Review – The Factory
★★★★★ I must confess up front that I seem to always like John Cusack in a movie. I was kind of shocked to stroll by the under $5 discount bin…
Our Recent Blog
How to Set Up Mutt to Work With JustHost.com Email
Every now and then you are going to need to send email from the command line. In the world of OpenVMS we did it from batch jobs all of the…
Farmer Fred and the IRS
Most of today’s youth cannot comprehend a world before the touch tone phone where a basic adding machine cost north of $400. Heck, most of today’s youth don’t even know…
Only 5 Days Left to Fulfill a Promise
There are only 5 days left for President Trump to fulfill a campaign promise. In truth, the easiest promise to fulfill given all of the promises and outlandish statements made…
Move Quickly and Turn Worthless Shit Into Production
We’ve all heard the phrase attributed to FaceBook “Move quickly and break things.” Some people have turned it into a totally fraudulent development methodology called Agile. Today I got to…
Page 33 – Not the 24 Million
I have been seeing a good many crazy eyed frothing at the mouth type people spouting true and false things about the 24 million who would lose coverage under Trump…
How are unvaccinated children a danger to vaccinated children if vaccines work?
The title of this post is an exact cut and paste of a question posted in an on-line forum. Below is my response. I felt it worthwhile to post it…
Mounting a Second Internal Drive in Linux
The other day I put a 250GB SSD in the current desktop unit and made it the primary. I wiped the (now) secondary 1TB hard drive and left it be…
Sometimes SPAM is Entertaining
I’m sure this link will disappear shortly, but I received an email with it. They claim this is a “Business Analyst” role. Here’s a quote from the link though: This…
Roman Numeral Calculator
If you work long enough in IT you will start to really get tired of all the cutesy ways companies try to “select” developers/consultants. Some of the worst ones send…
Lesedi – The Greatest Lie Ever Told
SmashWords should be done chewing on the title soon and it should get pushed out to all of the regular places, sans Amazon.com. The book also has its own Web…
GitLab Bites the Big One!
Let this be a cautionary tale for anyone who things wanna-be operating systems on wanna-be computers using software written under a fraudulent methodology named Agile is fit to run a…
How to Command Line Format a Thumb Drive on Linux
Every now and then you find yourself on a distro where the GUI tools to format a thumb drive simply aren’t there or aren’t the ones you know about so…
Configuring Jed
Because I keep needing my .jedrc when working at client sites I’m posting my Jed configuration here. I thought posted this once before, but it doesn’t show up in the…
Beware Range Extender Max Number of Users
I have been fighting an issue in my office where my printers periodically disappear from the network after being moved to wireless connections. I have my main router in the…
Aren’t Search Engines Wonderful?
This was sent to me today by a friend. It is a job listing from an automated thing on one of the job boards. I’m sure most of you have…
WDMyCloud – Worst Hunk of Shit Ever Made
If you do even the tiniest bit of research you will find no end to the horror stories associated with this product. I mean, just how could Western Digital hose…
Making the Netgear A6210 AC1200 Wifi Adapter Work With YABU
Anyone who has tried a YABU (Yet Another uBUntu) based on Ubuntu 16.x knows they really hosed wireless networking. My HP laptop has become almost unusable when it comes to…
Linux Fatal Design Flaw
Okay, there are many fatal design flaws, such as the inability to actually cluster like OpenVMS has been able to do since the early 1980s, but one is going to…
Is California a Modern Day Jim Crow State
On New Years Eve, like many geeks, I set about doing some year end backups and OS upgrades. It also lead to some experiments with OpenMandriva and OpenSuSE Tumbleweed, but…
Those Norman Rockwell Mornings
I catch quite a bit of flack for choosing to live in Illinois. People claim it is the most corrupt state in the union because we have put more politicians…
Ubuntu/Linux List All Exit Status Codes
I see this questions about this posted a lot. I also see numerous responses telling people to read through C header files. While you certainly cannot identify application level exit…
So Secure You Are Insecure
Recently I had to change my password for a Jeep owners forum. It didn’t expire or anything like that, I simply couldn’t remember the one I had used. Well, they…
Qt Pi Stuff on Pause for Now
A few weeks back I took an on-site contract far away from home and could not bring all of my toys so the Qt on Pi stuff is on hold…
First ITT – Next Devry?
