Category: tech

101

DMV 101 that is. After a few random yet repeated issues with people not knowing basic traffic laws I’d thought I’d offer up a PSA. hehehe

No, you do not get to block an intersection because you couldn’t bear the idea of waiting on a light. You can’t legally pull into an intersection unless you can pull all the way thru it, including the crosswalks. The reasons why you got ‘trapped’ are irrelevant. If you get tagged by a red-light camera, it is a non-moving violation. If you get tagged by a cop, it is a moving violation and goes on your license. [1]or it can

No, you can’t pull into the opposite lane of traffic to go around a double parked vehicle while other cars are coming. You do not have the ‘right-of-way’ simply because you pulled into the opposite lane before the other car got close enough. If anything were to happen you are at fault.

No, you can’t text and drive no matter how slowly your car is moving.

No, you shouldn’t bicycle and text either. When you fly over your handlebars after hitting the MUNI tracks, you have no one to blame but yourself.

And lastly, No you can’t legally park in the MUNI bus stop and then be surprised you got a $250 ticket.

Now you know.

🙂

References

References
↑1 or it can

Dong

Ding dong Prop 8 and DOMA (parts at least) are dead! lol It is high time too. Courtesy of the rulings, ss-couples can now not only be recognized at the state level but also the federal level. This is truly historic times for us.

To wake up and feel like an equal citizen for the first time [1]Ok. 2nd time. The first time was when California ruled we could get married before Prop 8 is amazing. And unlike before Prop 8, there is a sense of finality to the issue. There will be no more Prop 8s. We’ve gained recognition at a whole new level and I couldn’t be happier. To feel recognized and accepted under the law is just unbelievable. In a way, it is almost anti-climactic.

Of course, the fight is not over. We still have equal rights for our Trans brethren and we still have a slew of states that don’t yet recognize gay marriage and/or bar it completely. The latter is only a matter of time. If you read the DOMA ruling, the justices pretty much set it up. The bias and basis for these laws is based only on discrimination and ignorant religious dogma. As new cases wind their way thru the courts back to the supreme court, the issue of ss-marriage will be decided once and for all. All the states with these horrible restrictions and bans on ss-marriage will have to suck it up, just like they did for women voting, the end of segregation, and interracial marriages. All of which, they also tried to use religious dogma to enforce.

The tide has shifted to our side. Thanks to the multitudes of us living openly/honestly, the world is beginning to see we really aren’t that different. We want the same things in life. We aren’t out to destroy civilization. Hardly. lol With 7 billion people clogging up this poor planet, there is zero danger there. I look forward to the future w/new dreams that I never thought possible.

References

References
↑1 Ok. 2nd time. The first time was when California ruled we could get married before Prop 8

GHHD 2013

Well, GHHD #1 has come and gone this year. [1]Gay High Holy Day  This year was especially significant due the recent rulings of Prop 8 and DOMA, both of which got the axe! (More on those later)

My personal pride was somewhat subdued. I think I was so emotionally worn out from the day of the ruling, I just couldn’t muster super excitement. That is not to say I wasn’t happy. Anyway, I noticed a large number of straight people at the events this year. The number of straights in attendance has been increasing dramatically in recent years but this year seemed even more so. (More on that in another post)

I always go early to the events because I don’t like the drunkenness that ensues later on. Plus it isn’t yet unbearably busy. For a social person, I get really frustrated in cramped crowd environments. Anyway, the party was busy very early and since I had Cooper I had to take him home and come back. The most striking thing about the Pink party was the couples. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed so many couples before. Maybe it was the significance of the weekend but it really seemed like a lot more couples were in attendance. A good thing of course. I mention it only because I was struck by it.

I admit I had a moment of sadness for being single. I was a single guy surrounded by couples and I do like being coupled. But, then I remembered I am single not because I have to be but because I choose to be. When a guy comes along that compliments me in the way I need/want, then I’ll couple up again. I have no desire to be in a LTR just to avoid being lonely. It is a recipe for disaster and never ends well. So I pushed my momentary sadness away and embraced the freedom that I had and so rightly deserved.

Of course, Pride is barely over and many are whining about “do we need pride anymore?”  Yes we do. Just because it is no longer a benefit to you, doesn’t mean we do away with it. But more on that later too.

