Category Archives: Death Of Common Sense

June 10, 2015 · 23:43

In Search Of Job Application Middle Ground

I’ve been filling out a lot of job applications for a while now. While I have been to the odd job fair or other event where I hand out resumes and try to meet face-to-face and maybe fill out a quick application by hand, let’s get real – 99% of it these days is done online.

What I’m seeing is two extremes, with damn little room in between. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I can’t help but wonder if the place I’m looking for to get my foot in the door isn’t a place in that sweet spot.

On the one hand, there are plenty of places (through Linkedin or any of the dozens or hundreds of job search engines) where it’s not much more than a one-click  submission. Attach a PDF copy of your resume and click the button. Presto-chango! You’ve applied for the job! You may or may not (bet on “not”) even get an email acknowledging your submission, and 99% of the time you’ll never, ever hear anything back. I have gotten actual responses and even an interview or two from these, but they’re few and far between.

Out at the other extreme, there are places (usually national, big-name companies) that have the most long, drawn-out, odious application processes known to man. These things aren’t job applications, they’re endurance tests. In almost every case I’ve seen, the exact same form is used whether you’re applying for a CFO position or for a graveyard shift janitorial position.

Let me be blunt – that’s a joke. It means that someone in HR isn’t doing their job, or the HR department has been taken over by a deadly infestation of lawyers.

Inevitably these ordeal applications have questions which are totally inapplicable to anyone looking for a management position. I had one for a major hotel chain that wanted to know my high school GPA, the names of three teachers for references, and so on. (I graduated from high school over 40 years ago, I’m not sure how many of my teachers are still alive, I’m not sure how many live ones would remember me, and since I haven’t been in contact with any of them in over 40 years, how could they be a reliable reference?)

Next they wanted to know all of the details for my last five jobs. The assumption here is obviously that everyone moves from job to job every year or so, if that. But I was at my last job for 27 years. To get to my fifth job back in time, you’re talking about the part-time job I had as a junior in high school, busing tables and washing dishes at the Howard Johnsons off of I-89 in central Vermont. Who was my supervisor and what’s their current address and phone number? How in hell should I know?

Best of all, these kinds of applications from hell usually won’t let you put something in such as “Not Applicable” or “None.” The form has spaces to be filled in and damn it you can’t go on to the next page until it’s all filled in completely! And don’t try to put 555-1212 or 867-5309 in there for the phone number…

So in order to simply move forward in the process, there’s no option but to make up answers and try to make them convincing. Or at least, convincing enough to fool the ‘bot running the program. I guess it’s sort of like a CAPTCHA system for job applications, but with a sadistic twist.

And then they want you to swear that everything’s accurate and true, because if it’s not and they find out, they’ll fire you!

If you don’t realize that there are different questions for different types of jobs and job applicants, you’re not living in the same reality I am. It’s not a matter of discrimination or profiling or equality – it’s a matter of common sense. When your last job had a mid-six figure salary and you can only answer the question in terms of “how much did you make an hour and how many hours a week did you work” and there aren’t “legal” answers that fit, you’re doing a lousy job.

Which brings me to my final point on the application from hell procedure – do I really want to work for a company where the first contact I have with them is this kind of nonsense with zero flexibility or common sense? There are only about six places that I would answer “yes” to that question. NASA. JPL. SpaceX. The KC Chiefs. The LA Angels. Virgin Galactic.

Somewhere out there is that middle ground. More than just point and click, less than the Bataan Death March. A way to get a decent first estimate on the question, “Could this person maybe do a good job?” If no, then a polite, “Thanks, but no thanks.” If yes, then a follow-up, with some personal contact, common sense, and the flexibility to ask intelligent questions which could vary depending on the job, the applicant, and even the answers to the earlier questions.

I know there will be folks who say, “You can’t do that! There are too many applicants! You must have a computer or a system to quickly cut down the firehose of applications to a trickle of good candidates!” Perhaps, but if you’re going to do that, maybe you could get a program or system that isn’t totally useless, inflexible, and

Get to know me. Let me get to know you. Maybe the job is so over my head that I don’t stand a prayer. Maybe I’m so overqualified that it’s a waste of my time to show up every day. Maybe I’m perfect but you can only pay 1/3 of what I made before. Maybe you want me to move to Texas or Syria. Maybe you’re a startup with a bunch of millenials in their 20’s and an old fart like me wouldn’t fit in. Maybe you’re a startup with a bunch of millenials in their 20’s and you’ll be amazed that I love Amanda Palmer and EDM and Linkin Park and you need that old fart with decades of experience to give you a heads up when you’re going off the rails.

None of this means that either of us will find each other perfect, or even acceptable. But it might.

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Job Hunt, Paul

January 20, 2015 · 21:25

Hooray For Cat Hallucinations!

I’ve noted before (I used it as a starting plot point for the 2013 NaNoWriMo) that it’s freaky as all get out when a cat that’s resting comfortably and calmly on your lap suddenly bolts upright, ears twitching, eyes wide open, staring at something behind you that only it can see. It doesn’t help any when they spend the next five minutes with their eyes locked on whatever unseen horror it might be, their head swiveling as they follow their hallucination around the room, as if there’s some poltergeist or invisible zombie creeping up behind you.

