Month: June 2018

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More Scenes From a Road Trip

I love this man!
I am incorrigible, no matter where I am.
Redlands Public Library
Windmills outside Palm Springs
I've always referred to this as the Soylent Green processing plant.
Full moon rising at "magic hour" while passing Dome Rock on I-10 just east of the Arizona/California border
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And Here I Am…

…sitting in Starbucks filling out on-line employment applications and submitting resumes, something I had hoped I'd never have to do again.

Memories of Denver. Sigh.

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Quote of the Day

Obviously, this show is a little out of step with its misanthropy. It's a little out of step with where we're at culturally where it's a time of great optimism and we're all just knocked out daily by the warm bath of humanity that we find ourselves in these days. [Pauses, and then reveals he was being sarcastic.] No, it's a fucking disaster. It's a fucking total disaster. And every time I turn on the news I'm provided with fodder for our discontent. I think our timing might have been exactly right on.

Listen, I'm surrounded by the wonders of the creations of human beings. I have children and [series co-creator] Lisa Joy and I are reminded daily of how much beauty there is in humanity. But yeah, you turn on the fucking news and it's a shit show. And I've been reading a lot of history this season, a little bit connected to the show, but also just following the train of things I'm interested in, and it's depressing to realize how familiar some of these problems are, right? It's like we just can't figure these fucking things out. We come back to them again and again. It's as if there's a flaw—and this is very much the premise in our second season—there's a flaw in our code and it follows us around. Wherever we go, there we are. And we just can't get out of our own fucking way. All the beauty and incredible things we brought, and we just consistently find a way to fuck it up.

Much of the dramatic storytelling across the ages has concerned itself with "how will we overcome?" and personal growth and change. At a certain point you gotta fucking call it. We're not going to fix this shit, we're not going to figure it out. But there's an opportunity for the things that replace us to do so. And that's the dream of every parent, right? That their child doesn't face the same things they do, that they make better choices? But there does seem to be a pattern of behavior that follows us, that history echoes from the past, the same mistakes, the same foibles. So you say: At what point does this fix itself? Or are we just stuck this way?" ~ Jonathan Nolan, co-creator of Westworld on HBO, speaking to Entertainment Weekly

Maybe this just mirrors my general mood these days, but it sounds right on.

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Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge…



"You know, the old man himself hired me. So many years ago I can barely remember it. But he was very clear about my role here, about who I was supposed to be loyal to. I guess you could call it… my core drive. And this project the company started blurs the lines. You know? I'm just not sure who you're supposed to be loyal to in a world like that." ~ Ashley Stubbs, Head of Park Security letting Dolores/Charlotte know he knows what's going down here, Westworld (2018).

I squealed. The writing this year has been brilliant.

This season got off to a slow start, and I wasn't completely sure they would be able to match the excellence of Season One, but I was oh so wrong. IMHO, this season was equal to—if not actually better in places—than Season One.

It's going to be a long eighteen months until the arrival of Season Three…

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On The Road Again

Prior to my temporary loss of employment, Ben and I had planned on taking a mini vacation to Los Angeles. He had CPI training scheduled in San Bernadino and we decided a few days away from Phoenix would do us both good.

After last Wednesday however, we knew we'd have to cut our plans to conserve money. So while we still had to go, it was now a micro-vacation. Ben had to attend the training to maintain his CPI credentials, and we'd already volunteered to drive a friend's car over (she's moving to Encino at the end of the week to join her husband) so we were stuck doing the bare minimum. Three overnight stays were cut to one, and there would be no "fun" money available to spend, pretty much cutting out most everything we'd wanted to do in LA.

Monday morning we headed west from Phoenix.

Lots of memories tied to this route and the countless times I took it to and from San Francisco. I hadn't been back to California in any capacity since I left in 2002.

Dome Rock: "almost to Phoenix" when heading east, "almost to the California border" when heading west.
One of my favorite views along the route: I-10 coming down into the Coachella Valley.

The trip was uneventful, taking the expected five and a half hours. We checked into our motel in  (I'll link to my Yelp review at some point, but AVOID the Super 8 in Redlands at all cost), grabbed a bite to eat, and then headed west to Encino, neither of us realizing until we mapped it out how much longer we'd be on the road to deliver the car.

And speaking of mapping, how did anyone survive before GPS?!

