Chapter Eleven. Twelve Gates. Thirteen Hours.

[captainsblog]

Plus a random picture of the dog stopping and smelling the flowers yesterday morning:



(Also stopped and smelled: a pile of hay, random pees and poops, and whatever dead thing that was in the middle of the road;)

But I soldiered on after that for my eleventh hour of bankruptcy related continuing ed. First, though, I discovered that Windows is itself entering the Chapter 11 of existence.  I seem to remember them saying, when 10 rolled out, that it was the end of the numbering and all subsequent versions would be upgrades of that numbered version. So naturally, Micosoft's decided to roll out yet another numbered  version, again for free! for existing users if they meet the time and license and hardware requirements.

That latter one might be tough, though: version 11 will only be available to users whose CPUs meet requirements for anti-hacking chip content:

What is a TPM, and why do you need one for Windows 11 anyway?

“The Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) is a chip that is either integrated into your PC’s motherboard or added separately into the CPU,” explains David Weston, director of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft. “Its purpose is to protect encryption keys, user credentials, and other sensitive data behind a hardware barrier so that malware and attackers can’t access or tamper with that data.”

So it’s all about security. TPMs work by offering hardware-level protection instead of software only. It can be used to encrypt disks using Windows features like BitLocker, or to prevent dictionary attacks against passwords. TPM 1.2 chips have existed since 2011, but they’ve typically only been used widely in IT-managed business laptops and desktops. Microsoft wants to bring that same level of protection to everyone using Windows, even if it’s not always perfect.

Typically for the Land of Gates, they've put out inconsistent and changing information on what requirements would be required. There is supposedly a "Health Check" app that will allow you to determine whether your PC will qualify, but I'm going to wait a bit, since Windows 10 will continue in support for at least another 3-4 years and, hell, I'm still running Office 2003.  I also find it bizarre that you have to click a link and download an executable to find out if hackers can trick you into clicking a link and downloading an executable

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Speaking of Lands of Gates, I went to another one last night.

12 Gates is a craft brewery hidden amongst a bunch of boring industrial park buildings a few miles from home and even closer to the airport. I'd been there once before for an after-work fundraiser, but my friend Maria is getting back into live solo gigs and this one was closest to home, so I headed over after dinner to catch a few songs and breathe in the ambience and jet fuel.

They set up a tent for her outside. Only problem for the singer with that was, bugs seem to really like her. The night before at a different venue, she was bombarded by bugs despite being surrounded by a rodeo of food trucks.  Having the venue be right under the airport flight path reminded me of a similar night of planes and bugs: We went to see Nanci Griffith when she played outdoors at Artpark, a nearby venue, not long after we first moved here, and Nanci spent that entire night fighting off a squad of midges who were trying to get her to make dinner out of them.  No planes were harmed in that effort, but we'd left a two-year-old Emily with a then-coworker of mine (and until recently, a still-friend /sad), whose home was even closer to the airport. When we went to pick her up, all they could report was that Emily had regaled each of the dozens of overflights with cries of "A PLANE! A PLANE!"

Maybe that's why to this day, she's never acquired a Tattoo;)



Maria had fewer bugs under the tent, but an appreciative audience, including a dancing baby-



- an appreciative dog (you can see his mommy in the above picture after the rain brought them under the tent)-



- and of course the singer her own self, covering Maniacs, Indigo Girls, Jewel, Al  Stewart and Oasis:



I wasn't sure if they'd have food (they did), but I did expect they'd have beer. I ordered one of their 13 IPAs, which I hope might have been one of these two:



It's good to see music coming back all around us. The streams of it helped save our souls over the past year, but there's something special about getting your artist's autograph, toasting them with a good IPA, and enjoying the company of fellow fans, even four-legged ones:)

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By noon today, I was recovered from the night's events- that repast was followed by us almost finishing Lupin, a decidedly non-werewolfy Netflix series from France about a Good Thief (we got the rest of the way thorough Series 2 this afternoon)- and settled in at the office for our first writing group meetup in two weeks.

So, yeah, me, at my desk on Shabbos, getting my Zoom fix again for the twelfth and thirteenth hours of the week. At one point, lights came on in the hallway outside my own office; it turned out to be a coworker checking on a file, but I was briefly worried that they were all staging a Seminar Intervention on me;)

It was a fast and fun two hours with the four in the crew. They gave me a very promising idea for giving my two main characters, who are otherwise mute by necessity, a speaking voice and I will incorporate him, or a fictionalized version of him, into future chapters.  Meanwhile,

dauntless_heart brought a short chapter that we all agreed worked beautifully as a short chapter. The only critiques were over the possible overuse of "buts" and "backs." Yes, we sensed the theme. And one of the others had at least two Mel Brooks callbacks to decide about keeping.

Hopefully we won't need Windows upgrades to keep going. Btw, for fun at a bar bet, we all know that Microsoft put out numbered versions of its signature operating system with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 and 10.  What accounts for the other four numbers in the sequence?  Three were known by other names, while the fourth represents simply a skip in the sequence....



4) There actually WAS a Windows 4, but just for servers. Its PC version, the last one still mainly based on MS-DOS running under it, was,.... Windows 95.

5) Likewise, 5 existed in the NT world numbered as such, but it morphed into the PC edition that still lives on in many workspaces I encounter.... Windows XP.

6) Number 6 was pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered- or rather, not numbered. It was the bad dream known as.... Windows Vista.

And then 7 and 8 resurfaced as scheduled, but 9, well, just became the 10 we now know and love. Call it Schrödinger's Operating System, if you need call it anything at all. 

 

Comments

Aw...

[dauntless_heart]

:: waves to Pepper :: Hi, baby!

Some good Citronella oil would help with the buggies for the rest of the season. doTerra sells that now. In the past it used to be just Terrashield, which is more of a broad spectrum prevention. Arborvitae on the ankles will generally keep biting bugs off while walking through tall grass, also.

Here in the southwest we don't see rain often, and even less this year, but when we do we get cloudbursts--like a bucket dumped suddenly on the area and then it's gone. A lot of it will become standing water, since it can't soak into the dry ground quickly, which then attracts mosquitos. We have to be careful about our outdoor pools and cover or dump them daily--otherwise they are a breeding ground close to a food source--dogs! For mosquitos, I recommend people mix the Citronella and Terrashield. ;)

Yesterday WAS fun--see why I like to read live? I need to get into Slack and post the highlights for those that missed. :)