When they start making that little chirping noise and twitching their butt like they’re getting ready to leap, and the idiot freakin’ raccoons on the roof choose that particular moment to run the 100-yard dash across the roof right above your head, it’s an invitation to a coronary.

On the other hand…

When you’ve spent the day dealing with people and situations that you swear are there just to see where your frustration breaking point is, then your nominal evening entertainment is all pre-empted by the State Of The Union address, and your substitute entertainment (social media) is saturated with bullshit from both sides on the aforementioned SOTU, and you’re just about to punch something just because, it can be a relief to have the sleeping cat freak out.

“Ignorance is bliss.” I’ve often thought it was nonsense to think that way. I always wanted to know and know more and to understand.

But in the case of both the political/social polarity/intolerance in our society and the invisible phantom haunting the room, I’m starting to place a higher value on ignorance.

In both cases, I don’t think there’s much I can do to change the situation, and being aware of it is just raising my blood pressure and making me feel bad. So while I’ve always hated being ignorant or uninformed, I think the argument could be made that I might be better off being blissfully ignorant.

Even if it does mean that I’m slightly less prepared to catch Ken Jenning’s record when I finally get on “Jeopardy!”

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Filed under Cats, Critters, Death Of Common Sense, Freakin' Idiots!, Politics, Religion

May 6, 2014 · 22:42

Remain Skeptical!

First, I don’t think it’s become national news (I couldn’t find any mention of it on the New York Times website, for example) but out here there’s a furor over an eighth-grade writing assignment in Rialto. In the assignment, students were asked to research and write an essay about the Holocaust, arguing either that it occurred or that it was a fabrication for political purposes. Needless to say, the shit has hit the fan, the Rialto authorities are backpedaling and apologizing like crazy, and the students are going to get a different assignment.

Secondly, in watching “Cosmos” the last several weeks (as you should be as well, it’s “most excellent” as Bill and Ted would say) a recurring theme is that the people who changed the world and changed the way we see it were the people who questioned the accepted “truth,” the people who asked for proof instead of doctrine.”

Thirdly, in David Brin’s “Uplift Saga,” a pivotal plot point is that after the spunky, underdog, pesky humans (yeah, humans!) discover a billion-year old Galactic civilization, they’re the only ones who question the factual accuracy of the centrally controlled Galactic Encyclopedia. Of course, they find errors, omissions, outright falsehoods, and many novels worth of action and excitement ensue.

Finally, look on the internet (especially FaceBook it seems) almost any day and you’ll find people passing around some picture or story that has them either astonished (tonight only Mars will be bigger than the moon!) or morally outraged (Obama’s letting the UN take our guns!). The outrage often comes from some political or religious point of view. However, the tiniest little bit of fact checking will usually show how bogus the information is. It’s even worse when the source of the bullshit is a mainstream media outlet, but we’ll discuss Faux News some other time.

The theme running though all of these coalescing thoughts (at least, they combined and coagulated in my brain today) is one of a healthy skepticism. I’m a firm believer in that kind of skepticism, but I would urge everyone to temper it just a bit with some common sense and balance.

  • Skepticism
  • Common sense.
  • Balance.
  • Stay away from the extremes.
  • Be very, very skeptical of conspiracy theories. The more complex and convoluted they are, the more skeptical you should be.
  • Set the trigger point on your “bullshit alarm” very low — but not at zero.

At one end of the spectrum, it’s okay to believe the Holocaust occurred without having personally been at Auschwitz and witnessed the horrors that occurred there. It’s okay to believe that the Earth is round, even if it looks flat from where you’re standing. It’s okay to believe that Neil Armstrong and eleven other Americans walked on the moon, even though you weren’t one of them.

At the other end of the spectrum, when the tobacco industry spent decades “proving” that cigarettes were not addictive and were not unhealthy — maybe that should have been double checked. When the cable and internet companies tell you that monopolies will make sure you get better, faster, and cheaper service — maybe someone should take another look at those calculations. When any politician (from any political party at any level of  government in any country or era) says anything, assume they’re lying until you verify for yourself what the facts are.

As far as the internet goes, Brin’s idea was ahead of  its time. Be skeptical of everything online and always get multiple viewpoints and sources. If the NY Times, LA Times, Fox News, CNN, Reuters, and NPR are all reporting something to be true, your confidence level can be high. If every one of those places has a different “spin” and is picking and choosing which facts to lead with and which to bury deep in the text, then you should not be cherry picking which source you believe.

Remember, you don’t have to believe any one source — especially when there are a lot of different versions of the facts.

As for what shows up online, jeez louise people, did y’all turn off your brains when the computer screen turned on? There are articles out there passing as fact that are so outrageous even The Onion wouldn’t print them, yet folks keep passing them around as the gospel truth.

In that huge grey area between those extremes, remain skeptical!

Multiple sources are your friend.

When in doubt, check Snopes!

If it sounds too good (or too awful) to be true — assume that it’s not!

Guess what — people lie to you! Especially if they’re making billions of dollars by lying. (See tobacco companies, oil & gas companies, politicians, and so on.)

Finally, when that viral bit comes across your screen, before you pass it on to everyone you know online, no matter how much you want to spread the joy or revel in humiliating your enemies, step back for a second and double check a second source. Google it. If the first few things you see use the word “hoax” a lot, don’t perpetuate the bullshit. There’s too much of it to begin with.

