Posts

Posted on

I really shouldn’t get so spun up… BUT DAMN!

IMG 0201

My Nike+ Fuel band is broken and needs repair. I look up the warranty and find the receipt then discover that I only have to take the fuel band down to the local Nike store and they’ll repair or replace it.

Great! I print out the receipt, and the warranty page which clearly states “To obtain in-person warranty support bring the defective product and sales receipt to a Nike retail store…“

Yesterday Morning, I sync the last data out of the fuel band, locking up my computer in the process.

Really?

You choose NOW to lock up? I swear I’ve done exactly this same procedure 100 times in the past 8 months and had no trouble at all.

But this time WHEN I need to get out the door, It’s a hard lockup.

Great! I sit down, disconnect all the cabling from the laptop open it, press and hold the power button then restart the system. I reconnect all the cables and boom I’m out the door.

I saddle up and drive the 45 minutes to the Nike Store.

I’m in the parking lot and heading for a parking space when a crazed bitch pops through the parking lanes does a U-turn in front of me and whips into the parking space I was pulling into then she gives ME Shit for being close to her POS car WHILE she’s talking to her phone in speaker phone mode and I’m the one who’s in the wrong…

Riiiight! I called her a bad name, I actually called her a fat assed one…

I backed up a little and went to the furthest parking spot in the freakin parking lot.

I don’t want no trouble, I just want to get into this shopping center, do my shit and get the hell out of here and home BEFORE it gets completely insane!

I hoof it to the store, wait in line and get to the cash register.

NewImage

I hand the clerk the broken fuel band and the receipt plus a printout of the warranty… then ask him “who should I talk to about this?”

He looks at the warranty paper then goes to get someone else. OK Fine…

The new guy looks at the warranty paper and the receipt and says “you bought this in December from Nike”

I’m starting to get a bad feeling but I figure nope, I’ll be nice.

“Yep direct from Nike. The button is broken I just need to exchange it. Under warranty which is 1 year and we’re not there yet.”

He says, “We’re supposed to get them in tomorrow.”

Which begs the questions I think to myself “You’ve never had them in the first place?” or “Is this just a way to get me out of the store”

He continues, “To do the exchange we need to have all the parts that came with it.”

Now I’m sure this is a delay tactic. But I think to myself I’ve still got the original box, and the parts and accessories I can pack ’em all up and come back tomorrow.

I point out that the band is the failure point and that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to just have a big box of the bands without their clasps in the back room and simply do a replacement from that stock. Just swap the customers clasp right there in the store it would take 2 minutes tops and would prevent the bands in the back from being pilfered since they’d fall off without the clasp mechanism.

But THAT would of course be too freakin intelligent. 

Ok, I’m annoyed… but not ticked off. 

NewImage

I head out to my car and sure as shit, there’s a rusted out POS parked crooked and so close that I can’t open my drivers door.

Fine! I crawl into the passengers side and squirm my way into the drivers seat. It’s 97F outside. Inside the car it’s well beyond that.

I fire the beast up and hit MAX on the A/C then pull out of the parking lot.

I have one more stop to make. I need to deposit a couple of checks at the credit union. I head toward them, make a right, make another right, then make a left into a shady parking spot. SCORE!!!

Go inside, stand in line… and stand…. and stand… and stand. WTH?

Only Two tellers and both of them occupied with two crazy women. One demanding that the money be recounted (6th time) “‘cause she be knoin she gave dat teller another $40” at one teller window and at the other window the woman is explaining her boyfriends access to the various accounts and that she thinks he’s cheating on her and she needs to get herself some money that aint his money… 

At which point my eyes and ears are starting to bleed.

NewImage

I’m wondering if the ATM would be a better option when miracle of miracles a third teller appears at the counter and waves the guy in front of me over. Progress! My eyes and ears are still bleeding. But I might make it out of the credit union before 9PM this evening.

Finally my turn, I hand the teller my endorsed checks, I swipe my ATM card and enter my PIN (Might as well have done the ATM thing) and tell him I want to deposit these checks and get $100 in cash. And that’s when it all fell down…

He looks at the checks, and then logs out of his computer. “Please wait, I’ll be right back…” 

ZIP he’s over conversing with a woman that looks like she put the whole lemon forest in her mouth. After 5 minutes the young guy comes back.

