Category: Humor

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I keep waiting for her eyes to start glowing.

Greta Thunberg is apparently an “expert?“

She appeared on CNN’s Townhall about coronavirus.

Really? I guess all it takes for you to become a celebrity these days is to speak to your elders harshly. Remember this is the little girl who chastised the United fucking Nations and predicted doom and gloom for the world.

All I can hear as she speaks is a ringtone from The Goths in SouthPark “Death and Despair… Death and Despair…“

We have climate change scientists that can’t seem to get their modeling right. And I’m talking about real scientists who are doing real work.

What makes this little girl an appropriate spokesperson on anything, much less a chaotic system like climate?

But there she is on our televisions again.

What power does she have? 

Greta Thunberg 2 420x315I see her picture, hear her speak, and wonder what is going on?  Then I saw this picture on Breitbart this morning and it clicked.

I’ve seen that look before. It bugged the hell out of me and after a few minutes searching my memory, I remembered.

I saw that expression in Village of the Damned

VillageOfTheDamnedOMG! We’ve been invaded by Aliens!!!!

That would explain a lot of things.

Her meteoric rise from obscurity, her access to the halls of power, and the elite.

Her disdain for humanity and the feeling that when she’s talking she’s judging people as vermin.

(Full disclosure, I often feel that way too. So I’m possibly calling the kettle black in this instance.)

It makes perfect sense! She’s part of the advance guard. Her people are on their way and they’re concerned that the planetary ecology will be too screwed up for them to take over. The area of the planet that she comes from is a bit cooler, maybe her people can’t take the heat. That would make global warming a big problem.

I guess we need to start looking for others. Probably folks who come from Canada, the northern United States, Norway, Sweden, Greenland, Iceland, and Siberia. Lest we forget the Southern Hemisphere. New Zealand, parts of Australia, Argentina, The Falkland Islands, and The South Sandwich Islands.

Anderson CooperWho else from those areas might we be suspicious of? What positions of power might they have? How long have they been here?

Now wait just a damn minute!

Nooooo It can’t be true! Not Anderson!

Just a goof folks, Having a little bit of fun.

I honestly don’t think Greta should be in the public eye, I think she should be in school.

I’ve just had it with the constant doom, gloom, and the lockdown. So I thought I’d let my conspiracy theory horses out for a run.

I’d almost prefer an interstellar war. At least then I’d know why my life has been thrown into chaos, and why it may never return to normal.

Loki.jpgAfter hearing what some of our politicians have said and how they’ve behaved toward their citizens I was reminded of Loki in The Avengers.

“Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power. For identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.” ― Loki of Asgard

Which is why I decided to take a break from the news, and quite possibly a break from technology for the weekend. 

I hope you have a great weekend. Turn off the news and take a deep breath.

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How to get written out of the will…

Real id logoMy Mom and I were chatting.

The usual pleasantries, How the family is and how things are going, you know, usual Mom stuff.

Then Mom started talking about the upcoming election and vote by mail. 

In the back of my mind I’m thinking this will probably not go well, but I go along for the ride.

Mom asks me what I think about vote by mail. Uh oh, this is going to go South really fast.

I tell her I disagree with the “All vote by mail” initiatives.

“Why?”

FL Driver License REAL ID topshot“Because I think it’s too easy for shenanigans to affect the vote.”

“Not really,” she says.

“Yes really Mom. Voters in FL couldn’t handle pushing a pin through a piece of paper several years back. Other states have been sued to force them to review, and clean up their voter registrations. Each of those invalid registrations would produce a mailed ballot to a household that shouldn’t be sent a ballot. This would potentially allow multiple votes to be counted that shouldn’t be.”RealID

“People wouldn’t do that,” She says.

“Trust me they would, Mom. Probably for no other reason than it would be funny and they’d think it’s no big deal. Mom, I’m actually in favor of requiring ID at the polling location.”

