Not Worried About A I

So many today seem to be worried about AI and how it is going to somehow become “smarter than Man”.

Now while I may be the first to admit such is possible – even yours truly is not the sharpest wick on the candle… or something – faster processors can easily outperform what we mere mortals can accomplish.

Still, I don’t see it being better than what we have now.

Case in point:

We have one of the really new, top-line photocopiers in our office.

It can copy from a wide number of inputs, format the output in a variety of ways, shine your shoes, and make a perfect cup of coffee but it still has a few bugs.

Went to copy something this morning and it refused to budge as it beeped the warning “original left on glass”.

So I lifted the cover to remove whatever original someone had inadvertently abandoned only to find nothing on the glass.

I closed the lid again but it still refused to copy because now “a compartment is open”. The compartment showing on the warning message was the cover I had lifted to retrieve the imaginary original left on glass.

So I opened the top again and closed it, getting the light and warning to stop.

When I pressed the START button, it came again with the warning “original left on glass”.

Three more attempts opening and closing the top cover finally consoled the beast of its imagined woes.

I made my copy and left.

AI seems an awful lot like people to me.

Things are Confusing Enough Without Help

I have done accounting work for many years, primarily accounts payable, and there is a practice I have seen over and over through the years that causes so many headaches.

Generally speaking, I’d have to say about 15% of the time is spent tracking down this problem. And the damnedest thing is, the problem should never have existed in the first place. Except by someone’s incompetency, institutionalized.

The practice is applying payments to an account rather than to a specific invoice.

Let’s say your company receives three invoices from Joe’s Mechanical on one day.
#1 is for $20 for a widget,
#2 is $2,000 for some work done, and
#3 is for a $4,000 machine.

You send around the invoices to the people in the company who need to approve the expenditures. #3 is approved immediately and you process it. #1 is waiting for the guy to return from vacation and #2 is waiting on verification of the work done.

Meanwhile, Joe’s company gets the $4,000 check and puts it on your account.

Next day, you get another invoice from Joe’s for $1,350 for another piece of equipment. You send #4 off to the approving party.

Meanwhile, the project manager for invoice #2 calls Joe’s and tells them the task was not done and was not even ordered. Joe’s issues a $200.00 credit for that but does not send a paper credit memo, just keeps it in their system.

Working efficiently, invoice #4 is approved and paid.

Then you get a notice from Joe’s accounting department that says there was a short pay on invoice #3 and you still owe $430.00.

While most people would pull up the records and start hunting, the simplest thing to do is ask Joe’s to send you the statement of the account. Otherwise you are going to be more confused than ever trying to nail this thing down.

And here’s what the statement would show:

Once you have seen their statement, you know the confusion arose from TWO different errors:
1st – they misapplied the payments and
2nd – the internal credit memo was for $200.00 rather than $2,000.00.

This fiasco could have been easily avoided if the vendor had applied the payments properly rather than in a haphazard fashion. Also, if the credit memo had been mailed to the customer, the discrepancy on that count could have been found rather quickly.

I know how this sort of thing came about.

In the primeval days of accounting, there was no computer software for this stuff. Mainly because the only computer was the Univac in New York. The PC was not even in anyone’s daydreams (well, mostly).

Accounting was done by hand, with a pencil, on columnar pads, where every transaction was entered. And it was so much simpler to run an account on a page with the running total. It was fairly standard practice and still led to the headaches outlined above.

But then came the computer and software capable of lightening the workload by the correct assignment of payments. No longer do you have to search back through a year’s worth of invoicing to clear up these problems.

Except when people do not input the data properly – or use inflexible or archaic software.

But even in the olden days, pre-PC, this was a problem.

Still, the problem above had with Joe’s mechanical is not that much of a mind-bending problem. The solution could be found rather quickly.

But what about a vendor who sends out numerous invoices to your firm on a weekly basis?

Firms I have worked for in the past have several facilities each using a certain shipping firm and all the bills are sent to the central office. The shipper seems to be using software that has this little problem – or their personnel need to be trained a little better.