NewImage

I ask him what the problem was… He couldn’t read the first word of the spelled out amount… Sigh…

I remind him about wanting the hundred back. Then I’m done… Out the door and across the parking lot I see… a POS parked too close to my passenger door and an orange cone near my drivers door. WTF?

Oh the orange cone is from the mobile car wash guy who’s working on a Mercedes and has gotten my car with the water as he rinsed the Mercedes. He’s looking at me with fear in his eyes.

I guess by rights I could demand a free car wash but the poor guy looks so sorry, hot, & tired, I don’t have the heart. Besides my car is filthy the most he did was add to the water spots already in the dust on my hood. Big Deal!

It’s 99F when I get in the car. I’m on the road again heading North. 18 Wheelers are taking up 3 of the 3 lanes and not giving anyone a break as we inch along toward the freeway.

NewImage

Eventually the 18 wheelers manage to take up only 2/3 of the available lanes, me along with everyone else squirts through the opening and ahead into open lanes. Shortly though several cars are playing Indy 500 pace cars and we’re all crawling along catching every light.

Grrrr….

Finally the Freeway! Zip… I’m on cruising and all is well. I come up on Day Creek there’s enough room for 2 cars between me and the guy in front of me. The two cars merge perfectly and get on the freeway without problem. I’m watching the traffic as we approach the I-15 Northbound it bunches up in this area and it’s not uncommon for someone to realize they need to get on the i-15 and they’re not in the correct lane. This results in someone sailing across 6 lanes of traffic and further increase in the backup around the transition.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a white infinity SUV ON MY RIGHT! There’s either no lane or they’re about to run out of lane but they’re accelerating! There’s no room ahead of me, what the hell are they doing?

I’ve been moving at the same speed neither faster or slower there’s 1/4 mile of open road behind me and this dumbass has accelerated and is trying to force herself in to a space that is too small for her bloated ass and why is she doing this anyway?

IMAG0009

I’ve got nowhere to go, I can’t change lanes, and I figure the minute I touch my brakes so will she and we’ll still have a deadlock.

I keep moving at the same speed and hope she figures out that her best choice is to drop behind me like a good little BITCH and stop trying to cause an accident.

I momentarily think of the relative values of our vehicles and her probable impact point on my car, Yep! It would be her fault and I’d sue the fucking hell out of her. But nah… I just want to go home.

So I accelerate a bit to get out of her way because I still have nowhere to go… and the dumb bitch accelerates too!

Now it’s insane! She finally drops behind me as she should have done in the fucking first place and gets on the freeway.

As she takes the faster lane next to me another little bitch…

(I’m thnking a much worse word that is prefaced with Rancid, Diseased, Dried up, and ends with the bad word)

…in the passenger seat flips me off with her $90 manicured nails and enough diamonds on her fingers to make Xerxes I of Persia jealous.

I can’t stop myself, I safely signal and change lanes, I pull my phone out of it’s holster and snap a picture of them from behind.

NOW is when they get concerned that maybe, just maybe, they’ve pulled the wrong fucking guys chain. They speed off and I change lanes back to the slow lane to make the transition home.

You know, I just want to go about my life, It shouldn’t be an ordeal every fucking time I leave my driveway.

NewImage

This is one of the reasons that I’ve wanted to leave California for the last 5 years. I’ve actually wanted to leave this state for about the last 20 years but you make sacrifices for your significant other. The last 5 years however have made me want to be somewhere else I’m almost to the point of ANYWHERE else.

When do I get to go someplace that’s civilized?

I couldn’t help but think as I was finally heading home about that old saying “an armed society is a polite society” and that California is mostly disarmed now days.

Then there was the usual bullshit going up the I-15.

I’m going to get a sign to post in the back window of my vehicles, it’s going to read;

HEY DUMBASS!

It’s a simple rule…

SLOWER TRAFFIC TO THE RIGHT!

I finally get home. I’m hungry, spun-up and what should have been an hour errand at most, turned into a 3 hour tour. I think that’s going to be a new saying for me. “example, Then I was on a Gilligan – Something that should have been over far sooner than it actually was.“

I’m pissed off and storming so I sit down at my computer.

Logic, rationality, and calmness are what I’m craving.

I click on my browser, I want to look at some settings on the blog and maybe read the news.

The computer locks up… again… I have absolutely no control…

REALLY??????

AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

I need a drink!

Posted on

Main Stream Media sucks!

Most of the people I talk with agree that the Main Stream Media has become universally bad. Alright, most describe it as useless.

