I don’t follow sports much (never have, probably never will) but I came of age in the 1970s when Ali was making his comeback and it was hard not to be aware of him unless you were living under a rock.
But even then, the media mostly portrayed him as this talented boxer with a huge ego. (Both of which were aspects he indeed had, but which alone were an incomplete picture.)
It was only much later that I became aware of how much an amazing fighter he really was, both inside and outside the ring. He literally gave up the best years he could have had in his career as a professional boxer for his principles, principles that were based on fighting for a better world for the oppressed.
It’s a commitment to personal honor exceptionally rare in this world. (The only comparable example I can think of is Paul Robeson.)
Yes, he was in a sport that is now looked down on (in part because of outcomes like the early-onset Parkinson’s disease that Ali himself eventually succumbed to). Yes, in his early years he aligned themselves with the Nation of Islam and embraced their sometimes hateful rhetoric.
That just makes him a real person with real-world flaws who still achieved the greatness he did, which just makes me admire him all the more.
Well, I’ve done it. I now have a land line after a little over 10 years of being cell-phone only. Two things precipitated this decision:
About three years ago, I moved to Bainbridge Island. Once you leave the big city, cell coverage ceases to be so reliable. It was acceptable at the apartment I rented, but in my current home I get two bars of signal… at best. The missed and dropped calls at home eventually reached my breaking point.
Verizon is getting more and more intolerable. They don’t care about troubleshooting the issues I currently have. All they care about is trying to up-sell me to a smart phone, which I do not want. My cell service is less reliable than ever and I have no hope of any quick or easy resolution to that issue.
We’ll see how long this option lasts. Traditional analog twisted-pair landlines are slowly dying out, and that’s what I just got. Reason is that the electric power here is unreliable, and I don’t want a cable or IP phone that depends on some piece of equipment somewhere that in turn depends on commercial power. With plain old telephone service I can use a phone powered by the battery plant in the central office.
It would be a shame if I eventually had to settle for something less reliable, but it may come to that. It wouldn’t be the first time a less reliable new technology has eclipsed a more reliable older one. (Just think of all those fidgety electronic soap dispensers, faucets, and towel dispensers in public restrooms.)
Yes, I was there for the action. I left early because yesterday I woke with a cold and felt the need to get back home and rest. I wasn’t planning on being arrested anyhow; my role was more of a support one. Which I did.
Given how I fell asleep at 7:30 last night and didn’t get up until 6:30 this morning and have been napping all day, I would say my assessment that I needed to get home and rest was a correct one.
What part of the boldfaced text (emphasis added) from my on-line résumé do you not understand, Mr. Terrell?
Note: I am not interested in jobs outside the Seattle area, nor am I interested in jobs outside the field of software development….
I know: it’s an academic question. You ran a harvester bot and then spammed me. Repeatedly. Welcome to my hall of shame.
From: Terry Terrell <terry.terrell1@swftmail.com>
To: xxxxx@xxx.com
Reply-to: Terry Terrell <terry.terrell@axa-advisors.com>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2016 01:09:10 +0000
Subject: hope to arrange an interview with you
Hello David,
I contacted you last month about potential job openings with our
company. I haven't heard back yet, but I wanted to follow up and see if
I can provide you with some additional information about our company and
some of the positions available.
Again, we think your skills are a perfect match for some job openings
here that present real growth and a pathway for a prosperous future. If
we can set up a time convenient for you, I'd like to discuss your job
goals and see if there might be a match for you with us.
Thanks again,
Terry L. Terrell
Regional Vice President
AXA Advisors, LLC
10500 NE 8th Street, Suite 1600
Bellevue, WA 98004
Visit My Website
office: (206) 956-6220
fax: (206) 956-6202
Please Add Me On LinkedIn!
If you would like to unsubscribe and stop receiving these emails click
here.
Just because I feel like listing it, no other reason. I get several of these per day. Just because I don’t normally post them doesn’t mean I don’t get recruiter spam all the time.
Date: Mon, 09 May 2016 10:05:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Babin Raj <babin@ittblazers.com>
To: xxxxx@xxx.com
Subject: Fast Moving Requirement - Devops Engineer - San Jose, CA
Hi David,
This is Babin. I'm an IT recruiter at IT Trailblazers LLC. I found your
profile relevant to one of my current openings.
Title: Devops Engineer
Location: San Jose, CA
Duration: 12 Months
Job Description :
• Should have good working knowledge of Continuous Integration, Continuous
Delivery, Automated Deployment, Application Performance Monitoring and Agile
Development
• Knowledge of configuration management and provisioning tools
• Knowledge of software build tools
• Ability to apply analytical and problem-solving skills to solve complex
deployment problems.
• Practical knowledge of Deployment best practices and procedures
• Practical knowledge of containerization and deployment technologies and
infrastructure tools.
