Friday, December 4, 2020
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Frustrated but Inaction Persists
I am growing increasingly disgusted with blogger.com. A couple of months ago, there was a 'refresh' of the UI and I'm not a fan. One small detail here or one small detail there wouldn't bother me, but my experience is not as minimal as one or two small details being irksome. Instead, it feels like when I compose a post, there is some new small detail that is irksome. For example, I have embedded hundreds of videos from YouTube.com on this blog. When I have added the HTML code for the video to be embedded, the way it used to work is I would see the video preview when viewing the page in the "WYSIWYG" (What You See Is What Yo
u Get) view. However, now with the new UI 'refresh' on Blogger, I see the following:
Is it a big deal? To me, yes, it is. I have no "formal" training in HTML so every morsel of information I have about coding HTML is from working on Blogger, where I can either toggle from WYSIWYG view to HTML view, or working in Dreamweaver, where I can view both the "Design" of the page and the "Code" at the same time. I rely upon toggling or viewing between the two views to ensure I have not made a mistake in my HTML code.
In conclusion, I have looked at what it would take to migrate from Blogger to an alternative, but I don't have any plans to migrate.
Wednesday, December 2, 2020
Using Microsoft Power Query
While I have no current need to learn Microsoft Power Query, I think it would be neat to learn.
Editor's Note: There are sample files to download to follow along with the video - do not forget you nearly 51 year-old OLD MAN!
Editor's Note: There are sample files to download to follow along with the video - do not forget you nearly 51 year-old OLD MAN!
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
No Winning for DD
So, in the middle of an important task, the Republican Governor didn't take a phone call from President Trump. Here's the question. If he HAD answered the President's phone call, how on earth could he have a conversation with all of the press watching him? That wouldn't have gone well. Additionally, if he HAD answered the phone call, the press would have accused the Governor of being swayed by President Trump, even if there would be no evidence to support that accusation.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey Appears To Ignore Call From Trump While Certifying Election Result
Monday, November 30, 2020
I Need to TAKE CONTROL
I want to learn how to edit videos as I want to be able to post individual tunes that RPM has played together - including original tunes that Randy wrote as well as cover tunes - in the hopes that we can play jam in the same room in the future.
I want to organize my cassette tapes as I need to know how many I need to convert - my self-made compilations and my "Jam Tapes" of me playing drums with different musicians lead this list - and how many I can locate on YouTube.com - the albums I purchased / obtained through purchasing at a store or by some other means.
I want to organize my External Hard Drives. Currently, I have 51.79 TB capacity and 31.07 TB used, which leaves 20.72 TB free across my 7 External Hard Drives. This is unacceptable. I outlined what I want to do in my personal journal, which is to identify exactly what is my data and, once I have that identified, I want to designate an External Hard Drive for the specific purpose of backing up that data. I also want to designate an External Hard Drive for being a "Sandbox" for projects I dream up, including renaming JPG files to not have a space in the file name as well as to create a single folder with all of my MP3s so that I can identify duplicate files. I also want to figure out - and decide once and for all - how I want to organize my files. On one hand, I have a need to organize by date while I also have a need to organize by topic. For example, I shouldn't have to remember that the Bayside concert at Gabes in January 2019 was on January 30, 2019 - I should be able to search for "Bayside" and have a folder display in my search results that includes the folder with the pictures and videos from that concert as well as any pictures and videos from the concert I attended with Megan in October 2013.
And when do I want all of this figured out? Yesterday.
On another topic, today is starting my 33rd week of working from home.
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Monday, November 23, 2020
Time to Upgrade!
This screen capture was taken on Friday, July 5, 2019. The importance? Today, 11/23/2020, I can get a new cell phone!
Friday, November 13, 2020
2012 - Trip to Memphis
I'm working on finding any picture and/or video from the trip to Memphis with Mark, Susie, and Karen. I uncovered these three videos thus far.
Thursday, November 12, 2020
Mad
I'm mad that Hillary Clinton stated that if you voted for Donald Trump, you are a bad person.
I'm mad that Donald Trump is pursuing legal challenges even as the Mainstream Media - ABC, CBC, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC - proclaim that Donald Trump's claims of voting irregularity are not credible.
I'm mad that when Al Gore took 37 days after the election in 2000 to contest the voting results, he was not called the nasty names that the Mainstream Media is calling Donald Trump - the hypocrisy is on full display.
I'm mad that the blatant hypocrisy goes unchecked. For example, when George Floyd died in the summer of 2020, there was a funeral with several people in attendance. When a family member passed away, I had to watch the funeral Mass on my laptop. Now, it's acceptable to have a celebration in the streets but it's not okay for Donald Trump to hold a rally.
I'm mad enough that I'm no longer going to assemble political posts on a separate page. There are threads on Twitter about creating a registry of anyone who supported Donald Trump so that they can be put on a list of shame. That's wrong.
I'm mad that when Al Gore took 37 days after the election in 2000 to contest the voting results, he was not called the nasty names that the Mainstream Media is calling Donald Trump - the hypocrisy is on full display.
