Like Grains Of Sand…..

A story in The Los Angeles Times reported today that scientists have created a Hyper-acurate atomic clock that won’t lose a second in 15 billion years.

In a related story, I lost 4.5 minutes that I’ll never get back reading that article.

N.B., The ownership of any and all photos, opinions, and / or quotes above (including those of my own) belong to the material’s creator(s). Credit is given when it’s known, but as we’ve found, success will have a million parents and failure will be an orphan.
Feel free to ignore any ads that are shown below this advisory, I don’t get to choose them and even more sadly, I don’t make a penny off any of them, so in the holy name of capitalism I rebuke and don’t endorse or support any of them, unless of course they’re made of funny stuff…..
P.S., check back for occasional updates and rewrites….
FAIR USE NOTICE: THIS SITE CONTAINS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL THE USE OF WHICH HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED BY THE COPYRIGHT OWNER. I AM MAKING SUCH MATERIAL AVAILABLE IN MY EFFORT TO ADVANCE UNDERSTANDING OF ENVIRONMENTAL, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, ECONOMIC, DEMOCRACY, SCIENTIFIC, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, ETC. I BELIEVE THIS CONSTITUTES A ‘FAIR USE’ OF ANY SUCH COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AS PROVIDED FOR IN SECTION 107 OF THE US COPYRIGHT LAW. IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THE MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO: HTTP://WWW.LAW.CORNELL.EDU/USCODE/17/107.SHTML.  IF YOU WISH TO USE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL FROM THIS SITE FOR PURPOSES OF YOUR OWN THAT GO BEYOND ‘FAIR USE’, YOU MUST OBTAIN PERMISSION FROM THE COPYRIGHT OWNER.

See The U.S.A. From Inside Your Chevrolet…

There was an ad in today’s Los Angeles Times for Chevrolet’s annual “Chevy Presidents Day” sale, and it got me thinking that as I’m getting older and the motion picture industry I work in continues to export an exponentially increasing numbers of jobs to other states or countries based on their tax incentives, next year I might find myself celebrating “Chevy Residents Day”.

Why yes, I do want one of those mobile homes!

This is because I might be living in my Outlander van.

N.B., The ownership of any and all photos, opinions, and / or quotes above (including those of my own) belong to the material’s creator(s). Credit is given when it’s known, but as we’ve found, success will have a million parents and failure will be an orphan.
Feel free to ignore any ads that are shown below this advisory, I don’t get to choose them and even more sadly, I don’t make a penny off any of them, so in the holy name of capitalism I rebuke and don’t endorse or support any of them, unless of course they’re made of funny stuff…..
P.S., check back for occasional updates and rewrites….
FAIR USE NOTICE: THIS SITE CONTAINS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL THE USE OF WHICH HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED BY THE COPYRIGHT OWNER. I AM MAKING SUCH MATERIAL AVAILABLE IN MY EFFORT TO ADVANCE UNDERSTANDING OF ENVIRONMENTAL, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, ECONOMIC, DEMOCRACY, SCIENTIFIC, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, ETC. I BELIEVE THIS CONSTITUTES A ‘FAIR USE’ OF ANY SUCH COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AS PROVIDED FOR IN SECTION 107 OF THE US COPYRIGHT LAW. IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THE MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO: HTTP://WWW.LAW.CORNELL.EDU/USCODE/17/107.SHTML.  IF YOU WISH TO USE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL FROM THIS SITE FOR PURPOSES OF YOUR OWN THAT GO BEYOND ‘FAIR USE’, YOU MUST OBTAIN PERMISSION FROM THE COPYRIGHT OWNER.

Facebook Plays The Microsoft Card

If you’ve been following my usually sort of pointless screed here on the always friendly and charming BoskoLives, I’ve often made mention that I’m not now and never * in the future will be a “Facebooker”. Up until the past week that statement wasn’t more than me up on old Rocinante tilting at the windy bastards that are busy taking up far too much oxygen and earth time updating their walls and telling the world about how happy they are that they were able to get in on the I.P.O.

*Never, as it turns out is a long long time, and necessity is certainly a mother, so I’m finally going to be a facebooger, but only long enough to get my kickstarter campaign (see insert near the bottom) going to fund my sitcom pilot, more about that soon in a newer post.

Hey! Who let that chick in here?

