Welcome
- May 17, 2020
- Life at the Hermitage
-
A companion is a partner, friend, one who accompanies, another's mate — or someone hired to help another.
I have been criticized at times for my solitary life; being called antisocial, hermit, recluse, even "troglodyte" ... though that person lived to regret the label.
My early life was much more communal. However, over time I have come to value the quiet and what I've learned of people and their motivations and behaviors has lead me to believe that my early choices in friends were misguided to say the least.
I could say a lot and indeed who needs someone who feigns friendship and tears you down at every opportunity.
So yes, though not totally alone I do habitate in my place with no significant other by choice.
Those I entertained as potential companions turned out to be either intellectually problematic or social embarrassments, and indeed it IS far better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
My social life consists of a few close friends and various family members. I try to make it by my niece's houses to see their children that "Uncle Dave" might not be someone they've never heard of.
Though I'm open to the possibilities I simply don't see my status changing for the rest of this earthly existence. I suppose it's the way it was meant to be.
So I occupy myself with those things that bring me comfort like coding and graphics then I engage socializing on an intermittent basis.
I've found that I don't want to get too "chummy" lest my house become a hangout. Then other times I wish it were.
All-in-all I see it as an opportunity waiting to happen, but my thoughts on hooking up aren't really a serious consideration anymore.
I have sufficient outlets (and inlets) otherwise.
- Comments (0)
- May 16, 2020
- Maskless with a high degree of safety in COVID-19
-
I traverse my day without a surgical mask in this pandemic.
This is in protest of the tyrant public officials who would impose their will upon me.
The questions posed of me regarding this passive resistance involve things like hypthetical situations and "what if" scenarios most of which are irrelevant to my existence.
Like if a mask was "required" at some venue for which I sought attendence and one was offered to me I would most certainly comply with the requirement.
Unfortunately I don't see a lot in events I simply cannot go on without and surely those petty social gatherings would do well without me present poking fun at them while they wrap their mugs up in a variety of coverings. I particularly like the black masks that make everyone look like Bane. I can be quite contrary in the presence of what I see as irrelevant or unnecessary. The masks are required by an orthodox medical establishment used to issuing orders.
Well ... Dr Fauci and others in the government's roll of consultants first stated masks were unnecessary and said not to use them. Turns out they were lying to save masks for medical professionals. Indeed they knew masks would help all the time.
Anyway if I am dealing with the unscruplulous and immoral democratic party types as these and subsequent democrat tyrant governors such as that in California, New York, Minnesota, and mayors such as those imbeciles who cast decrees like they hold the divine right of kings to the citizens of Chicago and New York ... I'm pretty much good with making my own decisions regarding health maintenance and have thusly enacted a highly proactive approach to limiting my own personal viral load.
I don't force my views upon others but by the same token I decline to be imposed upon by a bunch of puffed up full of themselves morons without those formidable technical skills I hold.
Be all of this as it may I hope that you stupid voters who placed these skeezy tyrants in office are satisfied with their incompetence in the face of adversity. Some of us know what to do. It's obviously not them.
I'm in most of the high risk groups and I'm NOT going to get the virus.
- Comments (0)
- May 15, 2020
- Email Server Antics
-
After my recent successful disaster recovery of the web server I thought I'd make a preemptive strike on the email server and synchronize the hardware configurations with larger magnetic disk drives and the whole shebang.
So I went down to the local business supply and got another disk drive and set it on the table in my bedroom. Before too long I was champing at the bit to go ahead and place it in the box and get it all installed and up and running.
The nature of the beast is fairly straightforward from a standpoint of installing software then overwriting control files with the ones in use previously and that's pretty much what I did.
Following a brief foray into installing incorrect secure socket and transport layer security stacks I got with the program and was up in two shakes.
After the successful install, copy, and various tweaking which went down there is nothing more gratifying than watching a new install take charge and get rolling.
So here I sit with two boxes having fresh identical OS and app configurations installed on new disk drives that don't have that inherent write limit of an ssd.
Solid state disk drives are fine and dandy for sure. I also understand their speed increases HOWEVER there comes a time when ongoing maintenance becomes more important.
- Comments (0)
- May 14, 2020
- Honor walks can make me Cry
-
An honor walk is a sort of ceremonial escort of a patient who has been declared brain dead to surgery to effect organ donation in accordance with their wishes.
