Tag: Technology

Glass Cliff, Glass Ceiling Or How Her Corporate Soul Is Made Of As Much Nothingness As His

glass shattered

I’ve always had a problem with motherhood being on a pedestal. Is it because I was hatched? Procreation is more of a disease than something worth a baby shower and the happy wonderland consequence that is the lie of family life. I suppose that could mean I’m only partly misogynistic or just General Schmuck. Anyone remember Schmuck? He was the undersecretary of the military that served in Patton’s underpants and it is said he was lost behind a tank that made a wrong turn while hunting Rommel in North Africa carrying both a victory flag and roll of red, white and blue toilet paper. Then again, I’ve got no prejudice in my life because loss and Victoria, a grand ole bitch I’ve been fcuking for years, won’t leave me till I’m dead. And you know what they say, eh, dear worst-reader? It takes two to blame one in this game of touch and feel and everything is ok. I mean, come on, would we (men) really go for the family thing if given a choice these days? Trust me. Hatching the future is definitely worth a try. Or would we rather run off to some war-of-choice with the booty of expensive gas to cruise our broken streets in our broken and never-paid-off cars? Oh, isn’t it obvious how we ( men?) have been tricked? Played? Jerked ’round? Obviously males did go for this back in the day. Back in the day when dragging multiple wives into caves by their hair and our knuckles was a worthwhile undertaking. An undertaking that is reflected so clearly in how the world works today for the corporate state. But I’m off subject. Or maybe not.

Oh yea–we were worst-discussing my prejudices.

And so #1a…

I simply hate everybody and almost everything. With that in mind, there’s no reason to feel special if I call you out for a having uterus–and a mind incapable of dealing with it–especially considering how the outer part of the feminine sells that uterus.

And so #1b…

I do not hate the perfect balance between man and the uterus machine–if it can be achieved–especially in that which is manifested in a perfectly tuned turbo-charged V–8 that when given the gas it presses uterus (Her) so completely to the back of the passenger seat that breasts poke out and beg the driver-male to play another game. Hence youthful if not teenage sexuality aloft in the sky full of your candy clouds. I also find perfection in pistachio ice cream slowly blended into Napoleon ice cream after fcuking the entire day while laying in a field of daffodils and quaker oats mixed in real maple syrup. Beyond that, I gladly and openly live the life of a humble and powerless cartoon-like monarch-god that is angry and bitter and ashamed–for the sake of shame. I only blame part of what I am on the other sex because of Her desire to lock males into the uselessness of romantic love run amok in a world where pornography earns more than (insert your industry of choice here). Pornography, btw, isn’t as profitable as it is just because men want to spank it all the time. Indeed #1.

And so #2…

At the behest of my better-half, the Vladimir Putin of my life, I am a man destined, like Russia, to be ruled by two-bit dictators with tits. For that, like many Russians, I am thankful because I have been endowed with

  1. a well-careered wife and
  2. a society that couldn’t save itself from itself–if it had to.

And so #3…

This life that has been chosen for me because society (or is it sobriety?) has no choices left. I consider this (life) as an endeavour that is not without career and corporatist leanings. Indeed #2. We are all a slave to something. I see first-hand the unjust behaviorisms that influences not only mine but my better-half’s life–and the life of so many around me that must or are so willingly employed by the man. But enough about alter egos, wishful thinking and the admiration I abhor of those who are have-mores in the corporate world of their have-choice. And so…

I came across a new piece of feminism v emancipation yesterday: Glass Cliff. Would you believe, dear worst-reader, I had never heard of the glass cliff–until yesterday? I’ve heard of the glass ceiling, thanks to you-know-who. But the glass cliff…

The glass cliff is a term that describes the phenomenon of women in leadership roles, such as executives in the corporate world and female political election candidates, being likelier than men to achieve leadership roles during periods of crisis or downturn, when the chance of failure is highest.

As far as the origin of this nonsense?

