Tag: Modern Problems

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As I age…

As I age I notice an accumulation of stupidity and everyone else either ignores it, or flat out doesn’t see it.

I wish I could ignore things and remain blissfully ignorant. 

Some examples:

Tail lights. I’ve recently seen at least two different cars, with all three tail lights flashing at different intervals from each other. There are warnings in movies about flashing light sequences affecting photosensitive individuals. In a movie the person is sitting in a chair. On the road, a photosensitive person might be in the driver’s seat of 2 thousand pounds of vehicle and can do considerably more damage if they react poorly or have a seizure.

F-hN5LJWgAQ59Xq.jpegI’ve noticed the irony of college protestors demanding an Israeli cease fire, but being perfectly happy to beat the living shit out of a Jew with a different opinion. Which is it? Peace or War? 

The Washington Post Censored the Cartoon at right, even though it is a perfect description of truth. WP didn’t want to offend? How does truth offend? WTF?

We literally censored people from the internet who spread “mis-information” about elections, COVID, Vaccines, etc. When Rashida Tlaib spreads mis-information on the steps of the Capital using her position in Congress to magnify her importance and therefore her voice, nobody says shit about it, until the House passes a vote to Censure her. What is said after the Censure vote is in condemnation of the Censure.  That for me is a complete WTF moment. Personally, I think Tlaib should be taken from the capital in chains and tried for Treason. Oh, for the college educated… Censure is very different from Censor. You idiots might want to open a dictionary.

Evidence suggests Joe Biden has apparently lied about his involvement with Hunter’s businesses, and the “Biden Family Business” to the tune of millions of dollars, at minimum it looks like influence pedaling. Nothing much is said or done about it. Donald Trump inflates the values of his properties a tad, gets loans from banks, pays off those loans, making everyone money and harming no-one. Yet he’s in court on fraud charges?

Warner Brothers has decided not to release a completed movie as a tax write off. Let me get this straight, if I build a house and never move into it. I just lock the doors, and never use it, rent it, or sell it. I can write off the entirety of the house on my taxes? How about nobody gets tax write-offs on completed projects until the project actually loses money. That seems a lot more logical doesn’t it? Oh and shouldn’t Warner Brothers executive be sitting in court alongside Trump for fraud? It’s a cinch that they borrowed money to produce that movie. 

The entirety of the UAW strike and its resolution. WTF? I understand wanting higher wages and benefits. But you do realize that a nicely equipped FORD costs almost as much as a top of the line BMW luxury car. A GMC Truck costs more than some models of fully equipped BMW SUVs. So tell me again UAW how you’re going to preserve your jobs building your current line, or when everyone transitions to electric vehicles with fewer parts and higher purchase prices. If I have a choice, I’m going to pick the cheaper vehicle with longer range. Toyota? Kia? Nissan, hello paging common sense, is common sense in the building? There’s no incentive to buy FORD, CHEVY, GMC or Tesla at the prices they’re currently charging. Even if you wanted to buy one of these brands, you can’t order the vehicle exactly to your specification. Go on, try to build one on their websites. You’ll find you can’t have certain engine / trim combinations. For example I found I couldn’t have a truck with nice seats, no chrome,  a V-6 engine, 4×4 transmission in a 2 door with 6 foot bed configuration. They make what I want with a 4 cylinder 2×4 transmission but swap in a V-6 4×4 and NO! You get 4 doors and a 4.5 foot bed. Sorry, that just doesn’t work, I want to carry a full sheet of drywall flat in the bed of a pickup, and be able to drive uphill. This is especially true when the prices are at $40 – $60,000 before options.

Loyalty Reward programs. This is a bit hypocritical of me because I use these programs. Not using them in protest which I should be doing, is punishing myself, not the companies. Why do we need these Loyalty cards? Why not simply sell the goods or services at the discounted a.k.a “REAL” price to everyone all the time regardless of their loyalty? Why is it that on a recent grocery store run I was able to save $45 off the bill, but only had one .50 manufacturers coupon? Is it that the grocery store inflates the price so much they can afford to discount everyone’s bill by 1/4? How about gas stations? Why not give everyone a break on the price and speed up the refueling process along the way, instead of having folks enter loyalty numbers and selecting options of payment and 50 other questions?

Medical Costs. Same generic RX for years. Sometimes it’s $120 other times it’s $90, still other times it’s $50. I’d really like to know, how much does this shit really cost? Perhaps a better question is, “How much on average does it really cost to get medical treatment?” Maybe we should base insurance costs on the average, not how much can we get for removing a splinter in Beverly Hills.  Why can I negotiate 2/3 off on a medical bill? It’s not even negotiation. All I had to do was ask… That suggests that the actual cost of doing business is 1/3 less than advertised.

A better overall question is this;

Why do we put up with these clearly irrational things, and why are these things accepted as “Normal”?

