North Korea is teaching us a lesson. Being a Socialist State they know how to spy, and play dirty tricks on their enemies. Many people believe that the North Koreans are not behind the hacking of SONY Pictures, but rather SONY Pictures had themselves hacked to make headlines, and to get free publicity for their movie The Interview. In my book that smacks of Progressive liberalism. The hacking was most likely initiated from within, how else could the world’s most tech-savvy people let themselves be broken into? They might also have had a sequel in mind which would follow the exact story line we see in today’s headlines. SONY is a Japanese company and we all know the Japs lead the world in electronics and gaming software. They would be the last ones to have left a door open for a North Korean hacker to enter and steal everything.
A second scenario would give the North Koreans the will and reason to hack into the USA. They know how to make an atomic bomb, hacking a computer system would be child’s play for them.
A third scenario is that the CIA and NSA did the hack as another diversion for Obama. He needs a major distraction from the ass kicking he got in the last election. He pretends that it doesn’t matter because he has a phone and a pen, but his ego must be just a wee bit shattered by the country’s message to get out of Dodge. We are coming for you O,in a short time you will hold a sign on an expressway exit announcing “I work lie for food.” After all, your number one competitor resigned from your admin and announced she was flat broke. We should all be so broke. You can play broke too, it is the Progressive way.
On Thursday, I had the pleasure of meeting with four very old but close friends. Our ages range from seventy-two to eighty-three. We enjoy a monthly get together to drink some adult-beverage and to swap tales while sharing a meal. We met on this evening at the Ashford House on 159th Street in Tinley Park, a midway point between our homes.
We sat drinking, and explaining where they were when the tornado ripped through the area. The storm had different effects on each of us. Sherman lives in a heavily wooded area and one of his mature trees blew down and ripped through the back wall of his house. A large branch from that same tree pierced the liner in his garden pond. I laughed, only because this summer he completed repairs to the pond liner caused by a ground-hog that burrowed up from the bottom and chewed his way through the liner to get at Sherman’s collection of bog plants. His further inspection revealed that the tornado ripped the bark off his Linden trees. Al cut in, “that’s a class-four storm when the bark gets stripped from trees.”
Lou told us his neighbor had a very large Ash tree about fifty feet tall that died from an invasion of the Emerald Ash borer. The tree was dead, and Lou worried that the tree, which leaned toward his house, would someday come crashing through his bedroom. Lou reported the neighbor had the tree removed on the day before the storm hit. He lucked out. Rod, who also lives in a wooded area saw no damage to his property, but picked up many blown down branches. Al reported losing a single butterfly bush planted just three years ago. Al lives on twenty plus acres of trees. Joe told of a roof being blown off at the Mobile Home park just south of town, and the roof of the muffler shop on route thirty raised up several feet then dropped back in place.
Four of us ordered the Thursday night special, a five dollar hamburger the size of a dinner plate, with soup, salad and fries. Sherman had lamb chops.
As we ate we began kibitzing and telling more stories. Joe began by relating a sudden desire to hear the Oak Ridge Boys in concert. They perform in Branson at this time of year, but Joe didn’t have the opportunity nor the cash to go. Just for fun he searched the I-net for the concert schedule and learned that the Boys who were at Branson on Friday would be at the Holiday Star Plaza theater in Merrillville, Indiana on Sunday. For more fun, he checked the ticket availability; they had eight tickets left in the mezzanine at seventy dollars a piece. “Okay,” he said, “sign me up.” By the time he paid taxes, fees, and seven-fifty to download the tickets to his printer his bill came to $194.00. He did it anyway because it was cheaper than driving five hundred miles to Branson to see them. A twenty-dollar CD would have been even cheaper.
Al chimed in next. “I was talking on the telephone with my sister in Amarillo. One of her good friends wanted to borrow some money, but she didn’t have enough in her bank account. I joked with her that I had invested five dollars in a Mega Million lottery and expected to win that night. At 7:00 a.m. the next morning, I sent my sister an e-mail saying that I had won the Mega-Million lottery and a check would be in the mail to her.
At 7:20 I received an e-mail from the NSA congratulating me for winning the lottery. The e-mail claimed it was from all NSA employees.
At 8:30 a.m. I received another e-mail, this time from the IRS. It said that a normal tax amount would be deducted from my Mega Million winnings, but they knew that I had sold 2 million dollars of houses this year, so I would owe a high percentage of taxes on the gains from the property sales as well as any other income I had.They requested that I pay an extra $100,000 in taxes within ten days, and another $100,000 by January 15.
Later in the morning, I opened an e-mail from the ATF. They said they had verified that I was stocking up huge stores of food including twenty-four frozen turkeys on sale at forty-eight cents a pound at Jewel.
I answered the ATF that I purchased the food for the Frankfort Lions Club annual food distribution to the needy at Thanksgiving. The ATF responded almost immediately wanting me to give them a complete list of names and addresses of the Frankfort Lions and the recipients of the food delivery. Also, I am to include an inventory of weapons possessed by everyone on the list.
