Tag: technology

This shit gets ridiculous sometimes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few months ago, I chronicled how the week in which I was on a cruise with my family, was a week in which the whole fucking universe decided that they needed to get in touch with me, there were emergencies, there were fraud alerts, and I had no less than 69,000 emails, messages, chats and other alerts that took an inconvenient amount of time to sift through and deal with the most critical of issues.

Since I realized that the world most certainly does revolve around me, it’s been comical at just how predictably reliable it’s been that basically, when I am indisposed, unavailable, busy, or just plain not in a position to communicate, is when the whole fucking planet wants to communicate with me.

Case in point, I’m on a flight, connected to shitty WiFi.  I can receive texts and check email, but most all else is woefully unreliable, and I feel like I’m on the 2400baud modem that my old 486 was equipped with.  While on this flight, my boss DMs me despite my out of office being on, and since I’m not as smart as I think I am, I haven’t disabled notifications from Teams so I’m seeing them come through; additionally, there’s a ping for an impromptu business meeting, to which this sudden nature means something substantial, like someone critical leaving or having gotten shit-canned.  I don’t know and won’t know until I get back to the office but I am curious, but not curious enough to reach out to a colleague on a day off to find out.

A voicemail comes through, and it’s apparently my doctor’s office wanting to reschedule my annual that’s in two months, scheduled a month ago, because the American medical system is completely fucked, and I have to figure out what shitty appointment time probably three more months out I can get in on and hope the doc doesn’t schedule an out of office then too. 

And then I get a text from my sister telling me to call when I can, which is honestly these days tantamount to ask me to cure cancer as much of an aggrandizingly obnoxious ask to make of me.  But I can only imagine it pertains to my dad whom I just left after a fucking week of babysitting, so now I’m curious but can’t call because although I have shitty WiFi, making calls is still not something we do in the air.

It’s been like this fairly regularly since I realized that I control the universe.  No matter what I do, it’s when I try to take some time for myself is when everyone in my world starts trying to get in touch with me.

When I’m at my desk, available, ready, and willing to communicate?  Fucking crickets

Hit the gym during lunch?  Ping
Go out for a run on WFH Fridays?  Ding
Spending time with my kids?  Bing
Driving anywhere, any distance?  Be-doop
Running errands with an objective?  Boop-boop

And so on and so on.  It’s one of those things that sure, nobody knows what I’m doing at any given time but all the same I still feel that fucking everyone needs to give my time some more respect and just leave me the fuck alone.

One of these days if I ever get to have a single god damn day sabbatical, I think I need to hole up in a hotel room all by myself and just sleep, shotgun a show, eat whatever I want to eat, and put my phone the fuck away except for to do shit that I want to do, because the conclusion I’m coming to while I’m blathering all this shit out in that I need to just not be so god damn plugged into so much shit.

Dad Brog (#156): I am a better parent than you

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

…at the park, at least.

With the weather getting nicer (read: not balls sticking to your leg hot anymore), I’ve really wanted to capitalize and let my kids play outside more, before it starts getting to be too chilly for outdoor play.  That said, usually on weekends where there’s really nothing on the agenda, I’ll take my kids to one of the numerous parks in my area where they can run around and play on a playground, burn some energy, and interact with other kids.

It’s not at all surprising, but it’s still a little disappointing for me to see, but whenever we go to most any park, it’s almost always the same scene; kids running around and being kids, and their parents usually posted up on a park bench, aimlessly looking at their phones.

Obviously I get it, and sometimes there’s little else I’d rather be doing than doing the same thing and indulging in mindless content and memes and games as opposed to having to be on in dad-mode as if I’m not already in dad-mode for the other 90% of my life when I’m not working.  And I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t occasionally look at my phone myself when at the park with my kids, or if I’m lucky enough to be there with another trusted adult, indulging a little bit myself.

However the thing is that my phone is absolutely not the primary thing I’m paying attention to while at the park at my kids, because my kids are what I’m paying the most attention to while at the park.  Making sure they stay safe, making sure they’re getting along well with other kids or each other, and making sure nobody else’s little shits are bullying my kids.  And of course, I’ll play with my kids as well, whether they want me to chase them and play tag, push them on swings, or if they want my assistance at doing some of the things that they’re apprehensive about, like monkey bars, rope bridges, or climbing higher things.

