Notes

Thoughts

Today is an all links kind of day.

Links

Progress in aviation, or not. I think the fuel efficiency, automation and safety have raised a bit, but I don’t believe there have been leaps forward that can be quantified like the circles on the chart.

Some details on the Oklahoma beheading Jihadi wannabe.

British gallons vs U. S. gallons came up in conversation today (again). It turns out the discrepancies are between pints.

This episode of podcastle is one of the best podcasts I’ve heard in a while. They just did a good job on this one. Even the sponsor got in to the act and did a great job of doing it. I love that when it is well done.

Not it! Another story on a similar bend.

Maybe we should keep track of Global Warming, I mean Climate Change, I mean the weather with numbers and this new stuff called data.

.460 Rowland is a new round I’m hearing more and more about. Someone said the idea behind it was to mimic the .44 magnum numbers in a .45 pistol. The energy at the muzzle is similar. Essentially, you are making a very hot .45 round with a heavier bullet (slug that travels out the barrel). Packs a wallop. I want to find a double procession clip conversion that doesn’t come apart when you fire it. Could you imagine a 12 round .44 automag?

What’s with Twitter? I’m finding some issues accessing pages I want and getting rid of some posts I don’t want. Twitter is really pissing me off from multiple directions.

Is Hollywood doomed? The present form is doomed. If Hollywood can adapt in time then no, but if they do not adapt in time, well, something else will take the place of our movie industry and the people who run it.

Cat fight! To humans who think very highly of their own opinions.

Today's doodle. I'mon a farm kick

Notes

Thoughts

I was looking at my sick days and it appears that over the last couple years, I miss more days in Summer than any other season. The pollen counts really tear me up.

Strange today. I got in just before 8:00 this morning to work. If I hadn’t been reminded by my computer to go eat lunch, I would have thought it was 9:30. By 15:00 I was feeling like it was about lunch time even though I already went to lunch and was not hungry. When will I feel like going to bed?

Links

PEW!! PEW!!

What are the cops going to do when people video their own arrests with these things and then the drone flies away to be downloaded elsewhere? They are going to need chaser drones of their own. The arms race of freedom escalates.

What else do these companies have to do to tack us?

Ello - I have not gotten my invite yet.

Are racist if you expect more from people than animalistic reaction to stimuli? I expect more from everyone.l

At what point will our president admit any error?

Once again, the Onion gets it right. Their list is about as accurate as any I’ve seen. Particularly, the last entry.

I listen to Penn’s Sunday School, but I am not an atheist.

Afghanistan, feeling the presents of ISIS over their shoulder, pen a deal with U. S. troops.

Green rules might do more harm than good. You might get ostracized for saying that buddy.

Today's doodle

Notes

Thoughts

I could only think of work today. It was one of those days. The whole Earth and universe seems to be against me. it isn’t true of course. The universe doesn’t care one whit about me or what I do. I am a speck on a speck orbiting a spec in a galaxy the size of a speck to the universe.

Last couple days, my evil office partners have popped popcorn in the afternoons. I must rectify my lack of afternoon popcorn.

Links

ARP Storm - word of the day. When there is a loop in a network between dumb switches you get a bunch of “discovery” request bouncing back to the computer that made the request. There are supposed to be all kinds of things in place to stop this sort of thing, but it happens all the time.

Proof that all this smart stuff is making us stupid.

Why did we have a “Great Depression”?

Turkey on the firing line.

Fixed Elle's laptop

10% chance of rain my ass

Fixing Elle's laptop

Chick-fil-a for dinner

Notes

Thoughts

The walk in this morning was pleasant. no one tried to kill me. The mosquitoes were absent. The ground was mostly dry. The grass was not too tall. I didn’t trip over any limbs or garbage on the side of the road. The temperature was bearable. It wasn’t raining. The sun wasn’t even in my eyes.

I got home yesterday after work and fired up my laptop. The last I heard at work was there was going to be a build. I checked for the build, but none had started and no one had tried to contact me about it. My laptop complained about some updates so I kicked them off. By the time they completed and asked me to reboot, I was nodding off. I shut the laptop down and went to bed. I was out by 20:30. When I got up this morning, I didn’t feel any more or less “I want to go back to bed”ish than normal.

Links

“Trust but verify” came up in conversation this morning. I find myself using this with Elle.

Very cool. Some kids in a science fair project save the world from starving to death. I hope they have a patent on it.

Go IBM. Where the hell are these things? I can’t find them in Wal-Mart.

It has begun. Well, no. And it is really rude to speak of ill people like that.

Ukraine closing border with Russia and applying for UN membership. Well, I thought they had already done both of these things. Learn something every day.

The next entitlement.

Race riots coming to DC (hopefully not).

Holder bails. Thank Christ! This guy has done nothing but carry water for a dictator.

Nat wanted to go in to the Coast Guard.

