Act rationally in an irrational world.
If my scan rate at UPS was this slow, I would have been fired. A recent video online shows a humanoid robot sorting packages, mostly just flipping them label side up so they can be scanned. It was painful to watch because the conveyor was slowed down to at least half normal speed and the "robot" was horrifically inefficient at its job. Irony Alert: Before I could play the linked video above, it…
SpaceX stock has sagged a bit since its early peak, but that's not why Musk isn't a trillionaire. Market cap, as I have noted time and time again, is just eye-candy bullshit . Financial news sources want to generate clicks and capture eyeballs - as all modern "journalists" today want to do. Our whole information infrastructure today has been corrupted by fast cash and special interests. In our…
This is how I feel these days, watching any form of media or visiting any website. Source. All my banking apps and websites have "updated" recently. Of course, the big new feature I am supposed to love and cherish is the new AI assistant! He will tell you your bank balance and whether a payment was made! You know, stuff you can find more easily with a click of the mouse or a swipe on the phone .…
Depending on the features, the batteries may last only a few days or weeks. We are flooded with cheap products from overseas, mostly Asia (formerly "The Orient" but that is now considered a slur for some reason). Some products are real values - low cost, well made, and supported by a company that stands behind their work. Others are shoddy merchandise, barely functional, but inexpensive. Still…
The latest scam going around Old People Island is the fake Punchbowl invite. We call it "Old People Island" as the average age here is (or was) 74 when we moved here in our virgin 40's. Well, now we are the old people - has it been 20 years already? It seems we measure our time from trash day to trash day (is this week recycle?) or by the monthy changeover to a new show at the gallery. Right now,…
One difference between my generation and the young people of today, is back then, we cared about people and gave them a second chance - or a third, or a fourth. The new memory chips arrived and they worked flawlessly. I uploaded about 650GB of data to them - about 11,000 songs, a few thousand books, and a thousand or more photos and videos. Videos in particular, take up a lot of space. But I also…
Beware when buying external hard drives or SDRAM chips! I fell for a con the other day, but fortunately, since I bought through Walmart.com, I was able to quickly get a full refund of my money. What was the scam? Well, Mark wanted a new tablet to read epub books with - a glorified Kindle, basically. We have thousands of e-books on our computers, phones, and tablet, thanks to a kind stranger we met…
Manifestos are the best kind of Festos, just as Tabernacles are the best kind of Nacles . Everyone has a manifesto these days - so that when they die in a hail of gunfire, we can all read them on Twitter and shake our heads at the craziness. Peter Thiel is a formerly closeted homosexual and German-American. I've always said that Gay men make the best Nazis - what with the snappy uniforms and…
I had a chance to compare four operating systems side by side. The result was unexpected. A friend of mine was gifted a new HP laptop and asked me to "set it up" and transfer all of his data from his old Window 10 laptop (also HP) to the new machine. I was reluctant to do this, because, like working on someone else's car, if you screw it all up, you are the villain, but if you do it right, you are…
Tropes like this are repeated often online. But do they make sense? In my lifetime, the population of the United States has gone from 170 million people, to nearly 350 million, an increase of over 100%. Meanwhile, the amount of real estate and resources have remained largely finite. Waterfront property, for example, once common for the working man, is now a carefully rationed commodity for only…
When I was younger, I never thought about deducting medical expenses, as I didn't have any. But now... NOTE: Consult your tax advisor for current tax law in your jurisdiction. Your mileage may vary. Mr.See has always had problems with teeth. Mine are strong, but not particularly attractive. But as I asked my Dentist, "Will they last another 20 years or so?" and he replied, "Yes, of course!" I…
Gummies are the next big thing, but are they really a good thing? As you get older, you take a lot more pills, some prescription and some are supplements. Vitamins and such, for example. The prices aren't cheap, at least at the retail store. Oftentimes, a small bottle of vitamins or supplements can cost $20 or more. If you shop online, you can find the cost a lot less, particularly if you buy in…
