RedCrystal: The Blog of Alan

New Interesting Stuff!

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 01:24:32 Z

I have a great number of random thoughts and pages that I have been accumulating. For years, I planned to use this website to store and share these, using ... I don't know. Something that was easy for me to work with and powerful enough to work with links, images, formatting, tables, and so on.

I regularly use Microsoft OneNote to record everything, but for a long time it was not really a viable option to share publicly.

And now it is viable. So, on the new Interesting Stuff page, you will find a link to a counterpart Interesting Stuff in OneNote.

I expect to use both, but not as duplicates. That is, while both are organized similarly, information in the OneNote pages may not be on the website, and vice versa.

It's not possible to comment on the OneNote pages, so I will do what I can to add links on the OneNote pages back to a blog post like this.

Selling your email address to spammers

Sat, 15 Jun 2019 20:16:45 Z

For years, I have been using a simple technique to catch companies that sell my email address to mass-commerce marketers, or spammers.

The vast majority of companies honor their privacy policies and do not sell my email address.

Here are the websites that do not honor my privacy, and have sold my email address:

bestbuybonus.net (not too surprising, because it was a promotional sweepstakes kind of thing, but it was promoted by Best Buy)
playon.tv (surprising, because on https://www.playon.tv/privacy, they say:

“We at MediaMall Technologies (MMT) take privacy seriously.”
“MMT may share information as described below, but we do not sell it to advertisers or other third-parties.”
I have recently received email sent to the unique email address I used for playon.tv from:

gaudreaultqnj@fseengineering.com
reply-special-1373382868@e.citeam.pl

These are not legitimate emails in any way.
Maybe my email address was leaked via hack. This doesn’t give me confidence that they “… take [my] privacy seriously.”

Quicken and Running Balances

Sun, 08 Apr 2018 14:39:18 Z

One thing that bothers me about Quicken is that it confuses me with running balances when I’m filtering out transactions.

Normally, when I view an account’s transactions, I like to see the running balance on the right side of the register. It confirms that for each transaction in my register, it pretty much agrees with whatever the bank thought I had in my account at the time.

Happy bunnies prance about whenever my bank is in agreement with my register.

Prancing happy bunnies are good.

However, if I filter my transactions in the account register for any reason, Quicken shows me a running balance as if the visible transactions were the only transactions ever made.

Why?

What possible use can I have for seeing the running balance of a limited set of transactions?

Maybe I think Quicken’s addition and subtraction calculator is wrong, and the running balance proves that it’s not?

Unlikely.

Almost every time I filter transactions, it’s because I don’t want to see all the correct and reconciled transactions from many years ago, and I just want to look at the most recent unreconciled transactions. Or maybe I want to just see the Flagged transactions.

Either way, the running balance is not just useless.

It’s confusing.

It confuses me because it is display exactly the same as the normal running balance is displayed for the complete, unfiltered list of all transactions. The one the happy bunnies go on prancing about.

But it’s not.

It’s a lie.

Here is a redacted screenshot of my register, where it has been filtered to show just the Unreconciled transactions.

The amounts in the Payment and Deposit columns are correct. But the amounts in the Balance column don’t correspond to anything else in the real world, except for basic addition and subtraction, which I really don’t need to see or care about because there’s absolutely nothing useful I can do with that information.

The bunnies are not prancing because they are not happy.

Suggestion 1

When the account transactions are filtered, remove the Balance column entirely. That would be the easiest.

Suggestion 2

Quicken really should know what the actual running balance was for each transaction in the unfiltered view, and it should keep showing that in the Balance column. That might also be confusing, because the values will seem to be completely unrelated to everything else on the screen. So the column should be titled differently, or there might be a different appearance to the values.

What I would probably try to do (if I had complete control over the Quicken UI) is this:

Instead of hiding the filtered-out lines of the transactions completely, I would reduce those hidden lines into a single thin row and put a small button inside that thin row, which I could click to temporarily view the hidden rows (but not edit them).

Maybe that would work, and maybe I would discover that it is even more confusing, but the bottom line is that it would be anything different from the way it is now.

Make Quicken better, please!

Sun, 08 Apr 2018 14:06:00 Z

I guess everyone else in the world doesn’t really need checkbook and account management programs. Maybe they just trust that as long as the bank account balance is roughly what they expect, everything is good.

I’m not that person.

I am a little more concerned with knowing the details. So I use Quicken to manage my bank account balances.

I’ve look at other programs, but none of them do all of the things that I need a program to do:

Automatically connect to a wide variety of electronic financial services and download transactions and balances
Help me create a categorized spending plan, automatically categorize as much as possible, and show me how I’m doing
Help me track my stock portfolio, including cost basis so that I can get my taxes done correctly
Let me do account-to-account transfers that reconcile against the downloaded transactions
Separate personal transactions from business transactions
Connect to and manage automatic bill-paying services provided by my bank or elsewhere

However, I feel like I am forced to suffer in order to use this program.

It works just well enough that I can do everything.

And, it is different from what I would like it to do just enough that it is continually frustrating and irritating.

It’s the car that feels powerful and easy to drive, gets great mileage, looks pretty, but …

every time you want to change the radio station, you have to turn the radio off first
the windshield wipers make the air conditioner turn on, no matter how cold it is already
in order to fill the car with gas, you are required to complete a checklist of maintenance items first, with your non-dominant hand

You would get a different car, but none of the other cars have ALL of these: windshield wipers, turn signals, fuel level indicators, windows that can be lowered, and a seat that can be repositioned.

Yes, you can get from point A to point B even if you were missing only one or two of those things, or even without any of those things, but would you want to? Would you buy a car that didn’t have every one of those things?

I will share some of the things that bother me about Quicken. I doubt Quicken is going to re-prioritize anything they’re doing because of this, but I wanted to have a place to share a little more context to my requests so that I could quickly refer to them, if, by some miracle, someone at Quicken does actually care.

Jim’s Memorial Slideshow

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 22:00:18 Z

At Smilebox:

http://www.smilebox.com/playBlog/4e4459784f546b344f54453d0d0a&blogview=true

How I know the Earth is NOT flat

Sat, 10 Feb 2018 18:20:35 Z

I really can’t believe that after 500 years we are having to debate this.

I’m not going to point at the utter mountain of evidence to prove that the Earth is round.

There are billions of photographic images of the earth’s curvature as a sphere.

Every single one of those pictures shows earth and its curvature with 100% consistency to the way a round, spherical earth would look.

Same size. Same roundness. Same atmosphere. Same color variations. Same cloud structures.

It’s almost like they were actual unaltered photographs of an actual globe we call Earth. It’s scary how perfectly they all seem to have been produced by the same hand, from the same source, using every kind of imaging media available – film snapshots, film movies, video recordings of every resolution, digital cameras, infrared cameras, magnetic field detectors….

If the Earth was really flat, then every single one of those pictures had to have been altered, or made up originally.

There is no amount of computing power available that can take decades worth of satellite images, photos from spy airplanes like the U-2, even photos from high-altitude balloons, altering the images so that they distort the earth part of the picture so that it appears genuine, and round, and consistent with every other picture.

Someone would screw it up, somewhere.

There would be at least a small collection of very good, very detailed, high-fidelity pictures that somehow didn’t get altered.

There would be many pictures that would have been altered badly. The earth is too big in this one, too small in another, or not really “round” so much as “warped”. People make photoshopping errors all the time. You’d see a ton of those errors in these “round earth” altered images.

Some of the photographs are old, have been printed, and hang on museum walls around the country.

Every single one of those pictures shows the earth with consistent roundness, perfectly coherent with the rest of the picture. There are no digital artifacts of photoshopping or airbrushing. They’re just … well, perfect.

Before computers were altering pictures (and I’m old enough to remember when they could not), film experts had to paint the backgrounds that they wanted if the real background wasn’t right. Could they have actually put in all the details, accurately, of a made-up “round” earth when the actual photo showed a flat earth? On every single printed picture available?

But, I just said that I would not rely on the mountain of evidence.

Here’s what I do know.

There are some fabulously wealthy people in the world. Like, insanely wealthy. Bill Gates. Jeff Bezos. Billionaires. But, I’m sure people will accuse them of being biased.

So, what about other insanely wealthy people? Arab princes? Russian oligarchs? Drug cartel lords.

How much do those people have to be paid to keep secret their houses at the edge of the world?

How much would it cost to pay hush money to the secret agencies that build those houses, or fly super-wealthy people out to the edge for sightseeing?

