Archives July 2016

I was feeling pretty beat up last night and was going to skip any Ninebot One training.  I changed my mind as my inner taskmaster didn’t want me to lose any of the small amount of progress I had made thus far.  My ride session was brief but the most positive I have had to this point.  I had no falls which is a minor miracle.  What is more surprising is I was able to ride the entire length of the driveway, in both directions.  Yea my arms still flail wildly during most rides but at least I can keep myself on the wheel. It felt good to be making some real progress.

So I had to read the statement twice to make sure I was not seeing things.  Of course I am referring to Donald saying that perhaps Russia could uncover the 30,000 deleted emails of Hilary that the FBI couldn’t.  Knowing how Trump is, of course I knew he wasn’t being serious but his lack of judgement when making public statements is very concerning.  I mean really, how can the American public think it’s ok for a presidential candidate to have no filter when it comes to speaking.  When you combine this with his paper thin skin you have the potential for all sorts of fireworks to go down, potentially with catastrophic consequences.

I have said before, if Trump manages to win the presidential election despite the repeated warning signs to the US public that he is woefully unsuited for the job, we as a country deserve whatever misery awaits us as a result.  I’ll just keep riding my wheel and try to not say, told you so.

So it actually was not raining last night so I took advantage of it to get some more EUC training in.  Despite Cindy getting me all that protective gear I did not put any of it on.  My reasoning was I intended to ride mostly on the grass in the front yard. I did buy a cheap pair of boots to give me some ankle support and padding, which I wore during the riding.

I was having a hard time practicing in the grass.  The sandy soil was soft and squishy from all of the rain we had been getting.  The tire on the Ninebot also felt like it was under inflated.  When I put my air pump on it the pressure was lower than recommended.

During that first session last night I was doing short runs across the width of the driveway, no more than 15-20 feet long.  My goal was simple, get on and get off the wheel without crashing.  Unlike my earlier training sessions where pretty much every time I got off the wheel it was via a crash, I had some mild success keeping control last night.  I’d say about 50% of the time I was able to get on the wheel, ride a short distance and then got off in a somewhat orderly manner that allowed me to grab the wheel without it crashing to the ground.

I was trying to use a couple tips while riding to help me.  First I tried to look ahead instead of down at my feet.  This was the same tip that helped me get the hang of slackline balance.  Second, I worked on turning the wheel into the direction of hard leans to stop myself from tipping over.  I did so by sort of awkwardly rotating my hips.  You can see some examples of it in the video.  It did work although I need to get much, much better at it.  The one negative about the turning motion is the twisting forces it applies to my knees, something that is not great for someone that has had them operated on twice for meniscus damage.

I did have one rather bad wipeout during the night when I had pretty fast descent down the driveway that I lost control of.  I wound up going for a roll that left a baseball sized brush burn on my lower back as well as another one on my left knee.  Some of that damage could have been negated by my new pads so I felt dumb for not wearing them at that point.  Anyway, overall I felt positive about the progress I showed last night.  It still feels awkward as hell and I still have minimal control but when compared to how I started I definitely have moved the bar forward.

Sadie goes back to Ali’s place today.  It’s always a weird adjustment period when she goes back.  Cindy and I quickly get used to having Sadie shadow us around the house.  When she leaves I find myself turning around, expecting her to be there.  I feel disappointed when I realize she isn’t.

I neglected to mention that we added a Dyson V6 to our already massive floor cleaning army recently.  Now you may ask why I would need this with two vacuum robots and three hard floor cleaning bots.  The answer is very simple, corners.

Although the bots do a decent job of cleaning the main surface areas they can not get into corners or other tight spaces.  I have a small 10 year old corded Dyson that up until this point was what I had to use in these situations.  It’s a pain in the ass to lug it out of the closet, unwind the cord, plug it in and convert it to wand mode to clean spots like this only to have reverse the process when you are done.  As a result these nook and crannies don’t get attended to as often as they should.

