Do Not

Police and sheriff officers are already overloaded with all the stuff they have to know and do to enforce the laws in their jurisdiction, do not make them be psychiatrists too. They don't have the academic and clinical experience to evaluate anyone for a mental condition other than the obvious, and the record has shown in many incidents they still get that wrong and almost always use force than reason.

And do not make them the front line to make legal decisions as to the mental state of a person without due process and ensuring their rights, otherwise, they're only guessing, and almost always, wrong on that too. They do not have the knowledge or experience to know the suite of laws, regulations and policies of the state for their jurisdiction.

The police acted correctly when they assessed Elliot Rodger in an interview and did not acquire a search warrant or ask to search his apartment. They had no legal cause to do either, and if they had any suspicions, they had every obligation to report them to the District Attorney's office for further action and only then excuted any search warrant if the DA obtained one.

My point is that we shouldn't blame the system for one person. As the history of the country with guns has shown, normal looking and acting people can legally acquire a mass of weapons and ammuntion without raising alarms or  causing suspicions. Any laws to identify and stop someone like Roger would be overly burdensome for local law enforcement and district attorneys.

What Elliot Rodger showed us is that there are ways anyone can acquire weapons to do a mass shooting within the law, even within the most restrictive laws, we could enact let alone imagine. We shouldn't make the many who suffer from a variety of mental health conditions subject to additional scrutiny unless there is an obvious risk to others.

We shouldn't put mental health professionals on the front line to report their clients or patients unless there they determine there is a risk from that person, and there already are sufficient laws for them to do that, but do not put the 99+% of those getting therapy at risk for being labelled by law enforcement and district attorneys when and where there is no clear evidence.

Any action to do so, as we heard from many politicians, would further alienate those needing and wanting therapy and those in therapy. The vast majority of those people will simply stop therapy for fear of losing their legal rights and protections under the laws and the Constitution. They're not the enemy, the single person who commits mass shootings are.

That's the reality we live in, one person can quietly live and go live unnoticed until they act out their hate and anger. We've seen this with home-grown terrorists (eg. Timothy McVeigh) and the many mass shootings which occur every year. This is our reality, and there are many good reasons why and many good ways to reduce it. 

It's not 100% preventable, otherwise, everyone will be required to be regularly evaluated for their mental stability, and we know that's not foolproof. So let's not kid ourselves into thinking it's preventable in a climate of nearly unrestricted access to guns courtesy of the lobbying and political efforts NRA and other gun rights organizations.

Any solutions must deal with that issue in a responsible way. Let's remember more people die in this country almost daily than any one mass shooting, many by family members or friends in domestic violence cases, many in sudden acts of rage or anger, and many in some neighborhoods in cities.

The answer to the quesion, "How many more mass shootings must we have?", is easy, until we get the politicians to agree to reasonable laws for the sheer quanitity of guns in this country and the easy legal and illegal accessibility to them. There are no soundbites or simply solutions, it's in our culture, and that's where we should start.

Comcast

Comcast sucks. Ok, now that I have your attention, I'll explain. Comcast has a history of poer or worse signal for the high definition channels of the local (Seattle-Tacoma) stations, channels 104-113, and today, Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend, they've screwed of the broadcast of the Monaco Formula One Grand Prix and now the Indianopolis 500 broadcast with pixalating images, balking audio and video signal and even dropped signal.

I've done everything their representatives have instructed me to do in the past, disconnect and reconnect the cable input and the HDMI cable, recycle the box (on/off) and power down and backup the box (unplug). Nothing helps. The signal just sucks. And it's not from the satellite signal as it's the same on other channels and programs.

In short, Comcast doesn't seem to want to keep a consistent, clean HD signal for the local channels. Maybe it doesn't pay the bills like their other packages they force you to buy for the few channels you want. It's about money than quality of service. Comcast still sucks. And yes, all the proper notices, the opinions are those of the writer and does not reflect Google or Comcast, just a user and customer, respectively.

Really

Do all those Repubicans who are against abortions and are passing laws restricting access to, or worse banning, abortions think that closing down women's health clinics which provide women's reproductive healthcare including abortions will stop women from having abortions? Are they so naive or just blatantly blind to think women won't have abortions? It won't. It will only drive women to illegal abortion providers at great risk to the mother and the fetus.