Earlier today I tried to post a comment to a political article on a news web site, but it said that I had to first sign in to comment. So far, no big deal as that’s sort of the name of the game when you choose to respond with a comment. But wait a minute…..  In order to sign in, it now says that I have to do it using my Facebook account. Uh oh. And perhaps list my phone number, double uh oh…..

Your Papers Are In Order, Yes?

Here’s a quick test here to see if you were paying attention while reading the first paragraph. Would you for any reason expect me to give up what’s left of my privacy so I would be able to share the size and color photos of my bowel movements with my “Friends”, most if not all of whom I’ve never met, who have indicated that for reasons unknown they “Like” me?

Like us or lick us

When logging in on various web sites in the past I was usually given the choice of either logging in as a guest, or by using my Google account, my LinkedIn (more about that soon) account, or a from a few other choices. Today I found that I must “sign in using my Facebook account”, which to them is the only way with no choice “B” provided. This is similar to the way Microsoft coerced people into using Windows by making it the de-facto choice you had to go with for web building, viewing, and such in the early ‘net days. Some day I’ll ramble on about how many times Windows 3.0 left me high and dry (and file-less) with continuous promises of how the next iteration of their bloated virus magnet “Vaporware” was going to fix everything on my computer and in my life.

My way or the highway, v3.1

Shades of Air Force Baseball! For those new to that game, A.F.B. was a game I learned while I spent a few years protecting the Victor Valley area from the Vietnamese, or any of those other godless communists I’ve heard about since the embargo of Cuba started. The rules of the game were simple as explained to me by the lifers; “You play ball with us or we shove the bat up your ass”. I’m not liking much of choice B.

Ask for Louisville Lube, it works even where the sun doesn’t shine

I’m waiting for Facebook to start using a code name for those special users who voluntarily stick their heads into the bars while they fatten up on the number of their newest “likes” , until they are marketed to advertisers.

By the way, our screen name is “Veal”.

N.B., The ownership of any and all photos, opinions, and/ or quotes above (including those of mine) belong to the material’s creator(s). Credit is given when it’s known, but because success usually has a million parents and failure is an orphan, blame will not be so attributed. 

Feel free to ignore any ads that are shown below, I don’t choose them and (sadly) I don’t make a penny off any of them.

P.S., check back for occasional updates and rewrites….

FAIR USE NOTICE: THIS SITE CONTAINS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL THE USE OF WHICH HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED BY THE COPYRIGHT OWNER. I AM MAKING SUCH MATERIAL AVAILABLE IN MY EFFORT TO ADVANCE UNDERSTANDING OF ENVIRONMENTAL, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, ECONOMIC, DEMOCRACY, SCIENTIFIC, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, ETC. I BELIEVE THIS CONSTITUTES A ‘FAIR USE’ OF ANY SUCH COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AS PROVIDED FOR IN SECTION 107 OF THE US COPYRIGHT LAW. IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THE MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO: HTTP://WWW.LAW.CORNELL.EDU/USCODE/17/107.SHTML.  IF YOU WISH TO USE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL FROM THIS SITE FOR PURPOSES OF YOUR OWN THAT GO BEYOND ‘FAIR USE’, YOU MUST OBTAIN PERMISSION FROM THE COPYRIGHT OWNER.  

 

A sign of the times, in the L.A. Times

My power of observation, much like many of my previously super powers, seems to be fading.

After my post yesterday on how those ads for the “Black Thursday night / Friday morning” sales had bloated the Los Angeles Times daily edition past the usual bulk of their Sunday paper, I had another look at this paper that I grew up with (o.k., more or less grown up with), and I found that the paper itself is on the way to being history. The issue in question now has far fewer columns, and is about 1/2 to 2/3rds the width across than how I remember it was. I suppose that this might help save a tree somewhere, but it really comes down to, like most things in life, the basic “follow the money” paradigm with savings on the purchase of paper stock, ink, and distribution costs on a daily basis factoring in there. I do look at this paper and the New York Times on line each day, but there’s something about holding a real newspaper in my hands that I’m going to miss when they’re gone.

Under close scrutiny of  todays paper, with the exception of a cars for sale section, I find that there is no ordinary sort of classified section included. Exactly when did this omission start, and why didn’t I get a notice from them about it? This rivals the day when the paper ceased publishing the scary and close to the bone specific daily horoscope by Sydney Omarr, but at least that had a reasonable explanation when I found that Sydney had ceased breathing. The replacement they found is, in a word, worthless, full of nothing but generic crap that anyone can find a way twist to make it seem like it’s relevant to something in their own life.

