I noticed I was asked to meta-moderate. I thought I had turned both M1 and M2 off. Anyone remember how to get to that screen?

For that matter, anyone remember how to get to the screen where you can adjust +/- modifiers on posts, based on various criteria?

I had saved some links in the old URL format (/x.pl?op=y), but apparently not these.

As seen on TV just tonight, proof that zombies have now gone mainstream in our culture: Restless Arm, Creepy Holden, and Lifeless Lisa.

So I'm waiting in the Wendy's drive-thru after work tonight, and there's an ad on the radio I guess from the BSA. It said software piracy is not only wrong, it's illegal.

Doesn't "not only x, but also y" mean "as if x wasn't bad enough, there's also y"? When you use that rhetorical structure, aren't you going in increasing badness about something? Saving the worst for last, for the most dramatic effect and hopefully to seal the persuasion deal?

So now something being against the law carries more convincing force than something being wrong. I guess the needles of the moral compasses of most these days spin wildly instead of track steady. And without the force of government we'd be ethically lost.

Reminds of seeing on Cops a few weeks ago, teen gets arrested for taking a gun to an argument, luckily the cops stop things before anyone gets hurt, and dad is at the station talking to the young lad, very disappointed, and says son, don't you know you could get tried as an adult for killing someone? WTF? Because that's worse than ending another human being's life?!? That's why you shouldn't murder people?!?

p.s. Also heard on the radio tonight some announcer pronounce the TLD of that web site as oh arr gee. Made me think, I want a .OMG site!

Rights are distributive (with our Freedom of Association).

A x C + B x C = (A + B) x C

A = me
B = you
C = the right of Free Speech, in this example

Us speaking together is the same as you and I speaking separately, as far as the government should be concerned. To remove the C factor from the rhs, is to also remove it from the left.

An AC posted to my last JE, a kind of user I don't normally read posts from, but I was convinced he is someone who is on my Friends list. Because my response got long, and by posting AC he might not see it and notice the opportunity to say how I'm wrong about something, I've just made a new JE out of it.

But the entities we're talking about here are not some kind of disembodied mysteries. They're us. It's a violation of my rights to have to shut up because I formed a business with someone or joined a union or a church or whatever. I as a legal citizen of the U.S. have the God-given right to free speech, of which political speech is especially "sacred" (in a democracy), no matter my associations.

Okay, that is, except in the capacity of an agent of the government. Our rights (are designed to) protect us from government, so if you take a job with the government, that's voluntary, and you don't have free speech on the job. So cops can't proselytize while they're writing you a ticket, and teachers, well, shouldn't be allowed to brainwash kids with their Leftist garbage. But if I want to run a grocery store where the check-out people try to convert you, or tell you who to vote for, that's my right. (And then you can decide whether to shop there or not.)

I'm okay with politicians being beholden to corporations. Or unions. Or environmental groups. Or the NRA. Or the Mormon Church (I'm not Mormon). As long as that makes them also aligned with their constituents. And if it's not, then bad on the voters. How can we expect accountability for politicians when we won't hold ourselves accountable?

A politician comes into office with (hopefully) some dead-set beliefs, and some that they haven't gotten all the information on yet and are potentially swayable (or are issues they just don't care about either way). The most concerned about an issue raise it with their representative, and attempt to persuade him/her. Those that aren't really concerned about an issue, don't. So the politician decides based on which side of the issue seems the most important to his/her constituents.

Lobbying is pure, wholesome Americana. You can pay someone to do it, or do it yourself(s). On an FNC special one weekend during one of the more recent times the EPA or whatever was trying to make life hard for a rancher, members of the family flew to D.C. to speak to someone to state their case. I personally think it's ridiculous that they couldn't get time while their rep was in town, and that legislators should be part-timers somehow, but I haven't thought that completely through and it's a separate issue.

But special interests, despite thinking certain ones are okay and others are not, is what we all are, and is not a reason to shut people up in violation of their rights. I for example am a walking set of special interests like, as a male I would like to see equality in reproductive rights among others, as a programmer I want the importation of competing slave labor stopped, etc. If I form a software business with some people, I would want those who would apply progressively more and more costly regulations on that venture with my life's savings at risk to not be elected. Denying me free speech, in whichever of my private capacities I'm engaging in, is immoral.

