Steven’s Blog

The F-Word… “Family”, part two

Clickford, Steven M.

Advice for whiney Karens who think they know what’s best for their children and corrupt them into adulthood…

  • Fathers: when knocking up a woman, always take ownership, whether you’re married, cheating, having a bastard child. Avoid a Triple D with a Triple A demeanor. Denying a child’s birth, will only corrupt a child.
  • Mothers: “Giving birth” means you are giving a gift of life to the world. The world (whether it’s the next county over, or the other part of the continent or literally down under) has a reasonable right to be able to allow your child’s gifts
  • Oh and allow your child to have their gifts. If you are annoyed, then that’s your problem
  • The child must have good manners, and set a healthy example, but just because you’re a parent does not mean it gives you the right to fully control the child just because you can in theory. This corrupts children.
  • Be open, but expect the child to be blunt. Your kid may say something in a conversation that may go against your world views. Your kid may challenge you with a “Why” that isn’t about not throwing a ball near your mint Dodge pickup that you are protecting like you love it more than your human offsprings. Kids question bigger issues, but the parents love to control the narrative on preserving a crappy American made truck, than issues like politics, sex and money.
  • If your kid runs away (figuratively or literally) expect to take stock. These damned mama bears and papa bears never seem to take responsibility for corrupting a child. When a child runs away from the parents, they are scared, the last thing they need is to show who has authority. In fact this “authoritative parenting” is likely overcompensating the lack of that with the Boomer>Millenial cross generations. Kids are not objects, they are not your bitch. 
  • Children are children. Do not adult them. A former neighbor had two boys in the last decade. I recall minding my own business, the high pitched, and fast spoken individual was also using 5th grade language to children who weren’t entering in the first grade. The mother for no known reason was treating the children closer to adults then what their brains could handle. I could literally see the puzzled look in their eyes. We thought preserving kid’s innocence was just sex?
  • Likewise, talk to your hierarchal children at eye level. Do not look down at your kids, do not talk down, do not insult their intelligence. Avoid “instructing” children, then they look like they are apparent spoiled brats when it’s far from reality.
  • Family is more than just blood related individuals. Kids need to find someone to reproduce too. But that can’t work if you apply arranged marriages, saying the girlfriend is no good, just because she’s a hippie, or you don’t like her politics. Also, children need to be treated as individuals, not a clusterfuck of generic children in a generic family, this leads into more conflict that could be prevented if hte parent had their act together. 
  • The use of “hierarchal children” means the family unit is more flexible than the “flat” family structure (like the “clusterfuck” analogy.) In my estranged family, it’s very clear the “children” are perpetual youngsters that will probably stay the same.
  • Avoid parentification of children. Kids are not expected to grow up and be parents. There is a severe narcissistic parenting, of which parentification is common. This means that kids are acting as parents to do the work they should be able to do on their own.
  • Stop bragging about your children! That used to be an idiom, but for whatever reason parents who have no self-control , insist they have entitlement they can embarrass, and set a narrative, even if the child is an adult.

Lastly: The world is greater than yourself. Listen, take responsibility, be open, do not hide skeletons. Do not project, reflect instead; set examples in actions, stop using cute words, do not act like a king or queen. Don’t act like your life is invincible. Be humble, don’t gloat about your child. Don’t take your roles too seriously. Allow a child to fall on their own feet. Teach empathy. Only be aggressive when necessary, and let go of the petal when necessary. Embrace individuality, support a child’s own direction of thought. Do not indoctrinate them. Do not experiment mom-club ideas.  Think greater than yourself.

Damn that Millenial! Why do GenXers get a bad name?

Clickford, Steven M.

What happened to these parents is they were the first major generation to basically grow up without much rules, as both of their parents were working, leaving the kids to on their own. Most GenXers would be outside, outside and be very outdoorsy till the sun set. They didn’t do much gaming, even if an Atari existed, and to many of the Gen-Xers, an Apple was a fruit, and sometimes a computer, and even for an Apple II, it was too complicated. Most Gen-Xers learned on an IBM 5150 (or “The IBM PC”) resulting in burnouts of Tier 1 Helpdesk professionals often changing under 50somethings’ diapers during the first generation of the PC.

As a result they are technologically phobic and can’t understand social media, let alone the original carnations of the World Wide Web. Remember if they learned on a PC, then they never understood the open Internet, because Microsoft manipulated their users to use Internet Explorer… don’t get me started with that trauma!

