fractalnavel : katrina

i made coffee today !!

fractalnavel — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:44:00 GMT

and if you think that's trivial, you clearly hadn't seen my kitchen recently. all it took was a few hours of cleaning sinks, stove tops, counters, dishes, microwave, and stuff, and things, ... so now there's a (mostly) clear floor, and clear counters. still a lot more to do here. step by step, inch by inch ...

motivation ? i got a bag of white castle coffee on my last trip there. dammit, i wanted coffee, and i was going to have coffee - even if it meant cleaning ;-)

dead & dysfunctional thing update rambling:

i found the critter in the garage. the smell had stopped a week or so ago. poor little chipmunk. i need to put a critter door in the garage so any inadvertent captives have a way out. that, or make sure there's always several days supply of water, & perhaps food. i mean, put yourself in the trapped critter's place. jesus.

new router: the expedient thing to do was to cancel the "home wireless networking" package i had subscribed to, and just get the plain ol' cable modem from the store, since otherwise i'd have had to wait for a delivery - they don't stock the one that i had. it was actually very convenient - all in one modem / router / wireless access point. the isp would upgrade the firmware remotely every now & then, which was interesting, because my original 802.11b turned into .11g at some point.

now, i wasn't thinking this thing through. for some reason when i went to get the modem, i thought it would be like my old one, only no wireless - i.e., it would come with firewall & router. and then when i picked up the "wireless router" across the way, i thought it was only going to be a wireless access point. lucky for braindead me, those two mistakes cancelled out nicely. the modem is a plain old modem, and the router is firewall plus five port switch plus wireless (linksys wrt160n, for the geek-curious). which actually put me a bit ahead of the game, as i could retire the plain old switch i had been using.

the nice thing about the old setup was that the only unprotected line was the coax coming into the house. now, the ethernet port out of the modem is also unprotected, which is possible to inadevertently hook up to with an unprotected machine. the other thing i liked about the old device was the dummy lights - more informative than the net total of what i have now. and yes, i used to look over at them quite frequently; it's a reality check along the lines of "ok, nothing is supposed to be accessing the internet right now - so what the hell is that blinking for ?". etc.

pain in the ass reconfiguring again. i duplicated my prior network, which is more work, but this way the individual devices didn't need changing. the xo kept hooking up its wireless mesh networking to the .11n service, which was interesting, but not useful. and then there was the most pathetic hunk of shit software that i've seen in a long time, for its size: that damn auto-setup cvrap that comes with the router - over a gb of sheer uselessness.

on the bright side, i can make better use of opendns now. i still need to run my own dns server since i have a number of internal aliases in use. although - it seems that could be done on the router... hmm.

when i got the orginal "home wireless network" package, they also provided a .11b usb & pci card. i never noticed, but i guess those were outright purchases, since apparently they weren't recorded as leased equipment or anything. not that those things are all that useful now, but in case i (ever) have visitors with laptops & no wireless, those could come in handy.

oh, what else:

was surfing around in the scifi stuff, landed on scalzi's site for a while. remember katrina ? yeah, how soon we forget. well, there was a set of long comment threads on "being poor is ...", with a number of interesting links to other - opinions. something to be absorbed. and more personal motivation.

slowly weaning myself from the last couple of tech forums; these i've been frequenting since may. i had already called it quits on a couple of others that i had hung around on for quite some time. trying to put this summer's project(s?) on auto / unattended mode. this will leave me with one ocassional recreational forum, which i enjoy, actually.

mmm, coffee - second cup ;-)

jail to the thief

fractalnavel — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 00:46:00 GMT

somebody is starting a collection of katrina related video clips. not extensive, mainly a few recordings of criticisms. here's a wmp playlist of seven clips, totaling a bit over an hour. [best to save the list on your computer, then open the saved copy, but you can just click on it if you want]

of note are “real time” and “daily show” excerpts.

location is everything

fractalnavel — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 00:58:00 GMT

ok, time for at least a brief statement of my position with respect to things political. i'm neither right nor left, nor laissez faire. over the years, i have been alternately claimed and disowned as all of these things and more. at one early point, to my amusement, it was both left and right simultaneously. i will fight for or against just about anything regardless of perceived political persuasion, based only on my best efforts at independent evaluation. where i'm coming from is increasingly idiosyncratic, even eccentric, due to other non-political efforts at increasingly accurate worldviews, without regard to current attitudes.

however, i am a product of my background, as are we all (and as explicitly recognized in my current philosophies). i think i keep this in mind throughout my other efforts, and so is mitigated somewhat.

like i said, brief. argue with me. please.

