So many computers

When I was younger, unlike the opportunities of today's youth, I had never seen a computer except the phony ones in the movies. It was not until I was in the Navy and worked in a radio shack that I actually saw a real computer.

It is not to say that I didn't understand the concept -- I had already designed robots that could actually work in every way except for the brain and all the things that depend on brains, like eyes and ears and controling something so complex. As a child I drew all kinds of designs, in very fine detail, and in every way completely wrong.

When I did have the chance to learn about real computers, real robots and all the real problems that had never yet been solved, I dove in head first -- convinced that I could somehow solve those kinds of problems -- again, completely wrong.

I now have an infinite number of computers. Not in my house, of course, nor in my work, or even on the Earth, but in the virtual world. Every atom in the universe is a kind of little computer -- which reacts to the other atoms around it in some way that makes each atom unique. Such a large number of computers is useless, however, since there is no way I can program them all.

Even in my house, if I tried to count them all, I have literally dozens of computers. Some are like this one that I am typing on -- an old Dell that runs Linux but is attached via Ethernet to my Alienware machine that also runs Linux, and Windows7, and XP and several other Linux virtual machines. Why do I use this old Dell when I have so many others? Because it's the window I started typing in and it doesn't make any difference which one -- I can only type this fast.

But upstairs I have another laptop, and in my work backpack, another laptop, and my wife has another laptop, and my daughter has one, and her daughter has one -- all in this house. But beyond those there are even more. There are at least 3 working Android phones, several Blackberries, several LGs and even more that I'm not sure what brand they are. They are useless to anyone except for the grandkids to pretend they are using real phones and real computers, and in a way they really are. The batteries mostly still work, they can still take pictures and display things on their otherwise useless screens.

And, to connect all those things, I have an Internet connection via a cable modem, with 2 wireless routers hanging off it, an Internet phone hanging off of it, and yet more Ethernet routers hanging off that. All of those have little computers inside that are running some little form of Unix-like operating system.

Then there are the TVs, the MP3 players, the children's toys, the Wiis, Xboxes and other video games I'm not even sure what they are called.

Now, in order to use all this stuff, it has to all be connected properly, updated properly, supplied with electricity and batteries and wires and other gadgetry that makes my head spin, and my wallet sting.

So, I guess in the future some person will remember back to this time -- when computers were actually called computers, weren't just omnipresent patches of cloth in everything that is worn. When computers had to be told what to do by specialists like me who had to memorize vast numbers of infinitely petty languages written in arcane mathematical mazes by people who didn't realize what the future would really become.

In that future, not to far from now, it may even be that people forget how computers work, and that only computers will know, and only computers will know how to keep people alive -- because it is just to damn complicated for humans to do it anymore. Either that or there will be some kind of Skynet-like apocalypse that destroys our world in the singularity of cyber-consciousness.

Whatever, I have to write some code now.

Working like a fool

My job has indeed been taking my time, but that's what jobs do and why they have to pay you money to do them. The ironic things is, though, that I do the same things for money that I would do for free, except for the driving to some building where there are lots of phones, people and other distractions.

Still, I need to have people around for the most part, or go crazy. And if I stay at the house my daughter will have me changing diapers and other babysitting duties. I don't mind it too much, but the diaper part is getting a bit tiresome. So working at the office suits me OK.

My aunt just bought a new laptop to replace a dying old dinosaur of an XP system. She must learn Windows 7 and all that, but she is a smart old bird and shouldn't have that much problem. I think it is better for her anyway -- easier to keep safe from the viruses than the older systems, and it will make her use her brain, which is good for your brain.

Soon, though, I will need to give her a list of stuff that she should use instead of buying lots of junk or downloading a million things she doesn't need. In today's world it is really a lot cheaper to own computers and get software. This is fine for everybody except the people that make money selling that stuff -- like me.

New Job

I have a new job, which is wonderful when you know how long it took to get it. I have had temporary work in between, and I still write my Android Apps for a penny or two of remittance. But those things could not be depended on for money to pay the mortgage or even eat decently.

