I’m getting more Retro

God knows there’s a lot of convenience having our schedules on our phones and all of our contacts and “ToDo” lists in the cloud. Our online calendars make sure that no matter where we are, we can add a doctor, or car service appointment or know when our next meeting is.

I’ll admit it’s really nice and for many years now I’ve relied almost exclusively on these modern conveniences.

I’ve noticed that my handwriting has gone absolutely to hell. My handwriting was never beautiful either cursive or printed. Both looked like I’d strangled a palsy stricken chicken then dipped it’s feet in ink. My writing was so bad even doctors had a tough time reading it.

Now days, my writing is worse. Much worse! I’d bet that a future Archaeologist, upon discovering anything of mine that was handwritten, would assume they’d discovered another type of writing for which there was no Rosetta Stone.

I’d been aware of the degradation for many years. Last year it all came to a head when I’d written some notes during a phone call and found that I couldn’t read them an hour later.

At the time I was annoyed at myself. After ten or twenty minutes I was able to decode my chicken scratch and make sense of it. The problem wasn’t spelling it was formation of the characters themselves. I immediately recognized the problem as one of fine motor skills.

Without actually writing by hand, I’d begun to loose fine motor skills, not due to any malady, but due to lack of use. I proved this hypothesis by writing large on a piece of paper, then scaling the size of the characters down to fit in a single ruled line. (And yes, I was wearing my glasses!)

For those of you old enough to remember learning to write letters in grade school this is why all of us, as children started out with paper ruled in 2” lines. It wasn’t that our vision was terrible, it was that we needed the space to train the fine motor control in our hands.

I’d also noticed some other effects of the loss of fine motor control. Chief among these was soldering . I used to be able to solder the finest circuits by hand. If I made a repair on a board, you had to look really hard to see it. Cold Solder joints? Not on my work!

Now… Not so much.

A year ago, recognizing the problem and its cause, I dusted off my old Franklin Planner. I cleaned out the 10 year old notes and calendar, then wondered if Franklin Planners could still be purchased.

A quick web search reassured me that Franklins were in fact, still a thing. There wasn’t nearly as wide an array of page designs as there once was, but Monticello, (an old favorite) was still available. I placed an order and was pleasantly surprised when the package arrived two days later.

So I began writing by hand again. My penmanship has improved over time as a result. (I’m still not going to win any awards!)

I still receive digital Calendar invites and my household still uses common shared ToDo lists. But I transcribe the Calendar invites into my Franklin. Yes, this is redundant but it keeps pushing the ball forward on improving my penmanship.

Now when I’m on the phone scheduling something I’m noting it in my Franklin daily notes. I’ll add the event to the Franklin first, then move it to the Online Calendar if needed.

Admittedly, it’s hard to switch back to Paper and Pen. Digital services are cloyingly seductive. I’m willing to eschew the ease and convenience in trade for penmanship.

Another benefit of the trade is that my soldering ability is coming back. It’s not the quality it used to be, that’s something you acquire by doing it 8 hours a day 5 days a week. But it’s improved to the point that I’m not ashamed of anyone seeing my work.

This year’s Franklin refill arrived Monday. It’s not the old standby “Monticello” this one is something new. It’s clean and elegant with a bit less visual “weight” on the page. I noticed when I placed my order that there was a larger number of design variations on the Franklin web site.

I wonder if more people like myself are going “Retro” as a way to keep old skills?


As I mulled this over, an article notification popped up on the phone about a sitting congressman being served a warrant by the FBI for his phone.

According to the article, The congressman was traveling with his family and all the FBI wanted was his phone, this struck me as odd. Then I recalled that almost every “High Profile” FBI search and seizure over the past few years has also included seizing the person’s phone.

Thinking about it, I realized of course they’d want his phone. His phone would have a log of all his calls and their duration. The FBI would have access to all of his private text messages including those between him and his wife or children. His entire Calendar would be available as would his contact list. The phone would even have a GPS log of places that he’d been recently.