Don’t you think that at least one of their kids, or spouses, or personal assistants, or bodyguards, or pilots, or ship crew, or construction workers, or guests they were trying to impress for some reason, would have come back with a shitload of actual photographs and video recording of the edge of the planet, and shared it with some tabloid?

Don’t you think that Wikileaks would have obtained those photos from a hacker who stole them from some rich trust-fund kid’s phone or email account?

Don’t you think there would be super-extravagant travel agencies that would set up trips to the edge of the world? We have all heard about regular people being able to buy tickets to a trip to space. Why aren’t there tickets for a trip to the edge of the world?

But, okay, let’s just say that the super-wealthy have somehow, against all possible odds, succeeded in suppressing even the tiniest fragment of evidence that the earth is flat.

Why would they have done that? What’s in it for them? The world’s biggest joke?

Wouldn’t they also have to make sure that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos didn’t ruin their little joke on the world?

How much money does it take to force Bill and Jeff to claim, with a straight face, that the world is round when they are lying because they know good and well it is actually flat?

It’s clear that Flat Earthers simply are not interested in actually trying to prove the world is flat. They have nothing except a poor understanding of math and physics, and a passion for fighting against overwhelming odds.

I believe it’s that passion for fighting against overwhelming odds that I think fuels much of the turmoil in the world lately, especially in politics. But that’s a blog post for another time.

I suppose that some people need to find meaning in their lives by identifying with a passionate group of people who will never surrender their cause. Period. They just won’t.

Here’s my real dilemma. I know we can’t change their minds. But we also can’t have them running amok, pulling new people into their cause, without a chance for those new people to hear the opposing (correct) view and hopefully choose fact over fiction.

This is the role of education. We know that children have to learn how to rely on their own ability to work things out logically and rationally. There are two positions about the shape of the Earth; one is correct, the other is a lie. Which is which?

I never want to tell children to believe that the Earth is round only because everybody says so.

In fact, I want to make sure that children reject that kind of argument. You should never believe anything only because most people say it’s true.

That might sound like I’m making a case for the Flat Earthers. I’m not, but I can see why it sounds like that.

What you should do, instead, is learn how to use reason and logic.

And how and why you should do that is definitely another blog post. Or several posts. I’ll start working on those now.

2018-01-01

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 20:06:59 Z

Last night, Michele and I started to watch Sausage Party.

We gave up, about 1/3 of the way in.

It had some funny moments, but it started to get uninteresting. I guess I never really got invested with the characters? I don’t know. I just know I didn’t feel like I was going to regret stopping the movie early.

That’s a new experience for me. In the past, I would have stuck it out, thinking maybe the movie will surprise me.

I don’t know what this means, and while I could analyze it to death, I’m not as interested in analyzing myself (or what I think are a lot of other people) nearly as much as I used.

We also gave up on watching Pippi Longstocking, the day before that. In this case, it was just because we had intended to watch the movie as a goof, but it really has to be seen either as a child, or while (I guess) really high (not that I am encouraging that… but I’m sure it will work for someone).

Instead, we watched Arrival. That was a mind trip, and very good.

The day before (when we gave up on Pippi), we watched The Big Sick. That was also moving and well done.

Not a lot is going on today. Still going through job opportunities, and organizing stuff in my office.

For the longest time, I’ve been collecting a lot of scraps of paper, pictures, tickets, whatever. I’m not sure whether it is interesting to anyone, but I don’t remember a lot of stuff without something to prompt me. And while I don’t feel a need to remember everything, sometimes it makes me appreciate my life and the journey a little more if I can get some perspective on how much I have done and experienced.

Blog writing experiment #1

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 20:40:11 Z

Seeing whether I can paste in notes and illustrations that I create from OneNote:

So, yes.

Amazon Book Rating Mystery

Thu, 02 Nov 2017 02:25:36 Z

I have an actual Kindle, so Amazon supplies me with “Kindle First”. That means that each month I get to select one new book from (usually) six, for free, to add to my library to read. Amazon tries to include an assortment of genres.

The hope is, I’m sure, that I will review and rate the books, and help generate sales.

At any rate, I often wait for a couple of days at least to start reading the reviews of other Kindle First readers.

Today, I was a bit mystified to see that Amazon apparently includes randomization in their math. This is, according to my high school math teachers, generally Not A Good Thing.

Book One had been rated at 4.7 out of 5 stars, so naturally it shows 4 and 1/2 stars:

Book Two had been rated at 4.8 out of 5 stars, so naturally it shows 5 stars:

Do you see what I see? It appears that both books got numbers of ratings at each level, and yet one book slightly edges out another book.

I’m pretty sure that this isn’t just a weird rounding thing, because the “80%” and “20%” are so dead-on. Amazon normally shows those numbers to the nearest 1’s place.

I don’t have an answer for this. It was just interesting.

Chocolate Mint Protein Bar Review

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 01:00:26 Z

A few days ago, while shopping with Michele at Sprouts Farmers Markets, I decided to get more protein bars.

Normally, my go-to bar has been several flavors of Clif Bars. They’re good, but I only chose those because of a recommendation from some nutrition program I’d started many years ago. I know I’d seen some recommendations on Men’s Health for other bars, although the last time I tried to use those recommendations to shop with, I’d not found anything like their higher recommendations actually on the shelves.

So I decided to do my own review.

I bought six different kinds of chocolate mint protein bars, because that’s my favorite flavor. I did not get a Clif Bar, but I’ll include both kinds on the review since I’m already familiar with them.

Raw Data

Here are the various physical and nutritional characteristics that I care about for all eight bars

Product	Weight (g) per bar	Calories	Fat (g)	Protein (g)	Carbs (g)	Sugar (g)	Fiber (g)	Amazon box of 12
Power Crunch Protein Bars—Chocolate Mint Original	40	205	13	13	10	5	1	$29.99
QuestBar Protein Bars, Mint Chocolate Chunk	60	190	9	20	21	1	15	$28.73
Amrita Protein Chocolate Maca Nutrition Bars	60	230	8	15	30	13	4	$25.64
NuGO Slim Gluten Free Vegan Protein Bar, Chocolate Mint	45	180	5	18	17	3	6	$20.89
Bounce Cacao Mint Protein Energy Ball	42	180	8	9	19	10	3	$22.79
Square Organics Organic Chocolate Coated Protein Bar, Mint	48	210	9	12	23	13	2	$27.99
CLIF BAR - Energy Bar - Cool Mint Chocolate	68	250	5	9	43	22	5	$10.78
CLIF BUILDER'S - Protein Bar - Chocolate Mint	68	270	9	20	30	21	2	$15.98

Notes

I took some notes as I tasted each kind of bar. To be fair, I’m only going from memory for the Clif bars, but the others were compared against each other. I actually did the taste comparisons twice, on two separate days.

You might be able to tell that I sort of prefer the kinds of bars that remind me of a chocolate brownie.

I’ll fold these notes into the final scores at the bottom.

Power Crunch Protein Bars—Chocolate Mint Original

“Dry, light, light mint flavor, good balance of chocolate.”
“Not filling.”
“Wafer.”
“So light and wafery, it's not filling.”
“Great taste!”
“This should be just a light cookie.”

Flavor score: 10

QuestBar Protein Bars, Mint Chocolate Chunk

“Chewy, creamy fudge.”
“Good flavor.”
“Extremely dense, hard to chew.”
“Pretty good chocolate/mint taste.”

Flavor score: 8

Amrita Protein Chocolate Maca Nutrition Bars

“Weird flavor.”
“Oaty?”
“No mint, barely any chocolate.”
“Least favorite so far by wide margin.”
“Powdery, barely tastes like chocolate or mint.”
“Chewy.”
“Not a fan.”

Flavor score: 2

NuGO Slim Gluten Free Vegan Protein Bar, Chocolate Mint

“Another weird flavor.”
“Very artificial.”
“Not like chocolate.”
“Crunchy.”
“Chewy with a little crunch.”
“Light on chocolate flavor, weird aftertaste.”

Flavor score: 4

Bounce Cacao Mint Protein Energy Ball

“Tastes like sunflower seeds, carob, very very light mint”
“Seedy.”
“Lightly minty, very lightly chocolate.”

Flavor score: 3

Square Organics Organic Chocolate Coated Protein Bar, Mint

“Good flavor, very minty, needs a little more chocolate.”
“A little powdery.”
“Not bad, but still kind of powdery.”
“Not very chewy.”
“More minty than chocolate.”

