Month: September 2021

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I’m just not that into it…

There was a time in the recent past when I, like many other Apple users waited on pins & needles for the next iOS, iPhone, iPad, MacOS or MacBook computer.

This last iPhone event left me feeling sort of meh.

iOS 15 is somewhat interesting but I’m in no great hurry to update. This is very unlike previous years.

The iPhone 13 Pro is nice, but not dazzling. I sorta like the pale ice blue color but since I use a case that isn’t really all that compelling. My iPhone 12 Pro is still quite serviceable and does what I want it to do.

I’ve currently got an Apple Watch series 5.

I thought that I’d upgrade to the watch 7. I originally got an Apple Watch Series 3, then upgraded to the 5 and thought a 2 year upgrade cycle would probably be reasonable. Looking at the Series 7, I see no compelling reason to upgrade. Okay, it’s got a bigger screen and what else does it get me?

Apple’s presentation was even Ho Hum, it was almost like Apple themselves was “phoning it in“. Every Apple event they’re gushing about how impressed they are with their own technology. How each product, “…is the most advanced Technology Apple has created…”

Every time they say that now, I fight not to say, “Duh” out loud.

I’m always way more interested when they compare their technology to the competition.

I find myself wondering why I wasn’t excited, or even disappointed with Apple this year. I’d have expected to feel something one way or the other, I just don’t.

Early iOS adoption statistics might be indicating that I may not be alone. I caught an article last week, (which I can’t find now,) that said the one week adoption rate for iOS 15 was substantially lower than for iOS 14 in the same period last year.

Why have I not updated? That’s simple, I dealt with bugs that messed my phone up on both iOS 13 & iOS 14. I decided that this time around I’d wait. But when you add the whole issue of the CSAM scanning and privacy issues that honestly feel like an about face for Apple…

Well, I guess it feels a bit like betrayal.

It’s akin to that feeling you have finding out your spouse is sleeping with someone else. When you find something like that out, you tend to get angry, then when you calm down, you start evaluating the choices available to you.

Divorce is messy and ends up hurting you as much as your spouse. That’s kind of the nuclear option.

Ignoring it and hoping it doesn’t happen again, is another option. Sometimes that works, but can you ever really trust them again? Do you find yourself questioning everything they say or do for the rest of your life?

Couples counseling is another option. But that only works if both parties are willing to realize that a) they’re in trouble, b) the relationship still means something, c) are willing to give it a go and mend fences.

To some extent, Apple has behaved like the spouse that was caught screwing around. They’ve quietly admitted that CSAM requires more work. Their decision to hold off on rolling it out feels like, “I’m sorry I got caught. I promise I won’t do that again.“

No spouse, ever totally believes that. The one saying it, knows that there will be an opportunity in the future that simply can’t be ignored. The one hearing it, knows this too.

(I’m specifically being gender neutral above, because I’ve seen women cheating on their husbands and men cheating on their wives. Interestingly, I’ve been the third wheel in both equations. Not really proud of that, it’s life, it just happens sometimes.)

I think right now, I’m personally at the “Ignoring it phase,” with Apple. I would consider the “Couples counseling,” phase. But I’m wondering if divorce from Apple is in the cards.

I have to wonder if this is the way a lot of Apple users are feeling. The article I mentioned, was trying to cover the lower adoption numbers by highlighting that unlike previous years Apple is going to be supporting iOS 14 and iOS 15 bug fixes concurrently. In the past when Apple released a new iOS they stopped development on the previous version.

This meant that there were no security patches or bug fixes for the older version and if you wanted to close those security holes, you had no choice but to upgrade the OS. This year is different. Apple has said they’ll continue the security patches indefinitely.

I’m sure that some of the upgrade hesitancy is due to this, but I seriously doubt that all of it can be explained away. This feels more like “coming home from somewhere you never should have been,” (Thank you Garth Brooks) and finding your pillow and some ratty blanket on the couch.

I’ll admit that pillow on the couch is way better than a confrontation in the driveway and a gun shot under cover of thunder in the distance. But it’s just as much a statement. (Yeah, I’ve gotten the pillow once or twice too.)

Right now, I’m giving Apple the pillow. We’ll have to see just how contrite they are, and how willing they are to keep my business going forward.

