Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas

Words and pictures and stuff

Stupid Friday

Posted on January 15, 2016 by Jerry

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When I moved out to California to leverage my Physics degree into a career in fast food, I lamented with my roommates that we just weren’t as stupid as we had been in our carefree college days. Back in the good ol’ days, we had thought nothing of the consequences of staying up all night, our eyeballs exploding from the mixture of caffeine and alcohol we ingested, peeing off sheer cliffs of crumbling rock, numbering the stars and toooooasting life, wearing 12-pack cartons as hats.

Now we were living in a city, and many nights we had to keep in mind the r-r-responsibilities of the coming day. Still, reluctant to let go of the golden days of youth, we came up with a plan. A simple, elegant plan called Stupid Friday.

It was a Friday, for instance, when I shaved the top of my head to go with the monk costume I wore to a Halloween party. On another Friday we got several liters of Mountain Dew, went to a local park, and played chip-chip hula hoop tennis ball golf long into the night. (One of our number was a master at building a fun game out of a pile of toys. A recreational MacGyver.)

Stupid Fridays were a resounding success, so it was not long before we expanded the franchise. Dumb Wednesday became a feature of our calendar, and then things really took off:

Moronic Monday
Futile Tuesday
Dumb Wednesday
??? Thursday
Stupid Friday

I can’t for the life of me remember what we named Thursday, but it was one of the earlier additions to our calendar, as it was only slightly more stupid than Friday. Dumb Wednesday’s name was inspired at least in part by the movie Big Wednesday, which I remember fondly and wonder now how I’d like it. Futile Tuesday has a nice ring to it, and Moronic Monday is what it is. Maybe another alumnus of the EmmaDome can remember Thursday’s moniker.

I still invoke Stupid Friday now and again, and even Dumb Wednesday. Life is too short to be r-r-responsible all the time.

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Pretty Badass…

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Jerry

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I just put the following comment in my code:

// now SHIT GETS REAL

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The Internet of Shit

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Jerry

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Maybe you’ve heard about this whole “Internet of Things” thing. It is ultimately a pretty cool idea, where all the gadgets in your life talk to each other and just work better.

Exhibit A in the IoT revolution is your thermostat. You can now have a device in your house that learns from your behavior, and (maybe in a couple of years) only heats the rooms your family is using. Sweet!

But… if the internet goes down, you freeze to death. Or bake. And the kid next door with the gadget that breaks your thermostat protocol can really mess with your quality of life. Unlikely? Just ask owners of Samsung smart refrigerators. Goddam fridges have been hacked.

Brief aside: Apple’s home automation system, HomeKit, has been slow to catch on because the strict security and privacy requirements are a burden for your local fridge manufacturer.

So, the burning question is, “why do those gadgets need to be connected to the Internet to be smart?”

Does my thermostat need to be connected to the Internet (and therefore be vulnerable to mischief) to adapt to my habits? The answer is a resounding no. It will be cool when my home control systems talk to each other, but the Internet is completely unnecessary.

The Internet of Things is a sham to rip you off, and will disable your home whenever Comcast has another outage. What those guys promise can be better, and more privately, accomplished with a little local network of things. You might call it an Intranet of Things. That’s actually pretty exciting. A home network, controlled by the homeowner, entirely self-contained, that adapts to the residents’ habits. It would have happened already if Google didn’t want data on your behavior.

All the players, Apple, Google, Amazon, and the *ahem* even less credible players are trying to create the protocols that will run your home. Nest is now owned by Google, which means that a company whose entire revenue stream is based on knowing all about you now knows when you’re home, what rooms you’re in when you’re home, and can choose at any time to turn on a camera to see what you’re doing. Yikes.

Amazon recently came out with a Siri alternative, a piece of hardware that sits in your home and listens to everything you say and based on Amazon’s software chooses what to send to the mother ship for analysis.

