Category: Very Bad Karma

He Was Nice to Me

A somewhat well known racist in our community passed away recently. I won’t mention his name, nor will I link to anything about him here. My rant today has more to do with all the gays [1]read as cis-white gay men falling all over themselves to defend their friendship with said person as they mourn his passing.

As a bit of back story, I met this person multiple times in my tenure here in SF. Sometimes it was here in SF and others while I was back visiting in Texas, where he lived for a length of time. Without fail, every time I met this person he managed to tell me in various phrases and words about his racist views. It should come as no surprise he was also a rabid trump supporter. Granted, our first meeting didn’t go so well when I asked why he had a confederate flag tattoo on his chest. [2]A tattoo he later had covered up for some “unknown” reason He gave the typical BS excuse about white heritage.

Fast forward to his recent death and the eulogies about how “they didn’t always see eye to eye but he was a good friend.”  It was almost as if they all got together to work on a standardized message. It would be comical if it wasn’t so pathetic. I encountered the same phrasing from various folks on IG multiple times; talking about how “genuine” and “what a great friend” he was prior to his death. He was a proud racist and made no bones about it and these sycophant fa**ots are touting his virtues.

It shouldn’t surprise me, but because some of the people involved I used to admire, it did. Granted, after I reflected on why I admired these guys it was mostly due to their prowess in the gym and/or attractiveness to me. So yeah, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Seeing some of these guys just falling over themselves to qualify “he was always a good friend to me“, or “he was always nice to me“, etc was pretty disgusting. So that makes it ok? In other words, “I knew he was a racist but because he liked me, it didn’t matter.” Hitler was nice to white people, did that make him ok? The most laughable argument was “I wish people knew him in real life vs his social media persona“.  Yeah, I can personally shoot that weak argument down. And to bear, it is just code for he knew we were uncomfortable with his views so he avoided talking too much about them around us so we could pretend he was a good guy. 

Are we so broken as a community that attraction is more important than morals? Or maybe I’m deluding myself that we were ever anything better. There are a lot of things we can agree to disagree on but racism definitely is not one of them. If you’re butt-hurt for being called out on your friendship with a vocal racist, maybe you should spend some time examining why his views weren’t a deal breaker instead of shrugging it off with comments like  “we should respect the dead”. He might be dead but the rot in our community is alive as ever.

References

References
↑1 read as cis-white gay men
↑2 A tattoo he later had covered up for some “unknown” reason

McA**hole

I usually avoid direct topical stories but these one hits close to home on so many levels. I’m so angry I could break something.

Kansas cop resigns after fake claim that McDonald’s employee wrote ‘pig’ on his cup

This particular story hit home on my feelings. With all the bad press law enforcement officers get these days, this was totally unnecessary. This entitled jerk brought shame to law enforcement everywhere. I firmly wish he had been fired vs being allowed to resign. [1]He could potentially get a job elsewhere as a cop since he wasn’t fired. This was a deplorable act that damages the trust we place in those who are supposed to serve and protect us.

It doesn’t help the law enforcement are already heavily marginalized by our sensationalist style media these days. These incidents are rare but because of the way we consume news for outrage, you’d think it was everywhere. Fun facts: There are just under 700,000 law enforcement personnel in the US. [2]As of 2018, Statista reports Of those, the abuse of power complaints are less than 10%. [3]USA Today Tarnished Brass article 2019 Should it be 10%? Of course not, but when we are talking about perception vs reality, it sets a very relevant point. This also does not mention the 60,211 assaults on law enforcement. [4]FBI’s Uniform Crime Report 2017 LEOKA report No one ever mentions that part. And yes, people sign up for law enforcement knowing there are inherent dangers. That doesn’t make said dangers any less relevant.

The idea a Chief or high ranking officer would doubt the word of his officer used to be unheard of. I can well understand the Chief’s embarrassment and shock over discovering he needed to fact-check is own officer. (It doesn’t help that all the negative coverage of LE has discouraged many from even considering a job as an officer. I can’t help but wonder how low the bar gets sometimes to get cadets in the door.) This whole incident was just…unnecessary.