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Good Golly! I Hate Passwords!

Ihate Passwords 2Got a message this morning on my phone, maybe from my phone, that I confirmed on my computer.

Some Passwords Compromised! 

I’ve seen the message before, and like most folks I ignored it!

For some reason, this morning I actually looked at the message and the passwords that it claimed were compromised.

A lot of the compromised passwords have come about because I’ve merged the other half’s passwords into my passwords. It makes keeping things running a lot easier to have it all on one computer rather than bouncing between two machines.

The list was long… Some of it was easy to negotiate because there were duplicate logins. Once those were sorted out, then it was down to the business of changing compromised passwords. And here’s where things just go right off the damn rails!

I log into a site. Figure out where the hell the site has hidden change password. Account, Profiles, Client Access, security, or whatever other clever euphemism the company chose to use. It’s mildly annoying but navigable. 

I get to the change password option and things get super annoying! Enter the old password, then enter the new desired password, twice. 

“WRONG! You didn’t include the right kinds of characters, or the right number of special characters, or not enough upper case characters, or numeric characters, the password isn’t as long as War and Peace, that password is too long, 4 characters in the entered password have been used before on this account, or, or, or, or…”

The annoying thing about this is there is almost never any description of what these assholes want, prior to making the first mistake.

I’ve gotten to the point that I’ll hit the submit button just to generate the error that describes what format is necessary for a password.

Because I’m so often annoyed by this irritating bullshit, I use the internal password generator provided by Apple. The down side to this is sometimes even the Apple system can’t generate something useable, but it stores what it generates almost instantly. Meaning that if the generated password is rejected, you may have a bad password stored in the autofill system and then you get to fight with both the password manager AND the asinine website.

This is how I end up with passwords or pass phrases that would make Marines blush.

This morning I was entirely surprised when I ended up in one of these circular password situations and resorted to using an obscenity.

Low and behold, the website told me that such words were offensive and couldn’t be used as passwords.

WTF?

Who the hell are you to tell me what words I can and can’t use for passwords? Furthermore what does it matter? The passwords aren’t supposed to be stored on the site in plain text. They’re supposed to be encrypted. No human is supposed to be able to read the passwords and therefore no human risks being offended. Are we dealing with computers now being offended?

I’d rail and complain except I find myself caring less & less. This particular vendor, service provider, will not matter to me soon. Once I’m out of California I’ll be purging a ton of passwords, and phone numbers from my systems.

I’m actually looking forward to that. I’m looking forward to having a new phone number and a new address. 

I’m also rethinking the whole web access thing, across the board. I’d prefer to have everything mailed to my address. I’d like to get things in my mailbox. Maybe , I’ll be able to step back 50 years. I might start writing checks and mailing them to utilities. Then I won’t have to deal with passwords, PINS, and poorly designed websites.

Who knows? I might even have the Sunday paper tossed on my porch instead of reading it on my pad.

Is this a function of age? Or is this my rejection of increasing complexity to do the simplest things?

Perhaps it’s both!

There’s a lot to be said for de-computerization. You’d have to really know me or be looking at that sentence through my eyes to grasp the full irony.

I wonder if the Amish would be willing to teach me how to live simply?

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There’s a real case for eschewing utility companies internet portals

The most recent case in my experience is Golden State Water.

Envelope.jpegNot only are they trying to raise the rates excessively. (What else is new?) But they’ve got this stupid system where you can’t use their web site to change anything except your email address. Oh, and using their website requires that you submit to paperless billing.

Apparently they’re not even in full control of their customer portal. They may have contracted it out, so God only knows to whom. It does explain why the site is kinda screwy.

All of this started because I’m closing one of the two post office boxes. There’s a lot of the mechanics of living that I’m having to alter since the other half died. Thus far I’ve been employing a minimalist approach because honestly I thought I’d be the hell out of California by now. That’s not going to happen, for reasons that I won’t go into.

I’m going to be here until at least Spring of 2024 so I’m having to work through a lot of the fundamentals. Mailing addresses for utilities, I’ll have to pay for 6 more months of Post office Box rental. I need to close the other halfs P.O. Box and all that kind of thing.

But, and this is the trouble spot. Most all of these utilities want you to monkey with their websites, create accounts and such and then… Don’t let you make basic changes to your account. I have one account that won’t let me change the phone number without deleting and re-creating the account. There’s another that won’t let me change the email address. Both of these situations are funny because I know folks who change phone numbers and emails more often than some people change socks.

If you can’t change basic stuff, without having to recreate an account, then the vendor will have loads of zombie accounts on their servers. That’s just as much a security issue. Figure one person might have at minimum 2 accounts, possibly more. If the account database is compromised bad actors would have access to two or more emails and passwords.

I get that there are security issues. I find myself asking if there are such security issues, then perhaps we shouldn’t be conducting business over the internet.