That single device provided the FBI with anything and everything the FBI could want and it’s 1000 times better than the old McCarthy era tactics which required your friends or colleagues to serve you up. Your contact list could provide the FBI with 100 or more additional people to investigate due to “guilt by association”.

I rarely have more than 100 contacts in my phone. I just don’t interact with that many people. Folks I haven’t heard from in a year or so… I delete. My Calendar, Text Messages, Photos, and ToDo list are another matter. There are literally years of data in those systems. The GPS issue isn’t much of a problem because I delete that log whenever I think about it.

I wondered, “Why don’t people execute a remote wipe of their phones when the FBI seizes them?” (I would just for spite!)

All of this got me to thinking. Will the handwritten word and perhaps day planners experience a renaissance?

I find myself wondering if it is time to move my data out of the cloud. Is it time to memorize important phone numbers and addresses again? Does Thomas Brothers still make their excellent Thomas Guides?

I’m not guilty of anything, I’m not likely to have my phone seized by the FBI. It’s a matter of privacy and principal. Why make it easy for them, or for any other 3 letter department of whatever?

It occurs to me that true protection of privacy is only possible if everything is in your brain. Anything and everything put on the ‘net lives forever. Has it come to the point that the only way to ensure our privacy is to disconnect?

The FBI these days looks more like an enemy of the people and the enforcement arm of a socialist/communist government than law enforcement.

That is a chilling thought. Perhaps my switching back to writing on actual paper in my day planner is a good thing.

I can burn the day planner. I can write notes that only mean something to me in it. I can refuse to decode those cryptic notes. I can choose to not clearly recall details, I can invoke the fifth amendment.

My digital devices, not so much. They can only do as they’re commanded. My devices have no concept of Constitutional Rights and no ability to determine if they should obey valid commands or not. (I’m not even sure that I’d want them to have that ability) There are some things only a human mind can, or should do.

Have the powerful little bricks in our pockets become a liability? I was reminded of Blade Runner.

Will someone in the near future be visiting Apple and having an exchange like this:

Rachael: It seems you feel our work is not a benefit to the public.
Deckard: Replicants are like any other machine – they’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a benefit, it’s not my problem

I’m going to be thinking about stuff like this for a while. In the meantime, I’m going to be using my Franklin a lot more.

Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.

It is with some amount of schadenfreude that I’ve been observing the reaction of the LGBTQI+ (whatever the hell other letters are in it now,) reaction to Monkeypox.

There was an interesting article in Outspoken that I read with some sadness.

In my opinion, the author is pretty dead on.

The trouble is that so few people who lived through the early days of HIV are listened to, or taken seriously these days.

I’ve written elsewhere in this blog about those early days, I’ll not repeat myself.

What I will say is that in the early days when no-one was really sure how HIV was spread there was a lot less touching. In fact there was a lot less of anything if you were concerned for your life.

Monkeypox is far more obvious. HIV wasn’t something that you could see someone had, until they were in the latter stages.

Monkeypox also has a very defined life cycle. Onset, Symptoms, Resolution of Symptoms, and finally the person generally returns to health. (Yes, I know there have been some deaths.)

The strange thing is that Monkeypox has a fatality rate of about 10%. That rate is less if the person seeks appropriate treatment.

So let’s compare and contrast. For the sake of argument let’s say Monkeypox is 90% survivable. COVID is 98% survivable. Monkeypox is generally transmitted via physical contact with an infected person or biological residue from an infected person. COVID is transmitted via airborne particulates.

With COVID we shut the world down for two years.

With Monkeypox we’re nowhere near shutting the world down.

What can we derive from this?

One

Since Monkeypox is mostly affecting the LGBTQI+ community, the government’s response is pretty much the same as it was during the early days of HIV, laissez-faire.

One might infer this means that the powers that be are only interested in the LGBTQI+ community at election time. So perhaps the LGBTQI+ community should remember that at the midterms and beyond.

