Category: Rants

Why Me and Adam Ragusea Can’t Be Friends Anymore

“How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?”
– Roger Waters

Meatless chili is an abomination. There. I said it. I’m not sorry!

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It’s been unseasonably cold this spring. Greta says it’s because of Global Warming, but I think the Cetacean Nation is at it again. As everybody knows, a good bowl of chili is proof against dolphin-based climate hexes, so we gathered together the following components:

Floor Beef
Rotel tomatoes and green chilies
Spicy V8
Can O’ Beans (chili, kidney, and pinto)
Six Demon Bag (also known as William’s Original Chili Seasoning)

I was feeling saucy, so I chucked in some beef paste purported to be better than a bullion. The result was a potent concoction that was fit for both bowl and dog alike.

As I waited for it to reach peak flavor, I scrolled through the YerbaTube and landed on this…

Adam starts off strong, showing off his vegetable wins-without-a-knife kung fu, then breaks out the ox tail. At this point, I’m starting to get intrigued, but then he brushes it aside and utters maybe the most blasphemous thing I’ve ever heard, “Who needs more beef in their diet!”

I do, Adam. I do!

Meatless chili isn’t chili! It’s beans in spicy tomato sauce. You know what we call that, Adam? Beans in spicy, fucken, tomato sauce!

You can make meat chili without beans, but not bean chili without meat. Then it’s just…beans…as in, “boring as beans.”

Have you ever heard anyone say “Boring as chili meat”?

No, you haven’t. Checkmate, Vegemites!

The bassist of Waters knew that you couldn’t have any pudding if you didn’t eat your meat, and so did the Chili Queens of antiquity (probably…cetacean needed). Not even a Ragusea can stand up to that cast iron-clad logic!

Don’t get me wrong—I like beans as much as the next person, but that doesn’t mean they can evolve like pokemens into a final, meatless chili form. That’s not how it works. If you’re a beans, the rules is different.

Contemplate this on the tree of woe.

Priorities

“The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out alive.”
– Robert Heinlein

“My life’s greatest aspiration isn’t to live heroically; but rather not to die in an embarrassing way.”
– Joe Jim

Although I grew up poor, I’d say I had a pretty good education…of the many things I was taught, the ones that spring to mind amidst the recent tragedies are these:

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words can never hurt me.
Don’t play in the streets.
Look both ways before crossing the road.
The world owes you nothing.
Don’t show your dogs unless they’re barking.
Life isn’t fair.

Because of this, the chances of me getting hit by a car while attempting to block traffic on a busy highway are slim to none. It would also be virtually impossible for me to get pulled under the dolly axle of a double-trailer semi truck because I know better than to attempt to board a 40-ton moving vehicle while it’s in motion, and I can’t imagine a world where I’d be shot while illegally detaining someone at gunpoint during an unlawful gathering in the middle of the goddamn street.

This is because I have priorities. I have people that depend on me to stay alive, earn a living, keep a roof over our heads, and put food on the table.

“…We say, ‘hey now, this is America’
We got some time to kill, and we need a thrill
So we die doing the dumbest of shit…”
– Father John Misty

Perhaps if these fools had some sense of self-preservation, or failing that, some notion of their own mortality, they wouldn’t have died doing the dumbest of shit…

When A Stranger Emails

You Down With OPE?

“Confronting an irresponsible person is not painful to him; only consequences are.” – Henry Cloud

I’ve had my current primary personal email address for almost two decades. Over the last few months, I’ve received email notifications for services I did not sign up for. After further investigation, I determined that some asshole 7,000 miles away couldn’t be bothered to create their own email address and decided to use mine instead. In other words, they’re down with OPE (Other People’s Email [addresses]).

Leo says this happens for three primary reasons:

Typos: They simply entered the wrong address.
Avoidance: They don’t have an email address but are compelled to provide one to receive services, so they make one up (that happens to be mine).
Mischief: Someone intentionally uses an email address that doesn’t belong to them. I don’t think this applies to most people (and neither does Leo), so I’ll modify this to “Malicious,” which also includes attempted identity theft.

So what can I do about it?

The “Good” Approach

This is where you assume that the person using your email address made a mistake, and you attempt to get it corrected with the person and/or service provider.

In one case, some idiot signed up for a cardiology clinic’s Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system. They gave out my email address, so I received confirmation emails for their appointments. With this, I could have reset their password, gained access to their account, compromised their electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI), and so forth.

