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Want to Take Immediate Revenge on the House Republicans Who Approved Trumpcare?

Contributing money to the oppositional nominee of the 24 vulnerable Republican representatives out of the 217 who approved this travesty is a way to get them good and scared now, so they won’t try any more shenanigans.

This is so incredibly important, because they’ll be looking at fundraising, and so will the Senate.

Those 217 House Republicans didn’t just tie themselves to a cruel and vindictive bill. They did it to prop up the most widely-despised president in the history of the country. They deserve to be completely and utterly destroyed, and they must be an example to anyone else who would take the same cruel and harmful actions in the future.

It’s so early in the election cycle that we don’t yet know who every GOP incumbent’s Democratic opponent will be. In many cases, no challengers have emerged yet. In others, we can expect primaries. But at some point next year, we’ll have our candidates—and we already have a way to make sure they hit the ground well-funded, even if we don’t even know their names just yet.

The fantastic folks at ActBlue have created something called “nominee funds” that you can donate to immediately. These funds are organized on a district-by-district basis: You contribute now, and all money is held in escrow until after each state’s primary. At that point, the cash is transferred in one fell swoop to the Democratic nominee, who can then start using the money for his or her general election campaign pronto.

The following 24 “yes” votes are among the most endangered Republicans up for re-election next year, so we’re adding all of these districts to ActBlue’s new slate of nominee funds:

DISTRICT REPUBLICAN DISTRICT REPUBLICAN
AZ-02 McSally, Martha IL-06 Roskam, Peter
CA-10 Denham, Jeff IL-13 Davis, Rodney
CA-21 Valadao, David IL-14 Hultgren, Randy
CA-25 Knight, Steve KS-03 Yoder, Kevin
CA-39 Royce, Ed MI-11 Trott, Dave
CA-45 Walters, Mimi MN-02 Lewis, Jason
CA-48 Rohrabacher, Dana MN-03 Paulsen, Erik
CA-49 Issa, Darrell NE-02 Bacon, Don
FL-25 Diaz-Balart, Mario NJ-11 Frelinghuysen, Rodney
FL-26 Curbelo, Carlos TX-07 Culberson, John
IA-01 Blum, Rod TX-32 Sessions, Pete
IA-03 Young, David VA-02 Taylor, Scott

A big surge in donations now would have huge salutary effects right away: It would both terrify Republicans and boost Democratic efforts to recruit good candidates. Of course, it would also help us defeat these Republicans next year. And as it happens, 24 is exactly the number of seats we need to take back the House.

So make them pay: Donate $1 right now to each of the Democratic nominee funds targeting vulnerable House Republicans who voted to destroy access to health care.

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On The Possibility of Being Visited By Intelligent Alien Life

It’s a long read and not exactly for those with short-attention spans, but well worth the time if you have some to spare.

From Reddit: via WilWheaton.com:

I am not going to address the actual Roswell landing, what I am going to address is any alien life coming to Earth at all. Ever.

I study astronomy as a hobby, I have ever since I was a kid. One of the questions anyone who studies astronomy will inevitably wonder is if alien life exists (it absolutely does/has/will) and if it has ever (or will ever) come to Earth (it has not, and will not). It’s sad to be an astronomy lover and a sci-fi fan and know with such certainty that this has never occurred.

So let me explain….

THE SIZE OF THE GALAXY

This is not to be taken lightly or overlooked. The galaxy is absolutely enormous. I cannot stress that enough. Our galaxy is a barred-spiral galaxy, and looks something like this. So how big is that? Well…

  1. In terms of distances, the Milky Way is 1,000 light years “thick”, and has a diameter of 100,000 – 120,000 light years. (As per NASA) So let’s imagine the Milky Way as a massive cylinder in space, what is its volume? Well, volume of a cylinder = radius2 * height * pi. That gives us approximately 10 TRILLION cubic light-years. That’s a whole lot of space, and that’s not including the massive amounts of dark matter in the Milky Way or the massive Halo of stars that surrounds the Milky Way.
  2. So that is a hell of a lot of light-years, but what, exactly, is a light-year? In case you don’t know what a light year is, it is the distance that light travels in 1 full year, which is about 5.8 trillion miles (or, 5,800,000,000,000 miles). The nearest star is 4.3 light years away, meaning it is about (4.3) x (5.8 trillion miles) away. NASA explains it quite well.
  3. So, again, let’s go back to our imaginary cylinder that is the Milky Way galaxy. That sucker is 10 trillion cubic light years of volume. And a light year is 5.8 trillion miles. Therefore, every cubic light year is 2.03 x 1038 cubic miles. This means that the volume of the galaxy is 2.03 x 1051 cubic miles, which looks like 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 mi3. That is the volume of the cylinder that is our galaxy. (thanks to /u/jackfg, /u/stjuuv, /u/hazie, /u/Wianie, and everyone else who pointed out my earlier erroneous calculation!)

