(silly) (personal)
I know that dryers eat socks. Everyone knows that problem.
But it seems to me that luggage has started eating my 7 Jeans.
Socks are a couple of bucks. But jeans are two hundred.
I’d blame it on the TSA just for fun.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-26 05:03:00 UTC
RUTHLESSLY MORAL DOT ORG
(personal history)
I have managed to put a few companies out of business for immoral practices in the past.
The first company, I was 28, and it took me a few years to put the crew together, but we eventually used racketeering laws to take them down. Didn’t cost me a cent. 🙂
The second company, I was 30, and just out of the Justice Department (Yes, I used to work for the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT. My libertarian friends might find that interesting.) For a very short time. But before then, I spent a few years working in technology related to the bankruptcy system. It only took me about 90 days to force them into a sale after I got the justice department and one other federal agency involved. But I managed to force him to lose most of everything he had. Cost me a few thousand dollars.
The third company I helped set up the owner with the IRS but it was easy. They took all his houses and his Bentley. They left him a motorcycle for some reason I can’t attribute to much other than irony. Cost me a few thousand dollars.
The key thing is patience and determination.
And the next is to find people who can profit from pursuing an injustice. And that, it turns out, is a pretty common preoccupation in America.
Starting with …. journalists.
🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-25 18:46:00 UTC
FREAKING COOL TIMES
MTV 1981
It was so freaking cool at the time. To be there. To know we were going through the change.
THE EXPURGATION OF MIDDLE MANAGEMENT 1985
It was freaking cool to see it. At the time. To know that American business, like american politics, was abandoning the socialist method of production. And to sell franchises of every sort to those newly unemployed middle managers.
THE BERLIN WALL 1989
It was o freaking cool at the time. To be there. To know the world was changing. To lose that feeling of possible nuclear war. The relief of it all.
THE MICROSOFT-ING OF SEATTLE 1992
It was so freaking cool to be there. To be part of it. The flood of money and wealth and nerds everywhere. The Entros Restaurant. The Galleries. Reasonably inexpensive housing. The feeling that the future was a straight vertical line into infinity.
QUAKE 1995
It was so freaking cool to be there. The feeling that the world had changed. That everything was changing. That the future we read about in science fiction was happening. That William Gibson didn’t imagine a future – he created it.
WEB BOOM 2000
It was so freaking cool to be there. Just to participate in it. Just to do a startup and have it explode overnight with everyone else’s. To know that none if could possibly work, but to run with the pack, economically naked through the financial streets wearing nothing but network cables and no chance of crossing the finish line.
SEPTEMBER 2001
It was freaking horrible to be there. To see it. To experience it. To know that the world was forever changed.
HOUSING BOOM 2006
It was so freaking cool to be there, Just to revel in it. I means, stores were full of interesting stuff, and consumption was everywhere. Knowing all the while that we were running naked through the financial streets wearing nothing but fiduciary instruments made from toilet paper.
IPHONE 2007
It was so freaking cool to be there. To know the world just changed. To know that the problem of teaching people the use of computing hardware, was the abstraction created by the need to use a keyboard to control a machine, rather than the intuition of touch, was gone forever.
NOW
It pretty much sucks since then. And really, I am pretty sure that somewhere between 2017 and 2025 it is gonna suck on a scale that no one alive remembers. I dont know what that suck is going to look like. But it’s really, really gonna suck.
Just no way these economic conditions, the world’s demographics, the state of existing knowledge, can function with the current allocation of power and capital given the allocation of individuals.
Just no freaking way. It isn’t a complex model. It is just napkin math.
Pretty curves. Pretty lines. Very un-pretty conclusions. There is no rainbow there.
Because the incentive to protect the existing order is such that there is no means of easily transitioning
The only hope for the USA is the secession and nullification movement.
Otherwise, there will be something very bad.
I don’t know what.
But the disruption of world patterns of power, transit and trade will mean a lot is up for grabs. It’d be like the USA didn’t survive the second world war, and everyone ran around picking up the british empire.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-25 16:13:00 UTC
There is construction going on across the street on a wonderful old brick building that’s being brought up to date. When they aren’t using power tools it’s actually fun to listen to the banter.
Today, some guy randomly is shouting, in very clear and passionate Russian “Mother F___r!”, on a semi random basis.
We all laugh every time.
🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-25 09:22:00 UTC
Curt Doolittle shared a photo.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-24 13:34:00 UTC
NEW MACBOOK PRO : PORTABLE WHOO HOOOO!!!
15-inch: 2.3GHz with Retina display
– 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
– Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz
– 16GB RAM
– 512GB PCIe-based flash storage
– Intel Iris Pro Graphics
– NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 2GB GDDR5 memory
– Built-in battery (8 hours)
$2,599.00
NEW MAC PRO: OFFICE WHOO HOOOOOO!!!
Mac Pro w/ E5 3.5GHz 6-core Intel Xeon E5
Dual AMD FirePro D500 graphics with 3GB each
16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC RAM
256GB PCIe-based flash storage
Ports Six Thunderbolt 2, Four USB 3, HDMI 1.4, Two Gigabit Ethernet
$3999
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-24 13:22:00 UTC
Some nerdy fun for you. At least I think you might appreciate it. 😉 I apologize in advance if the rap gets stuck in your head…. 😛
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-23 20:58:00 UTC
WORKING YOUNG
(personal) (silly)
I started working for my father’s business at age seven. On holidays. I would take the list of deliveries and get them out of the cooler, put them in the truck, strap them down, then ride with the driver, walk up to the house, ring the bell, say something polite and cheerful, get back in the truck, and do the next delivery. I earned one dollar an hour.
At twelve I got a paper route. It was the biggest paper route in town. One hundred and eight to one hundred and twenty newspapers on sundays. Sunday was very heavy and took me a lot of trips. I used a wagon if I could, and a red sled in the snow. But usually just a canvas shoulder bag. And walked from house to house.
It is very cold in upstate NY in winter. 🙂 But the air smells amazingly good.
I loved delivering the papers. But I hated collecting the money. Too much human interaction with too many strange people. It made me exhausted.
I saved up, patiently, in a jar, and bought my mini bikes. 🙂
But I understood inventory, cash flow, receivables, sales, revenue, and, unfortunately, a lot about filing in alphabetical order, and how to serve customers by the time I could do multiplication tables. 🙂
Dad made me practice introducing myself and shaking hands a lot. Incredibly valuable really. And more of the same: I actually know what all those little forks, knives, spoons and glasses are for. 🙂 And how to tie a necktie. That kinda stuff. Which, if you’re an Aspie, turns out to be awesomely confusing to normals.
LOL
Life is awesome. Too bad we don’t get a couple of trial runs.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-23 18:48:00 UTC
Curt Doolittle shared a photo.
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-23 08:09:00 UTC
(secret)
Veronika plays Civilization and just about any game like it she can find. :))
Nerdy girls rule. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-10-22 06:58:00 UTC