Category: technology

The Pirates

I’m at a point in the novel, Long Summer (sequel to Returnee) where the pirates are about to enter.

Yes, this is science fiction. Yes, these are space pirates (cue dramatic music). Or cue a Monty Python moment.

I always like ‘fly in the ointment’ tales. That’s the pirates’ role in Long Summer. They’re naturally a plot trigger to cause the stories to bank sharply into another direction, bringing the three disparate story lines into contact with one another at last, thirty-five thousand words into the novel. Creating  the pirates enabled me to embark on my favorite fiction writing activity: making things up. In this case, I was given permission to make up the pirate ship and crew. Who are they, why are the pirates, where did they come from and how did they come to have this ship?

The ship is the CSC Narwhal. CSC is Castle Corp Security, a spin-off from the original Castle Corporation that dominates the Returnee series as one a major part of the setting. (The corporation is constantly restructuring, re-organizing, acquiring and divesting.) As Castle Corporation was originally an Anglo-American effort when they first formed on Earth (with roots in 3D printing, with specific focus on home security devices…from there to space), the company sometimes invokes its heritage when naming ships. This was strongly evidenced in the naming of the security ships (the preferred nomenclature over warship). I’d remembered Narwhal from my history lessons, so I looked up Narwhal and confirmed its role in England’s maritime history, confirming it was part of the Arctic Fleet. Two Brit submarines were then named the same, along with a US sub. So, sweet, that worked out.

(I had to refer back to my Returnee notes a little as I worked out that naming, confirming corporations and financial consortiums led the way into space. Governments had little to do with it.)

I then needed to further define my new vessel’s manning, which is complementary to its role. As a security vessel, Narwhal is small, with three squadrons of droid fighters. Why droid fighters? I started with manned weaponry and realized that robots dominate my future. It would be weird to have manned fighters. But humans maintain control….

Essentially, I evolved the Droid Commander. Droid Commanders remotely oversee the flying of four droid fighters simultaneously from pods on the Narwhal. Yes, we have the sophisticated technology to do that in my future. Likewise, Droid Techs remotely manage maintenance/software/hardware, keeping the fighters armed and flying, repairing them via nano-bots, droids and automation.

Each Narwhal squadron has three Droid Commanders, each flying four droid fighters. So each squadron is twelve fighters. Three squadrons, thirty-six fighters, nine each Droid Commanders and techs. A squadron commander coordinates their activities with the ship and mission briefs.

Narwhal is structured to run silent, fast, launching quick strikes and then bailing. Their defensive systems are lightweight and automated. They’re not going to bombard a planet or take on a battleship. They’re more likely to run escort and interdiction missions.

Once I had those things in place, what did I need for manning for the actual ship, the Narwhal? Well, again, it’s automated, and lightly manned. I ended up with three defensive coordinators. Commander, DO, pilots to fly it (in the event of worst case situations), navigator (overseeing the droids and systems), intel officer, techs to treat it.

Shuttles? Escape pods? Logistics? Medical? All done by droids, except I decided the three shuttles would have human pilots. Ten techs oversee droids that do the repairs.

So there it was, forty-seven humans crewing the Narwhal and its squadrons.

Since it’s going head to head with River Styx, the stasis pod ship, I went through the  same exercise for the Styx (which has only light defensive systems). Then I mentally plotted the sequence of events as I walked over here to write today. The twists arose on their own, pleasing and exciting me, further evolving my sketchy plot.

(Quite deliberately, because the pirates are out to disrupt corporate domination of space and human activities, Castle Corporation also owns the River Styx. The pirates love the irony of a ship they appropriated from the Castle Corporation, stretching the truth, as the Castle Corp had spun off the division that owns and operates Narwhal,  attacking another Castle Corp vessel.)

This summarizes my basic writing approach. I begin with a concept or a character. In this case, three ideas came together. That gives me a bare structure. As an analogy, if my novel is a car trip, I’m getting in and pointing the vehicle in the general direction of a horizon I see, with the vaguest idea of what’s over that horizon, and what’s between here and there. That works for each chapter, story line and character arc.

