Author: sean

Five

Going to free-write today, but I did dig up something from the archive.

What i picked up on with the explosion in Beirut yesterday was definitely the big story.

Ended up having a bit of a conversation on Twitter about it; you can click and read….

Other stuff?

Well, typical things with work. I hate that I make mistakes sometimes. I did catch it, however, and figured out how to deal with it.

What I’m dealing with, however, is actually newish stuff to my coworkers. It used to be a case of check-things-once-and-forget-it-for-years. A bit of the Ronco method; “set it, and forget it!” No, tech doesn’t work that way. You have to be constantly vigilant about things.

Unfortunately, I’m not seeing that I wrote about it in my Shmoocon section.

One of the presentations this year or last was about how hardware with flashable firmware actually get less secure the more that you patch them. Why? Feature creep in newer revisions, and attempts to work around the applied patches.

It’s counterintuitive, sure.

But that realization has really influenced my thinking about having old shit out on the network. You apply a laundry list of things to a system to address bugs, but you end up introducing new bugs as part of the fix, and leave undiscovered, unpatched things festering.

In other words, that creaky old server you’ve had for fifteen years is probably susceptible as hell to being haxxed, and patching it actually might make it more likely to be hacked.

There’s a ton of things you can do, however, to mitigate vulnerabilities that don’t involve applying AcmeCo’s latest patch.

Even so, maybe it’s a better idea to not leave ancient shit on your network for years. Document what it does. Have the data in a transferrable format, build something new, and restore data to the new secure system.

Bubuhbut we’ll have to retrain the users!!1!

Cry me a river.

Today’s flashback is probably on-point. I don’t know what in particular set me off writing this, but I would imagine it was something similar.

We do things this way. This is the only way that we do things, so you should just work with that.

Less than two years later, not adhering to that attitude, combined with my health issues would find me in a job for which I was incredibly overqualified.

The situation sucked. But at least the guy responsible is in Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison for a while longer.

8/5/2011 – 8/5/2011

Tffftbt. I don’t like having to drag people kicking and screming into the new realities of their business. It’s frustrating. What’s more frustrating is that many of the people on my level are intentionally ignoring the new realities. They’ve been working one way for so long; that must mean that one way is the best and only way.

sigh

Maybe I can recharge this weekend. Next week is going to be hell, though I do get to go to lala land Wednesday. Unfortunately, it requires an hour inside an electromagnet.

I delayed my medication refill until after my tests. Notsomuch because I want to switch meds, but I don’t want three months’ supply around if the doctor decides to switch me to something different.

So little to do, so much time.

Four

I didn’t have anything really drafted for today. I’m not sure how I missed it, but I’m going to publish something I’d not finished/published.

Just Walk Away

And I am. I’d started in on a response to a video I saw on the cesspool that is Facebook:

I’m a Libertarian. I understand that virtually none of my family is going to agree with me, regardless of whether they’re watching FNC or MSNBC. But either direction is ultimately unimportant. You touched on some of this, but missed the bigger point. Regardless of whether it’s Team Red or Team Blue, these legacy media outlets’ markets are shrinking every day; time does that to everything. It’s not dangerous that I don’t trust Chuck Todd. It’s not a problem that I don’t parrot everything Hannity says this week. Watching some other legacy corporate media outlet isn’t going to fix that. Though I’m one of the youngest Gen Xers (and, yes, my Millennial wife jabs me with the “Boomer” label), I understand that the big corporate media isn’t serving me. They’re serving that retired, graying, ever-shrinking demographic they worked so many years to build. Watching

I didn’t finish my thoughts, and I’m not going to. I don’t want to waste my time preparing a thought just for it to be shit on for some ginger college drop-out’s benefit.

Maybe that makes me a bad person; I don’t care.

I don’t remember when I wrote that. I don’t know who the “ginger college drop-out” was/is.

Thinking about it more, however, I think that that was actually from one of the times somebody on Capitol Hill was dragging Mark Z. over the coals for something, and he was basically begging for regulation that’d prevent anyone from competing with him/Facebook.

My professional help would tell me to just turn it all off.

