tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50199792024-03-06T20:53:09.093-07:00Telling it like it isVery opinionated ramblings about the world at large.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.comBlogger2289125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-47803660879064185822018-08-15T14:52:00.001-06:002018-08-15T14:52:31.554-06:00Hello? Is this thing still on?4 years and not a peep. I wonder if anyone is still subscribed .... ?Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-85265720702651727102014-01-09T07:12:00.001-07:002014-01-09T12:53:35.633-07:00The non-separation of the LDS church and Utah state.Look - I understand that mormons think gays are somehow evil, subhumans. I understand that the LDS won't tolerate gays, doesn't like them and thus won't marry them. But for local government to overturn a supreme court ruling about gay marriage is taking it too far. This is religious persecution on a par with the dark ages. The church doesn't like gays, so it leans on its members in government to do everything possible to prevent them from having the basic rights afforded other couples who want to marry. In other words, the LDS church is forcing it's (wrong) opinion about the LGBT community on everyone, via state and local laws that it has had passed and enforced on its behalf. Why should non-religious people be forced to abide by the opinion of a religious cult that they have no affiliation with? Apart from anything else, the uber-conservatives in this state are always the first ones to bitch when something even slightly unconstitutional happens, yet here they are ripping the constitution to shreds. I guess it's OK for them to take a crap all over the founding fathers then?<br>
The gay community isn't doing anything to harm mormons so why are they so homophobic? And why is the Eagle Forum even allowed to appear publicly? Those idiots are so pathetically backwards, so intolerant and so outspoken that they just come across as batshit crazy. One woman was on TV last night crying with joy at the "victory" of having gay marriage overturned. She said it was a triumphant step towards squashing immorality. Maybe in her (wrong) opinion, but the views of the church should not be forced on everyone simply because they live in Utah. Not only has Utah overturned the gay marriage ruling, but as a first for this country, has made it so that people who had been legally married under the law, are now no longer considered legally married because the local government has chosen not to "recognise" gay marriage certificates. Meaning they're now pulling back from affording these couples basic rights like shared healthcare, joint tax status etc. I'm not kidding - I know it sounds like a joke but it's not - Utah is deadly serious about the church running the government here, and doesn't see any issues at all with persecution and discrimination.<br>
Which is pretty rich given that historically, the mormons were on the receiving end of persection and discrimination so badly that they had to move west.<br>
And my mormon friends wonder why I dislike their church so much.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-38292461573241363662013-12-03T11:02:00.001-07:002013-12-03T11:02:22.049-07:00Employees don't want muchI'm sitting looking at my company's internal 'learning' system this morning - hundreds of online courses that are available to all employees, some of which we're mandated to take. I'm not sure why the rest of them exist. We certainly don't have time to do any of the courses, and for the average employee, they hold no relevance to what we do, or want to do in our day-to-day jobs. I for one just want to be assigned tasks, and then be left alone. I don't need to do hazardous material training - my job doesn't involve hazardous materials. I don't need micromanagement. I don't need all the various efficiency and ethics courses that are available because I have common sense. I don't need to be instructed how to use the email system, nor how 'just in time' manufacturing is good for the company (it has no bearing on our division). Ok I understand all of this is corporate C-Y-A but so many of these things are just inconsequential to us. On top of everything else, we get stuck in a management logic gap when doing training courses. We're told to only book time to programs when we're working on them, which is obvious. But then when we leave time entries blank because we spent an hour watching an online training course, we're told we can't leave the time entries blank. The logic gap then ensues : we can't charge to a program, there's no assigned code for training courses, and we can't leave timesheets blank. So we're happy to have hundreds, if not thousands of online training courses, but not one of them actually addresses how you're supposed to do the online courses.<br>It's a bit mental.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-38318578043143819762013-03-12T07:51:00.001-06:002013-03-12T07:51:53.101-06:00EA's failed SimCity launchIf you're not much into gaming, you'll have likely missed this, but EA launched the latest in the SimCity franchise last week, and to say it was a disaster is understating the issue.<br>
For the uninitiated, here was Electronic Art's business plan last week: Take $60 from a couple of million gamers, deliver a game that needs to be online all the time to play (even in single-player mode), and only have 6 servers on launch day, meaning almost nobody can play the game they've paid for. Ensure no refunds are given, and ensure that people who for refunds (via bank or credit card chargebacks) get their EA accounts banned.<br>
EA already had a bad reputation in videogame circles, but last week cemented their place in gaming history as the worst gaming company in the world.<br>
What makes things worse is that when they held their public beta test, they had the same issues of people not being able to play, servers kicking people off, and huge latency making the game unplayable. That was with a couple of thousand players. Rather than learn from that, they left the same infrastructure in place for launch day, meaning that within a couple of minutes of midnight Pacific time, their entire server farm (all 6 of them) were on their knees. As more players woke up, downloaded and installed their games, the worse it got until about lunchtime on launch day, nobody could play. By the next morning, Amazon had received over 5,000 1-star and 0-star reviews for the game and pulled it from sale. It took until sunday - 6 days after launch - before I could play reliably and even then it took five or six efforts to connect. The internet was ablaze with criticism and complaints and EA seemed genuinely surprised.<br>
What really happened of course, is what's happened in the company I work for : corporate bullshit and procedure won out over practical advice and engineering. Rather than listen to their engineers and programmers (the Maxis programmers have since come out and said they only put the always-on DRM into the game because EA forced them to, then they had to somehow justify it with a game mechanic), EA instead chose to follow some process of spreadsheets, documents and upper management meetings that indicated that everything would be OK because the spreadsheets said it would OK.<br>