Not that any of my fellow parents who have resigned themselves to phone zombie status would even notice, but it’s like I kind of make a point to be more active, more present and more focused on my children, because even at 5 and 4 years old, I already feel like time has zipped by, my kids are enormous, and the next time I blink, they’ll be teenagers too cool to be with their parents, and will outwardly resent and hate everything I do despite remembering they still love me.  I love watching their faces when they come down a slide, or hearing their laughter when they’re playing with each other or other kids, because I know this isn’t forever.

And I’ll even indulge other parents’ kids, if they’re playing with mine, and I’m typically happy to engage them in tag, or push them on swings or see-saws or merry-go-rounds.  Occasionally I’ll look up to see if other parents are cool with such, only to see them face-buried in their phones, completely checked out and handed off, which I find to be kind of sad.

Yeah, this does make me feel like I have a right to say that I’m a better parent than those who don’t do close to what I do, and are completely at peace with handing their kids off to the park so they can get some phone time in.  Your kids will be grown in the blink of an eye too, and if you don’t have any memories of casually playing outside with your own kids, then that’s your regret to hold and lament about, not mine. 

I typically save my phone time to when we’re at home, and I’m letting my kids get some screen time in; this is usually the time in which I indulge in my phone, while they’re watching Little Einsteins or Superkitties for the 250th time.  But when I’m outside with my kids, it’s important to me to be vigilant and be active and be participating in the things that they’re doing, and yes I do judge all the other parents who don’t and feel bad for the disingenuous memories that they’ll have for the future where they won’t be able to remember the sheer jubilation or excitement on their kids’ faces when they’re having fun, because they didn’t see them.

It’s never too late to become better.

Clearly the world does revolve around me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Before I carve out some time to write about the famiry cruise vacation, I just wanted to briefly chat about the fact that in the one week plus a travel day in which I was mostly offline and then for the most part radio silent as far as (reliable) internet connectivity went, pretty much the whole universe moved as far as people trying to get in touch with me, work pinging me endlessly at times in which they never do, people calling, leaving voicemails, and all sorts of news or internet activity that I was completely incapable of getting to, or even knowing about beyond the hints that I could surmise from the odd capabilities of pretty much only being able to receive push notifications and texts through iMessage only.

Ordinarily, I lead a pretty boring life where not a whole lot happens on a regular basis.  There are times in which I get so bored at home or at work, where I’m practically begging for my group chats or friend groups to fucking pipe up and chat, and I get to points where I feel like I have to restrain myself from trying to initiate lest I feel like I’m spamming and that the people in my life don’t like me. 

When I’m able to be on top of things, I typically manage to do such, and all my apps and mediums are typically left tidy and clean, and I’m most of the time pleased about the minimal amounts of catching up I have to do, when I’m at the most indisposed with the kids or work for a few hours at most.

But seriously, it was almost comical at how much activity seemed to only happen when I was completely incapable of keeping up with it.  My Fridays are work from home days, and it’s like this unspoken understanding that most people are capable of skirting the rules a little bit and stretching the “from home” part, be it through running errands, tackling appointments, or in my case, attempting to get out of town without having to officially burn any PTO, as long as the work gets done and communication is not completely radio silent.

However, in the one Friday in which we deemed our travel day, I figured I could skirt my work day so long as I kept my one meeting, and made sure to respond to any work-related messages in a timely manner.  Naturally, my work meeting was at like 11:30, so that loomed over my head throughout the start of my drive, and it wasn’t until we were around Macon was I able to check that off of my list, and I got work pings pretty much all throughout the entire day, that required mythical wife to transcribe for me, or me to dangerously try and type out while driving, and at one point required me to pull off the highway, VPN in and try to intervene myself.

It went all the way until exactly 5 pm.

Yes, it was my obligation to have to be able to work until 5 pm, but on a Friday, I knew my counterpart who was also involved in the work was as aggravated as I was.

I told mythical wife to remind me not to try and skirt the Friday again in the future and to just burn the PTO.

As far as the rest of the trip was concerned in which I was more or less forced offline which wasn’t really a bad thing in the sense that I actually went to bed for healthy durations of time and didn’t get sucked into the internet vortex of scrolling and wasting time, what was weird is that I was still able to get push notifications of all the things that I was missing, but was really incapable of staying on top of anything. 

I get free international roaming and data, which was serviceable in the past, but I guess T-Mobile really sucks compared to Sprint, and Mexico aside, the data available to me in Grand Cayman, Jamaica and Disney’s private Bahamian island were all inept garbage, and may as well as have remained offline, so it got to a point where I was just like, fuck it, and gave up on even trying.