Flavor score: 6

CLIF BAR - Energy Bar - Cool Mint Chocolate

Flavor score: 8

CLIF BUILDER'S - Protein Bar - Chocolate Mint

Flavor score: 7

Scorecards

There are several ways to rank each bar. Each way prioritizes some aspect of the bar over other aspects. Which aspect matters to you is a personal choice. I don’t always use the same aspect.

A note: I believe the total mass of the bar is how your stomach assesses each bar. When you’re hungry, I think only a certain amount of mass will convince your brain and stomach that you’ve satisfied the hunger urge. A lighter bar won’t do it, so you’ll wind up eating more. Conversely, a denser bar should keep you feeling full longer than a lighter bar of the same size. I don’t think the number of bites matters as much, especially if you’re willing to wait a few minutes to see how you feel after finishing the bar. You can always chew longer, regardless of the bar you chose.

Product	Weight (g)	Calories	Calories per g	Calories per $	Fat (g)	Fat per g	% Calories from fat	Protein (g)	Protein per g	Protein per $	Carbs (g)	Carbs per g	Sugar (g)	Sugar per g	Fiber (g)	Fiber per g	Amazon box of 12	Price ea	Price per g
Power Crunch Protein Bars—Chocolate Mint Original	40	205	5.1	82.0	13	0.33	57%	13	0.33	5.20	10	0.25	5	0.13	1	0.03	$ 29.99	$ 2.50	$ 0.06
QuestBar Protein Bars, Mint Chocolate Chunk	60	190	3.2	79.4	9	0.15	43%	20	0.33	8.35	21	0.35	1	0.02	15	0.25	$ 28.73	$ 2.39	$ 0.04
Amrita Protein Chocolate Maca Nutrition Bars	60	230	3.8	107.6	8	0.13	31%	15	0.25	7.02	30	0.50	13	0.22	4	0.07	$ 25.64	$ 2.14	$ 0.04
NuGO Slim Gluten Free Vegan Protein Bar, Chocolate Mint	45	180	4.0	103.4	5	0.11	25%	18	0.40	10.34	17	0.38	3	0.07	6	0.13	$ 20.89	$ 1.74	$ 0.04
Bounce Cacao Mint Protein Energy Ball	42	180	4.3	94.8	8	0.19	40%	9	0.21	4.74	19	0.45	10	0.24	3	0.07	$ 22.79	$ 1.90	$ 0.05
Square Organics Organic Chocolate Coated Protein Bar, Mint	48	210	4.4	90.0	9	0.19	39%	12	0.25	5.14	23	0.48	13	0.27	2	0.04	$ 27.99	$ 2.33	$ 0.05
CLIF BAR - Energy Bar - Cool Mint Chocolate	68	250	3.7	278.3	5	0.07	18%	9	0.13	10.02	43	0.63	22	0.32	5	0.07	$ 10.78	$ 0.90	$ 0.01
CLIF BUILDER'S - Protein Bar - Chocolate Mint	68	270	4.0	202.8	9	0.13	30%	20	0.29	15.02	30	0.44	21	0.31	2	0.03	$ 15.98	$ 1.33	$ 0.02

Weight

You want the heaviest bar.

Winner: either CLIF bar. Runner-up: QuestBar and Amrita. Loser: Power Crunch

Energy: Calories

You want the fewest calories per bar.

Winner: NuGO and Bounce. Runner-up: QuestBar. Loser: CLIF Builder’s

Energy density: Calories per gram of mass

You want the fewest calories for the most mass, because while you do want calories, you don’t want crazy-high calories while feeling like you didn’t get much to eat. (This is the opposite of a starvation-in-the-wilderness situation, where you want the lightest weight but the most calories.)

Winner: QuestBar. Runner-up: CLIF Energy Bar. Loser: Power Crunch

Energy economy: Calories per $

You want the most calories for the least price. I’m going the opposite way on this, since the only reason you’d care is if you want the most bang for the buck.

Winner: CLIF Energy Bar. Runner-up: CLIF Builder’s. Loser: Power Crunch

Fat

You want the least fat per bar.

Winner: NuGo and CLIF Energy Bar. Runner-up: Amrita and Bounce. Loser: Power Crunch

Fat density: Fat per gram of mass

You want the least fat for the most mass, because while you do want calories, you want it in the form of highly-usable carbs and sugars, and not as much in the form of fats and oils.

Winner: CLIF Energy Bar. Runner-up: NuGO. Loser: Power Crunch

% Calories from fat

You want to keep the percentage of calories you get from fat to be below some threshold (typically less than 30%).

Winner: CLIF Energy Bar. Runner-up: NuGO. Loser: Power Crunch

Protein

You want the most protein per bar.

Winner: QuestBar and CLIF Builder’s. Runner-up: NuGO. Loser: CLIF Energy Bar

Protein density: Protein per gram of mass

You want the most protein for the least mass, because you want to get as much protein as you can without feeling full too quickly.

Winner: NuGO. Runner-up: Power Crunch and QuestBar. Loser: CLIF Energy Bar

Protein economy: Protein per $

You want the most protein for the least price.

Winner: CLIF Builder’s. Runner-up: NuGO. Loser: Bounce

Carbs

You want the most carbs per bar. This might not be right for you. Some people want the fewest carbs, but since some carbs in your diet is essential, I’m assuming you are actually looking for carbs (like for endurance).

Winner: CLIF Energy Bar. Runner-up: Amrita and CLIF Builder’s. Loser: Power Crunch

Carb density: Carbs per gram of mass

You want the most carbs for the least mass, because you want to get as many carbs as you can without feeling full too quickly.

Winner: Clif Energy Bar. Runner-up: Amrita. Loser: Power Crunch

Sugar

You want the fewest simple carbohydrates (sugar) per bar.

Winner: QuestBar. Runner-up: NuGO. Loser: CLIF Energy Bar

Sugar density: Sugar per gram of mass

You want the least carbohydrates for the most mass, because you want the ratio of sugars to be low compared to how much food it feels like you’re eating.

Winner: QuestBar. Runner-up: NuGO. Loser: CLIF Energy Bar

Fiber

You want the most fiber per bar

Winner: QuestBar. Runner-up: NuGO. Loser: Power Crunch

Fiber density: Fiber per gram of mass

You want the most fiber for the least mass, because you want as much fiber to help you feel full longer without feeling full too quickly.

Winner: QuestBar. Runner-up: NuGO. Loser: Power Crunch and CLIF Builder’s

Price

You want to spend the least per bar.

Winner: CLIF Energy Bar. Runner-up: CLIF Builder’s. Loser: Power Crunch

Weight economy: Price per gram of mass

You want the most mass at the lowest price.

Winner: CLIF Energy Bar. Runner-up: CLIF Builder’s. Lower: Power Crunch

Conclusion

There are many reasons why you would want to choose one bar over the other, but in general, these are my priorities:

Good taste
High protein density
High weight economy
High carb density
High fiber density
Low fat density
Low sugar density

I put taste at the top, because I’m just not the kind of person who can eat something I don’t enjoy. I’d rather do without it, and find other things to eat. I may have to reduce how much I eat the thing – that’s okay, I’ll do that, mostly by just paying attention to total calories, etc.

With that ranking of priorities, here’s how all the bars fared, from highest score to lowest:

QuestBar Protein Bars, Mint Chocolate Chunk 11.77
CLIF BAR - Energy Bar - Cool Mint Chocolate 11.73
Power Crunch Protein Bars—Chocolate Mint Original 10.69
CLIF BUILDER'S - Protein Bar - Chocolate Mint 10.20
Square Organics Organic Chocolate Coated Protein Bar, Mint 7.71
NuGO Slim Gluten Free Vegan Protein Bar, Chocolate Mint 7.53
Bounce Cacao Mint Protein Energy Ball 4.90
Amrita Protein Chocolate Maca Nutrition Bars 4.72

Keep in mind, the QuestBar’s are middle-of-the-pack for price comparisons. The CLIF Energy bar is the clear price winner. #3 Power Crunch is the priciest, and feels like eating wafer cookies, so you might wish you’d eaten two (which costs even more!).

Reading news feeds in general

Tue, 10 Jan 2017 19:07:12 Z

Opening my RSS reader, I see that there are over 3,000 articles to read. And that’s after I wiped out 600 articles by unsubscribing from Lifehacker.

I have observed that I’m avoiding reading any news feeds except comics.

I suspect that I have been trying to stay on top of everything, but the unintended consequence is that I have stayed on top of nothing.

There is more news there than I need to know.

But I do need to know some things. For example, I just watched two TED talks that blew my mind.

