Things I didn’t know.

Lunch in Houston is done.  Waiting on the plane to Clearwater.  Somehow, I figured out how to turn off the vocals on Windows Media Player 12.  Listening to Maxwell Murder (Rancid) without lyrics was something I would have relished back when I played guitar.  I don’t do that anymore, but that’s because my guitars were one of the first things to go when I went broke. 

A few hours later, I figure it out.  Still in Houston, waiting on the plane.  I charge my phone to full at a charging station and it dies to half in less than an hour.  Wonderful.  So I’m eating the laptop battery to charge the phone so the phone can give me directions to where I need to go in Clearwater.  Which makes me think I should find where I’m going ahead of time.  And Google maps on my phone solves the problem in just a few minutes.  I think I will reboot my phone, though.  It shouldn’t be dying this quickly.

Airports are interesting in that they are slight microcosms of the rest of the world, just thrown all together in a compact, foot-mobile space.  I read an article by an Israeli responsible for security at Ben-Gurren airport.  And I begin to realize just how unsafe every airport I’ve been to is.  Airports are designed to provide the illusion of security to those who aren’t into dealing death.  There’s lots of people being very hands on and very invasive, and as Americans we’ve taken it for granted that is what security means.  But it’s security that doesn’t really secure anything.

A couple of suicide vests in those wonderfully long lines could take out hundreds before the person ever hits the so called “security”.  And if the bombers did what they did in Beiruit with the bombing on the Marine barracks, then you’ve got a giant clusterfuck of a situation where hundreds are dead.  But then, the security was always a knee jerk reaction and was never meant to create real security.  That takes different aims and approaches. 

I’ve long contended that we failed miserably after 9/11 and we basically gave the terrorists everything they could have wanted.  I was shouted down, but I don’t think anyone ever studied the aims of terrorists. 

I don’t remember the manual, but I seem to remember the aims of terrorism to be a few of the following: money, awareness, change behavior, kill enemies.  Well, when we change our behavior and everyone and their dog knows who Al Queda is, I’d say the terrorists won.  That’s not to say we killed a lot of them in the process, but they still won.  They got us to react to them permanently while they react to us momentarily. 

More airport fun

I’m at the airport, and for some reason, the Supersuckers Going Back to Tuscon is running through my head right now.   I’m headed back to Clearwater, Florida for training.  I’m sure there are plenty of things I could be doing right now, but all I remember is something I put on Facebook last night and I don’t think anyone got what I was saying. 

I read an article yesterday about the carbon footprint of the Tesla vehicles.  The article was very distinct in that the complaints about the vehicle were related to specific metals used in the production of the vehicle.  The end result is the Tesla has a smaller carbon food print than the guy who posted its’ diesel truck.  And then it struck me as weird.  My brain immediately jumped to a memory I have of burning poo in Iraq back in 2003.  And I kind of laughed, because carbon footprint seemed pretty ridiculous in comparison.  If you need a visual, watch the movie Jarhead.  You’ll see pretty much the same thing, described in detail.

And I think it could be because I’m reading a book about how to think like Sherlock Holmes (Mastermind by Maria Konnikova) and I just finished a section on creating mental distance, and I begin to think of this…

Be sure to establish your own priorities.  If you don’t, someone else is likely to set them for you and you may not like where you end up.

Make sure and use the principle of exclusion to keep others’ priorities out of your life.  Limit information in order to gain greater insight because it cuts down the signal to noise ratio.  I guess Konnikova put it accurately when she said more information is not always relevant or important information. 

And after a few seconds of thinking, I come to bread and circuses, and I begin to think the Romans were right.  The only thing is that the modern government has advanced the topic with the realization that not every person is going to respond to bread and circuses, but many will.  For those more advanced in life that have moved beyond bread and circuses, you have carbon footprints and global warming.  It’s all just a game to keep people distracted.

Hotels and Motels

At the Fairfield Inn and Suites in Clearwater, Florida.  Been here since Sunday night and I’ll be leaving Saturday early in the morning.  As of writing this (Monday morning, about 7 AM), I’ve found that Floridians aren’t completely crazy in their driving, and a hotel is a hotel, no matter what part of the country you are in.