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Well now, Time for another week of Biden Follies

Please note, ‘biden’ is hereinafter defined as a “fuck-up of epic proportions.”

The beauty of this is “Biden” and “biden” are completely interchangeable.

Therefore, I can write this blog well in advance. (sort of like the media did for Trump’s mean tweets.) The President and his Democratic cronies will, without any doubt provide fodder for me to make fun of, over the weekend.

That’s the saddest thing about the people controlling the levers of power.

I can count on any or all of them to ‘biden’ it reliably.

It’s a pity they cannot be relied upon to actually do their jobs or be constructive in any way.

Last week we had all the noise about photos of border patrol riding horses and the way the photos appeared, made it look like the split reins were being used to “whip” illegals coming across the border.

Maxine Waters said, “It looked like slavery” (As if she would know…) Looks are not necessarily truth and the ignorance demonstrated by the politicians in Washington DC is astounding.

With very few exceptions, the members of Congress have never been within 1000 feet of a horse.

(This image is one that’s been peddled as horrific evidence that the border patrol was whipping an illegal. But if you really take a look at the image, the border patrol agent’s right hand is grabbing the illegals shirt. The rein is simply blowing in the wind, because that agent dropped the rein to grab the illegal.)

The shrill men & women claiming that the illegals were being whipped, are the same people who’d not have the sense to avoid horse shit with their Jimmy Chu’s or Ferragamo’s.

Cowgirl Barrel Racing At A Small Rodeo Arena

But once again, truth, or reality, mean nothing. So the biden administration is doing what it does best.

(Looking at the photos from the border, I was reminded of barrel racing. Here’s a photo of a woman getting ready to maliciously beat a barrel with her reins.

Ahem!)

Horse mounted border patrol agents are apparently going to be forbidden.

I’m sure that in the coming weeks there will be injuries to border patrol who have to walk the crowd, and there are sure to be more drownings of the illegals.

I say this because horses are flexible animals. A rider on a horse can, with relative safety walk the horse into a river and assist someone who is being swept downriver. ATVs can do some of this work, but not in 3 or 4 feet of water. From a horse, the rider can concentrate on helping someone, from an ATV not so much.

It’s obvious why too. The horse has a brain. The horse will move to better footing and maintain a position all by itself. Leaving the rider to throw a rope to someone if necessary.

Horses also have a bit of sense. When the rider tells a horse to move out of a river, or across rough terrain, the horse will pick a path that most often works. (Horses don’t like falling down any more than we do.) Which is probably why the border patrol agents chose horses over ATVs in the first place. It’s simple common sense, (a.k.a. Horse sense,) they chose the best method for the environment they operate in.

Once the horses are removed from the equation, and the injuries to both border patrol and illegals increase I’m sure we’re going to hear from Congress about how unacceptable it is that illegals are not being treated well. They’ll be remarkably silent about the border patrol officers that are laid up with injuries.

In that environment and rough terrain, I’d choose a horse.

As an aside, it’s been 50 years since I was on a horse. Horses and I don’t generally get along with each other.

I’d add one more reason for using a horse. If I got hurt, provided I could get on my horse, I know that even if I was unconscious the horse could take me back to the barn.

ATV’s aren’t nearly that smart.

We all know this political monster we’ve allowed to be created will remain silent and do nothing to help the border patrol. The evidence supports this assessment.

The current administration and our politicians will do anything to destroy our country.

In that task, they are devastatingly efficient.

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I rewatched Elysium the other night…

I’d seen the movie a while ago. It’s from 2013.

Matt Damon, Jodie Foster.

The first time I saw it, It was pure science fiction.

Now, well, it was unsettling to rewatch.

The premise is that the elites of the world live in a marvelous space station. They have the highest technology and medical devices that can instantly fix whatever ailment someone might have. The elites living on the space station live in opulent luxury and ease.

The folks left on Earth, not so much. That’s the set up.

It’s a typical underdog makes good despite the odds, scenario. Complete with an abusive supervisor and shitty worker safety. The movie depicts abusive police and parole officer robots and a criminal element that is generally criminal out of desperation, not any particular desire to commit crime.