I can’t.

News (and, now, the extensions that are social media) has been part of my life as long as I can remember.

Today’s big story is something about a massive explosion in Beirut. I got an alert from one of the cable news apps on my phone, and took a look. My response? “Holy shit!” My wife asked what was going on, so I showed her the video. “Holy shit!”

What else did i want to talk about?

Oh, yeah, Adam Corolla does a bit, Germany or Florida? (And searching for that on one of the didn’t-used-to-do-evil-search-company’s competitors yields a Udict thing tracing it to “Love Lines.”)

But, living here on the edge of “The Swamp,” my mind goes to stories of stupid local ordinances/laws, “Florida” or “MoCo?” (Montgomery County, Maryland)

They’ve not disappointed, and made the national news the past couple of days. In the fall, the public schools are reopening, but they closed the private schools.

At the same time, that sounds incredibly appropriate. Authoritarianism is neat!

But the reason the President is upset about this is because his kid goes to a private school in MoCo.

*nod*

I do envy that Dave Rubin is able to step away a month at a time. But I don’t know how I’d even consider doing it.

Maybe I’ll try a week in the fall.

Three

Ah. News that I stumbled across earlier, but figured it was kind of paying attention to lately.

And to think that AOC made me almost empathize with him. Almost.

Got into it with someone on Twitter over the weekend about this:

Some of what the members of Congress described in that brow-beating session did focus on some of the things that the big tech companies have done that are anticompetitive, and violate antitrust law.

With the bungling of the case against Microsoft around the dot com bubble, the DOJ has been incredibly reluctant to actually pull the trigger, and break things up.

Microsoft eventually did lose out in the browser wars because they made a bad product. But Internet Explorer is wheezing along to accommodate legacy third-party products that only work inside IE.

Would things have been better if Microsoft been broken up? I don’t know. Maybe.

Flashback time….

08/03/2012 – 8/3/2012

Again, I’ve been horrible about writing and reading. What else is now?

Wednesday, I was as close to quitting a job as I’ve ever been in my life. I’d struggled, and struggled to get feedback on this thing I was working on. Very little. I incorporated most of the suggestions. I turned it in Monday night. Very late Tuesday night (we’re talking after 10pm, after I’d sent her something basically finises last Friday), I finally got some response from the person who’d tasked me on it. She said it was utter shit. I was livid. I know I make mistakes. I make lots of mistakes. I also miss things; comes with having bad eyesight. But that doesn’t mean I’m late, or what I turn in is bad.

In fact, very little of what I’d done was wrong. Most of it was actually perfect (amazing as that is!). I just hadn’t done the added, unnecessary, nonsense she felt it needed.

So I added it. And got it in late Wednesday afternoon.

I guess she, my direct supervisor, the guy who’d held the job before my supervisor, and the mumbling, stumbling idiot reviewed it. No major gripes. But it wasn’t “adding value.”

Give me a fucking break. It’s not supposed to “add value.” It’s a fucking academic exercise; CYA.

Whatever. I’m still employed. My boss understands the situation. I’ve been responsive. I haven’t undermined the mumbling, stumbling idior (yet). Life goes on.

It will be interesting to see what happens if I win this contract, and they lose theirs……..

My wife and I were discussing the logistics of the move to DC this afternoon/evening.

I’ve decided I want the following:

  1. Moving expenses in cash, up front.
  2. 80% telecommute
  3. A 6% raise (I’d normally expect 8%, but I’m going to trade some of it for the increased telecommute).
  4. Promise of twelve months’ employment after relocation. (I have zero faith in the Congress and the President to prevent shit from turning bad in January…..whoever wins the election is unimportant, really. This die is cast.)

My wife is fully marooned in Olympicdom. sigh

This one actually speaks to the attitude I had, then, and my life’s gotten a ton better since I readopted it.

I’m not going to do something out of desperation again, and I’ve gotten greater rewards from being unmovable on my demands. If you want me, you will meet my requirements, regardless of how outrageous they may look on paper.

I’m not well, physically. I’m aging. I don’t need to bend over anymore. And I won’t.

