Author Archives: f2x

Sunday, July 15, 2018

By | |
Leave a comment


Going Right Around the Bend

Recently there was a news item than came up in my feed about a Puerto Rican t-shirt. Perhaps you heard about it, or maybe not. In case you didn’t know, Puerto Rico is a U.S. Territory. The people who live there are natural born U.S. citizens. It has been considered for statehood on numerous occasions. They have their own flag like any other state or commonwealth, and it looks just about as patriotically American as 4th of July bunting.

With all that going for it, apparently some idiot thought that a woman wearing a t-shirt with the Puerto Rican flag on it was somehow offensively un-American. The video footage was cringe inducing. It was so outrageous that I almost thought it had to be some kind of setup. I mean, no one could be that stupid, could they? But it turns out this really did happen. I’m still wondering what precipitated this altercation. Was this just some rando looking for brown people to harass? Who does that shit?

I was sitting in the break room at work across from “Steve” (obviously not his real name) when I first saw this article on my phone. Now don’t get me wrong: I like Steve, and we get along fairly well. Like most of the people where I work, Steve is a redneck, and boastfully proud of it. He’s pretty much a bad caricature of “Duck Dynasty”, and would probably happily agree with that assessment. Steve’s a nice guy, but…

Anyway, a regrettable human characteristic I possess is to make conversation with people. I mentioned the article I was reading to Steve. The video had just gone viral, and the “national discussion” hadn’t yet taken hold. I don’t know what kind of response I was expecting, but he immediately started muttering about those “damn liberals”.

I thought maybe he misunderstood the premise, so I said, “It’s not about liberals, it’s about a woman wearing a t-shirt with the Puerto Rican flag on it.”

This sent him careening on a rant about people not respecting the history of the Confederate flag, and, “If people did any research at all, they’d know that…” then he trailed into some incomprehensible mutterings about black people designing the confederate flag. I can’t make this shit up.

Of course at that point I glanced at the clock and said, “Looks like my break time’s over.”

So what’s my point? Apparently my whole life has become one long gas lit non sequitur. The world has gone mad, and I’m trapped inside this insane asylum with people who can no longer pass a Turing test. I might as well start drinking again and have conversations with my Magic 8-Ball.

Pax,

-f2x

The Devil’s Drink

By | |
Leave a comment

Marvin was enjoying a beer in the outdoor seating area at his local tavern when a Nun suddenly appeared at his table and started decrying the evils of drink.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” she chastised. “Drinking is a Sin! Alcohol is the devil’s drink!”

“How would you know, Sister?” asked Marvin sceptically.

“Mother Superior told me so,” came the nun’s resolute reply.

“But have you ever had a drink yourself?” pressed Marvin. “How can you be sure that what you are saying is right?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed the nun. “Of course I have never taken alcohol myself.”

“Then let me buy you a drink,” offered Marvin. “If you still believe afterwards that it is evil, I will give up drink for life.”

“How could I, a Nun, sit outside this public house drinking?!”

“I’ll get the barman to put it in a teacup for you, then no one will know.”

The Nun reluctantly agreed, so Marvin went inside to the bar and ordered, “Another beer for me, and a triple vodka on the rocks,” then he lowered his voice and said to the barman, “and could you put the vodka in a teacup?”

“Oh no!” howled the barman. “Is that blasted nun back again?”

Baseball in the Beyond

By | |
Leave a comment

The devil called up St. Peter and said, “Let’s have a baseball game. My people against your people.”

St. Peter checked his roster and said, “Sure, but you’re gonna lose. I’ve got all the hall of famers up here.”

“Maybe so,” replied the devil, “but I’ve got all the umpires!”

Fast Fathers

By | |
Leave a comment

Three boys were in the schoolyard bragging about how fast their fathers were.

The first one said, “My father is the fastest. He can fire an arrow, start to run, then he gets there before the arrow!”

The second one replied “Ha! My father can shoot his gun and be there before the bullet.”

The third one listened to the other two and shook his head, “That’s nothing! My father works for the government. He stops working at 5 o’clock and gets home by 3:45!”

Soviet Thankfulness

By | |
Leave a comment

Back in the Soviet Union, an old woman was riding a crowded bus. There were no empty seats so she had to stand with her heavy packages. Finally, someone got off the bus, so she grabbed their seat. “Thank God,” she said, as she sat down.

The man in the seat behind her said, “Excuse me comrade, but we are in an atheist society. You should say ‘Thank Stalin,’ not ‘Thank God.'”

“Of course you are right,” the old woman said. “Thank Stalin.”

The old woman sat quietly for a moment then turned to the man and said, “Comrade, I just had a terrible thought. What shall we say when Stalin dies?”

Without hesitation the man said, “In that case, we will say, ‘Thank God.'”

A Sense of Humor

By | |
Leave a comment

Jim came back from lunch and called his senior employees into a meeting. To start off on a light note, Jim told a couple of jokes he’d recently picked up. (From Flush Twice of course.)

Everyone laughed at their boss’s jokes… Everyone that is but Rachael, who sat there with a slightly annoyed look on her face.

“Why aren’t you laughing?” asked Jim. “Don’t you have a sense of humor?”

“I don’t have to laugh,” replied Rachael. “My last day is Friday.”

