Notes

2013-7-11

09:00 I’m running a build. I can’t even figure out if I want  it to work or fail. I want it to fail because it will prove somethin. I want  it to work because I’m sick and friggin tired of not getting things to work.

Running on empty lately. I’ve been working on things I am simply not a master of. it is a huge learning curve for me. It is stressful because I want to do a better job. Every one thing I learn tells me there are five things I need to know. I’ve gotten help, thank goodness, but I hate asking because these folks all have deadlines.

The sun gives off about 1,000,000 tons of solarwinds every second. -Dr Karl.

That eyelash in my right eye tried to bite me again today. I was able to take the contact out and flush the eye a bit with some contact fluid. I recovered  This is the first time that has happened. Up to now that has been an endgame for the day of wearing contacts.

humid morning

Population

Populations (as found on Google on first search result). This all came up because someone at lunch mentioned that the UK seemed to have a lot of cultural influence over the world that far out stripped their population.

If you asked me before I did this I would have guessed that Mexico had a population of about 20 or 30 million. The idea that Pakistan has more people than Russia blows my mind.

Place	Population in millions	Each X = 10 million in population
New York	19	XX
Australia	22	XX
Texas	26	XX
Iraq	32	XXX
Canada	34	XXX
California	38	XXX
UK	62	XXXXXX
France	64	XXXXXX
Iran	74	XXXXXXX
Germany	81	XXXXXXXX
Mexico	112	XXXXXXXXXXX
Japan	127	XXXXXXXXXXXX
Russia	143	XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Pakistan	176	XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
US	313	XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
India	1241	XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
China	1344	XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

notes

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric.

The quarrel with ourselves, poetry

-Yates

This is probably why I suck at poetry and excel (of a kind) at rhetoric. I complain well. I’ve said many times that complaining intelligently has won me more than any other skill I possess.

I’m not sure if I dig Billy Collins as the new Writer’s Almanac presenter. I’m not sure anyone or thing can replace the original.

Had lunch at Whataburger. My spell checker tried to change it to whatsoever. Didn’t even know that was all one word.

Komodo Dragons have poison glands. It is not just the bacteria in their mouths. The levels of bacteria in their mouths is no higher than other predators.

Lunch conversation today consisted of school and GenCon.

Notes

2013-07-09

Work

There is a guy who knows his shit on our team. His time is very precious. It seems we all need him in order to move forward. It is a drag, but it is working. The more the rest of us learn, the less he will be over demanded. Hopefully.

Some folks you can give the following.

• Remote desktop to server xyz
• Log in with your current password
• Hit ctrl-alt-del (Linux) or ctrl-alt-end (Windows) and select change password

Others you have to drag kicking and screaming with screen shots and tons of back and forth to the river and baptize them.

Over the last couple weeks, I’ve had an office mate. I’m not sure it counts because he is rarely in the office. he is a hardware engineer and thus runs around banging on things to get them to work. I’m software so I sit and bang on one thing, the keyboard.

Today, I worked on something that was stressful. I needed to write my thoughts down more than normal as a distraction. Thus the long disorganized notes blog entry today. I also noticed I get up and pee more when I’m working on something stressful involving people.

Politics

it is illegal for inmates in California prisons to have sex. They may get codons in the future.

our president has dispensed with a part of his own Obama Care law that was causing trouble. Some say he does not have the authority to do so. Well, he doesn’t.  The law says it starts on a specific day and that is when it will start. This is ruling by decree. This is the kind of things dictators do. What will happen when a Republican president decides that the IRS shall not enforce the capital gains tax? I bet the punditry will have more to say about this sort of overstep.

Me

Had 2 donuts and a bag of hot Cheetos today. That was all I ate before leaving for the day. One of the donuts was cream filled. This is increasingly normal. Need to come up with a better paln than cheap snacks for daily sustenance.

Contrary to popular complaints, I have not given up on writing fiction. The Galactic Overlord just made me stop because of time anomaly conflicts.

I do not agree with my friends. Not specifically anyway. I am willing to disagree without feeling offended. I am willing to live and let live with different ideas and opinions for the most part. There are lines, but they are far a field.

I listened to an audio cast today where the author made a bunch of technical assumptions. That is, they spoke of technical things. They used a bunch of references to things like Linux and bandwidth. You probably wouldn’t say something like “I have a Linux program ...” You would say something like “I have a C program ...” or “I have a python script that ...”. Most of the rest of the ideas that I had time to listen to in the story made sense. There were no anachronisms beyond diction discrepancies.

Other

Car that gets 262 MPG, but you can’t charge your phone.

is the era of free internet porn coming to an end? It appears that for decades most of the online porn has simply been recycled with a few new bits thrown in every week or so to satiate the masses. However, the porn industry is waking up to this loss of money and suing people for intellectual property theft.

Notes

In the seventies, a filmmaker shot a couple minutes of film of people walking down a busy street. IO assume this was to use as stock footage. Someone put in a voiceover of a director screaming at people to do thinggs and to stop looking at the camera.  It was hilarious. It cracks me up to this day thinking about it. Too bad I cannot put in a link.

Looks like we are going to have some pretty stout rain over the next several days. We need it. Austin needs it even more. Hopefully we don’t get too much all at once.

Apparently the thinking behind Houston not getting a space shuttle after the break up of NASA was because we already had a mock shuttle. I’ve seen that mock up once a long time ago. It looks like the real thing.