The Dyson V6 removes all of these obstacles.  Pull it off it’s wall charging station and you are ready to suck and suck hard.  Despite it being a battery powered device it has VERY powerful suction.  When you squeeze the trigger it sounds like you are holding a small jet in your hand.  It comes with a number of tools that allow it to be useful in a bunch of situations.  You can remove the long tube altogether if you are doing something like cleaning out the car.    The box states that the V6 actually has more suction power than a lot of it’s plug in counterparts.  After seeing it first hand I don’t doubt that claim at all.

So despite my desire to keep plugging away at my Ninebot One rider training I decided to take a break last night to give my mildly sprained ankle a chance to heal a bit.  During the day Cindy stopped in at our local Sports Authority that is in it’s last week of business before they close the doors for good.  She scored some incredible deals with most everything in the store marked down 80-90%.  I now have an impressive array of body armor to hopefully minimize my Ninebot related injuries including a skateboard helmet, elbow and knee pads.  I also plan to get a cheap set of work boots to help protect/support my ankles.

I was doing more reading and thinking about the balance issues I have on the one wheel bot.  I started to think about if I am able to ride a bike slowly with my feet stationary.  Of course the answer is yes.  Although a bike has two wheels your brain is doing similar left right balance movements.  I need to put my mind more in bike mode when riding the One as front back balance is more or less handled by the internal gyroscope in the wheel.

I also realized I was handling leans/turns which lead to crashes wrong.  Again a bike analogy made sense here.  If you watched any of my learning videos you will see a common scenario is I get on and the wheel leans to one side or another and I can’t recover and fall off.  On a bike, if you are traveling slowly and start to lean to one side or another you steer into the direction of the lean to correct yourself.  So if you are wobbling to the left, a slight left turn of the wheel gets the bike back under you.

When I am on the Ninebot One I am trying to do all of my turning via leaning which works ok when you are cruising along but not at slower speeds.  What I need to be doing is turning the wheel into the direction I am leaning/falling into.  Your legs act almost like forks on the front wheel of a bike, you just sort of twist them to turn the wheel.  Now I have not gotten to put this new found revelation to a real world test but it makes perfect sense to me.  Hopefully it translates into less crashing and more cruising.

Cindy and I watched a good chunk of the DNC last night while we were in bed.  Some of it was awesome some of it wasn’t.  I didn’t particularly like the woman speaking at length about Trump University like it was a major reason to oppose him.  Donald Trump sold his name repeatedly over his career to many, many projects.  To confuse use of his name as him overseeing the daily operations and decisions made at this “university” is just disingenuous.  It’s like people that like to “Blame Obama” for pretty much anything negative in the country.  Your doctor didn’t call you back? Blame Obama! Cable bill is too high? Blame Obama! You hit a pothole in the street? Blame Obama!  My point is Donald has plenty of personal shortcomings to be critical of without having to try to pull in things he lent his name to as simple figurehead.

I thought Michelle Obama was nothing short of fantastic in delivering her speech.  I told Cindy I don’t think there has been another first lady during my life that would have been able to pull that off, including Hilary Clinton.  You can just tell she speaks from a sincere and true place.  Although I like and admire Elizabeth Warren I was not all that impressed by her speech.  I thought she sort of dropped herself down a few levels and delivered a speech that did not come off as sounding overly intelligent, instead resorting to a lot of tactics I’d expect from Trump with a lot of bashing meant to rile up simple thinkers.

It was pretty amazing when Bernie Sanders took the stage.  He got the loudest and longest applause of the night by far.  He tried a dozen times to start his speech and was drowned out by the thundering cheers of the crowd.  It was incredible as they panned the audience showing people literally in tears.  It was a very powerful moment.  These people felt so invested in Bernie and his unwavering, simple, and honest dedication to what he believes in.  With the revelation that the DNC was actively trying to influence the outcome of the primaries in Hilary’s favor it made the moment even more bittersweet.