Before I lost my job, of the things I originally wanted to do while we were there was to pay a visit to Amoeba Records. I hadn't visited it (or perhaps it was Tower I was thinking of—the memory's a little vague right now—since 1999). We'd pretty much axed all our previous plans of places to visit, but since it was actually only a brief detour on the way back to the motel, we made a quick visit and stopped for dinner. I loved Amoeba in San Francisco. I was not so impressed with the Hollywood location. I also remember it being on the northeast corner of an intersection, not the southwest, so I may actually be remembering a visit to Tower. It was nearly 20 years ago…

There was one record I wanted to buy, but I was an adult and didn't grab it: Grace Jones' Slave to the Rhythm 12" picture disk. It was only $7.98 and I should have thrown caution to the wind and grabbed it because the cheapest copy on Discogs I could find is going for over twice that—not including shipping.

Sadly, since we're in Redlands for the remainder of the day I'm not driving two hours back to get it.

I had one brief celebrity spotting: George Stults (@boraborageorge). Just as cute in person as his Instagram.

Lily of the Nile. I wish they'd grow in Phoenix, but sadly it's way too hot for them.

After finishing dinner we got back on the road.

Approximately two hours later, after stopping at Target to pick up some Febreze air/fabric freshener, we arrived back at our ashes-found-in-the-bathroom-sink "non-smoking" room. I actually slept pretty well, thankful that the place was at least quiet.

This morning we grabbed breakfast and I dropped Ben off at his training. We met up again for lunch and I'm currently sitting in the Redlands public libray waiting for his training to finish up so we can head home…

Apologies to any of my readers who live in LA or environs and love it, but I can't believe I ever wanted to live here.

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I Am Incorrigible

I was sitting at the same table with this guy and his girlfriend yesterday at CopperStar. We chatted a bit and then went back to our respective tasks. About a half hour later when another guy showed up and introduced himself to a guy at a different table and said, "So nice to finally meet you," this guy turned to his girlfriend and whispered, "Grindr." I burst out laughing, leaned over and said "That's exactly what I was thinking!"

Nice people. Hope to fun into them again.

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Shower Thoughts

When you die, it is entirely plausible that "you" will wake up, take off your high tech VR gear, and say "Wow, that game sucked!"

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It's About Fuckin' Time

I just got mine back from repair yesterday afternoon.

Via The Verge:

Apple has officially acknowledged that there are problems with its "butterfly" mechanism built into the keyboards of the recent MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops. The company is now offering an extended keyboard service program for computers affected by the issue, via iMore.

The extended warranty covers replacement of one or more keys or the whole keyboard, depending on the extent of users' problems, and it covers eligible laptops up to four years after the computer was bought at retail. (Every MacBook and MacBook Pro model with the butterfly switches seems to be included.) That's dramatically longer than the limited warranty the computers ship with or even Apple's extended AppleCare Plus.

According to Apple's service page, the program covers the following issues:

●  Letters or characters repeat unexpectedly
●  Letters or characters do not appear
●  Key(s) feel "sticky" or do not respond in a consistent manner

Complaints from users about Apple's recent laptop keyboards have grown in the past weeks and months, with people saying that the keyboards tend to fail entirely when encountering dust and the fragile design makes them difficult to repair. And while it's certainly taken longer than most users would probably have liked, it's good to see Apple is finally taking steps to solve the problem.

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Sticking My Toe Out Of The Box

I spent the better portion of yesterday with my friend Cindy. We met ten years ago when I was working at the hospital.

You know how once in a blue moon someone enters your life and from the very beginning you know they're going to be someone special to you? That's Cindy. We bonded almost immediately.

As I mentioned a couple days ago, when she learned I'd been laid off, she offered to hire me to set up her daughter's tech and help her retrieve photos from a bunch of old hard drives.

So mid-morning I drove out to her house thinking we'd just dive into it. But she had other plans. "Let's just sit and talk for a bit." She wanted to know exactly what happened so I described (to the best of my knowledge) what had gone down and she said, "Well there you go. You stuck your toe out of your box and they cut it off." She then went on to say that her own experience in healthcare—and she assumed it was the same, if not worse—in government work, taught her that most of the people who work in those fields are perfectly happy to work inside their own little boxes, never deviating from the proscribed script. Considering that "think outside the box" has become such a corporate cliche, the hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance when confronted with what actually happens is absolutely deafening. Do NOT think outside the box. Stay in your lane and don't deviate. And WHATEVER you do, don't make anyone else look bad—ESPECIALLY if they're higher up the food chain and you know more than they do.

That certainly describes my experience since moving from Config and Deploy to PC LAN support eighteen months ago. Instead of "continuous improvement," the motto at that place should be "If it's broke, don't fix it."

Interestingly, we both feel like this is ultimately going to be a good thing. I was ready to quit more times than I can tell you over the past six months, but never did anything about it because I hate interviewing. But frankly the reaction to being shot down a second time for finding a solution to an ongoing problem was my breaking point and swore that was the last time I was ever going to share anything with the team. Fuck 'em.

