September 2020

Doing Things.

With the weekend upon us we have nothing in our plans. My scheduled flight for the weekend has been cancelled due to inclement weather in the forecast. We’ll probably watch our weekly Star Trek movie on Sunday night. And on Saturday we’ll go for a ride somewhere.

I like going for rides in the car. I’ve always liked going for rides in the car. But we’ve gone on so many rides this year, mostly because there hasn’t been much else to do with the current COVID-19 situation, I know the northern half of Illinois like the back of my hand.

I’m hesitant to spend too much time in adjacent states, though we do dip into Indiana or Wisconsin once in a while. With such an uneven approach to pandemic precautions across the country, upon entering Chicago we’re reminded that we’re suppose to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival if we’ve been in a “COVID-19 Hot Spot”. Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa occasionally make that list and with Big Brother watching us the way it does in 2020, I don’t want our license plate reader showing up on an Indiana camera and then someone wondering why we didn’t quarantine when we got back home.

My husband and I are always extra cautious. We always wear masks, we wipe down everything with sanitary wipes, we have buckets of hand sanitizer in the car, and we don’t eat in restaurants. I’m sure there’s more than one french fry under the seats of our Jeep Cherokee.

I never thought I’d see the day where I’d be bored of going for a ride in the car, and I’m not really bored of the practice, but there’s only so many times one can drive across the prairie on Illinois 47.

11 September 2020 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Changes.

Even though it’s been 19 years, I still remember the events of 9/11 as if it was yesterday. I remember standing in the video editing room of the advertising agency watching the events unfold on a television monitor. I remember scrambling to get the radio station to full time news coverage. I remember the sinking feeling in my stomach as the buildings came down.

Most of all, I remember thinking, life will never be the same again.

Those thoughts have been proven to be true. It’s felt the country has been completely off the rails since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the results of those attacks have snowballed into a country that is barely recognizable 19 years later.

Much has changed since 2001. Some of it good, too much of it bad. There is now an entire generation that has never known a United States that wasn’t at war.

I still get a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I think of the brave people that last their lives on that day, and their families and friends that had to carry on without them. I feel the same way about the country I once knew.

We all lost that day.

11 September 2020 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Proximity.

Truman is not a snuggler. He’s content being in close proximity to us but he’s not one to flop on top of us any snuggle in for purrs and a nap.

When he settles in next to my desk during the workday I know this is his way of showing love. He digs at my closed door until he’s allowed entrance and then he’s on the floor, sprawled out next to his little cat house.

Contentment by proximity.

10 September 2020 by He's A Feline. 0

Restore.

The Linux partition and the Mac partition on my trusty MacBook Pro got into a squabble today and shut the whole thing down. I rebooted my Mac and nothing would start up. It was like the hard drive knew nothin’.

I am on attempt number two at restoring Mac OS. Five minutes left as I type. Wish me luck.

9 September 2020 by Geek 0

Star Trek Day.

Taken in July.

On September 8, 1966, “Star Trek” debuted on NBC. Produced by Desilu Studios, the series was given the green light not once, but twice, by the head of Desilu at the time, Lucille Ball. Each year, September 8 is designated as “Star Trek Day”.

I first discovered Star Trek in reruns in the late 1970s courtesy of CKWS out of Kingston, Ontario. I used to watch it each afternoon from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM. The antenna had to be turned, and during the ending credits I had to turn the antenna back the other direction so my Dad could watch the evening news during supper. With the right atmospheric conditions, I could vividly enjoy Star Trek from the Canadian station on the Zenith color television surrounded by a good sized wood cabinet. Turn it on early, it took a minute or two to warm up.

Of course, I have enjoyed Star Trek since discovering it in the late 1970s. Earl and I were just talking about which movies I saw on opening night, and which I waited until they were available on television or VCR tape. My first Star Trek movie on opening night was “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier”, in Acton, Mass. I remember audibly gasping when the Enterprise-A whisks by in a typical “beauty shot”, but with less-than-stellar special effects now well known to that particular movie. A guy next to me said, in his best Boston accent, “I know, right?”

The most important thing about Star Trek to me is the hope it provides for humanity. The “classic” spin of the series up through Star Trek: Voyager shows us a future where humans are most interested in exploration and scientific discovery. We’ve moved beyond money and greed and the humans of the 23rd and 24th century work more toward a common good for the entire Universe.

It’s a lovely thing to strive for.

I’ve been distracting myself from the 21st century this year by watching more Star Trek and chatting with other fans of the franchise. I am a verified member of Starfleet and I like to think that the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few, or the one.

