Category: Weird Shit

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In other Insurance news…

UnknownWow!

Spent hours on the phone again with the insurance company.

This time it’s not about getting my insurance back on-line. It was about figuring out what policy would be best for me to migrate to.

Got that all sorted out, I think. The new lemon scented Obamafresh plan will take effect March 1.

But here’s the really interesting thing I found out.

Obamacare hasn’t really helped anybody.

Oooops! Big surprise! Yeah, I’m behind the times.

Here’s the thing that rebooted my brain.

I’m not making any income. So when I get ahold of an insurance rep I point this out and ask what can be done to lower my insurance rate.

Unknown-1Medi-Cal is the answer.

But Medi-Cal I point out, severely limits my choices of Doctors, Hospitals, Drugs, and provides far less care than I, or anyone should consider acceptable. I thought Obamacare was supposed to make that better. I thought that’s what the whole subsidies thing was about.

I thought the subsidies were designed to allow people at the lowest end of the income bracket to purchase decent coverage and look forward to not waiting for care.

Obviously, I’m some kind of moron.

If, on the other hand I was making 90K I’m eligible for a subsidy? WTF?

First and foremost, I’m a capitalist pig. Even I think that’s obscene!

That being said, as a general rule I have no problem helping out those folks that are less fortunate than I am.

I believe that we should help the folks in our own country before we start sending bloody fortunes to 3rd world cesspools where hatred of America is taught in the damn schools. That however, is another topic.

I believe today and have believed for the majority of my life that NO CHILD in this country should ever go wanting for food, clothing, medical, or dental care. It’s an obscenity that so many children do go without such things.

This is not to say everyone should have a free ride either. Eventually, everyone should be employed.

However, children that don’t get enough to eat, who are sick, whose teeth are rotting out of their heads typically don’t do well in school. Without basic education we doom those kids as adults to be forever poverty stricken.

This must change. I don’t believe in grand sweeping changes which our politicians love to engage in for political purposes. I believe in evaluating the problem then solving that  problem. Often the correct answer is the simplest, arrived at by the straightest path.

Obamacare had potential. It could have fixed a problem by simply making sure the people most at risk, had care available to them.

So what the hell is Obamacare doing aside from throwing the medical care system into chaos?

If anyone should have subsidized care it’s those at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. That’s just simple common sense. What are the politicians smoking?

I stuck with paying for my policy. I’d rather deprecate my 401K than put up with shitty medical care. But what of those less fortunate?

Where do they turn? Who is their advocate?

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Weird Nightmares & Dreams…

I wish I dreamt like Dali or even Picasso. At least then I could easily tell that the dream wasn’t real.

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I mean really, how often do you see clocks melting & running down the wall? 

No, I’m not that lucky. I have full color vividly real dreams. Oh I know if I see Godzilla I’m dreaming, but usually my dreams are mundane and completely real. There’s not a detail that’s inconsistent within the context of the dream or nightmare.

Oh, the overarching theme of the dream / nightmare might be somewhat unbelievable but there’s a consistency within, and lets face it that’s where we tend to be during the dream. The same could be said of reality too. 

Remember 9/11? I seriously thought I was dreaming. I kept waiting to wake up, safe in my bed feeling sheepish for paranoid “Irwin Allen” fantasies. Except that I was awake and burning buildings were a part of our collective memory forever.

This past week I’ve had disturbing dreams every single night. (Or Morning… since some research shows we dream only in the hour or so before we wake up. Sometimes it’s just minutes but as we all know the dream can seem like hours.)

This past week, I’ve dreamt of the collapse of the US several times.

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In one of these dreams I’m hiking through rugged terrain with a backpack. (that I actually own, I guess thats why it feels real) I’ve got a standard recurve bow, an ample supply of arrows and my pack just has the essentials. A few clothing items, a jacket that handles 4 seasons and packs small. My tent, (another item I actually own).There’s a GPS and compass, maps, and tools for cleaning and cooking food. Nothing fancy with the exception of the GPS and a radio there’s nothing electronic. I’ve got a solar panel to recharge the radio & GPS batteries. It’s strapped on the outside of my pack.

