Since it came to my attention that some of my posts were being omitted from Google search results, I decided that it was about time to remove Google’s influence from my computer and online activities.

Why would I do this? First, and most obviously, censorship is bad. Google is primarily a search engine, which makes them digital librarians. Because Google is omitting from search results pages that it deems problematic to the ideology of its staff, Google has become the book burners of the information age.

Second, I value my privacy. Google collects tons of information on its users. Google then uses this information for profit with targeted advertising. If you’re particularly stupid, you’ll see targeted advertising as another way to bridge the gap between yourself and products that you weren’t aware you would have wanted. Otherwise, you’ll see it as another technique for liberating your money from you.

While I’m aware that some of Google’s alternatives might have some similarity in business practice, Google is generally the worse option due to the nature of its agenda. Also, the fact that it’s actively censoring me makes the matter more personal.

Browser

First, if you’re still using Chrome as your browser, you should stop. There are numerous alternatives out there, and even Microsoft’s current default browser Edge isn’t so bad. After considering my options, I decided on Mozilla’s Firefox as my browser. There are lots of reasons to go with Firefox instead, but I found that I liked Firefox’s ability to store multiple themes, as opposed to Chrome, which makes you redownload old ones if you want to reuse them unless you use an extension. And even then, the extension wasn’t reliable.

The only real bother was making up a new list of favorites and bookmarks for my new browser. While there may have been an option to import them from Chrome, I decided to just start afresh, rather than eventually go to the trouble of deleting legacy bookmarks I don’t use anymore. It’s a new browser, and a new beginning.

When switching from Chrome, don’t forget to uninstall the Chrome browser so it won’t still be on your computer doing whatever it is that it does when you’re not using it. Paranoid? Maybe, but this is Google we’re talking about, here. And while you’re at it, remember to uninstall your other Google programs as well.

Search Engine

Second, you’re going to want to use a new search engine. Of the changes to make, this one was probably the easiest. Just remember to set whatever search engine you choose as the default on your new browser.

There are some pretty nice contenders for this category, notably Bing, which greets you with a pretty nice home screen which changes. But my choice was DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo is a well-developed search engine with the main selling points being that it doesn’t track you or store information about you. This already makes DuckDuckGo a winner, but it doesn’t censor search results like Google does. Big win.

One word of caution is that you should probably be a little careful about how you use DuckDuckGo. If you turn Safe Search off, it’s very easy to find Rule 34 in the image search. You’d see the internet the way it used to be. You might find that awesome, depending on who you are. But it might be a good idea to mind the Safe Search setting, depending on where you are and at what time.

EDIT (15 Nov 2020): DuckDuckGo has lost its integrity. Finding a different search engine is advised.

Email

This is easily the hardest part of the de-Google process, because we tend to like having one email address for everything. After doing some research, I’ve determined that most mail clients are satisfactory, but I decided to go with Yahoo. As old as it is, Yahoo is still a decent email client.

I’ve been thinking of changing my email client for a while now, but I found the prospect of going to different sites and changing the email address in my profiles daunting. However, the main thing that prodded me on is that my ex-girlfriend decided to try to get revenge on me by using my old email address to sign me up for numerous online services so my inbox would be flooded with spam emails. I’m sure that what she’s doing is illegal, but I blame myself for not doing my due diligence in making sure that the women I’m interested in are not psychotic.

As it turns out, switching to a new email client isn’t that bad. It helps to make up a list of those you want to have your new email address, and notify them of the change. It’s also a good idea to update your resume and your online job search profiles. In case you miss someone, it’s not a bad idea to check your old inbox from time to time. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to go through the first few pages of your old inbox, making note of those you still want to receive email from.

Cloud Storage

I’ve never used cloud storage because I’m not an idiot. If you store your files externally, they can be accessed externally. Storing them using the internet doesn’t make them secure.

