Lately I find myself feeling much less than inspired. I recall a time when a lept from bed ready to seize the day whereas now I simply squeak through it in an effort to log just one more in that effort to trog through life I have become.

My process for mental stimulation having long been squandered by those requirements for eating and living indoors til it has squashed my creativity to the point that although my aspects of ingenuity and imagination remain they are clouded through the drudgery of those practicalities of earning a paycheck.

Inspiration, aside from that involved in drawing successive breaths, escapes me anymore.

Jack And Diane

Little ditty about Jack and Diane
Two American kids growin' up in the heartland
Jackie gonna be a football star
Diane debutante backseat of Jackie's car

Suckin' on chili dogs outside the tastee freeze
Diane's sittin' on Jackie's lap
He's got his hand between her knees
Jackie say, hey, Diane
Let's run off behind a shady trees
Dribble off those Bobby Brooks
Let me do what I please
Say a

Oh yeah, life goes on
Long after the thrill of livin' is gone
Say a
Oh yeah, life goes on
Long after the thrill of livin' is gone
They walk on

Jackie sits back
Reflects his thoughts for the moment
Scratches his head
And does his best James Dean
Well you know, Diane
We oughta run off to the city
Diane says, baby
You ain't missin' nuth-in
Jackie, say-a

Oh yeah, life goes on
Long after the thrill of livin' is gone
Oh yeah, I say, life goes on
Long after the thrill of livin' is gone

Gonna let it rock
Let it roll
Let the Bible Belt come
And save my soul
Hold on to sixteen as long as you can
Changes come around real soon
Make us women and men

Oh yeah, life goes on
Long after the thrill of livin' is gone
Oh yeah, I say, life goes on
Long after the thrill of livin' is gone

Little ditty about Jack and Diane
Two American kids done the best they can

John Cougar Mellencamp

I had a follow up for a nasty little infection I've been running the bulk of the year because I was going to Agape Senior and they didn't treat me.

I went to see the guy and he ordered lab work but was "absent" for the day of my appointment.

My new physician is much more concerned regarding my condition than the old "concierge" quack was with his requirement for a $2500 fee on top of his medical bills to receive adequate treatment.

I would complain but the state board of medical examiners wouldn't do anything anyway.

Two medical schools and I have to get a referral from my brother for quality care.

Can you say "malpractice" ?

Boo !

I have been quite happy with a yahoo email account for a number of years.

I'm sorry to say that with the acquisition of yahoo by verizon I'll be leaving that account to whomever happens to acquire it later.

Verizon wants a more competitive edge in mobile media ... likely due to the millennials who seem to do everything online with a smartphone.
 

Regardless, verizon is the last place I'll ever want to be because they're a bunch of rude pretentious anuses.

They ruined alltel. They'll ruin yahoo.

Marissa Mayer will leave with her obscene severance package and I'll will be left to find other avenues of email — but such is life.

Won't be any monetizing of my traffic for verizon if I can help it.

Here in South Carolina we seem to have a lot of deaths due to vehicle accidents lately. Over the past weekend we had ten and I notice a distinct lack of driving skills on the road anymore.

Likely this is due to no drivers education in the schools like I had when I was a kid. This has resulted in a lot of people trying to make abrupt last minute right exits from the far left hand lanes on the interstates during rush hour.
 

I am talking about 70 miles an hour traversing six lanes to the exit without regard for anyone else on the road.

Of course, there is no public safety in view at the time and indeed, there likely won't be a highway patrol unless you're driving without a seatbelt because this is about all I've seen they're good for anymore.

Way to go.

Then there are the distracted drivers. The ones going 20 in a 50 mph zone in the LEFT lane to boot. Texting is supposed to be illegal but it's happening all over my commute home these days.

I'll bet if they weren't wearing their seatbelts more of them would be caught.

Be all of this as it may I would like to see things monitored a little better.

When I go out of my way to be safe it is disconcerting to see these idiots who are allowed driving privileges when they should be relegated to public transportation or walking due to that menace to society they are behind the wheel.

This is our legislature in action. Leadership, what leadership?

All I'm asking for is reasonble laws not some meaningless seat belt thing which is the result of a pair of bitter parents who lost a kid crying to Senator John Land who should have retired way before he did.

I attempt not to be insensitive to their loss, but now we all have to suffer as they shove the memory of their dead child up our collective asses at the hands of our elected officials who are supposed to represent US too.

When you can't effort the removal of the reckless drivers all over the place, going after seat belt violations is rather contradictory from a law enforcement effectiveness perspective.

Priorities, what priorities?

I read an interesting tidbit about a woman who was so disgruntled with conventional dating that she utilized an algorithm of her own design in conjunction with dating sites to "engineer" 150 some odd dates in four months.

