You are a moron

Google has a "news near you" function on it's menu which allegedly is to provide information from your immediate area. In addition they push ads supposedly customized for your immediate area as well.

Fine and well and good ... only the geolocation they have for me is in another city a hundred ten miles away. THEREFORE, the "news near you" and "customized" advertising isn't really "near me" or "helpful" at all ... and subsequently about as useful as boobs on a beau hog.

I keep wondering just who is responsible for this stupidity and if indeed there will EVER be plans to fix the mess.

Attempts to contact ANYONE with Google regarding the situation is impossible and I'm close to firewalling them from my node in perpetuity just to be done with the low tech mendacity of it all. I don't give a rip if it DOES take me off all the android telephony which they obviously control to a level consistent with the third reich.

I even placed CORRECT geolocation tags in the head of the three web sites hosted at this IP address to no avail.

Surely Google isn't THIS stupid — but it's looking pretty bad presently.

My frustration level with Google is through the roof.

I awoke this morning fairly early to a much dryer living room.

It seems that the combination of dehumidifier and industrial fan is removing the water quickly. Yesterday I was sloshing. Today it's just a little damp with more dampness in spots.

I'll likely go one more session of towels for a little more wicking action and hope for the best.

The plumber will be here sometime this morning.

my broke water heater

I arrived home yesterday to a flooded utility room, kitchen, and living room courtesy of the piece of junk water heater sold to me by Franklin D plumbing who used to be on Alpine Road but left probably to avoid dissatisfied customers.

Anyway, the plumber tending to the thing said it appears to have rusted out at the top and this resulted in a steady leak which started sometime after I departed for work and continued all day because I was at work and unaware that there was a problem.

He asked me how old it was and I told him about 5 years old.

He said it should still be under warranty. Then he checked the manufacture date and it was 2001. No warranty. I was just sold an old piece of equipment.
 

Charlie Brown Frustration

Anyway I have spent the bulk of my time since my return from work yesterday drying out floors and furniture and carpet and this outrageous mess is going to pretty much deplete my working fundage given the fact that I bought a bunch of new computer hardware with what I had laying around.

So the plumber will return tomorrow since it was after five pm yesterday when we started the project so the vendors were all closed ...

and I'm going to zap my checking account shortly thereafter.

To make matters worse I'm not going to be able to work on the new server cluster because I'm tied up with those domestic mule duties which include fan and dehumidifier, towels to sop up the water, washing the towels, drying the towels, and repeating the mess. AAAAArrrrgh !

So now two of my siblings are sick with that mess that had me infirm for well over a month. Inasmuch as the 'sick-ees' are smokers they will likely retain the mess even longer than I did.

My regimen included supplementing the vitamins and minerals. I take extra magnesium and zinc as well as B complex and conjugated linolenic acids with three grams of ester C three times a day ... that's NINE grams of non acidic vitamin C. Then there was the guaifenesin as well to boot.

This mess clung to me relentlessly despite all the nutrition, rest, and expectorant I could throw at it.

I hope these smoker siblings of mine fare better than I did losing it ... but I am of the opinion that they will retain this mess far beyond the month long plus with which I coped with all it brought to me.

You can't live other peoples lives for them but I sure wish I could dictate a few things like smoking cessation in the presence of overwhelming stupidity ...

No such luck.

Yesterday I was messing around during lunch and came across a picture from my elementary school days. The person who posted it is unknown to me ... but in the picture as well.

It was of Mr Rumph's class at George R Fishburne Elementary School in Hanahan, SC and I'm the little fat kid in the back. Sadly, Mr Rumph passed away some two years ago after a happy and eventful life.

He was yet another of those I attempted to contact in an effort to say hello and see how he was doing to no avail. This is a recurring theme of my life anymore it seems.

I don't recall much of those days as they relate to school. I know my preoccupation was with things afterward — and I was never 'mister popularity' but had a large number of friends with whom I engaged in various adventures at the "sand pit" and the estuaries of the immediate area.
 

I recognized several of the people in the picture which include Kim Fite, Danny Capps, Bobby LaRocca, LaRue Larrimore, his sister Sandra Larrimore, Albert Meynardie, Larry Sessions and there are a few like Bobby Allison who I recall but cannot recognize in the shot ...

I don't remember the circumstances around it being taken but seeing how I'm in the thing I must have been aware of them at some point.

Just goes to show you that a piece of your past can pop up at any time !

Mr Jay B Rumph Jr

J.B. Rumph, Jr. Obit

Jay Bachman Rumph, Jr., 71, of Seabrook Island, South Carolina, entered into eternal rest Tuesday, March 11, 2014. His Funeral Service will be held Thursday, March 13, 2014, in J. HENRY STUHR, INC., DOWNTOWN CHAPEL, 232 Calhoun Street at 11:00 a.m. Interment, Rumph Cemetery. The family will receive friends Thursday one hour prior to the service.

