Update… My computer: a microcosm of the environment.

THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 2010


Update… My computer: a microcosm of the environment.
I sometimes get a little impatient with my computer as it continually is out on the interweb searching for Updates. Sometimes it is sneaking around doing it. Other times it is beating me over the head with a ball bat telling me it is about to or is or has. Tedious I tell you.

A WinDoze computer can bring a very special and diverse variety of pain. I began leaving my computer on and available to the interweb at night so it can go searching its software’s mothership headquarters for new things to try to fill up my hard drive. I am sometimes astounded how little the computer sleeps during the night because it takes so long to shut down and restart after it continues to rag me to reboot when I greet it every day. Maybe it is just tired and needs some rest. On occasion it is still churning away when I lift the portable’s lid in the morning.

Some programs consistently slow everything down while they search in the background and eat up precious cycles of my computer’s memory or its CPU. Checking the Task Manager Performance tab can be gut wrenching. Some of the other tabs are easily as threatening.

I loathe hitting CTRL ALT DEL to try to figure out what is going on that I as master of my own domain did not direct my computer to do. If the computer seems exceptionally slow I know it is either something hiding deep behind my Processes or something under the Services Tab. Usually it is completely out of my hands. I am left out of the loop.

Generally it is not a program listed under my Applications Tab. Those things are what I asked the computer to do. Hopefully I know what is lurking there! Hopefully, it is at least doing one of those things and they are all listing as running. With all the multitasking the 4 Gigs of memory and the Virtual Memory hiding somewhere in a hidden area of my hard drive are capable of, I usually try to keep these down to one or two active things going on at any one time. I figure that this gives the dual core Intel chip at least a small chance of being able to keep up.


I have a rather large brick fish pond next to the patio of my house. When I go out to feed the fish I am amazed at how this closed system reminds me so much of my computer. I tweak it almost as many times as my computer.

I liken the pump to something that is always operating when my computer is turned on… almost like the CPU. When it is not clogged with leaves or some other organic detritus it keeps on churning away recycling through its heart all of the blood of the system moving the bytes hither and yon, spitting them back into the system, moving electrons around.

In the fishpond I am pleased to know that the particular high capacity pump there works very efficiently if the strainer is not clogged. If there is blockage; the flow of the water through it slows to a trickle. Just like my computer. An advantage in the fish pond system is that I can without difficulty clean the strainer and if necessary flush out the hose coming from the pump.

With the computer this may not be so easy. Many services are like the leaves and the junk that always tax the efficiency of the pump. No matter how hard I try they continue to remain close to the heart of the system gumming things up.

In my computer world this type of debris is listed under either the Processes Tab or the Services Tab. Sometimes I can remove one and get it out of my pond. More often this virtual waste just keeps showing up. Bonjour Service is one of those kinds of things. I don’t know precisely what this is. I have googled it on many occasions to find out how to remove it. It is exactly like MicroSoft Messenger in that as many times as I pull the plug on it; it just keeps saying, “I’m Baaaaack!” as soon as my attention turns to something else. I want to thank Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and their software engineers for these seemingly unnecessary things that continue to assert dominance over my WinDoze Operating System (OS) and my preferences.

There is a lot more stuff floating around in my pond ready to clog my pump. I tire of trying to stop some of them from reloading in front of my OS. Many of these services are updaters that attempt to get out on the interweb to insure that the latest and greatest of the megabytes needed to slow my computer even more are entrenched. The big companies that are fighting for dominance of the computer world are all involved in this conspiracy and are waging their LITTLE war with all its large and small battles inside my computer. Apple, Adobe, Google and MicroSoft fight with Norton and others to load imperative instructional sets hiding in the files they send to me without my invitation. I have tried to limit the number of times this happens and even the time it does happen but feel stymied in my efforts. I have become my own full time IT Department.

Some things have the courtesy to ask if it is alright to interrupt me while I use the computer. Others just forge on and do their nastiness without asking my permission. If asked and I deny them they just keep posting thought bubbles and nags on my computer screen. “Warning Will Robinson”.

When I relent and let them take over; they change everything I have worked so hard to configure, protect or optimize so they can do what they want in the background without my knowledge or having to ask my acquiescence. Norton is master of this. This naughty boy starts bossing me around after it has had its way with me and my computer. It orders me to reboot. It asks me if I want to do it now... Or, if I want to wait five minutes, an hour or what ever. It tells me that something is nefarious. It orders me to back up or run a system scan. Or it just does these things all on its own.

