Steven’s Blog

I Wish to be in a Singular Relationship Than Being Completely Single

Clickford, Steven M.

In the experience with my paternal family a couple years back, one striking observation was how many partners they had and how many fractured siblings were both in my generation and my father’s generation. There is at least I’d say based on memory 4 half cousins and siblings, and 2 paternal grandfathers, 3 shared one, the other was from the other. I can’t even write properly because it’s so confusing.

It’s ironic because it appears that the family is very traditional, but I do not think having children from from at least more than one partner is the most healthiest thing for that bullshit idea of the “nuclear family”.

But nothing can be worse than a father not ever admitting the creation of this writer.

Regardless, what the Ayottes lack is what I aspire to have. I just want to be with one person who can be treasured, valued, admired with no fears that she’d be disposed.

I do not know what “love” means, because there has been no point of reference of what can be a good relationship.

The Search to the Demise of Democracy

Clickford, Steven M.

An ongoing series to find out why one of the smaller states may had been the very state that lead us – that is also the United States into the hellhole politically. This subject is on “the media”.

“The media” gets a bad rap, and I suspect the phrase “the media” like it being “the enemy of the people” is unfairly characterized, but its improperly directed at the wrong groups. The people behind the institutions are often the targets, but it’s really the way the media has become a commercialized entity where the content is a slot machine, that like a modern day slot machine in Vegas is “rigged”. Lax rules in the industry by the FCC, helped make radio a painful medium no matter if it’s Class A AM or Class C FM. The content for a lack of a better word, sucks.

In order to be part of a productive member of a democratic society, one must be informed of their surroundings of their local institutions.

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Fact. The Google Search Engine Works. *In Theory*

Clickford, Steven M.

When I used to manage The Museum of Telephony from 2012 to late 2019; one of the surprising antidotes I can say is: the Google Search Engine works. Period.

I didn’t pay Google a dime! I am going to be honest, and say it was really weird to see my own work come up in first or second pages when I was gawd-honest trying to find present telephony stuff, that in way was commingled in my content.

Not to mention the self-reflection I would see. Sometimes I would cringe just seeing my own work. On the other hand, there was this need to be responsible, but things went haywire by 2020.

Now how did Google get this if I didn’t pay to play like some YouTube hack creators?

  1. Unintentional SEO. It was never intended to be a Search Engine Optimized site, it just coincidentally happened that way. One was alternate text and titles in the images. The alternate text was very descriptive, because I always wanted my content I create to be accessible for all persons. It wasn’t too detailed, but it gave the reader an overall summary of the picture
  2. The iTheme’s built in Tag cloud. Since the inception, the iTheme was the overall visual identity for TMOT. Like most WordPress sites, it too had the tag cloud. I used the tags liberally and with relevance as well. Not to mention the categories as well.
  3. Daring to share. In 2018, I made social media companions. I resisted as long as possible, but made a Facebook and Instagram page. With the linking on my YouTube (under my alternate name), this gave the algos likely a feedback loop.

So when I hear Google’s search is rigged, it cannot be always true. TMOT was not a non-comm platform per se, but it was not by any means making any financial gains to expand or what. When it moved over to our own hosts, the hits were not as strong, despite the clickford.net domain being in use for over 5 years, and was acting as a redirect for a couple of years, before moving onto an off-prem host in late 2019.

I do not take what I did lightly, I broke the Internet, and while I slowed down, others made their own.

It was a great time for me in the 2010s.

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Rest in Peace Melanie

Clickford, Steven M.1 Comment

Melanie has left us for good on Wednesday morning of June 30th.  She died in an apparent motor vehicle suicide this morning not to far from where she’s been living. While Melanie filed for divorce on Valentine’s Day last year, Melanie had no contact with me. State authorities spoke to me later that morning and it’s been a hard day. The rest of this post contains graphic narrative of her last moments, reader discretion is advised when you click on Read More.

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Now Hiring – Technical Support Specialist

Clickford, Steven M.

CliMS – On Site – Information Systems & Technology

THE ROLE

* Migrating to automation and scripting when needed

* Manages about 10 different microcomputer servers and workstations

* Manages about 3 mobile devices

* Oversees a 3-subnet LAN, with multiple various VLANs; VLANs exposed to the Internet, some have no routing.

* Supervises traffic amongst 50 to 70 known IP connections * Manages multiple different platforms (Windows, Macs and Linux)

* Managing operating systems primarily on virtualization (VirtualBox and VMware)

* Many of the systems are legacy (OS X, Windows 2008, Windows 7)

* Coordinating, planning, and ensuring security on the critical/production systems * handling training for users of the system

* Attempts to document and log systems

* Projects that take years because of day to day user bailouts.

*  Managing Voice over IP Telephony and Unified Communications platforms (VOIP and IPT)

* Specific Applications (IBM Lotus Domino, Apple’s File Maker Pro), and custom FMP code (ERP, customer database, video and media logs)

IDEAL SKILLS:

Previous experience of a small work environment with enterprise class technology (Netgear PROSAFE, Cisco IOS) and a working knowledge of streaming and media management is a plus. Ability to work with users and help desk skills is helpful.