Early in the afternoon, The DEA e-mailed me that they knew I recently had $400,000 in my personal bank account, and since I had no job, this was likely drug money. They said their drone had inspected my 21.3 acres of land and found many unusual, as well as some suspicious plants growing inside my house. They said if I was innocent, I would allow them to inspect my property and home. If I didn’t allow an inspection they would get a subpoena to do so.
Later that afternoon I mailed my sister two dollars and told her it was one-half of my lottery winnings.”
A moment of stunned silence overcame the group as they digested what they just heard. Al bust out laughing and confessed that none of the above actually happened but that it could happen today in the big government world we live in.
Cray X-MP/24 (serial no. 115) used by NSA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The National Security Agency (Photo credit: @mjb)
The Edison bulb lit up over my head again while Peg and I were having our pork chop. I think the Smoking Loon Merlot had something to do with it. The Obama Care sign up website has been bothering me ever since it became clear that the site is worse than any hurricane that has hit North America. One question keeps coming into mind, how can the world’s most powerful country be so stupid as to allow a software program bring them down? We are the world’s software experts. Our computer scientists are known worldwide for their ability, yet we introduce software that will control one sixth of the US economy that is a pile of cow dung. “A few glitches” O said. It is becoming apparent as the days roll by that the glitches are major screw ups in the architecture. He will never admit it but he owns this one. There is no way to blame it on Bush or the Republicans.
The engineer in me has been working overtime to figure out what I would have done differently. The problem with this type of analysis is that I have the benefit of the Monday morning quarter back. Nevertheless, I began analyzing what I would do. The first thing is I’d hire my brainiac son who is a computer scientist. He works on huge financial analysis software and is known for his ability to test the living crap out of his programs before they go on-line. The problem is that he won’t take the job because he is more conservative than I am, and he would rather see the big O flushed down the toilet.
Any software needed to do this job has to perform fast, and must handle terabytes of information. Hmmmn, where have I heard that before? Yes, the NSA does exactly that. They monitor billions of phone call, e-mails, and video cameras daily. They respond quickly at the command of the Big O. They have a complex of buildings in Utah to house their new computers designed to handle the load with capacity for the future. Those are the guys, I will call to consult on this problem.
How is it possible that the huge government of over educated liberals failed to see the NSA as a contractor for the health care program? They would most likely handle it like a kiddy game compared to the work they do spying on us.
All I can come up with is that the NSA is the NSA, and Health Care is Health Care and never shall the two bureaucrat organizations meet to coöperate with each other and make synergy happen. The number one problem we have is a government that is too large, second, we give the government too much money, and three, we propagate bureaucratic empires.
After World War II the Japanese government was broke; their economy starved for cash. We didn’t help them because we didn’t want them to rebuild their war machine. Yet, by the nineteen eighties the Japanese auto industry started a war against the US big three and they won commercially. How did they do it? They didn’t have cash to invest extravagantly like GM, Ford, and Chrysler, in fact they had but a shoe string budget to invest. Today, the Japs make the best cars in the world.
Necessity made the Japs think outside the box, they worked with their government in a positive way. Japanese engineers came up with ingenious ways to make things with limited stamping presses and tooling. The government handled a plan to protect their markets while attacking the US market. The engineers stole an idea from the progressive die makers and applied it to making auto body parts. Our guys in America thought it was a stupid idea and laughed them off. The result was a car body made in Japan with superior fit and minimal assembly. They were also smart enough to hire an US quality control consultant who taught them the basics of just in time manufacturing. The US auto industry controlled by the UAW unions were too stupid to see the value of the process.
What does this have to do with Obama Care? The point I am making is that attacking the problem with a team and a very specific well-defined goal would have resulted in a superior roll out experience and Obama would have signed up 2.5 million people on day one. The health care software didn’t need tons of money to reach the goal, but it will to fix it. We need a do over.
A strange thing happened to me yesterday which drove me crazy. Since I recently reached middle age, I can admit that one of my physical deficiencies is poor hearing. My love-hate relationship with a pair of world renown Siemens hearing aids began three and a half years ago. I love my aids when they work, and I hate them when they do not, or are marginal at best.
This day, they worked. Peg and I sat having lunch within a few feet of our TV listening to news as we usually do. The house was cool, but not cold, while the outside temperature stood at ninety-two degrees. I spent the morning working on the 2013 Monet Vision and came in rather sweaty, but by the time we had lunch I felt dry.