Once upon a time, Science Fiction was filled with helper intelligences. In those stories folks could ask questions into the air and the house intelligence would answer. Now we’re close to having those intelligences in real life, but with a critical difference: In SiFi there were as many helpers as there were people; your AI pal was yours and yours alone. In the immediate future there will be AI helpers, but there will only be four of them and they will serve their corporate masters first. Every question you ask will be duly recorded and used to profit from you.

Back to the microphone in your house. Even if Amazon’s intentions are pure, what happens when a federal agent with a dubious writ shows up on their doorstep and says, “we want to hear everything spoken in that house.” The microphone is there. The connection is there. The constitution has already been buggered to allow it.

That’s not limited to Amazon, and not limited to audio. Siri, Cortana, Xbox. Some are, perhaps, more trustworthy than others. Google makes money selling information about you. Apple makes money selling you stuff. Amazon makes money selling you information. All have to live under the laws of the United States.

Shortly I will share with you just how much of your personal information has already been stolen. In the meantime, please don’t make it easy for the assholes. Don’t buy a thermostat that for some reason needs the Internet to operate.

The One Thing that will Make You Healthy

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Jerry

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There’s a guy out there right now flogging a diet book, who, along with a few poignant anecdotes, points to scientific studies which show that foods that cause your blood sugar to spike lead to more organ fat. The one and only thing you need to do to be healthy is eat more veggies and nuts, and avoid sugar and white flour.

Another diet says (pretty much) if you eat a lot of fat, your body will learn to burn fat.

There are plenty of other diets that show that fewer carbs, or less fat, or whatever, will lead you to the better life you’ve been craving. Each of those diets will claim to be based on science, and delve into insulin, glucose, neurotransmitters, and so on.

Each diet says there’s ONE THING you have to do to be healthy. Well, mainly one thing, but it doesn’t hurt to adopt other healthy habits as well.

Some of the diets are downright contradictory, but they all claim to have science on their side. How can this be?

There’s something remarkably cool going on, right now: In the last fifteen years we’ve learned a lot of really interesting stuff about how the body responds to the food we eat and even the mechanisms that make us feel hungry in the first place. If nutrition and health is a puzzle, we are finally getting to understand what shape the pieces are. It is conceivable that in a couple more decades we’ll have a pretty good look at what the puzzle actually looks like.

In the meantime, folks with medical degrees are choosing individual pieces of that puzzle and they are selling them as a complete answer. They’re not wrong, really, but they are absolutely overselling the facts. Activity X leads to hormone Y and therefore you get fat.

A scientific survey of the experiments testing the diets, which, alas, I can no longer find the link to, discovered an interesting thread: All the diets, when carefully followed, were beneficial, and none of the diets was clearly better than any of the others.

In the end, it came down to the same thing your mother told you when you were a kid: eat more veggies, and get more exercise. You just didn’t know at the time that you mother was that far ahead of science.

The one thing you can do to be healthier? Listen to your mother.

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So close…

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Jerry

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About to purge the last of the Windows from the house, and say goodbye to the flimsy crap Asus laptop. The last task: getting it to talk on the network so we can move everything over.

It worked on the network two days ago. It has all sorts of other problems, far too many to enumerate here, but at least we were able to move files.

Now, not so much. Along with this happy message:

A problem is preventing the troubleshooter from starting.

Yay Microsoft!

My Beef With Star Wars

Posted on December 21, 2015 by Jerry

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Maybe this is a good time to bring this up, with the first of the new batch of Star Wars movies sitting on the doorstep. The problem with the last batch was not Jar Jar. Jar Jar was annoying as all get-out, but no more annoying than the fur bears in the previous movies. These are films that chose not to grow up with their audience. I’m all right with that.

The real problem with the last batch (Episodes 1-3) is R2D2.

Watch the films chronologically. You will see a droid with rockets in its feet, that can take down a battalion of battle robots, that was built by Darth Fuckin’ Vader himself, only a few years later get zapped by a little dude with glowing eyes — the galactic equivalent of a dumpster diver — while tottering along over rough terrain at about half a mile an hour.

The same robot.

