Tag: General

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Well There’s my problem!

I was reading… Scanning headlines as I often do and a headline caught my attention.

The Headline was something like Russia sanctions nuclear weapons in Belarus. I thought “Great!” A few less nuclear weapons in the world is probably a good thing.

Then I read the article a little further, and found that Russia was allowing weapons to be deployed in Belarus. 

Hmmm. 

But we impose sanctions on Iran to keep them from doing shit that nobody likes.

To the dictionary Boy Blunder!!!

Oh hell no!

This word has no fucking meaning at all does it?

As a Noun it could be a penalty or permission, as a verb it’s the same.

Why does this word even exist?

No wonder there are pallets of cash and uranium being moved around to our enemies. 

They wrote the agreements using a word that is as two faced as Janus. (Look it up…)

I don’t want to hear this word being bandied about by journalist, politicians, or anyone else ever again! I’m putting this word in my official “Weasel Word collection”. This collection is my personal list of words not to use, and words that when others use them are red flags that the person is lying to my face.

I was looking for references to Russia threatening to Nuke Berlin, DC, and a couple of other cities if the west really threw in to ensure Ukraine won the war.

This seemed to me to be something of interest. While I’d caught the headline, I didn’t have time or inclination to read something that would very probably depress me. 

Then happily, I remembered that I am a child of the 1960’s. I grew up living under the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War. 

Nukes! Smooks! Bring it on bitches!!!! I remember how to duck and cover!

Although I must admit I might be inclined to send Putin a box of chocolates if he nuked DC.

That would solve a number of problems at once. Crime… Homelessness… Shitty Government…

Ahh there’s the piece…

Russia Will Drop ‘Entire Arsenal’ on London, Washington if it Doesn’t Win Ukraine War

It’s a Breitbart piece. It looks like Medvedev was saber rattling for the folks at home. I wondered why none of the talking heads were breathlessly telling us this was a result of Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin. 

Apparently they didn’t believe the threat was credible. 

The media and others say Tucker Carlson is now a traitor… Yawn. He’s the puppet of Putin… Sigh. He’s a useful idiot to Putin… Whatever.

There was a time when a real journalist would interview Jesus and then Satan just to present both sides of the story. Carlson in my opinion did what any decent journalist would have done. He seized an opportunity to go directly to the source.

We’ve heard all kinds of stuff from Zelensky, personally I wanted to hear from Putin in his own words.

Putin may possibly be a bit crazy, but he’s not senile and infirm like our president. 

The Russian guards in dress uniforms looked a bit odd. It was like they didn’t want to risk eye contact with Putin but still needed to watch over him. They looked uncomfortable performing their task. I wonder if that’s a traditional holdover from the days of the Tsar. There’s something in my memory about not meeting the eye of the emperor or king because mere commoners weren’t equal to the emperor.

I’ll have to look it up, refresh my memory.

Anyway that’s enough randomness for this morning. Time to get breakfast, then walk the K9. Spring is around the corner and Im planning on talking to the realtor mid March.

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You know, I don’t think DirecTV gets it.

I saw an ad for DirecTV today. The ad is selling the ability to stream DirecTV content via the internet.

You can see what I’m talking about at directv.com

Their big selling point is that you don’t have to have a dish on your roof. Uh… big deal! Their little dish is the least of the problems with them.

First and foremost in my mind is that I’d still be locked into one of their bullshit programming packages that forces me to pay for channels that I will never be interested in or watch. BET? Uh Nope! Zero Interest! I think I flipped through once a decade ago and needed subtitles to understand the language being used.

All I could think of, was the scene from Airplane where Barbara Billingsly says, “Excuse me stewardess, I speak Jive.”

I looked at their cheapest package which ends up being around 85.00 a month because you have to rent their box and the channel lineup was for shit! Oh they include SyFy, but SyFy doesn’t show Science Fiction anymore. It’s all reality shows and honestly stupid shit.

I can stream local channels without DirecTV. Heck I can and have been streaming local TV channels from places that I think I’d like to live. It’s great to listen to their news and see what’s happening. The human interest stories tell me about the communities. The crime reporting (or lack thereof) give me information about the safety of the area. There’s also a fair amount of information to be gleaned from the political reporting on their local level and how they report on national news.