Two

If the LGBTQI+ community were as smart, educated, and responsible as they claim to be. They’d put the word out that the quickest and easiest way to shut this down is to stop congregating. It would probably take less than 2 months.

Just 2 months of solo, or Zoom sex and Monkeypox wouldn’t be sweeping through the LGBTQI+ community. Remember, this is the community that joined the “Karens” on masking, vaccinations, and self isolation during COVID. Why aren’t they following the rules now?

I’m not suggesting that the LGBTQI+ community never have sex again. I’m suggesting that by abstinence for a couple of months the Monkeypox virus would burn itself out like all viruses do, when they are unable to inhabit new hosts.


For those who may have a problem thinking this through, allow me to elaborate.

Monkeypox infects a person. That person makes antibodies naturally that kill the virus. The virus is eliminated from the person’s system, leaving immunity from further infection. The person can no longer be infected, nor can they spread the infection.

This is called immunity.

If the person does not spread the virus during the time they’re infected. The virus dies. Think of this as starving the virus…

If, on the other hand the person continues to interact with others and isn’t very careful about cleanliness, (maintaining their own laundry, properly disposing of any disposable materials that came into contact with their sores or bodily fluids,) then the virus finds new hosts and spreads.

It’s a simple fucking equation.

It was not so long ago when we were all being told to wear a mask everywhere and go get vaccinated to prevent the spread of COVID.

Remember? It was our patriotic duty to forego our petty desires, it was patriotic to subject ourselves to discomfort for the protection of others.


Monkeypox is no different. In fact the straight-line solution is simpler.

STOP fucking around!

The LGBTQI+ community in New York, San Francisco, and every other large city needs to step the fuck up. Quit your bitching and moaning about the availability of vaccines and take responsibility for yourselves.

Take a couple of months off! It won’t kill you to not go out to the bar, the disco, the local orgy, or whatever.

What better way to flip the bird at the government than to essentially say with your actions.

Fuck you! You bunch of useless old political hacks. You wouldn’t take action so we did!

How better to demonstrate that the LGBTQI+ community is in fact responsible?

An added benefit is that it buys time. Time for the big Pharma to get enough of the vaccine into the system so that everyone can get a proper effective vaccine against not only Monkeypox, but Smallpox as well.

I’d remind you Smallpox is still a thing is small pockets of the world. While it was effectively eliminated from the Western countries, it still exists elsewhere.

That should factor into your thinking when you look at the southern border and realize that the folks making that journey aren’t only from Mexico or South America.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go into the whole mess regarding the border, but having a border and enforcing the law isn’t only about people. It’s also about diseases for which our population may have zero immunity.

Minor things like Ebola, Smallpox, Cholera, Malaria, Typhoid, you know, nasty shit.

One Hundred years ago on Ellis Island the primitive medicine of the time recognized that some people would have to be turned back and denied entry into the country to prevent plagues gaining a foothold.

The indigenous peoples of North America learned that harsh lesson. Smallpox & Measles decimated their population. Diseases, carried on blankets given to them by the immigrants coming from Europe.

Just food for thought…

They Said this would never happen.

The SAID it couldn’t happen.

They said that they weren’t making a database. They said the information was safe. They said anyone who questioned them was a child hating, war mongering, insanely violent, racist, monster.

Yet here we are.


The Los Angeles Times is reporting a California DOJ breach of every single Concealed Carry permit holder in the state. Initial reports said the breach was limited, but subsequent reports now state the breach was all the records.

Other news outlets report that the data exposed not only those who had concealed carry permits, but all those who applied for permits, granted or not.

Breaking news… It appears now that even the information about people who’d obtained a California Gun Safety Certificate had their data exposed. FYI a California Gun Safety Certificate does not mean you own a gun, it only provides proof that you’re aware of pretty basic gun safety rules and some of the California laws surrounding gun ownership.

The California Gun Safety Certificate is a quick and easy way for California to collect $20 every 4 or 5 years and have you pay the California DOJ for the privilege of having your name, address, and other personal information put into their database. The safety certificate is a big nothing burger, but it’s required before you can purchase a gun.

