One year ago today: March 29, 2019, grits lovers unite!
Five years ago today: March 29, 2015, a poor people experience.
Nine years ago today: March 29, 2011, food instead of shoes.
Random years ago today: March 29, 2013, I hope this helps.
Perfect weather. A bit warm with a cool breeze. I spent the morning in the yard and the afternoon on drywalling the bathroom. That’s fun, because when you renovate a section at a time, all too often you wind up with a corner that won’t fit. It’s because you work left to right. Unless you do all four walls, you literally build yourself into a corner. Boss Hogg didn’t help either, today they rebroadcast junk from station up in the northeast. You may be trying to listen to music, but their category today seemed to be music by single mothers.
The real situation this morning was the Forex business. I don’t like the format, but if you say anything you get accused of being old-fashioned and not knowing how “modern” people do business. The Forex advertising and recruiting depart greatly from what they advertise. There are no real tutorials and there are not real instructions on how to use the software. The tutorials are really a series of on-line conferencing where you are stuck listening to the answers to other people’s questions until you get your turn. And that is not even mentioning the quality of the questions.
I got the dummy account up on screen, but apparently they want you to link in with Zoom and get all buddy-buddy with some stranger who walks you through his version of what to do—all the while listening to them emphasizing everything is your individual choice. By any other name, it is apprenticing, which is historically the most inefficient way of learning anything. My experience with on-line conferences is by the end you’ve made more friends and enemies than money. This is important because this experience represents a real crossover in how I handle new situations.
The difficulty today (and it was serious) is that normally the Reb and I will divide up tasks, and in this instance, she does the front office stuff and I run the computer part. Instant problem. The so-called “tutorials” are one-on-one and geared to rope newcomers into the whole business model. They won’t just train you, they want to convince you that they’ve invented something new. It isn’t new at all. What gets me is they say there is a seven-day free trial. Where is it? What button do I click on? This is day four of the trail and I have yet to find out even if it exists or who to ask.
That’s one of the catches. To ask, you must create an account in either Google or Facebook, the two most reprehensible companies in computer history, surpassing even MicroSoft for nefarious goings-on. In this case, I’ve chosen to look at Zoom, a video-conferencing program-whoops-I-mean platform. I immediately dislike it because you must download software and install it. So instead of you logging on to a video, the video logs on to you. Permanently. I doubt one user in ten thousand spots the risk using his own e-mail address as an account name, but you have no choice. So I just used up another of my throw-away e-mail accounts and I’m running low.
I viewed several of the meeting and so-called tutorials. They are not educational, rather far more concerned with making sure you are “on board”, a “team player”, and “in the loop”. You get with an experienced person who walks you through the process. Take note, that’s experienced, not knowledgeable. This is known as apprenticeship, the most inefficient learning method ever devised by the human mind. I’m probably repeating the saying that if it was not for apprenticeship, mankind could have put a man on the Moon by the 14th century.
Nonetheless, this imbecilic chasing around is another spawn of the C+ coding legacy. Here’s what I’ve figured out. You are supposed to know that the free trial and dummy account are one and the same thing. You are also supposed to know that you have an “instance” that can be found on a web page whose name is not Forex, where to find it, and how to know it is an instance. At that point, you are supposed to also know the software is called Alexander. If you can’t figure this out on your own, there must be something wrong with you. There is nobody to ask, you must set up a Zoom conference at some point in the future convenient for your “sponsor”. Said sponsor’s goal is not to educate you, but to recruit you to bring in new members. Other than that, it is not a pyramid scheme, gosh no.
[Author’s note: odds are this sponsor doesn’t really know much about the software either. If they did, they would not leave you hanging to either figure it out or form an unwelcome co-dependency on themselves. Thus, when the Reb & I naturally departmentalized, it appears as if the system is deliberately designed to prevent that. The Reb would have to learn the computer end inside out before communicating it to me, even if that were possible.
