Sunday, November 10, 2019

Return from Another System Hack

11-03-2019
 A whole weekend off, a rarity of the prior job, but I had to give it up as I was feeling so trashed from the physical duties and the long hours, six days a week. Now, for a prospective month or so, I am back doing viticulture duties. My new employer is in the business of viticulture services, that is, undertakes the duties for vineyard owners who don't wish to do or manage the work themselves. In some cases it is established wineries, other clients are small holding owners, others wish for a single service, say spraying etc. They manage some 300 acres over some 40 clients. In other words, lots of variety and different tasks, even if it is near the end of picking. I have been working on vine pulling the past few days on one site, as this particular plantation hasn't done well. On another site, I was helping the surveyor to lay out the end post locations and the line posts. Hopefully we will have time to get the posts in before the pegs get buried in snow, as it has been cold this past week.

And by way of another system hack, it seems I have a temporary respite before another crash, this being the "Pink Screen of Death", a little more colorful than Microsoft's gift to the world, the "Blue Screen of Death", aka BSOD. In the case of the former, pink and white squiggly lines suddenly inhabit the display and it freezes inside of  a few seconds. Microsoft Windows invoked recoveries are hopeless. The bad news it that the problem never got fixed because the PC repair shop doesn't know what the problem is, even if they replicated it with several different graphics cards installed. A new PC they say, the drivers are out of date, Nvidia doesn't make them anymore, the PCIe is 2.0 when the current standard is 3.0, blah, blah etc. It seemed like grim news, so I spent most of the weekend studying the problem online, using the spare PC, also prone to flakiness, though of a different kind. (Boot up is peculiar sometimes). And it doesn't have access to this blog and allowing more postings, hence the hiatus. In other words, this blog posting could be held up yet again should this here PC have another squiggly line episode.

But I should be clear, I am not alone; this problem has gone back at least 8 years to prior Windows versions, and there is no certain remedy. Some say it is drivers, others say power fluctuation from the power supply, others say graphics card age, others say memory, others say its the CPU. That's four possible problems already, but the thing is that I never had a problem like this until after the RAID card was installed in mid summer. That was in response to the motherboard's RAID "somehow" not working correctly, hence a prior workaround that had to be attended to as no one was sure it was really in a RAID disk array.

I cannot count the number of times I have wanted to back myself up and have greater security of my computer files, and I am constantly thwarted. (RAID1 and greater makes multiple copies on different storage devices at the same instant). And there is only one outfit on this planet who has such a consistent track record in foiling my every effort, this one in particular. It has their modus operandi written all over it; once helpful PC techs now don't have a clue, and aren't offering much help, and over this same technical issue. Just what is their fucking problem? RAID arrays are ubiquitous, and have been around for 30 years, and yet I get constantly fucked on this issue. (For example, the above-mentioned on-board ASUS RAID "failing"). The whole RAID card installation this past summer, possibly the real culprit in the PSOD games, never would of happened if the usually reliable motherboard's RAID array somehow didn't work.

And too, the Psychopaths seem to get such a delight in having me function on another system, (above mentioned flaky starting PC), build up my habits there for a few weeks, (represented by lots of tabs open, as well as doing picture scanning), and now return me to the main PC. Now, I have to pull all of these efforts and interests for the past two weeks together, and get them back on one organized location on one PC. The perps just love that stuff; different files in different places, and the prodigious effort to get them back as a single unified collection, as well as getting my open tabs altogether. Easy you might say, all on a single home network. But no, Firefox won't synchronize the open tabs for "some reason: (even if set up to do so) , and Windows "somehow" doesn't see the PC 2' away that is on this network and is running. Well done assholes; the easiest and most natural thing to do, consolidate one's files and efforts, and yet this constant sabotage that creates this bifurcation and then furthers the sabotage so the effort is 50x more than what it needs to be, at greater risk.

And whatever this insane fuckery is about, over "distributed data" (more like a mess of unmanaged copies) and thwarting efforts to pull it together into a logical whole, is the very same issue for what I was employed for from 2000 to 2009, when designing and building a relational database for forest inventory sample plots. The organization idiocy, self-defeating fumbling, putzing and contractor fraud that I had to deal with was astounding. Finally, when I had budget authority, I hired a few good guys and assumed the role of a playing coach; I knew the business, did the major forestry analysis, and my guys put it into code, forms, tables, reports and did all the database admin to push changes through. They also contributed to the data analysis as I did not have sufficient knowledge about the business of data processing, and in one case, one of my guys came through with a magnificent model to deal with the myriad business rules, no matter what the context was, from data loading, valid values, to business reasonableness, to downstream data derivations etc. Anyhow, a magnificent project in the end, despite the organization landmines and loony traps placed in our way. But all related to the very same issue of the last four weeks; messed up data in different places that should be consolidated, logically arranged and secure. And yet again, (per above) more sabotage on this front, even if it is just "little old me", thankfully without organization adversity thrown in; "just" technical adversity this time. A word to the Psychopaths; just leave me and my data the fuck alone; I am quite capable of managing both, and would be a whole lot better at it without constant interference.

