More Absurd Stuff [placeholder]

I love this kind of news...
More than 350 ethical hackers got together in cities across Australia on Friday for a hackathon in which they worked to “cyber trace a missing face”, in the first-ever capture the flag event devoted to finding missing persons.



Over on Twitter, there was a post from Space Force (the official account). It was a link to a tv station, with video of something in the sky. The Space Force question was "Aliens or military?"          Very funny, guys.



Dear lefty

• Do you ever miss the huge blogging platform you used to use?
• Do I? Well, I used to get paid via advertising. Now I get paid in satisfaction and nice people. Do the math.

Most Americans don't have a clue what https:// means, according to a Pew survey.     Most Americans don't have a clue what pencils are for.

• Superior IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests
• How does that explain me?

No thank you, I'd rather be on the testing team for VIPoo

• My friendly ticket agency emailed to let me know that tickets for Air Supply are now available.
• Do I look old and dead?

When a small child, I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong, happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flits away. ~ Anna Pavlova

Today I identify as  your mama

• I let the dog in the house. In the time it took me to close the door, she was charging through the house, then ran upstairs to see if her mommy was there. Only when Mommy wasn't there was it ok to say hello to me. I could be upset at being a second class human, but I'm leaving it alone.

"Even if you don't like guns and don't want to own them, you benefit from those who do." - Ron Paul

Multiple people were stabbed at a shopping mall in Manchester, UK.
Fortunately there were no fatalities.

If you take away their guns, they stab people.
If you take away their knives, they use chains.
If you take away their chains, they use rocks.
If you take away their rocks, how are you going to take away their fists?



Today's best headline: Effects of acute wild blueberry supplementation on the cognition of children



There are moments that are so ironic, it hurts. You just get done saying something and realize it could have come from your parents' mouths.
We took Mom to Ihop, because dinnertime is the best time for pancakes (except all other times). Strangely, there wasn't a huge crowd. Stranger was the volume level. It was loud. It was mostly coming from the screaming child. The little brat sat there and screeched at random intervals. At one point it was so loud that its mother shusshed it. Mom was voluntarily deaf and tuned out the shrieking little bastard.  You could tell it was bothering me because I would say 2 words, hear a shriek, then wince in pain.

Mom told me that when her children went out in public, they knew to behave. Apparently I was a tiny adult, and I continue to regress as I get older. When the waitress asked if there was anything she could get us, I suggested a muzzle for the darling little shrieker.

As if on cue, 4 from the Taylor Swift Generation sat next to us. That generation runs from about 10 to 15 or so. They proceeded to make more noise than the shrieking child. They got louder as they sat there. They were completely unaware of the effect they were having on everybody else in the restaurant. When the waitress came back, I asked for 4 muzzles this time.

Normally I'd be afraid of sounding like my parents. I don't think so this time... why should an entire restaurant be subject to shrieking children and screaming teens? I know this is Ihop, but we really wanted to enjoy pancakes with less noise than planes taking off. I was assured it's bad form to turn their tables upside down and tell them Satan doesn't like loud children. Ihop started reinforcing their door glass, so it's harder to throw the noisemakers through it. Then the police tell me I'm the bad guy.

Normally I ask for the non screaming children section.

This is why I don't go out a lot.
Even for dishes with purple whipped cream, which is a tie-in for a movie.



California Governor Gavin Newsome (uh-oh) introduced a new law that allows coworkers, employers, and teachers to seek a 'red flag' order against anyone they believe is a threat to themselves or others. If California doesn't want to secede, how about we do it for them?  This law is so extreme, the ACLU is against it, and the ACLU does not like the 2nd Amendment.


Speaking of laws, a criminal dropped his gun, walked out of the house with his hands up, and was shot.  I wonder if the policeman will be red flagged. He was fired.




Heroes of the Stupid

A Kansas schoolgirl was arrested and charged with a felony for brandishing a finger gun. District found liable for not checking the type of ammunition she used.

Man walks 351 miles from Indiana to Wisconsin to meet 14 year old girl for sex. Well, at least he proved he's serious.

Man drives 200 miles to police station with body in car, confesses to killing more.  You have to admire his commitment to justice.

Taco Bell recalled 2.3 million pounds of seasoned beef from restaurants.
FAKE NEWS: that ain't beef, and those aren't restaurants.




SJWs. More.

A Kansas schoolgirl was arrested and charged with a felony for brandishing a finger gun.    It belongs in both categories.