Don Tapscott: How the blockchain is changing money and business

Bettina Warburg: How the blockchain will radically transform the economy

I am convinced that they are right. Bigger than the cloud, than AI, than CRISPR, than IoT. And those things are BIG. But the ability to have a secure world-distributed ledger is going to signal the end of many, many things that we have all assumed would probably be around forever.

So, I want to be on top of this and ahead of it, which means clearing the decks.

I still need to stay on top of my investing practice, and several other activities I’ve got going on. And, of course, my day job isn’t going to ask me to be a blockchain expert any time soon. But I think this is going to be enormous, and I don’t want to watch it happen without being involved in it, when I can see it coming so clearly.

Why I won’t keep reading Lifehacker

Tue, 10 Jan 2017 18:46:44 Z

http://lifehacker.com used to be an amazing place to get tips for productivity. While there is still some vestige of that original purpose, today was the day that I knew I had to stop subscribing the RSS feed.

First, according to http://feedly.com, they put out 191 stories every week. True, I don’t have to read them all, but I also don’t have time to even skim them all to decide which ones to read.

Second, according to http://feedly.com, this list shows the top three most popular stories currently on Lifehacker:

Item number two is a news item. There’s not a damn thing about being more productive. Maybe the people who are averaging 200GB a month or more need to do something else with their time; I seriously doubt they are spending their quality time reading Lifehacker.

Dear Massive Media Conspiracists,

Wed, 09 Nov 2016 20:00:33 Z

Oh, I'm sorry! Did you not think you were part of a conspiracy? But you are.

Here's how you should have known you were part of a conspiracy:

1. You are any kind of media organization that didn't wholeheartedly endorse the current president-elect.

Fox News. New York Times. Washington Post. MSNBC. ABC. CNN. CBS. Comedy Central. NBC. Huffington Post. PolitiFact. FactCheck.org. All of you. Maybe not you, NPR, because you are member-funded. Maybe.

You all aired THOUSANDS of hours, MILLIONS of words, of free campaign marketing for someone who you KNEW was NOT QUALIFIED for the job.

You sold America. For ads.

2. You are any kind of social media organization.

Facebook. Twitter. Snapchat. WhatsApp. Your algorithms of what we should see don't include a way for us to distinguish things that are truly important from the things that are notorious but worthless.

You sold America so you could claim "higher viewership" or "higher readership" or whatever. Most clicks, I guess.

3. You are anyone who engaged with anyone of the above co-conspirators.

That's all of us. You. Me.
We all participated in the freak show for the past year. We are ALL part of the conspiracy. We didn't use our better judgment. We didn't think about what we did. We deceived ourselves that we were doing something good. We Retweeted and Liked and Shared our collective outrage at the insane things, but none of us stopped to think about whether our contribution to Social Media was a good thing or not. We just did it because that's what you do in order to get Liked and Retweeted and Commented and Friended and Followed.

What was the point of this conspiracy, for all of us?

POPULARITY.

That's ALL.

We didn't run this conspiracy to get anyone elected. We ran it because we wanted to be on the Winning Side of the Popularity Contest.

We sold America to the guy that knew how to be talked about the most.

We ALL deserved this outcome.

Think about it. Did you ever count how many Likes you got? How many Favorites were made? How many Followers you have? Did it make you feel good inside to see those numbers go up? Did you feel a little left out when someone else you knew got a fleeting glance of recognition from some celebrity, when you worked so hard to get noticed?

He knew exactly how to get elected. All he had to do was to get everyone to talk about him. It didn't matter what he said, what he did, whether he was any good at it.

All that mattered was that he got your attention, and that you, too, wanted to play the Be Popular Game

It worked.

Our conspiracy to Be Popular worked, and now we have to live with the consequences.

We all confused being popular with being good citizens.

It should be obvious now that they are not the same thing.

A good citizen recognizes that the right thing to do is not always going to be the most popular thing to do.

I have not yet decided what I will do yet. I know I must do something different.

I know I must get away from the world where it matters to me whether my favorite celebrities shares my belief.

I must get away from the world where I am even aware how many Likes, Follows, Shares, and Favorites there are to what I want to say out in the open for others to read.

I must restore my world to where I stop to think about whether what I am sharing or saying is just likely to get a big response, or whether it is something that helps grow the people around me in a thoughtful, nurturing way.

I must get away from the world where I think I can get News Of Value for free. If I want News, I will do my research on the source and, if worthy, I will pay for it.

I must get away from the world where I believe that clicking Like or Retweet or Share is the same thing as taking a stand and expressing my personal intentions to make the world a better place. I am more imaginative and resourceful than that.

I am sharing this with you with reticence. Maybe you recognize yourself, like me, as part of this conspiracy. And maybe my words provoke something in you to choose a better path.

But if all that these words inspire you to do is to Share this, or Like it, or Tweet it, then PLEASE DO NOT DO THAT.

We created this conspiracy. We can stop it. But not by using the conspiracy.

We must take a stand for ourselves. Alone if we must. If possible, we may take a united stand for our shared beliefs, but only by individually working with other individuals.

Hey! I created this post using Word RT!

Sat, 06 Aug 2016 07:17:16 Z

That's right. I'm on a Surface RT. Running Word 2013 RT.

It does this:

That's right, bitches. Way better than basic markdown text editing.

Started off on the wrong foot

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 15:39:48 Z

Michele used to scoff at me for using a Franklin Day Planner, way back when. She is one of those people who remembers almost all of her appointments without writing them down. Well, she used to. She writes them down now. But I’d taken her teasing a little too personally, and had avoided relying too heavily on calendars and lists, lately.

Which is why I need to rely on calendars and lists. Missing an appointment is not fun. Missing an appointment that you have to pay because you missed it is just adding insult to injury. The cherry on top is that Michele reminded me yesterday (Monday) that I had an appointment today (Tuesday), but I didn’t believe her; I thought my appointment was the day after (Wednesday). She was right. My calendar was right. I was wrong, and I really have to get back to working against calendars and lists.

So, getting back on to the right foot. How? First, by knowing that I will, regardless of how much evidence I might have that I can’t. It takes a certain amount of delusion to be this optimistic, but I believe I have enough delusions to believe whatever I want, and that, in fact, is how I will actually succeed anyway.

First post from OLW

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 06:24:00 Z

Open Live Writer is the new face of Windows Live Writer, and probably will be my primary blogging editor. Let’s see how well it can publish!

hello world

Tue, 05 Jul 2016 00:27:57 Z

ohai!

The music in my head and in my heart

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 16:31:04 Z

I wish I could explain how this works. There is a resonance I feel whenever I’m listening to most of the songs performed by the band Swing Out Sister. Something about a jet-set romance. Sitting in an airport bar as dusk falls. Neon lights reflected in a taxi window. A lost love. The hope of a new love. A tear – is it from sorrow, or joy, or both? The echoes of something that just wrenched your heart beyond what you thought you could ever bear, but also a whisper that the worst has passed, and the heights of joy will fall into your hands.

I don’t have the musical background to faithfully capture the style or genre of their music. I have never really heard any other music exactly like it, although I’ve certainly heard music which shares elements of their music. Songs written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. 60s-era latin pop, something a little like what Henry Mancini might have made, and what you might hear on the soundtrack to AMC’s Mad Men. But also more dreamy than that.

Anyway, I hope they never stop making their soul-touching music. I could never grow tired of listening to it.

Where it went wrong

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:31:00 Z

Of course you remember the juicer that I bought at Goodwill for $3.00 USD. But I didn’t tell you why.

Many moons ago, a good friend of mine at Microsoft had me over at her house before we were to go teach programming at a neighborhood volunteer center thingy. She had just bought a Binford TurboMaxiJuicer 2000¹ and wanted to try it out.

It was pretty cool! I’d never seen a juicer in action, let alone had juice fresh out of one. She dumped carrots, beets, apples, celery, pears, … I lost track. But what came out was sweet, delicious, fresh, and memorable.

So, here it was, about a couple of years ago, and Michele and I are browsing a Goodwill that was next to a restaurant where we’d just had a decent breakfast. We were in the market for some kind of furniture, but we always appreciate a good bargain.

So, hidden in a corner near the counter was this juicer, with a friendly-looking handwritten $3 sticker on top. I couldn’t resist. Michele looked askance, but I insisted. After all, if it was a dud, it really didn’t cost much to find out. The lady at the counter even plugged it in and ran it for a second to prove it worked.

So I hauled it on home. We had a few Things Of Produce in the refrigerator that might be juicable. I dropped them in. I really do like carrot juice, and we had a few of those.