“Oh we can’t have that. There are lots of people that don’t have ID and can’t afford it,” She replies.

“Really? So how do these people write checks, do banking, cash their paychecks, get on a plane, or use a credit card, Mom? It’s a pretty low bar to produce your state issued / required identification to cast a vote. If it’s a matter of not being able to afford a state ID, then make state IDs free, and still charge for drivers licenses.”

“Some people don’t have birth certificates, Son”

“Come on Mom, I don’t have my birth certificate. I’ve never gotten a replacement copy since the fire. But I do have my driver’s license, and a little thing called my passport which every citizen is also supposed to have. So once again, if you’re a citizen you’re supposed to have some ID right? Those folks who are so old that they may not have these things are probably not in much shape to vote, not that they shouldn’t be able to, but it’s a very small subset. Unless you count the vote by seance crowd.”

“You sound just like YOUR FATHER!” [Note: They’ve been Divorced for 50 years, He’s been Dead for 28 years.]

“So you’re saying I Win????  Hello? Hello? Mom?”

“IF YOU WISH TO MAKE A CALL PLEASE HANG UP AND TRY AGAIN…”

Hmmm, I knew that wasn’t going to end well.

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Bwhahahahah! There are some things that tickle the hell out of me!

CNN: Wanted: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims.

willcodeforfood.jpegI saw this and just about laughed myself stupid.

I thought, “New Jersey is going to have to check homeless camps, ask old bartenders, check with real estate agents, lawyers, and gas station attendants.”

That’s where most of the old COBOL or FORTRAN programmers ended up, all of whom were laid off in favor of H1B1s. Yep, a lot of those programmers were tossed aside like yesterday’s trash by businesses, and government back in the 80’s.

manonbench.jpegA lot of them moved on to other things and I know several that built lucrative businesses in other fields. For a while I had an Eye doctor that had been a COBOL programmer. He was making way better money as an eye doctor than he ever made as a programmer and the hours were better too.

He didn’t regret getting out of programming at all. Like most of us old school tech people, he’d gone through lay off, after lay off, and had “trained” his replacements at too many companies.

homelesstents.jpegHe went back to school after his last layoff, graduated and started his own practice. To do this, he lived in a leaky teardrop trailer for two years after cashing out everything he owned to pay for school. He wasn’t eligible for student loans because he’d made too much in his previous positions.

I know some real estate agents and a couple of patent attorneys as well. They were all great programmers and they were treated like shit.

Iusedtobeyourneighbor.jpegThey wouldn’t touch a programming job now. It brings back bitter memories for them to even talk about programming.

See, they loved what they were doing, they had their joy crushed and were considered disposable in favor of “cheap” labor. Many of them simply walked off the job rather than “train” their foreign replacements.

I say “train” because more often than not the foreign replacements weren’t up to snuff to begin with. Many of these folks couldn’t follow the code, so training was a pointless exercise.

Then I remembered Y2K and thought it’s been 20 years. Couldn’t these government entities be bothered to update the equipment and programs? 

Some of the COBOL guys did come back to rework Y2K systems and they charged frankly obscene amounts to do it. I’d heard that several paid off houses and cars loans with the money they earned from Y2K contracts.

Then I thought, “Who’s gonna test it?”

I went back to laughing.

I’m sorry that the people in need of unemployment benefits aren’t going to be helped it’s not fair to them. However, this brings into sharp relief, other problems “leaders” in business and government have been sweeping under the carpet for decades.

The chickens are coming home to roost.

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I’ve been getting these…

Panic RoomMy friends are a motley bunch.

I love them but we all have a dark sense of humor.

I’m thinking I’ll start posting some of the fun images and movies regarding the Coronavirus on this page.

We’ll see how it goes.

Here’s the first installment.