The results were what you'd expect when managers get together and make engineering decisions : a total disaster. EA's PR machine has been in overdrive for a week now running damage-limitation, to the point where they're going to have to start giving free games away by form of recompense. (Of course the free game will probably be some no-name title that nobody wants.) Amazon did the right thing by refunding their customer's purchases and have since billed EA for over $1.2M in returns. And all because of what? Because EA are so paranoid about piracy that they tried to hold everyone to ransom with their always-online DRM system. Honest gamers who wanted to play, who wanted to give EA their money, couldn't.<br>
What will happen next is obvious: rampant piracy. There's plenty of people out their currently figuring out how to uncouple the always-on element from the game and as soon as that patch becomes available, EA will have lost the battle again. Only this time, it will be a self-inflicted death. They could have learned from Blizzard's botched Diablo III launch last year. They could have learned from Ubisoft's failed always-online DRM system (that they've long-since abandoned). But instead, EA chose to press on and launch the Challenger and were somehow surprised when it blew up in their faces.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-36773883642029349212012-12-19T07:57:00.003-07:002012-12-19T07:57:46.965-07:00Gun control in AmericaIt seems America might finally be ready to talk about gun control, and all it took was 20 dead children. The problem now is the GOP and NRA rhetoric has already started. Already I've heard the tired old argument about how the German government took all the citizen's guns away before WW2. Yes, yes, and in that same period in history, America thought nothing of enslaving black people and treating women as second class citizens so suck it up and realise that times change. The second Amendment is an outdated notion; when it was introduced, the gun was largely the most powerful weapon in existence and the predominant form of transport was horseback. The Amendment was put in place to allow Americans relatively equal footing to defend themselves from their own government should it turn on them. Nowadays, if the government turned on its citizens, it has far more powerful weapons and methods of delivery. People are living in the past if they think they'd be able to defend their property and towns and cities from an advancing military using nothing but guns. Air superiority would be the way to eliminate the majority of resistence right off the bat. That or a daisycutter (MOAB). "Ah Yes", say the apologists, "but that's not working out so well for us in Afghanistan is it?". Correct, it's not. But that's because they've been at war for decades and everyone in the country is well-versed in guerilla warfare. Can you seriously imagine the average American trying to attack trained troops from behind the shoe display in Macy's? Who in your street knows how to improvise an explosive device that would destroy a car instead of themselves? Who in your street has ever shot and killed another human being? The truth is that people here don't have the stomach (nor the experience) for sudden attacks and ensuing guerilla warfare, and should the worst happen, the government could easily overrun most cities here in a matter of days if the military cooperated.<br>
Locally, a graphic example of the inability of people to use their weapons properly came a few years ago during a shopping mall shooting. Of all the people in the mall who fled, eight of them had concealed carry permits and were armed at the time. Rather than do their civic duty and attempt to use their precious gun to actually defend themselves and stop the gunman from killing others, all eight of those people fled along with everyone else. It fell to a trained, armed, off-duty police officer to take the gunman down. The same story is true for most large-scale shootings in this country. Regular armed citizens who could have done something, always flee. Multiply that up from one shooter to a trained military and you can see where my argument is going.
Until people accept that simple truth, and realise that the second Amendment is irrelevant, there will never be true gun control in America. If you want the real story, go and find the statistics on the number of Americans who's ever successfully defended themselves using their own gun versus the number of Americans who've successfully attacked someone else using a gun. (Hint: the ratio is in the ballpark of 100,000 to 1).<br>
Those who are currently buying assault rifles and hoarding ammo are just demonstrating how little they understand of the world at large.
For a super conservative and very religious nation, I have to ask : what are you going to do with all those guns? If famine or a large natural disaster hits, are Americans going to do what their religion espouses - share and help the needy? Or are they going to power up and obliterate their neighbours because someone came asking for help?Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-42413561755306484592012-08-27T12:15:00.002-06:002012-08-27T12:15:51.877-06:00Playing the waiting gameYou know those times when you know, 100%, that you're right? A lot of the people I work with are 100% convinced which way our company should go with its products. We've been convinced for years - decades even. But every day we fight an uphill battle with the top brass who have a different view, a view that has been proven to be wrong on most occasions, but a view they stick to like chewing gum in your hair. Every time we get into a bitching and moaning session, one level-headed soul keeps telling us to "just wait - things always change". We've been playing the waiting game in its current form for five years now and just today, a single ray of light emerged from the dark storm clouds of this company's future. But it's a really bright ray of light, the sort of light that shines the truth on people. I think the end might be in sight for this round at least, which is more than I thought a couple of weeks ago when one of our most talented programmers walked off because of, as he put it, the bumbling idiots in management. Wonder if he could be tempted back?Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-71162713872200983562012-08-24T07:44:00.002-06:002012-08-24T07:48:34.307-06:00What is Romney hiding and why?It's traditional, but not required, that presidential nominees release copies of their tax returns. The posting of the returns is a form of trust despite the fact that only an accountant could understand them. This is a standard set by George Romney in 1968 when he released 12 years of returns whilst running as a presidential candidate. The Clintons released 8 years. Both Bush's (senior and junior) released 3 years and 7 years respectively. Reagan released 6 years. Barack Obama has released 11 years worth (even showing he overpaid by $8,000 on the income from his books last year). Mitt Romney still steadfastly refuses. Sort of.<br>
At first he said he didn't plan to release the returns. Then he said, "Maybe." Then he declared he'd release only the previous two years' returns. Then he said that because of the complexity of the return, he filed for an extension from the IRS so he could file after the April 15 deadline for the 2011 return. Then this past week before a fundraiser he said he "never paid less than 13%. . . . So I paid taxes every single year." (Most of Romney's 2011 reported income was capital gains - the tax on which was lowered to 15% by Bush in 2003 in order to benefit the rich.)
