Keyboard Fetish... Yeah so what??

Ok, since I have been a computer junkie for the past 30+ years I've grown accustom to having a unique keyboard on all my home systems... Wynn says it's just a fetish but seriously.. I used to love the original IBM "clickety" styles for all my touch typing use...   But of course they went the way of the dinosaur when all our compu-stuff was moved to China.  Back in the day there was a competitor with IBM called Keytronics and they make some damn good clones of the chattering beast but they were still sold at a somewhat hefty price.
Well low and behold, I found me two of them on ebay brand new in the box for a whopping $9 each... One for my Windows machine and one for my MAC and I also found some MAC keyboard stickers that I can use to put over the ALT and WIN keys respectfully for CMD and OPT..  Wooo hooooo...

The best part about these puppies is that you can zoom along typing and beat the shit out of the keys and never worry about them sticking or not registering correctly when you're in the middle of writing you great novel. And best of all you get true tactile feedback knowing that you really pressed the key instead of this mushy jelly thing.

Next, you take a glue gun and you make two dots on the F and the J keys to accentuate the home row keys so you can find them in a jiffy and not worry about damaging the keyboard for other future uses...  ( Clever huh?)  Ohh, and this little puppy has the large L shaped enter key so I don't have to go through the mindfuck of pressing the Shift instead of the Enter like so many others do.  Gosh, I feel so giddy about this...  So yeah, I guess I do have a fetish for the right touch when it comes to keyboards and that might explain why I had so many boxes of them up in the attic about 5 years ago when we had our last garage sale.

Even though Keytronics was a good clone, working in the mainframe world most of my life got me seriously used to the IBM version and the majority of the ones I found on eBay need all kinds of plug adapters to use on the machines of today... <sigh>  ... so I'll just count my $9 blessings and continue my work in peace.. LOL

Sometimes Memorial Day Sucks!

They tell me that I'm supposed to be appreciative for the men and women that sacrificed their lives for the USA in the war.  But why did they die in a conflict that we shouldn't have been in the first place.  

The weapons of mass destruction that never existed.  The tyrant that was killed because he didn't agree with us or his own people?   Religious wars?  Huh?   

Next these poor guys come home and they can't get jobs, they fee like they're rewarded with nothing but shit and then they kill themselves?  This is memorial?

Fuck That!

I'm a brain injury survivor and I know what it's like to "loose everything" in the blink of an eye.  Career, Friends, Body Functions, and more...    Yeah,  this is now what I call "Rick 2.0" and he's more fucked up than "Rick 1.0" was a times but the 2.0 version had a tremendous amount of simpleton shit to learn that people of today simply take for granted.  I had to adapt to all kinds of negative challenges so much that I almost wanted to take my own life too as I screamed in my sleep "Why, Why, Why? What the fuck did I ever do that was so horrible to be punished like this?"  over and over again.  

What's worse is that little 19 year old bastard that did this to me and almost took my life, never took responsibility for what he did with the two simple words of "I'm Sorry" and it took place on Memorial Day weekend.  He negligence almost cost me my life as I saw all the ugliness of survival and psychologically accepted all the loss of who I used to be.   The first 5 years were hell and those who knew me, would describe me as an "angry young man' who was dealt a loosing hand.  

The phone stopped ringing, the friends stopped appearing and the social loss continued to grow and widen it's spectrum.  The snappy compu-techie-nerd who formed his own ISP DIVANET business including nine hand-built computers that ran in his home was now a technical vegetable facing little to no future growth.  

So I put food in my mouth, I put clothes on my body and the "chosen family" I loved and trusted and though would be there in all times thick and thin abandoned me when I needed them the most.  Yeah, MEMORIAL DAY is real swell huh?   

I remind myself how I had to re-learn and re-experience things all over again.  Some of them I not at all fond of.  I also had to learn how to fall in love with myself all over again too because the thing that looked back at me in the mirror was much different than the 1.0 version that I clearly remembered.  

I had to be able to answer the question "Who is Rick Wagner" and not use a physical attribute or possession or any kind of statement that referred to the past Rick 1.0 achievements.   I'm willing to bet that there aren't a lot of people in the world right now that can truly create a paragraph to this question right now.  Why? Because they get so wrapped up in what others think of them or who they're trying to impress that they can no longer impress themselves!

Yes, happy memorial day,  My name is Rick 2.0 and even though I'm forgetful with short term memory issues I still have a kind heart and I'm capable of feeling compassion for others including that for myself.  My physical condition sucks,  my sexual appetite shows up maybe once in a blue moon when all of the medicines allow my pecker to wake up but I still have a beautiful heart filled with life lesson wisdom capable of sharing with anyone who asks.  