I've been watching a few of these as a function of being more in touch with my fellow people and I must say that the experience has been touching to the point of provoking emotional response from me.
Hospital staff and friends and family of the patient are seen lining the halls of the path from intensive care to surgery.
Some of the processions are more difficult to observe than others.
The stories are typically tragic and the only bright spot are the lives saved by organs procured at the end of the honor walk. Some of the terminal patients help many others with no where else to turn.
Honor Walk for somebodys Mom
The event is held in appreciation and respect for the patient's decision to donate their organs. Honor walks involving military and police members often include honor guards.
Talk about a profound lesson in humility.
- Comments (0)
- May 13, 2020
- The Tragic Margot Kidder
-
When I watched the Christopher Reeve Superman franchise I enjoyed those performances of Margot Kidder as Lois Lane.
She was a fetching, comely young woman who portrayed the character with an inherent humor and impeccable theatric timing that took me by surprise.
Margaret Ruth Kidder, aka Margot Kidder was a character actress who portrayed various roles and her career was successful up to the time she fell victim to the bizarre episodes resulting from bipolar disorder.
I always had a soft spot in my heart for her since her portrayal of Lois Lane having been extensively read in the superman saga as the result of the entertainment reading I engaged during childhood.
I recall her appearance on a television entertainment news show after she gained a part following quite a lengthy hiatus ...
She was decked out in a period sun bonnet and long frilly dress but that difference between her at that time and the actor I remembered were striking and somewhat shocking.
She was said to fall victim to a drug and alcohol overdose with her passing at her home in Livingston, Montana on May 13, 2018. It was later said to be a suicide.
It's easy to get carried away.
Whatever the cause, she was a talented actor and the world is less for losing her to such tragedy.
- Comments (0)
- May 12, 2020
- International Nurses Day 2020
-
I've had a rather tumultuous relationship with nursing and nurses in general.
Having pursued a medical career for the first fifteen or so years of my working life I encountered them daily and as you might guess ...
Sometimes those encounters were reasonable while others were not.
Be all of this as it may I never wanted to be a nurse.
I felt it to be a feminine designation and I could picture all the male nurses engaged in some bizarre breast feeding ritual or popping a few midol after shooting a tampoon up their butts among other things female and therefore I had little regard for the male nurse period.
My contempt for male nurses remains to this day.
So today is International Nurses Day.
It is an annual event observed by all the afficinados of nursing conducted each May 12th — corresponding to Florence Nightingale's birthdate.
I do feel that nurses contribute to society.
I just think male nurses should have been prohibited but to each pansy candy ass his own.
- Comments (0)
- May 11, 2020
- Remembering Jerry Stiller
-
In my history of sitting before the teevee I have numerous memories of comedian Jerry Stiller.
I recall him and his wife Ann Meara appearing on various variety shows as a comedy team and those interludes were a staccato of piecemeal flashes in the pan compared to later ...
He then appeared to go on hiatus where I never saw anything of him until Seinfeld came along. He became about the only character on that show I could tolerate after a time.
I attribute this to network syndication sticking the comedy up the world's ass whether we liked it or not.
Then he was on The King of Queens and I suffered through a spate of gd Kevin James just to see what it was all about.
The thing about Jerry Stiller that I could relate to was the portrayals of explosive anger viz a viz an otherwise frenetic nature which has been a lot like me over the years.
Today, Ben Stiller announced via Twitter that Jerry had passed at age 92 of "natural causes". Rest in peace.
- Comments (0)
- May 11, 2020
- Remembering Salvador Dali
-
In my youth there was Dali.
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech,
Marquis of Dalí de Púbol
May 11 1904 – January 23 1989
I missed his heyday by a long while, yet his favor with the public and his powerful eclectic persona still grasped the world in his various art productions ...
Some of which, like the one where he drew in the air in lights while being photographed in time lapse stuck with that impressionable manchild which was me.
Salvador Dali was a Spanish Surrealist artist renowned for his skills, technique, precision, and those striking and often times bizarre images which constituted his body of work.
I know I couldn't get enough of him, both is work and his antics.
He was an eccentric funny spontaneous soul to observe with a penchant for flamboyance that wouldn't quit.