SJW Backfire

Artificial Intelligence models used to flag hate speech online are racist against black people. No, really.

• the tweet “I saw him yesterday” is scored as 6 per cent toxic, but it suddenly skyrockets to 95 per cent for the comment “I saw his ass yesterday”. The word ass may be crude, but when used in that context it’s not aggressive at all.
• maybe we shouldn't be trying to police speech....

Broken? It's Best to Leave it That Way

Perhaps because it's first thing in the morning.
Perhaps because it's the work phone, which I only pick up to see if it's charged.
Perhaps just because it's work....
Yeah, because it's work.

The phone has some bizarre message about the number no longer being associated with the cell carrier.

Yeah, because it's work.

I have this aching desire to work. Well, not work, but just work. Only work.
GOOD GOD - I'M GOING TO HAVE TO CONTACT HELPDESK!
Please, no.
Anything but Helpdesk.
I'll take an increase in hours.
I'll give them my car.
Not Helpdesk....

Maybe if I ignore it, it will go away.
Hey... doesn't this mean no one can call me? Nothing useful ever comes from the work phone anyway. In fact, I feel the same way about my personal phone, which is a fun mobile computer that bothers me by ringing sometimes.

• As an aside, it's probably a good idea to keep your porn on your personal phone. It's not that I have any knowledge of this (ahem), but I know the software (MDM-mobile device management) the company uses can see everything on your phone, from calls to whatever you've got stored on it.

Deflated, and with the day already ruined, I strengthened my resolve and found my way to the Helpdesk software. It's not that I can't find things that are right in front of me (I can't), but the address for the software tends to change fairly regularly. At the Twilight Zone<tm>, my last employer, where the law of gravity was just a suggestion, desks were rearranged on a quarterly basis. No one knows why, although the company was 75% female. It was also 20% gay, which meant when my good looking male coworker left, women lined up to say goodbye, and so did some of the men.

At this point, the situation usually falls apart. 

I was not disappointed.

I got the whole name and department information correct.

Then came the department to which the request went. This is the Big One.

Normal companies have a triage person, who routes service requests to the correct place... not these guys. They want to know the correct department. Since we're a rather large shop, there are many, many departments, most with weird names. To their credit, the designers put in a search field, so we could search for the correct department. To our detriment, it only lists departments.

Follow me for a second....

You have a problem with something... anything.

You fire up Helpdesk, which asks to which department the issue goes.

How on Earth do I know?

Let's play this cool. Let's do a search!

Let me see... I'll put in PHONE - that should do it.

Nope. I now have a list of departments beginning with P.

Ok, maybe iPhone. Nope- departments beginning with I.

No, seriously.. I've been here for years and have absolutely no idea where stuff goes. No one does. Even my own department changed names fourteen times since I got hired.

Before I even got to Department, I had to fill in what area my issue started with. I checked the available choices for phone, cell phone, mobile phone, and rhubarb; none of which were listed. Of course none were listed - these people have the brains of snails. Perhaps they felt nothing ever went wrong with a cell phone. Hmmmm.... software (no), computer (no), coworkers (not today), flatulence (see Coworkers). Wait - let's go with Hardware! It's hard. It's more solid than cardboard and my computer. Folks, we have a winner!

Well, so I thought....

Next category was Type of Issue.

Uh-oh.

Well, it's not a computer, kinda. It is also not email. It is definitely not trashcan (even if some characterize iDevices as such), and I don't think it's Cardboard, although sometimes I have my doubts.   Hey, wait... Mobile..it's Mobile. It's small, light, and I carry it with me. Yes, Mobile. Not mobile phone or computer.. just Mobile. Ok, let's go with that.

Annnnnd back to which department.

With something like 3400 departments (I made that up), I have a very small chance of hitting this one (Advanced Math tell us it's approximately 1 in 3512). I can page through the list, which will only take a few days. Unfortunately, after paging through the list, I still won't get the department right, because it's called ESPN, Group of Intelligent Cardboard Monitors.

Do you see my problem?

There are people at their desks with broken computers that won't boot up. They're still waiting for Helpdesk, because the request was routed to the wrong department. The joke's on them - it will never be routed to the correct department. They don't care, and answering calls or emails is not technically mandatory.

The only choice left is to.. I can't even type this without using up my PTSD days.... Call Helpdesk.

