A Life For Itself

Category: five things

  • Five Things – 2 August 2020

    Twitter Hackers Caught

    There’s a scene at the beginning of “Ocean’s Eleven,” where Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan are trying to talk Ruben Tishkoff into joining them in their planned casino robbery caper. Ruben is hesitant at first, but is happy to join in once Danny and Rusty explain that they’re planning to rob the casinos of Ruben’s nemesis, Terry Benedict, who had recently bought Ruben’s hotels from under him and was planning to demolish them “to make way for some gaudy monstrosity.”

    Despite the good feelings engendered by Ruben’s joining the plan, he makes an important warning. Stealing from Terry Benedict like this is especially dangerous. “At the end of this, he better not know you’re involved, not know your names, or think you’re dead, because he’ll kill you, then he’ll go to work on you.”

    Since the movie is older than at least one of them, almost as old as the other two involved, I guess the young men who pulled off the Twitter hack had never seen it, or at least that scene. And perhaps nobody told them leave their names fully out of online activities like that. And that means anywhere along the lines.

    What’s the point of using a “hacker alias,” a VPN, TOR, an airgapped machine, Kali Linux, or any of that other stuff, if you’re going to use your real name on your bitcoin account that you use to receive stolen Bitcoin?

    I only ask because that’s apparently how guys in the caper got caught. They’re described as the middlemen, but, if you’re the kind of person who involves themselves in such activities, you’ve probably taken a lot of other precautions, such as the ones listed above, to protect your identity, as much as possible. They might even use burners phones and such. But if you’re going to be receiving stolen bitcoin, why on Earth would you receive it in such a way that can be tied back to you? There are ways to transact with Bitcoin anonymously and I was surprised to hear that this is how law enforcement was lead to the two.

    In Ocean’s Thirteen, when discussing that film’s caper, the specialist Roman Nagel asks Danny and Rusty possibly the most important question of any caper, “what’s your exit strategy?”

    These guys must not have given much thought to theirs. Now, they’re facing multiple felonies.

    President bans TikTok

    The other night, Twitter was ablaze with the news that the President of the United States planned to ban the short-form video content creation app, TikTok. If you’ve been living under a rock or perhaps spend the majority of your social media time on Facebook and therefore don’t know what’s going on, TikTok has been controversial because it is owned by a Chinese company with ties to its government and the app has come to be considered to be spyware. India’s government has banned TikTok, but they’ve also been having other issues with China this year.

    This, and perhaps other issues (like, really, who even knows?) have prompted the President to make the move to ban the app in the United States. But, if the comments on Twitter are any indication, there might be some trouble enforcing that.

    As a baseline, the government would need Google and Apple to remove the app from their app stores “in the U.S.” Even so, the moment the app is removed from those locations, what’s stopping someone from hopping on a VPN and changing their location to another country, like say, Canada, which has not banned the app, and getting the app?

    It’s possible on both Android and iOS without rooting, and it’s super easy on Android.

    But even so, for those who might be unable or unwilling to do that much, there are alternative app stores out there. And even if one does not trust those, what’s stopping people from going to other websites and getting the app(s)? It’s pretty easy to sideload an Android app. And while it doesn’t seem as easy to me to do the same on iOS, it’s possible. A quick web search will reveal a bunch of possible ways to do so.

    As this tweet says, pretty much nothing sort of the government building a “Great Firewall” is going to stop the app from coming into the country. They’d have to enlist every ISP, including cell phone companies and home Internet providers. Would they do it by blocking the DNS of known places where the app might be? Still, people can use DNS in other countries and even Cloudflare, whose 1.1.1.1 DNS service is encrypted. VPN providers have their own DNS servers, so if someone connected to a VPN, if that VPN provider were outside of the country, then they’ve already circumvented things. They’d have to ban VPN services.

    Then, what’s stopping someone two people, one inside the US and one outside, away from known VPN services, from setting up their own site-to-site VPN and just sharing the app between themselves?

    All of that aside, it’s being reported that Microsoft could buy the American arm of TikTok and I guess that, along with making sure the apps aren’t like … spying on people, will could make this issue go away? Hopefully, the kids will take their lessons on Internet privacy seriously, regardless of what happens.

    MLB Still Going

    Pleasantly surprised is a good way to describe how I feel about this MLB season, so far. Despite coronavirus diagnoses on several teams, MLB is pushing through. Now, Rob Manfred has told the union that too may more players testing positive would mean he’ll have to shut it down, and has told their television partners to get ready for that possible eventuality, but so far, they’re pressing on. And the O’s are near the top of the AL East. I do want baseball, not because I have this sense that it’ll be providing “normalcy.” Normalcy would be the season starting early spring when it’s cooler and fans would be in the stands and no fan noise would be piped in. But, baseball does bring me joy like few other things in my life, so I’m happy to have it. But, if the health situation becomes unmanageable, then it’s time to shut it down.

    NFL Better Pay Attention to MLB

    The NFL needs to be paying as much attention to how things go with MLB. In fact, while I’m pretty sure they’d never do this, were I in control of the NFL, I’d have done my best to have health and operations officials from my league working closely with some counterpart in MLB to monitor the situations and the decisions being made, to relay that information and to help us make better decisions moving forward.

    The two leagues are in similar situations, in that they both decided to contest games in each team’s home stadium. However, while no fans are present in MLB games, the NFL has decided to leave the question of fan capacity, ultimately up to teams and local governments. The Ravens announced several weeks ago that M&T Bank Stadium would have a capacity of no more than 14,000 fans (PSL holders were given priority ticket purchase rights since they wouldn’t all be technically able to use their PSLs this season), but ultimately, the decision is up to the City of Baltimore to decide whether that number of fans will be allowed into the ballpark, or fewer, or none at all.