The truth is they don't care about these women, any women, when faced with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy will think about, let alone have, an abortion. And the truth is that their view is the most unchristian view anyone could have about another human being. These Republicans don't believe in the word of Jesus to be compassionate and provide for others.

The studies have shown providing information on reproductive healthcare and contraceptives reduces the number of abortions. The Republicans are fighting their own hypocrisy and contradiction in trying to restrict access to contraceptives and abortions. The two are directly, and inversely related, something they're too blind to see or even care to know.

But my criticism is really for the Democrats for not standing up and fighting this on a national level in Congress with a bill for women's reproductive healthcare rights, such as one I suggested about a year ago. Surely all the brains in Congress can write a law on this and if you wondering the politics about it, let me say this.

When it comes to women's reproductive healthcare, it's time women had something to fight for than fight against. It's time they won the war than losing the battles. It's time. So when will women get their rights? Well, Ms. Pelosi? Mr. Reid? And all the democrats in Congress? When will all of you stand up for the women in this country?

Menu Bar Mail Apps

Update.-- Mail Satellite has a new version (1.7.3) which is different than the previous (1.7.2) as the developers removed the option to open Apple Mail from the menu bar app. The new version will show you the mail (click on the individual unread mail) but now you have to go to the Mail application to open it. I reverted back to the previous version.

Original Post.-- I like menu bar mail apps. I've had them before the new Notification Center with OS-X Mavericks. I like to look up at the menu bar to see the if there is new mail and if so, how many e-mails. Nothing fancy, just something indicated new mail in the inbox.

Up until recently I've used Mail Unread Menu application, a cool little app by Logan Rockmore who makes a lot of cool apps. But he had to release a new update after every update of OS-X because the new OS-X version would disable the old Mail Unread Menu version.

Usually after about a week he would announced the update on his Website. Well, after OS-X 10.9.2 was released he hasn't released an update so Mail Unread Menu doesn't work along with some of his widgets. Ok, his choice and it is free stuff.

That said, there isn't a lot of small, unintrusive apps doing similar thing, just notify the user there's new mail and maybe how many, all in a small icon on the menu bar. I did manage to find Mail Satellite which also is free and is very similar.

I'm surprised Apple hasn't developed a menu bar icon tool. It would see so easy than clicking the notification center all the time, just an icon saying, "You have new mail." showing the number and with a dropdown display of them. Not rocket science.

But then maybe that's the point, it's not glitzy enough for Apple developers.  That's it, a simple thing. I wish Mr. Rockmore would release and update, it's the better app, but hey, that's life, and it's the Internet where there's always something for the same thing.

Curious

With all the talk and discussions over the NY Times publisher firing the senior editor, I have question. If the editor had been a man, we would have focused on his management style and decisions, and not on the fact he's a man.

So why are we arguing the opposite over a woman being fired? The senior editor of the NY Times works at the discretion of the owner(s) and publisher, and they have the right to hire and fire, within the contract, as they please.

The senior editor knows that, and any day they could be told they're fired. So why aren't we talking about Jill Abramson's management style and decisions than the fact she's the first women senior editor at the NY Times?

If women want equality, isn't this equality? So we are we arguing inequality when the rules for women apply to men and she was fired because the owner(s) and publisher made the decision. After all her predecessor was a man who was fired to hire her.

The truth is the NY Times mishandled the firing, but then they do that more often than not in these situation regardless of the sex or gender of the person fired, but we shouldn't be outraged simply because she was the first women senior editor.

We should be asking more questions than simply reacting with charges of sexism. If she has a case, then she can make it based on her record than being a woman, and then we can argue if the decision was based on factors other than the results.

Cable

If the cable companies can keep track of what packages I'm paying for with their service, why can't they keep track of the individual channels to offer me a choice of the range of channels I want to subscribe and pay for and not for packages of which I only watch 2 or 3 channels?

The reason is simple, it's the computer system necessary to track individual subscribers by channel than package. It's the difference why Southwest Airlines doesn't allow passengers to reserve seats while the other airline companies provide the service as part of the price.

It's not the price of doing business, it's the price of the computer system to make it work. It's why some of the largest commercial computer systems are the airline companies keep tracking of all the flights, seats, passengers, etc. where Southwest has only a fraction of those system by not tracking passenger seating more than just total numbers.

