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I can’t resist…Yet MORE Techno-Drivel

Some of my friends are going to glaze over and possibly start bleeding from their ears and / or eyes.

Sorry

Yesterday was lost in a flurry of upgrades.

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some of you may be aware that Apple announced a number of new products yesterday, just in time for the Christmas shopping season.

Among the announcements were a couple of key things for me personally.

1) The delta between my current iPad mini and the new iPad mini isn’t great enough for me to begin lusting after a new iPad. Yes the retina display is nice and the processing horsepower might be handy but it’s not enough for me to chuck my iPad Mini in the bin.

2) Apple announced the release of their newest OS X called Mavericks and that it was FREE. Along with that announcement as that they were making their version of office suite applications free. As well as their iMovie, and Garage band applications.

Yipeee! I was downloading the stuff as soon as it became available.

Thus far this has been the absolute nicest OS upgrade I’ve ever done. Impressive as heck, and Mavericks runs just fine on a 5 year old MacBook Pro. Lets see you run Windows 8 on a 5 year old Dell.

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Oh and did I mention OSX is free? 

The systems upgraded perfectly, they were a bit slow at first mostly due to indexing and other stuff going on behind the scenes plus downloading application updates and housekeeping.

This morning the machines are their normal selves and fast as ever.

Pages, Numbers, and Keynote have all upgraded on my iPad, iPhone and on my computer too. Yes I still use the MS Office suite but for most things the Apple equivalents are just as good, read and write Office formats, and total cost is $60 instead of $200 or $300.

Some people in the news have called Apple a bit mean for their references to Microsoft during the announcements I personally think they weren’t mean. I think they were simply stating that the emperor’s got no clothes. 

I’m kind of hoping that Microsoft will take this as a challenge, or a red hot poker in the butt. I hope that they start concentrating on quality, and paying attention to what their customers want and need instead of the crap that seems to be coming out of focus groups.

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After all I do have to support clients running Windows. It would be far easier if Windows was stable and my clients liked it. As it is I’m supporting XP, Vista, Win 7 and Win 8 god help me.

Apple on the other hand is obviously trying to get all their users to the same OS and application versions. If they’re successful it will mean it will be a lot easier supporting their user base than having 4 or 5 variants in the field.

Another amazing number to me was the number of users that had upgraded to IOS7 in one month. It was something like 60% of their installed base. Dang! That speaks volumes and I have to admit I’m much happier since I drank the Apple Kool-aid and have a homogenous computing environment.

I think Apples catchphrase should be “Everything Just Works”

But then again…

I’m biased.

 

 

 

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Warning… This is techno-drivel…

Sorry to my non geek friends…Stop reading before your eyes start bleeding.

I noticed that Blackberry is releasing a version of the BBM (Blackberry messenger) for iPhone,  in 2008 it was a pretty neat application.

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I used it a lot but it was only really useful if your friends also had Blackberrys.

The practical upshot is that I had a grand total of about 10 people that I chatted with using the BBM service.

I’ll admit that there was a momentary “OH Cool” when I read that BBM was out on the iPhone.

Then I thought about it.

I can’t think of a single person in my circle of acquaintances that still uses any blackberry device. 

Wow! 

I really hadn’t thought about how long it had been since I’d even seen a Blackberry, other than the one sitting at the bottom of my sock drawer.

So at this late stage in the game, why the hell is Blackberry even bothering? The single advantage to BBM was that you didn’t use your carrier text messages. BBM used Blackberrys servers and your data plan instead of .20 text messages. 

Who doesn’t have unlimited texting these days?

BBM used to be top of the line.

A big disadvantage was that you couldn’t just reach out to anyone. They had to have a blackberry and you had to exchange a PIN number. On the one hand, this completely eliminated SPAM on the other hand the initial sync procedure was a pain in the ass.

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How is BBM any better than Apples messenger or simply normal text messages?

There are far more of my friends today that have iPhones. Apples Messenger works across iPad, iPhone, and the latest Mac OS X versions.

It’s simple, efficient, and just works. Messenger sends via your data plan if it knows the other device is something Apple. Your iPhone will select text messaging if the receiving device isn’t Apple. 

Had Blackberry continued to dominate the smartphone market and serve their business market, BBM on iPhone and Android today would be a welcome application.