Aside from working with some new characters this week, and presumably, for the next three or so, I got some scanning done my photographs, some in negative form, some as slides, and some as prints. It is going to take a while, never mind cleaning up some of them as the color prints are yellowing some, and even the slides are losing their color intensity. Which will mean substantial playing around with image processing software. The Psychopaths made sure I was roundly annoyed at the outset as the software that came with the scanner; it won't handle 48 bit color. Like WTF; that is the standard for digital photographic manipulation, so perhaps one day I shall have to pony up for Photoshop, though I am going to give the free GIMP a shot at first to see if I can pull out the best in my old photographs.

And as this PC is much faster and with more memory, I will also pursue my new CAD interests; there are some much needed (IMHO) improvements needed for my hand pruners, and the parts need to be designed first. Although I have knowledge of raster and vector image processing in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), I am finding myself on a new road of refinement when those concepts ares taken into CAD drawings, based on my scannings of the parts. The scanning and the CAD interests are two similar and interesting pursuits I was also deprived of these past two weeks while this here PC was taken out of service. The Psychopaths just love that too; begin an initiative, or even a task, and then get "presented with circumstances" (read arranged interference) that cause its delay and for me eventually (usually) to be able to return to the effort. Well done assholes; there isn't a single thing that hasn't been hacked and/or delayed since this insane harassment began in 04-2002.

And in many cases before 04-2002, it was already prevalent, but not to this present level of consistency and obviousness. Though prior to the day infamy when the perps went berserk/overt in 04-2002, I suspect that in the event I began to make mental notes of peculiar similarities, they backed off to maintain their cover and not have anyone put in a unexpected position of making up more stories that just didn't add up. And too, fail my (then mediocre) lie-spotting skills, now much more elevated due to this concerted orchestration of stalking, fuckery and imposed adversity.

SOF... stalked my ass



11-04-2019
Another day of pulling vines; I was the guy setting the choker on the trunk below the graft union, and the other guy ran the tractor to pull them out. A near 8 hour day of this to finish the job, and I was too bushed to go to yoga. I got all dressed up, decided to lay down to relieve my back, and just couldn't bring myself to get up and go 30 minutes later. Hence a continued lie down, and no sleep, just too whacked out to get up. I never experienced these kind of "In-between" sleeps/rests before all this abuse came down, and I reckon this is one more of their sleep/rest fuckery games. If I wasn't too bushed doing this last week, then why was I so wiped out today with a weekend off?

At least the Psychopaths didn't interfere to the high level of vexation they imposed last week; the chain would jam and bind unexpectedly, plant debris would somehow arrive and find its way to obstruct my vision as I was about to set the hook on the chain, or other fuckups that were just relentless. I would seem to me that at least sometimes things would go my way, but no, it was fight with the plant debris, chain etc. And that is typical of how they like to interfere; lay on extreme adversity at first and then slowly back off some, but on occasion, they will bring back some components from their adversity arsenal.

And just as well I skipped yoga this week; last week they near stacked the class with half males, highly irregular by any attendance I have observed. At least eight in a class of 16, most never been seen before, and seemingly they all got trained by the same Fuckwit in advance to lay on the heavy breathing. It was ridiculous as it was laughable; like WTF, here we are in a rest position in mid-class for a minute or so, and some idiot-male is doing heavy breathing. Yes, once they did bring a male jelly-gutted male and plant him around me for about six classes, and he was terribly out of shape and should not of been in an advanced class, and he was doing heavy breathing and sweating to keep himself going. But these dudes, while not real yogis, aren't nearly as flabby in the main, and here they are in heavy breathing mode. And for crissakes dudes, keep your shirts on, especially the flabby one.

