My head is spinning as I type this. I don't know if it's what I heard while I was just driving, or that frozen strawberry margarita with so much tequila, I couldn't taste the strawberry.
There was a radio story on YouTube CELEBRITIES.
As usual, I want to be honest with you. I'm what's called a Late Adopter. Years and years ago, someone told me I should try blogging, as it was perfect for what I did. Never mind that I can't remember what I was doing when I got the recommendation. I poo-pooed it, as I am wont to do.
Ok, I was an early cell phone adopter. And computers. But that's it. This stupid blog's title makes reference to the manner in which vacuum tubes work, fer chrissakes. You know... ancient technology that came about long before any of us was born.
So I discover things almost by accident, several years after they show up. Usually when the excitement around it has faded and people are getting out of it en masse. So I started blogging. Did reasonably well with an audience. Thrilled that I had an audience. It wasn't about money or 'fame'.
Back to YouTube.
I discovered YouTube at the same time everyone else did... I just didn't use it unless I had a specific need. We used to play this game called Stump YouTube, where I'd name a musician, then try to find his videos on YouTube. After a while, I lost the game a lot and stopped playing it, as it was no longer fun.
Then people started becoming YouTube Famous.
This was completely outrageous to me and most everyone with whom I associate. It could be said that I'm a leader, not a follower. The kind of leader who marches on, even when there are clearly no followers marching behind him. It seemed beyond wrong, for reasons I couldn't entirely fathom, stupidity aside. I don't do fads, which was one of the things that contributed. It seemed cheap and idiotic was the other... the most prominent. I never learned sociology but internet fame felt cheap and probably indicative of a larger societal problem. Perhaps fiddling while Rome burned.
Yeah, that Rome....
where was I?
Oh, YouTube.
So people became YouTube famous. They got paid whatever amount per whatever amount of hits. These people were making MONEY. Damn cool for them.. I used to make a pittance blogging. The subject of the story on the radio was the incredible pressure to produce, which they compared to actresses, actors, musicians, and other fields.
This 20 year old was YouTube Famous, attaining a lifelong dream.
Huh?
Oh yeah, there are people significantly younger than me.
This lady had income from YouTube, endorsements, and her own line of stuff with her logo on it.
I think I'm going to be sick.
She talked about the pressure to create a 'great video' every week or two so people would come back.
You've got to be fucking kidding me.
Stopping my trademark outrage for a moment, I do not begrudge her the money or 'fame'. She works hard and produces something a lot of people want to see. According to the story, it takes a lot of time to make a 2 minute video, largely in production.
You've got to be fucking kidding me.
I sit at this keyboard, and the keyboard before it, banging out original material, some based on my life, some rants, lots of sarcasm, and some technical information. I do it very frequently and edit it together, trying to weed the less interesting stuff out and produce a new installment every few days. Do I feel pressure? A tiny amount, but that's my own fault for putting it on myself. I do this because I like to. The fact people read it is the cherry on top. I am completely full of shit also. I spend a lot of time wondering why more people don't come by. People who aren't always related to me tell me the blog is funny and interesting. I come up with more original stuff whenever I visit Twitter, which is every other night or so. Every now and then I mention the blog, plus it's in my bio. Same with GAB, a free-speech oriented social network. Apparently I can't drag people in with an internet-based hook.
Well, good for the YouTube Famous. They obviously put out a product that the market wants, at least until the next new shiny thing comes along. Why shouldn't they ride that train? I'm partially jealous. Being an obscenely creative person (more accurately, creatively obscene), I could probably do Funny Stuff on video, but considering my Late Adopter method, I won't start doing it for another few years.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Thursday, August 23, 2018
I Have Plenty of Hair - Just Look in the Drain
Life is Python.
Python is Life.
I just caught a really good documentary on Monty Python, covering the lead up to their O2 appearance. One of the points they hammered at (and got hammered on) is their age; constantly referred to as septuagenarian, or 70s, in French. Well, they certainly looked older, but consider that the shows started in the late 60s. They're certainly going to have gray hair and other normal issues related to age. Graham Chapman had the ultimate issue related to age: he's dead (although technically it was related to illness).
They covered what the Pythons had been up to, Eric Idle taking the reins of leadership for the appearance, and rehearsals, which some couldn't make due to prior commitments. Putting on a show of this magnitude required an immense effort, from Eric to dancers to props. There was a scene where Eric was driving through his 'hood in L.A., headed off to a storage unit. There he found a picture of the first time he met George Harrison, some gold records, and finally, the albatross he was after.
The following day I watched a relatively recent Deep Purple concert, noting that our classic rock heroes are getting up there. Jeff Beck and the Zeppelins are all septuagenarians. Contrasted with the Pythons, the rockers are still relatively young, hair dye aside.
What have we learned?
That rock and roll keeps you young and that if you put mayonnaise on corn on the cob, I will lose my previous meal upon your person.
Turkish protesters took sledgehammers, handguns, and fire to iPhones.
Why? Do the Turks feel like I do about iDevices?
No, they're protesting Donald Trump's administration.
I call on you, readers of this blog, to follow the brave example of the Turks and take sledgehammers, handguns, and fire to iPhones, to protest President Trump's failure to jail Hillary Clinton. If you're unwilling to destroy your own $1,000 property, maim someone else's. If that fails, join my other protest: we're burning old, broken printers to protest Turkey's protest. We'll show them.
A 41 year old Iraq vet suffered from PTSD, attempting suicide five times after his 2009 discharge. The medicines he was prescribed left him with side effects and he still felt suicidal. He participated in a clinical trial of MDMA (ecstasy/molly), and within a few doses, he wasn't suicidal.
I'm glad the soldier got some help. Our veterans are sometimes treated like collateral damage. This is because Lockheed Martin doesn't build soldiers. Make no mistake - Iraq, Afghanistan and many other wars are unnecessary, but if these men and women served, they deserve the best we can provide. The president has made VA reform a high priority: I hope he succeeds.
Incidentally, ketamine (vitamin K, animal tranquilizer, party drug) is being used to treat depression. War on drugs my ass. Just wait til the drug companies start to sell these.... all of the sudden they will become Miracle Cures.
Python is Life.
I just caught a really good documentary on Monty Python, covering the lead up to their O2 appearance. One of the points they hammered at (and got hammered on) is their age; constantly referred to as septuagenarian, or 70s, in French. Well, they certainly looked older, but consider that the shows started in the late 60s. They're certainly going to have gray hair and other normal issues related to age. Graham Chapman had the ultimate issue related to age: he's dead (although technically it was related to illness).
They covered what the Pythons had been up to, Eric Idle taking the reins of leadership for the appearance, and rehearsals, which some couldn't make due to prior commitments. Putting on a show of this magnitude required an immense effort, from Eric to dancers to props. There was a scene where Eric was driving through his 'hood in L.A., headed off to a storage unit. There he found a picture of the first time he met George Harrison, some gold records, and finally, the albatross he was after.
The following day I watched a relatively recent Deep Purple concert, noting that our classic rock heroes are getting up there. Jeff Beck and the Zeppelins are all septuagenarians. Contrasted with the Pythons, the rockers are still relatively young, hair dye aside.
What have we learned?
That rock and roll keeps you young and that if you put mayonnaise on corn on the cob, I will lose my previous meal upon your person.
- In a survey, half of Americans don't want self-driving cars. Of course they don't want self-driving cars - they crash. They're not ready for prime time.
- Maybe some Americans aren't as stupid as they look.
Turkish protesters took sledgehammers, handguns, and fire to iPhones.
Why? Do the Turks feel like I do about iDevices?
No, they're protesting Donald Trump's administration.
I call on you, readers of this blog, to follow the brave example of the Turks and take sledgehammers, handguns, and fire to iPhones, to protest President Trump's failure to jail Hillary Clinton. If you're unwilling to destroy your own $1,000 property, maim someone else's. If that fails, join my other protest: we're burning old, broken printers to protest Turkey's protest. We'll show them.
- I'm seeing commercials for a tv show called Born This Way, about people born with Down Syndrome. Could someone please explain the attraction of the show and its high ratings? Disclosure: I haven't watched the show, as the commercials provided nothing of interest for me. There are enough disabilities around me - why watch them on tv?
A 41 year old Iraq vet suffered from PTSD, attempting suicide five times after his 2009 discharge. The medicines he was prescribed left him with side effects and he still felt suicidal. He participated in a clinical trial of MDMA (ecstasy/molly), and within a few doses, he wasn't suicidal.
I'm glad the soldier got some help. Our veterans are sometimes treated like collateral damage. This is because Lockheed Martin doesn't build soldiers. Make no mistake - Iraq, Afghanistan and many other wars are unnecessary, but if these men and women served, they deserve the best we can provide. The president has made VA reform a high priority: I hope he succeeds.
Incidentally, ketamine (vitamin K, animal tranquilizer, party drug) is being used to treat depression. War on drugs my ass. Just wait til the drug companies start to sell these.... all of the sudden they will become Miracle Cures.
- The Powers That Be in dog rescue have indicated they're still looking for a dog for us. If you know of an American or English cocker in the Philly area, please get in touch. We're looking for a young adult who's not insane and has no issues.
My favorite religious skewer is the satanists. It would almost seem that they were put together to defend freedom of religion. Little Rock, Arkansas, has unveiled an eight foot state of Baphomet at the Arkansas state capitol. How did this happen? The legislators approved a Ten Commandments monument. The satanists insisted on inclusion for the sake of plurality and got what they were asking.
Much as I love the point and the apoplexy it caused, I'm coming out against pluralism, satan or not. #1A is about the State not having anything to do with religion. In this case, 'plurality' is a sneaky end-around, in order to get one group's religious symbol put up.
What would Attorney lefty, Constitutional non-scholar and not-noted libertarian, recommend? The removal of all religious iconography. Require the virtue-signalling legislators to take a Constitution 101 course. Require they view a presentation on satanism. Then send them back to their overstuffed office chairs and have them practice minimal government.
The nerve of these Bubbas is astounding.
Naturally, Little Rock's Great Unwashed is marching in lock step, mounting a protest against the satanist statue. Because their religion should get preference over freedom of religion. Also because there are no other problems in the state.
- It's 7am. I'm technically awake, and there's an ungodly noise coming through the windows: it's heavy equipment. Equipment so heavy, it sounds like someone doing construction on a highway. This is the loudest noise to grace our street since the 757 landed in our driveway. The neighbor is already busy cutting grass. She doesn't push the mower - it moves away in fear. She's been at it for over an hour... I think she's going blade by blade.