Many of just only 50 million of these weirdos too worshipped Ronald Regan, as if he was some magical political force, of empty policy, and fluffy marketable ideas, but again ideas are not policy. If you push your beliefs, then it can magically become this perfect little world that the United States could do nothing wrong. Regan introduced society that primitive thinking (like as if we were in 1000 AD by branding his policies pretty simply.

Then GenXers were exposed to children randomly going missing in the 70s, and as a result, this may indicate why a certain age and demographic why parents over-protect their kids not from physical harm, but their feelings and mental protection is doing anything to harm.

That’s another subject for another day.

On Facebook’s Outage…

Clickford, Steven M.

I am not going to be the asshole tech pundit who trashes others for not knowing things like Border Gateway Protocol, or what have you.

I mean seriously, who at the Facebook’s technical staff even know what BGP stands for? Or any server administration period.

I am talking about the Facebook outage that occurred on Monday morning – the morning after the whistle blower appeared on 60 Minutes. There was little clarity whether it was a Distributed Denial of Service attacks (or DDOS – yes I capitalize the “O” because I find mixed capitals in initials to be tacky) or just a simple routing issue. It turns out, according to their blog post in response to the outage

“Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.” From Facebook’s engineering blog

Where is the PR to help gel out vague languages such as a “configuration change”… that even though I am not technical, I would certainly test things before applying (but that would violate the Move Fast and Break Things ethos.)

I’ve had a theory that coders were very narrowminded groups of people who don’t know much about networking, much like how networking guys took a literal backwards view on telephony.

Or that coders have basic views of networking, that is no different than a gamer or a YouTube influencer.

This is sad if a large trillion dollar enterprise is acting like a bro startup at a scrappy office building. It’s been confirmed that Facebook’s corporate hierarchy is “flat” according to the whistle blower speaking to Congress this week. It’s not a surprise and coders see the world as flat (maybe they are flat-earthers!)

Facebook’s own computing (of which they do, and not use Google or Microsoft or Amazon), is not just their own farm, but they had built their own bare computers, without standard rack hardware, just sitting out in the open, using open source software along with their wacky hardware designs. Facebook’s software however, should be concerning if the underlying code is basic Linux code, and if Linux servers are acting as routers, they typically are not intended to be built to handle billions of users.

This is really, really bad, if Facebook’s routing is as shallow as a home gamer with consumer grade equipment or consumer grade networking settings. This consumer mindset should alarm enterprises of any size because IP networking and routing is more than just from going in and out.

If you want to be the next Facebook, it’s likely logical you should consider Software Defined Networking, just make sure it’s built for scale and built for serious environments. Facebook’s very casual and reckless approach for managing their systems should also be a wake up call for aspiring web disrupters.

A Telephone Number is NOT A URL!

Clickford, Steven M.

A couple years ago, I had clashed with a crude and disrespectful DSP; who was there for a quick buck but should’ve worked in another field instead. The individual was significantly younger than me; and involved the really grey matter of what is considered to be a private, one on one conversation in a congregated group that isn’t strangers. I’ve had people say it’s wrong to abut into conversations in open environments, and some seeing what I saw.

The person I won’t identify avoided a local restaurant because the joint didn’t have an app to order on a smartphone, and actually left to go to another place that did. I said

“you couldn’t use your phone by calling?”

She responded (again a DSP, who should hold higher standards said in a crudely sarcastic matter”)

“I don’t need your sass”

While I was being generally light-hearted.

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Unsolicited Advice: How Can Facebook Prevent the Latest Screwup

Clickford, Steven M.

In the last 5 days, Facebook has been under pressure, the whistleblower who broke the stories to The Wall Street Journal of specifically Instagram monitoring and adjusting knowingly content with the intent to harm teenage girls came forward to 60 Minutes Sunday night. While it made media play the following morning, around lunch hour, Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp all experienced outages  at least for the rest of the day till roughly 6:00 pm Eastern Time when some of the services returned

On Tuesday, it was reported that Facebook had made changes to their core servers that resulted in the outages. In the midst of the outages, rumors flew that Facebook employees literally had to go into the data center physically to perform the reboot. Another cause was a screwup to the Border Gateway Protocol routing tables. This is one of several IP routing protocols to route Internet traffic between machines and users.

Both have no excuse. I have some solutions:

1. Facebook violated COPPA, both on the letter and spirit of the law

For those who say the rules and regs have to be rewritten for a modern era of technology is frankly bullshitting you. The Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act or COPPA was designed to protect all children under the magic age of 13 as they put into the regs from being tracked, monitored specifically personally identifiable information or PII. And even if the users were over 13, this doesn’t give Facebook the ethical or moral standards to treat a 14 year old user the same as a 24 year old because the world is not flat or bland, where everyone should be treated 100.0000.0000.000% the same.