And apparently Artoo forgot that he knew intimate details of his creator, information that might have, you know, saved everyone a lot of trouble. Like the name of the guy who built him from a Radio Shack kit. Anakin what? Skywalker? You don’t say!

Sorry if that was a spoiler. Vader was Luke’s father. Big shock to everyone — except R2D2, apparently.

This urge to add superpowers to R2D2 in movie sequence, while ignoring the story timeline, is what really gets my goat. As I watched Artoo level up time and again in Eps 1-3, I grew increasingly annoyed. Rocket feet and battalion-blasting just made me throw up my hands and say, “fuck it, this story’s broken.”

Brief timeout for goat runner-up: People with the Force forgetting they have the Force. One example: giant spaceship battle. The Empire comes up with one of its few actually intelligent weapon systems: little robot fuckers that latch on to larger spacecraft and start taking them apart. (By the way, that’s a weapon of the future. As a young adult, imagining integrating myself into the Star Wars universe, that was the stuff I imagined building. Clouds of little things that would weasel into big things and break them.) Anywho, one of the Jedi dudes is flying his spaceship in this big battle and a little robot fucker latches on to his boat. Right outside his cockpit! It’s a tense moment that requires some really sweet flying by another Jedi pal to resolve. (My spelling checker accepts Jedi, by the way.) IF ONLY… If only this Jedi pilot had some way to affect things happening three feet from his head… some sort of, I don’t know, force he could have applied from where he sat.

If only.

OK, Timeout’s over, back to my original beef.

Time, it seems, is not kind to R2D2. In the years between Episode 3 and Episode 4 it lost a lot of functionality, as well as its memory. When (not if) I watch Episode 7, I expect our favorite trash-can-shaped robot will be deep into senility, barely able to move at all, and unable even to remember C3PO’s shiny metal face.

C3PO: What’s that Artoo?

R2D2: Twee chrp mmbl mmbl

C3PO: No, Artoo, I don’t think Lord Vader has been stealing your email. Lord Vader turned nice before he died.

R2D2: Chrp squoo blttt.

C3PO: As you are well aware, Artoo, as a cybernetic being I have no colon.

If the droid is portrayed in any other way, Lucas has some explaining to do.

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Mason Jar Gifts for Guys

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Jerry

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Hey, guys, you ever wonder how it is that by late October the womenfolk all seem to have their Christmas shopping done? It’s pretty messed up. But here’s their dirty little secret: They cheat. They buy wide-mouthed mason jars, fill them with chocolates or potpourri or shit like that, wrap a little bow around the top, and bam! Homemade gift.

You could fill jars with potpourri, too. Or you could pay someone to ship a flower bulb packed in gravel to your friends. I’m not saying that isn’t a great gift, but let’s be real here. The only plant your buddy ever tried to grow was from partially-burned seeds from the bowl of his bong.

There are tons of sites that suggest “unique” (in the Internet definition of the word) mason jar gifts you can purchase.

But let’s get real, here. Those gifts are not for guys, or from guys. The only Y-chromosome involved in any of those projects belongs to the guy driving the truck from the gravel pit.

It’s time for guys to be able to say “I love you, man” with a mason jar full of something guys can appreciate. I’m here to right the ship. You don’t have to thank me; it’s what I do.

BEER

Be real: what’s going to lift your spirits more on a Christmas morning than nice, tasty beer? Your friends might spend the other 364 days of the year drinking PBR or Natty Ice, but let Christmas be a special day, a day for a can of beer they might not have ever had before.

ZIP TIES

Ridiculously useful? Check! Consumable? Check! Whether you’re running cables in the office, repairing a speaker, hanging pegboard for a photo shoot, or sealing up mason jar gifts, zip ties are the new duct tape. A big jar filled with multi-colored zip ties not only looks festive, you will be remembered fondly countless times throughout the year.

PORK RINDS, BEEF STICKS, PRETZELS, AND CHEESE PUFFS

You want to give a gift that will be really appreciated? Salty food that goes with beer will never go out of style. Think carefully about who gets what, however; you don’t want Steve to open his funky-smelling off-brand pork rinds and then find out that you gave Joe yummy meat sticks. It might be best to play it safe and give everyone the funky-smelling pork rinds.