I'm sure the Vets are in similar positions with emotion and pain that others around them can't truly comprehend because after eleven years I still become melancholy myself over the loss of Rick 1.0 all those years ago.  It's a thing that nobody else can understand no matter how hard you try to describe it, write it,  or draw it.   It's a pain that will lurk in the darkness forever and no matter how well we fool others to think that we've adapted and adjusted it's almost the equivalent of feeling as if we've been turned into a meaningless zombie that continues to scream to ourselves "don't give up, don't give up.."

Oh, and let's brainwash ourselves with this "God's Will" crap too... Yeah, Fuck God's Will.  If our guardian angels weren't at the goddamn titty bar, none of this would have happened, RIGHT? ...  LOL 

Sure, let's pass blame... let's blame the enemy, let's blame the weather, or the time of day, or anything else we think we can conjure up.   Do we ever blame ourselves for enlisting in the military knowing the  odds?  Do we blame ourselves for riding the motorcycle with our sexy leather vest and no helmet?  Hmmmmm, yeah right!  Forgot about that part huh??   

Hi, I used to be Rick Wagner 1.0 who was and asshole that thought he could outsmart the universal elements one times too many!   Now, I'm Rick Wagner 2.0 who's loaded with faults but is willing to continue moving forward and not continually try to dwell in a past that can never be reached again. 

Yup, for me, Memorial Day sucks and I suspect that it will till the day I die.  But, it does so in a way that I can never totally convey to others but know that there are other military veterans who can also relate to this pain and empty feeling of conquest achievement. I will continue to love and respect the 2.0 version as best I can as I try to look forward and follow my new dreams instead of the ones I had eleven years ago.  Those I come into contact with I will do my best to try and share this knowledge to cause them to play a personal game of "What If?" with themselves and / or those they love who have or  are about to experience similar tram in their own lives. 

Please, don't pray for me or sit there and say Awwwwww... cuz the sympathy doesn't make my blind eye, deaf ear, or lacking sense of taste or smell start working normally.   I've done my best to adapt and some think I've done a good job but,  still the Rick 1.0 loss remains painful at times in my own mind. I will quietly remind myself that I'm still here for reasons unknown but have faith that these reasons will be revealed at a later time to me and hopefully it will all make perfect sense at that time. Till then, this too shall pass and I'll put the razor blade down and refrain from doing anything stupid. 

To those reading this... thanks...  Just plain old thanks for being there even though your invisible and I'll probably never know you.

---Rick

Fed Up with Google's Nasty Tactics

Wow, yesterday my Huz, Wynn, became furious with the nasty stuff Google has been doing recording searches and purchases, eliminating Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) so you can share your contacts and calendars back and forth with LIVE.com (which I also think is shitty). Google told all employees two years ago that they could no longer connect a windows computer to "their" corporate networks and if they attempted to do so they would be terminated.

Today if you wanted to have EAS with their shit you have to pay for a business account.. This is really lame and it proves that Google is incapable of "playing nice" with others.

Because of all this, Microsoft is currently at war with them and is doing a really good job of showing the world how they continue to offer free stuff but don't bomb you with spyware or shitty advertising like MySpace did and FaceBook is doing today.

Anyhow, he was so furious trying to get his Android to play nice with all of his stuff it finally thew the thing down, went to the T-Mobile store and got and HTC Windows Phone instead saying that even though Apple and Mickeysoft try to interconnect with "all" the services, Google has gone way to far with this "all or nothing" behavior and he said he wanted them gone.  He couldn't do an iPhone because they don't run on T-mobile and we both learned that this German company sure does focus on their customers FIRST and foremost! 

I don't think I've seen him this angry in a long time but it tells me that I wasn't the only one who was a little ticked off over this new Google 'bait and switch' crap.

I worked with Microsoft technology for 10 years when I owned and ran DIVANET Hosting and even though they might do something wonky now and then they never pull this favoritism shit that the college dropouts at Google are doing now.  Instead they've worked hard to centralize all of their platforms with a singular user interface, (except for their server stuff which I haven't seen in years but...)  This is what Apple tried to do with iOS and OS X but failed miserably.

HS has truly proven how to take a user interface and present it to machines that do and don't have touch screens and make it behave in synchronicity.  FACT with windows 8. Soon Windows Blue will come and it will change and evolve faster than every 5 years and I think this will really take off with consumers also.

I said this years ago...  MS is perfect for 'number crunching' and APL is perfect for 'making pretty' with different media.  I have long given up on trying to do some serious office management with Apple.  Don't believe me..??  Fine, then tell me why can't find any decent 'Flat File" database programs for OS X but there's about 20 or 30 established in the Windows world and OS X has been going for the past 13 years?  Huh??  Point of Sale=Windows,  Database=Windows, Accounting=Windows (and don't even think of mentioning the pathetic versions of QuickBooks Mac)   Instead, I have several wonks peddling MySQL (yuk) and other overly complicated shit. HELLO !!!    I just want to build a quick list of shit in my garage I don't want to launch rockets or rule the world.