All the better to identify law abiding citizens who may, possibly, need to have their homes raided by a SWAT team at 2AM, if California decides that person might, possibly, just maybe, need to have red flag search and seizure of property contained in their home.

Back in Oct of 2016, The California DOJ had another “oopsie” and released the names and addresses of 3500 firearms instructors.

I haven’t checked, but I seem to recall there was some kind of gun control law moving through the California Legislature which was encountering a lot of opposition. I don’t remember if the firearms instructors were being vocal about opposing the legislation at the time. It would be an interesting coincidence if they were.

California wants a complete gun registry. The California DOJ wants to know about every single gun in the state. Even if those guns were legally owned by a citizen prior to them moving into the state.

California lawmakers claim this is to provide better safety to the people of California. They often use the safety of California children as their justification.

Really? Using Children? How about lawmakers actually address the problem of crime in the state? That would be a refreshing change.

Lest I forget… the California DOJ approves of guns via a very expensive testing procedure that gun manufacturers must pay for, and must also provide every variation (even if the variation is color,) of gun for testing.

If a manufacturer chooses not to provide a weapon and pay a fee, then the California DOJ will say that gun can’t be sold in California. The funny thing is that the California DOJ will drop guns from the approved list after that gun may have been approved for several years. Does that mean anyone owning such a gun is now in possession of an illegal firearm? Is that otherwise law abiding citizen committing a felony?

The fact is, there are some guns which are family heirlooms (think grandpa’s gun). Others that were gifts. All legally owned, and handed down father to son, or brother to brother. California, wants all of these guns to be subject to registration and investigation. How does California deal with these guns, many of which were likely never approved for sale by the California DOJ ?

While California dilly dallies around investigating, those weapons are supposed to be handed to a licensed gun dealer for a fee until California “approves”. Which means, that those guns are now not under the physical control of the owners. Should the gun go missing, and be used in a crime… The owner of record is still responsible even though the gun in question, wasn’t in their possession due to California’s regulations.

It doesn’t matter to the California legislature, that the guns may have been sitting in a law abiding citizen’s safe for a decade or more and haven’t been used in some horrendous mass shooting.

Various gun owners associations have repeatedly pointed out that such a gun registry doesn’t help Law Enforcement, nor does it make law abiding citizens safer. Law abiding citizens aren’t the folks engaging in the rampant gun violence plaguing California. Criminals are responsible for the gun violence. Guess what? They’re probably not buying their guns legally!

What such a registry does, is allow weaponization of various police agencies. It provides unscrupulous politicians an avenue of retaliation against those who might speak in opposition to them.

Or, as in this latest data breach…

The California DOJ has exposed the names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, home phone, and other personal data to anyone who might wish to engage in identity theft, target certain judges, citizens, or law enforcement personnel, or who might be looking for a target of opportunity to steal guns.

Great job California DOJ! Well Done! Instead of insuring the safety of law abiding citizens… You’ve painted a target on their backs!

On the plus side… You’ve destroyed any credibility of a gun registry!

Oh… This is getting So out of hand.

The other half got a haircut yesterday.

You’d think something as mundane as that wouldn’t be fraught with controversy…

You’d be wrong

We live in a mad mad world.

The stylist was talking with another stylist about a customer she’d had the day before.

The customer in question, was apparently transitioning from one gender to the other. “Okay, this is probably going to go off the rails,” I think.

As the story unfolds, apparently the stylist referred to the customer as a “She”. OMG! The horror!

The customer corrected the stylist’s use of pronoun defiantly proclaiming the proper pronoun was “IT”.

At this point in the story I’ve got my “What The Fuck” face on. The other half ignored me and continued the story.

The stylist, of course apologized explaining that she meant no offense. This wasn’t good enough for the mortally aggrieved customer. (He/She/It… whatever) Continued to manufacture outrage over this insignificant incident, turning everyone’s trip to the hair place into a crazed social justice nightmare.

