At home, I use a Linux desktop and a MacBook Pro laptop, and am quite happy with both. However, for our small business, I am reluctantly planning to get a Windows computer instead because I want to create a small database in Microsoft Access, and Access is not available in the Mac version of Office.

For the most part our business is not computerized, but we do want to replace a card file with an Access database. It will be just a simple database with a one-to-many relationship between the two tables.

When we recently hired a new employee at work, I had problems trying to use my new MacBook Pro on the U.S. government's Social Security Online Services website. I attempting to log into that website to use their social security number verification service for verifying the new employee's social security number.

As soon as I tried to log-in, I had problems, so I called the technical support number for Social Security Business Services Online. With slight irritation, the woman told me that I had to use Internet Explorer when accessing their website. A few minutes later, I also talked to a guy at their technical support number, who told me that I could not use any Apple products to access the Social Security Online website. I did not bother asking him about using my Linux computer.

I complained to him that my only Windows computer is an old Windows XP computer which just barely runs, and which has had a virus and malware removed from it in the past. I said that I would be irresponsible of me to enter our new employee's social security number from our least secure computer. After becoming slightly angry with me, he said that I should use a computer at the library instead.

I do not feel comfortable doing that at the library, with other people at the library looking over my shoulder, and our new Windows 7 computer will not be arriving for another week. Since, at the moment, I do not have Internet Explorer available from a trustworthy Windows computer, I will try to do the required social security number verification over the telephone with them instead.

My 1.5 Mb Century-link DSL connection is also still working normally. I have not noticed any problems now or from earlier this morning.

Most ham radio clubs have fox hunting events now and then, where they see who can be the first to find a hidden transmitter. I know you mentioned possibly contacting the local ham radio club. I have never participated in a fox hunt, and don't know much about doing that, but presumably they would each use a held directional antenna to see which direction the signal is strongest from.

I wonder which wireless monitoring applications on a laptop or cell phone would show more than just the nearby wireless routers? The old laptop that I occasionally use, only shows the nearby wireless routers.

Since he is an advanced Wi-Fi leach, he is probably has a high gain directional antenna, and is likely to be somewhat further away from the wireless router than is typical for Wi-Fi. I am not sure how far away he could be with such an antenna.

• Transmitter Hunting
• Fox Hunting DVD from the ARRL

Yes, booting from a LiveCD is another good alternative. But even if I used a Live CD, I would prefer to run it on a separate computer, so that I would not have to reboot everyday just for checking my online banking. Unfortunatley, that would actually require two reboots every day, once to boot up the live CD, and once to bootup back into the version of Linux that I normally use at home. Instead, I would prefer to leave my normal desktop computer running and then just boot up another computer with the live CD whever I need to use it.

If I ever actually do that, I might use a liveCD, or I might just install Linux on the banking only computer instead. If I were to unplug the hard drive, I could then probably assume that any ordinary Linux liveCD then had the extra security of being a read-only OS, although, Linux installed on the hard drive would have had more recent updates, including security updates.

I had not heard of the LPS-Remote Access liveCD that you mentioned, that sounds like a very good choice.

Back in 2009, Brian Krebs wrote these two articles that suggesting that small to medium-sized companies who lack fulltime IT/ security staff, use a Linux liveCD if they do online banking.

• E-Banking on a Locked Down (Non-Microsoft) PC
• E-Banking on a Locked Down PC, Part II

I have thought about possibly using one computer just for on-line banking and another computer for everything else. That way the computer that is used for on-line banking would most likely never have been exposed any websites, email messages, or anything else which would be likely to contain malware. The computer that I would use for on-line banking would probably either use Linux or be a Mac.

I would not be 100% sure that that the computer used for on-line banking is clean, but that is probably about the best that I could easily do. I am not an expert on computers or computer security, but that seems like one possible resonable precaution.

My main desktop computer runs Linux, by the way, so if I were ever to add an on-line banking only computer, I would probably choose Linux for it too.

I have discovered that a driver slowing while approaching a red light, does not mean they are actually planning to make a complete stop before making a right turn. About 15 years ago, I was standing at a crosswalk until the "Walk" sign turned green. Being cautious, I looked to see if the car was slowing. I also looked to make sure that the woman was looking in my direction. Only at that point did I start across the crosswalk. But, I ended up on the womans hood as she made her rolling right turn at the red light.