Anyway, for those of you not involved in accounting, this post will be pretty meaningless… perhaps.

Though the problem may exist in other areas of life and business as well.

I have also noticed the same sort of things in shipping departments. Some orders are shipped short, and caught up in a later shipment but shorted from that one as well.

Humans seem to have a propensity for complicating things for everyone else just to make their own job simpler.

This is called laziness.

Procrastinator’s Meeting Canceled… er, Postponed

As a proud member of the Procrastinator’s Society – that is, if I would remember to mail in the damned membership application! – I was a bit disappointed to see that the upcoming meeting originally scheduled for February 5th, 2013, has been postponed. Again.

I know it is probably too late to complain about such a thing but I really wanted to review the minutes of that particular meeting as a topic near and dear to my heart was scheduled for discussion on that meeting’s agenda.

“Acting in a Timeful Manner” sounded like a crowd-pleaser to me and I really hoped to get some tips from it.

Not that I plan on getting around to anything in anything vaguely resembling a “timely” manner but I should certainly know how to act like I had done so.

And the “acting like” is much more important in today’s world than actually doing anything, right?

Subjective, at Best

I’ve often heard some guy mention encountering “bad sex”.

Most men will tell you “bad sex” is still miles above “no sex”.

I figure it’s all really just a matter of opinion and is not something you can closely define, codify, or quantify. People’s tastes are different.

Years ago, I read a book What Makes Women Good in Bed and its companion volume on the male of the species. Quite a lot of the survey results limited the liking or not liking to some physical characteristic of the female.

In the opposite volume, there were very few physical characteristics as the female were more attuned to the emotional attitudes of their partner.

And far more of the women mentioned having “bad sex” than did the men. So many of the women said the “bad” part was the men seeming to be in it only for their own – somewhat rather quickly gained – satisfaction.

Yes, it seems (surprise, guys!) it takes women somewhat longer to reach climax than men, on the average… but who wants “average sex”, huh?

Women generally tend to value the emotional aspects of the encounter more than the men (yes, men do have emotions… somewhere… I think… maybe…) who focus almost exclusively on the physical. Really smart guys will note that enhancing the emotional aspects will do a lot more for their partner unlike, well… themselves.

That said, there is no “one size fits all” in this area and the best way to get good at it with your partner is through trial and error.

And, hopefully, the error will grow to be a smaller factor over time.

Matrix Life… continued

Once you start to question the things around us, you might begin to wonder how and where it started.

So, you turn to “history”… and encounter other matrices specifically created to occlude truth. History, as they say, is written by the victors and as such has always been more than a bit suspect.

This is a rabbit hole into which most will not and should not venture as it really rattles the entire structure of the safe cage you have always thought nestled you snugly.

Another aspect of this matrixing is in our personal relationships. How many times have we heard people get blindsided by revelations about their spouse that they had no clue, even though there had been some telltale signs along the rocky road?

Even in this we tend to create a bubble of ignorance in order to increase that marvelous sense of safety and security.

Battered women will remain with the abusive spouse thinking that “this time things will be different”. Self-delusion is one thing we are very good at. At least for a while.

How long, however, can an entire society continue along this road?

Matrix Life

Anyone who has a problem with the idea that we are living in a virtual reality need only examine the record of Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade.

I am sure 99% of the people – at least the white folks of Dallas – felt quite secure in the safe environment Wade created for them. Today, of course, we now know a large number of his successful convictions have been overturned because of suppressed and falsified evidence, coercion, and illegally gained “confessions”.

It really was quite an illusion, a fiction… a virtual reality that existed only in the minds of the gullible. It was what they wanted to believe; safer to believe. To question was to doubt and to doubt… well, no one really need go there, do they?

Today, the small minority (less than 20%) still adhere to the official story of the JFK Assassination and a similar amount still adhere to the official version of the 9/11 events. Today we are hearing from journalists who have spent time in the war zones of the Middle East and we are hearing stories that do not exactly dovetail with the official versions of the news from that quarter.

