StinkFight.com

The Peter Principle states that “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.” This is true, people get to where they’re doing a great job, then get promoted to where they can’t do a great job, but don’t fuck up enough to get fired, and stay there for the rest of thier life.

I find this true also with software. There is even a name for this, “software bloat” or “bloatware.” I think the reason this happens is because software companies have to keep rolling out new “features” to stay in business, even when the “features” turn out to be annoyances.

I use a lot of legacy software (older versions) that I like a lot  better than the latest version. Here’s a list of programs I have tried the latest version of, and reverted to an older version because I like the older one better:

• Microsoft Windows (Currently at Vista, but I use XP Professional on all my computers. I just bought a new laptop, and actually had to look hard and pay extra to get one with the older, cheaper, XP installed.)
• Microsoft Word (Currently at 2008, but I use 2000.)
• Sony Sound Forge (Currently at version 9, but I use version 8.)
• Nero disc burning suite (Currently at unnumbered version from five years ago.)
• AudioCatalyst MP3 encoder (no longer made, now part of RealPlayer. I use AudioCatalyst version 2.1, from 1999.)
• WinZip (Currently at version 11, I use version 10.)

You’ll get my legacy versions when you pry them out of my cold, dead hard drive.

We’re fine. Everyone’s calling and e-mailing us to see if we’re OK. Yes. We are. Thank you for thinking of us though.

It was a little one. A pussy quake. It’s being over-reported in New York and Texas because they want us to fall into the sea. Lol…..Or else it’s a slow news day.

Today’s quake was actually fairly short, and not that strong.
Was a 5.4 at epicenter, which was Chino Hills (near Whittier)

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/dyfi/

I was in frisko during the 1989 one. THAT was intense.

Overall, I like earthquakes. I think they’re sexy…..Mother Earth shakin’ her ass.

I watched the last few episodes of The Sopranos last night. Amazing show. I know I’m a few years later chiming in on the “make your own adventure” ending of the last episode, so I won’t comment (except that it worked for me.) I just loved how psychedelic the last season was over all, very experimental, but in a way that works. (And I decided to call it “psychedelic” before I got to the part about Tony tripping on peyote.) Also loved that when Chrissy relapsed, and the AA friend was spouting AA slogans at him, I said out loud “What a robot” seconds before Chrissy said “You’re a robot.” (Don’t get me started on AA, it did save my life, but I have issues with a lot of it, and don’t consider myself a member of the club any more, though I do work the steps in all areas of my life and I am still sober.)

I was a little miffed that my least-favorite character, Tony Jr., said a lot of things that could have come out of my own mouth. (About what’s wrong with the world.) I actually really dislike him and wanna reach through the iPod and smack him sometimes for being such a sullen whiny guy.

But I did love that, while he was in the mental hospital, he was watching Metalocalypse on TV. That’s my favorite animated show.

Sample dialogue from that show:

I heard something last night about home protection that I like, on this podcast, Black Man With A Gun: “You don’t shoot people just to kill people, you only shoot people to stay alive.”

But being prepared to do so involves training, practice, safety, and accessibility to your weapon. And accessibility to your ammo. An unloaded gun will not keep you alive. (Unless you bluff, the criminal isn’t brazen, and bluffing with an unloaded gun can get you killed. Non-brazen criminals rarely break into houses in the middle of the night willing to kill you. Non-brazen criminals steal iPods out of unlocked cars.)

There’s a lot of debate among gun owners about whether to keep your weapon loaded or not. Keeping it loaded makes it a better bet for home protection in split-second emergencies, but also can increase the chance of accidental discharge. Even though we don’t have kids, we do have cats, and they like to mess with everything. So I won’t keep my gun loaded. But I want shotshells readily available, and I can load them in seconds, even in the dark. (I practiced with non-active plastic dummy shells.)

I had bought this shot saddle (from TacStar, which is where this photo is from) to mount on the side of my shotgun:

(I was inspired to get it because Lem on The Shield has one. I am a little embarrassed to say that  - one probably shouldn’t take gun cues from TV shows, but it looked like it made sense to me):

But after I bought it, I realized that to mount it you have to push out the pins that hold your gun together. And that can, according to the directions, cause your gun to jam if not done right. So I decided to mount it on the wall in my bedroom.

I used a stud finder to find a place to nail it:

Had to drill a couple extra holes in the metal saddle. (I wore my shooting eye protection for that.) Then I just nailed it into the wall, and added shells:

Yay! Shells totally ready to go, without having a loaded weapon in the house.

