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Category Archives: Tech

Savior/Oppressor/Dictator/President

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Change, Conspiracies, Dingleberries, Emotional Intelligence, Human, Middle Way, Open mind, Patriotism, Politics, Sameness, Tech, Terrorism

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Years ago I was hired as a systems administrator at a small educational publishing company. When I first came on they had tons of problems with the predictability of things like fonts and color reproduction. I was taken aside by the production manager and told that everyone was dying for someone to just fix these things and get everything under control and to finally be predictable. If I could do that, he stated, everyone would be forever grateful.

Well, I did just that. And because many of the problems were caused by the artists themselves not understanding the technical process, much of what needed to be done was solved by locking certain things down because people just wanted stuff to work, they didn’t want to be bothered with how.

So, predictably, I became the bad guy. I was the oppressive sys admin. I had been hired as a savior and became hated as an oppressor, all because I did my job and fixed what they asked me to in the only way I could.

My point is this, when things are really messed up people just want them fixed. They are so focused on their own daily misery that they don’t bother to look at the bigger picture, no matter how much it is explained and shown to them.

Donald Trump has been using the language of a banana republic dictator for months now. His rhetoric has become increasingly paranoid, and he is not above inciting civil unrest. But he appeals to increasingly desperate people. People who are far more willing to believe there are mounting conspiracies as opposed to much simpler answers, such as the fact that time simply marches on, and sometimes things change quicker than people are happy with.

Desperate people make desperate decisions, dictators know this and leverage the fear to their benefit. Post World War One Germany is a perfect example of how a struggling people grasped a message that promised relief and also leveraged the blame onto outsiders. The regret from the German people’s decision to embrace a monster is still evident in the laws that make it illegal to display any Nazi symbols. And while that example is staring us in the face, to the Trump supporter it’s a ridiculous parallel and a different scenario. If only that were true.

Civil liberties can be a pain in the ass when you want things done your way.

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Scylla and Charybdis

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Change, Conspiracies, Dingleberries, Islam, Middle Way, Open mind, Patriotism, Quantum, Tech, Terrorism

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I’ve come to the conclusion that the stakes are so high in this election season, and the choices so polarizing, that the outcome will not be good no matter who is elected president.

The possibility that some form of internal strife breaking out in this country is all too real regardless of the election’s outcome. The rhetoric is ramping up on all sides, and the discourse is so jaded and threatening that the citizenry no longer sees it as a difference in policy and more as an assault on their very security. 

Friend’s have begun to turn their backs on one another. Brothers and sisters are becoming estranged. Political banter is being taken as fact, and violence is now punctuating conviction.

The fact that in my life I would live to see American citizens physically assaulted because of their political beliefs tells me that, as a country, we are regressing. We have not learned the lessons of our own Civil War, or the struggles for Civil Rights. We have learned nothing from the Great Depression or the Great Recession. The era of the Robber Baron has returned with a vengeance and the redistribution of wealth through corporate welfare has created a pressure cooker between the classes as the buffer that used to be the middle class disintegrates. Nationalistic and fascist sentiments are beginning to take hold in a way that makes McCarthyism seem tame. Big government has always been partisan free under the surface, as the illusion of choices hides the solid core of corruption. Freedom of the press is undercut by their own partisanship and is being given the last rights by a candidate who threatens lawsuits if people report negatively on him. The threat of totalitarianism is so intense, yet the average voter is less likely to vote now than they were during the primaries because the major candidates have roughly the same approval ratings as W. did when leaving office during the Great Recession. One candidate likes to tell everyone that his opponent wants to abolish the Second Amendment so that don’t notice that he is systematically demonizing and ostracizing the press, and getting the citizens to buy into his narrative. Pressure cooker bombs are slowly knocking the election off of its axis in a slow play toward annihilation by fear and self-protection. And weekly communication hacks are making everyone more guarded, except those who never had a filter to begin with. 

If I sound nihilistic, it’s only because I checked my hope at the door of a primary voting station, I sat back and watched the swill rise to the top through buffoonery, corruption and cronyism. We’re perched headlong over a bed of nails, each of which we drove in ourselves with every nitpick and special circumstances we felt we needed at the expense of those we disagreed with  

This one’s for you. 

The cyber is so big!

07 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Conspiracies, Dingleberries, Ego, Islam, Middle Way, Patriotism, Politics, Tech, Terrorism

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I was on The Googles today and reading some eNews when I came across a statement that shows how Donald Trump has his finger on the pulse of computer know-how. This is the kind of leadership we need to stop the ISIS and those Ruskies from infiltrating our dot-coms and our wide web of the world!

I mean they’re out there and they’re getting fast. We have to be just as prepared to get there first. And Donald Trump knows it because he’s a winner!

So if you want a President who’s gonna take on the psychological needs our country needs to win at cyber, then vote Trump! He knows the stuff!!!

And now, Donald Trump:

“Well, that’s it. And you know cyber is becoming so big today. It’s becoming something that number of years ago, short number of years ago, wasn’t even a word. And now the cyber is so big, and you know look at what they’re doing with the internet. How they’re taking recruiting people through the internet. And part of it is the psychology because so many people think they’re winning. And you know, there’s a whole big thing. Even today, psychology — where CNN came out with a big poll. Their big poll came out today that Trump is winning. It’s good psychology, you know. It’s good psychology. I know that for a fact because people that didn’t call me yesterday, they’re calling me today. So that’s the way life works right?”

