Tag: Modern Problems

Posted on

Wow! That was more difficult than I thought it would be.

I’ve been thinking about buying a pair of nice bluetooth over the ear headphones.

I’ve got a set of AirPod Pros 2nd Gen and while I like them very much, I don’t like that my ears get annoyed with me if I wear them for more than a couple of hours at a time.

Were it not for that, I’d have them in all the time.

It would be so much easier than listening to the crazy lady screaming about whatever she screams about, or hearing her fella, yelling at the yappy dogs, while grinding away on some piece of metal, driving or “Fixing” a vehicle that’s on it’s last legs.

What he needs to do, is stay out from under the hoods of the various vehicles he’s destroyed (5? I think at last count,) and leave it to a professional. His version of a properly running engine is very different from mine! 3 of 8 cylinders firing, punctuated by 5 consecutive backfires is not proper operation! There’s also the thrilling sound of him running a chain saw at 10 PM. I’m not kidding, I’ll turn the lights off and he’ll start the chainsaw. That motor is also on it’s last legs! One can only hope that when It dies we’ll be spared the restful sounds of him cutting whatever he’s cutting.

Don’t ask…

All I can say is this used to be a quiet neighborhood. This is what happens when you let riff raff move into nice places!

I’ve been in hollers in Tennessee, and Kentucky where folks were dirt poor, and not school educated but they weren’t this kind of white gutter trash.

It’s funny in a way, California can’t even do white trash or rednecks right.

You can see why I might be looking for noise cancelling headphones, that are comfortable in the long term.

There are literally times when I can’t watch TV in my living room due to the noise coming from that white trash. I like having the windows open this time of year, I like the fresh mountain air (even when it is full of pollen).

So I’m faced with, turning up the volume to unbearable levels, closing the windows, not bothering to try to live my life and watch a movie or TV show in my house, or a set of headphones.

I know there are those of you saying, “Why don’t you call the police?”

Hahahahahaha! Where the hell have you people been living? Police? Helpful? Responding to a noise complaint? The police can’t even arrest and hold her for more than 8 hours after she assaults someone. Which she’s done 3 more times since she assaulted me last year.

BTW, if I lived in one of those “Fly Over” redneck places… Let’s just say this whole thing wouldn’t be a problem. Folks go missing in hollers all the time…

I digress, I was considering the Apple AirPods Max. They’re expensive! But I can also buy them from Costco and save $70. I saved $50 on my AirPod Pros at Costco. My concern there is that the Max is generation one and come fall Apple may be releasing a replacement version.

This led me down a rabbit hole of reviews and firmware versions for both the AirPod Max and my AirPod Pros. That’s when I discovered something interesting and strange. I did a search for “Latest AirPod Pro Gen 2 Firmware” then I got articles from last year through this year. I told the browser to limit the results to only this year. You’d think that would narrow your search but oddly it didn’t by much.

I was still seeing articles listing last years firmware as current and it was clear from context, the article had been written last year but the date was today’s date. I looked at several similar articles thinking perhaps there was a current update but there wasn’t.

There was however a shit ton (Technical Term) of ads.

Then it dawned on me, these outdated articles are monkeying with the dates to appear current so they can serve these shitty ads.

This reduces the usefulness of the internet and honestly makes me discount the validity or accuracy of publications MacWorld and 9 to 5 Mac I’m looking right at you!

It occurs to me that because of folks doing stuff like this to keep serving the same 5 ads over and over again, overall the internet is becoming less useful all the time. If the filtering doesn’t work, then the user is faced with a wave of outdated and current information with no ability to determine what is real, and what is useless.

Imagine writing an article about Trump when he was President, packing that article with shitty ads, then updating the date.

A query like “Who is President of the United States” could return Trump, Biden, Obama and Bush. How would someone know? If they had to turn on the TV to figure out who the president is, then the internet would be kind of useless.

All this ad crap and targeted marketing was a bad idea to begin with, and it’s only gotten worse.