I was on roller blades at the time. Only in the last few seconds did I realize that she no longer was slowing sufficiently for a complete stop. I ended up on her hood, but I was not injured. Fortunately, she had slowed down to about 10 MPH before hitting me. I also had my helmet on and my protective knee pads, wrist pads and elbow pads on. If I had been a more experienced rollerblader, I could have made it back to the curb more quickly. So there I was, an annoyed overweight middle aged guy laying across her hood, while she had a horrified look on her face.

Having learned my lesson, I became even more cautious about entering crosswalks, but a couple of years later it almost happened again while I was walking with my girlfriend and her dog, that time. Just like before, the driver seemed to be slowing as if to make a complete stop, and seemed to be looking towards us as the green crossing "Walk" sign turned green. After stepping into the crosswalk, at the last moment we realized that the guy was not planning to make a complete stop. My girlfriend and I quickly stepped back to the curb, and I yanked the dog back just in time too.

As long as a slowing car is still in motion, it is not possible to tell for sure if the driver is planning to make a complete stop, or not. If the pedestrian were to wait for the approaching car to make a complete stop first, the red "Don't Walk" sign would quite likely have come on by on by then.

A slight variation of the above problem, is when drivers do not make a complete stop until after have crossed over both lines on the crosswalk first. By then they could have already run over someone.

My defensive driving skills have served me better when driving, than when walking, since I have been driving over 50 years without ever having had an accident.

They also asked me if I wanted to vote electronically, or on paper? There was a long moving line behind two electronic voting machines, but no line for using the paper ballot booths. Half of those dozen or so old fashioned voting booths were empty. Saving time by using a paper ballot seemed like the obvious choice to me. Besides I do not trust the security of voting machines and prefer to use a paper ballot for that reason anyway.

I brought my sample ballot with me, which I had already filled out the day before. So, it did not take me long to copy my choices over from the sample ballot to the real ballot. My real ballot had the little circles that I had to fill in with a pen, just like the sample ballot did.

Afterwards I had to insert my paper ballot into a machine, which seemed to scan my paper ballot. After two tries it accepted my ballot, and a pollworker handed an "I voted" sticker.

Driving to and from the polling place, plus the time spent showing my ID and then voting, took about 20 - 30 minutes, all together.

Ahead of the election, I had received in the mail, a sample ballot and also the Arizona General Election Guide, which has various pro and con arguments for each proposition. In addition, I also received a copy of the Citizens Clean Election Commision pamphlet, in which each candidate gets to make a brief statement about themselves. Both pamphlets were very helpful when making my choices on the sample ballot.

I do not watch much TV, so I do not recall having not seen any campaign commercials, although I did watch the debates. Besides having also clipped out a few newspaper articles, I asked an almost 90 year old relative, who reads the newspapers much more thoroughly than I do, what she had read about the various candidates and propositions. After all of the above, making my final choices on the sample ballot was not too difficult.

If reincarnation and karma also exist, perhaps they might be gradually rehabilitating criminal souls over many lifetimes, before releasing us out into the real world again. The karmic situation of living alternating virtual lifetimes as both the criminal and the victim, could be one such educational tool. After a few dozen or a few hundred lifetimes, perhaps we might each eventually graduate and get paroled into living in the real world again.

If we fail to make sufficient effort to progress over many lifetimes, perhaps they might eventually isolate the worst souls in some virtual realm somewhere, where they would not be able to harm anyone else, except perhaps other similar evil souls. Perhaps being stuck in an isolated realm with other evil spirits might be somewhat of a hell.

After hundreds of lifetimes in various careers, our job skills would gradually become very impressive. That would greatly improve our employment opportunities greatly, once we are released back into the real world. Despite the stigma of being ex-cons, with such impressive job skills, we should still be able to get good jobs, thereby reducing the temptation of our returning to crime. If we had been unemployed criminals before, we should then be well qualified to easily get a good jobs in the real world.

Perhaps some of us were not criminals so much, as just incompetent bureaucrats or professionals who were guilty of repeated gross malpractice, who were sent into the virtual world for a few thousand years to be retrained. Perhaps we were each given a choice between accepting many virtual lifetimes of difficult reeducation, or either being executed or being isolated in a sort of hell.