Without knowing the person, if someone says free speech is okay only except for corporations, to me that's not so much a position on speech as it is on corporations. If someone thinks corporations are evil and therefore should be excluded from x (among others), well, to me that's not a reason. I don't like the vast millions that the unions donate or that George Soros' various front groups donate, but I believe they have the right.

p.s. On a much less serious note, in case anyone reading this missed it, a couple of funnies (well of course I think the first one was funny): http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=6180957&cid=48459463

I saw on another tech news site the following:

"Despite the obvious corrupting effects of money in political campaigns, ..."

Huh? That's saying "despite the obvious corrupting effect of political speech on political speech, ..."

How is that obviously corrupting? Is grass roots organizing corrupting campaigns too? Do debates corrupt them as well?

I thought a political campaign was a candidate getting his/her message out. Getting your message to as many ears as possible requires, like most things in life, time and money.

With money you can buy mailers and slots on the airwaves. With time you can canvas. Contributions of money let you buy more distributions of your message, and contributions of time let other people call and canvas for you. In campaigns, donated time and money are multipliers.

Maybe the poster meant opposition money. That's doubtful because that's mainly a tactic of the Left (to funnel money in from all over the country, to squash a local candidate or proposition), and most people who speak up, well, anywhere, are Lefties.

But even so, unless debates are corruption, then opposing messages are just as valid in the arena of ideas.

Even attack/smear messages are valid. I don't like deceptive tactics, but if there's stuff that's true about a candidate that also reflects poorly on him/her, then it's fair game. I want to know if a candidate recently flip-flopped on an issue, or has a history of it, such that they might not really be passionate about a certain position.

I want to know if they groped women or diddled interns. What the Left does in timing revelations about such things, for maximum impact, is distasteful. The truth should be disclosed when it's known. But Leftists are distasteful. (Because gaining power to them is infinitely more important than acting tastefully. Shame, embarassment, bald-faced lying, none of these are anywhere near enough of a deterrent, as is constantly seen. Power at any and all costs is so important because the issues are so important to them.)

I don't need to know so much who's supporting a candidate, because that only matters if I already know that they don't have solid beliefs themselves and are primarily just doing what their supporters want. Because if they don't have principles they stick to, they're already disqualified in my mind, so who's pulling their strings is immaterial at that point.

A principled candidate is naturally going to attract support from like-minded causes. This is so obvious it shouldn't need to be said, except the Left has probably convinced most people that no politician would be for something if there wasn't the demonized "special interest"* backing for it.

If I was in political office and the NRA for example supported me, that wouldn't make me bought and paid for, I already believe in gun rights, and would vote that way anyways. Same for abortion and a whole host of other issues.

I suppose there are things I don't really care about, or that I think don't make a difference either way, like the minimum wage, that I could potentially be bought off on. But then that's up to the voters, to decide if they want to elect someone who really cares about a, b, and c, and not so much x, y, and z.

But if one side or campaign raises more money, or more volunteers, or writes a smarter big data program suite, this is not corruption. It's by definition the process.

So what it's really saying is that one doesn't like and would like to radically transform or throw out and replace the process. Not liking certain kinds of political speech means you don't like a political process which speech has a significant say over. You'd prefer a much less, or completely un-, democratic process. Which does afterall jibe with the Left's view that people are too stupid to make the right decisions, in general.

So that's what's meant by things like the quote above; the translation of that (dishonest) Leftie speak is "there really shouldn't be any speech involved in the political process". (Dictators are best. (Which is true, just not by humans/in this life.))

And that's why, despite popular belief, it's not safe to vote Democrat. It's often times not a safe vote to vote for the Republican, as they often are detrimental to the country. But it's basically never safe to vote for a Democrat, because they're almost all Lefties, and Leftism is an opposition to the main things that distinguish Americanism. Like democracy and free speech.