FLASHLIGHTS

No guy has ever said, “I wish I didn’t have so many flashlights.” Conversely, “Where’s my fucking flashlight?” is probably something your friends say once a week or more. You can help fix that. Give a guy a nice three-pack of flashlights and watch the faraway look on his face as he decides were each will go. And look! There’s even a bendy flashlight you can use to decorate the jar! Festive!

CAFFEINE PILLS AND HANGOVER “MEDICINE”

Let’s think about the three defining characteristics of 5-Hour energy drink: it has caffeine, it has vitamins of dubious efficacy, and it tastes like stale butt-crack sweat. Bang down a caffeine pill with a multivitamin and you’re good to go, without the butt sweat. All-nighter!

The next morning, he’s going to appreciate that hangover concoction, no doubt about it.

DETERGENT BALLS

You know that guy who’s an obnoxious Bruins/Lakers/Packers/Yankees fan and their team won that big game and he vowed to keep wearing his lucky jersey for the rest of the season? We ALL know that guy. Maybe it’s time for a little hintedy-hint-hint. Just be sure he doesn’t mistake those colorful balls for tasty snacks. He may never have seen one before.

RAZORS AND SHAVING CREAM, TOOTHPASTE AND FLOSS THINGIES

You’re not telling your friend he’s a slob, you’re saying “hey, I know you ran out of these things and you’ve been too busy to get more. I’m there for you, bud.”

MARSHMALLOW PIES AND TWINKIES

Sure to bring a smile to you buddy’s face. These two ideas are only just scratching the surface, but despite their awesomeness, these aren’t tasty treats a dude is likely to buy for himself. (Note to grocery store owners: you should stock these items in the liquor aisle.) Snack-Pack is a runner-up in this category.

CONDOMS

You’re buddy’s not getting any. You know that, he knows that. But… Maybe someday he might. Not only does this gift tell your friend that you have faith in him, however unfounded that faith may be, it also just might save his life. You really can’t do better than that.

SUGAR-COATED MINI-DONUTS OR BROWNIE MIX

If caffeine and alcohol are the primary-stage fuel of a big night, the sugar-coated mini donut is the magic ingredient that turns a late-nighter into an all-nighter. It has been scientifically determined that cramming for an exam with mini-donuts is 2.7 times more effective than cramming without.

But sometimes a dude needs brownies he cooks for himself, if you know what I mean.

FLAX MEAL

It’s the annual Secret Santa at work and you got the Healthy Guy. Vegan Marathoner Mo-Fo has to be sixty years old but he looks better than you did at twenty. He’ll like flax for some reason.

EXTENSION CORDS

Like flashlights, it’s something no one can ever have too many of. Where do they go? Seems like you just bought a bunch of them and there’s never one around when you need it. Here’s a gift that keeps on giving for years to come.

SPAGHETTIO’S

Boy-Oh-Boy-Ar-Dee! Sometimes you can think outside the mason jar. Here’s an example for the kitchen-challenged buddy on your list, complete with the bowl your last roommate left behind. Add a can opener and spoon to make it look like you planned this gift months in advance.

LIGHT SABER POPSICLES AND MUTANT NINJA TISSUE PACKS

Two potential uses: Your buddy can keep them intact as collectibles or he can mix the popsicles with tequila and use the tissues to zamboni the spills. A gift for nerds and party animals alike!

And finally, that most special of all gifts:

PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICH

Remember those great meals you had with your roommate before he got that job three time zones away? It’s time to relive those golden days. Maybe he was the chef of the household, maybe you were, but it never got much better than good ol’ PB&J. Ask any woman: Nothing says “I love you, man” quite like good home cookin’.

Whew! what a list! A couple of notes:

Not appearing in this list:
Golf shit. Countless times in November and December the phrase “he’s a golfer; he’ll like this” is spoken, and it’s almost always wrong. Golf is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, but once a guy is labeled as golfer he’s done for, as far as gift-giving is concerned. He has all the novelty balls, tees, and stubby pencils he will ever need. Give him what he really wants: beer.