My hair is long, as is my beard. I’ve been out for a long time.

Then suddenly, I see a uniform (Nothing like military or police we’re familiar with. It’s more like an Nazi SS uniform). I’m commanded to stop. With no other warning or explanation the uniforms are firing on me.

I take a few out with arrows and lucky shots, but know it’s a losing proposition. I yell at them “Why are you shooting?”

They yell back “Because you’re hunting on public land you belong in prison for defying the mandate to go to the relocation camps. You aren’t allowed to feed yourself you must be dependent on the government.” Then they start shooting again.

I’m hit several times, I fall to my knees, I’m bleeding out,  I see the blue sky, wispy clouds, and then an angry man in uniform kicks me in the head. I wonder why they can’t let me die in peace, there’s a hawk in the sky, the uniforms start shooting at it, makes me angry… Then I wake up.

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Another dream is me answering my front door. There are strangers there, they look dirty, tired, and hungry. I swing a shotgun into the gap between the door jamb and the door. I point it right at this guys face and tell him to leave. He begs for food and water but I’m firm with him. 

I know they’re from LA and they’ve walked over the mountain to get here. They’re heading toward Las Vegas instead of the farmland in Central California. I know they’re going to die in the desert. They’ve got nothing, no maps, no preparation at all. They’re simply the latest of the 100s who have passed this way begging for help.

It’s help that I can’t provide. Even if I tried to steer them in the right direction, toward the farms they’d take it as softness, they’d linger, then a crowd would form thinking I had food or water to share and I’d have to start shooting.

I close the door, sliding down it to the floor. I’m crying for them, and angry that I’ve become a heartless bastard.

I wake up crying.

The last dream is one in which I’m trying to check into a hotel. 

I’m actually carrying paperwork for three other people to check myself and them into this hotel. It’s not a nice hotel and I’m NewImagestanding in a long line. I’m being patient and waiting my turn.

Then I notice that all the people standing in line are white, but the people being helped aren’t. I wonder where all these folks from other countries are getting into the line?

Then I realize they’re just walking past the line and being allowed to do it. The receptionists and the guy keeping us all in a nice neat line are ignoring the fact that all these other people are cutting in front of those of us who’ve been waiting.

I ask the man keeping us in line about this. He pulls a gun on me and shoves it into my mouth. He snarls “Shut the fuck up! We don’t want any trouble so they get to do what they want to.” Pretty soon all the rooms are full and we’re still waiting in line.

I’m very angry. 

I wake up angry and it takes me a few minutes lying in bed to calm down. It takes even longer to convince myself that I’m angry because of a stupid dream, nothing more. 

I watch the sun rise over the hills to the East.

It’s a cool morning, and the sky is pretty. I’m relaxing letting go of the tension from the anger. 

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Time to get coffee, and wonder if I’m losing it.

Before you think, “Dude, you’ve been watching too much Terminator, or Mad Max, or conspiracy films.”

I haven’t. One X-files over lunch every couple of days is about it. I don’t watch the news because it never ceases to annoy me with it’s one sidedness.

I read the paper briefly in the morning but try to avoid any “back page” politics either national or local. I’ll read the front page political articles & that’s about it. Mostly I’m reading the technology & science sections.

These dreams / nightmares aren’t fun. I think they speak to my personal loss of faith in our government. No I’m not pining for the “Good ‘ol days”. I’m also trying very hard not to ascribe much meaning to any of this. Normally, I might have one or two dreams like this in a month or three. But this last week it’s been every damn night.

I suppose this may be the final inevitable death of my idealism.

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I’ve held on to the belief that things over time get better in general. Sure you have dips and peaks, but I’ve always believed that the general trend was up. Like wall street and land values. My faith that things get better has sustained me in some of the darkest times of my life.

Over the past 6 years things have gotten decidedly worse for me personally and I believe for the country in general. Perhaps I’m projecting because I don’t want to feel alone. Perhaps I’m just not able to delude myself anymore. 