*Calling special interests bad is calling freedom of association bad. If I have a right of political speech, and a right to group together with like-minded people, but then I lose the right to speak as a member of that group, then I don't really have those two rights.

p.s. on part 1: So on FU Garage earlier in the week they located and haggled over and bought a 1970 Torino 429 Cobra Jet, of which they said not a whole lot were made. (And with an engine that size, would be highly desirable.) They had no project car to work on at the time, so the wrench monkeys were idle. And the possibly head partner guy flipped it for only $2500 profit. WhyTF not fix it all up and sell it for a $25K profit?!?

3) Zombies

It's a good time for TV these days because there's so much zombie stuff. I've been a zombie nut since being a kid, although I didn't get around to seeing the original ("They're coming for you Bar'bra!") until later in life. Before having to work summers I'd rent marathon sessions of Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead (prior to the Ving Rhames remake), Return of the Living Dead Parts I, II, III. All great fun. (Still remember a great scene in one of those: One house occupant notices the other has obviously become very sick (a zombie), so calls for an ambulance. Paramedics arrive, and are overtaken in their van by zombies. Then more paramedics are called, as one of the zombies gets on its radio and says "Send more braaaaaaiiiinnnns!")

Then later Shaun of the Dead (first half comedy, second half serious), Flight of the Living Dead (subtitled "Zombies on a Plane", after Laurence Fishburne's "Snakes on a Plane" was a fad at the time), the 30 Days of Night stuff (SyFy did a few sequels I think), 28 [unit of time]'s Later, and of course Martin Lawrence's I Am Legend. And countless SyFy channel variations in their Saturday night originals. I didn't care that much for Romero's final zombie film, as the zombies were somehow smart in that one, and could swim. (I like 'em dumb and feeble! Like all good dead people should be!)

So I was really surprised when AMC of all networks came out with The Walking Dead. Gosh I wanted to like that, but I gave up on it several times/for chunks of several seasons because half the episodes were written for women or something. There was more crying and emoting going in some of those than in Seventh Heaven probably. Thankfully the existence of Z Nation, which is a lot more up my alley -- zombie kills and jokes -- may be causing TWD to keep its edge going, hopefully.

I also gave Helix a chance (they're doing a season 1 marathon on Black Friday). The variation where they're not dead, but infected with something that makes them zombie-ish. But an interesting setting, in a remote research facility in the arctic. I think they blew that up at the end of the first season, so when it starts up again I think in January they'll have to be somewhere else. But good conspiracy angles mixed in. Just didn't like the couple (only, thank goodness) of episodes with an over-acting Seven of Nine.

And I guess not zombies but vampires, but still, FX's (and Guillermo del Toro's) The Strain is bloody good just to even have on the tube. I don't watch sitcoms, cop dramas, or hospital dramas, which have in my lifetime seemed to be the big three in television programming (until so-called reality shows came along (and infomercials; yes Virginia, they really did used to show movies late at night on TV)), so having all this apocolyptic creature serieses is quite nice.

Moar creatures! (I do watch a bit off Face Off, and other misc. stuff sometimes I guess like House Hunters and Top Chef, but my preference is for a creative story over contests or (scripted) "reality".)

2) Survivalism

No I've never watch Survivor! (And the band sucks too.)

I've passed on Bear, and I think some British guy who was also doing solo survival demonstrations. Dude You're Screwed is going solo, but there's the other guys at basecamp interjecting things and keeping it interesting. Otherwise I guess I need at least pairs, so Dual Survival and Naked & Afraid with their sometimes complimentary and sometimes clashing aspects of the personalities involved are what keeps my interest.

Esp. Naked & Afraid can be somewhat boring though, if the particular two can't find any real food and basically just spend the 21 days starving and suffering and trying to keep themselves together mentally. I like success stories, although in Dual Survival it seemed like they were helped along sometimes, circumstance-wise (like happening upon a group of fisherman or something, so the episode could eventually end).

Not learning as much as I thought I would, though. I've learned that even if you're a hotshot at making fire, you're going to fail in an actual survival situation. I've learned that snakes are, at least on land, your best bet for decent protein. Everything else is too fast/elusive, but venomous snakes will stand their ground, stupidly. (And I've learned that venonous snakes have vertical slit eyes like cats, and non- have round eyes. So that's something, I guess.)

