Month: January 2013

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Enough Already — Updated —

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I hope it’s not just me.

I’m beginning to think we’re over stimulated. 

Watch young people, go to a Starbucks. There’s a constant din of chirps, beeps, buzzes, and squeaks as the people in the room drink their coffee say one or two sentences to their companion then turn all their attention to responding to the never ending text messages.

I’ve lately found myself annoyed at people in my house interrupting a conversation dealing with where we were going to dinner to answer texts.

After a few minutes of being ignored… I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, went to the table and began eating. I was 3/4 of the way through the sandwich before my visitor realized I was eating.

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Then they got upset with me because I’d ruined our dinner plans. I pointed out that they’d been texting for 45 minutes solid and hadn’t said a word to me during that time. I was hungry and now had no need to go to dinner. They left in a huff, I still feel justified in my actions. 

I mean I was physically in their presence but I took a back seat to someone else who was god knows where.

There are just way too many distractions!

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I even do my best to avoid gas stations with those damn video loops playing on top of the gas pump. As an aside I hate playing 50 questions with the pump too.

It’s like I’m being assaulted. The video is playing music and talking at me, the gas pump is beeping and booping asking questions, do you want a car wash? do you want a receipt, check out our drink selection inside, please enter your zip code, you qualify for a discounted car wash are you sure you don’t want a car wash, please select the grade of fuel. 

I just want to get the hell away from the noise and confusion. Maybe it’s because I’m an adult with ADD… it’s like there’s too damn much input!

I just want to put gas in my car and get going.

This summer while I was driving to Denver, I noticed that once I got out of California the gas stations calmed down. So perhaps this craziness at the pump is only a California thing. I really do hope so.

I feel the same way about reading news on the internet.

I hate clicking on a news article and beginning to read then having loud music or a voice blathering at me about some product or service. Lately it seems to be getting worse. 

I’m reading the article precisely because I don’t want to hear commercials screeching at me over my morning coffee. I like silence in the morning… I like to read the news and come to my own conclusion about a subject after reading several articles from different sources.

Aside from an increasing number of articles being so poorly written I can’t imagine how they made it past an editor, now I’m having to listen to commercials followed by a talking head describing the article I’m reading.

I’ve actually started keeping the sound muted on my computer. I can’t even imagine trying to take a break and read a news article at work. 

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I’m also driving with my navigation system off.

If the car needs to tell me something it can turn on the display, but normally I’m just choosing to be un-assaulted by yet another information display. I really prefer to notice the scenery i’m passing at 90 MPH while trying to not be run over by an asshole in a Mexican 18 wheeler.

Lets turn down the noise.

Really, try turning off the TV, and the tablet, and the computer and the text message notifications.

You’d be surprised how wonderful silence is. 

I play a game sometimes, I’ll simply leave my cell phone in quiet mode on the nightstand. I’ve done this for days at a time.

Folks get a little weird after just a few hours of no responses from me.  I suppose it’s because  they’ve gotten so used to the digital interactions they’re demanding an instant response to whatever they’ve sent me.

They’re content if that response is nothing more than an emoticon. I’ve often thought I should create an autoresponder that picked a random smiley or LOL. I wonder if that would work? I wonder if there’s a app for that?

When I decide to pay attention to my phone again I’ll get messages from people telling me my phone sucks, or that I really shouldn’t ignore texts.

I ask why not? 25 years ago cell phones weren’t all that common. People got along just fine leaving a message on my answering machine and I got back to them when I felt like it.

If you want to register your opinion about the assault at the pump you can send an email to the contacts here

http://www.outcast.net/fuel/

Cynopsis

Also brought to you by these people is this…

I’m not sure if it’s a marketing ploy or simply a demonstration of poor editing.

The word is synopsis.

I suppose I could see it if the misspelling saved a number of characters but in this case, it just looks like someone couldn’t spell.

It’s like that annoying spelling of fat. Phat doesn’t get you anything except to identify your ethnicity, musical choices and education level. On top of that you’ve turned a 3 letter word into a 4 letter word, what’s the point?

The only way I’ve found to register my displeasure about instant play videos on webpages is go to the source of the video and send a complaint.

I guess I’m old school. I think what happens on my computer should always be under my control. That includes videos or music playing. If I didn’t press play… then keep that crap to yourself.

I’ve actually gone to blogs, then closed the browser window when music started playing. I went to the blog to read what the person had to say, not to listen to their John Denver albums.

That goes double for going to a massage schools website and being blown out of my chair by Ravi Shankar at a volume that could be heard in a neighboring star system.

I like most of Ravis work but I don’t like anything at that volume, especially when I can’t make it shut the hell up!

We seem to have forgotten that we own the technology, the technology shouldn’t and doesn’t own us. 

I love technology. But I’m finding that I’m less and less interested in it running my life, or destroying the silence of my day.

UPDATE

Within hours of my posting this, I was confronted with another element of the over-stimulation and the demands for instant responses. I was on the phone taking care of some business. Another call came in, without interrupting the phone conversation I was having, I sent the new phone call to voice mail.

Within a second there was another call from the same phone number. Once again I sent the incoming call to voicemail. Two seconds later the persistent caller was calling again!

I excused myself from the conversation I was having, explaining that I had someone who was desperately trying to reach me and asked to interrupt my conversation for a few moments. Fortunately, they understood and said they’d hold. 

 I answered the persistent caller and honestly I wasn’t exactly polite. I hate people who won’t be patient, wait their turn and leave a fucking message!

It was an unknown headhunter.