It’s frightening to think that the one constant, my life preserver if you will, may be fading away.

It’s not something I dwell on because It’s depressing as hell. But obviously my mind is trying to sort things out during dream time. 

I’m drawn to Native American beliefs when I have these kind of dreams.  I find myself watching for “spirit animals” especially in these weird ones.

Over the past year I’ve seen the Wolf, Lizard and now the Hawk.

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Lizard speaks to agility or the need for/ability to change. Wolf is the finder new paths and teacher. Hawk is a messenger. This is according to my very limited understanding of such things.

The thing is I know I must change. I must adapt to the new realities of my career (or lack thereof). I’ve got to put aside the anger, and the hurt at feeling thrown away.  I’ve got to find a way forward into the rest of my life. 

Right now I’m in a holding pattern. I suppose that honestly I’ve been in a holding pattern for a very long time. It’s been so long, that I’ve forgotten what I’m waiting for.

Maybe that’s what these dark dreams are telling me. Move in a direction or you’ll not be happy. 

It’s something I’ve known for a while. I’ve even written about it in this blog. It’s scary to change, it takes strength, courage, and sometimes just plain dumb luck. I’m not sure I have any of those characteristics anymore. Maybe the dreams are telling me I do and to use them. I don’t know…

So now that I’ve thought about it…

CAN I GET SOME SLEEP?

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Weird Dream

I often remember snippets of my dreams, but occasionally I remember big chunks of them and baby i have a NewImagereally strange dream world.

The dream in question this time is I’m in a nifty little house and all is right with the world. The house is small and efficient and there’s not a lot of space.

My stuff is where it should be and I’m whistling a tune as I’m cleaning this little place. (That’s how I know I was dreaming I can’t whistle to save my life!)

So I’m dusting or wiping down something and I open a door to wipe down the doorjamb (another sure clue I’m dreaming, nobody does that… Well I can think of one person who might. I’ll ask the next time I talk to him.) 

Anyhoo,

The door opens and I glance into the space beyond. I really don’t pay it any mind but as I’m cleaning I see a beam of sunlight coming through a skylight illuminating a beautiful space with a large stone fireplace.

I think “oh crap I’m going to be cleaning all day”

Then I pass through the door of my little efficient space into this grand space. The place is decorated exactly in the style I prefer. As I move from room to room I realize how truly big the place is. Each room is appointed exactly  in my taste.

The place is strangely familiar but a little uncomfortable, it’s that feeling that you get when you’re in someone NewImageelse’s home when you’re house-sitting.

This place though seems much more familiar. It’s like finding something half forgotten from your childhood in a random box. You’re connected to the object and holding it unlocks tons of memories. 

As I move from room to room I suddenly realize that this grand house is mine, but that for some reason not only am I living in a fraction of the available space, but I’m choosing to live in the smaller place.

All I need is a lizard with a tattoo wandering through the place and my dream scape would be complete.

I miss the good old days when I had nothing to worry about except dreams of space battles and alien species NewImageannoying me. 

At least those dreams made some kind of sense!

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SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM… and More SPAM! (Updated)

I love the SPAMBOT Postings (I had to stop reading political stuff)

So lately rather than immediately deleting the SPAM that people try to post to this blog, I’ve been reading it.

You’ve got to be kidding!!!

Do any of these things work at all?

These comments have all kinds of flowery speech and it’s obvious that some of them have been written by translation software.

Here’s a few examples;

I really enjoy this theme youve got going on on your site. What is the name of the design by the way? I was thinking of using this style for the website I am going to construct for my class room project.

It is rare for me to discover something on the cyberspace that is as entertaining and fascinating as what youve got here. Your page is sweet, your graphics are outstanding, and whats more, you use reference that are relevant to what you are talking about. Youre definitely one in a million, great job!

Hello There. I found your blog using msn. This is a really well written article. I will be sure to bookmark it and return to read more of your useful information. Thanks for the post. I will certainly comeback.