Poorly motivated students, who consistently avoid choosing lifetimes with difficult challenges, would probably require many more lifetimes before they graduate, if ever.

Instead of us being criminals, perhaps there is just a desire to experience and better understand concepts and situations which are not possible in the real world. For instance, if the real world to too perfect and comfortable and safe, it might be difficult to fully appreciate and understand love. In a more dangerous virtual world, where we are all more vulnerable, we might be able to easily experience various aspects of relationships and love. The knowledge we acquire might useful for those living in the real universe.

Instead of being criminals, we might just be immature souls who need to develop and mature more over time, before it is time to release us into life in the real universe. A variation of that idea might be that they have a robot factory in the real world and need to create experienced souls in a virtual world, with good job skills and a strong conscious, to be implanted into each of the robots brains. In that scenario, perhaps they might reject using any souls who lack sufficient love and compassion, and a well develped conscious.

Another possibility might be that we have each died in the real world, and have been given imortality by transferring our consciusness into a virutal world on a computer somewhere.

I do not have just one obvious favorite movie or one obvious favorite author. I do not have a favorite color. I do not have just one favorite school teacher. I did not attend just one high school while growing up.

I also did not learn to drive on just one car. There were two cars at home and three more cars that we used in the drivers ed class. Then there was also the tractor that we had at home too.

I did not have just one dog while growing up, and can not remember the name of the first one that we had when I was an infant. I also did not grow up on just one street. I lived on several different streets at different times.

I have been asked for all of the above as security questions, but would not have just one obvious answer for any of those questions.

My desktop computer is using 70 Watts at the moment, not counting the large monitor which is using 38 Watts. Added together, that is 108 Watts. When the monitor is in the sleep mode it drops down to just 1 Watt. I have my computer plugged into a Kill-A-Watt meter, with the monitor plugged into a separate Kill-A-Watt meter.

This desktop computer has an Intel i7 processor, but since I am not a gamer, or heavy user, it just has an unimpressive, quiet, low power consuming video card. It has a high-efficiency 80 PLUS Bronze rated power supply. If I remember correctly, is roughly a 430 Watt power supply. The computer runs Kubuntu Linux.

An 80 PLUS Bronze power supply is supposed to be 82% efficient when running at 20% of its 430 Watt rated capacity.

I also have a small book sized computer, which does not have a built in monitor. It uses 23 Watts during light useage, not counting the large monitor, which uses an extra 38 Watts (or 1 Watt when in sleep mode). That would be a total of 61 Watts. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and runs Windows XP.

• http://www.p3international.com/products/special/p4400/p4400-ce.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS

I once unloaded a steel railroad car on a 120 degree F 80% humidity day in Phoenix, Arizona. The sun was shinning down on the dark colored steel railroad car, making it much hotter than that inside the railroad car.

Using a hand truck, I had to unload the bags of charcoal by hand, while dragging the wheels over pieces of broken charcoal. The guy I was helping did not have a broom.

I drank 4 1/2 gallons of water in 4 hours that day. That was back in about 1973.

Later on, when working in a hot warehouse during the summer in Phoenix, I found myself having to occasionly take asalt tablet, whenever I felt like I needed one. A few minutes later, I always felt just fine. I sweat much more than most people in hot weather, so for me the salt tablets seemed to be necessary, although I realize that too much salt is not good.

I now live at a cooler elevation in the mountains at 5,200 feet. As summer approaches, I am usually one of the last people to think it is hot. Each year, at that quite pleasant time of year, I have to listen to my neighbors complain about how hot is supposedly is already, when it still feels quite comfortable outside to me. That is on very low humidity days, with a nice breeze, well before the worst summer heat has arrived.

As I mentioned in another post, I did not have AC in my home or my car for about 15 years, until the early 1990s. Back then, a fan pointed towards my chair was all I needed to be comfortable, up here in the mountains.