It was not terribly pretty. The juicer juiced them carrots, all right, but unlike my friend’s juicer, the pulp was not disposed of as neatly into the pulp bucket thing. Rather, when I opened the unit to clean it, there were carrot guts everywhere. Plus, a few spoonfuls of carrot juice managed to sneak down the inside and pool around the counter. The separator basket (the thing with a thousand little sharks teeth at the bottom and wire mesh along the sides that turns carrots into carrot juice and carrot mush) was devilishly hard to clean.

So I put that juicer away in a cabinet for a while, and forgot about it.

Fast forward to about three weeks ago. Put in fast-forwarding tape recorder effects, if you like. Michele and I had recently renewed a Costco membership, and I discovered the existence of 10-pound bags of carrots. Alongside this discovery came the filtered memory of my possession of a juicer. Naturally, the two begged to be brought together.

I stuck the 10-pound bag of carrots in bottom of the pantry. They’re root vegetables, right? They should keep for a while in a cool, dark place. Hahahahahahano. They do not. I lost about a pound of carrots to some kind of weird black rotting thing. Fortunately, it didn’t spread, and most of the carrots were fine.

I started at 6:30. Separating orange carrots from carrots with non-orange parts. Cutting tips and ends off. Scrubbing them with a vegetable brush. Finally, at 7:00, I have eight pounds of carrots, ready for juicing.

There’s a dinner intermission.

At 8pm, I begin the juicing procedure. After 2 pounds of carrots, the pulp bin is full, and the motor sounds like it’s slowing down. So I stop, unplug it, disassemble the thing, swipe out the carrot guts, run them down the disposal, and pour the juice into a container. Then I reassemble it, plug it back in, and keep going.

Mind you, the carrots go in just fine, but I take care to push them in kind of slowly, because if I just jam them in, I wind up with mostly wet pulp and not a lot of juice.

This procedure repeats at the 4 pound, 6 pound, and finally 8 pound mark. I extracted nearly 2 quarts of very good looking and tasting carrot juice.

But it took me until about an hour to do this. So, one and a half hours of work, on a bag of carrots that cost about $4, to save about $3 from what a 2-quart bottle of carrot juice costs at the store (about $7).

It’s just not worth it.

P.S. Then, upon writing this blog post, I found out that my juicer had been recalled (http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml02/02041.html), so this was all done (unwittingly) at the risk of life and limb. No, thank you. I’ll risk cancer from the plastic bottle, instead.

¹ Make and model not guaranteed accurate

Microsoft Surface, pre-ordered

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 20:13:21 Z

Does anyone not already know that I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft enthusiast? I mean, before you read the previous sentence?

However, I’m not usually one of the first ones to grab the new technologies. I didn’t get one of the first Pocket PCs. I didn’t get one of the first XBox’s. I don’t usually get the Consumer Technology Previews (CTP), or “betas” of new versions of Windows.

But I just had to, this time. I pre-ordered a Microsoft Surface, and I should be getting it in about a week. I’m very, very excited.

Yes, I know I could have gotten an iPad a long time ago. But Apple and I just don’t see eye to eye on user interfaces, ever since the first Macintosh. Sure, I was more than a little handy with the now-ancient Apple ][. But when Steve jobs decided that users did not want too many choices, I knew that I was not his primary market anymore.

But why now? Why didn’t I wait for a while for a Surface be out for a while?

Because I (almost) never do this, and because the thing just looks damn sexy.

That, and I also want to start seeing whether I can make things that I can sell on the Microsoft Store. (Don’t worry, boss! I’ll use my Microsoft AlumNet employee-price discounts to buy my own development software and do it on my own computer and only in my spare time.) So, having one would be very important, to make sure that I’m doing things properly.

I’ll post pictures and reviews and stuff when I get it, which should be (according to Microsoft) right about October 26.

Keeping user manuals

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 11:16:00 Z

By way of lifehacker, I found this post on keeping user manuals in a binder.

Um, I used to do this, a few years ago. Thing is, I was pretty meticulous about it—more than I really needed to be, perhaps.

I had manuals for video games, Lego sets, an electric woks, a digital thermometer, my battery-powered soldering iron, the washing machine, the kitchen table, … I had a lot of manuals, and thus, a lot of binders.

I needed about eight 2” binders (the big ones), and I tried to categorize the manuals so that, if I actually needed a manual, it would only require searching one binder.

I stuffed the manuals into sheet protectors, and didn’t worry about alphabetizing or ordering them in any way, as long as they would go into the right binder.

I no longer use binders. It was too hard to get the right balance of categories. “Electronics.” Is that anything that has a transistor? What if it is a hand-held game… shouldn’t that be in “Games and Toys?” I gave up trying to figure it out.

Also, some manuals (e.g. for the dishwasher or the giant poster-sized manual for some toy) were larger than the plastic sheet protectors. It was very difficult to get them into and back out of the sheet protectors.

What I do now is this: I have a single plastic box I got from Target, with room for a lot of manila folders, just for user manuals, warranties, and original store receipts. Each folder has a very specific type of thing in it, but is labeled with the type of the thing, rather than a brand name.

Let’s say I get a new Canon EOS-1DX DSLR camera (just an example; I don’t have one). First, I will open the box of folders, and see if I have a folder already labeled “Cameras”. If so, I’ll check the contents of that folder to see if any manuals are for cameras I no longer own, and I’ll put those in recycling. If not, I’ll make a new folder called “Cameras” (not “Canon” or “DSLR”) and put the manual in it. I’ll file it alphabetically.

It’s simple, fast, efficient. I spend almost no time thinking about categories, and the folders, unlike the binders, always hold any size manual without effort.

An experiment with dictation

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 00:20:00 Z

A few weeks ago, I decided to volunteer to read news articles for the local Society for the Blind here in Sacramento. Part of the setup will need requires a headset or at least a microphone. So when I got Moon had said, I was surprised to find out that Windows has fairly strong support for speech recognition.

This blog entry represents my first attempt at dictating a blog entry entirely without using the keyboard. I'm pleasantly surprised that it recognizes as many words as it does, and that is fairly simple to punctuate and even capitalize words and I would've had to type before. The accuracy rate seems to be very good, even though just now it wanted to say " in for a good" instead of " very good". But even correcting it was simple and helps the process work better.

Okay, enough for now. I may be trying more of these in the future. It certainly is a lot faster than typing, plus I don't make any misspellings.

New from and for Microsoft: Its first computer, the Surface

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 08:21:00 Z

This is the first general purpose computer that Microsoft has ever produced, but it’s not exactly the first computer hardware for the company. The Xbox has as much computing power as any desktop computer.

Nevertheless, it looks very interesting. Apple, of course, is downplaying it – did you expect them to do anything else? I think the keyboard is a brilliant move. Apple thinks you should rely on Siri more than a keyboard. Have you ever tried to get a voice-response computer to write a memo with formatting, images, and hyperlinks? You can’t do that stuff while you’re dictating; you’ll have to go back and do it later. So, Apple users’ written correspondence will always be text-only with a bunch of interesting word and punctuation choices from Siri, while Microsoft users’ written correspondence will be right on target (to the limits of the writer, anyway). I’m thinking the included keyboard was a very shrewd move by Microsoft, and Apple is hoping you don’t notice how incredibly useful the first ever peripheral invented for computers (before monitors) really is.

Needless to say, of course, I want one, but I want the Surface Pro version, with the nicer keyboard, more memory, and the ability to run other things than just Metro apps. I’ll have to a wait a little longer.

Meanwhile, I think I will hit the gas on the application that I’ve been designing for a while now… No announcement yet. Just pretend I’m that weird crackpot inventor uncle you have that is out in the garage day and night with the windows drawn and strange sounds emanating forth. And bring me a beer every so often, would you, please?

Dhimmitude?

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:12:00 Z

Someone near me (doesn’t matter who) brought up the notion that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka “Obamacare”) singles out Muslims for exemption from the mandatory coverage clause.

The person referenced a web page apparently rounding the top of some search engines which talks about this mysterious word. It’s “ask marion” or something (I refuse to add a link to contribute to the page ranking of such a made up load of claptrap).

The author of the web page made an outrageous and easily disprovable lie. She said, “Obama used [the word dhimmitude] in the health care bill.” The rest of the web page is her expressing outrage based on this fabrication.

She even includes a link to snopes.com, which suggests that her claim is a “mixture” of truth and non-truth. Most people will probably not read the whole article, and will only see the red and green dot, and then conclude that she’s not making it up. She even goes so far as to claim it’s on page 107 of the bill.

