Fractured & Other Out of The Box Thoughts

Table of Contents

1)      Table of Contents

2)      Forward

3)      Prologue

4)      Customer Service

5)      Online, eBay and You

6)      Thoughts for August 2013

7)      Update 12/2016

8)      Disaster Avoidance

9)      Why projects fail!

10)   Slow packets

11)   HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)

12)   Liberals vs. Conservative, Us vs. Them

13)   Coat Tails

14)   Divided America

15)   BullShit

16)   $96

17)   Free Speech and other Fun Stuff

18)   Are your rude bits on display?

19)   Drones or UAV & Right to Privacy

20)   Drones and the need for media attention

21)   Rats and other creepy things!

22)   Pioneer Deceleration problem

23)   Toxic People

24)   Communication

25)   Big Red Button

26)   Cruise or Fly

27)   Customer Service Revisited

28)   Meteors Asteroids and other heavenly bodies

29)   Asteroid 2004 BL86 has a moon!

30)   Did you really want that raise?

31)   Paper vs. Plastic

32)   Taxes and Sex

33)   Are we Men or Sheep?

34)   Gun Control and other things that piss me off!

35)   The Truth is out There

36)   Design Nature or Luck

37)   Electric Cars, a Case for the Combustion Engine

38)   Electronic News

39)   Effectively communicating as a Manager

40)   To Lock or not to Lock

41)   Bugged

42)   Transformation

43)   Ego’s and Widgets & Little Debbie

44)   Certifications a good idea or bad?

45)   Dot Zero

46)   Disasters Big and Small

47)   Shocking things are beginning to become the norm...

48)   Radio Talk show

49)   Trump and Nutz  8/2015

50)   GOP Debate II

51)   Facebook friends, Social Media and thought of the day!

52)   A note about  Trump  8/2015

53)   Insight

54)   Hubris, Ego or just Stupidity

55)   IT in a Nutshell

56)   The American Dream.. Ha!

57)   Buying a car....

58)   Dress the Part

59)   Attention CEO CFO President CIO and of course HR

60)   The Ubiquitous Query Letter

61)   Cowardice and Bullying

62)   Thought for the Day

63)   About the Author

64)   Note

Forward

Why?

Children ask the question incessantly. The difference between most children and myself is I did not ask people the question.  After getting because I said so, as the answer, I stopped asking people. 

Unlike children of today, there was no information superhighway.  There was a Library with the good old Dewey Decimal System as the search engine.  I read much and questioned more.  I poured through an entire dictionary once, words intrigued me, and I was a terrible speller.

Sifting through an old encyclopedia set, I started at the beginning and by summer's end, had finished with the last.  No, I did not read every word.  The stuff that interested me or captivated my attention I did digest.

I started journaling while on a family vacation as a young person. I found that I really enjoyed reading what I wrote.

Writing is a passion like Art; we do it because it allows expression of thoughts, ideas or feelings, which might otherwise be subjugated to nothingness, like some dream that one dreamt and then awakened to find it only flitter away.

There are no boundaries in this medium; one is only restricted by their imagination, and time with which to elucidate those thoughts.

Contained within these pages are random thoughts, expressions of gratitude or disdain, and of course opinions on events, political, technology related or on the human condition. As an author of science fiction you may have guessed that I liked science in school.  There is some of that within these pages as well.

As a humanist; I am optimistic about mankind. Enlightenment through self-awareness is germane to the process.  Who are you?

My passions are varied but, center around the arts.  They are visual and audio as well as the written word.  I love technology, but I feel that it is running our lives instead of us using it as a tool.

As a child of the atomic age, I was awestruck many times by things as simple as radio or black and white TV.   Growing up with radio, then black & white TV, finally Color in the late 60’s, all pale in comparison to the flat screen super high def. screens that now adorn some wall in most every home in America.

We went from a half dozen channels that went off the air after the nightly news, to hundreds of channels that are on 24X7. Our phones are more powerful than all of the computing power that put a man on the moon.

I taught myself electronics at 8 years old after I became fascinated with how a signal from another place could make it to my radio.  Then there was my fascination with how the TV screen actually made a picture and how was that picture captured.

