Author: David K.

AI Apocalypse

The Harris campaign is using a lot of AI image generation to beef up the size of their crowds in pictures of events, and they’re doing a full-blown media psyop to pretend that conservatives are going to vote for her. Two can play that game. I mean, at this point, anyone and everyone can. Nothing is real any more. Nothing. Unless you see it with your own eyes and hear it with your own ears, doubt it. Certainly don’t believe anything you see on the news or social media. I’m seeing stuff EVERY DAY that gets proven to be a complete fabrication within hours. It’s happening ALL THE TIME, and you don’t even know it. However much you THINK is happening, it’s MUCH worse than that. We are on our own. There’s no one coming to save us from this AI apocalypse. Certainly not the government. They’re already using it against us!

Please Hang Up and Dial 911

I woke up with a chronic pain about 3.5 years ago, which has never stopped. I’ve now seen about 22 doctors and clinicians, had 4 MRI’s, 3 ultrasounds, a CT scan, 4 different nerve blocks, and 2 surgeries. I don’t say any of this for sympathy, but to setup this half-joke/half-serious idea I just had. As you can imagine, I’ve made a LOT of calls to various doctors’ offices over the past few years. It would be fun to record a voicemail greeting so that when all of these people call me back and leave a message, they have to sit though a couple minutes of their own greatest hits that I have to listen to multiple times a week, like, “please listen closely as our prompts have changed,” and “leaving multiple messages will only delay processing and returning your call,” and my all-time favorite — because EVERYONE has this in their prompt — “if this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911.” I wish I had thought of this sooner.

Windows Startup Buggery

I have a PC. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I have a PC. I bought it for one and only one use: to play Elder Scrolls Online. To that end, I bought a SCUF Envision Pro controller. It does not work unless its Corsair iCUE software is running. The software will not start with Windows. There’s a checkbox in the software to make it do that, but it doesn’t work. I’ve tried toggling it back and forth several times. It just won’t work.

Frustrated with the situation, I decided to finally fix it.

The “startup” thing you can find in the Windows options only has toggles for programs that have registered with it. iCUE is not there. So I search for where the actual startup folder lives now. I have to google that, and find a howto to run “shell:startup” from a Windows Run box. This is stupid, but now I have the old-fashioned startup folder to put a link to the program.

So, now, where’s the program?

I search for the application in the Windows start menu. All this will give me are links to web pages talking about the application. (Launched in Edge, naturally, and I don’t care to see if I can fix that, because I know they’ll just change it back with the next update.)

I have to click another button to get to the actual list of applications installed on my system, and it’s not there either. That’s right: a proper link to a properly installed program simply doesn’t exist on the system.

I have an icon on the taskbar to run it. I thought you could right-click on a taskbar shortcut, and see where the program that it runs actually lives on disk. Nope. So I google again, and find where the taskbar shortcuts live. It’s buried under AppData under Internet Explorer. No, actually, I find where they live on Windows 10. Despite Windows 11 having been released for 3 years now, all my searches still bubble up references to Windows 10.

I finally find the new location. It’s been moved under Roaming, but it’s still related to the folders under Internet Freaking Explorer. I find the shortcut. The properties do not point to the executable, but there’s a right-click link that takes me to the application folder under Programs. This is a regression in usability. On the old shortcuts, you could put flags on the command they would run. But I digress.

I try to link the launcher application in my startup folder. The default action is to MOVE the file, which is about the last thing I want to do, but, hey, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and this isn’t my first rodeo. I press the modifier keys to find the one that makes a link, but it doesn’t work. I try again. Nothing. I link the actual application. That works.

For my own reference, I linked C:\Program Files\Corsair\Corsair iCUE5 Software\iCUE.exe in C:\Users\david\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.

After all this, I reboot on the spot to see if this will even work. It does. Whew. Twenty minutes of frustration after frustration to make crap software work the way I want it to on a crap OS. Something that should have worked by default. Something that, failing the previous, should have worked within the software’s options. Something that, failing both of these, I should have been able to figure out in Windows startup options. Something that, failing all 3 of these, I shouldn’t have needed a bunch of googling to figure out.

Why is this still a thing? Why is this “operating system” even still around? How is this the best we can do? This feels like something from 25-30 years ago. It’s utter nonsense, but this is what people have been conditioned to accept.

