The Stravager

The thing about being employed by a company that does consulting work and being between contracts is it creates a mix of feelings.  I have time to think about stuff, specifically work related stuff, but also I start thinking about being 51 years old and sitting on my ass in an office trying to justify my existence.  I know that my life is good, and I travel a lot, but the bucket list is long and time is running out.  Next week by this time I'll be in Tokyo.  I'll be getting ready to celebrate my 51st year on this planet and after Christmas Midori and I will be heading to Vietnam for a few days.  Last year around this time we were coming down from the excitement of spending almost 3 weeks in Italy and Switzerland.  So it's not like we have been sitting idle, but what about the Great Wall?  Giza?  Bali?  Paris/London/Prague/Munich?  So many places I want to go.  Also looking forward to next year musically.  In January I wil...

Supply-side economics, (AKA trickle down, Voodoo, Horse and Sparrow) operates on the premise that if the government allows wealthy (business owners and private citizens alike) to keep more of the money they earn that they will then re-invest that money into job creating endeavors like increased production or increased investment in companies that will then hire working class folks down the economic food chain.  It's called supply side economics because it comes at growth from the perspective that it all starts from the supplier or goods and services. The problem is, this totally ignores the supply/demand dynamic.  Let's look at the one of my favorite metaphors used to explain this; The Horse and the Sparrow.  The idea is, if you feed a horse enough grain, some of it will come out the other side for the sparrow to eat.  The metaphor breaks down quickly because with a horse, there is a biological necessity for it to defecate.  What if the horse could just sto...

Yesterday I heard a news report stating that the Washington Post had uncovered an attempt by a woman to spread false stories about Judge Roy Moore by accusing him of rape when she was an underaged girl.  The story didn't check out so the WaPo refused to run the story, then they announced that this attempt had been made and followed the woman back to Project Veritas.  This is the project that has tried so many times to "discredit" so called liberal media efforts with "sting" operations.  They set up meetings with left leaning organizations, spin some story sounding like a parody of everything that liberals are supposedly supporting, like late term on demand abortions, cheating welfare, or any number of things that the right wing hyperventilates about, and they secretly record these sessions.  Then Project Veritas' modus operandi is to selectively edit the video in ways that amplify or totally mischaracterize the point and results of the meeting.  (Rem...

Today I read a story in the Atlantic about how one sorry assed SOB went from being a vegan leftwing nut in high school to a high profile (yet pretty cowardly) neo-Nazi thug and uber troll.  The story had a lot to say about how a short, awkward dweeb with no self-esteem, who is probably a closeted homosexual and is there for self-hating, misogynistic, narcissist and who goes to great lengths to prove to the world and himself could go from one extreme to the other pretty quickly.  It also had a lot to say about why this guy could so thoroughly identify with Trump.  It's worth a read.  It's long.  You've been warned. In other news, the Paranoid Style of American Politics isn't a new thing. 

I don't know if this is a memory of actual events or a daydream I had once, but I have told it as a memory usually to illustrate a point.  So, here goes. In high school I played football for a couple of years.  (Freshman and Sophomore years)  In Jr. high school I was on the bigger side of a lot of my peers so I ended up playing on the offensive line with some time as a linebacker as well.  For those not that familiar with American football, the object of the game is for someone on your team to run the ball to the other end of the field or to throw the ball to a teammate down at the other end of the field with the ultimate goal of getting the ball across the end line into one of the areas on either end of the field called the End Zone.  The other team is doing everything they can within the rules of the game to prevent you from doing that.  The key player on the offensive side of the ball is called the quarterback.  He takes the ball passed from be...

Once there was a village of sheep herding people surrounded by rolling green hills filled with little white puffy four legged animals called "sheep,"  For the most part the owners of the sheep would just let them wander through the hills untended while they stayed in their houses watching little 3 minute videos of cats riding robotic vacuum cleaners.  But one little boy loved watching the little white puff balls wander around eating the grass. One day the little boy spotted a wolf sneaking up on the herd.  He ran to the village elder and told him about it.  "Really?" said the elder.  "Sounds pretty far-fetched to me.  I don't think that wolf eats mutton.  More of a chicken killer I think." and he went back to watching a video of a kitten sitting in a small box.  The boy decided to go make sure the wolf really was just a chicken killer.  The wolf slinked up to one of the oldest, weakest sheep and killed it.  Then he dragged i...