Maybe it was on the House Resolution, once (House Resolution 3962). But it is definitely not in the actual law.

Her claim is not even close to true.

Did I rely on some liberal leftist journalist to check this out?

No. I relied on the easy-to-check source material itself.

And so will you, now!

Here we go!

Grab any search engine (try www.usa.gov, the primary portal and search engine for the United States Government) and look for the official title of the bill: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Do not click Wikipedia (because it is not an official source and can be edited by anyone).

Find the official text of the Act at a United States Government web site (ends with “.gov”). I found it at the U.S. Senate Democrats web site, http://democrats.senate.gov/pdfs/reform/patient-protection-affordable-care-act-as-passed.pdf.

It’s a 906-page PDF. Download it.

It’s also at http://docs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf. The pages won’t match, but the sections numbers will.

Scroll to page 107. She must have been referring to something important. She was. Here are pages 107 and 108 in their entirety copied, without editing, from the text. For cross-reference purposes, this is Section 1411, sub-section (b), paragraph (5).

H. R. 3590—107

(3) ELIGIBILITY AND AMOUNT OF TAX CREDIT OR REDUCED
COST-SHARING.—In the case of an enrollee with respect to whom
a premium tax credit or reduced cost-sharing under section
36B of such Code or section 1402 is being claimed, the following
information:
(A) INFORMATION REGARDING INCOME AND FAMILY
SIZE.—The information described in section 6103(l)(21) for
the taxable year ending with or within the second calendar
year preceding the calendar year in which the plan year
begins.
(B) CHANGES IN CIRCUMSTANCES.—The information
described in section 1412(b)(2), including information with
respect to individuals who were not required to file an
income tax return for the taxable year described in
subparagraph (A) or individuals who experienced changes
in marital status or family size or significant reductions
in income.
(4) EMPLOYER-SPONSORED COVERAGE.—In the case of an
enrollee with respect to whom eligibility for a premium tax
credit under section 36B of such Code or cost-sharing reduction
under section 1402 is being established on the basis that the
enrollee’s (or related individual’s) employer is not treated under
section 36B(c)(2)(C) of such Code as providing minimum essential
coverage or affordable minimum essential coverage, the
following information:
(A) The name, address, and employer identification
number (if available) of the employer.
(B) Whether the enrollee or individual is a full-time
employee and whether the employer provides such minimum
essential coverage.
(C) If the employer provides such minimum essential
coverage, the lowest cost option for the enrollee’s or individual’s
enrollment status and the enrollee’s or individual’s
required contribution (within the meaning of section
5000A(e)(1)(B) of such Code) under the employer-sponsored
plan.
(D) If an enrollee claims an employer’s minimum essential
coverage is unaffordable, the information described
in paragraph (3).
If an enrollee changes employment or obtains additional
employment while enrolled in a qualified health plan for which
such credit or reduction is allowed, the enrollee shall notify
the Exchange of such change or additional employment and
provide the information described in this paragraph with
respect to the new employer.
(5) EXEMPTIONS FROM INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY REQUIREMENTS.—
In the case of an individual who is seeking an exemption
certificate under section 1311(d)(4)(H) from any requirement
or penalty imposed by section 5000A, the following
information:
(A) In the case of an individual seeking exemption
based on the individual’s status as a member of an exempt
religious sect or division, as a member of a health care
sharing ministry, as an Indian, or as an individual eligible
for a hardship exemption, such information as the Secretary
shall prescribe.

and

H. R. 3590—108

(B) In the case of an individual seeking exemption
based on the lack of affordable coverage or the individual’s
status as a taxpayer with household income less than 100
percent of the poverty line, the information described in
paragraphs (3) and (4), as applicable.
(c) VERIFICATION OF INFORMATION CONTAINED IN RECORDS OF
SPECIFIC FEDERAL OFFICIALS.—
(1) INFORMATION TRANSFERRED TO SECRETARY.—An
Exchange shall submit the information provided by an applicant
under subsection (b) to the Secretary for verification in accordance
with the requirements of this subsection and subsection
(d).
(2) CITIZENSHIP OR IMMIGRATION STATUS.—
(A) COMMISSIONER OF SOCIAL SECURITY.—The Secretary
shall submit to the Commissioner of Social Security
the following information for a determination as to whether
the information provided is consistent with the information
in the records of the Commissioner:
(i) The name, date of birth, and social security
number of each individual for whom such information
was provided under subsection (b)(2).
(ii) The attestation of an individual that the individual
is a citizen.
(B) SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY.—
(i) IN GENERAL.—In the case of an individual—
(I) who attests that the individual is an alien
lawfully present in the United States; or
(II) who attests that the individual is a citizen
but with respect to whom the Commissioner of
Social Security has notified the Secretary under
subsection (e)(3) that the attestation is inconsistent
with information in the records maintained by the
Commissioner;
the Secretary shall submit to the Secretary of Homeland
Security the information described in clause (ii)
for a determination as to whether the information provided
is consistent with the information in the records
of the Secretary of Homeland Security.
(ii) INFORMATION.—The information described in
clause (ii) is the following:
(I) The name, date of birth, and any identifying
information with respect to the individual’s
immigration status provided under subsection
(b)(2).
(II) The attestation that the individual is an
alien lawfully present in the United States or in
the case of an individual described in clause (i)(II),
the attestation that the individual is a citizen.
(3) ELIGIBILITY FOR TAX CREDIT AND COST-SHARING REDUCTION.—
The Secretary shall submit the information described
in subsection (b)(3)(A) provided under paragraph (3), (4), or
(5) of subsection (b) to the Secretary of the Treasury for
verification of household income and family size for purposes
of eligibility.
(4) METHODS.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—The Secretary, in consultation with
the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Homeland

Riveting stuff. So, I’ve highlighted the important part, as you can tell if you read the stuff before and after it.

I don’t see “dhimmitude” there at all.

Maybe ask marion got the page wrong.

Open the search feature. Search for “dhim”. Just “dhim”. Not even “dhimmitude”, although you can if you like. It’s just easier to spell “dhim”.

No matches.

Hm. That’s not encouraging for ask marion.

Try it with other letters, just to make sure that it finds partial matches. Try “tude”. Try “over”. Whatever you want. Those should find something. You just want to make sure that your search is working, that it’s not case sensitive, and isn’t looking for whole words. Click the down arrow next to the search box.

No check marks next to those options.

And no matches for “dhim”.

So, let’s go back to where we were.

I am not a lawyer, but in simple terms this is just saying that there are requirements to fulfill for people who believe they should be exempt from the responsibility to pay for coverage (the “individual mandate”). The exemption must be qualified with an “exemption certificate,” which is described elsewhere.

Ah-HA! This must be where the Muslims are getting their built-in, guaranteed exemption, right?

Well, it obviously doesn’t say so right out in the open here. We’ll have to keep looking.

There is a cross reference to another section of this document, as well as a cross reference to the U.S. Code (the official laws of our great nation). We’ll go to these other sections to see if we can find the “dhimmitude” thing.

“Section 1311(d)(4)(H)” simply means “Section 1311, sub-section (d), paragraph (4), clause (H)”. If you go to the Table of Contents of the PPACA, you’ll find that section 1311 starts Part II of Subtitle C, and can be found on page 55. Sub-section (d) begins on page 58. Paragraph (4) begins towards the bottom of page 58, titled “FUNCTIONS.” It’s talking about what an insurance exchange must do at a minimum. Clause (H) begins on page 59. Here it is, copied verbatim.

H. R. 3590—59

…

(H) subject to section 1411, grant a certification
attesting that, for purposes of the individual responsibility
penalty under section 5000A of the Internal Revenue Code
of 1986, an individual is exempt from the individual
requirement or from the penalty imposed by such section
because—
(i) there is no affordable qualified health plan
available through the Exchange, or the individual’s
employer, covering the individual; or
(ii) the individual meets the requirements for any
other such exemption from the individual responsibility
requirement or penalty;

You can read the stuff before and after it, but there’s nothing before or after that talks about exemptions. (Be careful; the indentation is sometimes a little goofy; pay attention to the outlining numbers and letters only.)

This clause (H) basically means that the exchange must, subject to section 1411 (that’s the section we partially looked at earlier), grant certificates of exemption. Exemption to what? To the law that says everyone must pay into the “individual mandate” which is described in section 5000A of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. The who-di-what? That’s just a reference to the laws of the United States, the “Code”.

Let’s go see that code. That must be where the “dhimmitude” is.

