nick peelman

Systems Engineer. Network Nerd. Mac Geek. Code Monkey.

[peelman]

But some Marshall voters said they were turned off by Roem’s gender. “She’s never had menstrual cramps, and she’s never had a baby, and she never will be able to,” said Carol Fox, a community activist in the Heritage Hunt section of Prince William, where Roem campaigned repeatedly. “She can take all the estrogen she wants, but she’ll never be a woman.”

Some people just need to learn to shut the fuck up.

As a women, Ms Fox should be more cognizant of the problems that spawn from being marginalized and demeaned. But no, let’s be pissy about somebody’s genetic make up and choices (neither of which interfere with their ability to serve the public).

[peelman]

To hell with congress.  With that much swagger and charisma, send this lady to the White House.

[peelman]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5eILKG5oSE)

It is horrible that you have to do some procedural gymnastics crap to pass a needed, widely supported bill like this.

What's more ridiculous: that ONE member, regardless of committee and rank, can block legislation from coming to a vote or being presented to either the House or Senate (this problem is not limited to the Georgia statehouse).

Happy to see common sense prevail though...its sad that late night satire is where the story got over a 12 minutes of airtime to appropriately call out the insanity that this was even a problem to begin with:

http://radiotvtalk.blog.ajc.com/2016/03/31/did-samantha-bees-rape-kit-bill-bit-help-the-bill-pass/

I have written emails longer than the coverage  most national news outlets gave it.

Why should a state matter in Georgia be national news?  Because this bullshit is still not even on the table in a handful of states, and is only proposed in the majority, and is only partially fixed in the rest.

[peelman]

Make a bootable USB Drive from an ISO (On a Mac)

[peelman]

Evan Klitzke posted about The Cult of dd and essentially usurped this entire post.

Especially with the addition of pv into the mix, I am a convert.

[rsbenedict-deactivated20181216]

This thread is amazing.

[curliestofcrowns]

DON’T BRING TOBY KEITH TO A JUDITH BUTLER FIGHT

[thelonegrasshopper]

This. This. This. This.

[peelman]

Dell’s new XPS 15

For the first time in 10+ years, Dell has made a laptop I want more than a MacBook Pro. twitter.com/DamianEdwards/…

(me)

For starters, this is largely a theoretical exercise, or more like screaming into the void, because I am not in a position personally or professionally to ditch OS X right now.

But this just really makes me even more disappointed with what Apple did with the MacBook Pro in 2016.

Dell has built a better machine, from a technologist standpoint.  It won’t have the fit and finish of a MacBook Pro.  The trackpad will undoubtedly be buggy as hell, and require some weird ass driver that will misbehave constantly in Windows. Windows. Windows. Windows.  Windows. Windows. Windows.

But lets look at rest of the hardware:

GeForce GTX 1050 Graphics

32GB of RAM (for those of us who actually need a “pro” machine)

SD Card Slot (no dongles for camera users)

(2) USB 3 A (no dongles for basic needs)

HDMI (no dongles for basic hookups)

Battery Gauge (why in the bloody hell this was removed from Macs is beyond me)

Physical Escape Key

Inverted-T Arrow Keys

Function Keys

The option for a Touch Display

The option for a Thunderbolt 3 Dock

Its far from perfect.  Still nothing that resembles MagSafe.  Still Windows.  Still questionable build quality.  Still undoubtedly lacking the finish of a MacBook Pro.

But as Apple continues to slip further away from what professional needs really are, its going to be harder and harder to live with the compromises they keep forcing us to make.  

And after the fiasco I just went through with my iPhone 6S, my loyalty to Apple continues to become more and more questionable.

[peelman]

Baby Stuff - Part 1: The first two weeks

I have been active on twitter the past couple of months, but I have barely even looked at Tumblr. The reason for that arrived on December 12th. As my wife inched closer to her due date, I was focusing on work and baby prep.

Now that things have calmed down some (we are two weeks in), I wanted to make the almost-obligatory geek post about the cool baby stuff we received and/or found.

Car Seat

Britax B-Safe System

This one won the bid after a lot of research. Britax consistently ranks incredibly high in crash ratings. It is super-easy to install (especially if your vehicle has LATCH points), adjust, and get the kid in and out of. I have my complaints, but they are pretty miniscule. We went with the set after testing out the stroller in the store and my wife giving it her seal of approval. The stroller works with the car seat, then can be used without the car seat as a toddler stroller as well. We might eventually want a different stroller for one reason or another, but I think this one has a lot of miles in store for it.