In the novel 1984, George Orwell talked about a society that lived and believed in the lies their government told them. And, for the vast majority of the folks in the tale, they knew it was lies but went along with it anyway because it was the safest course of action, or inaction, to take.

Like the fictitious society in that novel, we have also embraced the matrix in which we live, the illusion of safety surrounding us because it helps us sleep better at night… so safe, so secure.

And if some future event should transpire where we found ourselves singled out for such outrage of being falsely accused of a crime, convicted on fake evidence, and executed, we can go to our Maker with the serene knowledge that our passing has – in so many ways – helped increase the feelings of safety and security for our fellow men. The sacrifice should seem worth it, right? We are all but martyrs for the common good, after all, each doing our parts to help secure the peace-of-mind enjoyed even by us up until the moment we became the scapegoat for the present, huh?

Just as the machinery of freedom needs the blood of patriots, on occasion, the machinery of this illusion also needs martyrs and their blood to keep those squeaky wheels greased, the gears turning, the money flowing, and the dopamine generators filling the receptors in the minds of all those unaffected by the outrages visited on a few minor, insignificant, souls who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Until then we can all waltz around on our drug of choice like the doomed populations found in “THX1138”, oblivious of the precipice we’re all sliding toward. Rejoice, like Winston Smith, and slide the evidence into the incinerator chute and remain assured that slavery is indeed freedom.

At least, until your number is called.

Catching that Golden Ring

Toilet humor is funny everywhere. Though most people claim it is very juvenile and nothing more that “eighth grade humor” it is bound to create laughter whenever and wherever presented, regardless of the age of the listener/viewer.

One thing that is not very humorous is going into a restroom when you have to sit down – for women, this is the usual case, for men, it is probably 25% of the time – and you find little yellow drips all over the seat.

Which guy thought he was that good an aim? Unless you have had many rigorous hours of perfecting you aim with a flaccid hose, you are not going to be able to hit the side of a barn much less the smaller target afforded by the oval interior of the seat.

Yes, I know the small opening in the seat at the front is supposed to alleviate this dysfunction but… see the paragraph preceding about the male’s ability to aim their stream. Invariably, either during the flowing process – especially when one of those pesky, kinky hairs gets caught across the stream’s aperture – or during the “shaking it off” process afterward, there is going to be errant sprays of the yellow fluid going onto the toilet seat.

And what is even funnier about this, I am sure every one of these unhygienic reprobates have needed a clean seat themselves at one point or another and had to dance from foot to foot while wiping up the mess from the seat so they could sit down and conduct their business.

It should seem a simple thing simply to lift the seat.

And here I can already hear the moans of the wounded males bemoaning their fate: if we touch the seat – even if is free from moisture due to a previous users’ failures – we are liable to get the “taint” from the seat (something akin to leprosy from what I’ve heard) onto our hands which, of course, would entail having to wash one’s hands before they conduct their business… You know, as well as afterwards because, as we all know, all men wash their hands before leaving the bathroom. But washing twice is simply wasteful!

Actually, I use a method that does not require cringing in horror or having to wash hands twice: I take a few squares of toilet tissue and raise the seat. Or you could even use the edge of your shoe to raise it – unless you fear of contaminating your shoe before you use it to make your dinner, or something. But after using the toilet paper to hoist the infected petard, you simply drop the paper into the toilet and get about your business.

Returning the seat to its proper position, of course, is optional and would require some very fancy footwork (or another piece of paper).

And, afterwards, you simply wash your hands… right, fellas?

the Lack of Search Engines

There are a lot of different search engines one can use today.

Unfortunately, very few of them are actually “search” engines anymore. Rather they are “find” engines.

By this, I mean they are not geared toward you wanting to search for something, it is geared to help you find product.

It has gone far beyond being a tool to search out data and information into that bastion of modern greed: another damned marketing tool.

Some search engines offer you that very tool: “privacy”, by promising to never save your personal or search information. Unfortunately, their engines work along the line of the algorithms used by the other monolithic marketing controls established by the galactic overlords.

