2014-06-30
Notes
2014-06-27
Road the bus right past my stop today. Videoed myself walking back to work. Damn Reddit.
Kids today may have never owned music CD or album of any kind. Even collecting music online may not include buying a whole album.
2014-06-30
Got my bus pass! Worked this morning just fine. Back in the express lane.
The Hamster Factor. The making of Twelve Monkeys.
That missing plane update.
The definition of “Angel Investor” has changed. It used to be someone who would invest on the strength of an idea. Now it is someone who invests on the strength in the growth of a business that hasn’t made it yet.
64 -22 = 42
So, that is where the meaning of life came from. The work age of people is 22 to 64. Now you know. the meaning of life is to work. I’m 45, which puts me 17 years from the end and 23 from the front. That means I’m more than halfway to the end of work. I’ll believe it when I’m in Mowii sipping Mities on the beach for a living.
2014-06-28
2014-06-27
In a German market
http://31.media.tumblr.com/ab7b5a7401fa2ec853a7f53efb42b948/tumblr_n7qawaQZd81s4nqh8o1_1280.jpg
2014-06-26
Old cars
One of the blogs I frequent says that cars have gotten much higher in quality in the past twenty years. Well I suppose they have gotten better in quality, but the fact that the average age of vehicles has nearly doubled in the US is explained by a couple other factors as well.
Computers running things instead of people. Not long ago, it took a mechanic to set the timing and other settings one a vehicle. Now computes make a bajillion calculations from dozens of sensors every second to keep the car in tip top shape. Keeping the car properly timed and primed does a lot to prevent unnecessary wear on parts and thus makes the overall vehicle last longer.
Bad times means people fix their cars rather than buying new ones. We have been in bad times for quite some time now.
The internet has made it easier to advertise used cars over a larger area more cheaply. People who do not specifically need or want a new car are more likely to sit at the computer and browse used cars looking for a gem in the rough. The fact that you have to go to specific car lot web pages to look at what new cars are available is barbaric. The online used car market is primed to change how new cars are made available to the public.
Notes
We just had a person who asked for access to our network .He has one of those last names that is good for a first or last name. Let’s say “Frank” (not the actual name). His name is Frank Frank. Patricide/matricide should be legal in this one case.
“The IRS broke the law” when sending the donor information of a conservative organization to a liberal organization. Funny, I thought the IRS was made of people. Does this mean someone at the IRS broke the law? If so, will they be punished?
Congress must be in recess to make recess appointments. Go figure. This is huge. This was yet another power grab by the president. The courts have slapped him on the wrist, but it is enough sometimes to simply reverse the situation of wrongdoing to prevent future wrong doing. It has taken a while. I wish there were a wholesome way to stop these scope creep dictatorial actions more quickly.
Some folks went to BW3s to watch the US vs Germany game. This is crazy I’ve never heard of even this mediocre level of soccer giving a shit before. I sat listening to the reports on ESPN radio. One of my office mates watched the game on a stream of some kind. She was animated every time some game related unhappiness occurred.
Humans lean toward happy. English is the least happy.
I’m George R. R. Martin and I’m going to kill off a favorite character of yours in the next chapter.
On autopilot.
2014-06-25
Notes
Made it in this morning without getting too wet. I tried to video my walk in order to catch whomever is honking at me. I walked with my Kodak camera aimed in front of me slightly zoomed in so I could simply raise it and aim it at the license plate of the honker in question as they passed. I now have honkerless video lasting about an hour. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.
Carrying your mobile in your pants pocket may be damaging your sperm. As long as we are not talking cancer i don’t care.
There is no lunch conversation today. I’m broke. Nat and I have run out of money for the month. I cannot eat lunch any longer. There is a rich tapestry of reasons for our current state. Lets justsay that I suck at life.
The US economy contracted last quarter. We went backward by 3% last quarter. People are broke and getting broker by the day. I think it is the fact that even stupid people can’t help but pay attention to the shit going on in the world.
The U. S. is actually asking Iran to take care of some issues in the Middle East? How jacked is this? Maybe I’m misreading some of those articles.
Police cannot search your phone without a warrant any longer. it is about time we got one of our rights back. The argument is the idea behind the people leaving England for a new place was warrantless searches and blanket warrants. It was during one of these actions that the revolution was born in the first place. The couple of guys who this particular case was brought about because of are pricks that deserves jail time. It is the rest of us who need protection from or own protectors.
Hey, the IRS is getting away with the "my dog ate my emails" defense. Why not the EPA? How far would you get if you went to any government agency and said you lost your paperwork?
2014-06-24
Notes
I was listening to a fictional podcast today. I do that at work .I could tell the lady doing the reading was just reading to her laptop. I could hear her the fans kicking in and out. I hate that. It is distracting. I want to tell people to use a microphone with a 3m cable and read in a different room. One of the podcasters built a tiny closet with sound proofing and uses that. Sounds like a plan. That or get a laptop that doesn’t have fans. Make an effort. The reading was excellent otherwise.
Rich people get their money from other people, not all of whom are rich. So saying you will pay for something by taxing the rich means everyone pays. Everyone pays because most rich people run businesses in some fashion. f they cannot get or stay rich by putting other people to work, they will stop doing so.