The one thing law enforcement in this country needs is citizen involvement. When the powers that be know they are being watched and potentially held accountable, they are less likely to abuse said power. I’m not talking about outrage on social media either. I’m talking about your community. Get involved. Indifference and outrage on social media does absolutely nothing but increase the problem exponentially.

And I’m not some rabid fanboy. Growing up in E. Texas as a little gay boy I discovered more than once what the police thought of the LGBT community back then. I was openly called a queer and fag to my face by police on multiple occasions; including once in a gay bar by the officer paid to staff as extra security. But things change. I now work for a law enforcement agency and have many friends who are cops and they are good people. They don’t go out hoping to shoot someone. They do the job and go home to their families, just like you and I. For every bad cop you hear about there are at least a 100 more you never hear about. Why? Because good news doesn’t generate outrage or ad-clicks. My point here is be outraged by individuals, not whole organizations. If I marginalized everyone based on the news I’d think all pit bulls are killers, all priests molest kids, and all gay spread HIV on purpose. Let us not become the oppressors we fight so hard to overcome.

I’m just so angry over this story today.

References

References
↑1 He could potentially get a job elsewhere as a cop since he wasn’t fired.
↑2 As of 2018, Statista reports
↑3 USA Today Tarnished Brass article 2019
↑4 FBI’s Uniform Crime Report 2017 LEOKA report

PSA: Retailers

​Here is a PSA to retailers. I get it that you want to maintain contact w/your new and existing clients who shop your websites. It is awesome that you wish to maintain a connection to your shoppers.

What is not awesome is when you bombard your perspective new clients with daily and weekly emails trying to sell your wares. Even worse, when I unsubscribe from your emails, you continue to send them with a message, “oh it might take days or weeks to unsubscribe.” You ain’t fooling no one.

And when you tell me, “we do not sell or give away your email”, you are a liar! I know because I routinely use fake email accounts with your business name @ my domain. Since I have a catch-all account for emails randomly sent to anything @ mydomain I can see how many times you sell my data.

/rant

Still

​It appears le blog is still being subjected to random brute force attacks. If you notice long load times or get a "500 internal server" error message, it is because I’m being timed out by the server to prevent it from crashing. [1]Nifty little protection mechanism I didn’t even know servers did that. lol I’m not gone, just try again in a bit and it will be back. If you get updates via RSS, you shouldn’t notice any issues.

I keep getting grumpy notes from my ISP about my server CPU stats. It isn’t me specifically that is being targeted. I’m nothing special in the grand scheme of the big interwebs. However, WordPress has some weak areas that bots and hackers routinely try to take advantage of to proliferate s p @ m. They basically take advantage of inherent internet workings to overload a server with too many page requests.

Anyway, I’m having to step up my game a bit. I’ve turned on site-caching from the server instead of from within WP. This just means a visitor gets served a cached copy of my index page vs the server rendering a file from scratch every time someone visits. Loading a static file only consumes bandwidth vs compiling php files on each request. The cache file gets updated every time I create a new post.

Hopefully, this will cut way back on the server load. If the problem continues, I’ll most likely move my blog to WP servers. They do a lot of work on the back end to prevent this sort of nonsense. I mean it is their product so it makes sense. lol My ISP helps when I ask but they are smaller and leave most of the burden on me. I simply don’t have the resources to combat such things.

Time will tell.

References

References
↑1 Nifty little protection mechanism I didn’t even know servers did that. lol

Ad

I have a dirty confession to make. I’m sure I’m not the only one out there but seeing so much of it these days, I just felt the need to fess up.

I’m not an ad-clicker. There I said it. I never click on in-app advertisements. I find them a waste of time, rarely if ever, related to my tastes. We hear constantly how ad placement is driven by user meta data and seems to be the ‘golden chalice’ of all the big players out there. I’ve never once clicked on an online ad to buy a product. 

Don’t get me wrong, I see the point but until it gets to a level where the ads are truly relevant to me then I’ll most likely never be an ad-clicker. Using my search results is rarely helpful. Google often gets the closest out of them all. I wouldn’t click on a Facebook ad if you paid me. The problem, for me anyway, is the few items I actually search out on the Web are lost in random queries I do all the time. While this might help target ads to me a tiny bit better, it’s like pouring a barrel of food on my plate and then me finding one item out of all of it that I will eat.

