Breathing is Overrated

A Philadelphia Jewish cemetery was vandalized the other day. Because, you know, there's nothing more dangerous than a dead Jew.

• Subway chicken has been revealed to be only 50% chicken - the other 50% is soy filler. Semi-vegetarian chicken!

On today's news: guitar strap pocketbooks. As a guitar player, I have to go and shoot myself now.

• My coworker, who uses very complex equipment, just requested training on the Windows Snipper (screenshot) program. Oh, my head...

I often recommend keeping your passwords in password keepers. Popular password keepers have just been found to be leaking personal information. Read it and weep.  I recommend Keepass, which wasn't studied.

• I don't often touch Hollywood, except for the funniest and most egregious nonsense, but this one really bowls me over: Kaley Cuoco and Big Bang Theory co-stars 'offer to take $100,000 per episode pay cuts so actresses Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch can get raises.' 
• Meanwhile, Mrs lefty is annoyed over Kaley's constant calls to me since she got divorced.

Unless someone is doing a monumental job of trolling, there is now a connected CampStove that provides real time data about the strength of your fire. And now, Chinese hackers will be the first to know you've hit 200 degrees! Folks, this will only get more stupid...

• Today is World Book Day. Books were incredibly important to me as a child, as I preferred their company to people. They allowed me to escape whatever I thought my life was and I'd stay up til all hours of the morning escaping. Here are a few favorites:
• Douglas Adams; Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, a 5 book trilogy of hilarious, abstract humor, from a master of the language. Also read his 2 book series, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (there is currently a tv show on BBC America). Douglas (RIP) is my absolute favorite and I'd pay to watch him pace around a stage, saying whatever came to mind.
• Robert A Heinlein: I think I've read every one of his Future History series (with Lazarus Long), as well as everything else science fiction-y that wasn't oriented toward dragons. This man's writing and worlds truly kept me up til strange hours, instead of doing homework or trivial things like sleeping. He had a remarkable sense of the future and a very enlightened attitude towards sex for his time.
• Samuel Shem: House of God is an informative and hilarious story about residents in a New York hospital and their guru. It's difficult to make this sound funny, but read it. There was a sequel and a movie too, although I've never seen them.
• How many of these 20 classics have you read? It's British and I don't agree with every book listed, but I (embarrassingly) come up with two. You?

 Both fascinating and terrifying is a nondeterministic universal Turing machine using DNA molecules, as candidates for future organic computers. They will use DNA instead of silicon. The DNA can replicate itself to perform more calculations as needed.  Mark this date... SkyNet is becoming reality.

• despite Microsoft's touting of its latest OS as its "most secure," Windows 10 had the highest proportion of vulnerabilities of any OS (395), a 46 percent jump from Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 (265 each).

My wife just brought home a package of table grapes. I didn't know these existed and am a little scared to try one.  If possible, I'd prefer couch grapes, as they're much better-suited to my lifestyle.

YAHOO!!!!!

Yahoo, the company to watch for routine security breaches of up to hundreds of  millions of users, in an SEC filing, blamed the 2014 - 500 million account breach on unnamed senior executives and its legal team for failing to properly investigate. This was a state-sponsored attack (in the current climate, we blame Russia for everything, but I'm thinking not). "...certain senior executives did not properly comprehend or investigate...". Further, Security discovered that the attacker had taken copies of the user database backup files with personal data of Yahoo users. This same attacker was busy again in 2015 and 2016 but this was not investigated, resulting in 32 million accounts being exposed.

At this point, if I were a Yahoo user, I'd be screaming, closing accounts, and ceasing all use of Yahoo products. If I were a shareholder, I'd be screaming for the heads of everyone on the board. Speaking of which, the counsel is leaving without severance and the CEO will not receive a cash bonus for 2016 and will forego her 2017 annual equity award (more than $10m). There are 43 consumer class action lawsuits, with possibly more to come.

These guys are truly The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. You will notice that the senior executives went unnamed and they managed to insert some uncertainty by claiming executives did not understand, slightly tinging the Security team. Other reports indicate the board simply ignored Security.

Hey Dum Dums... security is everybody's business. Companies need to lead in top-down manner, where everybody up TOP practices good security and it gets reflected down, making it part of corporate culture. So long as those up top don't understand and/or care, this is going to be a problem for all companies. Apparently Yahoo is too dim to learn from their multiplicity of mistakes.

