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Uh Folks, a Post Office Box is a valid address

Post office 50062 dallas

This is one of those things that most people don’t think about.

If you live in a house, you always have a mailbox, Right?

Well, actually you’d be WRONG if you made that assumption.

There are places in this country where the USPS regulations prohibit a postman making deliveries to your home. Usually these places are located in mountainous regions where the angle of the roads, (also known as the grade) are too steep. The Postal Service, in those situations puts a post office nearby and directs all residents to rent a P.O. Box where their mail will be delivered.

Mailtrucks

This is done to prevent placing postal workers in a hazardous situation. For example when the roads are covered with ice and attempting to drive a heavy truck up a steep incline would more probably result in an accident.

So, when you ask for a mailing address and I give you my LEGAL mailing address that works for my DMV records, and my Passport and mortgage payments, and bank statements and utility bills, don’t you DARE tell me that I’ve entered into a web form, or given you verbally, an invalid address.

E911

Corporate America, If that address is good enough for the Federal and State governments… its good enough for your paltry needs!

I say this primarily to high technology companies who sell software or services and simply want to make sure that they can put me on their junkmail lists.  Of course certain cell phone providers also fall into this same trap. They claim they’re trying to set up E-911 services and I can see that.

What I can’t abide is when their computers tell them that there is no such physical address and they won’t accept a P.O. Box either.

Fedex

When I tell you I live at:

6969 Blow Me Circle

Fucking, IN 96969

Then your computer says that address doesn’t exist we’re at an impasse, my address and house exist, they can be found on a map.

Just because your computer says otherwise is nothing more than bad programming. The way around this of course, is to give a company the physical address of the Post Office itself. However in the E-911 situation that means the Fire or police departments will be directed to the Post Office 8 miles away if I dial 911.

UPS Truck

If UPS and FedEx can find my address it’s obviously listed in a database SOMEWHERE! 

More and more I see a narrowing of thought and view, that is reflected in programming. I’m not sure why this is, but it’s getting old.

DragonmapUnless people start reclaiming the right, dare I say it? Their God given right to think for themselves. I envision a day when people will have their faces buried so deep in their screens that they can be confined to cities and suburbs simply by having their GPS present an ancient message.

Here be Dragons 

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Watched the Apple Reveal yesterday

TimCook

Well, I tired to watch it.

I’d just gotten comfortable on the couch, the big screen was on and the Apple TV was streaming the event. I could see the crowd and hear the din created when 2000 people or more are all talking at once.

Then Tim Cook took the stage and began talking.

I thought something was wrong with my TV, or the surround system. Mr Cook would speak and then there’d be the annoying whisper. I thought it was someone sitting too close to an open microphone. As I listened closer I recognized that the whisper was Chinese and it was getting louder.

I checked all my connections, rebooted the AppleTV and then couldn’t get back in to the live stream. The Apple TV kept saying “Content Unavailable”

Apple Logo

Fine, I tried from my computer; “Access Denied”

I grabbed my iPad and tried it. My iPad picked up the stream with the annoying Chinese loud enough that I could barely hear Mr. Cook. 

That’s when I realized that it was some interpreter who was supposed to be there yacking a translation to all the Chinese people. Once again, I felt like i as an English speaker in America was a second rate citizen.

Then the stream failed on the iPad, with the spinning wheel of death.

But the computer was suddenly able to log in again. I put the iPad down. I managed to rejoin the presentation as they were talking about the iPhone, and the Chinese was gone. Fine! iPhone its great, iPhone is wonderful, lets talk about the new innovations and technology…

Cool! thats what I was curious about, I lean in toward my computer screen and the stream fails!

Apple TV

GRRRRR!

I click rejoin, Access Denied, you don’t have permission to use this server. WTF?

I open the iPad while the computer is rebooting. It rejoins the stream, now they’re talking about Apple Pay. Excellent, I wanted to know about that too. Credit cards obsolete… blah blah, lets look at this video… blah blah… Here’s how it works and what devices will…

Pinwheel of death…

OH COME ON!

IPhone6

I gave up, it was one of those days when I couldn’t catch a break.

I watched the stream later as a rerun on the AppleTV from my couch. It was a better experience. 

Based on what I’ve seen the iPhone is nice, but somewhat incremental to my iPhone 5s. Having NFC, is in my opinion something Apple should have been doing all along. But given that NFC payments are slowly rolling into the marketplace I don’t see an imperative to run out and buy a new phone.