They keep throwing money at the problem and it keeps making the problem worse. It turns out that is the only tool in the box for these guys. How have we become dependant on fools? Oh, yes, the election.

It turns out Germany is on the “third tier” list along with China and Iran when it comes to countries the U. S is watching. It is SOP for the CIA to snoop on German government and indeed the EU. No one is happy about this getting out. They have proof of some kind that this has been going on. The U. S government wants to say it is normal and the Germans are screaming about it.

We have an internal online system for purchasing stuff at work. I got it to work. I ordered a bit of lab equipment that is high in demand. I got a USB to SATA cable with power supply. They are slow, but freaking magic when in a pinch. While we were still the old company, I had six of these things. They all grew legs. This is the best wayto tell just how useful a bit of kit is. I nearly did cartwheels down the hall, but restrained myself.

A scientist wants to get rid of many street lights by growing glow in the dark trees and other plants. I like it. One of the objections is the proliferation of light pollution.

Went down to the little cafe in our building at around 12:20. They were already out of the special. I turned around and left. It was pot pie. Nothing else will do.

The U. S. makes 15% as much steel every year as China. There are so many skyscrapers in China that no one has an accurate count.

Lightbulbs

Field	Data
Title	Lightbulb
Description	Changing the lightbulb in the garage door opener. My Links * Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/zhsy00001 * Google+ https://plus.google.com/110920679448216202152/posts/p/pub * Blog http://plastickelly.blogspot.com * YouTube RSS http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/zhsy00001/uploads
Tags	vlog, vlogging, light bulb, lightbulb, garage door opener, changing lightbulb, climbing on a car
Bullets
Link	Link

Independance day 2013

Pictures from 2013 4th of July party at a friend’s place. Please let me know if you cannot get to the pictures or if there are any crazy issues with them.

Independance Day 2013

Field	Data
Title	Independance Day 2013
Description	Someone asked me why I hang out and camp at Faire. This is why. The people. My Links * Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/zhsy00001 * Google+ https://plus.google.com/110920679448216202152/posts/p/pub * Blog http://plastickelly.blogspot.com * YouTube RSS http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/zhsy00001/uploads
Tags	vlog, vlogging, independance day, 2013, 4th of july, holiday, house party, taking picture, posing, old friends, happy, fun, family, faire,
Bullets
Link	Link

Vlog 2013-07-05[

Field	Data
Title	vlog 2013-07-05
Description	Life update My Links * Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/zhsy00001 * Google+ https://plus.google.com/110920679448216202152/posts/p/pub * Blog http://plastickelly.blogspot.com * YouTube RSS http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/zhsy00001/uploads
Tags	vlog, vlogging, truck, shipping container, fire works stand, pickup, life update
Bullets
Link	Link

Notes

Zero Hour contract in the UK sounds quite a bit like Right to Work in the US/Texas. They don’t fire you, they just cut your hours to 0. One of the big issues from employers I’ve heard in the past is that it is very difficult to fire people in the UK. Some say these contracts are really to lower unemployment numbers. I imagine it could be used as a precursor to outsourcing as well.

Phyllis Diller said (paraphrasing) - If anything is difficult, quit. Find something you like that you are good at and do that. I’m good at complaining. I should blog more.

The US government is the laughing stock of the world. it isn’t one person or one party. it is the ineptitude of career politicians. Our country is only surviving on the lack of strength of every other country in the world. We are simply not going to stay on top. If we don’t want it bad enough, we won’t get it.

Pic

Notes

Spent half my morning trying to fix an issue that I couldn’t fix. Worth a shot. I just didn’t have the rights.

There are finally whispers blowing around Washington that say maybe the IRS is a bad idea. The primary replacement would be basically a nation wide sales tax. I like this idea because if I put the money in a retirement account, it is my money. If I invest, it is my money. When I buy something or a service, a chunk of that goes to the government. How in the world would you defraud the government except to simply steal the money?

had a gyro for lunch today. it was pretty good. The service was OK.  It is in the same place as four or five other restaurants. That is, this place has taken over the location. It was a mexican place, then a South American place, then something else. Now it is supposedly some kind of Eastern European food.

A friend sends me a text message “Back at doctor. Have a spot of skin cancer on my forehead.” Yee gads. I told him to stay on top of it. Don’t let that stuff slip.

There is actually talk of making people take a math test before they are allowed to obtain a mortgage. I fear this will kill the housing market in the U. S.. I imagine that if you fail the math test, you would have to hire an independent  advocate to do the math for you. What kind of test will you have to take before voting?

At some point, I had some kind of crappy magnification working on my work Linux box. It sucked,but I distinctly remember it working, kind of. i can deal with the screen just fine right up until I’m on the laptop screen,. Then things are just beyond my ability to deal with. When I'm in meetings, the size of the fonts in some programs is just too much to deal with.

Got home and ran out to the back yard and mowed. I nearly passed out. There were some rain clouds in the area so I hurried. Most of the grass was about knee high. I briefly thought about videoing something, but I was just not in the mood.

Lunch Conversation

• Home
• Leaks
• AC repair
• One of the guys has a house with 3 AC units
• Roofs
• Pools
• Several of us grew up with pools right up the street
• It seems none of us want a pool. Too much trouble
• Weather
• Felt great last week
• Missing out on some rain
• Work (no details to follow)
• Video games, but I managed to fork a separate conversation
• Internet videos
• Having to fix things you just got.
• You get what you pay for so many times.
• Independance Day plans
• the old CB crew
• Drama drama drama