Now, I can hear you saying, “But what if the crazed addict / killer / rapist gets into you and your wife’s room before you have time to load up?”

Well my friend, our bedroom has the window boarded up with three layers of plywood (we use it as a recording studio). We have a several-room house, so I would have some notice if I heard anyone come in the other windows or the door before they got to my room. (I did last year when someone tried to get in, I stopped the guy from coming in, called the cops, and they caught him). And I am an insomniac guy with audiophile hearing who works at home, is usually awake all night quietly reading, has cameras pointed out all his windows, and leaves the house a total of about three hours a week, not in any set schedule.

“Do you feel lucky? Well do ya?”

So, I bought a new computer. Transferred all data over to the new one. The hard drive (among other things) was failing on the old one, wasn’t really worth salvaging. And the hard drive has lots of saved passwords and personal info, so I didn’t want to just chuck it.

First, I formatted the drive.

Then, I took out the RAM, to keep as spares:

I removed the battery, as it fits my new computer, and I can keep it as a spare:

I figured the best tool for the job of making the hard drive absolutely unrecoverable was the shotgun:

My wife came home during this phase of the operation. She’s smarter than I am, and reminded me that we have neighbors who might not like the sound of a shotgun blast. She suggested an alternate tool:

I hammered away at the hard drive for a minute or so:

(A good-sized hammer would also work. But a crowbar is a lot more fun.)

It reduced the drive platter to glass dust. (Modern platters are made of metal-treated glass, not metal.) A little bit of it fell out, but I could hear a sandy shake of glass chips and glass dust when I shook the case. (Note the sticker that reads “Warranty void if seal is broken.” I guess the warranty is now void):

I threw the drive full of powdered, deleted data into the trash on top of the coffee grinds:

I covered that with used kitty litter (not pictured) and took the laptop to the recycling place (not pictured).

I won’t guarantee that the drive is 100% unrecoverable, if one had NSA-level resources, but I’m not that important. And I still think it would be a hell of a challenge. If anyone knows a way to turn about a thousand tiny chips of glass back into data, let me know. This process is good enough for me.

—–

(Note….I wouldn’t REALLY have used a shotgun like that, especially without hearing and eye protection, and not where it could ricochet and hit me or the house. But if I lived in the country, I certianly would have set it up further away and tried it.)

Well, we finally got to shoot our shotgun (which the wife suggested we name “Li’l Debbie) at the range. It was a BLAST, no pun intended.

You can see the expended shell flying out of the gun in this photo of Dollie:

Below are a few of the targets. We were told it was pretty awesome for first time. We hung the targets up in our window, facing out to our patio. Crime deterrent….It lets people know what they’re in for if they jump our fence and keep going.

…your wife looks better than you with a shotgun in her hand.

We got the gun today. 10-day wait was up. Yay!

And we did a series of pix inspired by American Gothic (this pic) :

(Note to self: don’t ever commit any violent crimes or these photos will end up on the evening news.)

This guy, D. Hydration, contacted me and did an interview with me about my band from 1984, Baby Opaque, and wrote a cool little thing about us. :

Funny…he says we were preoccupied with guns. We’re we? I dunno…but I’m damn glad I didn’t own one then.

In addition to the shotgun, I spent 1000 bucks from my large book check this month on a six-camera infrared security system for the house. Works day and night. It’s cute and groovy, covers all windows, the door and the patio. Records to a hard drive. Yay! We feel even more protected.

(Peanut watching Poltergeist style as I set up the cameras):

And just for kicks, Fuzzy with his “Fuzzy Fountain”:

This first one makes great computer wallpaper:

Download episode 0070 of Clone The Homeless

THY WILL BE DONE. hy Will Be Done

Michael W. Dean and Debra Jean Dean, being of sound mind and body, have a will-signing party. Their friends George Earth, Becky Haycox and Lydia Lam come over and sign as witnesses. Everyone has a great time, nibbling good food, giving each other backrubs, laughing, and chatting. They play with some electrical devices, then talk about personal stories about The Mentors, El Duce, MDC, Franco from MDC, Danny Plotnick, Moterbooty magazine, and Bomb touring with the Flaming Lips.

They talk about Jethro Tull (greatest band ever, sort of), people who don’t take care of their kids, why all humor is to stave off fear of death, fun with guns, home security and spy cameras, and they wonder if Kurt Cobain was murdered or offed himself.

