Freakishly Fabulous Friday: Stupid News, Commentary, Music, Videos and Memes

Cross-posted on Really? Seriously?

Kids these days, ain’t they persnickety?

Well, good morning, people! It is a Friday morning in West Seattle, and currently sunny and 47° F. It looks beautiful outside at 0725 in the morning. But this being Seattle, this is supposed to give way to showers today with a high around 57° F. Roughly translated, this means that at some point today, the sky is going to do anything from a momentary period of mist or drizzle to hours upon hours of showers throughout the day. A “chance” of rain is just that: a chance.

I’m at home in my Hunker-Bunker. I spent the better part of yesterday putting my SQL-Server project together and have finally produced a working beta model.

This project started out as a Microshaft Access database, with a split Backend on a server and an Access database Jet client as the frontend. Engineering work orders is just a module in a much larger Asset tracking program — one for each property, which was one of the major limitations of Access.

I needed just ONE database that could be used be all the properties. I needed an actual SQL based program. I wanted MySQL, but IT insisted I write in in SQL-Server.

I’ve worked with MySQL on all these blogs and websites for over twenty years. I’ve never really fucked around with the Microshaft version of SQL — SQL-Server.

This old dog had to learn some new tricks. I had to actually learn coding on a completely new level than the little bullshit that I’ve been doing here on these websites over the years. I also had to do it on my own, by myself, with nothing to help me but the InterTubes and lately ChatGPI.

SIDE NOTE ABOUT ChatGPI: Don’t let anyone fool ya, these AI models are as dumb as fuck. They’ve scoured the Internet and sucked up every written word it was fed, and that includes some absolute gibberish and nonsense. Garbage in, garbage out. It’s only as ‘smart’ as the information it is given. It’s ability to ‘reason’ is based on a lot of good and bad information, so it will often produce results that may be close to reality, but not quite.

I used both the ChatGPI and CoPilot AI models. CoPilot comes with Windows 11, and ChatGPI is Google’s model. Everyone says that CoPilot is better for code, but I’ve found that ChatGPI doesn’t take as many revisions to come up with the correct solution. Also, I’ve found that both AI models screw up more on the less-complicated SQL syntax structures than the more complicated ones. Both become completely discombobulated over date functions, which makes no sense.

At any rate, I now have a working SQL model for beta testing. I can install it tomorrow on the Front Desk and department computers, and is now completely off-site and over the internet, which now allows me to add in the other properties.

This is better than sex.

====

Lawdy, the news be full of craziness this morning. There was so much there that I felt I should just put them into categories and speak generally about them.

May We Live In Interesting Times…

Headlines That Caught My Eye This Morning

Item 1: Anti-Israel Protesting as history echoes:

History Repeating – Propellerheads (1998)

Déjà vu (/?de???? ?v(j)u?/ DAY-zhah-VOO, -?VEW, French: [de?a vy] ; “already seen”) is the phenomenon of feeling as though one has lived through the present situation before. It is an illusion of memory whereby—despite a strong sense of recollection—the time, place, and context of the “previous” experience are uncertain or impossible. Approximately two-thirds of surveyed populations report experiencing déjà vu at least one time in their lives. –Wiki

I would like to think that this is all in my mind, but we really have been down this road before. This isn’t Déjà vu, we really are repeating ourselves fifty-six years later.

Vietnam war protests on campuses. Students make demands that can never be met. Heavy-handed police and military responses. The sitting president comes out against the students. Chooses not to run for re-election. A couple of assassinations happen, there is turmoil at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and eventually “The Chicago Eight” are put on trial…

Chicago – Graham Nash (1971)

So what has happened so far this year?

Well, we have students whining about a war overseas that we are subsidizing, and we are being treated to the instant news cycle where the images of the destruction and carnage are plastered all over social media. (guilty as charged, myself) Public opinion among the younger generations is understandably low on this topic. Idealists tend to give more of a fuck than older folks.

In 1986, students took over colleges and set up ‘shantytowns’ and ‘encampments’ to protest Apartheid in South Africa. Back then, they demanded that schools and businesses divest themselves of South African investments, and for the most part, those protests were successful. Investments were dropped from portfolios lickety-split and South Africa eventually went on to change, due to the global protests of that time.

