Offended, a Facebook Tip

I shared this on Facebook one day, mostly because of this one person on my Friends list who didn't post much unless she was offended by something. That or she posted things trying to correct everyone else's behavior. I finally posted something factual about one of her gods. Within a day she unfriended me. :) It was inevitable. She almost never Liked my shares, not even the funniest ones. I'm amazed she lasted as long as she did. Her husband unfriended me a while back out of the blue.

There's a better way to handle it. I see stuff on Facebook that "offends" me all the time. If someone constantly posts things that are vulgar, I turn off notifications from them. For example, this one guy kept sharing anti-Obama things. A lot. No, really. A lot. One day he shared between 20 and 30 anti-Obama posts on top of his other posts. I don't care for Obama either, but so much of it was hate instead of facts. I can live with facts. I'm tired of the hate. I changed my settings so I'd only see important posts by him. Problem solved.

My number one tip for getting rid of things I don't want to see on Facebook is to hide them. In the top right corner of every Facebook post is a little down arrow. Clicking it brings up a menu. The top choice is "Hide post". Bam. It's gone. Boring things. Long things. Offensive things. Useless clutter. Things I'm simply not interested in like somebody's hobby. Songs I don't like. Videos I don't watch. "Share if you agree" garbage. It gets rid of it all of that and more.

It's not a perfect solution. The perfect solution is quitting Facebook. But in the meantime, it works okay. It lets me hang out with and get along with a wide variety of people without having to approve, Like, enjoy, validate or condone every single post by every single person.

The Death of the Republic

It's been over 24 hours since the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, and the government still refuses to call it terrorism. 14 Americans massacred in cold blood. 17 Americans injured. The terrorists, outfitted in military garb and gear, were armed with AR-15 assault rifles, handguns and multiple improvised explosive devices. Their home was an "IED factory". There's no telling who their customers were. Yet the government plays word games about "motive" and "evidence". The evidence is clear: 14 massacred Americans clear, 17 injured Americans clear, assault rifles clear, handguns clear, military equipment clear, bombs and bomb factory clear. Motive is irrelevant when actions speak for themselves. This was not just terrorism but Islamic terrorism.

The reaction of the government is also clear. The government isn't functioning as an American government. When the entire government cannot use the word terrorism or the phrase Islamic terrorism, the government is functioning as a police state. The media reaction confirms this. News outlets are censored from calling the terrorist attack a terrorist attack without official permission from the government. The truly frightening thing is that it goes beyond the U.S. British and French media are also censored from calling it a terrorist attack. That requires global coordination and global control over the news media, an arrangement that has to have existed prior to this latest Islamic terrorist attack. A global government with enforcement powers is already in place.

The search for "motive" is an act of fiction designed to place the terrorist attack in the past until the public can be distracted by the next news cycle. It's a distancing tactic. Police often don't find motives for crimes. Why do we need one when the crime involves Islamic terrorists? It's theatrical nonsense. Investigators aren't searching for motive. The motive is already known.

The past two attacks have had a new element: media censorship. In both cases information was withheld from the media or prevented from being broadcast until hours later. Will we see the day when attacks are carried out and never publicly reported? I think we will.

This is a wake-up call to all Americans. The government reaction is dangerous. They're deliberately acting against the welfare of the United States. Lying and withholding the truth do not serve Americans. The end of our freedom is nearly upon us. The republic is holding together by a thread. A partial police state is already in place and functioning against us. For the United States to survive as a free country, something must be done to break the power of the creeping police state.

Humiliating Defeats

In the last blog I was talking about the Cubs and what I thought would happen in the post-season. As seemed likely, they beat the Pirates and the Cardinals. That's as far as I forecast, since I didn't know who would be playing in the series after that. It turned out to be the Mets.

