Month: June 2014

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Well for all the hype – That was a bust!

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After making all the noise about turning off our power for 8 hours, the electric company didn’t do it.

However, because they were supposed to kill the power, we sat up here with our technology off anyway.

Until about noon, then I said, “screw it” and brought the minimum systems back online. By 4PM I brought the rest of the systems back online.  

They went to the expense of hanging door cards throughout the neighborhood, and then called us the night before, you’d think they were serious about it.

I guess NOT!

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This begs the question; are they going to arbitrarily turn off the power on Monday, or Tuesday and call it all the same? 

I find myself looking at WiFi Router hotness.  As much as I like the Apple Time Capsule, it’s five years old. I’m wondering if its time to buy an updated machine and see if I can get better range. This would also allow me the flexibility to turn off the backup drives and still have internet access in situations where the power gets a little dicy. 

$200 bucks for a new powerful WiFi router? Or $400 for a new Time Capsule, with the same WiFi technology and 3TB of storage? Decisions, decisions. 

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Maybe I’ll buy a WiFi only router and test it out for fourteen days. If its good, I’ll keep it if Its bad I’ll return it and wait for the next generation Time Capsule.

Perhaps, I’ll just leave well enough alone, and not spend any money.

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OH NO!!!! I’m going Primitive today

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The Power company is doing some work and they’re going to be turning off the power to the neighborhood for about 8 hours.

THE HORROR!!!

I’ll have no internet, no television, no twitter feed to keep my apprised of a government run amok.  My god… I’ll not even have my one cup at a time coffee machine. Ok now the panic is rising…

Deep Breaths, Nice deep breaths.

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I’ve already shut down the backup drives and will be shutting down the WiFi network about 5 minutes prior to their scheduled outage. Not because I’m worried about the WiFi but because its part of my Apple Time Capsule and I’d like make sure that the drive in the TC is shutdown properly.

Been wondering about the merits of having a separate WiFi router in my network and just letting the network drives be… well drives.  This kind of thing is another reason to go separate router.

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So I’m going to be writing and doing chores that don’t require power. (My computer battery is good for at least 6 hours). This is one of those times when I wish that I had rooftop solar and was able to run off the grid most of the time.

The one thing i can say about power outages up here is that it gets really quiet I can’t complain about that.

Till the flip side, have a great Friday.

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You know I was thinking about politics…

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Now wait, it’s ok.

I was wondering why a happy go lucky guy like me who’d been able for decades to ignore politics, taxes, and all the foolishness, of the government suddenly got interested.

It’s counterintuitive as hell.

Then I started thinking back, remembering my life before my interest in politics.

I was busy, I had lots of work, the companies where I was working were competitive and only cared if you could do the job, not the effete university from which you’d purchased your diploma.

For that matter diplomas actually held weight. A degreed individual was actually someone that you could go to for answers to real problems. Instead of the narrow-minded stovepiped “specialists” we have today.

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Time spun on, and I was still working, although the jobs were getting less plentiful. I didn’t often notice the politics and most of what I did notice was scandal or unbelievable stupidity. But politics was infiltrating my life year after year.

Five years became ten, ten became twenty, and well… you get the picture.

Flash forward many years to now, and I realized that politics has simply become all encompassing and intrusive. Its everywhere and there is no escape.

It’s not just politics it’s highly polarized politics charged with divisiveness and fueled by a willingness to ignore anyone else’s opinion regardless of the validity of a dissenting opinion.

And that’s whats drawn my attention, its this complete dismissiveness of the other guy that pisses me off.

So now I find I can’t look away even if I want to.  Its sort of like looking at an accident in progress, you want to look away but you just can’t bring yourself to close your eyes until after you see the horror.  That’s our political system these days a disaster in progress.

Kind of a sad commentary when you think about it.