Apple WatchBesides, I like the size of my existing phone. I can shove it in my pants or coat pocket and it’s fine. My phone does pretty much everything that the iPhone 6 does already.I figure I’ll be ready for an iPhone 7s just about the time that NFC is fully deployed in all shopping venues, then it will be worth the investment. (Have I ever mentioned I was an early adopter of the original iPhone? I don’t know if I ever spent that refund…)

The Apple Watch is very pretty, I’m not sure that I’m ready to go back to a digital watch. Honestly I like my nice self winding automatic. I don’t have to recharge it, all I have to do is move. Isn’t that what the Apple Watch is trying to remind the user to do as well?  It does look like the Apple Watch may contain an NFC chip too. If so, and if the watch would bridge the gap between my iPhone 5s and my purchase of an iPhone 7s for transactions I might consider it. But the payments thing would have to just explode and begin inconveniencing me before I’d feel any pressure.

Colossus

Who knows, perhaps by the time I’m ready for a new iPad & iPhone they’ll be sentient!

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Well I don’t have to water today.

IMG 0340

We’re finally getting a little rain. It’s not nearly enough to replenish the wells in town. Still, its better than nothing.

Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to last. We’ve been having bands of light rain making it over the mountain top. I suspect that the bulk of the rain has been falling on the seaward side of the mountains soaking the foothills, Rancho and Ontario.

I’m not complaining, like I said anything is better than nothing. Besides, as dry as the ground is, if the rain came down any harder it would just run off without soaking in.

I’ve been thinking about moving my desk to face the window. That way I’d be able to watch it rain, or snow while I’m working, then there’s also getting to watch the critters that come into the yard. 

I’m hoping that it rains like this all day long.

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Reflections

NewImage

It was my birthday last week.

This one is a strange one.

I am the same age my father was, when he died. It messes with your head, I’m a young guy.

When I look in the mirror, at first glance I see myself in my early 30’s

When I look deeper, I see grey around the edges. The beginnings of that awful “Chicken Neck” thing that happens in some of my family.  Some blotchiness in my skin, a bit of sun damage and crows feet. My beard and goatee aren’t nearly as youthful as they once were. I take a moment in the steamy mirror to contemplate the changes and decide either due to reality or my ability to delude myself that I’m still not “OLD”.

The grey at my temples doesn’t look bad, the sprinkling of grey throughout my hair is still easily hidden with a shorter hair cut and even the slight recession in my hairline isn’t a disaster.

Then I flash on Dad lying in the hospital bed. With a little imagination I can strip away the ravages of disease and I see a guy that looks remarkably like me. It’s strange and disconcerting to think that If Dad was alive today he’d be in his 70’s and probably still spry and active. He’d certainly be able to hold his own in a political discussion.

Billy 20 7785

What would my Dad think of things as they are today? Would he be pissed, or would he have just given up; realizing that the battles he’d be trying to fight have already been lost?

Oddly, and something that spooks me deeply is that my life has mirrored my father’s in many ways.

Dad made his own way, he started businesses and generally was successful. He had a nice home, nice cars and a successful business when I was a child. He decided to “Check Out” of the ratrace in his mid 30’s and moved to Tennessee. He built a beautiful home, (or so I’ve been told) I never saw it completed. The house burned and Dad was back to square one.

666940 macro image of an old circuit board with transistors

Unfortunately, for dad, time passed and he’d missed a large transition from discrete electronic components to IC packages. This meant that he had a lot of catching up to do if he wanted to return to office dictation equipment sales and repair. I don’t know if he was ever successful in making that transition, we lost touch with each other for a while.

The next I heard he was in Florida again this time putting together an custom office furniture business where he built all the furniture. I lost touch again then heard from him when he told me he was in Sarasota building and selling houses. Again I gather that he was pretty successful, he must have been in his late 40’s by then.

Next I heard, he was in South Carolina. He was living with his Mom and starting another business. This time in cabinetry, That’s where his time ran out.

Resilience is one word I think of when I think of my father. He did all he did with a high school education, Navy training, determination and raw smarts. 

NewImage

In the late 70s I got into computers. By the mid 80s I had been kicked in the teeth, done a bankruptcy, and was clawing my way back up the heap. For the most part I was successful, I was working in an industry that didn’t care what school you went to. All they cared about was your ability to fix shit, make shit, sell shit, or support the shit that had already been made, or sold.

I did quite well for a long time and never thought about going back to college. After all experience trumps book learning any day of the week right?