He expected us just to believe him? Wouldn't that be awesome if we could all just phone the IRS and tell them how much we paid in tax and expect them to believe us?
Mitt never defined whether that 13% was just income taxes, or included all taxes paid, including social security, local, and state taxes (thus making the federal income tax even lower). If he meant income taxes, 13% is extremely low. Especially compared to the average American's 25%.<br>
Given how many lawyers and accountants Romney has, why did he need a 5-month extension on the tax return? Strange how all his accountants are perfectly capable of working the complex tax code with all its special interest loopholes, ensuring Mitt gets everything wealthy Americans are entitled to, but they seemingly can't get his tax return done by the deadline the rest of us have to use. I'm guessing they could, but knowing he'd be forced to reveal it, they spent those 5 months massaging the data in an attempt to make it more digestable for the public. Yes it's legal, but is it ethical for someone running for president? I wonder how many other deductions the Romneys had in the past 10 years that were larger than the average US salary? (I'm thinking of their $77,000 deduction for a show horse). More to the point, if he can't get his personal finances done without an extension, how is he going to manage the budget of an entire country?<br>I understand LDS members typically tithe at least 10%, correct? The Romneys claim they gave $2.5M last year, meaning their income was at least $25M. Now he's claiming he won't release earlier returns because his LDS tithing is "between him and his God". I'm sorry but that doesn't wash - he's already exposed his 2010 and 2011 tithing. Why attempt to hide behind that as excuse for previous years? Specifically he's very adamant about not giving up his 2009 return. Is this because he took advantage of the IRS amnesty in that year to disclose hidden income in offshore accounts? The amnesty that year allowed people to escape criminal prosecution for tax evasion. We know he has bank accounts in Switzerland, the Caymans and Bermuda too - not something the "average" American has (and until recently, not something many Americans knew the Romneys had). Offshore accounts are typically a haven for hiding money; did he declare those in 2009 and how much is in them?<br>For someone who vehemently insisted that Obama produce a birth certificate - a far more personal and important document, Romney sure is being very suspicious with his tax returns. The longer he stonewalls and hides this information, the more it looks like he has something to hide - in some cases, the more it makes him look like an outright liar. Why not just produce the returns? It's not a matter of how much he earns, its a matter of trust. All Americans - not just the democrats - should be pursuing this matter simply on trust alone. It's appalling how the GOP are treating it as if it's no big deal. If Romney is untrustworthy now, he's certainly not going to change if he takes office. And we know what happened last time an outright liar took office - we're still in those wars today.<br>More info on Presidential tax returns : <a href="http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/web/presidentialtaxreturns">taxhistory.org</a>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-86335130336052596622012-07-31T09:19:00.000-06:002012-07-31T09:59:24.807-06:00The opening ceremonyBeing in the US, we initially watched the London Olympics opening ceremony on NBC and it quickly became apparent that they had no clue how to do a live broadcast like this. The sound was awful, the commentators had no idea what was going on and spoke over all the parts where they should have stayed quiet. Countries were missing from the parade, they ditched chunks of the Industrial Revolution and Frankie & June, and they completely cut Emile Sande's 7/7 tribute song. So all in all, a massive #NBCFail there. Fortunately, the interwebs is a wonderful place, and thanks to BitTorrent, we acquired a 9Gb MKV file of the BBC transmission. So last night we sat down to watch the ceremony for a second time, this time on our big screen (and I mean big, as in a projectors and a 10ft diagonal screen) with our theater sound system.<br>
Where to start? I suppose given that I bought the official soundtrack album as soon as we'd finished, and that I'm listening to it as I type, I'll start at the end. The entire parade of the athletes was a spectacle the likes of which I've not seen in an opening ceremony before. I think it was probably because Danny Boyle raided my MP3 playlist so the entire soundtrack to that parade was keyed perfectly to my brain. We turned the amp up to 11 for that. Having that little segment of the BeeGees played when Fiji came out was pretty funny too - nicely done Mr. Boyle. But then the rest of the ceremony was good too. Not the same sort of amazing that China pulled off four years ago, but amazing nonetheless. I did have two WTF moments though - first - what was the deal with all the rugby footage during 'Jerusalem' at the beginning, and second - celebrating the NHS? Really? Ok I'm totally OK with Great Ormond Street and the kids stuff but celebrating the NHS was a total "huh?" moment for me (given how appallingly my family has suffered at the hands of their so-called Doctors over the years). But anyway back to the ceremony. I loved it. The industrial revolution was brilliant but by far and away my favourite section was Frankie & June and Tim Berners-Lee. Once again, my playlist had been raided for that section. The ending where they had the whole stadium with flames on the arena lighting that flashed white, dropped to black and had the single white strobe outline the rim of the arena to the end of Emile Sande's "Heaven" totally did it for me.
