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- May 20, 2020
- Bee Day 2020
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- May 19, 2020
- Malcolm X Day 2020
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The civil rights advocate Malcolm X aka El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz born Malcolm Little is honored this day thus far in Berkeley California as an early martyr in the civil rights movement.
There are varying degrees of celebration but like his cohort protomartyr Medgar Evers, that honor for being struck down while working for the good of all people, particularly the down trodden of their times is not universally accepted in the US.
The controversial black racial advocacy imposed early on in the black muslim movement 'by any means necessary' echos hollow without meaning in our 21st schizoid world.
The failures of identity politics drown memories of those who worked hard and long for civil rights to keep that recognition and esteem they once held with the masses they served.
I for one have never been a civil rights activist.
I do, however believe that we are all created equal.
I also believe that Malcolm X was murdered by those congregants of the Nation of Islam as a mechanism of some aspect of revenge.
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
Romans 12:19 Holy Bible, King James Authorized Version - Comments (0)
- May 18, 2020
- Ken Osmond Passes
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Well, one of those fixtures in my childhood was the Leave it to Beaver television show.
Kenneth Charles Osmond
June 7, 1943 – May 18, 2020
As your typical white anglo saxon protestant brat running around with others of my species I naturally gravitated to all things familiar and I think that June, Ward, Wally, and the Beaver were right up my alley with a lifestyle I thought to be similar to my own however disparate and I claimed them as such.
Of course, the antics of the child Theodore were a comparison in cultures and there were the required foils, namely Lumpy Rutherford and Eddie Haskell ... and I took them all in stride during the endless hours I spent before the tube suspending reality in half hour increments.
Lumpy passed a while back after a post television career as a stock broker. It was said that his advice regarding fiscal instruments were golden by several of his surviving cast mates.
Today we learn that Eddie has passed.
Ken Osmond was the actor who portrayed Eddie on the sitcom and he was the perfect snide smart aleck who alas became typecast by the role and found obtaining acting work afterwards difficult.
I encountered him one day in the mall at Huntington Beach, California right past the Orange Julius and he looked like an adult version of Eddie.
We spoke briefly and had a laugh about the old days and what it was like then compared to "now".
He always triggers pleasant memories due to that brief interaction at the mall that day and I am sorry to hear of his passing.
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- May 18, 2020
- International Museum Day 2020
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I remember as a child relocating to Charleston, SC as a function of my father's naval career.
Upon house hunting one of the places we visited was a fine old antebellum white wooden house with huge rooms having twelve foot ceilings, fireplaces, mantles, and the look of something right out of the pages of Gone with the Wind.
The place was called Boone Hall Plantation and it was the makings of the pre American Civil War museum it now is.
Well, we didn't get to end up living at Boone Hall Plantation but it was an interesting interlude in possibilities. Sometimes I believe I was shown such places as residential possibilities in an effort to tantalize me. Whatever the case, it worked.
Today is International Museum Day
International Museum Day, an international observance held under the auspices of the International Council of Museums annually around May 18.
The event is a thematic day which changes annually to reflect international museum community interests.
While I was a museum head long ago I fear those days have become supplanted by the internet and my ability to research such resources due to varous collections available on web sites.
However, this is an increasingly rare happening in my life.
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- May 17, 2020
- Life at the Hermitage
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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.
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- May 16, 2020
- Maskless with a high degree of safety in COVID-19
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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.
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- May 15, 2020
- Email Server Antics
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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.
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- May 14, 2020
- Honor walks can make me Cry
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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.
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- May 13, 2020
- The Tragic Margot Kidder
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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.
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- May 12, 2020
- International Nurses Day 2020
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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.
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- May 11, 2020
- Remembering Jerry Stiller
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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.
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- May 11, 2020
- Remembering Salvador Dali
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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.
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- May 10, 2020
- Hating on Microsoft yet AGAIN
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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.
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- May 9, 2020
- Benefit of the doubt
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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.
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