Month: July 2024

Cool

I Joined A Cult

It is official. I’m a newly inducted member of a cult. So far they seem pretty harmless, but I’m noticing it’s pretty hard to escape. Another drawback is that they demand a hefty price to be a member. It feels like every time I turn around more money is needed. I am, of course, talking about Apple Computer.

A little background. I worked for Microsoft for a long time. I was an early adopter of Android and did some development work on Android apps in the early days. I was not a fan of Apple. The Apple world was expensive and a ridiculous walled ecosystem that did not play well with others. As an engineer I did not like the fact that access to the OS was mostly inaccessible to the average user. With Windows system access, customization was easy and encouraged. Whatever Apple decided met their “surprise and delight” standard was what you got. Working under the hood was not encouraged. So for the entire time I was at Microsoft, and for quite a bit afterwards, I was decidedly not in the Apple camp.

This was made more complicated by the fact that Mrs Troutdog works for Apple. We’ve been in a technologically split marriage for years. She did her thing and I did mine (computer and phone-wise) and we’ve managed to make it work. But the interesting thing about cults is that they all feel the need to convert you. I’ve endured years of constant little hints to just switch over. Wouldn’t it be easier if we were both on the same system? Oohhh, look how fantastic the new iPhone is! Don’t you want to switch?

But I held out. The Microsoft/Android ecosystem does everything the Apple ecosystem does. Cloud based sharing of data across all devices. A rich app library, etc… I was happy. But after leaving Microsoft, more and more of my friends and family were all Apple. They couldn’t include me in FaceTime sessions. Sharing calendar/email stuff between the platforms is a nightmare. And any video shared in a group message is unviewable by Android – Apple intentionally downres’ it for non Apple devices so it’s unwatchable. Eventually I was the only remaining non-Apple person amongst everyone I know. It was a little lonely.

Six months ago I needed a new desktop machine for video editing. After hours of research I decided to bite the bullet and go Mac Studio. I’ll be the first to admit that their system on a chip is amazing. Performance-wise, blows doors on any PC I could have configured. So that was my first foray into the Apple world. I kept my Android phone and had never even touched an iPad. So even though I had one foot in the Apple world it wasn’t a complete experience. As I got more comfortable with the Mac OS, I did finally tell Mrs Troutdog that when it came time to replace my phone I would switch over to an iPhone to make intra-tech simple.

And sure enough, two days ago my Android phone bricked. Black screen of death. I took a deep breath and we went and got a iPhone. A day and a half of usage and I’ll admit that I like it. Setup and customization was pretty easy. A little awkward with the learning curve and lots of hunting and pecking to try and find settings and such. Apple is not nearly as intuitive as they’d like to think they are. But I did like the intra-machine ecosystem cloud so much I started playing around with an older iPad as well. The three devices do seem to work together more seamlessly than the Microsoft ecosystem did.

So that’s that. I’m in the club. Is there some sort of secret handshake or something? Can other Apple users spot each other in the wild? I think I’m going to go all-in. AirPods, iPad, Watch, Pencil. I will be a walking Apple commercial. Mrs Troutdog is happy now.

But I draw the line at that silly Vision Pro spatial computer thing. I will not sit in my living room, wearing weird looking ski goggles, waving my hands around at invisible icons and looking like a crackhead on a bad mushroom trip. A mans got to know when to say no.

Daily Life, Government, Politics

Who Has The Biscuit?

As I watched the President give an address from the Oval Office last night, I had a thought. Where is the biscuit? Hear me out… If you’re not aware, the president carries a laminated card with him at all times called the biscuit. The biscuit is a card that has all the authentication codes required for a nuclear response should we come under attack. As you can imagine, it’s kind of a big deal to ensure the president has that card with him always. There’s a military officer within physical reach of the president 24/7 who carries the nuclear “football”. The football is a briefcase containing laminated sheets of potential responses to an attack and the steps needed to carry it out. A menu of sorts. Clearly the most consequential action a president can take.

