Thoughts on Racism

Racism is not only evil, it is just stupid and not applicable any longer. I believe humans are hardwired to accept racism if it is presented to them as they mature in to adults.

Human brains are designed to recognize patterns and apply those patterns to actions and results. This in combination with the power of suggestion makes racism easy to teach. Once learned, racism is very difficult to turn around due to the concept of overcoming existing investment and the fact that people make excuses for exceptions to make sure they fit in to existing patterns.

However, racism can be overcome. It can be reversed to zero. Unfortunately, it can be much more easily replaced with racism aimed in a different direction. Sometimes this is called reverse racism,  but it is simply the same gun aimed at a different target. More often than not, racism against one group is simply replaced with the same racism against another group because the same pattern reinforcement is being applied. (same gun, different target).

Lunch Conversation

2014-02-27

• Work
• There was an uncomfortable moment where two folks spoke of work and just dominated the conversation while spouting a one side what to do when they get back from work.
• Something about schedules, I wasn’t listening.
• Cool Hand Look
• Relating to a challenge of eating 50 McNuggets in one sitting without puking.
• Robby the Robot
• One of the folks is from France. He hadn’t heard of robby or “Danger Will Robinson!”
• Glasses
• Contacts vs glasses and getting old
• Glasses and prices
• Different glasses for different needs
• Finding eye doctors who will work with you to get something that works.
• Other groups of lunch goers at our company
• We are the old group
• They are the youngon group
• There is some cross contamination.
• Greg and eye walk slow.
• One of the guys I like from the new company is headed back to England
• Flooding in the south of the UK.
• Wettest winter in UK records
• American school curriculum vs British school curriculum. (second week in a row)
• Something about video games, I wasn’t listening.

Bus selfy

This is a good head in hands

My next phone

null http://feedly.com/k/1kniSlj

Complaining about diesels and alternative fuel vehicles

Notes

Foggy this morning.

No lunch conversation today.Nat stopped by work with a chicken sandwich for me, but she had to run off to make a meeting for Elle’s school. I at alone in the parking garage.

Stress causes burnout or taking a bunch of risks causes you not to want to take as many risks. Science has finally caught up to this fact. Any coach could have told you this.

the first U. S. patent was issued to a black person in 1821. Jennings. It involved a new process for cleaning cloths. Remember, this is before the end of slavery in the U. S.. His daughter refused to leave a streetcar just because she was black. This is also in the 1800’s.

Nat bought me some geeky t-shirts. I’ll have to take some selfies.

Elle is a grizzly in the morning.

There have been times I’ve been upset when a band broke up. I can’t think of one of the top of my head, but someone said a band broke up today that I never heard of and it made me think.

Natzies were the National Socialist party. People forget that. If you call someone right wing and a Nazzy, you don’t know what you are talking about.

BitCoin

A bunch of people are freaking out about one of the BitCoin exchanges collapsing. The thing is, it is the exchange that failed., not the currency.

Someone said this exchange had simply been double selling BitCoins which is simple theft. If that is indeed what happened here, it has little to do with BitCoins themselves. The exact same thing could happen with dollars.

All currency is based on trust. All currency is based on promis. They are called promissory notes for a reason. All currency is just someone saying I promise to pay the value of this currency in some way or another. This is where gold and silver notes came in back in the day. No more. You cannot walk up to the U. S. government and demand some other kind of valuable clutter lying around. Those days are long gone.

The economists keep saying BitCoins are not real money. They are strings of data that are difficult to fake and the money money comes in only that there is a system in place to track who has what string of data. Well, that sounds a lot like ... money to me.

The reason dollars say “In God we trust.” is because if they said “Look this is all bullshit, but you can get a burger with this if you play your cards right.” no one would buy in.

Gold has no value when there is no food or water to buy.

