October 4, 2020
Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 4, 2019, bless these pets.
Five years ago today: October 4, 2015, this photo is staged.
Nine years ago today: October 4, 2011, silver begins to plunge.
Random years ago today: October 4, 2008, WJupiter, Florida.
Instead of going out as planned, I stuck around home and finally found a COBOL emulator that will install without a risky on-line link. Called Hercules, you download the entire file and the installation is a breeze. But it does not come with instructions. The trick is to make your computer think it is a mainframe. So far all I’ve managed to do is get it to sit there. All the on-line instructions made references to items that are not there. I’ve still not decided on a compiler but I can say for certain I won’t be using any on-line versions. Programmers, at large, can write code, but they cannot write instructions.
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The circus begins. I found an IDE, downloaded it and installed it. When run, the screen was in Spanish. No warning given. For those unfamiliar with this aspect of computers, I’m attempting to install and operate three things. One is Hercules, the software that emulates a mainframe computer on my Win XP system. Two is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that “word processes” COBOL lines of code. Three is the compiler required to translate the code into machine language. The installation guide of the Hercules emulator is 479 pages long.
The one guy I know who has a clue about these things is out on Anacortes Island. I sent him an e-mail, he sent back this picture of a tree and a bird. I infer this is deep west coast symbolism for, “Good luck, dude.”
I’ve been misled. There does not look to be any sort of easy download and install of this software. I do not know how to configure the files, this is a shortfall I was angry about 40 years ago, that none of the extensive programming courses I studied, sometimes for years, ever addressed the task of setup on either a mainframe or a desktop, the two styles of computers used by most businesses. That was always somebody else’s job and now that somebody is not around. The list shows there are around 42 parameters that must be set, most of them I never heard of until now. I’m software, not hardware. I had no idea ESAME is a synonym for z/Arch.
Time for some real apple pie, the kind with brown sugar, cinnamon, and ginger. Today was one of those shopping runs that replaced all the condiment type products. I’m one of the fortunate types where these things all tend to run out at the same time. It also means I spent $88 and have nothing to eat but apples. If I didn’t say, there is finally and ALDIs opening up only three miles from here. The Reb cautions not all of them are created alike, but the local shoppers can be a finicky bunch. I’ll be there shortly after opening, I drove past today and the paint stripes were drying in the parking lot.
In my vast store of DVDs is a movie called “Apocalypse”. Unsuspectingly I played it, what a crock. Some of the worst acting I’ve seen and sure enough, after a lot of opening scenes, they start to slip in the religion. At this point, such disks accidentally get stepped on around here, but this one was so pathetic I had to watch a bit. You are expected to believe that a world war starts in an area called Armageddon, that people start to disappear, and a Messiah appears in Europe—yet nobody on the planet except a small group in a TV studio see the connection with Biblical prophesy. And they are about to use their cameras and antennas to make believers out of the world.
The Bible has a great message but one boring plot. And you cannot make it un-boring. I just had to watch the acting, it was so bad you felt sorry for the people put up to it. After around the 20 minute mark, every line is a cliché. I watched another few minutes, but when they portrayed the head of Iraq as a green-eyed redhead named Connor Al-Bakeeshi, that was too much. Click!
[Author's note: later "Apocalypse" became the first and only DVD I have ever thrown in the trash.]
The Bible says an evil person will take over the world, pretending to be the Messiah. In America, corporations are legal persons. Up steps California, claiming to take the lead in protecting personal privacy—oh come on, I have to say it. Some 24 years after this blog issued a warning over the Internet, and some 34 years after the first warning about databases. The Privacy Rights Act of 2020 says it will give Californians the right to control the collection of personal data. It’s bogus, it will give them limited control. If it was any good, the measure would not require over 50 pages of terms and conditions.
The net result is likely to be that business will wind up charging people who opt for privacy a premium to compensate for the lost sales. Also, the law addresses only information collected from the enactment onward. Unless you listened to the conspiracy theorist, it is too late. They already have many times the information they need to track you for life. It’s existing info, so the law does not apply, and they will claim to be sharing it instead of selling it. To those who did not listen, serves you right.
Picture of the day.