For the entirety of his presidency Biden’s detractors have made fun of, or at least made reference to, his age and lack of mental acuity. Captain Applesauce, Pudding Brain, the ice cream president, etc… Watching the Oval Office address last night it was abundantly clear that the man is in trouble from a health perspective. Mumbling, loud swallowing, difficulty reading the teleprompter, and a clear inability to modulate his voice. He drifts from low and hard to hear to loud with sudden verbal emphasis in odd places. There’s something wrong. Add to that his obvious moments of confusion when he’s out and about with every staff member holding their collective breath when he has to navigate stairs or cross a large open space – he’s an elderly adult with Parkinsons and some level of related dementia.

Whatever. All we have to do is coast for six more months and someone with at least some level of mental acuity will be in charge, right? Here’s my thought experiment. There’s been a number of campaign activities lately in which staff members had to hand the president cash and instruct him how/who to tip during the staged visit. He has to be constantly redirected as to where he’s supposed to be looking and interacting with. What makes you think he’s able to dress each morning and ensure he has the biscuit with him before he leaves the private residence? What would happen if, god forbid, an incident happened and he needed to produce the biscuit and make launch decisions in response to an attack?

It’s happened before. Buzz Patterson carried the nuclear football for Clinton and wrote about that time in his book. He shared that during a routine check, it came out that Clinton had “misplaced” the launch codes. Obviously it’s a big deal as new codes need to be created and distributed to every nuclear launch platform – planes, submarines, and land based launchers. They never found the card with the codes. Clinton had all his mental faculties, he just had his mind on… well other things.

I wonder how often they check to see that the president has the biscuit? The person carrying the nuclear football is literally feet away from the president at all times. He/she sees everything that happens and clearly is the single best person to make a judgement call about the presidents fitness for office. I think there’s an interesting question around this. As a military officer (there’s one from each branch of service that rotate carrying the football) what legal obligation do they have to say something about the fitness of their superior officer to continue to serve? Who and how would they report that to?

It’s one thing from a political perspective for presidential aids and staff to ignore or cover for a president in decline. It’s entirely another thing for a group of senior military officers to ignore what they see. I wonder, do they feel the president is fully capable of continuing in his role or are they being quiet for career security? It would obviously be career suicide to say something. In reading Buzz Pattersons book it’s clear that these officers take their duty very seriously. I can’t imagine what goes through their minds each day they interact with the president.

It’s all terribly frightening if you think about it. The president has six minutes from a confirmed nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile launch towards the US to make a decision. I guess we’ll rely on Dr. Jill to fill in for the next six months.

Anyway, have a happy Thursday!

Government, Politics

You Can’t Handle The Truth

First off I have to confess to liking a good conspiracy theory. I can sport a tinfoil hat with the best of them. And you have to admit that this last week has provided a plethora of deep state, unknown force theories all working to undermine our country. The last few days I haven’t been able to refresh my X/Twitter feed fast enough. Approximately every five minutes I’ve been shouting down the hall to Mrs Troutdog the latest news. “OMG won’t believe this – the shooters cell phone had three phone calls from Vladimir Zelensky!” “You won’t believe this – Biden actually died in Vegas and Obama has been coordinating the plan to dump Kamala and get Newsom elected!” You get the idea. But upon reflection this morning… I don’t think any of this is a “conspiracy”.

While I enjoy intrigue, I’m also a realist. You know, that whole Occam’s razor thing. All things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually correct. The more I think about all the recent happenings, there’s one common thread. Incompetence.

Government generally speaking is incredibly incompetent. Usually laughably so. The incompetence increases the further away you get from local government. By the time you reach the federal government, an inability to manage the simplest of tasks is rampant. Throw in greed, corruption, naked ambition, stupidity, and the bubble of Washington, and you have the perfect recipe for the incompetent blog that characterizes much of government.

This is how California has a high speed rail project that’s been going for 15 years, has built virtually nothing, will cost $150 billion, and isn’t projected to finish for at least another decade. Or how the Biden administration “invested” $7.5 billion on EV chargers and has only built 7 of them. Or how we fucked up the Afghanistan withdrawal. Or the Covid response. At the local level it took my town more than six months to get a dashboard/tracking website up for Covid cases. This was the ENTIRE MISSION OF THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT and they weren’t ready. You had one job, be ready for a pandemic event, and you failed completely. The examples are endless. This is government at its finest.

