Month: December 2023

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Hmm, is this real or not…

I can’t imagine what kind of device Manuel might be.

I would have ignored this entirely except that it showed up in an email from LinkedIn. It was just too emblematic of the job search market to pass up.

I thought LinkedIn was supposed to be vetting their job listings. It looks like USTech is a real company, but I can’t locate this position on their web site.

So either it’s another SPAM job listing (All too common on LinkedIn) or it’s an old position that’s been filled so LinkedIn is just presenting it to waste the job seeker’s time.

I think it’s time to ask this simple question.

Is it time to abandon LinkedIn?

What does it really provide as far as service? The site has degraded to nothing more than a FaceBook clone.

Honestly, I can’t read more than a few of the posts before getting really bored. 

The years I was completely off of LinkedIn I got a lot less SPAM. Less than a week after rejoining LinkedIn, my SPAM levels tripled.

I only rejoined LinkedIn because a completely useless HR consultant told an entire class of people it was absolutely necessary to have social media and LinkedIn. This consultant supposedly walked everyone through the self marketing process. Social media presence, LinkedIn profiles, resumes, etc. Except they didn’t.

I can say, for me sitting in those classes was absolutely useless. I can’t say for certain that anyone benefitted, and the consulting firm doesn’t appear to be in business today. 

Our jobs, indeed most of our department was being offshored and the company had to wave its hands for the government, to make it look like they were doing something to assist those of us being laid off.

The majority of us who’d been through the layoff process before, knew within 5 minutes that these HR Consulting folks were bogus. These folks had the fundamentals of the layoff process incorrect and didn’t know that when a company lays off quantities of people above a certain threshold there’s government involvement and reporting.

They were getting paid likely an obscene amount of money but their curriculum was obviously a hack job and not one of them had ever taught a class or gotten up to speak  in front of a group of people. Yes, it was that obvious. Especially since I had stood up teaching classes to technical folks earlier in my career.

I’ve wondered what it would take for me to be one of the presenters for a corporation that does the “Employment Transitions and Assistance Classes” By the way, I claim that name, and the abbreviation ETAC as my own.

I’m sure I could put together a class that dealt with Social media (What to delete!) LinkedIn and resume writing. I’m also sure that I could put together something useful to the employees facing the end of their jobs. God knows I’ve been through the layoff process enough to have gained some useful experience.

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One of those things that you don’t think about unless…

So I fired up Word. Yeah, after Microsoft being asses in the summer and my cancellation of the subscription. I waited a week or two then created another subscription that was for me only.

I don’t know why the idiots at Microsoft make it so difficult to change your subscription from Family, to Individual.

Nonetheless, I was able to signup using a different email address. If you try to use the email that you cancelled, Microsoft will only allow you to buy the PREVIOUS SUBSCRIPTION.

You know, the one you were trying to alter… 

Talking to Microsoft gets you to someone in India who is completely unhelpful and honestly… a bit obnoxious.

Anyhow, I fired up Word to type a letter. It wasn’t anything special but I don’t like the default font that came up in the blank document. Not really thinking about it, I pulled the font list down and was immediately presented with hundreds of fonts. 

A large number of those fonts were from languages that I don’t speak. I was sitting here thinking I don’t need Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, or Tagalog. I figured I’d leave one representative example of these languages in the event that some email or webpage I stumbled upon used them. But I saw no need to have 10 variations of each installed on my system.

That’s when I found that I could delete pretty much anything I wanted to delete, except Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, or Tagalog. I thought at first that I could delete any European character set, but couldn’t delete anything else. I’ve found that I can’t delete a few European character sets. The restriction doesn’t seem anywhere as broad as it is for non-European sets.

I found the font I was looking for and typed my letter.

As I was typing I began to wonder and remember there was a time when you’d have English (because you purchased your computer in the US. If you wanted additional languages you purchased the corresponding character sets and installed them.

My early personal systems had only European characters. Because I worked in the printing and font industry, I’d added Greek, Cyrillic, and Hebrew. 

I don’t think I ever had more than 20 or 30 fonts on my system. Now there are 387 fonts! Fully 1/3 of those fonts are fonts to languages I don’t read and rarely see.

Fonts themselves aren’t all that large, but having all these fonts makes my Font Dropdown in Word and other applications a pain in the ass to utilize.

You’d think deletion or deactivation would be an option. Apparently I’m terribly misinformed.

Do I really need Urdu?

I have been able to deactivate a large number of the foreign fonts. Don’t get me wrong, some of the Kanji fonts and Arabic fonts are beautiful to look at, but without the ability to read or write in those languages the fonts are simply in the way.

I suppose I’m a minimalist when it comes to computers, and phones. I tend to only have stuff on my technology that is used frequently. I like being able to see exactly what I”m looking for and not have to weed through a ton of distracting crap.

(See, “some of the Kanji fonts are beautiful…”) that’s how you know I got lost just trying to find a favorite Adobe font, to type my letter.

Being someone who may well be a legitimate ADHD person, I actively try to minimize distractions. If I don’t, I never get anything done. I’ll get started on a project, but if there are too many distractions I’m going to wander off into the weeds and never get back to the project I was working on. 

This is especially true if I’m stirred up emotionally about something.