But I kept pounding the keys and eventually something came through.I may be old but I can still be useful.

Reasons For Inaction

There really are no reasons to be dead beyond being physically deceased. But many times I view the world, thinking about what I might have to say about it, unable to really think of anything worthwhile. And other times I am filed with anxiety to blabber whatever nonsense my frenzied mind can generate. 

The extinction of the planet is always an interesting topic, if not realistic as a coffee table magazine. If I just rattle of a few examples of what might extinct our species, or even just our civilization, it just sounds like desperate paranoid ramblings. Short of the Sun exploding, there is probably nothing that could just suddenly extinct our planet of all life. Perhaps all higher forms of complex organisms could be blown away by some kind of distant star going supernovae and a concentrated gamma beam irradiating us by accident. That is unlikely.

Certainly, when all factors are considered as having equal probability, then the Chicken Little type of scenario is very easy to propagate. Yet, our own actions as individuals has more effect on our survival and for the common survival of mankind. If everyone thought and acted that same, it would be very easy to either over-populate the planet or under-populate our species, either of which would be possible to impact us negatively. Yet there are so many pluses and minuses in the patchwork of humanity that there is only a slight advantage of births over deaths over the long, long term. 

Things like that are not exactly changed by individual action. I cannot simply refuse to have children and effect the graph very much whatsoever. I could also immediately commit suicide, which would also barely register above the background noise, if at all. It takes a large group, such as China deciding to limit births to 1 per household. That had unintended consequences, although it was obvious that such a culture where the male inherits all important aspects of the family, that females would be scrapped in one way or another.

Yet, even of each person in China was to disappear from the planet, which is unlikely any time soon, there would still be a very large population of humans, with a very large effect on the biosphere. And other animals, insects, plants and even other humans would quickly fill in the habitat opened up by such a huge displacement. It would not be long until all traces that China existed might disappear, yet the overall meter of life would be very little effected.

I am not happy with the destruction we do to this place. It is not simply the pollution and destruction of jungles and so forth, it is the stripping of the land of all usefulness, leaving our descendants with sludge pits filled with toxic materials. We will soon have either burned or spilled all available petroleum and other fossil fuels, although there is probably enough coal underfoot that given a strong enough disregard for surface life, we could get to that and keep on burning it.

We are not plants, which are very restricted in motion and thereby more efficient stores of energy. Humans and other animals cause net depletion of  energy, since we must move all the time to stay alive. Breathing, swimming, running and just having a heart beat -- all take energy and produce none. The balance in nature is either zero or close to zero overall. There are so many plants that invade areas we do not actively strip of life that they tend to erase history very quickly. In desert areas where plants are more rare, the more durable pieces left over from prior layers of civilizations might remain for a longer period.

Fish and other forms of ocean life tend to destory plants pretty quickly wherever they might grow, unless the plants are able to taste extremely bad, produce toxins in abundance or grow in areas where animals cannot, such is anoxic regions. Yet, no matter what, bacteria will grow. Algae will grow. There are many forms of such microbes that can survive in virtually any surface or ocean environment, and even in solid rock, so long as some moisture is trapped within.

Animals probably would never had evolved on the surface of the planet, leaving that completely to microbes and plants, except that there was such a struggle to survive amongst voracious carnivores underneath the waves. Plants could reproduce by action of the wind and rain. Insects would not be necessary in the earliest forms of plants. And since they needed no protection from insects or being eaten by herbivores, their surfaces need only to protect against microbial or weathering effects. 

Once animals reached the land, and once they could increasingly nibble and digest the plants, the plants had to develop means of surviving despite that, even to the point of giving in entirely to the fate of being eaten, and to simply use it as a means of locomotion, of spreading spores and seeds.

 Yet, still, after hundreds of millions of years, the plants mostly do nothing. The have no need for action.

