May I see your citrus permit, please?

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I’ve always had my suspicions Texas sees the Rio Grande Valley as the ugly red headed step child of the family. It’s the little things. Like a federal checkpoint an hour away from the valley outside Falfurrias Texas. And mandatory USDA permits for taking fruit out of the valley area.

No, really!

These signs are everywhere in the valley, and this one was posted at a local Staples.

Citrus permit sign

Citrus permit sign

Content follows…..
—————————-

If you are leaving the Rio Grande Valley and intend to take citrus fruit with you,or if you are shipping citrus fruit out of the Rio Grande Valley, you must obtain a USDA permit.

There is no charge for the permit.

Call or come by for instructions on how to obtain a permit.

USDA – APHIS – PPQ
4909 East Grimes Ste 103
Harlingen TX
956 421 4041

USDA – APHIS – PPQ
Federal Building
320 N. Main Street Room 119
956 686 3631

Texas Department of Agriculture
900-B East Exp 83
San Juan Texas 78589
956 787 8866

How to permanently delete your files and wipe your machine’s free space

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You probably have heard if you put files and folders in the trash that it does not mean the files are really gone. Even emptying the trash doesn’t get rid of files permanently.

To prevent most anyone from recovering the files you have deleted, you need to securely delete your files as you remove them and occasionally wipe your machine’s free space.

They are both very easy to do.

To start with, we first need to set up the secure deletion of files and folders.

If you have a PC, you will need to download a open source (free) program called ERASER from here. I’ve used this program for years, and it has never given me any trouble in Vista, XP or even the new Windows 7.

Once you have ERASER downloaded, double click the program and let it install.

After it has installed, the first extra option ERASER has put on your PC will appear whenever you right click on any file. You should see a new ERASE option. If you choose ERASE, that file or folder you clicked on will be securely shredded beyond recovery!

If you want to be ultra secure, after you click on ERASE, the pop-up menu that appears has an OPTIONS button. You can click it and choose other options that are more secure than the basic setting, but each higher setting will take around triple the amount of time as the one before it. The first setting is secure enough, so leave it at “1 Passes” (or “3 passes”) and click OK.

If you are on a Mac, you don’t need to install anything to securely shred your files. When the folders and files you want to get rid of are in the trash, click on the FINDER icon in your dock, then go to the FINDER menu on the top menubar and choose SECURE EMPTY TRASH. This second setting, under the regular “empty trash” command, will securely shred your documents beyond recovery, just like ERASER did for the PC.

Wiping space on your hard drive is the second step in basic data security. Wiping the free space on your hard drive will delete any stray files that were previously on your system that were moved but still recoverable, as well as any temporary files that have yet to be overwritten. The only problem is that wiping the free space on your Mac or PC will tie up your machine for a few hours. I usually set up the process for once a month on a random Sunday, start it in the morning, and by midday it is done.

ERASER has the ability to wipe the free space on a PC’s hard drive, while Mac users have this feature built in.

To wipe the free space on a PC after you have installed ERASER, go to MY COMPUTER. Now right click on the C drive and go to ERASE UNUSED SPACE in the pop up menu. A dialog box will appear asking you “are you sure you want to erase unused space on drive C:\?” Say YES and that’s it!

Just like on the single file and folder erasing, after you click on ERASE UNUSED SPACE the pop-up menu that appears has an OPTIONS button. You can click it and choose other options that are more secure than the basic setting, but each higher setting will take around triple the amount of time as the one before it. The first setting is secure enough, so leave it at “1 Passes” (or “3 passes”) and click OK. That’s it!

To wipe the free space on a Mac, you need to open your hard drive, open the APPLICATIONS folder and open the UTILITIES folder.

Once you are in the UTILITIES folder, look for DISK UTILITY and open that application. Once DISK UTILITY is open, click on your hard drive’s icon on the left column. Now on the right area, choose the ERASE tab.

Near the bottom of the ERASE tab, there is a button that says ERASE FREE SPACE. Once you click on it you will have three options on how securely you want to erase your free space. Each option is more secure than the other, but each higher setting will take either 7 or 32 times the amount of time as the one before it. The first setting is secure enough, so leave it at the top setting and click OK. That’s it!

Experiment a little to see how much time higher settings take to wipe the free space on your hard drive. I have mine set for 7 passes if I am going to be gone for the weekend and even higher when I actually get vacation time and can leave them running for prolonged periods.

