Salted Wounds: The Ultimate Fuck You

" “>

I've talked about this before. I don't talk about being homeless a lot. It's painful, living in hotels for two and a half years. It's a short story if I leave out a lot of the detail. Two and a half years ago, around Christmas, we were evicted from our apartment in Mission Viejo because my publisher sat on their asses getting my advance check to me for my book, Getting An IT Help Desk Job For Dummies (available on Amazon, cheap plug). I worked my ass off to finish that book. 330 pages in three months. They didn't care. Companies don't care, so we were screwed. We figured we'd be out for a month or two then find a new place.

The thing is, nobody would take us.

It's easy. Just have the biggest recession since The Great Depression, mix in one guy with no college degree and 20 years of professional writing and IT experience, a disabled daughter, and a wife who has to take care of said daughter 24/7, then throw in shitty credit and families that lack any kind of real empathy, and you have us. By 2008 I was making $75,000 a year with full benefits. After the recession hit, I could barely make $20 an hour on contract. I moved from job to job, working my ass off, mostly for idiots who refused to listen to simple reason, but those are different stories.

I will say, I had this one client for six months. He ran a small business in Tustin. He wanted to automate his business operations, and had heard I was the guy. We talked and he told me he wanted a system that did X, Y, and Z and all for free. I told him that X and Y could be done but that Z would need to be handled by a different tool and there would need to be integration and that he'd have to spend some money. He hired me, but he didn't listen. I spent six months trying to convince him that there was no way in hell there was any system out there that would do exactly what he wanted, out of the box, for nothing. Nice guy, but dumb as a box of bricks.

Eventually, the jobs ran out. Nobody was hiring any more and the economy was changing. I was too old, had too much experience, and didn't have a degree. I worked for SendGrid for almost a year earning $65,000 with meager benefits, but was fired after I pointed out some marketing material lied about some stuff the company was capable of doing for clients. Learn that as a lesson, kids. Honesty doesn't win you anything in this world. I got a gig with Mirantis for a bit, but their own internal squabbling resulted in my position being eradicated before I could even get started, so there's that.

That's when the book gig landed on my feet, which ultimately resulted in us losing our apartment. We fought tooth and nail to get back on our feet. We begged and begged and begged. We fought with our respective fathers, Rima and I. I've personally spent what seems like months worth trying to convince my father that the help he was giving us wasn't helping. We made several abortive attempts to buy an RV to live in, one of which resulted in us getting robbed outright to the tune of $3,500, by a former OC Sheriff, no less. All the while, Rima is keeping Leah in school and getting a college education, and I eventually start working for Uber. All that time, we still have to pay the hotel, usually money we didn't have.

So, two years later, we're still in hotels and we get a letter from the Anaheim Housing Authority. They've pulled Leah from the California State Section 8 waiting list at the request of Regional Center of Orange County, the State services group that helps with her disabilities. So, we did as they asked and we started to feel as if things were finally going to change.

We filled out the application while at a hotel in Santa Ana. The forms said we didn't have to live in Anaheim, but apparently that's not how they feel internally, so we were declined. We moved to a hotel in Anaheim and applied again. They looked over everything and we were declined again, this time for insufficient information. Of course, we had sent the information, it's just that someone else looked at the file and didn't know what was going on, so they sent out the denial. Maybe I could get a job there making their shit work.

Finally, we get them to understand they have what they asked for and they finally approve our application! Good lord, the heavens opened up that day, but only about a fraction of a second. So, we go in, have a meeting, get our fingerprints taken, a background check run, and handed a voucher to go talk to a landlord at one apartment building. That's where we find out about Kathy. Kathy Nutter. Kathy Nutter, the head of the Orange County Community Housing Corporation, a non-profit group that has been operating in Anaheim for 40 years.

She was so nice. She talked to us, we told her our story, and she empathized! So few people were doing that, it felt new. She agreed to let us rent from her and we started doing the paperwork. She arranged to have some couches a board member was giving away moved in and it turned out her daughter had a fridge she didn't need anymore, so we got that too. We finalized things, got the keys, and started moving our stuff.

That turned out to be a mistake.

When we had first seen the apartment, we didn't see any cockroaches or smell anything, but by the time we started moving in, we found the roaches everywhere and a smell of urine in the kitchen that was just overbearing. We stayed in the hotel one more night. The next night, out of money from the move, we stayed at the apartment. We cobbled together sleeping arrangements and eventually fell asleep, only to be awoken by the screams of our daughter who had roaches crawling on her face and body. We haven't stayed there another night since.