- Ancient astronaut theorists believe the neighbors are building survival complexes, seven stories deep. Or maybe the neighborhood is a CIA front. Except for my house, of course: we're a front for the city garbage inspectors.
Meanwhile back at the airport
"I'm going to need to see your porn, please," said the customs agent at the airport.
Excuse me?
"I need to look at the porn on your laptop."
Why would you possibly want to look at my porn? How do you know I have any?
"Sir, I'm specially trained to detect porn and see if it's the kind of porn which violates our laws."
How do you know I have any porn that violates your laws?
"I don't. That's why I have to review all of it. No telling where you might hide it. Please sit over there. A few colleagues will assist me to make this process faster. I'll be back in a few hours."
- Phew.. it's been a long but productive day: I finally got Word 2016 to open in draft view. I'm beat.
There was a party the other day.
No one was entirely sure why.
You're about to ask yourself what a party has to do with a bathroom door.
Go ahead.
I needed a new bathroom door. I was incapable of putting it up because I had never done it before and it was fairly complex. The solution, as always, was to call Bob. Bob is my buddy of many years. Bob is to construction as lefty is to computers. Bob stopped by, assessed the situation, and had it hung in short order. Wife was impressed. For about 15 minutes. Bob put the door on backwards. Bob are a perfesshunul.
Months later, I had to install an air conditioner shelf brackety thing. I was terrified of it requiring drills and other tools I knew the names of but did not have. Sure enough, Bob was kind enough to stop by on his day off. He looked at the instructions and shook his head... he wasn't understanding. Since we were both standing there in Man Pose (arms crossed, looking pensive), the Man Code stated I had to look at it. I too shook my head and sent Bob home. We just weren't getting it.
Wife, who called Bob, was less than happy that the professional (and I) failed to have the thing installed. When I protested stupidity, she handed me the device exactly as it was supposed to be attached. Boy, I really WAS stupid. I didn't have the heart to call Bob. But at least I finished with the Man Code: I told her if she's so smart, SHE could install it.
Bob's wife threw a party.
She has different ways of going about things.
When I say threw a party, I mean something closer to arranged a party. She made sure to delegate absolutely everything but being the hostess. When the day came, everybody had brought something, except Mrs. Bob. After all, it was her party. Then everybody arranged the food over tables, tents, and inside. Mrs Bob stayed inside because it was 90 outside. She certainly looked summery, in her very short skirt, which let most of it all hang out. And when I say it, I mean several great handfuls of cottage cheese and some used telephone poles.
After we left, I hear Mrs. Bob was already planning her next party. Why? Because everyone else cleaned up for her.
- I hate rain. I hate clouds. I picked the wrong state in which to live. We've had a pretty bad spell lately. Today we're aware of the sun, but the clouds are doing their best to obscure it, like Michael Moore in front of Gwyneth Paltrow. Yet I feel myself longing for rain. WHAT? Because if it doesn't rain in the next hour, I have to mow.
- Well, I had no choice. We went to a battery-powered mower, which is very light and very quiet. This is the problem: everyone else's mower is loud and bothers the hell out of me. I can't even reciprocate. Maybe I'll contact the manufacturer and find out if there's a VOOM retrofit. They have to put them on electric cars, so people will know they're coming.
Friday, August 17, 2018
Frosting a Cake with a Paper Knife
A very common story told by people who have technically died and come back, is the Near Death Experience (NDE). You know the story... traveling down a long hallway toward the light.. or a garden where your late relatives are waiting for you.
Sit down for a moment.
Stop the external and internal noise.
Go into the dark, maybe to the light, maybe a local light.
Are your friends and relatives there? Which ones?
What is their message, if any?
Think about it.
My wife experienced it.
She was up on the ceiling looking down.
Saw dead relatives.
They told her it's not time - go back.
Fortunately she did.
You're free to poo-poo it. You can tell me it's hypoxia and they're hallucinating (except they all seem to hallucinate the same thing). It's a thought exercise. You don't even have to believe it's real.
Sit down for a moment.
Stop the external and internal noise.
Go into the dark, maybe to the light, maybe a local light.
Are your friends and relatives there? Which ones?
What is their message, if any?
Think about it.
My wife experienced it.
She was up on the ceiling looking down.
Saw dead relatives.
They told her it's not time - go back.
Fortunately she did.
You're free to poo-poo it. You can tell me it's hypoxia and they're hallucinating (except they all seem to hallucinate the same thing). It's a thought exercise. You don't even have to believe it's real.
- Things are going relatively well, in that I haven't heard more about the alpacas.
Parents are weird.
Even the most rational of parents have interesting little quirks.
My parents have some rather huge ones.
They're going on vacation, which is wonderful and we're all jealous. A family tradition is to take family to the airport.
But not my parents. They leave early.
Early?
A day early.
From the airport?
No, but near the airport.
My mother, who can tell you who is about to call before the phone rings, likes to sleep at a hotel by the airport so they can get on the plane in the morning. To this day, no one understands why. I am the reason for many odd things she does, but I'm not owning this one.
- heard on tv: The Lesbian Cheering Squad is his latest picture.
The Pentagon has issued a directive restricting the use of fitness trackers and other devices at sensitive locations or high risk war zones. The reason for this is that they got caught using the devices that divulged their location. In other words, nobody had an inkling that these devices could cause a problem, until it was pointed out in public. Then a directive was issued.
How long has ThermionicEmissions been warning about these devices? Please don't tell me one low level security d00d outdid the Pentagon by going ahead in his time machine and seeing what was going to happen. What clairvoyance! It's almost like he IS the future.
Seriously, folks.... we know the govt is a humongous monolithic organization that gets nothing done overnight (or century - you've worked at large corporations), but this.... this was not hiding in some black corner of the Dark Web, in back of Hitler's Rolls, under the picture of J. Edgar Hoover in full dress. This was a huge, beaconing, genuine emergency, visible to anyone who took a minute to think about safety and privacy. I don't expect Joe Consumer would spend much time on this, but it shouldn't require a Serious Security Professional Prognosticator to check the Magic IT Ball to see the future.
These are the folks who protect our nation. Who spin up unbelievably huge new departments to help 'protect' us, at a cost exceeding the GNPs of most countries combined. You know better than to get me started on the result of this (TSA), right? Smile when you read your pay stub and see what you're paying for this.
This could be the harbinger of Bad Things in the armed forces. Wait - let me check my time machine.... fwwwwwip - yup, this is not going to be pretty. Within the next few years, the Pentagon will restrict 'checking in' to Afghanistan location apps and posting your lattitide/longitude on Faceyspaces. No selfies of you in the sand on Instagram. And NO tweeting your location if you're in a country 'helping its leaders to better position the upcoming vote'.
If this sort of thing is allowed to continue, it will no longer be fun to be in the military!
The Pentagon is welcome to contact me for consulting, but I'll save them a lot of money by having the NSA pass along what they gather from reading this blog. It's win-win. I get to blog, they get free warnings, and I get to help my country.
HONEY.... it's the phone... the Pentagon's calling again...
How long has ThermionicEmissions been warning about these devices? Please don't tell me one low level security d00d outdid the Pentagon by going ahead in his time machine and seeing what was going to happen. What clairvoyance! It's almost like he IS the future.
Seriously, folks.... we know the govt is a humongous monolithic organization that gets nothing done overnight (or century - you've worked at large corporations), but this.... this was not hiding in some black corner of the Dark Web, in back of Hitler's Rolls, under the picture of J. Edgar Hoover in full dress. This was a huge, beaconing, genuine emergency, visible to anyone who took a minute to think about safety and privacy. I don't expect Joe Consumer would spend much time on this, but it shouldn't require a Serious Security Professional Prognosticator to check the Magic IT Ball to see the future.
These are the folks who protect our nation. Who spin up unbelievably huge new departments to help 'protect' us, at a cost exceeding the GNPs of most countries combined. You know better than to get me started on the result of this (TSA), right? Smile when you read your pay stub and see what you're paying for this.
This could be the harbinger of Bad Things in the armed forces. Wait - let me check my time machine.... fwwwwwip - yup, this is not going to be pretty. Within the next few years, the Pentagon will restrict 'checking in' to Afghanistan location apps and posting your lattitide/longitude on Faceyspaces. No selfies of you in the sand on Instagram. And NO tweeting your location if you're in a country 'helping its leaders to better position the upcoming vote'.
If this sort of thing is allowed to continue, it will no longer be fun to be in the military!
The Pentagon is welcome to contact me for consulting, but I'll save them a lot of money by having the NSA pass along what they gather from reading this blog. It's win-win. I get to blog, they get free warnings, and I get to help my country.
HONEY.... it's the phone... the Pentagon's calling again...
- a top supplier of iDevices had to shut down for a bit because of ransomware all over their network. I told you iDevices are dangerous!
According to F-Secure, spam is through the roof because of the demise of Adobe Flash. Because people aren't using Flash, the criminals' pickings aren't as easy, so they turn to spam. Here's the best part: long ago I was told that spam was so prevalent because 10% of its recipients clicked on it. Last year it was 13.4% and so far this year, it's at 14.2%. I often lament the fact that we're so incredibly stupid. I truly hoped that with time and knowledge, we'd become less stupid. That was stupid of me. We're spreading our stupid deeper and wider than ever before. We're actually getting more stupid. Not only do we not learn, we flatly refuse to, in favor of growing more stupid. But how stupid can we get, you ask? Don't ask, I say... they will never let you down.
- If you want to go against what security people say and insist on using public wifi, here are some tips to keep yourself relatively safe.
Overheard from an equipment vendor: "Our security team said we are not allowed to use the WiFi in our hotel room during this hacking convention, so I am running to the lobby to answer some emails."
We are doomed.
We are doomed.
- They say, whoever they are, that our mind wants to see patterns in something we don't understand, so that's why we see things that aren't there. I wonder if this goes for the ears... The television is usually on at a volume which allows it to be heard in most of Australia, so I'm forever yelling COULD YOU TURN IT DOWN A BIT - AT LEAST TO AFRICA? I was just about to yell again, when I saw the tv was off. This means I'm hearing a tv that isn't on. The technical term for this is auditory hallucination. The technical remedy is antipsychotics. After too long or too many, one starts to sound like Ozzy Osbourne and shake a lot. I'd prefer to think my ears want to hear patterns.
