Month: September 2024

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Exploding Pagers & Radios? Oh My!

Pager explosion 768x439.When I first saw some of the snippets of news talking about exploding pagers, I thought it was yet another hoax from Hezbollah or Hamas, or any of a number of the other savage organizations operating in the Middle East. I thought they were trying yet again to blame Israel for their own screw up.

You know, kind of like when the morons in Gaza blew up their own hospital with malfunctioning rockets aimed at Israel. 

When it was apparent that the story was real, I thought it was brilliant. If members of these terrorist organizations weren’t outright killed, at least they were too maimed to be interested in hurting other people. 

Then I thought, “Hmm, If their pagers were in their front pockets, even if they survived, they weren’t going to be able to reproduce or rape anyone anymore,” and I counted that as a definite win.

Whoever thought of this in the IDF deserves a freaking medal! When we had troops in Afghanistan, I was always a big believer that we should’ve randomly made every cellphone in the country ring just to blow up the IEDs. People always asked, “What about the collateral damage to innocents?” My answer was always how innocent is someone with IEDs being built in the basement?

I know I sound harsh. But these people have, after decades of bullshit, devalued themselves with me to the point of being nothing more than crudely drawn characters in a video game. I no longer see them as human. They’re liars, untrustworthy, despicable, things. They’re crash test dummies now. It’s not hate, it’s complete unconcern and distain. They’ve become the characters in the video game that you shoot in the head to see how many different patterns of blood spatter the game developers programmed into the game.

I hate that we’re still sending money to the Middle East. I’m for letting them wallow in the cesspool of their own making and think they should either prove to the rest of the world that they’re worth something or be allowed to devolve into nothing.

I do find it ironic that a people who want to drag the entire world back to the 5th century are being hurt by 20th and 21st century technology. Perhaps if they walked their own talk, Allah wouldn’t have allowed them to be punished with exploding technology. 

Maybe that’s the lesson we should be teaching them. Stone Age people have no business messing with Western magical juju.

They should stop using cars, planes, busses, phones, computers, electricity, medicine, & indoor plumbing. Perhaps they should return to their old ways as bands of tribesmen tending their flocks. We could facilitate that by making various modern devices explode randomly. Aversion therapy I think it’s called. Make it so they can’t trust any technology so they stay away from it altogether.

It would solve a bunch of problems for them, and the rest of the world.

To fight crime, I honestly wonder if building every single item with a bomb in it would be a great idea.

If the item is stolen, it detonates when it’s reported as stolen. That would shut down the crime in this county and it would only take a few years.

I think it was RoboCop that introduced the idea that car thieves got fried inside the car they were trying to steal. That’s always been an image I liked when it came to thieving of any kind.

If technology were to be expanded to include GPS Coordinates so that the devices themselves knew where they were and then exploded if they were delivered to specific areas of the world, I’ll bet you could eliminate rockets and mortars being stored in schools, hospitals, mosques, and UN facilities in Gaza or Lebanon. 

I’ll admit, low yield explosives blowing Hezbollah’s balls off just tickles the hell out of me.

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Okay, that’s better, the evacuation warnings have been lifted.

Cloud clouds blue sky.Thanks to a lot of firemen who’ve worked their asses off to get the Bridge fire under control, the evacuation warning has ben cancelled for Wrightwood.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the west end of town took a hit. I’m not sure yet how many homes were damaged or destroyed.

It’s easy to say it could have been worse. That’s a true statement, but for those folks who lost their homes, it is worse. Much Worse.

I know, I’ve been through it. You feel disconnected. Your place in the world is gone, and you’re faced with a million tiny decisions all of which feel like you’re making the wrong choice. Loved ones look to you for strength and guidance. It’s easy to forget that this is one of those burdens that is best shared and that together you’ll all get through it.

There are some things that you’ll never fully get over. To this day, a roaring smoky fire in a fireplace can freak me out. That’s something I don’t think I’ll ever get past. But a lot of the other stuff is eventually left by the side of the road you travel.

