Me, the Internet & I

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Once upon a time, in an alleyway far, far away, there was a little boy named Duane who desired to have a web page of his own. Web pages were rare back then, kind of like squirrels, and birds, which aren’t real, so when little Duane decided to make this web page, he enchanted it with a special power, one that both told the truth and spelled words corectly. This was a great achievement, kind of like when Bob dated the head cheerleader during the senior prom game. We all remember what we were during on that night…crying and complaining that we weren’t Bob. Now, while Bob went on to such greatness as 5 to 20 in the county prison, and managed to get all 20 years of that sentence, including two extra years because the Warden just felt it was needed, most of the rest of us never achieved such greatness of Bob; most of us becoming doctors, lawyers, plastic surgeons and other made-up occupations we tell to girls when we meet them at bars and disreputable locations.

But little Duane wanted a web page of his own. He knew he couldn’t afford one, because to buy one took hundreds, and possibly thousands of dollars. So, little Duane bought a book instead. Actually, he bought four books: The Wolloping Wollaper, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Little Boy Who Bought Candy For His Neighbors (specifically as it was big enough to hide the first two books), and How to Make Your Own Web Page. When little Duane got home, he tossed all the other books and began reading How to Make Your Own Web Page almost every day he was awake. Not so much on the days he wasn’t home. He read it from page one to the very end. And then he read from the very end to the front and realized it didn’t make as much sense in that direction. But he read it that way because he suspected there were going to be secrets, and there were, but it was mostly secrets like .tnetnoc dooG .ti no tnetnoc tup dna egap bew a teG

Years later, little Duane created his renowned web page, the one read by famous people and criminals of all walks of life, revealing that there was a species of life walks that actually read. But that’s for another article.

Anyhoo, so I’m kind of getting off track here. What I really wanted to talk about was stuffed animals. (looks around) No one into that? Okay, I’ll try to continue with what I was talking about: Web pages.

My web page was online for close to twenty years now, almost as soon as the Internet was invented by Al Gore and Elon Musk in their laboratory next to their garage. It would have been by Steve Jobs but that loser was working in his garage trying to invent computers. Man, such losers.

But little Duane invented his web site and everyone around the world was simply amazed. I emphasize: Simply. So, if I did have something to tell you, it’s that two years ago, after 14 years and 599 posts, everything disappeared. I’d like to say the whole world disappeared because that would make one hell of an awesome novel. Come on, Stephen King, we need you now more than ever. But yeah, I went onto my web site one everning, and everything was gone. My web page, my Internet’s access, and I was staring at zero content. Nothing saved. Nothing to recall back on.

I was pissed, but I called my Internet company and told them the problem. The guy working customer service from India had both no idea how it happened and no idea what I was saying. I know that mostly the customer service at least speak English but after about ten minutes I started to suspect that this guy couldn’t even speak his native language. Cause I speak quite a few languages and I suspect that his was one of those. He couldn’t understand me, and I couldn’t understand him.

Finally, I got someone who did speak a language I understood (hint: it wasn’t English). I explained the whole dilemma to him that when I went to my web page (http://www.duanegundrum.com), there was nothing there.

So, I gave up. I would never have a web page again. I loved this web page, but it just wasn’t worth it. So I cancelled the auto renew feature and three months later, they charged me any way. How, I don’t know. And then they fought me through the payor service. I just couldn’t win.

A year later, for the fun of it (as I was still paid up for this web page, I contacted their customer service and got someone who actually spoke English, was really kind and friendly, and helped me fight crime wearing his own personal Batman costume. Okay, one of those three wasn’t real; man, he was mean and unfriendly.

He managed to get my web site running again. I think it sunk to a strange level of one of the nine hells. Possibly an unknown tenth levell that even Thor didn’t want to visit. But this guy did. Not only could he fight as Batman, but he found my web site.

So, what all of this is meant to say is that my web site is up and running again, and hopefully, none of Thor’s enemies are intending to knock it off line again.