    The challenge of preventing a breakout in any team’s locker room is magnified for the NFL, as NFL rosters are basically double the size of MLB rosters this season. NFL teams pretty much always have more coaches than the typical MLB team. More players play in closer quarters on every single play in any game, than in MLB. The NBA and WNBA have distanced players sitting on the bench, so it’ll be interesting to see how the NFL deals with that particular issue because there are a lot more players along the sidelines at any time during an NFL game than there are in any basketball game.

    It’s a logistical challenge and I think the NFL should have decided upon sequestering players, officials, and such in one or more places across the country and I’m surprised they did not. The NFL had lots of time to think about it. They planned and executed a physically distanced, and quite fun, in my opinion, draft in a relatively brief time.

    Now, on the chance that both the MLB and NFL seasons successfully complete, I do hope the O’s and Ravens do end up on top. I usually do, obviously, being from Baltimore and having been a fan for such a long time, but want to see the win for Mo. Baltimore superfan and child cancer patient, Mo Gaba, passed away this past week. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an outpouring of love or care or concern for anybody in the Baltimore sports community. Tweets came from current and former Baltimore players. Even whole sportscasts have been dedicated to him and his memory. Understandably so. He didn’t just love Baltimore sports, but that was part of his love of life. In spite of all of the challenges he faced. I never met him, but like so many of us, was touched by him and his story. The Orioles put him into their Hall of Fame hours before he passed and I hope that gave him peace and joy in his final hours. I’m glad the O’s and Ravens, and others, did so much for him, rallied around him. These are my home town teams, but we’re also part of a community that I’m grateful to be part of. At least one championship would be a great tribute to a life lived briefly but bravely.

    Isaias

    Tropical Storm Warnings have gone up in this area, and we’re hours from the forecast arrival of Isaias. Hopefully it will be just a Tropical Storm when it arrives in this area. From the looks of it, the storm will be here with us from sometime late Monday night through Tuesday afternoon/evening. It’s done quite a bit of damage down in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but thankfully lost some intensity last night and was downgraded. But tropical cyclones are anything but fully predictable, so we’ll have to wait and see how things turn out.

    Baltimore City is offering free sandbags for local residents on a first-come, first-served basis.

    Providing these bags is a great service, but I think in future storms, this needs to be done on the basis of living near one of the City’s waterways. The City has neighborhoods that flood almost regularly, like Canton and Fells Point and ones right next to the Patapsco like Cherry Hill and Westport. Those neighborhoods, and ones like Clipper Mill, which sits in the Jones Falls valley, and Mount Washington, are the most at risk when a storm threatens to rain hard and consistently for hours. There are also other smaller waterways, which can become hazardous during a huge rain event. These are the places the city needs to focus on, as well as areas with poor drainage. The City knows about these issues and can focus resources better itself than relying on citizens, who might come from neighborhoods at less risk, and come more out of fear than out of a sense preparedness. With the pandemic going on, city agencies like schools (yeah, yeah, I know how it runs and how its funded, but it serves Baltimore children and it’s located in Baltimore) have faced logistical issues in serving people. The last thing we need is people unnecessarily showing up places for something they probably don’t need. Hopefully, the City will correct this and do a better job in the future. This isn’t a condemnation, but advice, as I know that Baltimore, like pretty much everywhere else, is under unprecedented pressures at this time. Whatever happens in the next couple of days, I hope that we make it through, as unscathed as possible because the logistics around sheltering people during the pandemic would be a major challenge. I know the City has many good people working for it, but again, there’s a big strain going on.

  • Five Things – 26 July 2020

    I haven’t been blogging through the pandemic, nor through the recent social movement. I have lots of thoughts on why that is, and I may put some out there about that at another time, but one of the reasons is that I’ve been working mostly on new plays. I’ve been working on my latest full length and off, and on, a ten-minute play based on my most recently completed full-length. Or, perhaps that’s just an excuse.

    But not blogging or writing much of anything else, and feeling the urge again, is the main reason I decided to come back and blog again, at least weekly.

    I’m going to do my best to blog weekly, one or two items from the tech world, one or two from the arts world, and maybe one or two personal things. We’ll see how it goes.

    Instagram Fake, the Twitter Breach, and Social Trust

    A couple of weeks ago, I found out somebody had created a fake Instagram account using my name and my picture. Apparently, it had been created some time in June and I only found out because I was tagged in a post by a third account that roots out such fake accounts (big ups to them for this.) This was pretty surprising because I’m not a known name or anything, not yet. I didn’t think there was any value to impersonating somebody without much social visibility or trust or good will built up. At least not outside of people I personally know.

    And yet, there was the fake. Along with the new profile picture I’d most recently posted, this time, across all of my social media accounts, as my Gravatar, et. al. The account creator had lifted the verbiage from my Twitter profile, albeit without linking to this website or to my Keybase identity, both of which would have immediately exposed them as a fake. Not that posting on Instagram in different languages, not found on this site or in my other social media accounts, helped to establish any credibility any. Nor did not posting anything about Baltimore, which is one of my things.

    I reported the account and for a few days, it was still there. A friend of mine told me she’d gone through the same experience and had to send Instagram a picture of herself, holding a piece of identification. Fortunately, by the time I found my passport –I’d decided that was the ID I’d use instead of my license– and was about to take the picture, Instagram had already removed the offending account.

    I’m glad I didn’t have to go through the extra steps and all and while Instagram never notified me of the steps they took (which it says they’ll do when you report an account impersonating you), I would have liked to know if they decided that the offending account was truly the fake because I have these small measures of social trust posted online, e.g. my Keybase account and this website. I honestly thought about going live as proof that my account was the real one because while the offending account could certainly have downloaded any video out of my account and uploaded into theirs, Instagram would have at least known how the video was created –streamed directly into their service– and known that I’d made it and the copycat had not.