So now when I reflect upon the (many) events of the last weeks, I’m seeing them through the lens of government. I think it’s a cascading series of events that are trying to be managed by incompetent people. Was it a conspiracy to hide multiple shooters paid for by George Soros at the Trump assassination attempt? No, I suspect it was incompetent DEI leadership, lowered performance standards, and laziness that allowed the typical lone wackjob shooter to nearly succeed. Everything else is a collective rush by everyone to cover their butts. Hide behind lawyers, the DOJ, stall, blame “the ongoing investigation”, throw a few local Barney Fife types under the bus, and by the time Kamala is president it’ll be forgotten. You really think anyone in government is actually capable of keeping a secret? Hell, the Secret Service Directors full statement was just “leaked” to the press before she could give it to congress. Leaking is how Washington works.

The Biden drop-out issue? I think in reality this has been in motion for a while. The DNC simply had no idea what to do. Biden didn’t want to go and nobody wanted Kamala for fear she couldn’t win. Finally with the horrible debate performance, the donors started getting cold feet and that was enough for the big players to pressure Jill and Hunter to convince him to drop out. Everything since then has been nothing more than a scramble to figure out how to message this and how to handle the Kamala scenario. Realistically there was probably no way the DEI wing of the party was going to let the first female VP be passed over. Considering Kamala has been the abortion czar and that’s 1/3 of their party platform, the optics wouldn’t have been great had they removed her.

So that’s it. Stupid, power hungry people, desperate to cover their butts, all jockeying to be in the best position possible when the dust settles. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that. I mean my god, have you seen the picture of Biden’s speechwriting team? Nothing but college interns and gender studies graduates. It’s frightening to think these are the people shaping the messaging of the most powerful country in the world. It actually goes a long way to explain much of the past four years.

I think it’s time to put away the tinfoil hats and crazy theories about a new world order orchestrated by the UN and the WEF. Obama, Hillary, and Pelosi aren’t pulling any strings behind the scenes other than trying to figure out how to make their stock portfolios grow. The CIA isn’t planning the next Bird Flu pandemic to disrupt the election. And the FBI is too busy working with the DOJ to arrest more of those evil J6’rs to be involved in anything more sinister. So just check those conspiracies at the door and let the process play out. The country likes equilibrium and tends to balance itself out every few elections. It may look a little messy, but I guarantee all will be status quo given a bit of time.

LOL, just kidding. Nothing adds up and there is shit being covered up at the highest levels in all agencies. There’s been a glitch in the Matrix and the system is scrambling to regain control. And the closer we get to the bad orange man regaining the presidency… the more desperate the state will get. Buckle up buttercup, it’s about to get weird.

Government, Politics

Remain Calm, All Is Well

Well that was an unexpected news filled weekend. I would not have had attempted assassination on my bingo card when I woke up Saturday morning. As information slowly starts leaking out, as a registered contrarian, I have to say something doesn’t seem right. I’m reminded of a great scene in the movie Casino. Ace the casino manager confronts Don the slots supervisor after three machines in a row hit a jackpot:

Ace Rothstein : Listen, if you didn’t know you were being scammed you’re too fuckin’ dumb to keep this job, if you did know, you were in on it. Either way, YOU’RE OUT!

Look, I’ve never been in the military or been a police officer, but I was a Boy Scout and a lifeguard which is close enough to have an informed opinion about this. How this shooting occurred is stretching the lines of credulity. So what you want me to believe is that some 20 year old dorky dungeons and dragons player who apparently has zero social media footprint, and lives in his mom’s basement, pulled this off all by himself? That he cased out the location beforehand, knew where the stage and podium would be and the exact time Trump would start speaking? So you’re saying he managed to get to the location carrying a ladder and a rifle a handful of minutes beforehand and there wasn’t one element of security positioned to spot him? Or, maybe that the ladder was prepositioned and there wasn’t any sort of security sweep to notice it? We’re to believe that a sniper team was clearly observing a dude with a rifle on a roof and they did nothing?

Just like the Casino movie quote – either someone else was involved in this, or this is one of the biggest displays of security incompetence we’ve ever witnessed. Knowing that the Biden administration values DEI over merit, I’d like to believe it’s just massive incompetence.