A list of the obvious suspects (besides the economy, stupid) for this demise of the “want-ads” section would likely be topped by “Craigslist“, an online site where ads from most of the world for anything you can imagine are carried (for the most part for free), with postings that can be started, changed, and stopped in about a heartbeat by the lister. Also, these ads are searchable by a variety of ways that their newspaper equivalents could never do except for area, and you can choose parameters like a maximum or minimum price range to search, if they have included photos, and much more using keywords and search methods.

Not to jinx things, but at least the L.A. Times still has a crossword puzzle, which is my constant for measuring my remaining cognitive ability. The Monday edition is usually solved in about 5 minutes, until each days progressive rise in difficulty terminates on Saturday when it might take me up to a half hour to figure out those obscure hints. There may have been a few days that I wasn’t able to finish the puzzle, but that’s a subject for another posting. Again, the crosswords serve as a constant to monitor my slide towards “Old-Timers” disease, and after all, this blog’s all about me.

In Fear of Charly’s return……

If either the book with the title “Flowers for Algernon”, or the film known as”Charly” that was based on that book, a movie that starred Cliff Robertson, happen to ring a bell, perhaps you’ll understand why I have an issue.

Full disclosure; I’ve been doing crossword puzzles on a daily basis for years, and not far from the beginning I became aware that both the Los  Angeles Times and the New York Times puzzles start out easy on Monday and get progressively more difficult until you reach the Saturday edition, which by most peoples standards is a bitch killer. To quantify things, the Monday puzzle used to take me about 7 to 10 minutes, and by Saturday those times were more like 20 to 30 minutes, and on occasion I’ve even burned off an hour on one. Or maybe two with the NYT edition.

Several months ago I started taking an over_the_counter dietary supplement I found at Costco that, since I don’t get a penny for saying the name of it (nor even a discount), will go nameless here. Except, I will say that a photographic term will figure in there if you dig a bit.

A few weeks into taking 3 or 4 of those capsules a day, I noticed that my elapsed time to solve a puzzle seemed to be dropping, and after a few more weeks I found that I was finishing in less than half of my previous time. I no longer suffered from TOTT syndrome (this is my name for Tip Of The Tongue, that failure to be able come up with a word I know that I know, and I’m trying to think of). Words that I want to remember now will float to the surface like that triangle sort of thing that was in the middle of those old black magic 8 Ball party fortune tellers with a window on the bottom, the part that told you “yes, no, maybe, or ask again later” when you inverted the ball. I’m also speaking faster and hitting my marks on jokes that I tell, both are things I consider to be good. I’m not saying that I’m a Robin Williams, but hey, even Robin Williams isn’t exactly a Robin Williams any more.

Still with me? A quantum jump in my synapse firing speeds barely describes it, everything is clearer, sharper, and I feel like I’m really, really functioning. In effect, I’m pushing my personal throttle forward to what we called  the “Military” position when I was in the Air Force, a setting that went beyond 100% and was not supposed to be used except when shooting at the Vietnamese farmer’s water buffalos or doing evasive maneuvers to dodge enemy missiles and such.

And now for the catch. Many years ago when I indulged in experimentation in what I’d like to call psycho-active products, it was always with the idea that I could quit at any time. Which I did…. Eventually…. Several times. So, what has me worried is that if I were to quit being a user of, ah, let’s call it FF, I might go through what happened to Charly, a return to a slower state of being at a time when my brain functioning at full speed is necessary for me to just keep in place, much less pull ahead. I was never the retard (the film’s unfortunate and not very PC choice of a descriptive word) that Mr. Robertson played, other perhaps than in the opinion of my 2nd ex-wife, so a drop like this would be scary but not fatal. I just don’t want it to happen, so I seem to have a new life long addiction to deal with.

I guess the high (no pun intended) point of all this is that it’s not any kind of a  legal issue this time. After all, these days I’m buying my “meds on my American Express Card, not sniffing stuff off of it. Wish me well…..

P.S.

Yet another disclosure: I’ve worked with Cliff Robertson (one day on an ATT commercial) and Robin Williams (2 seasons on Mork & Mindy and a special on the Universal Studios lot for Spielberg to make a video birthday card for George Lucas) in the past, both guys were (and I have to presume still are) very nice, warm, and intelligent people.