His speech was filled with mostly the same points that he hammered home tirelessly during his campaign, most of which I support.  Even though he was unable to dismantle the HRC political juggernaut, his efforts have made a lasting mark on the American politics scene.  He showed that even with meager resources, a good person with the ability to communicate his message in a passionate way can still gain traction with the public, regardless of the media and even your own political party attempts to derail you.

Anyone else think Bill Clinton looks incredibly frail?

Saturday morning Cindy again was teaching a spin class and I again used that time to head outside to get shit done like weeding and weed whacking.  I also attended to several other outdoor things that caught my eye while I was circling the grounds. Of course it was hot and humid as hell.  When I came inside I jumped in the pool with my shorts on.  Sadie enjoyed an extensive session of splashy splash.

So I had told Cindy for a few days that I had ordered a surprise for her.  She had been trying to guess what it was and of course I would neither confirm or deny her guesses.  It was not supposed to show up until Tuesday but during the day Saturday I got a notice it was actually going to show up that day!

We had a few errands to run but I was worried to leave the house as the package required a signature.  I wound up printing out a note and signed it, hoping that would be sufficient for the Fedex guy if he showed up while we were gone.  On our way back we saw a RING movement notification.  Cindy checked it and saw it was indeed the FedEx guy.  She was able to talk to the guy via the doorbell and verified he could leave it with the note.  He said he could and told us he would put the box in a plastic bag since it looked like it was ready to rain.  It was a cool practical use of our in house tech.

The surprise was in a generic box so Cindy still did not know what it was.  I told her I bought another robotic vacuum cleaner which did not excite her in the least.  When I opened the box and pulled out the Ninebot One electric unicycle she was more receptive as it was one of the things she had guessed it may be when I first mentioned the surprise.  I thought the Ninebot One would be a nice compliment to the Segway Minipro.  Sure it is a one wheel device but I figured our Minipro riding ability would help fast track us to learning how to ride the Ninebot One.  Before making the purchase I watched a ton of videos of others riding it as easily as we zip around on the Minipro.  Sure I figured it would be harder to learn than the Minipro but not exponentially so.  Wow was I wrong.

We originally were planning to see the new Star Trek movie Saturday night but the arrival of the EUC (electric unicycle) changed our plans.  We rented Allegiant on demand and took a break during it to go outside and ride around on the new toy.  The movie does not require any in depth review, it’s a middle of the road B flick that was half decent.

So my first testing of the One was indoors.  This is a self balancing wheel, like the Segway Minipro however it only balances front and back, not side to side.  Just getting onto the wheel seemed crazy.  I wound up holding myself up on the counter while I mounted the wheel. Once I got on it I could feel the forward and back balance kick in but I also felt like the second I left go of a support structure I would fall over.  When I was able to make it from the counter to a wall and then a table I was hopeful that I was already getting the hang of it.

When we went outside I got myself next to the fence and used it as support as I clumsily moved along it, thinking again I was making some significant progress.  Of course I could only got a second or two at a time until I had to reach for a fence post.  I was still holding onto something to mount the wheel, I had no idea how others were able to just hop on.

As expected Cindy had more luck than I did as her lower center of gravity and good balance served her well.  Before we started Cindy applied a bunch of protective foam to the bot which is included to protect it during the training period.  In very short order a lot of it fell off.  Very early on I realized there was absolutely no way I was going to keep the One unblemished as we tried to learn.  Just a few spills in the driveway had already scuffed and scratched it’s body.  Thank goodness it appears to be built to withstand the abuse.

So anyway we decided to abandon the safety of the fence line and headed onto the driveway.  At first we used the garage broom as an auxiliary support to keep us upright.  It sort of worked but really did nothing to help us learn how to truly balance on the single wheel.  Cindy then started trying to get up on the wheel sans broom.  She was trying to hop on the pedals while holding the handle on the wheel with one hand.  She had some limited success but when she would try to release the handle to stand up she would fall off.