So happy Star Trek day! Live Long and Prosper. Enjoy this experience we call life, and all it has to offer with Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

8 September 2020 by Geek 0

Doomscrolling.

I’ve never been hip on the latest terms or slang. I recently asked Jamie if he “dipped” when he did some gesture that involved bending and throwing his arms and shoulders to one side. He laughed at me because apparently it’s called “dabbing”. Wait, did he “dab”? “Daub”? Now I’m thinking about playing BINGO.

I subscribe to a couple of motivational newsletters that come out on a regular basis, and one of the newsletters talked about the concept of “Doomscrolling”. During these American times of the pandemic, the crap politics, and the planet falling apart, among many other things, the Internet has provided humans a way to infinitely scroll through their smart devices and search for bad news. We get a certain amount of a dopamine hit from social media in general, and this bad news gives us the same type of hit as good news. As long we’re getting that dopamine hit, we continue to scroll.

The issue is, all of this bad news is stressing us out. Because the bad news generates more clicks and swipes, which in turn increases ad revenue streams for the social media companies, said companies continue to algorithmically fling this type of news in our direction, basically turning social media into an “Outrage Industrial Complex”. We combat this Doomscrolling by adding to the noise, countering or repeating this bad news with our own digital screaming, hoping that we’ll change someone’s mind or make things better by yelling into the chamber of the Outrage Industrial Complex.

This is not the way the Internet was suppose to work.

Some time back I took all “infinite scrolling” apps off my smartphone. If I couldn’t get to the bottom of a web page, or the end of a social media stream, the app didn’t belong on my phone. About 10 years ago Apple took away the ability to directly send a tweet or a Facebook update without using the actual respective application away from iOS. Today, if you want to update your Facebook status or tweet something, you pretty much have to go into an application designed to suck you in with their Doomscrolling algorithms.

This is not nice.

For my 30 day self challenge in September I have resolved to look at Facebook for no longer than three minutes per day. I basically see what the blood relatives are up to, wish my the appropriate friends a happy birthday, and then I shut down my Facebook connection. And I do this from my computer, no mobile devices allowed. I still want to get rid of Facebook completely by the end of the year, but so many of my family and friends rely on the platform as their only interaction method I feel like I’m missing out on important milestones in their lives. I really miss the days of when folks maintained blog like this one right here, but those days are apparently long gone. I am grateful for those continuing to do this old fashioned blog thing.

Twitter is a little trickier for me. I use Twitter as a way to stay in touch with those I share a common interest, namely aviation, tech, and Star Trek. I’ve tried using a third party Twitter application like Tweetbot or Twitterrific but there’s two issues with these apps; like Twitter, they encourage infinite scrolling and Twitter has neutered their third party API to the point that you can barely glean what’s going on in the twitterverse if you’re not using the official application. My primary use of Twitter, aside from my dorky interactions with others, is to see breaking news and use that information as a catalyst to look elsewhere for more reliable sources. It kills me that users think anything of actual news comes across Twitter or Facebook. These streams may provide a hint as to what’s happening in the world, but it’s up to us to find a reliable source to confirm what we’re seeing on the streams as we’re doomscrolling through the latest round of woes.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m working on improving myself through some professional and other motivational newsletters and other mailings. These things inspire me. They’re not recipes, they’re seeds of ideas that we nurture to grow in ways we want them to grow.

I need to focus more on this and less of the doomscrolling through the “Outrage Industrial Complex”.

Happy scrolling!

7 September 2020 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Exploring.

My husband doesn’t mind when I go off the beaten path when we’re out on a ride exploring The Prairie State. Usually I stick to the county routes, but today we took a few township maintained roads. A couple of them lacked pavement; the Jeep Cherokee handles the gravel roads just fine.

We made our way through the Otter Creek Wind Farm in LaSalle County. A little bit of research online reveals that Otter Creek Wind Farm went online in March of this year. There are 42 Vesta turbines spread across 10,000 acres of land rented from 76 land owners. The 158 megawatt wind farm puts out enough electricity to power about 60,000 Illinois homes per year.

We stayed on township maintained roads and stayed off the private driveways that go up to the turbines. They’re quite similar to the ones we used to pass by in the North Country of Upstate New York. Underground lines from each turbine carry power to a centrally located substation. The substation is tied into power lines that have crossed this area for decades. This is a natural tie-in to the local grid.