The cable companies could easily switch to an ala-carte system of service by upgrading their computer system to accommodate it. It's not rocket science, just replace the packages with channels and then give subscribers choices of the package or the channels.

So when we will see this implemented as they have been encouraged to do for a few years now? We won't if they keep lobbying Congress not to force the FCC to replace "encourage" to "will" in the regulations. The choice is users can drop packages and even the cable service.

As they say, you can vote with two things, your feet and your wallet, to which we can add your fingers of which remote control you use, the cable's or your computer.

Net Neutrality II

I got to thinking after reading more about the FCC's two options under consideration, and I don't think, with respect to money, it doesn't matter which is adopted since the consumer will pay in the end.

I think this because if they create the two-tiered system to the communications networks, one for consumers and one for companies, eg. Netflix, Google, etc., for high speed broadband access, how is such a system going to work?

If Netflix pays for the higher speed delivery system from their servers, the content will eventually end up at the consumer speed network and end users, and unless the end users, the customers, pays for the equally faster service, they won't see anything different.

The difference is the companies' ability to send more content which will eventually bottleneck into the consumer speed network, the Internet we already have, and you can bet the companies aren't going to pay for that speed out of their pocket but with increased customer prices.

In the end the consumers will pay for either system, more broadband service for consumers to accommodate the higher content volume from the companies or more higher speed service for the companies delivering the high volume content.

It's a win-win for the companies, they get to raise prices for both and get more profit for themselves and it's a lose-lose for the consumer who ends up paying the bills for either system. And the members of the FCC gets more money from lobbyists for making the companies richer.

My choice is the FCC designate the Internet a utility and regulate it for everyone, and yes, we'll all pay higher prices for more and higher speed networks, but at least we'll all be able to use it. The FCC needs to force the telecommunications and cable companies to upgrade their network for everyone or face fines for not doing it.

Net Neutrality

This is what the chairman of the FCC said, "There is one Internet. It must be fast, it must be robust, and it must be open," Wheeler said. "The prospect of a gatekeeper choosing winners and losers on the Internet is unacceptable.", after approving the provisional rules to abandon net neutrality for a tiered system for the big companies (Netflix, etc.) to stream content at higher speeds and volumes.

The rules are written, according to the FCC chair, to encourage the industry to build a better, faster Internet communications system to accommodate all the new streaming and traffic from the new rules, but didn't put any provisions in the rules to force the improvements. They're voluntary, as he said, so they don't burden the consumer being victim to the new traffic with no improvements.

In other words, the industry doesn't have to do anything, they can simply add the higher speeds on top of the existing system and if it forces the other traffic to slower speeds, so be it, unless of course, they want to pay for the improvements to sustain the speeds and traffic they already have. That's the point, advantage industry, more money from basic service customers to benefit the high volume customers.

And the rules are also written so the industry polices itself and consumer can't file complaint until they have proof after any violations to reduce speeds, raise cost "unreasonably" for the same service, etc. In other words, the FCC, the chair being a former industry lobbyist appointed by President Obama, remember his promise of net neutrality, is giving the industry what it wants while we paid the costs.

The rules will be open to a 120 day comment period by the public, and I have no doubt the FCC will hear from the public, but what we want to hear is from the President why he appointed an industry lobbyist the FCC chair and hasn't said anything against the new rules when he promised net neutrality, or maybe he has a different definition that the American people.

Gee thanks Mr. President for representing the people and promising net neutrality. Yeah, you're right,  it's a joke, on us.

Women Executives

I read the story of the sudden firing of the executive editor of the New York Times, their first women senior executive, and the fallout about it with emphasis on the fact of being the first women in the job. I find the reason to defend her because of her sex interesting.

First it is interesting because some people assume women bosses are better than men in some respects toward employees, their work and the company. Those generalities are not supported by the reality that many of the skills necessary for senior level jobs are independent of one's sex.

I can say this because I spent the last 5 years of my career working for a women executive, who wasn't  very good at the job, as we learned she was promoted from the office in another state to, in effect, "offer her the job to get her out of there."

She turned out to be more of the same. She was abrasive, agressive, argumentative, down the list of characteristics of what you would describe the worst male boss. She surrounded herself with people who only agreed with her, and didn't see they used her for their own promotions.