I mean, why would they try. I got Batman on my side. You don’t f’ with Batman, even if you think you’re the Joker.

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Gardening in the Concrete City: It’s Not You–It’s Me

Relationships
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One day in the Spring, I sat in the garden and looked at a wilting plant that was supposed to be a thriving abundance of vegetables I had planted earlier in the season. But there was no life, just a drooping, dying plant that had been picked clean by aphids and predatory insects. My months of nurturing this garden amounted to a complete and dismal failure. On this day, I sat down next to this dying plant and pretty much gave up. Not just on gardening, but on pretty much everything.

It’s not just you. It’s me.

Those were her last words to me. Not good-bye, not a fight, and not anything of any substance. Just an apology and then she cut the string on the two cans we used to communicate between us.

You see, this garden was to be my refuge from a life that wasn’t going as I had planned. I had such high ideals and plans for myself that should have put me in a much different place than where I ended up. My bestselling novels didn’t amount to the selling of any books, my occupation had stalled and sort of retreated because my desires were loftier than my accomplishments, and the relationship I had cultivated with the girl of my dreams had failed, miserably. Thankfully, the Veranda Experts had some tips and advice for my garden to bloom and thrive. And while my efforts felt futile, I considered seeking advice from Utility Surveyors to better understand the land and any underlying issues that might affect my gardening. In addition, if I were dealing with a different kind of space, such as a high-tech environment, I’d be looking into Cleanroom flooring services to ensure everything was up to standard. The only thing that could have made this moment worse was rain. Also, if you’re looking to enhance the aesthetic appeal of your house, you can check out this company for more information.

It’s not just you. It’s me.

And then it rained. And then it poured. And then it thundered and lightning’d all over the place, as if to not only remind me that sometimes life sucks, but that sometimes life sucks times a million. Then the storm destroyed what was left of my garden. And all metaphors for a sucky life just sort of laughed at me. And I sat in the rain and got drenched.

The garden was supposed to be my way to forget about it all. Things hadn’t been working out (see above), so I lived in this house that had a really nice area for a garden. There wasn’t one there before, so I thought what a cool idea it would be to expend all of my energy trying to breathe life into some plants. I went to the store, bought a bunch of vegetables I thought might be tasty to munch on one day, and I toiled the soil, or so they say, or at least I think that’s what farmers say. I mean, I had no experience in farming. None. I might have watched Little House on the Prairie once, but that was about as close as it came. And I didn’t really pay all that much attention to the farming on that show when I did watch it, so I didn’t really have a lot of usable experience here. But I was going to garden. Amidst my earnest but inexperienced attempts, I couldn’t help but ponder the history of Japanese knotweed, a plant known for its tenacity and ability to flourish in adverse conditions, unlike my struggling vegetable garden.

And garden I did.

I hoed and hoed and planted and planted and watered and talked to the plants, and then I waited. Meanwhile, I hoed some more and watered and talked and all that sort of stuff.

You see, I didn’t want to deal with my life. I fell into a depression that was just getting worse each day. The logical thing would have been to get back out there and start regaining back some of what I had lost, but I sort of gave up. All that I really had was my gardening. And I figured if that was all I could do, then that was all I was going to do.

But it never grew. The garden died almost as soon as it started to grow. It was like nature was waiting for it to sprout and then pounced on it almost immediately. It didn’t stand a chance.

I was never going to be a gardener.

During that storm, I sat in the rain and just let the world pound down on me. I figured it was doing what the universe wanted to do to me any way. At some point, I went back into the house, tossed the gardening stuff I had with me into the trash and then went to bed. That night, I figured I had nothing left worth working for, and probably nothing left worth living for. The storm had washed away anything worth continuing.

The next morning, I puttered around the kitchen for a bit and then wandered out into the backyard to see what damage the storm had done to my obliterated garden. Hopping through the defunct garden was a little brown bunny, sniffing away, looking for something to eat.

“You’re too late,” I said. “The storm already killed it.”

The bunny just stared at me for a second, probably wondering if I was a threat, and then it hopped away, never to be seen again.