Reflecting on all of this today, I recognize how much my writing approach parallels my other methodologies. As a senior NCO in the USAF, I was always imposing and maintaining order and discipline, but also loved instilling vision in my people about how to improve ourselves and our operations. To do that, I’d simply seize a direction and go for it, correcting as I went. Likewise, in my last position as a data scientist with IBM, when given a challenge, I mentally played with it until something formed, and then I launched myself into it. And in my youth, when I was taking art classes, painting and drawing, sudden inspirations would seize and carry me.

The confrontation between River Styx and Narwhal awaits. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

3

What I’m Following

I try to follow the news and escape the echo chambers. Demoralizing as so many American newspapers essentially offer the same take on every story. So vanilla. Meanwhile, columnists along the political spectrum are generally predictable about what they’ll claim, reducing their value. I like jumping out of the US and checking the news on BBC America, and British, Canadian and Australian newspapers for coverage of American events. I still dance through WaPo, SFGate, NYTimes, Boston.com, Forbes and a few others on a regular daily/weekly basis.

I’m following theSkimm because a friend recommended it. They read so I can skim. I wanted to see how they read and interpret.

Longreads take me into places I wouldn’t otherwise know. Longreads offer compelling, vivid stories. They take a lot of time to read. Yes, I read the Nation, the Atlantic, and Rolling Stone, which also have long articles. Oi.

Haven’t seen anything on theSkimm or Longreads about Lionel Shriver’s opening address at the Brisbane Writers Festival regarding cultural appropriation, but there’s an eruption of blog posts, newspaper columns and editorials about the complex, challenging situation. Wow.

Trying to drift into a different direction, I’ve been checking out Merry Jane’s website. Marijuana is morphing into a large and legitimate business in Oregon, with signs like ‘Exit here for the BEST marijuana’ emerging alongside Interstate 5, right beside signs claiming to have the world’s BEST pie.

I delve into Pinterest, FB and Instagram to see what’s bouncing around those places. I still check Flipboard and BillMoyers daily, and read an overabundance of writing blogs and newsletters, along with Wired, Popular Mechanics, the Smithsonian, Union of Concerned Scientists, Delancey Place and EPI when their newsletters arrive.

What are you reading out there? You have any sites that you recommend?

 

2

Einstein’s Blackberries

Sheldon Cooper is struggling to penetrate some impenetrable physics issue. Leonard Hofstader reminds Sheldon that tedium will free his mind, which is why Einstein worked in the patent office. Sheldon takes a job at the Cheesecake Factory where Penny works.

This is all from The Big Bang Theory, a sitcom I enjoy. On to Einstein’s Blackberries.

1. We went blackberry picking this morning. Seventy degrees and sunny at ten AM, the perfect weather has been dialed up.

The picking is being done at a friend’s place, ten acres on a small town’s fringe. Silence is the rule. Aircraft and a few cars traveling Highway 99 are the only violators.

I worry about zombies.

This is a perfect zombie scenario. A serene scene of a couple engrossed with fruit picking activity. Then a zombie arrives.

Which zombie type is critical. If they’re the 28 Days/Weeks Later rage filled fast moving zombies, we could be in trouble, but if these zombies belong on The Walking Dead, we’ll probably get away. Unless there are a zillion, or we’re stupid about it, like stopping to get more berries as the zombies close. (“Oh, look at that big, beautiful, blackberry, I must have it, oh, no, a zombie got me.” Screaming and flesh tearing ensues (according to the captions).)

If our zombie pursuers harken from iZombie, it’s difficult to judge whether we’ll escape. They like to philosophize about their killing, life choices, and plans.

Something cracks on the brambles’ far side. Snorting and chuffing follow. It could be a zombie, or group of zombies, trying to be quiet as they stalk us. It could also be a horse pasturing in the next field. Whinnying follows. That could be a zombie pretending to be a horse. Or a horse. One never knows. It’s Schrödinger’s cat all over again.