Deleting your files securely and wiping free space on your hard drives is a great way to stay safe on your daily work and/or home machines. And even if you trash files normally on a day to day basis, wiping the free space on your hard drive will clean up all those regularly deleted files and keep you just as secure as if you has chosen to securely delete each file or folder individually.

September Storm Clouds

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Finally got a few days of rain. It broke up the 105 °F / 40.6 °C days and felt wonderful while it lasted. Here’s what I saw when walking outside in a break in the storm.

Storm clouds with rainbow

Storm clouds with rainbow

Another version…

Storm Clouds with rainbow 02

Storm Clouds with rainbow 02

Some rolling in…

Gathering storm clouds

Gathering storm clouds

Last one…

Gathering storm clouds 02

Gathering storm clouds 02

Sony PRS-505 : mini book review

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10 words or less : Awesome for book junkies. Portable. Holds several books. Decent speed.

Sony PRS 505

Sony PRS 505

Long version: Ok, so it’s not a book review. It’s a book reader review. But this device is definitely a gateway drug for those of us who are book junkies. I just picked this up on clearance a few days ago, loaded it up, have been completely satisfied with it.

With the recent announcement of touchscreen-enabled readers, the Sony 505 I have is now officially the “previous generation” ebook reader. But the 505 is still being sold at retail outlets at a discounted price from the initial $299-$350 range.

The 505 works on a PC with the provided Sony reader software, but I found it much better to use a open source (free) program called Calibre to sync it on my PC as well as my Mac. (Sony does not provide Mac software for the 505, so Mac users will definitely have to install Calibre.)

There are tons of free books you can download, but you can also drag and drop in your own PDFs, Word files, LRF files (Sony reader files), and text files to read. You can also convert .mobi files through Calibre to use on the 505. MP3s and AACs audio files are also supported, as well as JPEGs, BMPs, PNGs and GIFs (which will only show in black and white on the 505 screen)

Reading with the 505 has been great. The 505 boots up instantly most of the time, and always to where you left off. The screen is very easy to see and the scalable font makes it easier to adjust the size of the text on screen to a comfortable level. The 505 also has fairly decent built in memory. I loaded 8 full books with plenty of room to spare. You can also add Sony’s Pro Duo or any SD memory cards to the expansion ports on top of the device if you want to carry your entire library with you.

The load and response times are very good. You can back up to a main menu where you can bookmark pages and pick up another book to read while keeping your place in the original book. You can also get a book’s Table of Contents (if it has one), sort by author, sort by title, sort by date or sort by collections. You can also listen to any music you uploaded while you are reading.

The 505 also lets you rotate the books horizontally, lock the device from unauthorized use, and make selections with the numeric row on the right column of the device.

The best part of the 505 is that is about the thickness of my 1st generation iphone, and about 7″ long by 5.25″ wide with the provided leather case attached. Very portable!

Now for the bad.

The 505 does not come with a charger. Sony does sell them separately, but you will have to charge the 505 out of the box from any USB port on your machine.

There is no backlight on the 505, so you can’t see the screen in dim light. Sony, conveniently, sells a very fancy cover/light combo separately as well.

Some very large or graphics intensive PDFs don’t like being scaled up or down and will take a loooooong time to refresh. This is a hit-or-miss problem, and I have only seen it once out of the 50 PDFs I tested.

Reading documents on the 505 is always decent, but nothing beats a document specifically formatted in LRF format for the 505. You can convert most anything to LRF with Calibre though.

All image files will only show in black and white on the 505 screen.

And finally, when you turn pages on the 505, there is a brief contrast change as the new page loads. You won’t notice it after a few pages of reading, but it is distracting to see at first.

But aside from that, I have no complaints.

Having books available to instantly read is a great way to pass the time. And while this is not the latest ebook reader from Sony, at its’ current reduced price, this could be something to get more people introduced (and hooked) on ebook systems.

I highly recommend the Sony 505. Four out of five stars.

And, very briefly, on a related topic, what do I think of the 505’s competition, the Kindle? They suck! Simply because they can delete any books you purchased at anytime without any warning or reason. The 505 won’t (and can’t) do that to you.

New Rules by Bill Maher : mini book review

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10 words or less : Funny and sharp. Quick reading. Will probably offend most conservatives.

