We just watched 60 Minutes from Christmas. It was the episode on Mt. Athos.
I’ve very rarely seen such selfishness.
They lock themselves up and pray for their own salvation.
They fight for salvation. Their own salvation.
It is covered by gold. It seems the opposite of what they are preaching.
“We prepare for death each day.” We are buying our ticket by working here.
Isn’t the purpose to make the world a better place? Not just one’s self?
The TV we have sitting in front of me right now, a 65″ Mitsubishi DLP TV has developed not one, but two problems in the past month.
It’s less than three years old and the light engine (the DLP guts of the TV) has developed two distinct problems.
First, and this has been going on for around a month or so, the TV has a flicker that starts to exhibit itself on the upper-right corner. It’s a here one minute, gone the next type of deal.
While we were just watching some shows it now has a stuck pixel.
White.
All the time. Drawing your eye to it.
W. T. F. ?
Internet searches lead me to think this is a $1000 problem. A new TV is around the same price. A TV with a warranty.
Our previous set, a rear projection CRT lasted at least 10 years and has been to Iraq and back since we purchased it and from the latest reports it’s still working.
What a piece of crap this new one is. It has too many moving parts and things to fail. There’s the lamp (which is a consumable), the color wheel and the bazillion mirrors that is the heart of the DLP.
With a large consumer durable goods item like this I think of it like a car or appliance. When you buy a modern car you have the expectation that with a bit of care it will last you a good long time. You expect that the engine and the rest of the drive train will last. Same thing with this TV. I expect – or at least have the expectation that it should last 5-7 years.
It didn’t.
Next TV = LED-lit LCD. It’ll be showing up on Tuesday.
In all my time in using LCD “things” (laptops, monitors, TVs, etc.) I’ve never seen this type of behavior. I’m willing to pay more for this. I’m willing to pay more for something that isn’t going to piss me off.
Everyone has traditions. Most people hold those traditions dear this time of year.
You grow up with Christmas (I’m using me as an example — if you celebrate anything else, feel free to substitute the holiday of your choosing) being done in a certain way each year. Every year you do the same things in the same order, because that’s just what you do.
Traditions are a product of the time. The fact that I went to my grandparents’ house to eat dinner every year probably had a lot more to do with the fact that they were next door for much of my life. The Christmas tree was brought by the angels on Christmas eve — it just sprang up by magic.
That’s me.
If we didn’t live next to my grandparents or they weren’t around then I guess a different tradition would have happened to me.
En did different things growing up.
When we got married there was the conundrum: who’s traditions will win out?
We tried to do some strange combination of doing everything from both sides and that caused nothing but heartache all around.
Then we settled into our own tradition. It’s a mix of mine and En’s plus what we ourselves bring to the mix.
- = -
We don’t have kids though. Kids bring a new angle to the picture.
The tradition they will remember is whatever you do. You can’t treat them like puppets and force them into whatever tradition you had before. Traditions, like I was saying before, are a product of the time. That time has passed. The circumstances that led to whatever traditions you had have changed — people move or leave our lives somehow, the world changes, kids are born, you change.
Recognize that you are in a different time and place. Recognize that you are not the center of the universe. Realize that those around you bring their own traditions.
Much of the holidays are for the kids. What you do now has to not be about upholding what you had growing up, but what they will look back on and smile.
This is a followup to yesterday’s post.
I just purchased a pirated version of the Audi service manual since I couldn’t find a download for it.
I’m OK with that.
I wish the seller on eBay buys himself a case of beer or something.
I’m looking at the fucking piece of shit CD-ROM on my desk here and want nothing more than to smash it to bits since it’s useless.
I paid good money for it.
I won’t pay good money for encumbered content like that again.
It’s one thing to spend a buck or two to “rent” a video online. You watch it. You eat your popcorn. You’re happy. A fair exchange of value seemed to have taken place.
Not this time.
And not again.
I’d rather pirate this content than to “buy” it. I put buy in quotes because I didn’t buy a god damned thing. I transferred money and got nothing to show for it other than a penny’s worth of plastic.
The next time I need something like this… I guess the well has been poisoned by these idiots.
Like I said yesterday — fuck Bentley Publishers.
A goodly while back (think around 2003 or so) I purchased a service manual for my 2002 Audi A6 from Bentley Publishers.
2003 is a long time ago in terms of software. We’re quickly getting to the bits on the DVD being a decade old.
