Own The Con 16

Discussion of how long Bruce and Heidi have been married. Sixteen years this summer. My wife and I have been together fifteen in a few years (but only married for evelven).

I remember back in the day bringing my then-girlfriend with me just so they could come close to selling out. 2008-ish?

For potential speakers, you need to follow directions exactly. (I wrote the beginnings of a talk in probably about 2010. I had about 40 minutes of speaking, and half a slide deck. I started going through potential questions from an audience, and got to one I couldn’t answer….and it was a question that really related to the heart of the presentation….so I gave up, and just bought a ticket.)

The ticket sales glut has kind of ended after they put the kibosh on second-hand ticket sales.

That actually makes me feel a bit better about my tentative intention at this point to do the Shmooze-A-Student again. If I’m financially able, I’ll buy a ticket for a kid, and sell my ticket to someone else.

Physically, I can’t do this anymore. Much of what I did yesterday was sitting in my hotel room watching the stream.

Naturally when I was younger, I really appreciated the new experiences that came along with being in DC. The novelty has more than worn off.

They saved a lot of money this year by not having the drink-a-palooza on Saturday night.

You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been to one of those. But they’re really not earning money on any of this, and are paying taxes on it.

(I’ll avoid going in go off on my bit about income taxes. More than half of the people who file don’t pay any income taxes. Payroll taxes are not taxes; they are contributions to the bankrupt Ponzi schemes that are Social Security and Medicare)

Close up was a potential giveaway of a (Dude-your-gettin-a) Dell server.

I have no place for toys like that anymore, unfortunately. And if I was going to get a nondescript Dell server, I think I’d like something with an Italic processor.

But they’re loud as hell.

I swear I’ll get many of the notes on other talks up over the next few days. As I said, I really don’t have the energy to do this con stuff anymore.

Shmoo Eight

Discussion of odd WordPress plugins that might have security issues.

I understand it, but this, and the work call that had me watching this over the stream link from my hotel room, really reinforce my commitment to not using anything that’s not supported directly by a vendor.

Trying to do this stuff in-house is just too fraught with peril for my tasted.

Interesting aside that the totes-didn’t-used-to-do-evil search company downlinks sites that have WP vulgarities. I, generally, think that SEO is snake oil, but if that’s what that formerly not-evil company is doing, well…

Static front page that gets picked up, then escort users in after they land on the static site with tons of keywords in the HEAD element.

2022 Talk 1

https://www.shmoocon.org/speakers/#tovpnornottovpnthatisthequestion

I tend to use ProtonVPN because I’m cheap, and it’s included with my ProtonMail subscription.

The tagline of this site works in reverse, too. Anytime you do something online, somebody can probably snoop. Deal with it.

Temporal connections are tougher to crack, but everything can be cracked.. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.

Sure Happy It’s Thursday

S.H.I.Thursdays, everybuddy. *quack*quack*

I’m really happy I didn’t end up a zookeeper.

Especially, now, where instead of going to a crappy little station somewhere to be a minor local celeb, but I really prefer where I am.

Obviously I don’t like having MS. It was more than a little dismaying learning that an old journaling friend was diagnosed the past fall.

Things change, but you can always leave.

I unsubscribed from a few podcasts after what happened with Russia and Ukraine. I emailed Kennedy to tell her I wouldn’t be watching episodes where she’s got those people as guests.

One of them lost the debate I went to see in NYC, and I’ve written about here before.

But you also can sorta go back again. So I’ll go to the TWUUG meeting tonight before I do extra work. Party.

Suddenly Saturday

I really didn’t feel like working yesterday, but I did. I also ended up working last night to address an operational issue that arose over the work day.

Since then, minus about four hours of sleep, I’ve been watching what’s going on in Ukraine.

Many of the information sources I’ve been consuming the past couple of years were completely wrong.

There’s just no other way to put it. I was convinced that the Russians would try to invade.

And they did.

And there’s been near silence about it.

Checking his Twitter feed, pretty much nothing over the past two days, save a link to fucking Antiwar.com.

Calling back to the late, great P.J. O’Rourke, Give War A Chance.

I’m too frazzled to write terribly coherently right now.

But there’s lots of things where I’d signed-up for something that’s proving to be untrue.

Back On Track

Maybe.

Very, very, very long week. That, and about five ounces of Gin and Tonic, caused me to sleep through part of it. Oops. I hope I wasn’t snoring, and if I was, I hope that the mic was muted. Good discussion at the end of where we got into a little about what I think is the um, trying to figure out the politest way to say this, maladjusted view of foreign policy of some in the libertarian movement.