I had mentioned above that it usually gets down to about 59 degrees F in the evening here at this elevation. I have wondered if it would be possible to design a house that could store that night time coolness, to stay cool throughout the day. I have imagined building a very well insulated house, which has heat storing high thermal mass interior walls. Perhaps the interior wall could have a double layer of 5/8 inch sheet rock or possibly some type of masonry, such as surface bonded cement blocks. I doubt that autoclaved aerated concrete blocks would conduct or store enough heat, for that purpose, but perhaps double thickness sheetrock or surface bonded cement blocks might work instead.

My thinking is that the home would only need AC during the humid two weeks or so, just ahead of the arrival of the cooling summer thunderstorms. During those two weeks or so during late June, it does not cool off enough during the evening. The rest of the time perhaps I could just get by with fans and the stored coolness from the night before. I have heard of a few such homes that were built somewhere in California, but do not know for sure if it would work here.

The roof overhangs and south facing windows could be sized such that sunlight enters the windows during the winter, but not during the summer. The sun is actually higher in the sky during the summer than during the winter, here in the northern hemisphere. I have seen a couple of solar energy books that describe how to calculate the size of the overhang and window sizes, for that purpose.

I am not actually planning to have a custom house built anytime soon, I am just thinking. I would prefer to be more self-sufficient and not as dependant on the electric grid for staying comfortable.

It would also be nice to have my own old fashioned hand pumped well, for backup purposes during emergencies. My grandparents had one on their farm back in the 1960s. That was in addition to also having electic power for that or another well. The link below has several models that the Amish use. I have seen one somewhere else, that is for an even deeper depth, like I would need here in Arizona.

http://www.lehmans.com/store/Water___Water_Pumps___Deep_Wells?Args=

At 5,200 foot elevation in the mountains of Arizona, it is cool enough to get by without air-conditioning, if necessary. I did not have AC for the first 15 years that I lived here. I would just keep a fan pointed towards my chair. On a typical day, the average high is 88 degrees F and the low is 59 degrees F. The hottest that it gets to here is about 100 degrees F.

I once lived in an old cabin which had doors with screens on each exterior wall of each room. Each of the two bedrooms had two sets of French doors, on different walls, with screen doors attached. I would open up the doors and just let to cooling breeze blow through.

Thunderstorms do occasionally knock out the power here, in one instance for 3 days. Someday, I would like to have just enough solar power (and battery backup) to run a fan, a light, and my two ham radios.

I keep a four 7 gallon plastic cans of water full, at all times, for emergencies. If that supply ran out, I might have to refill them up from the puddles in the rock formations, or from the small lake which is about 1/4 of a mile away. The summer thunderstorms always leave numerous puddles in the nearby rock formations, that contain water, mosquito larva, and tadpoles. After attaching the water containers to my bicycle and pushing them home, I could use my Big Berkey water filter to purify the water.

I always keep at least several weeks worth of canned food, dried beans, oatmeal, and quinoa on hand. I could cook the food on my small muli-fuel camping stove. I also keep several weeks worth of fuel for the camping stove on hand.

I have several LED flashlights and an LED lantern. My Rayovac Sportsman Xtreme LED lantern will run for 150 hours on low, or 76 hours on high. It uses 3 D-sized batteries. I also have an olive oil lamp from Lehmans. I prefer using an olive oil lamp over candles, because the olive oil burns so cleanly, that it does not bother my allergies (or chemical sensitivities), the way that even unscented candles do.

I always keep my gas tank at least half full, just in case gas stations could not pump gas because of a prolonged power failure.

As a licensed amateur radio operator, I have a 2-meter radio in my pickup truck. I could still talk to other ham radio operators, if the telephone and cellular services were down.

If things get really bad, I also have a gun, to defend myself with.

• http://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/
• http://www.amazon.com/Rayovac-SE3DLN-Sportsman-Xtreme-Lantern/dp/B0018S4XIS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341431708&sr=8-1&keywords=Rayovac+SE3DLN+Sportsman
• http://www.lehmans.com/store/Lights___Olive_Oil_Lamps___Chamber_Olive_Oil_Lamp___15312?Args=

He would make every effort to prevent individual states, such as Arizona, from making a serious effort to defend themselves on their own. In court and by other means, he would declare war on Arizona to attempt to stop them from trying to defend themselves.

Presumably, he would also act against any other state, which dared to try to defend themselves on their own, as the federal government does nothing.