We told Kathy what happened and she appeared to be shocked. She said she'd have the maintenance people over there in no time to take care of things. They sprayed something and went away. A few days later, when we checked, we found plenty of roaches so we told Kathy again. She sent her people over again and they put down gel and gave us bugbombs. We bagged up some of our things that weren't in boxes and set off about eight bombs. Two days later, we find plenty of roaches dead, but more than enough to sustain horror alive and well, crawling all over the place.

Kathy said she'd never had a complaint of roaches or bad smells before. Funny thing is, I spoke to a neighbor and she said they had roaches and had complained many times, and that a sewer line had broken last year and stunk up the entire building for several weeks. Wow.

We've taken pictures and videos. We've documented all of our communications with Kathy. We gave her every chance in the world to make it right, and she didn't take a single one. It turns out that the loving, friendly, helpful, generous Kathy Nutter we thought we knew was just another sleazy slumlord like all the rest. The rent for that place was $1400. We were going to pay less than $400 a month for our share, the Anaheim Housing Authority would cover the $1,100 remaining, and it was a pig sty at best.

Now, I haven't even mentioned the homeless guy living, literally, on our front doorstep or the half dozen or so drug dealers who were running shop in the alleyway behind the building. Everything about this deal just felt shady, and we were being screwed over royally. We thought we were safe, having made it into the helpful arms of a HUD approved group. Things just keep getting better, though.

We asked Kathy to reimburse us for the cost of the hotel. That was denied. We asked for compensation for the money we spent moving in. That was denied. We contacted AHA and asked them to come look at the place again. They did that, saw how bad things were, and said they would cancel their contract with OCCHC. They then suggested we move into another apartment, which looked good from what we could tell, but turned out to be managed by Kathy Nutter, as well. Isn't that a kick in the pants!?

So, we are now asking the AHA to help us get on another waiting list or help us fix this problem some other way, and so far we haven't heard back yet. It seems they might have hung us out to dry, as well. Only time will tell.

To get our money back, we need to take the OCCHC to court. Small claims. Yay. So that's what we're doing now. And back in a hotel. Me, three weeks into a horrible backpain episode. Leah still going to school. Bills have to be paid. Paychecks only come in when they do, and it's all hell.

So, this is that Fuck You I was talking about. It's the Fuck You that the Universe is giving us. The Jumbo Middle Finger of Fate.

I tell you, it's the most awesome thing ever.

Damon's The Great Wall isn't so bad

" “>

You know, if more Americans watched Chinese movies, they might understand films like The Great Wall better. I'm more of a Japanophile myself, but I watch a good number of Chinese epics. Netflix is loaded with them, and some of them are quite good.

The thing you need to understand about Chinese culture is that the ideal of working for the benefit of the whole has been around for a lot longer than Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution (communism, if you didn't learn about Mao in school). The other thing you need to understand is the Chinese love for tales of mythology. Chinese culture has been around for a very, very long time, so they've got a lot of them.

Now, before we get to the idea of whitewashing, I'll say up front, I disagree. Matt Damon plays a white dude who tries to get to China to trade for gunpowder. Despite being a highly skilled mercenary who is mad down with the bow and arrow skills, he loses all but one of his cohort, only to be taken into custody by the Chinese Army at the eponymous wall.

Without revealing any spoilers, I'll say that Damon's stonehearted mercenary is ultimately swayed by the amazing qualities of the Chinese people to connect and fight a shared enemy. He learns that there is much more to life than just fighting for food and money. I'm not suggesting that China has been this oasis from pain and fear and life as we now it all this time, nor that communism is a fix for our ails, but this is what drives a primary element of Chinese culture if you're going to watch these films.

On that note, if you want to see some subtly subversive Chinese film making, check out Chronicles of The Ghostly Tribe. On its surface, it looks like a love letter to the Cultural Revolution, but just check out the overtly hyper-positive attitudes and glassy-eyed recitation that makes it more clownish than oppressive. It's not a bad film, either.

The only thing I want to say now is that you should give this film a chance. It's an epic fantasy that might even be a little too short to tell the entire tale, but it works. You can even skip the beginning bit right up until they get to the Great Wall. That's where I would have started the film with a short, explanatory preamble.