Brick wall

My phone OCR. Not bad

Acknowledgements The current edition of this guide was written by Valerie Quercia, with the invaluable editorial assistance of Tim O'Reilly. Special thanks to Linda Mui and Eric Pearce (the co-authors of iight, A; Window System Administrator's Guide) for their expert technical and editorial support. Thanks also to Paula Ferguson for updating Appendix G, Widget Resources. Previous editions of this guide were written by Valerie Quercia and Tim O'Reilly, with the exception of the first edition, which was written by Tim O'Reilly, Valerie Quercia, and Linda Lamb. The first edition was based in part on three previous X Window System user's guides: one from Masscomp, which was written by Jeff Graber; one from Sequent Computer Sys- tems. Inc., and one from Graphic Software Systems, Inc.; both of which were written by Candis Condo (supported by the UNDO development group). Some of Jeff's and Candis's material in turn was based on material developed under the auspices of Project Athena at MIT. Most of the reference pages in Part Three of this guide have been adapted from reference pages copyright © 1991 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or from reference pages produced by Graphic Software Systems. Refer to the "Authors" section at the end of each reference page for details. Other copyrights are listed on the relevant reference pages. Pennission to use this material is gratefully acknowledged. was primarily developed using the MIT sample server on a Sun-3 Workstation and a Sun°SPARCstation™ SLC, with additional testing done on a Sony NEWS workstation run^ ning"ASony7sX implementation, a Visual 640 X Display Station, and NCD16™ and NCD19 Network Display Stations. We'd also like to thank the Open Software Foundation for Permi_s^on^fPn.n^Ae wye^^e^^P^^C^^^ ^'."Special thanks to Elizabeth Connelly of OSF for arranging this. ^°^^^^r,^:ss5£ book;_ DomlwolT,^n7EmeTurier'fo^ ^ofSreS ^!^^^^^^№www: Ms -'° toLenny Muellner for his expert tools assistance. D^.7,1,.^ of te. p.0ple, .ie s,,nd,rd —• -i.01.-' .PP- ^ crors

Foggy tree building

Learned something about myself

Elle in her natural habitat

Notes

Had to walk straight in to work this morning and take some Ibuprofen.  My left knee felt fine right until I got off the bus. Then it was stiff and felt that pressure you feel when you have some swelling. I know I did nothing to the knee over the weekend. It may be related to gouty.it felt better going up the steps on the front stupe. Not sure what that means.

Weekend in review

• Friday Evening, worked late
• Saturday, stayed in and slept, watched TV shows on the laptop
• Sunday Repeat of Saturday.

Basically, got nothing done this weekend.

There are as many numbers between 0 and 1 as there are between 0 and 0.01. Not a mind blowing thought, but one that makes me want to watch an episode of TMZ to clear my palate.

At my office, perhaps at the whole company, there is a stigma attached to forgetting you laptop. It can happen. Someone just this morning ran out of the house after grabbing the wrong backpack containing their personal laptop instead of the one containing their professional one. Still, the idea is frowned upon.

I worked on a real shit problem for 2 straight days. I got it working and the instant I saw the correct version number The A-Team theme played loud and clear in my head. That is apparently my victory song. I suppose there are worse victory songs.

Lunch conversation

• Work
• Have to be back by 13:00. We all kinda hate that.
• Parties
• Drama
• Hookups
• Stickers stuck to the sealing.
• Empty cans of Dr Pepper in strange places
• Conventions
• People who don’t register properly
• Experimental games
• Eurotrash games
• Ameritrash games
• Monopoly as a base of comparison is incorrect
• British curriculum schools in the U. S.

All in all, a good lunch. I was in my own head for much of it.

I want a frigging BYTE!!!!

So, photogrametry comes to phones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe10ExwzCqk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Notes

My phone is eating the battery more quickly than it used to. The scary thing is that I have three batteries that I rotate. I run them dead on Friday evenings and swap them every week. I try to treat them well. In short order, I will be forced to use a phone that does not have a removable battery. This is because they all have non removable batteries. This must be due to the drive to use the devices as tracking and monitoring devices. The only way to kill them is to pull the battery.