Now, go enjoy the internet, but remember to be a spunky, underdog, pesky, skeptical human!

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Freakin' Idiots!, Moral Outrage

April 11, 2014 · 21:16

Living Safely In Cyberspace

…and THIS is the reason that I’m just as happy my extremely non-tech savvy mother isn’t on the Internet.

I’ve got a pretty solid computer background. I started learning programming using machine language on a PDP-8 in high school. (Nixon was President.) We didn’t even have a monitor, or punch cards, we used paper tape. (Uphill both ways!)

I saw my first computer monitors at Dartmouth (25×80, monochrome), then took programming classes at UC Irvine where I was a physics major. Following graduation I worked for five years as a programmer. I’ve built PCs from the ground up, and I’ve upgraded more than I care to remember.

One of my functions for the next 25+ years was to be “the tech guy” in the office, which meant not only keeping the office computers running (hardware, software, training, upgrades, backups, the whole magilla) but also performing those tasks for the computers at my boss’ house.

If there’s a computer problem, I’m probably “smarter than the average bear.”

Today was my personal tech support day as I opened the can of worms that is the Heartbleed security flaw and the need to change passwords. What a mess!

First of all, from everything I’m seeing, now that the patches to close the security hole are being installed, you really, really need to be paying attention to the warnings and changing your passwords.

SIDE NOTE: If you want or need a simple explanation of how the flaw worked, check out today’s XKCD comic. If you want a good review of how to make a good password, read this XKCD. If you just want to be a decent and more intelligent human being, read XKCD every day.

This morning I was just going to change a couple of passwords from major sites (Google, Facebook, Dropbox) that were known to have been compromised, but were now safe. Six hours later…

Part of the time-suck was that I also was activating two-step verification where I hadn’t already done it. But once you do that, then you have to go through every stinkin’ computer you have (or at least the ones you’re using regularly) to update the password, then get an application specific password for the mobile devices, then get access verified, all the while making very damn sure that you are entering the correct password (there’s a system) and updating all of your records in case you forget one, as well as printing and filing away the emergency backup verification codes…

To me, none of this was rocket science, it’s just tedious and you have to be very meticulous. Very bad things can happen if you skip or mess up one little thing. But conceptually and practically, I’m not lost. But that’s just me. I’m well aware that I’m well above average in tech proficiency.

For folks who don’t have my background, who just want the freakin’ thing to work, this has a huge potential to leave them confused and pissed off. Which, in turn, is why so many folks have passwords like “none” or “password” or “abc123.” These folks won’t be bothering to change their passwords now when they really should. These folks won’t be making sure that they have a different password for each site.

Then I think of how my mother would react to this mess, and I shudder in terror. Mom’s not stupid at all — but she’s very inexperienced when it comes to tech. She had a cell phone, once, for a while, but receiving or sending text messages was beyond her skill set. I don’t know if she’s ever had a bank ATM card, but I suspect not. I do know that she has never had an email account. Ever. She has trouble looking up channels on the programming guide channel for her cable service. If she were to go online, it would be tough enough for her to keep track of a handful of simple, weak passwords, let alone strong passwords or the processes to change them.

So when the next security crisis comes along (and it will), or even when the consequences of this one come home to roost in a few weeks or month, more and more people will be hesitant to trust the security of the internet.

But there’s no way to not use computers or the internet if you’re in a first, second, or even a third world country. I guess in theory you could demand to be paid in cash and pay for everything you buy with cash, but even then, if your “cash paycheck” isn’t coming from some illegal and undercover activity, you’ll end up in the computer systems run by Social Security, state and federal tax agencies, and so on. How would you have a driver’s license or register a car or pay property taxes without ending up in the DMV or county assessor’s computer system? If you get sick or end up in the hospital, you’re in their system and some sort of insurance or Medicaid computer system. Get a traffic ticket? Someone hits your car?

You get the drift. I’m pretty sure even the Amish and the survivalists up in the Rockies can’t really and truly get out of the system and off the grid.

Let’s hope that the powers that be get their act together and learn a little bit from this mess. There will be another mess to follow, and more beyond that, but if we learn a little bit each time and we get a little better each time, maybe we can stay ahead of the bad guys.

In the meantime, realize that your online life has many analogies with your real world life. There are bad guys out there who want to hurt you and steal from you. The cops can’t catch them all, and sometimes the “cops” have their heads stuck where the sun doesn’t shine. You’re the first, second, and third line of defense, like it or not.

Make sure to do as much as you can to keep your cyber stuff locked up, the cyber burglar alarms armed, and the cyber watch dogs alert. If you’re going to do the equivalent of leaving your doors and windows wide open with all of your possessions out in plain sight, don’t be surprised when said possessions turn up missing.

Do it even if it is a tedious and meticulous can of worms.

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Filed under Computers, Death Of Common Sense, Family, Paul

April 4, 2014 · 22:20

A Thousand Days

Yesterday marked a thousand days since July 8, 2011, the day the final mission of the Space Shuttle program launched.

There’s no doubt in my mind that mothballing the Space Shuttle fleet when we did was a colossal error. A thousand days later, that opinion has only grown stronger.