I haven’t traveled a lot in the last six years or so, but not much has changed in comparison to when I did.  A hotel room is a basic thing, with two beds, one bathroom, and a TV.  The only noticeable difference I’ve seen is the CAT-5 cable coming out of the wall to provide internet connection.  Which is nice, and better than the splotchy WI-FI that is generally available.  Otherwise, not much has changed. 

My need for plugs?  That has changed immensely.  I used to need one, now I feel like I’m taking over every outlet I can find in the place: laptop, cell phone, blue tooth.  I’m sure I’m missing one or two here are there, but it’s just crazy.  Maybe it’s the giant fear that people live lives so greatly connected by technology that requires vast amounts of electricity.  And that causes fear, and shows just how dependent we are on the magical juice running through the wall. 

But that’s neither here nor there.  It’s just a thing.  I’m not sure it’s a good thing or a bad thing.  Just a thing.  Breakfast wasn’t bad.  I never eat breakfast, though.  Maybe one day out of thirty.  And now I’m sitting here contemplating breakfast again tomorrow morning.  I’ll probably get breakfast.  Is it that traveling and complimentary things cause us to change our behavior?  Or is it that the desire to consume?  I own an iron, but I never iron my clothes.  Yet I always contemplate ironing my clothes when I stay at a hotel. 

Towards the end of the first day now, Monday.  Not sure when this will get posted, but it’s a good thing to note.  Part of me is getting more and more relaxed, and part of me is wound up tighter than a drum.  There’s a desire to calm that winding with copious amounts of alcohol, but I don’t think I will.  I haven’t had real time off in I don’t know how long and my day usually doesn’t even begin to end until 8PM.  Generally more like 9PM, so I have no idea what to do with my life.  It’s strange and substantial all in one, and I don’t know what to do when I’m not working 24/7 anymore.  Might be job work, might be parent work, might be housework…  don’t know at all.  

Layover pt II, Airports pt III

At a layover in Austin, waiting for the next flight out to Tampa.  Last time I was in Austin airport, it was October of 2001.  I had just finished USMC Infantry School (0311, Alpha Company).  I flew into Austin and had a friend pick me up.  I had intended to fly into Lubbock, but the best laid of plans of mice and men often go awry.  And those who don’t ask, don’t know.  And that’s very true of those who join the USMC without asking too many questions.  

I joined the USMC without asking too many questions.  I can make implications as to why, but those are all numerology type inferences.  Maybe politician inferences.  I’m joking about the effect before cause inferences.   A failing of cause and effect makes 99% of numerology inferences fail.  All those inferences are based on tying two things together.  And tying those two things together often results in tenuous connections. 

But tenuous connections are often the best kinds.  Because the person’s floor I crashed in after visiting Austin airport was a good friend that I liked a lot.  And I wish something would have happened out of it, but nothing did.  A decade later, and everyone is different.  Still the same, but different in ways that are hard to describe other than “older”.  Some I haven’t talked to  in years, but that’s okay.  There are still tenuous connections made more than a decade ago that cause memories to come flaring back, and hopes and dreams and fears to become something different.  I find it hard to think about myself a decade ago.  I don’t even know where I was mentally at that time.  I can draw pictures and dates and tie things together chronologically, but that’s been a while.  The younger me would probably try to beat the older me up, but would lose because the older me is more cunning.

Still, it’s a different time and place.  The connections exist, but it has been so long that the logic behind all of it has been lost.   Such a different life. 

Is it the mindlessly long waits at airports that cause us to remember vague things?  Or is it the lack of entertainment and overpriced beer?  Seriously.  What better way to kill a three hour layover than three or four beers.  But not at $7 a beer.  I realize airports have a monopoly on your traffic, but this is just insane.  Maybe the airports of the world just don’t want customers completely loaded while we wait on a five hour layover to save a buck or tow.  Or is it simply that the airport/airplane business model has colossal holes in it that no one wants to fill. 

In hunting down my $7 beer, I found a $12 cheeseburger, a $6 slice of pizza, and an $8 sandwich.  The McDonalds dollar menu has nothing on airport travel, and they know it.  Next time you see a McDonalds commercial, pay attention to the message about “at participating restarunts only”.  What they really mean is “anywhere but the airport”.  I think they’ve roped the TSA into enforcing their monopoly as well.  There are size limitations on what you can carry on at an airport, so you are limited by what you can make it through security with. 