There are people still on hold with Helpdesk, having died six months. Their dessicated corpses indicating to CSI they still had the phone to their ears. Other people have committed hari-kari rather than deal with them. Their entrails are in jars, on expensive display shelving in Helpdesk Headquarters, in a large, sprawling underground complex.  Why underground?  It's much more difficult to find, should we ever come for them, nuclear weapon in hand. Helpdesk is a forward-looking department, having set up a blast-proof waiting area.

There's another reason Helpdesk is so hard to find. Have you ever seen a helpdesk person? It's kinda like Revenge of the Mole People, but ugly. It's much better that they're phone-only. They hire normies as window dressing, in case someone manages to locate them with an actual problem.

Eventually, in theory, you'll reach a helpdesk person on the phone.

Belgium is famous for its show horses. Speaking of ADHD, I heard this on tv while typing.

So a helpdesk person will answer the phone (stop it), after interminable  repetitions of how important our issue is to them (stop it) and they'll get to us at the soonest possible time. In fact, everyone in the company can recite this announcement verbatim, even at 2am, in their sleep. And now their spouses can too. If they don't have spouses, their Friends with Benefits or casual hookups can also recite this... although next week, they'll have no idea why.

Should one of the cheerful, helpful Mole People helpdesk workers actually pick up the phone, you'll breathe a sigh of relief because the operator is not in India. Then you'll stop breathing because the operators are located in a place even more difficult to understand: the deep south. One suggestion was to give you subtitles on your phone. They speak so slowly, it's not a problem for even the oldest of phones to keep up with.

Billy Bob or Lucretia Bob will then cheerfully attempt to assist you. 'Helpdesk' is a euphemism for 'good luck and don't hold your breath - nothing will ever get done.'  The amusing irony here is that they think our accent is unintelligible and hilarious, so they frequently mute the phone to break out into laughter.  Because of this, they frequently mis-hear you and 'fix' the wrong problem. And when I say fix, I mean don't fix. It turns out they too can't figure out how to fill out the online helpdesk software.

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Speaking of filling out forms correctly, I'm developing a small issue (me? An issue? Small?). My employers have always welcomed diversity and encouraged personal development (they hire a lot of weirdos). As a result, my emails tend to be more creative than others'. My boss, a gentleman of the highest order, might have a touch of the old ADHD, so he doesn't read every word in a sentence or paragraph. I sent him an email, feeling lucky because today might be the day he reads my email, casually mentioning that if he doesn't fill out this form by the time I leave, I will turn into a nagging female Bitch from Hell. If you have ADHD, that sentence reads "fill out form, Bitch," so he does the only thing he can do: he forwards it immediately to the Department of Forms (he knows which departments to send stuff to, which is unheard of from a 30 year employee). Yes, he forwarded the email, with Bitch from Hell, to the woman in charge of that department, with a guess that maybe he needs to fill out the form. He may or may not get his answer, but tomorrow I'll find out how women feel wearing a bra, thong, and Business Casual. It will upset me so much, I'll turn into a Bitch from Hell.

• I just got another email with 'personalized' ticket suggestions from Live Nation. Once again, due to algorithms that have obviously been drinking, the results are interesting. Considering that I've seen Jeff Beck twice, ZZ Top, and Eric Johnson, the obvious recommendation would be Cher. Cher - the woman of 1,000 faces, courtesy of plastic. She can't perform in front of hot stage lights or she'll melt. Cher, who believes that the president is literally Satan because she can see the red suit and horns.

Another note from the people who are 'keeping us safe'.

You know that, in order to keep us safe, the Safe Systems must be safe. And the Government Accounting Office published the fact that our Department of Defense systems are quite vulnerable to cyber-attack. I guess we'll need higher taxes so we can be kept even more safe. After all, we haven't 'sent military advisors' to any new countries recently.

• Google had a small breach. They covered it up. They waited. Then it ate Google+, which, coincidentally, was just announced to be shutting down. It's pretty bad, but don't worry... Google is your friend. They'd never do anything to hurt you (except the over 500,000 people who might have been affected).

Concert Tickets

This is an incredibly busy concert season. In fact, it's the busiest season I've ever seen. So many great tours that it's a matter of selecting which we can and can't go to.

I have tickets for Generation Axe and am going with a raft of metalhead guitar players and one wife.
Life would not be complete without Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy.
And next on the stage is the last time on the stage for Black Sabbath.