A) How was the stylist to know “It” was the preferred pronoun?
B) The Stylist did the professional thing by apologizing.
C) The aggrieved customer had all the social decorum of a turd in a punchbowl.

The other half was laughing and said to me, “All I could picture as this story was being told was YOU sitting in a chair during the actual incident.

Good Point!

I wouldn’t have been able to let it pass. I hate shitty behavior and the shitty people exhibiting it.

The first thing that popped into my head was that since “IT” didn’t have their pronoun tattooed on ITS forehead how was anyone to know? I’m sure that my expressing that thought would have added fuel to the fire.

The second thing that popped into my head is that “IT” usually refers to an object. Then I remembered being a boy in the Deep South.

The first word I ever learned to describe a Black person was the “N-Word”. But the context was that one went to get the “N-Word” to clean up a mess.

For Example: “Bill, please go get the broom to sweep up this mess on the floor.”

My childhood memory has the statement from my Grandfather telling me, “Hey boy, go get the “N-word” to clean up that mess.”

In my experience the “N-Word” was used to reduce a kind thoughtful human being, (Eddie would tell me jokes and ride me around on his shoulders and we’d laugh the whole time,) to nothing more than an object on par with a mop or broom. (For the sake of clarity, Eddie was an employee of my Grandfather, and I probably wasn’t more than 5.)

As I thought about the implications of a human being demanding to be called “IT” I couldn’t help but notice the similarity.

What completely astounds me, is that any human being would willingly demean & diminish their own humanity in this way.

People like the aforementioned customer, would loose their shit if I, a white CIS male, were to refer to an African American as “IT”. They’d be saying I was racist or any number of other ugly things. (Then again, most of the ugly words they’d call me have lost much of their former impact and meanings.)

Then they’d turn around and make a spectacle of themselves in a public place demanding to be called “IT”.

All the while annoying the rest of us “normal” people who use pronouns based in history and languages dating back 5 thousand years or more.

The other half is right…

It’s a good thing I wasn’t there for the incident itself.

Depending on how screeching they were, I could easily see myself leading off with,

“Nobody gives a fuck about your pronouns! Now sit the fuck down and shut the hell up. There are actual humans in this business, trust me they do not consider themselves the equivalent of a dildo or pocket pussy. Both of which, by the way, are ITS.”

No, I don’t think it would have ended well at all…

Bummer! That didn’t last long

The new machine is going back to Apple.

Bummer!

On the plus side I was able to basically build out an M1 system and I’ve got a complete backup of that system.

Because the decision to return and replace the machine was made in less than a day, I still have my original MacBook to fall back on. So it’s an inconvenience and a delay but not the freaking end of the world. I’ve got a computer.

So here’s the deal.

As I mentioned yesterday, the new machine smelled funny. It was an acrid smell, (which is how I described it to the Apple Folks,) unfortunately “acrid” is one of those words that’s become buried in dictionaries but is rarely used these days.

I had to use the sentence, “The smell is reminiscent of a smell commonly associated with burnt out IC chips in old computers or printers.”

That registered with the Tech Support people….

Sigh.

English is such a rich, complex language. It’s a pity so many people, myself included, have poor command of it.

I digress.

The first symptom I noticed was that the Start Up chime had no bass. I wrote that off to the machine having a down level version of the OS, and I’d seen some articles suggesting that there was some kind of sound issue on M1 systems which had been corrected via software.

The second symptom was the acrid smell that increased the longer the machine was running and decreased if the machine was sleeping or turned off. This smell was not the usual smell of a wave soldered circuit board warming up for the first time. That smell is the smell of rosin which is almost sweet smelling. This smell was bitter, and irritating to sinuses, and mucus membranes.

The third symptom was that any and all audio played through the internal speakers had about half of the bass missing.

I don’t listen to music through the internal speakers of my computer very often. One thing that can be said about Apple machines is that their onboard sound systems are quite good.

This particular computer sounded like a Dell from 1990.

These combined issues caused me to seek guidance from AppleCare.