"You've only got a few more years in the workforce," she said, "You shouldn't be miserable every day for those remaining years."

We both admitted a hard-to-describe feeling that something good is coming from all this. After the initial shock, disbelief, and panic wore off, unlike other times when I've been laid off, I'm actually feeling pretty positive about the ultimate outcome.

Or maybe I'm just whistling past the graveyard, but I refuse to go there.

I remember many years ago telling another friend (who has a much more reactive, rather than proactive personality) that if you know changes need to be made in your life and you don't do anything about it, the Universe will step in and make those changes for you.

Whoopsie.

"You teach best what you need most to learn." ~ Richard Bach, The Messiah's Handbook

 

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Maybe a Blessing in Disguise?

My contract at the government agency I've called home for the last 28 months was terminated yesterday.

This is not completely surprising. While I'm not sure (and will probably never know) why this happened, I do have my suspicions.

About a month ago I found a solution to the "A referral was returned by the server" as well as "The system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation" errors that have been plaguing us on Win10 systems while trying to install some agency-written software since I first started working there. I shared this with the team and thought that was the end of it. Prior to finding the registry modification solution, we had to remove the machine from the domain, perform the installation, and then rejoin it.

Two weeks ago I got an email from my supervisor asking where I found this registry solution. "Google," was my response.

Then, yesterday morning we all received this email:

Team,

 About a month ago this solution was suggested.   While the solution below helps us to quickly resolve issues for our customers, it is a violation of security policy.

 If you are having problems installing this application or other access issues, please bring it to my attention and I will work with management on getting a resolution for you.

 All possible solutions need to be vetted by IP.

All I can figure out is that because I dared to think outside the box and find a fix (that actually reset to the group policy default after rebooting) to the problem that was not being addressed by Infrastructure Protection, I had committed that violation of security policy—evidently grounds for immediate dismissal.

Anyhow I received a couple of panicked phone calls/texts from my recruiter after I left for the day and finally got in touch with her last night around 8 pm.

Supposedly no reason was given to her for my contract termination. The manner in which this was done was also not surprising; I'd witnessed similar with other contractors. One day they're there, and the the next they're gone, followed up by a generic "So and so is no longer employed by the agency."

My biggest concern was retrieving my personal possessions. The recruiter said, "I'll coordinate to have your things returned. They don't want you back on campus." All she was concerned about was getting my access badge (like it hadn't been disabled the moment I left the building yesterday) cell phone, and laptop, so after explaining that the phone and laptop were both in my office, we agreed to meet this morning at the local Starbucks to hand off the badge and parking permit.

While waiting for her to arrive, I reached out to my colleagues and asked that they gather my stuff up. Unsurprisingly they hadn't heard of my dismissal at that point, but after verifying it with our supervisor they went through my desk and got everything together. After coordinating with my department H.R. rep, I was able to pick everything up a couple hours later.

Interestingly, yesterday morning—well ahead of any of this going down—I must've tapped into something because after them both laying dormant for the last year, I reactivated both my monster.com and my indeed.com profiles and uploaded new resumes.

I did this because I was so totally disgusted with the official reaction to solving this ongoing problem (this was not the first time a suggestion for improving a process had been shot down in spectacular fashion). I was done.

When my good friend Cindy learned of this turn of events, she extended an offer to hire me to set up her daughter's home office tech and to help her transfer years of photos from a half dozen naked hard drives onto her Mac. (Something she swears she was thinking of doing prior to any of this happening.) Needless to say, my day is booked tomorrow.

 

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You May Have Noticed

…that I haven't written much about the tragedy occurring along the Texas border. It's not because I don't want to. It's because I can't. Since news started breaking of the orange shitgibbon's tent cities/concentration camps, there has been a knot in my stomach that will not go away. With each passing day's news of some further atrocity, I am becoming fully convinced that demons are real and they walk among us, circling the dotard like moths to a flame.

People ask how Hitler was allowed to rise to power in Germany. This is how. We are witnessing history repeat itself. It's not like we weren't warned. The tiny glimmer of hope is that we do have history to look back on (unlike the Germans), and that this horrific treatment of children is causing a lot of people to wake up and say, "Not only no, but HELL no!"

Cheetolini may—may—have finally overstepped to such a degree that this will be his undoing, and will hopefully bring down the entire Republican party with him.

It can't happen soon enough.

If the GOP can't be bothered to care about children being shot dead in school, they certainly aren't going to worry about a few thousand brown babies being separated from their parents. In fact, they seem to be reveling in it.

I want to go Nuremberg on their asses. I want to see them all swinging from ropes.