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Danny Boyle shot up several points in my book when he managed to play Frankie Goes To Hollywood during that number as well - I never thought I'd see 'Relax' get such a huge airing again, and I loved the one-finger salute to the BBC - they played the exact lines that got the song banned by the BBC all those years ago. Nice one Danny.<br>
Now if you want the full experience, I recommend you track down the video on youtube that was posted yesterday by one of the performers in the Industrial Revolution. He had a GoPro sewn into his costume. You can synchronise the TV coverage with his footage and watch them together to see his point of view compared to the entire spectacle, and that's well worth the time to do.<br>
And so back to the final part - the thousands of drummers. Who cares if they were plastic tubs and not actual drums? Keeping the athletes marching in-time to 120bpm with all those synchronised volunteer drummers was another scene that qualifies for the amazeballs tag.<br>
I think the takeaway from this is that the NBC coverage sucks donkey balls, the BBC had much better audio, picture and much less commentary, and Danny Boyle is the man of the moment for using my playlist in the opening ceremony. Twice. Almost makes me wish I'd been there to see it for real....Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-65055076910110376262012-05-22T13:37:00.002-06:002012-05-22T13:37:29.568-06:00So about that rapture thing.Remember Harold Camping? That religious nut who predicted the end of the world 12 months ago today? I wonder how things are working out for him?<br>
It always makes me giggle when nutters like him make those sorts of predictions. They're so adamant in their belief that the idea they could be wrong is completely beyond them. What's bothersome though is when they manage to get others onto their side and waste their lives too. I'm thinking of the various suicide cults that we've seen over the past couple of decades - flying up to the UFO hidden in the tail of the comet etc. I know the world is a diverse place and some people are more easily led than others, but I find it despicable that people will masquerade as religious fanatics because they know they can attract the weak-willed. David Koresh, Harold Camping, Marshall Applewhite, Warren Jeffs. They're all the same. Persuasive lunatics who get their kicks from destroying the lives of others. They all choose to reinvent religious tales to suit their own needs and then sell others on these ideas with the ultimate intent of one of three things: sex (rape, polygamy, child sex, human sex slave trafficking), death by suicide (by which many of the founders miraculously seem to be unaffected), or money (draining their bank accounts). History is littered with them. I just wish people would learn from history - on all fronts, not just this one. So many mistakes could be prevented by a little education and research.<br>I wonder if I have these views because I'm not easily led - because I'm a natural skeptic. You founded a whole religion based on us being sneezed out of a volcano and you had monkeys flying spaceships? Bollocks, I say, but tens of thousands will look at that and think "yeah, I can go with that."<br>
Our world is a properly odd place in which to live.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-51514464719605231872012-05-16T09:43:00.002-06:002012-05-16T09:43:49.406-06:00Corporate online training coursesI was just subjected to another of our company's online training courses this morning and every time I do one of these, it saps the will to live out of me. I do these courses wondering how anyone could get the questions wrong when everything is just basic common sense. You don't even need to watch the course to get the answers right - just leave it in the background somewhere and when the noise stops, check and see if it wants you to press a button.<br>Most of the engineers around me are of the same opinion - we just can't understand why time and money is wasted creating these courses and forcing people to sit through them.<br>
<i>"John wonders if he can take the code he wrote for a project in his old job and just re-use it for the current project. Is this the right thing to do?"</i> Frankly I don't need training to tell me the answer to that one but recently we began to understand why these training courses exist. Apparently in our company there are tens of thousands of corporate drones that have so little basic intelligence that a question like that would be baffling and confusing to them. How did we find this out? An email was sent to everyone in the company by mistake, rapidly followed by an "ignore that email" followup. In the meantime, many employees had already hit 'reply to all' and posted a message along the lines of "I don't think this email was meant for me". That prompted thousands of other drones to 'reply to all' with "me too" emails to the point where corporate IT had to shut down our email system for an afternoon because it was choking on all the 'reply to all' emails.<br>
It properly saddens me that there are so many people nowadays who seem devoid of even the most basic common sense. I'm not sure what's to blame but I'm sure that the brain-cancer that is "reality" TV is partly to blame. I'm sure there are still people that think Jersey Shore or TOWIE or WWF are all real and in no way scripted. Actually, I'm sure there are people that think those shows are somehow important, and that's probably the issue here. When personal accountability has vanished, where accident and injury lawyers can be used to pursue money for the most simple scrape or bruise, when the highest ranking shows on TV are depressing soap operas and <i>America Can't Skate With Talentless X-Idol</i>, I suppose it's no wonder we have to endure these vacuous online training courses.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-31362106038172930122012-03-27T15:51:00.001-06:002012-03-27T15:51:19.640-06:00When I unsubscribe, it means unsubscribe.Recently, moveon.org has started spamming my mailbox with "newsletters" sometimes as many as four a day. So today I went to their 'unsubscribe' page and took my email off the list. Fixed. Sort of. This afternoon I received two "please don't go" emails from moveon.org telling me to re-subscribe, or confirm that I really had intended to unsubscribe.<br>