Everyday there is a s new outrage.  The steady stream of stuff coming from the White House and congress that we should be losing our minds about is starting to wear me down.  After going after Clinton (both of them) for stuff that should not have been scandals and just barely bad decisions, the things that the right is willing to turn a blind eye about would be breathtaking if it wasn't so commonplace.  It reminds me of what it would be like if I lived in a place that had nothing but dramatic sunsets and grand canyon Swiss Alp views all the time, only in reverse.  At some point you'd get jaded.  If you lived in a miserable dung heap of a rainy smelly desolate back woods back alley you'd get a little callused right.  So this is not paradise or Hell, but it's relentless and unless we start picking our battles we will get wore down.  We need to stop giving a shit that the deputy spoke liar was sitting on her knees on a couch in the Oval Office when Trump...

I have a job that has the potential to put other people out of work.  My job is introducing automation into the software testing industry.  It doesn't have to put people out of work. It could let people do more interesting work.  But I fear that many of the people in positions of power in the software industry see the automation of software testing as a way of reducing the head count. I think this is the same mistake that was made by companies who thought the introduction of office automation (copy machines, fax machines, copy machines that could send faxes, etc,) was going to make it possible for a single person to do the work of 2 or 3 people.  So instead of having that person type things in triplicate several times they could do it once then stand at the copy machine for a while.  What this should have done is allow that person to spend more time interacting with the customer or collaborating with team members on innovation.  Instead, they got over work...

Stonekettle Station: Red Sea : How do you like your new President? It’s been a month, give or take, so how about it? Is the Trump Administration better than you hoped or...

I have to admit, I have been engaging in a lot of political battles on Facebook.  I know it's fruitless.  I know that people don't really change their views on matters based on Facebook arguments.  But I can't really help it.  I just can't let the stupidity just hang out there unanswered.  So, when someone posts a meme that I know is either untrue or misleading I have to point it out.  I have been reading about and discussing political issues since I was 14 or 15.  I have always been into reading the newspapers.  My habit would be to scan the headlines and read the first paragraph or two of the story.  (Learned this trick from a junior high school history teacher who explained the inverted triangle style of news story writing.)  Then if a story caught my attention I would go back and finish it before moving on to the Op-Ed page.  I'd read them all, so I would see what Art Buchwald would have to say, then George Will, then David...

I don't doubt that someone in the Trump White House has a master plan.  I just don't think that person is Trump.  I think Steve Bannon has a master plan.  I think Reince Preibus has his own ambitions.  And I think that Conway has decided that her career is over and might as well ride this horse until it dies under her.  Trump is driven by his ego, his id, and his crippling narcissism.  He needs to be loved, feared and above all respected.  He lashes out via his Twitter account at all of his detractors because he cannot stand the disrespect he is receiving from all sides.  There is no ability for him to absorb and reflect on the criticism.  He must deflect it and turn it back on the critic.  Since he sees the world in terms of winners and losers so his critics are ridiculed for things like circulation, (newspapers) ratings, (news programs) being washed up, (actors) or crime statistics. (congress members)  Of course the truth o...

I still have a hard time saying it.  President Donald Trump.  My stomach turns a bit each time I think about it.  But it was predictable.  That is not to say that I predicted it, or that anyone other than Michael Moore did.  But it was predictable.  This is because seeing the movie Idiotocracy seemed to me more of a future documentary when I saw it.  This is because the number of people who believe the crap that Fox News put out has been growing and growing.  This is because no matter how many times Andrew Breitbart would put stupid stuff on his web pages or support the stupid "veritas" jack ass and all his selective editing and entrapment style "journalism" people kept reading it and posting it on Facebook.  This is because the guys who lied us into war with Iraq still get invited to talk to America via the major news programs on all three network and all of the 24/7 news channels.  All this stuff was going on before Trump announced hi...