She then got brave and tried just hopping on it, like we have seen in the videos.  You basically put one foot on UEC and let it lean slightly in the the opposite direction that your foot is on.  You then hop the other leg onto the other pedal and hopefully immediately start rolling forward.  It looks incredibly simple when you see somebody that is good with the wheel do it.  In real life it is much, much harder.  Cindy did manage to do it several times, traveling as far as 10-15 feet before falling off.  I was impressed.  When I tried to do something similar I would not be able to get moving at all and fall immediately.

Well Cindy had a bad wipeout as she was trying to build on her riding distance.  She lost her balance in a way that caused the wheel to shoot out from under her.  She kicked the wheel out with such force that the Ninebot continued rolling on it’s own.  I had to quickly snag it as it was rolling towards the road.  Cindy landed hard on her hip and arm.  That was enough for her.  Both of us were not wearing any safety equipment which in retrospect is not smart at all.  Neither of us expected the One to be this treacherous to ride.

So once Cindy called it quits I felt obliged to keep plugging along.  I used the pillars by the front door as supports to steady me to get on the wheel.  I then would launch myself out into the front yard, the grass would be more forgiving on both my body and the Ninebot when it would fall.  I had some limited success with my best ride taking me right to the edge of mound, some 30-40 feet away.  I knew that I needed to be able to get on the bot without holding on to something so I did a few attempts at that as well.  I was able to get on it although each ride was 10 feet or less.  My shins/ankles were killing me by the end of the session.  If you would like to see the footage of some of the session you can see it here.

If I am being honest I was sort of bummed out.  I had these ideas in my head that the Ninebot One would be the perfect companion for the Segway.  I envisioned both of us being able to learn to ride the EUC relatively easily and enjoy doing so.  Well after our first session reality set in.  If I was ever going to get decent on the One I was going to have a long, painful, and potentially treacherous road ahead of me.   Because I dropped a good chunk of change on the bot I felt obliged to see it through however.

On Sunday morning neither of us felt up to running from our bumps and bruises from the Ninebot.  I told Cindy I would like to go to the track however to do more EUC training.  Cindy was done with the Ninebot One for the immediate future but despite my aches and pains I felt like I had to press on.  We brought the Minipro along for Cindy to ride on safely.

Once we got there we discovered that Sadie finds personal transport vehicles very interesting.  She seemed to love chasing Cindy around as she zipped along.  So I had some moderate success sprinkled in during the training session that was dominated by falls.  I have not figured out how to gracefully stop without just jumping off the bot.  I had one particularly nasty fall where I was up one second and crashing down on my side a split second later.  I came down hard on my hip and elbow but was back up and riding again a couple minutes later.

I had one ride that was probably in the neighborhood of 75 feet or so which of course ended with me jumping off the bot again and letting it tumble.  My training session ended when the bot hit the ground hard enough and at the right angle where the battery pack ejected it self.  I needed tools to fix it so we stopped it there.  My Ninebot One that was new and pristine less than 24 hours prior now looked like it has been through a war.  It was pretty crazy.

In addition to the various bumps and bruises I suffered I found that overall trying to ride the EUC was hard work.  I was sweated through my shirt.  Part of that is the total body engagement needed for balance and part of it is what happens when your body is asked to be thrust into a situation where it does not know how to react.  Forcing myself to get on the One again and again, knowing each time I was probably going to wind up falling off definitely tests my fortitude.

During the afternoon  a horrendous storm blew through.  Up until this point we had survived rainy season without a major return of standing water on the property.  Well that streak ended yesterday, by the time it stopped raining we had ponds everywhere.  This is the part of the summer I absolutely hate where the ground is permanently soaked and every day has heat and humidity levels in the 90’s.  It sucks, plain and simple.

When the rain stopped and the driveway dried a little bit I decided I needed to continue the painful training.  I again had some limited success with more failure.  There is no doubt I am making progress but it is slow.  I just hope I get to the point where I can ride the One safely before either the bot is destroyed or I am.  The afternoon session ended when I fell in a way that sprained my right ankle slightly.  The fall also wound up sending the Ninebot into a puddle of standing water where it landed on it’s side.  Thankfully the bot can endure mild exposure to water.  I hosed off the dirt and propped it against the wall to dry.