It's this sort of crap that gives online presences a bad name. I'm quite happy to support moveon.org for the most part but when they start spamming my mailbox even after I've left their mailing list, that's when my support for them evaporates. Same is true for any online system that sends me newsletters or emails. I'm quite OK with them arriving at the predetermined interval but when that goes from once a week, to once a day, to multiple times a day, that's when it is time to draw the line.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-19587585294957172052012-03-26T09:07:00.000-06:002012-03-26T10:31:32.488-06:00Wow the Mormon church has a lot of moneyOur rejuvenated city centre opened this weekend - City Creek here in Salt Lake City. It's a glorified shopping mall, built by the Mormon church, on land that they now own in the centre of the city. The cost? $5bn. With a "b". To put that into perspective, the Burj Khalifa - the tallest building in the world - with all its associated infrastructure and shopping, office and living facilities, only cost $1.5bn to build. Here's the best part - because it's owned by the Church, City Creek is closed on sundays - arguably the busiest shopping day of the week for people with regular jobs. That's a good investment then. I knew the Church had a lot of money to burn. With all it's followers paying a mandatory 10% tithing (they'll tell you it's optional or 'suggested', but in reality it's mandatory), they rake in the cash like a charity on steroids. And speaking of charity, because that 10% is considered to be charitable donation, they don't pay state or federal tax on it (the entire church is tax-exempt).<br>
But blowing $5bn on a shopping mall in the middle of a recession? That's a terrible waste of money, especially for a Church who's followers are 95% Republican and allegedly all about austerity and reigning in out-of-control spending.<br>
However - I suppose they can afford it. After all - according to Mutt Romney, "There are no poor people in Utah".Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-86762473396541797842012-03-12T08:23:00.001-06:002012-03-12T08:23:46.006-06:00This won't end well.You'd think that after American forces had been exposed for burning a copy of the Koran, and then last week for urinating on the bodies of dead combatants, that things couldn't get much worse wouldn't you? You'd be wrong. Now we've got reports of one, possibly more, US soldiers going house-to-house in the middle of the night last night killing sixteen people - between five and nine of which were kids - with gunshots to the head for no apparent reason, then piling the bodies into a room and trying to burn them. Reports are still sketchy at the moment but irrespective of whether this was a single person or a group, this can't possibly end well. As commander-in-chief, Obama is now responsible for this latest US military lunacy. This could all have been prevented if he'd just pulled everyone out of Afghanistan at the beginning of his presidency. Instead we're still emboiled in military conflict in countries where we should have no business. I'm sure America would react violently if they were invaded and the aggressors tried to force a system of religion and government on them that they didn't want, like or need. But when we do it the other way around, somehow everyone thinks it's just fine and dandy. Perhaps the middle east doesn't want or need democracy. Perhaps we should just leave them all alone to do what they want and only involve ourselves when they (and this is the important part) <u>directly threaten us</u>. That doesn't mean some goon with exploding underpants or a guy with flammable shoelaces trying to get on a plane. It means when they make a statement or action of War against the US, the UK or our allies. Now some of you will be saying "but that's what 9-11 was". Yes - and we've killed the ringleader of that operation but never addressed the country that carried it out - Saudi Arabia. Instead, Bush sent more kids to their death in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than were killed on that day in September itself, and Obama has since spectacularly failed to get us out of either conflict (special forces are still involved in Iraq).<br>
We have an appalling record of military involvement in other countries and our shocking foreign policy is probably the single biggest reason so many countries hate the US and the UK. Frankly if we ever do get properly attacked, by missiles, air strikes or a Navy assault by a foreign aggressor, I'm sure our government would be surprised and shocked, but they would have no right to be. It should be expected because as long as we're continuing to occupy other countries, we're building up generations of hatred that won't ever go away. I doubt the Iranians have a nuclear weapons program, but if they do, and they do one day turn Israel into glass, we can all sit back safe in the knowledge that decades of failed foreign policy has finally culminated in the inevitable.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-61877766022566543462012-03-09T15:11:00.002-07:002012-03-09T15:12:41.576-07:00It's been a long timeWell it's been a while - most of my status updates and general thoughts and ramblings go to Facebook now but it seems like I should probably keep the blog going for the idle curiosity of anyone who reads it. In the weeks that have passed since the last post, things have continued to go from bad to worse where I work. The management have a firm grasp on the stick and have it pushed as far forward as possible so we continue to hurtle to our inevitable demise at great speed. Still I suppose when the messy end comes at least we'll have a process or procedure that explains how it happened.<br>
I was totally robbed of winter this year. My favourite time of year and we barely had any snow - it's been unseasonably warm, sort of like it was when we had the Olympics here ten years ago. Skiing's been OK - the resorts finally have enough snow to ski on unlike the beginning of the season where it was like an episode of Wipeout. The flip side of that of course is that it's rapidly becoming motorcycling season, compared to last year's record winter where it wasn't even worth wheeling the bike out of the garage until May.<br>
I did pass a pleasing milestone though - I finally paid off our remaining car loan so we have a clean title on the car now. We own it - not the bank. That's nice given the sketchy future of my job - one less debt to worry about.<br>
Our local legislature here in Utah just finished it's 45-day hack-and-slash and left the state back in the dark ages when it comes to sex education. Teachers are now banned from talking about contraceptives, and cannot teach any sex ed other than abstinence. Parents can't opt their kids in for full sex ed either. Also, women are now forced to have a 72 hour "cooling off" period before being allowed to have an abortion. Given the predominant religion in this state and the corresponding size of families, a cynic would say all the above legislation is designed to "encourage" women to have as many kids as possible, starting as young as possible.
