Posts by jake

Whatever.

There's a time & place for everything.

I've walked into a bar with an axe, and have had everyone oohing & ahing over the hardware ... The bar was the Welcome Inn, in Fort Bragg California. The axe was my latest forging, a throwing axe. Several days later, I came in second at the Paul Bunyan Days competition.

And that's just the sharps ... I couldn't tell you how many times I've walked into a bar with my Precision Big Block ;-)

Whatever ...

I have 7 tomato mutations that happened in my personal veggie garden. The oldest is about 16 years old. All are tasty.

Try to remember, kiddies, there is no such thing as "wild corn" .... Every single grain that you (attempt) to cook with is technically "genetically modified".

Think about it.

During the meanwhile ...

Why is anyone daft enough to connect SCADA to TehIntraWebTubesAtLarge[tm] still gainfully employed?

I've fired COOs and CTOs of Fortune 2500s for less ...

Here, the top five (this week) are:

1) Get your PhD online!

2) Drugs

3) Bras, of all kinds and colors![1]

4) Dansco[2]

5) Cruises

Variations on refinancing your home is right behind number 5.

[1] I kid you not ... the mind boggles.

[2] Whatever the hell that is.

Thus neatly proving that ...

... us Yanks aren't the only ugly tourists on this dampish rock :-)

Take the religion out of it, and read the message ...

"So is the Rabbi an open-source man, or just a grumpy Windows user annoyed that he can't get his hands on the latest fondleslab?"

Or perhaps he has a point?

(Note that I'm on record as not being exactly tolerant of religious types ... )

Don;t needle Stallman.

Like most schizoaffective disorder sufferers, he already has enough on his plate.

For shame, Stob.

And the "occupy" label gets further diluted ...

... Do these idiots have no clue, at all, what "cohesive" means?

A fucking judge with a clue?

Whodathunkit?

If he'd fined the coppers for wasting court time, I'd really be impressed ... but that's not going to happen. Not in today's climate ...

May I be the first to point out ...

... that not all of us Left-Pondians are completely whacked-out religious nutters? Most of us are actually sane. Really.

Now if we could only get the masses to vote ...

"sysadmins despise cabling"

::rolls eyes::

That explains lots. Do grow up, Trevor.

First of all ...

... don't give $BIGCO any real data. Lie wherever possible, and always pay cash. Use "found" club-cards wherever possible. You don't owe them your personal details.

Second of all, am I the only one who sees this "must collect any and all data" as the same syndrome that teenage boys have, that being "must save any porn I come in contact with"?[1] The results seem to be the same ... Gut feeling is that the marketards running $BIGCO have never grown up, and have never figured out that "yesterday's porn has already been viewed" ... The world changes rapidly; last decade's data isn't just stale, it's decomposing.

That said, I personally, have nearly four decades of my personal data archived. It's very, very rare that I find anything over a couple years old useful[2].

Just something for the marketards of the world to chew over.

[1] I've been unclogging dorm-room computers since before the IBM 5150 existed.

[2] Pictures[3], music and bits of source code excepted, of course.

[3] No, not those pictures. Personally relevant pictures.

Whatever ...

... Exposing "personal information, credit card data, e-mails, documents, stock data, and other sensitive information" unencrypted over TCP/IP has been completely daft since ... oh, I dunno ... Flag Day?

C'mon folks, pay attention ... if you wouldn;t shout it from the rooftops, don;t put it online unencrypted. It ain;t exactly rocket science.

[please pardon semi-colon in place of apostrophe ... I have a 14 week old Greyhound at my elbow, and am kinda out of my normal typo(e)ing symmetry :-)]

Speaking as an employer ...

I want absolutely nothing to do with this thing.

Hire good people, pay 'em at least 50% more than the competition would[1], give 'em more perks than the competition, and don't micromanage them. Just let 'em get on with it. That's why you're paying top-dollar, right?

All this kind of micromanagement will do is create a paranoid workforce, and completely destroy anything resembling morale and productivity.

Microsoft's marketing department obviously has no clue about keeping employees gruntled. Remind me again why it's good for Marketing to run an Engineering company?