While reading an article about the demise of Uber the other day, i.e. a corporate tech entity that is nothing if not a smart-ass corporation to join all smart-ass corporations. It’s being said that a female might be picked to help them turn things around. Seriously? Hasn’t the industry learned by now? What? Marissa Mayer not enough? What about Carly Fiorina? Should I even go down the list of female superheroes that save the world and the men around them? No. Defiantly not. So here’s the thing.

Uber should be about connecting people with immediate mobility and thereby utilising the simplicity of modern technology. Instead it is a platform–a middleman, if you will–that tries to take advantage–or as corporate smart-asses like to put it: disrupt–the taxi industry. The platform on which this money is exchanged is the genius of Uber. Yet, like most who make money on a platform, they have forgotten that the platform must also have a purpose–other then their own greed. And I’m really rambling now.

When I discovered the term glass cliff my heart lost two more beats. I’m so sorry that the feminine not only has to deal with my bull$hit but also that of others–who are so much more than worst-moi.

Good luck, ladies.

Rant on.

-T

Links that motivated this post:

This post was created w/ writing software that utilises markdown and then uploaded to this blog; what the hell that means I have no idear. Good luck.

Hey Kids! Your Future Is Being Predicted Right Now. Get It While You Can. #Fascism Game Play Galore

next to last supper from ubisoft far cry
pic is from Ubisoft; it’s called: “next to last supper”; how appropriate

What do you recall from reading Jules Verne and George Orwell, Mr. Worstwriter?

I’m so glad you asked, dear worst-reader.

I remember from both those writers how my future was being predicted. Indeed. Even though I didn’t read much when I was kid, by the time I got out of the waste-of-time that is #americant suburban-hell highschool, I was reading like a mad man. Verne and Orwell were, to me, similar writers–even though they wrote completely different stuff. Both men were writing about worlds that didn’t actually exist but unlike other forms of fiction that I consumed, their worlds were at least based on something that felt as though it could be real. And so. When I started traveling with jet airplanes, Verne’s world came true. When I started getting my ass kicked by corporatists, aka fascists, Orwell’s world came true.

Hop skip and jump to the now.

As far as I’m concerned there hasn’t been much future-telling from generations after Orwell and Verne. Why is that? My worst-guess is, the future that was told and we’re now living in is also an end-game. What Orwell and Verne didn’t or couldn’t know is that when their worlds came true, there was then nothing left after that. Or was/is there? Enter the magic world of virtual game play. Have a playstation, xbox, gamer-PC? How ’bout a nintendo or a sega? Heck, break out that old iphone or even your old zune. Computerised gaming is here, baby. And it’s doing more than competing with movies, turntables, radio-hour and a good fcuking book. In fact, my guess is, computerised gaming is better than reading. How do I worst-guess that? Easy. Where are the kids–like when I was young–who know-it-all?

And no. Millennials don’t know it all. (If they did then books would be more popular than all their krappy pop music!)

Would you believe dear worst-reader that gaming has finally come full circle? I mean, it’s come full-circle like Verne (with his then sci-fi predictions) and Orwell (with his prediction of stupid people voting and faux newz taking over the airwaves) have come full circle. Although their predictions are a bit early for my taste, what the fcuk do I care? I live for convenience–and my highschool wish of being financially independent came true before my mid-40s. And so. At my age I can gladly lean back on my wooden la-z-boy and laugh my ass off as the morons that play the game, suck up to the game, get fcuked by the game. Why? It’s as though we’ve reached a point where reality has been tuned and manipulated by great literature and by those who never read it. On top of that, it’s also been tuned and manipulated by fcuking cartoons. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha…

Now get this.

The newest addtion to the Far Cry computer game franchise takes place in my beloved #americant. And not just any place in #americant. As though it was a premonition, the recent WWE asskicking of a reporter by a nutjob republican bully running for Congress…. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha… Far Cry, the computer game, is set in the same place, with the same local mentality, with the same, the same, the same… #americant. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. I mean, it’s perfect. Ha. Ha. Ha. Where Orwell’s world could work in Bangkok as well as Moscow, Far Cry’s newest story line can ONLY work in Montana. For that we can thank all those techi a$$holes in the only industry doing anything at any price. Ha. Ha. Ha. Gulp. Sip. Burp.

