Tag: logic

November 3, 2026 – Spoken Like a True Idiot

November 3, 2026 /

From an article on MSN “The rifle found hidden inside a wall during a house renovation“

Old houses have a way of keeping score. Sometimes that means faded newspapers, handwritten notes, or, in far rarer cases, a rifle sealed inside a wall.

Why A Hidden Rifle Stops A Renovation Cold

A firearm discovery changes the mood of a renovation instantly. What starts as a dusty demolition job becomes a scene that demands caution, patience, and a clear head.

That reaction is not overblown. According to reporting from The Independent, one Dallas-area renovation uncovered a weapon hidden inside a wall, the kind of find that reminds homeowners how unpredictable older properties can be. News stories about hidden rooms, false walls, and concealed caches appear often enough to feel familiar, but an actual gun is different because it carries obvious safety risks.

Even an old rifle that looks forgotten can still be dangerous. Ammunition may be nearby, metal parts can remain functional, and no one opening a wall can know at a glance whether the gun is loaded, altered, or unstable after decades in a dark cavity.

Feel free to read the rest of this by clicking on the link at the top if you like.

This is truly what is wrong with America today. I can’t blame the guy who has probably never seen let alone handled a firearm for not knowing what to do. The mere fact is that the firearm was in the wall the whole time and simply exposing it has nothing to do with danger. And drywall is no threat to stopping metal shards.

I will admit this would be unusual and there are plenty of things that somehow made it behind walls. Watch This Old House and you will see this from time to time. My cousins found a 22LR revolver in their basement. Heck, I have put stuff in the walls to be found later. Where do you think the time capsule went?

If you read the article, just imagine substituting a few words. Instead of “a rifle in the walls” you wrote “a black person in the neighborhood”. I mean we don’t know the history or the intentions. How ridiculous. Just because you are ignorant does not mean you have to sound the alarm on your own far fetched intentions.

First of all, I subscribe to the Art of Manliness 100 skills. A man should be able to shoot a gun as well as sew a button. If you can’t, what kind of man are you? Well, you are the kind of man that calls the police because they found a gun. That very well might be the right thing to do in the circumstances. I would subscribe that it is more likely the gun was used in a crime or hidden by a prohibited person rather than blow up because it is behind a wall.

Just the other day we had electricians finishing up some work. I was telling them that we have been having breaker trips since they started doing the work. This was a circuit that they did work on. Finally they pulled off the cover and said that it was wired incorrectly causing the arc fault to trip the breaker. These are professionals that do this work everyday and they made a careless mistake. What of an amateur, or what if they are high on meth or somebody put the gun there and then the stack of drywall was laid up against the wall and it was forgotten, then hidden?

In the days before ‘metrosexual’ was a made up term, people did stuff. Yeah sure, sometimes they stuck their hand in a dark space and shocked themselves. However, the project was not stopped to call an electrician and get a quote to rewire the entire house. The mindset was to see what was going on and carefully work around potentially dangerous situations. Chances are high that if a firearm was rusted to the point of not being reliably safe (even if it was loaded) that would also not reliably function.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess what draws my ire the most is the inference that a firearm should be treated like a pressure sensitive trigger on a bomb. If you look at it the wrong way your chances of injury are high. If there was so much corrosion as to not be able to clear the weapon, I would also assume that the fasteners holding the wall together are in the same state. If you want to become a man, learn to approach your fears. You will be a better person for it.

January 27, 2025 – On True vs. While True

January 27, 2025 /

I say pretty much what I want to say in the podcast. This concept is sufficiently nuanced and complicated that I won’t do it justice in a short paragraph. This is a programming concept and I do my best to distinguish how you would use each type. The reason that I think it is important is all about that ever sharpening logic saw that I keep pushing and working on myself.

December 19, 2024 – Things That Makes You Go, Huh

December 19, 2024 /

I am kind of behind the eight ball here. It has been party after party, late night after late night and working like a banshee. Add to that some emotional struggles not just what I wrote yesterday but also some additional drama. So, a normal Christmas season. I need to get my Festivus podcast put together so I am putting out a cheap one here.

I had planned to review a book that I am reading. I thought that I had two weeks to go to finish it and I haven’t read a page since. That is getting pushed to next year since I am taking a break for Christmas. The other day, I checked the mailbox and it was crammed full of envelopes. It took me four handfuls to empty it.

This picture is 41 benefits statements from the insurance company. I couldn’t help but laugh and laugh as I was sorting through the pile. I surmised that the hospital finally got around to submitting to the insurance company for my wife’s treatment over the summer. I only read a couple to make sure they were for the same event. Sure enough, it was.

We are definitely not there yet, but I imagine that this is the kind of practice that is going disappear as Artificial Intelligence gets a real footing. The reason being is that this logic is pretty complicated. A thinking person would say, one claim and one document. Instead of generating a document for every line item, it would be one document with every transaction (think bank statement).

But, this gets into the complication of the logic. You can imagine that each vendor/provider/service ends up with a different task code or billing line. With that each of those equal a transaction. The logic then ties each transaction a letter. This way the system does not have to know if these transactions are related or not. It is the simplest way of laying things out. And simple is always the most robust.

If there is any doubt, this is what I do. Take a scenario, break it down into to the steps, that is critical to getting it right. A warning though, the output is always important. The reason it is critical is that the output changes all of the details within the steps. As an example, I have often had to deliver reports (letters in this case) with the project. And often those are an after thought, with the assumption that all of the data is captured. But when it is not, then sometimes you have to even re-program the steps and step logic to capture.

Because the software process is complicated and technical, what goes on behind the scenes is obscure. For that reason, the industry has become reliant on sloppy practices. Think about electric cars. I hear that a new model (like the Mustang Mach-E) consistently has improved over time. Without substantial infrastructure changes, a 2020 model is essentially the same as a 2024 model. This is because they are running the same operating system if you will.

Because nobody knows what is going on at the consumer level, the industry uses this as cover to release substandard code and iterate to a final or better state. Realize that some of this is a necessary evil, it is not just a conspiracy theory. The reality is that there are deadlines and that a manufacturer would not want to release a 2020 vehicle finally in 2024. That would also be bad for business.

The other day, I had a Windows 10 Blue Screen (of Death). This is the first time I have seen this in years. It used to be fairly common twenty years ago, in fact I didn’t even know that they still existed it has been so long. A Porche 911, is fifty years of evolution. Sure, if you compare today’s to an original, they are not the same car but the result is constant evolution. It didn’t make a leap from one generation to another. That is what software is.

I know that all of the contrarians like to highlight the simplicity of Linux and the advantages of crowd sourcing. I also agree that it is good and I appreciate the benefits. But what cannot be denied is that Microsoft has built a stable and widely accepted operating system. Good luck getting your very specialized TV tuner card to work in Linux unless you are going to program it yourself.

End Your Programming Routine: Choice is good. Sometimes what is seen as ludicrousness, waste or incompetence actually has a reason. Despite the $20 of postage to mail all of those statements out, they have to doing something to make billions in profits last year. Make no mistake, the only way insurance companies make money is by charging the patients so we paid for this but there is a method to the madness. In my book forty-one explanation of benefit statements in one day is mad.