Why Pharah Sucks

" “>

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Pharah. That flying rat. The one and only flying hero in Overwatch, is the single most annoying hero of the bunch. Nobody else can fly. Mercy can glide and Winston can jump really far, but no other hero has flight capability like Pharah, which makes her suck. Pharah's missiles are also quite lethal, which means anyone playing her who is even vaguely good at twitch games can do a load of damage, and it's very difficult to counter her.

Counter her with a sniper, like Ana or Widow, and it works, but they have to be really good snipers. Counter her with Torbjorn, and her missiles can ditch that Swedes turret in a couple of shots before the gun's bullets can deal enough damage. Counter her with another Pharah, and its like watching two first-timers have a dogfight.

So, Blizzard. Dump Pharah. Having a single hero that can control the skies is just dumb. There's no balance. Drop Pharah like a hot potato. Ditch her like an ugly blind date. Be smooth. Remove.


The future face of computing

" “>

You might not have noticed, since you’re most likely looking at your smartphone, but a significant amount of time people spend on the internet is through a mobile device, dominantly said smartphone. We’ve got some nifty charts lined up from ComScore so you can see just how much.

[[Had an image here, but need to go track it down. Hopefully I don't forget. ed.]]

As is illustrated in the above chart, things start shifting around 2012 when mobiles started to take over from desktops (this includes laptops, I presume), and that gap continues to widen. In general, this shows what we likely already know just from looking around; when you need the internet, you reach for your phone around two out of every three times. What’s even more interesting is that age is not a factor anymore. Older people may not use the internet as much, or grab their smartphone as often, but the trend is remarkably stable across the scope.

[[Same here. ed.]]

In all cases, 19 to 65 and up, people tend to grab their smartphone first. This chart shows it’s when the user has both a smartphone and a tablet, but the trending is clear. Mobiles are taking over the internet. What you don’t need a chart to see is that so-called phablets appear to have won, with even Apple having rolled out a larger mobile with the release of the iPhone 6 Plus, but that’s a discussion for another story. Here, we are going to talk about the future of computing, and the above data is where we are at now.

Pocket Power

Computing comes in many diverse forms these days, there are smartphones (natch), feature phones (the not-cool ones), tablets, laptops in various form factors, and desktops of endless variety. If only that were it, however. There are also smart TVs, smart DVD and Blu-Ray players, video game consoles like the Wii U, PlayStation 4, and the Xbox One, scads of media devices like Apple TV, Roku, and the Chrome Stick, and enough smart watches to choke a Blue Whale. If that wasn’t enough, there are photo frames, radios, and even TV remotes that use the internet to make them better (though that’s debatable).

In part, it’s no wonder people gravitate to their mobile devices when seeking information. There’s so much… internet, it’s hard to break it down into the small, easy-to-swallow pieces user’s desire. This is a primary emotional component in why certain apps do so well on the various App Stores. The better an app performs at granting the desired instant gratification, the more likely users will treat it as their Go-To solution. It explains a lot when you consider that desktops in general don’t have “apps” and tablets can’t fit in your pocket (ignoring that some phones have a hard time fitting into the average pocket). To their credit, Microsoft does have apps on their Windows 8 and 10 desktops, but the app store has yet to mature and present developers with an enticing potential marketplace.

Future Tense

As you can well imagine, with PC sales dropping like a stone and smartphone and tablet sales soaring, systems producers are scrambling to figure out what the consumer is going to want in the next two to five years, and it’s hard to imagine where that might go. I thought I’d have a think on it and see if I can’t use the old Predict-O-Tron to suss out a few things. First, however, let’s remind ourselves about the categories we’re looking at:

  • Mobile phones (i.e., Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and other mobile OS)
  • Ultraportable devices (i.e., iOS & Android tablets, ChromeBooks)
  • Portable devices (i.e., PC & Mac tablets, laptops, 2-in-1s, convertibles)
  • Micro systems (i.e., PC sticks, Intel NUC, & other tiny non-portables)
  • Desktop systems (i.e., small form factor, mini tower, tower, and All-in-one systems)
  • Gaming systems (i.e., Microsoft’s Xbox One, Sony’s PlayStation 4, Nintendo’s Wii U)
  • Smart systems (i.e., home media, TVs, and DVD/BR players)

With that in mind, let’s dig into what might happen by 2020:

  • The Phablet – I don’t think phone sizes are going to increase much from here on out. There’s little incentive for consumers to have a seven or eight inch phone they can’t fit into their pockets. 5-5.5″ devices are going to inhabit the sweet spot in this market, while smaller devices will continue to fill the needs of the budget market. As always, there will be outliers, but they will be few and, unless extremely crafty, won’t last long. Advances will continue in hardware and software development. We’ll likely see better cameras, some interesting iterations of curved displays, and desktop-style docking as Microsoft revealed with its new Lumia 950 and 950XL. I have a feeling that we might see some edge-less displays in the next few years, which would allow the introduction of a workable folding device.
  • The CPU – Not many people but hardcore nerds talk about CPUs all that much, but they are critical to computing. Clock speeds won’t likely get any higher. They’ve been in stasis for a number of years already. What has grown are the number of cores, the efficiency of manufacturing, and the ability to reduce the amount of heat produced. One key example is Intel’s Atom line. When they first appeared, they were anemic and slow. The current crop is fast, capable, and efficient. As such, we will continue to see advances in multi-core parts, further reductions in heat production and power consumption, and increased functionality to handle complex operations and multi-tasking.
  • Desktop systems – Due to the continued miniaturization of computer tech, we will witness the ongoing death of the general purpose desktop. The “box” remains a staple in enterprise deployments, but even that’s being eaten away by the laptop. The consumer market is already being euthanized with tablets and will likely be replaced by the selection of small form factor and tiny desktop systems like Intel’s NUC series and an increasing number of all-in-one systems similar to Apple’s iMac. I have a feeling these won’t catch fire, but they will maintain at least some level of presence in the market.
  • The Laptop – If anything has been an effective agent of chaos against the forces of the desktop, it’s the laptop. Long gone are the days when a laptop was three or more times more costly than a desktop PC, and with the growing performance of low cost CPU parts, the multi-component relic of the PC just isn’t appetizing to many consumers. Yet, since the introduction of the iPad, Apple’s ultimate disruptor, the laptop has been facing it’s own foe, and fought back hard. The disastrous “netbook” era was short lived and ill conceived as a possible combatant to the tablet, so more tablets were released.
    The most compelling change in the laptop battle, however, is convergence. In other words, if you can’t beat them, join them, or, if you’re the Borg, assimilate them. Asus’ popular Transformer line of 2-in-1 devices is testament to that, but it’s Microsoft’s surprise rollout of the gorgeous and amazing Surface Book that is likely going to act as a template for the future of the laptop. By simply removing the display, you get a tablet PC. Reattaching the display, you get a full on laptop with longer battery life and even gaming-grade discrete graphics as an option. I predict that various forms of this configuration will become popular. There is, however, the matter of systems interconnect. After all, nobody will want a tablet that weighs five pounds, even if it sports a Core i7 and 32GBs of RAM. We may see some very interesting innovations in this particular space.
  • All The Others – There’s not much more to say, really. Gaming systems are going to get more game-ier. It’s unlikely that Sony or Microsoft will diverge from their course. Both command very lucrative markets and both see only each other as their nemesis. Nintendo, on the other hand, literally owns the mobile, dedicated gaming market, but still have to wage war against the monster that is smartphone gaming. I’d bet my shirt that Nintendo knows they need to emphasize that some games are just better with physical controls and will offer some spin on that when codename “NX” is revealed sometime next year. They’ve finally figured out they need to release some games on iOS and Android, but to really thrive they need to continue to innovate.
    Smart devices are going to get smart-ier. It’s not clear what will happen in the smart device vs. smart add-on war. Smart TVs lock you into that manufacturers ecosystem, while add-on devices like the Roku offer a much wider range of options. It will be interesting to see if anyone develops a line of TVs that have a low-cost, interchangeable dock in the foot that allows the attachment of an Apple TV or Roku 4 box and just bypass “smart” altogether. That’d be smart, if you’ll pardon the pun. If anything takes off in consumer electronics, though, I think it will be better, open, touch-and-pair wireless display technology using a combination of NFC and Wifi. The stupid dongle thing is a nuisance and restrictive.

In general, much of what is likely to come in the next five years won’t be astonishing, but iterative, an evolution, if you will, and much of it will allow access to the internet in some form. I can’t predict major breakthroughs that we’ll need to move beyond where we are now, but there’s still plenty of room in the tech that we have to continue development. For example, if the Surface Book were to really spawn a PC replacement market, it would need to have enough functionality to operate as a tablet without the base, but still be able to offer real power when docked. That’s going to require some real innovations in board-level interconnectivity as well as license allowances for dual CPU systems in the consumer market.