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But hey - we did pass some important legislation to prevent the public from taking pictures of farm animals (I kid you not). So that's all good.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-86297464735100680372012-01-10T07:42:00.002-07:002012-01-10T07:42:58.560-07:00Corporate culture when it comes to layoffsIt's silly season again. Our company just laid off 10 more people. One of my closest friends who has bailed us out of many a precarious situation and has led the way on a bunch of new development work - he was deemed expendable. Obviously no managers were touched. As of this exact moment in time, I still have a job but it's not 11am yet. When the middle managers swan in to take lunch, I'm sure there's going to be more moronic decision making. It just wouldn't be corporate America if any logic or business decisions were used to determine the people to be laid off.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-11371553553842201122011-12-31T14:36:00.001-07:002011-12-31T14:36:54.427-07:00"Drive" - so-so movie, awesome soundtrack.I like moody movies and I like car movies. "Drive" seemed like an ideal blend of the two from the previews. In the end the movie turned out to be a bit of a letdown. Dark and moody yes, but the driving scenes were laughable, from the screeching rubber on dirt, to the sound of the gears obviously being changed but the in-car camera showing the actor with both hands on the wheel. Cheesy and low-budget for sure, and oddly for me, a little too violent. But the real star was the soundtrack. It's amazing. Watching it for the first time I was 100% sure the soundtrack was by Tangerine Dream. It sounds so much like their album Le Parc (from way back in the day) that I was convinced they'd been talked into doing a movie soundtrack. Turns out it wasn't - it's a guy called Cliff Martinez. Never heard of him but I'll be watching for his name on movie soundtracks from now one. Bloody brilliant.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-25524950694292360922011-12-14T11:44:00.006-07:002011-12-14T11:44:47.704-07:00Technology is wonderful when it worksWhen you send an SMS from your cellphone, the carrier company is making pure profit from you. The SMS travels in the carrier identifier signal that has to be present for a cellphone to talk to a cell tower. It costs the network nothing because without the signal, there's no cell network. ie. the presence of your cellphone on a tower means you can text and it costs nobody anything. The carriers don't want you to know this which is why they charge extortionate rates for SMS plans - it's pure profit for them. However you can get around this with device-to-device messaging. If you have a Blackberry (I feel sorry for you) you have BBM - Blackberry Messenger. It's a texting service that uses your data plan to send messages directly to a device using the device's unique ID instead of your cellphone number. Apple has a similar thing now - iMessage works in the same way, device-to-device. It's why you can now text someone with an iPod from your iPhone (as long as the recipient is on WiFi of course). Device-to-device texting does use your data plan, like I said, but it's such a fractional amount that you'd need to be a teenage girl on speed before you'd see any noticable dent in your data usage because of it.<br /><div>
Which leads me to whatsapp - an app for most smartphones that does device-to-device messaging but it works between any two phones. So I can use whatsapp from my iPhone to message someone on an Android device as long as they also have the same app. Uses the data, not SMS, so the carriers can't charge you extra for it. The best part though is when you go international. I'm currently working on a contract for a friend of mine in S.Korea and when we're going through changes in the various items I'm working on for him, we use whatsapp to 'chat' in near realtime without incurring long distance phone or texting charges. Coupled with DropBox on my desktop, he can ask for a change, I can make it straight away, dump the updated file into my DropBox and he sees the change almost instantly. It's geekishly awesome.</div>
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Now I'm tech-savvy and moderately well educated, but things like this still make me smile. That I can do device-to-device messaging in realtime to someone on the other side of the planet and he can see the graphical changes I'm doing to his project at almost the same speed.</div>
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It's the same grin I get when I watch a Boeing 747 take off. Clearly that thing shouldn't be able to fly but it does.</div>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-1695458920228517622011-12-11T11:24:00.001-07:002011-12-11T11:24:26.475-07:00Walmart isn't exactly customer friendly.You can tell Walmart isn't set up for tech savvy shoppers. Because the<br>other nine places I tried were out of the item I wanted today I ended<br>up at Walmart for only the third time in ten years. To minimize my<br>exposure to the hateful place, I ordered online for an in store<br>pickup. Mistake. Their employees have no idea how to deal with this.<br>Well. When someone turns up and bothers to help. I stood waiting at<br>the pickup area for 15 minutes ringing the bell and trying to get<br>someone's attention. Then it took another 15 minutes for them to<br>figure out what was going on. Im sure if id walked in and just picked<br>the item off the shelf it would have been much easier but in theory<br>that would have taken longer. So much for that great idea. Their<br>prices aren't brilliant either. They were a good 30% more than<br>everywhere else which I guess is why they were the only ones with<br>stock left.<br>If I hadn't need the item today, and had anywhere else in town had<br>what I wanted, I would have been happy leaving my exposure to Walmart<br>at just two visits. But sometime you can't win and today was one of<br>those occasions.<br>I feel dirty just having been in the place :-(Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-68880474029481905502011-12-08T12:26:00.001-07:002011-12-08T12:27:46.223-07:00Less than stellar skiing conditionsWell so far winter has been a bit of a bust this year. Sure it's nice and cold but it's dry. Way too dry. We've barely had any rain or snow and the resort bases are pitiful. My go-to resort barely has 2ft of snow and it's all rocks and buried trees right now. The 10 day forecast doesn't look much better either. We ought to be knee-deep in snow by now but I guess we're getting the same deal we got 10 years ago when the Olympics came to town - dry start, wet end.