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It is weird. We just heard a private person is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help fund a flyby of the moon.

Strange undeed.

I will never choose a car with stick shift to drive around. Not in Los Angeles with the stop/go traffic freeway. Nope.

But it is a useful skill to have. What if you go abroad and have to drive a stick shift. Looks like in many nations, stick shift is sometimes the only option.

  The aftermath produced a lost decade for European economies
  and helped lead to the rise of anti-establishment political
  movements here and abroad.

I was visiting family in Hawaii during the 1st Christmas after the financial crisis started. Guess what? The beach chairs around the pools at the Waikiki area hotels were packed with guests. Every single one of them. Note I went because family is there, and stayed with them.

Granted, some guests were probably there because they already had reservations made before the shtf moment came. Or maybe some there were just vacationing at Waikiki as they downgraded their vacation plan to more moderate level, instead of going to Maldives or something.

But the point is the rich were far less impacted by the crisis. And when the crisis slowly faded away, the rich swooped in and accumulated more wealth. Like all the foreclosed homes in US being bought up by rich folks to be flipped, or worse, bought to be rented out.

The rich were barely impacted by the crisis, and the crisis just turned into an opportunity for the rich to accumulate more wealth more easily.

I know a guy who was an engineer at a very well known US based engineering startup that made real physical products. Lots of top engineering grads from top schools apply there. His observation of young interns from top schools was that when the fresh engineering grads (or soon to be grads) ran into a problem that they couldn't solve, many didn't know how to react or didn't take it well.

They all had been able to get that far in their academic career because they had been able to solve problems, and solve them well and quickly.

When they ran into hard problems in the real world that they couldn't solve, some couldn't handle it well.

My friend once interviewed for a low level position at a well known startup company. He passed HR, took and passed competency tests, passed interview by future coworkers. Last interview was with manager of the team who happened to be a young woman who was a brilliant coder.

He didn't get it. He was sure that her expression changed negatively very slightly once she saw him on the video conference. My friend is quite sure it was due to either ageism or subtle racism. He is not white.

He's moved on but it confirmed to him fair is not a word he believes in anymore.

I believe, at least in California, raising gas tax is frowned upon by voters because the so called highway fund (filled with gas tax money) has been raided to pay for non-road related projects.

No one likes bait and switch.

Yes, a career as a firefighter is a great one, only if you can get into it somehow. Those in the know already know this and actively try to channel their sons/nephews/friends into firefighting jobs.

1. Los Angeles Times recently did some reporting on Los Angeles Fire Department. Turns out many of the new hires are sons/nephews/friends of active firefighters. And application process included no public access, like no online application process. So when this was fist reported, LAFD did do online application process, but it was available only for an hour or so. Again, you couldn't have known this unless you had insider connection.

And I heard through friend of friend with connections in LA City. There are Los Angeles Firefighters who collect Disability Pay ON TOP of regular pay after going through some major fire incident. They can claim trauma of the major fire is hardship enough so while they work regular hours and collect regular pay, they can also receive Disability pay.

2. And then there's articles like this:

"Battling treacherous office chairs and aching backs, aging cops and firefighters miss years of work and collect twice the pay"

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-drop-20180203-...

excerpt

When Capt. Tia Morris turned 50, after about three decades in the Los Angeles Police Department, she became eligible to retire with nearly 90% of her salary.

But like many cops and firefighters in her position, the decision to keep working was a financial no-brainer, thanks to a program that allowed her to nearly double her pay by keeping her salary while also collecting her pension.

A month after Morris entered the program, her husband, a detective, joined too. Their combined income for four years in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan was just shy of $2 million, city payroll records show.

But the city didn’t benefit much from the Morrises’ experience: They both filed claims for carpal tunnel syndrome and other cumulative ailments about halfway through the program. She spent nearly two years on disability and sick leave; he missed more than two years, according to a Times analysis of city payroll data.

We are all screwed, except for those on PUBLIC pensions.