There was some bad news this year as well. Two shootings happened right outside the fair. It appears they weren’t straight on gay crime but details are still emerging. Two people were shot and so far both are expected to recover. This saddens me. While we welcome straights, often times as their numbers increase, so does the crime. And I’m not saying gays are less prone to crime than straights. But there is a fundamental difference between a drunk straight and gay guy. Gay guys usually just want to get laid, not start fights. They might read you to filth for some unknown slight vs trying to beat you up or shoot you. I’m not sure what the answer is here but I worry the outcome will be much like our old Halloween parties…shut it down. I hope not.

Now that it is over, I have plenty on my mind and even more to rant about. It certainly gave me blog fodder for a couple weeks. lol

I hope you all had a safe and loving pride, even if you didn’t celebrate or care.

References

References
↑1 Gay High Holy Day

Belly

Apparently, I have a habit that is a carry over from childhood. lol

While at the movies the other day, a friend and I had to relieve ourselves after the movie. I can’t just unzip. I have to unbuckle, unzip, and basically open the fly to do my business. After said business is done, I tend to hike up my shirt so I can close up shop, so to speak. I was told that my habit of hiking up my shirt to my chest is something only kids do.

Having never though about it, I just laughed and shrugged it off. Well, after pondering on it for awhile, I couldn’t seem to place any other adults doing it the way I did. Who knew? I didn’t know it was not a very adult thing to do. I mean no one has ever commented on it before so how would I? Of course, now I find I’m self-conscious about it. hehehe. I guess I’ll have to be mindful while in public to behave in a manner suiting an adult. hehehe

Captcha

Because I’m deleting upwards of 2-3 hundred fake user accounts every month now, I’ve installed a new hidden captcha plugin. You as the user should never see it. It doesn’t depend on the traditional method of captcha pictures to solve, which I detest with a passion.

Instead, it uses a rather interesting javascript output and cookie combo that effectively (for the moment) prevents most autobots from registering fake accounts. There are very few people who refuse to use javascript so I don’t forsee this as a problem. However, should you encounter errors, email me.

I also reviewed a lot of comments and feedback on the authors site. None were problems with it’s functionality so I feel comfortable it will not interfere with most of you.

Wish me luck! lol

Roles

No not the dirty kind. Get out of my gutter. After my snafu with the Intense Debate plugin, I got a request from a reader on how I managed junk comments on my blog. The WordPress plug-in community is wonderfully diverse and there is usually a plug-in for almost anything.

Because I leave my blog open to new users as a requirement for 3rd-party log-ins like FB, twitter, Google, etc, I get tons of fake users meant to get around my comment filters. Their tricks rarely work but I still have to occasionally go thru and delete all the fake accounts.

The easiest way I’ve found is thru a plug-in called Role Manager that defines the user account groups built into WordPress as Roles.  Each user group/roles has a break out of all the capabilities any user in the group/role can perform. Reading, posting, editing, deleting, etc. I find it a much easier way to manage my user base.

Anyway, it has a nifty feature where you can duplicate a user group/role and give it your own name and capabilities. I duped my subscriber list of real readers into its own group. This leaves the default subscriber user group/role to fill up with the fake accounts. When I get ready to delete the junk, I do a quick perusal for real new users and move them to the correct group. I’m then free to delete the rest en-masse.

Simple and effective.

Debate Over

Sorry about the last post that disappeared. It was never supposed to go live. I guess I hit the wrong button. I’ve already reverted back to my old commenting system. It interfered with my other plugin that hands off comments from FB back to my blog. People really enjoy that so the Intense Debate Plugin got the boot.

Apparent

Apparently, I’m the only one that decided to be available to work on our project today. But, since I don’t have the authority to assign myself new tasks I was left tweaking several already completed tasks. On the way out yesterday, one of the project leads asked me if I could this, this, and this. She was clearly asking me to do it so she didn’t have to. Do they think me stupid? I can tell when I’m being given a shit assignment. lol I totally didn’t mind though. It took minutes to complete each one.

Apparently, I’m also the only one that kept notes about the day to day usage vs who was whining about what. So now everyone wants MY notes to brush up on. lol And to be clear here, I’m not bitching, I’m just being a dork. I like this sort of stuff so I’m content.

Apparently, I can keep a lot in my head off of one or two line item notes. Each line turned into 2 & 3 paragraphs of text when I started cleaning up my notes and condensing them into cohesive thoughts. What started as maybe 20 lines of notes ended up spread out over 24 paragraphs of documentation. Everyone keeps saying, ‘oh my god, how did you keep up with all that while it was going on?‘  Uh, um…well I listened for one. Two, since I already know the code, tech, and the purpose as a user I can pretty much tell you everything that needs to be accomplished and how to do it. Me thinks maybe I should be the project manager…

Apparently, the powers that be above me decided it was too much to ask us to clone and edit command codes from the old system to the new one. This was one of the parts I was eagerly looking forward to. I’m bummed they actually convinced the developer to do it for free.

