Category Archives: Sunday’s Rant

Big Auto is Big Bullshit

I am really starting to hate the automotive industry. So much of it is a racket, and here’s a little secret: A large part of what you pay for when you buy a car is production scrap. That’s a little fact they fucking hate, but it’s the truth. Ironically, a lot of the scrap is created because of stupid policies so they can claim they’re being “responsible” or “sustainable” or “going green” or whatever buzzword they think will get them a promotion. It really is funny how car executives are so concerned about their image, but they never seem to realize that their narcissism is not very attractive either.

Every month the scrap rate is too high, the production numbers are too low, 12 hour shifts are the norm, burn-out is an understatement, people come, people go, and the pricks calling the shots keep blaming “lazy” workers. It’s funny just how far they will shove their own heads up their asses to avoid the blindingly obvious. Rushing people, overworking them, and deliberately trying to make their work environment uncomfortable because some psycho-dipshit convinced them it would improve productivity… It is all so incredibly myopic and stupid, I would not have believed it, had I not witnessed this farcical nonsense in person.

The amount of waste created by LEAN, Kaisan, Five S, and “the like” is a disgrace, and let me be clear, it is all a fraud. No matter what they tell you, the ideas still come from the top down. If they give credit to someone on the line it was only because they were toeing that line while someone higher up had already been musing the idea all along. The thinking goes that it would look more down to earth if one of their “epsilons” got the credit. In reality, it looks depressingly stilted and forced.

And the saddest part is, they can’t even build the fucking cars anymore. Have you seen the new car lots lately? Pickin’s are fucking slim, folks! They keep blaming it on the chip shortage, and yeah, there is a bottleneck there, but there is far more to this car shortage than a lack of Taiwan microchips. Think about it: After covid hit, industry developed and distributed hundreds of millions of doses of a new type of vaccine based on mRNA that requires only the most sophisticated technology that the world has ever known, but for some reason, they can’t make the fucking computer chips needed to drive a car?

BULLSHIT.

Kudos

OK, well I hope you enjoyed my little angry rant. I just want to say thanks to whoever for putting in a couple of jokes. I went ahead and queued them up for Monday and Tuesday. As always, the submission page is at your disposal.

Also I want to mention that I am still basically on “hiatus”. That just means that for the foreseeable future, updates will continue to be far and few between.

Pax,

-f2x

OK, I need to take a little break.

Not going to beat around the bush or go into any sort of sob story. I’m taking some time off. I just need to recharge is all. It’s not like I haven’t taken more than a few hiatuses, and I will eventually come back.

I always do.

Pax,

-f2x

And That’s That.

So yeah… I just finished burying a second relative in less than two months. Happy Halloween, I guess. Now the family is going to have to find someplace else to go for Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Family gatherings are going to feel very weird for a while.

But time marches on, and with the business of funerals out of the way I can begin working on finding a good podiatrist who can help me with a rather persistently painful heal spur. After entertaining a myriad of hayseed folk remedies at work that are all but guaranteed to make the situation much worse, it is time to give an actual professional a go. Unless you are a licensed medical doctor, kindly keep your medical advice to yourself.

There is one thing I would like to rant about. This fall went from oppressively humid 80 degree weather to a bone chilling wet and dismal 55 degree weather. It has my sinuses all fucked up, and my head is killing me.

Kudos

No one has sent in any jokes… again. Maybe it’s these dismal “rants” that’s driving everyone away, and honestly, right now I don’t really care. The submission page remains open in case anyone is interested, but I’m just going to continue stealing jokes from reddit.

Fake it till you make it.

Pax,

-f2x

I Like the Night

The days are getting shorter, and the sun is getting lower in the sky. As a third shift worker, this is great news. It is not as bright outside during the day, and my light-blocking window shades are more effective at darkening the room, and this allows for better quality sleep.

Of course I also like the concealing nature of night as well. This may sound weird, but I do not feel quite so self-conscious when I go outside in the dark.

Kudos

Speaking of the dark, I am still going through some pretty dark times. Jokes this week are courtesy of reddit. Of course our submission page remains available to any interested party. Otherwise, I will see you next week.

Pax,

-f2x

For me, this is still the bad timeline

Of course it could always be so much worse, but there are an overwhelming number of things beyond my control that ensure my life is one painful blow after another. Recently I lost a loved one, and soon I shall lose another. There have been enough of these tragic moments that they are starting to define what my life is about.

A year ago I lost another cousin, the year before I lost Grace, the year before that I lost my sister, and so on, and so on. Add to it all, the growing fragility within my own aging body, and it would seem like a pretty bleak and miserable existence. And still society makes us feel guilty if we aren’t enjoying every moment to moment, as if pain and suffering should never be acknowledged.

Kudos

Sorry to be such a downer this week. We do have one user submitted joke, and a few jokes from reddit. If you would like to contribute a joke, head over to our submission page and type one in.

Yeah, I wasn’t able to make a comic this week… Due to recent circumstances, it might be a while.

Pax,

-f2x

Too Pooped to Care

I have been going and going and going all week long, and it kept on going through the weekend. I have a lot to complain about, but no time to complain about it. So let’s just skip to the kudos.