Now I want to install some hardware for work — some GPS devices. Additionally I’d like to be able to hook up some radio gear as well. To do this I need to get a good source of power in the trunk — ideally I’d have both switched and unswitched power to the tune of 20-30A in the trunk. (The GPS from Sage Quest will draw perhaps 50mA, but if I get a ham radio rig in there I might be drawing 25A with a 100W transmitter so I want to make sure I’m ready.
So I go to install it in my normal Windows 7 VM.
FAIL.
It’s still trying to install IE5.
W. T. F. ?
Therein lies the problem: information ages.
If I have, for instance, a negative from my camera (you know, pre-digital) then that is going to be readable as long as the plastic backing is around and the pigments last. If I’m talking about black and white film that’s even more durable — the “black” of the negative is simply oxidized silver. That’s not going anywhere fast. (Color films are generally based on organic molecules and are a lot easier to degrade)
In my case right now I’m stuck with a manual that is worse than paper. I have a disc of bits that I can’t readily use. As time passes it’ll be harder and harder to use them in the first place. Right now I’m installing a VM with XP, but how long is that going to be around?
Compared to my car?
Just put the damn thing in a bunch of PDFs and be fucking done with it.
PDFs are at least a standard of sorts. Even in the future I’ll be able to look at one. Things like those (JPEGs, GIFs, etc.) while not immediately obvious how to parse are common enough that they are nearly as durable as the media they live on.
I have faith that in 100 years I’ll be able to (ok, not me, but we) read and display a JPEG. It might not be the easiest thing to do, but I’m sure it’ll be possible and generally easy.
The fucking Audi manual?
Not a chance in hell.
I was sitting upstairs at the computer when my phone rang.
“Hello, this is Jeff and this is going to sound really strange.”
“Go on.. ?”
“I think I have your checks.”
“… ? Uhh… huh?”
He goes on to tell me that the checks he’s gotten from his brokerage — TD Ameritrade — have some of my checks bound into the same book. Not just that but three of his check books he’s gotten from them have other folks from Solon’s checks in them as well.
I thanked him and went to get my checkbook.
I called him back.
“Yeah, this is George — you called five minutes ago. I have your checks in my checkbook.”
Someone at the printing company way really asleep at the wheel. The above picture is what I saw half-way through the check book.
That is what it should look like for the most part.
You can tell the binding is not even on the mis-bound ones and they’re stuck in there upside down. Odd.
I’m just happy that Jeff is an honest fellow!
So I called up TD Ameritrade and spoke to Tim last night. He assured me that someone will get back to me today.
Today has come and gone and no one has yet reached back out to me. They’ve sent me the instructions on how to get the iPhone app… but they didn’t talk me me about the security issue.
Fail.
This is going to be a rant of the highest order (though not business related). If you want to skip it, do so now. You have been warned.
My niece is almost three. She’s cool. (Yeah, if you’re reading this in the far future — I’m the first one to say that… just sayin’) She’s a boisterous girl that knows what she wants to do. She doesn’t just sit and wait for stuff to happen, she gets them to happen. She’s a character.
My mother-in-law-in-law seems to disagree.
She made the statement that my niece is not going to play socker or other sports, she’s going to play the piano.
W. T. F. ?
If she wants to play sports, play sports. If you want to do things that aren’t girly, do them. If you want to do “girly” things, do it.
To limit what you can and can’t do is an idiotic statement. If she wants to ride dirt-bikes I’ll be the first in line to get her one. If she wants to shoot guns, I’ll teach her how to do so safely. Computers: check. Photography: check. If she wants to play with Barbies, I’m out of my league, but En will no doubt step up. 
(Ok, I’m sure I can manage if I wanted to, but it’s not my forte) If she wants to play the piano (as opposed to being forced) then awesome! The key though is that every person is different.
To limit that artificially is damn near a crime — especially in kids.
Limits are for losers.
My niece isn’t a loser.
I want to lead things out by saying this isn’t a research piece, more of a op-ed.
I’ve been reading and listening to reports about the various “Occupy” protests around the country. Through all this I’ve formed some opinions on them.
Obviously, the occupy protests are riffing off the revolutions that occurred in Africa and the Middle East — the Arab Spring.
But there’s a key difference: demands.
The Arab Spring protests were looking for very concrete change. They wanted the dictatorial (some were called democracies… umm, yeah…) regimes to relinquish power. The goal of the protesters was very clear.
Contrast that with the OWC protests, where to me they come off like a bunch of whiny brats pissing and moaning about their situation in life.
At the beginning of the protests reporters were trying to ferret out what they were protesting. The answer I heard from the Boston crew was “we’re not sure yet, we are forming a committee to figure it out.”
WTF?