TRAVEL

Okay, you admit, the Milky Way galaxy is unfathomably huge. And, to top it off, it’s only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies. BUT, as you correctly would point out, most of the “volume” we calculated previously is empty space, so you don’t really need to search empty space for other lifeforms, you just need to look at stars and planets. Great point, but it gets you nowhere. Why? Well…

  1. Even thought we’ve cut down our search to just the stars, we still have the astronomical problem of actually getting to them. Traveling from the Earth to the Moon takes about 1.2 seconds for light. You can see it in a neat little .gif right here. So how long did it take our astronauts in a rocket-fueled spaceship? It took the Apollo missions about 3 days and 4 hours to get there. So a trip that takes light about 1.2 seconds would take a rocket-propelled ship about 3.16 days, give or take. It takes light 8 minutes to get to the Sun. It takes light 4.3 years to get to the nearest star. Now just stop and imagine how long that trip to the nearest star would take going at the speed it took us to get to the Moon. A dozen generations of human beings would live and die in that amount of time. The greatest technology we have and all of Earth’s resources could not get these hypothetical astronauts even out of our Solar System. (And in doing so, the radiation would fry them like bacon, micro-meteorites would turn them to swiss-cheese, and so on).
  2. So, our hypothetical aliens are not traveling on rockets. They simply can’t be. The distances are enormous, the dangers unfathomable, and they don’t have infinite time to be getting this mission done. Remember when I said that galaxy is 100,000+ light years across? Imagine traveling that in something that takes generations to go 4.3 light years. There quite literally has not been enough time since the Big Bang for such a flight to be completed. So, clearly, anything making these journeys would need a method of travel that simply doesn’t exist. We can posit anything from solar sails that accelerate a craft up to 99% the speed of light, or anything else that allows travelers to accelerate up to relativistic speeds in between star systems. The problem, however, is that acceleration/deceleration (as well as travel between these stars, maneuvering while in flight, and so forth) still takes years and years and years and years. And that’s not including actually searching these star systems for any kind of life once you get there. You see, once you decelerate this craft within a star system, you still have to mosey your ass up to every single planet and poke around for life. You might think you could just look at each one, but it’s not even possible for a telescope to be built that can see a house on Earth from the Moon, so good luck finding life when you’re on the other side of the solar system (and that’s if the planet’s even in view when your spaceship arrives). And how, exactly, are you going to poke around from planet to planet? What will you do to replenish the ship’s resources? You certainly aren’t going to be carrying water and food to last until the end of time, and without the infinite energy of the Sun beating over your head, you’re going to have a tough time replenishing and storing energy to be doing this mission even after you get as far as Saturn, where the Sun becomes significantly smaller in the “sky”. So the logistics of getting from one star to the other are huge, unmanageable, a complete mess for propulsion systems of any kind. Everything Earth has could be pored into the mission and we wouldn’t get out of the Oort Cloud. And even if we did, then what? Cross your fingers and hope you can replenish supplies in the nearest star? How are you going to keep going after that? How suicidal is this mission? And that’s just to the nearest star. What happens if the ship needs repairs? How many of these missions can you send out? If you only send out one, you’re looking at taking eons just to search 1% of our galaxy, but the resources to send out a fleet of these ships doesn’t exist. And how will you even know they succeeded? Any communication they send back will take half a decade to get here because those transmissions move at light speed, and that’s IF they manage to point their transmitter in the right direction so that we can even hear them. It would take us decades to even realize we’d need to send a second ship if the first one failed.
  3. Now remember how I said that the volume of the Milky Way wasn’t relevant since you’re just looking for stars and planets, not combing all of empty space? That wasn’t 100% accurate, because now you’re starting to realize that you actually have to traverse all of that empty space. To get from star to star requires crossing those unparalleled voids. That whatever-the-fucking-however-huge quadra-trillio-billions of miles is suddenly looking a bit more massive again. And keep in mind, all of these deadly, insurmountable problems I’ve laid bare are just getting to the nearest star from Earth. And there are a lot of stars in the Milky Way, as we will shortly see.
  4. EDIT TO INCLUDE DEATH: It’s also worth noting that when traveling at relativistic speeds you are going to have an awful time maneuvering this ship. So what do you do when a rock the size of a fist is headed right for your vessel? You die, that’s what, because you are not getting out of its way. And that’s if you see it, but you most likely would never know. Micrometeors and space dust smaller than your pinkie-nail would shred your ship to absolute pieces. Space is not empty, it is full of small little things, and a ship with a propulsion system would slam into all of them on its journey. I cannot find the source, but a paper I read years ago proposed the smallest “shield” needed to safely do this on one trip would be miles thick of metal all around a ship, and that’s only if the ship was as big as a house. Insanity. Propulsion systems will not work for this voyage if they’re going that fast.
  5. THE POINT BEING: So clearly, at this point, we have to resort to magic. That’s right, no-kidding magic. We’re talking about Faster-than-Light travel, because anything else is utterly doomed. And honestly, there isn’t much to say on FTL travel, because it’s pure speculative magic. It’s so crazy that in accomplishing it you create time-travel, time paradoxes, and you break all of special relativity into nice tiny chaotic pieces. But, as this is hypothetical, I’m going to grant you faster than light travel. No explanation, we’ll just use MAGIC and be done with it, but if you’re curious, here’s some reading on the matter.
  6. Finally, we are going to keep all of this travel within the Milky Way galaxy. Why? Well, we’re staying confined to just the Milky Way because, quite frankly, it’s already an absurd scenario without magnifying all the problems by a magnitude of 100+ billion more galaxies. As stated earlier, there are hundreds of billions of galaxies (in fact, when Hubble looked out into a patch of sky smaller than your pinky nail, it saw 10,000 galaxies, but there are untold-numbers of galaxies too far away to see, so that number is the minimum in just that patch of sky. There’s a lot of galaxies in the universe).