Duct tape. Neither in nor on any of the mason jars above. Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas wishes to apologize for the oversight. Which brings us to…

Make this idea your own

Hopefully this humble list is the beginning, not the end. You know what your buddies like. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it doesn’t have to be expensive. Better if it isn’t, in fact. We here at MR&HBI would love to hear your ideas.

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4444 Days!

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Jerry

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I just glanced over at the sidebar and noticed that this blog is now 4444 days old. More than twelve years. Wow!

That’s a fun number: four fours. Makes me want to do something four-themed to celebrate.

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One Month of Tsū

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Jerry

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Over at Tsū, things are going pretty well, I guess. It’s a different sort of presence than I have anywhere else; At Tsū I’m a photographer who also writes a little.

I have a few followers there now, drawn by (I hope) the quality of the handful of photographs I’ve posted. And I’ve even made a little bit of money: FOUR BIG FAT CENTS!

The idea is that people who add value to the network by posting original content should share in the revenue. The reality is that some people just blast out content they find elsewhere, with minimal attribution, and when those posts attract attention those posters get paid.

But there is room for slow-but-steady, and there is respect for original content. The memes are few, and political screeching is completely absent from my feed. It will stay that way, because screechers will be cut off. I am a photographer there.

Compared to Facebook Tsū is pretty primitive, but I am starting to get comfortable, wiggle my toes in the grass, and enjoy the company of other photographers.

If you would like to see the Other Jerry, pop on over to https://www.tsu.co/vikingjs and take a gander.

And drop by again every now and then! You might even enjoy it.

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A Secure, Undisclosed Location for my Stuff

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Jerry

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I take a bunch of pictures. Each image is many megabytes. It adds up. I have a big-ass hard drive or two, but each image should be on multiple hard drives, and not all in one room.

Then there’s DropBox. That’s a service that makes one folder on your computer also exist out there in what the kids are calling the cloud. Which is cool from a redundancy standpoint, but what I’d really like is to not have to keep the files locally at all. I want something that looks to my computer exactly like a hard drive, but is really some gee-whiz redundant storage solution out there somewhere.

There are a couple of requirements:

It really does act just like a hard drive
It is encrypted with a key that I generate; the provider does not have that key. No one has that key but me.
There is a plan and escrowed funds so that if the host goes belly-up, I get my data back.

I don’t even know where to start looking. Suggestions?

Bundling Up

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Jerry

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It was cold in the house yesterday morning…

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Whither the Sports Columnist?

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Jerry

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ESPN.com has completely gone to hell; si.com’s not much better. Grantland has ceased to be. Where does one go to read sports journalism any more? Does it even exist?

My Conflict Over the Attack on Rooftop Solar

Posted on November 23, 2015 by Jerry

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Most of us now can become energy producers. We might not produce as much as we consume, but we can put solar panels on our roofs and reduce our energy bills. And if our panels produce more energy than we’re using at the moment, it seems like a good idea to put that energy back on the grid for others to use. Energy storage is inefficient. The burning question: how much do we get paid for that power?

The law differs everywhere but where I live right now, People can sell electricity back onto the grid at the same price they pay for it. While that is great for those with rooftop solar, I’m not so sure it’s great for all of us. The question is: Why is the electricity I sell back to the grid worth twice as much as the electricity utilities buy from other power generators? The utility is forced to pay way more for electricity homeowners produce than they pay anyone else.

The power companies are fighting back by imposing huge fees on solar homes. In some states now, like Arizona (which… solar… duh), if you put in a solar installation you’re slapped with a huge tax to pay for “your share” of the old-world electricity infrastructure. That is also ridiculous. The message in those states: if you go solar, go big enough to get off the grid. A total lose-lose scenario, since the surplus generated by homeowners goes to waste.

And in that battle, I am the biggest loser of all. My euphemistically-named ‘manufactured home’ can’t support the panels. Next-gen solar panels might be light enough. I hope so. But in the meantime, my rates are inflated because some of the electricity I’m buying was bought by my power company at a ridiculously high price.