Shawn replied (to the post below, about the new gun DJ and I bought today):

“I like that you went for the shotgun. It’s not the usual choice for home protection. That’s cool.”

I started to reply as a comment to that post, but decided my ranting reply was too long, so I started a new post:

===

I agree…most people get hand guns, which is scary, as people tend to take them out of the house, because they’re so small.

Shotguns require the background check and the ten-day waiting period, like pistols. But unlike pistols, shotguns don’t require registration. Because they’re harder to conceal. (This is why sawed-off shotguns are illegal.) But I don’t plan to ever take it outside the house, except to go to the shooting range, and I’ll have it empty and with a trigger lock then.

Proof that few people choose shotguns (at least in California, I imagine it’s different in Texas) is that the store had about 500 handguns to choose from and about a dozen shotguns. And they had a rack of books on handgun safety and use and ONE on shotgun use (I bought it), and it was mostly for hunters, with nothing on home protection.

We got the shotgun for home protection and to take on dates to the firing range. The place we bought the gun includes a free one-year membership at their range. The salesman seemed into the fact that we were a couple buying a gun. Everyone else in the shop was a lone male, and not many of them seemed chatty or friendly.

You don’t really need to practice accuracy in the same sense you do with rifles and pistols, you don’t “aim”, at least at close range, you more or less just “point” shotguns, the spray is much wider. They also don’t shoot as far, which is why cops use them in urban settings, the bullet on a rifle can travel a mile and kill someone. With a shotgun, it’s lethal to far less of a distance, something like under 100 yards. Powerful handguns can fire much further also.

Then we’ll only take the gun out of the drawer if someone is coming INTO our house, fire a warning shot in the ceiling first, and only shoot them if they have a weapon and they don’t stop after the warning. I hope to never use it. Especially since California is not a “shoot the bugler” state. In some states, (mostly in the south), you can shoot to kill if someone breaks into your house, even if they’re unarmed. In Texas, a guy recently shot and killed two buglers coming OUT of his NEIGHBOR’S house and didn’t go to prison. In California, you can usually only shoot an intruder if they come into your house, AND they have a knife or gun AND they seem like they’re going to use it.

Good news: the police are pretty bored in this town and incredibly fast at getting here. When I called about the guy trying to break in, they were here in under two minutes. I was still on the phone with the dispatcher when they knocked on my door.

I think that shotguns are better than pistols for home protection. Not only is there less chance of a stray bullet hitting a neighbor, shotguns are way more intimidating than pistols. They’re bigger, look way more redneck/crazy, and they are LOUD AS FUCK if you fire a warning, WAY louder than a handgun. And for warning shots, a pistol would put a little hole in the ceiling. A shotgun would remove a of couple feet of the ceiling. Better for scaring crazed junkies into being sensible.

We also bought a security camera system, six cameras, hard drive, 1000 bucks. Covered all the windows and the door with ‘em.

Shotguns start at 150 bucks. Way cheaper than security cameras, which is kind of sad, and is why more people own guns, I think. (We’ve spent more than the minimum on the gun. I don’t wanna cheap out on something that could jam or blow up, ya know?)

We got it because someone tried to break into our home last year, while we were home. I confronted the guy outside, and called the cops. They actually caught him. It was strange though, we live in an upscale neighborhood with little crime. But someone was mugged and cut last weekend in our town, DJ says that hasn’t happened in nearly 20 years of living here, nor has anyone ever tried to break in the house before last year.

And I think that the economy is going to collapse soon maybe, with gas prices going up, people may freak out.

I’m sane enough to only take the gun out if me or the wife were in mortal danger, which is really the only use to take a shotgun out, unless you’re a hunter. And believe it or not, I find the idea of sport hunting fairly barbaric. (Strange talk from a soon-to-be gun owner, but it’s how I feel.)

But that’s just opinion, I don’t think hunting should be illegal, I just personally find it distasteful. I’m probably a hypocrite, because I do eat meat. But then again, I have shot and killed a couple rabbits, skinned, cooked and eaten ‘em. And I think who anyone who eats meat should do that at least once, just so they know what they’re doing. When you buy meat in a store, you don’t think about the fact that something screams and bleeds and dies before you eat it. I reflect on that every time I eat something that was once alive, because I’ve done it start to finish myself a couple times. But on a day-to-day basis, I’m just too damn much of an animal lover to enjoy shooting them. Call me a disingenuous pussy, but that’s how I feel.

