… it makes Google ‘win’.

I’m one of those old holdouts .. I run my own mail service, my own blog, my own photo site, etc .. I don’t trust others with my data or to back it up, or to not abuse their stewardship. Time and again these organizations have gone out of business (losing everything for you, especially DRM music and video!), or done sickly things with your personal data.

Anyway, its juts such a serious pain to keep on top of security patches and the latest anti-spam technoogies, it is seriously wearing even me to want to shift to another email provider.

And thats it .. the Facebooks and Gmails ‘win’, due to spam :/

* It is hard to resist the title “Never believing in absolutes”

There are some conversations you don’t touch; one of my favourites is to bring up the fact that Hitler actually did paint some pretty good artwork. I find it very interesting that all-things-Hitler are banned, but really, a man can be remembered for his better traits .. doesn’t that make us a better person? One of the worst things to bring up would be the debate between Pro-life and Pro-choice. Surely, it can only lead to madness, as with any enpassioned thing.

Hmm, I had started to write up a long rant here; I haven’t the time to address all the issues correctly — it is one of those items where someone will pick apart every syllable noted and take them the wrong way. Suffice to say that I believe in the Pro-life at its heart (life!)  – the reality is that this camp is too often deluded by thinking in terms of black and whites only, and surely life is never that easy (unfortuantely.)  Certainly, I will  _not_ wear only the Pro-life rose (since it has many conotations I do not agree with), but I might wear both that rose and also whatever symbol the Pro-choicers believe in. See, the problem is P-L people tend to forget the fact that Pro_CHOICE_ means the same as Pro-life, but also with choice by _someone else_. It is that very same question of having respect for another religion as equal instead of necessarily believing them to be wrong.. to bear the choice that you may be wrong, but believe anyway. An advanced concept that those organizations have been struggling with for decades and one of the great problems within the P-L camps — they’re talking about “Life”, but diluting the conversation by also having to deal with a religious 3/4s, rather than dealing with the issue alone. Anyway, I may believe very much in life but it is not up to me to decide everything for other people. I will not go into the deathtrap that notes that P-L is usually Christian-religion biased (meaning they are not thinking in pure logic terms about the core issue, they are thinking in terms of the Christian-bias about the core issue which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing), etc and so on .. but suffice to say — if only 2% of the population likes Ketchup flavoured potato chips, I m glad they serve those at the store. Dont’ we try to relish our minorities (but not our subculture, isn’t that an interesting thing?) Anyway, what I’m suggesting is — we do not decide what everyone else needs to do and force it upon them. We don’t say “despite the overwhelmingly good idea and generousity of organ harvesting after death, lets just do it” — we give the family the choice. If you die, and someone needs a heart and you can save their life, woudl it not seem obvious? But that woudl be a fallacy — it is _not obvious_ what to do, since the family in question has its own beliefs, religions, situation. Context.

So if we can be reasonable and coherent when it comes to death, in so much as we can during such a painful and difficult time, can we not strive to be rational with life? When my wife got pregnant, we were grateful; we would take what we got and love it and there would be no other case, so we are in the P-L camp of beliefs ….. more or less. Pure machine logic might dictate otherwise, but when it comes to life and death rarely can we reduce ourselves to such a state (and _never_ should, as that leads to fascism etc), and that is our humanity. But I certainly do not believe any one person has the choice over another, and so the only logical choice can be to stand with Pro-Choice, for only Pro-Choice can believe what the other camp believes as well.

Did that come out? That I believe that Pro-Choice envelopes and surrounds Pro-Life.

Ah well, hell of a thign to discuss, and I can only be demonized for even bringing it up. But there you go, I like ketchup chips.

I will bring down their computations.

I will bring down their mail room.

I WILL MAKE THEM PAY.

Just so we’re straight — I’m one of the guys who thinks that racing to the bottom in iphone pricing is a sure way to kill the market*, but let me say it this way — the established price for a game is what, $3 these days? Premier titles get yelled at for being $5 or $7, and those are from Capcom with a multi person team behind them.

When I was young, we went to the arcade, and we bled 25c _per play_, and $1 per play if it was Dragon’s Lair.

Bah!

* as to destroying the market, this isn’t the point of the post.. but for those nigglers, heresd the condensed version: consider the risk in even making an app for iTMS when Apple can refuse to sell it for completely arbitrary and random reasons, and frequently does; consider that just by signing up to the store binds you to an agreement saying once you code an app for iTMS, you can’t sell it anywhere else .. even if Apple rejects it (!). All that aside, with folks racing to the pricing bottom, it provides gratification to the buyer now, but only guarantees a minimal investment in quality up front since you’re balancing rejection odds versus a pitance in sale price versus being in the top-25 which actually might make oyu a few bucks. From all accounts, its a brutal market. Yay!

The media loves to hype; it sells, and is IMHO highly irresponsible. We need _real science_ when discussing vaccination when it comes to children, not hyperbole and BS designed to scare. We need rationalism more than sensationalism right now, don’t we?

But let us be clear.. the world was ending for Y2k computer glitches; then for dot-bomb crash; 9/11; SARS. I think we had a year of rest before they slapped us with the economic meltdown and now of course H1N1.