And I've learned not to do what they do. Everyone seems to think making shelter is the number one priority. And then they proceed to walk around in an area where the ground is covered in thorns, destroying their feet and critically affecting their mobility, instead of making shoes first. Or building their shelter in a downpour, letting all that fresh water slip by them, to then spend the next several days parched and looking for fresh water!

Speaking of which, the number thing I've learned not to do, is drink unboiled water. Esp. on N & A (T & A?) those people again and again make a dumb decision to risk drinking water running off a rock or sitting in a puddle, and then they're shitting their brains out for the next few days (or carted off to the hospital with some jungle bug), getting even more dehydrated then they'd have been without it.

Dude You're Screwed is the funner show as, besides the ambush the next victim for the next episode schtick, there's the aspects of the weird stuff that they give them, that they then use in suprising ways, and also the stuff that they steal on the way out of the plane or that they have hidden on their persons that gets by the guys as they search them before dumping them.

If you're going on Naked and Afraid, you each get one item, bring a big multi-purpose knife, no matter what, for chopping wood for fires, and skinning anything you might be lucky enough to catch. Then, if it's a wet clime, bring a firestarter (and then don't break it; they're not impervious), else bring a metal pot. Boil your water in the pot, or bamboo tubes you might be able to find.

Some worthless people have opted for, as one of their team's only two items, a pair of swimming googles, a magnifying glass, and duct tape.

I wonder why no one has brought any kind of real weaponry. Unless you're lucky enough trap something in its burrow, you would need some kind of projectile weapon to catch most meat. In re-cuts of the show they show some things that didn't make it on to the main episode, and they do cobble together grubs and miscellaneous things to eat, but not much calories, and nowhere near what they need to keep chopping up firewood, and to make their journey on the last day to be picked up. It's like no one ever thinks about how they're going to get enough protein, so at the end of the 21 days the women lose around 20 pounds and the guys can lose up to 40. And who knows what that kind of malnutrition (and the dehydration) is doing to them in the long term.

p.s. I also watched a few of those... um, maybe specials rather than a series, on how rich people purchase the services of survival bunker builders. Like taking a cargo container and outfitting it for n people to survive the apocalypse for m days. (Last night's SyFy movie reminds me. And leads into part 3.)

[Edit: Just thought of the third unusual, worthless item that's been chosen to be brought along, that I couldn't think of a few minutes ago.]

Apparently the stuff I've been watching on TV in recent times have mostly fallen into three categories.

1) Cars

I'm not so much into the fix-em-up part of those kinds of shows. Maybe partly because I'm oblivious to what they're doing or why. So I used to watch some of the block of car shows (I forget what they nicknamed it) that I think was mid-day Saturday on Spike (or maybe its prior incarnation, TNN), for a while there hosted by Danica Patrick, just as she was starting to get famous.

So I like the primetime shows a lot better because there's less grease-monkeying and in-show ads for stuff and more monkeying around and getting to the final outcome quicker. And the searching for new and interesting project cars. So I watch a little Count. I used to watch Ass Monkey a lot, but they really pissed me off when they fired a couple of the mechanics that I liked, and suddenly featured new faces that we were just supposed to accept I guess. Happily, those two partnered with some others and started up a competing business, that's now on the same network (as Misfits Garage).

I don't know WTF is PBS's problem. I used to watch Motorweek every week at college in Northern California. Down in SoCal, the station in one area used to run it at 2am or some shit, and where I'm at now doesn't run it all. Since they've stopped running that, and old Mr. Bean and Whose Line reruns, they're completely worthless to me.

Top Gear went from bad to worse. The British version was at least a fairly interesting show, you just had to accept that America and Americans were going to be the butt of literally every single joke, and that like Slashdotters, they never tire of the same old ones. (It's the element of mean-spiritedness and the feeling that gives to the tellers that keeps them from getting bored of it.) I've tried to watch the American version, I've wanted to like it, but it's just sooo boring! I don't know how I could find a car show boring. It seems there's not much about cars, just three guys screwing around. And they're not my kind of guys I guess.

I think Motor Trend or Car & Driver had a show on for a couple of years that I used to watch, but not anything that lasted.

My cable company used to advertise some new car shopping network, but that was one of the digital channels, and I'm still on analog cable TV. (And I felt a little funny about the idea anyways, as to me a separate organization talking about new cars is a show, but the manufacturers doing it is an ad.)