Michael W. Dean

p/s. Here is a PDF about self-defense gun laws in California.

Me and the wife went to Gun World in Burbank today and bought a beautiful new Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun. It was $607 with shock-absorbing stock (to protect her shoulder, since she had surgery this year - shock-stock not shown, this is not a photo of my gun, just of the model I purchased) and tax.

Since there’s a ten-day waiting period, I joked with the sales guy that “If someone breaks into my house before we come back to pick it up, I’ll hold up this recepit and say ‘STOP! OR I’LL….WAIT!’”

He laughed.

I’ve wanted a gun for a long time, finally had the money to spare. Also, seems like a good way to celebrate seven years of living in Los Angeles, which is tomorrow. (I moved here from San Francisco on July 9th, 2001.)

I’m approaching guns the same way I approached everything (music, writing, filmmaking, podcasting). Buy the gear, take a couple lessons, practice, hang out with experts, ask questions, then practice practice practice. I bought this book:

Modern Shotgunning by Dave Henderson. I love this guy’s writing style. Very unique voice, funny, like a friend or uncle sitting next to you telling you how it is. He reminds me of a slightly older me. (He even looks a bit like a slightly older me.)

Have an appointment for Debra Jean and I to take lessons from a guy who trains LAPD, and then gonna go to the range with my friend Joseph who is a very avid and expert shooter. Yay! New phase of life for the Deans. I’m excited.

I heard that a lot of cowboys named their gun after their woman.

Debra Jean suggested we call our gun “Li’l Debbie.” I like it.

Chris and I have worked on several projects together. And he’s the tech editor on the YouTube book I’m working on.

He’s really creative. Check out his stuff.

The YouTube book I’m writing with Alan, YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts, doesn’t come out for four months, and we’re still writing it. But it’s not only on Amazon, but it’s already at #76,142 in sales on Amazon!

It’s on Target too.

It’s common for publishers to put the book on Amazon before it’s done, but I’ve never had it rank this well in pre-order sales this far out from the street date. Yay!

article I wrote for the O’Reilly Digital Media site.

Digital Home Recording Tips, Part 2

here.

There are a lot of “time-management systems” out there. Some cost money, some are complicated, and some divide the world into two types of people: “Those who use our great system, and those losers who don’t.”

They all seem silly to me. So I invented my own: The Dean One-Page Plan.
I’ve been doing this for years.

I have a section about this in my upcoming book for O’Reilly publishing, YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts that I’m writing with YouTube rock star Alan “Fallofautumndistro” Lastufka.

(System text covered by Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. System is not patented or trademarked, it is in the public domain. Do what you like with it and pass it on however you’d like, just keep the name “The Dean One-Page Plan” in the attribution.)

The Dean One-Page Plan
It’s simple. It’s free. And you can start doing it right now.
I organize my life with one one-page document a week. Every Thursday (you can start on any day you like) I print out a page from a simple three-column, many row template I’ve created. The three columns are labeled “DO”, “BUY” and “CALL.”

• Things in the DO column are things I need to do in the coming week.
• Things in the BUY column are things I need to buy in the coming week.
• People in the CALL column are people I need to contact in the coming week.

“DO”, “BUY” and “CALL” seem to cover almost everything I need to think about in a given week, month or year.

I include “e-mail” and “mail something to them” in the “call” part. You can change it to “Contact” instead of “Call” if that makes more sense to you, but I like the one-syllable-each simplicity of the sound of “DO”, “BUY” and “CALL.”

I keep the template for this document on my desktop. I print it out once a week (twice a week in a week with many small tasks), and scribble things out as I complete them. And write things in with a pen in the printed copy as they come up. At the end of a week, I print out the list for the next week, removing things that have been done, and adding things in to do. It really works well in my life.

You can download my template HERE, or make your own.

I deal with long-term goals by getting a calendar every December. I usually get one with kitty cats on it, but you can get one with whatever you feel like looking at for a year. Make sure you get one with a big enough space to write a few things for each day that you need to (like an inch and a half square). If you get as busy as you’d probably like to be, you’ll need it. I also write notes at the margin between the calendar itself and the photo at the top, for things I need to do at some point this month.

Enjoy your more-organized life, and tell two friends.

(Kitty in photo is Fuzzbucket McFluffernutter. Photo by Michael W. Dean)