Suppose you took a picture of your genitals to copy into your sketchbook (because that’s more fun to draw than a bowl of fruit). If you then send the same picture to the cloud, you’re sending it through the internet, and having it stored where you have no idea how many times it’s copied or viewed by someone else.

If you’re running low on storage space, buy a bigger hard drive. Or an external hard drive. Or a thumb drive. All these choices are smarter than sending your files to the cloud.

Google already makes it it’s business to collect as much information about people as they can. Why trust them with your files?

What about YouTube?

YouTube is owned by Google, so one might think that an effective boycott of Google would include avoiding YouTube. However, Google is having a difficult time running YouTube due to the sheer number of users that use AdBlock. What’s more, Google’s attempts to pander to advertisers have upset YouTube content creators, so YouTube has had to walk on eggshells to keep the platform viable.

Therefore, I’m not really concerned with Google’s presence in YouTube, as the platform has proven to be a liability for Google to run. You’re more likely to spite Google by using YouTube. Besides, the YouTube alternatives that I’ve seen are varying degrees of suck.

That’s how I’ve been doing in de-Googling my computer and online activities. I suggest that you give it a try, too. Send Google a message letting them know that if they’re going to censor the people, then the people are going to hit them where it counts: right in the pocketbook.

A North Carolina restaurant owner got tired of seeing the experiences of his paying customers ruined by poorly-behaving children, so he banned them from his restaurant.

That’s right. A restaurant owner finally developed the nerve to do it. So, let’s hear a round of applause for the restaurant owner, Yoshi Nunez.

The restaurant, named Caruso’s, has banned children under the age of five from entering its doors. As you’d probably expect, this move has resulted in criticism from those who don’t understand why the rest of us would want peace and quiet while spending some quality time with our wives and suitors while eating a steak that cost several hours of wage.

That smug glow of righteousness that comes from virtue signalling about ageism is spouted by people that want to be sure that they can take their screaming children with them anywhere they go, be it to supermarkets, shopping centers, and even to restaurants where their undisciplined bags of ugly noise can deter the prospect of procreating for those of us who are better suited to it.

Predictably enough, once word got out that there was a restaurant that served as a haven from other people’s children, reservations for that restaurant went through the roof. While irresponsible parents may have taken to social media to complain, the rest of us have voted with our money and decided that a kid-free restaurant was just what was needed.

Of course, the many left-wing news websites that reported on this would likely be at a loss once they come to the realization that the restaurant owner that banned children was well within his rights as a business owner to decline service to potential customers for any or no reason. To understand why, remember that these same news websites had no problem with lambasting Christian bakery owners for not making gay wedding cakes in violation of the bakery owner’s religious convictions, in spite of the fact that nearly every other bakery one could have chosen instead is not principled when it comes to this kind of thing.

Of course, the pedophiles would likely be upset by this development, as it would mean one less dating option for them.

There is a short story that I grew up with that I imagine isn’t being passed along among today’s millennials. Therefore, I’ve decided to share it so that its message isn’t lost among a generation that needs it.

This is the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

There was a boy whose job it was to tend the sheep. His job was pretty simple: he was to keep an eye on the sheep, and if a wolf were to come along, he was to run into town making as much noise as he could, so the townsfolk would rush in and protect the sheep.

The boy had only one job to do, and as long as he didn’t screw it up, things would go just fine.

One day, the boy was bored, so he hatched a plan to cause a little excitement. He ran into town crying “Wolf! Wolf!” As he did so, the townsfolk ran to the fields as fast as they could, intent on protecting the sheep.

However, when they came, they didn’t find any wolf. They only found the boy, laughing hysterically at the commotion that he caused. The townsfolk returned home.

The boy had such fun, that he decided to try the same thing the next day. He ran into town crying “Wolf! Wolf!” Just as the day before, the villagers rushed in, but only found the boy laughing it up about having caused a ruckus. As before, the townsfolk returned home.

