Here Be Dragons, A Ke7in Web Joint: k7nwj

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Saturday, July 19, 2014

Paper white not a paper weight

Yesterday at my long neglected campsite, a Kindle Paperwhite lay where it was left near three weeks ago. During that time, it has rained and cooled many many days and nights. Sitting on a stump, where it was last used, it sat there in its folio case.

The screen was snow white. On it was a diagram of a usb power charger and perhaps an X. It was damp, so it was dried. The form fitting case was removed to find more moisture.

When it was brought back home and plugged in, the amber charging light did not come on. Oh oh, was this now a hipster paperweight?

The screen changed from the diagram to something darker. There was hope. In an hour or so the amber charging indicator started to glow. Twelve hours later, that same inidcator was green, indicating a full charge.

Unplugged, wiped off, it synced up via whispersync and was just as good as when it was left behind.

This is one sturdy device. It receives my whoie hearted endorsement as an out door technology tool, right up there with propane and propane accessories. Or what not.

---
15 offbeat holidays of July
http://mentalfloss.com/article/57609/15-offbeat-holidays-you-can-celebrate-july

.. On the go, responding via
my Galaxy Tab3

Friday, July 04, 2014

Branding

In the 1970s a corporate form called conglomerates was popular. Beatrice, ITT were a few well known examples. Today Berkshire Hathaway is a good example. Today I realized Ke7in is all over the place, both in real life and on the web. Today a new tag is being born. #k7nwj for a Ke7in Web Joint. This is both a nod to Spike Lee's preferred directorial credit, and my "spin off" Twitter account. KE7IN is my twitter and Facebook, with the shorter @K7n serving as an automatic repository for. Cross posting apps. There are blogs on blogger, tumblr. Listology, twitter, status.net, friend feed, Google+, LinkedIn, Myspace, Facebook plus many of those sites have multiple iterations of my writings.

Today a favicon was created based on the attached image. This image is from a block print made in a high school art class, as an attempt to inspire a student to create one for himself. This past year, I was a substitute paraprofessional. An ill defined helper of students that need a bit more encouragement and support to navigation the school system.

The design was created last summer while camping. Trying to make something, easy to carve, runic script was chosen. For that and of course my own Nordic roots. My Paternal Grandfather had a glyph/monogram and it always intrigued me. His initials HAF lent themselves for alignment. KBF has the curves of a B to contend with. That is how the straight line based carving system of runes was decided upon. As a similar KBF to HAF was formed, a similar art project was remembered. That of mirroring our own name. Kevin when rotated and mirrored became a fierce tribal mask. It was treasured by a five year old me.

As mentioned previously the favicon is based on the black and white image, which in turn is based on an actual block print of the design, on orange and green

The favicon will be attached to my blog array. The image will become a user icon too.

TOM Peters had a program called Brand. You

--
Kevin
T&FB @Ke7in
Instagram Ke7in12
Google.com/+KevinFillips

This email was sent by my beloved Motorola Droid, using Lap dock Technology from the middle of a jungle gym

WiFi, LAN, DLNA, 4G, LTE, 3G,, DSL Broadband

The process of starting a new blog almost got all of me. THIS post started out as a primer for a much larger post. Soon realizing it had stand alone value, I was made public ally accessible in a drop box public directory.

WiFi, Broadband, MoDem, LAN, WAN, DLNA, 4G, LTE, 3G,, DSL

WiFi: Wireless Fidelity, a form of radio that broadcasts digital information from machine to a router to another machine or WAN. (a nod to earlier audio days with HiFi being the term for High Fidelity )

Broadband: a term for faster connection, today generally used to describe High Speed Internet, compared to dial up MoDem technology.

MoDem: Modulator Demodulator, which modulates what you type in, and demodulates what it receives.

LAN: Local area network (Work groups, office printer network, & etc.) compare to

WAN: Wide area network. This is the INTERNET

DLNA: Digital Living Network Alliance, a series of interoperable protocols so our various WiFi enabled devices can communicate in the home . compare to

UPnP: Universal Plug and Play, the term for devices that operate with DLNA Protocols (including Playstation, XBox, Wii, BD players [Blu-Ray Discs], iPads, Surface Pros and etc)

4G: Fourth generation (of phone carrier internet service) not to be confused with Apples iPhone 4S, which was the fourth gen iPhone, but still using 3G when other manufacturers were selling LTE devices.

