Category: Rants

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Diversity? Oh Really!

Brain

Sorry, just read another article about the lack of “Diversity” in technology and realized I am totally screwed! Apparently, I’ve also been way ahead of the curve because for years. To me, my coworkers have been nothing more that their intellect. I think the ultimate diversity, is for all of us to be considered nothing more than a brain.

Here is the inevitable rant!

The lack of diversity in Tech means more DIVERSITY is being demanded even though some of the “Diverse” workers may have been given their degrees as a quota filling move.  Like the Dr. from MIT (yes… a real PHD from MIT) who was my boss. That idiot couldn’t read simple sentences, much less run a department.

PinkynTheBrain

All of us used to write memos that read like Dick & Jane books.

“See the network plug”
“The network plug is different from the phone plug”
“Forcing the network plug into the phone jack is bad, it makes the network sad”
“See Sparky run…”

Of course writing like that takes time and thought so we’d get dinged on productivity.

If we didn’t write memos then we had to talk in person and that meant what should have been a 2 minute conversation ended up being an hour long conversation as we explained repeatedly the fundamental concepts of digital communications in an “adverse” environment. The idiot really had trouble understanding why you didn’t want to run ethernet cables between moving vehicles. Truly this person was the poster child for “The Peter Principal”.

BTW the issues weren’t because of being  black, they were because of stupidity, and an artificial quota system which presented a pass based on skin color instead of having the student learn things and work for the degree(s).

truth

The lady who taught me UNIX was also a graduate from MIT and she was freakin brilliant. She spoke all kinds of languages, had an undergraduate degree in physics, and graduate degrees in Computer Science and AI.

She was tough to deal with but we got along. I think it’s because when we were at work it was only about the truth of the data, the validity of the software, and personalities or feelings didn’t matter. She’s what I thought all MIT folks were like, until I met my former boss and the fantasy was shattered.

I know if I was hiring now, I’d be suspicious of folks and their degrees. That’s what happens when you devalue an entire educational system to bring “Equality” based on anything other that intellect.

My suspicion  is evidenced by the number of pre-interview “Tests” that hiring companies want you to take.

Einstein

Yeah, they want to test you on your knowledge before you ever speak to anyone outside of the HR department.  It’s annoying, but I get it. Degrees are like toilet paper now. Very expensive toilet paper, but toilet paper nonetheless. Everyone has one and all the degree means anymore is that you’re in debt and sat through X years in an institute of “Higher Learning,” and have a mountain of debt.

There are some very good professors who do really care about facts, and whether the student has retained the facts or not. These professors are also interested in teaching and verifying that the students can use the “facts” in new ways.

But sadly these professors are retiring at an alarming pace and many of them are glad to be doing so. The helicopter parents haven’t gone away, they’re simply plaguing a new set of educators, except now they’re holding college professors accountable for little Johnny not doing the work.

Turns out the critics & educators of 50 years ago were right, things do slip to the lowest common denominator, not the other way around.

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Thank God I didn’t see this live

There are times when you just have to appreciate the bluntness of a military man.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters didn’t mince words Monday when asked about President Obama’s strategy on tackling and destroying ISIS — and was suspended by Fox News for it.
– via Guns.com

When I watched the video and Lt. Col Peters delivered his comment I’m very glad that I wasn’t eating or drinking anything. I’d have choked to death!

“Look, Mr. President we’re not afraid we’re angry, we’re pissed off, we’re furious,” Peters said. “We want you to react, we want you to do something. You’re afraid. I mean this guy is such a total pussy, its stunning. And, you know, we want — we the people, the American people, whom he does not know in any intimate sort of manner, we want action. We want action against Islamic State and then — then, when the president is telling us he is going to destroy ISIS.”
– via Guns.com

Here is the video, Enjoy it.

https://youtu.be/ARkeDYFtDMk
I found it interesting that the Fox Anchor didn’t stop the Lt Col. until the Lt. Col. called the people in Ferguson, MO “Thugs”.

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OH Shut the hell up! Shut the hell up!

TankGirl

Whiney, Humorless, Self Important, spoiled little college students, I’m personally sick of your shit. 

