Helen, Lily,
I have been out of email communication since early September. Actually, I've been out of computer from then until yesterday. Once I got the computer running, I right away clicked on my video editor, the Camtasia, and wanted to finish the Chinese version of the McDonald's Story. But hey, it said the microphone was not connected, though the wire connecting the microphone to the computer USB port was dangling right before my eyes!
Now that I’ve learned a thing or two about computers, I quickly pulled the microphone wire from the USB port at the front panel and connected it to the port at the back panel. Still it didn’t work. God!
This has been what was going on with my computer for the past month and a half -- when one thing was fixed, another problem came up. This aggravating process keeps repeating itself. Since my small bag of tricks was quickly emptied, the next fallback step was to write to the support staff of Camtasia. It turned out to be quite simple: go to Editing, then click on Reset, turn off Camtasia and restart it. Wow, the microphone was connected promptly!
I was petting my head in half smile, jesting at my own silliness, when I clicked on again the Voice Narration button, expecting to finally begin recording the McDonald’s Story. But wait-- how come there’s no sound at all? There was indeed normal sound effect earlier, even when it said the microphone was not connected. So once again, when the connection problem was solved, the sound problem arose. What the fuck!
My computer was hacked and viruses were implanted in it. After some study, I've learned that the virus problem was actually not that serious. Thinking that I should be more independent, I enrolled in a course to learn to assemble desktop computers so that I would have a better understanding of the whole thing. I also asked around and took the computer to specialists. Some even said it might not be the virus; some suspected that it was. No definite conclusions.
Mommy called and told me to change to another security system other than Norton. The specialists said it didn't matter though. There's no one anti-virus system that is completely infallible. Most good systems, and Norton is one of them, can and only can get rid of over 90% of the potential viruses. No one system is 100% foolproof. All have their own unique but different strengths. So the way to go in protecting the contents of the computer is to use multiple systems to do system scanning about once a month, and on top of it, do a quick scan about once a week. That should be good enough.
There are a number of free and pretty good anti-virus systems we can use. I have used Malwarebytes (www.malwarebytes.com) and Norton to do system scanning and my computer is virus free for the time being. When you do system scanning, run it a couple of times with each software. It may take a few hours, but it's worth the time and effort. Then perhaps the next month, run it with a different anti-virus software, and so on. Most of these software allow you to use them for free for a short time, say, two weeks or a month, so you can keep switching them.
The situation in Hong Kong is getting worse, or in my perspective, better. What used to be activities that occurred around one area about once a week, mostly in the weekends, now happen in multiple areas, sometimes every day. The police has arrested over 2,000 people, and over 400 or so were charged with rioting crimes so far. Should the court decide that a person has committed rioting crimes, the sentence could be as long as 5 to 10 years. Many, about 1/3, of those arrested are students. 5 to 10 years of jail time is a long time for a student or a young one. It would ruin their lives. So we cannot allow the government to do this to a large group of our students. Besides, the whole thing is caused by the government, and there have been countless abuses and excessive force used by the police but so far, no one policeman has been reprimanded, suspended or charged. So I figure eventually, the Hong Kong government has to be overhauled. But before that, its backer, the Chinese government, has to be changed first. We cannot change the Chinese government by ourselves. The whole world, or at least, the Western countries, have to be involved. So I figure in the longer term, the Chinese government will become a more open government, which in turn, overhauls the Hong Kong government. So this movement won't stop in the next little while yet.
Since I couldn't set up my old email program in this computer, which is now running Windows 10, I can't access your email addresses. Then it dawned on me that I might have your email addresses in my notes about you girls. It turns out I do, but I'm not sure if they are current. So I'll send this along and if you do receive it, give me a shout. I'll be using this Gmail address from now on. If I don't hear from you, I'll have to call you to get your current email addresses.
Love you,
Dad
PS: I went to watch the documentary movie “Pavarotti” this afternoon. It is good, moving, better than I expected. If it opens in Calgary, I highly recommend you girls go watch it. Talk to you next time!
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