You have heard it a million times. Raising the minimum wage is bad for business. It is true. The minimum wage will go up. It will cost jobs. No one who will receive the votes from the people who want a raise give a shit.

The western world is becoming a part time world. I still put in 60 hour weeks occasionally. I routinely

Everything has risk. You have to weigh the risk against the potential return. Spread the risk and timing. Diversify. Cash isn’t worth as much tomorrow as it is today. There is no safe haven.

There is more to heaven and earth than meets the eye. There are things we know we don’t know. Live your life and fear your life. For a price you can learn. The price is enormous. The price is knowing. Know there is more. Pay the price.

It is getting to the point that there is no way to communicate to everyone.  Was there ever a way to communicate to everyone? Could even depending on neighbors have ever gotten everyone or even 95%? TV, phones, bullhorns, writing on the surface of clouds. Would any of these work well to communicate critical information to the vast majority of people?

WhatsApp

Facebook is paying $19 billion for WhatsApp. They have 55 employees. This really puts my company’s acquisition in perspective. We were cheap in comparison.

Perhaps Facebook is buying this company for one of the following reasons.

• To make a poke at the international market. “emerging markets” are mobile only. No computers.
• To put the two massive databases together in order to advertise to the people on both platforms.
• To offer the exact same services without getting sued.
• Facebook may want to use the no advertising model pioneered by WhatsApp.

What is the draw to WhatsApp? It is international texting without fees. You can also do voice and video messaging pretty easily. You can use groups. You can opt out of groups without contacting the person who made the groupe or so I hear. That is nice.

I had heard of this app before. Someone liked it for the international text messaging feature. Not phone to phone, app to app. Still, it saved money. I thought that was all it was about.

They have the word “shit” on their front page. I like that. They are quoting a movie while speaking about their disdain for advertisements. Somehow they make money elsewhere. Not sure where they make their money, but they did only have 55 people working there so it was chugging along cheaply.

I use Google talk or gtalk or Google chat or Hangouts or whatever they are calling it this week for pretty much the same functionality.  I believe Hangouts is not available in all the countries and the mobile app is kind of clunky. Hangouts does allow for computer to phone use. WhatsApp is strictly phone to phone (device). It also doesn’t appear to use my Google address book which is a pain.

Haven’t actually tried the WhatsApp client. Probably won’t now that it is part of facebook. I never even used the Facebook chat app. Why?

Of course Facebook is telling people it will leave the existing model in place. That is such bullshit. Why do companies bother lying to people any more? Everyone knows it will be Facebook-ised as soon as they get the keys to the front door.

I doubt it

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/20/California-Referendum-Six-States-Split-Ballot

Where was this in middle school?

Rain

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-26254908

Notes

They moved our vending machines at work. They were in a hallway that ended up being very cramped when 2 people had tgo pass one another. They moved them to the lunch room where there is much more room. One of the guys walked by and hollered “AAAA!” Then laughed at himself.

I’ve used shoutcast for years. It seems to have finally crumbled. I cannot get to my favorite search any longer. That search is “oter” or “old time radio”. Itis old radio programs from the 1920’s and up.  Drama, comedy and all kinds of everything. If you like shows like Twilight Zone, you would love these old shows. This is where they got some of the ideas. Fortunately they stuck a link on the table of contents down a few. It is under “Talk”

I wonder if I would be worse off if I could see. I easily picture myself as a blue color stiff in a dead end job.

Orange

The Cloud (SAAS)

I had a meeting today all about cloud. My company is big in doing the back end stuff for other companies that specialize in clouds. It turns out there is a huge market in private clouds. That is cloud stuff designed specifically for one company or government agency.

This list is from the point of view of the “why offer SAAS solutions”.

