Hmmmm?
TECHNOLOGY: Need to figure out how to have my favorite auto hot key come up at start up
Saturday, April 29, 2006Hmmmm?
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Posted by reinkefj
Coming to the end of April, some soul searching. Or is it sole searching?
Saturday, April 29, 2006Is this activity of any use? I’m really not sure it’s being read. And if it’s being read, is it of value? And, value to whom?
All I get out of it is a toilet paper roll of random musings. At least they are all captured in one place. I does discharge that self-imposed need to discharge nervous energy. (I just typoed gry. What were those three words — hungry, angry, and ?)
See I am crazy.
Does this advance my thought that each individual has a duty to publish? To share their own particular data – information – knowledge – wisdom. When I do the alumni obits, I always ask “what have we lost”. Each individual has a unique value. Maybe that’s why I’m pro life. Maybe that baby is going to cure cancer, advance human thinking, or just make people laugh.
(I can see the groans on your faces! He’s going to tell the Wally Crowther Cave story again! Arghh! Run. He is “in a twisty maze of passageways, all alike” in his sick mind. Now he’s going to tell that story again. Run! Ahhh! Too late. Not fast enough!)
When I was at AT&T I found adventure. Not out on the plains of Africa, not in the dangerous streets of manhattan, not on a mountain. I found it at the end of a teletype terminal. I dragged it everywhere there was a phone line. I was hooked. Colossal Cave Adventure was the first known interactive fiction game, created by Will Crowther originally, to simulate his cave exploring experiences. I played Adventure so often that sometimes I would fall asleep at the computer, not go to class, or ignore everything. I made maps. And shared them with my fellow geeks. Meeting dwarfs and saying “plugh”. I figured out how to traverse the identical caves. I actually had the path memorized. When I was dropped in the maze randomly. All I need was one object (I always kept the empty bird cage for that purpose) and I could be out of the maze in no more than thirty two steps with the cage. I would find my way out and then go back to get may cage for when it happened again. I enjoyed the world that existed solely in my head and some far off server. Adventure by my keyboard.
Anyway, I became aware of the unknown value of a potential life from a stupid computer game. (No, I was not on drugs! It just came as one of my “insights”. You know, bang your head on the wall long enough and you get the “insight” that maybe it would hurt less if you stopped!)
Early in the game there’s a bird. Fifth or sixth move. And you can do lot’s of things with the bird. Kill it. Eat it. But if you leave it alone, then a few caves later, you’ll find a bird cage. And a few caves later, your progress is blocked by a giant snake. So having nothing much else to do, you go back get the cage, catch the bird, and release it at the snake. The bird drives off the snake and you are free to explore Walter’s world that everyone is raving about.
Now I introduced a number of people to the game. I was amazed at how many smart people for no good reason would kill the bird. It told me something about human nature and life.
(1) Killing things chokes off possibilities. That’s when I became a pro-lifer. Maybe we have aborted the person who will cure cancer, lead us to the stars, or just make us laugh. Look at Hawking advancing the forefront of physics and tell me that it can’t happen. So I formed my opinion, that we ought not be killing people. Before they are born, after they do bad things, because they are deformed, old, sick, or don’t conform to someone’s opinions of what should be.
(2) People do things for no good reason just cause they can. And, they are never aware that they have limited their possibilities. Eliminated a path of great possible reward. Scoped themselves down. Hence I relized that making choices is fraught with hidden risks and I always thought about my choices very very carefully. Choices end to be mutually exclusive. Doing X means you can’t do Y. That makes life tough.
By The Way, I never told any of them what they missed. It was perverse. But those of us who had gotten by the snake formed a sacred oath never to divulge the secret of the snake. It was hysterical to watch people spend literally hours trying to find the now permanently blocked path. Someone once said something about “experience is a hard teach but fools will learn form no other”.
Any way, does this blog matter? It represents a choice. By doing this, I am not doing somethign else. And you now know why choices are so hard for me. I know there is a lot I don’t know but I don’t know what I don’t know. Help me?
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Posted by reinkefj
RANT: LET THEM eat cake — or wait in line for a Prius.
Thursday, April 27, 2006***Begin Quote***
''Gasoline price increases are like a hidden tax on the working people," President Bush said in a speech that called for a federal inquiry into possible price-gouging, an easing of environmental rules on gasoline production, and a halt to new purchases for the nation's energy reserve.