Kudos

OK, so I’m guessing it was Big D who left the joke on the submission page. If not then it is a mystery I will never solve. Never fear, there are plenty of jokes poached from the forests of reddit.

Hopefully I’ll have a new comic up this coming weekend.

Pax,

-f2x

In Search of Land

If houses were cars, my house would be a very used base model compact sedan that had serious cosmetic defects but otherwise ran well. Obviously the trade in value would garner far less than a comparable house would sell due to the considerable amount of cosmetic disrepair, but as it is, I find it quite livable. There’s a roof over my head, central HVAC, the appliances, electrical, and plumbing all work, and the structure is quite sound. Alas, I yearn for more… and always have.

A house nestled into the side of a wooded hill, a field down below, a nearby creek that flows into a river, and a long way off from the nearest neighbor. Add to that my own solar farm, water treatment, and sustainable off grid capability, and that is a place I would want to call home.

But who am I kidding. I barely make enough to pay my bills as it is. This is where the idea of bootstrapping a homestead comes in. All I have to do is find the land, right? Weird thing is, a lot of the land is already snatched up, and the ones that are available are kind of… well… shitty and overpriced. Lots without any houses on 0.3 acres are going for $35,000 and up, and it is pretty obvious they are subdivision lots slated for HOA housing. Not what I had in mind.

Recently I spied a steal. $25,000 for a 4 bedroom farmhouse on 2 acres with a barn and some other outbuilding. Just think about it: With a $5000 down payment the monthly payments would be just over a hundred bucks. Sign me up, right?! Turns out it was false advertising. The home was up for auction with a starting bid of $25,000. They want cash on the barrel and it’s guaranteed it ain’t going for no paltry $25,000.

Honestly, when I bought my home 27 days before 9/11, housing prices were at an all time high, and looked like they were only going to go up. I had no intention of living here for very long. My plan was to fix it up and flip it, but the market cratered and my house got devalued to less than half what I paid. It has been 20 years, and only in the last two years did my house suddenly emerge from being under water as home prices have recently soared.I will probably die in this house… Either that, or as a homeless bum on the street. Moving anywhere else would be too expensive, and the rent is seriously too damn high.

But maybe… just maybe… if I keep my eyes peeled… I might find that plot of land out in the countryside for a song. Then I can build my tiny home on it with solar panels, rain barrels, and a composting toilet. I will finally be able to spend my golden years glamping with my dog.

Kudos

Sorry the rant was late. Thanks for the jokes TOR. The submission page is at the ready for more jokes, otherwise, there’s always reddit.

Oh, and sorry about the glitch last week. I forgot to hit the schedule button on Wednesday thru Friday’s jokes. Oops.

Pax,

-f2x

WordPress Plugin Spam

So to make a website these days, you actually need quite a lot. First you need a domain name. Next you’re going to need a place to host the site, and of course you are going to need a content manager. Unless you made it your life’s work, you probably didn’t code your own theme, and who the heck writes their own plugins? Basically in order to make a website you have to rely on the millions of hours of coding that came before you.

There are a lot of content managers out there today, but unless you want to spend way too much time to get less than mediocre results, you are probably going to go with WordPress. WordPress is running a full third of the internet, works fairly well, is very user friendly, has thousands upon thousands of “good enough” themes, and plugins as far as the eye can see. It is the obvious choice for many wanting to run their own websites.

However, there is a downside to being the hottest platform on the web. Ethically deficient code writers are having a field day by writing plugins that take a rather baleful approach to coding. Upon opening the plugin, you might be greeted with prompts to sign up with a service. This means your website will have a substantial portion resting upon an indemnified 3rd party who will more than likely have a tiered system where the useful bits all require an expensive subscription.

Then there are the ones that use your site’s back end to promote their other software and services. Now I don’t mind a promotional sidebar on their own plugin’s settings page, but when you start placing your ads on my Dashboard or any other settings page, you have demonstrated that you are a piece of shit and your plugin needs to be deleted immediately.

The worst ones try to stop you from deactivating/deleting their plugin. I swear to god, one of them somehow managed to reinstall itself. This, quite frankly, is outright malicious code, but somehow they are still being promoted on the WordPress.org/plugins page with absolutely no way to know the good guys from the bad.

At the very least the plugins pages should have some kind key or legend to indicate the kind of plugin you are about to try out. Are they truly free? Are they committed to staying truly free? Is it software as a service? Does it require registration to work? Are their multiple service tiers that provide additional functionality? Is telemetry data being collected from your site, users, or visitors? Until the plugin is installed and activated, you really have no way of knowing what the actual terms are.

So basically, plugins are like phone apps but for WordPress, and like those apps there are a lot of privacy and security issues that makes using them hazardous to anyone trying to run a website. What is most disturbing is the lack of any meaningful effort on the part of the WordPress Foundation to rein in bad actors using their platform to spread malicious code.

Kudos

Speaking of bad actors, I had several submissions this week from a spammer. Nice try, but I review the submissions in the text editor, so your poisonous hyperlinks have no power here.

A happy thank you to TOR for his contributions, and of course we can all thank reddit for filling out this week’s jokes. As usual, the submission page is ready to receive any jokes you would like to include (and apparently spam as well), so keep’em coming!