I come again to a question I’ve asked myself a lot over the past few years.

“Is the internet’s usefulness eclipsed by having to filter through all the crap to get valid information?”

I’m really wondering. I guess I’ll know when I see an article saying, “Australian farmers pig has piglets with wings, Farmer Stunned!” I’d bet that at least 25% of folks on the internet would read the article, and a lot of them would believe it.

I fell for one the other night, some bullshit about a mystery in some dudes backyard. It was written like some reality show script. A paragraph that said essentially nothing, then a commercial, and another paragraph then commercial. It went on and on, but it was putting ads in front of everyone that was curious late at night.

Spoiler Alert: The guy bought a house built in the late 50s, the “Mystery” was that someone who owned the house had put in a fallout shelter. Over time, other owners had added soil and landscaping that buried the hatch. Then the shelter had gotten forgotten about except as a dim rumor. The guy found the original blueprints at the county records office and decided to investigate. The shelter was in pretty good shape so the guy renovated the space. It was pretty cool. The article could have covered everything in maybe 4 well written paragraphs with photos. Instead they took almost 100 paragraphs all of which were poorly written.

I finally went to Apple for the answer. I’d not gone to them in the first place because often asking a simple question in Apple’s support section, does not provide a single Byte of data. You’re still going to have to sort through a ton data that’s not relevant.

By the way, as of 6/28/2023 the current AirPod Pro Gen 2 firmware is 5E135.

I still haven’t decided if I’m going to drop the hammer on headphones…

This is how I lose entire days…

Posted on

Credit Scores are Bullshit

Through my bank there is a portal to the Transunion Credit Bureau.

I sometimes look at the score, although it no longer has the meaning to me that it once did.

At one time I worked very hard to have a good rating. Then around 2008 or so, overnight my A+ credit rating simply disappeared.

I didn’t miss a payment, I didn’t open a ton of new credit, in fact I had done nothing.

What happened was a “Correction” because the banks suddenly realized that they had written a shit ton of bad loans and they were covering their asses, begging for money from the taxpayers, and in short screwing everyone by downgrading all of our credit even though there were a ton of people like myself who’d not used our homes like piggy banks and gone on spending sprees.

That day I realized that the whole credit score thing was bogus. Since then I’ve had a “whatever” attitude about it because the banks and the system can fuck us all anytime they want to. The recent bank failures are reminders of that.

This morning I was looking at my accounts, making sure that the bills were scheduled to be paid, and thought, “eh, it’s here and free, let me click on this just to look.”

I did, and my credit score is respectable, it’s not what it once was thanks to that morning in 2008 but it’s okay. At least I’m not obsessing over it like I was back then. As I was looking at the data on the web page, a comment jumped out at me and my brain rebooted.

“Having a low debt balance relative to your available credit signals to lenders you’re more likely to make on-time payments.”

That used to be called a debt ratio, it had nothing to do with on-time payments (they were a factor,) it was a measure of how much you owed versus your income, and real possessions. This was used to determine credit worthiness and your ability to repay the amount that you’d borrowed.

I know in this day and age when college loans are supposed to be paid by the tax payers and no-one is responsible for anything they’ve done, old ideas like repaying the loans you’ve taken out are passé. But there was a time when you could get into real trouble with credit and you only had two choices, get a better paying job, or bankruptcy.

What should signal to lenders you’re more likely to make on-time payments is actually right there on the same web page.

It Looks something like this:

Open Accounts – 5
Total Late Payments – 0
Accounts in Collections – 0
Inquiries (last 2 years) – 0
Age of Credit – 35 Years

Factor this data with the real assets I have, (equity – how much of my home loan I’ve paid off and current value of my home, for example,) plus my income, and a financial person should be able to determine if I’m able to reasonably take on additional debt or NOT.

You also have to factor in the cost of the loan. High interest rates for example can really screw your ability to pay the loan off. For reference see Debt Ceiling!