It’s not just you. It’s me.

I went back into the house and made some breakfast for myself. Somehow, it didn’t seem as bad right then as it did the night before.

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Statistics and Pigeons

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I was teaching to a college audience this morning when I was trying to educate on how statistics work, and what makes them credible. For somee reason, I couldn’t get the class to understand why not all statistics are credible. What got me stuck was that every student in the room was somehow taught that statistics are relevant as long as they are statistics. I guess watching some Youtube video taught these students that what makes something credible is that they have statistics backing up their conclusions.

Moving on from that, I came across an article that indicated that the last instance of spontaneous combustion occurred in 2010, and that incidents tend to occur every 14 years. Which brought me to the college student conclusion that the next incident is about to happen next year in 2024.

And this has me scared because statistically one in a total of over 6 billion people is going to spontaneously combust this year, and that person could end up being me. I mean, I know how statistics work (even if I can’t explain it to a group of freshmen students in college successfully), and even though I do, it still scares me. I mean, out of that 6 billion people, it has to happen to someone, right? Why not me? I mean, I’m not exactly exempt just because I paid my taxes on time. That ole’ spontaneous combustion monster is out to get me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Oh, sure, I could argue that tobacco related diseases is much worse (it’s going to kill 480,000 people this year, which is a much lower number than 1 that spontaneous combustion will kill), auto related deaths (42,915 give or take a self-imploding 1970’s Pinto), 686 mass shooting incidents (not per death but incidents that led to death; think about that one a second), 9 death by tortoise and 6 crushed by a cactus.

I mean, serious, who can’t see a tortoise coming at you in time to jump out of the way? Wait. A cactus. How does that even happen?

Sorry, I got distracted there.

Perhaps the point isn’t that people don’t understand statistics nor that they don’t believe them, but I suspect that we see so many numbers on a daily basis that none of them seem to have any meaning to us any more. I check the weather and suddenly a splattering of numbers appears that tells me the weather, humidity and some barometer thing that no one understands either. I might understand the weather is going to be 97 tomorrow, but this is Texas. It’s ALWAYS 97.

I turn on the news, and they’re throwing numbers at me. Percentage of people who like one political candidate more than another. Gerrymandering, where large numbers are used to explain other numbers that should take precedent over the large numbers. Economics made simple so us humans can understand, but delivered in a way that makes me feel like I should have been a banker instead of a college professor. B roll of pigeons.

Why is the news showing B roll of pigeons?

I guess what I’ve been trying to say is that this is the time of the year when you need to choose an ice cream flavor and stick with it. Too many people can’t decide on one flavor.

So decide on a flavor, people!

Thank you.

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Bill

Business, Computer Games, Memoirs, ,
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I’m starting to get old. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mind getting old. What I do mind is the inevitable. And, honestly, I never thought I’d be ready for it.

Recently, I wrote an article about my roommate in college who passed away. Tom was a good friend of mine, and he was always my greatest advocate.

Bill was also a great friend of mine. But he and I had kind of simmered on our friendship for the only reason that I now lived in Texas, and he lived in California. However, whenever I got the opportunity to travel back to California, he and I returned to our friendship almost as if we had never parted. A short while ago, I received a message that he had passed away, too.

One of my recent plans had been to make it back to California so he and I could hang out again. Now, I don’t have a single reason why I would make the trip. Bill’s no longer there.

So, let me tell you about Bill. He used to work for a bunch of computer gaming companies. When I was working for Maxis (and then EA), he would be working for companies like LucasArts and Microprose. He was an actual pilot, so when those companies were designing flight sims (like Xwing, Tie Fighter and F-15 Eagle) he was always there testing out those types of games.

One of my favorite stories was when he was testing X-Wing, and the producer had told him that it was impossible to destroy the Imperial Star Destroyer that was producing all the enemies in the game, he spent days flying missions against it until he turned off the damage on his own vessel and finally destroyed the Imperial Star Destroyer. After a couple of days, the developers indicated that it was impossible to destroy the Imperial Star Destroyer.

