Ain't Life Grand?

If you're not watching Trump's nightly Coronavirus shitfest, here's the summary:

He started out by accusing nurses of hoarding or stealing face masks.

Trump: "There is something going on. I don't know if it is hoarding. It is maybe worse than hoarding ... for years, 10 to 20,000 masks. Okay. It's a New York City hospital. It's packed all the time. How do you go from 10 to 20 to 300,000? 10 to 20,000 masks, to 300,000 ... even though this is different. Something is going on. And you ought to look into it as reporters. Where are the masks going? Are they going out the back door? How do you go from 10,000 to 300,000? Uh, and we have that in a lot of different places. So ... somebody should probably look into that, 'cause I just don't see from a practical standpoint how that's possible to go from that to that, and we have that happening in numerous places..."

He then accused hospitals of "hoarding" ventilators.

He does this several times throughout the briefing, Suggesting New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and medical personnel, specifically nurses, are conspiring to overinflate the number of ventilators and masks needed.

Again, he does this more than once.

Trump then admits there actually ARE shortages, but blames Obama. Saying that it's like how the military was out of bullets when he took over. None of this has any basis in reality whatsoever, but the toadies in the background are all nodding like this is fact.

This is beyond gaslighting.

This is a radioactive gas cloud.

This is like watching the Soviet government press briefings about Chernobyl, when the reactor was still burning and the Russians didn't realize we could actually SEE it from orbit and that radiation meters were sounding the alarm over half the planet.

Trump then talks about immigrants and how keeping them out of America probably prevented us from getting the plague and everybody behind him has this carefully practiced expressionless Soviet face on, and then bizarrely Trump randomly pivots to explaining how he didn't know until TODAY that 2.2 MILLION AMERICANS will likely die if we don't maintain social distancing -- even though that number was specifically briefed IN FRONT of him two weeks ago on national TV.

Naturally, now that Trump is suddenly aware of the probability of 2.2 MILLION DEATHS, he never said he was going to order America back to work by Easter. That was, uh, um, well, you see, um, just "aspirational."

The man who always speaks bluntly, is suddenly talking in metaphor and parable.

A QANN "reporter" asks Trump why his approval ratings are so high, is it because he's so awesome? Trump admits that he is.

Someone else asks about Americans facing eviction on April 1st. Trump says "I think landlords will take it easy."

Trump goes after reporter Yacmiche Alcindor for daring to ask about his repeated attacks on various governors. Trump angrily says, "We sent thousands of generators to New York ... the people in New York never distribute it the generators."

It takes a minute to figure out that when Trump says "generators" he probably means "ventilators." He does this repeatedly.

A reporter asks why Florida has 100% of their requests for supplies from the national strategic stockpile filled, but Massachusetts has not? Instead of answering, Trump says: "I was on the call yesterday with the governors and they were happy with the job we are doing."

The governors, who he noted the day before, he refuses to call. He was on the phone with them. They're happy he says, despite the fact that he was just this morning talking about how they're not happy and they should be.

Trump then segues into: "The biggest problem was the test didn't work. That was not from us. That has been there a long time" and suggests that the fault lies with Obama.

The tests in question were developed by the CDC, WITHIN THE LAST 3 MONTHS. Literally since the beginning of THIS year. Obama has been out of office for nearly 4 years now.

Then, bizarrely -- or not, given that this the new normal -- Trump says: "You will see drugs being used like nobody has ever used them before, and people are going to be dying all over the place."

I thought at first he was talking about his repeated claims about untested drugs as a cure for the coronavirus. You know, aquarium cleaner. But, instead, he was talking about drug ABUSE. Not sure by who, but you can probably guess. You know what happens when "those" people stay home with nothing to do.

A CNN reporter tries to get Trump back to his comments about the governors of blue states having to be more "appreciative." Trump screams at him, "YOUR STATEMENT IS A LIE!"

The reporter was LITERALLY quoting Trump's own statement.

Literally quoting Trump.

Trump called those words a lie. I mean, he's not wrong, but still...

As proof of this, Trump starts bragging about how his press briefings are getting better ratings than The Bachelor and Monday Night Football.

"The enemy is death," declares Trump.

And we're done. Thanks for coming everybody. Hope to see you all tomorrow for another exciting episode of "Reality TV President!"

~Jim Wright
https://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/posts/2885552571480127

RTFM

Last week was very rough. I was primary on-call. That means I can be, and am, called and notified over any software or hardware error across a couple of major product lines anytime of the day and night. Sometimes the systems are quiet, but not this time. The guy that had it last weekend had mentioned that one particular error was firing about every hour overnight.