We’ll go back to our search engine, searching for “United States Code”, clicking only on a link from an official source (usually something ending with .gov). It looks like the Government Printing Office has a copy, which just makes sense. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/, and click on “United States Code” over on the right side (under “Featured Collections”).

We want the most current stuff, so we choose the latest year. On this system, it’s dated 2010. If you find a newer one, good for you. I didn’t find one.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collectionUScode.action?selectedYearFrom=2010&page.go=Go

What a mess! There are a lot of laws!

We just need section 5000A of the Internal Revenue Code. The titles of the codes seem to be arranged alphabetically.

We’ll click on Title 27 – Internal Revenue Code, and there we’ll see that there are a lot of Subtitles grouping many sections.

I think we want “Subtitle D - Miscellaneous Excise Taxes (sections 4001 - 5000C)”.

Clicking that reveals a link to “CHAPTER 48 - MAINTENANCE OF MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE (section 5000A)”. Bingo.

I’m getting excited! We’re about to find “dhimmitude” written right into the very laws of the U.S.

I feel a little like Nicolas Cage’s character Benjamin Gates in National Treasure, about to reveal a secret plot to turn the U.S. into an Islamic, sharia-style state! I better get my hair cut nice for all the swarms of reporters begging to interview me on live TV.

Let’s click the link to download that bad puppy as a PDF.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2010-title26/pdf/USCODE-2010-title26-subtitleD-chap48-sec5000A.pdf

Five pages, all about the “individual mandate.” First, we search for “dhim” again.

Drat. No hits. Well, it can’t be that easy, or else it would have shown up in a basic web search. Let’s try reading this a little.

Subsection (a): Requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage

That won’t have it. It’s just saying what this section is.

Subsection (b) Shared responsibility payment

That’s just saying we have to share the responsibility.

Oh, boy! That sounds like socialism to me!

The responsibility should be left to the individual, not the government.

Of course, when someone’s life is at stake and they can’t pay their responsibility, the hospital and providers will have to be responsible, and that means they’ll spread the costs around, and then insurance will have to pay, so it winds up being shared responsibility anyway, except that uninsured people who could buy insurance but choose not to are just getting away with free health services. That sounds like theft to me.

But hey, a system that encourages outright theft beats anything even slightly resembling socialism, right?

Let’s keep going.

Subsection (c) Amount of penalty

This just says how they’ll charge you if you try to avoid paying.

In business, this would be seen as proper cash flow management.

In government, it’s just the government trying to take your money to “redistribute the wealth.”

It’s a good thing that we don’t think about voting for people based on whether they claim to be good business people. Otherwise, they’d get really good at taking care of the cash flow, if you know what I mean.

Right, Mitt?

Subsection (d) Applicable individual

It gets more interesting now. Specifically, Paragraph (2) which talks about “Religious exemptions”. Jackpot!

Reading…

…reading…

…frowning…

…reading.

It has a back reference to Section 1311(d)(4)(H) of the PPACA. Those people get exemptions. But we already read that part!

There’s this little bit:

(i) a member of a recognized religious
sect or division thereof which is described
in section 1402(g)(1), and
(ii) an adherent of established tenets or
teachings of such sect or division as described
in such section.

Another reference, this one to Section 1402(g)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code (it’s not back in PPACA; there is no Section 1402(g) in PPACA, it ends with 1402(f)). Those people get exemptions.

We’ll come back to these. Let’s finish reading this section 5000A.

Some stuff about “health care sharing ministry.” It specifically targets any not-for-profit group that takes care of its members, and those members don’t go to public hospitals for unpaid-for care. Not just Muslims.

So, if you are in a cult, religion, or some other group that believes, for example, that the only medication you need is the “laying on of hands” or “lots of sincere prayer” then you don’t have to pay into the individual mandate, but then you will also probably meet your Maker before the rest of us, so have fun with that.

Subsection (e) Exemptions

Oddly, there really isn’t much in the Exemption subsection about religious groups. Just various explanations why you may not have to be part of the “individual mandate” for this that and the other reason.

Subsection (f) Minimum essential coverage

Subsection (g) Administration and procedure

Nothing interesting here.

Let’s go to that back-reference to section 1402(g)(1).

Going back to the GPO search site, we can find that section 1402 of the Internal Revenue Code is in Subtitle A, “CHAPTER 2 - TAX ON SELF-EMPLOYMENT INCOME (sections 1401 - 1403)”. We’ll open the PDF for that.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2010-title26/pdf/USCODE-2010-title26-subtitleA-chap2.pdf

It’s a 20-page document. Section 1402 begins on page 5, titled “Definitions".

Of course, you have already searched for “dhim” and found nothing.

You have also been searching for “muslim” and “islam”, right? No?! Go back and do that! Now!

I’ll wait.

Nothing?

Hm.

How are all the Muslim people going to exercise their dhimmitude over the U.S. if they don’t put it into the law somewhere?

Hm.

So, on to 1402(g)(1). Page 5.

Subsection (g) is “Members of certain religious faiths”, and paragraph (1) is “Exemption”. Here it is, verbatim:

Any individual may file an application (in
such form and manner, and with such official,
as may be prescribed by regulations under this
chapter) for an exemption from the tax imposed
by this chapter if he is a member of a
recognized religious sect or division thereof
and is an adherent of established tenets or
teachings of such sect or division by reason of
which he is conscientiously opposed to acceptance
of the benefits of any private or public
insurance which makes payments in the event
of death, disability, old-age, or retirement or
makes payments toward the cost of, or provides
services for, medical care (including the
benefits of any insurance system established
by the Social Security Act). Such exemption
may be granted only if the application contains
or is accompanied by—
(A) such evidence of such individual’s
membership in, and adherence to the tenets
or teachings of, the sect or division thereof
as the Secretary may require for purposes of
determining such individual’s compliance
with the preceding sentence, and
(B) his waiver of all benefits and other
payments under titles II and XVIII of the
Social Security Act on the basis of his wages
and self-employment income as well as all
such benefits and other payments to him on

the basis of the wages and self-employment
income of any other person,
and only if the Commissioner of Social Security
finds that—
(C) such sect or division thereof has the established
tenets or teachings referred to in
the preceding sentence,
(D) it is the practice, and has been for a period
of time which he deems to be substantial,
for members of such sect or division
thereof to make provision for their dependent
members which in his judgment is reasonable
in view of their general level of living,
and
(E) such sect or division thereof has been
in existence at all times since December 31,
1950.
An exemption may not be granted to any individual
if any benefit or other payment referred
to in subparagraph (B) became payable (or, but
for section 203 or 222(b) of the Social Security
Act, would have become payable) at or before
the time of the filing of such waiver.

Wait, what?! Look at what I highlighted.

The only way to get an exemption is to refuse to accept the benefits of any insurance at all?!

Hey, ask Marion.

I think you need to explain this a little better.

Because right now, it looks a lot like you just made up some anti-Islam bullshit to scare people away from the Affordable Care Act.

And I bet you think that you’re doing something Jesus would be proud of you for doing.

I bet you’re wrong.

How I use Todoist

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:38:00 Z

I love Todoist, even though I have plans to create my own task list eventually.

One of the mixed blessings of Todoist is that it is extremely flexible. This is great because it can conform to your specific needs. It's not so great because sometimes you don't know what your specific needs really are, and a little guidance would be more helpful.

Well, I think I've finally come to terms with what works best for me, so I'll share it for posterity.

GTD

Before I start, though, I need to explain that I'm also an avid believer in the principles and guidance given by David Allen in his two books, Getting Things Done and Making It All Work. David recommends that you learn to distinguish between projects and actions. Projects are defined as anything that needs more than one action performed in order to be complete. You'll have many individual actions you'll want to do which aren't projects, and you'll have many projects that you've been thinking of as actions. The skill is to separate them, and then just do the actions. David explains exactly how to do this in ways that I'm not going to summarize here.

{Projects} and [Roles]

I have a simple way to distinguish between projects and actions. It's true that Todoist has great support for indentation to indicate that a task has been broken down into subtasks. I suppose I could have just decided that any task that had no child tasks was automatically a "next action," while any task with child tasks was automatically a "project." The problem I have with this approach is that I sometimes can't tell when I have a project that I merely haven't thought about enough to decide what the next action will be, versus when I have just a next action. And I really don't want to have to scrutinize every item every time I'm merely scanning the lists for actions I could knock out.