She never saw that her senior staff, whom she was loyal to a fault, especially in the face of their obvious faults and failures, would lie to her and agreed with her to win her approval and get promotions. The reality truth was lost on her because she didn't want to see or hear it.

We learned three fundamental facts about her management style. First, the word no didn't exist in her vocabulary, even when her bosses told her she couldn't do something, she would do it anyway. We had a useless, wasteful employee conference at Fort Worden in Port Townsend when her bosses' told her no.

Second, you didn't disagree with her on any point. She was always right. It didn't matter the subject, the decison or the events, she always knew and you didn't question it let alone argue against it, and if you did, you got a lecture.

Third, don't be tell her bad news for she always blamed the messenger for the news than dealt with the news. I learned this the hard way and spent the last 2 years in the proverbial dog house before winnning a complaint against my boss and her and then retirinig.

I won't argue there are excellent male and female bosses, I've worked for many during my career and never had problems, just disagreements which were resolved without hurting my career. I was always known for being outspoken on issues, often about or against management, but she was the only one who took that out on me than the subject.

So my point, don't assume women bosses are better and better deserving of treatment as executives. They should be judge on the merit of their work and results, and not jump to conclusions that a women is fired because of her sex.

McConnell

Senate minority Mitch McConnell is the epitome of the totally ruthless politician, on both his negotiations with majority leader Harry Reid where it's shake hands on an agreement and then promptly forget it, and his campaign where he has shown there is one rule, which is that there are no rules, meaning no limits, no ethics, no morality and nothing beyond attacking or falsely characterizing an opponent, even before they are even an opponent, meaning anyone he wants to target.

He is exactly what is the worst of a politician where only one thing matter, himself, and nothing else matters to do whatever it takes to win, however ruthless and brutal he can be he will do it to annihilate anyone who he decides to destroy. This is what he has done starting in January 2009 on the day President Obama was sworn into office, meeting to layout a strategy and plan to stop anything this President and the Democrats from doing in the Senate.

And he's consistently done it in his re-election campaign, airing ads attacking and lying about anyone who might even think to run against him, more so if they're a democrat. He has just one goal, win re-election, whether or not he is popular or the people want to re-elect him, he remove anyone else in the  way, against  the wishes of the people of Kentucky.

It's time he doesn't win. We have had enough of him in the Senate to stymie the work which needs to be done to move this country forward. He is the worst impediment to progress (just after Harry Reid himself), to advance bills to help people and this country. He's a relic trying desparately to stay in power at any cost and by any means.

If he wins, you can bet we'll see another 6 years of him and his antiquated view of the world and his mean spirited method of playing politics. We don't need this type of politician and him. We've had enough already.

Comcast

Update.-- After calling Comcast they added a new set of instructions, but be careful when you call them as they will reset the box which erases all the channel information and has to be reloaded. But here's some suggestions I learned before you call them.

First, as noted, disconnect the cable to the box from the outside and reconnect it. If that doesn't work then unplug the HDMI cable on the back of the box to the TV (mine has a HDMI to DVI cable for the older Plasma TV's). This should help, maybe. If not, see second.

Second, and the next to last resort, unplug the box for 10-15 seconds. This will erase all the information in the box, same as above but their reset is slightly different. If that doesn't work, then call Comcast (first write down the serial number of the box found on the back) and be prepared to repeat the steps you've already tried. If that doesn't work, see third.

Third, the obvious ask for an appointment to replace the box. And remember not to be so mad at the service representative as they only work for the company, they're not the company to be angry about.

Original Post.-- I wish my area had real competition for cable subscribers who have Comcast than the two satellite companies which aren't any better or better priced once past the new subscriber discount period. They were told to unbundle channel packages to give customers choices of individual channels, but they've just ignored that to keep bundling channels to force you to buy bundles for the variety of channels you want.

The worst service is when movies begin to pixelate and stop they give you some instructions to "improve" it which ends up makes it worse where you lose not just those channels but a lot more with black screens and the little box, "This channel should be available shortly", for longer than the movie and any news show. 

In short, you're paying for non-service. I'd say they suck, but that's giving them too much credit for their service but would for their prices and your wallet. 