Thanks to smitty for spurring a little Wikipedia journey, with:

Yeah, I don't mind the label "classical liberal", in the Hayekian sense.

So it seems that one way of looking at the Liberalism scale, politically L to R (at least in the U.S.), is:

Social Justice - Large amount of governmental intervention in peoples's lives.
Social Liberalism - Medium amount of governmental intervention in people's lives.
Classical Liberalism - Small amount of governmental intervention in people's lives.

And with Conservatism:

In the U.S. at least, a free market and a free society are for now still recognized as our traditional form.

So I'm a Liberal Conservative. Reactionary (and growing moreso, the more we move "forward") in my Conservatism (roll the country back to much of its traditional ways) and Classical in my Liberalism.

p.s. But when I look up Liberal conservatism, it says not to be confused with Libertarian conservatism. Yet I'm not seeing the difference between the two. I especially don't get this bit:

I believe in both, so maybe it's really splitting hairs by this point. This is me too:

That is, I have very Conservative values, yet don't think they should be imposed by law. And I come at my libertarian bent from the Right, vice those who come at it from the Left, like my sister and John Stossel, which to me doesn't not make for a very predictable libertarian.

Finally, I like this:

Had two identical messages on my machine, arriving at about 10am and then around noon.

In an unrecognized accent, the recorded voice said:

Not even a "This message is for Mr. Bill Dog..." opener, like all my official business messages begin. I guess Mr. Jefferson doesn't even know my name.

Googling that phone number, apparently Mr. Jefferson is also known as Brian Smith, to others from earlier this month. Maybe that's why he had to pause a moment before stating his name.

As with any job, there are some plusses and minusses at where I currently slave away. A pro is that our newish sys admin pushes us onto newer versions of things software. In contrast to our senior developers, who don't want the group to move to more modern development practices.

I plan to start looking for a new job after the raises come out next year, which happens beginning of March. This is also in part timed to the graphic in this FA that shows what the biggest hiring months have been. I've reordered it chronologically, and see that I really need to try to get in somewhere before the beginning of summer:

Jan 110,480
Feb 101,120
Mar 111,480
Apr 118,040
May 134,760
Jun _87,125
Jul _94,400
Aug _61,875
Sep _95,840
Oct 108,000
Nov 109,750
Dec _91,667

I'm mostly looking to leave over money. I do C#/.NET web development now, and was hired there based on prior web dev experience in classic ASP, and having completed a certificate program in .NET at the local university's extension program. And this after being out of work for two and a third years, being laid off at the beginning of the Great Recession, and seeing zippo employment action (in my area) going on with my old Win32 C/C++ desktop application skills.

So despite being a senior software engineer, I hired in to a level II position, and probably near the bottom of the pay scale for it at that. And don't get me wrong, I'm damn glad to have gotten the opportunity at all! But my raises have averaged 1%, and we seem to be kind of a low budget shop as it is, and the boss is not (the kind of guy who would be) impressed with me, and I'm 48 and burned a bunch of savings during the downturn, and have only been (able to be) putting away the bare minimum to take maximal advantage of the 401K matching.

So it's not like I'm greedy or I live extravagantly, and I'll wait and see, to be sure, but I'm not exactly expecting a boost in my income from this place any time soon. And at my age and how I've been only able to sock away a modest amount for retirement in my career so far, and how I can only afford to put away very little with what I'm making now, it comes to the point where it seems like it would actually be financially irresponsible to remain at my current job, if I could find better.

But better for me isn't just more money, but then lesser learning, say. In the mid 2000's I was paid well, where I was able to do most of my retirement saving, but I had a lot of down time between projects, and my skills atrophied. And I stayed almost 7 years, and lost touch with what was going on in the job market.

I really like getting experience on the newer versions of things and don't want to give that up in a job change. (For example a place I had interviewed at during the recession ran an ad recently, and they're *still* stuck on 2005's MS technology. Which would be giving up a lot, i.e. 9 years of nicer features and better ways of doing things.) And I want to get into newer development practices, which is what the follow-on will be about, but I don't want to be at a place where they exercise those development chops sporadically.

I.e. it's not really worth it to me to be paid more, but then be in danger again in my next job search.

