Category: Sh*t Mike Says

Sh*t Mike Says

Why Windows Sucks – Part 11,492

If you have an update on an Apple MacBook Pro, you’ll get a notification. You can then update at your leisure. Only on a critical software patch will Apple ever “force” an update on you.

On the other hand, Microsoft does not. They FORCE updates on you constantly and even when they are not critical patches or updates. I needed to quickly get into my Windows 10 virtual machine the other morning only to find this…

This makes the update experience on Microsoft software so painful and sometimes a serious problem. There are critical times where you need to be able to get into your machine in a hurry. Microsoft would rather stand in the way. This is not a good user experience for anyone.

Steve Irwin

The following isn’t true. It is not Steve Irwin’s 57th birthday because he only ever made it to 44.

Wrong Again Google

I appreciate the sentiment but it would be more accurate of them to say Today would have been Steve’s 57th birthday. That is factually accurate.

I do miss him. He was a one of a kind awesome guy who should have gotten a longer ride on the life train.

Why Marvel is Better at Making Movies…

…than DC Comics.

Ben Affleck is hanging up the cape, according to a report that the actor is leaving the Batman franchise.


Affleck’s exit comes on the heels of another departure from the DC universe, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which claims Henry Cavill will no longer be Superman.

via New York post

Changing actors so often has become tiresome for movie goers. I just got used to these characters being portrayed by these actors. DC can’t even have the same actor that works on a television show play in their movies. Look at The Flash for example — played by two different actors in two very different ways. Grant Gustin’s television version isn’t the same as Ezra Miller’s version in Justice League.

The Socialist Country formally known as Australia!

Australia is proposing a new law that would put you in jail for ten years for refusing to unlock your phone.

The Australian government wants to force companies to help it get at suspected criminals’ data. If they can’t, it would jail people for up to a decade if they refuse to unlock their phones. The country’s Assistance and Access Bill, introduced this week for public consultation, strengthens the penalties for people who refuse to unlock their phones for the police. Under Australia’s existing Crimes Act, judges could jail a person for two years for not handing over their data. The proposed Bill extends that to up to ten years, arguing that the existing penalty wasn’t strong enough…

via Slashdot

I think the existing two year penalty is bad enough.

China or Australia…starting to look like the same country to me.

However, Australian women are gorgeous so there’s that.

Battlefront II Imbalances

I don’t expect everyone who reads this website to understand how Battlefront II works. With that being said, I intend to rant about something that I believe is important to good gameplay. Balance.

The reason I bring this up is because I just played a game where one side would never possibly win. The way the game works is that when you accumlate enough battle points by either playing objectives or taking out enemy players you can upgrade your character to something even better and more powerful.

I believe an imbalance occurs when one side achieves a level where they have been able to claim most of the better player slots and the other side is never able to recover. If the light saber welding folks are hard to kill and they can pretty much kill any other player without a light laber, how would the other side ever be able to counteract that?

I’m not complaining just for the sake of complaining. I’ve been on both sides of this. On a team that just couldn’t be beaten and the team that always was. Here is how I would fix the imbalance. I would only allow one light saber weilding player per side per game. Let’s face it, Kylo Ren wasn’t present at Naboo so why should that character be able to play? In most cases other than the clone wars, light saber weilding players were low. There were only a few per side. Why not keep it that way in Battlefront II?

That is why in some cases, one side can never win. It is real jackassery on the part of Electronic Arts if you think about it. They gutted the original layout of the game to begin with and for those of us who were there at the beginning, they offered an olive branch for those who lost points, credits, and crystals and then never allowed anyone to cash it in. Well, you had a time limit but they never told you that. Sorry, I digress.

I love the game and as a veteran, I know that you don’t want your fights to be fair. You want them to be as lopsidded as possible (in your favor, of course). However, this is a game and I still believe one light saber character per side should be good enough for anyone. Especially, if you want to enjoy the game.

Ok. Rant mode off. I understand if I am the only one who understands this drivel. It’s good to have your own website sometimes.

Bitcoin – Still a Good Idea?

Ahhh, hell no. As this Yahoo article points out.

While Bitcoin ended the day with a 4 percent decline in its value, Ether, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum, plummeted by 13 percent against the US dollar, becoming one of the worst performing major cryptocurrencies alongside NEO.
Tokens recorded the steepest drop in their value on August 11, as most Ethereum-based tokens such as Theta Token, Aion, Pundi X, Aelf, DigixDAO, WanChain, and VeChain recorded a drop of around 14 to 18 percent.

via Yahoo Finance

Today, money has no value unless a government gives it value. The United States is a great example. How much is $5.00 worth? Whatever the United States government says it is. It is not backed by anything. Neither is cryptocurrency. It’s worth is decided by Wall Street traders which makes it even worse than the US government. How much is a bitcoin worth? It depends on what day you ask the question.