Short pause.

Not only are we living better through chemicals but consuming to survive seems to be working out pretty well, too. Good luck with your future. And don’t forget, find a way to continue voting conservatives into office because for the last 50 yrs they’ve given you what you’ve got. And now you can even play them in a computer game… Ha. Ha. Ha… It’s certainly better than reading about what predicts your future… Ha. Ha. Ha.

Burp.

Rant on.

-T

Link that motivated this post:

Eternal Errors Of Greed Mongers Galore And The Price That Will Be Paid

capitalism_not_quite

Actually thought about reading the linked article twice but ended up only reading it in part the first time. That is, I started reading it and then realised–and this coming from worstwriter–that the author was practicing his/her typing more than actually writing something. Or maybe not. What a crock of poo-poo the recent ransomware scandals are. Reason? I don’t know, ask f’n Microsoft. But wait. We’re (as in the royal “we”) aren’t allowed to blame Microsoft. Reason? Microsoft had warned users for years to get off of WinXP. Which means, it’s the users fault if they didn’t heed the advice. I guess it’s the users fault, too, if the user can’t f’n afford to pay the real ransom–that of Microsoft making software that, for all practical purposes, dictates when and how they are paid and by whom. Or? Ok. Whatever. I guess It’s easy enough to put the blame on ransomware of this kind on the users. Again. They were warned. But still… Microsoft sucks and so does most technology these days. Reason? That’s how greed-mongering works. Or maybe not.

The article that motivated this post, see below, was sent me by an old friend with the question: “you follow any of this shit?” Here my response.

Thanks for the article. I missed that one.

As far as the recent “wcry” (ransomware) exploit, the article does not once mention that it only worked on WinXP legacy systems. The rest of the explaining that the author does is interesting but doesn’t apply to the real world, i.e. Unix, Linux or Mac users. This recent ransomware exploit is all about legacy systems and whether or not companies are willing to pay the exuberant costs of upgrades—that is not only about upgrading the OS but upgrading all the other software components that, especially for older systems, are rarely compatible. There is a case where a Win7 system was infected but that was only after they tried to fix and/or upgrade the already infected WinXP system. These ransomware exploits, although serious, are really kinda of a sinister joke on Microsoft. I wonder what all these hackers that come up with this shit would be doing if there were jobs available for them—i.e. jobs that paid decent wages and provided a living standard?

Personally, I blame Microsoft for this problem. Even though they warned WinXP users for years that they would no longer support the system with security updates, they went ahead and stopped supporting it anyway. Microsoft knew that there are millions of systems out there still running XP. Hell, I’m sure you could go to some fancy restaurant in Manila and see XP on its cash register system. Why companies and organisations never updated to newer version of Windows is not just about upgrade costs, though—which are outrageous from Microsoft. Like I said, upgrade your OS and you also have to upgrade your other components.

Imagine running a WinXP accounting system on 10,000 terminals (retail, bank teller, airport terminal, etc.) that is dependent on a Oracle DB backend. Holly shit! The cost of an upgrade to another version of Windows OS is mind boggling. And you have to pay to upgrade Oracle, too. This is and has always been STUPID.

But listen to all the college grads out there totting old conservative rhetoric all their lives. A logical government mandate that controls the out-of-control is/was the only solution. Oh wait. Government regulation is a sin.

WHAT A FUCKING EASY THING TO EXPLOIT!

After Bill Gates, Microsoft has been run my sales people and NOT by engineers. This is blatant in how the company has tried to keep up with modernising its OS. I gave up on Windows after Win7. Although the current CEO of Microsoft is an engineer, he’s focused right now on hardware not on Windows.

I’m laughing my ass off.

Thank you.