The folks left on Earth are treated as if they’re unclean and generally left to squalor and hopelessness.

At the time the movie was made, It was probably a commentary on wealthy countries ignoring the poor.

Eight years later, with our current political situation, the movie has a somewhat different tone.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the older movies in my collection are changing. It’s not that the movie is being re-edited, it’s that my perspective is changing.

What was once escapist fantasy and easy to dismiss as unthinkable is becoming more thinkable, perhaps even possible.

GATTACA from 1997 springs to mind.

That movie was pure fantasy when it came out. Entry to workplaces and venues was restricted based on DNA “purity” testing. But watch it now with vaccine passports needed to enter certain venues or travel, and it’s suddenly not so fantastic.

There’ve been a number of references to Orwell’s 1984 but there are a lot of other science fiction stories & movies that are equally unsettling against the backdrop of events we’re living through.

The weird thing is that a lot of my personal collection deals with these themes. Okay, so perhaps I’m a sick puppy. Whatever!

I suppose it’s proof that whatever we as humans can imagine, we will be able to achieve.

Jules Verne in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea imagined a submarine that was powered by some mysterious power source.

We named the first nuclear submarine after Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. Verne had no knowledge nuclear power but he imagined a dangerous and unending power source.

Later, Forbidden Planet from 1956, explored the price of hubris.

The Krell, learned everything and then turned inward. They destroyed themselves in a single night accidentally, because they forgot about the darkness within their own souls.

Arthur C. Clark explored the human condition in many of his stories, I like his books, but I like his short stories more.

All these stories have at their core, kernels of much older stories. Human stories, from cultures across the planet.

Stories that at one time were teaching stories designed to instill values into whatever culture they existed in.

These stories explored right and wrong, good and evil, and I think we should listen to those ancient voices as much today.

We can and have modernized many of those stories but somehow the lessons contained in them don’t have the same impact in today’s society.

The notion that greed is a trap is explored in the story of King Midas and also in a Native American story of the eagle who became imprisoned by man because the eagle would not let go of a fish.

Two entirely different cultures separated by thousands of miles and years, and yet the message is the same. Greed leads to ruin.

We, Humanity, can no longer afford to allow hubris to blind us.

Our technology is marvelous and magical. A thousand years ago steel was the metal of the gods. Technology at any point in time is always the most advanced.

Human drives though, remain just as primitive as they were before we ventured out of the Olduvai Gorge in Africa.

I think it’s time for us to rediscover the stories our ancestors left us. There are lessons to be had, and enjoyment in learning those lessons.

Go grab a copy of Greek Tragedies. Look to Shakespeare, read Verne, or Clark, or Orwell, or rewatch any of the old movies in your library. Enjoy the entertainment and take a moment to consider the meaning behind the story.

Be warned, your pride might be bruised when you find that you’re different from your ancestors only due to your iPhone.

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Now this is a weird series of thoughts…

The following is the kind of shit I think about when I’m doing boring stuff like sanding the old paint off the trim of the house and prepping to caulk, prime & paint.

I was contemplating the latest news about the vaccine mandates. I was just randomly wondering what the difference between the vaccine hesitant and those folks who were all in with the mandates.

BTW, These mandate folks are coming awfully close to violating the terms of the Nuremberg code.

Growing up in the ‘60s & ‘70s there was always the threat of nuclear annihilation. This was courtesy of the cold war and the “bastard communists” in the old soviet union.

Every day we got up, we had our cereal, kissed our moms goodbye and we went to school. We started our day with the pledge of allegiance, had fire drills (actually hoped for those to get us out of pop quizzes), and nuclear bomb drills.

Little did we know that those nuclear bomb drills were almost completely pointless. We all knew what a civil defense logo looked like and where the nearest fallout shelter was. In the cases of the schools I attended, the bomb shelters were onsite. 

I can remember hearing the air raid sirens and wondering if this time we were going to feel the ground rumble like we’d seen in the civil defense films. It never occurred to me in elementary school,  that I might not ever see my parents again if the bombs actually fell, after all mommy and daddy both were wise and they would know where the bomb shelters were. After the dust settled they’d come to pick me up at school and we’d go home to watch TV.