Thanks and look forward to working with you.
Regards,
Babin Raj,
Phone : (732) 227-1772 Ext.425 /
Fax: (732) 909 2358
2050 Rt. 27 Suite 203 North Brunswick,NJ 08902
www.ittblazers.com / Email: babin@ittblazers.com
Note: Please allow me to reiterate that I chose to contact you either
because your resume had been posted to one of the internet job sites to
which we subscribe, or you had previously submitted your resume to IT
Trailblazers US/Canada. I assumed that you are either looking for a new
employment opportunity, or you are interested in investigating the current
job market. If you are not currently seeking employment, or if you would
prefer I contact you at some later date, please indicate your date of
availability so that I may honor your request. In any event, I respectfully
recommend you continue to avail yourself to the employment options and job
market information we provide with our e-mail notices.
You have received this message because either you have contacted our Company
to express interest in employment, or you have posted your resume in an area
accessible to recruiters or HR professionals, which implies an interest in
being contacted regarding employment opportunities.
If you would prefer to no longer receive any emails whatsoever from our
Company, you may opt out at anytime by clicking here.
Gotta love all the crap in there about my receiving the sleazeball’s spam because I posted my résumé on line. It’s crap, of course: my résumé clearly indicates I am only interested in local opportunities.
Haven’t made any of these in a long time. Since getting a cellular modem to allow Internet use on the ferry, my Internet sessions while commuting have been productive enough to enable me to do some SWLing after work at times.
I’m not going to much blame the specific claimed recruiter (Arun Kumar), because I strongly suspect he might not be an actual person. These slime are running address and phone number harvesting bots and ever since yesterday have been repeatedly spamming and robo-calling me about a job I am at best minimally qualified for.
Gotta love the mangled English, too. Realize that there’s plenty of well-educated people in India and Pakistan who have no difficulty using proper English grammar, and who thanks to the low standard of living in either country can be hired for a song compared to Western salaries. But of course if you’re a total sleaze outfit you can hire someone less educated in English for a song compared to them, so that’s what you’ll do.
From: ArunKumar <arun.r@krgtech.com>
To: xxxxx@xxx.com
Subject: Arun KRG Tech - Full Time (Permanent) - .NET Developer/Support - Redmond, WA
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 08:38:46 -0700
Hi,
Greetings!! We KRG Technologies star partner of HCL America recruiting for
.NET Developer/Support - Redmond, WA. If you are interested with the below
job description kindly share your updated resume, comfortable rate with tax
term to <mailto:arun.r@krgtech.com> arun.r@krgtech.com or call us to 661
367 8000 ext. 207. Also Please share this requirement to your friends, who
are looking for job change.
It’s going to be closed while Bertha tunnels under it, and given that there already have been subsidence and sinkhole issues caused by the tunneling, the chance of collapse-inducing damage is greater while at the same time the chance of the collapse actually hurting anyone is far lower.
Given that the Viaduct is on its last legs anyhow, it’s either going to collapse before it is demolished or be demolished before it collapses. And given how it’s already in territory that was previously proclaimed to be unsafe, but retroactively claimed to be safe, because the state doesn’t want to tear it down without a replacement in place, its best that the procrastinating be ended now.
And given that the tunnel project was always an unrealistic boondoggle, it’s better that it be cancelled sooner rather than later, as a result of its subsidence damaging an obsolete viaduct as opposed to a perfectly good and non-obsolete downtown building or two.
And once the viaduct is out of service for good, Seattle will then be compelled get busy with the process of figuring out how to live without it.
(This is the second of two posts which I had written down intending to repost here long ago, and only just recently rediscovered.)
… huge ones, in fact. But it is still the economic system of classic liberalism, based on the pro-freedom insight that letting people do as they choose need not create chaos and dystopia and can in fact create peace and self-organizing order.
Its biggest failure is in its indvidual-rewards mechanism. In attempting to reward valuable and useful effort, it ends up handing out privileges and creating a ruling class that subjugates others. The problem is not the rewarding of individual effort, but the way it is done. Rewards that create authoritarianism are anti-freedom and should be opposed.
But back to my first paragraph. That pro-freedom nature makes opposing capitalism tricky. One can’t simply get into the mindset that one is an anti-capitalist and then just oppose whatever the capitalist way of doing things is, all the time. If one does, one will often end up opposing freedom.
It’s part of the reason (only part, it was a feudalistic society with no tradition of nor much respect for freedom) the Soviet experiment went so badly for freedom. It’s also a reason to eschew the term “anti-capitalist,” which leads to just the wrong mindset when it comes to opposing and replacing capitalism.
I’ve never liked “anti-capitalist” much because it’s negative. I’d rather use labels based on what I am for, not what I am against. Now I have another reason to dislike the term.