I’m fairly sure the rest of the nation and the entire fucking planet is sick of your shit. If they’re not now, they soon will be.

You’re bullies, & you know it…

Pretty damn soon someone is going to push back against your childish whining and complaining. Personally, I can hardly wait. Be thankful it’s not going to be someone like Tank Girl

Before that happens and a bunch of innocent people get hurt, why don’t you take this moment to get your asses back into classes, (which some of us never had the money or opportunity to attend because we were living hand to mouth,) and let the rest of your fellow students get back to concentrating on getting what they can out of their education.

If college is so demeaning, dehumanizing, and racially charged that you can’t see anything except racist overtones — perhaps you should go home!  That way you can stop supporting the corporate, sexist, racist, patriarchal, system that is keeping you down.  

OH? You don’t want to do that? You want doctors of color? You want more diversity in the administration? You demand to be able to deprive someone of their hard earned career because of the color of their skin? You want inclusiveness WHILE you’re telling the white students that you’ve forced to march in your cause, to leave your safe spaces?

Well fuck you!

You whiney, weak willed, marginally educated, loads your mommas shoulda swallowed, need to realize nobody hands the rest of us anything!

We have to pay for it. We have to keep paying OR we’re out of the fucking street homeless and hungry while you little cum stains are bitching about dead people whose visage or name offends you because of something the said or did 100 years ago or their name is on the side of a building or a street name or whatever. And you do this from the safety of a warm dorm when other people from your own communities go to bed in the cold, in cardboard boxes, hungry and alone.

If you were the real social justice warriors that you’d like to paint yourself as you would be organizing protests about lack of services for the homeless, the poor, the mentally ill, hungry children in this country, and any of a long list of ills that happen every day.

You’d be baking cookies and dinners and you’d be delivering those meals to the hungry from the backs of your Priuses.

You’d be screaming bloody murder about lack of medical care for those who are truly at risk, rather than the color of the doctor providing the medical care, at the campus clinic.

(I honestly find it hard to believe that all the doctors at a college clinic are white. I suspect there’s a fair mix of Indian, Middle Eastern, and Latino caregivers. All you have to do is open a phone book to the M.D. section and you’ll see a demographic that is anything but white only. So I call bullshit on the Occidental students claiming they need doctors of color. Which by the way is about as racist as me complaining about how tough it is to find a white male doctor.)

You’d be asking questions and making suggestions instead of demands.

If you were demanding anything, it should be answers about why drug companies feel justified cranking the cost of some drugs up by1500% and why those same drugs are sold in other countries for pennies. Why the cost of medical insurance keeps going up and why the cost of medical care is spiraling out of control.

You’d be demanding answers about corruption in our government and corporations and how the collusion between the two entities serves to widen the economic divide between the various people in this country instead of bridging it.

You’d be asking why American education is so poor and why so many of you can’t write or do math. You’d be seeking to make sure that 5 years from today damn few students entering college required remedial reading, writing, or math classes.

You should be finding ways to make more with less instead of bitching about how wasteful people were in the past.

Bitching about the stupidity of the past is like blaming a two year old for using crayolas on the wall of the nursery. Folks in the past were wasteful because they didn’t know what we know now.

Bitching about their ignorance in ALL things serves no purpose. You’re all here NOW, make the best of what you’ve got and incorporate what we know now into your actions. Don’t forget… In 200 years students sitting on some campus will be shaking their heads at YOUR ignorance.

Woodhouse

You spoiled little brats should be studying very hard to find solutions to the situations that lead to the injustices you’re bitching about instead of blatantly inflicting the same harm on others.

No matter how richly their ANCESTORS may have deserved retribution, punishing descendants of an formerly oppressive group does absolutely nothing except breed resentment and / or hatred, and then the cycle repeats.

I realize all these concepts may have caused your little minds to be triggered out of your safe spaces. Some of you may be choking on the froth of indignation, and perhaps a few of you have suffered irreversible brain damage caused by attempting to actually think. 

So for all of you…

I’ll fetch a rug.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the TV show Archer, Woodhouse often fetches rugs to aid in the disposal of bodies and sometimes simply the disposal of drugged or passed out hookers.)