The Sneeze IMG_1242.MOV

Rustic TP quilted_northern.mp4

A mask in a pinch VID-20200324-WA0000.mp4

Then there was this jewel:

Quarantine Diary

● Half of us are going to come out of this quarantine as amazing cooks. The other half will come out with a drinking problem.

● I need to practice social-distancing from the refrigerator.

● Still haven’t decided where to go for the upcoming Holidays —– The Living Room or The Bedroom.

● Helpful Hint: Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.

● I don’t think anyone expected that when we changed the clocks we’d go from Standard Time Zone to the Twilight Zone.

● This morning I saw a neighbor talking to her cat. It was obvious she thought her cat understood her. I came into my house and told my dog. We laughed a lot.

● So, after this quarantine, will the producers of ‘My 600 Pound Life’ just find me or do I find them?

● Quarantine Day 5: Went to this restaurant called THE KITCHEN. You have to gather all the ingredients and make your own meal. I have no clue how this place is still in business.

● My body has absorbed so much soap and disinfectant lately that when I pee it cleans the toilet.

● I’m so excited — it’s time to take out the garbage. What should I wear?

● I hope the weather is good tomorrow for my trip to Puerto Backyarda. I’m getting tired of Los Livingroom.

(Please note, I make no money from these images / movies. I’m sharing them to help keep everyone’s spirits up. If you own the image / movie and want me to remove it please let me know.)

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I’m thinking it’s a spell …

Airpods pro PDP US 1 grandeI think that all of us can agree that Apple Stores are dangerous. 

No, not in the sense of personal safety but to the safety of our wallets.

I went to the Apple store to pick up my order of nifty new AirPod Pros.

They are very nice, comfortable, and have some really good sound along with the #1 thing I wanted, Noise Cancelling.

While I was there, I asked for the Apple folks to take a look at my series 3 Apple watch.

Nothing major, just a couple of issues that cropped up after the latest upgrade. I’d tried everything I could think of to resolve the issues and figured I’d see if they could point me in the right direction.

After the Apple folks poked around in my watch and my phone a bit, they came to the same conclusion that I’d come to. I was going to have to unpair and repair my watch & phone.

No big deal. We initiated the backup procedure so that the watch would be backed up to the cloud and I wouldn’t lose any data.

Backup completed normally, then unpaired and well, things were suddenly different on my phone. I hadn’t lost any data on the phone (all the health data that had been recorded was still there) but what had been two watches paired to my phone (I only have had one Apple watch) was suddenly no watches paired. The backup data was now gone after saying that the backup was corrupt.

My old watch was not wanting to pair with my phone and the Apple folks and I were confused. While I’d been waiting for the backup to complete I’d been playing with the new Series 5 watch and I’d been jonesing for one since they were released. 

Apple-Watch-Series-5-2019.jpgIt occurred to me that if I was going to have to download a new operating system to a watch and pair it… It might as well be to a New Watch.

They traded in my Series 3 got me a Series 5 and we started the setup process. Easy! Too damn easy!

That ladies and gentlemen is how I walked into an Apple Store for a new set of headphones, and walked out with new headphones, a watch, and a couple of cables I’d forgotten I needed.

Sometimes all I need is the slightest excuse to do something crazy. Thank god I didn’t look at iPhone 11 pro!

On the plus side, while I was waiting for the watch to do it’s thing I sat in on an iPhone training session and learned some nifty things that I didn’t know my phone could do. So that’s a win. 

I like the Series 5 a lot. I’m still getting used to the “Always On” feature and thus far my battery life has been good. Not yet the two days of my Series 3, but the battery is still young and does seem to be lasting longer each day. I suspect this is, in part because I’ve finished tweaking the watch and now It’s presenting information as I prefer it and I’m not in configuration all the time.

The only thing I wish the Watch would do is when my phone goes into “Night – Do not disturb” that the watch would turn off it’s display as well. Maybe I’ll send that as a suggestion to Apple.

The Apple Store magic is strong.  Make sure you’ve got the ability to counter it before you walk inside.