Shutting down the shuttle program has meant that US, European, and Japanese astronauts have all had to ride to and from the International Space Station on Russian rockets, paying through the nose for the privilege. Note that I don’t blame the Russians at all for increasing what they charge. We foolishly handed them a monopoly — they’re just doing any monopolist would or should do.

I won’t argue that the shuttle program needed to be shut down due to how much it cost.

I would argue that it shouldn’t have cost nearly as much as it did. I would argue that from the beginning, the program was never bold enough. It was a program run by bureaucrats and politicians, not astronauts and engineers. For an example of what people outside of NASA were proposing, look at some of the early proposals from David Brin and others for taking the shuttle’s external tanks to orbit and using them to build a much bigger (and earlier) space station than ISS. But I’ll save those arguments for another time, it’s just a lot of “coulda, woulda, shoulda” now.

Reality check — in the early 2000’s the shuttle was expensive and had safety issues. Instead of addressing or fixing those issues, President Bush (the second one) decided that the program would be shut down as soon as construction on ISS was finished. That was the situation that President Obama inherited, and while he could have changed direction, he’s actually made it worse.

If you believe that a human space program is a useless waste of money, I hope that you’ve stopped reading and moved on by this point. I’m of the opposite mind, believing that it’s a critical part of our future if our grandchildren and their grandchildren and their grandchildren are to survive. I also believe that NASA’s budget, which is a fraction of 1% of the federal budget, should be doubled or tripled or more, immediately if not sooner. (I don’t remember the exact figure, but the ballpark figure is that the interest on the national debt for a few hours is more than NASA’s budget for the entire year.)

That goes for the unmanned planetary exploration as well. We should be sending orbiters, landers, rovers, flyers, and swimmers to Titan, Enceladus, and Europa. But that’s a rant for another day as well.

So, having spent thirteen years and something like $150 billion to build an incredible space station and having it finally ready to start doing full-time scientific research, our big vision, our big plan, the course our “leadership” set was…

…to shut down the only way we had to get there, other than buying a limited number of Soyuz seats from the Russians.

Now that relations with the Russians are turning sour, plenty of folks at NASA and in Congress are noticing that the only way our next crew gets up there is on a Russian rocket, and the only way the current crew on orbit gets down is in a Russian Soyuz capsule landing in Russia. They are all saying that it won’t be a problem, they’re not worried, the problems we have with the Russians will never get so bad that they refuse to take our astronauts up.

Yeah, probably. We hope. God help us if they’re wrong.

But of course, a thousand days ago, the successor to the shuttle must have been on the drawing boards and ready to go any day, right? Otherwise, that was a decision that absolutely defies any kind of logic or common sense. It would have been almost criminally shortsighted. Right?

Currently, the US successor to the shuttle is Orion and the SLS. “SLS” stands for “Space Launch System,” a heavy-lift vehicle designed to take us past low Earth orbit. It’s more commonly referred to as the “Senate Launch System” because politicians with NASA jobs in their home districts and states are the ones who keep insisting on SLS being built, when the program is turning into an incredibly expensive dead end. It’s also referred to as “The Rocket To Nowhere.”

It would be a fantastic vehicle, a worthy follow-up to the Saturn V — if it were ready now, if it cost a quarter or a tenth of what it does, if it could be launched four or five or six times a year.  But it’s not ready now, nor was it ready a thousand days ago. The first test launch (non-crewed) is currently scheduled for 2017, three years from now, far more than another thousand days from now, almost 2,500 days from the final Space Shuttle launch.

I only wish those figures were typos.

It gets better. Assuming the first test flight goes well, the second flight, which will carry a crew, is scheduled for 2021.

2021. If there aren’t any problems. If there aren’t any funding issues or cuts. If there’s isn’t another ninety degree change in course.

Four full years after the first test flight, they’re (maybe) going to have the second test flight.

When we were learning to go to moon in the 1960’s, through Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, figuring out how to build rockets from scratch (yes, it was rocket science) we were launching as many as five or six manned missions per year, even on brand new rockets. Now, with over fifty years of experience, we’re hopeful that maybe we’ll be able to launch once every four years.

Can you tell that I’m less than impressed?

Then there’s Orion, the space vehicle that SLS will launch into deep space. It will carry up to seven astronauts to low Earth orbit, like to the ISS, or four astronauts on long (several weeks) trips beyond the moon to an asteroid or other target. It’s not revolutionary, it’s not a huge leap forward, it’s actually a huge leap backwards. It’s an oversize Apollo capsule, upgraded with better computers and digital displays instead of 1960’s computers that were a thousand times less powerful than your average smart phone.

Fine. Form follows function. It will get the job done. Was it ready a thousand days ago? Nope, not even close. But unlike the SLS, the first Orion (non-crewed) test launch is actually scheduled for later this year, although the smart money says it will slip into 2015.

So, next year we’ll be able to take an Orion capsule and launch it to ISS on one of our existing rockets, like a Delta or Atlas, right? We’ve launched hundreds and hundreds of those, we’ve got factories building dozens and hundreds more to come. Right?

Nope. As far as I can tell, the Orion will only be able to be launched on the SLS. Originally President Bush had proposed the Constellation program, which included Orion and a family of rockets called Ares. An Ares I could take an Orion to low earth orbit, an Ares V could take one to the moon or beyond.