I learned this over time, the hard way. I wouldn’t take on additional debt right now because I’m a little close to my personal discomfort zone.

The way things are, I wouldn’t get the kind of favorable interest rate I’d want, so taking on additional debt is out of the question. I know this because I have a handle on my finances. The credit bureau isn’t telling me anything new.

Laughably, the bank and credit bureau would still give me a shit ton of credit which would be more likely to push me as an individual into default.

Financial institutions are supposed to be about profit and part of the way they do that is through responsible lending. Ideally a financial institution should be concerned enough about their customers that they take the time to explain why a customer should or shouldn’t take out a loan and that the customer understands the risks.

While foreclosing on real property does make the bank money it’s a pain in the butt. Unsecured credit such as that associated with credit cards is a losing proposition, if the bank allows a customer to over extend themselves.

Why loan someone a bunch of money you’re never going to get back?

That makes no sense unless the banks are inflating their losses then billing the FDIC somehow.

With interest rates increasing the way they have I’m betting there are going to be a lot of bankruptcies in the next few years. I’ve got some credit cards that are suddenly at 18%. I haven’t seen those interest rates since the 1980’s.

There’s a part of me that says pay off the credit cards and close those accounts. Logically you’d think that would be the wisest path because it limits your liability. But doing that would reduce your credit score.

That’s another part of the Scam. They force you to keep accounts open but unused because it inflates the arbitrarily calculated number.

I understand mostly how this works. I understand that the numbers are supposed to equalize us all and allow computers to make approve or deny decisions. I just have no faith in the numbers or how they’re created.

I suppose that why the noise over the debt ceiling makes no sense to me.

I’ve completely lost faith in the credit score system. Credit Scores are bullshit and have been for at least a decade.

Posted on

Grrrrrr! Brain not cooperating !

I’ve been trying to write something to finish a short book.

I’ve tried looking at the blank page. That didn’t work. Took the dog for a walk head didn’t clear. Scanned some porn, uhh nope! That didn’t help.

I figured I’d turn toward the blog to see if I can write anything. Then two sentences in, the dog wants to play.

I have worked on cleaning out some of the paperwork out of office closet and found that once again the other half had stashed paperwork in another backpack. On the bright side this stuff was all from 2010 so I don’t have to worry about it. Straight to the shredder!!!

My limit is 2016, pretty much anything prior to that year with the exception of tax records (those are 2013) I’m just tossing in the shredder pile. I’m going to have to find a shred event for a lot of this crap because the shredder can’t handle it. I might be able to keep the shredder running if I could cool it with liquid nitrogen. I’m completely out of that so the shredder runs for 20 minutes then shuts down for an hour.

Then I sat back down to look at the blank page again. Nope, nothing…

The paperwork led to an archeological vein of melancholy as I found a bunch of stuff from 2009 and remembered that we’d just gotten back into this house after the fire. We were happy. We both had good jobs, new cars, new house, and everything was bright. I’d been saving like a fiend in my 401K because I wanted us to be able to retire.

My 401k was depleted 6 years later by unemployment and the other half insisting that we stay in California. I loved him, so we stayed. He lost one job, due to a minister that was far more sinister than ministerial. He kept his other jobs and replaced part of what he lost with a less invasive church position. I found another job that destroyed my career (what was left of it.)

It’s so damn funny that HR people don’t seem to understand taking a job slightly outside your career so that you have a roof over your head and food on the table. These dumb ass HR people just can’t seem to process pragmatism. They seem to believe that you should run up credit cards, then move back in with Mom & Dad while looking for the golden position. Most realistic people would take a job to feed their family. Well, realistic people of my age group, anyway.

There was a time when employers respected the hell out of initiative. There was even a time when the employer that gave you the slightly outside your career would offer to you the first open position that they had that was in your career path. After all they already know your work ethic.

That doesn’t happen anymore. Promoting from within doesn’t seem to happen very much anymore.