(I know, I know, I can’t say that because I’m not the one defining what is 2022 Libertarianism, but, well, I’ve been here for a while, and read and argued many sides of an issue…..but, hey, that’s not libertarianism, because and I fucking wrote what libertarianism is based on my narrow reading list from the RON PAUL 2008 campaign….)

In other news, things are a lot calmer, otherwise, this week, thankfully.

I should make a to-do list for the next few months.

Next month is Shmoocon. I need to figure out what I want to see.

April, I hope I’ll be able to travel down to see my mom’s new house. This week was spent trying to get her set up with a new iPhone, as her provider cut off the cellular network her old phone used.

May is another medical procedure.

June may be figuring out what to do if I end up being unemployed at the end of that month.

No idea with the rest of the year, except that I do want to go to the Super-spreader event in Mexico in the Winter.

Sunday With

There’s a Sportsball game or something today. Hat-tip to Bald Bryan.

I guess what annoys me is the admonition that goes along with it. So you don’t care about Football. Great. Many people do. If you don’t want to participate in the hoopla surrounding, go do what you’d like to do. Or make some money serving the people who do care.

I admit I’ve mocked people in the past for engaging in activities I don’t understand. I know I said a few things about the people camped out outside of the theaters when Star Wars came out in 1999

I had a job back then. If I didn’t, I could have done something.t

At the same time, I was still such a stickler for following THE RULES back then, I probably would have never even considered doing anything ummm, outside them. There’s a “No soliciting” sign in the theatre parking lot. Okay, and? Who would I have been hurting, really, by providing for those people with interests that differ from my own?

Kind of feeds in to what’s going on with the truckers blocking all sorts of shit right now. They don’t like THE RULES, and, by just doing what they can, they’re really fucking things up for the PM up there.

Yah, sorry. We’re not leavin’.

The autocorrect in Safari is kind of annoying.

But, being such a stickler for following rules, no matter how stupid they are, worked for me well for a long time. Following them feeds into my obsessive side.

The compulsive side, on the other hand, is writing. Obviously, I’ve managed to stay pretty sparse over here since I finished NoJoMo. I am writing episode recaps over at Back At Again, but that’s about it.

I hope this week is rather low-stress, as opposed to last week.

Sunday Without

An NFL game that means anything.

I don’t think I’ve watched a Pro Bowl since they moved it to the week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl.

So I’ve been cleaning up various things.

Podcasts’ websites are working.

Start working on taxes, even though I don’t have all of the documents yet.

Looking at the Podcasting 2.0 information.

So, figure out a bit more with crypto wallet interconnection with various sites/platforms, and different ways to support things i consume.

I think I’d written before about shit I’d bought to support podcasts I listen to. But I really am having issues drinking through all of this coffee, and my underwear drawer is full.

I don’t really like the Great Reset you-will-own-nothing-and-you’ll-be-happy idea, but I think I could own a lot less stuff.

How do I get around to doing that? Hmm.

I think my wardrobe would be a good place to start.

Maybe next week.

This week is going to be busy. Monday is a long work day. Tuesday is an infusion in the morning, and another medical appointment in the afternoon. Then home to do proposal work. I will probably nearly as exhausted as I was Thursday, where I worked something like thirteen hours.

But at least the weather’s getting warmer.

Almost Missed

Writing on Saturday. I did miss the last two weeks. This was only partially intentionally, but it’s something I kind of was okay in avoiding.

I didn’t work yesterday, as I was about to exceed my hours for the pay period. With the Shmocon delay, it was even worse.

So coffee today didn’t happen until almost noon.

There’s football this afternoon, this evening, and tomorrow.

The Saints aren’t there. The For(mer)skins aren’t there, either. I’m really beyond the point of caring.

I can root against the Iggles, but that might be done pretty quickly.

So….bear down, and wait for the rescheduled Shmoocon.

Way behind on my podcast queue, too, as things have opened back up the past two weeks.

Didn’t get much last night with the HRGeeks Jitsi meeting last night. I started watching Don’t Look Up, but I didn’t have the energy to finish it. I did today, however, and, well, I get where they were going with it.

The concept was similar to my concern with the asset-backed currency folks. As I’ve said, with the predictable response of, “shut up math *(#,” the currency supply needs to increase at a predictable rate, in order for pretty much any sort of modern finance to work.

(And I get distracted looking whether charging an origination fee is okay with the Islamic prohibition on charging interest. I’m not finding a quick answer…)

I need to respond to an email. But I really don’t have the energy to really get into it.