- And that, my friends, is how babies are made.
COWORKER FOLLIES
HIM: This list has the information you want
ME: Do you remember the site for that information?
HIM: Whaddaya mean - the list?
ME: The site where it resides
HIM: On the list. Let me take a picture of the list and text it to you
ME: WHERE THE DEVICE LIVES, where it is plugged into power, where it sits behind a door, its location, where it gets a network plug, where it blinks its lights, where people go to fix it when it breaks, DID YOU LEAVE YOUR MEDICINE HOME AGAIN TODAY?
Frosting a cake with a paper knife... refers to a very old tv commercial for canned icing. It's so moist, you can spread it with a paper knife. Then she does. This was satirized by Frank Zappa in 'Flakes':
I am a moron and this is my wife
She's frosting a cake with a paper knife....
I am a moron and this is my wife
She's frosting a cake with a paper knife....
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
Say, Is That A Sexy New Laptop?
WARNING: Rant.
After spending over a week troubleshooting my work laptop, mostly waiting for troubleshooting, it was decided to send me a new one, possibly because I kept annoying them by wanting a functional computer. They don't like that.
The laptop that was sent Friday failed to appear, but I did get a call the following Tuesday, asking me some questions about it. It turns out it wasn't sent Friday. So it was going out First Thing Tuesday. If you believe that First Thing Tuesday means literally First Thing Tuesday, you're a fool. Like me. First Thing Tuesday is not a point in time, but a range of potential points in time, once again exploiting quantum theory. Depending on where you work, First Thing Tuesday can mean anywhere from First Thing Wednesday all the way to First Thing Tuesday in any year ending in a vowel.
It arrived Last Thing Friday.
It arrived so quickly(!) because they really wanted me to have it. They really wanted me to have it because I couldn't get anything done. Period. Strangely enough, not getting anything done is not sufficient reason to rush any task at all. The old machine is chugging along, running fine, provided I don't close it (or go under 60mph). OOPS - what is that strange icon? Hmmm.... software was added to your machine and it will have to be rebooted. But.. but.. if it's rebooted, I'll never be able to work on it at all. This is why they're working at TOP SPEED on my new laptop.
I skipped the mandatory step of setting up the 35mm film cameras to make an unboxing video and got straight to unboxing. Hmmm... very light. Looks smaller. Uh-oh.. smaller is NOT better... a lot thinner. Uh-oh, Macs are thinner. HEY - it powers up! Normal people aren't this excited when a device turns on. This is because normal people aren't me and I'm not normal people. Plugging something in and having it behave as advertised is a Minor Miracle.
This smaller thing is worrisome. My personal laptop is what you would call Somewhat Larger than most (all) laptops. It is referred to as a Desktop Replacement, due to size and horsepower. Weight was not high on the list of design goals. Yes, it's larger and weighs more than a Volkswagen, but dammit, it's powerful, has a huge screen, and it's portable (provided we rent the flatbed car carrier in advance).
So there I sit, with a functional laptop. As if the joy from it powering up wasn't enough, it let me sign in! I thought I had died and gone to heaven, and was hanging around with Marshall again. And then I saw it... apparently size was the first consideration for this laptop, as they HOME and END keys now require the FUNCTION KEY to operate. What kind of blithering idiot makes a basic navigation key a function of FUNCTION? Dell, that's who. And the keys are at the bottom, while DELETE is up top. I'd have gladly sacrifice the INSERT key, which serves only to get in my way and screw up my already disastrous typing.
A month ago, my coworker was out of his mind because he got a new machine with Office 2016 on it. I laughed, but only politely. I was howling inside. He said to just wait - it was coming for me too. It was all I could do to not cry.
And here we are, a new laptop with.... you guessed it... Office 2016. The 'glass is half full' people would tell me to be thankful it had Win 7 on it and not Win 10. When I worked at the Twilight Zone<tm>, Manglement was deciding on what kind of mandatory training would be required when we 'upgraded' from one version of Office to another. Training? It was the same )$&@ing program. I don't mean to say I require training on Office 2016,... just that it's a flaming piece of excrement, made worse by calling it an 'upgrade'. 'Upgrade' doesn't actually mean upgrade.... 'Upgrade' means 'you better pay a lot to use this new version because we're not going to support the old version that you finally got set up and used to using.'
The only reason Humanity has not risen up and does something really horrible to Microsoft or just the designers of the RIBBON, is that they're stupid, lazy, and love blinky things. It causes violent urges in me if I even see it. I have everything optimized to take up as little screen space as possible, and now it's been cut way down because of some hideous menu that must drop down on me instead of letting me work. Android uses something horrible called Material Design. Everything I install uses this hideous video bloat, so I have to learn to hide it. It pains me to say this, but it looks like Google's been sleeping with Microsoft. The work you do with their programs has come in second to the design of their programs. I learned to hide the little hemorrhoid. But then I had no menus. I figured out how to put tiny little icons on the top left of every program with just the amount needed to do actual work.
After we put the Ribbon People's heads on poles around the compound, we're going on an even larger campaign: WHO TF THOUGHT IT SHOULD BE MANDATORY FOR EVERY PROGRAM TO START MAXIMIZED? When I start a program, it shouldn't splay itself over everything on my screen, yet here we are. This is not limited to MS. Office 2016 retains the ribbon and adds screen bloat for design. Big fat borders. They did away with certain things in 2016 and I have to use Skype for Business. MS bought Skype, complete with backdoors, and probably inserted new backdoors of its own. You might be guessing that no one asked me. And if you guessed that, you'd be very correct. Ok, I'm a team player, I'll use Skype. Oops... how do you make this thing smaller? It opened up and took most of my screen, but I used the standard method to make it smaller. Then STOP. I cannot make it smaller than eating 1/4 of my entire laptop screen. It takes up 1/3 of the width. One third of my (*$&@ing screen, eaten up by one program you can't resize. Or maybe we didn't pay enough to get the Secret Sizing Code<tm>. Even my coworker was stunned, although it worked for him. Aha - maybe it feels about me the same was I feel about Microsoft. Nah, it couldn't.
The laptop sure is light, though.
It looks to have higher horsepower and RAM.
And it's light. It's got that going for it.
It has some bizarre resolution.... like 1472x924, which might be why Skype won't get any smaller. My eyes aren't old enough to require this.
But it's light.
It has a hot spot. What is a hot spot - one of those internet thingies? No, a spot where you rest your hand that's hotter than it needs to be. I wonder if the exploding Samsung batteries had this problem before.....
It's also thin, which helps it to be light.
It has no optical drive, which also helps it to be light. It also helps it to be completely useless, as no one was issued an external drive, nor would anybody want to carry it. Good thinkin', guys.
Sure is light, though. And well laid out.
The most exciting and important bit about this new Wonder Laptop is the tiny Dell Blue band around the nipple. No, really.. you know the little pointer stick thingie that sits around the G and H keys? It's black. But they put a tiny little, almost rubberband-like blue 1/16" bit of rubber around it. But it doesn't light up (sad face). Whatever we paid for these, the nipple should light up. Plus with lit nipples, it's much easier to find them in low light situations. THIS is the kind of thing that makes Normal People rise up in anger. You can strip their rights one by one, but don't take away their emojis or they'll find you and do things to you while you sleep. Possibly involving a Kardashian.
Make sure you're sitting down for this part... I insist. I can't afford the liability insurance should you fall and damage any of your organs. The laptop wouldn't let me log in this morning. Gee, a few days ago it let me log in fine. Not today.
Of course not today, it's the second damn day I've had the brand new confounded thing, why would it let me log in? Coworkers, who always come by for the latest bad news and my bright, sunny outlook on life, stop by and wonder why I'm incredibly glum, instead of pissy with hate. There hasn't been a single I FUCKING HATE MICROSOFT in the building all morning. People are concerned. Are those tears coming down your cheeks? Why does that happen?
Logically speaking, if it worked Friday, it should work Monday. Except for me. Perhaps I brought a little Twilight Zone<tm> with me. Good lord, I was going to have to call Support... please don't make me call Support. It will be three days before they bother to call me back and another three to fix the actual issue. Hey, maybe those Glass Half Full people had something after all.. I could make an entire career out of broken equipment. I couldn't get a day's work done in 35 years because I had to call Support and wait a minimum of weeks to get each repair done!
Nah.
So I looked further and discovered a setting might have changed, although it was illogical. And sure enough, the illogic change worked and I was in. Then I hit Outlook and two of them came up. Makes perfect sense, no? Speaking of burning down houses and heads on poles, SOMEBODY changed the color of the Outlook icon to blue from that hideous burnt yellow color, which is how I used to find it. This is NOT an upgrade. They're just screwing with us now. There's an entire back room that quiets whenever someone tries to find Outlook. The backdoor sends them a signal and they all look up at their room display, which is roughly the size of a room, and watch the n00b look for a program. Because some genius set the design meeting for after lunch on a Friday. Ten mojitos later, somebody got up off the floor and said, "Hey guysh... let'sh change the colorsh of the iconsh randomly." Laughter consumed the room, with full agreement from the employees that were conscious and capable of legally giving their consent (and hadn't peed in their own, or somebody else's, pants yet). And that's why the colors are different. Don't let them tell you it's a visual enhancement, designed to help you work better, smarter, and faster. The software should have come with drinks, at which point their design engineering would have made some sense. Maybe not.
Sure is a light laptop, though.
After spending over a week troubleshooting my work laptop, mostly waiting for troubleshooting, it was decided to send me a new one, possibly because I kept annoying them by wanting a functional computer. They don't like that.
The laptop that was sent Friday failed to appear, but I did get a call the following Tuesday, asking me some questions about it. It turns out it wasn't sent Friday. So it was going out First Thing Tuesday. If you believe that First Thing Tuesday means literally First Thing Tuesday, you're a fool. Like me. First Thing Tuesday is not a point in time, but a range of potential points in time, once again exploiting quantum theory. Depending on where you work, First Thing Tuesday can mean anywhere from First Thing Wednesday all the way to First Thing Tuesday in any year ending in a vowel.
It arrived Last Thing Friday.
It arrived so quickly(!) because they really wanted me to have it. They really wanted me to have it because I couldn't get anything done. Period. Strangely enough, not getting anything done is not sufficient reason to rush any task at all. The old machine is chugging along, running fine, provided I don't close it (or go under 60mph). OOPS - what is that strange icon? Hmmm.... software was added to your machine and it will have to be rebooted. But.. but.. if it's rebooted, I'll never be able to work on it at all. This is why they're working at TOP SPEED on my new laptop.