While my peers were doing the normal things kids do, I chased electrons and tried to wrap my head around biasing tubes to transistors.  While DC electronics was straight forward, AC was an entirely new ball game but imperative for one to understand RF.

School was beyond boring, it was tough for me to focus on pagodas and empires when I was thinking about the velocity necessary to break the earth atmosphere, and how one uses gravity to gain momentum in space.  Celestial mechanics fascinated me, but I did not know what it was called back then.  Peering into the vastness of space while on vacation away from the city was awe-inspiring. We were only taught in school that the planets moved along the X-axis or horizontally.  We now know that the planets move in the y-axis as well.  More about this later.

Physics fascinated me in elementary school, and particle physics soon after.  How exactly does gravity work and for that matter, can you explain magnetism.  Then there is this whole (wave photon) argument that drove Einstein nuts.

In elementary school, we often did something called show and tell.  When it was my turn, I would give a short lesson on things like radio wave propagation, or explain the electromagnetic spectrum, while others would bring something in from some vacation, or a Christmas present or what have you.  I loved science fair, however; I do not think my experiments were entirely understood until I dumbed one down enough to explain static electricity!

I earned my first amateur radio license at 13 years of age. I built my transmitter from some old TV parts from the ARRL handbook and borrowed an old Hallicrafters receiver. Teaching myself Morse Code from a Radio Shack vinyl record, I soon mastered the dits and dahs.

Talking with people all over the world through Morse code, with no more than 15 watts ERP (effective radiated power) opened up my whole world.  I got my hands on a Hammarlund receiver, and a DX-100, which are boat anchors by today’s standards but were good for the day. 

I am pretty sure I suffered from ADD as a child. That was long before pharmaceutical companies and doctors made money prescribing psychotic drugs to children. I barely made it through school, it was very trying, and taught me little that I was interested in. Truthfully I was bored out of my mind and found it difficult to concentrate on that which was not interesting to me. Possibly it is a mental discipline one acquires with age, but I lacked it in school.

I have since gone back and re-taught myself every subject that I did poorly in, as now those things interested me. One of those was history, and another oddly enough was English! I hated diagramming a sentence, it made no sense!  Now I understand what a squinting modifier is, as well as a split infinitive.  Those were never mentioned that I could remember.  I still am guilty of using a "passive voice...and ellipses...!

I went back and refreshed my math skills first because that was one thing that I really needed to further my electronics/physics interest.  History, all of the sudden, fascinated me.  I was talking with some people that seemed so wise! It seemed as if I was always saying Oh...!

Geography seemed almost too easy now as I was talking with folks from all over the world. So, where in the world were they?  I had one of those world maps with stickpins in each place I talked to. (End of sentence preposition, who cares...)  It was not long before that map looked like it had the measles.

I, in fact, had conversations with Kings, celebrities and people from countries that are no longer countries or more accurately that country. While the internet and cell phones diminish what we have with Ham Radio, it is too easy.  Yes, I can Facetime friends all over the world with a simple click of a button.  Back in the day, it was a crapshoot!

A shameless plug for this type of communication is, when all other forms fail, Amateur radio operators will still be communicating!  Even Hollywood figured this out with their film, Independence Day!

Computers entered the picture in the early 80’s, long before Microsoft and Steve Jobs were anybody.  I became engaged in that process from early on and found myself spending more time learning to program them than do anything else.  There were days that I would sit at the computer and the next thing I knew the sun was coming up, and I had to go to work.

Most of my adult life has centered on technology of one sort or another, and then management of those that do it.

While Science has always been part of the fabric that makes me me, fiction too has entered into the picture because of my constant desire to ask what if?  Those two words begat my interest in writing science fiction.

Education needs to be revisited.  Looking back, much of my young life was wasted trying to hammer that into me, which I fully was not ready for.  I don’t think that there is a one size fits all solution. I believe that is why so many kids are lost, because of some rigid structure that has been around since the school matron of the 1600’s.  While they no longer take wooden rulers to our hands and unfortunately to our bottoms, the structure has remained the same except now we have taken it further and are educating to the test, a standardized test!  People are not standard!

In the pages that follow, you will find my thoughts on many different topics.