But the Constellation program was killed by President Obama, and he came pretty close to shutting down NASA’s human space program completely. You don’t have a human space program if you don’t have any crewed spacecraft or any rockets to launch them. Some compromises with Congress led to the Orion being kept, the SLS put on the drawing boards to carry it to some very unspecific “asteroid missions” in the very unspecific “sometime in someone else’s Administration” time frame in which to do it.

Now can you tell that I’m not impressed?

Our salvation at this point lies with the private sector and companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Xcor, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, and Boeing. SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are currently sending non-crewed cargo vehicles to ISS.

SpaceX is well along the way to building and testing a crewed vehicle, with abort system tests scheduled for later this year and in 2015. If all goes well, it might be possible for the first crewed Dragon flight to be in late 2015. Boeing is also working on a private, crewed capsule, the CTS-100, which will launch on an upgraded Delta IV or Atlas V rocket.

Late 2015 or early 2016 is an awful lot sooner than 2021. Can you tell that I’m impressed?

Back to the original point.

A thousand days ago, the last Space Shuttle flight took off. With absolutely nothing anywhere near being flight-ready to follow it. That’s got to be one of the greatest failures of vision and leadership in our country’s history.

It’s not like we don’t go through the exact same process with other government programs. So the shuttle was expensive and getting outdated? In an analogous situation, the military periodically has fighters, tanks, and ships that are outdated and getting too expensive to maintain. What do we do then?

We loved the F-14 fighters (Top Gun!), but they got replaced by the F-16, which in turn is being replaced with the F-18, which in turn will be phased out for the F-35 in the next decade or so.

BUT… We didn’t scrap the F-14s until the F-16s were in service and flying. We won’t scrap the F-18s until the F-35s are in service and flying. The programs will overlap and compliment each other for decades.

The older conventional-fuel aircraft carriers were outdated? They were replaced by the nuclear powered ones, which in turn are now being replaced by the next generation of aircraft carriers. Guess what? We didn’t scrap one generation until it had served side by side for decades with the next generation of ships.

Tanks? Ditto. Submarines? Ditto. Cargo planes? Jeeps? Destroyers and guided missile frigates? Guns? Bombs? Artillery? You get the picture.

But not spacecraft! We took all four shuttles, all four of which were flying like champions, all four of which were perfectly functional and capable, and even though we knew that there was nothing to replace them for at least six or seven (or twelve, or fifteen) years…we gutted them and put them into museums.

Strike one. If that’s not freakin’ stupid, I don’t know what is.

And let’s look at that analogy with military vehicles in another way. Do we make one single type of airplane? Nope, we have fighters, cargo planes, refueling planes, attack helicopters, troop carrying helicopters, tank killers, scout planes, bombers — an array different vehicles for different jobs.

Do we have one kind of Navy ship? Nope, we have aircraft carriers, destroyers, guided missile frigates, cargo ships, fuel ships, small attack submarines, big ballistic missile launching submarines…

So why are we building one and only one kind of rocket?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have crew-rated rockets in a range of sizes and capabilities? Smaller ones for putting spacecraft in low Earth orbit, bigger ones for putting big payloads (like space station pieces) into low earth orbit, even bigger ones for sending crews and ships to the moon and beyond? For that matter, why don’t we also have orbital craft that are never designed to land or come down to Earth, but act permanently in space as tugs, fuel depots, shuttles between the Earth and Moon, shuttles from the lunar surface to lunar orbit, shuttles from Earth orbit to the L5 and L4 points, shuttles between Earth and Mars…

Strike two. If that’s not freakin’ stupid, I don’t know what is.

I’m rooting hard for SpaceX, Orbital, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and Sierra Nevada. We need some success and some innovation and we need it soon. As important as I believe human space flight to be, it’s been proven to be too important to leave to the bureaucrats and politicians.

The last thousand days have proven that.

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Freakin' Idiots!, Politics, Space

March 26, 2014 · 21:20

Telemarketers & Scammers

I am perplexed by what I see as a paradox.

On the one hand, despite my regular experiences with my fellow humans on the LA freeway system, I try not to think of everyone as a bunch of freakin’ idiots! Granted, there are more of them out there than I would like, but on average, we’re not that stupid.

On the other hand, telemarketers and scam artists all seem to be doing booming business. As best as I can tell, that can only be happening if a pretty significant percentage of the population has less intelligence and less common sense than your average loaf of bread.

We all get the annoying telemarketing calls with general contractors wanting to give us estimates, credit card deals that we can only take advantage of at this instant, mysterious dudes who will buy your house in any condition, get cash fast opportunities with a pink-slip loan, painters who will be in your neighborhood next week and can put you on the schedule also, and so on ad infinitum.

They’re annoying, they’re illegal, and they’re not going to stop any time soon. I won’t even start on the political ads which inundate us when the primaries and general election rolls around. The political ads are legal because the laws written by the politicians exempt them. Cozy, eh? That should give us a clue about how enthusiastic the regulatory agencies are at enforcing the law.

My problem right now is caused in part by my employment situation and by the fact that I’ve got this new volunteer position with the local CAF wing. Normally I would just not bother to ever answer the land line unless the caller ID says that it’s someone I know. But I don’t want to take a chance on missing a call related to the job hunt or the CAF, so I end up answering the phone.