    Hopefully the Keybase account is good enough for at least techies to trust. At least it probably was before Zoom’s acquisition of Keybase. It may have been in this case. The offending account didn’t offer any form of social proof that they were me.

    Whether it’s Keybase or not, these forms of social trust are going to become more crucial in the future. Especially looking at the recent Twitter hack.

    As I mentioned before, my Keybase proof is in my Twitter profile. However, had I been a victim of the recent breach on that service, that would not have mattered, since the hackers had access to the service’s administrative console. They could have deleted any references to my Keybase proof. So, while there is some social trust in verified Twitter accounts, that trust now greatly rests on not just the user becoming verified, but also on practices like Twitter admins posting sensitive passwords with wide access in locations like Slack channels.

    I know this is a sensitive issue, especially inside the privacy community, and adopting specific means of identity verification, even like Keybase, is going to be difficult. But for the larger Internet, some kind of alternate means to say “this is the person you believe you’re communicating with” will probably become more important as we learn more about how some social networks operate.  Nothing compulsory, but a place where people can more reasonably trust that they’re communicating with the people they think they’re communicating with.

    In the meantime, I still have my Keybase account and it’s here:

    https://keybase.io/kesschristopher

    And remember, if an account online displays this proof, but the Keybase profile doesn’t point back to it, then it’s likely not me.  And you can come here to see if an online account says it’s me, but you have concerns.

    Thin Clients for the Masses

    I love thin clients, as quite a few folks I’ve worked with, will tell you. Not that they did. Most of the people that I asked, and even a bunch more that I never asked, and who volunteered this information, partly due to one frustration or another, did not. At least not the ones at the office, moreso the Wyse Winterms than the HP thin clients we eventually moved to, running Windows XP. At least, initially.

    Some of the same people did not like Chromebooks when they first came out, either.

    And now, coming next year, Microsoft will be releasing an Azure powered cloud PC. DaaS, Desktop as a service. Essentially a thin client. Probably for a subscription fee.

    According to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet, Windows loaded on a machine’s local storage, as we know it now, won’t be going away any time soon. But, what will be coming sounds like something that businesses, large and small, as well as some freelancers, will be interested in.

    For instance, say you’re a small nonprofit and you own a lot of legacy equipment and perhaps have an Office 365 subscription, but take advantage SaaS apps for functions like accounting and such, this may be more attractive than, say, buying a bunch of new PCs at once.

    Maybe you’re a large enterprise and you want to hand out laptops to users but don’t want them to be used off of your corporate network. Assuming Microsoft baked in IP address filtering into the service, it could prevent machines from booting anywhere but on the corporate network.

    Perhaps, down the line, you buy yourself a new Apple-silicon based Mac, but need access to a Windows desktop. Last I checked, the situation with software makers like VMWare and Parallels was unclear (even though Parallels will let you run Windows on a Chromebook in the future). This may end up being another case for Windows AAS.

    There may be lots of use cases in the corporate world.

    Depending on cost, I can certainly see some in the education world adopting this model. If there’s a need for certain software, yes. I’d imagine a company like nComputing, whose legacy equipment I’ve supported in an educational setting, developing hardware specifically for this Windows use case. And because of the pandemic, with public support for distance education at the K-12 level growing, being able to deliver a (more than likely) familiar Windows experience may have some value, as systems further refine their distance learning strategies.

    Hopefully, this news, coupled with Chromebooks still being popular as learning devices, larger conversations can be had about the digital divide, especially in places like Baltimore. Baltimore City Public Schools System (BCPSS) and the City of Baltimore, along with some local nonprofits, have been distributing Chromebooks to help with distance learning, often times disadvantaged areas. The problem has been that Chromebooks need to be connected to the Internet (I’m writing this on my original HP Chromebook 14) to reach their full functionality and the City has addressed this by distributing WiFi hotspots. But even with that, there have been complaints about the bandwidth and data amounts provided by the service being inadequate for the online instruction being offered as well as the availability of the devices to begin with.

    If companies are offering these tools and local school systems where there are inequalities of access, want to leverage these systems, there need to be real solutions for delivery. The value of systems like DaaS and hybrids like Chromebooks is predicated upon reliable, high speed Internet.

    Will I want to run out and get one of these Windows cloud PCs? If you have a .edu email address to share with me, then yes.

    Also, speaking of my coworkers, I told some years ago that desktop support as a job would be going away one day “in the not too distant future.” Well, if you’re a company running Windows, either in a data center or from the cloud, you have less need of someone to support desktops there in your office. Managed service providers, as long as those are around, will need people to support desktops remotely and sometimes in the office (seen that in action, personally), but even that should change some, the more that Microsoft moves things towards the cloud. It won’t happen in the spring or even perhaps for a few years, but if Microsoft can choose between allowing you to pay once for local Windows desktop or month-to-month for a Windows cloud subscription, I wonder which it will choose.

    TaaS – Theatre as a Service

    With the pandemic, theatre has moved online. I’ve seen more tweets and FB posts about theatres, large and small, here and there, offering one kind of performance or another, online. One playwright I’m friends with on Facebook has had weekly readings of his work for the last few weeks now. Broadway itself isn’t moving back into in-person performance until some time next spring. So, in the meantime, if you’re into theatre, you have to know how to work Zoom (which you probably do by now), Facebook, or YouTube. Theatre has become, hopefully for the time being, at least here in the US, a virtual service. Theatre as a service, if you will.

    I’m part of the fun too, as my latest ten-minute play, “Milton Avenue,” will be part of a group of readings by local Baltimore playwrights by Rapid Lemon, a local production company.

    Baseball

    Baseball came back the other night. It was surreal to hear all of this talk of MLB’s opening night while it’s hot and muggy out. We’re supposed to be seeing the top teams start to pull away going into August. But MLB is giving it a go, still, albeit without fans present. I don’t think any fans will see any MLB in person anywhere in 2020, assuming the league even makes it to the end of the season, which I’m struggling to see happening, at least not the way it started.