What if you buy a fancy crypto wallet and store your digital currency in that? What if you forget the password? Well, this happens.

But not all early cryptocurrency enthusiasts are counting their coins. Instead they might be racking their brains trying to remember their passwords, without which those few Bitcoins they bought as an experiment a few years ago could be locked away forever.


That’s because Bitcoin’s decentralization relies on cryptography, where each transaction is signed with an identifier assigned to the person paying and the person receiving Bitcoin. It’s how the system is able to process large transactions without a central bank, since each exchange is guaranteed by authenticating when money is going from one wallet to another using both public identifiers and private passcodes, and no one can access your Bitcoin wallet without your private password. If someone else somehow had your password and swiped your coins, they’re gone for good. Passwords are used to unlock your bitcoin wallet address, and if you forgot your password, those coins are locked away. There’s no central point of control to help retrieve your Bitcoin or change your password. If there was an easy means of cracking open people’s Bitcoin wallets when a password was lost, the cryptocurrency would be worthless, since the whole point is security without centralization.

via Slate

My two cents: I think that arguing that this is a good idea based on the fact that you are a geek and this is a geek thing has no merit. In the age of hacking, this is a horrible idea.

Oh Yeah! Another Power Outage!

This is super cool. Well, since it is currently 92 degrees maybe cool is the wrong word.

Power went off around 11:00 am. Projected time of repair is 2:30 pm.

Makes for an interesting start to the week.

My guess is that a power transformer exploded (heat related) but it could just as easily be a stupid motherfonker who hit a stupid motherfonking telephone pole. Telephone poles, in and of themselves, is a funny term because we don’t use landlines anymore.

Update: 3:47 pm – “They” do not anticipate power restoration until the early evening hours. Some gizmo or “do-dad’ broke. It’s technical.

Updated: 7.16.2018 – Added a cool photo I took in extremely low light conditions.

Productive Weekend

I thought I’d get a chance to post more over the weekend but alas, it was not meant to be.

Saturday was chock full of things to do around the house and Sunday was a full work day for me.

I still have a crap ton of stuff to do related to work and home. I should probably clone myself.

I have also decided to post the entire Take That! Media archive to the web so that anyone can download and listen to all of our old shows.

On Friday night, I listened to the Brass Balls Radio 50th episode (you can listen below) which was hosted by non other than Mark Steyn. It was a great show to produce and brought back a lot of great memories.

I’ve added the archive project to the growing list of things.

Laterz.

Government Assumption – Fire Zones

Government in general usually makes a lot of assumptions when it comes to knowledge that the citizens should or should not have.

Fire zones are just one of the many examples.

What the hell does that even mean? How the hell would any of us know what a fire zone is and why would we?

It is meaningless bullshit that only the retarded government worker who came up with it knows. Not everyone is a fire fighter and not everyone knows what these stupid idiotic retarded zones mean.

Whomever invented them. Fuck. You.

Seriously.

A Series of Books

As you can see by the sidebar (today anyway), I am reading a series called Arisen. It is an awesome series about a ZA or Zombie Apocolypse for anyone who doesn’t get the lingo.

I started the book yesterday and I was immediately confused about what series this was. You see — I have probably read about 14 books between the last book, Book 12, and the current book, Book 13.

A lot of different things have happened in a lot of other books. It can get really difficult to keep track.

I suppose it is a great problem to have. Reading so much that you can’t tell which series you are in.

Ok. Just wanted to rant a bit.

A Break from The Crazy – Part II

We were supposed to have our new system up and running by now. We’ve hit a few snags and now it will be a few more weeks until we are using new software. Better to be safe than sorry, I suppose.

This past weekend I got an overwhelming urge to reach out to a friend of mine whom I have not heard from in a few years. We plan on catching up this weekend and I’m hoping to plan a few camping trips this year.

I would like to keep up with writing but until we get to the other side of this major project — not very likely.

After about a year and a half, I picked up the drum sticks and began playing again. I was afraid the “song in my heart” that made me want to play in the first place was gone after my breakup. It has been a slow recovery for me and hiding behind that pain with laughter is what I’ve done for the past 18 months.

A close friend of mine has just undergone open heart bypass surgery. No matter how much safer these procedures are these days, it is still a nail biting experience until you get that first call from them. I got that call yesterday morning. He didn’t sound great but it was a welcomed call. His road to recovery is just starting and I wish him all the best.