LTE: Long Term Evolution (of phone carrier service) a name for a present form of 4G that was used for same before it was "officially " 4G now tacked on
but it is really Tomaaaaaaaaaaato Tomahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhto.

3G: Third generation (of phone carrier internet service)

DSL: Digital Subscriber Line, from your POTS, RBOC or land line carrier, it is distinguished from an analog subscriber line, by relegated voice to part of the wire, and data to another part of the wire, using digital encoding. This allows your single land line to carry both voice calls and the WAN traffic you want from the wider internet.
||||| as long as I am here, most cable systems, have wired your neighborhoods into LANs. were usually office networks which allowed file and printer sharing between computers dating back at least to Microsoft Windows 3.11 for Work Groups. Apple's AppleTalk. Workgroup=LAN. Broadband from cable is usually shared with your neighborhood, which has a single but possibly an array of "Pipes" to the WAN
||||[POTS: Plain Old Telephone Service, RBOC: Regional Bell Operating companies {the Baby Bells formerly 10 now 3]

Many of these terms are used interchangeably, correctly or incorrectly. The distinction of which can be major.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fnq1q8o62jor5c5/internetacrynyms.txt
And of course Google+ see my signature file

--
Kevin
T&FB @Ke7in
Instagram Ke7in12
Google.com/+KevinFillips

This email was sent by my beloved Motorola Droid, using Lap dock Technology from the top of a jungle gym tree house

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Chops

This photo has been altered to look real old.

Volunteering at a living history museum village as a school teacher, offers me incentive to get creative with my facial hair.

... On the go, responding via
my Galaxy Tab3

Home Canning, I say home Cadillac

Finally, they've done to canning what they did to baking bread with the bread machine.

Admittedly, i hoped to be able to dump, maters, jars, salt and vinegar into a hopper and have canned tomatoes come out on a conveyor belt. Nogo.

But this review seems positive. For some reason, my dad gets the catalogue from chefscatalog.com It is in there with a bunch of other luxury home canning supplies. Even high tech brine fermenting crocks.

http://www.cnet.com/products/ball-freshtech-automatic-home-canning-system/

... On the go, responding via
my Galaxy Tab3

Monday, June 09, 2014

Amazing

Yesterday I went shopping.

At checkout, the lady in front of me encountered some sort of delay, and open mouth apologized to me, in line behind her. I assured her everything was OK.

When the cashier was ringing in my sales, we were engaging in a tight but interesting unrelated conversation. As my wallet was pulled out to pay, she exclaimed, "I have done this before, because I recognize that wallet". I believed her immediately because I receive so many comments on my choice of credit card and currency container.

I then mentioned how once I had been in line and the clerk was asking me about the wallet and a lady behind me was very impatient and extremely rude about it. She was saying how much of a hurry she was in, and how .l.... yada yada ... as she continued to berate the clerk,

"You were amazing, we were doing this, checking and talking, and you said to her 'SHE is being polite to me, her customer'" "I am her customer too" she said. And I corrected her with, "yes but she is serving me. We have nothing to do with whatever is causing your urgency. In fact this very tantrum is delaying you further".

She said I was "amazing" perhaps she is not used to people being calm under pressure. The woman's crisis may have been real, self induced or not. But I didn't let her infect me. Because. According to some people. I am amazing. I smiled as I walked out of store.
--
Kevin
T&FB @Ke7in
Instagram Ke7in12
Google.com/+KevinFillips

This email was sent by my beloved Motorola Droid, using Lap dock Technology.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Fwd: Close your email and head outside

Even pinterest.com wants me to go play in yhe rain

... On the go, responding via
my Galaxy Tab3

This e-mail may contain confidential material. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender and delete all copies. It may also contain personal views which are not the views of [ pinterest ]. We may monitor e-mail to and from this network.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Pinterest" <editorial@pinterest.com>
Date: Apr 29, 2014 11:51 AM
Subject: Close your email and head outside
To: kevin3.0
Cc:

Android App · iOS App

Hi Kevin,
Discover all the places people have found to escape the harsh blue light of their computers and bask in some warm, real-world sunshine.