If you're wondering their instructions are to disconnect the cable to the box, at the back of the box or at the wall, wait and reconnect them. This often solves the problem as the bandwidth is overloaded. If that doesn't work, turn the box off and back on. This resets some of the box and saves all the settings and information but doesn't really do much.

The nuclear option is to unplug the box, wait 10-15 second and plug it back in. This completely resets everything except what only they can to from their computers, which is also an option if you want to call and wait for the next representative to explain they'll reset the box manually. Either way, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, which leaves the obvious, call for an appointment.

Yeah, they create problems only they can fix. Sorry, Comcast, you've never solved some of my problems  with your software an latest generation cable boxes and the digital audio signal (doesn't work), and you just seem to create new ones, trying to do too much down with too little cables, and always at the most inconvenient times.

Wrong Reason

With the plethora of restrictive voting rights law being enacted by states with Republican-controlled state legislature and Republican governor, Rand Paul "broke" with the Republicans but he did it for the wrong reason. Here is the quote from the New York Times.

“Everybody’s gone completely crazy on this voter ID thing,” Mr. Paul said in an interview. “I think it’s wrong for Republicans to go too crazy on this issue because it’s offending people.”

He should be against it because it's outright discrimination, plain and simple, against minorities, the elderly and poor people. That's the goal of the Republicans and what Rand Paul didn't say and should have said, which means he not againsts the laws, just don't be so obvioius to offend people.

Yeah, just another republican, except he calls himself more a libertarian republican, which would mean he's for individual rights, protections and freedom, like voting rights, but he's not because he still supports voter restrictions, just not so obvious about it.

He's not different than the rest of them and couching your words won't hide that fact.

Downloading Images

I have a Canon 5D (original MK I from 2006) and for the last few years Canon has decided not to support older model cameras with their EOS Utility application to download images directly from the camera. The latest version of the app simply blinks when connected to the camera.

I have yet to understand this mentality on their part to keep updating other applications in their suite but not the EOS Utility. It's the easiest way to download images. You can download them via the Image Browser but it doesn't give you the options to name the files in any specific sequence, just the file name from the camera.

In addition all the third party applications for downloading images from cameras also excludes the 5D MK I and other models from about that time, even the earlier 1D models. You can download them from the flash card as a folder with a disk reader, but you're stuck manually renaming the files for the sequence number if you use that like I do from the first image of the camera.

What's left? Adobe Bridge from the card reader. It has a generic download tool in the application where you can set all the prefernces, folders, filename sequence, etc. and then open an application if you want, namely a separate Adobe Bridge window.

Anyway, that's the point here, just a note about downloading images. I like the 5D model, which does everything I want a camera to do except perhaps having a faster than 3 frames per second shutter. It works well with the EOS 1n (film) camera and the set of lenses.

Armatix iP1

The NRA wants to ban anyone who wants to buy a gun. Really. They want to ban the Armatix iP1 smart gun. The NRA wants to ban people who want to own this gun from buying one anywhere in the US. And I thought they believed in the Second Amendment right to buy and own a gun.

The NRA is a hyprocrite about gun rights. They want people to have the right to own automatic weapons, even assault weapons without restrictions to the amount of ammunition the gun can hold and fire, but they don't want people to own a gun only the owner can fire, so it's the safest gun to have where no one else can use it.

The NRA even threatened the US gun manufacturers from developing equally safe guns like the Armatix iP1. Can you imagine saving the lives of children who accidently find the gun to be unable to fire it? Can you imagine the saving the lives if your gun is stolen it can never be used to shoot another person? Can you imagine saving the lives of people who find the gun and want to kill themselves? 

Imagine saving lives with guns which won't fire when misused or not theirs.

Dead Issues

The Republicans seem to be more interested in either digging up dead political issues for political purposes in this year's election or to stall anything the Democrats want to do to help people, like extend unemployment insurance, raise the minimum raise, bring new immigrations laws, repair the country's failing infastructure, create jobs, and so on down the list we all know what needs to be done.

But not to the Republicans who seem to keep wanting to resurrect Benghazi, the IRS, repeal or defund the ACA (now over 50 times), etc., anything to attack the President, targeting Democratic imcubents in this year's election, and targeting any potential 2016 presidential candidate, namely Hillary Clinton.