If I make more electricity than I need, the price I sell that power back to the grid should reflect the cost to the power company to get that energy to its destination. Right now in my neighborhood the power company is required to buy electricity at a loss from schmoes like me. While I have no sympathy whatsoever for the assholes who run the power companies, assholes who endangered public safety to bilk Californians out of billions of dollars and then hid the money behind bogus bankruptcies, I still have to move forward on principles of fairness.

Brief aside: Documents sealed in the Enron trials could get a lot of energy executives serious jail time.

Back to the small. If I produce electricity I don’t need at the moment, I should be able to sell it. The value of that power should be a contract between me (or a collective of people like me) and the power company I’m selling to. The price could change minute-by-minute, based on demand. But it shouldn’t be retail. Sorry, my hippie friends, when I’m producing electricity I am just another power plant; I shouldn’t have an unfair advantage over any other electricity producer.

BUT! While I accept that I should sell my electricity at wholesale, that doesn’t mean I accept the ridiculous taxes on energy-producing households to maintain the grid. The power company can profit from the power I generate the same way it does with power it purchases from big producers.

Power companies across this great nation wish to punish the small producer. They have brought forth taxes to combat the little-guy-friendly laws in many states. Solar power is starting to make real economic sense, even with the government underwriting of fossil fuels.

I think the key was in a parenthetical a couple of paragraphs back: millions of rooftop solar owners combining to form a collective — a single power company that negotiates its rates with the power companies the same way all the other generators do. As solar technology improves, the cost of generation goes down, where the cost of the fossil competitors may enjoy periodic drops, but ultimately must move upward.

If our nation were to say in the meantime that poisoning our water and killing our children is illegal again, even for frackers, that would dramatically increase the leverage of alternative power generators.

Let’s make solar power officially just another source of electricity. Solar is ready to compete on its own merits, without price controls, and despite the staggering portion of our taxes that is spent to maintain the oil industry. PG&E is not going to impose wacky grid taxes on its most cost-competitive supplier. But it’s the people making the electricity who need to speak, not governments. It’s time to take the training wheels off and let solar ride.

Gulp

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Jerry

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Today as I was driving to work (really had planned to bike today, but…) I was in stop-and-go next to a Maserati. “That’s a handsome automobile,” I thought. About then I caught a whiff of the oil going out my tailpipe and that brought to mind the mortality of all useful machines. I stopped to look at one of the Maseratis that parks in my structure. It is indeed handsome, even on extended inspection. “I wonder of there’s a Maserati convertible?” I pondered.

There is a Maserati convertible, it turns out. And it’s also a handsome automobile. And… it’s pricey.

Ha. “Pricey.” OK, I know a prestige marque commands a premium, but I wasn’t ready for a price tag that’s damn near twice the Jaguar F-type. That’s the competition, I figure. And while I find the Jag a little butt-heavy (I have heard that the trunk had to be expanded to meet the marketing requirement that it could hold a big-ass set of golf clubs – but if it can only hold one set, that’s what the passenger seat is for), and the Maserati is allegedly a four-seater, there’s just no way to justify spending absurdly too much for the Maserati (assuming you are already reconciled to spending far too much for the Jaguar).

Unless, unless, the Maserati has fewer stupid gizmos. There’s stuff on most modern cars I’d pay to not have. It would take a lot of not-having to justify that price, however.

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A Fine Way to Start the Week

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Jerry

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Fortunately I planned ahead and started stretching the Miata’s top last night — it had been down so long that it had forgotten what up was like. Then on the commute this morning: Thunder! Lightning! (Not necessarily in that order!)

California freeway in the rain? This isn’t So-Cal but the rain still makes already-awful traffic awfuller. Except this morning was the lightest traffic I’ve experienced in weeks, with drivers showing a little extra courtesy I’ve long since given up expecting. Go figure.

Tomorrow back on the bike, but welcome, rain. Don’t be a stranger.

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