If anything, Facebook should be fined if there is data that was harvested for the persons under the age of 13. The Instagram for kids app that Facebook was contemplating should be reviewed by a legal firms to ensure it’s all compliant to the existing COPPA regulations, and not universities.

2. Whistleblowers need to be protected (legally)

One of the provisions of the controversial Dodd-Frank law, was to address a decades old issue of how can a company prevent another Enron. Part of this was providing bounty support for anyone who was open and willing to report nefarious actions by corporate executives. While the Trump administration got rid most of the law (because it had Obama-fingerprints on it, other than promoting an indiscriminate free-market agenda) this whistleblower protection still exists because the law was the basis for the whistle blower to come forward since Facebook is a publicly held company.

There should be no legal shame for these people to come forward. It’s typical for a publicly held company to be responsible financially for wrongdoings, but Faceebook is with a zillion dollars by science of public perception, and the idea they can’t seem to have enough money to finance (or “fund”) a group of people to make Facebook’s platforms safe for everyone?

3. Facebook needs to not only employ security and safety, but FFS no one that is running the server farm has no knowledge on IP?

This clearly shows how people (even nerds and techies) assume the Internet is the Web or a platform, not a underlying protocol to connect machines to users. The Monday outage seemed to show how Facebook appears to be running on plastic clad routers or hubs. Worse, I suspect since Facebook’s own servers are built in house, that I wouldn’t be surprised to see if their networking was built in house too (read Software Defined Networking.) I wouldn’t be surprised to see if they shoplifted some open source code for routing and switching that in reality is designed for light traffic and lacks important critical features that would be required for a site like Facebook, and apps like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.

4. After this incident coders can’t be taken seriously anymore

The guys who brag they know Python, are real jerks. I am going out of my way to call them “zealots”. They are completely intolerant to anything that doesn’t interest them. They don’t care about  QoS, or IP routing, all they care about is their own type of networking that the rest of us don’t see it as. Technology professionals need to look at themselves in the mirror, to see if their one skillset is worth having a job in the first place. Just like in telephony, the phone guys didn’t get IP, and the networking admins didn’t understand the underlying telephony features, the same applies to networking admins and server admins. Look at how Microsoft sucks at VOIP because Windows guys don’t get Cisco’s IOS, and how lousy the constantly rebadged Unified Communications System showed that?

Brag about your skills in Python, but Python won’t save you from screwing up a routing table.

And if you disagree with me, then you lack empathy, you lack diversity, and you must be a little creepy perv to spy on underage girls’ PII.

Developmental Services System 1991 (NH State Audit Compressed for 2021 Standards)

Clickford, Steven M.1 Comment

In 1991, after the Laconia State School closed, the State of New Hampshire did an audit of the system and services for the developmentally delayed. Out of respect for modern day technologies, the original PDF can be seen here, at the expense of your network or cell data plan, This was the time where Macintosh computers were not used by many, so it’s lousy in design quality. The PDF was converted at some point from it’s original DOS-like word processing in 1998, and thanks to RSA 91-a, I am doing you a public service by hosting a lighter version of this PDF because am I a native nerd to the the government affairs, not “obsessed with the system”.

Sadly a lot of the core context in this file has never been addressed. Bill of Rights is kinda the theme here, and sadly the developmental disability system has been audited several times since 1991. But ironically the audits never go back to the original blueprint of the 1991 audit. Sadly I don’t even think our current agencies at the Department of Education or at the Bureau even have this document

Do understand in 1991, there was a dueling thing going on, and that was special education. I entered into Londonderry just months before, and there was a lot of growing pains across the state for Special Education, that was done on a reactionary measure, that then carried into adulthood so people like your’s truly was then hungover with the neglect at the SPED level.

The compressed PDF will be the source of many future writings or postings of content related to my condition and the ever so declining system that isn’t just me that’s having the problems. I can only speak for myself and presently I am the only one that is the most outspoken for the rights of me and my peers.

Happy Labor Day 2021!

Clickford, Steven M.

Labor Day is a U.S. Holiday for the people who work (not servicemen or women) but just your average Joe… or maybe that Average Joe is to this day under appreciated.

 

I thought I’d write up an article to look at the state of the American Worker, and if this figure is worth defending in the age of a changing society. I’ve put together 3 types of workers, the Work Hard, the Play Hard, and the Think Hard. Now understand these three types of on the 110% intensity is never a good idea.

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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.