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ARRRHHGGGGGGGGGG!!!!

NUKE

You want to watch me melt the hell down? 

Here’s the recipe:

Step 1  Tell me I need to get something important done. Or wait until I’m trying to learn something, or trying to write just a few disjunct thoughts.

Step 2  Interrupt me every 8 minutes with lame jokes or stupid comments, then let me try to get back to what I was doing. Continue until I’m obviously annoyed.

Piss on the floor

Step 3 Sit and ignore the dog who needs to go out. Oh, and don’t bother to tell me the elderly dog needs to go out. Then act surprised when I come out of the other room and see that the dog has peed on the floor. 

Step 4 In your surprise jump up, run to the linen closet and grab one washcloth sized towel, which you then must drop on the smallest of the pee area completely missing the puddle running across the floor. Oh and you must stand there looking at the towel dumbfounded, as if you expected it to magically move and clean up the mess. 

Step 5 Give me dirty looks when I yell at you to get some more towels.

Step 6 Sit at your computer while I’m on my hands and knees with the Bissell machine shampooing the carpet. Don’t bother to clean up the puddle of pee, do however stand in the way of my getting to the cleaning solution for the Bissell, then prevent me from being able to get to the kitchen sink to mix the solution, when you could, AND SHOULD be wiping the floor with the towels you’ve now dropped on the back of the chair.

Step 7 Wait for me to finish cleaning up the mess and clean the tools, then just as I’m about to sit down with a cup of coffee getting back to an employment letter you know I’ve been struggling with, announce that you’re waiting for me to get a shower so you can wash all the towels.

CarpetCleaning

Step 8 When I get out of the shower, announce that the dogs need to go out again and that you’re working on an email.

Step 9 After 20 minutes of me being outside with the dogs in nothing but a pair of shorts keep sitting at your fucking computer as one of the dogs steps on my foot and slices it open. Don’t forget to give me a dirty look when I ask you to simply get a treat for the dogs.

Step 10 Look on as, I’m pulling the Bissell back out of the closet to clean the blood out of the carpet, left there as you impassively observed my bloody foot, never once thinking to get me a bandage, or paper towel, or any assistance whatsoever. and completely ignoring my request for any of the above. Don’t forget to give me dirty looks and explain you were trying to decide which of the above would be better before you moved.

Harp

Step 11 As I attempt to return to whatever the hell I was doing, start tuning a fucking harp. Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da Dong Dong Dong Da De Da Da. 

Be pissy with me when I ask you for a few minutes of silence while I try to remember what the hell I was doing 3 hours ago. I explain that the tuning sequence sounds like RAP music, it’s going nowhere but is very irritating. Either play something OR DON’T.

BoulderRoadblock

Step 12 This is the most important step. Be hurt and offended when I go full on NUKE because no matter where I try to go in this fucking house, there is something in my way.

Either you, or the idiot dog, and no matter what FUCKING path I choose, one of you blocks me from my destination. Of particular annoyance is my having to exit the house via one door and re-enter the house via another door because you’ve blocked all other pathways.  I was only trying to get to my glasses but even that was too much to ask!

So, that’s how my Saturday is going… How’s yours?

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Confederate Flags – Symbols of Hate or Heritage?

2000px Gadsden flag svg

Stop the insanity!

Taking down a flag, or a monument, or stomping out a cultural identity is wrong. Isn’t it?

I’m sure that Native Americans could weigh in on that statement. Or for that matter African Americans?

Lets face it, Dylann Roof is NUTS! That’s pretty obvious, let’s call it what it is.  Roof claims that his attitude changed during the Travon Martin insanity.

Roof claims that he kept hearing about it, he got curious and after looking it all up on the internet he decided that a race war was necessary.

Flag csa

Okay, so why aren’t we banning the internet, or the news media? Obviously roof is a special kind of nuts to boot. What kind of psychopath can sit in a room participating in prayer then kill the people he was worshiping with?

All that aside, would we be banning the American Flag or the Gadsden, or the flag of the Union if he’d been photographed holding one of them?

US flag 34 stars

I agree that the Confederate flag should be removed from various statehouses and government buildings.