Collect your favorite travel ideas
>
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Unplugged places near and far
> >

Adventurer Awaits ...
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197 pins
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> 》Tammy D
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Saturday, February 15, 2014

Top the Tater

Why Target?

For the past three years since this returned to Minnesota, He's been able to find his ftavorite chip dip in your dairy section. Valentines Eve, after choosing $200 worth of electronics, dvds, blurays and the favorite chip, rounded to where the dairy section formerly was. Just yogurt. No sour cream, no Top the Tater to be seen. Much time was spent looking for the product bought at Tarrget more than any other store in Minnesota. Sour cream was found at feet level a couple aisles over. The red phone eas called, she looked for me and with me and asked up the chain of knowledge to learn it has been discontinued.

There are no longer any refridgerated chip dips but the chip aisle is over flowing. It is understood dairy is a perishable and under performing brands are routinely dropped by megastores for false economy.

More than ten years ago WalMart and Kroger learned when they drop someone's tavorite brand they likely lose that customers regular grocery business. Target famously uses consumer buying habits to infer when female shoppers may be pregnent. How can they fail to notice the complimentary relationship of chips and dip. Did they miss the chip/dip serving platters designed by some also ran in their boutique aisle.?

Loss leaders in the grocery business a freshman in college Econ 101 topic. If a store does not sell bread, shoppers avoid it.

To demonstrate an economic loss to the bottom line, this Target shopper demonstratively chose to abandon half the items in my cart at the cashier. I wonder how much the chip dip was losing? Without mentioning the brand, the cashier was able to name the discontinued brand. ISo not the only one to mention it apparently. But the metrics do not show what we do not buy. Which is why that action was used. For the lack of a $3 dip, Target lost around $100 bucks of doodads unneeded or wanted ezpecially. This might be the only one you know about.

A quick trip to Target to get 50 blank DVDs. The dip was a maybe, but much higher in my wants than the bluetooth items I alao picked up. Target is not a grodery store. The expanded grocery offerings was supposed to make it more convenient to shop at Target. It was not very convient when a 30 minute trip doubled and a half, involved 4 team members two radios and the help phone. CVS is not a grocery store but they sell refridgerated dips with far fewer choices for chips.

This blogger has a Master of Science degree in Economics from a southern research university. (UK 1992)

Please note, by calling Target designers "some also ran" I am not criticizing the designers. Some of my best friends are designers. Plus the "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" Ad stopped me in my tracks and could be the behinning of a new career choice for me. But really Target designers are very good. Their advertising agency is very good. But people fail. The guy that discontinued refridgerated dips but kept the chips has failed me. The tech guy that thinks an HVAC vender needs access to Target Customer payment data, should be sentenced to work behind locked doors ovetnight at a Wal-Mart.

... On the go, responding via
my Galaxy Tab3

Friday, December 27, 2013

Sweet

This Christmas while shopping, I stumbled across the Lifesaver multi pack called the Sweet Story Book. My sister and I used to get them every Christmas. I noticed there were many varieties, but I made sure to choose the traditional hard candy ones.

At gift exchange, my sister handed me a familiar package, I grabbed the one I had wrapped for her. We opened them simultaneously. We both chose the Hard Candy Christmas.

... On the go, responding via
my Galaxy Tab3

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Thin Clients: Tinycore

Thin Clients: Tinycore:

"This is a generic description of how to set up a Tiny Core based web server. It has been updated (May 2013) to match my current setup of Tiny Core 4.7.6 running on a Wyse S10 with 1GB Flash and 512MB of RAM. Although the previous version was still running perfectly I decided to switch to using a Wyse S10 as it consumes ~6W power when active and idles at ~4W."

'via Blog this'

source "Thin Clients"

PuTTy

---
and so it goes
###

Dakota City

Yesterday and today was the Harvest Moon Festival at Dakota City Heritage Village. This blogger started volunteering at the townsight located adjacent to the Fairgrounds in Farmington MN for the past month or so. Today we were grinding coffee in their authentic General Store. Yesterday we made rope at the fire barn. This festival is one of just a few events open to the public. If children complete all tasks, they are admitted free to the Christmas program. Running this store today was a bit of a challenge, but very capable of process. This blogger may choose to "adopt" the general store for future times. We'll see

---
Kevin via Smart phone

Monday, September 23, 2013

Cyclothemia

About a year ago, a psychologist diagnosed me with cyclothemic disorder. It is similar to Bi polar but longer cycles and thinner extremes.