REQUIREMENTS
A New Hampshire Drivers License, be willing to have a background check. An experience of 5 years in technology, preferably the same amount of time related to media production. The willingness of working in a startup environment. No group think mentality. Ability to multi task on multiple systems at once. Understanding QoS and packet prioritization is mandatory. Candidate is willing to work without benefits, and be able to be paid per hour on projects, and is willing to learn a startup’s own workflow. Must be a selfless professional.

 

Windows 11 & macOS Monterey…

Clickford, Steven M.

… I am in no business in wanting to use a workstation anymore.

Windows 11 is coming out soon, CNET reported today you could get the version – now! Whatever that means, a beta, pre Service Pack 2, etc. Last week, it was reported that Windows would discontinue support for Windows 10 in 2025. What does that mean, will that mean that I may get locked out of using Windows 10 past it’s End of Life?

Windows 11 is yet again another hot mess, of rebadging features and relocating things, of which in Windows 10, features within it’s lifecycle changed dramatically.

It’s unclear if the mandatory updates will disappear. Or that god-awful mandatory lock screen of the time of day that is so Orwellian.

Over at macOS, on the theme of Craig Federighi’s favorite California destinations, it’s where the late Gary Killdall called home, Monterey [Beach]. As much as I like iOS and iPadOS and the clustereff of separate but united systems, I do not, and fully do not think that having a Mac desktop acting like a touchless iPad is an intelligent “evolution”. Apple is not a “Pro” brand anymore, it’s just another English word masquerading as special brand.

There are parts where it’s perfectly good, like Messages, and FaceTime but changing the macOS interface to pander to the teeny-boppers of Gen Z is an insult to an on and off Mac user of 30 years. Apple is totally disrespecting their elders.

For anyone to compare this outrage from Classic Mac OS to Mac OS X is fooling themselves, leaving OS 9 to OS X was a major upgrade making the Mac indefinitely in par with a PC; in fact that was real progress on a technological sense. A computer that is simple as a toaster couldn’t fly in the age of security standards, etc. Those old farts that whined about the death of Classic Mac OS was clearly true pricks. the macOS today is more of a regressive move back to the days of Classic Mac OS and moving the Mac into an appliance.

Again, do I need to repeat the audience, that an operating system does not need to be released as a full new version every year on the 365th day after the “current release”? I get all the “security” nonsense, but things should be firewalled in the first place! This is invisible consumerism, with more disposing of cash for “new” things that don’t need to be replaced.

Excuse me while I upgrade (since “updating” is too simple for my workflow) to Sierra on the mini for the Fourth of July week, since High Sierra was a joke and not open to Mojave anytime soon.

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So IBM/Red Hat Killed Centos…and Fedora what the hell?

Clickford, Steven M.

This was never finished until June of 2021… was written around Christmas time (last draft on December 21st), then I got COVID and ran 10 days behind and whole slew of backlogs in life…

In the acquisition of Red Hat by IBM recently, they didn’t really wait to cut off community support for their free and open source operating systems.

Red Hat, is one of the largest mass producers of commercial Linux operating systems. Their flagship product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is sold to either enterprises or other corporations who will then resell the operating system as part of their own software (think of Cisco’s Communications Manager, or Avaya’s older AUDIX software.) There was two offsprings to a free but non commercial, non critical or be able to profit off their own code. There were two versions outside of Red Hat they had targeted, Fedora for desktops, and Centos (as in Community Enterprise Operating System) for enterprises and desktops.

One of the reasons why Linux or open source was better than commercial software was their alleged lifespan. End of life cycles were very long. Now what would be the last final support to Centos is now going to be within the next year, as opposed to 2028, in the old arraingment.

The issues of Linux as a desktop or a more mainstream server systems was the lack of unity. In a Live Free or Die technical state, there is a lot of us-vs-them from within the non-comm coders world. Think of KDE vs. GNOME; Mandrake vs Knopix, CENTOS vs. Debian, etc.

Like in the real commercial world, there is a lifecycle of a release. And given how insecure UNIX can be to run scripts, it’s not OK in their world to run vintage versions of Linux in production, or even in an isolated LAN. The selling point of Linux for vintage was for the hardware it could theoretically run, where commercial systems wouldn’t support 3 to 5 year old hardware.

The other issues I’ve spoken in the past is the lack of empathy of the overall user from the open source world. A lot of software packages are half-rate from the commercial world because it literally what most users want. Coders, like rapists think they are above all rules and they think if they know what’s best, then you are not to question them, and if you do you’ll be belittled and verbally abused.

While the so-called end user experience differs between the “distros”, Linux’s big failure is the ability to settle on one platform and stick with it with the hopes the group-think of Free and Open Source Software.

For some of my experiences with Linux, I preferred CENTOS over the other distros. The way IBM bought a big software company and is using their revenue to pay off debt that has nothing to do with Red Hat, that goes back decades. This lack of financial literacy of techies, leads them to think IBM is the worst “companies” (techies poor English trying to elaborate “Corporate America”) to exist. The problem is most Linux and FOSS people live off something or someone else and expect to have a free lunch, and someone has to feed their family. Now I am not sounding like Microsoft, M$ies, tend to say “we put a lot of hard work of blood sweat and tears [shoplifting others codes like DOS, the Macintosh, VMS etc.] creating DOS, and Windows and Windows NT”.