And he wasn't lying. It would take care of itself, but it still paged me every hour overnight. We had looked at several fixes but it was still notifying. Considering how much trouble I have getting back to sleep after having been woken up, this was becoming a special kind of hell for me.

On the third night, at midnight, another alert came in. It wasn't the same issue as before. I laid there, hoping the issue would go away. Nope. It was still in an error condition. Great. I'll be shot because now I have to engage the brain and I was working off about 6 hours of sleep in the past four days.

OK. get into the environment, take a look at the graphs and see what the problem was. OK. we have a process to fix this. So I'll run that.
<20minutes> Nope. That didn't do it. So let's amp it up and restart the software one level up. I couldn't see anything in a particular instance of the software, so global reset.
<20 minutes> Still having issues. Let's look at the flowing logs of the lower software and see if there is something there. Ok, one of the 5 seems to be an issue. Let's restart that.
<20 minutes> No, it is now erroring over here. It looks like the upstream one is bad. Thing is, I don't know which of the four it is. Let's try restarting them selectively.
<20 minutes> Where is this freaking error coming from?! Google mentions this error is associated with network issues. Dang it's cold. Ok. let's look at the network traffic and see if I can find something there.
<10 minutes> Interesting. This server's network spikes and then went way low. I'm going to poke around with it.
<10 minutes> OK. the server is in an unstable state. So I have to announce this to my group and ask if anyone is awake. Let them know that I have to restart the server and that can be a shock to the entire system.
<10 minutes> Announce this to all the developers and admins. Restart.
<10 minutes> Verify that things have repaired. Check the processes. Announce the repair.

About 4:30, everything was done. Crawled back into bed. Normally, this is the time I take a shower and get ready for work. Too tired. Can't operate.

<7:00am> "Barry, I need you to wake up. There's no hot water. There's something wrong with the water heater." <swear, cuss, shake my fist at the sky>

My wife led me downstairs and told me all that she had checked. The breakers were all set. The furnace is still working so the gas is still on. I wandered aimlessly while Tracy was on her hands and knees looking at the bottom of the tank. At this time, I was having a few different thoughts. One, why did she ask me down here if she's going to do the fix. Two, why am I standing here? My wife is more than capable to fix this without me.
<5 minutes> Me: "The instructions are on the side of the tank."  Tracy: "Oh!"
<2 minutes, in a cold basement> "OK, did that. Got a blinky. Pressing the button....There's the pilot. Great! Looks like it is working again." She got up from the floor and told me to get back to bed.

As I walked back upstairs, awake with no hope of getting sleep, I mused that all I did was tell my wife to RTFM. "Read The F****** Manual." I won't tell her that until later. It seems to be all I do at work telling users what to do.

At 9:00 am, another issue came up and in the on-line meeting, I was asked what I was doing there, as I had been up all night. They'd take the rest of the on-call and that I should get back to bed. I work with great people. And my wife is awesome too. The day, however, sucked.

This Has To Go

This isn't a great, feel-good post. I'm doing it for motivation and shaming myself. I'm tired of this stupid diabetes dance that I do with my doctor. I take the pills. I alter my diet for a bit. Then I remember how much I like potatoes. Then I circle the drain. I don't test my sugar. I know it is high. Ignorance is bliss.

This post is when I looked in the mirror and stated, "This has to go." while my hand was resting in my gut. A man shouldn't have a gut.

So that is where I was after the holidays. I get a backbone and take a weekend off up in a city I wanted to spend more time in, Winona Wisconsin. I don't eat carbs. Just veggies and meat. Get my mind right about carbs and what I need to do. After coming back home I talk to Tracy about things. I want to do things this summer. I didn't do much last summer. I have vacation time and I want to use it becoming healthy. I also look online to see some of the biking trails that I came across in my travels. Ok. Here's some goals.

1) Get bike into the shop. Fix some of the things that I'm having issues with.
2) Exercise daily. I can still watch TV but do it while riding a bike. I need to crank it up over time because I have to get ready for long rides.
3) Stop eating garbage. I know it is comforting but it is killing me. I need to lose at least 30 pounds.
4) Get time scheduled with Tracy so we can do this biking.
5) Do these paths. Most are 40-50 miles. I can do that in a day. One is probably 2-3 days.