I also expect we’ll see some new takes on the docked smartphone tablet in the next few years. If you look at how Microsoft uses a tiny little dock to turn their Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL into a desktop analog, you can easily imagine that functionality being integrated into tablet and laptop forms. It’s just dead until you slide in your phone. This is nothing new. The Palm Foleo was one of the more beautiful implementations of this concept, but it was cancelled before it was released. There was going to be a Foleo 2, but that never took form as Palm was falling apart, was bought by HP, and then unceremoniously shut down. More recently, the Motorola Atrix 4G and the optional laptop dock was actually available, but Incipio’s Clambook never really materialized. About the only place you can get such functionality is BlackBerry’s elegant Blend for OS 10.3, Windows and Mac OS X desktop software that lets you work on your BlackBerry via your system’s keyboard and mouse, even without a direct internet connection.

Whatever happens, though, it promises to be interesting. After all, we’ve seen Apple copying from others instead of defining the market and Microsoft come from being an oldster with stars in it’s eyes about the Good Old Days to being one of the hottest shops for real innovation in just the last few years. It’s going to be a real hoot to see what comes down the pike next to thrill and entice us.

I’ll Disable My Ad Blocker When You Stop Exploiting Me

" “>On January 8th, ExtremeTech published a piece about Forbes forcing users to disable their ad blockers in order to see any content, and guess what happened. Malware.

For the past few weeks, Forbes.com has been forcing visitors to disable ad blockers if they want to read its content. Visitors to the site with Adblock or uBlock enabled are told they must disable it if they wish to see any Forbes content. Thanks to Forbes’ interstitial ad and quote of the day, Google caching doesn’t capture data properly, either.

What sets Forbes apart, in this case, is that it didn’t just force visitors to disable ad blocking — it actively served them malware as soon as they did. Details were captured by security researcher Brian Baskin, who screenshotted the process:

Malware1

And now back to the original piece…

One of the things I loved about the internet in the 2000’s is that it was an overflowing treasure trove of content. Following in the footsteps of AltaVista and Yahoo!, Google had made the internet accessible. PHP, Java, and Ajax were coming on strong and reforging plain HTML to make the internet usable. Creative types and entrepreneurs were developing new ways to leverage the internet. Sure, there were ugly things like HoTMaiL, GeoCities, and MySpace, but we also got YouTube, Amazon, WikiPedia, CraigsList. GMail showed up, Facebook took its early steps, and Twitter popped up out of nowhere.

There were also a lot of ads. Corporate Earth had found the internet to be a new resource to exploit, and exploit it did. This was the era of the internet that created the need for the pop-up blocker feature being added to just about every browser on the planet. New advances in web tech also created news ways for site developers to be more efficient and more expressive. This created the Flash revolution and early Javascript-based pop-ups. Both website owners and ad network owners were having conniptions over click rates and revenues, and web users were getting really sick of ads splashed into every corner.

Hell, they still are.

Yet Google built their entire empire, one of the largest companies on Earth, almost entirely on the simple concept of plain text ads that didn’t stand out like a sore thumb, but few others followed that lead. From this incomplete history, admittedly lacking nuance, we know today that advertising on websites is deeply annoying. We have interstitials, ads which pop up between stories on some websites or when you jump from one site to another to keep you from reading before you look at the sponsor’s message. We have all manner of Javascript-based pop-ups that appear when you scroll down far enough, try to click the Close Tab control, or flip up to ask you to complete a survey telling them how much you loathe their website because of the ads. Even I use them to hawk my book or get you to follow me on Twitter.

DISCLOSURE: I employ Google’s AdSense on my site and a few others and, get this, I earn a whopping $30 a month. It pays a few internet-related bills. whee.

Then there’s the “Despicable”-class items. These are more behaviors than actual ads. The most common one people come to know and despise is Link Bait, links with titles shrouded in mystery, dropping just enough bombshell to get you to click. Then, of course, the resulting page is saturated in ads. One of the even more painful forms of this is the “Amazing List”-class. Here’s a simple tutorial; think up something gross or sexual, find five or more celebrities who have possibly admitted to doing it, create a gallery of these entries with one entry per page, entitle it something like “7 Celebrity Men Who Have Worn Women’s Panties”, now advertise. Guess what! Schlubs have to load that many pages, each full of ads, just to get through the list. Hideous.