    I only say that because I’m less certain they’ll make it, than I am say, of the NBA and WNBA making it through their continuation and “full” seasons respectively. As it was reported, Juan Soto missed the other night’s Yankees/Nationals opener because he had been diagnosed with Covid-19. That test was administered on Tuesday, before that day’s Orioles/Nationals preseason game, in which Soto played. So, he had to have played while positive. And even as of the other night, all I heard in the media was that Soto had tested positive, but no word about his teammates. But he played around his teammates and around the Orioles. And this weekend, his teammates played around the Yankees. And this weekend, the O’s have played the Red Sox. And are supposed to be playing the Marlins tomorrow, with four players having tested positive.

    At least the NBA and WNBA are playing in bubbles with strict protocols about players entering and exiting the environment. They apparently tested completely free of the virus the other day. The bubble and the wubble have worked.  MLB is already stumbling. I am hoping for the best as I love baseball and while I’ve enjoyed KBO, staying up until 4 or 5 AM to watch it, has been tough (I like to watch sports live). Having said that, NC Dinos is my KBO team. I like their uniforms.

    Breathe, You Are Alive

    In the 2000s, I encountered the work of the Vietnamese Zen Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. I’ve enjoyed and found great wisdom in his teachings. One of my favorite ideas I’ve picked up from him is the phrase, “breathe, you are alive.” It’s the title of one of his many books.

    When in times of distress or upset, I learned to come back to my own breath. Come back to that center. And not to just breathe, but to feel it deeply and ground myself in my breath, in my body. I learned to feel gratitude for the breath because it was a reminder that yes, I was still here. And if I’m still here, I can feel better, think better, do better.

    How scary it feels to know there’s a virus running rampant still, whose main activity is taking away the breath. And whose long-term effects aren’t known.

    Mask up. Be safe.  Remember to come back to the breath.

  • Five Things – 6 November 2017

    Five things to wrap up last week:

    Started pretty strong at NaNoWriMo, but tailed off towards the end of the week.  Still, I got 9815 words in.  Over five days, that’s an average of 1963 words/per day.  At that clip, I’d finish in 25 days.  So here’s to at least keeping up that clip.  Actually, here’s to working more on my more serious projects this week.

    Football was up and down over the weekend.  My beloved City Knights beat the Poly Engineers in the City-Poly Game.  Unfortunately, the Knights didn’t make the 3A South region playoffs.  Terps went up to Piscataway and lost to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.  Not at all what I was expecting.  Before the season, I’d had interest in going to this game.  I had some crazy idea about going to the City-Poly game, then either driving or taking the train to the college game.  Glad I didn’t.  And the Ravens went down to Nashville and lost a close, winnable game.  They fall to 4-5 at the bye.  Hopefully they can figure something out.  CBS’ Jason LaCanfora reported that former Ravens OC and Broncos HC, Gary Kubiak, is open to OC opportunities next season.  Maybe they’ll call him up this season for some consulting work or something.

    I had the occasion to go to the Halethorpe MARC station, for what was the first time, ever.  I’ve been through there many times, as I used to commute to D.C. to work and I’ve taken Amtrak trains from D.C. to points north, many times as well.  But I’d never actually been to the station until the other day.  They really did a good job on the rebuild.  It’s an actual station now.  I remember it being a few bus shelters with a parking lot before (seemingly Maryland’s favorite way of building a train station until recently).  And to get from the northbound platform to the southbound platform, you had to climb a long flight of steps, walk along a public street, then down another flight of steps.  Now, there’s a proper walkway over the tracks.  I used to feel for those folks on rainy and snowy days.

    Saw on the news that Columbia, Maryland turned 50 this past week.  There was a spot on the news, talking about the Columbia’s history, which touted Columbia’s diversity –even featuring an interview with an original Columbia resident, whose interracial marriage was accepted in Columbia in those days– but don’t let anybody talk seriously about bringing light rail out there.  There’s diversity and then there’s diversity, or so I hear.  Yet, these days you can get soul food out in one of the villages, which is more than I could say about the place when I was really ripping and running out near U.S. 29.  So, Columbia’s definitely coming up in the world.  It even has a Whole Foods on the lake and they’re starting to build sidewalks so they can become more urban, perhaps like Silver Spring.

    Sent out another newsletter issue, finally.  Got some positive feedback on it, too.  Good times.

  • Five Things – 22 June 2016

    1.

    Mets took down the two-game series vs. the Royals on the latter’s first trip back to Citi Field since last year’s World Series.

    Despite the pyrrhic victory, some getback from last year feels good, but the Mets’ issues weren’t solved in this series with the Royals. They need to keep hitting. It might help to go out and get a bat.

    I’m ignoring Murph’s Nats stats … ignoring them … ignoring them … wow he’s really cooled off. Batting just .352 now. Whew.

    O’s beat the visiting Padres to sweep their two game series.

    Nothing much going on in Ravenstown. That’s good news.

    2.

    Tomorrow, Judge Barry G. Williams will read his verdict in the trial of Caesar Goodson, one of the six Baltimore Police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray. The trial didn’t start out well with the judge excoriating the prosecution concerning some of the evidence. Since then, my feeling has been that Goodson will be found not guilty. Actually, before that point, since the moment that Goodson requested a bench trial, that’s been my feeling.

    We’ll see what happens tomorrow, 10 AM.

    I hope, in the event of a not guilty verdict, if there are protests, the rights of individuals to protest the decision are respected. I’ll leave that there.

    3.

    It’s tough coming up with things when 95% of my time is taken up by writing, being taught about writing, and talking about writing. This is a good problem to have, though, so no complaints. Still, I’m paying minimal attention to the O’s, Mets, Ravens, everything outside of here.

    4.