Obviously, the Psychopaths are on a campaign to increase associated maleness in my proximity, as they have been slowly and steadily increasing the dude count in yoga. Then every few months, they reach a set point, and put in all females in the class, and until another set-point (it seems), they incrementally add more males. Thanks assholes, I can do without them, even if you are on a campaign to exercise/expose my subconscious traumatization reactions (abreactions) to males, which very likely were part of the abuse during the Lost Years, when aged 2 to 5, when my recall was wiped out. I have read enough from others of that era, and it wasn't pretty. Others, such as Anne Diamond, still don't know what happened to them. In any event, I don't need to be rehabilitated, I just need to be left the fuck alone. But they never get that. Which suggests my abreactions are a barrier to more brain and energy fuckery and research they have in mind.

11-05-2019
I picked up vine trunks and carried them to the roadside for 4 hours, and that was my work for the day, despite prior assurances the Boss Man was to show up with a trailer and I was to help him load and dump them. He phoned around 1100h and said that he would help tomorrow, and later in the evening, my co-worker said he would be doing this tomorrow. Being new to this outfit, and the Boss Man, it seems that surely he can show up if he commits? I had my doubts though, as he showed me X-rays of his artificial hip, and it just seems that active vineyard work isn't the best thing to do for him. Earlier this year, he re-injured his artificial hip, so I am sure he must be favoring it so not to repeat such an episode. So why the stated commitment to help, and then backing off, twice? Whatever; another human behavior mystery to resolve.

And what is with the stalking at SOF still at a high pitch? I got royally hounded on my last visit three days ago during the afternoon, so I figured I would go back today, later at my usual visit time of 1900h or later. They were still on my ass at the chocolate section again, putting on successive stalkers within 3 minutes of each other. Funny how sparsely populated aisles (at that time) just "happen" to have people around when I am at my usual haunt.

Binge -watching Unsolved Mysteries, the original version this past month.... It just seems that some of the stories don't add up. Or more to the point, there are many additional questions to be answered and the show is failing to ask them. On other occasions, the police and prosecutors are deliberately dragging their feet and not doing their job of investigating the crime scene properly. Perhaps I should do a critique of some of these stories, but perhaps it has been done by someone else (like a blog). In one case, "The Boys on the Track" (as in killed and laid on a railway track for the train to run them over), "happens" to have considerable connection to the drug smuggling activity at Mena of the Clinton-Arkansas governance days. It took considerable effort on the part of one of the parents to get the body exhumed and re-examined, as the coroner blew the case off as a drug induced misadventure. Eventually an "uncertain" determination was made, meaning the police aren't going to do much either. But, when reviewing Arkancide, likely much more recent than the Unsolved Mysteries episode and its update, there are some who contend that they know exactly who killed the boys. And lo, if that person didn't get Arkancided.

11-08-2019
My regular co-worker is becoming more gruff and pissy of late; and it isn't me screwing up as the nominative cause. Along the way I learn that he has had prior sports concussions. And it seems that he has a penchant for alcohol consumption. Great; another unpredictable boss/co-worker situation, and even looking worse than the last gig.

We were doing trellis wire installations, and he was decidedly uncommunicative and unsupportive. I even helped out him considerably by packing my own hammer and a tool pouch with staples in it, and lo, if he didn't lose the other hammer and need to walk the row to retrieve it. Then he forgot the bucket of supplies we needed, when he was the one who brought them to the vineyard. All by himself no less, and not the usual Psychopathic set up of having me misunderstand his terse directions and I get it in the ear.

Last week I was getting some contradictory instructions from him about the vine pulling, and had to plainly ask him what he wanted, when he suggested that he didn't want me to do what he originally asked for (and no change in circumstances). And he was cranked that pulling a vine was taking 15 seconds, and I assumed he had done this before. At the end of the job he tells me that he hadn't done it before. Like WTF; job safely and job accomplishment are paramount, and it takes as long as it takes. Another day he is cranked about the Boss Man needing us to for a rock picking job as the wire trellis job was taking too long. (Well it didn't; it is just that he spent 3 hours getting the truck and supplies before he began, and then later (per above) forgot to bring some of the supplies). I replied "woo-hoo" to the rock picking job, as in, "ain't that exciting", and that clammed him up. He seems to be constantly cranked about how long jobs take, but most of the delay time is taken up with getting supplies and vehicles.

11-10-2019
As it "happened", he also has a landscaping business, and I committed to moonlight for him before it became apparent just how pissy and uncommunicative he is. It became another survival situation; keeping one's head down doing whatever one thinks he wants when he can change his mind for no apparent reason. You know, just ream out the help because they are supposed to be able to read his mind, and don't bother with explaining any context.  At least yesterday he didn't round on me too much as there were two other helpers on his leaf raking job.

A longer than usual run without a posting, but here it is.

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