The next day, a wolf actually did appear, and prowled around the sheep. Immediately, the boy leaped into action. He ran into town and cried “Wolf! Wolf!” as was his job to do.

However, the townsfolk didn’t respond.

So the boy ran around, screaming louder, “WOLF! WOLF!” However, the townsfolk ignored him. They remembered him as the boy who lied to them before, and they were determined not to fall for his schemes again.

The boy ran around screaming “Wolf! Wolf!” until he was exhausted. When it was nearly evening, he gave up and returned to his field. By the time he did, the wolf had already taken away all of the sheep. Because the boy lied and failed in his duty, he was left without a single sheep.

Remind you of anyone?

Can a person really vote by text? If it’s about voting in the upcoming presidential election, then the answer is no.

But that’s not stopping ads such as the one in the photo above from making rounds on social media outlets such as Twitter. The fake ads were apparently made by conservative Twitter users, who proceeded to share them as legitimate, perhaps so left-wing bloggers can take it at face value and re-tweet it.

Traditional media outlets have discovered that this is going on, and they went ballistic. One example would be this article on The Washington Post.

Twitter typically doesn’t intervene unless what is posted is illegal, and lying about the process of voting is not illegal. However, Twitter eventually intervened anyway, which I think just about anyone could have seen coming. You know, what with leftists making up a huge chunk of their Safety Council.

It’s easy to see why the left-leaning media didn’t like this very much. It’s not just the fact that it’s right-wing shenanigans, which they’d jump all over to try to convince you to change your vote to Democrat. Generally, politicians and the politically-involved tend to see the majority of the population as morons. So when they saw this hoax pop up, they suspected that people could fall for it. Personally, in the case of liberals, I see these concerns as much more well-founded.

I know that the image of the typical left-leaner as presented in the media is as some coastal technocrats that are connected and abreast of the trends of the digital age, while those on the right are portrayed as southern yokels who are too heavily invested in traditional values to come to the present age. However, when you spend some time on the ground, you see that this isn’t really the case. From my own experience, the typical left-leaners are low-income city-dwellers who believe that they are actively being suppressed, and that the odds are against them. They typically vote Democrat because they receive government assistance of some kind, and are convinced that if Republicans got their way, their benefits would be taken away from them, and they would be left to starve. This is in contrast to the typical conservative, who are usually skilled workers who see the world as unfair, but love the free market because it still offers a positive correlation between the effort that one puts forward, and the reward they get for it.

Fake ads like the one shown above, which has also been produced in Spanish, are perfect for pulling one over on the left-leaning. Many of them would see something like voting by text as something that could reasonably be implemented in the year 2016. They might even see the use of material such as the official logo for the Clinton campaign, as well as the disclaimer, and think it’s legit. So they’d fire their text messages off on their cheap pay-as-you-go Obamaphones while thinking that they’re bringing about change (by voting for the establishment candidate, go figure), and Election Day can come and go and they’d be none the wiser.

The fact that a similar ad was produced in Spanish is especially insidious. We know that the reason why immigrants (legal or otherwise) vote Democrat is because Democrats are generally weaker on immigration. We know that the reason why Democrats want illegal immigrants to vote is that illegal immigrants would mostly vote Democrat, and these days, when elections are usually tight, even a slight shift in one party’s favor can win that party the election. That Democrats desire to secure the votes of immigrants doesn’t have to do with sharing their values (because they don’t), they see them as a resource to exploit for political advantage.

The problem is, illegal immigrants don’t understand the American election process very well. This isn’t surprising, considering that Americans don’t understand the election process very well. So when someone new to America sees an official-looking ad say (in their own language) that they can vote for a candidate by text, they are likely to take it at face value, and not bother to register or vote or even show up on election day, and they’d be likely to pass this false information on to their friends and family.

