Super sandals

I went to St John's for the Eucharist yesterday morning. I haven't been there for several weeks, so it was good to see people and wish them a Happy New Year.

The weather was mild enough in the afternoon for me to walk in my Ecco sandals, for the first time in a month or so. After walking into town and back, I had covered just over eight miles, and my feet gave me no trouble whatsoever, and enjoyed pushing back my distance boundaries.  Recently the last two miles have been painful and energy draining, no matter what other shoes I wore. The others all fit well, but after a while feel as if they are thin soled compared to my sandals, even when using cushion insoles. This is a puzzle.

This afternoon, I walked even further in sandals, right down to the Bay Wetland Nature Reserve, and then caught the bus back from the city centre. As I was walking down Neville Street, a women of West Indian origin approached me, and asked if I knew where a certain street was. I googled it and found out that it was close by. She'd taken a wrong turning on her way to Madhav one of Cardiff's excellent Asian supermarkets to buy vegetables not so easy to obtain at a decent price in one of the big supermarkets. We chatted as we walked down the street together. Bright eyed and sprightly, she looked about sixty and proudly told me that she was in fact ninety. She told me how proud she was of her children and grandchildren, most of who were in Britain, though some of her extended family are in the Caribbean. She hailed from Nevis. It was one of those delightful rare conversations that happened by chance, and brought extra cheer to my day.

Again today, my feet were fine. I'll have to cycle through the other pairs of shoes in the next few days to see if the problem recurs. If it doesn't, it would suggest I had a foot problem which cleared up. If it does, then I will have to track down some more resilient shoe insoles which are equal to the quality of the sandals. Clare has found out that there's a specialist shoe shop at the other end of the Parish. The answer may lie there. We'll see.

I've put in a couple of hours work each day on my novel, editing and adding to the story. I think I'm in the last quarter of the tale that's telling itself. I can see where it's going and how it will end. It's just a matter of bringing the ideas out of my head and into a text file.

I had a worried email from sister June this morning, forwarding the text of a message she received regarding the renewal of her subscription to Piriform's excellent CCleaner software. The free version is on her PC. I first put it there, and another tech guy who did some trouble shooting updated the free version and used it. Did she accidentally subscribe without realising she didn't need the Pro Version? Not so. The small print in the email she received revealed the response was directed to Cleverbridge Software, an American company which sells rubbish security and cleanup apps, associated with cold calling scammers.

She was duped into giving them access to her computer six years ago this month, due to a telephone scammer calling up and pretending to be from Microsoft warning her of a dangerous virus on her computer (switched off at the time) but then she smelled a rat, and contacted her bank to cancel the transaction, as soon as we'd spoken about it. I went up to London and did a security clean-up of her laptop a few days later, and no harm was done. It was an unpleasant lesson but valuable in terms of encouraging computer security caution. Once these crooks have an email address, sooner or later they will have another go at tricking a user into engaging with them. Thankfully Gmail has an effective spam filter and once the dodgy email has been flagged, its successors shouldn't reappear. It find it surprising that Cleverbridge Software's bad reputation doesn't lead it to be on a spam blacklist.

However, it's no offence to market poor software, especially if the owners can afford to hire lawyers to defend their interests. And there's nothing to stop a group of scamming con-men pushing unwary users towards a legit company, and using it as a shield for their nefarious activities.

A trouble shooting visit and the sound of 'cello chez nous

I had a notification from my GP surgery early this morning asking me to book in for a hypertension review, rather puzzling as my blood pressure is being checked in surgery on a regular basis in the run up to the operation. It's always a lot higher in the surgery than at home where I'm more comfortable and relaxed than I can ever be in clinic. Then I remembered that my my three monthly medication supply is about to run out, so maybe there was a hidden logic to the scheduled message anyway. Just in case, I phoned to check if this was needed, and ended up getting a GP appointment straight after the Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning, which I was asked to celebrate. 

There were nine of us at the service. I then popped over to see the doctor, then returned for a cup of coffee and a chat ten minutes later. I think he was satisfied by the chart of home readings I'd taken, that all was as good as it could be under the circumstances. A medication review will be necessary once I've recovered from surgery, if my blood pressure has naturally dropped to where it should be for a man of my age. Still, with the op in two weeks, that's at least another month away.

I was grateful to have another acupuncture session booked for just after lunch, as the last couple of days of wound pain and discomfort have been pretty taxing on my energy level. It did me a power of good, though I felt it was a good idea to ask Clare to accompany me on a visit to Russell's to trouble-shoot his computer. He had received a couple of emails recently some someone claiming to have hacked his router, planted malware on his machine, and threatening to expose him for downloading pornography unless he paid a sum in bitcoin. He'd meant to ask me about this yesterday, but forgot and rang later in the evening. 