It seems like my dreams of Cindy and I swapping between the Segway and One are not going to happen.  I am going to have to be the one to learn the wheel if I want to have any use come of my purchase.  I had Cindy get me some additional body armor at the local Sports Authority going out of business sale to aid me in gaining that expertise without winding up in the ER.

If you want to see how to install an ejected battery back into a Ninebot One you can do so here.

I don’t have many Earth shattering thoughts from yesterday although I did find it very funny listening to the ghost writer from The Art of the Deal rip Donald to shreds. He described Donald as akin to a 7 year old with severe ADD.  There is definitely a very immature aspect to his personality and the way he speaks is very simplistic, relying heavily on vague generalities with a limited vocabulary.  He really sort of is the 2016 version of Sarah Palin, hammering home the same handful of one liners with no ability to expand upon any point in a significant manner.

I am picking up Sadie on the way home for an extended visit.  We hadn’t seen her for over two weeks so it will be good to have her back under the roof.  This weekend I have the standard weekly list of chores that will need to be accomplished in the 95% humidity that is southwest Florida summers.  On the fun front we would like to get out to see the new Star Trek movie and some more Segway miniPro cruising.

Yesterday was an unconventional work day that didn’t really start until noon.  My boss and I attended a user conference for a software package that we are considering implementing.  During the morning I jumped on the treadmill for a 3 mile run and did some chores around the house to make productive use of the time. The conference was beneficial to us as we got to talk to other customers to get their feedback which was overwhelmingly positive.  The staff of this company are very impressive and they all seem to absolutely love working there, a rarity nowadays.

The conference was held at the Marriot just outside of Sanibel.  I rarely get up in that region but it is quite beautiful.  The hotel that was hosting the conference was top notch.  At the end of the formal sessions they had a happy hour where everyone hung out and got to talk about business and non-business related things.  It was a good time.  By the time I dropped my buddy off and got back home it was almost 8 o’clock.

I did not get to watch any more of the 3 ring circus aka, the RNC last night. I did catch some highlights like Ted Cruz getting booed for refusing to officially endorse Trump during his speech and the awkward and weird “air kiss” embrace Trump exchanged with Mike Pence during his speech.  The convention has done a good job of echoing the chaos and idiocy that is now the de facto standard in American politics.

So yesterday was not a fun one at the office. We had an employee contract the Cerber ransomware on her pc.  Ransomware has been around for a little while.  We had another user do the same thing a couple years ago.  This employee clicked on a link that was in an email that was sitting in her QUARANTINE folder.  The email was in quarantine for a reason, geezus.  After doing so the program quickly encrypted the majority of the files on her pc.  It did not stop there however.  It proceeded to also encrypt almost a quarter of a MILLION files on one of our network servers, knocking a couple of our important applications offline. When Cerber completed it popped a message on the desktop with instructions on how to pay the ransom for the decryption program to undo the damage..

Of course this was four alarm fire mode. I came up with a plan of action along with our programmer who maintains the applications that became corrupted. It consisted of a combination of restoring from our nightly back up and fixing a few corrupted files.  To me, paying the ransom was not an option.  Not only am I against it in principal, I have no trust in paying someone who just sabotaged me to undo the damage they did.  If anything I would expect it to compound the problem where the decryption program plants further malicious seeds on the machine, no thanks. In the end we had downtime in those applications of maybe a couple hours which was annoying but not the end of the world.  It was a wake up call to how vulnerable you can still be despite firewalls and other security measures if you have employees that are asleep at the wheel in terms of safe computing practices.

Last night Cindy’s daughter stopped by.  Of course we had to have her try out the Segway MiniPro.  In a span of 5 minutes she went from being shaky to comfortable.  Before she left she was zipping around the driveway with ease.   She shared Cindy and my opinion that the Segway is just a lot of fun.

