Month: October 2014

Living ever closer to the future

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It finally struck me today. I was checking my email on my Kindle Fire HD6. Recall in the old series Star Trek the Next Generation? The eponymous pads they used for everything that at the time were just painted pieces of board? They’re here already.

And it’s even true of my inexpensive 4G phone. Touch screen – does everything. That holy grail has been reached. We now have the tablets they carried around in STTNG!

Now if I could only have space craft with warp engines and maybe transporters I’d be happy.

More on the Amazon Fire HD6 and deleting things

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Ok – let me put this out there. First of all the Fire HD6 is an Android machine. A quad core Android machine I might add.

But this means that if you want to delete a few things there are a few ways to do it. If you’re comfortable plugging it into your computer and opening it as a drive, just click around a bit in the folder structure.

But if you want to delete applications on the device it’s pretty easy.

1) Swipe down from the top of the device and look to the right. Tap Settings.

2) Now look about midway down – you’ll see Applications. Go ahead and tap there.

3) Now click on Manage All Applications. Presto!

4) Click on the App you want to remove. Tap it. There are two buttons near the top of the screen, either Force Stop or Uninstall. Your choice. But uninstall if you wish.

There you go.

A New HBO Series I’ve been Loving: Bored to Death

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So I have an HBO subscription – which included HBOGo on the web. Went trolling through series and one name jumped out at me: “Bored to Death”. It’s about a writer who decides to become a private detective.

I’m well into Season 3 now – it has Ted Danson, Zach Galifianakis and Jason Schwartzman. It’s a little 30 minute show but I’ve laughed my ass off at it a few times already.

Apparently it ran from 2009 to 2011 – so it goes back a few years. But the humor is still priceless.

No wonder the Christians are getting so strident

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It’s because they know they’re losing the game. I mean we all know atheist like myself number about 1 out of 5 people, or a full 20% of the population.

But a new article says that if you include the un-churched, never churched and skeptics it’s more like 38% of the population. That’s why Christians in the U.S. are getting so strident. They realize we’re nearly at the tipping point for religious belief to go into the dustbin of history.

I think as a society we’re finally figuring out that we’ve essentially been sold a bill of goods that wasn’t true. And I think one of the best ways to break ones belief is to read the entirety of the texts within the Bible. You have a lot that openly contradict other texts, some that is plain fantasy, and some pure psychedelic stuff in there. It’s fiction, all of it.

A sort of day off

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So I went into work as normal. Get there and it’s dark inside. Plus the emergency lighting and exit signs were dark. That’s because I believe their batteries wore out a long time ago.

As of 9:30AM I was told I could go home as the power wasn’t on yet and the battery on my laptop was about to blink out.

So I was home by 12:30PM. Yeah I know – it included an hour wait in South Station.

Now here’s something I noticed. I may ding National Grid here in Rhode Island on a frequent basis, but at the very least National Grid maps their outages and updates status on them. NStar in Cambridge just shows a list. It’s sort of stupid.

The servers were up though – they’re powered by a huge UPS and backed up by a generator. But the power had been out since 10:30PM the night before and most diesel systems of a small size get about twelve hours of power.

I did make the forethought to dismount all the drives on the systems I’m responsible for, that way they won’t get damaged if power is abruptly cut.

Truthspew’s Rules for Human Behavior Part I

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So this evening a thought occurred to me. It was watching what I plainly consider the idiotic behavior of shoppers in a suburban Trader Joe’s that it came to me.

Rule #1: While in a market of any type where there are lots of people it’s good to check your six, and your three and your nine while you’re at it. If this doesn’t make sense to you imagine a clock face where twelve is directly ahead, six is directly behind you, nine to your left, three to your right. In other words be aware of your surroundings.

Rule#2: If you’re going to pay cash, learn how to count out the bills quickly. Standing behind you while you have to s-l-o-w-l-y count out $174.25 in cash and coin gets pretty annoying. I will say my skill with cash comes from years ago, working in a CVS store that took utility payments. I’d handle up to $100,000 in cash daily. So it had to be counted quickly and accurately.

A corollary 1 to rule 2 is that if you’re using a credit or debit card, be at least familiar with how to orient the card so the terminal can read it, and nimble enough to punch out your PIN.

Now for corollary 2 to rule 2 – this is on the manufacturers of said credit/debit terminals. Standardize your interfaces.

Rule #3: Driving – apply the concepts in rule 1

A corollary to rule 3 is that you need to look around you. Seriously walking around in a funk or being oblivious is no way to go through life.

Check back for more – I’m sure I’ll observe some other silly human behaviors and produce new rules for those situations too.

The Kindle Fire HD6

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So I bought a Kindle FIre HD6. There were two reasons for this. First I wanted something easier to read than the small cell phone screen. Second is that it allowed me to delete the Kindle app from my phone thereby freeing up space to say use the gallery to upload pictures. So it was my cell phone that drove the purchase.

So far I like it, Has all the apps, is Android based and I have yet to jack it into the computer to poke around. It’s the ad supported model – so when you turn on the screen it’ll have say an ad for HBO, or some stupid vendor. I can tolerate that as when you unlock it the ads disappear.

The one gripe – on the phone when reading if you went horizontal there was a way to keep the text in landscape format. No such feature that I can find on the Fire HD6 does that. So I have to ding Amazon for that one.

A nice dining experience – Nordic Lodge Charlestown, RI

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So this evening Keyron and I went to the Nordic Lounge in Charlestown, RI.

Nordic Lodge Map

As you can see from the map it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere. But it has an interesting story. The family that founded it was originally from Brooklyn, NY. In the 1960’s they looked in that area and loved the water views. Hence was born the Nordic Lodge. It’s 30 some miles from Providence but well worth it. And it quite literally is best accessed via GPS. The woods are in fact lovely, dark and deep and I have promises to keep. In fact upon entering the property you’re greeted by two pyres burning away, quite awesome to behold.

It’s $91 per person but let me tell you – you can choose from all sorts of seafood including lobster, shrimp, scallops, oysters, crawdads, etc. All sorts of veggies like pickled beets, stuffed cherry peppers, artichoke heart and red pepper, etc. But they have something for everyone. You won’t leave without a stuffed belly.

For the $91 I consumed roughly 3lbs of lobster meat, had some fried scallops, some nicely done hush puppies, and a nice filet mignon done truly medium which I love. And then some chocolate coated cherries, chocolate coated strawberries, a very rich brownie, and I know I’m leaving out a few other things. There’s even breaded chicken if you want and all sorts of salads. Definitely got my $91 worth I’ll tell you. Total time about 1.5 hours.

Service for a buffet was impeccable. Drinks were kept refreshed at all time, lobster bibs and pliers supplied, table waste bowl emptied frequently, and even hot towelettes at the end.  I’d highly recommend the place. Just be prepared for sharp curves and a place where high beams are a must.

For the most part

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People are stupid. I mean really stupid.

For example on my commute home part of my route takes me through Providence Place Mall, then across the sky-bridge to the Westin and then out from there to the Convention Center which is currently a bus hub.

It never fails, invariably I tend to keep right. It must be the driver in me. But when you get to the doors at the Westin end of the sky-bridge – there are always dolts coming in on the RIGHT side.

And today I was in a hurry to get to a certain destination. So when the door clotted up on the right I loudly said “Are people that fucking stupid?”

As I’ve said before when I get inconvenienced the mouth starts. But it’s little things like this that pull back the curtain on humanity and it isn’t a pretty picture. A vast majority are simply dolts plain and simple. And many of them are dolts that vote. You see where I’m going here don’t you?