Instead, the format is to bring each individual as close as possible, which explains a lot about why some net businesses appear to thrive for no apparent other reason. They simply “out-mass” the competition and shoulder them aside. All this is couched in jargon, but not one molecule of it is original. These business models have always been around but did not bloom until the Internet brought thousands of the mediocre into instant contact. And like all blooms, it will fade.
Oh, and a pyramid scheme is any arrangement where you don’t make more money by working harder and smarter, but by bringing in people “under” you, that is, your downline.]
Siberian salt mine.
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Yep, I worked myself into a corner where I could not install backing for the drywall. I had to pull some furring strips outward and secure them with metal corner brackets. Some hours later I was denied the reward of putting up more fence panels (I’m using cedar fence panels for the décor). Seems the last few on the bottom of the pile don’t quite match the rest of the walls. So I “donated” them to Agt. R. It could take a few more days to finish the panels, as my car is back in the radiator shop.. Everything works [in the new bathroom], now to make it look better. A seven-hour day and things are finally pulling together. Nearby you can see some of the paneling that laps around a corner.
The software situation with the Forex account caused a row with the Reb & I. I realize now it is the way the training is set up. The sales pitch does not like partnerships or silent partners. I doubt the people involved have much conscious awareness of this, the first step is always indoctrination that this is not, at core, a recruitment plan. Once again, the emphasis is on the recruiter angling to conscript two rather than one. I now think the hot words between us was the fault of the training being set up to prevent two people acting in concert. Could be two people doubles the odds of figuring things out that they want left alone? If not, why does it seem like it.
For the record, I think it works like this. There is a Forex on-line report that streams data to your browser, which creates the display of real-time (minus about 15 minutes) trading. The algorithm you bought into scans that data for historical patterns that fit the curve of the rate of return you specify. Then at cycle’s end, you decide what to invest in based on the results. If you’ve ever felt after the fact that you should have made a move, this software tries to guess that in advance. Interesting concept.
ADDENDUM
So a MicroSoft ex-engineer pipes up to admit what we [here] knew from day one. Win 10 is a piece of shit. He blames it on the company policy of promoting “made-men”, those who look and act like former executives. Pity, but it won’t change. His perspective is understandable, but he doesn’t go far enough. Other factors that brought us Win 10 include “team” programming, first-to-market, incentives to embed malware, and incessant updates. And everyone except this blog is avoiding fingering the true culprit. It is C+ code. MicroSoft is single-handedly the guilty party for taking that horrific programming “language” and springing it silently upon the world. It is the worst programming style in computer history, and second place is held by the entire OOPS concept.
Often misspelled, OOPS is the code that “inherits” invisible properties, links, variable scope, and who-knows what other features from its “parent”. C+ and derivatives, including Javascript, Java, PHP, Apache, Virtual BASIC, Scala, Python, and Rust have been permanently poisoned by the C+ concept and the degenerate use of punctuation as anything but a delimiter of some sort. The layout doesn’t help much either, which is virtually unreadable. These nasty traits will negatively affect all future code until a completely new language emerges to take C+ down, no doubt kicking and screaming. Thanks to MicroSoft, that replacement will now require monumental effort.
In case this segment has attracted any millennial coders, don’t argue with me. The notion of “encapsulation” is nothing new, though we are given to know you’ve been told and/or indoctrinated different. The correct way to approach that concept is to have a main routine that calls subroutines, rather than embedding them. No property inheritance unless it is specifically hard coded by one solo programmer responsible for each subroutine across the entire product. If that is too much work for one programmer, split it into sub-sub routines. Either way, any routine that cannot standalone isolates that single programmer for re-education or better yet, termination.
As long as C+ code enables coders to hide behind layer after layer of deniability, the code itself will be equally irresponsible for the same things that made it notorious in the past. Battleship collisions, disappearing airplanes, collapsed bridges, power outages, pipeline explosions, computer viruses, mission failures, and the list goes on. Let’s not even mention your loss of privacy, unethical electronic profiling, and what C+ has yet to do to the devices inside your home. You think Alexa is frightening? PS—Alexa is not cloud-based. It resides entirely on Amazon’s servers. If it was truly cloud-based, it [your data] would not exist in any single location away from your own computer.