-t

…and please take all worst writing with a grain of salt. It’s just thoughts or three and little extra time to practice typing.

Rant on.

-T

Link that motivated this post:

Announcement: iPhone 10th Anniversary Not A Celebration But Instead Reason To Admit Defeat. Or. The iPhone Represents How The Old Economy Won.

three dollar bill apple logo (low res)

The thing I remember most from Steve Jobs presentation of the iPhone ten years ago wasn’t the device itself. No. The thing I remember most were three words that he said: “Internet Communication Device.” Nothing else in that iconic corporate presentation remains with me. I don’t care how the thing looks, what colours it comes in, how the edges are designed or how they put the on/off switch exactly opposite of the volume switch (on the iPhone 6s) which means every time you try to adjust volume with one hand you also turn it off.

The concept of an internet communication device is as profound now as it was then. The difference being, Apple missed the boat on making it. With that in mind, I’m still waiting for an Internet Communication Device. I’m still yearning for it, too. I’m still dreaming, like in Star Trek, all I gotta do is tap my chest and I can place a call to anyone simply by saying their name. Put another way: building an internet communication device is as far off now as it was ten years ago. Put yet another way: we should be over and done with words like cellphone, phone network, AT&T, Verizon, GSM, signal strength, etc., etc. Yet we’re not. Instead we’re still stuck and hung out to dry by the old economy that has won the battle. The iPhone is the device that proves: old beats new. The new bows its head in submission. Old farts rule the world. Gee. Turning over in your grave, yet, Steve? No. Of course you’re not. You didn’t really know what you were doing when you claimed that the iPhone was something more than just an old economy toy. Or?

Was Jobs and his über arrogant company fully aware of the significance of the third denominator they/he had put into their gadget but have long since abandoned? It was a phone, it was an iPod–or a music player–and it was an internet communication device. The phone meant nothing to me. Since the advent of carry-around phones only one thing stands out about them (all). The cellular networks that they depend on are shit because they are ALL run by dinosaur companies that should die. Talk about a chain only being as strong as it weakest link!

As far as carry-around music players go, even though I have an extensive digital music library at home, the idear of lugging thousands of songs around with me is just stupid. Alone the misery of music through headphones–an extra frivolous cost to an already frivolously priced gadget–should motivate people to curb their music listening habits. Music, like wine, shouldn’t be consumed in a plastic cup at a baseball game in order to wash down a krappy hotdog. (Or should it?)

At the least, the phone and the iPod aspect of the iPhone should not be celebrated after an initial decade of extravagant nothingness. Like everything else in the tech industry iPhones are nothing more than widgets in the vastness of monopolies and corporate do-nothing humdrum of an old economy that won’t die. So little is innovation in a world where screens get smaller, cameras get fantastic-er and computing capabilities in handheld devices get super-er. Seriously. What is there to celebrate when, even after all the pageantry of gadgetry, we’re still stuck like a crumb in an old man’s beard that is being eyed by a distant seagull?

I got my first iPhone at the end of 2012. Even though I admired the look and design of the device from afar, the cost of it is just stupid. How much does stamped-out, glued components, made by slave hands in Asia cost! As far as cellphone usage goes, I used to buy cheap, regular cell phones (where the f’n battery lasted a week) and even today my new iPhone isn’t any better. And with that same iPhone I still use prepaid phone service–because of how much I hate cell phone providers. The contracts one has to sign with old economy corporations in order to afford a new-fangled, fancy smart phone is at best a cruel joke. Why do people put up with this shit? But that’s neither here nor there. My wife likes iPhones. When she gets one, she’s nice enough to buy one for me, too. Who am I deny her that pleasure?

But get this. Even though I can afford to pay around seven hundred dollars for a phone every few years, I still think they are frivolous, extremely overpriced, and have yet to meet my expectations of what/how technology should be. Indeed. There should be no celebration of the iPhone because its invention has only lead to convention. Fcuk Steve Jobs! Fcuk the iPhone! Fcuk closed eco-systems. Fcuk iTunes. Fcuk app developers. Fcuk all you well paid useless corporate minions that keep dinosaurs alive.