2. Berry and fruit picking, yard work, washing and waxing the car, and walking are the tedium that frees my thinking. I work on novels, current problems (like tearing up the back yard and creating a drought tolerant space), and short stories. I probably stayed at IBM for all those years because it was so freeing. My mind was rarely required in that bureaucracy. So here I was today, picking berries, thinking, dreaming, wondering, soaking up sun and fresh air, and worrying about zombies.

The blackberries, like the blueberries, squash and peaches, are amazing. Our weather, after a fast, heated start, cooled substantially in July and August. Nights benefit from cool mountain air that drops the temp to the mid 50s on most days. Fabuliciously sweet blackberries are being quickly accrued.

3. The radio plugs songs from 1983 on the way home. It’s their thing, celebrating the music of different graduating classes.

Theme from Flashdance. Yes, “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” The Tubes. “Hungry Like a Wolf.” Toto IV.

1983 put me at Kadena Air Station, Okinawa, Japan. We were mid-tour in ’83, and living on the economy, less than 600 square feet, and no heat. It was great fun.

Kadena, with jaunts to Korea, Thailand, China, Singapore, mainland Japan, Hong Kong and Hawaii, was a memorable experience. Beautiful Pacific views. Typhoons. One earthquake. In between these matters were military issues, parties and college classes. They were ancient times, free of the Internet and computers, satellite TV, or cell phones that took photos and videos. CDs were just coming out, and VHS battled Beta Max for supremacy, but it was also a zombie-less era.

4. We were gone two hours. Seventeen pints are the result. I probably ate another pint. My wife is a faster picker than me. Perhaps I’m eating more of my pick. Or maybe my wandering mind slows me down. It could just be that she’s more focused, with quicker, more nimble fingers.

Arriving home, we check on the cats and conduct visual inspections for ticks and zombie bites (on us, not the cats). Neither are discovered (ticks and zombie bites – the cats are found, asleep).

The freezing machine (my wife) is activated. The freezer is precariously full of frozen fruits and vegetables. This year’s crops have been bountiful.

Einstein would have enjoyed the morning.

5

Computer Coming Back

My HP Envy is on the way back to my home. Although I’m happy, that’s not news, and it’s not prompting this post.

What prompts this post is how it’s coming back. Sent Fed Ex 2-Day service, picked up on 5th, it’ll reach me on the 9th. That’s a sign of our times, that 2 days = 4 days without a wince of embarrassment. It goes right along there with logic that says the answer to gun violence is to arm more people with guns. That ketchup is a vegetable. That water boarding is not torture, and that torture rewards us with the truth.

That America is the world’s greatest country. That corporations are people, my friends. That companies care about their customers above their profits, that market corrections will fix problems, that climate change can be ignored by legislating the words out of the public’s view, that charter schools run for profit will do better than public schools supported by taxes, that professional sports stadiums are good for the local economy and do much more than serve the wealthy owners, that things were better for everyone ‘in the good old days,’ and that the answer to war, is more war.

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Just More

I figure I should rename this blog to Just More BS, because it’s all just about me, baby.

Three days I’ve not written. I feel like those cat satires, whereby felines record how their captors taunt them while keeping them imprisoned. Oh, such a miserable life.

Life is not at all mis for me now. I’m rising, again, but will set again. I’m a creature of cycles and spectrums. But while I’m up —

I recognized stages today, of coping with not having my computer, and not being able to write like crazy each day, and of being limited to writing on the butcher roll paper of my mind. I complained (fuck!) and whined (why me, universe, didn’t you always tell me I’m the chosen), and then accepted (okay, I can do this, I will do this). (Clarification, I’m creating blog posts on the iPad mini 4. I’ve managed to miniaturize my hands so I don’t feel like the Jolly Green typing on a Selectric but I worry about enduring the rest of my Earthly existence with tiny hands. Yes, I’m a handist.)