The Mets didn't have a great team this year and won only 90 games. The Cubs should have handled them easily. But they didn't. In the Cubs's series with the Cardinals, Rizzo, Bryant and Montero weren't hitting. They were in deep slumps. Montero's was self-inflicted. He swung for the fences like a maniac almost, but not quite, every at bat. At the same time, players who are usually average were on awesome hitting streaks. I thought for sure Rizzo and Bryant would snap out of it, since they had three days between series to rest and work on things. It didn't happen.

In the series between the Cubs and the Cardinals, the Cardinals won one game. It wasn't total humiliation. In the games they lost, they put up a fight. In the series between the Cubs and the Mets, the Cubs got swept four games. I don't think they had a lead the entire series. If they did, it was for half an inning. It's hard to lose four games in a row. The defeat and humiliation were total and complete. After a great series against the Cardinals, the Cubs collapsed.

Rizzo and Bryant never came out of their slumps. Montero continued to swing like a madman. The guys who were on hot streaks against the Cardinals went back to normal. It was awful. It was brutal. It was basically unwatchable. The only silver lining is that the Cubs had a lot of rookies this year and weren't expected to do anything of substance until 2016. By the end of next season, the rookies will have two full seasons under their belts and hopefully be ready for the post-season.

Speaking of defeat, I may as well talk about Georgia Tech's football season. On the other blog I mentioned last season's awesome win over Georgia. Tech went on to play Florida State in the ACC championship. Even though they lost, it didn't feel like a loss. They played hard and left it all on the field and ended the game down by just 3 points. There was nothing to be ashamed of. They moved on and won their bowl game 49-34. Things looked fantastic for this year. I was so excited.

However, Tech had some key players graduate or move on to the NFL between seasons while other players became injured. This year has been a train wreck. After winning the first two games against extremely weak schools, Tech's only won one game this year against real teams. That was Oct 24th against Florida State, who was ranked 9th in the country at the time. Tech has had gradual improvement as the season's gone on, and it seemed like they were finally on track. Not so much. They lost Saturday against Virginia. It was a game they probably should have won, but I said that about the Duke game. They really should've beaten Duke. Seriously.

Tech has three games left this year, including the all-important game against Georgia. I was dreading that one. However, Georgia lost a crucial player to injury for the rest of the year and aren't as high in the polls as they started out. In fact, they're no longer a top 25 team, just like Tech. Maybe, just maybe, Tech can beat them again this year. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm not dreading the game like I was. I have hope.

And the Mets? They lost the World Series 4 games to 1. Daniel Murphy, the unstoppable hero against the Cubs, made two memorable errors. One cost them game four. The second helped to lose game five to complete the defeat. Baseball's a game of streaks. Over the course of a season, it all evens out. In short series like the post-season, it gets magnified.

How Did My Braves Boycott 2015 Work Out?

As I mentioned in April, I boycotted the Braves this year and went with my second-favorite team, the Cubs. I made the decision to do so in September of 2014, when Fredi Gonzalez wasn't fired after multiple seasons of mediocrity. After observing his managerial capabilities for his first month with the Braves, I spent every year of his tenure hoping they'd replace him with a good, solid manager. It never happened, and now he's under contract until the end of 2016. :( Enough is enough. The only Braves games I watched this year were the ones in which they played the Cubs.

In September 2014 most of the unthinkable moves and trades made in the off-season hadn't happened. The Braves had a lot of talent and looked good for this year. The Cubs were struggling and seemed iffy. So, how did my boycott work out?

Between seasons the Braves sold or traded off nearly the entire team. The Cubs picked up a fantastic manager and made good trades for talented players. There was no way to predict the way things ended up happening.

2015 Season Standings
The Braves finished third worst among all major league teams, winning 67 games while losing 95 for a 41.4% win rate. As usual for Fredi Gonzalez teams, they experienced yet another late-season collapse. Only Cincinnati and Philadelphia were worse. Average attendance was 25,017.

The Cubs finished third best among all major league teams and made it to the post-season. They won 97 game and lost 65 for a 59.9% win rate. The best team in the American League won 95 games. The Cubs' record is better than the entire American League's and second only to St. Louis and Pittsburgh in the National League. Average attendance was 36,540.

