Author: wwducat

About: Writer, Technology guy, Photographer, Possibly EX-Software QA Engineer, Worker Bee. Interests: SCUBA, Working out, Friends, New Views, New Vistas, Photography
Posted on

Patience has paid off.

NewImage

After many days of tweaking and patiently letting my computer do whatever the hell it needed to do, I now have an alternate backup.

Not only do I have an alternate backup, It’s working very nicely and for the time being all is peaceful in computer land here.

Getting the backup took days (Still scratching my head over that one…) But now the incrementals are quick, efficient, and on a par with the TimeCapsule. Even though they’re being made on a Western Digital NAS

I’m over the hassle for the time being. I’ll probably do something like put the Time Capsule into maintenance mode when I’ve got nothing better to do. For the time being I’m just going to take a breather. None of the other computers backing up on the TimeCapsule seem to be having problems. I can only assume the problem I was having is some kind of corruption in the backup for my machine alone.

I can’t stress how much everyone needs to have a backup of their computers or at least their data. That is one thing I can say Apple has done mostly right, The Apple backup system in it’s various iterations has saved my behind on a number of occasions. 

Were it not for the automated system I can’t tell you how many times I’d have been lamenting over losing all the stuff on various computers.

Whatever you do to back your system up, be consistent about it.

DAMN! 

As I was sitting here typing I pondered the question about why the WD drive was so slow. It occurred to me that I have several really fast ethernet ports on the back of my TimeCapsule. Those ports while nice, had never really mattered all that much because the rest of the devices in the network are incapable of capitalizing on their speed.

I wondered what speed if the WD drive? Sure enough, it can capitalize on the additional speed so I took a break from writing this blog and did a little reconfiguration. Now time will tell if I notice the different in access speed. 

When I plugged the WD in a year or so ago after the Buffalo drive died I just used the same port and really didn’t think about it. I was so focused on saving what data I could save I just wanted a drive that was online. In retrospect I probably should have given a little more thought to the situation.

Yet another time when I’m doing the Homer Simpson “D’OH”

Now before my non technical readers start bleeding from their eyes I’m going to change the subject.

OK I’m going to break yet another taboo… Gun Control!!!

I don’t know how many of you watch Piers Morgan… ( I don’t as a rule, I think he’s a pompous ass and wish that CNN would just shut him down.)

However, poor Piers has really been taking it on the nose the past few weeks.

Most recently he was pretty much outclassed, out thought, and out maneuvered by a young Attorney, Author, and supporter of the 2nd amendment named Ben Shapiro.

 You can view the interview here 

http://youtu.be/hJ8jcsaDK1k

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ8jcsaDK1k]

I like what Mr Shapiro has to say. He’s asking for a logical description of gun control. His point that relatively few murders are committed with AR type weapons is interesting and that if you’re going to ban weapons to be consistent you really should ban handguns. They are, after all used far more often in crimes of violence than assault weapons.

It’s an interesting point and In general I agree with him.

However I believe that banning handguns in this country is a lost cause. Therefore President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the congress are choosing a weapon to “Ban” as nothing more than simple theater.

It’s a way for the government to look like they care, and they’re doing something.

They may get assault weapons banned. Then what? 

Automatic pistols are sold in California with 10 round magazines

Depending on how good a shot you are that single magazine represents 10 people dead. I’ve posted previously that the people most likely to carry out the kind of insane crimes we’ve seen in recent history are planners. They think long and hard about what they’re going to do, how they’re going to do it, and they practice.

Remember Anders Breivik in Oslo? There’s evidence suggesting that he tested his bombs on a farm outside the city limits, prior to his rampage in 2011. 

Given the proposition that these people practice their murderous plans beforehand, nothing short of a complete ban on all weapons is going to stop the violence.

But then do you really think the violence will stop?

Even if by some feat of draconian socialist government control you manage to remove all firearms from this country. If someone wants to kill another person or multiple people… explosives, incendiary  devices, bows and arrows will do the same job just fine.

So are you going to outlaw gasoline? How about basic chemistry? Gunpowder is a really simple compound to make. I’ll grant you, it wouldn’t be high yield, but the Chinese were using gunpowder in explosives 1000 years ago. And the basic recipe can be found in a StarTrek episode.

Oh wait… One of the oldest human traditions is the good old fashioned club, There goes baseball bats and forget about Cricket bats. OH wait I guess we’ll need to cut down all the trees.

My point is this, a reasonably intelligent NUTJOB who wants to make a statement, or commit suicide by cop will find a way to express their violence or make their point.

The sad part is that a lot of these people are reasonably intelligent.

They may be crazy but they’re not stupid, unlike our politicians and TV pundits.

Posted on

Paraprosdokian Of the Week

A Friend sent me a list of these. I thought it would be fun to share them.