NewImage

During the Sharp fire, for example. The media reported streets that were being evacuated, but never once bothered to look at a map while writing the text or reporting on the fire.

Instead of saying something simple like “The Mandatory evacuation area is all streets along East Canyon extending South of Orchard. These streets include Mt Mahogany, Slippery Elm, Buckthorn, and Mojave Scenic. Voluntary Evacuations extend North of Orchard to Lausanne Drive, The Portion of Chaumont East to Basel Dr and West to Orchard, and the portion of Summit Dr North to Easter Dr.”

NewImage

This would have made it very clear to the people of town what area was involved and the extent of the area. All It would have taken was a journalist looking at Google Maps. OR actually asking an information officer at the command post to point out the area. 

I suppose that the ability to construct a cogent sentence might have helped…

Instead what we got was a confused mess of street names and directions that mislead people far North of the Evacuation zones (Mandatory and Voluntary) to believe that fire was sweeping toward them and they were going to die! 

In other words… PANIC People PANIC NOW! 

The really sad part is that not only was the Medias’ coverage virtually useless to the local residents who were trying to comply with the orders, the coverage panicked people who have vacation or retirement homes throughout the town but who don’t live in the town. 

So in the midst of packing, and seeing to the elders who needed help evacuating, and securing the homes of neighbors on vacation and weekend residents, the full time residents were also answering the phones giving people the real un-panicked rational version that we got when we asked a hotshot crew or sheriff as they passed by.

A story, that was in fact far more calm and coherent.

Yes, we are probably going to order an evacuation. No we don’t think the homes are in all that much danger. We’re concerned that with the narrow streets, plus our moving heavy equipment up here that if the winds kick up & the fire spreads, we wouldn’t be able to get the residents and ourselves out without people getting hurt. There are simply too many variables for us to feel comfortable having the fire this close to occupied homes.

As always there were 1 or 2 people that stayed regardless of the mandatory nature of the evacuation request. 

Not once did the media say anything useful like “The evacuation is for your safety.” or ask the question of one of the people not evacuating “What is your plan if the fire should get below you, cutting off your only route of escape?”

The media failed to look at the human interest stories like the neighbors checking on the elderly and making sure that they weren’t forgotten or the residents of the town opening their homes to many of the evacuees.

Another angle of the story would have been to ask the fire and police what they thought of the residents orderly evacuation. This would have provided an opportunity for the Firefighters to speak about the importance of having an emergency plan. It would have allowed the police an opportunity to explain what their role is after an evacuation. For example that they stay and protect the empty neighborhoods.

I’m not a journalist but these are all useful points that could have been made instead of “FIRE OMG FIRE OMG FIRE PANIC!” 

It’s not just the fire, I use this as an example because it’s fresh in my mind and I have direct knowledge of it.

NewImage

You can see evidence of “Spin” and bad reporting or fact checking all the time. Compare the reporting of an event in Germany from a US news source and then read about the same event in a German news source. (Many German news sources have well written English versions.) 

Sometime the difference is startling. 

US Media: “Merkel SLAMS Greece over finances”

German Media: “Merkel spoke firmly with Greek officials about their financial plan”

I read those two sentences as very different. In reading the full article Merkel was annoyed with the vagueness of parts of a report the Greek banking officials presented, but she wasn’t pounding her shoe on the conference table.

NewImage

Not that Germans commonly do that, it’s more of a communist Russian thing. (If you don’t get it, look up Nikita Khruschev and the quote “We will bury you”.) 

Recently, we’ve seen too many examples to count of what my high school English and History teachers called “Yellow Journalism” around the issues of guns and gun control in America.

To the Wikipedia definition I would add a specific paragraph about media affecting national politics by “Spinning” reports which are full of confabulations then later conflating those same reports to control or influence public opinion.

Many people have become so fed up with the media in general that they’re not watching the news.

Some people have gone so far as to turn off their cable and satellite. Many more people no longer read the newspapers. These groups rely instead on the information that they obtain from Google News, and other online media sources.

This lack of readership, or viewership appears to cycle back upon itself causing ever more sensational headlines and a “News” media that is skewed far more toward entertainment than toward providing facts.

Which leads to more people turning away from the Main Stream Media in all it’s forms, leading to more sensational, salacious headlines in 72 point type.