I contacted the clinic directly, notified them of the breach, and demanded they remove my email address from the account. They didn’t, and I continued to receive emails containing ePHI intended for this other person. I emailed them a second time and again and continued to get this person’s emails.

Finally, I filed a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services as this constituted a HIPAA violation. Then and only then did they fix this…

In another case, some oxygen thief signed up for a gym membership 7,000 miles away using my email address. I received an invoice with their name, birthday, phone number, and membership #.

Again, I attempted to contact the service provider, and again, they made no indication to me that they were the least bit interested in resolving this issue. In this case, since I had this brain donor’s phone number, I decided to reach out to them directly…

It was an international number, so I installed WhatsApp since that’s how most people in that part of the world communicate. So, I downloaded WhatsApp on my mobile phone, created a new account using a throw-away Google Voice #, then got to messaging. I started by sending him his birthday, membership #, invoice #, etc.

He replied, “Yes,” Followed by, “Tell me.”

I came back with, “No, not tell me. YOU tell [redacted] Fitness Club that you signed up for services with someone else’s email address and need to change it.”

He denied this at first, so I asked him, “How else would I have gotten your information?”

“Do you suppose it’s possible that you entered the wrong email address when you signed up, so your details went to a stranger? (Ask me how I know).”

Of course, this dazzling young urbanite asked me, “How?”

At this point (whether it was out of pity or frustration, I can’t say), I explained the concept of rhetorical questions. It was only then that he finally conceded that he’d given them the wrong email address.

“BINGO!” I exclaimed.

As he began to explain how his email had a number in it, I quietly muted the conversation, then went on to delete the WhatsApp account before this Gloopy Nazz could give me more of his personal information…

The “Neutral” Approach

You could ignore, block or delete the message. This does absolutely nothing to resolve the issue. The service provider will continue to send you someone else’s messages, and the intended recipient will be none-the-wiser.

The “Effective” Approach

When you use someone else’s email address to book a reservation, that person will receive a confirmation email. That email will include your itinerary number, which, when combined with an email address, is a costly amount of information:

Conclusions?

It’s a terrible idea to use someone else’s email address to sign up for goods and services. If you do, there’s a good chance your personal information will be disclosed to a stranger on the internet. The consequences could be as simple as getting harassed on WhatsApp to as severe as a $400 cancellation fee…or worse.

Octopus and the Farce Böök

“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.” – Someone I disagree with on the internet

I’d like to preface this by stating that I don’t do the social medias. It’s not that I disapprove of them for you, your organization, club or even Big Jim; do what you want, it’s a free country (or at least it used to be)…

Farceböök, Twit, Instant Grams, Oh Snap Chatter…hell, even Taxed Massages; I have no use for any of these – it’s not that I’m a luddite, far from it, but that they simply serve no discernable purpose in my life.

If I want to write someone a letter, I use email. I’ve had an email address for about 30 years now, and while names and providers have changed, it remains a perfectly viable way for me to keep in touch with people I care to.

In the late 90s, ICQ came along, and I used that to send “instant messages” to other people. This wasn’t a new idea, I’d been active on BBS chat rooms and IRC prior, but this was different in that it focused on one-to-one conversations. Like my email address, this has given way to other internet messaging services but the core principle remains the same; a non-verbal means to communicate in real time.

Before any of that, if I wanted to talk to someone remotely, I used the PHONE. My first phones had dials, those gave way to buttons, lost their cords and eventually went ‘mobile’. Coverage got better, devices and service became affordable and all sorts of ancillary nonsense became the norm. Nevertheless, the primary reason I have a phone (even a mobile one) is to make and receive phone calls.

As an avid gamer, I could see the advantages of voice communications in team-based games, and embraced Ventrilo, and later Discord, but again – this has a purpose.