But in the week in which I was off the grid, aside from work blowing me up, there was apparently all sorts of shit happening in the world that got a lot of my shit blowing up.  Wrestling events, sports happenings, interesting news in general.  Family gatherings, friends reaching out, and even a friend of mine getting engaged.  My dad, whom my sister and I are dealing with the things that occur in later stages of life, has been making a lot of questionable independent decisions, one of which caused his bank to contact me, naturally while I’m out of the country, to ensure its authenticity, which spiked my stress and anxiety at being incapable of handling it.  Family chats blowing up trying to arrange future things, multiple friend group chats exploding with topics and takes that I’d ordinarily like to participate in.  All the while, being pretty much offline for seven nights.

I understand that this is among the pinnacle of first world problems.  But it was almost comical at just how much the world moved just as soon as I was completely unable to witness all the happenings of it.  To the point where even though I’m home and beginning the settling in process, I wanted to blurt out this diatribe before taking any time at even attempting to ease back into the connected life, before anything else, not to mention the component of where I had the above graphic in my mind, and where the Photoshop sometime steers the post.

Who didn’t see this coming with AI?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few years ago when I went to Adobe MAX, little did I realize that this would be the year in which the whole event would basically be this gargantuan circle jerk over the advancements of AI.  I mean, fuck me for thinking that I’d be able to go attend some panels and workshops and perhaps maybe learn a few things or tricks about the software I use on a regular basis, and not just listen to all these pitches about how AI is going to impact them all, feeling like one of the only clear-thinking attendees that saw that most everything was being developed with the intention to ultimately usurp all of our jobs in the near to distant future.

However, as big of moonshot ideas existed over the capabilities of AI, I knew what was more likely to occur first – a whole lot of fucking nonsense.  Like, a metric containership fleet load of fucking nonsense, especially once most AI tools, apps and functions were made available to the general public.  And it was going to be a matter of time before AI-generated content was going to permeate and eventually run rampant across the internet, mainly throughout social media, and then even more so than originally, absolutely nothing would be seen as genuine or authentic, and even more everything would be forced to be put in question on its authenticity.

I mean, we’ve crossed that bridge quite some time ago now, but it hasn’t been until more recently that it bubbled up in my mind to be worth throwing up some words onto the brog to spit my two cents out about the topic.

It’s like, most everyone probably has a story about a person(s) they’ve known in their lives that were the people who always latched onto a joke or a meme a little harder than everyone else, and well after the general heat of a joke has simmered down, they’re the ones still spamming it, referencing it, and inadvertently assisting the killing of it for others.

Yeah, if you’re reading this, you probably know what I mean.  And it’s okay to say if you’ve been that person before, lord knows that I’ve definitely been that person multiple times in my life.

What I’m getting at is that AI has made it easier for people to become those people, who overuse and help kill jokes and memes faster, and frankly it’s doing a disservice to the virality and general heat of a good joke or a meme, when looking back at something, and the sheer amount of bullshit surrounding them drowns out the original material from the onset.

For example, the Phillies Karen saga, when it first started, that shit was nuclear hot.  A perfect example of a story gone viral, with it absolutely exploding.  Video clips, internet witch hunting, just about every news outlet and op-ed in the world throwing their two cents into the well.  But then about 2-3 days later, the memes began, first through just bad photoshops, but then came the AI-generated images, where the first few were clever and fist bumps for those who jumped on the horse early, but then shit rolls downhill real fast when every would-be comic on the internet that knows how to write an AI prompt wants to try and get their jokes in for whatever attention-seeking reasons.

Ghibli-fied images.  Deep-fake videos.  AI-generated scenarios of Phillies Karen in various other movies, shows or stories demanding to be given possession of X.  Like, it’s funny for the first two seconds, but as the heat cools off, the constant stream of bad AI-generated content ultimately makes people like me wish that the original source of the meme never happened, so that I wouldn’t have to be subject to such bad abuse of AI tools to make up for the lack of creative talent that exists out there.

This is just one example of how AI is hurting the internet.  Who cares about how easy it makes students cheat in school, and how it’s acting like a miracle writer for people to lazy to do it themselves.  Who cares about how it’s able to take redundant, menial tasks and complete them in seconds, and who cares about the maybe 2-3 good things that AI has managed to accomplish.  It’s fucking with good memes and news and jokes, and this bullshit is the real lifeblood of the internet that perpetually bored scrollers and surfers need to get us through each day.

