Month: May 2022

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I never saw that coming…

As a child growing up in Florida, I remember going to Walt Disney World before they actually had a park.

We drove and drove and then there was a sign that said something like, “Welcome to the Future Disneyworld” There was a place to eat, and a gift shop of course. They also had mockups of the park as the designers envisioned it, and a nice little tour that explained what they were going to do to the area of what was essentially a kind of marshy chunk of land.

For a kid it was pretty neat, even though there weren’t any rides or much of anything else. After all I’d already been to Disney World well before it opened. Several years later, I went to Disney World and mostly remember the monorail.

Even then, large portions of what would become the entire park were still under construction. We were fairly regular visitors then. Each time we went it was a revelation because newer sections of the park opened. I recall ticket books and the like. That’s where the phrase, “E-Ticket Ride” came from.

After we moved out of Florida our visits to Disney World became less frequent and when I got to visit Disneyland in California, I was honestly disappointed. It was so small, noisy, cramped, and I guess due to the scale, it just seemed cheap. Yeah, Disney World spoiled me.

I think in the 35 or so years I’ve been in California, I’ve been to Disneyland maybe 3 times. At least one of those visits was back in the day when corporations could buy the park for an afternoon or evening and have private events. I honestly don’t know if corporations can still do that or if they would these days.

The last time I looked into going to Disneyland or Disney World I quickly dismissed the idea because it had become prohibitively expensive even with discount coupons offered by the company I worked for.

Occasionally, over the years I’ve been invited to join friends at Disneyland and after looking at the prices, politely declined. For that kind of money, I’d rather go to Las Vegas and enjoy more adult shows or entertainment. And so, Disneyland and Disney World dropped off my radar decades ago.

What I’ve been surprised to learn is that Disney World has enjoyed freedom from full taxation, and autonomy in their operations in Florida for 50 years. That kind of benefit had never crossed my mind. Like most folks, I assumed that Disney World had in fact been providing tax revenue to the state of Florida.

I applaud the Florida Legislators for stripping Disney of their tax exempt status. It sends a very clear message. Stay out of politics you’re a business, BE a business!

I suppose in truth they have indirectly paying taxes via sales tax and various tourism taxes from hotels, restaurants, airfares, and car rentals for tourists visiting the state. But no matter how you slice it, Disney had a dang good sweetheart deal. Even if they were paying reduced taxes, over 50 years that has to have added up.

You also have to wonder what the environmental impact of Disney World has on the vast tract of land they occupy. The trash alone must be monumental. Food waste, paper, plastic, human waste, you name it. Typically, Disney parks are immaculately clean. But in the case of Disney World… Where does it all go? What happened to the natural environment in that swath of Florida? Was any of it preserved?

To be fair, in the 60’s undeveloped Florida land was seen as opportunity and in need of development. Then, very little concern was paid to environmental issues. I strongly suspect that had it been practical the Florida Everglades would have been paved over for housing projects.

Disney could have kept its mouth shut about the Florida Parental Rights Bill. Certainly some of the Disney lawyers must have read the bill and informed Disney executives that much of the media hyperbole was not factual.

The Parental Rights Bill wasn’t an open assault on LGBT… lmnop people everywhere.

I do have a concern now that because of the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and over the top dramatics, that there may be an open assault on all LGBT people’s rights.

My concern is not due to the Parental Rights Bill. It’s due to the reaction and conflation of what I think of as the vocal lunatic fringe, the LGBT… lmnop, with the LGB community at large.

That conflation coupled with the “Normal” LGB community’s parroting of whatever the HRC or as OutSpoken puts it, “Gay Inc.” tells them to believe or think, may set gay rights back by decades.

The LGB community fought very hard for a very long time to win the rights that they were guaranteed by The Constitution of the United States. In many cases, those rights could arbitrarily be abridged for no other reason than they were homosexual.

LGB folks have the right to marry, to not face discrimination in housing, their workplace, or any other aspect of their lives. That was what we were fighting for, and we’ve achieved it for the most part.