The Voices In My Head

There are many kinds of pathos in the human world. Just to list them would be a boring, endless list of depressing descriptions. Even to think of them is probably harmful, like the Joke that Kills.

People are always thinking up new ways to do stupid things. I have a button on my browser(s) that causes a random webpage to be invoked. The vast majority of purely random links are family pictures with unreadable drivel written around them. The next popular things are similar to the Cat Pictures, although in some ways the Cat Pictures are less depressing than to find humans or their babies doing even dumber things.

When I think of any politician, no matter which point on which dimension they appear, I think mostly of pathological liars. I grimace to listen to them because everything they say has already been proven to be bull manure, hundreds of times over.

One of the biggest lies is "to produce jobs, reduce taxes for rich people." What happened the last time we gave them tax breaks? They fired us and moved their companies, or at least the actual labor, to India or China or someplace. So we should reward them?

Another lie, "we can borrow for this program now, and it will pay for itself."

Other lies and totally nuts ideas are that killing murderers is not itself murder, fetuses are persons, oil and nuclear power are necessary and harmless. But everyone has their opinions. Opinions don't have to be "proven true." Just look at Phox SNooze, for instance. Not a word that has been uttered beyond whatever ideology the propagandists demand.

It would perfectly logical for a politician to promise that he can make chickens lay 2 eggs at once, as well as sliced bacon for the side dish, without batting an eye. He can make cornbread from oats. His horse manure doesn't smell bad.

Slogging thru the Spam Logs.

I spent about an hour on all my blogs -- several that I use for different purposes -- deleting all the comments, except for REAL comments. Most of them were Chinese, which I cannot understand, and had links to adult sites that I'm not interested in.

I'm not against Chinese, per se, but it really is a pain to rid all those dumb links. So now I require a word-test before each blog comment. I don't mind REAL comments, even if they are negative. I just don't like SPAM.

Living with Children

I am not so old, really, but I am old enough that small children -- my grandchildren -- are much too rapid and wild to engage too often. My office is a massive assortment of bookcases, computers, both servers and workstations, plus laptops occasionally. Also, which is my own fault, there are enormous quantities of computer components lying about, in boxes, in tubs, in cabinets, on shelves, in drawers, and basically everywhere you step.

This is bad enough, however it is also the denizens of the playground that frequent my office, because of all the interesting things in here, and also because Papa is always kind and understanding, regardless of how angry their mom may be at the moment. This results in large numbers of toys, parts of toys, and boxes of toys that accumulate with my own hoarded collections.

I am not really so compulsively a hoarder, it is just hard for me to throw away books, or working pieces of equipment -- regardless of how obsolete they all may be. There are some things I can dispense with, if I get the time. I really don't need 200 feet of Thin Wire ethernet cables anymore. The last thing I used those on was a HP Unix workstation about 10 years ago or so. I also have modems that don't exceed 2400 baud -- useless in today's world, as well as a collection of charging adapters that could bring down a power line if I used them all at once. I can't -- because I don't know which one goes to what device -- they are rarely labeled or even receptacle matched.

I will never use Wireless-B. That can go. I will probably never use Wireless-G again, either -- at least after all of the 3 routers I have are burned out. The Wireless-N will probably last a little while longer, but who knows what will come next. Actually, I prefer direct connect Ethernet for most of my computers, but that is very inconvenient for the other members in the family, so I have to maintain everything all at once.

In front of me are many bottles of pills, directly under my terminal, so that I don't forget to take my 10 different pills throughout the day. I wish I could dump those, and they are a hazard in case any of the children decide to test them for candy content. I also have 10 pairs of glasses, of which perhaps 3 are any good at all, and only 2 which I can stand to wear. I have to use far-glasses for far-things, and close-glasses for close-things. I also have bifocals, but they really don't work very well for using computers all the time.

I have many trash cans, usually filled with napkins from cleaning sticky things off my desk, invariably carried in by the children. There are also other things in there come time to empty them. Toys, parts, stuff I have to sort through.

But I love my grandchildren. Much more than I love my junk.