    Aside from the fact that I watched last night’s episode of Major Crimes, which was really good. Maybe they’ll give Rusty a better arc this year with his still-shaky relationship with Gus and now his mother’s revelation that she’s pregnant.

    I’m really looking forward to Murder in the First’s season premiere Sunday night. I’ll be back home watching it, so I need to leave really early to get home and write so that I’m not up writing late instead of watching.

    5.

    I’m not thinking too much of going home. I’m enjoying myself and worked through the issues that plagued Sunday and part of Monday. The writing activities and process have really helped.

    I think I’m going to resolve to do even more writing in the mornings. Like getting up earlier, like 6, and getting it in, before work. And perhaps hiding with my notebook more. Not eating lunch at my desk. Maybe I’ll haul a desk into the big network closet to be a writing desk for myself.

  • Five Things (St. Mary’s Edition) – 22 June 2016

    1.

    Maybe it’s because summer session is going, but the college used to be much more strict about where people could park their vroom vrooms.

    Yeah, they don’t want the workshop participants parking behind the townhouses at night, but as Public Safety explained to me, that was because the grounds people couldn’t get back there easily last time (which I saw first hand).

    Still, I parked right outside of the circle at DPC to walk around the “central” part of campus and take pictures. Then I went a couple other places and just parked wherever I wanted while I took more. I had a good time just putting the vroom vroom any place I could.

    I did get a bunch of pictures, even a few from Historic St. Mary’s City (I never went over there as a student). They’re not uploading from my phone, so I transferred them to my Chromebook to upload to Google Drive. If they’ll upload from my Chromebook or Google Drive (via my Chromebook) into the site later, we’ll be in business.

    2.

    I decided after my campus picture taking to drive down to Point Lookout and get a few shots down that way.

    The drive was much shorter than it seemed the last time I was there. The Confederate Cemetery also seemed much further from the state park last time. And the huge Confederate battle flag was absent this time. However, I got a couple of shots of the flag being flown elsewhere along the road.

    I didn’t feel like paying to enter the state park for just a few minutes of picture taking, so I turned around. Maybe I’ll come back down here one day for at least a few hours, perhaps to fish, and get some pictures of it there. The confluence of the Bay and the Potomac is really beautiful.

    More on this in a future essay, I think.

    3.

    After my quick jaunt down to Point Lookout, I needed to go to CVS and I wanted to get a quick, small bite to eat since I’d skipped lunch in the dining hall to go out and get pictures.

    Halfway between campus and Lexington Park, I figured I’d make the left onto Great Mills Road and see what new I might find there, whether it had become as built up as the rest of the county I’d seen thus far (save everything south of campus along Route 5).

    And it was. More gas stations, shopping plazas, all that stuff. There was even a place selling ox tail and curry chicken, as well as a Latino market further down back towards Leonardtown Road. Even a car dealership. Way different than I remember.

    4.

    Back here on campus, I noticed that with one of the newer buildings there, vehicular access from the back of campus near Mattapany Road to the Dorchester Circle (which I’m not even sure that area is even called that anymore — and that’s weird because so many areas on campus are named circle or quadrangle or something). There were a couple of young, student looking guys on a Club Cadet (seriously, where do they get those from; they weren’t the only two people using one that looked like students) riding around the still-paved driveway near Dorchester and Prince George’s dorms, but I have no clue how they got there other than driving across the grass.

    I do have pics of all this.

    5.

    I kinda wish I had the time to drive to Leonardtown and back and see how things have changed out that way. Unfortunately, no time, and I wasn’t planning on going that way when I leave out of here on Saturday. If I do come back down this way again (perhaps, next year for the conference), I’ll go all the way down Route 5 that time. Hopefully it won’t be the 6th Borough by the time I get there.

  • Five Things – 16 June 2016

    1.

    With iOS 10, Apple has made the phone carrier less necessary than ever

    Apple desperately wants to wrest as much control of the iPhone from the phone carriers, and with iOS 10 it has taken another important step to making those network providers into dumb pipes.

    Source: www.imore.com/apple-ios-10-goodbye-carriers?utm_medium=slider

     

    Caught this after the initial news about WWDC. The way it’s going to function, I really like. I hope this functionality reaches the iPad, since I often use mine to make and receive calls.

    But I moreso like the statement that this new functionality makes. Apple is turning their iPhone into a phone for all voice services, not just calls made over your provider’s “voice” network. If you want to use Facebook Messenger or perhaps, Viber, or some other 3rd party VoIP service, you can do that more or less the way you do now with “regular” calls over your provider’s “voice” network. Those services work now, but they’ll be more integrated into the usual ways calls are made and received.

    VoIP used over data-only plans is the future. In a world where you’re Tweeting and Facebooking, watching video on YouTube or Vimeo, and perhaps FaceTiming or Duo-ing (I really am stopping here, I promise), privileging voice “minutes” will be a ridiculous and unacceptable way to pay for the usage of a smartphone (or tablet). Voice will be just another type of data that you’re consuming, not a separate and more important usage of your device.

    I don’t expect the carriers to change overnight, but change they must. I imagine quite a few people my age and older (and perhaps some younger) consider the idea of paying for talking minutes to be perfectly reasonable, probably because we’ve done it for a long time and we’re used to it. Remember how we used to pay for long-distance calling? Do cell phone payment plans remind you of something?

    However, much younger people (and older folks who have adapted) who have grown up on first, unlimited calling to cell phones (remember that, too?) and then, pretty much unlimited minutes to any phone, and then on top of that, all manner of video and voice chat over both cell phone data and Wi-Fi, don’t have any fond memories of opening up their telephone bill and flipping to the long distance section. Or of buying calling cards. They’ll probably consider the idea of buying a certain amount of voice minutes as ridiculous as I do now because they’re not spending most of their time talking on the phone as such. The data they use to post status updates and Snapchat is what they’ll be interested in. Cell carriers will have to adjust accordingly.