When I was 5 years old, my neighbor (Mr. Cooney) had bypass surgery when the process was still new. He didn’t make it. I still have sad feelings wash over me when I think about it. They were the nice older couple next door and would watch me and my sister before we had to go to school. I miss them.

Well, this has been another fine brain dump.

I have a couple of blog posts in the hopper and I’ll post as soon as I can. One of them is about the Cannes Film Festival.

Fuck. Them.

A Break from The Crazy

We’ve been getting ready to complete a major project at my day job. This project has been pushed back a couple of times because it seems the scope was much bigger than anyone imagined. Anyone but me, of course. I remember talking to a co-worker who believed we could get this thing done in a month. It looks like we will get this done in 3 months. Ideally, this should have taken 6 months.

In talking to a few folks over the last several weeks, I realize there are two things that I am really passionate about outside of the day job. Those two things are writing and hiking/camping. Throw in a few ideas about “prepping” and you’ve got quite the mix.

A couple of books in the audible library are about what happens when we loose electricity. The power grid goes down and the whole world goes to shit. Literally. I have a few different titles but they all seem to show a common thread. People who have not prepared expect those who do — to take care of them. Extreme liberal views are like that. I have friends who believe that the government should run everything. Not because the government clearly knows what they are doing — but because they believe in being “taken care of” by someone other than themselves. As a military veteran, I would strongly disagree.

I think I am overdue to a short shory so I am hoping to write one this weekend.

I should probably start posting on this site because, why not?

This website is for me. I don’t write on it to keep anyone else informed. It is my place to discuss whatever I like and… occasionally, I get to swear.

Being single has its perks.

TTFN.

Why Aliens Won’t Visit Us

I recently heard a great idea about why we as a species would never be visited by an alien race. The idea is simple. Sentient beings are not capable of truly getting along with each other and always end up killing themselves off before the Star Trek utopia actually happens. Sentient species that are capable of murdering each other are not capable of creating an environment where interstellar travel is a real possiblity. Politics, hatred, and a plethora of other emotions cause them to commit hanous acts of violence against each other and while they are doing that they never reach the level necessary to travel between the stars.

Hell, we can’t even agree of what global warming really is. It is extremely difficult for any scientist to apply static science to a dynamic situation. The Earth doesn’t stay in any one pattern so how do you know that it is or isn’t following one? Easy. It never is. Does the over population cause a problem? Sure. How much of our weather is a result of that versus nature? Not really sure that anyone on this planet is qualified to truly answer that question.

The reason I felt like even writing anything about this has to do with an article on the space.com website titled “Slaughterbots video depicts a dystopian future of autonomous killer robots.” The idea is frightening enough but after watching the video you feel like you want to join their cause to ban these weapons. That isn’t the scary part. The scary part is the fact that simply “banning” something doesn’t stop it from being produced by anyone with enough drive, money, and determination to do so. We were so busy asking ourselves “if we could” that we didn’t stop and ask ourselves “if we should.”

This post could simply been about why aliens won’t visit but there is so much more to explore than that. Let us speculate that an alien society does exist that has mastered the subtle art of co-existing in peace with one another. They reach the level of technology necessary for interstellar travel and they stumble upon Earth. Would they want to contact us? Why? How would they choose which nation to approach? Would the fact that we are not all united under a single earth government matter to them? So many questions but you can certainly get the idea.

I’m including the link to the video. It is worth a look.

Here is a link to autonomousweapons.org. A website devoted to stopping the production of these types of weapons.

Final Thoughts About 2016

For me, 2016 was a mostly good year until the beginning of October. That is when my world fell apart. It wasn’t just my world that fell apart. My significant other’s world fell apart as well. It wasn’t something we needed and it completely ruined more than just a year. I wouldn’t say it ruined anyone’s life because we pick ourselves up and continue on as best we can. However, it affected people we both love and us more tragically. I love her with all of my heart and always will.

My life will never be the same and I’ll always be a half a person going forward. If you throw in all of the celebrity deaths this year, face it…2016 sucked ass.

I’m hoping that 2017 will bring a better year than the one we leave behind.

Happy New Year everyone!

 

Technical Projects

I am currently working on server type stuff. I realize that if I get much more technical than that, there will be a few folks whose heads may explode.

I enjoy the simplicity of Mac Server.

I do not enjoy the complexity of creating an internal ecosystem.

If you’ve read this and said to yourself “what the hell is he talking about?” #geekwin