They, as always were nice, polite, and helpful. Tech support made the suggestion that the machine should be swapped out. I was fine with that except that the machine’s configuration is somewhat unusual and the unit has to be built special in China.

The Tech support people went Oh, that could be a problem.

They transferred me to a super nice man named Josh who walked me through all the necessary steps to wipe the machine, remove it from my Find My, and iCloud account.

Then he carefully explained the exchange process. When he quoted me the lead time, I’m sure that he had his earpiece well away from his ear.

In this case he needn’t have worried. The lead time, is late June or early July. He asked if this was alright.

I told him it had to be alright because the machine would have to be built in China, then shipped, and production schedules are what they are. Yeah it’s an inconvenience, but there’s nothing either of us can do about that.

He said, “Thank you for being so understanding about it, most of the time this is the point in the conversation when people start yelling and cursing me out.”

I told him that I had a long career in the industry. I got it. I mentioned that Apple could perhaps mitigate this kind of thing by maintaining a small supply of “Esoteric” builds of products in Cupertino.

Then I followed on explaining that might not work too well because there was no way for Apple to anticipate failures and it would represent dead stock racking up inventory tax just sitting in a warehouse.

The problem with this machine may just be infant mortality. It happens sometimes with complex circuits. Or it could be a manufacturing process issue.

If the problem is a manufacturing issue, Apple better move fast to nip it in the bud. This is the kind of thing that gives companies big shiners when it comes to public opinion.

Reliability gets you customers DOA equipment does not.

We know from experience that China gets sloppy with their manufacturing process from time to time.

Anyone remember tainted dog food? How about tainted Heparin (The blood thinner). Or blood pressure meds tainted with carcinogenic chemicals and in some cases metal filings? Oh, remember the tainted drywall, that was a good one, carcinogenic chemicals vaporizing in enclosed spaces like people’s homes? Then there was the defective lithium ion batteries in Samsung phones (How about a fire in your pants scarecrow?)

Good Job China! Great freaking quality controls you’ve got.

In fairness, given the number of products produced in China that work just fine perhaps I’m being a touch unfair. The problem is that with so much being produced in China, when they screw up, they really screw up on a massive scale.

This is why I’ve always questioned our reliance on goods manufactured in China. This isn’t to say that there aren’t manufacturing problems elsewhere in the world, but It seems to be China where executives are routinely murdered, only when their carelessness embarrasses the CCP. Otherwise everything is, “A-OK top notch…” even when it’s not.

You’ll note I didn’t mention anything about sloppy laboratory practices. We’re not supposed to say anything about a disease causing a panic that crippled the global economy are we? Sloppy laboratory processes, particularly in research labs, can have dire consequences. Just Sayin…

Honestly, I’d be much happier if all Apple products were manufactured here. For that matter I’d be happy if all our products were manufactured locally.

It’s a lot easier to fly a process engineer to Texas, or Oklahoma on a Sunday than to fly that same engineer to freakin China, to figure out whatever step, or steps, a Chinese executive decided to omit to speed up production.

Perhaps an executive forgot to whip the Uyghurs enough on a particular day???

I know, I know, I’m being hypocritical. I have no high ground to bash China when I’m feeding the beast like everyone else, purchasing goods produced for mass consumption under ethically or morally challenged circumstances.

Again, I digress.

Apple has indicated they’re going to be very good about the exchange. I’ve already packed the New Machine up in all of it’s original packing materials. I’ve printed the return label, and I’ll drop it off at a FedEx facility on Monday.

Then I’ll wait for a new, new machine to arrive sometime between June 25th and July 6th.

Although, if it’s a manufacturing issue… It could be longer.

On the one hand I’d like the notoriety of being “The Guy” that caught a problem with Apple’s production lines.

On the other hand, I’m not sure that would be a good thing if thousands of Apple customers have to wait another month for their machines, and know my name.

What would be nice is if Apple responded to my job applications, or better yet sent me the machine for free.

HA! I’m not holding my breath…