Month: December 2014

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Had a great day yesterday.

Santa

Yesterday was my annual Christmas Shopping trip.

An old friend and I used to do a Christmas trip many years ago, but now that he’s married, he has a lot of family responsibilities. Our annual shopping trips have become less frequent.

That’s not an accusation, his wife’s family is very into the holidays and each other’s lives. My friend’s duty is clear between his family, and his wife’s family which is now THEIR combined family, there are a ton of obligations.

Honestly I don’t know how the hell they maintain their schedule. Must be really good drugs!

I try to get together with him as soon after the first of the new year as our schedules allow.

SC Tree

However, nature abhors a vacuum. Apparently, so does South Coast Plaza! 

Another old friend needed a shopping buddy. So one day a year, we have lunch, drinks, Ok perhaps a couple of drinks, then we go shopping for our loved ones. Both of us fervently hoping to find the “perfect” gift and often we purchase a gift for ourselves along the way.

This year, I think I did good. My friend also found something perfect! 

Capital Grill

Unlike years past, we returned to his house, then another couple came over.

After more drinks, cheese, an excellent Italian dinner mixed with tons of laughter, off color jokes, and more laughter, suddenly the clock struck midnight.

We adjourned each to their homes and I found myself having one last pleasure of the evening. 

Empty freeways.

I queued up my favorite playlist, the first song was “Keep the Streets Empty” by Fever Ray. 

The perfect end to a perfect day.

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Explaining Twitter to an older person.

Question:

What is the difference between email & twitter. I see the value of Skype or FaceTime but I am ignorant in respect to Twitter other than its base word “twit” which was an undesirable descriptor in my youth.

Sent from my iPad

My Answer:

Tweets1

Twitter is a social messaging website/application which limits a message to a maximum length of 140 characters.

Email is unlimited.

Twitter, is used by a wide variety of companies and people to send short messages to a broad scope of people also known as “Followers”.

As examples, here are “Tweets” from the LA Quakebot and The San Bernardino Forestry Service.

There are a number of representatives in the House and Senate that have Twitter accounts and post what’s going on in session during the day. Pelosi, Reid, Boehner, and many California politicians use the service.

This is the helpful side of the service.

The downside is that it’s given voice to every Village Idiot on the planet.

AlSharpton

The problem is that it’s sometimes difficult to tell that a person is the village idiot.

When you strip away the context provided by other members of a persons village rolling their eyes while the person is talking, sometimes idiots are given far more credence than they should be.

There are tons of news feeds from outside the country as well as the usual main stream media.

Often the News site RT reports on things well ahead of the US and they’re very accurate too.

There are discussions, Pro-Guns, Anti-Guns, Pro-Abortion, Anti-Abortion, Pro-Amnesty, Anti-Amnesty and just about any other subject that you could think of.

I’ve noticed that the rudest people on Twitter are often the ones claiming to be progressively liberal. I still haven’t figured that one out.

Twitter can piss you off and NOTHING you see on Twitter should be simply taken as fact.

The easiest way to think of Twitter is as the modern equivalent of the soapbox in the public square.

The other difference is the level of privacy.

With Email, only the NSA and intended recipient read your message. With Twitter, the NSA and everyone else on the planet can read your message.

I hope this answers your question, have a very nice day.

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Ahh End of year stuff begins

Board

I’ve got backup of my computer that dates back to 2008. It’s gotten to the point that the usual backup drives are getting full.  I’m moving files onto other “Offline” drives. then I’ll run maintenance on the usual network drives and start new backups.

In short, I’m in the end of year digital doldrums. Every year I run a cleanup of my drives and delete tons of useless crap that accumulates during the year. This year is special because of the backup drives.

Thankfully backup maintenance is something that I only do every 5 years or so. However when added to the usual year end stuff for taxes, and of course the holiday insanity which means that my days will be busy and my computer will be SLOW.

On the bright side, I can work on some other stuff while waiting for a trillion files to be indexed and moved.

Digital Rabbit Hole

I’ve been trying to catch up on blogs, and work on getting a couple of websites done for clients.

The problem is that I’m kinda being sucked down the digital rabbit hole too. I’m not as mobile as I normally am. I have to keep the computer connected to the network and I’m using a hard connection instead of the WiFi because the hard line runs a whole lot faster. Not fast enough, just a lot faster. Instant probably wouldn’t be fast enough for me.

Here I sit, chained to the desk by an ethernet cable.

When I’m not actively writing and just queuing files for transfer I’m really bored. This archiving has to get done for the good of my network and systems, but it’s tedious as hell.