I have been following my mood swings, and I seem to be in a "low". But I've noticed an upturn so I think Sunday was the trough and I'm back on the ups.

---
Kevin via Smart phone

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Sphere of Seven

I'm obsessing about the sphere again. A long while ago, I was reading an old alchemical text. There was an illustration of a unique style of globe shape cage. It was made of 7 great circles. I think it was a map of the heavens - ie 7th heaven. With a bit of time and effort, I figured out how to make one. I have yet to construct one, but I know how.

Today I was looking at flat pak furniture and housing. These are large projects that work not unlike those snap apart wooden dinosaur models.

So now, I am fighting the urge to make a small scale cardboard model of my 7sphere. The full size would be made out of mdf panels which will be two panels thick, offsetting the seam by one half each arc. Without giving away my design, I think each of the 7 great circles will have an obvious and similar number of segments, each layer rotated one half way round the circle, intersections to be calculated. It is a good thing I received ribbons for my geometry grades.

The purpose of writing this was to get my brain solving the problem. - It happened. This work is closely related to Buckminster Fuller's Bamboo Geodesic. If that means anything to anyone.
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and so it goes
###

For more info

Monday, July 30, 2012

Fire

I cannot say enough about fire. I arrived in camp pretty late Saturday night, fully expecting to fire up my vintage 425 camp stove and finish the pot of spaghetti I brought along for first night.
Pump pump times 50 and no pressure. So cheese sandwiches. The next morning I went to my back up plan. Grilling. I grilled hot dogs for breakfast but never managed a good boil for either my coffee or the spaghetti. Back up number two was my bottle stove with fuel tabs. Boils water in a jiffy with sterno, but the fuel tabs fizzled.
Yesterday after kayaking and swimming at my aunt's nearby lake home, I mentioned my gas pressure problem. She and my uncle lent me some 3 in 1 oil. Apparently the pump seal dries out. Well considering the stove was my other uncle's and was stored nearly 20 years I figured it was likely. Last night I had my spaghetti dinner and this morning i have my coffee.
Fire rocks. I understand what all those cavemen were so excited about.
-Kevin Fillips

Sunday, February 05, 2012

Blog Post #Brandsterbation specifically GE

21518_IB_CAN_EF_0_00023888.pdf Download this file

http://www.scribd.com/doc/80573303

I own this perfectly nifty device, that pairs my bluetooth enabled cell phone to a landline phone. Only recently experiencing the POTS landline service while house sitting, naturally I wanted to give it a whirl. But after a cross country move, I was not sure I had the manual.

But today, you can find most anything online. But I thought it would be quick and easy.

First I googled it by name

"Ge CellFusion gateway" I got a bunch of listings for sale for my device.

Predominantly amazon.com - fine, but the big river does not have downloadable manuals.

But I got the model number from that. GE-21518 - Great!

Remembering GE had sold its RCA and GE brands to Thomson, I started looking for Thomson, or was it Thompson? But the exited the consumer electronic business, and changed their name to Technicolor USA. As they exited the business, the brands got redistributed. Probably by GE. Consumer electronics, small appliances, telephones and accessories were now handled by different companies. But t his device was hard to categorize. It wasn't a phone, it wasn't an answering machine, it was bluetooth, but not computer. So

I had little luck at Jasco or TTC Tech Usa, the two obvious choices for something.

Apparently Technicolor (formerly Thomson) runs http://www.homelectronics.net which is supposed to sort through the confusion for you. But the triage process of sorting out where I need to go got me tot he North American division which was only able to find advertising products for my device, not the manual. The bulk of the site was having server errors of a technical nature. I am not sure if it was limited to the time of my three hour tour, or if this problem is chronic.

After a bit, I had a brainstorm. I will pretend I am from somewhere else, in the english speaking world. I picked Middle east and found the english manual for my device.

But should it really have been that hard?

--
Kevin ... K3vin ... Ke7in ... Kev1n2

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Fly in the ointment, as threat, or cure

Health care. Everybody wants it, nobody wants to pay too much for it. "Too much," is an indefinable term. Any amount is "too much" to someone. How many times has a person heard "I wouldn't take that for free?" In that instance even free was "too much."

I am going to make the following assumptions. My entire treatise is based on these assumptions.