I chose to be a little more explicit. Each project is enclosed with curly braces. "{File 2011 taxes}" is a project because it's not an actual action I can take. To do it, I need to complete the next actions "Collect my tax documents," and "Select an online tax filing service," and so on. Those next actions have no curly braces, so when I scan my lists for next actions, I know immediately that these are things I could just physically do.

I used to use square brackets to denote roles and responsibilities. I find it useful to organize by roles and responsibilities because I get overwhelmed when I try to think about everything from just one point of view. Considering my plans from a particular point of view helps me keep priorities straight; the [Dad] role is a lot more important than the [Good Neighbor] role I have. I don't use square brackets on Todoist now, because I've organized everything in a way that makes the square brackets a little redundant.

Todoist.com

There are two main parts of Todoist. There's a project list on the left. Each project can contain subprojects, up to a limit (about four deep, I think). There's a task list on the right. Tasks can contain subtasks, and I don't know what the limit is, but its deeper than four.

In my project list, I have these projects:

IN
Shopping
- Short term
- Medium term
- Long term
Daily
*This week
- Self-improvement
- Household
- Finances
- Family/Friends
- Community
- Fun
- Expression
- Technical skills
- Networking
*Someday
Work
- [Someday]
- {Subproject 1}
- {Subproject 2}
*Completed Work

The This week, Someday, and Completed Work projects are container projects only, meaning that I can't assign tasks to those projects directly at the top level, but only to subprojects below it. You can enforce this with Todoist by prefacing the name of the project with an asterisk (*).

IN, Shopping, and Daily

My IN folder is just for holding commitment-related notes temporarily until I can review it later and put it where it should go. It's helpful when I'm on the phone or in a hurry. I make a point of emptying it before I do anything else on or with my lists. Sometimes, I have already done the thing I put into this folder before I start reviewing my lists.

My Shopping folder is just what it sounds like. The top level folder holds items that I need to buy right away, like milk or printer cartridges. Short term means I want to buy it in the next month or two, Medium term means the next four to six months, and Long term means anything longer than that.

My Daily folder is very short and small. When I am building a new habit, or have a new responsibility that I must do every day, it goes in this folder. These are never projects; they're just actions that must be done every day.

This week and Someday

The This week folder, as I said, can't have any tasks (actions) assigned directly to it. Instead, I have subfolders named with responsibilities and/or roles. This is not what David suggests, but I find that it helps me in my weekly review to have projects or actions that are related by my roles and responsibilities. Otherwise, I tend to duplicate things, or have a hard time finding them when I need to mark an action completed or add a new action.

The list of items under the This week folder that you see here is not my actual list. My actual list is based on principles I have adopted in my life after taking classes from Landmark Education. I have five domains which express what I'm up to in my life. They're color coded. Within each domain I have some roles and characteristics I want to maintain. It's not a good place to start from if you haven't been doing this for a while, which is why I shortened the list to something a little more manageable. You should adjust this list to whatever suits you, but I would recommend that you begin with a list that has at least five and not more than nine items.

The Someday folder is structured identically to the This week folder, only I didn't show it above. It has exactly the same set of subprojects in it, named exactly the same.

I try to make sure that I keep the projects and actions in the This week folder limited to just those things that I reasonably think I could do this week. Each week, I'll look for projects that I could move back or forth between This week and Someday. I don't have a This month or This year folder, because I always look at the Someday folder every week, and it's more helpful to review each project or action to determine whether I'm still committed to it, and by when, than to put them into special buckets based on an arbitrary deadline.

I do not put any more subprojects inside the subfolders of the This week or Someday folders. What I've shown is as deep as the hierarchy gets. All projects and actions are kept in the task list (the right side) that is associated with each folder (role or responsibility) on the left. I enforce this by using an asterisk in front of the names of these folders.

Todoist allows you to associate dates with tasks (which sometimes mean projects for me, as I explained earlier). Why don't I just combine them, and use the dates to separate the tasks for this from the someday tasks? Because I get distracted easily, is why. It's just a little harder to move a task on the right into a new project than it is to give it a new date. If everything—things that need doing now and things that could wait a few weeks—was all in one place, I'd be reprioritizing and rescheduling too frequently. I'd rather not see the tasks that can wait until later until I am in the right mindset, during my weekly review.

Work and Completed

Then I have the next two folders that contradict David's recommendations, but just by a little. David recommends using contextual folder to separate lists of actions. You might use an "At home" context, or "At work", "On the phone", "Errands", and so on. I find that when I'm at work, I really need to stay focused on work. Reviewing my "On the phone" list and finding "Call my friend Gale and ask how she's doing after her trip" will probably distract me from getting my work done, even if I could call her from work. I guess I could put that in my "At home" context, but I think I have a better way. Before I get to that, though, I'll explain the Work and Completed Work folders.

The Work folder is just what it sounds like. The top level folder holds immediate next actions I need to do. Underneath this folder is a [Someday] folder, which works about the same as the Someday folder I described earlier. Also under the Work folder are subproject folders. I know they are subproject folders because I use curly braces around the project name.

A very large number of the things I do at work qualify for David's description of project. The specific area of focus or role or responsibility that I'm engaged in at work varies significantly from year to year, and sometimes from month to month. I've found that any time I've delineated my roles and responsibilities at work, within a few months that organization is no longer practical, in that I have many tasks assigned to me that seem unrelated to those roles and responsibilities.

I don't really need to judge whether I'm doing the job that my original job description suggested I'd be doing. So, I just track the projects. I try to avoid going more than one level deep in subprojects; I'm much more likely to create a subproject called "{Deliver New Widget System}" and another called "{Publish design plans for new widget system}" next to it, not inside it, even though creating the design plans are part of delivering the whole system. But, I will sometimes do that (put it inside the parent project) for very large projects that will last for several months or more.

For the top level Work folder, I avoid putting any kind of project into the task list on the right. Instead, I put just next actions, and I try to limit those actions to things that I will do today or, at worst, tomorrow (if I'm out of time today). Any other next actions that need doing later than today or tomorrow will get put into the [Someday] folder.

So, the Work folder usually has quite a few subprojects. Once I've completed a subproject (a subfolder under the Work folder), I move it to the Work Completed folder so that I can remember what I did when completing my employee performance evaluation.

Contexts and Labels

Earlier, I mentioned that David recommends using contexts to group next actions. "Meeting with Mike" could be a context, as could "Email" or "Web", and so on. The idea is that when you are in a specific place, have a specific mindset, or have access to something specific, you can quickly select an appropriate next action for that context. The way I do this is by using the @ label feature of Todoist. I have a labels for @home, @phone, @blog, @online, @out, and, at work, @meeting-(name or purpose) for meetings, and @(application) for the particular tool I'll need to complete an action, if it's a tool I use only occasionally. Coming up with labels is just a matter of practice until you find what works.

The goal is to find the names for contexts that you will remember to associate with actions and then check when you are actually in that context. The name of the context should be tied in some way to one or more of these factors: a physical location, a mindset (buying, reading, meeting, waiting in line, flying, etc.), or having access to a necessary tool (phone, email, computer, special purpose application, etc.).

The context should be distinctive. A context like "being alert" is not that helpful, because that's probably the mindset you will try to always have, but a context like "brain dead" might be helpful if you have a number of things to do that don't require concentration and focus.

It's important to note that Todoist limits functionality with labels, so that more features are enabled for premium (paying) users. Specifically, searching for key words as well as labels is a premium feature; you can't get around it by filtering tasks on something like $context or #context. I find the cost of Todoist's service to be absolutely worth it, so I am happy to be a premium customer.

What else

I haven't really talked about colors, but I do use them. My IN and Shopping folders are all gray because they are not that interesting to me. Similarly, the Work Completed folder is gray. My Daily folder is gold because it addresses my interest in self-improvement, and that's the color I chose for that domain. Inside the This week folder, I have five colors, each representing a domain. This isn't really an organizational tool as much as it just helps me preserve some balance and perspective. The colors show up when I do a context filter view, or view tasks for "today, overdue, and the next 7 days" to help me make sure I'm not spending all my time just on one area of my life, or neglecting an area that I need to spend more time in.

As I said earlier, I'm writing this largely for posterity. That is, I want to be able to come back and remember why I set things up the way I did, and decide whether I can improve on it. If you find this helpful, that's great, and I'm glad. If it's not helpful, then I still recommend that you try reading David's books, play around with Todoist a little, and invent your own way to be effective and successful. I doubt that there's exactly one way that is right for everybody, and there may not even be one way that's right for most people. The main thing is to keeping growing, keep learning, keep making mistakes, and share what you've discovered.