Later in junior high school, my knowledge and wisdom increased, I realized that the bomb shelters weren’t going to be useful since by that time I’d read about the survivors of Hiroshima and seen the pictures. I was also learning about things like the half life of various nuclear material and how irradiated materials could retain dangerously high levels of radiation for decades.

Mutation, horrible death, and fear of a nuclear holocaust became elements of my daily life. The possibility was always lurking in the back of my mind. The thing is, it became commonplace, eventually it was just another stupid thing in my world. I ranked It up there with a curfew, or tardiness to school, or the school project that I didn’t want to do and was putting off till the last minute.

Nuclear destruction became ho hum, boring, just another part of living. It was like cancer or chickenpox, or the daily bully as I walked home from school.

As I became a young adult, I got busy with trying to make my way in the world. The threat of nuclear destruction took a back seat to the more immediate things like eating, living, loving, paying my bills, and being happy.

I lived through the HIV/AIDS years, and looking back I wasn’t particularly afraid of that any more than I was of nuclear bombs falling. In the case of HIV/AIDS I was pissed off about it because that hit just as I was figuring out, and getting experience with sex. All of which came to a screeching halt just when I was getting good at it. 

HIV/AIDS Poster

Don’t take that the wrong way. HIV/AIDS was a threat, it was scary, I lost a lot of good friends, including the one who said, “Dude, we medical folks don’t really know what this is, but looking at the spread pattern I think it’s somehow sexually transmitted. So just remember, no glove, no love.” He saved my life, unfortunately he didn’t take his own advice. 

Flash forward 50 or so years from my childhood, and we’re dealing with a virus that has a breathtaking mutation rate. We have misinformation and what I only think of as fear porn 24/7. Oddly, it’s reminiscent of the “Dirty Bastard Communist nukes,” news I remember pretty clearly.

Maybe it’s a fatalism that I’ve carried with me all my life that leaves me somewhat less concerned about this virus, than the younger crowd. 

I suppose I adopted a  “Live the day, you may be dead tomorrow,” kind of thing.

Then there was the first SARS which was again sort of a meh moment. No-one panicked about it, hell no-one much noticed. Although I do recall the media banging the be terrified angle pretty hard. Nobody paid much attention. We didn’t shut down anything.

SARS

In a nuclear exchange, it’s gotta be over 90% that you’re going to die. With the COVID-19 virus, there’s a better than 90% chance you’ll survive.

It’s not political, it’s not racist, it’s just another damn thing in my life.

With a better than 90% survival rate this whole virus thing doesn’t come close to freaking me out like the concept of being atomized in a millisecond.  This isn’t even in my top 10 worries.

I wonder if the “Unclean” vaccine hesitant folks in America are around my age?

Give or take 20 years. Those who are 40 something might still remember talk at the dinner table about the nuclear threat. They may have incorporated their parents lassie faire attitude. They’re quite possibly doing the math and thinking, “Eh whatever. It’s not like a fusion bomb.”

COVID-19

(While changing a sanding pad, I had this thought…)

Sonofabitch! I should thank the USSR for the cold war and the lessons of mutually assured destruction (MAD)

Were it not for my growing up under that sword I would be huddled in my darkened house with a hoard of food, ammo, and guns, muttering to my favorite knife, and twitching at every single noise I heard outside. But I’d be afraid of looking out the window to see what it was.

Instead, I’m standing here in the sun, on a beautiful autumn day, doing something that while it’s work I don’t really want to do, I’m enjoying anyway.

So thank you to all the comrades of the former USSR. Had it not been for your saber rattling I’d be quaking in my boots, in fear of everything.

The next thought that crossed through my mind was that people of my age don’t appreciate being badgered. President Biden at one point in his life had to know that. It speaks volumes about him personally and the youth of his staff that he is badgering Americans.

Most of the young probably haven’t see and certainly wouldn’t remember Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe like a hammer at the UN screaming, “We will bury you…”

Nikita Khrushchev Speaking at the UN

We all know how that ended for the old USSR.

I am still very amused that the folks who prior to COVID were against vaccinations of their children for childhood diseases, are often the same folks screaming today loudly for mandatory vaccinations for everyone.