    What Apple is doing now in iOS 10 is portending this future. Cell carriers will become data pipes, just like ISPs, which is probably why we see so many of them now jumping into the content generation business because soon, the real money and power will be in driving you towards their content, not just giving you the means to get online.

    Even the idea of having a telephone number is becoming anachronistic to me. I was talking to a loved one a few weeks ago about giving up telephone numbers entirely. I don’t think telephone numbers will fully go away anytime soon. How will you be able to dial 9-1-1 and how will your older relatives who know dialing telephone but not using Hangouts get in contact with you? But folks of a certain age, who may or may not even use SMS, won’t give it much importance at some point. I hardly do. I just can’t get everybody to message me on Hangouts or iMessage. Which brings me to …

    2.

    Seems I’m not the only one who wants iMessage on Android.

    An Apple exec explains why it won’t happen. And not everyone else thinks it’s a good idea.

    Apple makes a ton of money selling you hardware. And they make money selling you music subscriptions, but you can get that on Android (not that I want it, regardless of platform). The Wired article makes a business case for Apple to bring iMessage over to Android. Part of the argument is using iMessage as an enticement to come fully over to Apple. I’m not sure it would work that way –I hope it would– but I’m not sure.

    I do have an alternate thought. Apple keeps iMessage inside of their walled garden. I’m sure they’d love for me to ditch my Android devices, Chromebook, and Windows laptop and gear out with a Macbook and iPhone. I might get a Macbook, but I’m never getting an iPhone as I hate them (for whatever reason). But I’m also not giving up my iPad. I’m a sort of inbetweener, platform agnostic.

    I like to think of myself as a good case for iMessage on Android. Yes, I have an iPad and I would like to have one for the foreseeable future. I regularly communicate with folks in iMessage. But I don’t want to carry my iPad around everywhere. So it would be nice to be able to stay in communication in iMessage, regardless of which device I’m using. I know others who have just iPods and use those to iMessage and FaceTime their iPhone user friends and relatives, instead of being able to just pick up their Android phones. It seems like most of the people I know who don’t have iPhones or Macs but use iMessage still have some gateway device that’s brought them inside of Apple’s walled garden. Could Apple use iMessage on Android to keep you buying at least one Apple device even if you don’t want others? I don’t know. I just know they’re not thinking that way. They want you all the way in. And they’ve made billions doing that, so I don’t expect them to necessarily change.

    Besides, with them now giving 3rd party apps the same sort of privileges of the phone dialer, I have to wonder how much longer messaging will be important to them in any way. Even as the messenger wars heat up. It’s hard to tell right now. But if Facebook can make the kind of money some think they might make being cross-platform, maybe that’s something that will change Apple’s mind.

    3.

    I had to look up how to format a form/block letter. Might have been a brain fart, but I was drawing a blank. I should format email that way just to stay in practice. Writing formal letters might also be a fun writing exercise.

    4.

    Tough news coming out of Flushing.

    I’m still thinking about it and trying not to think that this is the end. If so, it makes losing last year’s World Series that much more painful. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on it later.

    Ravens cut Eugene Monroe. Really welcome to Baltimore, Ronnie Stanley. You’re definitely starting.

    Up off exit 16W (see, Jersey folks, I can speak your language a bit) in the swamp, Jerry Reese couldn’t see fit to do business with Ozzie and trade someone to get Monroe, so he just waited for the inevitable cut to go in and try to make a move. And that’s good for them. Their offensive line’s been trash, even if some of their fans take everything out on Eli. Two titles haven’t bought him the benefit of the doubt, unfortunately.

    And the Giants are cool with Monroe’s weed advocacy. That’s always a plus. In New Jersey.

    Back at Birdland, the O’s are still mashing dingers (baseball lingo). AJ had one tonight in Boston. It’s a good season to be an O’s fan again. My birthday gift to myself may be another O’s hat. Or perhaps this fine hat that also happens to have my initials as the logo.

    5.

    Off to a writing conference next week. My regular blog topics, aside from Five Things, are on hold until I get back, but I will be blogging from there. I have to get up everyday at like 6:30AM, so there will definitely be something to write about.

    Bonus:

    It’s been a tough stretch of days in Orlando. Even if you’re not a praying person, please continue keeping a good thought out for that area. Same for the family of this little girl killed earlier, run over by a stolen car.

  • Five Things – 9 June 2016

    1.

    Mets have been scuffling a bit, but managed to get a win and avoid the sweep in Pittsburgh (never a good thing in my book). They got a game-clinching hit from Wilmer Flores, but they’re going to need better hitting period. Their pitching will keep them in it, but they’re not going to win 60 or so more games 1-0 to make it into the postseason.

    O’s are rolling, completing the three game sweep of the Royals

    Also, this happened:

    Ventura had already thrown at him earlier in the game and really, who can blame Manny for charging after getting hit by a 98 MPH fastball. Especially since Ventura doesn’t have to stand in the batter’s box himself.

    I haven’t asked any Royals fans how they felt about this, yet. But as much as they were upset about Noah Syndergaard throwing inside in the World Series last year, I might give them the benefit of the doubt and imagine they’re as as upset as the team is about Ventura doing it now.

    Speaking of the Royals, the sweep extends their losing streak to seven. Their injuries have hurt them, but they’re still just 3 games out in a close division.

    O’s up 12 games over .500 and in first. Gotten some good pitching lately. Chris Tillman’s 8-1.

    Ravens lost a week of OTA’s and really, there isn’t much else to say about them. They’re back at practice. They have a bunch of tight ends on the roster.

    Oh, and coach, please don’t join Twitter. The last thing you need is a zillion remarks about your clock management every Sunday night after a close game. Ravens Twitter can be a mess on Sunday nights.