Will we stand by while a lunatic fringe seizes our voice and uses it to polarize parts of the nation who tolerate us, into our enemies?

The gender fluid, crossdresser activists, should not, and do not speak for all the LGBT community. Nor do virtue signaling corporations.

Let the LGB community speak for ourselves. Generally, we just want to live our lives, love who we love, live quietly, and be left the hell alone.

It’s time for the LGB community, the real LGB community to stand up and roar.

The first and best place to start is roaring at Disney and the “lmnop” fringe by siding with the Florida legislature. Yes, I said side with Florida lawmakers.

Children should not be sexualized in the schools, Full DAMN Stop!
Parents have the responsibility for their children’s behaviors until they’re 18, Parents should also have the right to generally determine what their children are taught in public schools.
Public schools prohibit teaching a religious belief system, it could be argued gender fluidity is simply another belief system.
Disney World should be paying fair taxes and should not enjoy a sweetheart deal if they’re going to enter into politics.
Disney World is an entertainment venue, not a Political Action Committee. If they choose to be a PAC, they shouldn’t be, in effect subsidized by Florida tax payer dollars.

Most LGB people knew there was something different about them from an early age. But at that early age, the difference was irrelevant to them. Something that was an occasionally passing thought, quickly and easily superseded by a sparkly butterfly, or the next baseball game.

The time to address the difference is when the difference becomes an irrefutable issue that occupies a lot of a child’s brainpower. For most, it started at puberty, 3rd graders typically aren’t there yet.

After children have entered puberty, and are questioning all the weird changes in their bodies and minds, I’m all for providing useful education and the knowledge that they’re not alone or abnormal. Until then, let children be children and don’t trouble them with sexuality or pronouns.

I call upon my brothers and sisters in the LGB community to stand up to the insanity. Say “No” to the fringe, remind them that we are inclusive but that a larger majority of us are quite content being the gender we are, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Remind them that it is our work, our voice, and our lived lives they are usurping. Perhaps remind them of the old adage: They’re nothing scarier than a full grown adult queen.

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If the GOP takes the House and Senate will it make any difference?

Unfortunately, I think it won’t.

I had hoped that it would put controls on the Biden Administration but now…

We’ve already seen what “accidentally releasing” a draft opinion on Roe v. Wade has done. I’ll grant you, the protests in the streets aren’t up to the par of our most recent “Summer of love,” but if the Democratic majority is tossed out on their collective asses as they well deserve, I expect the burning and looting to start all over again.

Republicans have been painted as sitting at the right hand of Satan. Conservatives are seen as racist minions of the Devil. Collectively, the two groups have been demonized as White supremacist domestic terrorists.

While to my knowledge, few if any of these assertions are true. There is a remarkably large group of people who believe it to be so.

Perception often becomes reality. Even when gravity doesn’t suddenly switch off on demand.

Those who believe Republicans and conservatives are terrorists, will require little to go back to rioting in the streets. I’ll not be surprised if we see people falling to their knees, rending their clothing, and crying as the election result are made known.

This poor individual. They’ve become the face of over dramatic stupidity.

I’ll be waiting for the tearful pronouncements, “Democracy is dead,” “NAZIS control Congress.”

I suspect that there will be a large number of saintly Democratic Candidates demanding recounts claiming that the demonic Republicans cheated at the ballot boxes or suppressed voters. Even in areas where the elections followed the same rules as the 2020 election.

They’ll trundle out the usual examples. People of Color, the poor, the sick, and you can bet there will be a trans person who won’t be able to vote “authentically as themselves” because their ID doesn’t match the name they give at the polling place.

I’m betting that first day with new members in Congress will be a circus. I haven’t figured out what kind of distraction the far left people within the Democratic Party will come up with, but I’m sure it will be amusingly transparent to everyone except the protestors.

There’s another problem though. Once all the protestors have gone home because it’s too cold to bother, the Republicans may choose not to take strong immediate action to curb the Biden Administration’s obvious screw-ups.

