Sh*t Mike Says

Why Windows Sucks – Part 11,492

If you have an update on an Apple MacBook Pro, you’ll get a notification. You can then update at your leisure. Only on a critical software patch will Apple ever “force” an update on you.

On the other hand, Microsoft does not. They FORCE updates on you constantly and even when they are not critical patches or updates. I needed to quickly get into my Windows 10 virtual machine the other morning only to find this…

This makes the update experience on Microsoft software so painful and sometimes a serious problem. There are critical times where you need to be able to get into your machine in a hurry. Microsoft would rather stand in the way. This is not a good user experience for anyone.

Steve Irwin

The following isn’t true. It is not Steve Irwin’s 57th birthday because he only ever made it to 44.

Wrong Again Google

I appreciate the sentiment but it would be more accurate of them to say Today would have been Steve’s 57th birthday. That is factually accurate.

I do miss him. He was a one of a kind awesome guy who should have gotten a longer ride on the life train.

Why Marvel is Better at Making Movies…

…than DC Comics.

Ben Affleck is hanging up the cape, according to a report that the actor is leaving the Batman franchise.


Affleck’s exit comes on the heels of another departure from the DC universe, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which claims Henry Cavill will no longer be Superman.

via New York post

Changing actors so often has become tiresome for movie goers. I just got used to these characters being portrayed by these actors. DC can’t even have the same actor that works on a television show play in their movies. Look at The Flash for example — played by two different actors in two very different ways. Grant Gustin’s television version isn’t the same as Ezra Miller’s version in Justice League.

Mystery of Little Feet

August 27, 2018

These were found on the floor in our work area. I think this is hilarious. I mean, what happened to the rest of it? WHAT was the rest of it? Why were only the feet left behind?

The Socialist Country formally known as Australia!

Australia is proposing a new law that would put you in jail for ten years for refusing to unlock your phone.

The Australian government wants to force companies to help it get at suspected criminals’ data. If they can’t, it would jail people for up to a decade if they refuse to unlock their phones. The country’s Assistance and Access Bill, introduced this week for public consultation, strengthens the penalties for people who refuse to unlock their phones for the police. Under Australia’s existing Crimes Act, judges could jail a person for two years for not handing over their data. The proposed Bill extends that to up to ten years, arguing that the existing penalty wasn’t strong enough…

via Slashdot

I think the existing two year penalty is bad enough.

China or Australia…starting to look like the same country to me.

However, Australian women are gorgeous so there’s that.

Battlefront II Imbalances

I don’t expect everyone who reads this website to understand how Battlefront II works. With that being said, I intend to rant about something that I believe is important to good gameplay. Balance.

The reason I bring this up is because I just played a game where one side would never possibly win. The way the game works is that when you accumlate enough battle points by either playing objectives or taking out enemy players you can upgrade your character to something even better and more powerful.

I believe an imbalance occurs when one side achieves a level where they have been able to claim most of the better player slots and the other side is never able to recover. If the light saber welding folks are hard to kill and they can pretty much kill any other player without a light laber, how would the other side ever be able to counteract that?

I’m not complaining just for the sake of complaining. I’ve been on both sides of this. On a team that just couldn’t be beaten and the team that always was. Here is how I would fix the imbalance. I would only allow one light saber weilding player per side per game. Let’s face it, Kylo Ren wasn’t present at Naboo so why should that character be able to play? In most cases other than the clone wars, light saber weilding players were low. There were only a few per side. Why not keep it that way in Battlefront II?

That is why in some cases, one side can never win. It is real jackassery on the part of Electronic Arts if you think about it. They gutted the original layout of the game to begin with and for those of us who were there at the beginning, they offered an olive branch for those who lost points, credits, and crystals and then never allowed anyone to cash it in. Well, you had a time limit but they never told you that. Sorry, I digress.

I love the game and as a veteran, I know that you don’t want your fights to be fair. You want them to be as lopsidded as possible (in your favor, of course). However, this is a game and I still believe one light saber character per side should be good enough for anyone. Especially, if you want to enjoy the game.

Ok. Rant mode off. I understand if I am the only one who understands this drivel. It’s good to have your own website sometimes.

Bitcoin – Still a Good Idea?

Ahhh, hell no. As this Yahoo article points out.

While Bitcoin ended the day with a 4 percent decline in its value, Ether, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum, plummeted by 13 percent against the US dollar, becoming one of the worst performing major cryptocurrencies alongside NEO.
Tokens recorded the steepest drop in their value on August 11, as most Ethereum-based tokens such as Theta Token, Aion, Pundi X, Aelf, DigixDAO, WanChain, and VeChain recorded a drop of around 14 to 18 percent.

via Yahoo Finance

Today, money has no value unless a government gives it value. The United States is a great example. How much is $5.00 worth? Whatever the United States government says it is. It is not backed by anything. Neither is cryptocurrency. It’s worth is decided by Wall Street traders which makes it even worse than the US government. How much is a bitcoin worth? It depends on what day you ask the question.

What if you buy a fancy crypto wallet and store your digital currency in that? What if you forget the password? Well, this happens.

But not all early cryptocurrency enthusiasts are counting their coins. Instead they might be racking their brains trying to remember their passwords, without which those few Bitcoins they bought as an experiment a few years ago could be locked away forever.


That’s because Bitcoin’s decentralization relies on cryptography, where each transaction is signed with an identifier assigned to the person paying and the person receiving Bitcoin. It’s how the system is able to process large transactions without a central bank, since each exchange is guaranteed by authenticating when money is going from one wallet to another using both public identifiers and private passcodes, and no one can access your Bitcoin wallet without your private password. If someone else somehow had your password and swiped your coins, they’re gone for good. Passwords are used to unlock your bitcoin wallet address, and if you forgot your password, those coins are locked away. There’s no central point of control to help retrieve your Bitcoin or change your password. If there was an easy means of cracking open people’s Bitcoin wallets when a password was lost, the cryptocurrency would be worthless, since the whole point is security without centralization.

via Slate

My two cents: I think that arguing that this is a good idea based on the fact that you are a geek and this is a geek thing has no merit. In the age of hacking, this is a horrible idea.

Oh Yeah! Another Power Outage!

This is super cool. Well, since it is currently 92 degrees maybe cool is the wrong word.

Power went off around 11:00 am. Projected time of repair is 2:30 pm.

Makes for an interesting start to the week.

My guess is that a power transformer exploded (heat related) but it could just as easily be a stupid motherfonker who hit a stupid motherfonking telephone pole. Telephone poles, in and of themselves, is a funny term because we don’t use landlines anymore.

Update: 3:47 pm“They” do not anticipate power restoration until the early evening hours. Some gizmo or “do-dad’ broke. It’s technical.

Updated: 7.16.2018Added a cool photo I took in extremely low light conditions.