I moved to Macs about 10 or 11 years ago now, and I just can’t believe that people still put up with this crap. While I’m typing this out, my work laptop has just popped up a useless message about some “feature” in Teams that I will never use. Good grief! The popups now. Everyone in the Windows world is using them now. Open an application or go to a web site? Get 3 or 4 popups with a “tour” of features that — if they had designed the software intuitively and didn’t bury the icons and menus to begin with — you wouldn’t need in the first place. It’s all just so maddening.

I should just uninstall and reinstall the software. That’s the Windows way, right? But I’m afraid I’ll lose my settings. You wouldn’t think so, but, then again, I wouldn’t have thought I needed to do ANY of this.

UPDATE: Trying to figure out why my $200 controller couldn’t map one of the programmable buttons led me to finally discovering Corsair’s help forums. Among other things is a big thread about how the iCue software won’t launch at system start. Someone figured out that this stupid software just doesn’t put a link in the Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run like it should, and pointed out how to do that. Almost mercifully, my last comment about just giving up and reinstalling is moot, because it appears that wouldn’t have worked anyway.

For future historians, the problem with remapping is that the one button I bought the entire controller for — to remap the right index finger button to D-pad left, in order to put the ESO bar swap on a button I don’t have to take my thumb off movement for — doesn’t work, despite a dozen tries to reconfigure it. The G keys are mapped to keystroke combos, and they work fine. I don’t know if that’s because only these kinds of assignments work, and button remappings don’t, and I’m not going to figure that out. Anyway, and again for my own reference, it seems that:

Hooking up the controller with a USB cable gets the button remapping working again.

Something is Coming

Something is Coming

I feel this in my bones, and it’s been getting worse, quickly.

It’s not the economy.

It’s not COVID.

It’s not the vaccine.

It’s not illegal immigration.

It’s not DEI.

It’s not ESG.

It’s not AGI.

It’s not corporatocracy.

It’s not the uniparty in Washington.

It’s not the ticking time bomb of the national debt.

It’s not the deep state.

It’s not the wars in Ukraine or Israel, or the burgeoning war with China and Taiwan.

It’s the spirit of anti-Christ. These are the prophesied End Times. Literally.

I need a giant banner at the top of Twitter, constantly reminding me: It’s the last days, dummy.

AI for all the Corporate IT Things

I got an email with a link to a “town hall” about IT. I said to myself, alright, I dare you to tell me something interesting or actionable, and started watching the replay.

The CIO leads off, of course. His first slide is about DEIC, and celebrating/observing Black History Month and the Lunar New Year.

Sigh.

I mean, that’s great and all, but that’s 10 minutes we’re not talking about IT, which is what this meeting is supposed to be about, and which is all I care to hear about. I seriously doubt that people in, say, Europe or China care much about the US Black History Month, or that people in the US care about the Chinese Lunar New Year, for that matter. But, sure, let’s waste time pandering in the name of the current thing.

And then he says he’s able to relax, now that we know Taylor Swift was going to the at the Super Bowl. He doesn’t know what teams were going to play, but he spent a few minutes talking non-ironically about Swift being there.

Again, I mean, that’s great and all, but a half hour in, we’ve now spent thousands of man-hours not talking about IT.

When we finally get around to talking about, you know, information technology, and I find out that we’re apparently using AI to modernize our “corporate operating system.” I know a little about AI. I know a lot about how our internal procedures and organizational systems works. I do not understand how we can get AI to fix any part of this.

Well, it’s a good thing I don’t understand, because he’s not talking about using AI to fix IT. He wants to use “technology” to improve our “safety-ness.” Say wha..? Like, he wants to use AI to improve safety on the factory floor. Huh?! Are we going to buy Tesla robots to pull people’s fingers out of the way of presses?! I’m confused.

Next, we’re apparently going to minimize all “risks” to IT uniformly, without specifying or identifying what any of those “risks” are. So, at least we’ve got that going for us, which is nice. We’re going to do this by 1) reducing “new” findings, 2) eliminating repeat “findings,” and 3) closing “findings” faster. Well, that certainly seems simple. A little light on details, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.

Then we’re going to “partner” with AI, and it’s going to help us be more “exponential.” Except that we’ve also been sent a company-wide email that says we’re not allowed to use AI for, well, anything!

After an hour and a half, I gave up watching. I just want to note that the leader of “transformation” just bought a new-fangled “Mac” and says he’s “challenged” to set it up.