Google controls the search market and has a feature that used to be very interesting, the “random” search. Today, it is nothing more than a search for what veryone else is searching for in the past few minutes. In other words, another marketing tool.

Yahoo!, who began by being a new and upcoming search engine before it was anything else, no longer uses its own search engine. No, it gives you Bing instead. Yeah, right. Like, that’s any better than anything else?

It used to be that search engines were used to locate data. If the results gave too much of one sort, the user could ad “- [that item]” and it would re-search but exclude those types of entries. Nowadays, it does no such thing. Why would advertisers pay you money if you allowed the consumers to remove you from the search. How dare they, huh?

Recently, I wanted an image of a nightstand in a darkened bedroom. I have seen several in the past year or two and searched “image of pocket change on nightstand in darkened room”. I immediately got two hundred images of nightstands for sale from Bed Bath and Beyond, Ikea, and the like. After careful examination, not a single one showed any sign of pocket change nor were any of them shown without the bright light one requires when trying to sell their products.

Another search “image of watch on shadowed nightstand” produced only a hundred photos of the brightly lit nightstands… the other hundred were… you guessed it: watches for sale.

Search engines are fairly useless when searching for things other than images as well.

A research search for medical studies related to asthma resulted in a variety of articles and wikipedia pages. After looking at the various articles and their blurbs – not what I was looking for – I clicked to go to the second page and saw… the exact same articles referenced along with the wikipedia pages.

The third page? Same stuff. The articles actually began changing on page eight for no apparent reason.

And this was on top of the fact that the search engine told me there was a total of 1,235,721 articles found. Then why couldn’t they show me a few more of those other articles?

Another thing, it used to be that the ads at the top of the page were marked off by a horizontal line, separating the ads from the actual searched for links. There were three or four ads and ten separate links.

Today it is completely different: ten ads and only five actual articles and there is, of course, no indicator where the ads end and the searched-for stuff begins.

No, search engines today are nothing more than marketing tools for commercial enterprises.

And thinking of them for anything else is a joke.

How else do you think Google came to be worth billions?

Certainly not for their social consciousness!

Oh, and I tried to find some other search engine but…

Oh, the Humanity!!

It’s finally happened!

I had read about blatant discrimination before… The gay couple in Oregon turned away from a bakery… a Trump spokesperson being tossed from a restaurant…

And now… THIS!

Yes, I was refused service, recently, at a small store (of a chain that I will not name for legal reasons).

Juggling several small items as I waited for one of the two cashiers to be free, the customer at one finished and I approached the cashier. I made it to the counter without dropping anything, thankfully.

Then I looked up to see the cashier scowling at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t serve your kind here.”

What? I thought. My “kind”??

Then, obviously noting my confusion, he clarified, “You’ll have to go out and change your shirt before I’ll serve you.”

Looking down to see what shirt I had worn… It was nothing more than my usual tee with the Washington Redskins logo on it.

I said, “Huh?”

He said, “I don’t serve your sort here.”

“What would be acceptable?” I asked. “A Patriots shirt?”

He shook his head. “No, only Cowboys fan apparel. We have standards here.”

The other cashier finished with her customer about then and I pushed my pile of goods over to her side of the counter.

She smiled and asked, “Will there be anything else?”

I said “No,” and she rang me up.

The other cashier was still giving me the evil eye.

Sadly, I shook my head at him and wondered what the world was coming to.

This personal bias discrimination is getting out of hand!

And over something as minor as this!

Anti-Freeez

If anyone is interested in a new idea for a program…

How about a new computer program that allows you to interrupt a process.

When a windows program is taking too long to process (giving that all too familiar “Not Responding” warning) you can interrupt the process you started, allowing whatever the heck is going on in the background to cease before you inadvertently overloaded the system…

It also shows you which process(es) were ongoing that delayed the system and allows you to “park” the other processes to allow you to take control of your system.

Task Manager used to have this sort of functionality but the “bright boys and girls” over at Microsoft changed it.

Someone really needs to put that function back into the system.

Because, after all, whose f**king computer is it anyway?