Why?

If I were running the Republican Party, I’d be inclined to let the current administration continue stepping on all the rakes they’ve left on the White House lawn.

They’ve pretty much looked like a bad combination of The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Abbot & Costello, and the Keystone Cops.

Were I thinking about maintaining Republican control for decades I’d let the administration continue to show just how incompetent they are. Let them destroy themselves, allow their policies and decisions to paint them as buffoons. Hey, I can be as much of a bastard as everyone else!

That would effectively gut any Democratic Party candidates for at least the next decade, possibly longer. Mothers who couldn’t feed their babies will have a very long memory. Truckers and commuters who lost their jobs due to gas prices will be unforgiving for a very long time.

Then at the last moment, preferably when Biden or Harris is on their knees before Congress begging for help. Only then does a Republican Congress roll out conservative, fiscally responsible, solutions to the Biden /Harris Administration’s self inflicted wounds.

The Biden / Harris Administration must be destroyed totally and shamed so throughly that none of the participants ever attempt to hold a political office again. The last thing I’d want (were I directing the Republican Party) is to allow the Biden / Harris Administration any room to say anything they did was a success.

Make sure that when the gas prices drop, The Country knows it’s the Conservative Republican Congress’s doing.

When the illegal border crossings stop, and the criminals who have used the open border to bring their crime, trafficking, drugs, and misery, are brought to justice. Make sure the Country knows who it was that took appropriate action.

When the shelves are stocked again, shipments are on time and under budget, driving cost of consumer goods down. Make sure there’s a (C) for Conservative visible on the shelf tags, to remind folks who actually does the job.

Then go after every single one of the former members of Congress who wrought this disaster. For those who lined their pockets from the misery of the American People regardless of their party affiliation… If the evidence supports incarceration, put them in the cells formerly occupied by the prisoners illegally held without due process or speedy trial in the Jan 6th riot.

To be clear, I don’t think the Republican Party or conservatives are saints. But I think they’d do a damn sight better than the current crop of morons running our country.

Sadly, it hinges on the newly elected officials in Congress putting the People first.

As I stated, I’m concerned that instead of taking action, they’ll choose vengeance. In their vengeance, the American People will still be pawns and suffer at the hands of power mad politicians.

I think, the only hope to rein in power mad politicians is the prospect of a very long prison sentence at hard labor, or hangman’s noose, if they’re caught.

When the presidential campaigns start up. I sincerely hope that Donald Trump has the good sense not to run. I don’t think he was a bad President. By comparison to Biden… He was awesome. Then again as Biden stands today, a psychotic monkey with a gun would be preferable.

Yeah I really don’t like Biden and haven’t liked him for as long as I can remember. I think maybe in the early days, he might have at least had his heart in the right place, but that faded very quickly.

I’d like to see pragmatic independent candidates who were unafraid to speak the truth. I’d like them to have a plan, and be willing to share their thoughts with the public during the campaign. Personally I eliminate candidates that appear to be pandering to specific groups.

I pay attention to candidates that have a consistent story, and those that say something like; “Oh, that’s an interesting point. I hadn’t considered that, you may have changed my approach,” to one of their competitors will have my full and undivided attention.

The last election, every candidate said something like, “We have to go totally green in energy production.” But few of them spoke about their vision for getting from where we are, to a green future.

I’d have asked, “Are you proposing using the advances we’ve made in nuclear reactors? Do you propose every roof of every home in America have solar panels? Is your proposal to create wind farms? Create more Hydroelectric power generation? What is your plan to achieve this goal?”

You don’t have to believe in climate change, to implicitly understand the less pollution we generate, the less we have to clean up. The less oil or coal we use, the longer those resources last. Everyone gets that. Even the most adamant Climate Change Denier won’t argue.

What they will argue with, is being told they’re going to have to use technology that isn’t adequate to their needs. For example, having to buy 2 pricey electric tractors to keep up their farm production where they only needed one 20 year old diesel tractor to do the job before.