Yesterday ITT Technical Institute announced the closing of all its “schools.” This type of crackdown has been a looooong time coming. While I personally know nothing about ITT, I did…
Lip Service and Bribes
I have recently finished reading the Time magazine article on Oklahoma quakes. (Yes, I’m a bit behind on reading.) It was probably a good thing I didn’t read the article…
Raspberry Qt – Part 13 – A Bit of Explanation
Please read Part 12 first. Were this a book I would be printing and explaining a lot of code. This isn’t a product people are paying for so it will…
Raspberry Qt – Part 12 – QML Blows Big Stinky Chunks
Given all of the rah-rah about QML and all of the calls I get about it I think it is time for a level headed appraisal. Unless you are developing…
Raspberry Qt – Refresh
This post is more for me than you. A combination of client wanting me to do some QML stuff and having done too many horrible things to my desktop set…
C++ 11 and Qt — Part 5 Constructor Initializer List Religion
Okay, we are going to cover this one last time. If you are new to C++ programming you probably don’t know the doo-doo storm I kicked off bringing the subject…
C++ 11 and Qt — Part 4 Test Your Compiler
As promised, here is a test to see if your compiler actually handles initialization lists correctly or adopted a “last one in wins” strategy. #ifndef SMALLDATA_H #define SMALLDATA_H class SmallData…
C++ 11 and Qt — Part 3 This is Broken
One of the many reasons medical devices and all systems where adverse outcome for humans are slow to adopt “new” things is that there is so little known about “the…
C++ 11 and Qt — Part 2 const
This really isn’t a C++ 11 or Qt thing we need to discuss next. It is something which hoses every C/C++ programmer at some point, especially if you are either…
C++ 11 and Qt — Part 1
The medical device touch screen world tends to stay well behind on “new” standards and features and for good reason. Given the 5+ year FDA mandated testing and approval cycle…
Thunderdome Meets Today
Science and dystopian fiction writers are always viewed as someone wearing an armadillo shell hat while lining their vehicles and homes with tin foil. At least until they write something…
What is a “Government Issued Phone?”
Yes, Hillary greased up and slipped through the fingers of justice again, just like her hubby is prone to do. Yes, Tim Cook of Apple decided the company could make…
Raspberry Qt – Part 11
Notice the emit statement in the following code snippet. This is where I chose to force in the new line character for our communications protocol. void MainWindow::enterClicked() { QByteArray…
Raspberry Qt – Part 10
You need a communications protocol But isn’t RS-232 our communications protocol? Well, it is the communications transport layer. If you read through the code you will see I set the…
Raspberry Qt – Part 9
Making the serial port actually work By default your Pi has a getty/mgetty process enabled. There are many out of date instructions about disabling it. Please pay attention to the…
Raspberry Qt – Part 8
Installing Qt on the Raspberry Pi Once again I will rant about the piecemeal convoluted expert friendly process of installing Qt 5.x. That becomes painfully obvious when you attempt to…
Raspberry Qt – Part 7
Finding the serial port There is one chunk of the code we really do need to discuss and that is the snippet of how the application chooses its serial port…
Raspberry Qt – Part 6
Logging information in Linux In the zip file you will notice logikallogger.cpp and its header file. This is a class I have written over and over through the years, even…
Raspberry Qt – Part 5
I’m going to take you down the slow road. First we will get our application running on the Ubuntu development machine and test our cabling. Then we will go through…
Raspberry Qt – Part 4
Back in the day of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) everyone had to use a modem to connect to either a bulletin board or friend’s computer. This was long before the…
Raspberry Qt – Part 3
Setting Up No matter what you are told, ignore the contents of the SD card which comes with your Pi. You can mostly ignore the little booklet which comes with…
Raspberry Qt – Part 2
The hardware I’m using a Raspberry Pi 2. Yes the 3 is out and it has more to offer, but I’ve had this one a while and wanted to actually…
Raspberry Qt – Part 1
I must apologize in advance. Yes, I’ve had to do quite a few things in the embedded/semi-embedded world with Qt on Linux. Yes, this increasingly means cross compiling Qt applications…
How Does a Person Shoot Themselves Twice in the Head?