Enter the Ad Blocker. Ad blockers promise one thing; to block ads from appearing in your browser. The results are simply astounding, if you use the right one. I personally use AdBlock, a plugin for Chrome on Windows, which effectively blocks all ads I don’t want to see, but allows advertisers who behave responsibly to display their tasteful ads. AdBlock is one of the most popular because it works well. In fact, it works so well, the internet advertising industry and sites that derive revenue from ads instead of subscriptions is engaging in collective howls of “foul” claiming that it works too well and too many people are using it. They’re simply loosing too much money and they’ll have to stop publishing if we don’t let them violate our eyeballs with their ads (or the ears of our deaf friends who must endure hideously convoluted crap in their screen readers).

It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that now it’s difficult to go to just about any website without seeing some pop-up (am I the only one seeing the irony here?) begging visitors to please whitelist their site so they can continue to exist. Some truly heinous asshats will just block the content altogether until you disable your ad blocker. If that wasn’t bad enough, ads are just about everywhere. They’re in our Free-To-Play games, which should really be called Free-To-Play-But-Costs-Money-To-Play-Well games. They flash brightly on giant electronic signs in our cities, blinding us while we drive at 80 MPH on the freeway. They invade our shows on Hulu, even when we pay a subscription fee (that’s changed lately, but it illustrates the point). We’ve been fed pre-movie ads in the form of trailers for so many decades, we now look forward to them! Billions of revenue dollars flow from one corporate entity to the next because of ads, but ad blockers have been putting a dent in that, at least on the internet.

Well, so what!

Who cares if you obnoxious ad people and website operators complain that not every human being on Earth is actively enthralled by your short-form, advert-oriented expositions of so-called creativity. You are hawking stuff and not everybody wants to look at gaudy promotional material every waking minute of every day so you can make a few more millions, shocking though that may be. If your damned ads weren’t so freakishly annoying and obtrusive, we probably wouldn’t be blocking them! They slow down page loading times. They require plugins people don’t want or need and likely shouldn’t be using because they open security holes on their systems. Ad networks have even been a source of viral attacks on millions of unsuspecting people who never once thought they may get a virus from their respectable website.

In a nutshell, you are exploiting us and we don’t like it. We now have the power to stop it on the internet, and that bothers you. When Replay TV and TiVo first came out, they had the ability to skip ads. Where’s Replay TV now? Dead. Where’s TiVo? They had to cripple the function to survive, but have recently announced their new console that brings back Replay TV’s long coveted 30-second jump, thumbing their noses that their oppressors. Millions of people are cutting the cord, ditching cable TV, and getting subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu’s new ad-free program, and just getting TV the old fashioned way, through an antenna. YouTube even has an ad-free service for $10 a month.

Nobody loves your ads because you abuse it and there are some people who will take that abuse to the extreme. So, here’s the breakdown. You stop horribly exploiting us users and we’ll stop blocking your entirely reasonable, unobtrusively placed ads and you can go on making revenue.

Better yet, why not try charging a super-small monthly fee to go ad-free, and no, you don’t get to spam those who don’t pay. Just consider asking for a few bucks a month. This is the internet, after all. You can reach millions of people instead of a few thousand in a neighborhood. You can make real money. It’s not that hard.

Look at Google.

Support reasonable regulation of the vaping industry

" “>

I was a smoker of 30+ years. I smoked a pack a day and, for a few years, I smoked two packs a day. Almost two and a half years ago, I tried an e-cigarette and I stopped smoking and started vaping. Millions of smokers try to quit every year and fail. They try patches and gum and drugs, but none of it works effectively. Electronic cigarettes, however, have been exceedingly effective in smoking cessation. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to regulate e-cigs and I’m not keen on kids getting into vaping because of the candy-flavored juices, but that’s no reason to let a small group of puritanical zealots smash the one industry that smokers can count on to quit into little bits. After all, you don’t use a sledge hammer to put in a thumb tack. If anything, the e-cig industry has been looking for regulation, but you have to understand vaping is NOT smoking. You can’t just apply the same laws that are applied to cigarettes.

So, stand up and say something. The following is a message I received from Mt. Baker Vapor, my supplier of vaping products. What the CTFK is doing is fine, but e-cigarette juice is not tobacco and analog cigarettes have around 7,000 chemicals (which is 6998 more than in e-juice). There is no comparison, and vaping actually helps people actually quit smoking. Sure, nicotine isn’t great, but neither is caffeine, and yet Americans drink tonnes of the stuff every day.

As a customer of ours, we try not to overburden you with messages, but we have been making a concerted effort to try and help inform our consumers around the nation about important government developments that threaten your ability to use electronic cigarettes and other vapor products.