#FuckYouMyCrook (Bonus points to anyone old enough to get that reference).

~~~

OMFG This congee is Amazballz! Fuq yu if you don’t like it!

As far as I can tell, social media is largely a means to:

- Share pictures of what you had for breakfast
- Get into arguments with strangers on the internet, and/or…
- Get into arguments with strangers about the picture of what you had for breakfast, over the internet…

#ProveMeWrong

Since I have no interest in any of those things, it’s never really bothered me that I don’t have them – or at least I didn’t…until now… 🙁

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I’d been thinking about getting into VR but have been waiting for the technology to mature and some standards to emerge and codify. While I’m grateful to early adopters for spending obscene amounts of money on things so I can get a better, faster, cheaper model later, I’m not about to throw in and join them.

Sure enough, the prices had come down substantially, and a very good mid-range VR rig can be had in the way of the Octopus Quest 2 for about $300 USD (or if you want to spend an extra $100, you can upgrade from 64GB to 256GB of onboard storage).

Unlike other VR products, you don’t need a fancy gaming rig to hook it up to, you just put on the headset and grab the controllers and you’re good to go. That said, if you happen to have a fancy gaming rig, you can connect it to your PC using a USB-C cable*.

*Octopus sells a “link cable” for $78 – which is an overpriced USB-C cable. You can buy a high-quality 16.4′ Active USB cable for about $25 here, which is what I did (two in fact, one for power and one for the PC).

So what’s all this got to do with Böökenzifäce (i.e. sitzen affen scheiße schleudern)? Octopus VR, LLC was bought by Foshizzlebizzle in 2014, and until 5 months ago, you could have a standalone Octopus account without having to register a separate Bark Fart account. In October 2020, that stance was reversed, and not only did they require that all users would need to have a Bjork Fork account to use the device, but that it had to be a REAL account (i.e. no fake names or aliases). Those who tried to skirt this requirement ended up with their accounts banned, lost access to all of their software/data and bricked their device…

So what choice did I have?

Send the device back
Following the rules, but as petulantly as humanly possible

I opted for the second. Yes I made a goddamn Face Fuck account. Yes, I used my real information. After that, I locked it the fuck down. I turned on every privacy setting I could find. You can’t find me there, and if you did, there’s nothing to see and never will be.

###

Someday I’ll trade up for one of their competitors but until then, I’ll make due with what I’ve got and chalk it up to another lesson learned.

The Mysterious Holosun HE530GC-RD

Introduction

A little over 3 weeks ago, I ordered a Holosun HS515GM red dot for the Black Adder. Unfortunately, the item never shipped because the vendor listed it as available by mistake. I received a refund but could not find another seller who had one in stock…

Posit

On whim, I went to MidwayUSA’s website to see what they might have available, and came across the HE530GC-RD, discounted down from $500 to $375 (25% off) with free shipping!

It was interesting, but I could not find ANY reference to this specific model on Holosun’s website or YouTube! Google searches only pointed back to MidwayUSA’s ad, so the question was, “What even is…?”

Consequence

Looking at Holosun’s website, there is no listing for this specific model, but there are listings for a HE530G-RD and HE530C-RD…

Both of these are Holosun’s ‘Elite’ models, which offer premium features like a titanium housing, shake awake, amazing battery life, a nice QD mount, kill flash, clear lens covers etc. The only difference between the two is that the HE530C has a solar panel and the HE530G does not.

In the ad for the HE530GC-RD, you can clearly see a solar panel:

Another odd quirk was that the buttons were on the opposite side of where they’d normally appear on the HE530C’s:

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The item shipped quickly, and after a couple of days, I had it in-hand and could get a good look at it. There were a few discrepancies…

Note that the instead of battery tray, you have a twist-off battery chamber… The height of the mount was advertised as 1/3 lower co-witness but turned out to be absolute co-witness (i.e. shorter) and does not include any alternate mounts to raise or lower the height.

While the box and case it comes in both have a HE530GC-RD sticker slapped on them, the included manual is for an HE515GTC-RD/GR (the 20mm version)… What gives!!?

Result

After a couple hours of cyber sleuthing, I came across an old blog post (dated April 30, 2017) announcing Holosun’s new Titanium red dot sights. The author refers to these as the HS530G (battery only) and HS530C (battery/solar). Here’s a picture of the “HS530G”with a (you guessed it!) prominent battery chamber:

While the post doesn’t include a picture of the “HS530C”, we can infer that if it did, it would probably feature the same battery chamber, but I wanted to validate that so the search continued…

Using the HS prefix instead, I came across the following German eBay ad featuring none other than the elusive HS530C:

Conclusion