Apparently, it’s Friday and I’m ready to get the hell out of here!

Have a good weekend all.

Survived v2.0

Ugh. So I have almost survived week two of my new day shift. I am seriously beginning to wonder if I’ll ever adapt. It’s been two weeks and my natural rhythm still hasn’t caught up. My sleep pattern has settled a bit so at least I’m getting to bed and asleep on time. I still seem to be almost exhausted by the time I get home at night. Wednesday this week I didn’t have an overly busy day at work but I was simply tired all day. I managed to get a good workout in but by the time I got home I could barely lift my eyes to eat and get Cooper settled. I finally let myself go to sleep around 10:30 and I passed out! Me, asleep at 10:30 pm!

The project has gotten off to a very slow start. It seems the project managers weren’t really prepared, had no idea what to expect, and are still catching up. It is incredibly frustrating to sit in a room with developers, IT employees from 3 depts, 2 project managers, and 2 other operations personal besides myself and feel like I’m the only one really getting it. And having to go over the same stuff several times because key personnel don’t always attend, certainly hasn’t helped keeps things moving along. Naturally, there are some politics involved, which I have absolutely no patience for.

Today was the first day we actually got down to doing some of the nuts & bolts stuff. Much of the work has to be done in certain orders as one system depends on another and you have to build the systems w/no dependencies first, blah blah blah…  We’ve already covered several key issues that would have affected the users adversely. I’m still excited about the project, just grumpy over the delays. Tomorrow is probably gonna be a wash as well but I have several things to review.

I’m hoping I don’t blow half the upcoming weekend recovering like I did last weekend. I blew the whole day last Saturday just trying to chill and recharge.

Survived

I survived my first week on the new schedule. Well, sort of. I’m completely run down today. I’d planned to schedule a bunch of stuff to do but I just don’t have it in me right now. So today is gonna be a lot of down time and sitting in front of the tv watching movies and catching up on tivo.

The biggest struggle has just been my schedule. I fought all week long to get up in a timely fashion and be on time. This week was super important as the developer/training team from the company was there teaching us how to change, set, and read system metrics for the software. The next few weeks are just the local team doing work and review. And to give you an idea of the scope, this effects not only the dispatchers but all of the police, fire, and parking/traffic employees who use the system. That is thousands of people and thousands of vehicles and equipment. Anyway, I’m getting off topic, I’m hoping next week I’ll be a little better with the schedule. I’m hopeful as today, the one day I wanted and could sleep in, I promptly woke up at a little after 8am and couldn’t go back to sleep. There is hope I guess that I am and will adjust.

Some things have had to give to make it possible though. I’ve barely even touched Facebook, twitter, or google this week. lol To be honest, I don’t even miss it. I popped in a couple times in moments of down time but otherwise, the interwebs have had to go on w/o me this past week. Even emails and text messages suffered. I get up, go to work, come home an spend quality time with Cooper, gym, a little down time, bed, and repeat.

I can say I made it to the gym every day I was supposed to this week! Granted my intensity suffered a bit but I went and worked out. And it could be a part of why I’m so drained today but I need to keep on a schedule otherwise I’ll end up blowing it off too often. And we can’t have that now can we!? And having not blown off the week schedule, I can move today’s normal workout to tomorrow w/o skipping anything.

As to the project itself, now that I have an idea of the project workload I can tell ya I have my work cut out for me. There is a lot of data entry that will need to happen on top of all the system changes that have to be uncovered, vetted, and possibly enacted into policy for our dept(s). Beforehand, I was thinking there was no way this would take 5 months. Now I’m not sure if that is a long enough. lol Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited and enjoy the work. This will effect us for at least a decade an having a chance to mold our software in advance to fit our needs is awesome. On top of that, I just like having my fingers in the pie, so to speak. And of course, my inner geek is thrilled to learn about the inner workings of not only the software but all the pieces of hardware and other systems that integrate and/or connect to our system. I find it completely fascinating. So far, no complaints on the project itself.

Anyway, don’t be sad/mad if my blog posts become sparse for awhile. Lord knows I always have something to rant about. But until I adapt better to the schedule, I have to prioritize real life over cyber life.

Wish me luck.