Don’t get me wrong, I like compliments as much as the next person. But, I don’t like empty compliments that are supposed to make me approve a comment just so the commenter can “Build Links” or redirect someone to their sales site.

All of the above comments are linked to sales sites. Things like Gucci knock off bags, or shoes, or whatever Chinese knockoff someone thinks they can entice someone with.

The really scary part is that some of these links track to websites that are full of malware. Many of these sites are in foreign countries, The largest majority appear to be originating from Asia, at least that’s as far as I wanted to track them.

These messages come from SPAMBOTS, they apparently scan for new blog entries and then post a comment. If you’re not paying attention you’ll approve the comment and potentially give the spammer distribution of their website address and god forbid one of your readers will click on the link and it’s a malware website.

These comments end up in my deletion queue immediately. But sometimes they’re funny.

Then there are the tons of email SPAM I get.

RevoIution – home business (Followed by a web address that appears to be hosted in Amsterdam.)

Learn how to turn successful at home (Associated with a website hosted in France)

Up to $2,500 NOW. Bad or NO Credit OK. (This one actually came from an American Website)

The BIGGEST Auto Clearance of 2012 Is On NOW.  LAST CHANCE To Save THOUSANDS! (This one comes from the same site)

Then there’s my ALL TIME favorite! This one sets off the Virus detection every single time!

From: UPS Information

Subject: Delivery information # Error ID3122

Usually in the preview you’ll see something like;

I did disapprove of your following me here, for you know that

This one is a malware /virus laden email that originates on a juno site apparently in Russia.

I get about 10 of these a week on an ancient yahoo mail account. What’s interesting about this one is the rambling text that’s embedded in the message. It looks like random clippings from some kind of story / literary website. 

I can only assume that it’s a method to evade the spam detection software many servers and email programs use.

Then there are the SPAM Faxes;

Crap1

Crap2

Tell me does anyone actually call these people? 

I’ve set my fax machine to route anything it doesn’t recognize to a directory on my server. That way I’m not wasting ink printing stuff that shouldn’t be coming in to my fax machine unsolicited.

For a while, I dutifully reported junk faxes to the appropriate government authorities, but the faxes kept coming in. After a while I concluded that either the government authorities couldn’t care less or… they were simply overwhelmed.  I tried setting up an auto forwarding to the proper government authorities but they told me that would be spamming them.

Now I purge junk email, and faxes about every 3 months. That’s is exactly what I’m doing today and why you have the “JOY” of this random sampling of crap.

Just remember… YOU Came to this blog, I didn’t send it to you!

As always be careful opening emails, and make sure that your anti-virus software is up to date.

Have a great day.

 

Apparently, the SPAMBOTS loved this blog post. Since it was published, there have been a 127 spam comments attached to this one post. Who’d have thought…

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Arrrrhhhhggggg!

Sad Mac 400x400

Two days Ago I had an event in my Computer.

I was running along nicely having a pretty normal day when out of the blue my machine started asking me for passwords to email accounts.

This made little sense because those passwords are all stored on the system and shouldn’t be required.

I entered the first password without thinking then the second one, the the third one and that’s when the event caught my attention.

I thought Whoa! Something bad is happening. So I saved my work, closed the programs I had open and told the computer to reboot.

That’s when all hell broke loose! What I got back after that reboot was a system that had been mostly reset to it’s factory defaults. 

I don’t have esoteric settings in my systems. For the most part I’m an average kind of user.

I work at being just an average user I’ve spent so much time being a “Test Jocky, Monkey, Software Quality Assurance guy” that when it comes to my home systems I just want to sit down turn the computer on and do what I’d planned to do without a lot of drama. God save me from endless updates and reboots.

That’s why I use a Mac.

99.998% of the time I fire up my Mac and don’t think anything of the fact that I’m using technology, because it’s not in my face.

Well, two days ago was the .002% of the time when I was reminded.