I've learned not to recommend stuff to others because it turns into a useless pissing match.. instead I use what works for me cuz I run my Husband's home business that does a minimum of 27k in sales each year for the past 10 years proving to all the whiny bitches out there that they can be very productive right at home. So tell that cow at Yahoo to go fuck herself for telling her employees that they can no longer Tele-commute anymore.  Fuck, I did it for 13 years with my California based company http://www.hydrasystems.com/ very successfully.

Maybe they should have some college courses on entrepreneurial things instead of kissing corporate ass for a paycheck. I know people who fortify their retirement income selling stupid shit on eBay. If these old farts with Walmart computers can figure this out, how come the fools standing in unemployment lines can't? 

The State of Humanity

The State of Humanity

As a society here in 2013, why do we seem to be filled with so much hate towards one another?

As we drive down the road and another person cuts in front of us going half the speed limit we shake our fist and scream “get out of the way asshole” instead of making sure that driving instructors for our youth are focused on teaching students to avoid this.

We find it more important to poke our phones and text our invisible friends without investing more time to engage in things face to face.  We judge another person by who they know, what they type, and post on their online social hangout but rarely do we offer them any true comfort.

Have we advanced with technology or has it become a placeholder for true friendship forcing us more into isolation in the world?  Hate Hate Hate....  Why?   If you don’t measure up then I’m taught to hate you.  Why??  

And “what’s in it for me...?” seems to be the law of the land these days..  Rarely do you hear “here, let me show you how to do that...” instead it’s replaced with “What are ya, stupid? You never learned how to do that and you’re 30 years old?” Then we accuse others of being full of baggage.  

Why do Christians brag about how much they love Jesus and their God but the moment they walk out of the church they find more interest in the shortcomings of others and making themselves look artificially superior even though they know it’s fake. This is a loving person from a so-called ‘loving’ God??   Did I miss something?  

We plaster our social profiles with sexy photos of ourselves thinking it will lure more people into liking us till they find out how horrible and benign we really are. And then we judge others for their lack of ‘Truth’ never realizing how twisted our own morals are.   Wow, we’ve certainly come a long way in the new millennium but my question is when it comes to interacting with others, did we get closer or repel further away from the humans around us.

Why do the rich hate the poor and vice versa?  The poor see the rich as scam artists who don’t know what the word “work’ really means... and the rich see the poor as lazy and good for nothing with no interest in growth or learning.   Did the rich forget that they were blessed with abundance while their friends were blessed with challenges and poverty? They both went to the same kindergarten so what went wrong?  But did outsiders ever put them in a room together to determine which of them grew up with the most wisdom and humanity? Or even hate for that matter?

Have smartphones become the dumb weapon that shot us in the proverbial foot?  Have we turned into the 1970’s movie “Logan’s Run” with our need to dial-an-orgasm but with no true friendships with one another?  Some reading this, especially the youth, may think of this conversation as a ‘downer’ but the fact remains that social violence has grown over the past three decades. We even show reality stuff on television to further humiliate and applaud others and we call it “progress”.  Why?  Are there less sad and lonely people in the world compared to three decades ago?  Do we focus more on helping the needy and less fortunate or do we focus on hoarding as much as we can for ourselves?

Over the years I have been founder of several social groups but it seems that trying to get people with common interests together in the same room more than once is like praying for a miracle.  “Did you see the clothes on that bitch, who the fuck does she think she is?  I would never invite that thang to my house and mess up my white sofa and carpeting...  I don’t care how juicy Miss Lucy thinks she is, that thing better stay the hell away from me..... blah blah blah...”  We think talk like this is funny but, is it really?  Or, does it hide an invisible insecurity by the person who just said it?  Does the reader of this even know what the word “insecurity” means?  

I can’t help wondering if INSECURITY is the real thing going on here.  If others are so worried about fitting have they forgotten who the hell they really are themselves?  When someone asks them to say something about themselves, they offer a laundry list of bullshit that the other person wants to hear like a resume but never really connects to it with true emotion.

SO WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND WHY SHOULD I SHARE MY TIME WITH YOU?

I’m learning that there’s a lot of people right here in this busy city who can’t answer this and it seems scary.  They can whine about their privacy, or the cost of gas, or the bitch next door but, when it comes to their own identity they are clueless.

The bible says “The meek shall inherit the earth.” I don’t recall it saying anything about the insecure or the clueless.  Even though the one with the most toys wins, what exactly is it that they win?  How to be an asshole to others?  Is this what get’s you into heaven or moved into the next astral life?