I just finished watching “Kill the Messenger.” This is a docudrama about Gary Webb who broke the “CIA sells drugs to fund the Contra War story” then basically had is…
Why the Driverless Car Will Fail
There has been much hype and hoopla over driverless vehicles, then there is the fine print. I agree with Mr. Berko that driverless vehicles will be a massive failure, but…
What McDonald’s Move to Chicago Tells Us
Yes, officials in Oak Brook, IL are wringing their hands. Some are possibly rending their garments as well. The news is not a shocker, well, at least not for anyone…
The Ultimate Sin of Man
This may seem like an odd topic for my blog. While I get political from time to time I make it a point to never get religious or preachy when…
Blocking Windows 10
I’m basically recording this because I know at some point some relative will visit an antiques shop and while buying steel irons you had to heat on the stove to…
Design Patterns and Real Computers
I received this question from a consultant I’ve worked with in the past. Finally, a question about the gigs you get back there. Do you run into software architects…
Have You Ever Noticed How Windows Fonts SUCK?
Recently I’ve had to do some work for what _has_ to be the last company on the face of the planet still using Windows for anything. Since I did not…
Scite Properties
This post is more for me than anyone else. It’s a Scite properties file I keep around to configure the editor. From time to time I load the Scite text…
Interesting Authors
Some months ago I joined a friendly group of interesting authors. It has been a pleasant experience and we set up a Web site to announce ourselves. If you have…
Qt 5.4 and MP4
This question keeps coming up. There are many “half answers” posted on-line. I call them “half answers” because they ass-u-me you have already built Qt from source or have some…
Was Leaving LinkedIn Your New Years Eve Resolution?
It was mine. Thousands of others didn’t bother to wait and more thousands will be leaving this year. This is a site which one time had a purpose but is…
Debian on Nextbook Flexx
Ah, the continuing saga of trying to get Linux on Nextbook devices. Much additional research turned up Debian having a multi-arch distro. I downloaded the nearly 4 Gig file and…
Linux on Nextbook Flexx
There have been a great many attempts to get a Linux distro up and running on the Nextbook Flexx. While I hate anything to do with Walmart I ended up…
The I Can’t Afford It Myth
When it comes to ACA (Obamacare) good many people have offered up the “can’t afford it” argument in various flavors, many of which center around “deductibles so high people cannot…
Dominionists Inside the Gates
We’ve all heard the stories about “shadow governments” and “puppet masters” pulling the strings from behind the curtain of Washington. Most of us have been conditioned to believe these stories…
The Return to Program Hiring
If you live long enough, everything comes around again. Well, hopefully not leisure suits, but it appears some things from the 70s are making a comeback. In this case it…
Sangean RCR-5 Clock Radio
I have to say, I have fallen in love with this thing. During the summer I was working a contract in the city of Chicago. The corporate housing unit I…
Whole Farm Wifi 2015
It has been quite a while since I wrote the original article about this topic. Much of the original equipment probably isn’t even on the market anymore. I had some…
The Annuity Scam
I poke around on financial sites from time to time. Yes, I see the late night commercials as well, when I’m awake late at night. No matter how many legal…
The Nextbook 10.1 From Wal-Mart
Let me start out by saying it is against my religion to purchase anything from Wal-mart. The client of a client wanted us to test our the software we were…
Did 47 Republican Senators Commit Treason?
Speaking as a registered voter and tax-paying citizen, it is a question I want answered. Isn’t it a question you want answered, as well? In case you managed to miss…
The Locals Only Scam
If you work in IT, even if you aren’t currently looking for a new gig, you get email spam about openings (both contract and FTE.) Many of them will even…
Dot-Com Flame Out 2.0
Anyone who was around for the last Dot-Com Flame Out (affectionately called DOT-BOMBS) remembers how that scam went. Valuations were mostly based on revenue growth (it was the new-new economy…
The ST506 Tale
I have been saving this brittle, yellow, tractor feed sheet of paper for a very long time. It was printed with a dot matrix printer back when dot matrix ruled…
Will the Last One to Leave eBay Please Turn Out the Lights?