I skipped the mandatory step of setting up the 35mm film cameras to make an unboxing video and got straight to unboxing. Hmmm... very light. Looks smaller. Uh-oh.. smaller is NOT better... a lot thinner. Uh-oh, Macs are thinner. HEY - it powers up! Normal people aren't this excited when a device turns on. This is because normal people aren't me and I'm not normal people. Plugging something in and having it behave as advertised is a Minor Miracle.
This smaller thing is worrisome. My personal laptop is what you would call Somewhat Larger than most (all) laptops. It is referred to as a Desktop Replacement, due to size and horsepower. Weight was not high on the list of design goals. Yes, it's larger and weighs more than a Volkswagen, but dammit, it's powerful, has a huge screen, and it's portable (provided we rent the flatbed car carrier in advance).
So there I sit, with a functional laptop. As if the joy from it powering up wasn't enough, it let me sign in! I thought I had died and gone to heaven, and was hanging around with Marshall again. And then I saw it... apparently size was the first consideration for this laptop, as they HOME and END keys now require the FUNCTION KEY to operate. What kind of blithering idiot makes a basic navigation key a function of FUNCTION? Dell, that's who. And the keys are at the bottom, while DELETE is up top. I'd have gladly sacrifice the INSERT key, which serves only to get in my way and screw up my already disastrous typing.
A month ago, my coworker was out of his mind because he got a new machine with Office 2016 on it. I laughed, but only politely. I was howling inside. He said to just wait - it was coming for me too. It was all I could do to not cry.
And here we are, a new laptop with.... you guessed it... Office 2016. The 'glass is half full' people would tell me to be thankful it had Win 7 on it and not Win 10. When I worked at the Twilight Zone<tm>, Manglement was deciding on what kind of mandatory training would be required when we 'upgraded' from one version of Office to another. Training? It was the same )$&@ing program. I don't mean to say I require training on Office 2016,... just that it's a flaming piece of excrement, made worse by calling it an 'upgrade'. 'Upgrade' doesn't actually mean upgrade.... 'Upgrade' means 'you better pay a lot to use this new version because we're not going to support the old version that you finally got set up and used to using.'
The only reason Humanity has not risen up and does something really horrible to Microsoft or just the designers of the RIBBON, is that they're stupid, lazy, and love blinky things. It causes violent urges in me if I even see it. I have everything optimized to take up as little screen space as possible, and now it's been cut way down because of some hideous menu that must drop down on me instead of letting me work. Android uses something horrible called Material Design. Everything I install uses this hideous video bloat, so I have to learn to hide it. It pains me to say this, but it looks like Google's been sleeping with Microsoft. The work you do with their programs has come in second to the design of their programs. I learned to hide the little hemorrhoid. But then I had no menus. I figured out how to put tiny little icons on the top left of every program with just the amount needed to do actual work.
After we put the Ribbon People's heads on poles around the compound, we're going on an even larger campaign: WHO TF THOUGHT IT SHOULD BE MANDATORY FOR EVERY PROGRAM TO START MAXIMIZED? When I start a program, it shouldn't splay itself over everything on my screen, yet here we are. This is not limited to MS. Office 2016 retains the ribbon and adds screen bloat for design. Big fat borders. They did away with certain things in 2016 and I have to use Skype for Business. MS bought Skype, complete with backdoors, and probably inserted new backdoors of its own. You might be guessing that no one asked me. And if you guessed that, you'd be very correct. Ok, I'm a team player, I'll use Skype. Oops... how do you make this thing smaller? It opened up and took most of my screen, but I used the standard method to make it smaller. Then STOP. I cannot make it smaller than eating 1/4 of my entire laptop screen. It takes up 1/3 of the width. One third of my (*$&@ing screen, eaten up by one program you can't resize. Or maybe we didn't pay enough to get the Secret Sizing Code<tm>. Even my coworker was stunned, although it worked for him. Aha - maybe it feels about me the same was I feel about Microsoft. Nah, it couldn't.
The laptop sure is light, though.
It looks to have higher horsepower and RAM.
And it's light. It's got that going for it.
It has some bizarre resolution.... like 1472x924, which might be why Skype won't get any smaller. My eyes aren't old enough to require this.
But it's light.
It has a hot spot. What is a hot spot - one of those internet thingies? No, a spot where you rest your hand that's hotter than it needs to be. I wonder if the exploding Samsung batteries had this problem before.....
It's also thin, which helps it to be light.
It has no optical drive, which also helps it to be light. It also helps it to be completely useless, as no one was issued an external drive, nor would anybody want to carry it. Good thinkin', guys.
Sure is light, though. And well laid out.
The most exciting and important bit about this new Wonder Laptop is the tiny Dell Blue band around the nipple. No, really.. you know the little pointer stick thingie that sits around the G and H keys? It's black. But they put a tiny little, almost rubberband-like blue 1/16" bit of rubber around it. But it doesn't light up (sad face). Whatever we paid for these, the nipple should light up. Plus with lit nipples, it's much easier to find them in low light situations. THIS is the kind of thing that makes Normal People rise up in anger. You can strip their rights one by one, but don't take away their emojis or they'll find you and do things to you while you sleep. Possibly involving a Kardashian.
Make sure you're sitting down for this part... I insist. I can't afford the liability insurance should you fall and damage any of your organs. The laptop wouldn't let me log in this morning. Gee, a few days ago it let me log in fine. Not today.
Of course not today, it's the second damn day I've had the brand new confounded thing, why would it let me log in? Coworkers, who always come by for the latest bad news and my bright, sunny outlook on life, stop by and wonder why I'm incredibly glum, instead of pissy with hate. There hasn't been a single I FUCKING HATE MICROSOFT in the building all morning. People are concerned. Are those tears coming down your cheeks? Why does that happen?
Logically speaking, if it worked Friday, it should work Monday. Except for me. Perhaps I brought a little Twilight Zone<tm> with me. Good lord, I was going to have to call Support... please don't make me call Support. It will be three days before they bother to call me back and another three to fix the actual issue. Hey, maybe those Glass Half Full people had something after all.. I could make an entire career out of broken equipment. I couldn't get a day's work done in 35 years because I had to call Support and wait a minimum of weeks to get each repair done!
Nah.
So I looked further and discovered a setting might have changed, although it was illogical. And sure enough, the illogic change worked and I was in. Then I hit Outlook and two of them came up. Makes perfect sense, no? Speaking of burning down houses and heads on poles, SOMEBODY changed the color of the Outlook icon to blue from that hideous burnt yellow color, which is how I used to find it. This is NOT an upgrade. They're just screwing with us now. There's an entire back room that quiets whenever someone tries to find Outlook. The backdoor sends them a signal and they all look up at their room display, which is roughly the size of a room, and watch the n00b look for a program. Because some genius set the design meeting for after lunch on a Friday. Ten mojitos later, somebody got up off the floor and said, "Hey guysh... let'sh change the colorsh of the iconsh randomly." Laughter consumed the room, with full agreement from the employees that were conscious and capable of legally giving their consent (and hadn't peed in their own, or somebody else's, pants yet). And that's why the colors are different. Don't let them tell you it's a visual enhancement, designed to help you work better, smarter, and faster. The software should have come with drinks, at which point their design engineering would have made some sense. Maybe not.
Sure is a light laptop, though.
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Home Alone - Call the Authorities
I am alone for the weekend.
My first thought was 'I really don't feel like getting up.'
My second thought was 'I really don't feel like going to the bathroom.'
Thirty two minutes later, I was up.
I was greeted by the tranquil sound of heavy machinery doing something to someone's house. For a quiet neighborhood, there's sure a lot of noise.
There is something about getting dressed that makes you aware of the problems of the world. I can skip out of bed but the moment I put on socks, everything stops dead. The worst kind of force imaginable comes right after the first sock. There is absolutely no momentum from the first sock, so I sit there, trying desperately to get the necessary oomph for said second sock. While trying, I review every bad and embarrassing thing that happened since first grade. One day last year it was dark by the time I got the second sock on. Taking them off takes no time whatsoever. Modern Science is studying this time warp, as is Modern Psychology, which has a much greater chance of a solution.
I look down at his spot and notice that Marshall continues to fail to be there. Something must be done about this.
Opening the curtains, I note that I don't like opening the curtains. This is something that will be automated in the future.
I stumbled to the coffee machine, still bleary-eyed, and made a cup of my favorite French roast. This will energize the hell out of me, probably sometime after my second nap. The Art of the Weekend is defined by being able to get downstairs before the first nap begins.
Know what's disheartening? Picking up your coffee cup to drink the second half and noting that sometimes the grinds get through. After I removed the grinds, I noticed they were moving. There are two ants in my coffee. No line of ants getting ready to hit the diving board, just these two. Quite frankly, I'm amazed that anything from the animal kingdom could survive my coffee. Most people can't. Besides, how did this happen? I don't think there were ants in the cup. I hope there weren't freeze dried ants in the coffee pod. There's no food around to attract them. To make thing absolutely perfect, I just took a mouthful of coffee. They're probably going to reproduce in my GI tract, making my next colonoscopy a real treat for the doctor.
Two windows are open on either side of the house, giving me a stereo field of sound for the construction going on outside. For a quiet neighborhood, there's sure a lot of noise. There is a brief halt to the noise, which sounds like a giant vacuum; not of the Hoover variety... just silence. I don't like silence, because that's when the demons come out to play. Not the Ghost Hunter demons - the ones inside, which are much more scary.
The quiet is immediately shattered by the air conditioner. Wife loves the air conditioner. We just bought a new one, which will keep food cold in case the freezer breaks. She uses a fan in the bedroom in addition to the air because she likes fresh air moving. The she wraps herself up in my blanket so she doesn't get cold. Meanwhile it's snowing and I'm without a blanket
I'm pretty fair with the wife. I told her while she's away, I need either a dog or a vice wife/babysitter. I don't think that's unreasonable. She does. Further, she has the car. So after a week of slaving over a hot computer, I'm locked in the house. This is a bad thing, because when I get bored or unwilling, I get up to Stuff. It's not a good idea to get locked inside a house with a bored lefty, unless you like to watch the world burn.
Only I'm so.... tired.