So why do I need DirecTV? Oh, right I need to rent their box, plug it into my internet, and then buy a nearly $200 package per month to “Experience” all they have to offer. But wait… I already pay $80 a month for internet… So NOW you’re talking $280. For that, I get all their channels, a fair number of which I am not ever going to tune into.

I don’t speak Spanish, so I’ll never use the Spanish channels. I don’t speak Ebonic, so I’ll never watch the BET offerings. I’m not a Catholic and honestly have never enjoyed televangelists. If I’m gonna go to church, I’m going to get up, get dressed, and actually go to a church. So all the church channels are off the plate.

If you start talking about the “Premium” channels… HBO, Showtime, Max, Disney, and all those channels aren’t gong to do much for me because generally speaking they all play the same thing at different times of the day. I can also order those channels through the internet directly, and once again I don’t have to have DirecTV’s box. I’d have to do the math, but I think I can have them on a subscription basis for less as well.

CNN is included on all the packages and MTV is apparently still around. CNN I will not watch, and MTV? Haven’t even thought about that channel for at least 20 years.

I might be interested if I could pick and choose my channel lineup. Let me construct my own package of channels in blocks of 10. Charge a fair price and have a Premium Block where the HBO, Showtime, etc live.

Make it easy for the consumer to change the selections, make it web based, or better yet ON the DEVICE the user has to rent, so no-one has to listen to crappy English from a call center 1/2 way around the world who will inevitably screw things up worse each time the consumer calls about their service.

10 Channels cost X.
20 Channels cost Y
30 Channels costs Z
Premium block of 5 or 10 costs some higher price 

Make the cost per block predictable and easy to select.

Then DirecTV streaming service might have a chance in hell of surviving.

I could see myself easily with the 4 or 5 local channels, the local PBS stations, WGN, and TCM and that would about fill out my first block of 10. 

The point is, suddenly the viewers via their selection of channels implement a merit based system. Neilson would know which channels and what shows work instantly.  Hollywood could then create entertainment that actually entertained instead of throwing crap against the wall to see what sticks.

It will never happen.

What’s sad is DirecTV just trying to reboot the same tired old paradigm of the cable days and thinking that’s innovation.

I have to ask why they’re doing this now? I can only imagine that their current satellites are running out of fuel and will soon be unable to maintain orbit, or their relative positions in orbit, both critically necessary to maintain coverage.

The cost to launch new satellites is prohibitive and If memory serves, they’ve lost a few on launch recently. Some of the oldest units have probably become non functional or DirecTV has been forced to de-orbit them prior to failure, to burn up in the atmosphere or crash into the ocean so they don’t crash down on populated areas.

Eventually, the constellation of DirecTV satellites will become too thin to provide coverage. I think this is a “Hail Mary” move. DirecTV is trying to do a sort of “Bait & Switch” on consumers. They’ll get everyone who is already using their services to switch to their “Faster more reliable” service.

“New!!! Improved! Now with zero downtime due to weather conditions or blockage of the dish.”

Because so few people understand how so much of our technology actually works they’ll keep writing the check instead of thinking it through and looking for alternatives.

There’s very few channels that can’t be streamed. Most newer smart TV’s have the applications built in. Or An Apple TV, Roku, Xbox, FireStick,  or PlayStation can be loaded with the appropriate applications to access the streams.

Why do I need DirecTV again?

Don’t fall for it, Don’t subsidize shitty programming that you’ll never watch because of a crappy bundling scheme on the part of Cable or Satellite providers.

Show them you’ve got a brain!

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One of those nights…

I was winding down for sleep, then boom! I’m wide awake again.

I finally saw “Bros” today. It’s a cute movie, a somewhat predictable romantic comedy. But I like Luke Macfarlane as an actor. I’ve liked him since KillJoys and it was nice to see him playing something other than one of the Jaqobis boys.

He’s done a shit load of movies but Bros is the first one I’ve seen.

I looked up the website of the SCUBA trip organizer I traveled with in 2008. They’re still at it, and they’re heading to Bonaire in October. That’s a tempting get away. It’s unlikely I’ll go because there may simply be too much to deal with this coming year. That being said Bonaire is someplace that I enjoyed. I suppose my going, or not is going to depend a lot on finances and living situation. I could really use some tropical time, and some SCUBA time.

It’s been literally years since I got wet. I should plan on a refresher course and I need a new dive computer. Yes the Apple Watch Ultra has the ability to act as a dive computer, but honestly the way the sensors and algorithms get changed via software, I won’t bet my life on my Apple Watch.