As usual, I’m off subject. My point of this post is to simply state that Apple has missed the boat when it comes to technology. We see this in 2016 and how the company is regressing with its products. The new MacBook Pro line of laptops is a joke. The AppleTV, probably the first product they’ve ever made where it got bigger instead of smaller, is also a joke. iPad sales are down because the iPad Pro creates an unnecessary product line in an already overpriced product line. The Apple Watch… Oh, the Apple Watch. You’ve got to be kidding me. Should I even mention the headphone jack issue in a device that was initially brought to market as a music device? Apple is not a technology company as much as it is a smart-ass, sell shit to suckers, fashion-marketing company–designed in superficial California. Btw, when is that earthquake gonna finally sink California?

What is an internet communication device? Simply put, it is a device that is not the iPhone, Apple and an eco-system that locks one into nothingness. At the time Jobs said those words while introducing the world to his new gadget, he was deep inside his distortion field. Either that or he was tripping on acid. Wait. Are they both the same thing? Nomatter. Obviously I can’t criticise the iPhone too much. It is part of the gazillions of dollars that Apple has in offshore accounts and lots of people use the device for crazy things like making films and taking pictures and and and. And that’s the only thing that matters anymore. I guess. But then again, like the Swedish pop band Abba once said: money money money in a rich man’s world.

Fail upwards.

Rant on.

-t

Blog Migration H-Eeeee-Double-Toothpicks And Why I Left #AWS

wordpress

Due to (technical) knowledge constraints I thought I overcame, I recently gave up hosting my blog with AWS. According to the conspiracy theorist inside my third-eye, I think the problem I had hosting at AWS was due to the fact that they couldn’t up-sell me and my lolly blog from being free-tier to being (insert $-amount) per month. Yeah, “free-tier” at AWS is only worth it if:

  • You don’t get many hits at your blog
  • You’re a webserver expert.

The only way AWS would help me with any problems was if I paid them for the help. In other words:

  • Free-tier web hosting at AWS is cool until you need even the slightest amount of help.

Now ain’t that suspicious? It’s especially suspicious when it’s obvious that a problem occurs not because of what I did but becuae of what AWS did which amounts to things being:

  • Suspicious.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m only blowing off some steam here. The problem I had with hosting my Worpress blog at AWS was solvable. I just didn’t know how to solve it–and something was telling me that if I’m gonna have to pay to have that amount of limited service, AWS isn’t for me.

The pseudo dream has always been to actually set up my own server at home and run my compulsive writing blog there. It’s really a rather simple thing to do. That’s what makes it extra frustrating that I couldn’t solve the problem at AWS. All one has to do is connect a home webserver to the outside world. For this you need the proper bandwidth. It’s no coincidence that we all can get high downloads speeds with our home Interent connections but only measely upload speeds. In Germania, as well endowed with phone lines and cable lines as the country is, I’m sure that the powers-that-be don’t want people to start hosting their corners of the internet at home. Indeed. And so. I constantly had the following error while hosting my blog on a Linux server at AWS:

  • “Error establishing a database connection”

As best I can tell this “error” is due to a mix-up between WordPress, which is my blog content management system, and AWS’s management of its server iterations. The mix-up or “error” occurs when one or all of the following happens while hosting a WordPress blog:

  • Free-tier blog gets too much traffic
  • AWS fiddles around with its systems and thereby forces changes to WordPress configuration files.

The thing is, I don’t feel like going that deep into all this technology krapp. It was actually a fun project a few years back when I went from 1und1 hosting to AWS. Installing Worpress on AWS was cool. But it’s now clear that free-tier doesn’t mean what you think it means. And that’s fine. I can deal with that. And I can even pay a couple of bucks a month to WordPress in the hope that all those database error messages are over.

We’ll see.

Rant on.