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-78980108562417549782011-12-05T11:56:00.001-07:002011-12-05T12:09:52.391-07:00Why speech recognition is a novelty.I have an iPhone4S which means I have Siri, their voice-activated assistant. Sadly, like almost all speech recognition software, Siri is still largely a novelty, and I've all but given up using it. I suspect most owners have. There's only two things I can rely on it getting mostly right - setting a countdown timer and sending the most basic "leaving work now" text to my wife. The problem is that it's not bombproof and until speech recognition can be relied upon 100%, to the point where you don't have to read what it interpreted and double-check it, it will remain firmly in the novelty category.<br />
Last week for example, I needed to dictate a simple text while sitting at some traffic lights. I said "I'll suck up the leaves when I get home" referring to a conversation talking about leaf blowers and clearing away the autumn debris. What Siri put in my text was "I'll fuck up the girls with my get boned".
Had I just sent it, that would have been a problem but Siri has trained me to double and triple check everything it interprets.<br />
The same is true for Xbox Kinect. It fails to recognise, reliably, even the most basic commands and all it's trying to do is play games.<br />
My car can't understand the word "dial" when talking to the phone and consistently thinks I'm saying "cancel".<br />
My friend's Ford MySync system can't get any of the names right in his phonebook, much less understand street addresses for the onboard GPS.<br />
Automated airline flight information lines are a nightmare. They can't get the flight numbers, dates or airports correct so in trying to get the arrival times for Amsterdam for today, you'll be presented with the departure times for Hamburg tomorrow.<br />
Throw in an accent and the already sketchy detection rates can drop to almost zero. I have trouble and I have a relatively flat, unaccented British voice.<br />
You know things in speech recognition have gone horribly wrong when you see people having shouting matches and arguments with their electronic devices. <br />
And that's the point - speech recognition systems cannot be relied upon and as such, they take more time to use than conventional techniques. Typing this blog entry, for example, I'm error-checking at a basic level as I type. If I was speaking this, I'd have to speak a sentence, wait for the interpretation, then go in and hand-correct all the mistakes, which ultimately takes more time than just typing in the first place.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-77717824154960011602011-11-17T07:56:00.001-07:002011-11-17T07:59:23.819-07:00Cyber monday doesn't exist.I do wish the press would stop perpetrating the myth of "Cyber Monday". Black Friday has long been known about here in America - it's traditionally the point in the year where big retailers go into the black for the financial year. I prefer to think of it differently - black Friday is like a war zone with rampant shoppers trampling each other into emergency rooms to get 99c off something in SprawlMart. I think the 'black' refers to how grim the shopping experience is on that day, but I digress.<br>
About four years ago, someone in the media made up "Cyber Monday" and claimed that it was the single biggest day of the year for online shopping. This is simply not true - there's statistically no more or less activity at most online retailers on the Monday after Thanksgiving than any other day of the year. I wish they'd stop trying to invent another reason to spend money - it's retarded enough already that Christmas stuff appears in the stores at the beginning of September.<br>
Apart from anything else, "Cyber Monday" just sounds stupid.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-12090551320258698562011-10-24T18:05:00.000-06:002011-10-24T18:05:26.944-06:00Syncing iCloud to Google.I've become an Apple fan over the last few years and I like the iCloud features that came with iOS5. But up to this point, my go-to calendar has been Google Calendar, which I sync with outlook at home for a local 'backup' if you like. The utility I use at home is called GsyncIt. Works really well. Allows syncing between multiple calendars at home as well as those on Google. But lo - iCloud cometh forth. And so the big question - can you sync google calendar with iCloud?<br>
The quick answer is no - not yet.<br>
The long answer is yes and it's easy.<br>
First, make sure you've got Outlook syncing with Google Calendar using GSyncIt. Next, setup the Windows version of iCloud to sync the iCloud calendar with your Outlook calendar. When it does this, it will merge your existing calendars into new iCloud calendars, and your old 'personal' ones in Outlook will vanish. Never fear, all your stuff is still there, it's just in a different folder.<br>
Now, the piece de resistance. Go into the GsyncIt settings, and point the local calendars at the new iCloud-created Outlook calendars. It will want to do a total re-sync but when it's done, Outlook on your PC becomes the conduit between Google Calendar and iCloud via GSyncIt.<br>
It sounds complicated but it really isn't. I'm well chuffed that I got that figured out. It means I can point my iPhone at either Google Calendar or iCloud calendar now and they're both in sync.<br>
Why, you ask?<br>
Because I could.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-19720053189926460362011-10-18T21:16:00.001-06:002011-10-18T21:34:56.500-06:00Feeling good about helping othersI hate it when good people get screwed. I hate that our company is about to outsource most of its artistic talent to India - to screw the lives of 22 people and their families because of the misguided belief that it will save them money. I hate that there are managers in our organisation that are so stubborn that they flat refuse to listen to logic and reason, yet when things fail because of their arrogance, there's never any accountability. They take the praise for anything that goes right that they didn't touch, but apportion blame to everyone else when something they <i>did</i> touch goes wrong.