Well, it did… back in the old days. By the mid ‘90s those of us in the industry were beginning to notice that H1B1 visas were taking positions that we would have recommended our friends for. Often we didn’t even know there were openings in the department we were working in.

Jobs got harder to get.

NewImage

California entered a slow death spiral that continues to this day. Suddenly your college pedigree was the most important thing regardless of how much experience you had. 

Then the layoffs happened.

Like my Dad at this age, I’m trying to find and create a new place in the world for myself. College? A new career? A complete change, or only a partial change? Do I want to return to the tech rat race, or would I prefer to do something more interesting? 

I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m running out of time.

I’d expected to retire from the last tech company I was working for, maybe I was retired… 

Must’ve missed the memo.

Lately, it seems that nothing I’ve tried has worked out as expected, perhaps “as needed” is a better description. 

I’m not the only person in this situation. I’m still hearing about friends that are bailing, either out of their careers, or California. 

NewImage

I’m starting to get over the weirdness of this birthday,

I’m at a place in my life I’ve been before… It’s the “fuck it all, cinch up my bootstraps, and start kicking some ass” point.

I thought perhaps I didn’t have the strength to do it all over again. I’m tired, I’d grown sick of the bullshit in corporate America, but it’s all I know. I’ve wanted to just give up, to allow myself to just be swept aside, to accept that my fate was not my own and be a victim.

Then I think of Dad, he didn’t have the time to reboot his life.

I think he’d understand what I’m feeling now, then I suspect he’d say “Now that you’ve gotten that off your chest, GET OFF YOUR ASS!”

NewImage

OK Dad, this one’s for you…

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Kill Them, Kill them ALL!

ISIS New Video To America Reuters

With the latest beheading atrocity committed by ISIS I feel absolutely confident in stealing the phrase from Spartacus.

Kill Them, Kill Them All!

Kill them to the last man, Kill any of their kind who even reach for a weapon. Destroy this cancerous infection utterly.

Human rights, fair play, truces, treaties, and parley be damned. No mercy, no rules, no kindness, and no prisoners!

These FUCKS! Claim they’re already here, and due to our lack of diligence they probably are. I can only imagine the blood bath that will start when these animals bomb places in America.

Isis marching AP

It’s entirely possible that we’ll see xenophobia the likes of which even Hitler was afraid to dream of. But I don’t think it will be camps or gas chambers. I think it will be open season, and the good and innocent will be swept away with the evil and corrupt.

Imagine Ferguson on steroids. Imagine pissed off people, a MOB going house to house hunting anyone that is different, but especially targeting Middle Eastern people.

If that’s what we as a people want, then let President Onumbnuts keep playing golf. How many vacations have the taxpayers paid for this year?

We must take the fight to ISIS. We must make an example of them, we must leave a trail of dead bodies all the way back to Syria and if necessary, beyond. Once and for all we MUST make the price for their kind of violence simply too terrible to contemplate except as a blood soaked memory.

Rockets over Israel Reuters

Based on the actions of ISIS or ISL or whatever they call themselves this week, Islam is not a religion of peace.  Islam is not a religion of light.  Islam is a path that leads only to the grave.

Before Islam, Baghdad and the fertile crescent were beacons of literature, science, poetry, philosophy, and mathematics. These people were artists, craftsmen and scholars.

For the past 1500 years they’ve done absolutely nothing to benefit humanity. They threw all their enlightenment away to follow a retrograde, barbaric, religious cult. Now these savages seek to drag the rest of the world back into the stone age with them.

I for one have no interest in sitting in my own filth, dimly remembering when we were a technological species. All the while hoping that I didn’t do anything to make the Imam angry enough to have me killed. God forbid, I should ask a question of the O so enlightened caliphate.

Isis foley 676x450

I do not wish to see my nieces and nephews have the hope, intelligence, and enlightenment drained from their faces. 

These barbarians have left us only one option. Annihilation 

If nukes aren’t an option, drop a million pissed off armed Americans in Iraq. Tell them, there’s no bag limit, and for every ISIS kill they’ll make 2000.00. Provide Booze, ammo, food, and water, with those odds, I don’t give ISIS two weeks.

Kill all the members of ISIS, feed their worthless carcasses to pigs then shoot and burn the pigs.

No Mercy, No Compassion, No half measures, and especially NO reporters. What’s done to ISIS in the desert, STAYS in the desert.

Yeah, beheadings tend to sour my mood!

Jihadists in general should realize that when the American people unite, focusing on the single goal of destroying Jihadis, there will not be a hole deep enough anywhere on the planet that they can hide.