Sometimes pretentious. Sometimes a little vulgar.
Always an interesting interlude to be had and I caught him in various spots on the teevee when I could.
His influence by Impressionism and the masters of the Renaissance evolved into surrealism and that so called nuclear mysticism which was an amalgamation of classicism, mysticism, a rediscovered interest in religion and the current science into which he found himself immersed.
My fondest memories of him are an old white haired fellow engaged in various over the top episodes of creativity with an almost manic enthusiasm.
He always left me feeling like the clod that I was during those times.
- Comments (0)
- May 10, 2020
- Hating on Microsoft yet AGAIN
-
How do I hate thee Microsoft, let me count the ways
I hate thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach
You sell tedium in the form of never ending updates of an operating system software which is never finished and for which you want way too much money.
That stupidity which is your coding staff is only surpassed by your intrepid fleet of microsoft certified so called professionals who are typically dumb as dirt hanging a bunch of letters after their names which are as meaningless as their pitiful little unskilled certification seeking lives.
I hate that invasion of workplaces with your lame product lines ...
How your outlook email client can't even complete a sentence with the cursor at the end. Just why does your crap have to go out of it's way to be infuriating?
And then ... there is that technofeces vaporware you call sharepoint that you have never gotten right since it's bloody incept so very long ago.
And your stupid "cloud" cottage industry that complicates every aspect of a job I once loved so much.
Too bad the powers that be don't realize that the word "cloud" in the context of networking simply means "somebody else's computer".
An inability to manage one's own technical affairs and assets is known as "outsourcing".
Duh.
Your mssql mess is precisely that: an incapable mess that should have been aborted like so many feminist sexual exploits.
Only nobody wants or needs those products of conception.
I hate your products. I hate your people. I hate your logos. I hate your never ending updates. I hate the fact that windows 10 was forced upon me. I hate your overstepping foreigner ceo.
Most of all I hate your moron customers who think that you are the only way to go. Thank gawd I'm a Unix head.
I hope redmond washington falls off into the Pacific and charlotte nc falls into a 100 sq mile 500 mile deep sinkhole because you are there and you will go with them.
Die microsoft die. Preferably right now. Make the world a better place.
- Comments (0)
- May 9, 2020
- Benefit of the doubt
-
Back in the day I was a jogger. I used to do 3 miles on the dirt roads of rural Salley, SC at high noon in August. I was never accosted let along shot at.
A tragic yet old story from Georgia involves a father and son who ambushed then killed a jogger named Ahmaud Arbery because they 'thought' he was a burglar.
Mr Arbery
Mr McMichael
Mr McMichael
The individuals, Gregory and Travis McMichael stalked the man who was apparently jogging through a neighborhood, confronted him armed with weapons and other armed individuals then shot him with a shotgun while on leaked cellphone video of the McMichaels' confrontation by an accomplice in the back of a pickup truck.
Now then, the pair were arrested two months after the crime and complaints from family and friends of the jogger which had made headlines primarily in the local area.
This has the appearance of an overzealous ex-cop taking matters to an extreme over step of one citizen's rights over another.
As the story develops I will be curious to see why a person cannot jog in a neighborhood without some misguided attempt at mistaken vigilante justice. Coupled with this is a curiosity regarding the delayed action of law enforcement.
- Comments (0)
- May 8, 2020
- Toni Tennille's Birthday 2020
-
When I was a kid there were "The Captain and Tenille".
They had a variety musical show I used to watch frequently back in the days of my early adulthood until about that time I entered the Navy and my musical tastes took a radical change.
Over the years I would read various items about them and their public persona being that as a couple hid the underly trouble which consumed their marriage.
The Captain was Daryl Dragon who Tenille married on November 11, 1975 allegedly in the name of tax benefits. I didn't get the impression that theirs was a happy union and this was confirmed in Tennille's biography.
Nonetheless they remained close after their divorce and through the time of Mr Dragon's death from kidney failure in early January of last year.
Cathryn Antoinette "Toni" Tennille was born May 8, 1940 and is an American singer-songwriter and keyboardist, best known as one-half of this 1970s duo Captain & Tennille alongside her former husband Daryl Dragon.
Their hallmark musical number is "Love Will Keep Us Together".
Tennille has also done other musical gigs independently of her husband, including various sessions and solo projects.