"bring out your dead..."

fractalnavel — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 00:18:00 GMT

latest thing that's ticking me off (so many ticks, i need fumigating):

...

But soldiers who had been brought in over the past few days to help in the search were not seeing that kind of toll.

"There's nothing at all in the magnitude we anticipated," said Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell, commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.

[Col. Terry] Ebbert [the city's homeland security chief] said the search for the dead will be done systematically, block-by-block, with dignity and with no news media allowed to follow along. "You can imagine sitting in Houston and watching somebody removed from your parents' property. We don't think that's proper," he said.

...

so how are we supposed to believe any conclusions with a press blackout ? it is precisely becasue of the prevailing controvery that we need to see these efforts - and the dead.
dignity?! what “dignity” in this entire fiasco ? all censorship will accomplish is silencing the last - and perhaps only - voice these poor souls had. at the very least their silent bodies should be allowed stand in condemnation of our pitiful efforts. real respect and dignity will be achieved only in allowing these people their final mute testimony. yet again, the bush administration is cutting the tongue out of truth. “lets not alarm anyone” is apparently smirky's byword. what he really means is “must preserve the illusions”.

nothing like muddying the waters further. that's how they survive. god forbid any light may fall on anything.

by the way, i did see one brief news ad showing force being used - wicked force - to remove one of those remaining in the city. funny - i never saw the actual story, and the ad never appeared again. meanwhile, we're asked to believe that “we're trying our best to persuasively negotiate and we are not using force at this time”.

oh, for ... BULLSHIT !

i don't get it...

fractalnavel — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 06:37:00 GMT

...the events of last week, as a capstone to the continuing appalling failures of the bush administration, don't lead to any impeachment talk, but one inconsequential sexual escapade of clinton had us up in arms ?

“Breaking News: President Bush said Tuesday that he will lead an investigation into what went wrong with the response to Hurricane Katrina.”

oh no you don't, you little weasel ! we'll get someone else to do that. you just sit there smirking and head-bobbing like you always do. we all know what his “investigations” are like, white-washes for the mucky-mucks while the little guys are thrown to the wolves. 9-11 commission ? nowhere. abu-ghraib ? enron (and the rest) ? wmd and iraq ? don't make me laugh. hell, some of the perpetrators were even promoted (rice). this guy and his people are one long string of, at best, criminal incompetencies, and at worst, malign deviousness.

travels: choices

fractalnavel — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 18:17:00 GMT

go to gasbuddy.com for lists of locations and prices as submitted by motorists. this is a portal page that links to state and then city or regional sites. they are getting pretty heavily loaded right now, so if you get a "server busy" message, just keep trying.

there are also credit cards out there that offer discounts on gas purchases, but the terms are drying up quick. it appears at least one card changed their discount from 10% to 5%. even 5% helps at $3 / gallon.

zoom [cough, cough]

and, this may seem silly, but the price of premium is lower than ever, since it has kept a pretty constant price difference of 20 cents over the years. at $1.50 /gallon, that's 13%, at $3 /gallon, it's 7%. of course, it's still 20 cents out of a shrinking budget (and maybe that is the proper base for the marginal value of those two dimes).

car pooling ? maybe. biking ? i think i can effectively use a bike for all those small trips for odds & ends. i realize this option is not possible for many nowadays. looks like i'm going to get exercise in spite of my recalcitrant laziness ;-) of course, that still doesn't affect the increase in transportation costs being passed along in prices for other items. but if overall consumption can be reduced, it will have some small impact.

i'm hanging here for labor day. that's only personally immediately helpful. assuming more people come to the same conclusion, it may improve the fuel situation a little, but will negatively affect the rest of the economy incidental to travel. of course, there should be a complementary stay-at-home economy.

update: almost forgot, one of the most effective ways we can reduce fuel consumption is to use telecommuting to its full ('fuel', heh heh) advantage. the corporate cultures and pea-brained managers that prevent this from coming into its own probably need some governmental prompting at this point. it's not like they're averse to the idea in principal - they have no problem outsourcing and offshoring.

the big question is what to do with winter heating costs, and all the rest of the fuel related activities (cooking, water heating, and any electric use - that includes computers).

something _all_ of use should have done long ago - and it may still be worth it - is to invest in hedge funds, commodities futures for oil and gas. although this may already have had a backlash effect that would just be made worse this way: people have been making $$$ on speculation in these markets. that's abuse of financial instruments; someday one would hope there would be laws against what has been increasingly treated as a common gambling pool. yet it still makes sense as a hedge, even if the forces one is hedging against arise purely from speculation.