My aids sent me a string of tones of unusual sequence. The electronics will send me a set of four notes running down the scale when a battery dies, but this one was entirely different it went up and then flat. Within a few seconds of the alarm, the aids shut down. I didn’t panic immediately, I just pressed the button on the right aid and turned them back on. The two devices respond to each other wirelessly. Within a few seconds I got another set of tones and a shut down. Oh, oh I thought, this is not good. This time I pushed the button on the left side and they turned back on, but without the usually tonal ping that says ‘I am on” yet in deed, both aids were on. The signal tones and shut-downs lasted for a good ten minutes as I played with the buttons and the aids continued to communicate with each. Peggy thought I was going crazy. I left the table to install a new set of batteries. Nothing changed, they continued to shut down after sending tones from one ear to the other in various notes.
I removed the faulty aids and installed my new MSA30X sound amplifiers that I bought from a TV ad for $47.95. WOW! They do amplify. They do such a good job, I could hear every sound 30 times louder than normal even though I had them turned down to low. Background noises are the worst, and Peg’s voice still unintelligible. I couldn’t take these new aids either.
I spent the rest of the afternoon reading in wonderful silence. By the evening hour I decided to try using one aid alone. Since the right one seemed to respond more normally, I put it in and turned it on. It worked, and I didn’t get the Mexican Hat Dance playing before shutdown.
This morning I reversed the order and used only the left unit, it worked. After two hours of trouble free function, I installed the right unit. I turned them both on, and experienced wonderful stereo sound again. So far, they are still functioning (knock on wood), and I am back in the “love” phase.
All I can deduce is that the NSA read my boring e-mails, and because they didn’t find anything incriminating they went one step further to hack into my head through my hearing aids. What other explanation can there be?
The garden looked better this day than it had in a long time. A cover of dark grey clouds hovered over the 2013 Monet Vision, and a light mist of rain fell giving the new plants the drink they longed for. Grumpa Joe admired his work from the dry warm comfort of the sun-room. Coffee cup in hand he walked to the kitchen to survey the area between the pond and the border garden. A flurry of sparrows and finches fought for space on Grandma Peggy’s bird feeder. She had filled it in the morning and by now it was nearly empty. He looked down to assess the amount of feed falling to the ground under the feeder. There was a large round spot of bright yellow-tan seed directly under the feeder bowl. “I wonder if Peggy is spilling feed on the ground for the critters?” Then he spotted the furry body of Aga Bam-bi. “He blends so well with the ground, I can’t believe I nearly missed him.”
Aga Bam-bi hunched on the ground at the edge of the seed circle. His nose twitching as he chewed the seed. His ears continuously turning and twisting in all directions listening for danger. Grumpa Joe lightly tapped the window with a fingernail. Aga Bam-bi froze.
He is bigger and fatter than Grumpa Joe remembered him from a year ago. He wondered where Aga Bam-bi was for the last twelve months. “He hasn’t found the petunias yet, that is good, but I’m sure he will,” muttered Grumpa under his breath.
Deep inside the briar patch within the wetland Ali Bug-Bunee sat in conference with his cell. A full year had passed since the cell expelled Aga Bam-bi. The cell had remained in sleeper status during that time. The cell had been busy multiplying, and Ali faced a small crowd of cell members. Many of the newest members were still shedding their baby fur.
Ali began, “The Nature Spy Alliance(NSA) has informed me that Aga Bam-Bi found his way back to the garden. It is time to use Bam-Bi as a distraction while we execute our plan to devastate the petunias under the cover of darkness. Grumpa Joe does not know we are waiting to attack him. He will think it is Aga who is destroying his Vision. Put your ears at attention and repeat after me, “I solemnly swear to be active only in the darkness under the threat of being fed to the hawks.” They all fluffed their tails and wagged their ears in unison at the completion of the oath.
Grumpa Joe finished planting the last six petunia plants near the window where he spotted Aga two days ago. “I’m taking my chances with this critter, but he has stayed away from the feeder for a while, and I feel confident that he won’t eat them.” As Grumpa Joe patted the final plant into place, he spotted Aga in the far corner of the garden eating clover flowers.
Grumpa Joe slept in on Saturday and shuffled to the kitchen for his coffee. He raised the shade on the window and looked out at his fresh planting. “What the he. . .? Peg, come here. Look what that damn rabbit has done to the petunias I planted yesterday. He has eaten them to the ground.”
“Now, now dear, he is only a poor little creature who lives a very hard life in nature,” said Peggy.
“That’s it, I’m taking some serious action today.”
“What ‘ll you do?
“I’m building an IED.”
“You aren’t going to blow the poor thing up are you?”
“No, no, I meant an Improvised Entrapment Device(IED). I’ll catch him and take him for a ride.”
The striped squirrels working for the NSA were listening to Grumpa Joe from under the stoop. Chip made a mad dash across the patio and through the Cranesbill into the wetland to report to Ali.
“Excellent work Chip, you have done well. Grumpa Joe doesn’t suspect a thing. Aga will get the blame and we will fill our bellies with petunia flowers until they are all gone. If we are lucky, Joe will trap Aga with his IED and we will be rid of him too.”