I use personally hosted Confluence ($10 a year) to keep snips of notes and personal project related stuff. And also Google docs.

Yes I'd be interested in having a tool to keep videos organized.

You do not have to use any of the syrups. Far better off to just add bit of juice for taste.

He lives in a house that is worth less than the armored SUV parked outside his house.

And drinks cheap alcohol/food, and not for a photo op.

What more do you want him to do?

Jimmy Carter did not send the military. It was local South Korean military/junta that did so.

In Netflix 'Fire Camp' doc, there's a section on inmates who join to fight fires. From what I could see, they inmates have to pass strict conditioning/training to actually work as a fire fighter.

I'd guess if one didn't want to do it, he/she could just slack off and not join.

Look it up and watch the show if you can.

The thing with LDS is that it's more of an organization with a strong (aka oppressive? or too powerful) leadership at top. Every adult has to go on a 'mission' for a full year?

On the flip side, there is no such distinct leadership/requirements in most other Christian organizations. Pretty much anyone call self a Christian.

Maybe Catholics are similar to LDS but I'm not too familiar with them.

Western culture is not the only culture that has racism or issues with racism.

I've been called chink by an old grizzled Mexican-American (I think?, not sure).

Various Asian cultures have been accused of having racist views. Even against other Asian cultures, like Japanese against Chinese or Chinese against Japanese...

I grew up with no AC in a location that got very warm/humid in summer. A fan was it.

Now I have a family member who grew up in Hawaii and consequently with AC turned on alot.

When it gets a little warm/humid and no AC is available, it's absolutely miserable for her. But I'm just fine. I mean it's miserable but I can pretty much function normally. She can't.

I am too.

Few years ago Hana Hou (inflight magazine of Hawaiian Air) had an article on Kimchi scene in Hawaii.

https://hanahou.com/14.5/deep-kim-chee

It covers a local Korean market where Kimchi is made and sold. And then the companies that sold Kimchi in Hawaii, until a recent consolidation and about half of kimchi sold is made by a company owned by a man named Mike Irish.

I remember reading about how rice is bad because it is arsenic. Well. Stay the hexx away from my rice and kimchi.

End of an era for sure.

Whether google does it or not, China will.

Nope. Who do you think you are? A customer that we really care about?

The parts contract between Samsung/Dell was about a billion dollars over 10 years. It included CD/DVD drives, RAM, screen etc. A billion dollar in tech industry today doesn't sound like much but for late 1990s, that was a big deal. But not reported much in US if I recall correctly.

Also I distinctively remember reading a piece by a reporter who was quoting a Dell representative talking about a small/light Samsung Laptop that Michael Dell was using as his everyday laptop. They really liked its small form factor. I think it may have been Samsung Q20 which was rebadged as Latitude X300 around year 2000 or so.

Also, I heard Tim Cook first caught the attention of Steve Jobs around this time. He joined Apple to help smooth out supply of parts for Apple computers and he was instrumental in working with Samsung to accomplish it. I just checked and he joined Apple in 1998 so the timing does make sense to me.

Btw, as I was trying to look up old computers of Dell, I realized there is no complete list of them anywhere. Not like one available for Apple computers. Sad how the latest thing at a point in time like in 2002 is no where to be found on the internet...

Maybe similar happened in 1980s. But I was talking about late 1990s.

At least you can buy RAM if you really wanted to. For few years in late 1990's, you couldn't buy RAM if even you had the money. Companies like Dell/Apple were unable to manufacture computers to sell because of lack of RAM modules. Price of RAM Modules literally fluctuated a lot like gold or crypto coin day by day.

There were robberies targeted at computer parts distributors by robbers who wanted RAM modules to resell in black markets.

And this is how Samsung got big. They had just started investing in RAM manufacturing and Dell/Apple and the likes started signing long term contracts with Samsung for steady supply of RAM modules. Samsung Electronics Revenue grew x4 yoy one year around that time.