My amusement at their hypocrisy is that they don’t see it as hypocrisy. Some them have gone so far as to use the line, “Its for the children…”

Original AntiVaxers

I get that everyone has the capacity to change their mind or opinion. That’s totally cool, it means folks are learning.

What I don’t get is some folks ability to hold diametrically opposed thoughts in their heads at the same time and claim that all are true.

Call me binary. (Yeah, that’s a no no today, isn’t it?)

Where ever you come down on the vaccination issue, please at least have thought it through.

Do your own research, make an informed choice.

But under no circumstances should you just bow to the whims of the mob. You are and should always be in inviolate control of your own body and that includes what you allow to be put into it.

Hmm. Another weird thought is this one. How can the European Union which has so very publicly, over the past decade been against GMO foods and grains be so draconian about vaccine enforcement now?

Yeah, I know that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines aren’t technically GMO organisms. But given that the spike protein in question is a direct result of genetic modification doesn’t the EU stance seem just a bit odd?

It was at this point that the second battery died on the power sander, and my knee started killing me.

I came inside and other things beside random thoughts occupied my attention.

Now you know where some of this blog comes from. Sometimes it’s just the product of me having something boring to do.

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Gee Thanks Joe!

So as has been stated, I’ve been looking for a job for 2 years. I was laid off from my previous job due to outsourcing in Aug of 2019. Just in time for COVID Yea!

Throughout 2020 I applied for various jobs in my field that process has continued into 2021, with no positive results.

With over 30 years experience in technology and software testing I’m apparently unemployable. That’s not whining, it’s just a statement of fact.

Way back in the day, I demonstrated that I had a high aptitude for technology and computers. I was literally hired out of a junior college and never went back to finish a degree. That’s on me I admit it.

The fact is most of what was being taught in colleges had zero relevance to what I was actually doing because the colleges were teaching technology that was already 5 -10 years out of date and I consistently found myself on the bleeding edge of new technology.

There was little incentive or indeed value to paying for knowledge that was irrelevant. You see, my pragmatism dictates that knowledge is useful, a piece of paper proving my indebtedness, less so.

New hardware, new software, new languages, new technology was coming out every month. It was all most of us could to just to keep up within the companies we were working for.

While all this was going on, there were the innumerable layoffs, mergers, and acquisitions that made someone like me have a resume that looked like I couldn’t keep a job.

That assumption is completely false, but as time moved on and younger HR people came into the industry, they were applying all their college knowledge to my resume and frankly there was a significant disconnect.

Over time it got harder and harder to find a job, but I persevered and remained gainfully employed.

In my career, I have been a technician (back when we actually repaired machines at a board level), I’ve been a technical instructor (teaching others how machines worked and how to repair them), I’ve been a regional representative (supporting corporate product sales, and solving problems of product implementation and repair), I’ve been a technical support representative (explaining very technical issues to non-technical people to solve their problems), I’ve also worked in retail and warehousing.

All of this experience is useless today because I don’t have a degree. I ask you what function a computer science degree would serve since that degree would include FORTRAN-77 or COBOL, parallel communication, or RS-232? Virtually none of these skills have any relevance today.

To be sure, subsequent technologies that grew out of the aforementioned do have relevance and those technologies would have been learned on the job over the intervening years.

Which is to say, I’m on an equal footing with anybody coming out of college today with the possible exception of those educated in C# or some of the later languages. That being said, the core logic of computer languages is still the same. High level languages compile down to an instruction set that commands the processor to carry out specific actions. That hasn’t changed since computers occupied entire buildings.

The language simply provides a more human readable and therefore easier mechanism to create software. You can still bypass all of those higher languages and write software directly in assembly code. (The instruction set specific each processor. Before you ask, there are still people who earn really good money doing exactly that. Those folks, I respect immensely. Coding at that level is tedious and abstract beyond belief. I’m a little too ADD, or not ADD enough to do anything more than ‘tinker’ in that realm.)

As an aside, the folks that code at that level, are the folks ALL the sexy high level languages rely on. Assembly coders are an interesting and unique bunch. It’s not unusual for them to be socially challenged and challenging to more “normal” people. Assembly coders, deal in absolutes, mathematics, and the purity of silicon switching. Right and Wrong are terms which have no grey areas 2+2 in their world always equals 4. Something works and is therefore “right” or it doesn’t and is therefore “wrong”.