Yesterday afternoon, tho’, whilst grilling veggies, I speculated, can I go back to writing in a paper notebook? Challenges and obstacles rose through the mists of hope. My writing is organic. I’m like a kid jumping through and around puddles of scenes, plot setting, and characters. I wouldn’t be able to do this, and I didn’t print out the works in progress. Still, I convinced myself I can write some scenes and insert, edit and polish them after the Computer Returns.

Pondering this, I grew hopeful. This morning, I considered, maybe I can just write a short story, hey, hey?

Sure. Whatever. Deciding I needed to write and was going to write, I found an almost blank notebook. The few written pages were perused. Ah, a draft of a performance report, I recognized. They were part of the structure of a past existence and have been banished to the admin vortex where they belong. Tear them out!

Now the notebook is blank and ready. Short story or novel, and which novel, Long Summer (sequel to Returnee) or Personal Lessons with Savanna (third book in the mystery series)?

I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’m in my coffee shop office. I have my quad shot mocha and a pen at hand. Because, when I summarize what I want, what I do, and who I am, I want to write, and I write. To not write is to give up. Why should I assume this will not work out? Perhaps this change will inspire a new spring of creativity. Maybe this is a reboot, Michael G6.

Yeah, that’s all words, justification, rationalization, clarification. I just want to write like crazy. Time to do it, at least one more time.

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A Beautiful Time

I had a beautiful time last night, thank you. I again attended a friend’s birthday. This friend is 90, vivacious, intelligent, artistic and fun. She is, like, another role model for when I’m 90, or better, for when I’m sixty. She enjoys life with a buoyant spirit. Her home is rich with art, especially her own. She presented me with a piece of art last year of a curled cat sleeping with the serene sweetness cats project, but with ears tilted and attuned, listening, announcing, I am asleep, and I am aware.

Also met some new folks and visited with some charming friends I’d not seen in a year, who came back for the bday celebs. In talking with one, Mo, about my science fiction writing (they should know not to ask me as a writer, what are you writing, because you’ll be informed, in depth), and how I play with concepts regarding technology granting virtual immortality through serial resurrections, she talked about how troubling she finds these ideas. Which I react with as, yea! Good. Tell me more.

“I don’t want to share my body or abilities to meet the challenge, I want to meet the challenge but nurturing, growing and developing what and who I am.” I love this humanistic point of view. I wanted to debate merits and points, but it was a birthday party.

I was also introduced to a Belgium IPA with tangerine tones that lit up my beer buds in a pleased way. Besides that, the food was delicious, all contributed by attendees. I met more of the party honoree’s family and friends and became re-acquainted with her son. We share a name but he’s so much more charming. I always enjoy our encounters.

Hope you all meet such wonderful people, and enjoy beautiful times. The world is wealthy with both.

3

Powering Up

Been running through laptop options to cope with sending the HP Envy back to have the hard drive failure addressed. Otherwise, I’ll be without a working machine for my writing for ten days.

We have an iPad mini 4, which will work for surfing the net and checking email, but they’re pretty limited in other applications, so I dragged old laptops into the light. The Dell had potential. It was a decent running machine that just ended up being replaced on a whim because it was five years old. I remembered the hard drive password but couldn’t recall the Windows password. That didn’t worry me. Using either brute force or a password recovery program, I figured I could pry the password out of the machine or reset it so I could access it.

I attempted the first and easiest way, seeing if I could access the tables through the Administrator. Nope. Then I tried getting around that via Safe Mode with Command Line. Nope. Apparently, if the Administrator has a password set, that path is closed.

Next, I addressed it through using a boot UBS with a password recovery/reset program. Nope. That didn’t work because now I was getting a kernel failure report.

Nuts.

I didn’t feel like using brute force for cracking at that point. I was sort of depressed. So I powered up the Dell’s replacement, the old Thinkpad. It had been displaying remarkably similar failings to the HP Envy, with intermittent connectivity issues, slow browsers, lots of fan running. Besides those, it had developed the dreaded Blue Screen of Death with an IRQL_NOT EQUAL_OR LESS message.