And what's worse is that the Tea Party loves it, as long as the Republicans don't touch their entitlements (their government subsidies) and as long as the Republicans keep attacking the President. It's not about racism to them, only because they're blind to their own blatant hypocrisy not seeing they're racists.

Yes, they are despite their words they're not because they attack the President for the things they wouldn't attack any President if he was white. The didn't attack Romney over Massachusett's universal health insurance, the model for the ACA.

I won't argue I'm a great fan of the President. He's failed on a lot of issues but he's also succeeded on more and shows the patience and judgement we need in a president in the complex world the US is one of the leaders, especially compared to any Republican who ran or wants to run for the presidency.

My point here is simple, this year's election can either keep the current state of Congress going to being the worst in history, only worse than their earlier sessions under this president, or can change the direction to go forward solving problems than playing the blame game on the past.

The Republicans are the past and the Democrats are the future. It really is that simple. I'd rather we made mistakes going forward than just sit on our hands looking at the past and getting promises about the future, empty promises disguised and political rhetoric.

We've had enough political rhetoric and there will be more with the new unlimited campaign spending by the wealthy attacking Democrats and lying about Republicans. We need change in Congress, not backward-looking change, but forward-thinking and doing change.

That's our choice on November 4th.

Just Asking

Why are we so worried about finding the most humane way to kill someone who commited the most inhumane act of all, who consciously killed other people?

How someone kills another person is really irrelevant since the other person is dead, so why do we care so much how we kill the person who committed the act?

Where do we draw the line between the humane and inhumane way to kill someone?

Why aren't we talking about all the innocent people who have killed by our government in recent wars and with drones?

Isn't it hypocritical of us to consider American citizen better to deserve a humane way to kill them but people in other countries don't deserve even the slightest consideration about their lives?

Or is it really not about the person with the death penalty but our conscience? Is that hypocritical to put our moral judgement above the act of murder and the person committing the murder?

Why do we want salvation from God when we sentence and put someone to death and not want salvation for all the innocent lives killed in our wars?

Why do we view the life of the person sentenced to death above all else?

The death sentence and the act of carrying it out isn't about anything else but ourselves. How self-rightous of us to think we are that good and above all people to think we're humane because of how we carry out a death sentence.

How many innocent people died in this country and the world the day the botched death sentence happened? Why are we so concerned about that one person's life for their brutal act of killing another person over all those other lives lost the same day?

We're self-rightous hypocrites if we believe one manner of death is more humane than another. There is no humane way to kill someone. That's the reality. We just want it swift to reassure our conscience. And that's the insult to the notion of humane and inhumane.

The Senate

If you can't see the Senate is broken, take a look at the vote for cloture, meaning the vote to close discussion on the minimum wage bill (to raise it to $10.10) and proceed to an actual vote for any bill, it was 54 for cloture and 42 against cloture, and the motion was defeated.

Defeated? Really with a majority of 54 of the 100 Senators? Yes, because Majority Leader Harry Reid didn't change the filibuster rules where it takes 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster, and they can filibuster any motion and any bill, and even some Presidential nomimations.

So it only takes 41 votes to control the Senate since Harry Reid has been the leader and failed to change the rules because he's afraid if the Republicans ever win the Senate, the Democrats will do then what the Republicans do now.

Except that's likely not to happen in his career, but he's afraid even when a majority of the democratic caucasus wants change but he wants a near unanimous concensus of the caucasus to make any change. The Democrats long had the opportunity to replace him and haven't.

The Democrats have long argued they want to get the 60 votes by elected democrats or independent, meaning they would have a super majority of the Senate so the Republicans can't do anything, except that hasn't happened since the 1979-1981 Congress. Really. Wishful thinking on their part.

This is why the Senate is broken. This isn't new or news, nor it is new or news to Harry Reid who's heard the cries for change and heard the cries to replace him. So why are the Democrats afraid when they know the Republicans wouldn't hesitate to do what the Democrats won't do.

So we're stuck with a House that does nothing except pass useless bills the Senate will never consider, especially over 50 times repealing or defunding the Affordable Care Act, and with a Senate full of political cowards.

Not just the Repubilicans, the majority of the Democrats, but it's clear the Republicans are the smarter party in the chamber because they're winning being the minority. The Democrats, with 56 Senators, can't seem to get their political head out of their ass to pass anything but bad compromises.

And who's fault is that Mr. Reid?