Here is where my age really tells on me. I found the concept of such dating so irrelevant to my personal sphere of existence that all I could do is a sheldon cooperesque scoff of haughty derision and attempt to give it an objective pass through my thought collections.

In that sum total of relationships and who we are, the notion of dense pack dating has about as much attraction for me as two of the same poles of a magnet and though I do indeed think relationships are a worthy pursuit ... seeing how many I have efforted over the years — can I really be one to question another's decidedly empirical approach in all my scientific awareness ?

Those past times spent with various significant others has left me wanting mostly to do those things which do not involve others because of the innumerable ulterior motives I have encountered along the way.

Had just one encounter been with a true kindred spirit or someone who really wanted to know who I am ... or even had a clue when it comes to awareness of those outside the two feet surrounding their bodies it would all have been different.

As it stands, I'm happy to remain single and pursuant of those things I find important to me. However, perhaps the crux of the problem is that I'm just as selfish as all of those whom I engaged.

I spent the morning working on Mom's yard so it was in some semblence of tidiness prior to her trip to see my sister in the country.

It's a trip I'll likely not make again because I simply can't stand to see my sister's further deterioration at the hands of her own lifestyle diseases in conjunction with this "cadillac" insurance my brother in law always brags about yet my sister's guts are hanging to her knees because she can't get the abdominal repair needed for her diastasis recti due to his crappy "teamsters union" insurance he thinks is SO great.
 

Add to this her idiot penchant for smoking while on insulin and voila ... I don't expect to have her around much longer.

So in that tragedy which is the fact that you can't save a person from themself I simply must submit to the inevitable eventuality evolving much more quickly than it would in the presence of good health habits and competent health care of which she has neither. Add to this crappy health insurance and what chance does any person really have?

Excuse me while I decline to watch you kill yourself anymore, please. Having no one in your corner with good judgement or willingness to act limits your options to the point that I really don't think you have much of a chance remaining.

Microsoft is lamenting the less than stellar reception of Windows 10.

In all that irrational exuberance fueled by the optimistic release of this version of Windows it seems they lag far behind their billion device installation goal significantly.

Perhaps it's the rejection of that nazi approach to updates.

Perhaps it's the assumption that a peer to peer node between customers for providing updates to others was okay with the user.

Maybe it's that persisting image of Microsoft as this toe stomping legend in it's own mind.

I know that I'm okay with Windows 10.

I remain, however, less than satisfied with the forced updates, the lack of keyboard access methods like F8 to get safe mode, the need to turn off many features just to get Windows 10 not to intrude into every aspect of my life, and MOSTLY I hate this entitled attitude of the company in general.

No wonder the contempt continues to build. And by the way, the Edge browser bombs WAY too much.

Windows is rapidly becoming the CKEDITOR of operating systems: unnecessary; but forced upon us. Someday the folks at Microsoft will realize they're not the primadonnas they see themselves as being.

So I've been messing with the logging constructs of Tomcat. Had to be able to capture every little tidbit required for forensics and legal purposes in case there's a problem.

I'm surprised at the number of netizens out there who don't realize that much of what they do on the web is recorded for posterity ... maybe not down to the name and address but certainly down to the IP address which can be cross referenced via the route if a subpoena is required.

Having migrated my primary datastore off the cluster has streamlined that part of it down to mainly firewalling little piss ant dweebs out to break and enter ...

but I digress yet again.
 

The logging mechanics of Tomcat differ somewhat from Apache so I had to ramp up but I like the container arrangement and I wrote myself a little cheat sheet then voila ! I'm logging all aspects I deem appropriate to the task and it took every bit of around fifteen minutes or so.

However, the hardening wasn't nearly so involved. Fewer variables.

That was after a week or so of reading documentation and screwing up the syntax a couple of times bringing everything to a screeching halt.

Word to the wise: make sure you have an adquate backup of your control files prior to embarking on extended configuration procedures. They certainly saved me with this project.

Anyway, enough of adventures in Tomcat logging and I hope you're day goes as swimmingly as mine !

Ted Cruz decided to play the "sore loser" card at the Republican National Convention last night.

After saying he would endorse his party's nominee — that person chosen by the Republican voters to be President of the United States ... he didn't.

Look ... when you play in the big game you need to expect no pulled punches and I have much more respect for a man who means what he says than one who doesn't.

So if your family is so fragile that you are rendered a moot point in politics you might want to stay out of the kitchen because you simply can't take the heat.

Ted Cruz got my vote once. I'll never make that mistake again. Getting booed off the stage of your party's national convention speaks volumes for the politician you aren't.