Cindy and I saw a small portion of the RNC convention last night.  Wow it sounded pretty exciting with Dump Trump people getting shouted down, Colorado delegates refusing to sit in the arena, and the the Ohio governor, John Kasich refusing to attend, further reenforcing why I wish he somehow had the nomination instead.  We did not catch respected republican keynote speakers like Cha Chi (Scott Baio) or Antonio Sabato Jr, the hunk from General Hospital soap opera.

We did catch the speech from Melania Trump which made me laugh out loud repeatedly.  The hypocrisy of the anti-immigrant candidate’s Russian bride (Slovenia technically), reading a speech that evidently had large portions that were word for word from a past Michelle Obama speech was simply amazing.  It’s going to be a very entertaining week for sure. Merica rulez, the rest droolz! Hell yea!

Friday night after work a few people from work met up with my ex-boss Shirley who retired about a year and a half ago.  I had not seen her since then.  Cindy came out and joined us as well.  I downed five Shock Tops while we were there putting me beyond safe driving parameters.  We left the Prius there and Cindy drove us both home in the Tacoma.

Our new Segway miniPro arrived during the day.  I told Cindy she should open it up and put it together which she happily did.  She shot video of her unboxing which I combined with my first attempt to get on on the Segway, drunk, when we got home.  You can see both things here.

Trying to step on the miniPro for the first time drunk was not ideal.  The first couple times I tried the board rocked back and force violently.  It wasn’t because of a problem with the Segway, it was my alcohol impaired balance.  Even with drinking, I eventually got myself up on the board and was able to slowly maneuver around the great room without feeling like I was going to crash.

Cindy right away was more adept at riding than I was.  Even though it was pitch dark we took the board outside so Cindy could ride in the driveway.  There is a built in speed limiter on the miniPro where you can not unlock the top speed on it until you log about .6 miles of ride time.  After a few laps around our driveway Cindy had passed that distance so we unlocked the speed limiter, which allows the miniPro to get up to 11mph before the the automatic brake is applied.  The built in headlights made nighttime riding a piece of cake.  The configurable color LED tail lights are extremely cool as well.

Saturday morning I hopped back on the board inside and practiced sober.  I quickly gained confidence in my ability to control the Segway.  I had no issue riding around the hard surfaces in the house, easily steering around furniture and other obstacles.  I drove Cindy back to South Street to pick up the Prius which she used to get to the cycling class she was teaching.  When I returned home I wanted to get more miniPro time but I instead rode the tractor around the yard for a couple hours, the grass was getting high.

I didn’t have any major construction projects on the schedule but I did help Cindy assemble two wood pallets into a chair.  The bare pallets had been sitting around for awhile so I was happy to lend a hand to get them out of the yard.  I also ripped a couple boards off a third pallet so Cindy could turn it into a planter for a friend of hers.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched our current Netflix rental, The Big Short.  The film is based on a true story regarding the financial meltdown of 2007/2008 and the origin of the credit default swaps that pushed several financial institutions off the edge and required others to get billions of federal bailout money to remain afloat.  I thought the movie was extremely well done and did an excellent job at illustrating at just how greedy and disgusting the financial industry was and is.

Just imagine you bought a house and instead of buying one mortgage on it you instead bought 50 mortgages on it.  In simplistic terms that is sort of what these banks did, selling mortgage investment bundles, filled with horrible risky loans over and over and over again.  It is pretty incredible when you try to wrap your head around just how deep the fraud and irresponsibility went.  The scary thing is so many people act like it was ancient history while the financial industry received little more than a tap on the wrist for literally stealing TRILLIONS of dollars from the general populace.  People can’t be bothered with things like financial fraud and abuse when there are so many Pokemon pets yet to catch.  Anyway, I liked the movie a lot and every adult should see it, and pay attention.  It gets an A.

Sunday morning we had an interesting exercise session that included running, Segway riding, rollerskating, and rollerblading.  I put in about 3.5 miles on the track while Cindy rode around the school grounds.  We then drove to Dunkin Donuts where I rode the miniPro while drinking coffee while Cindy roller skated.  Cindy had told me she used to be a really good skater but I never saw her in action.  It didn’t take long for me to be impressed.  Despite her not skating for years she immediately seemed comfortable, skating backwards and doing spins like it was nothing.