Having felt like he had laid down the law, the developer thought nothing of it as Bill spent days flying endless sorties against the Star Destroyer, and then he destroyed it again. But this time on the hardest level.

The developers, after discussing it amongst themselves, decided to add a readme file on the main disk indicating that “if you destroy the Star Destroyer, you might not be able to finish the game.”

One of my other favorite stories of his exploits was the origin of his ecology degree from UC Berkeley where he had gone to college after his time in the Army as an Army pilot. He was on the original GI Bill, and the way it used to be structured was you could continue your education until you graduated, and then it was over. So, Bill being like Bill was, continued until he was about finished with one degree and then he would change his degree to something else. He did this for a very long time until the Department of the Army sat down with Berkeley, and an offer was made that he could choose several degrees (of his choosing), and they would confer it upon him. So, the ecology degree ended up being one of the ones he chose, just cause it sounded kind of cool.

My other favorite story was one that everyone wished they had done themselves, and it involved the pettiness of a ticket he received from the city that was for several hundred dollars. And add to it that they had sent him a threatening letter if he didn’t pay it immediately.

So Bill took the train to downtown and walked in to pay his bill. And he brought a handful of dollar bills to pay it.

So, the clerk took the money, counted it and determined there were several dollars missing. Bill swore there was an exact amount, so the clerk spent quite a while counting it again. This time, she came up with a different amount, but not the amount that was supposed to be there.

So, this went on for several more rounds until a supervisor came over, grabbed the money and counted it himself. He came up with a number far below the amount required. So he told Bill he’d have to get the proper amount and return.

Bill swore the amount was correct. He’d counted it a bunch of times before coming in.

The boss started counting again, got about a third of the way through and then just shoved the money into a drawer, saying: “Fine. He paid the right amount. Give him a receipt.”

So Bill walked out of their with a happy grin.

Now, these are all stories told to me by Bill over the years, and the one reason I believe him on each story is because he told me these stories over and over, thinking he was telling me them for the first time. So, if they didn’t really happen, at least he believed in them. And that was all I needed.

Bill was one of those people who had brilliant ideas that were completely out of left field. I remember when I had a theory about how gravity was a physical property, not just an action on something else. I thought it was completely original, but the second I told it to Bill, he started analyzing how my theory might actually exist and exactly how we could test it. Unfortunately, neither of us had an actual spacecraft needed to test it, but we discussed it late into the night, throwing theories back and forth.

The point being: A guy with his degree from Berkeley in various disciplines was capable of going toe to toe with a guy with a physics degree from West Point. And his analysis was good.

We’re a couple of months away from the actual release of Starfield, and as much as I long to play it, I really wish it would have come out earlier, because this is the type of game Bill would have loved. And he would have found a way to break it, too, cause that’s what he did.

And no one did it better.

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Is the United States Heading Towards a Civil War?

News, Politics
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As someone who did his doctoral work in political science (and then subsequent graduate work in communication), let me tell you a secret that people almost always miss when it comes to the concept of civil war: No one EVER sees it coming. No one.

During the US Revolutionary War (which could be considered a Civil War as it involved fighting amongst Americans against Americans (as well as the outsiders who were theoretically in charge of the insiders at the time). For the sake of this essay, I’m referring to the people who fought against neighbors. And to make things even more complicated, most neighbors may not even known they were in the middle of a revolution until it was practically over. They were living their normal lives, farming or making products, and their only brush with the knowledge there was fighting might have been Revolutionary soldiers or British conscripts who crossed their lands at one time or other.

Forward just a few years after our conflict, and the French were in the middle of a civil war, often called another revolution. Some say it started because they had seen what had happened to the United States, but regardless, when it happened to the French, most were taken completely by surprise. Even the people who should have been knowledgeable. You know, the people who ended up getting their head chopped off for being in the parties of the people who lost. When Marie Antoinette said: “Let them eat cake,” she was not suggesting a desert choice for dinner. She was oblivious to the fact that things were going to come at her and come at her fast.