The internet has proven to be a double-edged sword. While it’s true that it can be used to send information instantaneously around the world, the same could happen with false information, and that false information can get quite a bit of traction. It’s tempting to save time by taking someone else’s word for it so one can get back to wasting it with some vapid Facebook game. However, if a person doesn’t do their research, they’re going to be much easier for someone else to take advantage of.

When Donald Trump stated his belief that the US presidential election was rigged, it was treated by media outlets and the Democratic party as an unprecedented challenge to democracy itself.

But was Donald Trump the first person to ever challenge the results of a presidential election?

How quickly people forget. The results of the US presidential election has been challenged, and it was actually very recent. In the year 2004, George Bush won reelection. By a landslide. That did not sit well with left-leaners. While John Kerry himself shortly afterwards conceded the election, there were diehards who would not accept an extension of the Bush presidency, including Larry Chin of FromTheWilderness.com and Bob Fitrakis of the ironically-named FreePress.org. If Donald Trump can be called unpatriotic for challenging an election system he believes is rigged, certainly the same could be said of bloggers who were leftists back when leftism was fashionable.

But, the challenge wasn’t issued by John Kerry himself, so it’s not like he was being a poor sport. So then, was there a previous presidential candidate who directly challenged the results of the presidential election?

Yes there was. Does the name “Al Gore” ring a bell?

Yeah, that guy. Not only did he challenge the results of the election in the state of Florida, he brought the issue to the Supreme Court, which then gave the election to Bush. Gore made a spectacle of the American electoral process, which resulted in America being mocked abroad for our difficulties in selecting a leader. At that time, Floridians who claimed that the ballots were confusing sided with Kerry. I’ll let you consider whether you want to count the votes of those who don’t understand how to cast them.

Leftists, I get it. You don’t like admitting that your favorite guys lost to Bush, the guy who’s portrayed as a chimp in political comics and has no apparent knack for public speaking. That’s embarrassing. This might have something to do with the fact that neither one of them became the frontrunners for their party again.

However, when Donald Trump accuses Hillary Clinton and the DNC of cheating, leftists trip over themselves to make him out to be a threat to democracy, not remembering what they themselves once said back when Bush campaigned and won.

Personally, I liked it better when Donald Trump said it. Not that he’s providing much in the way of evidence to back up his claim, nor do I know for sure what kind of information he has access to.

However, Trump did bring something against Clinton that I wouldn’t put past her. She was the one who staged an event where she hugged a child after collapsing at a 9/11 memorial event as though she were okay, then claimed to have been diagnosed with pneumonia just days prior (This is irresponsible, because pneumonia is the single highest infectious cause of death in children worldwide. Saying that she lied wouldn’t be much of a defense.). Hillary Clinton is the one who hired a child actor to feed a scripted anti-Trump question to her at an event.

And, worst of all, after Hillary Clinton was asked to turn over emails as part of an investigation, she then deleted them and proceeded to have her old Blackberrys smashed with hammers. It was bad enough that she used a private email server when she should have known that that was illegal. She couldn’t have claimed ignorance when she deleted the emails that she was ordered to turn over. Isn’t tampering with evidence in an investigation called “obstruction of justice”? At the very least, she knowingly defied a court order. How did she avoid getting arrested?

And, in any case, how was conspiring against Bernie Sanders to deny him the Democratic nomination any less detrimental to the electoral process?

Making hamburgers is easy to do, but hard to do well. The following is a recipe for a good hamburger.

Before getting started, be sure that you have all of the ingredients ready. That’s a culinary basic.

Here is the list of ingredients:
Ground beef
Wheat kaiser roll
Brown mustard
Pepper Jack cheese
Pickles
Jalapeno slices

Lean ground beef works. When the fat content is higher, the fat usually cooks right off, and what’s left is a juicier, more flavorful hamburger. You’ll want to shape the beef by hand into a patty nearly an inch thick, and slightly wider than the roll you intend to use as the bun. The patty shrinks slightly as it cooks, so going large isn’t a bad policy. Besides, there’s something inviting about a hamburger that extends slightly beyond the bun.