I think it’s really important for the independent web to have a platform, and to the extent that WordPress can serve that role, I think it’s a great privilege and responsibility. — Matt Mullenweg

Pax,

-f2x

So How’d That T-Mobile Thing Work Out?

OK, so recently I mention that I signed up for the T-Mobile Home Internet. No this is not a paid promotion for them, and no one is compensating me to say this… I can’t believe I’m actually uttering that cheesy line, but yeah… This is my own personal experience and not a sponsored promotion.

OK, so I have had a bit of a beef with my local ISP’s over the years. Mainly it has to do with the price. I personally don’t think that a low end connection to the internet (like an uncapped sub 25 Megabit per second connection) should cost more than $35/month, and that should be a forced available option for every hard line ISP in the US.

Sadly, the local offerings are about $70/month, but they advertise lower prices if you are willing to bundle, which I am not. After AT&T decided against being reasonable, I told them to piss off.

This is where I started using a wireless modem and a SIM card from a cheap MVNO such as Mint Mobile or more recently, Tello. That worked out pretty good, but I had to watch my data usage. With Tello I got 25000 Megabytes for around $40. Ultimately I was spending about $60/month and had to watch YouTube videos on 240p. Not ideal.

Enter T-Mobile Home Internet. It is a wireless home internet service that costs $60/month, but as of this writing is being offered for $50/month with what seems to be a permanent $10/month discount for being an early adopter. It is not available everywhere, but it is available where I live, so I signed up.

They called me back immediately and started asking me all sorts of uncomfortably personal questions like my SSN, driver’s license number, and the last 12 people I slept with. The process got a little hung up when they encountered my credit freezes. I had to temporarily unfreeze them. I was not happy about this process, and I think it would be a major turnoff for a number of potential customers.

But in the end everything went through, and after waiting for a month or so I got the cylindrical modem in the mail and set it up. Honestly, it just works like any other internet service, so nothing to write home about there.

But that is also where this service shines. I am paying $50/month for an unremarkably reliable internet connection with no data caps. The speed varies a bit, but I never have any problem with streaming HD video or keeping my smart home running, and it has impressively low latency that would make any gamer envious. Surprisingly, my home security cameras actually work better for some reason.

So for now, my internet seems to be doing fine. If T-Mobile Home Internet comes to your neighborhood and you are tired of being gouged by your local ISP, you might want to give it a shot. Other than the overly nosy background check, I really do not have any complaints.

Kudos

OK, so I’m not really sure if it was Big D or TOR who sent in the last 4 jokes, but thanks. As usual, here’s the link to the submission page, and be sure to check out the merch in our online swag shop.

Oh wait. We don’t have a swag shop… or merch.

Let me know if you think a Flush Twice T-Shirt sounds like a good idea.

Pax,

-f2x

The Perils of Platforms

From Shining to Shit

Back when I first started FlushTwice.com, I was doing the HTML primarily by hand… and poorly at that. Up until 2008, I was using a collection of page templates designed to be easily edited for daily use, but it was a manual process and only changed when I uploaded the changes. No database, no scheduling, and no way to update the look and feel without breaking everything.

But then I found Movable Type… which was awful so I switched to WordPress, which was much easier to use and had a much better selection of themes to give my site a unique look. This opened up a lot of possibilities, but most importantly it gave Flush Twice an automated schedule. Now I could upload a bunch of jokes and comics well in advance, then sit back and let the system reveal them in time. It also allowed for users to leave comments.

But it didn’t stop there. Oh no! This baby had plugins too! Back then I only used a handful, but today over 20 plugins are required to give Flush Twice its particular look and feel. Also to track visitors, but do it in a privacy respecting way. I could have used Google analytics, but then Google would use that info to… to… Come to think of it, I don’t know why I fucking care about that, but I do.

The thing here is this: This is my site. I have complete control. No one else can mess with it. It’s mine and… What’d you say? Auto updates? What about them?

Ugh!

In the end, the control is like a rainbow. Only an illusion. WordPress and those 20+ plugins run my site, and the scary truth is, any one of them can bring my site down. All it takes is one malicious update to make the whole thing go away. Of course I could turn off the updates, but that comes with its own pitfalls as well.

And then there is the other elephant in the room. Shady plugin developers that have flooded WordPress.org with plugins as a service. You install the plugin, and they handle everything on their own server… including analytics. And of course you’ll need to pay them for their services as well, or suddenly your site doesn’t feel so good. What’s more, if their site goes down, so does yours. Trying to find a plugin that doesn’t pull this crap is becoming rather challenging.

In the end, all of civilization is built on a house of cards. Best not to startle the table.

Kudos

OK, so to start out the week, we have a few jokes from reddit, followed by a couple jokes donated by my good buddy, Big D. The submission page is still a great way to add jokes to the joke queue, but sadly it doesn’t add comics to the comic queue. I’ll have to work on that one.

“Pop, I’m nothing! I’m nothing, Pop. Can’t you understand that? There’s no spite in it any more. I’m just what I am, that’s all.” ― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

Pax,

-f2x