Hugh's Worthless Blog

This weekend when I booted up my aging Dell Latitude E7440 it was installing yet another Windows 10 update so I let it do its thing until it was ready to let me log in. Unfortunately, once I was able to log in, the system was running at a snail's pace and simple tasks were taking several seconds instead of instantaneously as they had just a day beforehand. So I thought I would try using System Restore to take it back to a restore point in late November when I know the system was running in its old perky self. Unfortunately, the system started into a painful loop where it would keep rebooting and trying to repair itself until it came to a point where it said it could not repair. I tried booting it in Safe Mode and it would not even boot in Safe Mode. I was resigned to reinstalling Windows 10 on the system when I noticed I had an Ubuntu 18.04 boot flash drive here at home so I thought I could at least boot it up with it and copy over a few files on the local SSD I had not copied ove...

  During the pandemic I have been doing a number of jigsaw puzzles in my spare time, so my thoughtful wife, Penny, has been finding a number of them for me to put together. Unfortunately, one of her purchases did not turn out so well as they shipped the wrong puzzle, in fact they shipped two identical National Park puzzles that we did not want. After a lengthy dispute, she was able to get her money back, but the company said we could keep both of the undesirable puzzles. Therefore I decided to put one of them together and try it out. One of our faculty members in my department at Washington University teaches a very popular National Parks course so I thought I could at least learn the names of some of the parks. First off this puzzle is made from a very flimsy card stock which is not much thicker than a playing card. The backing of the puzzle is stamped with the letters A through H which allow you to figure out which section of the puzzle it is which can be helpful since almost a...

  We have successfully completed two weeks of classes now at Washington University , but the fall semester is definitely quite different than it was last year. Even strolling across campus, the large groups of walking students have now disappeared even between classes when you just see a few students walking around and never in groups larger than two or three. Everyone is properly wearing their masks and after two weeks, the university is showing very low numbers on our COVID-19 dashboard , even though they are making it very hard to even find. Since August 31 they have run 7,477 tests on students and only have found 12 positive cases. I had thought SLU (Saint Louis University) had been doing pretty well themselves with their much more informative dashboard , with only 136 positive cases since August 31, and only 12 positives in the past 10 days out of 642 tests (Sept 14-23). One thing that really looks odd when you walk around campus is seeing all the random lone chairs placed all...

  At the beginning of this month Google decided that our old Google site dedicated to our free church play scripts had to be updated so we decided it was time to do as Google asked and update it. The options there were pretty limiting but I was able to migrate all the content and the 13 script pages we had there into a new format Google site. One thing we noticed, however, is that it would not allow me to put any Google Adsense ads back on it, and once I read around I realized nobody could add Adsense ads to Google sites since 2013, and we were only allowed to keep our ads intact because our site was opened up before 2013 (it was created back in 2009) and we were grandfathered.  So today I decided to migrate the whole thing to WordPress which is easier to use anyway and allow Google to place ads back in it. I am hosting it on my same HostGator site that hosts my calculator site where I can actually run a number of WordPress sites. My " Dead Reckoning " estate planning site ...

Since I receive e-mail from just about every place imaginable, I actually somehow signed up to receive messages from both the Democratic and Republican campaigns for just about every upcoming election. One thing that is consistent is that they all want my contributions, but in some cases they will give you special swag. I found it interesting that for the exact same $35 donation you can receive a very different special gift from either campaign.  If you donate $35 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) you will receive two reusable cloth face masks that not only help reduce the spread of respiratory viruses, but help promote that everybody go out and vote during the election. You can definitely purchase face masks for less, (like from one of my co-workers who sells custom made, decorative masks for just  $7 to $9 on Etsy ), but you are also paying more to help the Democratic Party promote their candidates. If you donate $35 to the Trump re-election campaig...

My mother-in-law had been experiencing dementia since her early 80's and was living in a nearby assisted living facility when she fell and broke her hip in early January this year (2020). That was the beginning of the end for her, but we did not realize she would end up passing away in April during the COVID-19 pandemic when the St. Louis area and much of the country was under a "stay at home" order. This has made taking care of all of her affairs much slower and more challenging, but luckily we had planned a lot in advance to make the whole procedure less aggravating. My wife, Penny, decided to write up her ordeal and I have posted it on my site as " Dead Reckoning " our guide to setting up and executing an estate plan for a parent. Enjoy!