Author: Clickford, Steven M.

Let’s go to the Chop Shop and Watch World “News” Tonight!

Clickford, Steven M.

I’ve posted some remarks of WNT on my Instagram in the form of cute dear-diary like quality.

One I posted “I feel bad for every ABC affiliate (or even an O&O) that is top rated to do the painful handoff of local news to World News Tonight at 6:30 or 5:30″ (or if you live in the Bay Area), Disney’s KGO-TV is currently running the East Coast feed at 3:30 PM Pacific Time perhaps to fill up programming that may discontinue that live show in a month or so.

Friday night was like watching “local news” in say Lubbock, Texas, if only I knew what that kinda journalism is. I think the quality is shown below.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=518872228547493&set=a.306087653159286.1073741862.100012741619409&type=3&theater

If I offended you those Texans, my apologies in advance.

What this picture shows is an apparent full screen graphic of a weather map, and it’s whited out. Thankfully the iPhone saw what I saw too.  Too white for a graphics of this type. Whether it’s over exposed by a technical mishap or extra layers- it’s really a CBA situation. It shouldn’t never went to air, and if the West Coast feed got this as well, it would show the low standards of what a “network newscast” should be.

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I disconnected from the World… and I don’t miss it

Clickford, Steven M.

After a stressful week, I said “Eff it, I’m done, I’m turning every devices off for the weekend”. Except for the MacBook, and if it weren’t for the thunderstorms Friday night, I would’ve kept the Mac mini on, I had for all intensive purposes disconnected. And except for Saturday to have my mother be in touch with me, but essentially email, voice and social media was not on my priorities. I am conquering a mess of clutter of paperwork and unorganized stuff that if you got “little things” they pile up very quickly. I also struck out on Saturday not finding anything of value at Michael’s to use a coupon that was in last weeks Sunday News. I was also planning to read some self help books I got over the course of June, but got tied up trying to wrangle the mess of micro clutter.

After this weekend, sometimes you wonder if America was better off breaking up the Bell System all in the name of special snowflake’s narrowed interest of “innovation”.

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The New York Daily News “Bloodbath”

Clickford, Steven M.

In New York media today, a massive layoff at the New York Daily News has rivaled as mass layoff, putting the torturous   “Massacre of 1996” that took 6 anchors off a job from the newscast at WCBS-TV (of which one of the papers called it the said title at that time) to put shame very lightly. It’s much worse.

Channel 2’s loss 20+ years ago is pure child’s play. And in fact, this may impact the Daily News in almost a similar PR crisis, unlike local TV, you can beat the odds of bad TV ratings 10 years is not something a newspaper in the 2010s can do, especially in a different business climate.  Over 40 newsroom employees got the boot, most in the sports unit and photogs that got a notice today, as the paper was sold to Tronic last fall, (aka the Chicago Tribune company… for all intensive purposes, I’m going to just call it Tribune because I feel every time I mention it, I have to pay Disney or somebody for mentioning part of a movie of yesteryear.)

When I saw Tronic trending, I was surprised to see the Daily News in the same graph. I didn’t know they were sold. According to The New York Times, it was actually sold for a $1 by Mort Zuckerman, the former owner.

Some of these people are critical for a news operation, such as assignment editors and sports writers, of which now New York Yankees stories may very well come from a blog or a wire service going to a “local” “hometown team” paper. Even worse, the Bronx Bombers are in Tampa Bay and the writer has been relieved of his duties prior to coming back home to the Five Boroughs.

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Who Do You Love? The Great American Poli Disconnect

Clickford, Steven M.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9tenSy-vzo

Thank you Howie Carr for helping me create this narrative. The above embed is the opening song to start each hour of his radio program. This song is the infamous Who Do You Love by George Thorogood

That very same song I feel is the melody to our political disconnect. While so many compare Presidant Trump to a reality show, politics in general, specifically in the GOP is the reason why I feel there is problems.

The song I posted above was also used in a promotional package for ether Season 11 or 12 of American Idol, post Simon Cowell, where there was more talent, and while the show did tout themselves as a talent competition, there was however a popularity piece, and creative services unit at Fox (that aired the series at that time) felt the way that season went, it was more of fan favorites over the most talented.

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Howie Carr – Boston’s Disgraceful “Media” Talent

Clickford, Steven M.

So I thought Howie Carr would finally be dumping on Presidant Trump’s really out of line remarks from Russia on Monday… as he would mock libs “Nothing to see here folks… move along”…

But Howie found a story, a puff/fluff/don’t take to literally a story about WBTS (the NBC O&O station) and a few anchors expecting at the same time… Howie took to Twitter…

The shouting on Twitter drives me nuts with the all caps, I am sick and tired of Howie yelling on radio too. And if you never really heard of those “anchors”, How, I suspect it’s because you tune to your non stop shop for entertainment, better known as the Fox News Channel.

It’s so pathetic how Howie has sold himself out to federal politics, and lack of local chatter. And that’s why Howie is a SHADOW OF HIS FORMER SELF!

Howie Carr Sells Out to The Donald

Clickford, Steven M.

Howie Carr is peddling a new book called What Really Happened of the story of election of President Trump and how he helped get Donald Trump elected. It appears to be a spoof of Hillary Clinton’s What Happened book. I wrote back in March how Howie Carr has lost a lot of local relevance in just the last three years once he left WRKO, initially loosing them as an affiliate, but also to do the show..

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Giving up on Tech, part five

Clickford, Steven M.