Regardless, I’d started rebuilding my 401K and saving as much as I could from 2016 through 2019 all the time looking for a job in my career path and trying to regain the ground lost so that we could have some decent retirement.

Then, well another layoff due to offshoring! Yea!

What I didn’t know was that the other half wasn’t thinking the same way I was. Even If I’d made half a million a year, and done the max 401K contribution, it wouldn’t have helped much. We’d have been in about the same boat I’m in right now. Unless I was putting hard cash away in some other kind of investments.

It made me sad. I tried to do better for us.

I didn’t plan for him dying before we’d retired. I figured I’d be the one on the slab first.

That’s actually kind of funny.

Like Baldrick from Black Adder, my cunning plan blew up in my face.

This is one of the hardest parts of all this. It’s the recognition of what we almost had, what we missed, what we’d hoped for, and dreamt of.

I sometimes feel like I’m sweeping up broken glass. I keep getting those thin shards in my feet because I’m barefoot and I can’t cross the glass to my shoes.

What I’d really like to do is finish the dang story so I can publish it.

Posted on

All I wanted was to listen to music…

Riiiiight!

I pulled a thread, and now none of the smart lights in the house are working. The security camera is also offline. I managed to kill the battery in my phone about 5 PM.

As Mr. Scott once said, “The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to clog up the works!”

This is what happens when you have a “smart house”

I have no clue exactly what the hell is going on. But I’ve done factory resets on my router, and all the smart light bulbs. I’ll be factory resetting the HomePod Minis, the Apple TVs and the Big HomePods.

I’ve been playing whack a mole. I’d get the lights working, then move on to the next thing that was broken, and boom the lights stopped working. Then I’d fix a light and something else would suddenly go offline.

It’s the darnedest thing.

For those of you wondering why I’m mistrustful of AI, here’s a perfect example why i don’t trust AI and think all AI systems should have a kill switch! That switch should be something totally mechanical that can’t be programmed around. Possibly augmented by a very large Axe.

None of the stuff at my house is particularly complex but something is running through the devices like a horseman of the apocalypse.

I’m thinking that I may have to power down then reset each and every device in the house to factory default then add them back one at a time.

I’m also thinking that I’ll need to delete the house from all the HomeKit enabled stuff.

By the time I’m done with this, chasing this problem around and around the house will have cost me 2 days. I started farting around with this Bullshit at 8am yesterday morning. I was listening to music, then suddenly there was no stereo. I asked the question, “Why?”

Before I knew it, I’d been consumed, as had my day. I actually had other things that I’d planned on doing yesterday none of which I got done except the laundry…

It’s also a good thing that I didn’t have any video I need to preserve. Because the security camera has been removed and re added to the home controls twice and will require the procedure again. Each time, any recorded video stored in the cloud is erased.

Totally brilliant bit of software engineering there. Another interesting feature is this, If the camera is offline in the Apple Home application then you can’t even look at video that’s recorded in your iCloud. So once the camera goes away and requires that you delete it and re-pair you’ve lost anything and everything stored for the last 30 days anyway.

I’ll be looking at a different paradigm for cameras in the future.

What’s the point of having the data recorded but completely inaccessible due to some silliness caused by a software update. Isn’t that the point of storing videos in the cloud???

Apparently, I’ve missed a memo somewhere.

Here’s the update. Flushing everything seems to have worked. I now have music throughout the house again and the smart lights are working. This was definitely the brute force method of solving the problem. I’m sure that it will reoccur at some point in the future.

That cynicism comes from experience with technology. Even if you’re not the one fiddling around with the devices, there’s always someone in development who’s tweaking a line of code here or there. Then someone else decides that a software update is necessary, or some scumbag hacker takes advantage of a security flaw and causes an update. One way or another, something is going to change and your nice stable system will be completely hosed.

I’d really like to be able to bill for the time lost to SPAM Email and all the software update related issues. The folks I’d like to bill are the little scumbag hackers, or their parents, or their countries of origin.