Preferably, the hamburger should be cooked over an open flame, but it is acceptable to cook it on the stove over medium to medium-high heat. You’ll want the patty to remain on the heat for about half-a-minute to a minute, then turn it 45 degrees and allow it to cook on the same side. You’ll know that one side is done when the sides appear cooked (a brown-grey color), though if some juice boils through the burger, that’s a sign that one side is near done. Flip it over, and allow the other side to cook for the same amount of time, turning it 45 degrees after a short time of cooking.

At no point during cooking should you “smoosh” the burger with your spatula. Doing so causes juices to escape that would otherwise assist in the cooking of the hamburger, and make the burger flavorful and moist when it is done. Smooshing hamburgers results in dry hamburgers.

You’ll want a nice roll, and a wheat kaiser roll will do. Don’t settle for cheap hamburger buns. It’s a crying shame to put so much effort into making a nice hamburger with nice toppings only to put it on a cheap bun. A wheat kaiser roll would be great. By wheat, I don’t mean those cheap rolls that are only died brown in an attempt to trick poor people, and contain only trace amounts of wheat so that it could legally be called wheat on the package. Nice wheat rolls may cost a little more, but the result is a nicer hamburger. To get the most out of it, after it has been sliced, lightly toast your roll. This can be easily done by placing them directly on the surface the hamburger was cooked on for a few moments.

Next, it’s time for toppings. The mustard goes on the bottom roll, right between the bottom roll and the patty. The rest of the toppings go between the patty and the top bun. Brown mustard is preferred, but yellow mustard is okay. If you really like mustard, you could use both.

A cheese slice goes directly on top of the patty. Pepper jack is preferred, though muenster works as well. On top of that goes the pickles. Don’t use soggy pickles like the kind you’d expect to get at McDonalds. Vlasic has a variety of sandwich slice pickles. Those would work pretty well, or something like them. On top of that goes Jalapeno slices. Be generous with them. Optionally, a pineapple slice can be added. That may sound weird, but it actually goes great on hamburgers. Top with even more mustard and put the top bun in place. There you go.

With that, your hamburger should be ready. A recommended beverage to go with it is beer.

There are some who might wonder why some toppings are missing. One of these toppings would be bacon. I know that there are many people out there that think that bacon makes everything better. It doesn’t. Bacon is not a big, screaming deal. Stop fetishizing it.

What about relish? Relish is made from pickles, and when pickles are already included on the sandwich, relish is a little redundant. If you wish, you may substitute a suitable relish for the pickles.

Then there’s ketchup. I’m not really fond of ketchup. Ketchup is really more of a kid’s topping than something to put on a serious hamburger. What’s more, ketchup ruins the flavor of just about anything. Like eggs. If even a dab of ketchup touches eggs, they’re ruined. I had ketchup on eggs once. Accidentally. I hated it. Some people even put ketchup on their steak. Gross. Good steak isn’t cheap. A Delmonico steak at a nice restaurant would set a minimum wage worker back four or five hours of work. If a person is going to work so hard for a steak, they shouldn’t ruin it with cheap toppings.

Now you know how to make a great hamburger.

Earlier, I overheard a student wonder why his instructors are not more laid-back. As he saw it, there was something about his major that makes people stuck up, and he thinks that his instructors are exhibiting this attitude. The student in question is hardly a star student; he was held back already. Because of this alone, one would suspect that he was venting his own frustration with his educational progress, but wasn’t willing to accept his own fault for not taking his education and career more seriously.

I don’t know all the details with his situation, but I think that there’s an aspect to this matter that he may not have considered. This is that the instructors might not be stuck up; they might actually be frustrated. And this frustration may be justified.

Why would they be frustrated? I imagine that it may be because, year after year, they see numerous students come in to major in electronics, and then see something like half of the freshman class drop out because, among other reasons, the students don’t take their major seriously.

