Category: Modern problems

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Explaining Twitter to an older person.

Question:

What is the difference between email & twitter. I see the value of Skype or FaceTime but I am ignorant in respect to Twitter other than its base word “twit” which was an undesirable descriptor in my youth.

Sent from my iPad

My Answer:

Tweets1

Twitter is a social messaging website/application which limits a message to a maximum length of 140 characters.

Email is unlimited.

Twitter, is used by a wide variety of companies and people to send short messages to a broad scope of people also known as “Followers”.

As examples, here are “Tweets” from the LA Quakebot and The San Bernardino Forestry Service.

There are a number of representatives in the House and Senate that have Twitter accounts and post what’s going on in session during the day. Pelosi, Reid, Boehner, and many California politicians use the service.

This is the helpful side of the service.

The downside is that it’s given voice to every Village Idiot on the planet.

AlSharpton

The problem is that it’s sometimes difficult to tell that a person is the village idiot.

When you strip away the context provided by other members of a persons village rolling their eyes while the person is talking, sometimes idiots are given far more credence than they should be.

There are tons of news feeds from outside the country as well as the usual main stream media.

Often the News site RT reports on things well ahead of the US and they’re very accurate too.

There are discussions, Pro-Guns, Anti-Guns, Pro-Abortion, Anti-Abortion, Pro-Amnesty, Anti-Amnesty and just about any other subject that you could think of.

I’ve noticed that the rudest people on Twitter are often the ones claiming to be progressively liberal. I still haven’t figured that one out.

Twitter can piss you off and NOTHING you see on Twitter should be simply taken as fact.

The easiest way to think of Twitter is as the modern equivalent of the soapbox in the public square.

The other difference is the level of privacy.

With Email, only the NSA and intended recipient read your message. With Twitter, the NSA and everyone else on the planet can read your message.

I hope this answers your question, have a very nice day.

Posted on

Ahh End of year stuff begins

Board

I’ve got backup of my computer that dates back to 2008. It’s gotten to the point that the usual backup drives are getting full.  I’m moving files onto other “Offline” drives. then I’ll run maintenance on the usual network drives and start new backups.

In short, I’m in the end of year digital doldrums. Every year I run a cleanup of my drives and delete tons of useless crap that accumulates during the year. This year is special because of the backup drives.

Thankfully backup maintenance is something that I only do every 5 years or so. However when added to the usual year end stuff for taxes, and of course the holiday insanity which means that my days will be busy and my computer will be SLOW.

On the bright side, I can work on some other stuff while waiting for a trillion files to be indexed and moved.

Digital Rabbit Hole

I’ve been trying to catch up on blogs, and work on getting a couple of websites done for clients.

The problem is that I’m kinda being sucked down the digital rabbit hole too. I’m not as mobile as I normally am. I have to keep the computer connected to the network and I’m using a hard connection instead of the WiFi because the hard line runs a whole lot faster. Not fast enough, just a lot faster. Instant probably wouldn’t be fast enough for me.

Here I sit, chained to the desk by an ethernet cable.

When I’m not actively writing and just queuing files for transfer I’m really bored. This archiving has to get done for the good of my network and systems, but it’s tedious as hell.

I wonder. Can I watch Christmas porn on my iPad?

I can, I can! 

Oh, Santa’s got something special for those folks!

Maybe this won’t be quite as tedious as I thought it would be

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Situational Awareness

Wheee

I was doing a little shopping in the OC yesterday.  It was a little rainy so… well, people were more than a little nuts.

Water! FROM THE SKY??? It’s the END of the world!

Growing up on the East coast I think nothing of rain. Hail on the other hand just pisses me off if I’m driving in it, it’s hell on the paint.

I digress!

Glad I didn't buy lunch

As I’m walking around in the mall, I’m noticing people walking around and texting. I can only think that I’d like to position myself in front of the nearest fountain, have a nice cup of coffee and wait for some dumbass to try to walk on water.

Then I notice that the majority of the people in the mall are women. That makes sense, these are soccer moms and they’re trying to get ahead on the shopping while the kids are at school.

Text Fountain

As I walk past the Sony store (yes really) there’s a CNN report blaring about the “War on Women” and that idiot publicity seeker Lena Dunham. Suddenly it hits me like a ton of bricks…

Every single one of these women I’ve been having to avoid because they aren’t watching what they’re doing, is a potential target.

I’m probably going to take some flack about this. But really ladies get a freaking clue, if you’re so focused on texting or looking something up on your phone in a mall that you don’t notice a guy walking toward you, then you turn directly into his path and stand still, you’re a target.

It’s equally possible for someone to be walking behind you waiting to pass in front of one of the service hallways or a construction barrier, then grab you, cover your mouth, and drag you out of the sight of anyone who could help. 

Texting Lady

If it’s a rapist they’re going to have their way with you and no-one would be the wiser. If it’s just someone who wants your purse, phone, or the bags you’re carrying they too are going to take your shit and be gone before you’ve even figured out what’s happening.

In addition to you being completely checked out of life, you’re rude as hell.