Sunday, July 8, 2018

By | |
Leave a comment

Getting by on Two 10Gb/month SIM Cards

Mobile carriers hate people who tether. If they know in advance that you’re planning on tethering, they will put heavy restrictions on your ability to use that feature. Of course if you’re paying them a shit-ton of money through a four line family plan with a 2 year contract and all the latest phones, they’ll give you all the internet you can eat… But if you’re on a budget, you ain’t gonna like what they do to you.

Now I’m not shilling for my mobile provider, but Mint Mobile has this deal where you pay $300 and you get unlimited calls and text, plus 10Gb of tetherable 4g/LTE data per month for 12 months. That comes to $25/month, and I bought two of them. I also bought the $240 5Gb/month for my actual cell phone, so that’s actually 25Gb/month on 3 SIM cards, and yeah, that was a lot of money up front, but I don’t have to worry about anymore internet or cell phone charges for the rest of the year.

Twice a month, I unplug my modem and swap out the SIM. The removed SIM goes into a $50 Android phone. If I budget the data plan over the next 15 days, it comes to about 680Mb per day. The modem is actually quite good at keeping track of my usage, so I can easily check it from a bookmarked webpage. I turn on the WiFi hotspot on the cheap Android phone with the spent SIM card and connect it to my Windows 10 computer. Even when the 10Gb is used up, it can still get unlimited 2g internet speeds until the monthly reset.

Of course most people would feel utterly suffocated by such a paltry constraint. I have to admit, it’s not always easy to keep within those parameters. If I find that I’m going over budget at the house: I tether my phone (which gets 5Gb/month) to my desktop for a few evenings. It gets me back on track, and the performance isn’t any different than using the main system. I just have to remember to plug my ethernet cable back in when I’m done.

Of course if I use up all my SIM cards, then I’m only almost fucked. The SIM cards are staggered so I’m only at most about two weeks away from getting another 10Gb, but more importantly all three SIMs get unlimited 2g data. Thats about twice the speed of a 56K dial-up modem and can limp me to my next refill date, so it’s not like I’m ever disconnected.

In the end I’m paying about the same amount that Spectrum wanted to charge me, but my internet is being metered and of course a little slower. On the other hand, my connection is no longer randomly cutting out 5 times an hour, and I don’t have to worry about sudden rate increases or bullshit charges on my bill.

In a perfect world, some benevolent soul would guide me to a SIM card that would provide me with unlimited internet that is capable of streaming decent video for less than $50/month. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge! I’m still waiting!

Oh well… At least I can watch YouTube videos at 240p for about 5 hours every day. No really… It’s about 2.16Mb per minute which is 130Mb per hour which means I’ll only use 650Mb after 5 hours! But while the video quality isn’t terrible, it is a little rough looking at times.

In contrast, Netflix will eat 600Mb every 2 hours on it’s low bandwidth setting. This is not ideal. I really wish they would have an even lower setting, so I could use it at home. Right now I only watch Netflix when I visit my dad and we watch a movie together at his house. You know what’s strange? Even though I have his system set up so he can watch NetFlix and Amazon videos, he still ends up using Kodi most of the time. But I digress.

I have to be wary of any background services that could suck down my data plan without my realizing it. It’s why my Windows 10 machine is only allowed to connect to the “spent” SIM card.

So before I go, a big “fuck you” to all the autoplay videos on news sites. You guys suck. I also want to wish a pox on all the advertisers who autoplay video ads in hi def. I hope you all rot in hell. Special thanks to uBlock Origin, Chrome, and Linux for making it possible to bring my data usage down to within my pathetic monthly allotment. And I’d also like to thank you, my internet viewers for whom I have never seen or met. It’s like you’re not even there.

Pax,

-f2x

Oh, thank you random internet ghost!

Within only a couple of hours of posting this, I have gotten word from one of my “non-existent” viewers that I can watch Netflix with even lower bandwidth usage on Linux by installing “wondershaper”.

sudo apt-get install wondershaper

You then enter the magic phrase,

sudo wondershaper [interface] 200 200

This will give you extra slow internet. Now Netflix almost looks like shit, but only uses about 90Mb/hour, which is even less than 240P YouTube.

Of course this really slows all of your internet down, so it’s important to know how to reverse the spell:

sudo wondershaper clear [interface]

Keep in mind that [interface] is something like eth0 or wan0 or even usb0, whichever the case may be.

Thanks for that tip, my friend. Now I can watch awesome stuff every day after work.

Sergeant Sensitivity

By | |
Leave a comment

The Major spoke to the Sergeant before the morning formation, “Sarge, I just got a telegram that Private Jones’ mother died yesterday. Better go tell him and send him in to see me.”

So the Sergeant went before his morning formation and said, “Listen up, men, Johnson, report to the mess hall for KP. Smith, report to Personnel to sign some papers. The rest of you men report to the Motor Pool for maintenance. Oh and by the way, Jones, your mother died, report to the commander.”

Later that day the Major called the Sergeant into his office. “Hey, Sarge, that was a pretty cold way to inform Jones his mother died. Couldn’t you be a bit more tactful, next time?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the Sergeant

A few months later, the Major was speaking to the Sergeant before the formation again, “Sarge, I just got a telegram that Private Mullin’s mother died. You’d better go tell him and send him in to see me. This time be more tactful.”

So the Sergeant went before his troops and said, “Ok, men, fall in and listen up. Everybody with a mother, take two steps forward. NOT SO FAST, MULLINS!”