Terra Nostra Nat’l Park. (Portugal)
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Biggest growth industry after the lockdown is over? Tattoo removal. The past year has zapped most of the zero-sum Internet operations that called themselves businesses. The unemployed are now a breed apart and qualified for nothing. Can’t read, can’t spell, can’t think. It ceased being okay to be a dropout long ago. With computers and 30 million illegals taking over the low-end work, the face of the unemployed has changed, along with its arms, wrists, neck, and some unmentionables. Work from home may be their only option, which brings up how they will be monitored. Recovery or not, there are no longer enough real jobs to go around so the competition will get fierce. And while McDonald’s has their pick of freaks, I doubt that extends to disfigured freaks. If you thought getting the tattoo was expensive . . . .
Ah, I didn’t forget to buy cheese, and I mean real cheese, see here. Extra sharp cheddar because when I want a cheesy omelet, I mean it. I had to check since it wasn’t on my shopping list. I checked the microwaves at Wal*Mart, nothing worthwhile. They have these tiny, or pardon me, compact units but only 700 watts. Every recipe you’d like needs 1100 watts and 1200 is better if you’ve done any serious cooking. Nor could I find a decent shop fan for the new shed. I need two fans, actually. One is a window fan, but the window is a custom made casing in the shady north wall.
I’ll compromise, since winter is almost here. A cheap box fan in the wall and the old robot clubhouse unit on the floor. That old unit has been repaired so many times, I think the motor, blades, and control switch are from three different sources. I was out there taking measurements for nearly an hour. That Rush guy was on the radio and raising some good points. The one I most identified with was the fake polls. I just left them at fake but Rush asks how they get away with it. They were dead wrong last election and that should have eliminated them as a serious service. Clever Rush wrote down who said what and is now comparing it to what they say now.
Not only that, Rush knows his statistics. Polls have a sampling error and he demonstrated how to have been completely wrong, the odds had to be astronomical. I agree, as polls have a bell curve, ergo they were lying through their teeth. Americans are on to the bandwagon effect and that may backfire if the Democrats try it again. If liberals lazy as they are think they have a commanding lead, why bother to vote? Rush rattled off a series of talking points to the effect the pollsters not only must be lying, they have also coordinated their lies because they know they won’t be flagged. He implies they have a cozy relationship with the mainstream media. Same as last time, they know in advance the big players did not pick up the story.
The solution is to bring back the Reciprocal Rule, or whatever it is called. The requirement that if media puts any slant on their reporting, they must present the equal and opposite position for the same air time. But that would mean the end of commentators like Rush, Sean, and Tucker. And both sides would cheat at that game since the leftist agenda teaches such cheating in grade school these days. What? Oh, yes they do, the just call it something else. Which is also cheating.
I was mislead about the incentive checks, they are still in limbo. The holdup now is Pelosi wants to give money to illegals as well as citizens. She’s bat-guano crazy and this alone could cost her both the election and her job. She will not be missed. The left-wing press is clutching at straws, anything that can be spun negative-sounding is fair game. Like the report that people who voted for Trump in 2016 are “less likely” to evacuate until a hurricane makes landfall. My explanation is simpler, that in New Orleans, it’s smarter to keep an eye on your property until the last minute.
ADDENDUM
In France, five bar owners have been arrested for not logging their WiFi usage. This sort of regulation tells us a lot about why England got the hell out of the European Union. Make the people who let the terrorists in track them, not the guy trying to make a buck at his business. They could get up to a year in the slammer. Another heads up is DRM, digital rights management. It is not the same as encryption in that it goes far beyond that. The concept is that all content will be encrypted, such as music tracks. What you need is a key to unlock it first. This key would be assigned to your person and track what you use it for. For the recording companies anyway, this could be the long-awaited metered service.
Trivia. Did you know Yahoo! was an acronym? I don’t know how the early Internet worked but I knew it was organized on a file system called Oracle. The history is another thing I don’t know. Files were hard to find. These two guys came up with a plan to search a database for site names. They named it Yet Another Heirarchical Officious Oracle. And the name stuck. Back in those early days I searched high and low for a school that would teach me how to program transactions and such on-line. That’s why I never understood how these kids knew what was not there and how to write the software. Where I lived in 1990 – 1993, I was the only person who had any idea what the Internet was and I could not afford a dial-up connection which, back then, was long-distance.
Last Laugh