The HE530CG-RD is actually a rebadged HS530C (sometimes referred to as the HS530C Elite) that debuted in Spring of 2017. At some point, the HS530 series red dots were upgraded to include a battery tray and rebranded with the ‘HE’ prefix.

Somewhere along the line, MidwayUSA must have purchased a palette of new old stock HS530C’s that were rebadged as “HE530GC-RD’s”. This would explain the heavily discounted price/limited availability.

As of the writing of this post, MidwayUSA has both the HE530C-RD ($500) and the HE530GC-RD ($375) for sale. As far as I can tell, on paper they are the same optic save for the battery tray (or lack there of).

Regrets, Complaints and Recriminations

Is the battery tray worth $125? Probably not… Tray or no tray, the thing may as well be made of unobtainium because it’s ridiculously stronger than it would ever need to be (especially for any use case I’m likely to explore).

The only legitimate gripe I have is that there was nothing to indicate how this differed from the HE530C or why it costs $125 more…

The Mounting

BEHOLD, a Great Red Dragon!!! Err… I mean Red Dot!

Here’s another shot from the side:

Some other upgrades include a red dot magnifier, weapon light, stubby foregrip, ambidextrous safety and extended charging handle. Someday I’ll fork out $1,500-2,000 for a quality AR, and when I do, I’ll have some nice glass for it. Until then, I’m happy with my purchase, even if it gives me the Coof…

Post-Modern Prognosticators: 27 Things I Learned From Watching Demolition Man

…I’m the enemy. Cause I like to think, I like to read. I’m into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I’m the kind if guy who wants to sit in a greasy spoon and think, “Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries?” I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter and buckets of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a non-smoking section. I wanna run through the streets naked with green Jello all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to. Okay, pal? I’ve seen the future, you know what it is? It’s a 47-year-old virgin sittin’ around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake singing, “I’m an Oscar-Meyer Wiener.”
– Edgar Friendly, 2032

In 1993, the cinematic masterpiece, “Demolition Man” made some predictions about what life might be like in the future. It didn’t occur to 27-years-younger me just how accurate those predictions would be… without further adieu, here’s 27 things I learned from watching Demolition Man:

If you’re short on toilet paper, just violate the verbal morality statute!
If you live in a socialist utopia, homeless people will steal all your food
Taco Bell will be the only restaurant to survive the Franchise Wars
John Spartan doesn’t know how to use the Three Sea Shells (I could see where that might be confusing)
Burning buildings are a good indicator that bad guys are nearby
Police are no longer equipped to handle this level of violence
Behind me is Simon Phoenix’s lair in what appears to be a mostly peaceful protest.
We shouldn’t ask where the meat comes from…
Rat burgers aren’t bad…
In fact, you should be out there hunting rats instead of begging for vegan meat-alternatives (you can thank me later)
Don’t face-time naked unless you’re sure you are calling the right number
Commercials will infiltrate every popular media. Today you can pay to opt out, tomorrow it will be compulsory, and you’ll learn to like it!
Social distancing stops the spread of STDs, the hunka-chunka and other recreational activities
Sandra Bullock enjoys VR sex (presumably with hot anime girls, but will make an exception for John Spartan)
In the future, all meetings will be video conference screens staring at other video conference screens
Wait a minute, this is the future, where are all the phaser guns?
Cars drive themselves (into walls, people and oncoming traffic)
You are an incredibly sensitive man, who inspires joy-joy feelings in all those around you
In the future, there is no more sarcasm
Accusing the savior of your city of being in league with a multi-murder-death-killer is rude
Sewers smell like biscuits ‘n gravy
To catch a multiple murder-death-killer, you just wait around for him to kill another person so you’ll know exactly where to pounce!
John Spartan likes the Chief’s plan
Cocteau reminds Wesley Snipes of an Evil Mr. Rogers
Sylvester Stallone is neither a blow-up-the-bad-guy-with-a-happy-grin-he-man type nor a moody-troubled-past-gunslinger-who-only-draws-when-he-must type
I forgot to say, “Simon Says!”
When you come out of cryo-prison, the first thing you’ll want to do is knit
You can’t take away people’s right to be assholes!

…A Few More Words…

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a year since the anniversary of when it all went down.

There have been a lot of new and exciting changes in my life, things I’ve working for and toward for many years are starting to come to fruition. Success is something to be proud of, to enjoy, to look forward to. This seems (to me) to be the natural order of things but that just isn’t true for everyone.

Some people fear success – are terrified of it in fact. They don’t believe they deserve it, they don’t think they can hold on to it – it makes them feel vulnerable; the more you have the more that can be taken away.

When he first told me about how he burned his school laptop in a bonfire, I assumed this was a triumphant middle finger to the establishment he’d grown disillusioned with. I never recognized it for what it really was – an offering to Damocles, and a cry for help…