Boardwalk, Park Place and Comcast

02 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in Comcast, Conspiracies, Dingleberries, Middle Way, Politics, Tech, Terrorism

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I just purchased a new modem last week and I had to call Comcast (they are the only functional ISP in the southern NH area… Do you hear that Google Fiber?!) for them to put in my MAC address so I could use my own stuff. The support person who answered my call looked up the model number of my modem and regretfully informed me that my modem was already at “end of life” and Comcast wouldn’t activate it. I had to patiently disagree with her, going to far as to finally ask to speak to her supervisor so that they could help me activating my brand new modem. 

As I waited on hold I saw the refresh come through to my modem. The support person then got back on the phone and explained that some Lazarus-raising-modem-soothsayer had been discovered working nearby and was able to bless my modem from afar, raising it out of hopeless despair. I gratefully thanked her for her help, while silently cursing her employer for providing me a fraction of the bandwidth that the rest of the world enjoys, and doing so at an exponentially higher cost.

Play Doh? Seriously?!

21 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in Conspiracies, Dingleberries, Kids, Middle Way, Politics, Tech, Terrorism

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Living in New Hampshire with our First in the Nation Primary status, gives you a unique perspective on politics. For example, I don’t know too many people who haven’t been stuck in traffic because a motorcade was going through. It’s kind of a fact of life around here. The news helps by letting you know who is around when, if they can, but sometimes there’s no avoiding it. You pull up to an intersection and suddenly the State Police pull up out of nowhere, block everyone off in seconds and now you’re forced to sit and wait… and hope you don’t have to pee too bad. 

So when the governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, requested that the president and other presidential hopefuls stay away from the state while emergency efforts are underway to help the flood victims, it was totally understandable. The last thing they need is the secret service and press taking up food and lodging needed for first responders, let alone the interruption to the transportation systems. If one person suffers because emergency personnel were stuck behind a presidential motorcade, it’s one too many.

But a natural disaster is just too attractive for some politicians to walk away from. And so here comes Mike Huckabee a-helpin’ and a-criticisin’ the president for not leaving his vacation to help the good people of Louisiana, despite the governor’s request. Okay, I get it, he’s doing his Christian duty to help, but he can’t help but poke the bear while he’s there can he? He knows that the headlines are more powerful than the truth and he just gained a few more votes for the brotherhood, right. Oh yeah, and the Newt bitched about the president too. I know that’s hard to believe. 

Anyway, then there’s Donald Trump…

Where to start?

Let’s start with the state governor’s request to Trump to please not visit if he was just coming for a photo op. And if he did show up, please be ready to pitch in and help out for real. Now what would make him think that Trump would be an opportunist while running for president of the United States?

So here comes Trump, ready to get his hands dirty, wearing a brand new sparklingly white “Make America Great Again” baseball hat and a blue blazer. Yes, the man was wearing a fucking blazer with a starched white shirt on underneath! He looked like Thurston Howell on his way to the golf course. 

He spent less than a minute (49 seconds by some reports) handing out… wait, not handing out… handing over cases of Play Doh to Mike Pence, who then gave them to someone else so they could give them to the victims who were hoping for food and water. 

Play Doh? Seriously?!

I’ve been combing news stories trying to figure out what the Play Doh is for, or why it seemed like a good idea. Now to be fair he donated other stuff like baby formula, school supplies, blankets, and even socks. But Play Doh? Hasn’t anyone showed this guy the pictures of Michael Dukakis poking his head out of a tank like an Alfred E. Newman Jack-In-The-Box, or John Kerry dressed up like a giant sperm?! These are classic photo ops gone wrong that were too stupid to have ever have been allowed. 

Someone on the Trump campaign should have been smart enough to make sure that the only thing he was seen holding was food, water or medical supplies. Someone on the campaign should have thought about his attire and had him go for a more every day casual, down and dirty look, like W. had when visiting the World Trade Center disaster site. Someone shouldn’t have let him go down there against the governor’s wishes unless he planned on sticking around and doing something useful. 

But someone couldn’t do those things because everyone around him is new. Donald Trump has rebooted his campaign more times than one of those cow computers from Gateway that is running Windows Millenium Edition.

I swear to God I’m about ready to buy the conspiracy theories about Trump trying to lose this election to help his friend Hillary. If he isn’t, then his team is too stupid to be allowed near a lit flame, never mind the nuclear codes. 

A Spiritual Life Pro Tip – Tech

21 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Change, Ego, Human, Middle Way, Spirituality, Tech

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Have you ever heard of a Buddhist Prayer Wheel? It’s essentially a cylinder with a prayer/mantra written in Sanskrit around the outside. The inside will have a “Tree of Life” core, around which are also wrapped countless more prayers and mantras. 

The purpose of, and belief in, the wheel is that each time a person turns these wheels while focusing their intention, they generate karmic merit. Similar to the how praying aloud helps for others. 

So, how could you harness such a concept in modern life and make it work for you?

Well as computer security becomes more complex, and correspondingly important, it is becoming more common for people to create “pass-phrases” instead of passwords. Longer and more complex codes that can be relatively simple for a user to remember.

So here’s a thought… Why not make your passcode a mantra or prayer so that each time you have to enter it you center yourself back in to a spiritual space.

So rather than your dog’s name as a password such as “Fluffy69” why not point your mind toward a more calming and centering intention like “M@yGodcomfOrtYou”, or “Om Vajr@pan!Hum”

Just a thought. It’s one way to make a stressful process more spiritual, and secure.