Category: Uncategorized

Up late doing work. It happens. I did get a little teed-off about one of these tell-everybody-you-can-think-of emails from one of the other techs.

He said I was ignoring text messages.

Were you sending them to my old number?

Oh.

But an officious email to everybody will cover up for the problem existing between the keyboard and chair, no? PEBKAC.

Otherwise, I’ve been abusing myself by watching Chuck Todd, and, on one of his gusts’ recommendations, NextDoor.

MSNBC might well be a bigger danger to society than a politician who decries “fake news,” Upchuck.

This is somebody who’s been saying that people who don’t trust people like him are dangerous. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Because I’m a bit of a masochist, I have been trying to watch his show lately. One of his guests, the just-as-Republican-as-Bill-Weld David Brooks, mentioned Nextdoor.

Later in the afternoon, I got an email message talking about how MSNBC and change.org were working on a petition to get everyone a COVID-19 test.

Really? Seriously?

Then these old, rich, white folks were telling me exactly how I should handle the situation. No, that’s okay. I’ll let my docs at Georgetown to dictate.

Sorry if that makes me dangerous, Upchuck.

But make sure it’s into your shoulder.

I’ve been listening to podcasts about CoronavirusCOVID-19.

Obviously, this is of particular concern to me as someone with a chemically-suppressed immune system.

But at the same time, I can’t get too wound up about it, really.

I was happy to see that Wall Street had pretty much the same reaction I had to President Trump’s news conference yesterday.

I guess my question is whether the sort of cooperation among private companies would happen under a government-run system.

I’m more than a little skeptical.

One of the things I did notice about the news conference, however, was the push to do things like provide paid leave to people who really now get no benefits from their jobs.

For a long stretch, there, I had no PTO. None. Not even paid Federal holidays. Nothing.

But that’s what people had voted for.

Much as I appreciate Katherine Mangu-Ward’s argument against voting, I did go vote in the Virginia Democratic Primary this afternoon.

Why?

Because some of the candidates, two in particular, were so terribly awful I felt the need to try to contribute to their early departure.

I won’t name specifics, but I will say, “New England.”

It does, however, feed into my still-alive idea of “You Can Leave.“

Two of the leading candidates, again, “New England,’ want to stop that.

Don’t like the things Google is doing with its search algorhythms?

You can leave.

But the politicians have a problem with that.

That freedom is the thing that candidates are trying to end.

I’m not.

That might well make me a bad person.

But I don’t care.

I am back in Tidewater, visiting my recuperating mother, and my grandfather who came up to visit.

It is strange being here, certainly.

I’m also prepping for Shmoocon next weekend, and tying up loose ends from yet another rebuild on this server.

I can’t find a lot of what I wrote between 2015 and 2o18.

I have SQL dumps that I can pick through, but I really haven’t had the energy or patience to do it.

I am still trying, too, to really pull out everything I’d put in for a job search during my periods of unemployment.

I really do love where I work, now. I wish I was healthier so I could move off on to something they’re doing that’s different than what I’ve done since 2005.

I got distracted just now by a friend on Facebook appealing to the usual sources for fact-checking before posting of stories.

Um. Okay. So only check facts from sites that are biased as hell before you share something. Perhaps SPLC should have been on that list.

It did distract me from something else I wanted to talk about the Apple backup story.

At first, I was disturbed by this, what with AG Barr’s misguided attempts to have backdoors engineered into encryption.

That, of course, was a bit of a knee-jerk response. I’d missed the part about these backup sets being store on an iCloud Drive.

Wanna keep shit suparsekret? Encrypt it yourself, and store it on physical media under your control.

Yes, that Apple made the decision after FBI pressure bothers me, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is technically-possible to keep whatever it is you have from prying eyes, government or otherwise.

I’ve long maintained that many of the people working as corporate recruiters are Arts Majors who spell too well to work at Starbucks.

This morning’s bit was a call from a 703 number with no name displayed in the caller ID.

Are you in the market?

Not really, but I’m always willing to listen. What do you have?

You need to answer a few questions before I tell you.

