Tag: platforms

My take on the election.

My Clinton and Trump dump is finally here, and before you read further…no…this is not heavily thought out and to be honest I am out of practice in making my rants attractive, appealing, or even remotely warm and fuzzy. Read at your own risk.

So yes, we have a new president, and to be honest after this short rant, I am done bitching about the candidates. I have always stated clearly that I am an equal opportunity hater when it comes to our political parties and election system.

…and now the election is over. (YAY!)

But somehow, this has caused people to think that it is now time to wreck some shit because their candidate didn’t get elected. Y’all need to work something out if you seriously think you need violence and vandalism to make a change. Protests definitely have a role, but rioting, vandalism, and violence only serve to feed the argument against whatever you’re rooting for.

It pretty simple for me, in candidates, I always first ask myself if the candidates can be trusted with their finger on “the button.” Because of all the crazy things that can happen in the world, our ability not only to develop WMD’s is surpassed only by our idiotic sense that they are somehow necessary in a conflict. Our ability to instantly destroy that which we have no right to even consider, rests solely in this person’s moral scope of viable options.

Clinton in this election proved that she could be the only candidate to represent a broad scope of human rights necessities and social progress, while simultaneously shitting on our country’s national security and judicial system, and scaring the hell out of everyone in the world by promising to escalate every foreign conflict via embargo and military action rather than negotiation. All this said, Clinton would push the button, and blame someone else for the choice like it was some sort of scandal. She failed my “Button Finger” test immediately.

Trump has managed to become elected by boasting so many outrageous platforms and agendas completely outside the scope of the president’s power, inciting violence, and giving the public an excuse to become apologists for damn near everything a majority of us in the US stand wholeheartedly against, and still be the only candidate that might be capable of keeping the world from shutting us down economically, and fixing our deplorable foreign trade agenda…and maybe, just maybe, being able to amend a certain healthcare act that is putting damn near everyone I know into debt…just to have healthcare. Trump is a misogynist child in an old mans body that loves getting what he wants. His values are not anywhere remotely in the human liberties, freedoms, and rights. I am always given the impression that he would not only hit “the button,” he would do so for financial gain, and just like Clinton, pawn off the use on some scandal.

Johnson was the low-key candidate I wanted, but I saw some indifference in him on certain subjects that made me cringe. I suspect that his agenda was relatively closed to only deal with what he though the government should deal with, and thereby leaving the rest of the popular platform items by the wayside. The funny part, this guy, who was distant and slightly uninformed, came off as the only guy that wasn’t trying to start wars and dig our nation into an early grave (remember, we’re still a young nation by comparison.) Most importantly, he doesn’t present as a man who would allow himself to hit the button…I would only have to sacrifice all of my other moral, ethical, diplomatic, and economic concerns.

So yeah…voting this election for me was painful, too. I think it was like that for everyone. But…you don’t see me running around breaking shit over the results.

Of course…I would like to thank everyone who voted, and think everyone who did vote should pat themselves on the back for taking the time to show enough interest in the directions and policies our country is adopting. The system might be screwed up, but ambivalence, indifference, and reticence with regard to our elections will never solve this country’s problems.

That said, I think some people need to get their head out of their asses learn more about not only the election process but the greatest problems facing our elections, read up on the awesome people that run, but get no voice, while still trying to make our country better, and take a day or two to work an election/campaign and see how the process really works before they resign to temper tantrums against innocents and property in response to the election results…don’t be surprised when your vote doesn’t have the effect you expect when half the country doesn’t care enough to vote. Don’t shit on people that didn’t see the changes they are hoping for. There is your missing majority, there lies the greatest threat to our country…indifference.

I have been watching people get angry about the results and protest…and get violent. Look, we all want a better country to live in, and while we obviously aren’t getting the presidential candidate material we all wish for, protesting is your right. But Violence is definitely not. Turn that crap off. If you think it is your right to commit violence and destroy property, this isn’t the country that stands for it, and any movement, ideal, or group that advocates it will never get the support it needs to succeed. Plus, violence makes you an asshole.

In case you are wondering how I feel. not altogether unlike this guy.




Dear Facebook (by Michael Aguilar)

Michael Aguilar - From PoorlyPlannedSafari.com

Guys, this is a letter one of my friends wrote in Facebook (to Facebook) that really needs to be more public than the silly public settings on Facebook itself. While this letter doesnt touch on some of the more questionable actions by Facebook we’ve learned of in the past, it does address a common dissatisfaction within the environment that most people do find in their experience with the service.

Michael is very much like me, he’s very savvy in the tech arena and often cracking some awesome one-liners that sometimes you’ll even find me quoting on the blog. He’s currently forgone the tech arena, and is currently taking a journey camping from Texas all the way to Alaska..no really, he’s actually doing it. I am featuring him here mainly because he’s a pretty cool cat and he posts rants like these that just make people want to hug him.