Folks will balk at being told that fuel prices are going to be taxed into the stratosphere as an incentive to switch to inadequate technologies, by people who don’t have the sense to step around cow shit in a field. (No, Senator… That’s not a mud puddle! Those shoes weren’t expensive were they?)

Trust me, working folks will leap to demonstrably superior tools. Check out any construction site and you’ll find all the workers using battery powered tools all over the place. No cords, same capability, it’s a no brainer. Even nail guns are going battery. It’s nice to not have a compressor and a long assed pneumatic hose when you’re doing finish work.

A local handyman here, deploys solar panels across the hood of his truck to power battery chargers for his tools. He’s not high tech, he’s not a greenie, he’s just pragmatic. He works on vacation or rental homes that often have the power turned off.

The point is, instead of screwing with gas taxes and mandates, a politician should have a broad plan.

They should be able to say, “Yes, I want solar panels on every roof. During the day we should be able to direct excess power from the housing panels to power our schools or offices where we learn and work. Hopefully it would be enough that we could direct oil and coal generated power to industry during the day, increasing our GDP but overall reducing the fossil generated kilowatts those plants have to produce. At night, I’d like to have the ability to redirect oil and coal generated power to light and heat or cool our homes. We’ll use this system until we can bring new safer nuclear plants online. My plan is to transition in a logical, planned way. Along the way, I’m confident we will make new discoveries and those may make the transition faster, and more efficient. To that end, I propose that we fund as much energy research as possible. Not just power generation, but also power storage. I propose that we mine, refine, and produce the raw materials and finished products here in America. This provides jobs and potentially can increase our exports to other nations.“

Every politician should be able to lay out various plans to address the issues of the day.

You don’t have to agree with the plan. But someone who lays out the broad strokes at least has thought about it. They’re not just pandering to activists for votes. The harder step is holding them accountable and calling them out if they haven’t delivered on their plan(s).

I use the same approach when reviewing all candidates.

It’s a given that no one candidate is going to embody every cause of the day. What I’m looking for is a candidate or candidates that at least are bold enough to speak their minds, honest enough to admit they don’t know everything, and smart enough to have thought about the issues.

Sadly, we’ve created a world where one misstep or poorly chosen word can destroy a candidate who would otherwise be the best person for the job. This allows only the pretty, the pandering, the disingenuous, and those driven by greed for money or power to hold office.

I don’t think that’s likely to change anytime soon.

This is why I think the Republican “Red Wave” in the midterms is going to be a big nothing burger.

The new boss will be exactly the same as the old boss.

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For those of you who may be new to this blog…

First, by most accounts I’m nuts!

I don’t see it that way, but then if I was nuts, by definition I wouldn’t see it. So my self assessment is pointless. I’ll leave the reader to decide for themselves.

I’ve been writing for a long time, one way or another. It might have been technical manuals or instructional materials, but I’ve been putting thoughts into words on paper for a long time.

I’ve been blogging for a long time too. This blog had its original incarnation on Blogspot. I moved the blog here when Blogspot started making noise about censoring content.

Hey they’re a free site, and they can run that site anyway they want to. Since I was a free user, I had a choice. I could abide by their new rules, or I could go my own way where I made the rules.

I chose the latter.

I’m a major advocate of free speech and I wanted to be able to post pictures, comments, and thoughts where no-one could come along and tell me to shutup.

People can of course tell me to shutup in comments, they can tell me they think I’m a freak or a monster there as well. But mostly, if I’ve offended someone they usually just don’t come back to this blog. That’s their right and I’m fine with it. I’ll even allow some comments to show up even if they disagree with my opinion.

I am the sole authority and moderator for those comments, and to be clear, If I decide not to publish a comment… There is no appeal.