Usually I do have that option to tell most of these nags: Not Now. Inevitably I have to bow to their wishes and click on their preferred option and the radio button. I can find some really obscure things almost every morning before I get to holler “Whoopee!” and reboot.

The fish in my pond are like some or my computer’s services or processes. They gobble down any resource I throw at them. If they are sated because they ate all the fish pellets or cat food kibbles I have dumped in; they are usually ready to try to eat more the next time food is obtainable. The more I feed them the bigger they get and the more they want. It is an endless loop of geometrically growing mass. When I put the resources into the pond the fish are a swirling critical mass consuming everything is sight.

I have pet nicknames for a lot of the fish pets living in my pond. These names are based on what my fish do or how they look. Many of my processes and services just don’t look as great to me. Some I can’t even find a real name for. They keep swimming around gobbling down all of my resources… not giving me much in return. Sometimes they show themselves.

It is not unusual that they stay hidden. They can hide very well when I, the highest apex predator have been stomping around in their network like the Great Blue Heron that visited several times. His most Holy Uninvited ate some of the most worthy and most of the dumbest. Like me he kept coming back for more. I thought he had eaten all of the fish. I did not see a single one for about two weeks. By then the heron must have stopped showing up at the Smörgåsbord or had eaten all of the terminally stupid. I was not so pleased when this happened. It did take the less worthy and lowest on the food chain out of the system. He removed them from the gene pool. I should be so lucky.

I am attempting to tame some of the largest of the fish that gobble up my most of my resources. Exactly like I am trying to tame my resource hogs on my laptop.

Jaws managed to escape the Heron assault. I got him when he was very small but he has managed to survive his attempted extermination. He is a gorgeous mottled Koi with pretty markings and a fluorescent mask across his eyes. I am getting him trained and have him get his food pellets from my fingers every day. He has gotten good at this but will if given the chance latch on to my index or pinkie in an attempt to take more than he is offered. I think of Jaws like MicroSoft WinDoze. He is always lurking there ready to gobble up anything whether it is offered or not. If it is there he is going to attempt to make it his own. He wants to swallow it up and process it through his system and then when done with it, turn it into crap.

I have Hoover and Roomba who are named after vacuums of those names; both remarkably unremarkable larger goldfish. Like Jaws but they are slightly different kinds of fish that attempt to swallow everything they are offered and much that they are not. I think of them as Apple. To me they are not the prettiest in my pond because I continue to wonder if they really belong there but they keep plugging away sucking down anything within sight. They offer some wonderful entertainment possibilities but keep beating up Flash. Flash is a smaller version of Hoover and Roomba. He can be a resource hog when he wants to.

I have Norton. He was a far smaller guy when I put him in the pond but because of his prodigious appetite he has grown almost too big for the confines of my small system. He is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. He shoves others out of his way to get to my resources. He always seems really bossy.

I have Big Moby Dick. He is a beautiful completely white goldfish and he thinks of my hand and the food pellets like they were Captain Ahab’s ship. He is going to crash right in there and break up the party. He is always cruising just below the surface ready to grab any crumb that someone has not yet consumed. A lot like Google does. It doesn’t matter what it is he is ready to gobble it up even if it isn’t there yet or already belongs to someone else. He doesn't seem to care. He is not yet the biggest fish in my hydrographic system but if he continues sating his huge appetite I may have to find him a new home. I heard there might be room for him as an Android or somewhere in the Land of Chrome. I'll have to ask him sometime. Little Moby is exactly like Big Moby. Possibly he is another Adobe of my system. I may replace him with Foxit like I did on my computer

Besides Norton I have one other fish that gobbles down masses of resources. I call him Java. He is always spinning his tail letting me know that he is there. He is a big white goldfish with some large bright orange markings. He is a rather attractive fish and knows a lot of tricks but he seems to get confused a lot.

The last named fish is Spot. He is a medium sized white goldfish with a large fluorescent orange spot that covers the top of his head. He is always ready to let his presence be known. In a lot of ways he is like my computer manufacturer’s processes and services. No matter where I look he is always there. I wonder exactly what he does besides grab everything the others have not grabbed a hold of already.

I can never seem to get an exact count of how many somewhat less descript fish are in the pond. I usually have to break up the kibbles for their consumption. They can be rather monotonous. They all still eat a lot of the resources. They don’t shove everybody around like some of the bigger fish but they are always there eating, eating, eating.