But it speaks to some of what I’ve been going through, mentally. In other areas, I’m very risk-avers, but, professionally, I just can’t get too wound up about anything at this point.

I’ve done what I need to do, and if everything comes crashing down, whatever.

Two

I’m trying to force myself not to do any work this morning. I do have something to do late tonight, which I’ll do, but the temptations are there, certainly.

Slept hard last night, but that’s not a bad thing. When my alarm went off this morning I turned if off, with only a moment’s consideration, and went back to sleep for another hour-plus.

It’s Sunday. I can do that if I want.

Writing, on the other hand, really isn’t one of those, strangely.

Digging through the archives….

Hmmph. – 8/2/2002

RC on the last one, which spawned quite a few notes. Thing about it is…..

It doesn’t matter to me what other people do. If people want to use drugs, fine. Yeah, I smoke. I know it’s probably not the best thing in the world for me to do. I enjoy it. I also enjoy eating fatty foods and many other activities that aren’t necessarily good for me. I drink. That said, I’ve only been “drunk” umm…..once this calendar year. Rarely do I have more than one drink in a sitting.

But my point, which some people obviously missed, is that trying to control what people do for pleasure is basically impossible. (oral sex is still illegal many places……) “Just Say No” was so ingrained….and it hasn’t worked. We’ve forcefully taken billions of dollars from people to fund this “War on Drugs.” People still use drugs. And, really, the costs to society have greatly outweighed any benefits. I heard on the radio the other day that there are half a million people in prison right now just for simple drug possession. And we’ve got FBI agents snooping into bank accounts, drive-by shootings, asset forfeiture, missionary planes being shot down in Peru….

AND PEOPLE STILL USE DRUGS.

You’re never going to stop it. And so I say, put up or shut up. Either make every single mood-altering chemical illegal, or legalize it all. And if the popular choice is the former, I’ll go somewhere I’m free.

So my views really weren’t that different, even eighteen years ago.

What is more difficult today is cancellations of people for insufficient wokeness. I disagree with your goals, so I’m unable to live my life as I choose.

Got it.

For reference, “RC” here stands for “Readers’ Choice.” It was a tool used on the old OD to give attention to various people’s entries.

I’m not sure what the hell I wrote that people liked, and I’m too lazy to go back and try to figure it out.

More tomorrow. I’ve got some things to do.

Against the Patriarchy

As I’m listening to podcasts today, I was roaming around the Intertubes looking for places I could buy products advertised on the various podcasts I routinely consume.

I’ve taken a committed stance against what is perhaps the most-prominent support site for various content creators..

They exercise control over content they don’t like.

*fires up Bing News, because F the company that didn’t-used-to-be-evil*

Ah. That was tough. I’m no fan of Owen Benjamin, but they shouldn’t be withholding money from him.

And they’re having to stop.

Good.

He has a right to earn a living, even if some of his personal choices aren’t the ones I would make. Moreover, his kids shouldn’t be destitute because he believes the wrong things. Same goes for Gavin McInnes. Or even Alex Jones.

One

Focusing on August. I’ve spent the past two days largely trying to sit through enthralling courses to earn credits to pay my fucking protection for the certification that lets me keep working.

It does make me want to give up. You spend hours upon hours watching people read fucking Power Point slides, then do virtual labs that don’t work more than half the time.

For this, I’ve paid hundreds of dollars.

Why?

There was a story on the news this morning about a deployed USAR officer who was buying a house in MDDR without ever visiting it.

My wife was completely opposed to this.

I kind of am, too, but I can understand the circumstances.

I’ve thought several times about what I might do when I finally decide to take my leave.

Back to Tidewater? But that doesn’t get me away from Governor Hoodor Blackface, and his supporters.

Somewhere else? Yeah, but where?

I’m oddly intrigued lately by the Texas Gulf Coast. I can remember when I was younger looking at maps, etc., and there was one county along the Gulf Coast that was basically one family’s ranch.

That’s kinda neat, but, my reservations were largely related to the lack of connectivity down there.