I'm mad that the blatant hypocrisy goes unchecked. For example, when George Floyd died in the summer of 2020, there was a funeral with several people in attendance. When a family member passed away, I had to watch the funeral Mass on my laptop. Now, it's acceptable to have a celebration in the streets but it's not okay for Donald Trump to hold a rally.
I'm mad enough that I'm no longer going to assemble political posts on a separate page. There are threads on Twitter about creating a registry of anyone who supported Donald Trump so that they can be put on a list of shame. That's wrong.
Give Me THIS Job
I don't know how much a paycheck would be to be paid to write articles like this one about John Wick. I also don't know if the author was paid to watch the John Wick trilogy or if the viewing of the movies had to be done outside of "work time."
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Thoughts from 410 Days Ago
Reread these thoughts from 410 days ago: Confessions of a Political Junkie.
Reread these thoughts from 411 days ago:
Editor's Note: This is the source: https://theresurgent.com/2019/09/26/why-impeachment-is-justified
Reread these thoughts from 411 days ago:
The transcript of President Trump’s telephone with Ukrainian President Zelensky is out, but the fallout continues. As expected, the call is damning enough to keep the Trump critics on the offensive but vague enough for Trump supporters to explain the president’s actions away. In my view, which does not represent the other writers here or The Resurgent itself, the transcript combined with other evidence against President Trump easily justifies impeachment despite the defenses offered by Republicans.
Defenders of the president make several mistakes in rejecting the impeachment option, the first of which is to claim that impeachment requires an underlying crime. As I’ve pointed out before, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Even though the constitutional basis for impeachment includes “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the original intent of the phrase did not preclude impeaching officials for abuses of office that were not criminal in nature.
At the micro end of the scale, the president’s supporters deny that the phone call transcript is enough to warrant impeachment. I believe that they are wrong. While there is no explicit quid pro quo, there is an implicit one, especially in the context of the fact that President Trump had suspended aid to Ukraine the week before. Trump laments that the relationship with Ukraine is not “reciprocal” and Zalensky responds that he wants to cooperate and buy more Javelin anti-tank missiles. President Trump then says that he wants a “favor” from Zalensky. The favor turns out to include investigating Crowdstrike, the US cybersecurity company that investigated the 2016 DNC hack, as well as Joe Biden’s role in dismissing Ukraine’s former top prosecutor.
Trump’s defenders set the bar impossibly high. The only thing that would convince some people is an explicit, Godfather-esque statement in which Trump tells Zalensky, “I’m about to make you an offer you can’t refuse.” Nevertheless, the implication is clear: Play ball and you get your aid and the Javelins.
Trump’s defenders also tend to take each piece of evidence against him individually rather than looking at the big picture. In truth, the revelations of the Mueller report, in which Trump staffers testified under oath that the president ordered them to take action to impede or shut down a federal investigation, detailed an impeachable abuse of power. Mueller explained that the president couldn’t be indicted because of Justice Department policy, but any one of us who acted similarly would likely be sent to jail. Just ask Mike Flynn or George Papadopoulos.
But wait, as they say, there’s more. We also have the president’s decision to declare a national emergency to bypass the will of the people as expressed through their representatives to Congress. This is an egregious affront to the Constitution’s system of checks and balances and, if not corrected, will establish a precedent to be further abused by future presidents. Yesterday, in a vote that included 11 Republicans, the Senate voted to end the national emergency farce, but opponents lack the numbers to override an almost certain veto.
Further, the Trump Administration has habitually refused to respond to congressional oversight, again setting a precedent that will be followed and expanded by future presidents. Like Obama before him, Trump refuses to respond to congressional subpoenas for both documents and testimony. It was the refusal to provide the whistleblower complaint to Congress, not the contents of the telephone call, that spurred Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry.
An additional error on the part of Republicans is using the wrong yardsticks to measure President Trump. Frequent defenses are that he’s an outsider and doesn’t know any better or that the Democrats acted similarly. Both are damning. If the president is so ignorant that he can’t understand the law and ethics when his advisors explain it, then he should not be leading the country. Likewise, if an Administration whose stated goal was to “drain the swamp” is looking to swamp denizens for moral guidance, it has lost its way.
An objective measure rather than a subjective one is much better for the country. Ask the simple question, should any president use his office and taxpayer-funded foreign aid to influence a foreign country to investigate a political rival? Should the president use his office to block an investigation into his campaign? If you view the rule of law and the Constitution objectively, the answer has to be no.
To check whether you are viewing the situation objectively, simply imagine that Obama did the same things that Trump is accused of doing. Republican heads would be exploding rather than offering rationalizations. That’s the next error: Tribalism. Republicans defend Trump, not only because they like his policy and his style, but because he is leader of their tribe. This is simply a different strain of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The bottom line here is that there is an abundant record of abuses of office by President Trump. Some would justify impeachment on their own, but taken as a whole, they provide a strong argument that the president should be removed from office. He is simply is not trustworthy with the power that he has been granted.
