time to let go, maybe

I should start a museum of tech that was functional and functional but didn’t quite explode. I have a lot of items like that. Items that were incredibly useful and valuable but, in the end, didn’t make a huge impact. I was unpacking boxes and found so many things I should have let go of around, say, ten years ago!

1. Archos media player (mini)
2. Planon Business Card Scanner
3. iPod Touch
4. Garmin Bike GPS
5. Agix circuit printer (a converted printer that prints electrical circuits)

Those are just the ones I pulled out of two boxes. The iPod touch is the most recently discontinued (2022). The rest are 8, 9, or 10 years old. The previous owner of our house had an Xfinity security system, so I also took it down. I have other security systems and prefer something other than the all-in-one security model. I have a moving video sensor and a separate video system from the home security.

Not mind that I am aiming for a multi-vendor solution. I prefer a defense in depth to home security. Every door in the house has a video camera on it. Plus, there are one and soon-to-be two motion-based security systems. Those cameras and moves cover the house’s two levels with doors. The upper level of the house has windows, but it is 14 feet in the air, which is not as much of a risk.

Home security and feeling safe at home and online is important.

Interview

https://youtu.be/j3jO0BSpJts

Want to buy the book?

https://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=danny-and-the-corporate-ladder

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here we go again

I grow more and more worried. First, let me say that what William Jefferson Clinton did while he was President, in particular lying to Congress, deserved an impeachment. Now I wonder if it was truly politically motivated because of Richard Nixon. Nixon was never impeached, but Richard Nicons would have been the first president removed from office without his resignation and Gerald Ford’s pardon.

What did he do? Well, he covered up a crime. He didn’t commit the crime but worked hard to cover it up. DOES THAT SOUND FAMILAR to anyone? It truly seems like the impeachments and eventual charges against the former President (he who shall be nameless) seem to be walking that same line. Covering up a crime, trying to pretend a crime didn’t happen. I worry now more and more.

I would lose my clearance if I took secure documents to an unsecured place. Not for today, but forever. As in, I would never be able to get that clearance back. At the very least, based on the evidence we know and can see, they should strip he who shall remain locked up nameless’s clearance. Forever. He can run for President (apparently, he will be convicted or not), and it’s ok.

He can’t see any information that is confidential or higher. He can’t be briefed on it, allowed to hold it, or possess it. Adhering to and living by the rules of classification government can work. I don’t care what country you choose to live in. Documents that should not be general knowledge have to be protected. Some people have given their lives to protect that kind of information.

So let him, who should be locked up but will be nameless, run. Just don’t let him see anything that is classified. Don’t lock him up; stir his clearance forever. That would happen to me, or for that matter, anyone else who did what was done.

Interview

https://youtu.be/j3jO0BSpJts

Want to buy the book?

https://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=danny-and-the-corporate-ladder

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Let’s end with an inflated phrase

After long consideration and evaluation, I stopped posting on Tumblr and MeWe and deleted those accounts. There are other social media sites I may get rid of eventually, but for now, that is the first cut. I don’t miss either, honestly; they were both interesting answers to the question of what is a social media site. I added the new threads application, but I don’t know if one will stay either. It is an interesting concept but, so far, just not relevant to me.

I also let go of Mastadon. It was an interesting idea but not something that has a long future.

Social media remains an interesting experiment. In part because it is very top-heavy (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). That continues year after year. I don’t see another social site moving into that top tier in the next year or so. There are better ways to do social, but right now, that can’t be built today. But someday, we will have the toolset of the communications platforms (web meetings) combined with a lot more.

But that is a long way off, 12 or more months.

The promise of and for social media is still out there. We hope to get there at some point in the future.

Interview

https://youtu.be/j3jO0BSpJts

Want to buy the book?

https://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=danny-and-the-corporate-ladder

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he’s rambling about cameras, again

One of the things I have talked about many times is the growing market for specialty cameras. From 360-degree cameras to cameras that work with your iWatch, there are many. (Wristcam works with your iWatch and offers video and still pictures). Between Drones and ROVs, some cameras allow you to record from above and below the water. It amazes me sometimes.