I have always been fascinated by electricity and I’m encouraged by the renewable energy efforts in Illinois. Wind farms are especially prevalent, but we also have solar farms scattered across the prairie. I know some folks don’t like the turbines dotting the landscape, but they’re nearly silent and they harness a renewable resource to keep our ever growing list of electric-dependent devices working.

There are some encouraging aspects to the 21st century!

5 September 2020 by Geek 0

Entitlement.

There’s a lot of chatter on the airline and aircraft forums I follow on a daily basis around a woman who wrote a hateful, profanity laden, degrading note and handed it to the flight attendant as she deplaned after a recent flight. She was upset that she was asked to wear her mask over her nose.

I will not dignify the incident by posting the note here; it’s vile. 

Instead, here’s a photo of a woman in the Ukraine who was too hot sitting on a Boeing 737 and decided to do something about it.

Please note she popped one of the emergency exits open and decided to get a breath of fresh air. Ms. Pink Pants is banned from this airline for the rest of her life.

The tendency to say whatever we want to whomever we want on social media, usually with lessened social graces, has permeated into our normal interactions. Any sort of societal norm or contract seems to have been discarded. Folks are just doing what they want, where they want, and feel they can say whatever they want.

Another example of a society in decline.

When I say this, I’m occasionally reminded that not everyone is like this and this is absolutely true. The issue is one of two things, incidents like these are becoming entirely too commonplace or it’s become too easy to publicize asshattery like this. Either way, it’s still contributing to the decline of our society.

I’m often reminded of the passage from “Angels In America”:

Before life on Earth becomes finally merely impossible, it will, for a long time before, have become completely unbearable.

4 September 2020 by Why. 0

Privacy.

From John Gruber at Daring Fireball.

>This new ad from Apple touting iPhone privacy protection is good, and genuinely funny. But what makes it funny — the premise is a series of people loudly sharing in the real world the sort of information that gets unknowingly tracked online — is actually the perfect analogy to help explain how the tracking industry — what ought to be considered the privacy theft industry — has grown into existence.

Consider the new ad-tracking privacy protection feature in iOS 14. The tracking industry, led by Facebook, is up in arms about it — apparently such that Apple might delay enforcing it for a few more months, according to this report today by Alex Heath for The Information (paywalled, alas — here’s MacRumors’s summary). Heath’s report closes thus:

Branch CEO Alex Austin, whose company specializes in measuring the effectiveness of ads in mobile apps, called Apple’s proposed change to IDFA “unworkable for the app ecosystem.”

“Apple’s move has gone too far, disproportionately disrupting a vibrant app ecosystem by throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” he told The Information.

The entitlement of these fuckers is just off the charts. They have zero right, none, to the tracking they’ve been getting away with. We, as a society, have implicitly accepted it because we never really noticed it. You, the user, have no way of seeing it happen. Our brains are naturally attuned to detect and viscerally reject, with outrage and alarm, real-world intrusions into our privacy. Real-world marketers could never get away with tracking us like online marketers do.

Imagine if you were out shopping, went into a drug store, examined a few bottles of sunscreen, but left the store without purchasing anything. And then immediately a stranger approaches you with an offer for sunscreen. Such an encounter would trigger a fight or flight reaction — the needle on your innate creepometer would shoot right into the red. (Not to mention that if real-world tracking were like online tracking, you’d get the same creepy offer to buy sunscreen even if you just bought some. Tracking-based offers are both creepy, and, at times, annoyingly stupid.)

Or imagine if you found out that public billboards were taking photos of people who glance at them, logging those photos to a database, and using facial recognition to match them with photos taken at point-of-sale terminals in retail stores. That way, if, say, you were photographed looking at an ad for a soft drink, and later — hours, days, weeks — purchased that same soft drink, the billboard advertisement you glanced at hours, days, or weeks before could get “credit” for your purchase.

We wouldn’t tolerate it. But that’s basically how online ad tracking works.

The tracking industry is correct that iOS 14 users are going to overwhelmingly deny permission to track them. That’s not because Apple’s permission dialog is unnecessary scaring them — it’s because Apple’s permission dialog is accurately explaining what is going on in plain language, and it is repulsive. Apple’s dialog describes something no sane person would agree to because it is something no sane person would agree to.

Just because there is now a multi-billion dollar industry based on the abject betrayal of our privacy doesn’t mean the sociopaths who built it have any right whatsoever to continue getting away with it. They talk in circles but their argument boils down to entitlement: they think our privacy is theirs for the taking because they’ve been getting away with taking it without our knowledge, and it is valuable. No action Apple can take against the tracking industry is too strong.

3 September 2020 by Digital Rights Fun and Games Dept Geek 0

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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