Bill Maher - New Rules

Bill Maher - New Rules

Longer version: “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer”  by Bill Maher was in a local bookstore’s bargain bin. Since I haven’t finished unpacking, I picked it up to pass the time.

The book was easy reading, but I liked it. “New Rules” is a good intro to his sense of humor if you haven’t seen his HBO show. Part of the fun is how he obviously goes out of his way to offend people with highly conservative values. Most of his book is common sense, but he does fly off on a wild tangent every so often.

Unfortunately, like all standup comedian and talk show host books, the book uses an oversized font. Single one-thought paragraphs take up full pages. And the book’s sentences are more than double spaced. The entire thing should have been less than 114 pages, and not 228.

Aside from that, I thought it was good stuff.

Three out of five stars.

Storm clouds near Alice, TX

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Storm clouds near Alice, TX

Storm clouds near Alice, TX

Driving back from Alice, Texas about a month ago, I got caught in the back end of a good storm. That’s one of the bigger clouds on the East side of 281. I was heading south at the time.

The camera automatically lightened the clouds, but when I tried to darken them in photoshop so it would match what I saw, the photo didn’t look right. So here it is in its’ original auto-lightened state.

Hatched Egg

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Hatched Egg

Hatched Egg

I found this little egg sitting just like this in our yard some time ago. I have no idea what it hatched, but it was dry to the touch and nothing else was nearby. It was tiny too. Less than the diameter of a quarter.

Mickey D’s? BK? Meh. How’s this for a restaurant name?

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OK, let’s say you want to open a restaurant. Something that features a pretty universal comfort food. Something easy, something that people understand, and you want to do it right across from a local university campus. What would you name such an establishment?

MKKs restaurant

MKK's restaurant

Mother KlucKer’s. Oooooh yeah. Jackpot.

Whats another trillion among friends?

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I’m no politician. I don’t even do office politics.

Having said that, I’m having a real “WHAT” moment after reading a news article from the hill.com. According to the article, the Senate is going to have to raise the federal debt limit to well beyond $12.1 trillion by October… just about four weeks from now. This is “a move viewed as necessary despite protests about the record levels of red ink”.

But Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in the article that “failing to raise the cap could lead the nation to default in mid-October, when the debt is expected to exceed its limit.”

To quote a famous movie, “That would be bad. Okay, alright, important safety tip.”

Before I rant on, though, take a moment to click this link to see what a single trillion dollars looks like, starting from a $100 bill.

Did you see it? Double stacked palettes of $100 bills. But that’s just A billion. Imagine 12 stacks of that.

But that’s not the “WHAT” moment.

A math whiz on another website pointed out that the biggest surplus ever was 236 billion, way back in the Clinton/2000 era. No surplus of that magnitude has ever happened before or after. But it did happen once, so you can argue it could happen again.

The thing is, even if the spending stops right now, it would still take over 52 years of $230 billion surpluses to pay off 12.1 trillion.

12.1 trillion divided by 230 billion = 52.6086957.

WHAT

Yeah. Time for a coffee.

Pair the remote on a Mac

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If you have a MacBook or Ibook or any other Apple product that has one of those little white remote control things, you should take a moment to electronically lock the two together.

The reason for doing this is to keep your presentations and Mac under your own control. I’ve heard (in theory of course!) some pranksters carry their own Apple white remote with them into presentations. A few clicks of their own remote will send your Mac’s presentation (or Itunes, or any other application for that matter) into a complete state of chaos.

To lock down your Mac so that it only obeys commands from your Apple remote…

Go to SYSTEM PREFERENCES
then SECURITY
choose GENERAL

From here you do have the option to completely disable any remote control by checking the DISABLE REMOTE CONTROL INFRARED RECEIVER option. However, if you click the PAIR button, the Mac will ask you to hold your Apple white remote a few inches from the computer while pressing the remote’s MENU and NEXT buttons at the same time.

After holding the buttons for a few minutes, a white graphic of the remote will appear on your screen, with two chain links above it. This indicates the paring was successful!

Now only that one remote control will control your mac. Any other remote commands from other remotes will be completely ignored.

If you ever want to un-pair the assigned remote with the computer, just go back to the same preference pane and click on the UNPAIR button. Then the mac will go back to being accessible by any remote.