I had to cheat on my cognitive test! Another trip to Mayo, and I am not sure any of it is useful. To recap, after spending over $100,000 of your taxpayer money, they found my organs are all in remarkably healthy condition - except my brain. And there is nothing they can do about that, other than to prescribe medication. So here we are. They wanted to do cognitive testing, which took three hours to…
When someone demands you go to an unknown site, beware! I got a late-night text from an Oregon phone number asking if the trailer we are selling is "still available." They wanted to see it tomorrow - all the way from Oregon! Two red flags right there. The "Is the item still available?" is the other red flag. The "item"? ESL! Anyway, I played along and the guy wanted something like the "AVR" report…
If you could get every American to send you a dollar, you'd have about $330 million overnight. I made the above quote a long time ago to illustrate how it is possible to get very rich by taking a little money from a lot of people, as opposed to taking a large sum from one person. In those "caper" movies, the thieves meticulously plan a bank job or casino heist, to get away with millions. But, as…
If you want a basic program to balance your accounts and log purchases, well, it's free. I have tried this "ClearCheckbook" app on my Chromebook for the last few days and it seems to work OK. It is pretty basic, as in it looks like it was programmed in BASIC on an Altair 880 computer in 1978, Not that there is anything wrong with that! PLUSES: It's free, in its basic form. You can upgrade to…
This "app" is useless! They got the SIMP part right ! I realized, years ago, that I needed to start treating my personal financial life like my business life. And getting my business life in order was a real daunting challenge. Engineers and Lawyers are not taught about accounting methods, and Calculus students in high school don't learn "business math" that the vocational students get to study.…
"I'm Still Here" ( Video link here , if it doesn't load) The fun never stops, but I have no reason to complain. Parkinson's, so far, is just annoying. I noticed it early on when my gait changed - usually the first symptom that people bother seeing a doctor about. But other things happened before - and since. I wrote before about Seborrhoeic Dermititis . It is not painful, just annoying. The…
Radicalization comes in all forms - Left and Right. Over the last few years, we have seen a concerted effort online to influence public opinion, worldwide, through social media postings. And it has been working. Given the anonymous nature of the online experience, it isn't hard to set up numerous fake accounts and post opinions and make it seem like what you are saying resonates with a lot of…
M'Lady! People are freaking out about Windows 11. It has ads in it and is clunky and slow, particularly when you try to "upgrade" an older computer to that operating system. People have complained that it is too cloud-oriented, for example, default searching online, when you want to search your hard drive. Others claim it is too invasive - tracking your usage and online movements in a similar…
Somehow, this video seems even more relevant today. I had a conversation with a couple of people who work at our local "Federal Law Enforcement Training Center" which is arguably the largest local employer and a source of pride locally. Funny thing, but when we cross the border from Canada, they see our passports and say, "Gee, I know where you live! I've been to Jekyll Island!" And we reply,…
Half of learning any trade is learning the lingo. I recently had another CT scan at Mayo. They are very thorough there, but you end up getting referral after referral and each new doctor wants to run more tests. I am hoping to be done with this, but the cardiologist wants to run a "stress test" (the chemical kind, not the treadmill kind) with a scan. I told him that friends had this and it "felt…
The biggest obstacle to success in life is us - and the people willing to help us be that obstacle! I was lurking on Reddit the other day and someone posted an inquiry as to what has fundamentally changed in the USA in the last 50 years that no one seems to have noticed. People put up all sorts of good suggestions and I was tempted to reply, "Gambling!" but kept my mouth shut instead. I noted…
Style sells cars, not functionality. Always has, always will, because.... Humans. I have been busy working on the camper van and have gotten a lot done. It is interesting, doing a little "automotive archaeology" and seeing how things were put together. The Mercedes part seems to work OK, although - typical of German Engineering - everything is over-engineered. The, there are also some odd design…
iRobot is going bankrupt - and it was inevitable. I wrote before about this phenomenon - how market pioneers end up broke, over time, or at least lose their first-to-market advantage, often rather quickly. DeHavilland was first to market with a jet airliner, but within a few years was eclipsed by Boeing and Douglas. The second-to-market learns from the expensive lessons of the first. It is a…