Ladies, if you need to text someone, move out of the walkway. Find a spot on a bench or with your back against a wall then text away!

This serves two functions.

1) You’re out of the way of the rest of the mall’s patrons.

2) At least you’ve narrowed the directions that attack could come from. Who knows, you might even see someone coming at you out of the corner of your eye.

The message I’m trying to convey ladies is; don’t be so clueless that you become a victim.

Posted on

Tis the season…

NOSPAM

For my SPAM filters to get a hell of a workout!

Starting November 1 a wall of SPAM has been flooding into my system daily.

A lot of it seems to be associated with scams designed to look like insurance offers dealing with the ACA. But if you look at the links, these offers are originating in China (cn) and Russia (ru).

So Ask yourself why would ACA insurance offers be originating form either of those two countries when the US Government spent a fortune for a web site to sell you insurance?

In addition to these weird offers I’ve been seeing the offers for weight-loss, the usual male enhancement stuff, shitty bits of software, fax services, and even toilet paper. Toilet paper? Yep, some kind of coupon scam…

Clearly not targeted marketing, I have a Costco membership! I buy toilet paper on a pallet! 

I woke up this morning to 40 SPAMS and those are the ones that slipped past my SPAM filters. Checking the filters on the server showed over 100 rejected junk mails. A couple of them were in languages that I’m not even sure I can properly identify.

All of which is to say, be vigilant! There are a lot of scummy people trying to get their hands in your pockets.

No, not yet enough of a justification to run out and buy an iPhone 6 give me a couple of years.

 

 

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You know, I’m beginning to think this is all a SCAM

Healthcare Insurance Logos

Welcome to Open Enrollment! Your ACA plan is serving you… UP!

As I’ve chronicled over the past year I’ve been involved with a nightmare called Anthem Blue Cross of California.

A month or two ago I was told that I’d have to wait for open enrollment to change my health care, I’m still not even sure how that works, or how they think that is going to work. I can change my health care any time I want to, ALL I have to do is not pay the bill!

And speaking of bills… I understood having open enrollment periods when I was working for a corporation. That makes sense, it tends to allow the company to budget their expenses and keeps the employees from jumping healthcare providers each time they don’t like something.

HealthInsurance Marketplace

However, since I’m paying the bill, I’m the one buying the goods or in this case services, why do I have to screw around with open enrollment at all?

caduceus

Technically, as a consumer of the insurance service, I am the Insurance company’s employer. As such, I ultimately have the capacity (Or I would in a non-socialist country…)  to hire and fire a poor provider at will. Oh yeah, but NOT under Obamacare.

Anyway, I’m shopping.

I can’t see myself putting up with more of the same from Anthem and not being able to see my primary care physician, (Even though they said I could. Then when I found that I couldn’t, they told me he must have dropped out of their network. But I have a PPO plan, networks are irrelevant… Well apparently it’s not really a PPO and My Doctor was NEVER in the plan they sold me). Or not being able to find a dermatologist. (And neither could they within 90 miles of my location.) 

Assurant

You see, I’ve been paying through the nose for a policy that was at best only a catastrophic plan with prescription coverage because none of the doctors I wanted to see were in fact accepting the Anthem Pseudo- PPO. I could have saved about 1/2 of my medical costs per month by just having a catastrophic care plan, and paying for everything else out of pocket which is essentially what I’m doing anyway.  By the way, a catastrophic plan is one of the options I’m looking into.

Under the “Won’t get fooled again” premise I’m trying to compare companies based on how they’re rated by consumers. As I’ve been sorting through the data I’ve discovered a couple of interesting things. 

NewHealthinsurance Marketplace2

1) Of five companies I’ve checked on thus far, only two will allow me to purchase their policies based on my zip code.

All of these companies appear to service California but apparently they don’t all service the county in which I live.  

Sorry folks I’m an all or nothing kind of guy. If you’re selectively insuring counties that means that technically I can’t move from one county to another until the next open enrollment period. Doesn’t that also mean that when I drive across county lines, I’m out of network? Either you sell in all of California or don’t sell at all. 

I recall speaking to some insurance agent last year. That person said that even though I could purchase their insurance policy, AND that my Doctor was in their network, AND that the policy and my doctor were compatible, I still would be unable to see my doctor. Their explanation for this was that since my doctor and I were in different counties, he would be considered “Out of Network”. I seem to recall not purchasing that particular policy.

2) I can’t narrow down if my county theory is correct without requesting a quote from each possible provider — this is significantly slowing down the shopping process.

More Logos

The upshot of all of this is that insurance shopping, which was always painful, has now become 100 fold more painful because there is no simple way to sort through the data to compare stuff. I have noticed that every policy seems to have an ACA metallic moniker;

Bronze, Silver, Tin, Rusted Iron, Busted Galvanized Pipe, Copper, Pyrite…

All of which mean the same damn thing…

I’m beginning to think we have no choice in policies, just a choice in the company administering them. 

In dealing with all of this bullcrap, I think that I’d rather pound my own testicles with a sledgehammer, (1000 FemNazis just came in their jeans) than shop for health insurance!

I just don’t think I have medical coverage for that…