Re-Reading Opening Volley written in 2011, when I moved to this hosting site and set up this incarnation of the blog, I find that I’m not a whole lot different as a person. Some of my opinions have changed a bit. My approach is a little more moderated (not much,) and I still write what I’m thinking about life, politics, the world, and things that strike me as odd. I am not terribly filtered about what I say or how I say it.

I moved a bunch of older posts and images from the old blog that dated back to 2008 to this new site.

I noticed today that some of the photos from those older blog posts appear to have been unlinked. I remember moving the images and correcting the links at the time, but well a lot has happened since then. I’ll see if I can’t relink them when I have the time or inclination.

I also noticed while scanning the older posts that I was worried about censorship and what would become “Cancel Culture”, 10 years ago.

I could see the pattern of precursor events adding up even then.

People were starting to realize that “Flame Wars” which had previously only happened on sites with limited reach and a defined membership were beginning to explode across the infant social media sites and attracting global attention.

(Flame War – Best described as an escalating battle of words between two individuals over email or chat systems. These battles only ended when both participants were exhausted and devolved into name calling. Neither participant proved their point and usually other observers concluded that both participants were jackasses. See also schoolyard bullies.)

Social Media allowed Flame Wars to have global scope and like minded individuals were able to pile on in support of their preferred combatant. The global scope, finding supporters, combined with smaller secondary flame wars fed even the tiniest of narcissistic egos, turning them into full blown neurosis.

This blog is an exercise in narcissism. Really, who would, or should care about my opinions or thoughts? I could have the same satisfaction and writing practice with a simple journal. But there is a bit of pleasure to be had from seeing readership statistics. There’s a sense of satisfaction reading comments about a particular blog post.

So this blog is me paying my dues to limited narcissism. My hope is that by indulging in a little, I can avoid becoming a Kardashian.

In the 1500 or so posts contained herein are snapshots of life. You’ll find sex, thoughts on the day or year, good things and bad things, commentary from my perspective on what it is to be male and a man in this world.

You might find thoughts that touch you, anger you, please you, or that simply cause you to consider a subject from a different angle.

All of this is objectively good. Writing, like all art should engender a reaction. Mozart or Snoop Dog, Picasso or Rubens, Orwell or Shakespeare, Mapplethorpe  or Adams, they all have their place and affect the observer.

Uh no… I’m not comparing my writing to those folks. I’m not sure that my writing could be printed on their toilet paper.

What I’m saying is that some of what you read here, you may like, some you will not, reading what I write isn’t meant to make anyone into me. It’s offered as a thought put out into the world or the universe and it’s up to the reader to make of it what they will.

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Color me Surprised!

I caught a report from Twitter that Nina Jankowicz resigned as the director of The Ministry Of Truth. A.K.A. The Disinformation Governance Board.

Unfortunately this doesn’t mean that the Disinformation Governance Board is really dead. Perhaps someone should drive a stake through its heart?

Works for me!

Another report quoted The Biden Administration as painting Jankowicz the victim of vicious attacks and mean people, once Ms. Jankowicz’s Tik-Tok videos started making the rounds.

How do they figure that? She made the videos, no-one held a gun to her head, she created and published those videos of her own free will.

That those videos became the subject of derision and bad jokes is just the way the ball bounces.

Apparently, the DHS is also pausing the Disinformation Governance Board in its entirety. I’m not sure I believe that. Then again, I’m not sure exactly what I believe coming out of our government anymore. I’ve read more articles in the past few months that I thought were satire and had a good laugh, only to find out that they were true.

It’s gotten pretty bad when “Truth” coming from government spokespersons reads like a Saturday Night Live skit. (Back when they were actually funny, that is.)

If they did pause the Disinformation Governance Board or better yet are going to kill it altogether I can only say praise God and pass the ammunition!

Now if we can only get the Department of Homeland Security to disband. While we start cleaning up the various messes at the DOJ, FBI, and all the other alphabet agencies.

I know that sounds like a conspiracy theory but I can’t help it. In the past 5 or 6 years the DOJ and FBI have made some very questionable decisions and those decisions haven’t reinforced my belief in their objectivity or pursuit of actual justice.