Two scammers were particularly persistent, calling three or four times a day for the last couple of days. (Or at least, they have the same bogus information on the Caller ID.) I got sick of it today and answered.

Despite the different Caller ID data, both were someone claiming to be from “Windows Computer Service Office.” Both were people speaking in extremely heavy accents, almost unrecognizable, both reading (badly) from a script. When I asked the first lady to stop reading from the script and just answer a couple of questions, she hung up. When I asked the second guy, he wanted to argue that he really, really WAS from “Windows Computer Service Office!” I said that I was as likely to be working for the FBI as he was to be working for Microsoft, and I asked him if anyone ever fell for this bullshit he was forced to read. He was still cussing me out and making suggestions that were anatomically unlikely when I hung up.

There’s the paradox. I don’t see how these scams ever generate a dime. Who in the world would bother to listen to this utter crap song and dance, let alone give them credit card information and access to their computers? Yet, there is obviously someone or some organization (it sounds like the calls are coming from a room full of hundreds of callers, just like in the movies) who’s paying to run this scam, so there must be some financial return or they would quit. I don’t get it.

Ditto for the “general contractors” who want to give free estimates. Do people ever really, really give tens of thousands of dollars in remodeling work to someone who just called up on a robo-dialer? Yet they keep calling. What gives?

Another similar thing that caught my eye earlier this week I can now understand a little bit more, thanks to something passed on by a Pepperdine classmate just a few minutes ago. (I had a really good rant going about this one too, but you’re going to get the re-write.)

It seems that people are getting calls from someone claiming to be with the IRS, demanding immediate wire transfer payments of thousands of dollars or else their homes will be seized, they’ll lose their car, and so on. Another local scam I just heard about is similar, with the caller claiming that there’s an outstanding arrest warrant and  if the payment isn’t made you’ll be hauled off to jail.

Kneejerk reaction, as above, is who in the hell falls for this? How can you not know that the IRS and the police NEVER handle things this way? If I got such a call from “the IRS”, I would tell them that I would be more than happy to see them at the local IRS office, give them the address, and ask for their name, their supervisor’s name, the date of the tax returns in question, the document locator numbers for the claims… There might also be some choice vulgarity in there, but I would promise (pinky swear, cross my heart and hope to die!) to apologize if and when we ever actually met in person in a real IRS office and they proved themselves to be real IRS agents.

Guaranteed, they would be hanging up on me and moving on to the next mark long, long before I got 10% of those questions said.

They say they’re with the police and there’s a warrant? Fine, show up at my door, in uniform, and let me see a badge. Until then, I have some moves to suggest that the Kama Sutra overlooked, which I will of course apologize for if and when…

Then I saw the article that’s related to the ones I had seen. But it’s not from the New York Times or Los Angeles Times or Washington Post. It’s from India West Online and talks about how these scams are targeting immigrants and non-native-born Americans.

That makes far more sense. These clowns aren’t calling folks who were born and raised here. 99.999999% of the calls would get laughed at. But if you target people who know a lot less about our culture and institutions, who may have limited English skills, who can be blackmailed with threats of deportation in addition to arrest and financial ruin, then I would expect to have a much higher “success” rate.

It’s not that these folks are stupid, it’s that they don’t have the same backgrounds and “common knowledge” that others have. For con artists and the slimeballs who run these scams, someone who is a stranger in a strange land becomes the weak gazelle at the watering hole.

So, pass the word, particularly if you know someone whose cultural background might make them a target. The IRS will NEVER demand an instant payment, and they will NEVER call you on the phone, at least for an initial notice (or the first couple hundred after that). The IRS just loves, loves, loves killing trees to send you paperwork. That phone call is bogus.

Ditto for the police. If there’s an arrest warrant for you — they’ll arrest you. Pure and simple. Anyone calling on the phone, claiming to be the police, and demanding any kind of immediate payment at all is 100.0000% guaranteed to be bogus. You should just hang up.

With all of that said, I still don’t have a clue how the “Windows Computer Service Office” makes any money, nor do I have any good way to deal with the calls. Ignoring them completely is probably the best option (so my head tells me) but my Catholic school upbringing makes me want to punish them (a feeling that comes from the gut, not the head).

Their “currency” is time — they want to move on as quickly as possible to the next victim when it becomes obvious that you’re not going to bite. But I don’t want to tie up my precious time either. That’s why these calls piss me off so much in the first place.

Does anyone have any good suggestions on a technique that would tie them on the phone for a while, while also not giving into their scam in any way and not taking any of my time in return?

 

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Freakin' Idiots!, Moral Outrage

March 21, 2014 · 23:21

Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Saturday, March 21st

As I mentioned elsewhere yesterday, I really need to take up kickboxing or skeet shooting. Life’s frustrations can pile up and need to be vented properly. Somehow bank reconciliations and answering emails just isn’t getting ‘er done.