This is about the time when Dell signed 10 year contract with Samsung for computer parts. I learned much later that as a term of the contract, Samsung stopped selling Samsung branded laptops in North America. It was weird. Samsung had started making some good laptops but they suddenly disappeared from shelves in US. Laptop reviewers who reviewed them in EU praised them, but they were not sold in US.

I guess I am pretty old...

No not courts. Apple did not win in other non American courts. Not in Germany. Not in Japan. Not in Australia.

Only in a courtroom in Silicon Valley. And with a jury headed by a jury foreman with very questionable opinions and patents himself. He had to be told to shut up after the verdict because he was going around interviewing saying things that tainted the verdict not so greatly.

I agree that cars are not good for cities. When I was in S. Korea few years ago, I got to visit a newer apartment complex, with dozens of 20 - 30 stories tall apartment buildings. One important feature the builder/architect added is underground parking for all cars of visitors/residents. The entrance to the parking lot is right next to the street.

There are roads within the complex for Fire/emergency/moving-trucks, but no other cars are allowed onto the ground of the complex. So there are no cars driving around within the complex.

Not having to worry about dodging cars or dealing with car-noise/engine-exhaust-smell all combined to make the quality of life so much better. With some grass and greenery planted, walking within the complex felt like walking on a hiking trail. And this is in the of a huge apartment complex with thousands of units.

My goal is not to create a Venezuela like housing crisis.

But housing investment is sucking in $ from everywhere, even non-American investors. Some at top are raking in money while everyone else is paying for it.

There is a reason more and more wealth is concentrated in less and less people at the top.

The REAL cause of the housing crisis is more and more rich people/companies view real estate as a way to make money. Not just as a way to park wealth to defend against inflation, but to make $. With astounding return rate.

Frankly, I think the only way housing crisis can be resolved is

1. taxing severely anyone who owns multiple house/condos (not apartment units) with the plan of renting. Probably gradually higher tax rate based on number of units or monthly rent fee.

2. Heavy tax for profit made from flipping a house.

The goals of the tax would be to control excessive amount of $ from flowing into real estate.

Real estate investment is made out to be a really smart/great investment. But why?

One big reason for remote work was so that companies could stop paying big bucks for commercial real estate, which requires big money and long term commitment. But some and now many more seem to be going the extra mile and hire from outside of the major metropolitan areas. That way instead of just saving on real estate, they save on salary too.

+1 for Ansible from me.

Of all the tools, I first heard of Puppet first and so I'm assuming it was first on scene? From my limited experience, it seems Puppet is most widely used tool because of that reason. Not necessarily the best of the bunch, but first on the scene. Considering the effort required to roll it out, I am assuming whatever is deployed first will stay as the tool of choice.

I've tried out Puppet, SaltStack, and Ansible, in that order.

What I didn't like about Puppet is that once you deploy a change, the actual change can happen on the "client servers" at any point within next 20 minutes. I may be off on the exact duration but I remember that changes were deployed at any point within that range of time. To me that sounds like not a great idea. What if you want to switch over your web servers at a specific moment? And Puppet requires a dedicated command/control server.

Next I tried SaltStack. I liked it enough. Now that I think about it and hear someone else mention it, yah SaltStack is similar to Ansible. What drove me away from SaltStack was that you essentially need a dedicated command/control server from where all SaltStack commands are sent out to SaltStack "client servers". I did not want to dedicate resource (and money) for a server that is rarely used. And the personal web/lab servers I manage can grow small/large from 2 servers to 10 servers.

Next I tried Ansible. I think Ansible is the perfect choice for me. I only needed to 'devop' just a handful servers and also learn a tool that many businesses seemed to want on resume. So I picked Ansible and it's been great. Some operations are not as flexible as doing it with a shell script (and I assume same issue exists for other tools). But I've had good luck combining Ansible with little bits of shell script to get the result I need.

The best part of Ansible is that any Mac or Linux machine can be used as the "command server", provided that you have the SSH key pair on your Mac or Linux machine.

Lastly, some may not like the ad-hoc way of doing things on Ansible, but I prefer it that way.