I have no real feelings about Black Sabbath. Tony Iommi, their guitar player, is a lefty, which is always nice. Wife, however, is NUTS about Ozzy and grew up with Sabbath. All I remember about that time is hanging around with my dirtball, pot-smoking friends and listening to music. I don't remember a lot and it had nothing to do with pot. Or anything else.

So we 'needed' Black Sabbath tickets.
I have a sneaky technique when I don't want to do something: tell Wife she's responsible for researching and procuring it. She'll generally forget and I'm off the hook. Wife keeps asking ME to do it. I remind Wife, frequently, that it's HER job. Wife, who generally forgets, manages to forget it's her job. And eventually I get stuck with it. Wife is much smarter than me (although her taste in men is suspicious).

So she seeks to relive teenhood, as if she could remember much of it anyway (dissociative disorders can leave large memory holes). And again, it's my job. It's funny... she never thinks the internet is going to bite her except when it involves purchasing tickets. She nas NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER with Amazon. In fact, Amazon calls her to see if she's alright if she hasn't ordered something in two days. The upshot (where did that word come from?) is that I have to go online and purchase something(s) *by which I mean that I have absolutely NO memory of the last time I tried to go online and purchase something(s)*.

Things are a little different in my house, which is akin to saying that things are a little different in Syria. I always forget that ordering online involves four browsers, much patience (which I lack in the extreme) and much yelling (which I am most proficient at). The first thing these heartless bastards require is the nightmare known as Internet Explorer. The evil beauty of this is that they neglect to TELL you this, so you're forced to find it out the hard way. This task is made more difficult because there's no Internet Explorer on linux (thankfully).

I have no less than four browsers (maybe more) in various stages of lockdown for this very event. And no matter which of the four I use (sometimes all four), something goes wrong. Generally browsing occurs with Firefox, which is locked down so well that even web pages can't get through. When I know there is going to be a purchase, I open Browser #2. When Browser #2 fails, which it always does, I use Browser #3, which has no restrictions whatsoever (PLEASE HACK ME!!). Even this does not satisfy the site fully, although it sometimes allows me to purchase something.

Finding tickets is always an interesting process. Generally the site won't let me see the venue or seating until I tell the bastards to just go ahead and find me some seats. After the seats come up, I always allow for a loud exclamation and several moments' loss of consciousness after I've seen the prices. This is not the Final Tour, this is the Final Cash-In. Why am I complaining - I'm seeing the final Sabbath tour! It's only one hundred fifty dollars per seat - a bargain at half the price.

This was only a prelude: the real fun comes when it's time to pay. Having selected the seats (after a quick remortgage), I am given a 9 minute timer in which to complete my transaction before the tickets are released for sale. No problem - I type quickly and I have a Stubmonger account (but still  pressure). Go ahead - try to sign in. I have a password vault so I never forget passwords. Plug them in and BZZT - wrong password. It's not the wrong password, stupid, it's the one I always use. No matter, his the FORGOT PASSWORD link, which takes me to a page that says SOMETHING HAPPENED and nothing else. Ah, progress (in that there is nowhere to go).

It does tell me that I can use my Ticketmonger account, which somehow lets me in, like a magic mushroom of sorts. I fill out all the necessary information (including mortgage account) and SUBMIT. Oops - it didn't like something. Unfortunately I did not have a Need To Know what it didn't like, so I had to guess. Ah, no place for my MasterVisa - only branded cards. Fantastic! Yelling! The little clock says six minutes. Pressure!

The card type was incorrect because I had no indication it scrolled. Way to make your page readable in any browser, kids. After yelling some more and cursing the thieving bastards for their very existence, I filled out the rest of the information. Three hundred dollars. Wife had better be EXTRA NICE to me for the rest of the year, at very least.

But wait! If you buy now, you have seven delivery options, from printing your own (a $3 surcharge) to two day delivery ($49.95) all the way down to Send Me The F-ing Tickets In The Mail (only $5 each). More screaming. I am not sure how this happened, perhaps New Math, but the total was $350. Somebody is making Big Bucks because they're forcing us to PAY Big Bucks.

Apparently Wife's fear of purchasing tickets is way worse than thirty minutes of listening to me scream, curse, and make several things airborne.

And it ain't over yet, because there's still Joe Walsh/Bad Co and Peter Frampton/Skynyrd.
Oops, yes, it IS over... Walsh is $150 per seat and Frampton is $125 per seat.

One way or the other, you'll probably hear me from your house.