So what do I want in a new organization, besides recent versions of things and steady development work, and how am I going to select for that in the portion of the interview where I get to ask a few questions? That's next.

I was shocked when Laurence Fishburne first showed up in those Capitol One commercials. He was so great in Pulp Fiction and the Matrix, I thought, oh no, is his career over already? And now Jennifer Garner (no doubt the daughter of Jim Rockford) is shilling for the same.

The creepiest is Matthew McConaughey driving around at night in a butt-ugly Lincoln SUV softly waxing sweet philosophical nothings to us.

The latest is (the now forgettable) Sarah Marshall and Punk'd Employee of the Month (who I just found out are married (to each other, I mean)) doing like a minute and a half mongo commercial where a Samsung Galaxy tablet is part of every aspect of their lives.

And just like that, poof, the shame and presumed damage to one's career for resorting to "acting" in TV commercials is now gone evidently.

It used to be just voices. Like I can never forget a face, I can pick out a famous actor's voice (I just can't remember names for shit). That way an actor could lend a brand some familiarity, without getting himself all soiled in it. For example I most recently heard a new spot with King Ralph as the voice of it. Have no idea what the product or service was, as in my case I'm usually distracted by the familiar voice.

Which I would think is even more of a down-side when they actually appear in the commercials. As in, the focus is on the spokesperson and not the product or service being pitched. When I see Flo (who, incidently, was in that Ben Stiller honeymoon movie before becoming Ms. Progressive) or Red, I think car insurance or Wendy's. When I think of Matthew McHowdoyouspellhisnameagain, I think of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, not a dying carmaker division whose vehicles' front ends all look like hideous barn owl faces.

Yes, that was plural. One other is that I'm deeply misanthropic. No, not like the Leftie kind. I'm totally with the Left on the belief that people can't be trusted to make the right decisions. But my religion (which is a reference point to my politics, and not one in the same), or my God, commands me to love and forgive others for their failings [if only I could apply that to myself!], and to recognize that despite being highly flawed, my species (i.e. not realy about race, or gender, or other, for me, although I have my prejudices) that I despise so much was made in the image of God and unlike the rest of creation possess cores that will live on past this very beautiful and at the same time very ugly physical world.

So I've never been like for example my sister when she was in college (studying biology/chemistry at UC Berkeley) who wanted to invent something that would, as she put it, wipe out all the human beings so that the animals could live in peace. Nor am I like more adult-thinking Lefties, in feeling that the masses should be enslaved in some sense, for their own good (and that of the earth, and fairness/some universal cosmic karma I guess, etc.)

But though I'm not as bad as maybe around 1/3rd of Americans who are solid Left, it's still something I want to work on.

And then another would be the constant mini-digressions, that I'm prone to, that can be seen in the first couple of paragraphs here. I think this condition of mine manifests itself, in my writing, in lots of parenthetical clauses, and lots of commas, to break up the subthoughts of a thought, and to separate out the hyperlinked if you will related illuminating or context-adding pieces to a thought.

You see, if I don't try really hard to control it, I'm naturally an incoherent mess. So that's another I continously try to work on.

But it's also this second one that leads me to the third and last one I can think of, which is the real topic of this JE. (!)

I constantly get caught up in my own little world, in my head.

From a work performance aspect, I think I was born to be a programmer because I can get in the zone quickly, and get in deep. And I think I create stuff expressed in a way that makes sense, and is robust.

But from a soft skills aspect of work performance, it hurts me badly.

1) In meetings I'm constantly zoning out. My mind frequently wanders back to the issues at hand in the quiet, individual, at-my-desk part of my job. Sometimes unnoticed by me the conversation has meandered to something I've worked on and a question gets posed to me all of sudden, requiring the context of what has transpired so far to interpret. This is hugely embarassing, and is not so swell for my career.

I don't know what to do about this except just try to remember to stay focused on all the floundering around and illogic that the idiots I work with do in meetings, and probably in their own minds.

2) Now I don't think everyone is an idiot of course, and I actually like some of the idiots I work with, because they're nice (goes a long way with me/I can overlook a lot with that), and so my frustration and disappointment with another manifestation of this condition. So I'm deep in thought in what I'm doing, and someone comes by at the end of the (or their) day just to be friendly and social and say goodnight. Like a slug I often just mumble uh-huh or something.

