Picoftheweek

Picoftheweek
Waaaaaaaay too many to count...

My Statement

"Let me emphatically say that I am not anti-Facebook (Fleecebook), anti-smart phone, anti-Microsoft, anti-Apple, anti-Google or anti-Internet. I do believe, though, that the consumer is being ripped off of his privacy, identity and purchase history. We are being herded into a Facebook corner where what we "Like" and where we go physically and on the net will be scrutinized and sold numerous times to actually corrode and erode our culture while tempting us only with convenience, high tech and flashing video screens. The unsuspecting consumers need to be aware..." - Gary Lapman

Quote of Note

“If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”-W.C. Fields

"For the strength of the Wolf is in the Pack, and the strength of the Pack is in the Wolf." - Rudyard Kipling

"Common sense is not so common. " -Voltaire

“Fame is vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wing, but only character endures.” - Matthew McConaughey

"In order to keep a true perspective of one's importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him"

"Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason" - Jerry Seinfeld

"Fleecebook is free, you (and your identity) is the product!" - Gary Lapman


"Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves." - Eric Sevareid

"'Smart' phones are only smart for the cell phone providers!" - Gary Lapman

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity.” -Albert Einstein

"Technology creates the illusion of companionship without the intimacy of friendship." - unknown

"No worry, there's an app for that..." - Gary Lapman

Friday, June 28, 2013

Blog Fail

As you can see, the format of my blog (not to mention, the content) has [basically] returned back to normal (?).  Something, somewhere (in Google-land) changed last week and the template for my blog went to hell in a hand basket.  A few messages to the Google-god and most of it is back.

Wow, some really epic decisions coming out of SCOTUS all at once.  What have they been doing the rest of the time? 

I have had a lot of conversations regarding Edward Snowden and his information release.  Many of them are more concerned with the information he released, rather than the fact that he did.  Having had pretty high clearance previously, I realize that you have entered a contract with the gubmint that you get to see this information, but you don't own it.  It is the gubmint's property and you have to respect it for that.  The actual information he released (so far) is well suspected (or known) amongst people I have spoken to.  So, as far as harm that he has caused; I think most of it is to himself!






Ahh the wisdom of the ages.

A female CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time.


So she went to check it out. She went to the Western Wall and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site.
She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane and moving very slowly, she approached him for an interview.

"Pardon me, sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN. What's your name?

"Morris Feinberg," he replied.

"Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?"

"For about 60 years."

"60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?"

"I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims."

"I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop."

"I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults and to love their fellow man."

"I pray that politicians tell us the truth and put the interests of our kids and the planet ahead of their own interests."

"How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?"

"Like I'm talking to a f---ing wall."






Reputation

Dear Abby,

I am a crack dealer in Beaumont, Texas who has recently been diagnosed as a carrier of the HIV virus. My parents live in Fort Worth. One of my sisters lives in Pflugerville and is married to a transvestite.

My father and mother have recently been arrested for growing and selling marijuana. They are financially dependent on my other two sisters who are prostitutes in Dallas.

I have two brothers, one is currently serving a non-parole life sentence for the murder of a teenage boy in 1994. My other brother is currently in jail awaiting charges of sexual misconduct with his three children.

I have recently become engaged to marry a former prostitute who lives in Plano. She is a part time "working girl".

All things considered, my problem is this. I love my fiance and look forward to bringing her into the family. I certainly want to be totally open and honest with her. Should I tell her about my cousin in Longview who is a (political party affiliation which reader hates)?

Signed: Worried about my reputation. 



Dwarf Incident

I rear ended a car this morning...

I tell you, it was going to be a REALLY bad day!

The driver got out of the other car, and he was a DWARF!!

He looked up at me and said "I am NOT Happy!"

So I said, "Well, which one ARE you then?"

That's how the fight started.




Diversity

Recently, a large corporation hired several cannibals to increase their diversity, "You are all part of our team now," said the Human Resources rep during the welcoming briefing. "You get all the usual benefits and you can go to the cafeteria for something to eat, but please don't eat any employees."

The cannibals promised they would not.

Four weeks later their boss remarked, "You're all working very hard and I'm satisfied with your work. We have noticed a marked increase in the whole company's performance. However, one of our secretaries has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to her?"

The cannibals all shook their heads, "No."

After the boss had left, the leader of the cannibals said to the others, "Which one of you idiots ate the secretary?" A hand rose hesitantly. "You fool!" the leader continued. "For four weeks we've been eating managers and no one noticed anything. But now, you had to go and eat someone who actually does something."

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain...


Somebody just recently asked me about the NSA leak in the news.  I certainly don't condone what happened, but I find it very hard to believe that the "general" public didn't already know that all electronic interactions that are on the internet or cell phone carrier aren't already sold and also made available to the government agencies.  So the "leak" is certainly not a revelation, but more so, that a high-school dropout with one community college course in computer science can get a job as a contractor for those government agencies and gain access to that data.  That is a revelation- and a very scary one.

