Author Archives: bluedepth

PAD 3/26/2013 – Deja Vu

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Have you ever truly felt déjà vu, the sensation that you’ve already had the experience you’re currently having?

It comes in fits and spurts. There are moments that feel like they have happened before. It’s like the experience of the unfolding events align around a pivot. The nagging feeling starts and then you start feeling very strange. At first it’s not clear what the feeling is attached to because you are approaching the pivot and nothing looks like it does, until you’re half-way along and then what you experience rings with your memories, the memories of the future that became crystallized in that one moment. When it strikes me I have to stop what I’m doing and respect and witness the event coming to pass around me. The feeling of Deja Vu is so powerful sometimes that I become almost paralyzed with the novelty of the situation. I don’t know exactly where the memories of the future come from, perhaps I dream them and in that there may be some untapped clairvoyance active within me that I can only access when I’m dreaming. My dreaming world is very rich and I remember many of my dreams and I write them down before they evaporate under the assault of too much consciousness.

Almost always, when I have this feeling of Deja Vu I will stop and I will remark to everyone around me that it’s happening to me. I don’t consider it to be a very private thing and since it paralyzes me with it’s marvelousness I feel it’s important to explain it to others as quickly as possible so they don’t worry that I’m having some sort of stroke or attack.

PAD 3/30/2013 – Five a Day

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You’ve being exiled to a private island, and your captors will only supply you with five foods. What do you pick?

Onions, Pork, Bread, Cheese, Broccoli. I don’t think five is enough as it takes more than these items to maintain a healthy body, but these items are things that I value more than others. Onions are universally useful, you can eat them raw, you can cook them and they can take a lot of heat abuse if your cooking tools are very low-brow. Pork is a good choice because it is an animal protein and has all the amino acids necessary for living, especially the ones we can’t manufacture by ourselves. I’m sure you could swap Quinoa out here, but I love pig parts, so pork is it. Plus pork is leaner than chicken and not as bad as red meat. If there wasn’t pork available I would have to switch out to Ostrich. It’s got a great texture, it’s near pork and chicken for ease of cooking and still helps you avoid the perils of red meat. Bread is a cheat as it’s not a food but rather a constructed food. Water, Flour, Yeast. Bread can keep you alive. It’s not a great life, but it can be done. Technically if bread wasn’t available then I’d have to place flour or oats here and I’d assume I could find some sort of water to make unleavened bread. Cheese is vital, it’s very dense, calorically, it provides calcium and it’s durable and resistant to spoilage. There really isn’t any alternative to cheese, perhaps extra-firm tofu, but it’s not the same. Broccoli is a superfood, a little miracle all on it’s own. It’s dark green and leafy and provides Vitamins A, B, C, Calcium, Potassium, and Fiber. Broccoli, like Onion can be eaten raw and can take a serious amount of thermal abuse before it becomes inedible. It’s durable, like all the other foods and easily carried. I’m sure there are better choices available, but these are the few that occurred to me off the top of my head.

PAD 3/31/2013 – Odd Couple

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Does a messy home (or office) make you anxious and cranky, or is cleaning something you just do before company comes over?

There is a minimal amount of clutter that I can contend with. I don’t keep my house immaculate all the time, and there are certainly phases where I feel like the house has devolved into a mess and it has to be addressed. Quite often it’s when family comes to visit, but they are more of an excuse than anything else. I don’t want to be seen living like a slob, even though I don’t, not really. It’s impossible to say that I’m not at least a little bit slovenly but I will say that I’m at least functionally organized at home. The only bits that make me cranky are when there is too much obnoxiousness all in one spot – a giant heap of dirty clothes strewn about and dirty socks in random places, for example. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does that gets to me. The solution is snap easy, just gather everything up and throw it into the washing machine. Dirty is clean, at least in a bin, and it just takes a wee bit to put order to that chaos.

One thing that I will admit to is that a messy or disorganized kitchen does drive me to distraction. I’m fine with making do with what you have, but things should be with other things that are like them, the wooden spoons need to be together, the spatulas need to be together and the knives need to be together. I don’t think I’m too pushy about these things, but they do get to me.

PAD 3/27/2013 – Judgement Day

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If you were to judge your favorite book by its cover, would you still read it?

My favorite book is “What Dreams May Come” by Richard Matheson. The cover art for the book is muted and features a man standing before a doorway in the sky. The words, the art, it’s hard for me to answer this prompt because I’ve read this book and I know I love it. I think that it would engage me even if I had never read it before. It would be better to judge a book I haven’t read and then read it and see if the judgement of the cover matched the experience.

I will say that a book that I saw by the cover, which was George Nader’s Chrome did intrigue me and I judged the book by the cover, at least positively and after I read it I was rewarded with a great experience. So in that case, judging a book by it’s cover, even if it wasn’t my favorite worked out for the best.