• I&M Canal I wanted to do this last year. I didn't.
• Jane Adams and Badger Trail
• Glacial River Trail
• Glacial Drumlin Trail
• Wild Goose Trail
• 400 Trail
• Elroy Sparta Trail
• LaCrosse River Trail
• Great River Trail

I don't know if this will come to fruition. I have to try though.

CES Nonsense

Years ago when I was struggling with trying to understand my faith, I joined a group on Facebook with people that had similar issues. A whole bunch of people trying to come to grips with how they felt, what they had read or other experiences in their lives. One man in the group was also wondering on how to best understand his faith and had asked his father if he could ask him some questions. His father, IIRC, had determined that the questions were a bit more involved than he knew how to answer but he knew someone higher up in the Church Education System (CES) and if he could write up his questions, he would pass them on.

Thus the publication of the "CES Letter" was started. I didn't realize that I was witnessing something that would lead thousands out of the church.  As time went on, calls for references were made to substantiate the questions as well as any possible responses. The CES official never did respond to the letter, but it eventually was expanded and published and is freely available online for download. The author, Jeremy Runnels, was eventually excommunicated. His trial was covertly recorded and it and several other interviews are available on YouTube. He wanted others to know what asking uncomfortable but honest questions would lead to.

I've long since unsubscribed from that FB group. I do still have friends that I met there, but I no longer frequent those kinds of sites because my family has moved on. However, I was informed of this on a subreddit and I thought it was a great example of the kinds of people who leave the church and just how we treat each other generally.

What Do I Do Now?

EDIT: well, this blew up. I am blown away from all of the messages and comments that I have been receiving. They are filled with love and compassion. I wish I could message all of you back. Maybe I will another day. But for now, I have finals to study for. Also, I hold no grudges or ill-feelings to anybody that was involved in my post below. 

I've been wanting to post on here, but I just needed time to process all of the new information that i have received the past couple of weeks (which have felt like months).
I am one of the sons of the stake president that excommunicated Jeremy Runnels. So, I have a unique perspective that I would like to share with this community. First off, I love my dad with all of my heart and he and my mom have been my rock and support for all of my life. I had a great childhood, even though my dad was gone a lot of Tuesdays/Sundays for church meetings. I went on a mission, Temple Marriage, the whole enchilada. After I got home from my mission in 2014. I went away to go to college at a small college. I was at this college when the whole Jeremy thing was happening. So, what did they say about the church court?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. I didn't hear anything about this till months and months later. And even then, it was through my mother. who talked about it very briefly and with no details. She told me that my dad held a church court. It was on the news, and my dad was going through a really difficult and rough time. It weighed on him heavily the decisions he had to make. and the night of the church court, my mom went to stay with other family just to be safe. (The church also sent security or something to protect my dad) not clear so don't quote me on that. My mom later found that someone had spray painted a swastika underneath our backyard doormat. So that just solidified my belief in the church and how exmo's are bad people wanting to hurt the church.
But, why am I writing this post in 2019 and not back then when it was relevant? Well I got curious a couple months ago about why that excommunication happened. So, I googled my dad and the church. That sent me down down down the rabbit hole. I read news articles about the trial, I watched the video Jeremy released of his church court. I read all of the demeaning comments about my dad. I found this subreddit because it linked to Jeremy.
Then, I found the CES letter. Holy crap. I couldn't stop reading it. I would look at the sources, stay up all hours of the night just reading the letter. I then read Letter for my wife, Then the gospel topics essays. I couldn't believe it! I remember learning a little bit about polygamy and Joseph Smith and the peep stone. But, definitely not to this extent. I was devastated. Also, I found all of this during the last couple weeks of the fall sememster. So, whenever I wasn't working, going to school or studying, I was glued to finding more Information.
I found John Dehlin and his Mormon Stories podcast and that has helped me so much. because he has just a loving approach to everybody and doesn't bash the church like a lot of posts on this subreddit do.
So, I came out to my wife and said I'm having trouble with my testimony. I gave her high level basics of what was going on. About my dad, the CES letter and the gospel topics essays. She said I shouldn't look at that stuff anymore. I let it go. And whenever I try and bring up something about the letter or anything controversial about the church. she says that she would rather be left in the dark.
I also tried to talk to close friends about my issues vaguely and they just changed the subject. So i left it. But, now I don't know who to talk to. I don't want to talk to my dad because I feel that it would crush him if one of his children fell away because of the actions of someone he excommunicated. and the rest of my family is so devout that I would like to think they would love me and talk me through this, but, I don't know if that would happen.
So, I'm having a faith crisis with nobody to talk to and crying in church because i'm still feeling all of the good the church does and provides but also cant deny facts. and ALL DURING FINALS WEEK. RIP my concentration.
I wrote this for two reasons.
just to get it off my chest and to put it all in words.
Just be nice to everybody. Everybody has their faults and mistakes. And many people that we criticize and demean within the church have families and loved ones that are devastated when they hear all of the bad and derogatory things they hear about them.
We don't win with fear and hatred, we win with love.