This really hurts, because I don't want to be that way, I'm not really that way when I'm, well, of a fully conscious (of my surroundings) mindset. I really like to socialize with the nice people (who are so few (in today's working world in general?)), I'm just not my "normal" self when I'm engrossed in something. So I come across as a cretan, and so undoubtedly also affecting my working relationships and success.

3) The final aspect of this is that so much time or such frequent trips to my own little world, also coincides with an unhealthy amount of introspection. Don't get me wrong, I treasure my introspective abilities, in a land of what I think are mostly oblivious dullards. But in the workplace, and sometimes in social situations, I would really like some effing obliviousness, as far as internal that is.

Because one deadly way this manifests is in, broadly, public speaking. My somewhat proneness to anxiety attacks are physiological and not psychological, it seems to me, so that's not really part of what I'm talking about here. But examining my voice and my self for cues of it, worrying about if or how much it's coming across, really makes me dysfunctional in orally presenting.

Because of this I dropped most every course in college that included a speech, because I know how my body freaks out (while mentally I'm not worrying about anything, except my body freaking out!). I.e. it's not a preparedness thing, about knowing my topic well enough, or anything like that.

But whatever it is, this also holds me back (as another example I can totally block during a job interview, on something I know full well), and I don't know what to do about that. My mind wants to zone out and focus inward, at the most inopportune times, and it means I don't get to convey to the team everything that I want to about something I've done or researched, and it means I can sometimes just stop, and then the anxiety builds as I can't get myself to focus on getting back to where I was because I'm stuck in worrying about how long it's going to take for me to regain focus! (Usually it's an external stimulus that snaps me back to the task at hand, like someone speaking or otherwise some kind of noise.)

I don't have ADHD or whatever, as I can almost always get myself to sit and read a book and study something for long periods of time. I get engrossed in a movies.

So I'm normal, yet I also grapple with being normal. I don't know how people switch so fast, between deep thinking and social awareness, and how they think and communicate* at the same time without their minds being violently distracted by related thoughts.

*Maybe that programming involves being constantly mindful of related concerns is why I can think and communicate to a computer at the same time.

[Edit: Hit the wrong button while checking for typos; regret if this means redundant notifications get sent out by this system.]

by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644037)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644039)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644041)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644043)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644045)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644047)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644049)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644051)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644053)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644055)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644057)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644059)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644061)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644063)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:10PM (#47644063) 15

by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644075)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644077)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644079)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644081)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644083)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644085)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644087)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644089)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644091)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644093)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644095)
by jelIomizer (3670957) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:12PM (#47644097) 12

by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644113)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644115)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644117)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644119)
(#121 is by a real user who happened to post within this barrage)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644123)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644125)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644127)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644129)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644131)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644135)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644137)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644139)
by jeIlomizer (3670951) Alter Relationship on Sunday August 10, 2014 @04:16PM (#47644141) 13

Someone posted an ad to Slashdot, it looks like 40 times, in 3 batches.

* How did they get the system to accept 12-15 posts a minute from one account?

* In looking at the message ID's, I thought maybe it involved every other post being to somewhere else, such as to foil the moronic "slow down, cowboy" filter. But then I looked at the user ID's between these two accounts, and apparently /. had at some point gone to odd numbers only (to make activity levels look bigger?), as there are only two accounts created between them, #'s 53 and 55, and 52, 54, and 56 are "not found".

* Not new news, as RG got spoofed some time ago, but it was an unfortunate font choice that was made by /. that makes capital eye and lowercase ell look the same. The real "jellomizer" has a 103300 user ID, not a 3 million something.

* The spoofer even replicated the bio text from the real account's bio. This is pretty cold to poor old real jellomizer.

* I don't really have any way of telling how recently these accounts were created. But my what is maybe the non-subscriber's view of their comment histories shows only the spamming of two articles, today and Friday. And yet, they have "achievements". One they both have is a +5 score comment achievement. Which I guess would, of course, be all too easy to quickly garner if having just read /. for a little while.