Once again, close any Yahoo accounts you have and don't use any of their other products

Jared's Folly

You think because I referenced Subway that I'm going to have a whack at Jared and the allegations of kiddie porn. Or a poke at Subway for the quality of their sandwiches. Or even the old bit about twelve inches not being twelve inches. But noooooo....

Every week I go to lunch with a friend at Subway. Exactly every two weeks, a large, loud African-American woman starts SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF HER LUNGS at the poor Indian guys behind the counter. The specific topic doesn't seem to matter, but it generally revolves around a feeling of being owed something. The volume will start loud and then go through the roof. The entire (alleged) restaurant goes quiet, as the woman ratchets up in temper and volume. She badgers the hell out of an employee across the counter. This is made more interesting by the two-way language difficulties.

Eventually somebody will threaten to call the police. One arguer kept telling the employee to 'GO AHEAD -CALL THE POLICE', as she backed out the front door. Another encouraged calling in a tone that shook the building, as her girlfriend/partner got up to the cash register and yelled even louder.

An African-American couple looked at each other uncomfortably and left without finishing their food.

Finally one of the employees decided to end the play by giving the bellowing monster what she wanted. I'm going to guess this was to end the noise (our ears were bleeding) or because if he called the police, he'd be retired long before they arrived. In Philly, the police cannot be bothered to show up unless you specifically say GUN.

After it was over, I stood up on my chair and yelled `YOU... I'M GOING TO STAND HERE AND SCREAM AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS UNTIL YOU GIVE ME WHAT I WANT.'  The restaurant laughed and applauded. My job there was done.

As we walked out, we noticed six policemen approaching, obviously by accident. I wanted to suggest they come back in two weeks.....

• What in the multiverse is up these days?  When I read the news, I often wonder when we officially switched to 1984 or some other science fiction novel set in some black, ugly future. The nonsense was piled upon us a piece at a time, so most of use didn't notice (the Kardashians were on). Every time I read a story about immigration, my head spins. Let me see if I understand this correctly:

1. We are allowing hundreds of thousands of (mostly) Mexicans to stream across the border, due to it being largely porous. If we're that concerned about 'terrorism', why are we allowing this?
2. Our border with Canada is sealed tight, as are the international airports.
3. The occupant of the White House and his accomplices welcome the illegals, referring to them as undocumented.
4. The illegals are treated to healthcare, education and drivers licenses, on our dime. We, who can't afford our own insurance, are forced to subsudize insurance for people who can't be bothered to follow the immigration laws of our country.
5. An administration that won't enforce its own immigration laws.
6. An administration that fails to deport illegals in most cases, even after they commit serious crimes and sneak back repeatedly.
7. DC wants to give illegal aliens the right to vote.

• So tell me - what's going on here? Am I completely missing the point? Am I so turned around that I'm abnormal(moreso) and this situation is perfectly ok?

Speaking of insurance, I had a real Insurance Experience the other day. My wife went to pick up some meds and was told the insurance refused to pay for them because they needed a precertification.  Mrs. leftystrat has been on this medicine for five years and it's cheap and generic; no reason not to pay (other than the fact that insurers don't want to pay any claim). The pharmacy faxed a form to her doctor for precertification.

A week later(!), she called her doctor to see where the process was. As it turned out, the process wasn't. No record of request or action so they said they'd call the next day.  I should mention that it's a good thing we had a backup supply: if this were an antidepressant, she'd be shooting from the roof or in schoolyards by now.

The next day the doc's office told her it should be waiting for her at the pharmacy. A little later she the office called back to say that the pills weren't entirely waiting for her at the pharmacy. The insurer called the pharmacist but he was being uncooperative [no way this could be true- they're like family]. 

The wife gave up and paid cash for the meds. This was NOT alright with me. I got on the phone with the drug coverage people, who wanted the prescription number. There is no prescription number, so I cursed a bit and hung up. Then I called the main number, waited whilst being told how valuable I am, eventually arriving at an actual human. SHE explained that there's a medical coverage I.D. and a drug coverage I.D. The insurer approved the medicine under the medical I.D. and whenever the pharmacist tried to put it through, it got rejected. This person grasped the situation immediately (she'll be fired next week) and said all we had to do was move the precert from one number to the other (I almost fell out of my chair). 

You know what's coming, right?

She couldn't transfer the precert - she had to connect me with the Precert Department (aaaaaaaaaargh!).