Bush conveniently ignored one built-in cost: Government levies include a federal 18.4 cents-a-gallon tax on gas; and the states tax on top of that.
***End Quote***
Hey, somebody figured out that the tax on gasoline gets added into everything we buy. Hmmm, think I heard that before. What are we stupid?
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Posted by reinkefj
RANT: Against mindless forwarding of email
Thursday, April 27, 2006Dear fellow traveler,
I don't understand how forwarding an email that may or may not be authentic helps anyone. Usually I counsel people not to do this bcause:
(1) Cause it doesn't get read.
(2) It absorbs a lot of different kinds of "space".
(3) Exposing all those email addresses to spammers is a bad idea.
(4) It doesn't influence anyone.[The reader's are urge to improve my list by sharing their own points.]
If you were moved by the underlying message, then tell us about your experience. Trim the text so it has a high signal to noise ratio. Distill it.
(By the way, pictures don't usually come thru the forwarding process well. And they take a lot of space.)
That adding, distillation, and trimming all has value and merit. And, it might influence your fellow XYZers to think about something, think about it differently, or Intelligent Designer forbid they might actually change an opinion. See the way you did it, forwarding a many times forwarded message with no value added, makes people think that it was done in a careless fashion. Where as, if you add some value to it by telling people why you think it's important to share it, then you might actually do some good.
Email is a wonderful tool properly used. This message did nothing for me but make me rant.
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Posted by reinkefj
Why do the players have to sit out?
Wednesday, April 26, 2006The New York Post
April 26, 2006 Wednesday
SECTION: All Editions; Pg. 82
HEADLINE: JASPER BIG 3 IN LIMBO
BYLINE: TIM SULLIVAN
LOAD-DATE: April 26, 2006
***Begin Quote***
Xavier, a sophomore guard from Pawtucket, R.I., who averaged 16.6 points this season, has a scholarship waiting for him at Providence if he’d like to transfer, sit out a season and play for his hometown Friars. The Big East might be too tough to turn down, but he is keeping all options open.
***End Quote***
It really not fair that the coach can change at will, and yet the players have to sit out a year if they transfer. It’s just rotten! Now, why doesn’t the coach have to sit out for a year?
Why do the players have to sit out?
At the very least, to compensate them for the “lost years” (i.e., for the time they invested in the departing coach who leaves them in the lurch), they should be allowed to play for some one else right away.
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Posted by reinkefj
The CEO, the COO, and the CFO conspire to weenie the employees of a start up!
Wednesday, April 26, 2006http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/security/investigator/archives/008976.asp
***Begin Quote***
In several emails he outlined a plan where the company assets (intellectual property, equipment, etc) would be sold and transferred to the buying company. The employees "are not a transferable asset, nor are they essential to a successful IP transition. We are prepared to 'trickle' them out in groups during the transition period". In other emails to C-level executives at our company, he repeatedly fought off the CEO and COO desire for compensation packages for employees that had been around for at least one year of employment. The CFO spewed financial nonsense and bull$hit, however he was accurate to the penny on what each executive would receive as compensation. These guys were going to make millions. In a few of the last emails, the CEO and COO caved under the pressure and greed.
***End Quote***
For anyone who has NOT yet realized that the "rules of engagement" for employment, here is you wake up call.
While I personally deplore the actions that were supposedly taken, I have to admire when justice is served. There is no way, no how, that seekers should be deceived into working like a dog WITHOUT a just reward.
###
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Posted by reinkefj
What is this “barbara streisand”?
Tuesday, April 25, 2006Important Authentication Disclosure
To help the government fight the funding of terrorism and money-laundering activities, Federal law requires Fidelity to verify your identity by obtaining your name, date of birth, address, and a government-issued identification number before opening your account. In certain circumstances, Fidelity may obtain and verify this information with respect to any person(s) authorized to effect transactions in an account. For certain entities, such as trusts, estates, corporations, partnerships, or other organizations, identifying documentation is required. Your account may be restricted and/or closed if Fidelity cannot verify this information. Fidelity will not be responsible for any losses or damages (including but not limited to lost opportunity) resulting from any failure to provide this information, or from any restriction placed upon, or closing of, my account.