That needed to be fixed before anything could be addressed so I’ve spent about twelve hours in the last two days seeking the fix. I appeared to have found and resolved it today.

  1. Oddly, my Network Connections folder was empty. I found some suggestions for that issue. The first was a REGEDIT solution. It worked. After rebooting, the folder was once again properly populated. I clicked on Chrome. Boom. BSOD.
  2. I used the same REGEDIT solution, then went on to the other REGEDIT suggestions. The rest of my entries were correct. Yet, the problem remained, the folder would populate, I would open Chrome, and I would experience a BSOD, and the folder would be empty again.
  3. Next was deleting the network adapters through the Device Manager. Okay, I began going through them, only to find the WAN mini-port adapters could not be deleted. I found a work-around that called for a manual driver update coupled with using a MS MAC Bridge driver for them. That allowed me to delete them, add them back in, and update the drivers.
  4. I rebooted. All seemed to be working. The folder was correct, as were the registry entries. I opened Chrome. Boom, BSOD.
  5. Aha. The dmp error information was exactly the same. Chrome seemed to be doing something. Therefore, I tried Firefox. Firefox opened sluggishly but ran and the machine didn’t die. I uninstalled and removed Google Chrome, a process that consumed almost an hour, a lot longer than it should.

And that’s the problem. Everything is taking longer than it should, pointing toward hardware failure. I’d run chipset tests but I suspect it’s another hard drive failure. I’ll see what I can do to pin that down and mitigate it and update everything before sending the HP back for repairs.

Progress is being made. It’s tedious, time-consuming and frustrating stuff. Fortunately, it takes little brain engagement, so I can do other things while I’m dealing with it, watch TV, pet the cats, eat, play games on the other computers, read, do Soduko puzzles.

Then I’m going to go back and try to fix the other computer – if I can find the boot up CD – and recover that password. At this point, it’s an itch that I can’t scratch, and I want to scratch.

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The Roomba

“Get out of that corner,” my wife yelled at the Roomba as it circulated the office this morning. “Why do you keep going back to that corner?”

Responding to that rhetoric, the Roomba sang, “I need to go where I want to go, do what I want to do.”

Wouldn’t it be neat, I thought, if the Roomba was rigged to play music as it went through its noisy cleaning processes? Better, why haven’t they developed a Roomba that kids can ride, one that the kids could steer? Then Mom or Dad could say, “Kids, why don’t you get on the Roomba and vacuum the house?” Riding the Roomba around and vacuuming could be part of their daily chores, for which they receive an allowance.

I’ve seen videos online of cats, children and dogs riding Roombas. I’ve shown these to my cats. Quinn wants nothing to do with it, fleeing the house as soon as the Roomba stirs into action. Tucker watches it, moving out of its way. Boo, likewise, takes to high ground to observe the mechanical creature. None of them display interest in mounting the machine.

Perhaps, to improve the cost/benefit ratio of owning and using a Roomba, we could have modifying kits. For example, a kit that attaches a four foot tall pole to the Roomba. Atop the pole is affixed a circular tray. Drinks and snacks could be put on the tray and the Roomba can go around, offering drinks and food to people, while it sweeps the house.

I don’t know. My imagination is too limited to come up with good ideas, but there must be something they can do. Maybe someone with more creativity can solve this conundrum  of what else to do with the Roomba.

At least we could put flowers on it and dress it up, or come up with mobile art designs.

There must be something.

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Double Gulp

Besides personality issues and issues with politics, money issues, and environmental issues, I’ve been dealing with computer issues. My HP Envy turns two in 55 days. I’m returning it for repairs next week.

After all the problems I’ve had with video drivers failing, wireless connectivity, and browsers failing, and searching for answers and running updates, I discovered HD1 has failed. There’s a code and everything.

Naturally, I was a touch upset.