I think something is very wrong in those agencies and wonder if they shouldn’t be revamped and brought back to their original mission. The real question is what part of the government is the right one to do that?

Who would the people trust?

[Somewhere deep in the bowels of Washington DC government… There’s someone contemplating that question. Any minute they’ll decide to create a Department of Public Trust..]

I’m going back to watching porn.

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I’ll hand it to them, it’s clever…

When I upgraded my OS to Apple’s most recent offering I noticed there were some 3rd party applications that weren’t compatible.

I figured, “No Problem,” especially for the apps in question. Several of them had gone to a subscription model that was too expensive given that I used those apps so rarely. I terminated the subscriptions and then deleted the applications. To be fair, some of these applications were “free” and when I looked at the number of times I’d used them over the past 6. months I concluded that they just weren’t worth the space on my disk.

Typically on a Mac the user drags the application to the trash and that’s the end of it.

Not so with these apps.

In one case I found there was an uninstaller that had to be downloaded which supposedly cleaned the application from the computer. At least in theory…

In reality, it did remove the plugins to messaging and email, but notably there was a stand-alone updater that was still running every time the computer booted up. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem but this updater would then keep running about every 10 seconds and wouldn’t stop.

The problem was that there was no application to update and I suspect that confused the updater. It wasn’t error trapped in a way that would shut it down if it couldn’t determine what version was on the computer and what version was needed.

Just sloppy programming…

Then there were the MacPaw applications. Interesting thing about them was that even though I used their signature application, to delete all their applications. They still left traces and update utilities spattered all over my system.

It’s been a month and I’m still finding their crap in odd places. They too seem to be trying to update non-existing applications and they also appeared to get caught in an endless update loop.

For a signature application that bills itself as a way to make your Mac fast and efficient they sure screwed my system after checking with me several times asking if I really wanted to delete their product. Yes, MacPaw… I really, really, really, wanted to delete your product.

Dropbox is another one that left shit and at least 2 updaters running constantly. It’s also another one where I’m still finding settings, preferences, databases, and god knows what in weird places all over the system. The best one from them that I found was some leftover application that was supposed to ask if you wanted to subscribe to their service. I never saw the question, so I guess that since I used Dropbox so infrequently it hadn’t ever been triggered.

Open PGP did the same thing and this was even after using their deletion routine. They’re another subscription app, I used to use them a lot but fewer and fewer people use them now and even just signing an email always resulted in having to explain that, “No the email message isn’t damaged, no it’s not a hack, no it’s not a virus,” So it got to the point that I wasn’t encrypting anything and I stopped signing anything too. So why pay the subscription fee?

The really nasty thing about it is that all of these remnants would run, then fail, terminate, then run again.

The practical upshot is that they wouldn’t show up on the normal Apple monitoring application as “Heavy” power users. In the moments that they were running, they weren’t heavy power users. But cumulatively they reduced my battery life to about 2 hours from 6 or 7.

Thanks! I really appreciate that!

They were also running the CPU hard enough that my normally cool perfectly functional computer was running very warm.

Again Thanks, guys!

As I was combing through log files noting huge runs of file not found errors, and then backtracking those to the calling application stuffed in weird directories all over the computer it dawned on me.

“If I simply reloaded all these apps, the problem would go away.”

That’s when I began to wonder if this was bullshit by design.

If you think about it, it would be a very clever way to bring customers back and keep them. Most folks would look at the effect and assume that they had to keep the application because they couldn’t effectively remove it and it’s easier to sacrifice some disk space and perhaps pay for a subscription you never use than to have your computer only give you one third of its normal battery life.

Maybe I was being too kind, it’s not sloppy programming… It’s programming designed to trap a customer into paying protection. Just like the old mafia days in Chicago.

But it gets better…

If you didn’t want to dig through the million or so files and directories to manually delete the remnants.

You could flush the operating system format the disk, and restore your system…

NOPE!