They start the conversation with “Hi, are you busy?”

I responded, “Yes… which is why your were sent to voicemail Twice! I’m on another phone call.”

“Oh… well I calling to find out if you’d be interested in a temporary contract position.”

“Yes, however as I’ve said I’m on another call right at the moment. Did you leave a voice mail?”

“Uhhh I think so” <— LIE!!!

“Could you please send me an email regarding the position, I’ll review it and call you back.”

“Sure” <—LIE!

“Fine then I’ll review the information and call you back, Good bye…”

Then I returned to my previous phone call. I have yet to receive an email, this headhunter didn’t leave a voicemail and I’ve pretty much decided to blacklist them in my email and phone.

This guy didn’t even apologize for his annoying behavior. 

WTF?

I don’t want to be represented by a company who doesn’t even understand basic courtesy. If they make a prospective employer angry because they’re discourteous, my chances of employment are nill.

Politeness and professionalism still count a lot with me.

I guess I’m showing my age.

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Patience has paid off.

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After many days of tweaking and patiently letting my computer do whatever the hell it needed to do, I now have an alternate backup.

Not only do I have an alternate backup, It’s working very nicely and for the time being all is peaceful in computer land here.

Getting the backup took days (Still scratching my head over that one…) But now the incrementals are quick, efficient, and on a par with the TimeCapsule. Even though they’re being made on a Western Digital NAS

I’m over the hassle for the time being. I’ll probably do something like put the Time Capsule into maintenance mode when I’ve got nothing better to do. For the time being I’m just going to take a breather. None of the other computers backing up on the TimeCapsule seem to be having problems. I can only assume the problem I was having is some kind of corruption in the backup for my machine alone.

I can’t stress how much everyone needs to have a backup of their computers or at least their data. That is one thing I can say Apple has done mostly right, The Apple backup system in it’s various iterations has saved my behind on a number of occasions. 

Were it not for the automated system I can’t tell you how many times I’d have been lamenting over losing all the stuff on various computers.

Whatever you do to back your system up, be consistent about it.

DAMN! 

As I was sitting here typing I pondered the question about why the WD drive was so slow. It occurred to me that I have several really fast ethernet ports on the back of my TimeCapsule. Those ports while nice, had never really mattered all that much because the rest of the devices in the network are incapable of capitalizing on their speed.

I wondered what speed if the WD drive? Sure enough, it can capitalize on the additional speed so I took a break from writing this blog and did a little reconfiguration. Now time will tell if I notice the different in access speed. 

When I plugged the WD in a year or so ago after the Buffalo drive died I just used the same port and really didn’t think about it. I was so focused on saving what data I could save I just wanted a drive that was online. In retrospect I probably should have given a little more thought to the situation.

Yet another time when I’m doing the Homer Simpson “D’OH”

Now before my non technical readers start bleeding from their eyes I’m going to change the subject.

OK I’m going to break yet another taboo… Gun Control!!!

I don’t know how many of you watch Piers Morgan… ( I don’t as a rule, I think he’s a pompous ass and wish that CNN would just shut him down.)

However, poor Piers has really been taking it on the nose the past few weeks.

Most recently he was pretty much outclassed, out thought, and out maneuvered by a young Attorney, Author, and supporter of the 2nd amendment named Ben Shapiro.

 You can view the interview here 

http://youtu.be/hJ8jcsaDK1k

I like what Mr Shapiro has to say. He’s asking for a logical description of gun control. His point that relatively few murders are committed with AR type weapons is interesting and that if you’re going to ban weapons to be consistent you really should ban handguns. They are, after all used far more often in crimes of violence than assault weapons.

It’s an interesting point and In general I agree with him.

However I believe that banning handguns in this country is a lost cause. Therefore President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the congress are choosing a weapon to “Ban” as nothing more than simple theater.

It’s a way for the government to look like they care, and they’re doing something.

They may get assault weapons banned. Then what? 

Automatic pistols are sold in California with 10 round magazines

Depending on how good a shot you are that single magazine represents 10 people dead. I’ve posted previously that the people most likely to carry out the kind of insane crimes we’ve seen in recent history are planners. They think long and hard about what they’re going to do, how they’re going to do it, and they practice.

Remember Anders Breivik in Oslo? There’s evidence suggesting that he tested his bombs on a farm outside the city limits, prior to his rampage in 2011. 

Given the proposition that these people practice their murderous plans beforehand, nothing short of a complete ban on all weapons is going to stop the violence.

But then do you really think the violence will stop?

Even if by some feat of draconian socialist government control you manage to remove all firearms from this country. If someone wants to kill another person or multiple people… explosives, incendiary  devices, bows and arrows will do the same job just fine.

So are you going to outlaw gasoline? How about basic chemistry? Gunpowder is a really simple compound to make. I’ll grant you, it wouldn’t be high yield, but the Chinese were using gunpowder in explosives 1000 years ago. And the basic recipe can be found in a StarTrek episode.

Oh wait… One of the oldest human traditions is the good old fashioned club, There goes baseball bats and forget about Cricket bats. OH wait I guess we’ll need to cut down all the trees.

My point is this, a reasonably intelligent NUTJOB who wants to make a statement, or commit suicide by cop will find a way to express their violence or make their point.

The sad part is that a lot of these people are reasonably intelligent.

They may be crazy but they’re not stupid, unlike our politicians and TV pundits.

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Paraprosdokian Of the Week

A Friend sent me a list of these. I thought it would be fun to share them.

Paraprosdokians are phrases or sentences that lead us down the garden path to an unexpected ending.

When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.