Definitely time for my first nap. They say that people who plan their next meal while they're eating have a food problem. If I plan my next nap while napping, do I have a sleep problem? If I have a bowl of cereal, what type of fauna will likely accompany it? And what is that horrible noise coming from the back yard? Probably bits of tree falling and small planes crashing, as usual. For a quiet neighborhood, there's sure a lot of noise.
Overheard on tv: the cockpit voice recorder was powered by the left engine, and stopped working when it fell off.
Mice. Of the computer variety.
Having excavated my home office, I decided it might be a good time to upgrade things a bit. It's not that I haven't been in there for a while, but one of the mice had a ball in it. Another was just plain weird. A bunch of mice from the Mouse Pile were even more strange, in ways a mouse just shouldn't be. As the computer mice were not modified by real mice, it was confusing. Not enough to investigate, though,
So the smart thing to do is Amazon. This is a fantastic solution to most things, in keeping with my policy of late adoption. I would be even later if I hadn't seen Wife using it. She makes great use of it. This makes me nervous because she also watches tv channels solely dedicated to selling things. Those will not be adopted, unless I take a fancy to dressing like a middle-aged female. Never say never, but this is really close to absolutely never.
Since I go back before the mouse, I have some perspective.
No, really, there was a time before the mouse. There was an operating system called DOS (and other complex ones before that) and it was all character-based. No windows, no clicky clicky, and porn was scarce, if not impossible.
Mice, when they appeared, were pretty clunky. The mouse balls got really dirty really quickly, requiring minor surgery to clean. This was magical to people when I started doing desktop support. In fact, most things were magical to users when I started doing desktop support. I had to misfortune to support a warehouse full of voluntary idiots, who felt no need to learn a thing and entitled enough to have all of their issues solved by desktop technicians. Most of their issues were PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair) or I.D.10.T (idiot).
So... mouse balls... so many years of really horrible jokes.
The next great step forward was the laser mouse. In reality, it was an LED mouse, but truth is rarely rarely allowed to get in the way of advertising. No more mouse balls! Now if the mouse started behaving strangely, the magic of pulling a small hair out from in front of the LED was standard practice.
IIRC, mice were hideously expensive at first. On the order of $80.
Almost as if by magic, they fell to $15 and less. They appeared to be the same mice. Would economics of scale explain the decrease? How the hell should I know - it's not like I know crap about economics.
Scouring Amazon, I came up with 15 pages of mice. An embarrassment of riches. Removing the lovely wireless mice and the travel mice that a small child would find small, there were about 40 mice left. All I wanted was a generic full size mouse (paralleling my desire for a generic land yacht to drive). I even limited the search to (gasp!) Microsoft. Years ago I was tempted to call Microsoft support and ask if their mice worked on linux, but decided it wouldn't provide enough entertainment for sustained hilarity. There were about 10 mice from which to choose. Two that looked alike cost $11 and $89. Why bother asking? The rest had prices that varied between $9 and $15, in very strange denominations and names. The Microsoft Mouse was $9.35. The Microsoft Office Mouse was $13.43. The Microsoft Office Mouse black was $12.33.
They also failed to describe a single feature of said mice. I looked at my existing mice to trace lines and figure out which one I wanted from Amazon's pictures. Of course the mice keyword also brought up women's shirts and a few sex toys, per the prophecy of Ancient Astronaut Theorists. Do you have this much trouble buying a mouse? Two days later they arrived, wildly different from the picture, and not at all as large as I wanted. I ordered 2 different Microsoft mice on purpose, to prove there was no difference in hardware for different pricing. And there was no difference. The Basic Black mouse was exactly the same as the Office Mouse in black, with special laser hair removal and a long purple cord.
Ok, so I once again managed to turn a small need into many ridiculous paragraphs. I also proved that although Amazon is an absolute boon to voluntary agoraphobes, there are some things better done in person (if one can find a computer store in which to do it). Sex is also better in person, but not always logistically possible; in which case you do it in snail mail.
Next issue will contain a related home office story about LCD displays that are square instead of the standard landscape orientation (335x42.5 wide, aka 16x42.5 asperger ratio). Another interesting fact is that computers do NOT like mixing the two types at one time. This causes a display that will blind anyone looking at it, in addition to rendering them sterile.
My first thought was 'I really don't feel like getting up.'
My second thought was 'I really don't feel like going to the bathroom.'
Thirty two minutes later, I was up.
I was greeted by the tranquil sound of heavy machinery doing something to someone's house. For a quiet neighborhood, there's sure a lot of noise.
There is something about getting dressed that makes you aware of the problems of the world. I can skip out of bed but the moment I put on socks, everything stops dead. The worst kind of force imaginable comes right after the first sock. There is absolutely no momentum from the first sock, so I sit there, trying desperately to get the necessary oomph for said second sock. While trying, I review every bad and embarrassing thing that happened since first grade. One day last year it was dark by the time I got the second sock on. Taking them off takes no time whatsoever. Modern Science is studying this time warp, as is Modern Psychology, which has a much greater chance of a solution.
I look down at his spot and notice that Marshall continues to fail to be there. Something must be done about this.
Opening the curtains, I note that I don't like opening the curtains. This is something that will be automated in the future.
I stumbled to the coffee machine, still bleary-eyed, and made a cup of my favorite French roast. This will energize the hell out of me, probably sometime after my second nap. The Art of the Weekend is defined by being able to get downstairs before the first nap begins.
Know what's disheartening? Picking up your coffee cup to drink the second half and noting that sometimes the grinds get through. After I removed the grinds, I noticed they were moving. There are two ants in my coffee. No line of ants getting ready to hit the diving board, just these two. Quite frankly, I'm amazed that anything from the animal kingdom could survive my coffee. Most people can't. Besides, how did this happen? I don't think there were ants in the cup. I hope there weren't freeze dried ants in the coffee pod. There's no food around to attract them. To make thing absolutely perfect, I just took a mouthful of coffee. They're probably going to reproduce in my GI tract, making my next colonoscopy a real treat for the doctor.
Two windows are open on either side of the house, giving me a stereo field of sound for the construction going on outside. For a quiet neighborhood, there's sure a lot of noise. There is a brief halt to the noise, which sounds like a giant vacuum; not of the Hoover variety... just silence. I don't like silence, because that's when the demons come out to play. Not the Ghost Hunter demons - the ones inside, which are much more scary.
The quiet is immediately shattered by the air conditioner. Wife loves the air conditioner. We just bought a new one, which will keep food cold in case the freezer breaks. She uses a fan in the bedroom in addition to the air because she likes fresh air moving. The she wraps herself up in my blanket so she doesn't get cold. Meanwhile it's snowing and I'm without a blanket
I'm pretty fair with the wife. I told her while she's away, I need either a dog or a vice wife/babysitter. I don't think that's unreasonable. She does. Further, she has the car. So after a week of slaving over a hot computer, I'm locked in the house. This is a bad thing, because when I get bored or unwilling, I get up to Stuff. It's not a good idea to get locked inside a house with a bored lefty, unless you like to watch the world burn.
Only I'm so.... tired.
Definitely time for my first nap. They say that people who plan their next meal while they're eating have a food problem. If I plan my next nap while napping, do I have a sleep problem? If I have a bowl of cereal, what type of fauna will likely accompany it? And what is that horrible noise coming from the back yard? Probably bits of tree falling and small planes crashing, as usual. For a quiet neighborhood, there's sure a lot of noise.
- If you've got an HP Officejet printer with fax, you've got a problem. Discovered at DEF CON 2018 (Disneyland for hackers), was a way to get into printers with a specially constructed fax. This means if you don't have a fax or have a printer that's not an inkjet, you're ok. HP released patches for this earlier. Don't forget to check for patches for everything you own, including your wireless system.
I love Google (Do No Evil): they're so perfectly evil... apparently when you turn off the Let Google See Your Location History, it compiles your location history. Google says this isn't true - they tell you all this and there might be another setting to turn this off, but they're not going to tell you what it is. This was a study by the AP, using unaffiliated assistance. Google flat out lied. And just when the iDevice users are starting to smirk, let them know that the same thing happens on their phone. I believe if you TURN OFF LOCATION, you should be ok. Of course there are about 3 people on the planet who do.
- If the iDevice people want to feel smug, they can check out this story, which goes over the unimaginable number of android phones that are open to hacking because of the unholy bloatware installed by the carriers.
Lastly, for the acrophobics and planephobics, is a story wherein a researcher found hundreds of planes exposed to remote attacks. A fellow passively (using signals in the air, not probing or hacking) checked out a plane's satcomm system and discovered rather a lot of open services anyone could access without a password. Plus the fact that certain planes can be hacked from the ground through satellite communications systems.
Once again I tell you that we WILL NOT learn.
Let me start by saying that airplanes are very safe. VERY safe. Everything that can be redundant is redundant. Twice or three times. You're much safer in a plane than a car. Have you ever heard of Pilot Rage? Whenever there is an airplane tragedy, something is learned to make the planes safer. I trust the method because no one has any interest in planes pointing themselves at the ground and meeting it nose-down or in an otherwise unfortunate manner.
Computers, entertainment systems, and satellites?
No f-ing way.
Again, we have had personal computers for a long time. Before that it was mainframes. We have learned countless lessons on problems, failures, and security. Yet each new generation of devices fails to take any history into account. It's right there, available to everyone, plus fairly obvious to anyone watching over the years. Yet we have insecure entertainment and satellite communications systems on planes. Internet of Things devices that are hackable right out of the box.
Happy Security Day to you!
- 18 months after pacemaker vulnerabilities were reported, they're still vulnerable. Just to make things more interesting, the flaws also affect an insulin pump. If specially timed electrical packets are sent to the general vicinity of a person with either of these devices, they can be forced to do the chicken dance. Aside from health and morality issues, the UN qualifies this as torture for the wearer and the viewer of the spectacle.
Overheard on tv: the cockpit voice recorder was powered by the left engine, and stopped working when it fell off.
Mice. Of the computer variety.
Having excavated my home office, I decided it might be a good time to upgrade things a bit. It's not that I haven't been in there for a while, but one of the mice had a ball in it. Another was just plain weird. A bunch of mice from the Mouse Pile were even more strange, in ways a mouse just shouldn't be. As the computer mice were not modified by real mice, it was confusing. Not enough to investigate, though,
So the smart thing to do is Amazon. This is a fantastic solution to most things, in keeping with my policy of late adoption. I would be even later if I hadn't seen Wife using it. She makes great use of it. This makes me nervous because she also watches tv channels solely dedicated to selling things. Those will not be adopted, unless I take a fancy to dressing like a middle-aged female. Never say never, but this is really close to absolutely never.