    Talking about KC does remind me of last December’s Chiefs at Ravens game. A painful memory. Not necessarily because of the loss, but because of the gold pants:

    Never again. Please. We’re not the Steelers.

    Oh, the MLB Draft will be on TV and streaming beginning tonight. Mets pick 19 and 31 (compensatory pick for Daniel Murphy). O’s go at 27 (compensatory pick for Wei-Yin Chen). I might order myself a salad and watch and get ready to see these players in a few years.

    2.

    I’m finally allowing comments on blog posts. I didn’t want to because comments sections are usually cesspools and I wasn’t sure who I was going to be attracting to this site. But I thought it would be interesting to possibly see who might be reading what I’m saying here.

    So, comments are there, going forward. Moderated, though, through Disqus. Warm up your social media passwords if you have something to say.

    3.

    Found out that someone else affiliated with my job is from Baltimore. And not just that, his folks lived not too far from where I grew up. I even attended camp at their former church one summer (though long after they’d moved).

    I love meeting Baltimore people outside of Baltimore. Especially ones who are still positive about Baltimore as a whole and haven’t given up on the City being able to come back, regardless of its recent troubles. And believe me, there’s been trouble lately.

    4.

    As I said in an earlier blog post, I’ve never been to Horseshoe and I’ve only been to Maryland Live once or twice. One of those times, I just went to Bobby’s Burger Palace.

    Despite my not having dropped a few bucks into the till, casinos around Maryland aren’t hurting. We’ll see what this means especially for Baltimore, given all the big talk about community investment from casino money, specifically from Horseshoe. Especially after National Harbor’s casino opens later this year.

    Meanwhile, AC’s trying to come back from its spectacular hit in 2014 when four casinos closed.

    During summers when I was growing up, I remember there being many bus trips from Baltimore up to Atlantic City. The cost of the ticket included your fare there and back as well as some chips or something to play inside the bus’ destination casino. Once the bus got to Atlantic City, you had 12 or so hours before the bus returned. You just went and did your thing.

    This went on for years because AC was the only place in the region with table games. If you wanted to just play slots, you could go up to Delaware Park.

    And then every state around New Jersey legalized table games. Delaware brought them into Delaware Park and Dover Downs. New York State followed. Pennsylvania’s table games went to new and already established casinos. Maryland Live, Horseshoe, and Hollywood Casinos opened in Maryland.

    I wondered then about the fate of AC and the bus tours because if you were going to spend hours sitting there playing slots or cards, you had no reason to go all the way to Atlantic City to do it. Then 2014 happened. I wasn’t surprised, but a lot of folks in AC seemed to be.

    Hopefully for the sake of the folks lining up to get jobs, they’ll be able to make something work at (the former?) Revel and Showboat and with the overall AC recovery. As one of the linked articles shows, there were people who put in many years working in those properties who very quickly found themselves out of work.

    I don’t know what it’s going to look like in AC going forward with all the surrounding states working to keep the casino dollar at home, but until they can figure out the future of AC, I hope folks there find some relief.

    5.

    For years, my coworkers have praised me and my boss for keeping things going at the office. Information Technology is obviously important and we do our best, along with our technology partners, to keep things going. Even if I have to hear nearly every day that someone’s default printing settings have changed. Oh how I love to hear yet again that someone’s default printing settings have changed.

    However, I have to nominate our HR Director for being the one who really keeps things going there. Anybody who can actually understand the complicated processes surrounding interactions with the health care and insurance industries and help the rest of us with all the documentation and calling and making sure folks get paid while you don’t get thoroughly ganked, is worth their weight in gold.

    The documentation and payment process has been nearly as stressful as the hospital stay that produced the need for much of the documentation in the first place. Having someone there to help is pretty invaluable.

    I help my coworkers keep their iPhones synced with their office email and the occasional Facebook password reset. And I personally take complaints about user printing settings. I guess there’s value in that, as well.

  • Five Things – 2 June 2016

    1.

    I was right about Matt Harvey. Kinda. He has “snapped out” and at least in his last start was the old Matt Harvey. But, instead of the issue being something mental, it was a flaw in his mechanics. Hopefully, they’ll keep him on track the rest of the way through because they’re going to need the starting pitching to do well as Jeurys Familia and the Met bullpen haven’t been lighting the world on fire lately. Aside from Addison Reed. He’s locking the 8th inning down right now.

    2.

    Ray Lewis must, without the help of anything mechanical, achieve flight and ascend directly into Heaven or Low Earth Orbit one day soon.

    It came out this week that not only did Ray come back from a torn triceps in 2012 (see, 2012!), he also re-tore the triceps the night before the Super Bowl. And played anyway. And prayed over Jacoby just before his touchdown. He must be touched or it was all 100% Concentrated, 125 Proof Deer Antler Juice. At least that’s what I hear on the Internet.

    I’m going to make a pilgrimage to Ray. I’ve already been to the statue. That was just the first part.

    Seriously, though, I need to stop talking about football while the O’s are just 1 game behind Boston in the AL East after splitting this week’s series. They also mashed 7 dingers earlier. Baseball jargon.

    3.

    Pretty much done with the infection. Took my last hit of antibiotics earlier. I’ll be taking my probiotics after I click the publish button in WordPress. And some vitamin C as I think I got a summer cold the other day. Sniffles, some sinus/throat soreness. Don’t worry, though, it’s gone.

    And with my skin healing, I will get back to throwing my bell and possibly lifting some next week. I’ll definitely be throwing the bell. I love how thoroughly drained I feel when I’m done. Feels like I was running without having to run. I wish I’d discovered the bell when I was in high school.

    4.

    Been doing some writing and editing at work this week. Playing surprisingly well with others involved in the process, too, considering how much I hate that (I like collaborating in Theatre, but not when I’m writing). I appreciate the opportunity, though. I’m a writer, even if I’m doing something else for pay there.