We have part of a project at work written in Python that is 17,000 lines long. It has been written over a couple years and is one after another bug fixes. Today, the powers that be, decided to look very hard at learning from it, and rewriting it from an updated design spec. That isn’t quite scratch. Sometimes fixing goes too far and overhauling is in order.
Those plugged up nose inhalers are banned in Japan. You can get a resounding slap on the wrist if you try to take one in the country even by mistake. So I’ve heard on the internet anyway. It must be true.
Notes
2014-06-23
More people in Texas are filling in pools than getting them put in. Between insurance and taxes it just isn’t worth a wet hole in the ground.
Age discrimination in IT fields. It looks like there is a movement to make companies think twice about saying “Recent Graduates” or something similar while looking for new highers. I’ve always kind of wondered if this was age discrimination. I guess I’m not alone.
I got a scrape over the weekend working on the fence. I only replaced one board and got a cut on my thumb and the scrape on my finger. I should have worn gloves. I was wearing safety glasses. Not that stupid I suppose.
One of the guys came by and said he ordered a new t-shirt. It is not really work safe, but it has a big picture of a camera on it and says “I shoot people and sometimes cut off heads.” Love it.
Wimbledon kicked off this week. I cannot communicate how pissed I got as a kid when they preempted my cartoons for fucking tennis. American football and baseball would do the same thing sometimes. There was something about tennis that just made me livid.
It is getting to the point that powerful computers are eating up more electricity than it is worth to simulate things like wind over an aircraft wing or weather patters.
It is so much easier to just Drone people than to capture, convict and incarcerate them. J-Walkers beware.
That picture shows how frigging huge these things are. That looks like one of those inflatable hangers as well. Interesting.
Lunch Conversation
2014-06-23
- Weather
- We got rained on so the conversation bent toward that quite a bit.
- Past weather at lunch related stories.
- Hurricanes and hurricane season in Houston.
- Floods
- California weather vs Houston weather. One of the guys is from California.
- Handedness
- When I walked up to the table I made sure to get a position where I would swing my left arm away from people.
- Me and one other person in the lunch group are left handed.
- 10% of the population is left handed.
- There is a word for being neither left nor right handed. That sound like me.
- Houses
- Designing
- Customizing
- Building
- Fixing
- Work
- Meetings mostly. Most of the group had a 13:00 meeting and the rain was slowing us down.
- Communicating with customers from an engineer point of view.
- World Cup
- We actually watched some of the games this time round.
- USA had a chance until the last 30 frigging seconds.
One of the group had the foresight to remember an umbrella. It refused to close properly and she had to wrestle it in to the vehicle.
2014-06-23
2014-06-22
2014-06-21
Diswruptive technogy is good
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-most-important-automaker-20140620-story.html
2014-06-20
Notes
Iran is majority Shia. Iraq is majority Shia, yet Suni have ruled it (through Sadam) for a long time. Turkey is talking about handing the Kurds (in Iraq) their own country. Let’s redraw a bunch of lines. That will make everyone happy, right? Iran has invaded Iraq and is setting up shop to stay it appears.
My 11 year old daughter had a bug bit (we hope) on her belly. She had to go to the doctor and get it looked at. He decided to take a sample and have it sent off. She screamed and scared the other patients. Poor thing. They gave her a prescription for antibiotics.
Good news. ISIS has Chemical Weapons. These are from the same pile of WMDs that Saddam didn’t have. The weapons are indeed real and now ISIS or al Qaeda 2.0 now have them. Thanks Barack. Your attempt to pull out early gave birth to WMD terrorism.
Heading over to a buddy’s place to watch Game of Thrones. I’ve seen them. I’m going to get some face time with the friends. Nat will be at home cuddling with the 12 gauge while I’m otherwise occupied.
2014-06-19
Notes
Printing with (TIG welded) steel. The day you drag and drop a bunch of icons on to a car fame online and give you address to have the car, computer, dishwasher or whatever delivered from the local printing house are right around the corner. At some point, we may bypass Amazon and all of them and justhave the printers right in our homes. Cut out the middleman all together.
Some studies are saying the majority of people vote for whom they vote for out of habit more than anything else that comes up in an election. Wow. That just makes me want to puke.
Nat dropped her phone and had to get a new one. Her old phone is no longer made. We upgraded from a Google 4 to a Google 5. I don’t remember what the names of the phones are. I looked at the phone and it is pretty darned cool. It does one new thing that I believe will really help Nat. It is 4G. I’ve noticed her poor reception in some places where I (with my S4 and 4G) got good reception.
They are putting cameras on school busses to catch people running the stop signals. I kind od like this one. They should have great big signs that light up saying “Smile, you are on camera.” That would be far more of a deterrent in my book.
There is a movement to teach the public programming. I think it is a big mistake. People do not need to know how to program. They need to know how to do something that will lead to a productive life and career. We don’t insist everyone who gets a drivers license know how to build a car; everyone who buys a house know how to build one.
Slingshot ammo datasheet. (Steel balls) If you need steel rods or balls that’s your place.