There are book covers that, lets face it, are awful. If I had to judge the Wheel of TIme series by it’s cover art I would just yawn myself to sleep. I wouldn’t be interested in any of it because I’d think it was a time travel story told by steampunk amish. Thankfully I was exposed to the books before I got a look at the covers and found myself loving the series despite it’s rather lame cover art.

I hate that books sell by their shiny cover art and not as much by their merits. Perhaps that’s something that eBooks can address as those, like the ones gathered from Project Gutenberg lack cover art, letting the text stand on it’s own for good or ill.

Athletes Behaving Badly

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After the recent spate of athletes and coaches behaving badly it struck me that I don’t follow sports and I don’t think any of these stories are worth my time. Sports has always seemed silly at best and contrived at worst. What has interested me is how other people behave when it comes to sports, that fascinates me. I draw a bead out of NASCAR criticism voiced not by me, but instead by George Carlin: “Who cares who wins? It’s the same five rednecks that win anyways.” and that applies more to the professional sports teams than the college ones. What for them then? Well, you have abuse, hazing, illicit sex, rape… gosh, it doesn’t matter which alley you look down, there is something nasty everywhere you look. A bit of proof to the pudding is that Michael Vick is still allowed to do anything at all with sports. The man who abused so many dogs was punished and released and went right back to playing. If I was a potential opponent of his, I would walk off the field.

Back to why people love these overpaid oafs it could have something to do with cognitive dissonance. Fans buy sports junk and this surrounding junk then establishes a feedback mechanism: “I can’t believe I wasted all this money on this junk! I must really like them! I love them!”

Although I’m sure it’s not that simple. I still don’t get the fascination. There’s far more good to be done with championing the mind, the only thing championing the body gets you is celebrity, distasteful amounts of money, and a blown out life at the end. With the mind, you can carry that for a lot longer and it brings more happiness in the end, as far as I’m concerned.

PAD – 3/23/2013 – Local Flavor

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Write a piece about a typically “local” experience from where you come from as though it’s an entry in a travel guide.

The first thing that occurred to me, for good or ill is a classic summertime staple in Syracuse, New York where I was born and grew up. It’s something that really only is sold in markets around town and seems to be a quintessentially upstate delicacy and that is the venerable Salt Potato. The potatoes come in a brown paper sack with a plastic baggie full of salt. The recipe is stupid simple, everything goes into a pot with water and boils until the potatoes are done, then they are taken out of the water. As they steam out they get a crust of salt left on them, then you put a little butter in the dish, wait for it to melt and then enjoy.

There are certainly other memorable foods, but this one is the most durable and has the most nostalgia surrounding it. It’s something that Michigan would not understand, right up there with Spiedies, and Heid’s Coneys (nee Hoffman’s actually). Perhaps one of these nights I’ll have to whip up these for old-times sake.

Nook HD: Built for Sluggish Annoyance

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47:366(Y2) - HungeringI really would like Apple to come out with a iPad Mini with Retina display. I’m quite tired of this Nook HD. It’s not very user-friendly and definitely not me-friendly. I don’t want to take a hammer to the device but when I use it, I sort of do.

So I was online to a site that lets you browse various fan-written fiction stories and they have a feature where you can download epub files, so I did so and saved it to my Dropbox. Then I went into Dropbox app on my Nook HD and went to go look for it. The Wifi on the Nook HD is a flaky pile of junk so that took way longer than it should have. Once I found the file I wanted I downloaded it to my Nook because the only other way to get it in there is to pop the MicroSD card, root around for a universal adapter and then put it in that way. That’s annoying, I’d much rather just be able to tap and download, like I would with an iPad Mini.

I downloaded it from my Dropbox and it ended up somewhere in my Nook’s own storage, which I hate to use, I much prefer my MicroSD plugged into the Nook instead, but there is no way to tell it where you want it to store the files. So I had to find another app called OpenExplorer which has an awful interface but lets you move files around the Nook.

Then the Nook library was confused about where I put that file. Every time I went to go look for it and tap on what it found, I’d be sent to the Wifi activation screen, where I would turn it on (why?) and then nothing. Nothing more than that. When I went back to the search and tapped on my file, it told me “File is not present.” and that was that.

I’ve never been happy with the Nook HD user interface. I bought it because it was cheap and supported Barnes & Nobles but really I think I would have been better off getting an iPad Mini. I regret this Nook HD. It could be so much better if only the B&N User Interface wasn’t so fascist. That’s what it really is. B&N doesn’t trust anyone with anything so they make it impossible to use beyond the B&N Book Experience. I don’t want all my ebooks at B&N, I’ve got thousands of ePub files all on my own – could I upload them and locker them at B&N? Of course not. That’s what the MicroSD card is for. So what value does the B&N store have for me? Little.

So is there any way I could get ePubs from Project Guternberg? Nope. I have to find some other way to get them, like on my iPad and then use Dropbox and OpenExplorer to… it’s way too much work. I’m tired even thinking about it.

So, if and when Apple decides to sell a iPad Mini Retina I’ll put all my Nook stuff on eBay and save up for the iPad Mini Retina. At least iOS respects me and I don’t feel like a criminal trying to cajole Android to give an inch.