Some of these topics revolve around Information Technology, which has encompassed so much of my life. There are many pearls of wisdom within those pages as well as some trivial stuff, that is entertaining.

Following politics as I do, there are some chapters designated to that topic as well.  I try to interject my sense of humor where applicable.

As a science fiction writer, I have also put in words some of my thoughts on space and time and physics.  Relax; I left most of the math out of it!

My goal is to entertain, inform and make this place a little better than I found it. Relax; find a quiet location and something to drink while you escape your world for a little while.

Prologue

The following pages are writings of mine from the last several years to current date.  In many cases, I have added to them to reflect current day.  I cover a myriad of things from health to politics to technology.  There are many pearls of wisdom herein.  It is my hope that you enjoy this and get something out of it.

My sense of humor is in here as well, although I have definite opinions on certain things; I believe you will find my judgment sound and not too radical.

A diverse field of interests should keep you entertained no matter what your walk is in life.  We are all the same separated by one thing, our stubborn insistence that we are better or somehow superior to the other person. 

You might trivialize that to say, no it is about race, or religion, or ethnic heritage, or pick something, but in the end, unless you are visiting from some other planet, we are all the same! We, in fact, have more in common than that which you might maintain divides us.  We are in fact, made from the very same star stuff, which everything on this planet is made from.

Some of the chapters on politics might be different from yours, and you might think that they are not worth reading.  Skip them, this is about so much more than a difference of opinion.  While I welcome non-emotional debate on any subject, at the end of the day, I can choose to consider the other parties thoughts or dismiss them.

That is the main point, isn’t it? You are in control!  Once you understand that your lot in life is your own doing; then and only then can you make changes.  I tell people it is then and only then that you can develop that rudder. One needs a rudder to steer their vessel away from the traps that so many fall into, in this stream of life. Too many are content to get up, go to work and come home and repeat day after day, week after week and what did it get you?  Develop a rudder my friend!

Customer Service

Recently I picked up my car from the dealer after having some unscheduled work performed.

Key word, Unscheduled.

Translated, I had an issue with my rather new vehicle, and even though the warranty covered most of the repair, I was still inconvenienced in that I went for 5 solid days without my car.  I still had to travel to and from the dealership; twice, and ... I had to pay a deductible.

The process of getting the car into the shop was relatively easy. The service writer was not readily available, but after waiting for some time, he finally appeared.

I am an easygoing person.  I understand that people are busy and cut them slack when necessary. Today, however, when I picked up my vehicle I was told to go to the cashier’s office.

An elderly woman behind her desk did not acknowledge me.

Maybe she is hard of hearing... I thought... Hello...

Last Name?

Not hello, not kiss my foot not anything simply Last name.

Giving her that, she finds my invoice and tells me what my deductible is.

She then said, sign here.

Trying to make some sort of small talk with her was to no avail.

I am a customer service animal.  I give excellent customer service, so when I do not get it, it is bothersome. She is the last person that one deals with at the dealership and her attitude and demeanor was curt if not downright truculent, to say the least.

She then points to the machine to use my card in.

Chip or Swipe? I ask.

She looks up at me as if I have just insulted her, and points back to the machine.

Looking down once again, I see a small post it note, with scribbled writing on it no chip...swipe.  The note appeared as if it were a script to a pharmacist, not knocking doctors here, well I am a little, learn to write.  My point it, it was basically illegible.

At this, I stop talking and swipe my card... Either this woman is having a bad day, or she is the wrong person to be in this position.

She waits for me to put my card back into my wallet before asking me for the last 4 digits of the card. Truthfully, it felt as if she was screwing with me.

Twenty minutes later, I see my car making its way through the parking lot.

Here is the deal...

I do not care what vocation you have. If you are taking a paycheck for what you do, you had best be smiling. If you cannot smile at your job, go find something else.  Life is simply too short to settle for something that you cannot do with a smile on your face.

I am not suggesting that every moment of every day will be laughs. The majority of your time at work you should be able to do cheerfully. If you are dealing with their customers, that mandate is magnified; as you must be able to project that cheerfulness in your social intercourse.