But I’ve noticed lately that I am more balanced in the images I take. I take roughly 10% with a digital camera other than a wrist cam. I use roughly 30% with my wrist cam, and finally, I take the rest with my iPhone. That is a significant change for me from as recently as five years ago. The number of pictures taken in a year has increased, but more and more are on the iPhone. I still love my specialty cameras; they aren’t always with me.

Technology and the path it takes is interesting.

So I will end with the Dwarflab. It’s an interesting camera; to date, I’ve used it in the backyard to take images of birds. This weekend I will try the other feature of the camera, which is to take images of the night sky. I need to get my Smart Telescope set up and unpacked. But I would like to try the Dwarflab and see how good it can be. Things like that are always interesting to me!

Interview

https://youtu.be/j3jO0BSpJts

Want to buy the book?

https://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=danny-and-the-corporate-ladder

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Where are the journalists now?

Mitch McConnell is the worst kind of Hypocrite. When you set a precedent (2016, refusing Barrack Obama the appointment of a supreme court justice. We will let the people decide in the fall who chooses this justice) and then doing the opposite in 2020, as I said, in my opinion, makes him at best a hypocrite. But I do feel bad for him, with various news outlets speculating about his health. That is a bridge too far for me the other way.

Ethics aren’t applied on Tuesdays differently than Thursdays. So, in fairness, he deserves to be roasted as a hypocrite. But his health, honestly, should be off-limits.

The reality of who and what a journalist is has evolved so much in the last 40 years. It makes me sad. Remember Princess Diana’s death? The people chasing her were not called journalists. They were called Paparazzi. Paparrize is a derogatory term ascribed to photographers and videographers chasing celebrities or “famous” people to get the money shot. It’s called the money shot because if you get it, you get paid.

They, today, are called journalists, and frankly, they are not. We need to gain the concept of what journalism is. In 1972 Journalists took down a sitting American president in reporting on Watergate. It was not because that made them famous but because it was the right thing to do. Check the sources, verify the information, and then inform the public. We need to go back to the days when those who followed the ethical codes of journalism were celebrated.

Ethics is the application of rules designed to keep people moving toward the truth.

We are all, to a degree, biased. It is human nature. We see from our position. We realize our bias when we stop and consider our position may be wrong (orientation) and apply the OODA Loops.

However, the easy button on bias is that lying and repeating the lie is truly wrong. It is not biased to look at someone repeating the same lie repeatedly and dismissing them as a credible source for anything.

(PS as a blogger I AM NOT A JOURNALIST nor do I claim that status).

Interview

https://youtu.be/j3jO0BSpJts

Want to buy the book?

https://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=danny-and-the-corporate-ladder

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listening to both sides

Yesterday was a long, frustrating day. One of those, no matter what I did, more things slipped through the cracks. I need to have a day where I can catch up. But that isn’t likely to happen in the near term. I will have to burn some weekend time to catch up. Time is the one thing we cannot change.

I have been listening to one of my favorite podcasts. Lex Friedman does a good job of presenting both sides of the issue. It is interesting because, honestly, at this point, when you listen to both sides, you hear the extremism both sides pretend only applies to the other side. But in listening to the interviews he has done lately (both sides of the middle eastern conflict), I wish he would ask more questions that pushed both sides.

Rhetoric, as we learned as a nation in 2016, is merely a word salad. It has no nutritional, intellectual, or, for that matter, any value whatsoever. So letting people spew word salad into the air does nothing. In the past, I was frustrated with the podcast because of the unfair pressure and declarations about Dr. Fauci. I do understand that things were mishandled at the beginning of the pandemic. But Fauci only gets a small portion of that blame. Lies often repeated start as lies and end as lies.

Decisions made way above his pay grade impacted his ability to function.

Just Dr. Fauci on what he did for the AIDs community. Covid has enough blame that he should not be the brunt.

Interview

https://youtu.be/j3jO0BSpJts

Want to buy the book?

https://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=danny-and-the-corporate-ladder

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i found a box of Mindstorm Legos

Yesterday, during my lunch break, I was unpacking a box. In that box, I found the old Lego Robotics kids, known as the Mindstorm system. The Mindstorm has been in one of the twin’s closets for five years. At this point, I suspect I should put it all in a box and donate it.

But you never know when the desire to build something and bring it to life will take over.

I love taking ideas and seeing what I can do with them, from the imagination through the creation. That is the cool reality of 3d printers; you can quickly prototype things. 