In fact, the case against Trump is much stronger than the cases against the two previously impeached presidents. Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury, an offense that even many Republicans felt could have been handled by censure, and Andrew Johnson was impeached for appointing a replacement cabinet official without congressional consent. Quinn Hillyer makes a detailed comparison of other incidents where impeachment was considered in the Washington Examiner. Trump’s case is stronger than any of them. As Erick Erickson pointed out, the case is likely to become stronger when the whistleblower complaint drops.
Trump’s abuses of power, encroachment on congressional authority, and failure to accept congressional oversight have essentially left Congress no choice but to impeach or accept a diminished role. While I cannot say for sure that impeachment is politically wise or good for the country, it is clearly justified by President Trump’s actions. If impeachment is not justified for President Trump, it may as well be written out of the Constitution. Especially for a party that claims to favor the rule of law and the Constitution, an elected official should be held to a higher standard, not graded on a curve.
Editor's Note: This is the source: https://theresurgent.com/2019/09/26/why-impeachment-is-justified
Monday, November 9, 2020
Knowledge Aware
I was hired as a Documentation Specialist at NDP exactly 9404 days (25 years, 8 months, 4 weeks, 2 days) ago. From then until today, I have watched a lot of tools and methodologies that were sold as "the future of technical writing" fall by the side to the extent that, now, no one remembers what they were. Thus, when I saw this blurb in an email this morning, I chuckled a little:
While I like what that blurb says, I'm going to take a "wait and see" approach.
Knowledge Aware: The Future of Knowledge Management
To keep pace with a globalized and digitized economy, Knowledge Management can no longer rely on legacy methods that manage knowledge within documents, people, or models. These traditional knowledge management approaches risk critical failure modes. They disrupt the flow of work and encumber the user with wading through vast stores of knowledge to obtain what is needed. Knowledge Aware is a next generation knowledge management approach that avoids legacy failure modes and leverages technology to deliver knowledge to end-users directly within their flow of work. This white paper details the innovative approach to knowledge capture and activation that makes Knowledge Aware a transformative approach for multiple industries. Today’s digitized work environments create the imperative and opportunity for Knowledge Aware to streamline organizational learning, increase productivity, and enhance functions across the entire organization.
While I like what that blurb says, I'm going to take a "wait and see" approach.
Friday, November 6, 2020
Returning Briefly
I've gone the entire week without writing about what's going on in my life and I don't know what conclusion to draw from that simple truth. I have been working, very hard, at getting my disaster recovery documentation to go from my local laptop, where it is compiled into a browser-based output, to the S:\common\drpcurver folder and, this is the "new" part, then, its contents are copied to the ShareFile\DrDoc folder and, from that folder, the contents are synched to the local machine of the Directors.
I have had some success and some unsuccess with this project.
My success is in the reality that this flow works.
My unsuccess is in the reality that this flow is rather cumbersome because my "current" browser-based output from RoboHelp has
6772 Files 4,959,647,173 bytes
In my professional judgement, it takes too long for those 6772 files to be put through the current route from my laptop to s:\common\drpcurver to ShareFile\DrDoc to Director Local Machine.
So what's a Technical Writer, who uses RoboHelp, to do? I know! Create a .CHM file of the disaster recovery documentation so that only a single file goes through the current route from my laptop to s:\common\drpcurver to ShareFile\DrDoc to Director Local Machine!
I tried that.
RoboHelp bombs out and says that the file could not be created.
Is it the weekend yet?!?
I have had some success and some unsuccess with this project.
My success is in the reality that this flow works.
My unsuccess is in the reality that this flow is rather cumbersome because my "current" browser-based output from RoboHelp has
6772 Files 4,959,647,173 bytes
In my professional judgement, it takes too long for those 6772 files to be put through the current route from my laptop to s:\common\drpcurver to ShareFile\DrDoc to Director Local Machine.
So what's a Technical Writer, who uses RoboHelp, to do? I know! Create a .CHM file of the disaster recovery documentation so that only a single file goes through the current route from my laptop to s:\common\drpcurver to ShareFile\DrDoc to Director Local Machine!
I tried that.
RoboHelp bombs out and says that the file could not be created.
Is it the weekend yet?!?
Monday, November 2, 2020
Peterson: Prohm deserves another shot at fixing Iowa State basketball
Peterson: Prohm deserves another shot at fixing Iowa State basketball:
I'll revisit this post in November 2020 to see what happened.
Editor's Note: Is Steve Prohm the ISU men's basketbal coach heading into the 2020-2021 season?
Even if Steve Prohm’s team beats Oklahoma State in Wednesday’s 6 p.m. play-in game, will that erase the ugliness that was 5-13 during the Big 12 Conference and 12-19 overall?
I'll revisit this post in November 2020 to see what happened.
Editor's Note: Is Steve Prohm the ISU men's basketbal coach heading into the 2020-2021 season?
- Yes, he is.
- NO, he isn't.
Friday, October 30, 2020
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