Why go Cloud (Software as a Service SAAS)

• Tighter control over what features are offered
• Faster to market
• When a feature has outlived its usefulness, get rid of it.
• Experiment with new features on the fly
• Keep your client’s data on your servers
• Clients come to you when they want their data
• Clients share their data through you
• Scalability
• Pay for what you use
• Need to triple your size at Christmas time?
• Need to halve your size after the basketball season ends?
• Support
• Silent upgrades of hardware and software without user interaction
• No more “I don’t want to upgrade because i’m afraid it will break something.”
• You know what version of the software everyone is using when they call. That is more important than it sounds.
• Centralized security
• No point in putting data on a thumb drive because you can share with authorized people via the cloud.
• DRM control

The game industry really needs to start using SAAS architecture. They keep trying to support their own systems from start to finish and it just doesn’t work. I cannot help but think they could offload a bunch of it to another company that has experience in the tech. The game companies could then focus solely on the gaming experience.

Notes

Then came Tuesday. No one remembers to plan for Tuesday.

PowerPoint is a great way to lie to a group of people.

There is a news article saying a bunch of Linksys routers have been infected with a bad software. There are a ton of them. I always turned off my remote access unless I absolutely needed it. This one uses remote management. It just seemed like a bad idea to leave that running to me. Some bad guys out there are using home routers to do attacks on banks and other industry.When will dishwashers have to be hardened? I suppose they already do if they have an IP.

India is putting together a Mars mission for about 75% of the cost of the movie Gravity. Good on them I say. Proof that movie budgets are bat shit crazy.

Red Flag Linux is dead. China no longer needs Red Flag Linux because they have hooks in all the OS software sold in China.

Banks are complaining about having to upgrade from 1980’;s technology in order to speed payments from 3 days to 10 seconds like every other goddamn country everywhere. You can use your mobile phone to send money to someone else’s phone all over the world, except not in the U. S.. Some leader we are.

Now I know when is the best time to invade Switzerland. Why would you hijack a plane and decide to go to Switzerland? Not the most forgiving or open minded country on Earth.

Let’s complain about yesterday

Got in at 7:00. Got out at 20:00 or there abouts.

I was not in a bad mood until I thought about my ex wife for some reason. Something that happened that didn’t piss me off at the time pissed me off last night after a long productive day. i don’t get it. I don’t get why I thought about my ex wife. She hadn’t crossed my mind in years. What happened all those years ago is immaterial. I should not have let it get to me last night.

Are difficult memories just sitting there waiting for you to have a weak moment only to pounce? That reminds me of a cold sore.

They should not have gotten the better of me. I do not expect to be the strong person all the time, but dangit, sometimes you need to nip bad stuff in the bud and just get on with it. I skipped dinner last night. I was just too tired to make something. I had planned to eat breakfast, but was too lazy for that as well. I did eat lunch.

Get over it work too many hours Kelly.

Lunch conversation

• Computers (not work related)
• Game machines
• Water cooling vs air cooling
• Buying whole machines vs buying prepared machines
• Is it worth the two weeks to get it to work?
• How often to upgrade
• Video cards more powerful than 10 year old supercomputers
• Work
• We were in the lunch from and people kept getting grabbed for questions.
• Movies
• Something about Lego
• Something about some movie about pirates
• Cars
• Some of these people have money so they want to talk about rich people cars.

I only took a half hour lunch today. I missed most of the 14 conversations going on in the lunch room. It it very interesting because there were only 10 people in the room. While walking over to McDonald's to get a sandwich, I was mumbling about hating computers and wishing I had become a ditch digger or something. I only make this complaint on nice days.

I know I'm not good at drawing, but I enjoy it.

Lunch time

Notes

Weekend in review.

• Saturday
• Changed oil in mower
• Buried mice
• Fixed fridge
• Shot a video of it all
• Sunday
• Mowed front and back (did not weed whack)
• Had migraine most of the day
• Didn’t pay bills like I meant.

Lunch conversation

• Olympics
• New sports
• Drive By dual sport
• Old shit sports
• That one where that is just shuffle board on ice.
• The reverse lunge (head first)
• Past olympics
• Houston Drivers
• Crime
• Kids and finances