Paraprosdokians are phrases or sentences that lead us down the garden path to an unexpected ending.

When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.

Posted on

As much as I’ve bashed EDD it’s only fair …

That I report when EDD actually does something correctly.

I spoke with an EDD representative yesterday who actually asked reasonable questions.

This was a first!

This lady asked what I’d done as a career.

I told her that I’d been a software Quality Assurance person for about 30 years.

She asked me why I’d taken a Bartending class. 

I told her because I couldn’t get the time of day in my previous career and that It seemed a way to get immediate employment. After all good times and bad… people drink!

She noted that this was quite a departure but she saw my point.

She didn’t comment on  my statement that High technology businesses were offshoring or leaving California at an alarming rate.

She did that pause thing that you hear when people are censoring themselves. I don’t know if that was agreement or not but it was interesting.

This lady was a real person. She wasn’t one of those creepy automatons who barely speak English and strain my universal translator to the breaking point.

She was actually a nice person.

NewImage

It was kind of funny, because she told me that this class didnt’ qualify for California Training reimbursement. 

I told her I wasn’t trying for any reimbursement, I was simply reporting that since I was sitting in class 10 hours a day I obviously wasn’t out interviewing. I’d answered the question on the EDD forms honestly.

She paused again… Then chuckled and said, “I see.”

She asked, “If you’d been offered a job during that week would you have dropped the class?”

I said I’d have accepted the job as a priority. But, I’d have gone to the folks running the school and asked if I could attend nights and finished the class.

She chuckles again and says “I’m clearing this, we’re going to get you caught up.”

I was shocked. I thought there were no EDD benefits left so now I’m curious about what the they’re doing. We’ll see when the next batch of paperwork comes through. Heck if all I have to do is fill out paper work and they’ll keep me in the system I’ll fill out the paperwork.

It was nice to deal with a real person at the EDD at least once. 

#EDDNOTFAIL

 

Posted on

Sandy Hook was a tragedy but lets think shall we?

NewImage

Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner has proposed that California impose a waiting period on bullet sales.

Her sound bite on TV last night was so insane I thought my head would explode.

Most gun owners always keep a supply of ammunition around. Oh and for your information… 200, 250, 500, even 2000 rounds of ammunition isn’t that much, despite the mock breathless shocked reporting of the talking heads on CNN.

At a shooting match, you go through 250 rounds. On the shooting range you can easily fire 300 rounds. Why? because you’re practicing!

How many golf balls do you hit at the driving range? How many baseballs do you hit in a batting cage?

NewImage

If you’re practicing to hit a target, you use a lot of bullets, just like any other situation where practice improves skill.

This “Lawmaker” obviously doesn’t know what the term “Pre-Meditated” means.

NO, It doesn’t mean that you meditate seeking karmic balance before you get your gun and go shoot up a school. 

It means that you plan well in advance your actions. 

That being said a waiting or cool down period before you can purchase ammunition is pointless.

NewImage

Do you think that James Holmes wasn’t planning?

Lets see, allegedly he had guns and ammunition in his car along with body armor. He didn’t stop at the army surplus store and buy that stuff on the way to the theater.

Holmes also took the time to boobytrap his apartment and was probably not intending to come back but was trying to take out additional fire and law enforcement officers that he knew would come to investigate his residence.

So Ms. Skinner what kind of waiting period do you think you’d like to impose? A month? 6 months? A year? 

No it’s pretty obvious that you’re trying to impose and eternal ban on bullets followed by an eternal ban on guns.

The last time a bullet ban was proposed environmental protection was the vehicle. After all we don’t want lead in the environment do we?

NewImage

Adam Lanza didn’t stop at “bullets r us” on the way to the Sandy Hook school. He had all the ammo he needed because it was in the gun cabinet.

The problem is that people are trying to assign meaning and rationality to the insane actions of people that are… pardon my technical terms here, crazy as fucking hell.

There is no logic, no sense, no reason behind these events. These individuals were / are out of their minds.

I for one am sick and tired of everything being tied back to the Sandy Hook tragedy and the way that tragedy is being used to forward the agenda of the gun control lobby.

I personally find it obscene that the gun control lobby, our liberal politicians, and the media are using the murders of children to push their agenda forward.

Let’s stop engaging in knee jerk reactions. Let’s look at these tragedies in the harsh light of reality.

Crazy people, do crazy shit. There’s nothing more complicated about it than that. If we want to live in a free society we accept that there will be a certain element of risk.

A question I’d like to see answered is this.

Why is it that when I was growing up no-one would even have thought about shooting up a theater or even more unthinkable a school. What has changed in the fundamental fabric of our society that allows what was once unthinkable, to be manifested in reality?

That’s what we need to identify and fix.