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Posted by reinkefj
Suprynowicz nails the true purpose of “gummint publik skoolzs”
Sunday, April 23, 2006http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Apr-23-Sun-2006/opinion/6595142.html
***Begin Quote***
The purpose of government schooling, Gatto learns from Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, "Principles of Secondary Education," is "to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
"That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country."
The result? "We have become a nation of children," Gatto offers as our cultural epitaph, "happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults."
This week and last, I have cited many sources, though necessarily in much abbreviated form, on literacy during the era of the Founding Fathers, which is generally held to have ended with the deaths of Adams and Jefferson in 1826.
Surely whether a reader chooses to seek them out and study them at more length, or responds by harrumphing that, "I certainly don't agree with those facts," will best allow us to judge whether he or she truly "wants to learn" why our government youth internment camps are producing an ever higher percentage of functional illiterates …
Just as they were intended to.
***
Vin Suprynowicz (vsuprynowicz@reviewjournal.com) is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of "Send in the Waco Killers" and the new novel "The Black Arrow.." His column appears Sunday.
***End Quote***
A pretty compeling indictment. But how do we move from "gummamint publik skools" back to prive schools?
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Posted by reinkefj
But which party is fat and which is ugly? To me, they’re both like Cinderella’s step sisters!
Sunday, April 23, 2006http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/51102
***Begin Quote***
This is like a fat person telling an ugly person they can lose weight, eventually, but there's no time like the present for the Dems.
***End Quote***
When will people realize that they are being hustled? There is no difference between the two. With Shrub's eight years (Bush 2's two terms), we now have AMPLE evidence that the R's are NOT the party of smaller government. They fooled you didn't they. Not me! I voted Libertarian. AND, Clinton's two terms demonstrates, that while the D's during those eight years weren't as bad as Shrub's eight years, they aren't going to give you smaller less-intrusive government.
No, for all the flaws and foibles of the Libertarian Party, they are the Party of Principle. That principle is liberty. You have to be free. Free to make your own decisions. Good decisions, bad decisions, and personal decisions.
The Federal Government is both FAT and UGLY!
Fat in that they are involved in everything. A bloated organization, which really is the gang that can't shoot straight, where one out every five Americans relies on the government for employment. (Five may not be exactly right but it's close. It's definitely single digits.) They have run up an enormous debt (that we need to grow ourselves out of), inflated the currency that eviscerates our savings and impoverishes pensioners, run the Social Security Ponzi scheme for their own spending, and have citizens fighting each other over scraps (to preserve this or that program).
Ugly in that they have destroyed our Constitutionally recognized, Intelligent Designer given, inalienable rights. Lets itemize a free of the more obvious ones: (1) First Amendment free speech zones; (2) Second Amendment gun seizures in NOLA; (4) Fourth Amendment "war on drug" raids and airport searches; (5) Fifth Amendment Kelo decision; (6) Tenth Amendment Medical Marijuana State laws abrogated. AND that is just off the top of my head. Don't forget we are fighting and undeclared war. Don't forget we have a President who says that he doesn't have to follow the law. Don't forget that we have an out of control bunch of private gangs running around like the BATF, every darn agency has guns with "police" power (like Department of Agriculture), and tax laws that are enslaving us.
I no longer consent to this government!
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Posted by reinkefj
Don’t get old!
Thursday, April 20, 2006While I urge evryone to get the paperwork in order when they are young, (i.e., will, poa, hcp, and advanced directive), I predict that we all will get old. I have three old folk that I am responsible for. Tonight I am elder-sitting my Mom who just came home from the hospital. She lives in NYC and I’m in Jersey. This would have been so much much easier if I could have convinced her to move to NJ with the rest of the relatives decades ago. But her stuborness, and my inability to convince, and my failure to “make her”, puts me where I am today. She’s getting older and could have had an easier life by being closer.
So, under the theory that you dont have to pay tuition for every lesson (i.e., don’t make the same mistakes I do; learn from the mistakes of others; be a “fortune teller” predict the future), learn from my mistakes. If you are an only child, have your parents physically close to you. Whine, cajole, cry, snivel, snit, and even be down right nasty about it. Cause it’s a pay now or pay later situation. I’m paying now. And I regret not have prepaid for this trouble.
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Posted by reinkefj
Reinke Faces Life 
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