I’ve heard various things from the 99%:
I’m sure that everyone there has their own list of demands. From a tiny bit of Googling I’ve found some absurd ones too:
I’m sorry, but this borders on idiotic.
If you want to effect change in this representative democracy of ours you should vote for someone who shares your world-view. If you can’t find that person, go and run yourself. You have established that you have a critical mass of people that share your views, now organize and get elected.
If you don’t know what you’re protesting for, what are you doing? If you don’t have a job, look for one. If you do then go to the office and work and get your paycheck. If you took out loans that you can’t afford now, well, I guess you have to eat more ramen because you knew you would have to repay it when you signed the dotted line.
It just reminds me of a few lines from Shakespeare:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
I’m sorry if I sound jaded… but this just feels like a lot of sound and fury to me.
From everything I’ve seen thus far though, they just seem like a bunch of communists pissing and moaning that they’re not happy.
The world doesn’t guarantee you happiness. Nor should it.
We are based on the pursuit of happiness.
Go and pursue.
I’ll end it with a step back from the brink though: it may be a marketing problem. I’m sitting here, a liberal-ish libertarian and I’m calling them all out. Wouldn’t I be someone that would agree with these liberal (non-)demands? Stop shouting and come up with a cogent argument already.
I found that I needed to get some dress shoes. My old ones are old (think around 15 years or so) and not quite holding together as well as shoes should. They make an odd popping noise as I walk about.
En decided that the mall would be the solution. She and I went to the mall — Beechwood Place to be specific. It was my first venture into a mall in the past five years so. (I may as well have direct deposit with Amazon, which explains my lack of physical shopping)
Our first store: Nordstrom… well I’m realizing that modern shoe style and me just don’t really mix. Sax’s was somewhat the same — pointy shoes, albeit pricier onces. Clarks just felt cheap and pleather-y, though some were less pointy.
Apparently pointy shoes are in.
I have moral objections to shoes that don’t fit my feet. My feet are not pointy, ergo pointy shoes do not fit. Eventually shoes that were not too pointy nor made of pleather were finally found at Dillard’s.
This gets to my point though: everyone has a style that fits them. If it happens to mesh with what society is wanting at the moment, then cool. If the “in” thing is something that you can deal with, then I guess that’s OK as well.
But you’ve got to keep true to yourself too,
I wrote a while ago about the Solon deer problem. This ballot issue is going to come up for a vote in a few weeks as issue 94.
As time has passed I’m becoming a lot more opinionated about this issue.
The main arguments against allowing any form of hunting is the fear of people with guns or bows used to kill the deer. The more important thing however is the Bambi factor — they’re cute and they should be kept around.
The hunting issue is an interesting one though. It goes so far to prevent the city itself from contracting with professional culling services.
The other side of this is the overpopulation of deer in Solon. This comes in several different forms. The most obvious is the health aspects to the deer themselves. An overpopulation of deer leads to them contracting chronic wasting disease (CWD) which causes a slow death and makes them useless for any food use.
Beyond that there is the issue to the environment: lack of food causes them to start behaving strangely and eat things like bark and mildly poisonous plants. Moving beyond that they are a menace to vehicle traffic — the accident count in Solon is correlated with the deer population. Lastly there’s the issue that most people seem to care about most: destruction to landscaping.
En has some plants like nightshade that are poisonous in our yard. They’ve been chosen because deer don’t eat it. There are ways around the landscaping issue for the most part.
This took another turn for me over the weekend.
The deer are so hungry they ate my antenna feedline! LMR-400 has no nutritive value at all!
How do I figure it’s deer? Simple: it’s deer head height and there’s nothing else in the area that would start to do this. The extra loops of cable were around 3 1/2 feet up off the ground. The other possible attackers would be something like coyotes or dogs, but the size of the teeth marks would tent to rule them out — even if they could reach it in the first place.
While fixing it our neighbor came out to see what’s up. (Not surprising — sitting in the woods with a mini torch soldering isn’t something that most people think about. Talking to her made it really clear to me that people aren’t seeing the issue for what it is.
“Can’t we just get them to go somewhere else?”
This reminds me of those newspaper editorials where people are asking to move the deer crossing signs because it’s not safe for the deer to cross where they’re posted. You can’t reason with deer. You can’t ask them to just go somewhere else. You can’t force them to go somewhere else. Contraceptives have been shown to be not a good value-for-money since it requires constant attention and reapplication.
Since we, as humans, have gotten rid of all the large predators they’re prey have gone out of control. We are responsible to be the stewards of the environment that we ourselves have messed up.
Honestly I wonder how many of the antis enjoy a good burger or wear leather shoes? Neither grow on trees.