However with the minuscule presence of Blackberry in smartphone market and the growing BYOD (Bring your own device) paradigm. I think the BBM application will suffer a fate similar to Blackberry’s formerly ubiquitous phones, obscurity and eventual irrelevance.

Sad really, when a great company slips and falls like Blackberry has.

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Have you heard about Widows 8.1???

Apple will be releasing OS X Mavericks shortly.

As I think about Windows and how poorly the latest versions have been received by the general public.

It occurred to me, if Apple wanted to drive a stake through windows heart (too much TrueBlood), they’d release their latest OS for $19.99 on any Intel platform.

Compared to the outrageous cost of Windows, I wonder how many people would simply say, “yeah I’m done with Windows” and pony up the $.

Perhaps that would be a more merciful death for Windows than “The Death of a thousand fuckups” it’s experiencing now. 

Nah… Apple won’t be that merciful to Microsoft. 

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We read your beads without ever talking to you…

 

NewImageWe know you don’t belong here.

We don’t have to ask, all we have to see or hear is the way you race your little wanna be drifter car with it’s flatulent exhaust into our neighborhood.

We know you’re out of your element precisely because of your dark windows.

We smile seeing you lock up your brakes when the pavement runs out.

We know you’re lost, led astray by your GPS.

We see your confusion at being lost because you don’t understand the failure of your technology.

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I’ll give you a little hint… Mountainous terrain and the mineral composition of the mountains can, and often does introduce errors in the GPS signal.

If you’re depending on your phone to give you guidance you better hope that you’ve got a cell signal too.

Not that I care… I personally wait for the day when one of your morons goes flying up my street, and straight into the wash.

I don’t necessarily hope that you die but I’m a big believer in Darwin awards.

Not that any of you would understand what the above sentences mean, you’re dumbfucks and you deserve what you get.

To you, technology is magic, never wrong, and using your mind, or eyes, or the barest shred of common sense is a totally foreign concept.

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You’re lemmings, sheep, Prey… People like you are why Americans in most parts of the world are thought of as morons and easy marks.

Thanks for that by the way…

When you drive off the road into the wash and your little POS car is broken, there is no doubt in my mind that you’ll try to sue the GPS maker or the county or the local residents for your stupidity. Because after all you’re not responsible for your actions are you?

Believe me, you hit one of the local kids because you were going too fast, on single lane residential roads & your bleached bones might be found in the mountains… eventually… if your family is really, really lucky.

Word of advice…

Slow down, remember that in your haste to get somewhere you often miss the beauty of where you are…

BTW, your phones navigation system will most likely work better too.

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Ode to the wash

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I for one miss the little meandering wash of 20 years ago.
 
I miss walking the in it. I miss the little thread of water that was in the bottom of the wash almost year round and the way my dogs would find pools to lay in and cool off during our walks.
 
I miss the treasures of semi polished stones that could be sometimes be found in the wash bed.
 
We used to have coyotes come to the wash, morning and evening for water.
 
Geology students from local high schools and colleges would come here for samples and classes. The instructor teaching the class about the mountains, their relative youth and the minerals found here.
 
Then some kind of flood event happened or the wash became perceived as a threat.
 
Mitigation efforts began, and the wash became wider, deeper, filled with more loose soil eroding ever more rapidly and our little wash was suddenly, one Spring afternoon… gone.
 
It was replaced by a large grey dusty, dry, gaping wound most of the time. At other times is was turned into a raging angry torrent of muddy water and boulders that shook the ground. 
 
In the final mitigation project…  Stone, concrete, roads, barriers, and control demonstrate that sometimes it’s better to have left well enough alone. 

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The project goes forward 6 days a week. Rumbling machines, digging equipment, cement trucks, rock carriers, and all manner of big Tonka toys. (The rock trucks are a touch of irony they’re bringing rocks UP from the desert to reinforce the sides of the wound they’ve created.) Our little wash is being remade, reformed, conquered, dominated, dare I say raped?
 
I think all of us luxuriate in Sundays because we can sleep a little later and have a whole day where there’s nothing but the sound of wind and birdsong in the trees.
 
On Sunday, people come to the rim of what used to be a gentle little wash with water in it most of the time.
 
They gape at the canyon that now separates one side from the other, some shake their heads and go back inside their homes then draw the blinds on the windows facing the wash.
 
Others are angry and others still, are just sad.
 
I hope that as the work finishes and the trees are replanted the “revised” wash won’t be such a glaring permanent reminder of mans desire to dominate nature. 
 