Today, longtime vaping opponent, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK) has assembled a call to action to urge President Obama to pressure the FDA to finalize their Tobacco Deeming Regulations. What has been failed to be mentioned is that if these regulations go into action, 99.9% of vapor products currently on the market will be gone within two to four years. These proposed regulations will have a crippling impact on businesses and consumers.

If you have not already done so, we urge you to please send an email to your Congressional representative and Senators and ask them to support and co-sponsor HR 2058, a bill that will stop the FDA from banning 99% of all vapor products.

The link [above] will take you to the CASAA blog where you will find all the information you need to contact the White House and let your voice be heard. Together we can show that the American people DO NOT support these regulations.

This only takes about 30 seconds and it’s the best resource we have for influencing the national conversation on vaping legislation. Please consider taking the time to send this important message!

Please be courteous and respectful at all times during your message. Ask that your representative support HR 2058 and be sure to share how vaping has made a positive impact on your life.

THANK YOU!

Thank you for your willingness to weigh in. It’s important for all adult consumers of electronic cigarettes and vapor products to help educate policymakers about vaping.

The Mt. Baker people are just trying run a business, provide a quality, American-made product, give great customer service, and all at the best prices around. And, no. They didn’t ask me to do this. I know a few dozen people who quit smoking through vaping. I’ve helped a few into it. I see thousands online, and I know that there are tens of thousands more whom I do not know, all who have used vaping to stop smoking. That’s a potential of hundreds of thousands of people who will no longer be murdered by the tobacco industry just for using their products.

In Defence of The Grand Tour

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Granted, I'm not entirely in love with the first season of Amazon's highly anticipated Clarkson, Hammond, and May vehicle (that's a pun), The Grand Tour, but it needs to breathe (that's a wine reference) somewhat before it starts to shine.

In the latest R&T op/ed from Jack Baruth, the Avoidable Contact scribe rants about the failings he perceives are being perpetrated by The Grand Tour team, and he is right on some accounts. It does feel overly scripted, for the most part, and the best thing about Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May is their repartee en flagrante. We don't quite get to see it just yet, but it's more complicated than just getting the trio back in front of the cameras again.

We need recall that the BBC fired Clarkson for bitch slapping a production assistant. Clarkson walked and so did his fellow presenters. When he was courted by Amazon, show runner Andy Wilman and much of the Top Gear production team followed. The problem isn't that these people don't know how to work together, it's that the book they took 23 series (we call them seasons) over 18 years to write had to be tossed into the fire. You don't think the BBC would just let Clarkson and Co. walk off with the Top Gear formula, did you? Top Gear has been one of the BBC's biggest international golden gooses ever.

Episode #2 from the first series back in 2002. Look at how empty the hanger was!

Production needed to be different or the BBC would sue the hell out of Amazon. So, not unlike trying to get a cruise ship to do a backflip (both impossible and an impressively epic visual metaphor), the well-oiled Top Gear machine, honed over two decades starting with the almost utterly unwatchable first season, was going to have to start mostly from scratch. This is what we're seeing now. They had to do it to learn what was and was not going to work, and they need the crucible of public opinion to craft all new material.

We've also seen how hard it is to replicate Top Gear. The Australian version was cancelled after four years. The Russian version was cancelled half way through the first season. The US version has run for five seasons, but has never drawn significant viewership and is widely derided. There are South Korean, Chinese, and French versions as well, but I can't tell how well they're doing, though the French version posted a record viewership for the first episode.

It's not easy because good television is hard. So, let's give The Grand Tour and Amazon some room to get it right. It's fun to watch already, and the hosts and Andy Wilman will start to dial things in after this season. Like a fine wine, they just need room to breathe.

The stupid way to delete all photos from your dumb iPhone

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So, I gave up on Apple a few years ago and have no ragerts. Apple has simply lost the thread of late and Microsoft is the real innovator these days. For the record, Windows 10 is the bomb and is far more functional than Mac OS X. Regardless of my enthusiasm, however, my wife Rima still insists on using her dumb ass iPhone 5s and it's admittedly sweet 8MP camera. She takes a lot of images, and that takes up a lot of room. She needed to archive the images she had taken and make room for a few thousand more. 

But, ahem... iOS only lets you delete images one at a time, or a bunch, but you have to select them manually. One. at. a. time. How annoying, and terrible UI/UX design. Jesus, Apple, I thought you guys were supposed to be awesome at this. 