SO, to recap: our hypothetical aliens are from the Milky Way, they are searching in the Milky Way, and they can travel faster than light. PROBLEM SOLVED, right? Now our aliens will inevitably find Earth and humans, right…? Yeah, about that…

STARS AND PLANETS

Okay, so I’ve granted you not only that we aren’t searching all of the massive volume of the Milky Way (just the stars), I’m now granting you faster-than-light travel (with no explanation or justification, but that’s how we have to play this game). But I still haven’t even brought out the big guns, because the biggest and most important question of all hasn’t been addressed: How many stars and planets are the aliens actually looking through, just in the Milky Way galaxy? Well….

  1. There are anywhere from 100 billion – 400 billion stars in just the Milky Way galaxy. Determining this number involves calculations of mass, volume, gravitational attraction, observation, and more. This is why there is such a disparity between the high and low estimates. We’ll go with a number of 200 billion stars in the Milky Way for our purposes, simply because it’s somewhat in between 100 billion and 400 billion but is still conservative in its estimation. So our hypothetical aliens have to “only” search 200 billion stars for life.
  2. Now we’re saying the aliens have faster than light travel. Let’s, in fact, say that the amount of time it takes them to travel from one star to the other is a piddly 1 day. So 1 day to travel from 1 star to the next.
  3. Yet, we still haven’t addressed an important point: How many planets are they searching through? Well, it is unknown how many planets there are in the galaxy. This Image shows about how far out humans have been able to find planets from Earth. Not very far, to say the least. The primary means of finding planets from Earth is by viewing the motions of a star and how it is perturbed by the gravity of its orbiting planets. We call these planets Exoplanets. Now, what’s really fascinating is that scientists have found exoplanets even around stars that should not have them, such as pulsars.
  4. So our aliens have their work cut out for them, because it looks like they more or less have to search every star for planets. And then search every planet for life. So, again HOW MANY PLANETS? Well, we have to be hypothetical, but let’s assume an average of 4-5 planets per star. Some stars have none, some have lots, and so on. That is about 800 billion – 1 trillion planets that must be investigated. We gave our aliens 1 day to travel to a star, let’s give them 1 day per planet to get to that planet and do a thorough search for life.
  5. Now why can’t the aliens just narrow this number down and not look at some planets and some stars? Because they, like us, can’t know the nature of all life in the universe. They would have to look everywhere, and they would have to look closely.

Summary: So we’ve given our aliens just under 1 week per solar system to accurately search for life in it, give or take, and that includes travel time. We’ve had to do this, remember, by essentially giving them magic powers, but why not, this is hypothetical. This would mean, just to search the Milky Way for life (by searching every star) and just to do it one time, would take them approximately 3 BILLION years, give or take. That is 1/5 the age of the universe. That is almost the age of the planet Earth itself. If the aliens had flown through our solar system before there was life, they wouldn’t be back until the Sun had turned into a Red Giant and engulfed our planet in flames. Anything short of millions of space-ships, with magical powers, magically searching planets in a matter of a day for life, would simply be doomed.

Oh, but wait, maybe they can narrow it down by finding us with our “radio transmissions”, right? They’re watching Hitler on their tvs so they know where to find us! Yeah, well…

ON VIEWING EARTH AND RADIO TRANSMISSIONS

Regardless of whether or not our magical aliens have magical faster-than-light travel, there is one thing that does not travel faster than light, and that thing is…. light. So how far out have the transmissions from Earth managed to get since we started broadcasting? About this far. So good luck, aliens, because you’re going to need it. This is, of course, assuming the transmissions even get that far, because recent studies have shown that after a couple tiny light years those transmissions turn into noise and are indistinguishable from the background noise of the universe. In other words, they become a grain of sand on an infinite beach. No alien is going to find our tv/radio transmissions, possibly not even on the nearest star to Earth.

So what if they have super-duper telescopes? Well, the size it would take for a telescope to view the flag on the Moon just from Earth would need to be 650 feet in diameter. And that’s if you knew exactly what you were looking for, and where, and were essentially on top of the thing. Seeing details of any planet like Earth from any distance outside the solar system is 100% impossible. Seeing details once inside the solar system would take massive telescopes, and even then you’d need to know where the planets are to look at, you’d need to know what you were looking for, and that’s assuming the aliens you’re looking for on those planets are just strolling around on the surface. After all, most of Earth is ocean and intelligent life could have easily evolved there and not on land. And what about underground? You need to study these worlds pretty carefully (though, granted, Earth has us just right up on the surface making it easier once you are actually staring right at the planet).

TIME

There is one final nail in this coffin and that is one of time. Human beings have only existed on this planet for the past few tens of thousands of years. We’ve only had civilization for 10,000 years. In other words, if the entire history of the Earth were represented as a 24 hour clock, humans have existed for a grand total of 1.92 seconds out of that 24 hour clock. The point is that this would mean an alien would not only need to find Earth within the entire unfathomable galaxy, they would need to find it within a specific time-frame. It’s not as though we’ll be here for billions of years while they search, and if they are even a fraction too early, we won’t exist yet.

Think of it this way. If it “only” took the aliens 100 million years to comb the entire galaxy for life on Earth, they would have .0001% of that amount of time as a window in which they could find humans at all. To find human civilization is .00001% of that time. To find us as we are now is an even smaller fraction. In fact, the dinosaurs went extinct 60,000,000 years ago, so even if they make a return trip, and if they were last here when the dinosaurs went extinct, they won’t be due back for 40 million+ years. And that’s if we give them ultra-super-duper magical powers so they can scan the whole galaxy in “just” 100 million years.