I would guess that you couldn’t make a decent lunch out of what you can carry on at the airport.  The airport knows that there isn’t a thing within walking distance so it is isolated and separated.  Secondly, you’d have to go through the security checkpoints in order to make it to anything around.  And they make going through security all together so pleasant.  “Okay buddy, take off your belt and empty your bags while we treat a law abiding citizen like a criminal”.  Once you’re done being shoved through security and treated like a terrorist, it’s time to cram into an uncomfortable bus with tiny seats and ride that for hours on end.  Because the air travel model is really well designed… for a monopoly.  

The airport model really makes me think about what you can do with enough fear mongering and political clout.  I guess the real question is this: how much of those dollars that go into an airport make it to the city coffers?  I’m guessing a decent amount.   Otherwise, you might have a competitive business model happening.  And what you’ve got right now just isn’t it.    

While I'm thinking about it, or Airports pt II

While I’m about it, I’m going to mention my disdain for PDF Complete and Adobe Reader all in the same group.   PDF Complete tries to handle what Adobe doesn’t do by creating a lightweight, easy to use and operate PDF reader program.  Great concept, and if the execution was as good as the idea, then it would be perfect.  But it’s not. 

While I have little to do, stuck in an airport, I’m catching up on reading amongst other things.  I rarely have time in the day or night to work on anything other than what I’ve got in front of me.  Studying?  Just forget about that most of the time.  But I’m in an airport for the next hour, killing time and catching up.  This trip to Tampa is working vacation for me.  I’m technically flying out to go through a class and pass a certification test.  But most of what I’m studying I’ve been doing for the past year.  This is not a lot of new stuff to learn, just refinements in what I already know. 

As I was saying, I’ve been catching up on my reading, and a bunch of what I read is in PDF format.  So that means I need a PDF reader to handle that document.  It would be nice if the PDF program would remember my place without hours of work.  Hit a “remember my place” button or “dog-ear this page” button.  Something like that.  But I’ve never found that.  So I go with the other option.  And the other option is to write down what the PDF says the page is.  Here’s where PDF complete fails me. 

Let’s say I’m reading a 2,000 page book.  I read for twenty or thirty minutes, and then I write down the page I’m on in a text document and I exit the reader.  Next time I want to read that book, I pull up my text document with my “dog-ear”, and I open the file.  Once it’s open, I type that page number into the page location and press the enter key.  Within seconds, I’m back to where I finished.  Except I’m not.  With PDF Complete, that page number never updates once I continue reading.  So I end up reading the same thing over and over.  I did that at least twice before I uninstalled PDF Complete and installed Adobe Reader XI.  

Adobe Reader has always been a buggy, bloated, painful to operate program.  It doesn’t play with other programs and has always had a problem with memory leaks.  It’s like whoever wrote the memory free/release structure for Adobe Reader never checked it to make sure it was releasing everything and closing the way it was supposed to.  Combine that with the constant updates, and you’ve got a generally crappy program. 

Other thought…   Adobe acknowledges their product is such a delivery method for viri and malware the bundle anti-x tools with the program.  What a piece of crap.  I guess that’s my new method for determining how buggy a program is… what has it been bundled with?

While I’m discussing viri and malware, there are generally three programs you need.  R-Kill, Avira, and Malware Bytes.   Malware Bytes the trailer though, and often it won’t find anything.  But R-Kill and Avira will solve 95% of all issues.  And from a Windows user perspective, I would recommend you have at least two accounts on your computer.  Both can be administrators.  That part is irrelevant.  What you essentially need is a stable account that hasn’t been jacked with in a long time so when the virus takes over your computer you can get rid of it. 

There was one computer that had issues.  The virus had changed all the operating system links, so Windows didn’t know an .exe file was supposed execute things. Every extension had been changed.  Luckily, this was a domain user and they had a local computer account on that computer.  So what I did is put R-Kill in the “all users” startup folder, logged off as the domain user, logged on as the local user, and R-Kill fired off because it was a separate account.  R-Kill fixed the file extensions so I could install Avira and clean the computer.

Okay, enough rambling from this airport, as I’m about to board and head for the next airport.  There is a several hour layover at the next one, so I’ll probably fill up another couple of pages.  Maybe by the end, I’ll have a couple of weeks of updates so my blog actually has activity.