Accessories

We use several add-ons to the B-Safe that are fantastically handy; here is the current favorite:

B-Warm an insulated cover. If you are having a newborn in the cold-weather season where you live, this is an amazing cover that beats the crap off off “the blanket thing” you see many people do. We did that for the ride home from the hospital. The blanket and the handle do not get along. The blanket falls in the baby’s face. The blanket blows off if there is a light breeze. The blanket falls on the wet ground. The blanket sucks. The B-Warm attaches to the seat with elastic around the edge. It is zippered on the bottom half, and one top quarter is snapped into place, the other quarter flaps and overlaps, which lets you peek in, and provides ventilation without the aforementioned issues.

Baby Shusher

Forget the white noise machines. Forget the little crappy speaker that is on the pack-n-play. The Baby Shusher is the best thing ever. Like it says on the card inside, If your kid is fed, burped, and has a clean diaper, this thing will help lull them to sleep in no time flat. And if its not working, odds are something else is amiss. Our photographer had one while she was taking our newborn photos and it was so effective I had ordered it before we left the session. We learned the “shushing” method of calming a baby when my wife and I took an infant care class before her nephew was born (”my” nephews on are in high school, so it had been a while since I had done baby-stuff). Then we had it reiterated to us when we were doing pre-partum class stuff. It is very effective, but the Shusher is magic when you finally have to put the now-calm-or-sleeping baby down and need something to help them stay tired and sleepy. I decreed and the wife agreed that we are putting one of these in every baby shower gift we give from now until forever. The only word of caution I have is that it can put you to sleep just as easily as the baby, especially in those first two weeks when everybody is exhausted.

Baby Tracker (the app)

I spent more money than I will ever admit, just testing baby tracking apps. And they all suck. Some suck a little. Some suck a lot. But every bloody one I tried had some fatal flaw, except for Baby Tracker.

Many of them (well, most really) don't sync. At all. In 2016, that is just unforgiveable. Some sync, but only over iCloud, or a proprietary server. The former means that you and your spouse have to use the same iCloud account. The latter means your baby's data is in somebody else's hands (though what somebody would do with a record of diaper timestamps and statuses is beyond me, it still was a put-off).

Baby Tracker syncs over Dropbox via their App API. It sucks a little because you have to use a single account and the app doesn't use the Dropbox app to authenticate. Its great because I set up a dedicated account solely for the purpose, and Dropbox accounts are still free. So, not great, but tolerable. The syncing is fast, we haven't had any issues with it since setting it up.

The tracking is insanely helpful for two stressed out parents who are both meticulous in different ways.  Kelly is a doctor (veterinarian) who is used to keeping detailed records. I’m a geek who is used to dealing with data and needs to see trends and graphs in order to spot patterns and make sense of life.  This app scratches oh so many itches for us.  There is no question on when the last dirty diaper was, or how many changes were made on a given day. Or when he ate last and whether it was formula or breastmilk.1

If you are about to be new parents, give the app a look.  Its worth the 5 bucks and setup time to coordinate the efforts of two parents and not rely purely on memory.

Take care of Mom

If your about to be a dad for the first time, I have but one spot of advice that isn’t (strictly) gadget related: take care of your wife. You probably don’t yet know what she is about to go through.  Look up episiotomy and know that if your wife has one, she is going to need you a lot more in those first days than the kid will. The kid will need her, a lot; you? Just a little.  But she is going to be in a world of pain and hurt for several days.  If the hospital doesn’t send you home with one, next-day ship a donut. Buy a lot of Tucks.  Even if she has zero problems, don’t slouch. If you get a paternity leave, don't treat it like a vacation. Take a little time for yourself as you can, but your “job” during that time is Her, then the Baby, then the house. In that order.

Don’t be a dick about breastfeeding or not; support her decision to do it or not do it.  You can’t, and it doesn’t matter what you read on the internet.  Its her call, its fucking hard, and there is almost nothing anybody else can do to help her. If she wants to do it, then pick up the slack and help in other ways.  If she doesn’t want to do it, then learn to how mix formula and become a pro at it so you can prep a bottle while she preps the baby (or vice-versa).