The Precert Department did not tell me how valuable I was, which was a harbinger of things to come. Earl answered the phone and I explained (slowly and patiently) the situation. He was much more interested in the dosage and amount of the medicine than actually fixing the problem. Then he stated he could fax a form to the doctor to get the process started. I kept telling him (slowly and patiently) that the process was already started: all he had to do was move the precert. He kept telling me (slowly and patiently) that he would fax a form to the doctor to get the process started. Once again I explained to Earl how easily it could be fixed. Once again Earl said we'd have to start the process over.

It was at about this point that I decided it would be best to dispense with slowly and patiently. I raised my volume and lowered my pitch, explaining to Earl that I needed them to pay for this medicine TONIGHT and how was he going to make that happen?

At this point I heard a higher-pitched YAAAAAY! The pharmacy called my wife and said it finally went through... there was celebrating (and we ate Robin's minstrels). I bid Earl a fond adieu, only to discover that the insurance company only covered half the cost of the pills.  Ain't insurance grand?

• Speaking of insurance (and we were), I found an article stating that insurers are asking for twenty to fifty four percent cost increases next year.  HUH?  It seems that because more people are insured (thanks, Obama), the insurance companies (who wrote the laws) aren't making money on the deal. What was Obama's response? Call the state regulators and tell them to examine the rate increases carefully. Why is it that he and the rest of the criminals aren't run out of office hastily? We got screwed last year and now they're adding another helping of Screwed Soup. 
• Everybody who voted for Obama, raise your hand.  Good - YOU pay for my insurance. It's YOUR fault. 
• And don't go voting for Hillary, you kool-aid drinking socialist New World Order sycophants.

So there are three children whose parents are going through a nasty divorce. They refuse to see their father so a judge, full of good intentions, sentenced them all to Juvenile Detention for the entire summer. It came down to a pissing match between three recalcitrant children and a judge. In these cases, the judge always has the bigger member, even if female, as is the case here.  Aparently the kids really don't want to visit Dad, as all of them chose detention over visitation. This would be funny if it weren't so serious. Who are we kidding - it's funny now.

• Portland, Oregon, has taken on a very controversial Neighborhood Beautification Program. When I was young, it was common to throw your old sneakers over the power lines. I have no idea why. In Portland, they are doing the same thing, only with dildos. Just like sneakers, they are going up in pairs, in beautiful white and bright orange. Bright orange? I didn't know they came in bright orange. Excuse me.... I have to run an errand......

A divorced couple is fighting over frozen embryos. The female half wants to insert them into a surrogate, which isn't going over well with the male half.  Hey - leggo my embryos!

A Moment of Music

These guys have been slagged off unfairly, as a copycat band and as a grunge band. Stone Temple Pilots are a refreshing surprise of musicianship, writing, versatility and heroin abuse.  Their hits, and there have been many, are typically loud and raucous. I appreciate some of their more complex songs, which they can't play live, as they're overdubbed and there are too few musicians to reproduce them.

The DeLeo brothers, Dean and Robert, play guitar and bass, respectively. Robert doesn't get recognized for his contributions, which are solid yet busy and sound like James Jamerson (Motown). Dean plays many instrument flavors and tones, making things very interesting to the ear.  Eric Kretz is a drummer in the pounding style of John Bonham (Led Zeppelin). Scott Weiland is a very talented singer with a lot of baggage. Twice, after appearances on the Howard Stern Show, he went back on heroin.  Scott is bipolar, which probably drives this behavior. He's a great frontman, a real chameleon. He was let go and replaced by Chester Bennington, of Linkin Park. Personally I'm not thrilled but he's certainly decent.

Daisy is a rare instrumental. One of Dean's secret talents is slide guitar. He sets his tone beautifully and really uses his slide lyrically, instead of the 'normal' slide routine.

One of STP's surprises is their variety. You can listen to five songs and not know it's the same band. One of my favorite STP tunes is Atlanta. Listen to this and tell me you don't hear the Doors.  Hello It's Late is another change of style. Does this sound like their hit Plush? One of my wife's favorites is Bipolar Bear. Note the acoustic going into the faster chaotic electric section. Like Jimmy Page, DeLeo is a master of layering and many tones. There are all sorts of things going on here that can't be accurately played live, although they manage to pull it off.

These guys play to serve the song - no heroics, except for the whole.  Listen and love.