“Take a puppy, abuse him, kick him, mistreat him – he’ll revert to feral carnivore. That his litter brother, pet him, talk to him, let him sleep with you, but train him – he’s a happy, well-behaved house pet.

Take another from the same litter, pet him on even days, kick him on odd days. You’ll have him so confused that he’ll be ruined for either role; he can’t survive as a wild animal and he doesn’t understand what is expected of a pet. Pretty soon he won’t eat, he won’t sleep, he can’t control his functions; he just cowers and shivers.”

– Robert Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy

I began writing this post over a year ago. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what happened to the friend I’d lost track of – all I knew was that he was in a bad place, and there was nothing more I could do to help him. I felt angry, bitter and betrayed. In fairness, he wasn’t the first person to make a fuck out of me… and probably won’t be the last – good-natured people are often taken advantage of.

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In time, that anger gave way to reason. I reminded myself that mistakes are how we learn… or don’t. In any case, they give you pause for thought. It’s not my place to dictate to anyone what they should or shouldn’t do with their life. Everyone has the right to go to hell in their own way. All one can do, all anyone can do, is the best they can.

“…Mate, go do what you gotta do.”
– Sassy the Sasquatch

I Remember

I remember when…

I learned that life wasn’t fair
I lived a rich life, in my own mind
Anything was possible (and nothing was possible)
My days were filled with adventure
My nights were filled with dreams of what might be
I had nothing, and neither realized it nor cared

I remember. I remember when…

I lived in a country without freedom of speech, religion or expression
I was asked if I spoke English
I was picked on for being the ‘American’ kid when I lived abroad
I was picked on for being the ‘Foreign’ kid when I came back to the US
I believed in God (and other fairy tales)
There was magic in the world

I remember! I remember when…

I stopped believing in God
Phones weren’t mobile
Pictures you took had to be developed before you could see them
I thumbed through ads for computers I lusted after (but couldn’t afford)
I dreamed of making video games for a living
I had heroes, and longed to be accepted by them

I remember! I remember when…

I swam in a cold river with Ducky
I rehearsed Shakespeare with my friend at midnight in the park
I was young, beautiful, and accepted (by an outcast rabble in the square)
I was hassled by the police for looking like a troublemaker
I got serious about my music
I did hard labor for a pittance, and dreamed of using my mind for a living

I still remember. I remember when…

I stopped believing in heroes
People were expected to have manners
All we had to protest was McDonalds Hot Mustard being discontinued
Racism wasn’t fashionable (or profitable)
Only villains demanded that people kneel
All lives mattered

I remember.

A Word About Dealing with a Crazy Person…

Don’t.

The Nature of the Scorpion

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
– Ernest Hemingway

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

There’s an old fable that tells of scorpion that begs a frog for a ride across the river. The frog replies, “if I give you a ride on my back, you’ll sting me!”

The scorpion assures him, “if I sting you, we’ll both drown!”

The frog accepts this as logical, and agrees to take him across the river on his back. About half way there, the frog feels a sharp pain, his legs go numb – they begin to sink.

“Why did you do it?” asked the frog, “Now we’ll both die!”

“I couldn’t help it,” replied the scorpion, “it’s in my nature!”

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In other variations, the frog is replaced with a fox. Perhaps this was to illustrate that even a creature as clever and resourceful as a fox is not immune to the cruel indifference of nature.

A modern retelling has the fox place the scorpion on the end of his snout where he can keep an eye on him, flinging him off at the moment he raises his stinger. Interesting, but I think it misses the point (pun intended); The fox learns no lesson and instead, confirms only what he already knew to be true.

The last variation of the story replaces the scorpion’s fellow traveler with a tortoise. According Bidpai (as retold by Maude Barrows Dutton):

Halfway across he was startled by a strange rapping on his back, which made him ask the scorpion what he was doing.

“Doing?” answered the scorpion. “I am whetting my sting to see if it is possible to pierce your hard shell.”

“Ungrateful friend,” responded the tortoise, “it is well that I have it in my power both to save myself and to punish you as you deserve.” And straightway he sank his back below the surface and shook off the scorpion into the water.

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The scorpion pretends to understand logic and can parrot reasoned arguments, but he is and will always be a slave to his nature. Is there any point to being upset at a scorpion for being a scorpion?

The lesson here (if there is one) is this: You can only trust a scorpion to be himself. And if you are going to try help him, you’d better have thick skin.