My Apple Watch has too often behaved in arbitrary ways after software updates. I’m leaning more toward an air integrated single purpose dive computer. Let’s have the life support equipment focus on being life support equipment.

Perhaps I’ve been sitting in front of screens too much lately. Perhaps I’m spinning a little toward the manic and that’s why I can’t sleep. I’m trying 2 fingers of Jack, jotting down some story notes, and trying like hell to find the insomniac net on the Ham radio. Sometimes the late night “nets” are interesting, I might have the wrong night or… it’s not late enough yet.

I’ve been having some interesting thoughts about life, moving, starting over, and what happens next. Maybe these thoughts are just dealing with such monumental questions and worries that my poor addled brain is spinning up, instead of spinning down.

Jesse has gone out to the couch which is odd because usually he’s sleeping on the bed whether I’m there or not. On these late nights, I have to work my way into the bed and find space around him. Once he’s out, he’s dead and grumpy weight to move.

It’s raining now, we might see a little bit of snow but at this altitude it’s probably going to be more rain than anything. I’m hoping for rain that is strong enough to make that thrumming sound on the roof that I like. I’m not sure I’d hear it though because there’re still large patches of snow piled on the roof.

Right now It’s Phutureprimative Mind’s Eye playing while I sip my bourbon, and try to clear my head. I think Mind’s Eye may be one of Phutureprimative’s best albums. Check it out if you can.

I see that the weekly backup of my computer is running. That’s estimated to complete in an hour or so. Right now there’s not enough change on a daily basis to justify backing up to the server hourly. The server spend most of its time in sleep mode. That’s probably just as well since the drives spin down and stay spun down sometimes days at a time.

I think part of that is that on my computer there’s 2 TB of disk, so I’m never going to be fighting for space. Typically if I’m transferring to the server, it’s a huge block of files all at once for archival purposes instead of tons of transfers during the day. 

Jerry was always transferring stuff to the server. 

I’m beginning to envision a future. It’s funny, that wasn’t ever a problem when I was young. I had absolute faith that I could regenerate, rising like a Phoenix from the ashes and that I’d be okay. I could recreate myself with ease.

After the house burned, I realized that it was a lot harder to rise. As time went on, I found that I just didn’t have the energy. I was able to create an apartment life in San Diego. But that was an extension of my home here. If shit went sideways, I knew I always had a place to retreat. Selling and moving is a much different proposition. There’s no anchor, no retreat. I’ll be floating raw, naked, with no tethers and whatever I do, must work flawlessly.

Or mostly flawlessly. I can recover from imperfection… I’ve done it before, to do so requires only the application of money. Since money is finite and also in short supply I’d like to avoid as much imperfection as possible and thereby unnecessary expense.

I’m still spinning. I’ve been refraining from firing up the PlayStation for a few rounds of Call of Duty. That would probably amp me up more.

Not that I mind shooting bad guys, I could see myself joining an online game and really getting amped up because the avatars I’d be shooting are representations of real humans. When they respawn, they tend to have a bit of a grudge. I’m a shitty player… even I get lucky from time to time. Most of the time I’m taking a dirt nap waiting to respawn.

I miss having the friends from my Military Contractor Job to play with. We trash talked each other and played brutally. I used to be able to take my boss down in the game without fear… Well, until he respawned and came hunting me. We laughed a lot, swore at each other and had a ton of fun.

I noticed when I activated my PS5 there were all kinds of rules and regulations against trash talking each other. It’s a pity that so many people are that thin skinned or that so many people abused the shit out of communications.

All our trash talk at each other was nothing more than male bonding. I guess that’s something a lot of gay people and especially female to male transgenders simply wouldn’t understand.

There was nothing more gratifying than shooting my boss in the game and having him say “FUCK!!! I’m coming for you when I respawn!” 

I’d reply, “Yeah, but you have to find my ass first boss!”

The next morning at work we’d all be laughing and talking about the awesome shots we’d taken, or why it was we were dancing in one spot against a wall.

We all used to teabag each other in Halo. Imagine… teabagging your boss and him not being pissed about it the next morning.

Well, here we are at 2 AM. The weekly backup is complete.

Now what?

2nd glass of Jack hasn’t really hit. 

Games? Bust a Nut? Or just go climb between the sheets and hope the warm bed takes me to dreamland.