Since I go back before the mouse, I have some perspective.
No, really, there was a time before the mouse. There was an operating system called DOS (and other complex ones before that) and it was all character-based. No windows, no clicky clicky, and porn was scarce, if not impossible.
Mice, when they appeared, were pretty clunky. The mouse balls got really dirty really quickly, requiring minor surgery to clean. This was magical to people when I started doing desktop support. In fact, most things were magical to users when I started doing desktop support. I had to misfortune to support a warehouse full of voluntary idiots, who felt no need to learn a thing and entitled enough to have all of their issues solved by desktop technicians. Most of their issues were PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair) or I.D.10.T (idiot).
So... mouse balls... so many years of really horrible jokes.
The next great step forward was the laser mouse. In reality, it was an LED mouse, but truth is rarely rarely allowed to get in the way of advertising. No more mouse balls! Now if the mouse started behaving strangely, the magic of pulling a small hair out from in front of the LED was standard practice.
IIRC, mice were hideously expensive at first. On the order of $80.
Almost as if by magic, they fell to $15 and less. They appeared to be the same mice. Would economics of scale explain the decrease? How the hell should I know - it's not like I know crap about economics.
Scouring Amazon, I came up with 15 pages of mice. An embarrassment of riches. Removing the lovely wireless mice and the travel mice that a small child would find small, there were about 40 mice left. All I wanted was a generic full size mouse (paralleling my desire for a generic land yacht to drive). I even limited the search to (gasp!) Microsoft. Years ago I was tempted to call Microsoft support and ask if their mice worked on linux, but decided it wouldn't provide enough entertainment for sustained hilarity. There were about 10 mice from which to choose. Two that looked alike cost $11 and $89. Why bother asking? The rest had prices that varied between $9 and $15, in very strange denominations and names. The Microsoft Mouse was $9.35. The Microsoft Office Mouse was $13.43. The Microsoft Office Mouse black was $12.33.
They also failed to describe a single feature of said mice. I looked at my existing mice to trace lines and figure out which one I wanted from Amazon's pictures. Of course the mice keyword also brought up women's shirts and a few sex toys, per the prophecy of Ancient Astronaut Theorists. Do you have this much trouble buying a mouse? Two days later they arrived, wildly different from the picture, and not at all as large as I wanted. I ordered 2 different Microsoft mice on purpose, to prove there was no difference in hardware for different pricing. And there was no difference. The Basic Black mouse was exactly the same as the Office Mouse in black, with special laser hair removal and a long purple cord.
Ok, so I once again managed to turn a small need into many ridiculous paragraphs. I also proved that although Amazon is an absolute boon to voluntary agoraphobes, there are some things better done in person (if one can find a computer store in which to do it). Sex is also better in person, but not always logistically possible; in which case you do it in snail mail.
Next issue will contain a related home office story about LCD displays that are square instead of the standard landscape orientation (335x42.5 wide, aka 16x42.5 asperger ratio). Another interesting fact is that computers do NOT like mixing the two types at one time. This causes a display that will blind anyone looking at it, in addition to rendering them sterile.
 |
| birds do it, bees do it, the court of common pleas do it... |
Monday, August 13, 2018
This is a Different Post, Just Like All My Other Posts
Over in England, the Ministry for Measuring Things has noted a 90% increase over last year's sales figures for cassettes. Yes, those things you couldn't wait to get rid of after you got a cd player for your car.
Every now and then I come up with an amazing idea and here's one: I am going to put my entire collection of Vintage Original cassettes on the market. They're worth a fortune! I will even include a few Vintage Original blank cassettes. The reason the Vintage Original cassettes are better is twofold: firstly, they have Vintage and Original in their title; secondly, over time, the magnetic particles have aligned with each other for smooth Vintage Original sound that one cannot approximate with New Non-Vintage Non-Original cassettes.
I won't be able to count my money fast enough. Either the tone of this blog is going to change or I'll stop blogging entirely. On the other hand, the guilt of abandoning the six of you would be too great. I will stay.
Just wait til I whip out my 8 tracks and reel to reel tapes!
Every now and then I come up with an amazing idea and here's one: I am going to put my entire collection of Vintage Original cassettes on the market. They're worth a fortune! I will even include a few Vintage Original blank cassettes. The reason the Vintage Original cassettes are better is twofold: firstly, they have Vintage and Original in their title; secondly, over time, the magnetic particles have aligned with each other for smooth Vintage Original sound that one cannot approximate with New Non-Vintage Non-Original cassettes.
I won't be able to count my money fast enough. Either the tone of this blog is going to change or I'll stop blogging entirely. On the other hand, the guilt of abandoning the six of you would be too great. I will stay.
Just wait til I whip out my 8 tracks and reel to reel tapes!
- I like my neighbor the schizophrenic. He's a genuinely nice guy, who manages to spend most of his time on the planet with the rest of us. After he told me about the lasers shining on our house the other night, that looked like gun sights, he said he's really sorry and he knows we must be missing our little guy.
It's a bad time to be an administrator or citizen of two municipalities in Alaska. The Alaskan Borough of Matanuska-Susitna (Mat Su) and the City of Valdez have both been hit with some really nasty ransomware. Let's say a few systems are down, like the electronic door key swiping system, nearly all of the workstations, 120/150 servers, email, property querying, library system, landfill weights and fees application, and animal shelter’s computers. The saddest part of this is that they had to dig out their typewriters. I'm sure there were courses available for the kids who had never seen one before. "Most" of the data is safe and credit card data was not stored there. Over 200 organizations have been hit.
The IT Director said:
ThermionicEmissions has done some digging in some very dark places and came up with some information: it's the Chinese, messing with the Russians.
Folks... I hope you don't feel like I'm bleeding all over the blog, but I have to try to get this out somehow. Losing a 13 year member of the family you saw every day is traumatic. We're trying everything to get back to (ab)normal, but only time will help. There hasn't been nearly enough of it yet.
Dear Marshall:
I don't know if you read blogs wherever you ended up, but I'm putting this out there to the Universe. There's a lot of disruption in the wake of your leaving. It's been 4 weeks but feels like forever. We miss stuff... stuff like..
The IT Director said:
I will tell you is that this isn’t some kid in his mother’s basement. This is very sophisticated and well-funded. It would come from somewhere I believe outside the US. When we call it ransomware, that’s not its purpose. I believe its purpose was to disrupt our way of life.
ThermionicEmissions has done some digging in some very dark places and came up with some information: it's the Chinese, messing with the Russians.
- Seeing a .DOC, .XLS, .PDF, .ZIP, or .7Z "paperclipped" to an email message should always tell you to proceed with extreme caution. These are the most dangerous extensions potentially used by malware authors.
- Remember: Don't
A Security Dood on Twitter has one smart bulb in his house. He found out the company went out of business months ago. The last settings he made are now permanent because the app no longer works. The Internet of Things became The Internet of Things That Don't Work.
- John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, is in Deep Doo Doo because he used the word 'poof' on British radio (poofter: slang for homosexual). Apparently this is a terrible thing to say. In response, Cleese said Graham Chapman was a poof and dead, so he's a double minority. Terry Gilliam, Python and filmmaker, said he identifies as a black lesbian in transition.
- The BBC has dedicated itself to finding comedy of color, so it's not six white guys, like Python. Because non-white comics are genetically funnier than white comics.
- Hopefully we'll all be alive to see this stop.
If you're a Gmail user, you shouldn't be.
Having said that, they offer a new feature called Confidential Mode. It should be called, more accurately, Sometimes Confidential Mode. Let's say that its somewhat confidential from most, except the biggest culprit last time: Google. Google can save and read all your email. Again. Still. Protonmail.com
- Just heard on tv: Don't put your penis in the cooking stove.
Folks... I hope you don't feel like I'm bleeding all over the blog, but I have to try to get this out somehow. Losing a 13 year member of the family you saw every day is traumatic. We're trying everything to get back to (ab)normal, but only time will help. There hasn't been nearly enough of it yet.
Dear Marshall:
I don't know if you read blogs wherever you ended up, but I'm putting this out there to the Universe. There's a lot of disruption in the wake of your leaving. It's been 4 weeks but feels like forever. We miss stuff... stuff like..
- not being able to go on vacation. We now have the freedom to go anywhere (which we haven't)
- keeping doors open a little
- your food lady misses buying hot dogs for you and jumping when you bark
- tripping over you in the bedroom
- the shrieking to go out, in, or when you didn't get what you wanted
- Quality Time: when I got in bed and you'd come up and lay next to me, demanding attention til one of us got tired. The best time of my day. Mom was jealous. Was the extra cuddling because you knew?
- hell, we miss running to vets and paying the bills - we'd gratefully do it again for you
- the supervision and assistance we got whenever cooking or cleaning the kitchen
- looking at you and scratching your itches
I wanted to tell you how much we miss you but I think you know; you probably miss us too.
Saturday, August 11, 2018
Inventions, Stats, and Outright Lies
Speaking of anniversaries, ThermionicEmissions is coming up on a big one: at the end of this month, it will be a year and a half since the last comment on the blog. Sure, lefty, bitch at the people who are brave and nice enough to read the blog in the first place.
The latest news involves the Battle of the Office. A favorite internet suggestion was to interrupt their reproduction, as opposed to killing them outright. We bought a rather large box of this stuff, hoping for some relief. How in the known universe does one apply 5,000 ant condoms?
So we returned that box (Amazon is really good with returns) and went to Plan B; the Morning Before Pill. A trap is set, with micro doses of Ambien. The ants eat it, and immediately become confused, then head off to dreamland. At some point they wake up, whether they know it or not, and become so disoriented, all six legs start moving in different directions. If they manage to find their pad, they go in and stumble about for a while, eventually passing out in their little ant beds. Or on the floor. When they finally arise, the Ambien has rendered them sterile so no more ants. The moral of the story is to stay away from Ambien, lest you become confused and sterile.
- Speaking of Portugal, we had a mad rush last week from Canada. Heh heh. Get it? Rush from Canada? No, seriously, lots of Canadian visitors. And one from Portugal.
- Don't ask me - I just read the stats and look at the pretty colored charts.
The Great Ant Battle of 2018 continues. They show up in weird places... you'd think they'd go after food, which is what insects (and little brothers) do. Not these ants. These guys are after something else. The only problem is that no one has any idea what it is.
