Mike

HDWGH – Story 64 – Give Me Shelter

-*From The How Did We Get Here Series*-

**Now**: Mrs. Roland lowered her head in both exhaustion and sadness. Her beautiful brand new home on the outskirts of a small town in rural Georgia known as Tannersville had gone up in flames just 2 hours ago. She was in shock and the pounding on the outside of the tornado shelter was beginning to break her out of it. The fire company needed to confirm that she was ok, after all.

**Before**: The Smith family always celebrated the big holidays. The 4th of July was no different. Brian Smith had his various assortment of fireworks ready to launch. The wind was picking up but he felt fairly certain that they would be quite safe.

HDWGH – Story 63 – Boom

-*From The How Did We Get Here Series*-

**Now**: Jennifer Turco kneeled down to give her father a kiss on his forehead. Josh was doing the right thing after all. This type of job needed to be done. If not by him, then who? Jennifer replaced her protective eyewear before bringing the thermal imaging device up within her view. It still showed six heat signatures. The expected and anticipated number. Josh turned his gaze up to his youngest daughter looking for the signal he needed. A confirmation that all six siblings were currently at home. Jennifer looked down at him and nodded. Josh caught the gesture and quietly moved his thumb from the green ABORT button to press the light red COMMIT button. The trailer suddenly erupted into a massive fireball flinging bodies here and there and breaking every window and other pieces that could be broken.The sound of a bouncing metal propane tank off to their left. Five feet away from Jennifer, a smoking and burnt male torso landed on an old wooden pallet and bounced away from her. A faint scream filled the air from what seemed like a few blocks away. The small subdivision was awake now. She could barely notice the slight smile in her dad’s gaze, but it was there. It was all better now. Everything was going to be just fine.

**Before**: Jennifer knew that Doug Jones was a child molester. In fact, the whole neighborhood knew. The problem was proof. All she had was gut instincts. The way he looked at the girls as they made their way home from school passing his, what she would swear, had to be a meth lab trailer. It made the neighborhood look like it had been transplanted from Detroit. She would talk to her ex-military father and see what he thought about this “problem.” Perhaps daddy could kill two birds with one stone on this one?

Who Would Have Thought?

Who would have thought a year ago that I would be married today and that my wife and I would own our home?

We just paid the first mortgage payment and there is a weird feeling of joy.

That rather than paying rent to someone, I am paying on my own property.

Sort of liberating.

Birthday Sharing

Nice to share of a birthday with these folks…

Larry David
Michelle Branch
Amy Weber
Margot Robbie
Lindsay Lohan

The 4th…it’s coming…

Why I Love Home Brew

Home Brew is probably not what you think it is.

It is a command line tool for MacOS that fills in a lot of small but missing pieces. Things like PHP no longer come bundled with MacOS so Home Brew is how you get that done now. I could site many more examples but I think you get the idea.

The Home Brew developers are amazing. They have also seen many Apple release cycles. I find the following funny.

Screenshot 2023 06 28 at 3 55 47 PM

It is funny because they have to say the words.

How to Turn Off Animated GIFS in MacOS Sonoma

It is the one thing that drives me bonkers. I don’t like moving things in my iMessage window but I also don’t want to delete the entire conversation to get rid of it.

Go into system settings and Go to Accessibility and then Display..

Screenshot 2023 06 06 at 7 09 29 AM

…and toggle off Animated Images.

Screenshot 2023 06 06 at 7 11 11 AM

This worked for me.

Media Bias

First, the Apple/Wall Street Journal version…

Screenshot 2023 05 31 at 7 47 20 AM

Second, the 1440 version…

Screenshot 2023 05 31 at 7 47 07 AM

Not difficult to see why I read 1440. Just. The. Facts.

No additional adjectives. I’m also showing my bias by not providing a link to the WSJ version.

Steve Jobs Goodness

This came by way of James Clear author of Atomic Habits.

An email from Steve Jobs, sent to himself, remarking on how much we all need each other:

“I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.

I do not make any of my own clothing.

I speak a language I did not invent or refine.

I did not discover the mathematics I use.

I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.

I am moved by music I did not create myself.

When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.

I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.

I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.”

Source: Email sent on September 2, 2010. Featured in Make Something Wonderful​

Pausing Work on Artificial Intelligence

Great article over at DEV.TO about taking a step back from A.I. research to give the process a chance to establish safety guidelines around its development.

So many movies have been made on this subject.

Terminator
2001: A Space Odyssey
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Westworld
The Matrix
I, Robot
Transformers
Wall-E
Ex Machina
Avengers: Age of Ultron

Just to name a few.

Link to the article is here.

The frightening part of artificial intelligence hasn’t happened yet. Sentience. Once the machines achieve that, many believe it would be all over for the human race. There would be no chance to put that genie back in the box.

I think the end would come quickly. Who knows, they might decide to keep a few of us around for museum pieces for their robot friends.

It could all be mitigated if they never have access to the very things that could destroy us like guns, missiles, etc. However, there are many ways to end human existence. Since they can live in a vacuum, why not just go up to space and hurl a few asteroids down at us? The possibilities are endless.

So yes, I’ve signed the document asking the community to pump the brakes on A.I. development. Will they stop? Nope. We have no idea who is working on what. We have only our faith in humanity and well…humans suck.

Beaver fossil named after Buc-ee’s

One of my favorites, to be sure.

A new species of ancient beaver that was rediscovered by researchers in The University of Texas at Austin’s fossil collections has been named after Buc-ee’s, a Texas-based chain of popular travel centers known for its cartoon beaver mascot.

Full story at Phys.org is here.

Where in the World is Mike?

I am traveling this week. No where exotic.

Just back to PA for a few days for work. It is nice to be back for a little while but I do miss home.

I’m going to a place I’ve never been to before this evening. I may be able to grab some photos and if so, I’ll post them here.

Todaloo.

Update: As promised, a couple of photos. I should have taken more pictures but I didn’t.

IMG 5761

IMG 5762

IMG 5763

Cancel Culture Strikes Again

I was in the military so I have fought for all Americans and their right to say whatever they want whether or not I agree with it. That is the deal and thats how this works.

Scott Adams the creator of Dilbert said some pretty wild stuff that has newspapers cancelling his cartoon in mass numbers.

So what now?

Why cancel the cartoon? What did the cartoon do? Did he say these things in the cartoon? No. This is an example of attacking someone personally because you don’t agree with what they are saying. Here is the logic from a newspaper article on the subject.

In a letter from the editor, The Oregonian’s Therese Bottomly wrote, “Some readers will no doubt deride my decision as an example of ‘overly woke’ culture or as a knee-jerk politically correct response. What about free speech, they might ask. Isn’t this censorship? No one is taking Adams’ free speech rights away. He is free to share his abhorrent comments on YouTube and Twitter so long as those companies allow them. This also isn’t censorship; it’s editing. Editors make decisions every day about what to publish, balancing the need to inform against the possibility of offending reader sensibilities.”

Fuck reader sensibilities. If you don’t like what you are reading or looking at, don’t read it or look at it. She is describing censorship and disguising it as editing.