My boycott went pretty well. The Cubs have a young team that's not really expected to take off until next year, and they're already in the playoffs this year. How far will they go? I expect them to make it past Pittsburgh in the first round. It's only one game, and Jake Arrieta will pitch. He's had an amazing 2015 and could win the Cy Young Award. The competition is fierce this year. Even if he doesn't win, his year was certainly worthy of the honor.

If the Cubs beat the Pirates, they would go on to face the St. Louis Cardinals, the best team in all of baseball. 100 wins. 62 losses. 61.7% win rate. The Cardinals handled the Cubs early in the season this year but lost the last series in September. Assuming he gets two starts, I expect the Cubs to win both of Arrieta's games, which only leaves them one game to win in this best of five series. I kind of expect the Cubs to beat St. Louis and move on, but a few things worry me. The Cubs are a young team. John Lester hasn't been his best this year. Over the course of the year the Cubs had too many occasions of putting runners on base with 0 or 1 out and them failing to score. The bullpen hasn't always delivered.

I think it might come down to the bullpen. If Arrieta and Lester both pitch well, that's three games, but the bullpen has to close the deal.

All in all it was a good year to be a Cubs fan. :)

Bird Feeder

I cleaned the bird feeder last week for the first time all year. It doesn't get very dirty, but it was getting hard to see through the opaque plastic in a ring around it where the birds were hitting it with their wings, I guess. I felt good about getting that done. A couple of days later, the metal bird feeder pole was bent over. It had been broken beneath the ground. The bird feeder was nowhere to be seen. It was just gone.

It was discouraging. My TV got hit by lightening not too long ago. My computer just went into a coma. Apparently, it's the motherboard, although that's what I thought about the CPU. Bird feeders aren't expensive, but I still don't know how much it's going to cost for the computer.

However, while coming up the driveway, I saw part of the bird feeder in the woods. When I went to get it, I saw a huge paw print. Bear. I haven't seen one since 2013 when my dad was in the hospital. I think someone shot that one. A few days after I saw it, I heard a gunshot back where it would have been roaming.

I put the feeder back on the pole, which is shorter now. The feeder had very little damage, just a small piece of bent plastic that I broke off and threw away. When I saw it in the woods, I figured it would be too mangled to use. Now I'm wondering how the bear carried it from the yard to the woods without scratching it. They must be able to use their mouths very delicately. I wouldn't have thought that about such a large animal.

Windows 10 Upgrade Woes

I upgraded to Windows 10 Pro from Windows 7 Pro. It turned all the title bars white with no way to change the color that I could find. I right clicked the desktop and went to settings/personalize, etc. Didn't work. I put it on the back burner. I had bigger problems than worrying about the colors.

I use Microsoft financial software to keep track of my checking account. Windows 10 is incompatible with it. For some reason it needs Windows Explorer 6, or it won't run. Windows 6 will not install under Windows 10 in a 64-bit environment. To make a long story short, the solution is to use virtualization software or upgrade the software. Since I couldn't even open the program to export my data, my solution was to uninstall Windows 10. My software works now. :) I'm going to have to find a replacement program, export my data into it and try Windows 10 again later.

If you're thinking about upgrading to Windows 10, be sure to check software compatibility first. It might not even work with Microsoft software.

Bullpen Relief

http://m.cubs.mlb.com/news/article/140132628/cubs-get-tommy-hunter-from-orioles-for-lake

In the last post I expressed worry for the Cubs' bullpen. Right after I posted, another article came out. The Cubs picked up another arm for the bullpen, Tommy Hunter from the Orioles. I'm not familiar with him, since I don't watch American League baseball unless they're playing a National League team. The American League isn't authentic American baseball, but that's a post for another day.

The Cubs have been slipping since the All-Star break and have lost their wild card spot for the moment. We'll have to wait and see if these changes have any affect on the team.