A) People want everyone to have access to health care.
B) Nobody wants their own access to health care compromised.
C) Nobody wants to pay "too much" for it.
D) People want superior health care.

Now the funs stuff begins. I will state a few challenges.
How many of the protesters at the town meetings have health care, through jobs, unions or other?
How many of these are subject to assumption B?

Currently the health care delivery system has three basic payers for services.

1) Self-pay
2) Private 3rd party payer (Insurance through work or self policy)
3) Government (Medicare, Medicaid, VA Chp etc).

The providers can be grouped into two broad categories. For Profit and Non-Profit. The latter is a misnomer, in that they still need to cover their expenses, and hold onto reserves for expansion. Just no shareholder wealth is created by the organization. How non-profits create huge profits is a subject for another blog.

These players all charge and bill and pay each other and ultimately the nation's health care system continues. Payers #s 2 & 3 negotiate or impose fee schedules for services based on "usual and customary" charges. There is some controversy as to how those are computed, which I will not get into here. The end result is 2 & 3 pay what they pay, and the provider must write off the rest. Its not unlike having a coupon. A shopper with a coupon is like a patient with a 3rd party payer. The example is not 100% true because retailers can treat some of those coupons like vouchers in which the manufacturers reimburse the retailers for the discount. But from the customer standpoint the experience is the same.

So if a provider has a price for a procedure of $1000 and payer number 2 only pays $800 and payer number 3 only pays $750, why does the self payer still get billed the full $1000? Same reason you don't get double coupons if you don't bring the coupons. Because.

The $1000 price is a result of the provider needing to pool all the payments received for that service against all the costs associated with providing that service. If there is not enough profit (or reserves in the case of NonP), then something must happen. What about the self pay people that do not actually pay? Noncollectable debt is factored in as a business expense as well. Perhaps for example, of every $10,000 billed to patients, the provider can expect $7000, then $3000 is an expense of doing business. Not unlike sales commissions, visa charges or license fees.

So in a simple example of three patients, John uninsured, Beth insured, Chris Medicare each get the $1000 procedure. The provider can expect $2250 of the $3000 billed.

But there is another more insidious price policy other than the time honored supply and demand. What the market will bear. Supply and demand is great when people pay attention to prices. But when someone is paying for you, it is real easy to ignore inflation. Plus since the providers are really not getting 100% of their prices anyway, the "real price" is the average price after discount not the posted price. in my example $750. Think Manufactures List Price on a car. The price above the "real" price at Wal-Mart. Have you ever been to a department store to see a 25% off sign on something that months ago cost 30% less at full price?

So people with Insurance are not sensitive to price increases. This is the main reason behind co-pays. To put a price of transactions so that consumers will remember they are spending money, if just a nominal amount.

OK, so what is my fly in the ointment?

Forbid health benefits with employment or union membership. Require all providers of said benefits, to put that money in a tax free account for the recipients and let the consumers shop around for their own health care. My idea is once people realize HOW EXPENSIVE it really is, even though they will be no worse off in the end run, they will be more sympathetic to the plight of those without benefits. There may be an added benefit to the self pay insurance market with this too. Risk pooling will be out of whack. Currently large corporations with vast numbers of employees get preferred rates from insurers because of pooling the risk across the board of the smokers, the women of child bearing age, the healthy young guns and what have you. But when someone like me, applies for insurance, I may be considered a poor risk because of th mere fact I am applying for it. Am I simply that risk averse, or do I know something.

I am not sure if anyone knows the feeling of finding out I had heart disease, 2 months after letting my health insurance lapse due to a temporary budget crisis. But it was pretty horrible. I racked up 6 figures of debt with no realistic out. I was being responsible, right up until I made a fateful decision that I was "healthy enough" and I would catch up in a few months, better pay for my heat instead this winter. I am not bringing this up to garner sympathy, in fact it may have the effect of tainting the reader's view of my position as being self serving. Currently I live on disability and receive Medicare parts A,B & D.

---

and so it goes

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Monday, January 26, 2015

Monday, January 19, 2015

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Friday, July 04, 2014

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Monday, June 09, 2014

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Friday, December 27, 2013

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Monday, September 23, 2013

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Monday, July 30, 2012

Sunday, February 05, 2012

Wednesday, August 19, 2009