I haven’t met any coders who work in the new field of quantum computing. I would guess that they are a completely different kind of duck. Quantum theory being somewhat less determinant and the underlying math is so far beyond me I can’t begin to visualize it. I’m quite content to take it on faith that they know what they’re doing.

I digress…

The point is, I actually like computers and technology. I like testing it, and verifying that the code does what it’s supposed to do. It’s a puzzle to me. My job in the last decade or two has been to test the software coders create. I’ve mostly looked at this as a cooperative effort where I’m a fresh set of eyes working on code that the actual programmer finished working on weeks before. They’ve moved on to other parts of the project and are being productive. I’m making sure they didn’t miss anything and if they did, I’m the one who captures the errant behavior and shows them how I induced the error.

In this capacity, I’ve learned so much and been blessed to work with some truly amazing people. I earned the nickname “Demon” and wore it proudly. My “Demonic” tests, helped to produce a wide variety of award winning and useful products, of which I am also proud.

Now I’m dealing with having all that taken from me. It was hard enough to deal with human HR folks and get myself, or my resume in front of a hiring manager. Most hiring managers look at my resume and think, “This guy has been around. I’ll bet he knows all kinds of things that I could leverage.” That’s how I’d get hired.

But that was when humans actually read a resume. Now, folks like me are lost in the filters of HR databases. Databases I might add, that are controlled exclusively by the priesthood contained in the bureaucracy of layers of HR.

The hiring manager writes out a list of ideas about the kind of person they’d like to fill a position. HR passes the requirements up level after level of representatives ultimately getting the request to one or two people who actually enter the requirements into a database. However, by the time the data is actually presented to the hiring system the requirements are absolute and glacial.

The hiring manager wrote the initial requirements in a fuzzy way. “This or this would work for the position.” HR enters the requirements as “THIS AND THIS MUST BE PRESENT.”

(C) Scott Adams 2008

That’s how you end up with tons of people out of work, and corporate HR saying there’s no-one available for a particular requisition. This is also how you end up with corporations not capitalizing on workers within their own ranks for internal openings that could be promotions, and why so many workers leave a company after a few years.

I’ve personally witnessed newly minted Baccalaureates applying for open positions within the company they were already working for and being ignored. After 6 months or so they’re tired of being passed over and they go to work for the competition in the position their new degree qualifies them for.

Then I’ve also gotten nasty looks from HR when I laughed in their faces as they lamented that workers had no loyalty and how difficult it was to ramp new hires up to being productive. When asked what I find so funny, I’ve told them exactly why people in my department left. It wasn’t the pay, it wasn’t anything other than HR locking them into a particular position and having no hope of advancement.

As a side note HR people really hate having their noses rubbed in their own poo.

All of this is what workers deal with every day. This is one of the reasons the hiring process is such a royal pain in the ass, for employers and prospective employees.

But along comes Joe Biden… With his imperial decrees about mandated vaccines, and what do we have?

Now we have companies adding “Must Be Vaccinated” to their job openings.

And in HR’s usual moronic fashion, they’re making the vaccine mandate apply even to people who are applying for remote only positions.

So now there’s another hurdle to surmount. It’s not enough that the remote position is on the other side of the country and a prospective employee will never darken their corporate door. A remote only worker cannot transfer any disease to any other employees via a zoom teleconference. There is zero risk or threat of contamination.

Yet, corporations will demand that a worker be vaccinated simply because they can. Their HR departments will fall back on the excuse, “We’re in compliance with The President’s mandate, and the law. After all it’s for your protection…”

Translated: “We’re protecting the corporation from any/all liability. We’re doing our bureaucratic duty…”

So thanks President Biden, you’re batting 1000 at screwing everyone. Good job!

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

The trouble with career politicians is that they’ve never had to consider unintended consequences. That fact coupled with greed and elitism is why politicians always fail.

If good ol Joe keeps up the pace of failure, I suspect that Washington DC will very soon look like The Vatican. The question will be, are the walls keeping the angry population out, or the shitty politicians in?