By the time our son was 12 hours old, I knew that the best path to being a rockstar dad started with being a rockstar husband those first few days.

That’s it for now

I will make followup posts as we get deeper in this parenting rabbit hole and my geeky self continues to seek out ways to make our kid’s life better and our life a little easier.

1 Yes, we are supplementing.  Take your Le Leche League Nazi shit someplace else. Please.

[peelman]

Death by a thousand cuts and a couple of gaping wounds

So I have had multiple instances of people complaining to me recently about iOS.

My wife is struggling with Autocorrect and how dumb the corrections are these days. Im corrects to in instead of I'm or I am. Tangential problem is when messages displays an alternative keyboard instead of the primary one when attempting to send a message.

My brother and mother in law are both struggling with space issues. They purchased iCloud space upgrades thinking that would solve their "out of space" issues, because only nerds understand the difference between the space on their phone and the space they "rent" in the cloud. And even that doesn't make sense given the way Apple markets iCloud storage.

iCloud photos had become a nightmare I can no longer recommend to anybody, because of the way iOS handles (or doesn't handle) space management. Amazon Photos, combined with Prime, is a much better solution, offloading the pictures to the cloud, making them available on demand with a fixed local cache, and otherwise allowing them to be removed from the phone.

Had Apple not shafted users for the past 3-4 years and made 32GB the default standard, these complaints would be mollified, or at least delayed for a little while.

My brothers phone downloaded iOS 10, despite not having enough space for both the installer and for the installer to run. And when the phone started running out of space, why did the phone not ditch the installer immediately? Because the phone sucks at space management.

But let's make sure we have shit like iMessage apps.

[peelman]

[peelman]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Mu8qfVb5I)

[edwardspoonhands]

Would you ever consider running for office? I understand you're a very busy guy so you'd obviously need to turn all the day-to-day responsibilities of your businesses over to someone else in order to do this. But I think you would be a great public servant if you were ever elected.

When I was at Comic-Con a father of a fan said to me that not only should I run for office but that I, as an educated, articulate, popular, progressive person who is not a sociopath had an obligation to run for office.

And I do respect people who choose to enter public service and I think that is an excellent and difficult thing to do with your life.

But lemme tell you, I have a friend who’s on the city council in Missoula…a homogenous small town…and OH MY GOD he gets SO MUCH HATE. People HATE him…they write him the meanest letters I’ve ever seen in my life. I thought YouTubers got a lot of hate but it’s /nothing/ compared to politicians. 

So, no, I don’t have any desire to run for public office because it has become an outright request for abuse of you and your family and even if I did have an obligation to do it (which I don’t think I do) I still wouldn’t because I am selfish and want to live my life for me and my family.

And to that dad…I honestly don’t think politics attracts sociopaths…I think constant abuse turns people into sociopaths because they have to stop caring what people think about them and the easiest way to do that is to dehumanize people who disagree with you. And if they’re constantly verbally abusing you, it’s pretty easy to stop considering their humanity.

[peelman]

Whenever somebody comments about the apathy of our generation, I am now going to show them this.

Having celebrity is one thing.  Being ridiculed for every decision you have ever made because one side or the other disagrees with it is something else.  Every dollar you have ever earned will be called into question and the legality of the transaction examined under a microscope.  And you are going to be judged on the ethics of some income, the legality of other income, and the entire sum of those dollars.  You’re either going to be too successful to be legit, or viewed as a failure because you didn’t make enough.

You are going to be raked over the coals on issues like abortion, immigration, gay marriage, workers rights, food stamps & welfare, healthcare, highways, what kind of milk you buy, what kind of foods you don’t like, how many girlfriends/boyfriends you had, etc., even if they are in no way related to the office you wish to hold.

I don’t blame Hank or anybody else in the least for wanting to avoid that nightmare.

[refinery29]

The Muslim father of a slain soldier just challenged Trump, “Have you even read the United States Constitution?”

In one of the most thrilling moments of the convention so far, he offered to lend the Presidential candidate his own copy, challenging him to look for a few crucial clauses he seems to have missed. And watch how Chelsea spoke of her hopes for her mother’s Presidency.

Gifs: ABC15 Arizona

[peelman]

[laughingsquid]

The Impending Threat Level Is Curiously High at 221B in Sherlock Series Four Teaser Trailer

[peelman]

[laughingsquid]

The Imperial March Theme Song From Star Wars Played on a Computer Hardware Orchestra

[peelman]

And here's the most important part: when they do so, they never or almost never face punishment.