And who was the one I found at the top of the list of responses?

 Jeremy Runnells here. It's an understatement to say that I'm surprised to see this post. A friend texted me telling me about this just now.

First of all, thank you for your vulnerability and for sharing this. I know it takes a lot of courage and I applaud you.

I see your faith crisis (I prefer to instead refer it as "Discovering the Church's Truth Crisis") is just weeks old. I remember how disorienting and insane my early weeks were and what a shock it was to my system and model of the world. You have my compassion and sincere concern.

I agree with your post. I think your dad is a decent man at his core. He was caught in the middle of something that he was unprepared for and just couldn't process. I'm not surprised by your words that it weighed heavily on him as I believe it did. I met with him about a year before the court thing went down in 2016 and he offered to consult with his historian friends about the questions and wanted to help. He disappeared for about a year after that and I can only speculate that perhaps it was because it was too scary for him to go down that road so he just left it on the shelf.

I don't see your dad as the instigator. I see LDS, Inc. in Salt Lake as the instigator. The first time I heard back from your dad after that year of silence was in January 2016 when he called me. One of the first things he said was, "I need to hold a court on you." It wasn't "I'm going to hold a court" or "I've decided I'm going to hold a court"...it was "I need to...". What this told me was that there was an outside force putting pressure on him to do this and it fits with what I've seen in my interactions with him. I don't think he wanted to go after me but had no choice as he had to obey the Brethren.

I never wanted to hurt your dad and have never wished him ill. I'm sorry to hear about the hardship he and his wife went through and the whole swastika thing is outrageous and unacceptable.

You're not alone and you shouldn't feel alone. There are so many good people here and in this community who can help you through this. This includes myself and John Dehlin. If there's a good time to have a faith crisis, 2019 is it as there are so many excellent resources and wisdom. You've received a gift but it will take time to fully appreciate the gift. It's not going to look like a gift in the coming weeks and months but it's a gift.

Hang in there and keep your chin up. You've done nothing wrong. Keep asking questions and keep climbing. The mountain is hard to climb but it's gorgeous at the top.

I just think this is how people should support each other. People go through challenges. We need support.

Cheerleader

While I was watching the volleyball games this weekend, I was also trying to sort out some personal things. Tracy is going through some career issues and I was thinking about how to best support her. Then I went down that rabbit hole of how much this makes relationships work. What we really want is someone that will support us, be there when we need them. It isn’t just in the big things, like careers or moves or children. It is a lot of the small things. When I’m out on a motorcycle trip, Tracy can track me. She makes my motel reservations. When we had infants, we did all the parenting things as equally as we could. Tracy is working evenings now, so I have to do the chores those days that she usually does.

While I was thinking about this, I was sitting in front of 5 boys that were from the school on this side of the net. Whenever there was a point made they gestured their approval with the same gesture the referee made, a right arm pointing towards that team to show they scored a point. There was some slight approval smiles from the girls on the team. Right before my eyes was what I was trying to be to my wife, her cheerleader. Just like the song, but reversed. As the game went on, the boys’ gestures became more and more acrobatic. At each score, one of the boys tumbled or cartwheeled or shouted. With the increased support, the girls took more and more time looking at them and smiling broadly. I’m sure it felt good to get approval from classmates. Volleyball is sometimes forgotten, especially early on a Saturday morning.

So I’m gonna keep trying to be a good support for my wife. Also for my children. For my co-workers. I will do it because it is the right thing to do, and they are worth all the “cheering” they can get.

For My Next Trick

About 25 years ago, I became tired of sweating ALL. THE. TIME. The job in Chandler, AZ had dried up or was in the process of drying up and thoughts of moving were on my mind. I think it was on my mind more than Tracy's but so be it. We worked on updating my resume and looked online via Compuserve (remember that??) for any job that I might qualify for. I think I sent out 4 resumes. I got hits on two. One of the agencies told me that they were looking at me for a job at Motorola.

Motorola.