Today, it is not quite so easy to divest a portfolio of targeted investments like this. IF it can be done, it will take a lot of time to make it happen.

Are we going to have an old, frail sitting POTUS announce that he will “not seek” his party’s nomination, throwing open the gates of hell at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in *checking notes* CHICAGO?
Are we going to get some assassinations?
Better yet, is the music going to start getting really really good again?
I mean, let’s focus on the more important things, shall we?

Item 2: In re: Israel’s Idiocy:

I read an article yesterday where Israel vowed to make things rough for the Palestinians if the ICC continued to pursue arrest warrants for Israeli officials.

That would be like a bank robber hearing that the prosecutor is going to charge him for a felony, and the robber publicly threatens to start blowing up banks if he’s charged.

The idea that Israel is now giving an ultimatum to Hamas to “strike a deal” or Israel is going to start its offensive into Rafah ignores the vow of Netanyahu that he is going to offend Rafah deal or no deal. What incentive does Hamas have to make any deal with Netanyahu?

I mean, once Bibi the village idiot ( “???? ??? ????? ???????.” ) made his vow to go in and do to Rafah what he’s done to the rest of the Gaza Strip regardless of ANY deal, whether the hostages were released or not, then why should Hamas make any agreement? Netanyahu is going to do what he wants and everyone else can be damned.

So does anyone wonder why there are protests?

Don’t look for me to show up. I don’t do protests. I don’t do gatherings, meetings, groups or even friendships well. I prefer to sit here and pass stupid judgment on all ya’ll. It’s kinda my schtick.

Remember, I’m THAT guy.

Whistling

Just keep your protests away from where I need to be, and we’ll be just fine, okay?

If anyone is wondering who, historically, can lay claim to the territory currently referred to as “Israel”, then you should watch this historically accurate animation put to the music of Exodus.

To say “it’s complicated” would be a major understatement.

Item 3: The Trump Trials and Tribulations – Early Friday Edition

“Mary Trump Says…”

Is it me, or aren’t we all just a bit tired of hearing what Mary Trump has to say about her uncle? They haven’t been close for years.

It’s going to be interesting to hear what Hope Hicks has to say about Trump. Will she unload ALL the dirt? How is Trump going to react?

Does it surprise anyone that a company closely connected to Trump is part of a ‘massive fraud’ scheme?

It seems to me that anything that has to point out that it’s “truth” is probably anything but.

Item 4: It’s the End of the World as we know it… and I feel fine

Everybody is spoiling for a fight. If they could all just hold off for a couple-more years, I can be gone and out of the way so y’all can have your apocalypse. I’m not the spring chicken I was a few years ago, I won’t hold up well in the end of the world…

Item 5: Netflix Baby Reindeer Subject Lashes Out At Stephen King

I’m thinking this person is looking for attention in the form of publicity.

Item 6: Texas man files legal action to probe ex-partner’s out-of-state abortion

This guy has a serious problem of letting go.

Item 7: The Battle for Attention

Everybody wants access to your eyeballs and ears.

Item 8: The BASIC programming language turns 60

Do you know what I learned in school in 1965? BASIC. It was a joint partnership between the school district and Rocket Research Company in Redmond. I got three years of computer programming as an extracurricular activity.

Item 9: Booming labor market poised to reach milestone for low unemployment

Numbers are interesting. It all depends on how you frame the numbers.

While it is true that unemployment rate for registered unemployed workers is at an all-time low. When compared to the pre-pandemic rate in early 2020, there are roughly 1.7 million workers missing from the roster. There are something like three million jobs right now going unfilled.

A lot of them retired, and/or died. Some went off to start a family. Some went to school. Some left the country. The pandemic shook up the labor snow-globe.

It was heading this direction anyways. The Boomer generation is dying off, and the generation behind it was substantially smaller.

Item 10 US economy adds 175k jobs in April, falling short of expectations

Next month, they will ‘adjust’ it back upwards, watch.

Item 11: Fact Checking for people lacking basic critical thinking skills: