Saw a funny toot about two things that “techbros” apparently say. One the one hand: #SelfDrivingCars are inevitable.

On the other hand: Select all squares with traffic lights.

That spawned a lively discussion of techbro-bashers which was equally entertaining. But here’s the thing: the central point of the OP was about hypocrisy, or at least being self-contradictory.

Well, these very same techbro-bashers, if asked about being dismissive of disabled people, who wish to live independent lives to the extent feasible, would OF COURSE speak up on the side of the disabled. Or elderly. Or whatever.

Pretty decent overlap of these same folks reminding anyone who will listen that #CovidIsNotOver (and it very much is not, and is a much bigger threat to elderly, etc.).

Huge overlap of these same folks decrying how much we must do to address the #ClimateCrisis.

Yes – there are growing pains of every technological advance. It’s easy to say that “X lives are too many” to lose in order to achieve Y. But this may be a case where failing to achieve Y will inevitably cost X-times-1000 lives.

Infrastructure will need to change. Pretty much everywhere. Stroads will need to not exist, and other similar changes. But in order to EVENTUALLY drastically reduce the deaths from vehicular accidents, and from the Climate Crisis, and from Pandemics, electric self-driving cars will be necessary. As will masking/vaccines requirements of everybody. As will a robust passenger high speed rail system (on which vaccinations/masks are 100% required, including it covering your fucking nose, you dim pricks).

But it will be a bumpy, expensive journey to get there, in part because the future’s very proponents are also its loudest opponents… and are also assholes in a way they have not yet objectively appreciated.

Crazy dream last night involving a notebook containing technical details for #HamRadio repeaters around the #TwinCities having been stolen in a burglary, and needing to go downtown to the office in the middle of the night to change a bunch of passwords. Even though it was the middle of the night, all my co-workers were there, including one of my bosses, Helen Yarmoska… except the part of Helen Yarmoska was played by actress Julie Bowen. And any of you who know Helen can see what a brilliant bit of casting that is.

OK, here comes a shitpost… Years ago, when my daughter’s boys (in their teens now) were toddlers and a bit thereafter, daughter’s family bought a house in Richfield, with the Southdale Public Library basically in their back yard. (We also lived in Richfield, so this was handy for baby-sitting.)

They went about remodeling the kitchen – themselves.

Then my idiot former son-in-law realized that cutting and installing the counter-tops was probably beyond his skills and tools. So he hired someone for that step of the process… ON CRAIGSLIST.

Goes out to the garage while the guy’s working, to find him cutting the big corner mitre cut using a jigsaw… a saw specifically designed to allow you to cut a non-straight line… a saw that sucks pucky balls at one specific thing: cutting a straight line. Fired him on the spot. But wound up with a horrible kitchen counter anyway.

I like to think that guy eventually did get better tools and better skills, but nevertheless never really grasped the goal, the vision, the reason we do things the way we do them.

What made this story pop into my head? Well I’ll show you.

Therapist: What's been bugging you lately? Me: Saw this at a house I showed the other day. Below that, a corner kitchen sink, wherein the cabinets have two 45-degree jogs, but the countertop has a 55-degree jog and a 35-degree jog, and the sink is aligned parallel to, but not centered upon, the short middle askew section.

I opened a ticket with their help system 6/15/23 8:02 AM with the following:

Xfinity internet had been dropping 2-4x/day briefly the past couple weeks. Then yesterday morning, it was out first thing, and this time the outage really was on their outage map. Outage ended on time, and everything came back online except my Cisco SPA525G with three lines (voip.ms, hamsoverip, hamshackhotline).

I have had to MANUALLY edit some things in the web UI for each of voip.ms and hamsoverip, and they both came back to working.

I need to MANUALLY edit whatever’s wrong with hamshackhotline, but because you guys do this auto-magical provisioning script thing, I’m unable to find plain instructions/screenshots of what fields need to say what. I don’t even know what my SIP account’s password is. If I’d ever been told, it’d be in my 1Password – it is not. Was only ever known by someone on your crew who did stuff remotely.

Where can I get the details necessary to MANUALLY re-configure SPA525G for HsH 11079?

This was their response…

Avatar

Bill Lewis posted 6/15/23 8:32 AM 

Hello Kelvin D. Olson,

As requested, here is your password: a3869(obfuscatedBitsForReasons)5903b728

Please be advised that because you will now be modifying settings in your endpoint, you are now transitioning from “Full Service Support” to “Self Service Support”. This basically means that it might be possible for you to accidentally change a setting in your phone and disrupt your service with us.

Because we won’t know what you changed, there will be no way for us to effectively help you.

If you find your phone in a condition where it does not operate as it should anymore, you will be required to perform a full factory reset on your phone, and then perform a re-provision to restore your phone to the settings we recommend for optimal performance.

Regards,

 Closed by Bill Lewis with status of Closed 6/15/23 8:32 AM

Avatar

Kelvin D. Olson posted 6/15/23 8:44 AM 

Well… aren’t you just awful?

Please close my account.

So… these guys work from the assumption that if you’re getting a VOIP phone, you’re getting it to do one and only one thing. They have you point your VOIP phone at an automated provisioning script which wipes out anything ELSE you’ve got going on that phone. When you instead sign up with HamsOverIP.com, you get access to a Wiki wherein the left menu contains…
Configuration Guides
..Endpoints
….Hard Phones
……Cisco
……..Cisco 525g
…and there you find step-by-step instructions, and screenshots of all the settings on the web UI for the phone.

NIGHT AND DAY DIFFERENT from giving me the password (one of MANY things I needed to know), closing the issue, telling me there’s “no way for us to effectively help you.” Uhm, fuck you, I can show you a great example of a way to effectively help me. You’re just an Alpha Hotel and a LID, Bill.

SPAM Single package on a green cutting mat. Also on the mat are two slices of yellow/orange American cheese, two plain mini bagels, and the screw-ring for a half-pint canning jar.
Half of the ingredients. Seen later: eggs, Slap Ya Mama, butter.
Two frying pans on a gas cooktop. One has butter melting, the other has 4 halves of plain mini bagels on it, cut-side down, to toast just the inside surface. In the background, a couple spatulas and a couple eggs.
Butter the bagels, and place cut-side down on a frying pan over medium-low heat. These take longer to toast than the rest of the cooking, so I start these first.
The green cutting mat again. But now the SPAM has been cut into a circle by using the canning ring like a cookie cutter. The slices of cheese have been separated from each other, and also each cut into circles. The off-cuts with holes in them are also sitting on the cutting mat.
Use a half-pint canning ring as a sort of cookie cutter, to turn the SPAM Single and the cheese slices into circles.
Close-up of the circle of SPAM, being sliced to half-thickness with a fine knife blade.
Slice the SPAM to half thickness. Otherwise it would be too much SPAM for the final sandwich – overbearing flavor ratio.
Two eggs with broken yolks frying in a nonstick pan.
Crack eggs into other fry pan over medium-lower heat. Break the yolks. As the whites start to cook, pile or fold or otherwise gather them in so the final fried egg has a smaller footprint.
Same two eggs frying in a pan, but now they have spices sprinkled on them.
Season to your preference – we prefer a hefty dash of Slap Ya Mama.
Closer photo of the SPAM circles, now having been frying in the same pan as the bagels, and have been flipped once. The surface of the SPAM has patches of brown.
Fry the SPAM for a couple minutes, flip, couple more minutes. Goal is to get a little browning on both sides.
Bagel halves are now shown on a small blue plate, with toasty light brown patches on them. A circle of cheese is draped on the left edge of the blue plate.
The bagel halves get removed from the frying pan when they’ve gotten your preferred level of toastiness.
Round pink plate in the foreground, blue plate in the background. On each, one half of the bagel has had the circle of cheese and the circle of SPAM added to it. The other half of each bagel is waiting to go atop the fried egg (not yet shown).
Slider assembly begins.
A big fat weirdo peers giddily from behind a blue plate with a breakfast slider on it. He looks very pleased, but somewhat unhinged. The slider looks delicious, though, if you're into that sort of thing.
The obligatory command: Enjoy!

It’s just a story that deserves note, in my opinion, and takes more than 500 characters to tell. So here goes.

I had been an aerospace fan as long as I could remember. Intensely curious, I paid attention to the sort of details that typical people would not notice.

On the morning of the last Challenger launch, our baby boy had a Pediatrician appointment. One of those routine checks they make you do every N weeks until they’ve survived a year or so.

The Doc appointment was done, and I’d bundled Danny back into the car-seat. I was ready to go, but not in a hurry, and the launch countdown was less than the time it would take to get home & the TV on and whatnot. So I just stood there, watching the launch in the clinic waiting room. Most of the other mommies were also watching, some more intently than others.

About T+60 or 70 seconds, there’s that first little puff of something in the wrong place. A little flash. I don’t know why, but I noticed it. And I said, “Oh! That doesn’t look right.” Why would I say something like that, aloud, in a room full of strangers? Dunno, but it’s definitely part of my personality to be the first person to say something into an awkward silence.

When I said that, in my periphery, I saw one mom glance over at me, like “Dude, what’s your problem?”

Seconds later, boom.

As far as I know, every mom in the place was now looking at me, at least briefly, wondering what the hell it was that I saw that none of them had seen.

The intense scrutiny of all available camera angles would make that all clear soon enough.

But I tell ya, it’s weird AF to be an introvert, and suddenly have the attention of every adult stranger in the room, looking at you like you’re obviously clairvoyant or some shit. Acutely unsettling. It was a good thing that I’d already bundled Danny up and buckled him in. I was ready to grab the handle, walk out, pop him in the car, and drive away.