That’s kind of how I see things happening right now. The United States has had the luxury of nothing truly bad happening on its shores for over two hundred years. Sure, a bunch of religious fanatics, with connections to ideologies in foreign lands, flew a bunch of airlines into some or our largest buildings. But that’s not what I mean by bad happenings on our shores.

For over a hundred and fifty years, we’ve had nothing serious consume our homeland that threatened the very nature of what we stood for. Other than World War II, which was basically a challenge to Europe and the Pacific Rim, we’ve had it pretty lucky with most of our conflicts stemming from U.S. attempts at enforcing Marshall Plan-like proclamations. But those rarely threatened the daily lives of American citizens.

However, right now, we seem to be heading for conflicting territory in our future, the kind of mixed narrative where no one knows where it might end up, and any guess might just be more dangerous than saying nothing at all. In most civil wars, and I’m talking about a history of them from all corners of the globe, they happen for reasons you can never predict, and they explode in ways that no one can be sure they won’t end up under a guillotine or at the end of a firing range.

Civil Wars in Africa and East Asia have resulted in some of the worst atrocities imagined where common citizens were picked out of common groups and executed. Sometimes, people are killed for just looking one color or for having an occupation that someone believes to be a future threat.

But here’s the secret: The usual response is that “oh, that’s just in Africa and East Asia!” But here’s the thing: It’s not about where these things have happened; it’s about how they’ve gone from military targets to civilian targets. And what people don’t want to believe is that it’s not relegated to Africa and East Asia.

The United States’ citizenry has a unique history of murdering its own. In the United States, we have gangs that coordinate racial, ethnic, racist, religious and sometimes just local bullies. Historically, they have targeted less defended populations and harassed and/or killed them.

What is to stop anyone from thinking that these types of organizations, once there is rationale for the elements of civil war, won’t take it upon themselves to target those same demographics now that they have a justification for going after them? That’s pretty much how it’s always happened in the past. There are documented cases during a 19th century Civil War in France where shopkeepers used their ties to the leaders of a winning side (at least during two year periods of control) to target shopkeepers who were in competition with them, killing them so that they would no longer have to compete. That’s pretty much capitalism at its worse attribute.

Right now, the United States has split down the middle in a way not seen in the 1860s. Sadly, most people don’t realize that this isn’t new. The U.S. has always had this division. We just didn’t have the capability of recognizing it with some amount of immediacy. Up until now, we had mass communication, but that mode of speed was contained mostly by media and academics. Now, everyone, through social media, has instant communication. People who hate other people are now in contact with people who feel the same way, and they’ve become quite vocal.

For a few decades, we were generally okay because at least our politicians weren’t stupid enough to exploit this hatred Americans have towards other Americans. Now, that cat is out of the bag. And I don’t think anyone can figure out how to put the cat back into the bag, or even if America might bounce back to the way it was before the bag was opened.

We’re heading for a Civil Awakening, and whether that leads towards a Civil War is anyone’s guess, but from what I can see, NONE of the politicians trying to lead the country are capable of keeping it from happening. What we need right now is a completely different voice from what we’ve been hearing. We need someone who has a future vision of America where everyone benefits, not just one group of people rather than another group of people.

Our political parties are part of the problem. The Republicans represent a party that’s only desire is to benefit very rich citizens. Pretending to be for the people, specifically Rednecks that drive pick up trucks and wear baseball caps, has been dishonest for the last 60 years when they might have had an argument to make. Unfortunately, the Democrats have a similar problem. They advocate that they are for the lower classes, the middle class, and every disenfranchised demographic that is conceived by all sorts of parameters, but once elected to higher office, they immediately enact laws that protect specifically banks and very rich people. Meanwhile, a minority of their party still tries to advocate for the downtrodden, but not enough of them do in order to justify the appeal for 50 percent of the available votes.

The problem is that the people ONLY have a choice between these two parties. And this leaves a lot of people truly feeling disenfranchised when they become smart enough to realize what is really going on. Sure, they could vote for third parties, but in a two party system our country was built around, most of us are screwed.