Crushing Traumatized People

After I got struck with chronic health problems a few years ago, I was forced to notice how much Pentecostal churches preach that if you just make some grand display of worship, you will be miraculously healed. But I’ve done the things, and I’m still sick, so I guess I did them wrong? It can be confusing, and if I were new at this, or hadn’t actually read the Bible, I would be defeated by my experience.

This approach to healing is not scriptural. No one ever came to Jesus wanting to be healed (or to get healing for someone else) where Jesus said something like, “Hey, worship God like your life depended on it, and maybe I’ll do it.” He never demanded worship to heal. He often asked for a display of thanksgiving AFTER the healing, but not before. If He asked for anything, it was a confession of FAITH.

I’ve heard it preached that God led Abraham to the Promised Land because he “worshipped” God by being willing to offer his son as a sacrifice. Nonsense. His attitude wasn’t joyful or thankful. It was depicted as somber and resigned. That was a story about OBEDIENCE and FAITH that God would somehow work it out, regardless of what it looked like. The same message referenced marching around the walls and “shouting” at Jericho, as though that “worship” brought down the city. But the army of Israel wasn’t “shouting” in worship the way the phrase is understood in modern churches. They were letting out a war cry in OBEDIENCE and FAITH in what God had promised.

It’s been a very frustrating few years for me now, and it’s been compounded by these “Pentecostalisms.” Let’s just worship, shall we? God is still God, and worthy of praise and worship regardless. Let’s not make it into something that obligates God to do anything for us. And it’s OK if I can’t run laps or stand on my head anymore, isn’t it?

I can’t find a book called “Thriving Forward” by Diane Langberg, but she has several with intriguing titles that make this quote seem legit.

Apple and Corporate Limits

It’s become clear over the past 20 years that we’re headed for the megacorp cyberpunk version of dystopia, where it’s more important who you work for than which country you live in. I think there ought to be many limits on corporations: market cap, employees, levels of horizontal or vertical scaling, etc. When a limit is tripped, they should be forced to divest into *competing* interests, not collusive.

You can say it’s great that Apple has become the single-source provider for OS, computer, tablet, phone, headphones, music, TV, storage, AND CREDIT CARD, and I use all of that, but it’s creepy and weird that we let companies have this much concentrated control over our lives. These areas should be broken up.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had more viable choices for operating systems and hardware platforms? Maybe the work involved in bringing a modern operating system or a new CPU to market precludes having more than 2 or 3 players. But there’s no inherent reason to have a credit card from a computing platform vendor. Any bank could offer a similarly great app for your phone. They just choose not to.

Holding to God’s Promises

James 5:14,15 – “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.”

I’m standing on this promise, and holding God to His Word about it.

Arguing with a Narcissist

Our HOA president has repeatedly harassed us about parking on the street in front of our own house. I need to summarize how we got here, because there’s a definite pattern.

First, she told me that I couldn’t park on the street because we lived in an HOA, as though that, in and of itself, precluded it. I told her my copy of the covenants said nothing about parking passenger cars on the street.

Second, she implied that I didn’t have the latest copy of the bylaws, but wouldn’t supply me with a copy that she deemed current. So I went to the recorders office and confirmed that my copy is, in fact, the latest legal instrument that applies to my lot.

Third, she told me that the city didn’t allow it. I called the police department, and they said, if there were no signs, there were no restrictions.

Fourth, she told me that the garbage collectors don’t like it. I called the city garage, and they said they didn’t care.

Fifth, she said that emergency vehicles can’t get through if there are cars parked on the street, and says the fire department “reviewed” her rule. I called the fire marshal, and he confirmed that fire trucks were no bigger than school busses, which go through the neighborhood with cars parked on the street, every school day. He also said that if the streets were too narrow for emergency vehicles, the city would ban parking on one side or the other.

Now she claims that, as the president of the association, she has the authority to unilaterally make up rules, under a general safety clause in the by-laws, and that the association’s attorney said this was legal. She hasn’t faithfully represented the positions of any other cited sources, so she’ll have to forgive me if I cannot trust what she says any more. Given the history on this topic thus far, I believe she is either misconstruing what he said, or distorting what he said for effect in the process of relaying it to me.

So I called my attorney. He feels — and I wholeheartedly agree — that any change to the covenants would need to follow the change procedure outlined in the covenants themselves, especially changes to rules that are already covered.

I was ready to dive into all of this when I finally realized…

Arguing with a narcissist is like wrestling with a pig in the mud. You just get tired, and the pig loves it.