Jay was born May 7, 1942, in Charleston, South Carolina, son of the late Jay Bachman Rumph and Mary Alice Hartin Rumph. He was a graduate of The High School of Charleston and Newberry College and was a retired Middle School Teacher with Haut Gap Middle School, teaching for more than thirty years. Jay was a lover of the arts and jewelry. He traveled extensively around the world and especially loved Egirdir, Sparta, in Turkey, where he owned a home.

He is survived by two aunts, Annabelle Rumph Jenkins and Gertrude Rumph Mathews, both of Charleston SC; and two cousins, Richard Goehring (Mandy) of Charleston, SC and Dr. Thomas Mathews (Sue), James Island, SC.

Memorials may be made to Pet Helpers, 1447 Folly Road, Charleston SC 29412. A memorial message may be sent to the family by visiting our website at www.jhenrystuhr.com.

Germany is looking at the provision of free wi-fi hotspots in public spaces. Their most prevalent snag in the process has to do with existing antipiracy guidelines and after all ... the law is the law.

I am frequently asked about providing free wi-fi here in the hood. My data connection is well beyond those of most in my midst and the presence of the two installer trucks parked in my yard for several hours the morning it was installed has made me somewhat of an oddity in these parts.

I get attempts to log into my network via one of the three nodes available —

Less now that my would-be "guests" have a feel for the security implementation and now the requests have gone from hijack attempt to stopping me and asking me why I won't provide the SSID to my fellow denizens of the 300 foot radius supplied by the bodacious router I use. Well, the answer is simple. It's ALMOST like the German conundrum in that it involves the law.

My preventative has more to to do with pervs and less to do with pirates. I'm more afraid of some idiot kiddie porn fool getting traced back to one of my IPs — the long term maintenance of logs ... the possibility for court and bad publicity; and it's just too much trouble to fathom. So I keep the bandwidth and those network access codes strictly private.

There are worse things than being stingy with abundant resources ... Whereas in my younger day I was a fool for others, these days finds me minding my own business and keeping my own counsel regarding what's happening in my technological arena.

There just is no room for some dummy involving themselves illegally over my internet connection in the manner I keep reading about too frequently anymore in the local newspaper. I don't do it. Why should I let them.

I had toyed with giving wifi access to one of my friends who comes over intermittently but decided against that too because the new software in use will make those SSIDs legible to the user and therefore subject to sharing. Heck, windows 10 still has a feature to share those access codes in peer to peer provisioning only recently SAID to be removed via windows update. I'm afraid I'm somewhat brazen in my opposition to even inadvertent advertisement of access credentials.

Nope. No peer to peer. No TOR coming or going. No botnets. No spambots. No suspicious spiders. I'm simply not going to jail because somebody thinks they're sneakier than I am. It's simply not where I want to be. I don't begrudge the access so much as the possibility for going to prison and subsequently becoming some bad man's boyfriend.

Tain't happening.

machu picchu from afar

I've really been having a ramp up getting from the older version of my server cluster to the new.

It has involved a little research, a lot of package work, and several middleware setup failures to get to this point.

I'd like to say it was a walk in the park ... HOWEVER it was more like trudging through a briar patch.

Luckily few tasks remain and the destination appears to now be in sight !

In the sweet by and by we will meet on that beautiful shore called COMPLETION.

Abby Sciuto on NCIS portrayed by Pauley Perrette

I was reading a rather pointed piece on cnet regarding women in my industry. It surrounded ideas like too few, less pay, less say, gender disparity and so forth and so on.

All I could gather from this is the obvious disparity in that definition of "tech" as it relates to where you are and what you're doing.

Silicon valley may indeed have all the gender disparity it can dish out. I, however, work in an incorporated municipality and the distribution of XX to XY workforce is I dare say more XX ...

In the end it may be that we have a national problem but it simply is not evident where I work. Indeed, there is no gender bias nor racial bias and about the only thing that will get you fired remains a demonstrated and consistent lack of technical competence.

Our primary focus is management of a city. Information technology is a single aspect of that. We work to support the employees. We require office automation as a support function of our daily operations. That's where we come in.

I suppose the 'silicon vallley' reference is to those large scale enterprises concerned only with producing technology as consumables.

I produce IT product for the workplace but it's specific to our needs and not for general consumption. The public often interacts with my work but the staff utilizes it's output in their work and they are the reason it exists.

Though diversity is quite prevalent I don't really view it as a gauge of success because if you have a competent staff therein lay all you need to see you through.

The piece must be speaking primarily of averages and that realm within the real world technology consisting of the googles, the microsofts, and their ilk. The places with overpaid boards of directors, and other bastions of so-called "preferred gigs". I'd just as soon stay where I am, thank you very much.

No toxic frat boy culture in my workaday world. The preponderance of workers are indeed female as far as I can tell. The only discrimination is against those who cannot do the job. I view discriminating against the incompetent dragging the workplace down as proper ... regardless of your gender.