There was brief rain yesterday that helped was some of the smoky smell out of the air. We could have done with a lot more gentle rain, but I’m not going to complain. For me it’s the sound of rain the roof thats soothing.

Yesterday, I felt pretty crappy most of the day so I appreciated the sound for as long as it lasted. I’m feeling better this morning, which is a good thing because I’ve got chores to do.

The sky is clear and blue this morning. It’s going to be a good day & now I’m off to walk the dog.

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That was pretty easy for something California…

The California Mobile Driver’s License is available in my Apple Wallet app.

From what I gather, the availability may be a gradual phased approach. That might make sense, when you consider the population in California. If everyone was suddenly able to request approval from the DMV it could easily overwhelm the system. Remember the Obamacare website???

Yeah, kinda like that..

I noticed a small announcement, nothing like the big splashy announcement about the Android version, and found that indeed California mDL was listed in the Apple Wallet.

I went through the process and it failed the first time. I was asked to try again later. Several hours later, I tried and the system accepted my request. About 2 hours after that, I got a notification that my ID was available. 

The one thing I don’t like is the way my name is presented. My first name and middle name are spelled out and my last name is omitted entirely from the digital representation. I’m not sure how the information can be presented better.

That being said opening the digital representation allows me to see all the same information that is present on my physical driver’s license. That’s what matters because thats the data that will be transmitted upon request.

In short, the onboarding process was pretty easy. The DMV did their part pretty efficiently and I’m impressed. Good Job, California DMV!

Now let’s see where this is useful. Honestly, the only time I’ve been asked for ID in the past few years is when I was getting a loaner car at the car dealership while my vehicle was being repaired.

I’m curious about this though. Since I have my physical DL, and now have laid claim to the Digital version, does that make my ID easier or more difficult to steal?

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A couple of days ago Governor Newsom signed some free speech bills

These two bills are not the end of the First Amendment. But if they’re allowed to stand, they could begin the erosion of the First Amendment.

I believe these two bills will have a chilling effect on political memes within California and I’m not sure how these will play out in situations where the host servers are not located in California.

The problem I see is that if California is allowed to prosecute memes regardless of where the creator lives, then defacto censorship is likely to extend across the entire nation. I honestly wonder about the longevity of this blog.

I’ve expressed some pretty strong opinions about our political candidates and even created one or two memes that are very unflattering to several presidents, vice presidents, and governors.

Will I be arrested? Will I have my First Amendment rights stripped from me? I’m a little guy, I can’t afford to mount a legal defense against the deep pockets of the State of California.

So until I understand the ramifications of the new laws, I think I’ll not be posting anything of a political nature.

Let’s think about this for a moment.

Due to uncertainty, and fear of unfair prosecution, I’m self censoring. This is exactly what these laws seek to do.

I’ll be reading these laws very carefully and looking at the details of what precisely they’ll prohibit. After I understand the law I’ll return to making political comments. I’m willing to bet there will be other people that just stop talking.

I happen to believe that if people aren’t allowed to speak… okay, bitch, and complain. Then like the boiler with a broken pressure relief valve, the pressure will just build until until what would have been unflattering speech will become something far worse.

The first read of these bills looks like they’re targeting memes, and videos that appear to have the subject political figure saying something they didn’t say. A.K.A. disinformation.

The “Very Fine People Hoax” for example is the one that pops to mind instantly. Biden and Harris have both kept that hoax alive even though it’s been throughly debunked, and disproven. The news media cut the video of Trump in such a way that it appears he said Nazis were very fine people. He didn’t. A shit ton of people still believe he said it.

Mark Twain said, “No amount of evidence will ever convince an Idiot.”

Turns out if the TV says it, It’s gotta be true.

Under these new laws, would California seek to prosecute Joe Biden or Kamala Harris?