 I have a feeling that the wound will be a very long time healing.
 
Time will tell if this flood project will prevent the roads from being washed out. I suspect that it will create pools of standing, stagnant water. That will no doubt require more “maintenance” from the county to keep the mosquitoes down. 
 
Our little wash was in reality gone the minute bulldozers rolled in 10 or 15 years ago.
 
They cut and gouged their way toward the mountain, each year going further and deeper.  Some years when the bulldozers didn’t come, the wildlife came back, coyotes, and bears, raccoons, deer and the occasional cougar or bobcat, and other critters.

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The balance would be disrupted again by the growl of heavy diesel engines and the wash got deeper, & wider. Eventually water didn’t flow and collect anymore so neither did the wildlife.
 
Through the years, we had hope that the bulldozers wouldn’t come again and the wash would recover.
 
It’s certain now that our little babbling wash is gone forever. 
 
With it, one of the reasons I chose to live here.
 
It’s not your fault, Mr Flood Control. You’re doing your job and your goal is to protect property, homes, and prevent roads from being washed out.
 
I get it, but I’ll mourn the loss of the shallow little wash behind my house; 
 
The wash with a few errant Mt. Mahogany’s growing in the middle of it. 
 
The wash where I took my Geologist father, who spent hours looking at the tailings. 
 
Finally he loaded up a fair sized backpack with actinolite, then handed it to me to hump out of the wash. Those samples he sent to his geologist buddies all over the world, because thats how geologists give gifts to each other.
 
More recently the wash was a place where a precocious little girl all of 5 years old pronounced with the absolute certainty only a 5 year old can have, that we couldn’t be in a creekbed, riverbed or wash. 

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When I inquired why, she pointed out that stones in creeks and rivers were rounded, therefore since these rocks were jagged this wasn’t a creek, river, or wash. 
 
She modified her conclusion when I pointed out how close the mountain peaks were and asked how far she thought the rock had to tumble to get smooth. To this day I don’t know if she believed me, but she took it under advisement.
 
See it’s not just a wash that sometimes flooded. To us, it’s a place of memories, wildlife, discovery, and laughter. 
 
Well… It was all of these things, when it was the shallow little wash behind the house.
 
To the people on the town council, the wash was simply an inconvenience when they had to take the long way out of town. 
 
To the county and flood control,  it was a potential hazard. 

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To the people who live along the wash, it was a neighbor who sometimes had a bad day or two, but a neighbor whose good days and benefits greatly outweighed the bad.
 
You see, Flood Control.
 
We were angry and are sad because we’re mourning the loss of a friend & the natural wildness we moved 90 miles away from Los Angeles to enjoy.
 
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The past couple of nights have been “Interesting”…

…The Insomniac theater of the absurd.

I wrote a blog sitting naked at my desk. It was long rambling, random, and well… Nuts!

I started taking an antibiotic that cautions it may cause dizziness. They should also caution about insomnia and insanity.

Probably not a good sales pitch though. “This antibiotic is effective against sinusitis and may also cause extended episodes of intense crazy. Use with caution when operating heavy equipment.“

I’d take an erection lasting four hours, but that’s not what this antibiotic promises or what it’s delivering…

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I chose not to publish the “crazy blog”… Probably for the best.

Last night I dreamt I was with Arlene in a psychotic TrueBlood nightmare.

I was offering her soothing words about her husband Terry having been ripped apart by a flatulent vampire. Arlene said, “I can deal with Terry being ripped apart… but what is that horrific stink?“

Just then Terry pulled himself back together and became a flatulent vampire who kept chasing us round and round Merlotte’s but was easy to avoid because we smelled him coming.

Lafayette put an end to Vampire Terry with a pot of chili and a can of lysol. “Bitch! I jus done cleaned this kitchen and you come up in here smelling like dat? Awww HELL NO!” 

I ask you… is this the kind of behavior you want from your antibiotic? I didn’t think so.

Then this morning, I was outside doing poo patrol in the back yard.

OK did someone put extra stinkiness in the poo, or have my sinuses started to clear?

Then it hit me one of the dogs must have been particularly gaseous last night which got incorporated into the TrueBlood dream / nightmare.

I guess you could say the past night or two has been shitty or at least gassy.

I do hope only the mind altering drugs you expect to cause delusions are deluding you, and that your antibiotics are just killing infections.

Have a good one