And because every motherfucker in the world has access to AI tools now, the amount of bad and lame bullshit content constantly overtakes anything real in a matter of time, and like I said, it gets to a point where you see so much turrible shit that you eventually wish the source of it never existed in the first place, regardless of how good it might be, in order to spare everyone from seeing lame shit.

As far as my opinion is concerned, the jury’s still out on if AI is still going to really be worth it in the long run.  I’m inclined to lean no, since I see it more than likely impacting my career adversely before I prosper from its existence, but one thing I do know about it now is that it’s polluting the internet with a lot of bullshit, which is pretty profound considering just how already full of nonsense it was before AI was made available to everyone.

I would like to have a DragonZord tail too pls

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently this is news from six years ago which goes to show just how out of touch I can get with the rest of the world, but supposedly Japan has developed robotic tails for the elderly to equip in order to help them with balance.  For whatever reason, this just started popping up in my socials recently, leading me to get that spark of inspiration because when I saw the, what I’m guessing were AI-generated images, all I could think of was how much they looked like DragonZord’s tail from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

And how I too would really like to have a DragonZord tail too; not just for something to help me maintain my own balance, but the obvious desire to be able to rear back and whip the sparks out of any motherfuckers who cross me, or try to take over the Earth on my watch.

I mean, anyone who’s ever watched as much Power Rangers as I did probably knows that despite how cool it looked or the idea of the DragonZord tail whip is, the fact of the matter is that it was really often times portrayed as an extremely ineffective attack.  It’s like short of the debut of DragonZord, where it would whip the shit out of Tyrannosaurus or MegaZord when it was being controlled by Evil Tommy, once on the side of good, DragonZord and its tail whip were nerfed into oblivion.  Either Goldar or bad guy of the day would duck it easily, or they would just tank the hit for no damage; and so often times was the case, an opp would just grab the tail and use it to pick up DragonZord and swing it into a nearby building or mountain range.

But I don’t care, if a DragonZord tail were made available to the people, I for one would still like to have one.  I’m sure as I continue to age, my balance will worsen, as I’m seeing is the case with my own dad, and it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to get ahead of the degradation and go ahead and start equipping my own DragonZord tail.  Being able to whip motherfuckers with it would only be a bonus, and if it would be possible to get a drill-tip upgrade like DragonZord, I think it goes without saying that I’d have to have it, because you just never know when you really could use the ability to drill a hole into something, in a clean fashion, and not have to resort to some makeshift spike or some unsymmetrical blade in order to do so.

Anyway, for all the nonsensical and useless shit Japan makes to solve even the most first world of first world problem minutiae, I will concede that creating DragonZord tails definitely sounds like a real W of an invention, and I would very much like to have one pls.

Wouldn’t it be funny if

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NPR: America Online to discontinue dial-up internet service which is still miraculously still available in the year 2025

Frankly, I’m astonished that AOL is even still in existence, much less their very specific dial-up internet service.  After Instant Messenger had the plug pulled from it back in like 2017, I wouldn’t have imagined that AOL had any product or asset at all remotely capable of keeping them afloat as a business, but here we are in the year 2025 where they’re not only still alive, but about to pull the plug on the very thing that put them on the map in the first place.

I mean, who among my general age range, didn’t ever have AOL?  It’s basically a rite of passage for elder xennials like myself, and probably most everyone could probably remember their very first @aol.com screen name slash email address.  And everyone was innately aware of the free trial CDs that were just about everywhere, and looking back at it, it worked in the sense that they saturated the playing field so heavily that for a while, internet access = America Online, much like soda became synonymous with Coca-Cola.

But before I can go down the rabbit hole of nostalgia and wax poetic all day about stories involving AOL, I’m just going to get back to the point of this whole post, and finally wrap up the title of this post because I don’t write as often as I want to lately and I can’t get myself sucked into my own vortexes of words instead of getting to the point of the things that I actually do want to write about.

But anyway, wouldn’t it be funny if, with the elimination of AOL dial-up service, it completely turns the tide of the political battlefield in America?  With the obvious implication that GOP supporters are mostly a bunch of antiquated olds who only have their internet access via AOL dial-up, and when the service is taken away from them, they lose their umbilical cord to the modern world, and either shrivel up and die sooner from boredom, or without the bullshit they currently imbibe on, on the regular, their minds actually clear up and break free from the brainwashing they’ve all been subject to over the span of the last few decades.