I’ve often thought about the humorous aspects of a newspaper that kept increasing the headline type size until eventually they only had one letter per page and all meaning was lost. Oddly, it didn’t have to go that far for all meaning to be lost. All it took was a texting generation. (I hart u y u no hart me)

Reading about the LAUSD deployment of iPads in the schools, I cringe in anticipation of the reporting and writing style in a decade or so. I’ll be writing a blog about that soon.

Turning to the internet isn’t the best choice either… As I’ve written previously, any idiot can post something to a blog. Case in point… the blog you’re reading right now.

This blog is a purely entertainment, opinion driven, bit of writing. It’s not in any way a proper news source, thankfully it’s not widely read given some of the typos I’ve failed to notice.

Were I to write news articles I’d probably never see them published because they’d be pretty dry. The details of a water project only rarely become salacious, it usually takes a body being uncovered by a work crew. Even then, how you describe such a  discovery can be titillating or simply factual.

The same pressure to garner attention is present in internet news sources. It’s all driven by the same thing… Money.

Look at the side columns of a web page or the annoying floaters you see on almost any article you click on and it’s about advertising. And therefore about enticing the reader to remain on a web page long enough to see the ads.

This driving force hasn’t changed since the beginning of newspapers.

What has changed is the quality of the writing and reporting.

The change has not been for the better.

Posted on

You should probably know.

For the next few days, my hosting company is upgrading servers.

It’s means that there may be interruptions in my blogs availability.

It’s not you, your computer, your ISP or the NSA

My hosting service promises that my pages will be faster when they’re done upgrading.

OK

I’ll take the speed.

Posted on

Well I Apologize…

It seems that in my cleverness I enabled a commenting system that wouldn’t work for people that were using IOS to make comments.

NewImage

Not only would it not post the comment… the system I was using wouldn’t even bother to notify me that someone had tried to make a comment.

It seems to work just fine for Chinese Rolex knockoff sites..,. Who knew?

I’ve checked, comments weren’t sitting in the SPAM folder, they weren’t in the trash folder and they weren’t just sitting in the pending folder.

Wherever your lost comments ended up… Know that they’re in a better place now.

I’m really sorry to any of you who tried to post comments only to have your hard work not show up in the comments section.

In an Ironic twist… 

A buddy of mine sent me an email telling me that he’d commented on “Do you really trust the Internet” and that the comment was MIA. 

So I Suppose this proves the point, you can’t trust the internet!

I’ve switched to a different posting system. I don’t like it as much, but it has the advantage that it works… I think.

I posted something from my iPad and got the proper notifications.

A few things about the comments section.

You can post anonymously for the time being, if this becomes a problem then I will go back to requiring names and email addresses.

All Comments are moderated. Meaning that if I think you’re way out of line I reserve the right to wish your comment into the Corn Field. Something I’ve not had to do, except to people trying to use my blog and bandwidth for free advertisement. 

Abusive comments toward me or toward other posters will not be tolerated. I’ll wish your comment into the Corn Field.

If a person becomes a specific problem, I can blacklist them. I don’t really want to do it but it’s possible. Essentially this is wishing you into the Corn Field.

One last thing, you can’t comment on a post older than 14 days. That’s a way to keep some of the snake oil sales people at bay. 

Remember, I enjoy a bit of interaction, even if you disagree with me. At least I know you’re reading and that makes any writer a happy camper.

If you’d like to send a private email you’re welcome to use the email link listed under the “Contact” heading.

Once again, I’m very sorry if I frustrated anyone…

I kept thinking it was too quiet!

“Wishing someone into the corn field” was from what TV Show? What was the actors name that did the wishing? And where did this actor show up later in their TV/Film Career?

Hey, Just because I screwed up doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun…

Posted on

Do you really trust the Internet?

We’ve heard the perennial excuse “It’s Computer Error”.

NewImage

I’ve had one too many occasions where I was told something was due to a computer error where I followed on with “So you knew the computer was in error and yet you continued on with … (Whatever the screwup was)?”

Think about it, usually these kind of errors are in a single corporation…

What happens if you magnify that by hundreds of thousands of computers where all of those machines are linked together?

Far from having a “Terminator” or “SkyNet” experience, you have instead a degenerating mass of corrupted data.

One example I can think of are our three major Credit reporting agencies… They share the same data pool.

NewImage

The practical upshot of this sharing is that the three systems synchronize to the lowest common denominator. Which means if you have an erroneous black mark on your record appear on one of the services you’ll have that black mark replicated on all the other services. 