We’re hearing that most of the protective personnel were DHS security and not secret service due to lack of resources. Watching some of the female agents on the stage, well… let’s just say they didn’t appear to be operating as a well oiled machine. I can accept that maybe the secret service resources were stretched thin and this was the B or C team that was deployed to protect Trump. Apparently the secret service is now claiming that perimeter security was the responsibility of local PD. If folks are already starting to cover their butts and point fingers, then yes maybe this was all just due to incompetence. We have untold billions to send to Ukraine, but can’t afford to protect a former president? Yeah, ok.

But… but even the most small town yokel Barney Fife police officer would probably guess that securing rooftops might be a good idea. Or at the bare minimum that maybe an officer or a rent-a-cop security guy should be placed so that someone can’t just walk up to unsecured areas around the former president without being noticed. I have a very hard time believing that not a single person thought about this. Maybe if this was a spur of the moment visit and nobody had time to scope out the area, but this wasn’t a last minute visit. It was a rally planned well in advance. Could the US Secret Service really have screwed up that badly?

The other option is that this was intentional. We’ve done it before. The FBI (who’s now in charge of the investigation) HATES Trump. The CIA would be happy to have Kamala in charge. There’s plenty of motivation for various agencies to make a move to prevent a change to the status quo. Had it been successful, the DOJ and FBI certainly would have slow walked any sort of investigation so Biden or Kamala could be put in place for another term.

I don’t know. I don’t want to believe either scenario. Sadly, I wouldn’t be shocked at either one being true. Government incompetence grows at an exponential rate (feel safe flying these days?) One nutjob getting lucky that the C team benchwarmers happened to be in charge during this trip isn’t completely crazy. However, the deep state hates Trump with the power of a thousand suns. All things being equal, with Biden’s DNC support collapsing last week a Trump win looked more likely which presents an existential crisis for the government power machine. If they thought they could get away with it, I wouldn’t put it past them.

Either way, it’s not a good look for us as a country. Would we rather be completely incompetent or admit to planning hit jobs? We’ll never know the answer because we no longer have a press/media that’s willing to do actual journalism and search for the truth.

If Trump was smart he’d call up Erik Prince today (former CEO of Blackwater) and hire him out to provide private security for himself, family, and whomever his new VP pick will be. It’s clear that the government can no longer be trusted to provide reliable security.

How in the world did we ever get to this point? Indeed, The Fourth Turning is rapidly picking up speed. I don’t think there’s much to do at this point other than grab your popcorn and watch the chaos unfold.

Government, Politics

Remember The Doomsday Clock?

I’m old enough to remember practicing ‘duck and cover’ drills in elementary school. I’m not sure how diving under my desk with my hands over my head was going to protect me from a nuclear blast, but I was ready. We all knew about the Doomsday Clock that had been created in 1947 in the aftermath of the manhattan project. The closer the hands got to midnight, the closer we were to all out nuclear war and global armageddon. The hands have been moved forward and backwards 25 times since its creation. The hands are currently the closest to midnight they’ve ever been. The clock was set to 90 seconds last year. That’s an even more dire risk assessment than during the Cold War. I don’t give the clock much credence (they now include global warming in the calculation), but it is a proxy for the current world-wide unrest. Thinking about the Doomsday Clock made me change my mind about our current political crisis.

It hasn’t been a secret that Biden is not running the country. It’s not clear who the final decision maker is or even if there is one. Perhaps everything is run by committee. Realistically I don’t think it matters who the democratic candidate is. Biden, Harris, Newsom, etc… if they win nothing changes. The same committee will still be running the country. Up until yesterday’s NATO press conference I was content to keep Biden in the running as I think he’s the best chance Trump has to win. Not that I think Trump is a great choice, but he’d be lightyears better than the current administration. But listening to the NATO speeches about global expansion and Biden’s disastrous big boy press conference, I believe for the safety of the country the president needs to be removed from office.

As I have been saying for a long time, the president clearly has Parkinsons and some level of dementia. Up until the campaign started in ernest, they’ve managed to mostly keep him out of sight and the press was happy to play along. Watching the press conference it was even more clear for me that the man is unable to maintain a train of thought, forgets names, and is word searching. The disease is progressing rapidly and even if he were to win (which is not out of the question), I guarantee that he’d have to be removed from office within six months.