Now, however, I don’t know. Even though 5G might cause COVID-19, my attitude is kind of “whatever.” (I know, showing my Gen Xness there…) But I’m inside the swamp, now, and I really only leave when I need to go to the doctor.

The ride might be a bit longer, but my life wouldn’t be a lot different. So. Why not?

Other stuff….

Dave Rubin is taking the month of August off from news and social media.

I do have to admit that I have a tinge of jealousy with that, but I can’t ever see myself in a position where I’d be able to do with that.

Information coming in, and thoughts going out, have been part of my existence, really, my entire adult life. Financially, too, it’s never been an option.

I can’t imagine it, and I don’t know how I’d even try to do it.

March, maybe, I should try.

But do I even really want to?

No news check today. Some of my friends online dropped a link to a different news site, HNN.

One of the stories I saw yesterday was of interest. I’d seen something on Dark Tourist on Netflix where they were trying to get inside there not terribly long ago.

Cypress is a UN success story, if there ever was one….

Lookback time.

Blonde – 8/1/2001

I am. Or I’m getting there again. My hair is bleaching out. Maybe it’s going gray.

Nope. I shouldn’t get so lucky.

I had a lot more hair back then.

If I let it grow, it’d still not be gray. If there’s a natural hair color, it grows out of my head. Except gray. I figured that’d happen at some point.

But I also figured I’d be able to grow a beard by the time I was 40, too. My odd genetics don’t permit it. Let’s just say that I’m a lot more American Indian than Elizabeth Warren.

I can’t help myself sometimes.

My hair is pretty dark these days. That might be somewhat due to my pretty much constant indoor existence.

My mother found a picture recently while she was cleaning out her house of my dad, my brother, and I.

I probably would have been about five years old. Long, straight blonde hair. My little brother with very curly blonde hair.

And my dad looking very much like me as an adult.

Time to wrap it up for the day.

Thirty-one

I meant to write about this yesterday, but I forgot.

Much of what’s been on the local news lately has been about the various mask mandates to address COVID.

Yes, I wear a mask on the rare occasions i go out. Yes, I think people should do the same. But I don’t think throwing people in prison does anything to stop the spread.

From the politicians’ perspective, however, this is a win-win.

If people put on masks, you close businesses, churches, etc., and the spread stops, you can claim credit. And do it in the future for whatever is ailing society. You’re doing what’s best for people, and whatever rights you violate in the process justify it.

If your draconian orders don’t work, and there’s not 100% compliance with your direction, you can blame the noncompliance.

My view on things has been very cynical lately, and I expressed that hearing the fourth-hand talking points about how the President should be impeached again. Since a Republican was saying it, it must be true.

What will the corporate press cover? Hmmmm…

On to the news….

After 9/11, if I’d known that OBL was living in Pakistan, combined with a story like this, I’d have been behind attacking Pakistan.

Or just stay away, and let them do whatever it is that they’re doing. I’ll continue just not giving them any of my money.

It’s really not that difficult.

Nothing – 7/31/2002

Nothing has been going on, and I’m uninspired.

Finished watching the entire first season of the Sopranos, and will have nothing to do tomorrow night.

Nothing and I’m uninspired

The Intertubes are a lot more active these days. That’s both a good and a bad thing, I guess. I was watching The Sopranos largely because there wasn’t much else to do at 1:30 in the morning when I wasn’t on the air.

Thirty

I ended up just taking today off. I’ve only gone to the work computer once to check on things.

Obviously I’ve been looking at email, etc..

And trying to get through this protection racket. Essentially what I’m having to do at this point is do the exercise, then wait until the clock is nearly expired before I mark it as complete. Lamesauce.

I absolutely hate that I have to do this in order to keep working a few more years. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate.

Yes, I’d like to stay at it a for a few more years. No, I don’t know if I can.

At the same time, I’m not sure what else I’d do.

Write. It’s what I do. Sometimes.

It’s about the only thing I have to spill out these thoughts bouncing about my scarred brain.

I used to speak more, especially when I was on the radio. That said, when I was 21 years old, I had problems with my diction speed.