Why do we murder one another over different beliefs? Is a belief more important than a human life? Are all humans supposed to act the same, dress the same, talk the same and if they’re different they need to be extinguished?  Does this behavior also extinguish growth and enlightenment as well?  How can you ever learn something new if you killed those who could teach different things to you?

Sorry, but I like learning. It doesn’t mean I agree with everything I learn but it gives me the chance to envision and adapt to change easier.  In 2002 my life completely changed after being hit by a drunk 19 year old on my motorcycle. I went through anger, hate, loss, depression, acceptance, adaptation, love, loneliness, and lots of retrospection. Ya know what? Back then, I was a selfish person filled with judgements, dislikes, and always focused on hoarding as much knowledge as I could collect for myself and assuming the stupidity in others was by their own choice not mine. Boy was I ever wrong. Some of those people were incapable of growth because everyone else always ignored them on their own life quest.

I had to learn the painful balance of life and learn that there is a very fine line between good and evil.  There is no absolute regardless what other religious whack-jobs may say. Trying to live on that fine line is nice but you can’t be in that mode forever because you’ll never grow or be able to adapt to life changes.  

No, I don’t give a crap about power, or wealth, or being supreme cuz if we were all climbing the emotional mountain of life, the dude at the top is the loneliest person around. Nobody else up there on his level. Nobody at all. Think about it!  So what is the top dude’s great reward and accomplishment if he’s the only one?  It would seem that we teach our kids to “be the best..” at all times without ever seeing the brick walls of their little box at the top.  Nobody else measures up so why give a shit about them?   So how come they seem happier than I am even though they’re more stupid?  Could it be that they have companionship with others and I get to sit here all alone each day, every day?  Being the best is good? YEAH RIGHT!  BUZZZ, NOT!  Being the best is good only if you take the time to share it with others willing to grow too.  No, not force it on them, but give them the chance to seek more if they choose.

Knowledge is true power even more than money or material goods but only when it’s also shared with others seeking growth. Then it becomes the definition of WISDOM earning appreciation and respect in the return.  

Chew on this!   If life is all about learning, experiencing, and accumulating things and then we finally croak, we already know that none of the wealth or toys can go with us. Suppose that wonderful stuff in our mind can?  Now where’s the real power?  Now suppose that knowledge is going to be required to live and fulfill requirements in the next life?  Freaky huh?  What do you suppose will happen to the hateful, selfish minds after they croak?

Made it through another year

Wow,  and now it's 2013 and I made it through another year... BFD right?  for those of you not in the know, BFD means (Big Fucking Deal)... :-) Anyhow, I think it was a pretty good year compared to all the horror and trama I had to deal with last year... 

Sure the Huz has health issues, and so do I but we manage to adapt to all the changes so I guess that's good. 

Our rental tenant moved out and got his own place...  Sadly though his behavior really took a toll on our friendship and it left us more like acquaintances rather than friends. At first I was a mentor but later on I was accused of "picking on him" all the time so maybe it was meant to be.  I just didn't want to see the dude suffer some of the same negative things that I did in my past but oh well, now he'll just have to figure it out on his own.

I also had a snit with a couple House of Light members and it resulted in resigning from the group but later the founder told me that she wouldn't accept it because of all the great stuff I do to help and keep things running.  So instead I just blocked the offending individuals from my Facebook postings and reading and as far as I'm concerned they don't exist.

Ohh yeah, I did that with my Aunt Pam Hydeck too after she coplained about "being forced to read my rhetoric" when I politely asked republic Romney supports to please un-friend me.   Ahhh fuck'em!  They live in Penn. and never bother behave like a family anyhow so why the fuck should I care.   My mom was a bit shocked when I read off Pam's message to me realizing that this bitch has some serious issues.

I guess maybe one thing I learned throughout 2012 is not to waste my time trying to fix other people's baggage... Instead, just treat it like a broken light switch and shot the friggin thing off and walk away.. No muss, no fuss... just off and gone!   Buhhh bye...   If I was so fucking important to them then they would have done something to repair things themselves. 

I think the most fun I've had was hanging out with our friend Tom Walker during the holidays and doing absolutely nothing but watching the fireplace, noshing on a light meal and relaxing. No deadlines, no worries, and no disappointments..   Sure would be nice if I could remember to write more stuff on here in the future but as usual, I'm sure I'll have some excuse or another to say why I didn't...  Blah Blah Blah...  yeah yeah yeah...     If any of the readers here really gave a shit they would comment more telling me that my thoughts matter (uhh huh like that's gonna happen anytime soon.)  Still it's so cool not having to engage in other people's drama and just fiddlin' with my huz and my goofy cat and dog...