This machine is barely 3 months old and it’s possible it was experiencing a hardware issue. So I pulled up the console logs and saw some very weird stuff. As I was stepping through the log I realized I didn’t know enough about the way Apple does things, to really be able to tell if the errors I was seeing were do to the failure or due to normal errors (Yeah… there is such a thing as a “Normal” error).

So I called Apple. I figured that the data was toast and I was looking at minimum at a restore of my system from my backup. I had a couple of questions, the first of which was how do I send log files to Apple?

After dealing with a first line phone rep for all of about 2 minutes (Thank you BTW for realizing that I wasn’t calling with anything ordinary.) I got transferred to this really great guy whose initials are RR.

RR listened carefully to what I said and we started walking through some items. This makes sense because he couldn’t see my screen and he must get 1000 calls a day from people who’ve forgotten to plug their system in.

Within a few minutes of talking, I’ve got a log collection tool running and he’s looking at my screen. (He can’t actually click on anything or control it… that must be maddening.)

After poking around for a bit he admits he’s never seen anything like what happened to me ever.

The logs get sent to the Gurus in Apple engineering.

Then I’m pretty much ready to call it a day and restore my whole system from the backup. When RR says, “you know… that might not be a good idea.”

I think about it and don’t like at all where he’s going, because he’s absolutely right.

Since we’d pretty much ruled out a hardware problem. That means that software has to be to blame. (Hardware Engineers around the world are rejoicing… Industry inside joke.) 

If I simply restore my system from the backup, it’s likely that I’ll be resetting the conditions that created this problem in the first place.

Which leads inexorably to a complete format, & rebuild of the system. Including reinstallation of every single piece of software. Then we get to pick and choose the bits from the backup that we absolutely can’t do without. Like the data!

As much as I don’t want to… RR is right.

Best to bite the bullet, reformat the drive, reload a completely pristine copy of the OS, then reload copies of the applications and then make a backup of the computer in this new pristine state.

You’d think that given the age of the machine I’d have a pristine backup… Well you’d be wrong.

When I got this machine a few months ago, I moved all the programs from my older MacBook to this one. Then I upgraded the Operating System on the new machine, so god only knows what bits of incompatible flotsam and jetsam may have been floating around on the disk.

Approximately 20 hours of work later I have a system that is mostly like what I had before. I know that I will be stumbling over bits of unlicensed software for weeks to come.

When I stumble over one of these applications I’ll have a choice. Find the license key… or toss the software. Realistically if I haven’t used a bit of software for weeks… I probably could do without it.

I like a clean system that works. So I’ll probably be tossing these little bits of software.

I did notice while reinstalling software that there are an awful lot of applications that ask for access to my contacts list. I understand Word asking… It’s trying to make writing letters easier by linking contact data. But some of the other applications made no sense at all.  Needless to say they were denied access.

I’m kind of a fan of Apple, NO… I’m not a rabid fan boy. But I like Apples machines.

IMAG0253

Honestly, Apple does it right most of the time.

There are some things that they screw up on in big ways but in general they do a good job in design, implementation, and support.

If you’re thinking Apple for your next computer purchase. A word of advice…

Buy the full boat machine. Max Memory, Max hard disk, top of the line… You’ll never be sorry and the machine will probably have a usable lifespan of at least 5 years possibly more. Think about it, you and your Mac go to College and graduate with a Masters degree 6 years later. Can you say the same of Windows?

As I’ve been reading email & writing this blog, my machine has been backing up to a different TimCapsule drive. I want to keep the old backup for a few weeks in case I need to go pick something out of it that I can’t recreate or live without.

I’m back online, back to working and Hopefully this is a “One Off” event.

RR wherever you are… Thank you!

Talk about great service! RR called me several times to see how things were progressing and was always there when or if I hit a snag. He’s the consummate professional and genuinely knows his stuff. Even if I did make him a bit nervous by fiddling with the UNIX underbelly of the Mac OS.

I hope that if he reads this he’ll take what I say next, the right way. I hope I don’t have to talk with Apple again. But If I do I’m going to see if I can have a chat with RR.

Now on to the next thing…