Windows 10 and the external sound card

After resisting for a long time and checking all the compatibility issues, I decided to finally upgrade my laptop to Windows 10. It all went rather smoothly. Everything worked, except ...

I have this external sound card, the "8-CHANNEL 3D USB 2.0 EXTERNAL 7.1 SURROUND SOUND BOX W/DIGITAL OUTPUT, USB-SND8."

When the upgrade was finally all done, the sounds came just from the laptop's regular speakers. No problem, I said, just need to assign my card as the default sound device and things will be fine again. Well, not exactly, since Windows 10 threw in a new thing. Soooo ...

I found the sound setup dialog and made sure that the external sound card was set as the default, but now there was no sound at all. I immediately checked all the connections, the device was on, everything looked as it should, but no sound. I went to the manufacturer's website and found out that this device was not (yet, I suppose) compatible with Windows 10. Great, I said to myself and started looking for another USB sound card. 

But then something told me to investigate a bit more and, after trying all I knew how, I did the following. I marked the USB speakers in the sound setup dialog, clicked on "Properties" and (eventually) "Levels." 

Sure enough the little Speakers and Line and Microphone speaker icons were all marked with a "No-no" sign. I unchecked them all and it all now worked fine.
 
I thought this might be of use to somebody else out there.

Manipulation and Choices We Make

How do you make others do things they would not do without your intervention? How do you manipulate others into doing things that might be against their best interest but benefit you?

I believe it is by creating an illusion that they have no other choice, or that the choice you are offering them is the best choice they can make given the circumstances (the illusion of which you create).

Therefore one must always be fully aware of all the available choices, especially so when one feels manipulated.

Letter to America

I came to America almost 40 years ago at the time when she started losing her soul, the time when the rest of the world, especially the so called "third world" started recognizing itself not as an appendage of the Europeans and their surrogates, but as a world with its own values, traditions, desires, hopes--its future that is possible to be realized without the wisdom (what a misnomer) of the first/second world.

I witnessed her decline, her slow transformation from a country that cares to the country that does not, the country that is confused about the rest of the world. America has experienced waves of being an occupier, then a liberator, and then again an occupier of foreign lands and peoples. Now her people, people like you and I, are bewildered and ask "why do they hate us?"

Well, they, the former "third world" does not hate you, America, they do not hate the Americans, they simply had enough of your bullying them around, economically and politically. They are making lots of mistakes, no doubt, but they are finding their own ways to create their own future, and, whether you like or not, they do not wish to be like you.

I am out of America now, returning to my roots, thankful to her for the experiences she has given me and am worried about what she may yet become if she continues the self-deluding path of being a "world power." I miss you, the American people, but I am hopeful that, for your own good, you will learn how to "live and let live," that you will have courage to reject the demagoguery of your current leaders, the talk that has lead you to pay dearly, with your lives and resources for things you do not want and do not need. I hope you will understand that there is a light around the corner, the light that will free you.

Have courage to look at what Sen. Bernie Sander's campaign may become, to see that, if you join it and contribute, lead, create, it may become a movement to reclaim America's soul and return her to the community of nations, respected for her genius to reinvent herself yet again. Sen. Sander's campaign, while its direct aim is to elect him the President of the US, is a chance for you to reclaim yourself as your own agents, throwing off the yoke of serving the system that is enslaving you. It is time to wake up and realize the dream and, even if Sen. Sanders is not elected, continue building upon the experience of a fledgling bird which, after her first tentative flight realizes "I can fly" and unstoppably flies her own way on her own power. There is an eternal beauty in that first flight.

Every day is the first day of the rest of your life. No time to wait as this life is not a rehearsal. Those who come after you will be glad you did not wait for a perfect moment to be yourself.

We and everything else

One of the amazing aspects of human existence to me is that, I am convinced, very few of us and then very seldom are fully aware of things beyond what we consider our immediate environment and then even in that environment of all things in it. We do not even ask questions about it.

Then there are some of us who took it as their profession, their life's purpose, to in fact think about what most of us do not, to understand it, explain it, figure out what it is, where it came from, and where it's going. And even those curious people only have theories of it, parts of which may be proven, but the understanding of the whole thing is elusive and ever evolving.

Yet we all sort of mindlessly march through life, act, make decisions without realizing that what we carry in our consciousness is a very sparse description of what there is or may be. Moreover, we do this by happily assuming a very important role for us in it.

Does the question of existence have a definite, provable answer or is it one of those known unknowables? If it is, and I believe that indeed it is ultimately unknowable, then it should be quite okay to make all sorts of theories about it or none at all and live hopefully knowing that all that we know is just a description that somehow makes it worthwhile to continue living.

The question remains an interesting one, though.

Bobby

Just finished viewing "Bobby," the Emilio Estevez's "fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the June 5, 1968 shooting of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen of The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles following his win of the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primary in California."

While I bear no special liking to the Kennedys, members of the privileged class, the movie did touch me emotionally with its multiple side stories of ordinary, and not so ordinary, people whose lives were touched. It made me believe that that year, with two infamous political assassinations, marked clearly the shift in America, a shift from the country to which I looked up as a source of inspiration, a country that was what it projected as being around the world--a country of possibilities for all, to a country being finally hijacked by the opportunism that inevitably arises from the social, economic, political system we call capitalism.

I arrived to that country 8 years later in 1976 still experiencing the country of hope only to witness its slow, long path towards its own moral destruction when the opportunist class openly, boldly took over in 1980. She continued sinking to the point where I decided to leave her in 2013.

I still like to visit my friends who live in that beautiful country and hope that her wonderful people will see through the empty promises and arise to reclaim her soul once more.

Islam and its founder

There is no doubt that one of the most divisive platforms of conflict today is Islam, or better to say, the way various people understand what Islam is and how they use that understanding to guide their actions. This is not a secret. Consequently, I have been studying various sources to learn more about Islam and also about Islam's founder, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh, I use "pbuh" out of respect for my brothers and sisters for whom that is important).   

I found many sources and decided to share two with very extreme views here. Here's one source:

Why We Are Afraid, A 1400 Year Secret, by Dr Bill Warner

It is a bizarre collection of insinuations that is hardly believable; however, judging by the number of views--1,942,642 as of now--it finds its audience. I do not wish to promote it, but in the interest of informing--there it is.

I heavily lean towards the views offered in the following documentary: 

Muhammad's life - documentary part

Marches of my youth

Almost nine years old, in the early Spring of 1958, my father taught me, along with 12 or 13 other youngsters, music. We were learning to play various instruments in a marching band in my hometown Dubrovnik, "Gradska Mužika." A month or two later we joined the band. I played an alt horn and loved it.

For the next nine years I enthusiastically played in that band. We marched, we held concerts playing various opera potpourris and overtures, fantasies, we visited neighboring towns, it was a lot of fun. As a 14-year old I "graduated" to play a solo baritone horn (euphonium). Playing music was an outlet for me for my otherwise troubled young life.

My favorite marches to play then were "Sveti Lovro" (San Lorenzo) and "Stari Drugovi" (Alten Kameraden). Little did I know of the connection those two marches would have to my later life when as a 50-year old I renewed my love of Argentine Tango and now I live in Berlin, Germany.