So our aliens are not only finding our invisible planet in a crazy-huge galaxy, they are finding it in a VERY specific and narrow amount of time. Outside of that, they’d be far more likely to find our planet as a frozen wasteland, a molten slag-ball from pole to pole, or just find dinosaurs. Again, IF they found it at all, ever, which doesn’t seem terribly likely in the first place.

SUMMARY

So, as discussed:

  1. It is impossible for aliens to directly view Earth, the planet, and certainly not details of it from outside the solar system.
  2. It is impossible for them to pick up transmissions from Earth even at our nearest star.
  3. Therefore they have to actually go solar system to solar system in order to hunt down life, even intelligent life.
  4. The distances they must travel are enormous.
  5. The number of stars they have to search is enormous.
  6. The window they have to find us in is extremely small, so that even if they made a return trip it would be long after we are extinct.
  7. Combining these amounts of time needed, the amount of space to be searched, and the TINY fractional window they have to accomplish this in, we are looking at something that is an impossibility compounded by an impossibility.

And that’s not even getting into the fact that we’re positing the aliens have existed for this long. How many alien intelligences are there in our galaxy? What if there’s only one that ever pops up in any galaxy? What if there have been 1,000 others in the Milky Way but they’re already all extinct? What if they don’t exist yet? These are utterly unanswerable, which is why I don’t go much into what the aliens are or how many there might be, but it does provide further layers upon layers upon layers of problems. The mess that one need sift through to even begin to hope for aliens bumbling into Earth and start probing us is enormous, unfathomable, immeasurable.

So, I hope you can now see why Roswell is pure crap. It’s a roundabout way of getting there, but I can say with absolute certainty two things:

  1. Given the massive size of the universe and the time it has existed, it is 100% certain that alien intelligence exists (or has existed) somewhere else in the universe.
  2. It is 100% guaranteed they have never, and will never, find us on this planet.

EDIT: Some people balked at my 100%. To me, 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999…% is 100%.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re obviously interested in this subject and will find the entire conversation thread fascinating…

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Another Timely Blast From The Past

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

10 Questions to Help Determine if Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened

From a great little post over at Alternet:

This simple quiz will let you know if you’re being oppressed.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing.

2. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those two guys in line down at the courthouse.

3. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am being forced to use birth control.
B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control.

4. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to pray privately.
B) I am not allowed to force others to pray the prayers of my faith publicly.

5. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) Being a member of my faith means that I can be bullied without legal recourse.
B) I am no longer allowed to use my faith to bully gay kids with impunity.

6. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to purchase, read or possess religious books or material.
B) Others are allowed to have access books, movies and websites that I do not like.

7. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) My religious group is not allowed equal protection under the establishment clause.
B) My religious group is not allowed to use public funds, buildings and resources as we would like, for whatever purposes we might like.

8. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) Another religious group has been declared the official faith of my country.
B) My own religious group is not given status as the official faith of my country.

9. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community.

10. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home.
B) Public school science classes are teaching science.

Scoring key:

If you answered “A” to any question, then perhaps your religious liberty is indeed at stake. You and your faith group have every right to now advocate for equal protection under the law. But just remember this one little, constitutional, concept: this means you can fight for your equality—not your superiority.

If you answered “B” to any question, then not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others. This is the point where I would invite you to refer back to the tenets of your faith, especially the ones about your neighbors.

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A Repost

Looking over some old entries today from 2012 and ran across this one. While it doesn’t apply quite as much to my present position as it did when I was basically the only technical support available at CNIC, it still resonates…

Signs of I.T. Burnout

  • You wake up in the morning and think of 50 different excuses to call in sick because you just can’t face another day of it.
  • You no longer even feel the need to pretend to be cheerful and nice when talking to end users. You answer them with the fewest amount of words possible and possibly a grunt thrown in for good measure.
  • When you sit at your desk and stare through your monitor thinking of all the other things you would rather be doing, and one of them is having a urinary catheter put in.
  • You stop hearing what people are saying to you and just think about how much you would enjoy smashing them in the face with your keyboard—repeatedly—just so you can go back to staring through your monitor.
  • It feels funny when you smile.

I’m so there.

Having been on both sides of the Tech Support fence, I can pretty safely say that the state of technical support from most major vendors these days is so abysmal that an actual good support experience is almost shockingly noteworthy. I try to do my best, but there are days where I simply don’t give a fuck. I’ve already been called out for having an attitude, but thankfully the number of “You ROCK!” nominations that keep coming in for me from my end users offsets any stray comment my boss receives.  And on the other side of the fence, businesses in general have begun to recognize that the grand support-offshoring experiment that started in the late 1990s has well and truly failed. But even before the trend really got underway, tech support was hardly a glamorous experience, either for the customer or the poor phone monkey stuffed into minuscule cube, earning a hair above minimum wage.

The story is the same for customer-facing and internal help desks alike: no one likes calling them, and no one likes working them. It’s a common bit of conventional wisdom that the average time it takes for a newly hired tech support worker to go from bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to suicidal and burnt-out is about 18 months; the job can be notoriously hard on the psyche and the soul. It’s the very definition of Sysiphean—no matter how many times you answer the customers’ questions, there will always be more customers with the exact same questions.

Repetitive tasks with no relief can be psychologically stressful. This leads to a feeling of resentment on the part of a lot of support staff, who can come to regard customers as unendingly, unerringly stupid; conversely, when confronted with a sighing, obviously annoyed Nick Burns-ish creature groaning at them, the immediate response of most customers is mistrust, reticence to comply with directions, and sometimes outright anger.