We scoff at the notion of registering guns because we will end up in a searchable database, yet we have registered ourselves already by acquiring a smart  phone.  They know who has one, where it is at, where it was used last, the number called and probably what was said.  All this information becomes fodder for linkage algorithms and establishing patterns.  No amount of features and niceties that a smart phone provides is worth the loss of privacy. 

I was wondering if anyone has given thought to the conundrum presented by the Boy Scouts relative to their recent position on gays, and how ridiculous it is.  Why has this not been a problem with the Girl Scouts or the YMCA youth groups? Who can really say what the BSOA stands for and force their members to learn and profess.  I certainly wouldn't blame any parents for not allowing participation in the Boy Scouts, given that they don't practice what they preach.  How very disappointing.  Many kids look forward to what good experiences they can have with the scouts and it appears as though that has been ruined by the "politics" that they currently exude.

I guess we live in interesting times....



Jokes vs. Law
And the thing about my jokes is, they don't hurt anybody. You can take 'em or leave 'em - you can say they're funny or they're terrible or they're good, or whatever, but you can just pass 'em by. But with Congress, every time they make a joke, it's a law! And every time they make a law, it's a joke! -- Will Rogers




Over five thousands years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel, "Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land."

Nearly 75 years ago, (when Welfare was introduced) Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel, this is the Promised Land."

Today, Congress has stolen your shovel, taxed your asses, raised the price of Camels, and mortgaged the Promised Land!

I was so depressed last night thinking about health care plans, the ecomomy, the wars, lost jobs, savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc. I called a sucicide hotline. I had to press 1 for English. I was connected to a call center in Pakistan. I told them I was suicidal. They got excited and asked if I could drive a truck...

Folks, we're screwed...

Friday, June 7, 2013

"Smart" Phones Revisited

So it has been a few months now since we were sucked into the fold and converted to Smart phones.  What is my reaction so far?  
  1. I like carrying my phone in my pocket and this phone, while not the largest, just barely fits comfortably in my jeans.  Of course, because of the replacement cost, I had to get a protective cover built like a tank.  You could drop it or throw it against the wall and it would survive.
  2. We got hooked on games- the free ones that are also free to play, like Words with Friends. This certainly has played havoc with battery life.
  3. Battery life is a bit atrocious , since the temptations to run all kinds of apps is very high.
  4. Signals are reliability using 4G Lte is pretty good, but there clearly are still holes where coverage is very bad.
  5. Android is easy to use, but there are some things I'd like to see different, for example: There should be a nice way to say "I'm done with this app, give the memory back and don't run it in the background.
  6.  So far, I haven't bought any apps and every need has pretty my been filled and much, much more.
  7. We have been very careful about accessing important things like bank accounts while on the phone, and we will certainly eschew the automatic charge-card via phone, for as long as possible.
  8. It actually costs us less now, on the sharing-data family plan than it did before paying for minutes AND paying for data AND paying for so many texts per month.
So now that I have accepted my fate, I think that there are less reasons to be unhappy with my carrier than I was before.  I don't like the phone stores, whether AT&T, Verizon or Sprint. I feel like I am being treated as though a second-class citizen that can't find his butt with both hands.  Their prices are high and they do all their manipulations in the back room while you are waiting for what seems forever in the display area.
Two better experiences, one at Best Buy and another at Costco, who are both dealers in phones from many carriers were much better experiences.  They worked in front of us and explained what they were doing during the whole process.  Neither of them treated us like the audience at a magic show.

Would I go back to a feature phone, probably.  There is really nothing so important that I couldn't live without it.  My wife, on the other hand, uses it as a business tool and is forever using the voice to text feature to communicate with clients and their agents.  She has Bluetooth in her car and loves the hands-free features including the reading her texts out loud.  She'll never go back, but maybe the need will wain eventually.




The Indian and the Hooker
A Manitoulin Island Indian picks up a hooker off the streets of Sudbury .
'How much you charge for hour, sister?' he asks.
'$100,' she replies.
He says 'You do Indian style?' 'No' she says.
'I pay you $200 do it Indian style' 'No', she says, not knowing what Indian style is. 'I pay you $300' 'No', she says.
'I pay you $400' 'No', she says.
So finally he says, 'OK, I pay you $1,000 to do it Indian style..'
She thinks, 'Well, I've been in the game for over 10 years now. I've had every kind of request from weirdos from every part of the world. How bad could Indian Style be?'
So she agrees and has sex with him.They do it in every kind of way and in every possible position.

Finally, after several hours, they finish.

Exhausted, the hooker turns to him and says, 'Hey, I was expecting something perverted and disgusting. But that was good. So what exactly is 'Indian style?'

The Indian replies 'You send bill to Government.'



I was visiting my son and daughter-in-law last night when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper.
"This is the 21st century, old man," he said. "We don't waste money on newspapers. Here, you can borrow my iPad."

I can tell you, that friggin' fly never knew what hit it ...


Drinking last night
Last night I was out with a few friends and had a few too many beers.

Knowing full well I may have been over the legal limit, I did something I never had done before. I took a bus home.

I arrived safely without incident, which was a real surprise; as I have never driven a bus before and I am not sure where I got it from.