All posts by SCAdmin

Happy Friday the 13th!

Happy Friday the 13th everyone!

Enjoy tonight’s micro moon, which is also the harvest moon. The next time a full moon will fall on a Friday the 13th will be 30 years from now.

For me this Friday the 13th was a workday. Had to wrap up some work that wasn’t very Silicon Valley like. It wasn’t Agile, or DevOps-y, or Machine Learning or even anything important at all by tech standards. But it was part of a contract deliverable to a customer so such is life. These things are sometimes unavoidable in the tech biz driven life. Maybe I’d rather just be sipping an ale and eating chicken vindaloo while watching old reruns of Red Dwarf. But the skutters won’t have it. They would have me transferred to an unimportant hollogram in an instant.

Apollo 11 Landed on the Moon 50 Years Ago Today

50 years ago, on July 20, 1969, NASA Apollo 11 Landed on the surface of the moon bringing the first humans to another celestial body other than Earth.

Budweiser_Discovery_Reserve_Snoopy_on_the_Moon_50th
Budweiser Discovery Reserve Command Module shaped bottle and astronaut Snoopy on the Moon during the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing

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And Now His Watch Has Ended – Of Anything at all on Television

Game of Thrones, one of the best shows on television in recent memory, somehow was allowed to end based on some 12 year old’s fan fiction. Eight long years of careful foreshadowing, plot building and sometimes even character development was thrown away as if into a sky cell.

For the night is dark and full of terrible writing.

Arya the Explorer heads “West of Westeros”. Really?

HBO was, for a while, thought to be immune from the manipulative bullshit of standard television . But nope. Game of Thrones was good enough to make people forget that “The Sopranos” also ended very badly on HBO with it’s “fade to black” The End finale.

Don’t get me wrong, Game of Thrones Season 8’s finale had some powerful, well done moments, but they were all disjointed and lacked flow in the actual story. The actors valiant efforts to make the scene believable felt wasted in a story that made no logical sense. Something was definitely missing in the finale. Was it an errant anachronistic coffee cup?

HBO is done. The high priced model of subscription television is done. And HBO knew it. Before the last few tragic episodes of Game of Thrones, HBO was pushing Chernobyl and whatever other new TV series that they think will retain paying subscribers after the confused Game of Thrones ending.

The latest Game of Thrones episode just proves that, given enough hero worship, any crap writing can be deemed genius and pushed forward to production. SNL has been doing it for years and most of the stoned TV watchers as that hour don’t notice at all. The writing has been dumbed down in an attempt to please all. But time and again, attempts to please all with any production end up pleasing no one. So that is where we are today with the much anticipated Game of Thrones finale. No one is pleased. EspecialyJon Snow.

Game of Thrones Coffee Cup – The Last of the Starbucks

Game of Thrones’ final season is wrapping up with just two episodes left to go. But last week’s installment, “The Last of the Starks”,  could have been titled “The Last of the Starbucks”.  An errant, anachronistic coffee cup that looks a lot like a tall Starbuck’s cup was left on the table next to Daenerys in the post battle celebration scene. Whose was it? And how did they miss it in post production? Did the editors just think it was product placement? Like the Air Arya shoes worn by the hero as she flew through the air to take out the Night King? Just kidding. She was actually wearing Curry 2 Low ‘Chef’ shoes.

With all the money spent on practical fire effects, flying dragons, giant’s milk, and moveable white walker piles, the most talked about prop from HBO’s Game of Thrones season 8 episode 4 is a single errant disposable coffee cup. The internet is amazing. HBO initially tweeted that Daenerys ordered herbal tea and not coffee, so that wasn’t her cup. So obviously it is Jon Snow’s Giant’s Milk Latte that he’s been regularly ordering to try to grow out of the “Small but Strong” jokes from the original drinker of Giant’s Milk, Tormund Giantsbane. HBO now says that the errant cup has been deleted out of any replays of “The Last of the Starbucks”.

So that DVR recording you have is the only place the cup remains. And of course across millions of twitter, facebook and Instagram posts. The cup will live forever now. Even without Melisandre’s magic necklace. The North remembers. And so does the internet.

Perhaps HBO will pick up a Game of Thrones spinoff involving Winterfell’s most famous coffee shop, Grim Grinders.