I thought this was something about which he should contact his ISP, Plusnet, but in searching for a helpline contact number, I came across a user group forum in which was posted an exact description of a similar scam email content. I reported this to Russell, but thought it'd be a good idea to look at his machine, a Dell laptop still running Windows 7, but now doing so very slowly. His broadband speed was stable and adequate for his kind of usage, but the machine ran slowly. It was using the old Windows Security essentials suite, and was fully up to date. 

An imposed security scan revealed nothing suspicious, which was a good start, so I installed CCleaner. It took more than an hour to run. It was the first system cleanup that had been run in its six years of life. Over 15GB of redundant files and nearly 1,900 useless Registry entries were removed. I think it should be OK for the future, as the CCleaner installation will pop up a spring-clean notification from time to time, which I know will get attention. Such a shame for Microsoft to foist such a badly designed system on an unwitting public. 

I'd like to persuade Russell to use Linux, but he relies on several Windows only programs, the equivalent of which would need to be found, installed and learned, and that's a bit of a learning curve for someone of ninety two. 

About the time we were due to leave, Clare had a phone call from Eloise, a therapist who works with her on muscular problems. She's also a 'cello teacher, and Clare had invited her to give a lesson to one of her students at our house, using my father's 'cello, which is stored chez nous for Rachel, as it would be too vulnerable to the horrible climate conditions in Phoenix where she lives.

The call reminded Clare that we were in danger of running late to get home, so we departed rapidly and joined a stream of traffic going into town which was thankfully only a fraction of the stream of traffic leaving town, so we got home with five minutes to spare. It was lovely to hear Eloise playing one of the Bach 'cello suite opening pieces on my dad's 100 year old instrument. She was very taken with it, and looks forward to returning for another play, another lesson. What a pleasure for us!

  

Back at the workstation

Yesterday, I celebrated the eight o'clock Eucharist at St Catherine's, and for the rest of the day we didn't do anything special, apart from a walk in the park, as the weather wasn't wonderful for most of the day. It did however start designing a poster to advertise Rachel's gig at The Apothecary on the first weekend of July when she comes over from Arizona to visit us. This involved consultations on information and photo content, back and forth on WhatsApp followed by trial and error. At first I used Libre Office, but had to give up in frustration, as there was a single feature to do with overlay and transparency I couldn't find, either because it doesn't exist or because the instruction manual is not as clear as it needs to be.

I started up my old Windows Vista workstation, which worked without hesitation. As Microsoft no longer supports this operating system, browser use is plagued by security warning bells and whistles, but nevertheless it works. I was surprised by the speed at which MS Word and Publisher started up and continued to operate. Publisher 2000 isn't as sophisticated and complex as successive versions, but I'm familiar with it, and it just works for my limited purposes. Far too many modern software packages impose on users more than they ask for, and make things more complicated than necessary. Likewise hardware. My ten year old Acer, starts and runs faster than any Windows 10 system on modern hardware, because it's not as dependent on constant interaction with internet servers and that unending procession of updates patching a fundamentally flawed system.

Admittedly the system did crash a couple of times initially and needed a hard reset, but I suspect it wouldn't have been necessary if I'd run CCleaner before starting work. Although I haven't entirely forgotten how Publisher works, it did take some concentration and recourse to help files to get what I had failed to find in Libre Office. By the end of the evening, I'd composed trial draft version and emailed it to Rachel in Phoenix for comments. The devil will certainly be in the detail.

   

A day of updates

Yesterday, morning, Clare and I went to our solicitor's office on Llandaff Road, to go through the revised draft of our Wills, and sign them. The last time we did this was November 1992, just before we moved out to work in Holy Trinity Geneva. Co-incidentally, we're flying to Geneva on Thursday, on our way to locum duties in Montreux. I've already been busy with arrangements for a wedding blessing and a christening on top of the regular services. It's going to be an interesting time.

 I went over to visit my old friend Graham Francis, who's living now in retirement just down the street from St Saviour's Splott, where he has been helping out during the interregnum, in the same way I was helping out at St German's. Recently he's been undergoing chemotherapy prior to surgery to remove a stomach cancer. He's facing up to this life threatening challenge with confidence, realism and good humour, and continues to busy himself with worship and ministry in whatever way he has energy for.

A secondary reason for visiting him was to give his Windows 7 laptop a servicing, and decommission his ten year old desktop machine, which still runs, but astonishingly slowly. Fortunately, many years ago I set up a back up program to auto-run - Syncback. The computer hasn't been used much since the advent of tablets and smartphones, so backups an external drive have only ever been partial. Even so, given the time, it successfully completed its routine, so that now he has a complete and up to date archive of his files of the past decade, if not longer, which can be attached to his laptop when needed. 

Sadly the intermittent use of this device also has created problems with updating, and it runs very slowly, due to congestion which the use of CCleaner took ages to sort out. The anti-virus library was 520 days old and there were scores of other Windows security updates. All seemed to be competing for internet attention, and after four hours, I had to walk away, leaving the machine running in the hope that in the course of time, days if not weeks, it will sort itself out. I recall a similar problem with the office PC over in St German's taking weeks to update, although that problem was compounded by a flaky wi-fi connection.

