Fearthepenguin.net

Once upon a time in the distant past, I briefly worked for a hosting company called CIHost. It absolutely had to be in the running for worst hosting company in the world. The owner was narccissistic, abusive and habitually lied to customers. The pay was absolute garbage. All the employees hated it, and few people worked there for long before buckling under the abuse, getting out as quickly as they could, or turning to large quantities of alcohol.

The owner would scream at employees and threaten them frequently. He would lie to customers that their servers were backed up by a tape drive directly on the server and tapes rotated, but the tapes were NEVER rotated. Customers would pay for more advanced backups that were supposed to be using a large tape robot, but the tape robot was shoved in a corner and not even plugged in. He would advertise that we had a ‘Tier 1 Datacenter’ but it was an old office building with half the servers sitting on bread rack shelving. The UPS protection was whatever cheap UPS he could buy from eBay and stick on the bottom of a ‘rack’ and overload massively, with old office power-strips dangling from the top shelf servers who’s power cords wouldn’t reach the UPS at the bottom.

The customer managed servers ran a (barely) customized version of RedHat that the employees not-so-lovingly called ‘BrownHat’ because it was total shit, and was loaded with horribly insecure PHP scripts that were constantly being abused to send spam, to the point where they were being sued by AOL because of the flood of spam they were getting from our servers.

One day, the owner sent out a message to everyone that the company was in the running for some magazines ‘Best Places to Work in DFW’ type article, and included a link suggesting all the employees go and fill out a survey about what a wonderful place it was to work. Two mistakes were made:

1. The survey was anonymous.
2. The survey allowed respondents to input their own free-form responses which would then be visible to later respondents.

Hilarity ensued. Needless to say the results were not what he might have hoped for, because the employees were brutally honest.

I think my personal favorite is “The pay checks haven’t bounced in awhile” as an answer to the most unusual employee benefit. :)

I left not long after that, and the company soon went bust. The owner moved into the fracking industry, and called himself the ‘frack master’. He is now serving 15 years in federal prison for fraud and tax evasion! https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/so-called-frack-master-sentenced-15-years-federal-prison

So at least there was a happy ending!

These are the rough (unedited) images of the full set of eclipse photos. I had a tough time getting the focus right, and I feel like most of the non-totality images are overexposed, but it’s the best I could do for my first attempt at photographing a solar eclipse.

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These are just some of the quick-and-dirty series of images I took during totality, plus a animation of the combined images.

Yeah, it’s 106F officially. And this is what happens in a car sitting out in the sun:

First you can boil water on your dashboard…

And don’t even think about sitting down in shorts…

Over the last 8 years of Obama’s presidency each time the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] releases their unemployment numbers I hear a chorus of conservatives crying over the fact that the official unemployment rate does not include people who are “underemployed” (working part time or at a lower wage than they might normally be working) and it does not include “marginally attached workers” ( discouraged and no longer actively looking for work).

On one hand, they have a point. Those numbers are important in determining the efficacy of economic policy and even if not used as the ‘official’ numbers, they should be taken into consideration and should probably be mentioned and discussed more in the news. With that said, they only seem to use it to bash Obama and ‘liberal’ policies as if, were we to look at these numbers, it would show that Obama’s policies have not had a positive impact on unemployment or economic health at all. This is disingenuous at best.

The fact is that the BLS does keep track of and release those numbers. They call it ‘U-6: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force”, and it’s exactly the number that the conservatives say should be used. So lets see what those numbers say over the terms of the last 3 presidents.

Note2 : I can only find data on this U-6 number back to Jan 1994 – after Bill Clinton’s first year in office.

In Jan 1994, a year into Bill Clinton’s term the U-6 rate was 11.8%. When he left office the rate was 7.3%. That’s a 38% drop.

In Jan 2001, when George W. Bush took office the U-6 rate was at 7.3%. When he left office the rate was 14.2%. That’s a 94.5% increase!

In Jan 2009, when Barack Obama took office, the U-6 rate was at 14.2% (and rising very fast). In Oct 2016, just a couple months before he leaves office, the rate is 9.5%. That’s a 33% drop.   [44% if you count from the peak (17.10%) from the massive inertia in play that Bush left]

So the “Full” unemployment rate almost doubled under Bush and Obama has brought it back down significantly.

Don’t get me wrong, 9.5% percent is not good enough, and this economic recovery has been slower than anyone would like. And yes, that is a national average, so there are pockets of America where the rate is much higher due to regional differences in economic and business realities. And yes, we need to continue working to ensure that people suffering in those pockets are not left behind as we continue to recover from this last recession.

The fact remains that the economy as a whole *is* massively improved under liberal presidential policies. So what exactly is their argument?