Non-IT users need to learn their computer/device better. I see too many people who still don’t know the difference between Windows and Office. Granted computers etc. are getting easier to use, but end users need to at least try to learn some basic terminology besides “The Internet isn’t working.”

How to do this? First, make the technology easier. Apple does this the best. (And my experience with Apple Tech Support has been, without fail, exemplary.) Facebook is right behind them. Google has some good consumer offerings as well and is catching up rapidly while still keeping higher end functionality. I’ve personally had to deal with software that requires a process that has no documentation, takes 2 hours to install and required manual intervention by a person for most of that time. Only one question… WHY? If you can’t answer that succinctly in a few words, or it sounds like “we don’t have the resources to invest in that yet,” you are doing it wrong. I’m talking to you, McKesson.

Second, pay tech support people more and give them some respect! Customer service is hard. Programmers can’t do it and neither can engineers. They think they can, but it requires training just like any other position. We have to stop treating customer service like sweat shop labor. That’s how we got the support outsourcing started because some bozo thought we could just put warm bodies on the phone to do what a computer could not. Tech Support staff are the E.R. physicians of the 21st century, yet they’re still treated like janitors. Even after your system crashes and we’re called upon to get it working again, we’re never given the respect that little bit of saving-your-ass deserves; more often than not, we’re blamed for the calamity. I’m all for putting the right person in the position, be they Indian or American, but pick people who have skills, respect them and pay them, and eventually you’ll have good people wanting to go into these positions.

Finally, the best tech support has people who can think critically and logically. It’s sad, but we are losing our ability to do that in the United States. Increase investment in public schools and increase time spent on logical problem solving in general. Customer service is about solving someone’s problem, not just smiling and making the customer feel good about themselves. Yeah, I want the person to be friendly and personable, but if they can’t take two seconds to think about my problem and make a decision… any decision, then the first two points aren’t going to help at all.

After the 6,437,193rd time I’ve worked through your exact problem, I have an idea or two about what might be wrong. When I ask you to reboot, check a setting, or rename a backup file and restart the program, it’s because these steps fix the problem most of the time. You may be honest, but approximately 56% of the callers will lie about trying a simple reboot, and the other 44% won’t even have considered doing that before calling in the problem.

Speaking of lying, when I go to a PC and see a half dozen toolbars covering 25% of their browser and ask, “How did all this get installed?” the answer will be, “I don’t know. It just showed up.”

When I walk you three three procedures and have you check to see if the problem is fixed after each one, it’s not that I’m an idiot (correlation does not imply causation). Rather, it’s because your particular problem sometimes has multiple causes, and if your system is partially hosed, we can avoid some of the steps. When it’s completely munged, though, we must go through the steps to fix the little problems before the big problem goes away.

I am the entire unofficial “Help Desk” for my company and to be perfectly honest, while I still try to provide good, friendly customer support to my users, I’m rapidly coming to loathe every aspect of my job. I’ve been at this company for a little over a year, but I’ve been doing Tech Support work as my sole source of income since 1997. For the ten years prior to that, it was secondary to my primary job function, so I’m certainly no stranger to the scene. My phone ringing has become like the calling of some satanic beast, here to rip out another chunk of my soul, so I finally reached the point where I turned the ringer off. I figure if it’s a real problem, they’ll (a) leave a message, (b) send me an email, or (c) come to my desk. What I learned early on is that with most problems, if you don’t immediately run to hold the user’s hand, 90% of the time they’ll figure it out on their own or the problem will spontaneously go away on its own.

I’m looking for a way out of here, but I’ve been at this long enough to know that in this field the basic story line and personalities I have to deal with on a daily basis will stay the same no matter where I go; only the faces will change. The only saving grace to this job is that I get here a half hour before most everyone else, which means I get some time in the morning without having to see or hear from anyone and I beat the traffic going home in the afternoon. It’s also insanely easy to get to from our new apartment, regardless of the weather.

A good number of the users at my company admit to being computer illiterate and they have no patience for the time it may take to troubleshoot a problem. They seem to have this idea that my job is simply a matter or pressing a button or tapping a key and everything in their world that breaks will be put back together in a heartbeat. But it’s not like many real problems—problems that might require I invest a few brain cells in solving them—ever come up.

Most of my day is spent:

  • unlocking accounts (Turn OFF your CAPS LOCK KEY,  you MONKEYS!)
  • resetting passwords (You were out for a week and you’ve forgotten it? Is it really THAT hard to remember? You’ve been typing it EVERY day for the last three months!)
  • telling people what the URL is to our web mail system
  • walking them through the steps to get their email to their smartphone. (Most of these people shouldn’t be allowed to have one)
  • Troubleshooting or requesting service for printers (I hate printers. Why are we still printing SO DAMN MUCH?!)
  • showing people how to reduce their mailbox size when they have gone over the limit (they never remember to empty the deleted items folder)
  • creating PST files in Outlook so they can horde every single personal cat-video, inspirational message, and Obama-is-a-communist-Kenyan-ursurper email they have received from the beginning of time

I guess you get the idea.

Terminology is also big problem with my users. They can’t tell the difference between a desktop computer and a laptop that is attached to a docking station. They don’t know the difference between a computer and a monitor (your mean the TV thing?) Before I created a spreadsheet with all the hard information I would ever need to get from my users, if I asked a user for his/her computer name, I can guarantee that I’d either their employee ID, log in name, email address, the computer service tag, the model of the computer or  “It’s a Dell. Does that help?”

When I ask for their Windows password, 9 times of of 10 I’ll get, “Is that the one I use first thing in the morning to log in?”