Today is her birthday. She is a pillar of my young adult years. I have great respect for her as a performer and person and I hope she enjoys many more celebrations of her birthday.
Happy birthday to you !
- Comments (0)
- May 7, 2020
- Nick Berg was murdered in 2004
-
In 2004 I was a motivated patriot borderline jingoist working in the field of Information Technology for a niche handbell business concern. My work was easy but very busy and it involved a lot of equipment change outs and Unix support and I tried to do a good job for the years I was there.
During that time I learned of the murder of Nick Berg, an American freelance radio tower repairman who had ventured to Iraq in the shadow of the United States invasion of that country.
He was abducted and murdered by beheading allegedly by Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a muslim insurgent who we subsequently took out by air strike in October of that same year.
Allegedly this murder of Mr Berg was in retribution for the very ill advised Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal in which Mr Berg had no involvement.
It seems that United States Army members tortured and otherwise abused Iraqi prisoners. Later it has been speculated that those actually punished, though perpetrators, were not the individuals giving the orders.
A video of the beheading of Nicholas Berg was released on the internet. This is said to have been from London to a Malaysian hosted page owned by the Islamist organization Muntada al-Ansar. It was an infuriating piece of travesty whereby an innocent was punished for the transgressions of others.
It epitomizes the militant muslim in my mind.
- Comments (0)
- May 7, 2020
- Online Presence and Insignificant Others
-
There is an issue with having an online presence of the nature of crackerjackdata.net ...
This surrounds the innumerable attempts at exploit by others who either rent server or network space and try to break and enter as either a hobby or career.
Yes, I indeed had such inclinations back in the late 1970s but those days are long gone and my access was limited to a measily 1200 baud analog modem attached to a dumb terminal. The addition of a pdp-11/73 process in a backplane with DLV/11-J and other interfaces as well as CDC 9448-96 disk drive the size of a small refrigerator still didn't afford me the break and enter capabilities all too many technological sociopaths now may afford.
Then there are the two types of people: significant and insignificant.
My place is not for everyone. It is both an acquired taste and by invitation only. People think because you're in the public domain you're automatically a public resource with which to do as you please. Nope, I don't let just anyone hang around.
The annointed few are accommodated regardless of how great those lengths are to make things happen. The others are admonished thusly:
behave or begone !
So what is one to do when the access logs are filled with OBVIOUS exploit attempts of the web, mail, and application server variety by the sociopathic ilk of would-be technology purveyors in our midst ???
In a word: FIREWALL.
Yes, the F word. I will invoke it at the drop of a hat. I will firewall people, places, groups, entities, entire countries at the drop of a hat. Can you say "China" enemy of the United States of America boys and girls?
I even purchase additional machines to ensure adequate throughput for the many rules in place.
So yes, I am a vigorous firewall afficinado with eyes on those logs and a keen eye for keeping out troublemakers, i.e., spammers and exploits and I won't hesitate to change out hardware which gives the slightest hint of unsuitability.
There you have it. I'm a vigilant mean network and server farm managing machine ! My policy is "do no harm to others" and conversely, you go after me I'm going to head you off at the pass quicky and permanently. Don't tread on me unless you want to draw back a nub.
- Comments (0)
- May 6, 2020
- International No Diet Day 2020
-
I've celebrated this day before. Pretty much every day of my life. Today is International No Diet Day and I'm not one to go on diets ... I believe exercise to be the weight gain problem answer.
Now, the day is devoted to body acceptance ... and no, Gussie I'm not accepting of your magnificent moo cow pendulous breasts attached to that stupendous abdomen that drags the ground with those butt cheeks that go on forever.
Sure, I've suffered rejection but I went ahead and cut my losses long ago and now I have a goodly selection of various consorts who accompany me because they know what I'm about otherwise and respect my exceptional skills and superb hygenic maintenance.
No, I'm not hating on anyone it's just you can't call yourself dieting when you eat a pile of weight watchers product that you wash down with a case of light beer.
The day is about promoting a healthy lifestyle. So go forth and do so and then rejoin your feminist gaggle and celebrate your diversity because it's quite the varied terrain you're toting around for display.
Me, I'll just stick to that which I am. I can't say I'll ever be in the great shape of my post Navy days once again but it's surely a wonderful thought.
- Comments (0)