I wonder. Can I watch Christmas porn on my iPad?

I can, I can! 

Oh, Santa’s got something special for those folks!

Maybe this won’t be quite as tedious as I thought it would be

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There be Snow here!

DSC 0784

For all the folks that are asking, and all the folks that aren’t…

Yes! There is snow, uh however, there’s nothing to see, move along. 

We welcome snow players in designated areas.

NO! My front yard isn’t designated! No, I didn’t clear the driveway for you to park and did you just drop a dirty disposable diaper on my roses? OH HELL NO! 

No, I’m not going to help you dig your car out of the snow, You came up here with no chains, and bald tires? Oh I’ll help you, I’ll call the tow truck to remove you from my lawn!

“Gee you speak English just fine now…”

IMG 0395

Oh you’re threatening me on my own property? Well I’ll be very happy to help you now!

“Hello 911, Yes I’ve just been threatened with violence at my home. No Ma’am I can’t escape because the person doing the threatening has blocked my drive and parked on my lawn. The man is threatening to kill me, his female companion is egging him on, can you hear this? Good. Please send an officer as soon as possible. Yes, I’m retreating into my home now.”

Thankfully, the above scenario hasn’t happened to me.

I have had dirty diapers left in my plants, I’ve been blocked in by snow players who assume my driveway was cleared  for them to park in.

IMG 0403

One of my neighbors HAS been threatened on her own property when she asked the snow players to leave her yard.

She was so afraid, that she ran barefoot in the snow to a neighbor on the next block and then called the police. This lady is in her mid 70s, retired and honestly didn’t need the excitement.

When the police got to her home, the people that made the threats were gone. 

The point is, our neighborhoods are not designated snow play areas, any more than the pool in your backyard, or the condo complex, or your apartment complex, is a public water play area. You’d be pissed if we showed up on the first warm sunny day of summer and just took over your homes. Respect is a two way street folks.

So you’re welcome to visit, welcome to play in the areas set aside for you, and heck most of us locals will help you if you get stuck out on the main roads, one of the play area parking lots, or even if you’re just lost. 

We ask however, that you please remember to bring your manners, please recognize this isn’t Disneyland and we’re not being paid to clear our driveways and private streets. We live here year round and have jobs and school to get to, and groceries to buy. 

In short, we don’t exist to serve your whims.

Thank you, this has been a public service announcement brought to you by:

The OLD CURMUDGEON OF THE MOUNTAIN.

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Insurance AGAIN…

Shopping

I swear I have other things that I’d rather be doing. You know, living my life, taking a huge dump, jerking off, drilling my own teeth, (although Dr. F would probably be pissed off if I did that.) In short, I’d rather be doing ANYTHING and I mean any fucking thing aside from dealing with trying to sort out the insurance bullshit again.

Yet here I am, dealing with web sites Cigna (for example) that has incorrect information published about which providers currently take their insurance. Yep, they say my Doctor is accepting the Cigna plans, but turns out Cigna only offers HMO policies in Orange County and my Doctor doesn’t actually take any HMO patients from Cigna.

So who do I believe?

You know who I believe? I believe the lady that handles the billing and money.

Which leads me back to the bullshit of shopping policies. Anthem Blue Cross is right the fuck out. They’ve already screwed me for a year.

As it turns out Blue Shield actually offers a real PPO to people like me, and that PPO has no regional limits. However THEY demand a bunch of information before you even get a chance to ask them IF they sell private policies at all. 

They wanted to know how much money I was making BEFORE they would even let me talk to an agent. I pulled a number out of my ass. Then I’m talking to an agent that tells me I should go to Covered California, get a number of some kind, and then we’ll talk because I’m eligible for a subsidy based on the number I just pulled out of my ass.

This agent was all excited to tell me that I was eligible for a subsidy and something inside me twisted. That subsidy money is taxpayer money and honestly the unsubsidized premium wasn’t all that bad.  She was all excited about my getting money from other taxpayers to pay for my insurance.

Is it me??? Am I the only person that has a problem with this?

Pragmatically, she’s right in telling me not to leave money on the table that can effectively halve my premiums. But there is something so inherently wrong with this that I can’t wrap my head around it.

This is SOCIALISM, plain & simple. I’m greedy, I’d love to have someone pay my premiums for me, but I can’t help but think this is wrong. 

SO what to do? Follow my ethics and pay full pop even thought I can’t really afford it, or sign up on the exchange and get a subsidy even though I fundamentally disagree with the whole system. 

If I go for the subsidy, does that make me a sell out?