We later switched, I put on my roller blades and Cindy rode the board.  I also had not rollerbladed in several years.  Unlike Cindy, I was never adept at it.  At best I could avoid falling down but I never was smooth or fast.  I managed to not fall on my face but if you watch the video you will see my awkward style.

After an active start the rest of my Sunday slowed down. Both Cindy and I felt very tired during the afternoon and actually laid down for a psuedo-nap.  The most productive thing I did during the day was to reroute an ethernet cable that used to be used for the Xbox 360, into the wall and back out behind the tv for hard wired internet speed.  I pulled the 360 out of the bedroom as it had no practical use with a smart TV and a Fire Stick residing there now.

This weekend the string of horrible events continued with more police shootings in Baton Rouge and a bloody, unsuccessful coup attempt in Turkey.  Soon these atrocities will become so commonplace that they get as much news time as US soldiers dying unnecessarily in Iraq/Afghanistan.  It gets to the point where typical public response to these events just feels numb. Outrage, prayers, and cries it must stop are the typical blueprint.  To me the increased frequency of these events would indicate that whatever we think we are accomplishing with that response is obviously ineffective.

I had planned to fill today’s entry with light and mostly pointless jabber about stuff like how my Segway miniPro arrives today, our discovery of a cool show called Mr Robot or how I decided to solo the end raid of Wrath of the Lich King last night.  Instead I woke up this morning (without an alarm between 4-5AM) to news that there has been another terrorist mass casualty event in France.  This tragedy deviated from the normal gun and explosive tactics most used by suicidal maniacs.  Instead this man drove a large truck at a high rate of speed right into the middle of a large crowd gathered for a Bastille Day celebration.

The casualty count is somewhere in the mid-80s with many of them being children.  It is yet another horrible event in the long stream of horrible events that seem to be a regular occurrence in the world nowadays.  With these tragedies happening so often it gets hard to discern between them.  Regardless of the corresponding death toll with each event the rhetoric is typically very similar with leaders vowing to “defeat” terrorist groups which is a crock of shit.

When politicians say they are going wipe out terrorism they are appealing to simple thinking people.  It is impossible to wipe out a group that blends in among the populace and that views blowing themselves up as badge of honor that has rewards in the afterlife.  You can’t defeat extremism because they are willing to go beyond the boundaries civilized society exists under.

Of course as is the case far too often, religious beliefs are at the rotten core of this endless conflict.  There is no foreseeable resolution.  Religion has been the cause of conflict throughout human history and to think it’s changing anytime soon is naive.   I have no answers, no light at the end of the tunnel although I am sure the executives of military mega-conglomerates have a little spring in their step everyday they wake up to news like this.  Anything that helps to propagate fear and panic is good for business.  My personal plan of action is to just keep moving forward and hope human beings don’t totally eradicate themselves before the century is over.

Have a nice weekend hunting Pokemon.

It seems like we have found our own modern day zombie apocalypse and it’s called Pokemon Go.  Take a look at this article regarding what NYC has transformed into in the matter of a few weeks.  When I see the clips of people walking around outdoors ignoring everything except the 5 inches of screen space in front of them trying to catch their latest Pokemon pet it makes me cringe.  Unfortunately it is a clear indicator of just where we are as a society and the dark direction we are headed, where lemming mentality rules with individual, independent thought looked upon with disdain.

Last night when I got home I felt like I was totally out of gas.  I had no energy and just felt blah.  At first I blamed a pretty difficult lower body workout at the gym followed by an afternoon of relocating one of our branch offices that required a lot of lugging stuff around.  I then wondered if I was possibly getting sick as the back of my tongue was tender/sore for a day which can sometimes be a precursor to illness for me.  Whatever the ultimate reason, it was a very low key Wednesday evening.