Hell, I was nicknamed “John Wayne” by some of the folks on my high school football team. (Where there were six Sean/Shaun/Shawns. My parents wanted to give me something distinct, so they gave me the most popular boys’ name of the 1970s as a first name, and the second most-popular name as my middle name….)

I’ll admit that the nickname could have been due to my lack of running speed, too, but I’ll just say that it was probably a lot more about how slowly I spoke.

In 2005, I finally moved into a situation where I was doing on-air work beyond really just live assist for network programs.

2005 was about the time, in the wake of John Kerry’s rollicking success in the 2004 race, a bunch of the hipster progressives decided that they could probably do talk radio better than the conservatives could.

I listened. It was unspeakably awful. Beck did a bit that he was going to air an abortion. I should have known it was a complete bit when his bumper for one of the segments was Rooster by Alice In Chains, but….he ended up playing as segment of Al Franken and his giggling sidekick as the “abortion.”

Where I was living at the time, AA were on a very low-power AM stick, but the programming was just atrocious.

At the time, one of the flagship shows was “The Young Turks.”

I paid attention to it a bit, as it was marginally more entertaining than Al Franken, or Rachel Maddow.

But it was terrible.

Since Air America found its well-deserved death, the show has bounced around.

One of the podcasts I listen to had a death watch for them a few months ago. Somehow they’re still around, even after their hopes and dreams for a public execution for treason evaporated.

The entry from the archives I have is here:

7/30/05 – 7/30/2005

The talk radio business is a strange one, but it’s gotten tons stranger since Air Amerikkka showed up.

Turns out they took a “loan” from a charity funded by the City of New York. Details.

And, their flagship, WLIB-AM, now has lower ratings than before they went on the air. Of course, the folks over at the Daily Kos won’t ention that.

Please excuse the typo I see there. Chances are that I hammered that out on an ancient laptop in bed, or in a dark radio studio.

I tried to find their meltdown on Election night in 2016 as their prophet lost.

That actually was entertaining. Kennedy mentioned on her show one time that watching those was something she does to cheer herself up.

Maybe if I could have found that video, it would have improved my mood some, too.

Oh well.

TYT, and the main host, are kind of the broadcast equivalents of cockroaches.

Tucker Carlson actually found a place to live after being the resident conservative on pretty much every cable news outlet.

Things pass. My radio career. Friends. Family. Eventually me.

But not the cockroaches of the corporate press.

Twenty-nine

One of the things that’s bothered the hell out of me the last couple of days is this video that the tech giants kind of at the same time banned.

Almost as if talking points were being sent to my reflexively anti-Trump connections in the cesspool that is Facebook posted something about how one of the speakers is some sort of witch doctor.

As I suspected, there’s stories like this peppered across the Intertubes.

Okay, this woman maybe isn’t on the level. Understood. But she’s got a right to say crazy shit, and people have the right to repeat her crazy shit.

You do the fact-check after you see the incorrect information. You don’t go and remove the crazy shit to protect viewers.

That’s not your job. You don’t get legal protections against liability for the crazy shit people post.

You don’t act as if it never was said because you think it was wrong.

Should every corporate media post about the fucking Steele Dossier be forever banned because it’s now becoming very clear that it even the FBI thought it was bullshit?

No.

It’s the corporate media outlet’s responsibility to fix things after it’s been discredited.

How would people feel if CloudFlare just decided that MSNBC publishes incorrect stuff?

No.

I understand the loathsome Josh Hawley’s urge to repeal §230 of the Communications Decency Act.

I’m not saying I agree with that urge, but I understand it.

Freedom means having to face bad things from time to time.

And this is where I’d say that I’m a horrible person for being in favor of freedom of speech.

Whatever.

From the cobweb-laced archives, not long after I was diagnosed with MS…

07/29/2009 – 7/29/2009

Oh, and I forgot part of what I was going to write about the difference between now and then…..

I still feel numb in some ways, but think I appreciate emotion more than I did then. Perhaps some of it is melodrama, but I think sometimes that’s okay. I never would have said that ten years ago. I admired stoicism, then when I achieved it, I was utterly unsatisfied. How the fuck did I not cry when I left radio? I came really damn close, then it went away. I didn’t cry at either of my grandmothers’ funerals. I didn’t cry on 9/11. I didn’t cry over being dumped.