  • Again it’s already 23:00??!! I’m getting too old for this crap.
  • As with so many people, my NCAA bracket didn’t even make it until noon Pacific. Dayton put a huge hole in my bracket, Harvard kicked me while I was down, North Dakota State punished me (presumably for being from South Dakota), and this morning Mercer just flipped off every bracket on the planet.
  • Fred Phelps is dead and for once I’m really, really hoping that my mother’s strict Catholic vision of Heaven is accurate. Fred vs. St. Peter is a conversation that I would pay good money to see.
  • At least I’m not a Duke basketball fan.
  • I whined, bitched, and spewed about how far Fry’s Electronics has fallen, and last night I felt the same sadness for CNN. Twenty years ago they were THE place to get sound, accurate, unbiased, factual news. I tried watching to get some late night updates on the missing Malaysian jet and found a panel of conspiracy theorists and assclowns who were too whacked out to give a decent opinion to the National Enquirer.
  • Absolutely astonishingly, there’s still one perfect bracket left in the QuickenLoans/Yahoo billion dollar thing. But the guy’s got at least three major upsets in the next round, including SF Austin beating UCLA, so I don’t think he’s long for this world. Warren Buffett will not be losing any sleep tonight.
  • You can’t watch CNN, the local news, and I’ll only watch Fox if someone has a gun to my head. Thank god for Twitter!
  • The CEO of Time-Warner Cable has been on the job for six weeks and is going to get $80 million when they merge with Comcast? Words fail me.
  • As for institutions that have gone into the toilet head first, don’t even get me started on The Learning Channel! Someone needs to be dipped in honey and staked to an ant hill in the sun for what’s happened over there.
  • The saddest part of all with places like TLC, TWC, and CNN, as well as with the people who are running them and becoming oligarchs in the process, is that I have no doubt at all that they honestly believe that they deserve more money for six weeks of work than fifty upper-middle class families will earn in their lifetimes combined. There’s no way that thought is logical or sane, yet it seems to be commonplace in “the 1%.”
  • I’m telling you, there are multiple dimensions in space and time right here on Earth today. We live in one. The 1% live in another one that only touches ours long enough to suck the life out of it.

Remember that if you violate the “do not call” list and interrupt me by illegally calling my phone in order to try to convince me that you’re with Microsoft technical support and I need to give you a credit card for a $500 charge to keep my computer running, I am under no obligation at all to be civil, polite, or to treat you like anything other than the slime you are. If I can’t go skeet shooting or kickboxing, at least I can screw with your head for kicks.

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Filed under Computers, Death Of Common Sense, Juicy Chunks, Sports

January 31, 2014 · 21:41

Odds & Sods For Friday, January 31st

Item The First: I can’t be the only one wondering where in hell January went, can I?

Item The Second: As long as I’m in a cranky old fart mood, why is it that May Company always has “One-Day Only!” sales, “this Saturday…with a preview day on Friday.” I may have to use my fingers to count, but that’s two days, not one. Shouldn’t it be a “Two-Day Sale?” Somebody needs to grab their marketing folks by the lapels and give them a good talking to. Or maybe we should do that to the shoppers who fall for that particular little bit of stupidity masquerading as “marketing”.

Item The Third: Weep for our society. Here’s why. I was buying a soda and a snack at the gas station. It came to $2.80. I handed a $5 bill to the young lady behind the counter. She accidentally hit the “$10” key on the lowest-common denominator cash register. First issue — do we really have to have cash registers that don’t have the numbers zero through nine, but just buttons for $1, $5, $10, and $20? What’s next, buttons that just have pictures of the president on the bill because those number thingies are really hard? What if you bought $53.17 worth of gas and paid cash? Do they have to call a supervisor?

Anyway, ow the register display says she owes me $7.20 change. She knows that can’t be right — but she can’t figure out what the correct answer is! (I swear, I couldn’t make this up.) She can’t figure out “$5.00 minus $2.80 equals $2.20.” She can’t figure out “I hit the button that’s ten dollars instead of five dollars, so subtract five dollars from the answer the cash register is showing.” She’s holding $7.20 in change (a $5 bill, two $1 bills, and two dimes) in her hand, and can’t figure out “Put the $5 bill back in the drawer.”

She finally solved it — she put everything down and pulled out an electronic calculator to do the math, one of those little plastic, solar powered ones.

Weep for our society.

Item The Fourth: I love watching the astronauts on ISS doing live interviews with school kids. Interviews with most reporters, not so much, and television reporters and talk-show hosts are the worst. (Hint: Most of the grade school kids ask more knowledgeable and intelligent questions than the reporters.) But that’s not the point here. I noticed this week while watching some of these live interviews that the US astronauts are wearing belts with their pants. Why do you need a belt in microgravity? Your pants most certainly are not going to fall down. Is there a wedgie ninja on the ISS?

Item The Fifth: This last Monday the rate for first-class mail in the United States rose from 46¢ to 49¢. The Postal Commission has decreed that this increase will only be in effect for about two years, until the post office can recover the revenue it lost during the recession. Then, in 2016, postal rates will go back down to 46¢ according to their plan.

Show of hands — how many people think that the rates will ever, ever really go back down? Anyone?

Item The Sixth: Here in Los Angeles, and I assume in most other markets, starting at about 4 AM every day we get local news on six or seven channels and everyone has a slew of folks who are upbeat, chipper, and cheerful. I can’t speak for the men with that gig, but I’ve noticed that a fair percentage of the women appear to be single (i.e., they’re not wearing wedding rings). I don’t see any way that it’s because they aren’t good looking, and I doubt that it can be completely explained by the fact that they get up to go to work at 2:15 AM every day, although that can’t help. Nope, I’m convinced that it’s because they are upbeat, chipper, and cheerful at 4 AM! Such an attitude is unnatural and these folks must all be mutants or Communist agents or aliens of some sort. Anyone who is naturally chipper before 7 AM should be treated with great suspicion and considered to be a threat until proven otherwise.