I've been in the business so long that I have a clear feel and knowledge for when things will work, and when they will fail, and I hate that managers with little experience in this business do not regard my experience as valuable, rather as arrogance. It's arrogant of me to say 'I told you so' when blindly following a project I told them five years ago would fail. It's arrogant of me to tell them if they'd listened to me they would have saved N-million dollars. It's arrogant of my to have more talent and more experience than most of those above me in the chain of command.
I could change that I suppose. I could go from being an office drone to someone in power. But I'd make a horrible manager. I care about people and I want to deliver an excellent product to customers. I'm passionate about my job and it drives me crazy that there are others in the same office and company as me who think that the way to solve problems is to add more management and more process to a system that, to even the most casual observer, is plainly broken. This self-destroying system has caused me to melt down in a meeting last week when I was within 30 seconds of handing in my resignation. Now I'm not the most level-headed person, so that's hardly a surprise. When confronted with lunacy and mediocrity I come out fighting. But two of my colleagues who are so calm, so unflappable, so serene that they have until now been able to float above it all - also melted down in the last couple of weeks. That's the sign that something is badly wrong. When they come unglued, it's a bad omen.
This mediocrity and 'screw you' attitude of companies isn't just present at my company either. It's everywhere. I hate it when I hear of people who are trying to do the right thing, and are being hindered at every step of the way because companies and organisations they rely on are dragging their heels, overcharging, and generally being a pain in the arse. A friend of mine has a couple of friends in just such a situation - they're starting a fledgling business and website and the company they contracted out to to design their site has screwed them from here to the east coast and back.
So at least I feel good about one thing tonight - I've been able to offer this couple some much-wanted relief from their problems. It might turn into a side job for me, but at the very least I've been able to ensure that they now own and possess their own source code. Something their previous IT people have been unable to do.
I was able to help out.
That makes me feel good.
For now.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-13687804664396584572011-10-06T07:50:00.000-06:002011-10-06T07:50:03.061-06:00RIP Steve JobsI learned last night that the world's last true great visionary had died and when I got up this morning, the weather was overcast and sheeting down with rain. A sombre weather statement on a sombre day. I don't know of any other CEO in the world who, if they died, would cause people to leave flowers outside the company's offices or stores. Most of the world's CEOs today would be burned in effigy. But most of the world's CEOs are not Steve Jobs. I'm sure Apple will survive without him but I'm not sure what their products are going to be like. Steve was the guiding hand in Apple - you could see his influence in every one of his devices. They were revolutionary, not evolutionary, and like it or not, Steve Jobs changed your life forever even if you never used an Apple device.
It seems there were three Apples that changed the world. The first one was the one that Eve ate (if you're religious). The second one was the one that fell on Newton's head. The third one was the one that Steve created.
RIP Steve - you'll be sorely missed.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f16xEg4sHWE/To2x9yqSEtI/AAAAAAAADio/sbTUU4P5bIk/s1600/ripsteve.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="282" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f16xEg4sHWE/To2x9yqSEtI/AAAAAAAADio/sbTUU4P5bIk/s320/ripsteve.gif" /></a></div>Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5019979.post-20043753179015762672011-09-24T16:23:00.001-06:002011-09-24T16:23:51.704-06:00Why does NOTHING work in England any more?I bloody hate the UK. The country is broken and everything in it is broken. Seldom do I have to rely on anything from England - I make it a point not to because relying on anything there ultimately ends up in disappointment. Today was no different. Sadly I'd placed an order with Interflora to deliver a spray of flowers to my mum for her birthday. (There are times when you don't have any other options). The order was placed four days ago, and of course, nothing turned up today but Interflora did send me an email telling me they would deliver, and they did take the money out of my account.
Naturally, being England, their customer service phone number costs an arm and a leg, and leads you two minutes into the phone tree before you get a curt "customer service is closed at the weekends" message. They don't respond to emails to their 24/7 helpline either. Their own website has a plain English guarantee. They've broken that. I've halted the payment.
Bloody England.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15322134770888868709noreply@blogger.com0