Miss a payment, your car won’t start. This has been around for a while.

Firearms in the home

At lunch today one of the topics we covered was guns at home and late night paranoia. I wanted to bring up the fact that people who drink suffer from far worse late night paranoia. Our little group had the symptoms of continuing to dream when they get up. I’ve done that. People who drink suffer from this more often and with more intensity I’m told.

Oddly, no one said that guns should not be allowed in homes. Some chose to have guns and some chose to not have guns. That is how it is supposed to work.

Of course, then we started telling stories of why we think the way we do. One person came home late and their dad answered the door with a gun in his hand. I got up in the middle of the night investigating a strange thumping noise and it turned out to the the dog digging in the tub for water.

Some of the people were very worried about a firearm in their home being used against them. This is statistically insignificant, but is believed to be a real problem by people who do not do any homework on the subject.. The anti gun rights lobby has been highly successful with this unbackable argument. More people are run over by their own car than shot with their own gun. You have to be careful when looking in to it because some suicides go down on the books as accidental shootings. Also, some attempted murders are also marked as accidents after the adrenalin has ebbed.

Today's meeting doodle

Another man's doodle

Notes

Thoughts

I dropped my magnifying glass on the floor at work today. Someone walked in my office saying “At least I know who it belongs to.” and handed it to me. Earlier I had dropped my box cutter from the same pocket in the car. Nat hollered at me while I was walking up the steps to the front door of work and handed it to me. I’m a mess today.

The invites to lunch abounded. However. I prevailed. I went on a walk for about 20 minutes. This is noteworthy because I’m such a fat ass. The weather just recently took a turn for the slightly more pleasant. There is some shade on the walk here and there. The sidewalk is treturous.

Feedly down for maybe 15 minutes

I use www.feedly.com for my RSS needs. I forget how much I depend on this site until it goes down. It did so this afternoon. I use it to keep track of my blogs, vlogs and podcasts. It does a great job. I wanted something that would keep track of my feeds and what I have and have not read watched listened to across multiple computers and platforms. Love the service. Too bad it goes down every now and again.

They went down. The blog said they were working on it. They came back up in no time at all. I was listening to a Shoutcast feed. Didn’t even get through one episode of Richard Diamond radio show.

Links

Amphibious warfare of the future? Isn’t the Marine motto “Adapt and overcome.”? Something like that.

DOD (Department of Defence) getting sued by former spies. Probably not for what you think.

I think you will be lectured by a public school girl like her. You may not listen. Not sure what to think about this story. Remember “public schools” are called that in England because you do not need to be clergy to attend. Anyone who is rich may attend. Does the world “lecture” require you to pay attention?

First replicator on a spacecraft. (that we know of)

Today's meeting dootle

Notes

Thoughts

I’m listening to the BBC. Someone just said “Job guarantee for young people” or words to that effect. There are no guarantees. The best way to provide jobs is to provide the ecosystem for exchange. Don’t tax business and people to death. Beware of people who want to regulate the market out of ruin. Typically, that is how markets get in to ruin.

England is the land of “Keep calm and carry on.” The U. S. is the land of the bottomless coffee cup.

Links

The birds!

Whose side are they on? Oh, wait, it’s obvious.

You sure you want Hilllery for president?

Heads rolling in White House security.

Cars kill more people than guns at the moment. Schools teach kids how to handle cars. Why not how to handle guns safely?

Word of the day Tesseract. I cannot do what it is justice so go read tge Wikipedia entry. These show up in video games. That was the first place I heard the term.

We were just talking about cost vs benefit of military weaponry at lunch this afternoon.

Years of war ahead. Again, spoke of this at lunch today.

Lunch conversation

I dare say this was the most diverse list of topics we have ever covered in a single, though a bit long, lunch.

• Entertainment
• How many movies can you watch in a month?
• Seventies British smut movies
• TV series (police procedurals)
• Body fluid samples
• Travel
• Why all the cops
• Travel and high alert on U. S. southern border due to radio traffic about car bombs.
• Fort Bliss on high alert.
• Wrecks and bad spots
• International Affairs
• ISIS/ISL Why the different names?
• The politics of killing people on mass
• Does killing terrorists makes their kids and family in to terrorists?
• Can you bomb a society in to submission?
• With nukes, without an invasion: Japan
• Without nukes, with invasion: Germany
• Modern people and ideologies
• War vs other names for the same thing
• Rhetoric as a weapon
• Talking instead of doing
• Brainwashing as a deterrent to future conflict.
• Air strikes in Syria without permission. (illeagle)
• Long range shooters (snipers)
• Bullet drop
• Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet. May have been related to being jammed so the U. S. can run bombing runs on ISIS in the area.
• Dropping million dollar bombs on pickup trucks with guns strapped to them.
• Growing our hair out
• Adam’s hair is too curly and too much acne
• Mine all fell out, though it was gorgeous there for a few years.
• Greg is too thin and wraps at the shoulders

Close to home

A kid at Elle’s school is special needs. He has emotional issues. He was having a particularly tough time this morning. Nat got involved a bit helping to get hold of one of the parents. Elle helped calm the boy down. She is our little empath.