We need an outsider for a change. We need a Trump to get us out of this mess in which those career politicians and mealy mouthed liars who can't keep their word placed us.

Boo !

A diffuse thread through the news of late involves individuals taking it upon themselves to impart their distinctiveness into a situation which is not their purview.

I'm talking about individuals mentioned in the news reporting who have refused service to police officers, placed glass in the food of police officers, and engaged police officers in sniper activity causing their deaths.

The compound tragedy involves those harmed being people other than those stated as perpetrating acts which caused the behaviors in the first place.

It is a sullen note that murder is deemed an appropriate response to anything. This twisted view of justice is becoming pervasive as revenge supplants the legal system with each subsequent lawless gloom and doom scenario.

While I will never condone the abrupt shooting of a person stopped by the police nor will I support another person embedding their knees into the chest of an arrestee on the ground surrounded by six officers ...

the bottom line is those mistreating police officers will eventually be called out on their transgressions as well.

This repeating news of individuals overstepping their boundaries in civil society will itself eventually be met with deadly force by those who support and respect the law.

These stupid notions of retribution are better left to people who don't sling fast food and work in service industries. The police are not public targets for idiots with an axe to grind.

Leave those value judgements to the courts because the bulk of those making them are ill advised and creating what will eventually become insurmountable problems for themselves.

I read an interesting snip on the Rand Blog regarding ethics and artificial intelligence. It went into the various warnings proffered by some of those technology and science people who cautioned regarding the far reaching and wide spread abilities and consequences of "thinking" codebase executing in conjuction with adequate peripherals to pose the threat of all threats.

It's a potential horror story of The Terminator franchise magnitude to be sure ... but I think that some of the application of "ethics" to be subjective and in the machine world certainly relevant to the orientation of the code sequences, i.e., as it pertains to that individual mission involving said AI programming.

Given the fact that the mission could be some extinction level event through nanites released in mass upon the scourges of human existence ... that "ethics" remains relevent to what the AI thinks it's supposed to do.

So as technology evolves in leaps and bounds one thing can be sure. Selfishness and domination will remain a prime mover in the illuminati orientation of our oligarchical orientation to "constitutional republic". The cautionary notes while certainly worth taking heed will likely not save us from those who would seek control of that which is the world.

It's happened before. It's happening now. It will continue.

I have a node on the internet consisting of a web server and an email server clustered with failover.

This outward appearing euphporic situation is not without it's own set of considerations given the behaviors expected viz a viz those encountered:

1. Accessibility. Every spammer out there thinks they need to be able to pelt you with whatever unsolicited commercial email they see fit to send. Some go so far as to appear to view it your patriotic duty as a denizen of the global electronic village to accept that spam without any form of countermeasures.

2. Open relays. If you allow your server to send mail from anyone to anyone else it will be blacklisted as an open relay. I have never had this problem because I maintain a restricted access control list and if you're not in one of those domains I support you can pretty much forget it.

3. Configuration errors. It's easy to goof up some setting and render your server inoperative for whatever reason invoked by those errors. If you maintain an email server you should actively pursue proper configuration bearing in mind the grief your "bleeding edge" distro update might cause.

4. Software updates. You should maintain all updates deemed appropriate to your operating system distribution — if nothing else from a security standpoint alone. Exploits are easier on obsolete modules in the stack and there's always an exploit waiting to happen.

5. Firewalls. I used to be this tight butt hair trigger firewall implementation whereas now I just drop your packets and let you hit the node as much as you like by and large. The exception to this of course is the never ending attempt by individuals who keep doing the same thing incesantly and expecting different results. HOWEVER, I never reject packets anymore because of the consequences of backscatter traffic ... there are individuals which will hold that against you and I have sought to be a much kinder, gentler, tolerant geek in my old age.

6. Know thy enemy. I have amassed a database of subnets from which exploits and hack attempts proliferate. These are typically firewalled as a precautionary measure. I don't feel the need to court disaster just because it happens to be lurking in my midst.

7. MX Records. It became obvious early on that the bulk of spammers don't bother to incorporate DNS records aside from those provided by their ISPs. I require anyone sending email to do so from a server with a valid MX (mail exchange) record in an effort to curtail these residential customers out to make a killing in the spammer markets which abound.

8. Discarded email. I have several sets of rules by which email is discarded. I discard email from specific email addresses, specified domains, keywords in the header, subject, or body of the communication, and I generally reek havoc that is now silent but deadly.

9. To sum it up; if you need access you get it because I want you to have it. If you don't need access your are likely discarded at the server. These granular (low level) controls are the culmination of years of experience and a great many mistakes along the way. I can implement or reverse any block anytime for anyone anywhere. I prefer peaceful coexistence above all things. This is simply the way it is.