I still don’t know why people think Android is any good. Wretched system.

photo by: Nomadic Lass

Connecticut Gun Control Bill

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213. Only slow kids need play here.

I noticed in the endless stream of AP news items that Connecticut has passed a wide-ranging gun control bill that places important controls on gun ownership. I was looking for links to news stories and I refuse to link to Fox News, any New York City toilet rag, or the New York Times only because their links aren’t durable and so there is no point to link to them in a blog, historically the links just bellyflop years later. CNN articles from 2006? Good luck with that. So, Connecticut has new gun safety laws. This makes Connecticut more attractive option to migration for me. The law makes the state safer than the other states, and that opens up a new line of pressure for the states to decide on their gun laws. It’ll be less about personal liberties and the overworked 2nd Amendment and more about population dynamics and taxpayers. If all your taxpayers decide to move to a state where their children won’t be shot randomly, then they will be paying taxes to that state and not the more dangerous ones. These bills could become new tools for state tourism authorities to promote their states when it comes to safety. “Come and visit Connecticut, we are safer.” If it becomes an actual population pressure, then I bet more states will start adopting gun control laws in order to retain their populations. The only thing that a state really fears is negative migration. Perhaps it’s time to stop talking about guns, ammunition and magazines and start talking about public safety issues. It’s subterfuge of course, but really it’s not. It’s got more to do with living children than dead ones.

The image of a dead toddler is the one thing that the NRA cannot blot out. That image sears itself into anyone who looks on it. All your arguments mean nothing when launched over a 3 foot long coffin! It’s a wretched commentary on American life that it takes dead children to force adults to cut the shit and take things like guns seriously.

These aren’t fun little toys, they are tools of death.

North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill

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"The Year of Jubilee has come! Let all the People Rejoice!" -- Kenosha (WI) Civil War Museum 2012North Carolina May Declare Official State Religion Under New Bill.

There is something absolutely magical about stories like these. They are thrumming with the excitement and promise of what the Civil War was all about. Rebel states filled with rebels convinced that States were above Union. We started this on April 12, 1861 and we concluded it on May 9th, 1865. So here is North Carolina, a previous rebellious state pushing the buttons on the Union, again.

So, what does this bill do? It ignores the deaths of 625,000 Americans who died during the Civil War all so North Carolina can whine petulantly and act out.

There has always been a simmering discontent between the North and the South. The war was concluded but the problem was never really resolved and you see the worm turn in stories like these. North Carolina is still a rebel state filled with rebels. Apparently LOSING THE WAR didn’t impress upon them their pecking order in things.

Not that there will be another Civil War, or at least not shaped like the last one. The next one will be polarized between liberals and conservatives. Neither side is listening so we’re eventually going to have to go to war again to resolve these issues. All anyone has to do is wait. The South will rise again, and with them, the seeds of their defeat, again. We could skip all of this fun, but since North Carolina didn’t learn their lesson the first time, perhaps we need a reprise.

photo by: Ron Cogswell

e-Cycle and Gas Station Sushi

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Used 1985 Cadillac EldoradoI sent three old iPhone 4’s to e-Cycle for recycling, they had a relatively good buy-back rate for the old devices. Of the three that I sent, only one was accepted. The other two were shredded and I got nothing for them, other than the vague satisfaction that the hazardous materials in them were recycled, probably.

I can’t really blame the company, it’s all there in black and white. Don’t send phones with active lines on them. Oops, that was my fault, but after hearing that they had this problem I thought I could just go into Verizon’s site and mark the lines as suspended. That didn’t do the trick. So the phones were summarily destroyed and recycled. I think that’s the part I don’t get, the rush to obliteration. Then again, I do get it, it’s a company trying to maximize all their angles and this is a rather convenient angle. It strikes me that they could have simply shipped the phones back to me or perhaps told me that my attempt at suspend didn’t work. Instead, they took the silent and cheap way out – shred the phones and mark the Unit Price as $0.00.

So, do I do business with e-Cycle in the future? I don’t know. I have learned my lesson at least, a phone you haven’t used in six months may still have a line on it. I don’t think I’ll be doing any further business with e-Cycle. It’s not because of anything overtly naughty, but just the sense that they didn’t care to even get back to me after I tried to disconnect the lines – that haste to simply shred and zero-balance fills me with doubt as to whether I got a fair shake on that deal, or not. I’m thinking not. While it wasn’t against any of the fine print, it did leave a rather bitter taste in my mouth, and I did learn a lot dealing with them, so perhaps in the end, it was good for everyone. I got a lesson, they lost a customer, and I’m wiser next time.

Now, to see if e-Cycle has any competitors.

UPDATE: They do have competitors, so at least there is a wide field available. Also turns out that the reports of the devices shredding were perhaps premature. They were found in a box, waiting for Verizon to disconnect them, since I sent that little nugget to Verizon today, it may take a bit for those devices to register as disconnected. I’ll update more as events unfold.