-t

A Grid Computer, A Deadline, German Girls Learning American-English

I believe this is a Grid3 but I could be mistaken.
I believe this is a Grid3. My work setup from 1989.

How easy one forgets or just plain misses his/her history. In today’s world of fancy-pants super computers masquerading as dumb-downed smartphones there was a day a long, long, long time ago where humility reigned supreme–especially when it was Friday late afternoon and one takes on a deadline for 8am Monday. At least that’s how I remember my entry into the world of mega personal computing.

When the assignment arrived everyone in the office scattered, conveniently putting themselves out of a hard weekend’s way. I had just joined the firm and was unaware of the divisiveness of corporate hallway work-avoidance. In fact–it’s all coming back to me now!–I believe I actually volunteered to take the job. The job was nothing more than providing company data, aka business profiles, of all the suppliers for telephone networking systems–by Monday morning. Keep in mind, this was pre world-wide-web. Even though I knew that it would be a lot of hours putting the individual profiles together I also knew that the fancy-pants consultancy I had just joined–the company that literally brought me to Europe for an extended stay that to this day has not ended–had all the resources I would need to get the job done. All I had to do was:

  1. Identify the companies (which I was able to do within a few hours Friday)
  2. Find their balance sheets, find a few news articles about them and, whenever I could, get some info about them from sources e.g. Lexis/Nexis, Gruner + Jahr, etc. (which the firm I worked for actually had in its mega firm-library)
  3. After that all that was left was to write it all up in company format and provide it in digital form.

Sounds easy enough, eh. Well, actually it is/was pretty easy even though I didn’t own a computer at the time–nor was I eligible for a fancy-pants portable computer that the firm sometimes loaned out. Also, for whatever reason, that weekend no one was allowed in the office to work. Something about fixing all the cubicles, fumigating, renovating, etc. I guess, in a way, I committed myself to something that was definitely “up-river”.

Luckily the head of the information & research department–where I worked–came to me a few minutes after I took the job. He was carrying a huge black suitcase.

“Toe-ma,” he said. “Here. Take this. There’s plenty of empty floppies in it. Get the data you need from our database and then you can sort through it all at home.”

I took the suitcase to my cubicle and opened it. Luckily it was Friday late afternoon in Germania. I was alone at my cubicle. To this day everybody leaves early on Friday. It’s Germany’s Volksport! Which means… No one could see the excitement in my face when I opened that black case.

Some Trivia.

Did you know, dear worst-reader, that a Grid Laptop was the first portable computer to go to space? I suppose that’s something to be proud of, especially if your John Ellenby, the founder of Grid. In fact, when the Challenger exploded in 1986, the Grid that was onboard survived not only the explosion but it was found underwater and when salvaged it still worked. Heck, even Steve Jobs owned a few Grids and if you take a hard long look at Apple’s first (krappy) laptop there’s no missing the similarities. Yea. Grids rocked.

Needless to say I was flabbergasted when I opened the large black case my boss had given me. I actually thought for a second or three that I should just leave with the device and never come back. If I could pawn the damn thing… Grids were only affordable by CEOs back then. The things costs something like $10k a piece! I could live in Mallorca for a few months. ;-)

Tommi, aka worst-writer, meeting deadlines and privileged enough to do it on a piece of history.
Tommi, aka worst-writer, meeting deadlines and joking around teaching a new friend Americanisms in my basement #eurowasteland apartment 1989.

But no. Back then the bite and bitterness of corporate cynicism hadn’t yet corrupted my measly worst-mind. I was dedicated, I was committed, I wanted to work. Of course, the girl that took the pictures which I recently found tucked away in an old shoebox also got a bit of attention that weekend as I was on (yet another) assignment to help her with her American-English. All-in-all it was a good weekend.

I met the Monday morning deadline–with lots of praise from my boss.

The girl that took the pics got in a few hours of learning “American” for her university courses in Anglistics.

And I got to work with a Grid computer.

RIP John Ellenby.

Rant on.

-t