Once the black mark appears it can take as many as 12 interventions on your part to have a correction remain permanent. I’ve personally had this happen and spent a year removing the same piece of bad data from each service repeatedly because the services were sharing it back & forth.

But what about other more subtle information?

NewImage

Truly, the internet has given voice to all.

It’s pretty easy to figure out when village idiots are speaking in your own village? Folks all know “That Child ain’t right” and they’ll tell you so.

But can you be so certain when the Idiot is from another village? You don’t have access to the common wisdom of the folks from that other village. How do you verify whats being said is really true?

I started thinking about this the other day when I read an article on the web that had been published under the auspices of National Geographic.

The article in question rather loosely tossed around a few terms, fossil being one of them. The writer described Carbon14 dating being done on the Chitin of insect which had been fossilized. Fossilization typically describes the replacement of biomatter with mineral compounds. 

We have discovered badly degraded dinosaur tissues in the fossilized long bones of some of the largest dinosaurs. but the mineralization process seems to work from the outside in.

Insect exoskeletons made of chitin presumably would be the first thing to be mineralized.

Without bio-matter C14 testing doesn’t work.

Which leads inevitably to the conclusion that some of the data the writer was quoting was inaccurate.

I was disappointed because I have pretty high regard for National Geographic publications. I couldn’t help thinking about my nieces and nephews arguing what they read in an article online with their Geologist Grandfather. Their Grandfather would at worst tell them they and their source was full of caca. At best he’d demand to see the article himself and after reading it conclude that the writer was too loose with the language.

Knowing their grandfather as I do, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he wrote National Geographic and demanded they print a properly credited and corrected article.

This morning I was involved in a discussion about the marvels of Tablet computers in our schools and the revolutionary concept of interactive textbooks.

Then I thought of the libraries.

Schools, Elementary through College used to have extensive libraries. I’ve noticed public libraries closing and wondered if the same trend was happening in education.

NewImage

 

It was at this point that I had a slight epiphany. 

A book, a real printed book that sat on a shelf in a library contained “facts”. Those “facts” could be referenced by citing the book, the author, the publication date, revision, chapter, page number,  paragraph, and line.Today textbooks and research materials are available online but they also exist as hardcopies. If publishing moved to an online only paradigm these materials risk becoming ephemeral.

If the “facts” changed, another book was printed that contained all the revisions. It got placed on a shelf next to the previous edition and the world spun on.

If a book exists only as a digital entity, instantly downloadable and revisable online, can you be sure of the “facts” contained in the book? What you read last week, you might be unable to reference this week due to an update.

Within the pages of this blog, with absolutely no regard to the changes in meaning or in fact the subject of a particular piece I’ve made edits to what I’d said previously. I pressed the “Publish Button” overwrote what I’d said and I never gave it a thought. 

What happens if textbooks are treated with the same cavalier attitude?

NewImage

Johnny or Jane learn today that Syrias uprising was a completely internal affair. Their textbooks say so. But tomorrow the Syrian uprising is found to be caused by an external player. Johnny or Jane, if they miss the update will be incorrect on their final exam.

This is of course an extreme example but it illustrates the point.

In a completely digital world how do we know a “fact” is a FACT? (No, I’m not suggesting that we live in “The Matrix”) 

It’s said time and again “History is written by the winners.” In the not too distant past, the victors had to go to great lengths to re-write history. In a digital age… all it takes is opening an editor on a computer.

This led me to a disturbing thought

In a society where everything is online… where news is unabridged, unedited, and instantly displayed, we run the risk of being a society of gossip and here-say.

Perhaps, this is why so many people are caught-up in “Reality TV shows”. These are after all nothing more than gossip raised to it’s glitziest form.

The really ironic thing for me to consider is that I never considered the possibilities before now. I played a part in moving this digital age forward and I looked upon those who were not seduced by the promise of technology with some disdain. 

NewImage

As I look at it now, perhaps those who were cautionary weren’t Luddites. Perhaps they were simply better acquainted with the lowest common denominator of human behavior.

I can’t help but draw a very loose parallel to the angst Robert Oppenheimer expressed when he understood the full nature of what he had created.

I like digital books, but I think with my favorites… I’m going to buy hard copies. Just to be sure.

FYI I just edited this entry… Mostly for the hell of it.

Have a Great Weekend!