Enough with the griping. Found out a simple-ish way to backup and delete all of your images. YMMV, since I only did this on an iPhone 5s with recent-ish software on it. You will need: 

  • A PC with Windows (since I have no idea how a Mac will respond, and frankly don't care). 
  • Your iPhone.
  • The USB cable. 

It's likely you'll also need to have the iTunes software installed so you have the mobile device drivers for your iPhone, or this probably won't work. 

  1. Fire up the PC.
  2. Fire up iTunes (maybe, maybe not). 
  3. Plug in your iPhone.
  4. Open up Windows Explorer.
  5. Go to My Computer or, if you aren't living under a rock, Computer.
  6. Open up the iPhone drive that should be there. 
  7. Open the DCIM folder in there. 

Now, at this point, you should see a few folders that have stupid names. These are the different folders you have on your iPhone in the Photos app. You can't delete these. 

  1. Now, open each dumb folder. 
  2. Select all. 
  3. Press Delete. 
  4. Watch them all go away. 
  5. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now, I suggest you copy these to your hard drive before deleting them, or you can MOVE them, which is kind of the same. If you don't, you'll lose every last one of them. In case you don't know, when deleting files from a connected drive, there is no Recycle Bin. It just goes away.

Poof. 

So, take your time, be careful. Use checklists if you have to. Mind your surroundings. Keep your guard up. 

Coals on the inside

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Emotionally, I’m about as drained as one can be, without simply keeling over dead. Spending day after day after day just being little more than alive, constantly searching for a solution that cost more than my heart can afford, is like a desiccant for my... me. I have these little fires in me somewhere, but I can never quite track them down. I know they’re burning and sometimes, on good days, I can even see a wisp or two of smoke, but then it’s gone. If I could just find one, I’d stoke the flames as high as I could.

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Yet, I know what that means. 

If I cannot handle the flames, then I will be consumed by the conflagration. Some form of me might remain, but it won't be me. It will just be a husk of me, working through the motions of a genuine life. Eventually, I will wear down and scatter. I'll end up becoming the nothing I already believe I am. 

If, on the other hand, I can withstand the fire, watching it lick across my presence, finding the edges, darkening them, making them sharper, I might move something, somewhere. 

Like an ant moving a mountain. 

Before I'm sure I'm not that ant, I might as well try to prove I am, when I reach the other side of whatever awaits me. Maybe then, I'll find some of those fires that I know are smoldering somewhere deep inside. 



In case you're wondering: Why Windows 10 Phone, HP?

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This isn't going to be a long read. The simple answer, and this is a guess, is that HP sees three things. 

  1. Windows 10 development is reportedly significantly easier than for 8/8.1. That should induce some developers to prep versions that run on all Windows 10 systems.
  2. Microsoft may have dumped Project Astoria, a dev kit to help Android app devs port to Windows 10, but Project Islandwood, a similar dev kit for iOS apps, is still on the workbench, and the iOS app ecosystem is significantly more cultured than Google's.
  3. HP has a very old relationship with corporate culture. HP can see the writing on the wall, and it's screaming CONVERGENCE = LOWER COSTS. 

It should come as any surprise that companies would prefer to adopt an ecosystem that gives them the most control, the most integration, and the most efficient workforce for the lowest possible outlay. That's exactly what the HP Elite X3 is all about, and HP sees the potential quite clearly. They don't even care if they sell fewer traditional enterprise-grade desktops. Those are loss leaders. If they can get in on the ground floor, nay, BE the ground floor of this hot new segment, they can cement their dominance and exert control over the formation of the new segment. 

Word from MWC last week was that an Elite X3 kit with optional laptop "dumb terminal" will cost much less than a smartphone and laptop, and the buyer gets both in one purchase. The dock comes with the handset, so just add a Monitor/Keyboard/Mouse combo kit for a few hundred more and you've completely outfitted one employee at a lower cost, reduced the time IT works on that employee significantly, cut down on the potential for shadow IT, and don't have to adopt any kind of lame BYOD policy. Sure, some people will complain, but I'm sure they'll pick their paycheck over their smartphone. 

For the coup de grâce (if you think I'm misspelling it, look it up), HP has developed Workspace, something of an app store for virtualized desktop applications to run over a network to the device, though real details aren't yet available. I do know that HP Workspace requires a subscription fee, so it's unlikely that any consumers who are able to get a hold of one of these magnificent* devices will be able to afford to use it. All that will remain to be seen later this year when HP starts rolling them out. 

* early reports from presser hands-on periods have suggested it's marvelous, but time always tells the truth when it comes to smartphones.