And when people recognize they have no voice (and never will), the idea of revolution or civil war starts to sound appealing.

But like I said: If someone new with a completely different vision comes along, and at least one of the parties buys in, we might have a chance. Otherwise, we’ll exist on co-pilot until someone like the orange bufoon comes along with a more serious agenda that takes us right into the arms of an autocracy. And then it’s too late to care because those who do will end up being rounded up.

That’s how it usually happens. And you’ll never see it coming.

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America Has a Problem, and We Refuse to Face It

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On June 30th of this year, America achieved a milestone that set this year apart from previous years. And no, it had nothing to do with eating contests or Celebrity Jeopardy. No, this had everything to do with how many mass killings we achieved in the first half ot this year. We had 28 mass killings (more than four deaths in one instance) wheras in 2006, we had 27.

27 of those deaths involved guns (4 of which involved AR-15s) and one involved an arson, so this could easily be one of those articles about how guns are out of control. But I’m going to spare you from that. Instead, I want to talk about something more important, a factor that we should have been talking about a long time ago.

I’m talking about mental health.

One thing I’ve always found to be interesting is that after one of these minor massacres, politicians tend to stake them out on specific platforms. Liberals will generally commit themselves to the idea that guns need to either be removed or regulated while conservatives will pretend guns don’t exist at all and say either we need more thoughts and prayers or they will talk about the need for mental health focus.

And then they’ll never mention mental health again.

The reality is that we need mental health coverage and focus for a lot of people who have been targeted as needing such coverage, but in reality that costs money, and one thing conservatives won’t do is spend money, unless it’s to cover defense spending.

And while liberals are generally for mental health coverage, they’re generally not interested in focusing on it as long as their energy is centered on controlling or eliminating guns.

The biggest problem we seem to be facing is that neither side is capable of focusing on more than one issue at a time. But it shouldn’t be hard to see that if we started to focusing on mental health, we might solve one of the bigger problems that has reared in American society.

Let’s look at mental health in recent history: In 1967, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act allowed for those struggling with mental health to be placed in mental hospitals in hopes of improving their mental health. But there were a lot of problems during this period, including horrible methods of treating those in custody. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter created a presidential commission on mental health with the idea of reforming a lot of these procedures. In 1981, when Ronald Reagan became president, he ended the Lanterman-Petris Short Act and pretty much kicked all of the people with mental health issues back onto the streets. Today, we don’t have much of a process with dealing with mental health issues unless police or medical officials can get a patient to admit that he or she intended to cause someone else or themselves some type of bodily harm. Then, and only then, can they admit someone into a medical facility as a danger to themselves.

That’s where we are today and why police services have such a hard time handling risky cases of potential mass killings. Their hands are tied, and the citizens are left fending for themselves.

Unfortunately, the only way to solve this is to either be viligent all the time (which is practically impossible) or for our elected leaders to do something to protect the people. Either this has to happen from Congress, which is the entity that in all theoretical terms should be the one to make such a thing happen. However, the president can do so as well through executive order, although ironically such an order would be constitutionally appealed by members of Congress and then sent to the Supreme Court, which in today’s environment, would probably reject the order on those grounds. That would leave a challenge to the Supreme Court, but if there’s no court case that is making the grounds to the Supreme Court, then they have no grounds to hear one. It is doubtful another fanciful cake bakery case would make its way to the Supreme Court covering this issue, so that’s not an option either.

In the old days we’d argue that if we wanted to get such a thing done, you’d need to write your member of Congress, but our country now exists within a vacuum, meaning that our representatives rarely respond to our interests any more these days, so one can only wonder if the second half of 2023 is going to lead us to reach another zenith in numbers of mass killing deaths.

For context, in 2019, there were 46 mass killings. We’re now at 28, which means we’re 18 away. I hope we don’t continue this trend. But all I have is hope, which isn’t much considering both hopes and prayers haven’t helped us in the first six months of this year.

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