The Uncomfortable Reason Why It Came to This In Dallas Yesterday

Look, I don't know. I don't want to rush to judgment on either the Baton Rouge shooting or the Falcon Heights shooting, but based upon what we have seen, they look bad. Very bad. They look, at least at first glance, to confirm a lot of biases that people have. They look like a scenario that has played out all too often that the white community either doesn't believe ever happens (or at least believes is at most a freak occurrence) and minority communities believe is a systemic occurrence. And they look, most importantly, like many other scenarios in which officers have skated either scot free or with a slap on their wrist.

Emphasis mine.

Every time I post these stories, I get a flood of comments from people who look for even the smallest hook on which to hang an excuse for the cops. "Well, he was rude and confrontational to the cop." "Well, when the officer was trying to arrest him, he ran." "He was 'resisting arrest.'" (My personal favorite, which was used by several dozen people I talked to regarding Eric Garner, whose "resisting arrest" consisted entirely of turning his back to a cop and putting his hands in the air.)

Its not just the review boards and the juries and the legal system in general that gives cops a pass.  Its the bigoted, racist twits.  And its those who stand by and let those assholes espouse their vitriol publicly without refute.

See also: Shootings, Molly Suzanna’s Story

[micdotcom]

This white woman’s shocking account of police brutality reveals the importance of the #BlackLivesMatter movement

Molly Suzanna shared a story on Facebook that she had never told before: when she was 19, she ran a red light while crying, then was pulled over and forcefully removed and beaten by a police officer. She explains in the letter that she believes her situation would have been even worse had she been black — and she ends the letter with an important call to action.

[peelman]

Shootings...

Last week, outside a Burger King in an area I know well: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2016/07/02/robbery-suspect-shot-during-confrontation-police/86634974/

In Greendale, the officer shot this idiot, as he was charging; reportedly in the shoulder first, and when that didn’t stop him, he fired again at his leg (or hip, reports vary).  He then administered first aid, instead of holding the guy at gunpoint until he bled to death on the ground.

Compare to last night in Minnesota.  The guy is sitting in a confined vehicle, with the officer so close he could touch the guy and not to mention see both of his hands.  But he was so twitchy he shot not once, not twice, but FOUR effing times at Point. Blank.  Range.  Then stood there and screamed “F***!” at the top of his lungs, keeping his gun trained on him, until the man bled to death (which being shot 4 times at that range was probably inevitable, but holy hell, TRY).  Based on the officer’s reaction in the video, he doesn’t seem like some of the psychopaths we have seen other videos of.  His voice was an expression of his panic. I’m still in wonder that given the situation he didn’t shoot the woman when she was starting the live stream on her phone.

The guy in Indiana is white.  The guy in Minnesota was black.  The guy in Indiana had robbed a restaurant, had threatened multiple people with a knife, and was charging the officer(s).  The guy in Minnesota was a passenger, wearing his seatbelt, in a vehicle with a busted taillight. 

I’m not saying this cop is a racist shithead (like many others out there) or needs to burn for murder. But he doesn’t need to be a cop any more.  Period. If he had winged the guy, drug him out of the car, cleared whatever weapon or threat he thought existed, and the performed first aid until ‘medics arrived, then let the courts sort out the rest, MAYBE he would deserve some disciplinary action.  But this was literally a grave mistake, he shot a guy without cause. 

But we all know how this story is going to end.

The asshole in Indiana is going to recover, and probably go to jail for a while, but probably not long enough, and will probably come out worse than he was when he went in.

The guy in Minnesota is going to get autopsy’d and buried.  In a week the media will forget about it, but his family and community will bear that torch for the rest of their lives.  In 3-6 month’s we might hear about some disciplinary hearing, or a US Attorney or Justice Department investigation that will clear the officer of any wrong doing because there is no enforceable standard for rules of engagement for police officers.

If I shot and killed somebody because I thought they *might* shoot at me, without there being an imminent threat on my life, I’d probably do time.  I would at least be arrested, put in jail, possibly be released on a bond, and then have to endure a bankrupting trek through our shitty legal system.  This cop is probably going to get put on paid leave for a couple of weeks then resume work, assuming he doesn’t resign, which would at least be a form of contrition.