Like I kind of write this partially in jest, but at the same time, there’s a shred of hope of believing that this might actually come into play in the future.  The numbers (well maybe not necessarily) don’t lie, GOP voters are on average 726 years old, and short of having shitty brainwashed tech-savvier children setting up their internet, I have to make the assumption that there’s a tremendous overlap between Republican voters and AOL dial-up users. 

And since neglecting the elderly knows no political affiliation, there’s no guarantee that when AOL dial-up goes offline in September, there’s actually going to be people readily available to swap these geriatrics onto any form of higher-speed internet, and thus begins the prophetic disconnection with the modern world for these demographics, and it lowers their chances to be auto-right voters come the next election.

Yes, there are a ton of holes in this logic, but all I’m saying is that it would be real humorous to me that come 2028, the next election is seemingly way less dramatic and there’s a surreptitiously noticeable reduction in Republican voters, from a very specific demographic, and I for one will immediately point to this specific news story about how AOL killed their dial-up, and inadvertently changed the fate of the entire country in the process.

/goodbye.wav

I think companies should be more zero tolerance about security breaches

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A little while ago, I was having a stressful morning at the office.  My workload has been quite high over the last few weeks and the quality of the projects I’m on have been leaving a lot to be desired as far as the competency of those I’m required to collaborate with, and I spent more time in meetings than I do actually working on most days of the week.

But to top it all off, my company’s IT department sent out a company-wide mandate about sweeping security changes, with a little less than 48 hours of lead time.  My first thought was, when the fuck am I going to have time to go through any of this bullshit when I can barely, actually cannot, get through my own preexisting workload on a regular basis?

I prioritized this less than the importance of finding a quiet bathroom to take a breather in and went on with my days, but unlike a lot of the bluffs that IT sends out, on Wednesday morning, I finally hit a point where all my authentications had expired, and it was now time to reauthenticate onto the network and all the shit controlled by our SSO procedures.

Naturally, since I had neglected to address it when initially notified, I had to scramble to get back on the network, and unsurprisingly the instructions that were sent by IT on what we needed to do weren’t working.  I’m no engineer, but I’m technically competent enough to be able to follow directions, and when shit wasn’t working, I had to go down to our IT floor, which is the pain in the ass I don’t want to do it equivalent to mythical wife’s feelings about needing to speak to someone on the phone.

Turns out there was still something that IT had to do with each and every user, which wasn’t mentioned, and within five minutes of having to get some face time with IT, my issues are resolved, and I could be on my merry way, but not without having derailed my entire morning and frankly, all future instances of where I need to reauthenticate my credentials.

All I could think of after this stupid ordeal, was how shit like this became a necessity on account of one or a few isolated incidents of some dumbasses within the company that probably fell for a phish or continuously have failed our periodic security checks.  No security protocols are as secure as the intelligence of the dumbest end user, and the prevailing thought in my mind is that I think that companies should be more zero tolerance when it comes to their employees failing security checks, and fire them on the spot for getting busted for being weak links in the fence.

Now full disclosure, I have failed a phish test once, on account of a moment of weakness where the company clearly managed to pique to my Asian love of name brands, claiming to have company apparel made by UnderArmour.  Since then, I haven’t bitten on a phish test, and am probably one of the more obnoxious end users who reports emails as possible phishing attempts on a regular basis, even when I’m 99% sure it’s legitimate.  And sometimes, I’ll use the report phish button as passive aggression, reporting things I just don’t want to see from the company as phishing attempts, but the point remains despite my own early-tenure discretion, I’ve been pretty exemplary when it comes to not getting phished.

I feel like if companies were a little more draconian and zero tolerance when it comes to security protocols, the more stimulating of a workforce we’d be in.  It would help weed out all the olds who won’t fucking retire and allow for the advancement of more competent employees, and it would naturally help filter out all of the unqualified goons who lied or affirmative action’d their way into their roles. 

Companies shore up their security, and those who have been axed for their shortcomings have a chance to learn, grow and with the sheer amount of job fluctuation in the workforce, allows the entire marketplace to be stimulated and fresh, with people moving around at a rapid rate.

And then there would be lesser needs for companies like mine to do massive, reactionary, wide-sweeping IT initiatives like my company had to do, and there would be less wasted time on massive scales.  Everyone wins!