This has made me wonder if our headlong rush into preserving or mandating diversity. As in the case of the fonts on my computer doesn’t inadvertently do a couple of things. 

1) We forget that those among the population who are legitimately ADHD aren’t being served at all by putting distractions in their way. ADHD folks like diversity and bright shiny objects, but too much stimulation causes us to be completely unproductive because we like chasing things down rabbit holes… Until we’re bored, or something else catches our attention. 

2) Aren’t we diminishing everyone’s freedom of choice when we force diversity upon them. I’m not talking about people here. You’ll always run across different people. But when even our technology, A.K.A. our tools have an enforced DEI can you really say that we own the tools? If something is mine, then I should be allowed to customize and configure that tool exactly the way I want it. I shouldn’t have to wade through things I don’t want just to get to the things I do. In this case 55 fonts that serve no purpose and that I’ll never use to find the one font that I purchased and installed because I prefer it.

By attempting to include everyone, we have excluded whole groups of folks “On the Spectrum” because we’re throwing bright shiny objects, metaphorically, in their path.

Perhaps we should get back to allowing someone to select what they want or need when they’re installing an operating system.

I wouldn’t mind spending 10 minutes answering configuration questions about my computer when I’m upgrading or installing an operating system.

What language(s) do you speak?

Do you want to install only character sets compatible with those languages?

Do you want to install Emojis, and special graphical character sets such as Dingbats?

Are there any other languages or character sets you’d like to install such as Math symbols, or Map symbols?

You can add additional fonts or languages from the control panel later is you desire.

Letter typed, I spent some time trying to figure out if I was missing something in turning fonts on or off. That led me to wondering what other fonts I could buy, which led me to wandering through font catalogs and coming to the conclusion that I didn’t really want to spend money on fonts right now. 

Which led me to updating my Desktop publishing  and Graphics software. Then I wandered digitally into a couple of rabbit holes before I remembered that I needed to print an envelope to go with the letter I’d finished a couple of hours ago. That required updating the laser printer driver, and so on…

Which is how I lose many hours just trying to do the simplest of things. And now it’s time for lunch.

How’s your day progressing?

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Whoopedy Fucking Doo! Yeah, this only means the Firewall is between Joe and Hunter is complete.

In the more bread and circuses column. There’s this headline.

Hunter Biden Indicted on Nine Tax-Related Charges, Three Felonies

We all know this is a big assed nothing burger. We all know Hunter isn’t going to jail, and that unlike the rest of us someone will be able to write a check for him. He’ll be snorting coke and dancing at the nearest Hollywood donor party the same day he pleads guilty and promises on a stack of bibles it will never happen again…

The Democrats will use this to say, “See we don’t have two tiered justice, and Republicans going after poor Hunter was nothing more than a witch hunt. Trump meanwhile will be found guilty of conducting normal real estate business practices in New York, that harmed nobody.”

The Democrat operatives at CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, & ABC will completely obfuscate the evidence from the IRS, and every other source. In the end they’ll paint it as a mean trick the Evil Republican Party used to try to get at Joe Biden.

The bitches on The View will probably screech, “Hunter is a victim, all those hookers and blow were forced on him and his laptops were given to him, then later stolen, so embarrassing videos would come to light. It’s a Russian or Republican plot!”

As to the Felonies… Hunter has already admitted to one of them and yet… NO Punishment. I doubt he’ll have any consequences from the remaining felonies. 

All this means is that the people handling Joe are confident that they’ll be able to shield Joe from the fallout for the remainder of his Presidency. It also means that Joe may not be the nominee. I suspect both are to some extent true.

I expect Joe to “Decide” to step aside. By serving up Hunter, he has a plausible excuse to “Decide to spend more time with his family.” He can back out of the campaign without losing face and still be the “dedicated family man,” a character deserving of compassion and privacy.

That last one is the biggy. They’ll finally admit that Joe’s not all there. Then the powers that be will call for compassion and kindness in this difficult time. They’ll say, “clearly he’s in no shape to stand trial.” If necessary, the Biden family will burn Hunter to the ground as the “Ringleader” for any wrongdoing and the rest of the Biden Clan will walk away with the cash. Hunter’s past indiscretions will be spun to make a believable illusion that coked out of his mind, “The Smartest guy Joe every knew,” was making business deals while measuring coke and having his knob polished.

Any questions, or charges leveled at the Biden’s by Republicans or law enforcement will be spun as pointless and cruel. So, all the corruption will just be swept under the carpet.

All of this is predicated on us not having World War III.

If we do end up in WWIII. Then it will all be moot. Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past the Biden’s to get us into a major conflict to cover their criminal activities. If the US is gearing up for War, we’re not going to care about the Biden’s. We’re going to want a strong leader that other nations respect and who is just crazy enough to make other nations wonder, “How crazy is this President? Would he Nuke us for the hell of it?”

Through it all, I do feel a little sorry for Hunter. I honestly don’t think he had a chance. He is exactly what his father and family made him and when they’re done with him, (which may be real soon,) they’ll throw him to the wolves and never look back. Let’s face it everything we’ve seen with the Biden’s could have been scripted by Machiavelli. I’m not sure the Biden’s get to the standard of the Borgias.

Enjoy your bread and the circus. I pray we don’t see Joe Biden naked on the balcony of The White House playing a fiddle.