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Odds & Sods, Space

January 15, 2014 · 22:11

Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Wednesday, January 15th

‘Cause I’ve been laughing so hard I might have broken an internal organ or two, that’s why.

  • This is what damn near killed me tonight. I’ll entertain the idea that I’ve been dealing with some stress and pressure to the point where I was ready to pop like a balloon — this was the pointy thing that burst the bubble. Whatever. I still haven’t been able to read more than the first five or six comments without getting to the point where I can’t breathe and the dog’s whining because she thinks I’m dying.
  • There’s a very fine line between a cat trying to cuddle with you and a cat trying to see how much they can piss you off.
  • To Donald Trump and all of the other troglodytes who think that climate change is a hoax because they’re having winter, I would note that California’s in its worst drought on record and it was 95° F this afternoon in Orange County at 13:15.
  • At what point does being creative and purposefully “thinking outside the box” cross over into desperation and panic?
  • I actually had to use a trig function in a calculation for yesterday’s blog article. I’m still amazed that I remembered how to do it. (Shut up, Bob!)
  • It sucks when the dog gets old enough so she can’t jump up on the bed and instead just looks over the edge of it with those sad, brown eyes. “Anthropomorphism” my ass, you know that she remembers being able to jump up there, wants up there now, and knows that she can’t make it.
  • Whoa! Wide dynamic range of emotions there tonight, from laughing myself nearly into unconsciousness to sad, old dog eyes. As a pilot, you want to avoid those kinds of oscillations, they can lead to a loss of control. Which suddenly has a whole new meaning…
  • Tomorrow morning the nominations are announced for the Academy Awards and for us the scramble starts. How many of the nominated films for the “Big Five” categories (actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, best film) can we see before awards night? That way we can have informed and knowledgeable completely useless opinions instead of our usual ignorance-based useless opinions.
  • How do they determine who the weakest link is in a “prayer chain”? Is it based on the honor system, does God rat you out, or do we just check with the NSA?
  • And to think, I get paid for writing this nonsense!
  • Wait, what?

Remember to floss. At a bare minimum, do it when you’re changing the batteries on the smoke detectors on the day when we “spring forward” or “fall back” into or out of Daylight Saving Time.

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Filed under Cats, Death Of Common Sense, Dogs, Flying, Juicy Chunks, Movies

November 30, 2013 · 18:01

Durability Versus Disposability

More Christmas lights went up today. Again this year we’re running up against an issue that seems to get worse every year. Our existing light strings have been in use for years and they’re slowly but surely starting to fail.

Many strings of mini-lights come in strings of 75 or 150 or 300. You’ll notice these are all multiples of (3×25) which has a foundation in how they’re designed. They also tend to fail a third at a time. In general, if one or two or three lights burn out in a 25-light subset the rest of the lights will continue to light. But at some point, and I don’t know where that point is, enough bulbs will burn out so the whole 25-light subset goes dark. What you see in practical terms is a string of lights that’s 1/3 dark or 1/3 lit.

Due to time constraints in putting up the lights in the last couple of years, some of the 300-light strings that have one or two of the 25-light subsets out would get put up anyway. But this year we’re finding more and more that are 2/3 out instead of 2/3 lit, and I won’t put those up.

It’s a real pain, a very time consuming one, and very frustrating  to find repair these light strings. It’s pretty much trial and error to find which bulbs are burnt out bulbs and replace them. Therefore, conventional wisdom says these lights are disposable. A set of 300 lights costs something on the order of $30, so it’s much easier to simply toss the old lights and buy new ones. A set can last for five or six or ten years, so take what you can get and then dump and replace them.

My worldview has problems with that. I know that, if there was a way to identify which lights are out and replace them quickly and easily, a “dead” string of lights is actually 80% to 90% good. Why should I throw it out because 10% to 20% is bad? Things should be durable. If something is 90% functional, it should be possible to fix the broken 10% in order to keep the whole thing working.

As a result, while I don’t put up the strings that are 2/3 dark (because there’s only a dozen or so dead lights on a 300-light string), I don’t throw them out either. I’ve got dozens (if not hundreds) of these old lights in the garage, just waiting for an easy way to fix them.

I understand that it’s a matter of economics. In addition, it’s not black and white, but a spectrum. I don’t think any of us would junk a $50,000 car because the radio’s broken, or even if the $5,000 engine or transmission is having problems. On the other hand, I don’t think any of us are recycling paper plates. We all have our point along that spectrum where we put the durable/disposable mark. Mine is just a little bit more off to the one side than most people’s.

There are all kinds of little gizmos you can at the hardware store or by mail order that claim they can solve this problem, allowing you to quickly and easily find the burnt out bulb. I have yet to ever find one that actually works.

It’s frustrating. It should be an easy problem to find a solution for. Right at the moment I don’t have hundreds of dollars to buy new lights, but the number of “dead” sets I have is disturbingly high this year.

Maybe with the NaNoWriMo thing behind me next week I can do some more actual experimenting with the problem. God knows I’ve got enough material to experiment on and nothing to lose.

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Death Of Common Sense