Think about the kind of insult it would be if, after going to school for years in something, making it their career, going to school for teaching, and finally becoming a teacher, they get in front of students to lecture and what they’re teaching is immediately competing for the attention of some games that some students play on their cell phones.

“Huh? Electronics? Oh, yeah. That’s cool. But can this lecture wait a few more minutes? My knight is almost level 87.”

This is in spite of the fact that some students were on a wait list to start on their major. When the wait list is long, each student that doesn’t care much to learn is making someone else wait at least a year. And for what? So that some twenty-somethings can play Magic: The Gathering in the lab?

Just in my own class, about half of the students didn’t make it to the second year. Several of them dropped out or failed out due to bad grades. One of which tried to cheat on tests, but failed because his grades weren’t good. Another didn’t even want to be there. What his story is, I’m not sure. Perhaps his parents signed him up. He fell asleep in classes, and quickly dropped out. There was one who quickly dropped out because the math proved to be rather esoteric for him. He actually seemed to have enthusiasm, and wanted to form a study group. Perhaps if he hung around and focused, he could have done well. Even though he was only around for about a month, the other students still laugh it up about him, even though it’s been over a year since he dropped out. There was another student that dropped out after trying hard, however. No one made fun of him.

I know that some might prefer the kind of electronics instructors that come off as laid-back. However, the instructors are there to prepare the students for the work force. The work force is even less laid-back.

To get right to the heart of the matter, there’s a reason why students have to learn some maturity before graduating on to the work force. This is because employers and colleagues don’t want to see electronics technicians who…

• …are incompetent
• …show up late
• …steal from workstations
• …play AMVs (anime music videos) on YouTube instead of working
• …are nowhere to be found when work needs done, even though they’re on the clock
• …play practical jokes on their fellow employees.

About that last point, there is one classmate that might be fancying himself as some kind of jokester. If so, he’s setting himself up for disaster, but that would likely take place on the job at this rate. If that’s how it’s going, the people around him might have to take care not to become a casualty of his antics, perhaps including his classmates.

Electronics technicians have a job in which a lot of people count on them. Maturity and competence can make the difference between things running smoothly and having a ton of gum balls on a factory floor. When an instructor passes a student that’s not ready to work professionally as an electronics technician, they are doing nobody any favors.

There’s nothing about pursuing a career in electronics that inherently makes people snotty. It’s one of many ways in which a person can improve themselves, and become more employable. There aren’t many employers out there that are looking for the kind of employees that just want to chill and hang. They want employees that take their jobs seriously. And teachers want students that take what they’re learning seriously.

That title isn’t a typo. According to Fox News Latino, a toddler killed a snake by biting it.

The child’s mother allowed him to play in the yard. When the child was strangely quiet, the mother decided to check on him. When she found her child, the child had a venomous snake in his mouth, which was still alive and trying to escape.

Examination by physicians has determined that there was no venom in the body of the toddler, who was deemed to be in good health. The snake, however, succumbed to its injury.

Is this child in some way related to Chuck Norris? When I see a snake lying on the ground coiled up and minding its business (of laying still or whatever it is snakes do), I admit that I don’t think of it as something I’d want to try to take a big bite of. I wonder whether this child has a normal sense of fear. Even harmless snakes are kind-of scary looking. But this kid, he sees this snake in his yard and thinks something like “I’m gonna bite it.” And he does.

I remember hearing about an ex-marine who was attacked by a mountain lion, and he fended it off with a chainsaw. As awesome as that sounds, he had the assistance of a chainsaw. The toddler who bit a snake, however, killed it using his mouth.

This child might just be starting his career in fighting off animals that grown adults would normally be terrified of. Maybe as an adult he’ll punch walruses and suplex tigers. Not that it would necessarily be called-for, but because he’d be bored and they’d need a reminder not to step out of line.