i'm not at all certain about the financial mechanics of that sort of hedging. it would seem that oil companies and the like could already have availed themselves of this and passed on the benefits. likewise, the government could have done the same. someone explain this to me - ? speculation is already acknowledged to have inflated prices greatly. too many times in the recent past this has hurt the global economy. housing / real estate is probably next. and now i have to stop; this is veering into another type of thread entirely.

changes

fractalnavel — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 14:28:00 GMT

...if the problem with fuel right now is in production and delivery, won't that (temporarily) decrease consumption, both at the pump and at refineries, equating to lower demand for crude, which should drive the prices down ? there should be a slight backlog developing in crude supplies right now. releasing national oil reserves is a useless gesture if the refineries can't get to it. something screwy is going on.

bush and his administration doing everything they can? not hardly. what about price freezes ? steps to cut consumption (as in, quotas and the old even-odd fill up days, etc.) ? nah. the only steps he took were to help the oil industry, not the consumer.

just off the top of my head. i know the economics work out more complicated, but temporary relief to ride out the bubble will not affect long term economics. however, voluntary consumption reduction would have a more lasting effect.

not likely to happen. the great american exurb exodus now mandates expensive commutes, in expensive vehicles, to expensive homes. well, i guess we got what we wanted. i don't think the housing and vehicle industry forced this situation on us. we all colluded to create this mess.

but still, the _real_ pain point for fuel costs has yet to be reached for the level of disposable income available. free markets do not distinguish between the haves and have-nots, it operates on the gross average forces of supply & demand, etc. the increasingly highly skewed distribution of wealth means that the lower wealth echelons have less and less relative economic force, meaning that their pain points will have been far exceeded by the time the controlling economic sectors begin to balance out. the reduction in demand, and the relative price benefits gained, will come at the expense of those least able to afford it.

the alternative is something no one would agree to, because it would mean paying at least an amount proportional to income or other indicator of ability to pay. instead, our fuel dependent economy, which is not a luxury that people can opt out of entirely, imposes the equivalent of a hugely regressive tax on the population.

the mcmansion echelon of society will eventually feel real pain too, it's inevitable. their sense of entitlement about their position in the world is as surely an illusion as the daydreams of the poor. they are the even more willing tools of the top of the food chain.

socialism ? no. but surely there is a better balance. both major parties have had about equal parts in creating this situation in their own particular ways. but even libertarianism equates to a type of social darwinism in this situation, an uncontrolled economic eugenics. the green party ? their anti-nuclear lobbying has contributed to this mess as surely as the others.

so where is the solution to be found ? are our imaginations that weak ? apparently. it may be more symptomatic of a diseased social conscience and accountability than anything else. there is great "fun" being had internationally with widespread adoption of captialist machinery and democratic pretenses. but it is no longer a free market if any sense of competition is effectively masked from the consumer when the necessities to life are controlled by groups which are immune to choice.

unrestrained capitalism can only work, it seems, in an infinite marketplace. there was some semblance of that when the world was a bigger place, and later, when other non-capitalist economies acted as economic sink and source to the growing west. but with the world much smaller, and no buffers available, the equations no longer apply. the rational social responsibility of the mid-twentieth century seems far better. but that was illusion as well.

time for a new socio-economic theory, one that won't raise the hackles of establishment institutions over concerns of unfriendly revolutions. besides, the populace is more defanged than ever. what happens to "nature red in tooth and claw" when the great majority have been disarmed in all possible ways ? speciation is what happens. bifurcation into predator and prey.

that sort of observation seems to naturally arise, over and over. but it was clear that some (historical) suggestions as to how to respond to this were at best naive, and at worst genocidal. i don't know that _any_ response to this results in any different conclusion. i think the same gross results occur, they just get shifted around in time and geographically.

the bottom line is that there is a population / resource imbalance. the illusion of "newly created wealth" can only be just that, illusory. there is some cost for all of this. and there are limits to human endeavors, to our science and imagination and our collective willingness to attempt ever larger tasks.

some people talk of singularities, of approaching a point of exponential and ultimately catastrophic change, it's good or bad or neutral, nature indeterminable. well, we have been in a "singularity" for a few centuries now. turns out it's a phase change, like water to ice, or steam. such transitions are characterized by critical points and singularities in various parameters, and chaotic and fractal behavior throughout the system. kind of looks like now. on either side of the transition would be regions of much greater relative stability and homogeneity.

where we're heading i don't know. depending on the nucleation sites and the various temperature and pressures there is a great range of possibilities. so what is a desirable outcome, and what needs to be pushed or pulled to get it there, before the opportunity is lost ? that is, if we aren't seeing the final changes already.

after that, all we can hope for is catastrophe. unless of course you like the world you live in, in which case the word is "fear", not "hope".