I was an RN on a neuro floor for years and spent plenty of time with Parkinson’s patients. Several of the lesser known side effects of the disease are paranoia and hallucinations. That’s a scary thought. The leader of the free world, the man with the nuclear codes, might be experiencing wild mood swings and paranoia stemming from an inability to distinguish between reality and hallucinations. If you watched the press conference, towards the end he had a weird shouting outburst after randomly talking about guns. That’s the Parkinsons in action. Who knows what else will set him off when he’s behind closed doors?

I’d like to believe there’s enough people and systems in place that Biden can’t just willy nilly start launching missiles, or order a carrier strike group to provoke China, but I don’t have a lot of faith in this administration. I think the real worry is that the rest of the world sees with crystal clear clarity that the president is incapacitated. That increases the odds of bad actors out there doing something serious in an already unstable world. I absolutely do not trust this administration to make smart decisions and keep from starting WWIII. I think everyone from Iran, China, North Korea, to Islamic sleeper cells in our country are currently evaluating making a move now prior to the election. We’re in a pretty vulnerable and frightening spot at the moment.

I never thought I’d say this, but at this moment I’d rather have Biden step down (or be removed) and have Harris as president for the next six months. I don’t think she’d be any more competent than the dementia patient, but at least she wouldn’t be suffering from hallucinations. As long as she can keep from cackling she’d at least be able to read the teleprompter and “look” semi-presidential. That might be enough to keep the world at status quo.

My god, how did we get to this place? The cabal, the committee, whoever’s been running things, are some truly evil people. People who are willing to put the country and the world at risk so they can maintain power and keep the military industrial complex running. They’ve been happy to keep an actual dementia patient propped up as a figurehead so they can achieve their goals. It’s insane when you think about it.

So even though removing Biden reduces Trumps chances to 50/50 at best, I still think it’s the right thing to do. We’re at a scary inflection point.

I think the Doomsday Clock is closer to 30 seconds now.

Daily Life

I Forgot How It Works

One of the things I love is photography. Specifically, street photography. There’s just something about those types of images that resonate with me. As a sometimes wanna-be photographer, I think I have a pretty good “eye” for images. What I don’t have is the technical background of an actual photographer. Is that important with today’s modern cameras? Yes, and I’ll illustrate why.

The last few years I’ve gotten lazy and stopped carrying a “regular” camera. Instead I’ve used my cell phone. Why wouldn’t you? They take fantastic images and you don’t have to do anything other than push a button. Since all I ever do is post those pictures to my Instagram, the workflow is seamless. So why bother with a real camera? A couple of reasons. The first is that those images are great… for viewing on a phone or small tablet. Blow them up much more than that and you’ll be disappointed. What looked fabulous on a phone screen will show grain, clipping, poor focus, and pixelating on a big monitor or print. Second, Instagram is disappearing as a place for photography. They’ve gone the way of Tik Tok and seem to show nothing but reels nowadays.

So if you want full control over light, grain, aperture, and movement you’ll need to be using an actual camera. So the other day that’s what I did. I dug out my camera and walked downtown to a local bike race. I figured it would be a perfect venue to get pictures of racers and spectators.

The problem was that it had been so long since I’d used the camera, I completely forgot how. I got home and didn’t have a single usable image. Out of focus, poor exposure, bad framing, you name it I did it. You could say that it was understandable since I hadn’t used it in quite a while, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue is that I barely knew what I was doing to start with. Sure, I could make the camera work and get lucky with an image if I went out shooting frequently. But there’s a difference between getting lucky and actually having an understanding of what you’re doing.

If I really knew what the reciprocal shutter speed and ISO was for a given aperture it wouldn’t have made a difference that I couldn’t see my LCD in the bright sunlight. If I knew what the hyperlocal distances were for my lens I could have used zone focusing instead of autofocus (which didn’t work). You get the idea. If I actually understood what I was doing, the camera itself wouldn’t make a difference.

So, it’s back to school for me. Time to start from scratch and relearn photography from the ground up. I want to become competent at the craft so my images aren’t luck – they’re by design and skill. Fortunately in this modern era we have the entirety of human knowledge about photography at our fingertips, for free. Let’s go!