Well on with the rest of the day.

Have a great weekend

Posted on

I got to thinking about the whole Video Interview Thing…

Something about the “One-Way” interview has been bugging me. I tried to sort it out in the blog post here. I failed to clearly analyze what it was that concerned me.

I was denying my suspicious nature. A couple of good night’s sleep later and my concern clarified when I started down this path.

Have I become too suspicious? It that suspicion justified? Have there been simply too many bullshit recruiters and promises?

As I was thinking about it, I found myself asking this question.

“Why the one way video interview?”

The hiring manager still has to make time to review the video. Then they have to arrange to call the candidate back for another interview. This whole one way video interview paradigm saves no-one any time.

Why not just Zoom meeting or FaceTime, or whatever in the first place? Why add a layer of complexity?

Then it hit me.

The one way interview does allow for isolation, racism, and sexism.

The candidates are speaking blind to a dispassionate recording system. But the managers can review the video and easily allow racial, gender, or age bias to guide their candidate selection for second interviews. Since the hiring manager reviewing the videos doesn’t have to actually connect with the candidate, they can forget them without guilt.

It’s all done in the privacy of their office with no oversight or questioning of their choices or motives. It’s unlikely that anyone will take the time to review the reject pile.

If the manager said candidate X, Y, or Z isn’t appropriate, who’s going to go look at a video? Who will have the time to notice that the hiring manager is only interviewing candidates of a particular color or gender…

I’ll grant you, this can happen in any interview situation. But since most interviews are done with a minimum of an HR representative and the Hiring Manager present there is some oversight.

The old, “sort through resumes,” pick out those that have the skills you need and call those people for an interview tended to prevent racial stuff because you couldn’t justify hiring a less qualified candidate over someone more qualified, if you were hiring only on the merits of experience.

Looking at a resume you only had the name of the individual. I’ll grant that in more recent years, it became possible for racist bias to rear its ugly head because of the names some parents gave their children. “John or Julie Green” was pretty generic. (I’ve worked with two John Greens. One was white, the other black. Both were great guys and excellent programmers.)

With “Jose or Julia Verde” you could infer that they were of Spanish/Latin origin, but from where was the question. Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador? You might be able to narrow things down if they’d attended college or trade school in another country. If all their education was in country, you’d be fairly certain that they were at least first generation, so communication wouldn’t be an issue.

When you get to “DeKanye and Shaquanda Green” well, the parents of these children set their kids up to be victims of racism. It’s not right, but it is sadly true.

This name thing also works the other way. My surname screams white, and possibly NAZI to boot. So in this period of time I’m as susceptible to racial bias as poor Shaquanda. The only way we truly escape bias is if everyone changed our names to numbers. Perhaps our phone number or our social security number would eliminate all name based bias.

But we’d still have the physicality bias to contend with. The only way to eliminate that is to have everyone work from home and no video conferencing at all.

Which brings me back to the things that had been bugging me about the whole “One-Way” interview process.

1 It doesn’t save anyone time.

2 The candidate has little or no control over how the interview is used.

3 The “One-Way” interview can promote racism or sexism with no oversight.

4 This interview format imposes technological barriers such as compatibility and internet speed.

5 Technological barriers may indicate the economic level of the candidate, and be used in an exclusionary way or result in lower offered wages for the same work.

Now that I’ve worked through it I can tell my brain to work on something else. I hate it when my brain is chewing on something but can’t figure out what caught my attention.

If you’re looking for a job, consider the “One-Way” interview carefully. It may not be as much of an advantage as it’s purported to be.

I’d welcome an interactive video conference interview. That would in fact save everyone a lot of time and prevent un-necessary driving around.

Now I’m off to figure out why something Apple related isn’t working after their latest software update. I think it’s a bug but need to check out my settings before contacting Apple.

Talk about a company that needs good old fashioned manual testing and human eyes looking at their products…

Oh well, that’s never going to happen!

Have a good day.