Seriously.

They refer to their web browser as “The Internet” and Windows as “The Windows.” Try getting a user to tell the difference between Windows XP and Windows 7. It’s like trying to teach a newborn how to drive a dump truck. Same goes for Office; there’s no hope when it comes to that. Hell, most of my users can’t even figure out how to create shortcuts on their desktop or task bar.

And they’re terrified of trying anything on their own!

They don’t know what it means when I ask them for a folder path or drive path to whatever calamity they have gotten themselves into. They only know it as the “R” drive or “P” driver or “I” drive.

The company I work for is in the medical insurance business and therefore rakes in vast amounts of cash. But no matter how much myself, or the two I.T. Directors I’ve now had the pleasure of working for have pleaded with the holders of the purse strings, it’s only very recently that they started providing basic, strictly voluntary Excel training to the staff. Until that point, they just gave these people a computer and said go to work! So whenever someone new gets hired I can almost guarantee at least 3-4 calls a day from this person, just trying to help them navigate the scary magic box on their desk.

In conclusion, Tech Support is Hell. It has been my observation over these past fifteen years that a good majority of the people who work in the field are tortured souls, and very few of us actually like this job after the initial rush wears off. Users are, for the most part, incompetent, and I often wonder how companies manage to stay in business considering this staggering level of willful stupidity. It’s 2012, for chrissake! Personal computers have been a part of corporate life for the last thirty years, and yet there are workers in their 20s who still view them as some sort of incomprehensible technology that landed from another planet. The bottom line is that American businesses need to put more focus on training their employees on how to use the thing they spend 99% of their work day in front of.

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How Naïeve We Were…

Not to realize that Romney was just an opening act.

Profile of a Sociopath

  • Glibness and Superficial Charm
  • Manipulative and Conning
    They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
  • Grandiose Sense of Self
    Feels entitled to certain things as “their right.”
  • Pathological Lying
    Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
  • Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
    A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
  • Shallow Emotions
    When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
  • Incapacity for Love
  • Need for Stimulation
    Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
  • Callousness/Lack of Empathy
    Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others’ feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
  • Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
    Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
  • Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
    Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet “gets by” by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc.
  • Irresponsibility/Unreliability
    Not concerned about wrecking others’ lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
  • Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
    Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.
  • Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
    Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.
  • Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
    Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.

Source

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Pre-Existing

A short list of pre-existing conditions not covered under #Trumpcare:

• AIDS/HIV
• acid reflux
• acne
• ADD
• addiction
• Alzheimer’s/dementia
• anemia
• aneurysm
• angioplasty
• anorexia
• anxiety
• arrhythmia
• arthritis
• asthma
• atrial fibrillation
• autism
• bariatric surgery
• basal cell carcinoma
• bipolar disorder
• blood clot
• breast cancer
• bulimia
• bypass surgery
• celiac disease
• cerebral aneurysm
• cerebral embolism
• cerebral palsy
• cerebral thrombosis
• cervical cancer
• colon cancer
• colon polyps
• congestive heart failure
• COPD
• Crohn’s disease
• cystic fibrosis
• DMD
• depression
• diabetes
• disabilities
• Down syndrome
• eating disorder
• enlarged prostate
• epilepsy
• glaucoma
• gout
• heart disease
• heart murmur
• heartburn
• hemophilia
• hepatitis C
• herpes
• high cholesterol
• hypertension
• hysterectomy
• kidney disease
• kidney stones
• kidney transplant
• leukemia
• lung cancer
• lupus
• lymphoma
• mental health issues
• migraines
• MS
• muscular dystrophy
• narcolepsy
• nasal polyps
• obesity
• OCD
• organ transplant
• osteoporosis
• pacemaker
• panic disorder
• paralysis
• paraplegia
• Parkinson’s disease
• pregnancy
• restless leg syndrome
• schizophrenia
• seasonal affective disorder
• seizures
• sickle cell disease
• skin cancer
• sleep apnea
• sleep disorders
• stent
• stroke
• thyroid issues
• tooth disease
• tuberculosis
• ulcers

So in other words, pretty much everything, and what Congress has just said is, GO FUCK YOURSELVES!

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I Find This Sad, But At The Same Time…

…strangely reassuring and well worth a few minutes of your time to read in full.

Western civilization will completely collapse in the next 200 years

Hari Seldon is a fictional character in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series who studied broad patterns of human behavior, and through that study was able to predict the collapse of civilization. The general principle is simple: large masses of humans are similar to large masses of atoms in a gas. Predicting the behavior of any individual atom is nearly impossible, but the prediction of the behavior of a gas–how it will react to changes in temperature and pressure, for example–is simple and deterministic. You don’t need to know how each individual atom will behave, because in the aggregate masses of atoms show statistical properties that are invariant. Isaac Asimov’s premise in the Foundation books is that large masses of people are predictable for the same reason: the large-scale flow of action is driven by statistical factors that will cause predictable patterns to emerge, even if the behaviors of individuals cannot.

So call me Hari Seldon… because I’ve been looking at some patterns recently, and I’m convinced Western Civilization will completely collapse within the next 200 years.

(continue reading)

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Cautiously Optimistic

From The Palmer Report:

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has never backed away from a fight with Donald Trump – and he’s tended to win those battles. Schneiderman has succeeded in taking down the phony Trump University and the fraudulent Trump Foundation. He’s also reportedly bringing state level RICO indictments against the Trump organization (link). And today, Schneiderman is also going after Trump over the AHCA.