Earlier I had a few rants against Voice over IP.

One of the things that angers me is how some “VOIP office phones” ring like the sound a caller hears when someone makes a call. Obviously I wanted to have you hear at least one time as opposed to twelve hours.

Grandstream, Polycom and Allworx have this as their ring tone package or is the default ring tone. Never in the history of telephones did an electronic ringer sound like what was heard in the central office until a few boys that were working for datacom decided to do some really stupid things such as making crappy office telephones.

I just so want to GTFO out of this interest.

Giving Up on Tech, part four

Clickford, Steven M.

I hate Voice over IP and it’s “evolution” back to the 1960s in the step by step switching era. It offends me as a phone guy to see how cloud and Asterisk-like VOIP providers LECTURE to the audience about how antiquated the old “digital” telephone systems are and defend a really POS of a phone service. Most Asterisk “PBX” systems scale horrifically, and a lot of the pricky IT weridos think a “PBX” is an “on prem” phone system. NO! This is why I had The Museum of Telephony in the first place! “Features” today are the standard 19 features you can get for your cell or analog phone line, and app integration for your Salesforce, or  other “apps” that do not do call vectoring, advanced call routing, priority ringing, etc.

AND DO NOT GET ME started with how they assume Interactive Voice Response is the VERY SAME THING as an “Auto Attendant”. I so want to scream and strangle these asexual, virgins or rapists – these guys who sell these systems make me want to do a background check. They scream sex offenders!

VOIP is cool, there is a lot of great advantages, but they are doing it in the wrong ways. Latest-and-greatest and fashionable technologies such as Session Initiation Protocol and disgusting “VOIP phones” do SQUAT! Dissing “H323” standards because it’s “not open” shows how close minded “open” minded IT pricks are. There’s a reason why H323 is more reliable, but because you guys are too lazy to learn application specific technologies, well your arrogance is hurting the rest of us!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjyazEhlzQv/?taken-by=steven.clickford

And what’s so disturbing is how a Polycom phone is almost as dumb as a rotary telephone! There was a time when everyone was drinking the AT&T haterade around 1984, that black rotary telephone was all the anger. Well I find Polycoms and Cisco phones to be s— but yet the communistic Open Source community has raped about 90% of the enterprise or small end voice market and yet no one is bitching about that.

Talk about double standards.

Giving up on Tech, part three

Clickford, Steven M.

The ongoing series of why I have decided I.T. is the worst avenue for just a “job”

Arrogant Sysadmin: If you don’t keep up with the times, then you’re in the past.

Me: That’s so unprofessional, threatening me of a job like that

Moderator: Don’t get personal on our technical fourms

Me: Get me of your freckin site, your’re a rapist, misongyistic  man!

And you wonder why I respect women over these pricks right?

Giving up on Tech, part two

Clickford, Steven M.

I am not one of those cranky sysadmins who denigrate “end users” for being “stupid” or “idiots”, etc. I’ve always believed the best ethic for this profession was to have a deskside manner.

I hold all my patience in, and I sometimes want to loose it.

Especially when this narrative reminds me of the twentysomething dude in an Xifnity commercial where the parents had him come to the house just so he can help them.

My mother is one of those people who wants her sci-fi, all the time on her iPad. I am someone who doesn’t understand consumer grade products or content, (OK I use iPads and iPhones, etc. – just I don’t watch movies, and I only manage my iTunes for music, OK?)

I honestly have no clue how to get those special digital downloads to work, and to be honest to give Big Hollywood my email address to get a login with a DRM type of download and have to haggle with that. My mother needs to be instructed and if there is no instructions, she’s up the creek with no paddle.

So I know only enterprise grade technology. I can attain a three nines reliability. My mother doesn’t understand that half of the servers are for business purposes only. I am a year to two years behind getting a help desk program and a knowledge base system to help her, and several other initiatives.

These systems are not apps, they are servers, providing at least five instances of services. In order for me to attain a three-nine reliability, I need to be in management and not be pulled way when walking down the house hallway to be her “little helper”. I DO NOT LIKE BEING PULLED AWAY OR BE TOLD TO COME OVER, DROP EVERYTHING AND BAIL OUT THE OL WOMAN! 

I DO NOT have the time to drop everything and talk to someone at a basic level and handicap EVERY FRECKIN PROCESS of how something works!

Do not tell me to be patient!

As you know my social circle is very narrow, and that due to a number of reasons.  I do not have relief support, I can’t have friends come over and help me with a DB project while I could do something else. I have to do this all by myself.

 

I am this close to just say you’re on your own. Fictional sh– movies  is not a use-case for the enterprise grade equipment. Get your  own HDD and google how to ingest your own video and put it into iTunes. I never tell someone in their face to “google this” and worse this is my mother.

I don’t understand dumb consumers. Why are they so stupid to not understand a BASIC principal of internetworking and in order to have a healthy and happy network, it requires a well, logical, planned out network?  Why do they feel entitled to believe that IT can be their slaves and bend over backwards and do ad-hoc tasks? I have a f—–g door and yet no one respects it. I do not tolerate being flagged down.

I’m done being the sysadmin for my household. I’ll leave the semi secure Netgear Prosafe Firewall as a thank you, because according to FBI, we are supposed to listen them for cybersecurity advice, when if you had some enterprise gear, this was no-news, but it got your mother all sensed up.

I cannot stand parents and their exploitation of their sons with IT without IS backgrounds. I cannot be your hand holder forever!