I realize that many are in jobs that are of necessity and only that, rather than what they truly would like to do.  Once many years ago my boss that I like was rifted, laid off and some Asshat from corporate came down to take his place.  I will never forget his first staff meeting with us.  If you are smiling or having fun while working here, you are doing something wrong!  Work is work!

After an appropriate amount of time to see that he was truly a moron, I left... He was too much of an imbecile for me to deal with. He was so wrong, so misguided that I am in hopes that the ghost of Christmas past, present, and future, visited this poor demented soul!

What is your goal in life?

•        What is it that you would truly like to do?

•        What steps have you made towards that end?

•        Are you a settler, whatever comes along?

Money is unavoidable.  Money is a tool that allows you compensation for your efforts.  Money permits you to trade that tool for food, clothes, rent, etc.

•        Everyone has some sort of skill or talent, what are yours?

•        Have you taken an inventory of them?

Much like a leaf traversing a stream of water, many choose to go where the wind blows them, or the stream carries them.  Folks that is a mistake! Develop a Rudder

Online, eBay and You

I have spent some years on eBay and for the most part been happy with the services and products.  Having said that a few stand out in my mind and I thought an airing of the facts might help someone else.

Sites like eBay have accountability built in, however; many of us don’t leave a negative rating when the person deserves it, thus skewing the results.  Some of us leave them a bad mark because the item was defective, or what have you when it was clearly marked as is no returns.

I have been known to leave them a positive feedback but then voice my concerns for their way of doing business in the comments.  For instance, one fellow sold me something and then just threw it into an if it fits it ships box, no packing and barely any tape.  Why the post office took, it is another story, but it did make it.  The box did not survive, and the device inside looked as if the Cowboys used it for the football.  Anyone reading his feedback will see that he needs to step up his shipping game.

Here is my argument, see what you think.  I have always felt that we are too litigious of a society, we are sue happy.  Anything goes wrong, and there is some lawyer somewhere looking to make some money and will take the case no matter how petty the suit.  Much like sharks; the more hungry the beast, the more appetizing a license plate or old shoe looks as opposed to a wrongful death suit that just don’t fall into everyone’s lap.

Is there a time to sue and is there a time to leave a negative rating?  The answer is yes to both.  If you are suing someone because you see it as a way to make money; (much like the lawyer,) then probably not.  However; if you are bringing legal action as a way to hold the entity accountable, and possibly get them to change the way that they do business then I believe that you are not only justified, but you should.  The same is true about not leaving five stars. 

•        Did they earn it?

•        Was the description accurate?

•        Was the product or service delivered as expected?

•        Was the shipping normal or was the cost too high?

•        Was the item packed correctly?

•        If there was a problem, did they go out of their way to make it right?

•        Did they communicate with you until it was resolved?

Online buying has evolved over the years, and I would suspect that the day of shopping via printed catalog will be history in the next few years.  With companies like Amazon and others, it seems that the marketplace is much larger, only limited by internet access and access to the mail, or UPS or what have you.

I collect, purchase and refurbish old radio’s, purely as a hobby.  I visited a recycling plant a few years ago where I saw home electronics being shredded, ground up, pulverized, etc.  While there is a need for this, I really would like to salvage some of Americana via its technology of the 50’s and 60’s and before, for the next generation.  This quest has me looking for and purchasing different antique e-stuff and then looking for the parts to repair it. 

Few young people today know what a tube is or how it works.  We have managed to pack a video camera into a wristwatch that still tells the time and only a few years ago (60) the transistor was replacing the tube allowing for smaller power supplies and of course smaller radios.  We got the first transistor radio in 1954, which was a combined effort of Texas Instruments and Industrial Development Engineering Associates.  A year later over 100,000 pocket radios were on the market.  That is when Raytheon jumped in to make a better radio hence came along the 8 TP 1 which was a radio that doubled the amount of transistors incorporated from 4 to 8 allowing for better sound.

eBay seems like a natural place for this as it is rife with all kinds of these things.

Here are some things that I learned over the years that may help you and or might guilt the person or person’s who practice this type of behavior to stop it.

When selling an old transistor radio, the seller said, I am not sure how to test this.  Translated I have done everything that I know and this thing is dead.  If