Here’s the official statement which New York AG Eric Schneiderman released today: “The healthcare bill passed today by House Republicans is a threat to the health and wellbeing of all New Yorkers. In addition to the devastating impact this bill would have on every New Yorker’s access to affordable healthcare, the legislation that passed the House today is unconstitutional in several critical respects—and I stand ready to challenge it in court.”

It continues: “First, House Republicans’ attempt to effectively deny women access to reproductive healthcare services is a cruel and unconstitutional attack on women’s rights – especially the most vulnerable. Further, the Collins-Faso Amendment is a cynical ploy by House Republican leadership and President Trump that exceeds Congress’s authority by interfering with how New York has long elected to fund its Medicaid program. This bill threatens to slash essential healthcare services for millions of New Yorkers who need them the most. For these reasons, if this disastrous and unconstitutional healthcare bill is ultimately signed into law, I will challenge it in court.” (link)

If the Senate votes no on the AHCA, or if the Democrats are able to filibuster it, then it will fail, and Obamacare will remain intact. But even if it does pass, it’s clear the battle will just be beginning. And if New York can get the AHCA ruled unconstitiutional, it would be nullified in all fifty states. If the Democrats then win the midterms, they could reinstate Obamacare. So the fight against the AHCA is just getting started. 

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Throwback Thursday

 My freshman yearbook photo.

The Top 10 Songs that year…
1. Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree, Tony Orlando and Dawn
2. Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, Jim Croce
3. Killing Me Softly With His Song, Roberta Flack
4. Let’s Get It On, Marvin Gaye
5. My Love, Paul McCartney and Wings
6. Why Me, Kris Kristofferson
7. Crocodile Rock, Elton John
8. Will It Go Round in Circles, Billy Preston
9. You’re So Vain, Carly Simon
10. Touch Me In the Morning, Diana Ros

Yes, I’m old.

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Be Careful What You Ask For

Well, we dodged at least one bullet today. 45’s extra super special “Religious Freedom” EO doesn’t explicitly allow discrimination against LGBT folks as previously feared. It’s more of a feel-good-but-has-no-real-teeth-behind-it proclamation that might make it easier for churches and other religious groups to engage in politics without endangering their tax-exempt status. It does not appear to have any backdoor anti-gay discrimination language and its scope would be simply limited to employer-provided insurance and churches which endorse candidates. While the “christian” reich-wing wants full repeal of the Johnson amendment that put the whole church-taxation trigger in place, that isn’t going to happen by way of a simple, crayon-scrawled Executive Order.

It should be noted that if there is anything in the order that runs counter to the Johnson Amendment, it cannot take effect without congressional action to repeal Jonson, but right on cue—because of course—one pencil-neck white male republican congressman from Indiana stood up today and advocated for a full repeal of said amendment.

Nothing triggers those Whitejesus® freaks like that pesky separation of church-and-state thing.

According to an article over at The Hill, “some social conservatives voiced frustration the order does not include provisions to allow them to oppose LGBT rights on religious grounds.” While an earlier draft of the religious liberty order would have let federal contractors discriminate against LGBT employees based on faith beliefs, Thursday’s version did not include such provisions, so naturally their panties are in a twist. Those “social conservatives” don’t really care about “religious liberty” in any other context, so since this EO doesn’t explicitly let them screw over gay people, they naturally aren’t going to be happy.

Poor babies!

But the question I have (sort of prompted by the graphic above) is what happens when say, oh…I dunno…a Muslim congregation or Imam starts advocating politically? Is that allowed, or will it prompt a visit from Homeland Security?

Oh stupid me…I already know the answer to that! “Religious Liberty” only applies to Christians!

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Snowflake-in-Chief

From The Guardian:

Trumpism is a movement built on victimhood. It holds that Americans are unemployed because immigrants stole their jobs. It argues that people of color are diluting the culture of America and that LGBT people having rights is an attack on the traditional family. Its slogan, Make America Great Again, speaks to that victimhood. We were great once. We aren’t anymore, because of those people.

Saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” is enough to inspire a meltdown. Nando’s, a chicken chain, recently “triggered” multiple Trump supporters by simply handing out “#everyoneiswelcome” posters in their DC stores. The act of simply existing while transgender sends some into a tizzy.

The reality is that, yes, we actually are all unique, no matter our political leanings. Having strong reactions to things does not necessarily imply weakness or fragility, and is not the same thing as being triggered. The phenomenon of living in an ideological bubble where opinions that align with our own are considered good and opinions that challenge your beliefs are considered bad is not unique to either party or any movement. It is also not the same thing as a safe space.

Not every protest is a tantrum. Using speech to criticize speech is not censorship. Dismissing the struggles of marginalized communities as “identity politics” is intellectually lazy. Sometimes, something just is racist or sexist, and if describing it as such is enough to make you have a meltdown, then maybe you’re the fragile one. I’m talking to you, Donald.

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Quote of the Day

We cannot allow Pence and the rest of the Trump team to get away with decisions that the right-wing would have burned Hillary Clinton at the stake for – but of course, she would never have made those decisions because Clinton is a true patriot and is not beholden to the oligarchs in the Kremlin.” ~ Natalie Dickinson

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Quote of the Day

I’m very positive about California, but then again, the rest of the country, you have to realize that just under 50% of the population are very racist. They voted for their racism. That’s why the polls were never accurate because no one wanted to admit their racism. Before the election, I said they would go into the voting booth and say ‘Fuck Transgender bathrooms, Fuck Black Lives Matter, Fuck those Mexicans! I want mine!’ And that’s exactly what they did. And don’t think gay marriage didn’t have anything to do with it! That was the last gasp of the white, heterosexual male.” ~ Zoey Tur

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Let’s Play a Game

I call it Stupid or Don’t Give a Fuck.