Links:

Oct 2016 unemployment numbers [including the U-6 numbers]: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

Macrotrends 30-yr chart on U-6 unemployment rate: http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate

So over the years I’ve had more and more friends make the switch from iOS devices to Android. Obviously I’m a big fan of Android, so I’ve decided to provide a list of Android apps and why I recommend or use them, so that these new Android users have a good place to start. This list will not include super common apps like Netflix, but some of the less common apps I’ve found useful.

• aCar – Free/Paid – I actually paid for this one. I use it to keep track of my fuel usage and gas mileage and maintenance schedules as well as ongoing costs for services and so on for my car. It can import/export to formats for a bunch of other apps [including iOS apps] .
• Android Device Manager – this is actually built into the OS, and your Google account – but I think it needs to be set-up/activated. It allows you to go to your google account and locate your device, and/or wipe it if it is lost or stolen.
• Bandsintown – Free – If you like live shows, this app can tell you who’s playing near you. Put in bands to watch for, and it will let you know when they’re coming to town – and can let you know when similar acts are coming.
• Dropbox – Free – super common, SUPER useful [see KeepassDroid entry]
• Flashlight HD LED – Free – [from smallte.ch] – super-bright and requires ONLY the bare minimum of permissions -there is NO reason a flashlight needs access to your contact list! But that’s what some other flashlight apps request.    ### I can no longer recommend this Flashlight app – it now requires more permissions than it really needs, plus the most recent versions of Android have a built-in flashlight which is accessible from the login screen or the home screen by swiping down from the top of the screen.
• FolderSync – Free/Paid – I prefer to keep my photos on my own systems instead of auto-uploading them to cloud providers [Dropbox, Google+, Facebook etc] – so I use this app instead. It can sync any files [not just pics] and it can use FTP, SFTP, SMB/CIFS, WebDAV or one of a BUNCH of different cloud providers. It can sync in one or both directions, and can be scheduled. It can also be set [per connection] to limit *when* it will attempt to sync. For instance, I have mine set to only sync to my home server when the phone connects to my specific WiFi SSID. This app is very cool, and very flexible. If you want to sync any of your phone’s data this is the best way to do it.
• GroceryIQ – Free – Grocery list – very useful. If you create an account [not required] you can sync the list across multiple devices – great for couples!
• gStrings – Free – guitar and other stringed instrument tuner
• HD Widgets – Paid – I use this to put a great clock and weather widget on my home screen, as well as some quick-toggle buttons for things like Bluetooth, Wifi, brightness etc. Very customizable on size, color, font and what you want to be on the widget.
• KeepassDroid – Free – This is the android port of Keepass – which I use to store all of my many, many passwords securely. I keep my password database on Dropbox [WARNING: Keep a REALLY strong password both on your Dropbox account, and the Keepass database!!!!]  – In this way, I’m able to access and update my passwords from my phone, tablet, home computer or work computer! This enables me to keep a lot of much stronger passwords for various accounts than I would if I had to remember all of them. Now I just have to remember my Keepass password.
• Light Flow – Free/Paid – I paid for this one too. This lets you customize and set recurring notifications [ie, if you get a text – keep beeping every X minutes until you acknowledge it]. This is great for work texts in case I miss them. If your phone supports it, you can also adjust the color and blinking of the notification LED depending on which type of unread messages you have [ie. Green for email, red for texts]
• Quick Dice Roller – Free – If you play any games that require dice rolling – this is a great app. Can customize the look of the dice and set up custom dice with specific formulas.
• RedLaser – Free – I use this to scan barcodes in stores and compare prices and find reviews.
• Scanner Radio – Free/Paid – Access to thousands of internet streams of scanner radios – listen to police/fire/emt/weather radio from around the country and around the world.
• Wi-Fi Analytics – Free – This app by Amped Wireless allows you to see what wifi networks there are around you, and see all kinds of detailed information on them. You can determine which channel is least crowded so you know what channel to use for your own network, and you can get information on signal strength, and so on.

Hallmark has outdone themselves, and printed the best birthday card ever!

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In case anyone ever wanted to know what a herniated disc looks like. This is an MRI image of my lower spine. The main section of cartilage, between L5 and S1 [with the arrow pointing to it] is seriously herniated and is pushing against the nerves which go down into my right leg, which is why my right leg has been hurting so much lately. The space between L4 and L5 is also a little bit herniated. The ones above those are what the cartilage is supposed to look like.

I’d like to add that I got this injury by trying to be a good samaritan. For my troubles I’ve gotten a month of excruciating pain and many hundreds of dollars of medical expenses. See if I ever do that again!

Here are some shots from Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, CA. There are some really interesting erosion patterns in the rocks.

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Note: I will expound on the story behind these pictures at a later date. For now I just want to get the pics up….

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