You can find him and his campy camping experiences at PoorlyPlannedSafari.com

Dear Facebook,

I think it’s time I explained something to you. It’s about what you are. Yes, I’m sure you’ve drunk enough of your own Kool-Aid to believe you are something new, cool, and different.

You’re not.

What you are is blogging for the masses. Nothing more. There isn’t anything happening here that hasn’t happened for years on other platforms. You just made it easy enough for anyone to get into it.

That’s great! Setting up and filling a blog used to be really hard. If you wanted to say something to the world, you had to jump through a lot of high hoops. HTML & CSS was enough to scare people away. If you wanted to manage access in any way, you had to convince people to sign up for it. You had to give out your URL, or urge people to subscribe to your RSS feed. You had to pester them to read the thing.

It was part tech, part marketing, and then only what you had to say.

That sucked, and you fixed it. Thank you.

So why even bring this up? Well, it seems that you’ve gotten a little too big-headed lately. You’re so fixated on being cool that you haven’t figured out that you’re not. You were just the next step in something that has been going on for almost 20 years.

So, now you’re running around buying and building things that nobody even asked for. Timeline? Really? Show me a successful blog laid out that way, I dare you. Nobody reads like that.

Instagram? Face.com? Sure, lots of people were using them, and I’m sure they will make fine additions. They’re cool, right?

What about the basics, though? Instead of listening to what your closed circle of people are telling you, why don’t you just look at the things WordPress does, and make it even simpler?

How about nested groups, or at least permitting more than one group access to a post, picture, or album? Managing access is still a complete pain. This is something that Google+ does much better.

What about (you knew I was going to say it) better photo management? Moving a picture from one album to another should be a no-brainer. It isn’t possible at all. Instead of automatically tagging faces, an automatic watermark would be nice.

And wow – these long-form posts really hammer the browser. I didn’t know that until just now. Take a look at it, would you?

Most importantly, quit trying to be so sneaky. This is our stuff. We want to talk to each other, not you. I’m sure most people understand that we’re giving away data to advertisers, and that’s not so bad. You gotta make a buck or two. That’s fine. Setting things so that we’re unknowingly sharing has got to stop. Take us more seriously.

“Cool”, by it’s nature, only lasts so long. You’re not lame, yet. You sure are working on it, though.

I’m not going anywhere just yet. This is where the people are. For now. I’ll go back to posting pictures of my cats.

Sincerely,

Michael Aguilar (but you already knew that)




Little rant for the evening…

Good evening readers. (In this case “readers” is the term I casually use to act like I actually have “readers” when in fact…I am simply writing to myself a bit to vent.)

so.

It is absolutely amazing how loopy you can get when you’re tired, sick, and have taken a sizable shot of Nyquil to have an easier evening.

Well…when I say “you” I obviously mean “me”…unless…umm…nevermind.

So…in case you didn’t see my tweet, you should all google “askew” so you can see what its like for me every day.

Not the “askew” part per se, just the googling. I am asked to “google” things on a professional level so often that you might honestly wonder how I actually got into all this. Which was simple. A decade or so ago, I use to keep a journal. Shortly after a violent break up with the restaurant industry I started keeping my journals in electronic format. LiveJournal, then C2…at one time I was even using phpbb. Until finally after a gazillion hosts and many many blog platforms later…Wordpress won me over. Of course I am a great big dork. Mainly because every one in a while I have to say ‘Tony is a dork’ in my posts so that I come up on the search engines properly…that is…by searching for ‘Tony is a Dork’ you might still find me.

I did mention I am a little loopy. Mainly sleep deprivation of the “under-a-day” kind. We used to call that “wedging” – if you were awake for so long that you started feeling drunk…yeah thats wedging.

Luke the Cat - TonyTown.comAnyhow. I should probably introduce you to my assistant blogger, Luke.

Luke the cat is a little bundle of insane cat whoopass that you all know kittens to be.

He is lovable all the time. He plays with absolutely everything. His favorite toy is a straw, which you can use to make him climb up anything, including innocent roomies that dont realize that a spastic kitten is about to climb them like their life depended on it. He also feels my sandals are mice in disguise and attacks them regularly. And when he gets tired he gets absolutely adorable by climbing up my back without notice so he can curl up on my shoulder while I am typing. (Not joking…he really doesnt care what I am doing, when he wants to sleep he meows twice and if I havent picked him up he climbs on his own.

So yeah. I am really tired now, even the cat is passed out, and I just realized I wrote about nothing on my blog, so I’m fired and tired for the evening. You guys have a great one and hopefully my next post will have something remotely umm…relevant…in it eh?

Night!

-Tony (and his assistant Luke)