[1] My four "permanent" fieldhands get around 6 times more $/hr than they would elsewhere, have free room & board, TV, Internet and all utilities are payed, the only bills they have are for their personal phones and vehicles. Likewise the foreman & his assistant (his wife), who get about double what they would make elsewhere. All are fully insured to boot (including a variation of "renters insurance"). The day workers have similar benefits. We have an all-hands planning meeting twice a week (Tuesday & Friday, over lunch), and I never need to tell anybody what to do the rest of the week. Day folks come & go with the seasons (we do re-hire good folks when we have work, so the faces are fairly consistent), but the "live ins" have all been with me for over a decade.

I use social networking when recruiting.

If an applicant lists social networking as a "skill" or sends a link to their !GooMyFaceYouTwit site, their resume/CV goes into the shredder. Handy filter, that :-)

So, the third George Bush ...

... that isn't quite right in the head.

Oh. I see the joke.

Ha, ha.

Seriously, PETA advocates need their heads examining.

Twitter followers are considered "IT professionals"?

Can you see the problem with the survey yet?

Gawd/ess. The mind boggles.

Surely teaching winter driving skills would be more practical than "bless me, Father, the roads are icy"?

But then I'm a Finn ...

During the meanwhile ...

I can go to the local library[1] and checkout damn near anything[2] readable for free. Inter-library loan might take a day or so, but that's hardly an issue, even for periodicals.

What? You want it NOW? You must be part of TheNintendoGeneration[tm] ... If you think ahead[3] a little, you can easily keep yourself in reading material with little or no effort.

[1] Even the Sonoma Valley Library's temporary digs on Spain Street.

[2] True, as a University lecturer I have access to stacks that most people don't via ILL ... but then most people don't even know those documents exist.

[3] I know, "thinking ahead" is hard. I feel so sorry for you.

Methinks Microsoft is completely clueless about ...

... the actual meaning of "embedded systems".

Which suits me just fine :-)

For "oligopolistic", kindly read ...

"Multi-billion $CURRENCY international marketing corporation".

Some of us noticed this over two decades ago. Nice that the Euros are finally catching on to what has been obvious for nearly a quarter century.

Bottom line: If you wouldn't shout it from the roof-tops, don't feed it to a third party.

Where the hell are you lot getting Iran out of this?

With the prevailing winds in the area, it's probably something long forgotten rotting away in the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik ...

But it's only a quarter to 6 on a Sunday morning ...

Do you suppose I could have some toast?

Oh my gawd/ess! We're all gonna DIE!!!! ::wrings hands::

Personally, I worry about this kinda thing like I worry about earthquakes[1] ... it is going to happen, eventually, and probably in my lifetime. When it does, we'll pick up the pieces & carry on with our lives. During the meanwhile, I'm cleaning ditches & drains for winter rains, planning my spring planting schedule, and taking care of several very pregnant mares.

Life's too short to sweat the shit that the Universe *might* throw at you.

[1] I'm typing within 400 yards of the Rogers Creek Fault, probable home of The Bay Area's NextBigOne[tm]. I'm not complacent, I'm aware. When, not if. Yes, I have enough food and water for the humans & critters for several days ... Months, actually ;-)

Why are we here?

To spend grant money, of course :-)

::yawns::

Who the hell cares?

Seriously, does this have ANY affect on anyone reading this? What difference does it make in the great scheme of things?

The entire "British royal family" thingie is an anachronism, and a boondoggle ... I mean, seriously, when was the last time any of 'em did anything useful?

My veggie garden ...

... in a 28 acre corner of the property bordered by a couple main roads, has prominent signs, in four languages[1]. It reads "If you are hungry, come to the big barn and ask anyone for help harvesting food. If you try to take it without asking, the dawgs will use you for food."

In reality, the dawgs will only alert me, the Wife or the Foreman that someone's about (that's how I trained 'em) ... We get a couple dozen takers every week, and all leave happily with a several days worth of produce. Sometimes they get lucky, when I've been making sausage or we have a surplus of eggs or have slaughtered a largish critter. Most of 'em return the favo(u)r and clean stalls & paddocks & ditches, or mow occasionally.

If you have more than you need, share. It comes back five-fold.

[1] English, Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese, if you care.