So most of those are hype and also mostly man-made. SARS and H1N1 are at least real problems, but not so earth shattering you need to put the fear of Grod into people.

*Sigh* What are we normal blokes to do?

Brutal Legend is awesome (I mean, any game where you play an old school metalhead saving the world from the undead while dissing emo kids has got to be pretty win.) Batman: Arkham Asylum is also very good, but for entirely different reasons.

But really I just wanted to say that you need to know First Principles to be any good at your art; you might not need to exercise them much, but you need to have been steeped in their arcane smells to shape your brain right. As they say, you learn to turn an empty mind into an open one, and you need to learn Lisp if you’re a coder.

And C (maybe C++, but really just C). And an assembly (ARM is fun, 68k is fun, well, they’re all fun.)

Java is fine and all, but damnit, everything can be taken apart, taken to its roots, and kids today [tm] need to know it.

The truly sad thing is I’m not joking, and I’m skipping a pile of steps since I’m writing this half asleep. (Who could write such nonsense awake? Oh, right, the Process Analyst!)

Question: Can you just change the toilet paper?

.. consider the risk involved in changing it, and in running out

.. look up in asset catalogue to find the service dept owner

.. open ticket to SVD to investigate options

.. open up a subcomittee to review options for avoiding this in the future

.. service dept does a ROM to discuss overall costs and strategy; do we need an architect or integrator?

.. integrator notes all toilet paper rolls are the same, so screw off

.. business analyst writes 30 page essay; some is fluffier or has more weave! Business analyst is a poop subject matter expert.

.. What SVDs for design and implementation

.. contact finance to determine costs, and open up cost centre for SVDs

.. an EDD (External Design) to publish how it will look after being replaced

.. user committee signs off on approach

.. users select a team for testing poop for signoff and for outage window

.. IDD (Internal Design) is created to detail the procedure

.. SID is created so maintenance SVD can perform maintenance

.. An update is scheduled, and risk of downtime is published

.. Risk avoidance team document what to do should an issue occur during outage window

.. First responders document process for dispatching support calls to SVD       should a call occur

.. During outage window, toiulet paper falls to floor — abort and  reschedule, or continue? Page house owner for advice, and consult outage
window constraints.

.. Replace toilet paper

.. Post mortem — what did we learn? what can we do better?

.. Update metrics so we can try for faster response next time

.. Update asset database; minus one toilet paper roll

.. Document for future implementations; future generations need to know how to do this!

Word of the day: Upgrage!

Some folks say to always be looking back, and some say to look forward. Most of us just look at our feat. But in looking back.. are you happy with what you see yourself having done? When it seemed so important at the time, or so fun.. was it?

The important thing is, the longer you wait, the more that is behind you and the more evidence others will have of your life. If you want to invent a new backstory, what I’m saying is..

Starting lieing now!

I know I know — picking on radio is not a difficult task. Like kicking a tree (easy target, since we don’t talk about kicking people when they’re down anymore.) Radio has its faults but I still enjoy it, and its vague sense of community and spirit.

I imagine most (or a significant portion of) radio listening is during rush-hour .. the morning and evening commuter cycle. Further, I assume (perhaps incorrectly?) that most people tune into the radio for some music. It may be that people tune in for entertainment of any kind but at least for me – some days I might enjoy a good raunchy morning show, while others I just want some good music. And since I’m commuting while chauffeuring around my beautiful baby girl I’d like to be able to find fun simple family or rock, and have the option to fine The Heavy for my return trip from the sitters.

The trouble is — during the morning commute, there is _only_ talk radio. Roll through a dozen stations and you get only talk or commercials, never music, for an hour or more there. I don’t get it. So the radio is simply not an option .. my little one is not interested in listening to people gab, she wants some Rafi or some Reggae (no joke.)

Sillyness. So either everyone else really wants talk radio or….. wtf?

.. in mistreating these fellows. I used to just be nice to them as people are hard up and need work. But after they so often crossed the line or border-lined on harassment I’ve started to treat them as they deserve – Nothing in the decent persons code of conduct 2009 requires support of their broken business model or to condone their lack of ethics. The more we answer and deal with these people, the more we validate the mode of operation. (The actual guy on the phone, I know, you get your paycheque; but the guy who runs the company, how do you sleep at night? And how do you treat the telemusketeers who call your house?) Anyway, todays ever so slight amusement has provided a specific indulgence.

You see, they play in the gray area where you assume they’re lieing, but you rarely really have solid proof. But we have recently moved, so we very much do have proof, and there in lies the guilty joy of the catch.

Bastard: “We’ve drawn a coupon here in our very office; a coupon you filled out last year. Do you remember it? It has been a long time.. back July of last year sir? It has your address and name! ”

(like an address and name are some sort of secret thing? I’m not so quick to cleverness on my feat so I really should prepare a statement for such situations, but thankfully I am not _that_ anal :)

Nonetheless, it is a great thing to inform them that I know they’re lieing this time, that they’re out to scam me of something, and that I now have their phone number (since they didn’t block it), and furthermore can look it up online or call it back, or set a fax to call it all day and night for the next year. I almost wish I had one of those trap programs that picks up the phone and plays receptive-sounding messages at them to keep them on the line all day..

Lieing bastards.