Had a fire drill today. All survived.
New test for prostate cancer involves obtaining a semin sample. Line forms to the right.
The earphones I was using at work died. The replacements suck. They sound like everyone is in a tin can a room away. Dammit! I want some $10 earphones that don’t suck and put up with a little abuse. This is too much to ask from our current engineering manufacturing univers. Earphones must be one of those things that is more difficult to make work and make work well than it looks. It seems like you could just make one set that is cheap, durable and doesn’t sound like shit and then hit copy and paste by the train load.
So, a lot of people at my work start half their sentences with “Soooooo ... “ it kind od drives me nuts. I’ve caught myself doing it around here. Is it a youth thing. Are they quoting Office Space?
Lunch Conversation
- Most quotable movie
- Office Space (I can’t remember the quotes)
- TLC, TIL TPL reports. What was the quote?
- Holy Grail
- Bring out your dead!
- Holy hand grenade
- It’s just a model.
- None shall pass
- How do you know he’s king? He is the only one without shit all over him.
- I’m being oppressed!
- Ghostbusters
- No human could stack books like this
- The flowers are still standing.
- Woe ther Tex.
- Yes, this man has no penis.
- The next time someone asks you if you are a god, say YES!
- True Grit
- Fill your hand you son of a bitch!
- Star Wars
- What do you think about Disney taking the reins?
- Original character placement in the new shows.
- TV shows based on the Star Wars universe.
- Other cool modern movies
- Starship Troopers
- 250,000 blank rounds expended in the filming of.
- Other cool TV shows
- Falling Skies (kind of cool)
- Fiction in general
- The conflict between books and movies based on them.
- Why Ken doesn’t read.
- Star Wars was just a straight up idea, not a book.
- It borrowed a lot, but was not based directly on another story.
2014-06-18
Notes
Unwelcome drones at the olympics. Someone is flying around practice files. When the players and coaches complained officials blamed it on overzealous fans.
In China they might just use a warehouse full of copper to secure a loan. Sometimes the same warehouse is used to secure multiple loans. Some western banks have people in China asking to see the friggin warehouses to make sure this huge pile of copper even exists. The shell game may be disrupted for a bit.
I do not believe the terrorists who crashed the planes in to the towers on 9/11/2001 were cowards for crashing the plane. I think they were cowards for targeting civilians.
I like listening to fiction podcasts. At least, I used to. Lately, I have no patients. If the story doesn’t grab me, I’m off to the news podcasts. Nuts. Maybe it is summer or just the crazy days of work.
There goes another set of earphones. One of the sides has just gone dead. Humph. I have other things to worry about.
Notes
2014-06-17
Rubby Bink. What an awesome name. I heard this name on the Flying Squirrel’s (Red Panda) podcast. She was getting a birthday shout out. The reader mentioned he was going to steal that name for a story at some point. They also have Von Schlitz as a character name. How evil does that sound?
It turns out there are issues with forcing your populous to be stupid and controllable. Not the least of which is the lack of brilliant people to keep your controle machine going.
Ford first called his motorized vehicle a quadracycle. It ran on ethanol. It had a 2 stroke engine with about 4 horsepower. It would also not fit through the door of the garage. An ax fixed the design flaw.
Oh, I’m behind on this, but the U. S. beat China in the World Cup. USA! USA!!
I think Feedly is under attack again this morning (2014-06-17). It seems like my feeds are updating very slowly. I really hope whomever is doing this lives and dies broke.
I so need this to be cheaper than it is. They don't mention if it has some way to not run in to things while following you around.
The Last Ship: A post apocalyptic (sold) TV show ...
Billy Bob Thornton is in a band that has played South By Southwest.
2014-06-17
2014-06-16
2014-06-15
2014-06-13
Notes
Friday the thirteenth. Good thing I’m not superstitions.
We (Ted, Elle’s biological father) went to Elle’s school this morning for a little happy Father’s Day thing. I had a little pastry and a boiled egg. We talked and teased Elle for about 30 minutes. I’ll post the pictures here.
Iraq is going to fall. When it does it will be worse than it ever was under Saddam. The U. S. dismantled the Iraqi army on basically day one of our occupation. How many times do we have to learn the same lesson. If you are going to destroy a state, destroy it. Then take it as your own, or hand it to an ali. Don’t expect a defeated people to be able to take care of themselves.
I have never sought out ESPN before. I’m listening to the World Cup online while I work. Today Mexico and Australia are playing games I want to listen to. No, they are not playing each other today. The BBC refuses to put up the games on the radio service for some reason. ESPN is putting up the games. I like the commentary of the BBC better. What are you going to do?
Obama as unpopular as Bush. What difference does this make?
Nocebo: is the antonym to Placebo. A Nocebo is a harmless substance that causes a bad result. I learned this today on Dr Karl.
No lunch conversation. I shot a couple of clips for the vlog. McDonald's has peach pies at the moment. They are not bad. They are also 2 for a dollar.
Lots of bad stuff going on in Iraq. One of which is incompetence. It does sound like there is more to it than a small group of experienced fighters taking over an entire country.
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