Bringing machines back to working order after increasingly longer layoff, due to the ease of being able to do basic everyday tasks on a tablet or smartphone, is a great disincentive to using a Windows computer, so it's no wonder their market share is falling. This adds to the perennial problem of built-in redundancy, caused when older operating systems are no longer supported with security updates, or drivers not provided to enable older hardware peripherals to run with a newer operating system. Good equipment going to waste, causing electronic waste pollution when disposed of wrongly, and all due to the illusion that newer and fancier, with more options available is really desirable. It isn't, so the big computer businesses play tricks to force us to give up on old kit. What a foolish world!

   

Another Windows troubleshooting mission

An early start today, with the alarm going off just after six, and after a suitable breakfast, out of the house by twenty to seven, walking to the National Express coach station in Sophia Gardens for the seven fifteen coach to London to see my sister June and fix her computer. On my way down Cathedral Road, with relatively little traffic around, I was delighted to hear singing, first a wren, then a robin, then a blackbird, then a starling, and then thrush. All in the trees and garden bushes along one of Cardiff's main arterial roads into the city centre. What a lovely surprise to start the day!

The coach fleet has been upgraded since I last took the journey a year ago. Seats are better upholstered, if a bit narrow for me, and there's more legroom. Best of all, there's free wi-fi, which allows one to receive and send emails, also to surf the net, though not to use social media apps, it appears, probably because they gobble up too much data. Some video streaming is possible via a Sky app, and e-magazines are available to read, but not much to interest me. 

I slept on and off, and browsed a little, and the journey seemed to go much quicker than usual, despite arriving about forty minutes late because of traffic congestion around Newport and beyond the Severn bridge on the approach to North Bristol. Google kept issuing notifications of traffic delays throughout the journey, and it was possible to follow the trip on the Maps app in 'real time'. If you're not driving, this is quite interesting as you get to put names to the hamlets and villages along the M4 corridor which do not appear in motorway exit signage. Then if you're curious, you can Google further info about them. This time last year, on a trip like this, I would have been struggling to do office tasks on my Blackberry in response to a crisis phone call from Ashley, or prepare a document draft on a policy change. This was a much more relaxing and leisurely an outing.

I arrived at June's place at half past midday, having done some shopping for her on my way from coach to Victoria train station. June's laptop is identical to Kath's, and as soon as I switched it on and examined it, the same problem problem presented itself. A broken network configuration, meant that there had been no updates since 9th November, and the anti-virus software was also out of date. It was a matter of re-setting the network software from the command prompt window, with the recommended single line of code, rebooting the machine and forcing it to update everything immediately, a process that took about an hour, all told. 

This was a lot more straightforward than with Kath's machine, as in her case the update mechanism was broken, and it took ages just to find out how to repair it. Would I have been able to remember how I did the full repair two weeks later? Glad I didn't have to put that to the test.  Being risk averse, I'd brought with me the little Acer Aspire E11 I bought recently, to leave for June's use, while I took the other one back home to sort out. But that wasn't necessary. After lunch, I spent some more time, removing some of the useless redundant software, installing and using CCleaner to keep her Acer ES1-521 running as well as it can. So, hopefully there'll be no more problems, unless Microsoft does something equally as stupid and dangerous to render its flagship software system unfit for purpose again. I wonder how many millions of hours have been wasted and money expended by individuals and businesses unable to sort out critical technical problems forced upon them for themselves?

My sister starting using a home computer of her own fifteen years after retirement, and that was ten years ago this year. She gets along reasonably well with surfing, emailing, writing and printing off letters, scanning documents, shifting photos from camera to computer, but finds changes in the user interface, layout and terminology imposed by Windows quite baffling and dis-empowering. I wish that I had introduced her to Linux at the outset, where it is possible to choose your own user interface and modify layout until you get it the way you want it, then stick to it through all the necessary updating processes that improve the work the software needed to do in the background, to keep users safe and stable. Too late for that now however! 

I am pleased, however, that she gets on well with Libre Office, as I never put MS Word on her first laptop. So, she has benefited from having basically the same user interface throughout the decade, as its appearance changes have been cosmetic and minor. I'm glad to see reports that the next Libre Office will replicate the ribbon tool bar familiar with many users of recent iterations of MS Word, and that it will be optional - if only Microsoft would make optional appearances available easily, without fuss and palaver.

My trip home took just three hours and ten minutes, as the traffic on the streets of West London was relatively light, so it only took about half an hour to get as far as Heston services, when it can take twice as long when things are really busy. Despite spending seven hours of the way in coach seats, my gammy leg didn't stiffen up too much, so the twenty minute walk home wasn't an effort. With 'mission accomplished' I arrived with a sense of modest satisfaction, and devoured the welcome late supper Clare had left for me. She retired to bed early, in anticipation of early rising tomorrow to attend the Heath Hospital for her next eye operation.