In point of fact I thought the Confederate flag HAD been removed from those facilities decades ago. It’s well past time. I was surprised that any state buildings were still flying it. States like Mississippi will have a bit more trouble not flying the Confederate flag but only until they redesign their state flag

DSC 0654Zoom

I don’t however agree that the Confederate flag be stricken from all sales outlets, or erased from history. Yet that seems to be exactly what is happening. I really have a problem when monuments to southern leaders, are being defaced, and confederate flags are forbidden in games, or over confederate burial sites.

Being raised in the South I remember seeing the Confederate flag but it wasn’t all over the place. It was mostly a point of heritage, pride in the South, more like a celebration of southern culture. Which as many people who’ve visited the South discover, is pleasantly different from other areas of the country.

DSC 0649

I was at an event last night where I met a California Native who’d just returned from their first visit to the deep south. They were gushing about how polite people were. They were impressed that even the panhandlers were nice and didn’t curse at passersby who didn’t put money in their collection hat. Yeah, it’s become common in LA that panhandlers get nasty if you don’t give them money. Go Figure!

The point is, when someone visits the South they’re often amazed at how different the reality of the place is from their preconceived notions. Sure the South has problems, and stupid people, and even crazy people. But it also has charm, grace, and history.

Old

As a southerner I have zero patience for those who bash the South having never been there.  I may live in California, but my heart is still southern, when folks start painting the South with that broad brush saying things like; “Everyone in the South are bigots. Well, you know how ignorant they are down there.” I tend to get a bit spun up.

Civil War

I’ve visited confederate sites all over the South, does that make me a bigot, a hater, a racist, or a potential murderer of a bible study group?

NOPE! It makes me a person who visited those sites and who saw battlefields where hundreds, or thousands of men died. These are places of sorrow. Not because the South lost, but because of the waste, and the bitterness that precipitated the civil war.

Elitist

Contrary to popular belief it wasn’t ONLY about slavery. There were other components; like states rights, federal over-reach, business, and commerce. Slavery was a part of it but not the only part.

As a southerner visiting these sites it’s painfully obvious that secession was ultimately wrong because that action led inevitably to war. I’m really offended when someone says, “The South Lost, get over it.”

I’m offended mainly because you don’t need to tell a southerner the outcome of the civil war, anymore than you need to tell a black person they’re black or a jew what happened at Auschwitz.

Southerners know that confederate money isn’t going to come back in vogue, the South isn’t going to “Rise Again” and slavery was wrong. We know these things through the lens of history. In fact most of us aren’t looking behind and living in the past, we’re looking forward and trying to forge a future.

KKK

The KKK is… or was, dying. I suspect that in less than a generation it wouldn’t have been able to sustain itself because it is considered even in the South to be just wrong and it hadn’t been gaining converts. That all may change now.

This change might not be due to renewed racism, but due to folks who believe they’re “our betters” once again telling southerners what they are, (racist, evil, stupid, bigots), and then trying to tell southerners how to live and think while continuing the “stupid southerners, racist southerners” chant.

Disobey

I can’t get over the Orwellian direction our country has apparently taken. Are we really wanting to “Memory Hole” anything and everything  that we don’t like? If we do and become a “Society of the NOW” won’t we be opening ourselves to repeating the mistakes of the past?

As a Southerner I can tell you, in my life and the lives of most of my peers the confederate flag exists in our psyche in its proper context.

It is not a rallying cry for racism. It’s a symbol of a place in common, a point of origin that is different from every other place in the country.

NewSouthernflag3b1

A unique place where thunderstorms, red clay, water skiing, boats of all shapes & sizes, and fireflies dancing on a warm evening breeze, live forever in our memories. We come from a place where being polite is important and where we call Steel Magnolias, “Mom”.

Taking the flag out of our sight will not change those who are racists, nor will it change substantially the character of the South and is therefore an empty gesture.

NewSouthernflag3a

However, since so many people are all about erasing the Confederate battle flag I propose one of  these two flags as the new flag of Southern Heritage. These flags are clean, inoffensive, and exemplify the new realities of our “Brave Society”.

Just a thought…