I will throw a plug for Revopoint; they are a great 3d scanner. I use it on my laptop for scanning all the time. It helps when considering the reality of 3d objects. Now that I think about it, I should keep the old Legos. I can use them in the ideation process! I create and scan.

Once you scan, you can convert the scan into a printable file and print a solid version of the Lego creation! I’ve only done that three times, but it got easier each time. Practice when doing things like that makes them easier over time. But you also learn the nuances!

Interview

https://youtu.be/j3jO0BSpJts

Want to buy the book?

https://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=danny-and-the-corporate-ladder

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sometimes you have to ask

What is the responsibility of a human being if you know something happened that should not have happened?

I worry about that question all the time. Where is the ethical line in that scenario? Knowing bad things happened, what is the responsibility of the person who knows? Waiting for someone else to raise the issue isn’t good. Being the first is only sometimes a good position, too. First, you have to wait for others to collaborate on what you have shared, which takes time. Issues can be sensitive.

So, what do you do?

Over the years as a team leader, I have known that I acted quickly when it was someone on my team. But that only applies to managers. IC or individual contributors have different rules around the reporting concept than managers do. They are also outside the chain of command and more likely to be told what is happening. Or what happened, and sadly, since they are outside of the loop, they really can’t do as much.

This brings me back to my ethical question. What should you do?

Kohlberg would have loved this moral dilemma. He loved to write about the elements in his dilemmas because it contains the elements. There is a choice, but the choice has positive and negative impacts. Oh, to live in interesting times.

Interview

https://youtu.be/j3jO0BSpJts

Want to buy the book?

https://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=danny-and-the-corporate-ladder

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Logical Consequences

To be accountable. If I walked into my boss’s office and told him he couldn’t fire me because there would be problems, he would and should fire me. That isn’t the way the world works. Threats or allusions to threats are not the way people operate. Creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt, or FUD, is something many groups and companies do. The reason for FUD is not, however, to inform. The goal of FUD is to create doubt without evidence.

As a centrist, I want to have two viable choices. I wish to avoid being in a situation where I choose one person because the other person is not a decent or viable candidate. That is how the election would look to me if it were held today. I would not have a GOP option even to consider. That is truly sad; I’ve only voted for one former Republican for the present (John Anderson many years ago). I was uncomfortable with the other options from the GOP.

But now, I can’t even consider merits because one side has none. The GOP front-runner suggests a potential for unrest and violence if he is convicted of a crime. This is the same person who chanted for two years Lock Her Up. I agree that what Hillary Clinton did wasn’t a good thing. But it did not include information about where Nuclear weapons are and our plans in the event of various global attacks.

Hillary Clinton also didn’t apparently or allegedly show her emails to people at Florida resorts. Narisscissim paints a not-happy picture of people that are willing to do that. The other GOP candidates at this point either can’t get out of their way, are constantly reversing their positions, or, worst, implementing State laws that take us back more than a full step. Not by the by, to a time when America was great. That time is yet to come (hopefully).

Let’s talk honestly, truthfully about how we can work together to move forward.

Interview

https://youtu.be/j3jO0BSpJts

Want to buy the book?

https://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=danny-and-the-corporate-ladder

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on the days things just don’t fit

Settling into a long summer swelter, I was thinking about the impact of devices designed to cool you as you walk. I have one in a box right now, but they are available. They use water to cool your body, focusing on the area where heat has the greatest impact (your head). The thing that I am considering is the dog I walk with. He gets hot as well. I normally carry water with me on longer walks, but I wonder. There must be a way to help a dog stay longer on walks!

I should think about that a little, and I am sure there is a way to help Puck stay cool on hot walks.

We do also walk less per walk in the summer. It reduces the exposure, but it is still hot.

Yesterday, I found a box with my dad’s stuff. I knew he had been gone for nine years, but finding a box full of stuff he had touched was a little hard. I would think, over time, that wouldn’t be the case. But it is still a little painful. I remember Dad struggling when his father died. It is a termination of a relationship that shapes you as a human being. But in reality, it isn’t an ending. It just changes the relationship to one of the memories.

Progress continues, despite finding that box!

Interview

https://youtu.be/j3jO0BSpJts

Want to buy the book?

https://www.newmansprings.com/release/?book=danny-and-the-corporate-ladder

.doc