Corporations that are to provide a service (that is an easy to distribute version of Linux) has to pay debt, and other costs other than just people. They have to break even. Red Hat was fine, but IBM wanted to make quick buck to pay off debt from other failed acquisitions or financing bleeding entities, that techies think is perfectly OK.

Why should the mainframe business have x amount of employees at a declining y revenue stream? That is not how a capitalistic system is support to work. Notice I refrained from stating capitalism  which are two different meanings.

This is what people sign up to live. On the edge, unsure what the next sustainable path both financially and technologically. This is one of the reasons why I checked out of high tech.

Why Rural America is often Joked Upon

Clickford, Steven M.

I have thought this a lot over the last few years, especially after the rise of the Tea Party and the party of Donald Trump to see why people are who they are emotionally, intellectually and worse politically, and the areas with less people tend to have these usual suspects. I find Rural America to be the rot to the decay of this country. I outline them below:

  • They lack emotional intelligence. You rarely hear about low EQ people in sub/urban areas, but I find that in rural America, people tend to make more emotional decisions, are subjected to misinformation because of their emotions, they can’t take reasonable criticism and on a completely different level, they put faces to business owners, and  have more attachment to business on an emotional level, which is never appropriate on the enterprise.
  • They are not “dumb” per se, they lack high volumes of information. Conservatives or people who live in the south or the rural America are not dumb. They appear to have rotten brains because their schooling was either subpar or they refused to apply any skills they learned in “skool”, as many rural Americans like to pronounce in the phonetic sense.  They choose to refuse to get new information. They lack information because they preach on the same gospel since they graduated high school. This may explain why they tend to say “this isn’t what I learned in school”. Likewise in sub/urban locales, thirtysomethings insist they have to go back to college to learn things, when it’s not the classroom where you learn the most stuff.
  • Politics is all D.C. (where all the fun is) Rural America is also the locale where politics and sports seems to be synonymous. In municipalities where there are town meeting governments, these people tend to be quiet and shy, but are very outspoken to close family members when it comes to national politics. It’s like the 1940s, there is a silent government (state and local) and a loud government (federal) the ones that they are most interested is the one that they think they can fight, the federal. At the same time, the sub/urban liberal types tend to focus on federal government/elections over state and local, or the main goal is to get to the federal level ASAP after doing their time for a term or two on the state and local.
  • They are very prejudicial to anyone that isn’t one of them. In smaller towns where tolerance is so low (this is very typical in any rural American town); so anyone whose from the next state over must be some bad person, because of the underlying tones that gets projected by the low information, and low emotionally intelligent people.

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Women Avoiding Their Lane (Women Speaking on Men’s Issues) – Brittney Sellner

Clickford, Steven M.

Brittney Sellner, an American YouTuber is part of this alt-right movement, of populism over facts, and using emotions to scare her audience. Ironically masculine men would preach “facts over emotions”. I guess that applies if the person is a philosophical  (or a “liberal”) person. But it’s a female not a masculine men that is preaching unhealthy information. She was born in America in 1992 (makes her a younger Millenial… which means she’s not only self-centered, but considered to be dumber than her older counterparts.) She married an Austrian (via the fan Wiki sites – a groom with Neo-Nazi ties… going to leave it at that. The reader should now know how bad she is.)

Her editing is lousy. It’s often shot on a webcam, and cut every five seconds as if she was talking for over an hour. Her dB reads are often very hot, peaking at 11 in most videos. Her anger and fast talking really causes a passerby to get highly anxious. Two of the most absurd videos of late was her views on sexuality…

According to her logic, “the media” and our culture is “obsessed”. When you cut her self-pimping book, this goes down faster than 8 minutes. If you have low tolerance, I’ll just give you the jist:

  • Uses celebrities as the scapegoat for the hyper-sexualizing “in the last few decades a-ago” – is she implying like 5 since the 1960s?
  • Bashes OnlyFans, which is a niche platform to pay to view more raunchier content
  • Refers to the Kardashians phonetically as “Kardashins”. Wow is she living in Austria?
  • “Its the norm to be hyper sexual”
  • She tries to talk like a non-American intellectual by phonetically saying “ta-boo”, and “Holy-wood”. (Her backdrop on her YouTube looks like it was taken in Austria… need I say more?)
  • Starts to throw porn under the bus (claims that “inceset-porn” is on the rise)
  • She starts to make unreferenced claims about a rise of PornHub… OK???
  • She attacks the music industry’s sexualization
  • “Once a ta-boo [sic] is normalized…and people need to take it a step further”
  • Claims porn is destructive to society, but yet rhetoric isn’t?
  • 9:25 she goes way down… wait for it…uses some Vice News articles to back that up.

Still porn apparently is hurting society and yet POTUS Trump, Mr. Holier Than Thou was completely morally perfect in his governance. Makes a lot of sense.