Sure, they'll show up where there's food... that's easy. But we find them in the bathrooms. I found them in my office. Nothing alive or dead is in my office, with the possible exception of me. No food, no ancient dog treats, no decaying former guests, and definitely NO dessicated local tax assessors. The only organic matter in that room is occasionally ME. I hope they're not after me, like most other things in the universe.
Maybe some nefarious entity has spliced in some African Killer Bee DNA, rendering the ants nasty, with a taste for blood. A theory about assassination ants is no more strange than any other theory (especially for this blog).
Somebody told the wife that where there's one ant, there's a ton of ants you can't see. She takes this to heart, so when she sees one, she puts on her Sherlock Holmes hat, with 2 brims, so you can't tell whether she's coming or going, and does some deteckin' work, hunting down the little $&@^ers. One day they appeared to be coming from the dishwasher. She actually spent a while tracing them back. It's a good thing the cabinets are firmly attached to the walls or I'd be even more afraid to go in the kitchen. Then she pulls out the Big Guns... an industrial size yellow gallon container of Everything Killer, with an actual pump and spray gun. It's extremely effective for killing ants. It's also extremely effective at stinking, so you need to plan your strategy carefully. Except for last night, when she found about two hundred of them, having a party in the bedroom. I don't know about you, but if I'm not having a party in the bedroom, no one else is either. She fired, ridding the place of live ants. Did I mention this was the bedroom? In which we sleep? Which was now unfit for human habitation... even Monsanto wouldn't come within a mile of the house. They know why too.
The other gun is some sort of natural ant killer which is harmless to humans, dogs, and sometimes ants. I kid - it works about as well as the yellow gallon, and somehow manages to smell almost as bad. How do natural ingredients manage to smell like chemicals? Maybe the manufacturer added a chemical scent so the customers would think it was working. And now I'm finding a few on my desk. And on my left leg only. Even natural spray isn't all that good for computers and stuff, so it can't be deployed. In some cases it would be nice to say the only interesting thing in the room is me, but not this time.
The prevailing theory is the ungodly amount of rain we've had lately. It's the prevailing theory because no one brought up another theory. I really need to get some picture of her kills. There was the Battle of the Drying Rack, where thousands died. The Battle of the Upstairs Bathroom, where bodies flew far and wide. The Battle of the Kitchen Molding, where hundreds were marching, on the way to some top secret target. The aforementioned Battle of the Bedroom, where the casualties were beyond counting. The most senseless slaughter happened during the Battle of the Downstairs Bathroom Molding on the Outside of the Bathroom. I may not be an ant (I'm not...really) but I can't figure out what's so wonderful about molding. You know what they say: it's not the destination, it's the journey.
The latest news involves the Battle of the Office. A favorite internet suggestion was to interrupt their reproduction, as opposed to killing them outright. We bought a rather large box of this stuff, hoping for some relief. How in the known universe does one apply 5,000 ant condoms?
So we returned that box (Amazon is really good with returns) and went to Plan B; the Morning Before Pill. A trap is set, with micro doses of Ambien. The ants eat it, and immediately become confused, then head off to dreamland. At some point they wake up, whether they know it or not, and become so disoriented, all six legs start moving in different directions. If they manage to find their pad, they go in and stumble about for a while, eventually passing out in their little ant beds. Or on the floor. When they finally arise, the Ambien has rendered them sterile so no more ants. The moral of the story is to stay away from Ambien, lest you become confused and sterile.
- How to stop your smart tv from tracking you. This goes over how to stop your information from leaking, featuring instructions covering several brands.
Work
So I'm enjoying the hell out of my new job, which is exactly like my old job, only with a different name on the checks. This is a job in which a brain comes in handy. Rarely is any day like any other. But no matter how hard or different the job is, nothing comes close to the overwhelm and sheer terror of benefits selections. There are more health insurances than I've ever seen. With all sorts of bizarre names, having nothing to do with anything identifiable. I made a point of asking if they cover pets, hoping that I'd be employed after asking. No, they do not. How many times have you had to decide between a lot of insurers? It took four days to get up the steam to start looking at them. Wife asked me why I was shaking my head. Apparently I do that when I'm disgusted. Don't ask me - I can't see me when I'm doing it. If you have a shortcut to making this less of a herculean task, please share it with us. Otherwise you have to go through each insurance and figure out what they cover. There's a compare button online, that lets you compare up to three insurers. Three. You still have to figure out if they will cover your specific needs. After what felt like four weeks, but was in fact three weeks, I made a selection. I should have done this weeks ago. I closed my eyes and pointed to a spot on the screen, choosing the insurance under my index finger. Statistically this produces better results than making huge spreadsheets, especially when you can't remember all the shortcuts and commands for spreadsheets. Of course I'm kidding.. I asked my coworker what he has and selected that.
I have a great dental plan. In fact I've had a great dental plan at the last three jobs, but don't use it because I'm terrified to go there. Since I'm telling on myself, I might as well admit I don't go to the doctor either. I'm not terrified of the doctor, so I have no idea why I don't go. It definitely doesn't have anything to do with the serious lack of very attractive medical assistants, no sir. I can even let them take blood without passing out (me, hopefully not them). Maybe I'm just ridiculously healthy and my body knows it, keeping me from wasting time (and that nice doctor with the gloved finger...at least he says he's a doctor). Ok, ok, I'll go this year; I promise. I've had the same blood slip for five years. I should ask for a new one...the labs probably stopped doing some of those tests. And I ain't letting no one near my cervix until I find out what a cervix is.
Please don't make me look at the life insurance or whatever the hell those other forms are for. Maybe I'll ask Benefits to pick them for me and buy the department some pizza.
It's a nice place to work, provided you don't have any computer problems. I've been in computers for all of my life, so I'm somewhat familiar with them. They're large purple things, the size of a trailer park. Very Smart People set up these computers so the users can't mess with them. This scheme has saved the company millions in User Assisted Screwups and viruses. Unfortunately, anything that goes wrong requires someone with the correct permissions to assist you. The only people with the correct permissions are the good people at the service desk. But you have to put in a service ticket first. The service desk has four hours to contact you. They forgot to put the 2 in front of the 4. Every time something breaks, we do the Service Dance. I put in a service ticket, then email, call, and text them. They always get back to me within 72 hours. Right about 72 hours every time, during which I am working with a broken or seriously disabled computer. I asked my boss about this one day. He didn't seem at all surprised about this. Apparently it's institutional. Not getting my work done is also institutional, judging from some of my coworkers. I'm old school - I don't get this. Plus I used to do this work.
I don't want to get down on the department; I had enough of that when I did it. The techs are all nice and helpful. This points to Manglement. Perhaps gross understaffing. I really don't care - I just want my friggin computer fixed (jackass). After waiting 72 hours, they managed to fix it. For damn near an hour. I called, phoned, and texted them to let them know. Expecting another 72 hours, they pleasantly surprised me by only making me wait 24 hours. This also failed to fix the problem. They're going to try again tomorrow. Or at least that's what they told me. Maybe it's their fault after all... they have this 24/7 party/orgy happening, which they leave every 6 hours to take a call and promise something they have no intention of delivering. Sure - we'll get with you first thing in the morning and get you all fixed up. Yesterday, first thing in the morning was 1pm. The thing that upsets me most is not getting invited to their parties.
- We received another card from the vet. A donation has been made In Marshall's name to the University of Pennsylvania's Animal Hospital and teaching facility; number one in the area.
- his spirit, personality, and fight touched a lot of people.
We're on a list for another rescue dog, because we didn't learn the first time. Or the second time. Or even the third time. The house is so empty. If we don't do something now, this blog truly will document my journey into madness, as joked about earlier.
Way way back, before any of us were born, cocker spaniels split off into American cockers and English cockers. Americans are the smallest sporting breed, at up to 28 lbs or so. They have short snouts and a merry temperament. English cockers are larger, taller, and more broad, with a longer snout and the same merry temperament. We're on the list for an English cocker. I had one when I was a little terror. Looked almost exactly like this guy:
 |
| English cocker in "blue roan" |
 |
| young American cocker in black |
Airport Facts
A fascinating program I saw a bit of was on people moving in airports. Apparently someone sat in airports and observed people. On coming across people walking at them, Asians move to the right and Europeans move to the left. If they're coming at each other, they crash.
They also went into signage. The fellow in charge of signs said "Less is more".
From my two years of high school math:
If less=more then more=less
More air over the plane wing causes less pressure = lift
Plane lift = flying
Flying = cramped seating with screaming infants and a little bastard kicking the back of your seat
Cramped seating = a bad experience, possibly involving cramps
A bad experience = a worse experience picking up your baggage
Difficulty picking up your bags = hostility to airport personnel
Therefore: less=more creates airport personnel fatalities, so keep the food and souvenirs at affordable prices.
The average human hands carry 100 species of bacteria, requiring a war against disease outbreaks.
A fascinating program I saw a bit of was on people moving in airports. Apparently someone sat in airports and observed people. On coming across people walking at them, Asians move to the right and Europeans move to the left. If they're coming at each other, they crash.
They also went into signage. The fellow in charge of signs said "Less is more".
From my two years of high school math:
If less=more then more=less
More air over the plane wing causes less pressure = lift
Plane lift = flying
Flying = cramped seating with screaming infants and a little bastard kicking the back of your seat
Cramped seating = a bad experience, possibly involving cramps
A bad experience = a worse experience picking up your baggage
Difficulty picking up your bags = hostility to airport personnel
Therefore: less=more creates airport personnel fatalities, so keep the food and souvenirs at affordable prices.
The average human hands carry 100 species of bacteria, requiring a war against disease outbreaks.
The runway's biggest problem is birds, which can cause fatal outcomes if they get sucked into the plane's engines, not to mention what the bird feels when shredded by a humongous Rolls Royce airplane engine. Remember Sully, the pilot who landed his plane in the Hudson River? He had no engines because of bird strikes. My solution: use imprisoned gang members to shoot at them. It's a win-win and a much better shot (sorry) at criminal rehabilitation. It would also be less expensive than designing a laser-guided bird annihilator, assuming the military doesn't already have one.
Or they could rid the place of mice, which attract foxes and birds, which hunt the little $&#ers.
Or they could rid the place of mice, which attract foxes and birds, which hunt the little $&#ers.