((Technical questions from someone who clearly doesn’t know WTF she’s asking))

What is your current salary?

I’m not at liberty to say.

Okay, then, well, we’ll keep your resume on file.

Nono, wait a minute, you haven’t let me ask my questions.

You wouldn’t answer mine.

Please don’t keep my information on file.

My initial inclination was to release this disreputable company’s information. Then it was to call and complain about this cheery employee.

But I’m not going to do that.

I just want people to stop doing that shit.

That’s the phrase that’s been floating through my scarred brain lately.

And I am/have.

Facebook. Google. Twitter might be next if I can find something that I find to be an adequate replacement.

Sometimes, it’s the only thing left.

I did go see a psychologist a few weeks ago in response to a few issues I’ve been having.

Since probably November, I’ve been having these very disturbing dreams. She thinks I have OCD, which seems to be a bit more common in people with my condition.

My, now years’, of writing every day of a month, is a compulsion.

(As an aside, I moved my 2015 and 2016 archives off the main page; I’m not sure I meant them to be there, anyway.)

Yesterday, we spent most of the day looking at places to rent in the District of Columbia.

Though I’d like to be closer to where I’m working (only one day per week, the rest remotely), and where I’m receiving my medical care, I’m scared that we won’d be able to afford it should something bad happen to me.

Paranoia
Paranoia
Everybody’s coming to get me

And a diversion to watch stuff on YouTube.

But back to writing. I don’t even know. Perhaps it’s something that keeps me humming along.

Today’s thought, after a sleep ended by a dream I’d been thoroughly roughed-up by the security staff at some conference I was attending. It wasn’t something that was terribly of interest to me, but I was there for someone else. (Perhaps this was triggered by my wife mentioning something she wanted to see that’s not of particular interest to me

And delete speculation on the cause of the dream.

On the bright side, however, the compulsions for risk have really dropped off since I spoke to her.

I need to listen to the book she recommended.

And maybe write in May instead of the month leading up to my birthday this year, separate things by six months.

My inclination towards the end of last summer’s writing period was to just not do it again.

But the urge is there, and it’s probably better for me than worrying about where I can find something dangerous to do.

When I say, “dangerous,” it’s rarely something that’s potentially fatal, but just reckless. Where can I find some raw oysters to eat? No, I don’t want to put in my seatbelt in the back of this car.

But odd times, to say the least. My scarred brain is calming down some, thankfully. We shall see. And maybe I express my compulsion in May, instead of July and August.

Headline reference. Reactions to this week’s nonsense with Virginia.

My former Representative, and Virginia’s two senators, called for that yesterday.

.I disagree. Ralphie is a horrible governor, and politician, that’s to be sure. There’s a reason why more than once I set out specifically to vote for his opponents, and against him in Norfolk Democrat primaries. (Norfolk has been a single-party city since the Northern occupiers left in the 1870s.) I do admit that that was more about his undergraduate stint at a state-funded military academy that didn’t admit women until twenty years after the Federal service academies. I also, professionally, cannot name a single Keydet I’ve worked with whose presence didn’t actually detract from the mission at hand….

But, no, I don’t think Ralphie is racist. I think he’s a typical well-to-do Virginia Democrat. Until very recently, proper admiration of the racist party overlords was required to advance.

You can’t just erase that history.

The statues the racists in Charlottesville were concerned about — those were erected by Virginia Democrats.

I almost said I can’t believe that there’s efforts to pretend otherwise. No, it makes complete sense. Erase the past completely, and maybe people won’t point fingers. Nope. Didn’t happen. There’s no record of it.

And even if there was a record of it, all of those racist Democrats, like Fritz Hollings from South Carolina, all became Republicans, right? Erected the Confederate flag over the South Carolina statehouse, went to the Senate, and switched parties.

Oh he didn’t switch parties? My mistake.

But parts of the party’s history, and personal histories of adults involved in it don’t disappear dow the Memory Hole, by just pretending that it never happened because it makes your party look bad.

(Yes, I have a legitimate excuse for whatever I did in 1984; I was a very young child.)