This is a discussion Ben and I were having the other day while driving home from lunch. We’ve both noticed an increase in the general assholery of our fellow Americans lately, both on the road and off.

We used to quickly dismiss it as just plain stupidity (left turns from right hand lanes, etc.) but the thought occurred to me the other day that it’s more than just stupidity. I think that with everything going on in the world over which they feel they have no control, a lot of people have just developed an entitled, fuck-it-all mentality when it comes to the little things they can control.

“Why should I follow traffic rules when no one else does?”

“Why should I actually have my fast food order sorted before I get to the head of the line?”

“Why should I do x, y, z and maintain basic civility toward people when it’s obvious no one else is and they’re getting away with it?”

Now granted, there have always been self-important, entitled assholes:

But it seems that until last November this douchebaggery was just kind of simmering there, for the most part held in check by civil society.

Not any more!

The “election” of the Cheeto-faced Jizztrumpet and the ongoing train-wreck that has followed has unleashed all that pent-up effluent and has allowed it to run freely in the streets with its head held high. People who would otherwise be muzzled by basic standards of civil behavior can now be flaming douchebags to anyone and everyone without any fear of repercussion. Because if the President can get away with Treason, why do I have to play by the rules?

BECAUSE FOLLOWING THE RULES AND TREATING OTHER PEOPLE WITH RESPECT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO, MOTHERFUCKERS.

So I would suggest start playing a game when you’re out and about and see something that leaves you shaking your head in disbelief. Try and figure out if someone did something out of sheer stupidity or out of a misplaced fuck-it-all sense of entitlement.

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IMPEACH THE MOTHERFUCKER ALREADY!

From The Guardian:

A day after Watergate reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward issued a stirring call for the press to hold Donald Trump to account, the president’s chief of staff said the White House is actively considering a change to libel laws affecting news reporting.

“I think it’s something that we’ve looked at,” said Reince Priebus, appearing on ABC’s This Week. “How that gets executed and whether that goes anywhere is a different story.”

On the campaign trail last year, Trump responded to reporting on his policies and background by floating the possibility of a change to libel laws. Such a move would in reality require a change to the US constitution, which enshrines freedom of the press in the first amendment, the supreme court having ruled on the issue.

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The Joys of Furry Friends

No, not those kind of furry friends. (Although I will readily admit I’ve had many of those over the course of my life.) I’m talking about the four-legged variety.

So once again I found myself wide awake at 4 am this morning. This time however, it is not from worry about Trump’s bombastic pronouncements to Korea; it was from a dog with diarrhea.

Bobo, our little pirate (so called because he has only one eye) came to live with us a couple years ago via Ben’s mom (a story any longtime reader of this blog is well aware of).

He has a crack habit.

His crack is the canned, wet version of Natural Balance Duck & Potato dog food.

We initially started purchasing this as a means of delivering a daily medication in a balled-up teaspoon of the stuff to Sammy, our other dog, since I’d read that peanut butter (our prior delivery system of choice) really isn’t all that great for dogs. Of course, we can’t give something to one without giving it also to the other, so that’s how it started.

More recently Bobo’s turned into quite the picky eater (it’s allowed, he’s an old man at 11 years). We discovered that mixing a bit of this wet food in with his kibble in the morning ensures that he eats it all before Sammy swoops in and finishes off what ever Bobo’s left. (According to Ben, Bobo has always been a grazer, eating when he wanted to and not being forced to wolf down the entire bowl at a single sitting. Living with Sammy, however, has forced him to “eat it or lose it” when it’s put down.

Well, occasionally as a treat we’ve been giving both dogs just the wet food for dinner. It’s literally gone in 30 seconds, even when Bobo’s portion goes into one of those special slow-eatin’ bowls.

We’d been giving each of the critters about an ounce and a half of the wet food; the same amount of the chopped log variety we normally give them in the evening. Upon reading the can, however, it was recommended for dogs of their size, they be given an entire can plus.

Ah, no. That isn’t going to happen. Last night, however I did give them each half a can. BIG mistake. All was well and good until sometime in the middle of the night I was aware of Bobo trying to get back on the bed. The poor lil’ guy doesn’t have the strength in his back legs that he used to, so most of the time he has to be picked up. I didn’t think too much of it; he gets down occasionally to go relieve himself (finally trained to use the puppy mats we have put down), but the fourth time he got down I figured I better get up and see what was going on.

As I headed down the hall in the dark in my bare feet (you know where this is going, right?) I stepped in it. Twice. I turned on the light and saw a string of deposits leading to the den door. It was obvious the way Bobo was dancing around that he needed to relieve himself again, so I turned off the alarm and he rushed outside while I cleaned up the mess (and Ben slept blissfully on).

Now anything that comes out of Bobo has never been particularly aromatic, but this…I almost hurled. When he came back in, we went back to bed and I slept—fitfully—until I heard him jump down again around 6. This is the normal time they get me up so I let them both out. Ten minutes after coming back inside Bobo started doing his “I have to go outside NOW” dance in the den. Let’s just say I still didn’t get him back outside quickly enough.

After cleaning that mess up it was then that I discovered his initial middle-of-the-night deposit on the new living room rug…because of course where else would he do it?

I have a feeling it’s going to be a long day.