Who decides what is dis-information anyway? The Nazi Party had quite a division to make this determination and sent authorities to arrest those believed guilty of creating or spreading dis-information.

Is this the America we want to live in? Do we want to have a Nazi-esq group of jack booted enforcers kicking down doors because some of us forwarded a picture of a dog looking up at the camera with a concerned face., and a caption, “I know we’re visiting family in Springfield, don’t let me out of your sight,” because it was funny.

It doesn’t matter if Haitians are literally eating cats & dogs or if it’s meant as a slur. The humor is visual, and conveyed by the dog’s expression. We as a people, used to be able to see humor without being so sensitive that it traumatized us.

I loved the Washington Post fact check on Trump when he said, “we had hamburgers piled a mile high.” They said, “at 2 inches high, 700 hamburgers wouldn’t be a mile high”

Duh! Really? You don’t say. It was an exaggeration. A figure of speech, no-one in their right mind actually thought Trump had stacked hamburgers 1 mile high.

We used to not have a problem with these sorts of exaggerations either. We as a people used to recognize that our leaders were human. We used to give them a pass on some silliness. We became concerned if the leader repeated the error. Then we’d ask, “Excuse me? What did you say, and what did you actually mean by what you said?” When we asked that question, we expected an answer, plain & simple. We didn’t want or expect a bunch of BS language that said nothing and never provided an answer.

This was back in the day when Americans had a sense of humor.

When was the last time you saw a good comedy routine?

I loved Netflix for their standup comedy. When there were fewer and fewer actually funny programs, I stopped watching Netflix, then I cancelled the subscription.

I digress, well, maybe not. As cancel culture became prevalent, comedians began self censoring. That might have been why the stand-up routines seemed so flat, or stale. If you can’t say what you want without someone being offended and harming your career then you start censoring yourself too.

I’m not sure I like this dark road we’re apparently on.

I don’t appreciate political parties supporting censorship because I look to the history of not only the Nazi party, but other dictators, kings, and potentates.

This is something I believe should concern us all.

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I did something I swore I’d never do again.

Apple iOS18 icon 1505066260.I updated all my Apple machines to the latest IOS, WatchOS, and Mac OS versions yesterday. 

I was perhaps foolish because while my IOS devices were updating. I was working on a project dealing with some photos. However I needed a break, and my laptop battery needed recharging, so I initiated the MacOS update while the computer was recharging.

This worked out perfectly since I couldn’t get the computer into a comfortable location to work on it while it recharged. The update is completely automatic so the computer didn’t need me. An hour or so later I came back to a fully charged battery and a new operating system. Neat!

The iPhone and iPad both took a while to do their thing.

Oddly, it was the Apple Watch that was the most tedious to update.

I use the IOS 18 logo generically. 

I was kind of ambivalent about doing it. But I’m evacuated from my home and honestly… It was sort of a “Klytus, I’m Bored,” situation. 

680full ming the merciless.Fans of the movie “Flash Gordon” will recognize the reference.

Emperor Ming, The Merciless, starts the movie with that line. Beginning the travails of Earth.

For those interested, the upgrades went very smoothly. Now I’m re-evaluating some of the applications that I have subscriptions for. At least a couple of them may be superseded by Apple native versions with similar functionality.

Not that I’m complaining. The less money I have to spend with silly subscriptions the happier I’ll be.

I haven’t noticed any bugs yet, but I’ve only been working with the new systems for less than 24 hours.

My results with upgrading my devices may differ from yours. I tend to be a minimalist when it comes to software on my devices. I’ve only recently begun to wonder if that minimalism has been dictated by where I live more than by choice.

There are very few services like food deliveries, mass transit, or some of the more well known eateries where I am. As a result, I don’t have any of the usual apps because they’re useless in my particular situation.

I suspect that my lack of applications contributes to the generally successful OS upgrades I enjoy.

Were I to live someplace where transit cards, or food delivery, or any of the well known conveniences existed It’s more likely that problems would occur.