Because all these crappy files and ghost utilities would just be restored and you’d have gone through the whole exercise for absolutely nothing except wasting your time.

The only way to remove all these wasteful applications without spending your day in Terminal typing commands, is to format the disk, reload the operating system and then reload all of the applications you want to keep, from their original sources.

Then you have to move all your documents, music, photos, etc from a known good backup.

Basically, it’s a compete rebuild of your system from scratch. Because in effect these application programmers have corrupted your backups too.

Super NOT COOL!

I will not even hazard a guess as to why Bit Defender (An anti virus program) keeps creating a Google Directory, With a Chrome subdirectory and some kind of json file in at least 2 places.Most people regard Google as evil, and Chrome as a security threat.

Although looking at the file, it may be that they’re using the json file as a delivery mechanism for virus updates. Nonetheless, I work really hard to not have Google stuff of any kind on my devices. I don’t appreciate an antivirus program loading anything through Google or creating Google shit on my system.

Then there’s Microsoft Office. I don’t use OneDrive, I don’t use the Microsoft suite. I use Word and Excel. I’ve deleted the Microsoft applications that I don’t use (PowerPoint, OutlookMail, OneNote etc). They’re bloated applications that take more than a Gigabyte each. I personally find that kind of code bloat obscene. Especially so, since I remember when Word fit on a 720K floppy disk in its entirety.

That being said, all over my Mac are bits and pieces of OneDrive, and the older version SKyDrive. Microsoft, you could at least clean up after yourselves when you update your application names.

The Microsoft subscription is another one that I’m strongly considering cancelling. Apple’s Pages does just as nice a job. It can even read and write Word Files. The same is true of Apple’s Numbers. Both are free and come with the dang operating system.

There are times more often than not when I just use a text editor not a word processor to flesh out blog posts or emails. The resulting output file is clean with no application specific formatting.

I guess that sounds like I’m “retro” but the KISS principal still applies. BBEdit or Sublime do a bang up job, even if I choose to embed formatting in a document.

Then there’s this little oddity. As I’ve been manually cutting the remnants of deleted applications out of my system. I’ve recovered almost 4 Gigabytes of storage. Really? 4 GB in useless bullshit that should have been purged when I removed the applications but wasn’t?

Thanks again programmers!

I’ve got a 1 Terabyte drive in my computer. I’m not hurting for space. But damn, just because storage densities have gone through the roof (remember when 20 megabytes was huge,) it doesn’t mean that programmers have a license to burn space for no good reason.

What ever happened to clean, compact, elegant code? Do programmers even know how to use CASE or reusable subroutines anymore?

Humans flew to the moon and back on 4K of RAM. The Shuttle only had 16K of RAM. I think they had near line storage made out of static column RAM, (not hard disks due to vibration) that was measured in Kilobytes as well. RAM was super expensive, and RAM that could take the radiation was… Astronomically expensive.

Honestly, I miss the my days working with programmers who would engage in competitive coding to see who could write the smallest program to do the job.

Ah well, those days are gone.

My immediate problem is to go back through the logs to see if I missed any other “Ghost” programs and delete them then see what effect I’ve had on my battery life.

There’s supposed to be an OS update soon. I may wait for that in case Apple screwed up and is running some processes too hard. If I’m still having problems I’ll probably go nuclear on my system and do a complete rebuild.

What I can say is that nothing from MacPaw, Open PGP, DropBox, and only select Microsoft programs will find a home on my machine.

I think I’ll also take a directory snapshot of the OS before I load anything. I’ll store that on my server and if this happens again, I’ll have a guide to assist in figuring out what can be deleted.

Maybe I’ll write a Python Script that will show me just the differences and paths between the original install and the point at which I’m trying to troubleshoot. Huh… I wonder if the recovery partition has a complete OS version. Maybe I could use that as a template…

Hi, this is Siri. The writer of this blog has just wandered off into the digital woodland. Thank you for reading. Good Night.