    And even if my name isn’t going on the work. I don’t even care, which is also strange for me. I’m engaging my biggest passion in the office and besides, the work is for something important to the organization. I appreciate that my input is so valued.

    And before you say “they’re taking advantage of you,” I’ll have you know that I’d much rather spend that hour or two editing and rewriting something than having to walk around and reboot something for somebody (which you should do before calling IT anyway), climbing under a desk, or moving a workstation for the thousandth time. It really is like a small vacation. The workstations will be there when I’m done.

    5.

    Baltimore Metro is infested with rats.

    Amalgamated Transit Union held a protest at Mondawmin, complete with folks in rat masks. Video is above. I often talk about how different we are from folks in other cities, but in this case, I kinda hope we get a New York style video of a rat hauling a cookie from The Great Cookie down the concourse.

    (I haven’t been to The Great Cookie in so long. I need to go over there. Often, when I smell freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, I think of Mondawmin. When I was younger, the smells from Great Cookie seemed to fill the entire mall. Whenever we went over there, I always knew where I wanted to go. I hope the rats are indeed enjoying those treats as much as I want to. Until they get gassed or something by MTA.)

  • Five Things – 26 May 2016

    1.

    Another possible staph infection. Thankfully, no hospitalization.

    My first trip to the doctor, she did tell me that if the condition didn’t improve by the first couple days of antibiotics, then she wanted me to go to the emergency room. Not sure if the implication was that they’d give me a stronger antibiotic or a few incisions, but I’m guessing it was the latter.

    I’d pretty much decided I wasn’t going to do that, so I’m glad it didn’t come to me having to say those words. Or, rehearsing saying those words as I likely still went out there.

    Mostly, I’m glad that I didn’t have to lay there as doctors and others funneled into the room, asking me how I felt, perhaps talking some football, and submitting a bill I’d later curse at in the HR office at work.

    Then, there was the whole “getting sicker in the hospital” thing.

    2.

    I did look up some alternative “stuff.” After last time, one of my coworkers gave me some interesting information about staph and antibiotics and alternative treatments, since the antibiotic apocalypse is coming. Phages sounded most interesting. Copper kills MRSA on contact, but I thought better of ordering some 999 copper rounds and touching them to the wound. Maybe next time, if there is one. I found colloidal copper online, but I wasn’t feeling that, either.

    I did settle on some antiseptic cream and some extra probiotics. Last time, I waited until after I’d finished my course of antibiotics to begin taking probiotics. Not this time. I feel much better.

    3.

    Ironically, I haven’t written as much this week that I’ve been fighting this infection. When I was in the hospital and didn’t have notebook, pens, paper, Chromebook, anything, I couldn’t wait to get out and write again.

    This time around, I’m right with all of my writing tools and utensils and I’m not writing as much. Maybe I should have packed some clothes and notebooks and gone to the hospital. Had I gone, I wouldn’t have had to take the call that like half the staff at work couldn’t get into the terminal server.

    4.

    It was bound to happen eventually. Not sure how it happened, but not everyone is ready to share the road. However, the train always wins. Remember. The train always wins.

    I’m glad their streetcar is doing so well. If Baltimore can’t get a new light rail, because … buses … then I’m glad KC can have one and that it can be a success.

    I’d love to go out there and take a ride, just not on a day like today.

    5.

    Ravens:

    Big fine for breaking offseason rules. Perhaps they should put in for a TIF to redevelop some land around the stadium and help pay for fines for stuff like that.

    Ray Rice was back at the Castle. They did say he’d be welcome back after he was done playing to help guide rookies.

    Perhaps the NFL or even MLB should bring him in.

    O’s:

    They’re attracting more orioles.

    But the players are strking out alot. The extra-inning game the other day was pretty brutal.

    We’ll always have those 2012 and 2014 playoffs. Those were magical.

    Mets:

    Hope this doesn’t get any messier.

  • Five Things – 19 May 2016

    1.

    Liking Gotham alot right now. In Hugo Strange, they’ve created a character whose next action, I always want to see. He embodies a very Gotham-esque ethos, a mix of science and junk science and odd religion that they’ve toyed with in different characters like Mr. Freeze, Ed Nygma, and Theo Galavan.

    Plus, I just flat out enjoy B.D. Wong and Tonya Pinkins’ performances. They play really well off of each other. But they’re both damn good veteran actors. What else would I expect? Besides, the show in general has featured some great acting. Don’t forget Robin Lord Taylor’s Penguin.

    David Mazouz’s performances have also been better. Since he’s grown up a little bit, he embodies more the ongoing grief and bitterness that pushes Bruce Wayne. I’m enjoying it.

    How much longer until Harvey dies and Jim Gordon has to take over GCPD because there’s literally nobody left who can run the department?

    2.

    I still think Elizabeth Keen faked her death and she’s going to show up on the season finale. I think she faked it and Mr. Kaplan helped. Outside of that, I don’t know what to think. Tom’s headed into another show.

    3.

    Preakness Weekend. Sun reporting that horse racing is doing better financially in Maryland, but I’m not sure if that means anything for keeping the race in Baltimore. I’ll believe any talk of a Pimlico renovation when I see dirt on West Belvedere Ave. (there was once something else horse related that they claimed to not to want to move before. Can’t remember what that was. Oh well).

    Regardless of what may happen in the distant future, it’s supposed to rain all Saturday, so the race should look like last year’s. And there should be plenty of alcohol and partying, as usual. I’m expecting there to be a rain slip and slide in the infield or something.

    4.

    I need to go to Barnes and Noble. Haven’t been in a long time. I’m going to take my Chromebook up there and write one of these days. Perhaps I’ll take a day off for this instead of waiting for a weekend.

    5.

    Disastrous West Coast trip for the Mets. Nats series hasn’t been any better. I’m also happy to forget the O’s series vs. Seattle.