I have bought a lot of stuff on eBay over the years. I even bought a Jeep on there and had it shipped from New Hampshire. The site used to…
The Problem With Thumb Drives
I’m writing this while formatting floppies. No, this isn’t something I wrote in the 80s and reposted. It’s January and time to put a bunch of stuff which has been…
McDonalds Problem is Not the Menu
There has been a lot of chatter about the financial situation at McDonalds (MCD) lately. All kind of chatter about revamping the menu, loss of market share, allowing more local…
The Call Blocker Saga
Anyone with a telephone number in the United States of America can testify to the fact no government entity enforces the National Do Not Call List and that scam artists…
The Secret to Buying a 300K Mile Car
I’ve bought more than one vehicle from the Internet. Sometimes through car sales sites and other times on eBay auctions. People always ask me “How can you know you aren’t…
Labor Day and Minimum Wage
It should come as no surprise discussion about the minimum wage is heating up. Add in the fact an election is just around the corner and you find no shortage…
What if Microsoft Made Refrigerators?
This question came up today. Actually it came up a while back and I finally looked at the message today. What if Microsoft made refrigerators? The question is an apt…
First Aereo – Now Google
In an absolutely stunning move the Supreme Court might have justified its existence with the Aereo ruling. Most citizens had lost hope and faith in the institution with their ruling…
Air and Space Museum
Today I finally did a touristy thing. I drove out to the air and space museum. It was the longest drive I have taken the Hybrid on so far. Mostly…
Icky of Gnome
Recently I upgraded to Mint 17 to get back on an LTS revision. I couldn’t wait for KDE to come out so I went with the version built for Gnome…
No Gnews
It is odd what triggers memories of youth. Now that my contract is in the winding down phase, or at least in a breather phase where I don’t need to…
Hunger Games – Catching Fire
Does anybody else feel completely ripped off with this movie? I really should say “half a movie” because that is all it was. We have far too many MBAs in…
The Minimum Wage Debate
Few things should tell a person just how bought and paid for elected officials are than the current minimum wage debate. Somewhere, somehow there must be an on-line auction selling…
The Ever Shrinking Definition of Fully Equipped
As a traveling consultant I spend a lot of time in extended stay type hotels. Unless I’m traveling to a client site where I’ve worked previously I tend to spend…
Idiots and Oil
Today I was sitting at Meineke getting an oil change when one of the mechanics came out of the back to show the manager a perfectly dry dipstick. This wasn’t…
Did Ford Fire Microsoft?
There is a rather persistent rumor going around that Ford has fired Microsoft, or at least ended the use of their software in automobiles. Of course if Ford wants to…
A Sad Tale of Power Supplies
A few days ago I came into my office to be greeted by a funky electrical smell. I checked all of the computers. They were all running. It was most…
Sugar Free Products That Aren’t Sugar Free
I have seen a rash of this lately. Perhaps it is because I read labels closer now. The most recent flagrant abuse of advertising came on a package of fudge…
I Will Never Buy a CyberPower UPS Again
Yes, I’m in that part of Illinois which still doesn’t have grid power due to the tornadoes we had yesterday. Living out in the country I’m pretty used to third…
Traveling the Country You Built
I imagine those who don’t live close to a stop along the famous Route 66 hear less about the topic than I do. I’m still impressed by those who actually…
Fast vs. Slow Calories
Once you get to a certain age you have to start checking and watching your sugar. For some this age comes early in life with a diagnosis of diabetes and…
Did the Obamacare Web Site Developers Also Work for Wal-mart?
Bet they would have loved a glitch which stopped customers from being able to do this!
If I Only Had Time to Focus
How many times have we all said that? I would complete “thing x” if I had time to focus on it. Sadly, it is a lie we tell not only…
If You Ran OpenVMS You Wouldn’t Have to Be Outraged
I almost couldn’t write this post. My sides hurt from laughing so hard. This story about Google being outraged by the NSA hacking is absolutely hilarious! Seriously??? You run a…
John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars
What some reviewers are saying about “John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars” Susan Parkinson who has reviewed books for the BBC said: “George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’ is…
Mesothelioma
I’ve put off writing a post about this for some time. I knew I should write a post but didn’t know exactly what to write. You see, not all that…
My Shoes Are Too Tight
There are many “learned” egg heads out there who will give you rules and charts for ranking that which gets shown on television. Not surprisingly, most of the really popular…
The Sad State of LifeScan and Bayer
I must give a nod to the post and title I’m ripping off: The Sad State of Diabetes Technology in 2012. It has been almost a year and not much…
Round-Up Ready Cocaine Syndrome
Quite some time ago, back when I used to blog for “the Fool”, I wrote a post about how farmers were going to have to dust off their Weber Weeders…