* The newest account in the system as of this moment is #3781073, which is 55,061 account numbers away from this person's first here. I can't think of any way to estimate how many account creations /. sustains on average every day (sans going to the trouble of checking daily for a few days, which I won't), so can't tell if said spammer created these a while back, or say right before the weekend to do the posts this weekend.

Anyways, surely the system should disallow such things. Points to how /. is truly the one of the big dumpsters of the Internet (where at least the trash from spammers and trollers provides a little, humorous break from the tired, common trash from the hoards of commies that post here), and that the owners/operators, as always, do not care.

p.s. I wonder how said spammer picked that jello person to spoof.

So tonight around 12:30 am, and I'm sitting downstairs watching TV. It's hot right now, so I had the windows closed and the central A/C on. Set to 76, so it hadn't run in a while.

My "living room" (it's an open concept downstairs in my townhome condo, so it's really just one big room) part is right by the front door, and I have my ceiling fan on at its highest speed during the hot months.

So the vertical blinds are flapping away in the window by the front door, and my TV is on this end, facing towards the front door, so at my doorstep you can hear that it's on.

And my recliner is 12-18 inches from the door handle. At about ear level where I'm sitting.

So I'm sitting there, and plain as day, someone tries the door handle. Now the setup here is that the door handle turns freely (although outside there's nothing to turn, you grab the handle and depress the latch with your thumb), but there's a deadbolt above it, keyed on the outside and with a switch on the inside, and that's what locks the door.

So whoever it was, clearly could tell that someone was home, up/awake, and most likely downstairs, given the blinds were flapping and the TV was semi-blaring (I play it a little loud, having lost some hearing or quality of from too much loud heavy metal with headphones, such that sometimes I have a little trouble making out what someone said).

And unless the person's watched me for a while and knew I was single and lived alone, would think potentially there was another person in the house, because I left the light on in my 2nd bedroom upstairs. (It's a CFL, and those I like to not cycle too much, and just leave on if I plan to come back into the room in a little while.)

And yet this person tried to come into my house. Now I've got 3 other doors around me, to my neighbors' places, but I can hear when they come and go from my recliner, because one door is right next to mine and the other two are in the next building just a skinny walkway's width away (we're packed in pretty good here).

Now I've heard reports of prowlers coming into peoples' homes when they're asleep at night, through an open or unlocked window. But this person had evidence to the contrary that the folk(s) who live here had gone to bed.

Which brings to mind the question, what if I hadn't had the top latched. What was this person prepared to say or do upon entry into my house, to the person(s) downstairs they would expect to encounter.

This person did not ring my doorbell nor knock on the door. I can't hear doorbells of my neighbors', but I can hear knocks on their doors, and their weren't any, so it wasn't some lost person in need of some kind of assistance.

The last neighbor who left their light on all the time for our walkway moved out recently, and my outside light on the light-sensitive controller broke a few years ago, so it's been completely dark out there, unfortunately. Apparently I should get that fixed and be the one who leaves that switch on all the time.

And maybe it's time to think about getting my first firearm. (And some lessons some where, having only ever shot a BB gun before.) I live in a nice neighborhood, but maybe that makes us a target.

And since I'm a heavy sleeper, maybe even getting an alarm system. Although I think those only detect a window opening, and not breaking.

Which leads to the other question that had come to mind about this person of the night. S/he was evidently prepared to confront this residence's awake occupants, so why not break a window to get in. The only thing I can think of is that the person wanted the element of surprise, and quietly slipping in through a mistakenly unlocked door would enable that, that a shattering window would not.

And yet occupants could come from other parts of the place, potentially with guns, so even if surprise was had on a downstairs occupant, it still potentially could've gone very badly for the presumably would-be intruder.

Oh, and no one tried the keyhole on the deadbolt, so it wasn't a neighbor who was just coming home drunk or something and walked down the wrong walkway, in this row of buildings.

And so I'll close with the ultimate question that came to mind: Why does really weird shit, happen to me. And no it wasn't a dream/I wasn't asleep, I'm a night owl kind of person, and had slept in until about noon-thirty today. I was watching stupid Friends reruns, after coming downstairs to catch Stossel's "Security and Liberty" special from 10-11. (Who's a whole topic unto himself.)