Game of Thrones presents us with “The Last of the Starbucks”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Valyrian Steel and Dragon Glass Futures Trending Downward

Beware! Here be spoilers related to the final season of Game of Thrones:

Due to changing market conditions, the futures for high end Valyrian Steel and Dragon Glass are trending downward. It seems one Arya Stark made the last practical use of this exotic steel with an expensive dagger known as the Catspaw Blade, previously  owned by Little Finger. Interestingly, this same Valyrian Steel dagger that saved the Three Eyed Raven (AKA Bran Stark) was used in an attempt to kill him and frame Tyrion Lannister.

While Valyrian Steel is still rare, its use in shattering White Walkers seems diminished.

So now we mourn those that we lost in the battle of Winterfell:

The mini-lady of Bear Island, Lyanna Mormont, who would have fared better against the giant had she had access to Giant’s Milk in her school lunches.

Beric Dondarrion, the eye patch guy with the burning sword. After his many lives, he is finally sent to pay the big propane bill in the sky.

Theon Greyjoy, after redeeming himself for his past deeds, is killed by the Night King and reunited with his missing pork sausage.

The Night King gets a taste of Arya’s Valyrian Steel dagger and gets all broken up about it.

Ser Jorah died protecting the mother of dragons from the relentless ice zombies. Sadly he never had a chance to make it out of the friend zone.

Melisandre, used her last fire spells to give millions of TV viewers enough light to see the Battle of Winterfell. And also used her last shot of botox. Age comes on fast.

Ice Dragon Viserion, whose destructive breath was at least minty fresh, was taken down with his creator.

There were still those that were not expendable in this Long Night battle for Winterfell. The Hound, who still has to face his brother, The Mountain. Jamie Lannister who still has to face his sister. And baby?

Despite being worth less at the moment, Valyrian Steel swords are still quite rare. These are among the specimens known to still exist in Westeros:

Oathkeeper

Heartsbane

The Dagger

Dawn

Widow’s Wail

And this seems to end the darkest part of winter. Does that mean that #SpringIsComing?

Guess we won’t need this #dragonglass anymore:

Dragon Glass. In a glass bottle.

Happy Lunar New Year! Year of the Pig 2019

Happy Lunar New Year Silicon Valley!

Today marks the start of the Year of the Pig. You can celebrate with some famous pigs like Pua, Tigger, Hamm, Porky the Pig and of course Miss Piggy.

Check out these cute piglets running in slow motion:

And of course don’t forget about Geico’s Maxwell the Pig:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swlC1Y4U0KE

Happy New Year Silicon Cali!

Happy New Year Silicon Cali and the rest of the World!

May the year 2019 bring you peace and prosperity, but always remember those that didn’t make it to 2019.

 

Verizon Outage Hits Silicon Valley

Another Verizon outage hits Silicon Valley.  As this map shows, the Verizon outage is turning the United States upside down.

Verizon outage turns the United States upside down.
Verizon outage turns the United States upside down.

 

 

 

Happy SysAdmin Day 2016!

Happy SysAdmin Day for all you hardworking System Admins that keep the internets running, the bits flying, the Pokémons evolving, and the Twitter tweeting!

SysAdmin Day is celebrated on the last Friday in July. What do SysAdmins do? Well we’ll just let Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley’s Pied Piper explain:

” What do I do? System architecture, networking and security. No one in this house can touch me on that.”

” I prevent cross-site scripting. I monitor for DDoS attacks, emergency database rollbacks, and faulty transaction handlings. The Internet – heard of it? – transfers half a petabyte of data minute; do you have any idea how that happens?

“It’s not magic, it’s talent and sweat. People like me ensure your packets get delivered unsniffed. So what do I do? I makes sure that one bad config on one key component doesn’t bankrupt the entire f***ing company. That’s what the f*** I do. ”

So while you’re out there hunting for Pikachu this Friday and your Pokémon Go app is actually working, thank a SysAdmin. If its not working well then just kill and restart your app. If your Pokémon Go app still isn’t connecting to a server then maybe its a sign for you to stop walking around while staring at your phone instead of watching where you’re walking.

Pikachu_over_water_Pokemon_Go_Screenshot
A screenshot of Pikachu hanging out on the waterfront in Silicon Valley from the Pokemon Go app.

I was promised flying cars

It’s the year 2016 but where are the flying cars. I was promised flying cars. I don’t see any flying cars. Why, why, why. Oh wait! there’s one! At Maker Faire in San Mateo.

Ok, so where are the flying Tesla cars? You know, the ones that are going to Occupy Mars? Better make them self driving flying cars. People have a hard enough time driving in ground based cars in Silicon Valley without crashing them into each other.