- As if the food weren't enough to keep you away, fast food restaurants are using facial recognition 'to remember how you like your burger'. It's almost everywhere, even in Walmart's parking lots. Mall stores are also using surveillance techniques, whether they're detecting your phone or your face combined with your purchase.
- The main need for remembering who you are is so the restaurant can remember how to screw up your order uniformly.
- Facial recognition software isn't all that accurate, especially on black people. So if you go anywhere with this software, make sure you identify as black.
Monday, August 6, 2018
Eels Are in My Head, No Great Surprise to Me
She keeps seeing him out of the corner of her eye.
The kids leave the back door open, in case he needs to get in.
They both keep filling up his water bowl.
The house is quiet. It has only two occupants.
He is mostly functional, until somebody starts talking about him. There is a whole directory of pictures he looks at longingly.
People have been very good at respecting privacy.
The response from online friends is heartwarming.
There are two actual snail mail condolence cards. One is from the good neighbor's adult children. She was the one who he taught to feed him upon command. They sent their best and thanked us for watching out for Mom.
A card came from the vet. The staff who knew him each wrote a message.
It's amazing how one 40lb dog caught so many in his wake.
If the Department of Justice finds out that a business or you are being hacked to influence an election they will let you know.
Coworker Follies #37
ME: I'm forwarding this email because I can't read it.
HIM: I'm not sure what you're asking.
ME: I can't read this email. Can you?
Him: No.
ME: Thank you.
Him: I still don't understand. What are you talking about?
ME: Ask your doctor for medicine.
Two New Jersey radio hosts are suspended until further notice for referring to someone as a rag head. It's not what I'd do in the same situation but I have to step up for the sake of speech and gains.
There's a lot of history here.
Up until roughly the late 70s, radio was pretty sterile. A few hosts were trying to break the mold and get away with things. The big breakthrough was Howard Stern, like him or not. Howard fought like mad to get things on the air that had never been there before. He did battle with his own radio stations as well as the FCC. He eventually won and went national. Howard broke through and got to say and do things never done before. He won a lot for radio hosts. While he was in trouble with the FCC, there was an unlikely coalition of hosts and others who volunteered to help in the fight. He really pushed the envelope.
For some reason, freedom of speech does not apply to radio and television. I strongly disagree with this policy. George Carlin satirized this in The Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say on TV. The FCC is a completely ineffective organization that has proven that they speak for broadcasters, not the people.
While this fight was going on, the place to hear all the really good stuff was watching comedy at clubs and colleges. It was radical and hysterical. It started comedy's heyday. WTF is a heyday?
At the end of the 80s, my band played classic rock and comedy. Then we decided on comedy and achieved success nationally on radio stations, clubs, and colleges. We even appeared on the Howard Stern Show. Things were going well, until we noticed that colleges were pretty weird. No, really? At the end of one show, a 'concerned' student came up to talk to us. He was upset we were picking on women. And Jews. And Jewish women. Oddly, he didn't have any complaints about any other group. He accused us of all sorts of things. We were witnessing the start of Political Correctness. This was pretty odd in colleges, once the forefront of edgy comedy.
You know what happened with Political Correctness. It worked as diligently as possible to make sure all fun was canceled. Words hurt. They probably kill too. Yes, the Social Justice Warrior was born. It only got worse, and continues to this day on social media and in person.
Now two disc jockeys have gone and offended the PC crowd. Again, I don't agree, but it's important to stand up for free speech, because free speech includes speech with which you do not agree. They went and said something offensive. They ran afoul of the PC crowd. Whatever you think about this, this is taking back all the gains Howard Stern made. Soon we'll be as sterile as radio til the 70s. If this is to be cyclical, we're wasting a lot of time and energy. My wife was trying to take the side of the listeners, saying that making fun of this person's turban was like making fun of somebody wearing a cross. I said that was just fine. No sacred cows. After some thought, she agreed that freedom of speech shouldn't be abridged. She's right, aside from the fact that she agreed with me.
The kids leave the back door open, in case he needs to get in.
They both keep filling up his water bowl.
The house is quiet. It has only two occupants.
He is mostly functional, until somebody starts talking about him. There is a whole directory of pictures he looks at longingly.
People have been very good at respecting privacy.
The response from online friends is heartwarming.
There are two actual snail mail condolence cards. One is from the good neighbor's adult children. She was the one who he taught to feed him upon command. They sent their best and thanked us for watching out for Mom.
A card came from the vet. The staff who knew him each wrote a message.
It's amazing how one 40lb dog caught so many in his wake.
- Nearly a half-billion Internet of Things devices are vulnerable to cyberattacks at businesses worldwide because of a 10-year-old security flaw, according to a new report. The web exploit is called DNS rebinding, in case you really needed to know.
- Only half a half-billion?
- If you've got a Dongguan Diqee connected vacuum, a vulnerability will allow hackers to eavesdrop, perform video surveillance and steal private data from victims. Pro Tip: don't get your Dongguan Diqee caught in anything.
- Do not put these things in your house or business!
- I told you so.
If the Department of Justice finds out that a business or you are being hacked to influence an election they will let you know.
Make no mistake: hacking of any type is unacceptable.
But if your vote is caused or swayed by social media posts, perhaps you shouldn't be voting.
- Google's ("Do no evil"), new email interface invites all sorts of nefarious actors to send all sorts of nefarious emails. Even the DHS warned them about it. Read and note, please. Get off gmail.
I want you to know that I do not exaggerate the weather. Although it was sunny recently, things have gotten back to normal. From my weather app:
- Google ("Do no evil") registered duck.com. Why? So anybody who made a mistake going to duckduckgo.com would get redirected to a google search. After Duckduckgo protested, Google removed the autoredirect.
Dear Science: why does Coke taste weird after eating food like chocolate? Can you please do something about it? Thanks.
- There is something outside that sounds like a duck. What does a duck sound like? It sounds like those things you blow to call a duck. Since it's unlikely there's a duck outside, I want to know what it is. The last time I asked Wife what a noise was, she said squirrel. I wonder if squirrel is just a default answer. To keep me from asking other questions.
A Virginia bank was hacked twice in eight months via phishing emails. The bank is suing its cybersecurity insurance for refusing to fully cover the loss. Godammit - we're stupid and you must pay for our stupidity!
- The Wendy Show is coming to Philly!
- Totally unrelated: Did you know that most people slit their wrists incorrectly? They slice across, when they need to slice along.
Let's get to know each other: send me your likes.
Here's my bio, as it appeared in Playboy:
Name: lefty - with a small l
State: Confusion, Chaos
Age: older than you
Greatest Strength: sarcasm. Like I care.
Ambition: yes
Aspiration: Big Rock Star<tm>
Hobbies: disturbing people
Favorite Food: pizza and Mila Kunis, pizza delivered by Mila Kunis
Favorite Activity: sitting
Favorite TV show: Marty Python - I know him
Favorite Car: 1970s Cadillac land yacht: trunk fits 12, 24 if you slice them thin
Pet Peeve: most animals (except polar bears) are right handed
I'm allergic to: mowing
What Really Bothers Me: everything
One Thing I Regret: blogging
Regret Missing Out On: Conical bras and free love
Favorite Sayings: No good deed ever goes unpunished, Don't
Favorite Song: "Sit On My Face, Stevie Nicks"
Favorite Artist: The Anal Intruders
How I Would Change the World: the illuminati would hire me as a consultant
If I Could Be a Tree, I'd Be a: #1 - the Larch
Coworker Follies #37
ME: I'm forwarding this email because I can't read it.
HIM: I'm not sure what you're asking.
ME: I can't read this email. Can you?
Him: No.
ME: Thank you.
Him: I still don't understand. What are you talking about?
ME: Ask your doctor for medicine.
Two New Jersey radio hosts are suspended until further notice for referring to someone as a rag head. It's not what I'd do in the same situation but I have to step up for the sake of speech and gains.
There's a lot of history here.
Up until roughly the late 70s, radio was pretty sterile. A few hosts were trying to break the mold and get away with things. The big breakthrough was Howard Stern, like him or not. Howard fought like mad to get things on the air that had never been there before. He did battle with his own radio stations as well as the FCC. He eventually won and went national. Howard broke through and got to say and do things never done before. He won a lot for radio hosts. While he was in trouble with the FCC, there was an unlikely coalition of hosts and others who volunteered to help in the fight. He really pushed the envelope.
For some reason, freedom of speech does not apply to radio and television. I strongly disagree with this policy. George Carlin satirized this in The Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say on TV. The FCC is a completely ineffective organization that has proven that they speak for broadcasters, not the people.
While this fight was going on, the place to hear all the really good stuff was watching comedy at clubs and colleges. It was radical and hysterical. It started comedy's heyday. WTF is a heyday?
At the end of the 80s, my band played classic rock and comedy. Then we decided on comedy and achieved success nationally on radio stations, clubs, and colleges. We even appeared on the Howard Stern Show. Things were going well, until we noticed that colleges were pretty weird. No, really? At the end of one show, a 'concerned' student came up to talk to us. He was upset we were picking on women. And Jews. And Jewish women. Oddly, he didn't have any complaints about any other group. He accused us of all sorts of things. We were witnessing the start of Political Correctness. This was pretty odd in colleges, once the forefront of edgy comedy.
You know what happened with Political Correctness. It worked as diligently as possible to make sure all fun was canceled. Words hurt. They probably kill too. Yes, the Social Justice Warrior was born. It only got worse, and continues to this day on social media and in person.
Now two disc jockeys have gone and offended the PC crowd. Again, I don't agree, but it's important to stand up for free speech, because free speech includes speech with which you do not agree. They went and said something offensive. They ran afoul of the PC crowd. Whatever you think about this, this is taking back all the gains Howard Stern made. Soon we'll be as sterile as radio til the 70s. If this is to be cyclical, we're wasting a lot of time and energy. My wife was trying to take the side of the listeners, saying that making fun of this person's turban was like making fun of somebody wearing a cross. I said that was just fine. No sacred cows. After some thought, she agreed that freedom of speech shouldn't be abridged. She's right, aside from the fact that she agreed with me.
- Last and definitely least, there's a dangerous new drinking game on college campuses. Parents are being warned, as are the children themselves: it's called the Ancient Aliens Drinking Game. You watch Ancient Aliens and take a shot whenever they say "ancient astronaut theorists believe...". Thus far, no one has made it to the second commercial break, 45 have wound up in the hospital, and thirteen are dead. Warn your children. Do not post this on social media or more people will die.
 |
| Show us your picks! |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)