I was just there. Sighing. Smoking. Just existing.

It’s a lot different now, and while I still am not fully on the roller coaster, there are more ups and downs. I do credit the love of my life for some of it. I smile and laugh more now. I have cried. I look at kids with wonderment; while I’m still not sure that I want any of my own, I’m less opposed to it now. I try to remember the ups and downs of being a kid, and miss the pure joy kids experience. May never find it again, but maybe I can take part in someone else’s? Maybe my young future wife’s? Maybe our kids if we have them?

I had no idea what was going to happen, how bad things would get.

But I’m still the same. (And I’m not much of a fan of his, but that song is incredible. It doesn’t have a chorus!)

Twenty-eight

I saved the draft for this over the weekend while I was picking through archives to see if I could find something to write about.

Maybe I can elaborate a bit more after the entry, but I think saying that my approach about the issue really hasn’t changed that much.

Back then, I couldn’t say that I believed. With more information, I’ve made a decision, and that’s my choice. I’m not going to try to convince you one way or the other.

Mind Trigger – 7/28/2001

Listening to a replay of Art Bell, he asked the guest, “Do you believe in the God of the Bible?”

But it reminds me of the dream I had yesterday…..

I was sitting in a situation where I would have been expected to wholeheartedly believe and I didn’t. It was almost a classroom setting, and for some reason, I was required to believe. So the teacher/whatever asked me….

“Do you believe in God?”

And again, what am I supposed to say to that? Giving the typical wishy-washy answer that’d get me by in life wouldn’t work in that situation. I had to answer yes or no.

And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t answer. I don’t know.

Or, maybe looking at this from another perspective….

Since I was in a situation where I was required to believe and I didn’t…..

Maybe I do know and I’m not being honest with myself totally.

I still don’t think it’s okay to force/require someone to declare either way.

If that makes me a bad person, regardless of what I believe (or don’t), so be it.

I’m willing to let you make your own decisions.

I’ve become, however, very opposed to what I’ve dubbed “Evangelical Agnosticism.”

If you hold that there’ll never be enough information for you to make a determination, that’s a problem with you. Your decision might change as you get new evidence; that’s fine.

I’m also okay with you saying that you don’t think you’ve got enough information to make a decision.

But saying that it’ll forever be impossible to make one — that’s a problem with you.

Did Han shoot first? Three possible answers: yes, no, or I don’t know.

But you can’t say it’s impossible for you to make a determination one way or the other.

Do I believe that Jesus was a real person? Absolutely. Do I believe that he was executed by the Romans? Seems pretty likely. Do I believe that he rose from the dead three days later, and is the son of God? That’s where the matter of faith is. (And if you happen to be reading this, and really want to know, feed me beer, and find out in person.)

On to the news.

Today’s big story? Barr’s interrogation by the House.

The reporting started with an analysis of his opening statement yesterday.

I was listening some of the testimony while I was working. I think he, along with a lot of the folks’ whose opinions I value, have reached the same conclusion; this isn’t about police racism anymore, and the riots need to stop.

Again, it goes back to the fundamental reason government exists — to protect life, liberty, and property.

No question that property is being destroyed. And people are dying in the “largely peaceful” protests. And liberty is significantly affected if you life or work near the sites of these “largely peaceful” protests.

I think part of the reason they pulled Barr in was the deployment of Federal protection forces to address the protests on/around the Federal courthouses.

What I heard was pretty much as you’d expect; why are you Trump’s puppet?

(And time to delete something I probably shouldn’t say…)

I’m tired of it.

And, no, electing Biden isn’t going to fix it.

I saw something in one of the Facebook private groups that does with one of the podcasts I consume that said electing Biden to replace Trump is like shitting your pants, then changing your shirt.

…

Pretty much.

But, hey, with a blue pilled Senate, things like the filibuster can go away, ensuring that more laws with no consent from the governed can be enacted.

Good stuff.