10 Thoughts for June 11, 2015

1. You must absolutely read this story about the independent reporter, whose work and actions were at the center of how the FBI was able to shake the FIFA tree. This is what Journalism really is about. Of course, there's also John Oliver, whose public takedown of FIFA was so impressive and popular, one can't help but give him some credit for Sepp Blatter's resignation.
2. Test your ears. Out of the six samples, I was able to correctly identify four as the uncompressed track, and the other two were 320Kbps. I can pick out the 128 Kbps samples, fairly easily; it's the 320Kbps and uncompressed ones that are much more difficult to discern. I archived my CDs into uncompressed FLAC, but most of the time I'm streaming my library -- via Google Music -- at 320Kbps.
3. Stories like this one, are why you can't trust what the news media often says. What the US Office of Personnel Management had was a breach; what the IRS experienced was fraud. The two are not similar. One can be resolved fairly quickly with much fewer repercussions, while the other is going to stick around for a very long time.
4. Over a month ago, my mother didn't know which was she was going to vote on the NEE buyout of HEI. I told her that either way, she should sell half her stock to lock in the gains that came with the initial buyout announcement. This way, if the buyout failed, she would have realized a profit that could then buy new shares at the lowered price, and if the buyout succeeded, the share price would only increase to roughly the buyout price, allowing her to get buy the shares back with a modest cost. I don't think she paid any attention to my advice, though. Well, the turnout for the vote was poor, and they failed to meet the minimum stock buyout vote required, so they extended the voting period, and finally got shareholder approval. Exactly as I said, there was no jump in the stock price as the buyout offer was pretty much the cap on the stock price.
5. I saw this one morning this week and thought to myself, why didn't someone locate the overflow downspout at the column? Locating it over a window just seems like asking for trouble. But also, notice how the downspout could have had a chain attached to it, to flow into the hanging basket? Two stones.
6. Sticking with photos, have you ever seen up close, the flowering dogwood's flower? Very fascinating structure, I think -- it's like a bunch of flowers within a flower.
7. I thought that I had fixed my Nexus 5 battery issues; apparently not. The camera-battery flaw remains with me, but now, instead of shutting down and showing roughly 4% battery left, it now shuts down and won't allow me to restart without first plugging it into a power source. The other day it just shut down, and when I plugged it back in, I had well over 80% battery left. So you're going to laugh: The makeshift solution is to carry a portable (external) battery pack to plug in, just so that I can reboot while outside. I bought (and received today) a Motorola P893 Portable Battery Pack. It works out fairly well for me, because it means that I can recharge my headset on the go, too.
8. So, the Mi store finally had things in stock, available for purchase. And so I thought I'd try to put stuff in my cart and see how much the shipping would cost. My eyes nearly popped out. For the two items in my cart which totaled $94, the shipping was $41! I then removed one item -- the Mi headphones -- and kept just the Mi Band, which cost $14.99, but then I checked the shipping and the shipping was *more*, at $15.99! Yikes...I tossed out the Mi Band and logged out. If you're charging more for shipping than the item you're selling, you've got logistics issues and need to open a physical warehouse in the US so that you can ship in bulk.
9. The USPS main office in downtown Portland has curtailed its PO Box counter hours to standard working hours, which means that if you work normal hours, you have very tiny windows to grab any package they're holding onto. Suddenly, having a PO Box at this branch seems worth a lot less than what I've paid for, yet the prices have increased.
10. One of the things I bought (and just received) in the past few weeks, was this Aukey Portable Wireless Bluetooth 3.0. It's a receiver you can attach to your car stereo, or speaker, or headphones; in other words, it's versatile. I'm using it to connect my desktop and other devices to my AV stereo, so that I can listen without having to use my Chromecast which would require having the TV on. Less power use, greater flexibility, given that I can do it without an internet connection.