I went to the HP support site. It identified my computer and told me it was under warranty. So I then clicked on contact support. Doing that caused HP’s support site to tell me that they couldn’t verify I was under warranty. Did I want to dispute this?

Why, yes, I did. Their website just told me the opposite.

I sent that info off to them with a screen shot of their website page that showed they the computer was under warranty. No, sorry, that won’t work. For these technological geniuses, a receipt was required.

I stewed on that. I purchased the machine through Costco.com. I had the order but not the receipt. Oh, boy.

Next steps were contemplated for a few days. Offer them the order doc? That didn’t inspire hope. Hunt down the receipt? Yes, I would need to open the files. It’s probably in there. Maybe.

But then, I tried the HP Utility Center. It’s installed on my machine.

The HP Utility Center had an icon for HP SmartFriend.

A smart friend! That’s just what I need. A one-on-one Helpdesk. Awesome, let me true it.

Turned out, they would be a friend for just $14.99 a month.

Back to the Utility Center. I clicked on the HP Assistant under the HP Utility Center. The HP Assistant is like the support center except it’s not. I initiated a chat and prepared for them to reject me. I stated my case. Provided my computer’s serial number, product code, and the hard drive failure code.

They approved a merchandise return to fix the machine. Great, but —

It’ll take seven to ten days.

Seven to ten days without my machine. Double gulp.

Did I really want it fix?

Yes, yes I did.

I could just replace the hard drive myself.

But HP OWES ME.

Seven to ten days without my computer.

Oh, boy.

I’m typing on it now. I spend hours each day on it, reading news, checking on cats, surfing the net, shopping, writing, playing games, reading novels, blogs and magazines. For God’s sake, I have habits.

I have, like, five other machines sitting around the house, not including my wife’s Macs. One is a Dell tower built in 1999. Although I updated its CPUs and chipsets about ten years ago, it runs on XP and is not wireless. Its age limits what it can do. It functions well for MS Office apps, but it can’t handle the latest plug-ins. Its hardware and architecture limits updates, and it’s a tower. I can’t take it to the coffee shop to write.

I also have my previous machine, a Lenovo Thinkpad. Ten years old, it slowly died on me. Maybe I can reformat that hard drive, update everything, and press it into use. There’s also a Dell that I stopped using in 2010, but its hard drive is password protected (like all my machines) and I can’t recall ITS password. I thought I knew it, but that one doesn’t work. There’s also a larger, older Dell, my first laptop, from, like 2002. Then I also have an iPad mini 4 that I can use, but its accessory keyboard is too small for my clumsy fingers. I do have a few USB enabled external keyboards. Maybe I can rig one of those to it.

So there are options. It’s just…well, these little separations are worrying. I’ll be without my computer for seven to ten days.

Double gulp.

UPDATE: The packaging to return the HP Envy is due to arrive on 7/19, and I remember the Dell laptop hard drive password and have it up and running.

The anxiety of withdrawal has eased…a little….

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Beyond 3D

Ghostbusters 3D is in our local cinemas tomorrow, and we’re hitting it.

3D movies are normal and expected, so much of it being put into 3D. My first experience with it was Hugo. When the snow fell in the film’s beginning, I was astounded by how the snow flakes seem fall toward me from the scene. Beautiful and amazing, and now, like jets, cars, microwaves, computers, the Internet and a million more modern technologies, processes, and services, so common, it’s the new normal.

Virtual Reality movies may be the next iteration. Imagine, instead, of attending a movie, and while sitting in the theater, you experience the movie from within. With tiered ticketing, the opportunities to watch can be inter-active, so in one side, you can reside within one character, watching, hearing and generally experiencing the movie through them. In another scene, you can be a fly on the wall, turning your attention to whatever attracts you.

Such scenarios drive ideas about what can go wrong. Trapped in a movie, trapped as a character, launched into a new dimension through a movie, time traveling through movies, accidently becoming someone else during the movie – or reversals of these things. Discovering you thought you were born here when actually, you came through a movie. Now they’re hunting you.

Oh, the fun we can have with this.

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