The stuff that is floating around or settles at the bottom of the pond I think of as the ghosts of programs that were uninstalled. No matter how much they are processed or I try to clean them out they always leave evidence of their past existence somewhere in my registry. Mostly just crap.

I also have a Leopard Frog that hangs around the pond. Most of the time I don’t even see him or know he is there. I don't know if he is in the pond or out cruising the neighborhood. I never even figured out where he came from. His name is HTML5. HTLM is the toad that hangs around near the base of the bricks. He doesn’t seem to do as much as HTML5 nor is he as flashy but he is still hanging around.


My little microcosm of the world would be incomplete without some of the animals: the rodents, mammals and marsupials. The squirrels, raccoons and ‘possums are the malicious things they are constantly trying to grab the other few precious resources I have left.

Squirrels despite my best efforts will drain my bird feeders in a heartbeat. I have one leaping acrobatic squirrel. He can launch himself off the top of the fence or from the roof of the house to assault the ‘squirrel proof’ bird feeder barely reachable even with his best standing long jump efforts. He continues to leap after every FAIL until he finally makes contact and grasps the feeder with his nasty little paws. I think of him as my tracking cookies. I hate him but no matter what… he keeps coming back, jumping from high places almost beyond the limits of his capabilities and endurance. He will NEVER give up. He will continue until successful no matter how many times he has been removed from the scene of operations by CCleaner, WinDoze or Norton or even crashed to the ground in a stupor.

The raccoons are constantly standing by ready to destroy anything to break in and get my resources. Leave nothing and they will still find a meal. They work in the dark but are visible when I turn on the lights. They are like the pop ups in my browser. No amount of effort or Ad Blocker can get them out of the neighborhood garbage can. Nothing seems get rid of these pests although some things do work for a while.

The opossums are exactly like the Trojans and viruses that keep trying to get my resources. It doesn’t matter how many times they have been chased from the neighborhood or hit by my car and turned into RoadKill and RoadPizza… they just look evil and keep coming back for more. Every once in a while I will see a mouse or even a rat under the bird feeders. They are smaller versions of the ‘possums but sometimes even dirtier and nastier. They always bring to mind my email spam and the phishing schemes and remind me of Black Death. I remain vigilant and will not let their fleas bite me.

DakotaDawg is like the good side of my Norton because she is the sworn enemy of these beasts.


My next door neighbor’s dog is mostly akin to tracking cookies. He stands ready to call out and let everyone know precisely where I have been and what I have been doing. If he has to he will bury his nose deep in my crotch to find out. No matter how much I try I can not get him to shut up once he has decided he needs to let his owner know. He seems always to be in the yard 24/7.

MsConfig.exe is a little like the Animal Control. No matter how many times I call them to remove various pests from my neighborhood, the pests just keep coming back and disrupting my life.

DakotaDawg is the hero of all, especially me. She stands sentinel to keep any intruder out of the house. She lets me know when they are coming or passing by. She raises my spirits whether or not I need that. She is like the free downloads from Cnet who no matter what stand ready to complete any task they are asked to do. Last year she actually leaped completely over the pond in the pitch black of nite when I let her out. She ferociously grabbed a ‘possum by the neck and shook it until it was disabled. I didn’t even know it was there until I heard all the fuss and had to administer the coup de grace. That Mofer was either fishing or getting a drink of water during the drought. In any case it was after our precious assets. As a team DakotaDawg and I both foiled that. I would have been more like Animal Control and chased it from the neighborhood. DakotaDawg made certain this one pest would never visit us again.


I really love my DakotaDawg… Some of those resource hogging Mofers… NOT so much.


In some ways my computer is an awful lot like DakotaDawg too. It has so many talents. Although sometimes it doesn’t seem to understand English so well. I am still having a hard time with Hochdeutsch. We are all working on our language skills.

Habitually I consider going over to the Dark Side… going completely Apple. It is just that then I would have to keep updating my OS too and it would probably be just too easy. What is the fun in that?


I hope Moby Dick has not crushed the coffin floating around someplace in my pond.

Here DakotaDawg. Can you see if there is anything you can do to this computer? Have you seen that Great Blue Heron hanging around anywhere? Just a sec. Let me go find the English to German dictionary.


Thanx, the darn thing seems to be singing like the birds. The birds are the programs on my computer that I want there. It is beautiful when they are singing. I just need to remember to go out and get another fifty pound bag of sunflower seeds for them. I promise not to forget the DawgFood.
© 06.24.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg


POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 9:40 AM