IMO companies are too greedy in trying to put ads in front of my eyes. The email lists, the hard sells, the device cookies, are all an attempt to get ads in front of your face. It is pointless to me because it’s just a brute force attack. The moment you click on an ad or go to a referral link, then the real bombardment begins. If you aren’t using a disposable email, you’re in for a real treat. hehehe

Some developers make their living off the ads they push into apps to keep them free. I get it. And for some apps, it’s the only way to go. But for more popular or heavily integrated apps, not having a paid, ad-free version is a deterrent, at least for me.

I don’t mind having sites or companies track my habits, likes, dislikes, etc. Tracking my habits w/o trying to tie it specifically to me as a person is the way to go if you want me to click. IMO this is why Google will continue to dominate the ad market. They are pushing heavy into this and less on specifically targeting you vs your online presence. If companies really want to find the ‘sweet spot’, they need to continue tweaking their ability to be very specific without constantly trying to bombard me with any and every ad possible. Then, and only then, will I ever consider clicking on ads.

Stuff

I had a caller tell me the other day she couldn’t be bothered to worry about tying up an emergency line because “that stuff doesn’t effect me.” Well true, at least until you do need someone and then the line is tied up by some other very inconsiderate person who can’t be bothered. Karma can sometimes be a painful teacher. I hope she never finds out first hand. But the flat out indifference surprised me a bit. ‘Screw you because I can’t be bothered to care about my actions but I’ll be the first to scream when it happens to me,‘ seems to be the norm vs the exception these days. While the result of your actions may not always be readily quantifiable, it should matter that your behavior impacts others. Otherwise, we devolve into a race of adults w/the minds of self-obsessed teenagers. Think on that for a bit.  /rant

Another caller didn’t believe he’d reached the real police dept and kept hanging up. He’d then call back to try and get someone who sounded more official. He got me and apparently thought I was official enough to report his noise complaint to.

The best call was a guy reporting a 311 (naked person) in the wharf who kept going on and on about how unattractive the naked person was. I mean he really went on about it. Couldn’t be bothered so much that he was naked but that he was unattractive and naked. lol At least he was honest about it.

*

The project I’m assigned to is still ongoing. What was supposed to be roughly 6 months has turned into a year, or it will have by the time the assignment is over. I don’t mind but many of the delays, most unnecessary politics, have sucked some of the fun out of it for me. I still get to influence how it will function and look and as a user that will be the biggest benefit. I could go on and on over the drama but it’s not worth it. In the end, it’s gone from being exciting and fun to just a paycheck. [1]Ok, the geek in me still likes it but the zeal is gone.  lol I don’t think I’d be cut out for civil service in the higher echelons. I’d get too disenfranchised I think.

Speaking of, more and more of my coworkers, as they discover the breadth of work I’ve created, are saying I’m in the wrong position or I should try to wrangle another job out of this. I am really appreciative that they recognize not only the level of skill but also the amount of work I’ve put into this thing. That said, I really enjoy my job. Primarily because it matters in a very real way. My actions have direct consequences on people’s lives and I value that. While it is true I don’t use all of my available skills, I use plenty and I’m content in that. And it is projects like this that give me a chance to show off my less used abilities. I guess in the end I would consider other options if they were available but it would have to be pretty good for me to jump ship, so to speak.

References

References
↑1 Ok, the geek in me still likes it but the zeal is gone.

Twitter Twatter


Pat & Moby

I got to meet my 3rd twitter contact today. He was also my first overseas guest. Patireland from Ireland was in town for business. We hung out over dinner and then coffee. Charming fellow and it was an enjoyable meeting. We had a great conversation about the use of twitter, facebook and other online social sites.

Sadly, he had to see me act in my work capacity. [1]An 800 was harassing the employee at the Starbucks. A quickie phone call to work took care of that.

All in all, a great first meeting.

References

References
↑1 An 800 was harassing the employee at the Starbucks. A quickie phone call to work took care of that.