I feel this one because I am a person with special needs. I need more help than most of the other folks around me. I am provided this help for the most part. it is very frustrating most of the  time.

When I was a kid, it was far worse. Being an adult who needs help is bad enough. Being a kid who needs help is far worse. You do not know what help you need. You do not understand why no one else needs the same help. You worry about people thinking you are weak because of the help you need. Things do not get resolved the same way as everyone else.

Girls think you are icky and weird. Guys don’t want to hang out with you.

I’m not sure if it gets easier, but you do get better at it. Every case is different. Learn what works and take notes. It wasn’t until I hit an age where I could tell people to jump in a lake that things really got better. I don’t know if I changed or if people started treating me differently. That age started when I grew shoulders in late high school. It continues to this day. The difference is I find it a snap to tell people to fuck off and continue on my journey through life without that person.

Lovely nickel

Doitone doodle

Doitone doodle

My opinion on Alibaba

Notes

Phone virtual keyboard

I used to use the Swype keyboard on my Android phone exclusively. The default keyboard on a generic Android device kind of sucks. I now use the Samsung keyboard. It is not much better than the default. It is worse than the Swype keyboard. The Samsung keyboard, however, leaves the numbers at the top all the time.

This encourages using numbers in passwords. I insist on having numbers in my password. The Swype keyboard makes one sit on a key for a moment in order to produce a number. This is mildly annoying the first several unlocks and a wrong that must be righted then on. I haven’t found a setting to entice the Swype keyboard to display numbers at all times, though you can get to the numeric keypad at will with a expertly performed squiggle.

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Vlogger problems

I used to keep track of the metadata for my YouTube videos here in the blog. No longer. I do not keep any of the data really. I fear that YouTube will fall away at some point. It is already set up to not make money for people who monetize their videos any longer. Well, only if you really pull in the views. That is no skin off my nose. Some people only do it because there is a monetary response. I do it because of some strange need to write things down.

Google has tried a couple times to give non money making videos a place to post. Google video and Google Plus are their answers. Search engines do not bring you to those places. So, until they prevent people from posting to YouTube, that is where my videos go.

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Single Thoughts

Also, I would have to upload the same video to Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and my blog (somehow) if it were not for a single place that allows reposting like YouTube. Nightmare.

alibaba.com. 80% of all ecommerce (online purchases) in China. I believe alibaba will connect the U. S. consumer with the Chinese manufacturers more closely. This will be an unintended side effect that is a good thing from my point of view.

Are zombies dead? I have 2 ideas for zombie shorts that I think are awesome. What to hear them?

There for a minute, there were seven people in my office. There are normally only three. Three quiet people. Too much activity all at once. I found it very stressful. Then it was quiet again. Glad Kelly.

Twitter is really pissing me off. I’m getting random shit in my timeline. If I want random shit in my timeline I’ll stick random shit in my timeline. I’m not far from uninstalling the app and killing the account.

My Android phone does not last a full day on the provided battery. I purchased an external battery in order to make sure I get home without a dead lump of plastic in my pocket. I’ve found that the “Battery Save” Option in the settings makes a pretty big difference in the battery life. I can last a full day with that setting enabled. I looked at what it does and it appears the processor on my phone getting jammed in low gear (indistinguishable really) is the deciding factor. I have to manually set the screen because the low power setting makes it too dim in the daylight to use. I suppose that does save the battery.

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Links

“... a certain kind of soldier.” Worth a read.

More war. Yup.

Get in line to surrender behind France.

Dilbert Movie getting under way. Well, starting out.

I agree

http://i.imgur.com/ahLz8Z3.jpg

Carma

Gold Coast Drivers - Busted!: http://youtu.be/V5q4pfNtIRk

My ferry infestation is getting worse.

The garage door opener saga

Bloody Ferries

Notes

Red Shirt Diary.

I wondered how long it would take for someone to blame the victim in the journalists beheading issue. Not very long it turns out. If journalists are not supposed to go get the news, then the “free world” will not know what is going on. It isn’t like or government agents are telling us anything.

You can paint a teddy bear on a nuke, but it don’t dull the boom.

Coral is a worm that turns itself in to a rock with a mouth. Dr Karl.

Sometimes the correct people get shot.

Authors have to provide a one line description of themselves to put up before one of their stories is read. I think mine should read “Blessed but tired.”

Sometimes I wish they would stand down here. Between the CIA stand down in Europe and Military loss of confidence in the administration, I’m not sure what the hell will happen next.

Meeting doodles

Poncho is useless