This was the company that I idolized during my college days. I used Apple Macs during my undergrad work and I did some programming on it. I fell in love with the processor. the 68k. It was so much easier to work with than the intel 8086 or later. Just a great piece of silicon. I had used the 6805 processor at my current work as well. It was just a great company. It was also ironic that I was surrounded by Motorola plants there in Phoenix, but the job was in Illinois. Didn't matter, I wanted out of Arizona.

I already had a trip ticketed to Chicago as we were traveling to Michigan to visit my parents. It just made sense to interview while I was there. So my parents travelled down to Chicago and I interviewed. I think it went well. I knew the chip. I was confident I could help the company. After the interview, my Dad wanted to get some Chicago pizza. I don't know what our thinking was, but we wound up stuck in downtown Elgin and while we were trying to get out of the traffic jam, I muttered, "If I do get the job, this is one place I won't live."

So eventually, we made our way back to Michigan. I think I received the offer soon after we arrived. I can't remember. I do know that Tracy and I went to Mackinaw Island and at one photo she shot, she told me to "Smile and say Motorola." I gave her about as good a smile as I ever gave.

So I came to work for Motorola, a company of about 175,000 employees. I was to debug a piece of equipment that had a particular bug for its entire life. In 3 months, after learning as much as I could about the operating system it used and going through the code, I found the bug. It was a memory leak. I got the job and was hired on as a Motorolan in April 1995.

I don't know how much I can show my gratitude for the opportunity to work for this company. While I worked, my wife received her master's degree at Northern Illinois University. Once she got her degree, Motorola put me through school for my Masters in Computer Engineering. My undergrad education was almost tailor-made for Motorola. My focus was on radio and my interests were on programming and computer design.  My masters was focused on what the company required of me at the time, programming and database work with transmission theory to keep me honest.

Then, after schooling, we built our family. Our first three children were adopted. We had built a home in all respects and Motorola provided financial support through repayment of our adoption fees. Those are not tiny, by the way.

Just like any experience, it wasn't without its ups and downs. I've sat in library parking lots in the middle of the night to fix issues when the library had the only internet connection within 30 miles. For almost 20 of these years, I couldn't take Monday's off. I've also been on-call most of these years. Redundancy has been sometimes lacking in my position. They even tracked me down in Guatemala when we were there adopting Madsen and Ellie. It has been interesting.

Having only worked for a start-up before Motorola, I don't know how much better or worse it would have been to work for another company of this size (we are now less than 20,000 I think). I can say that I have loved working here. I still enjoy my job, my coworkers, and the subject matter. It hasn't always been easy, but boy-howdy, I have really loved this job.

By the way, I hit 30,000 on the motorcycle this morning. I'm not proud of that number. The past years have been pretty busy during the summer and I really haven't gone much of anywhere since my eclipse trip in 2017. I really want to change that. In fact, I would have gone somewhere the past few days but, like so often, I'm on-call.

What the Heck Happened to Me?

When I went through my “faith crisis”, I had a lot to evaluate. In my journey down the rabbit hole of trying to find out what I had been a part of much of my life, I also spoke to a lot of other people that were going through the same thing. What better way to understand what I was experiencing than from people that had already made or were in the midst of the journey? I found a particular bent. They all seemed to be leaning left, politically. I was pretty conservative. However, with all my reading and listening to others, I hadn’t been listening to my conservative radio. My own life was much more interesting. Even then, I contemplated that the reason some of these left the church was due to them being liberal in such a conservative religion. No wonder they left. Cognitive Dissonance is a miserable thing to live with.

But, considering that I felt lied to most of my life about my most intimate beliefs, I wanted to know what else I might believe because of faulty information. I wanted to be ruled by evidence and not by desire. So I stopped listening to my right-wing radio. With listening to others and trying to make sense out of what was happening to me, I really felt empathy building. It was noticeable. I became much less of an island.

Holy Crap, I’m turning into a liberal! How the hell did that happen?

I guess empathy does that. I certainly didn’t "deserve" what happened to me. What about all those others that had things happen to them that they didn’t deserve?

I think I’m still conservative in some things. I still own guns, but I’m in favor of reasonable and realistic gun control. I think we should have a balanced budget, but I think our spending priorities are way out of whack.

Anyway, I am what I am. Sometimes I’m too much of it. Sometimes not enough.

I like listening to science and law programs. I realize now how skewed my old thinking is. I have a better understanding of how flawed our government is and some of those things really can’t be fixed. In other ways, our government is pretty good. I just wish we’d learn from other places, both good and bad. Our tendency for the concept of American Exceptionalism is overall damaging, just like religious exceptionalism blinds people to the suffering of others.

Oh well. I just wanted to say this.