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Introduction

Are you ready to go down the rabbit hole? To visit a surreal world, where black is white and white is carrots?

A friend, Metacognician in Shanghai, describes the situation as follows: “Life is more absurd than movies. I've gone down the rabbit hole too, when it just becomes more and more strange and you wonder how that all is supposed to make sense.” I asked him if I should just embrace it. He answered, “Why should you ... change the universe?”

It started with a psychotic named Jim Kiraly who resides, we think, at 6329 Twinberry Circle, Avila Beach, California.

Jim Kiraly is a respected citizen. A churchgoer. A Vice President of Transamerica Corporation. And a violent abuser who tried to use an emergency anti-violence measure, one intended to protect battered women, to stop his victim in a wheelchair from writing a book.

Concise enough? :)

For attorneys: Jim Kiraly filed for CLETS against his son and victim, who lived 200 miles away, did not own a car, and was in a wheelchair. His son and victim was not asked to end communications. Jim had no (zero) specific and relevant allegations that were not perjury. But he turned down repeated offers of no-contact and a signed stipulation that gave him everything but CLETS. He insisted on CLETS if his victim ever once “discussed” him with third parties.

In the end, Jim Kiraly signed an agreement far weaker than the ones he'd been offered.

A review of Court paperwork and other materials will tend to confirm that Jim and other parties, including attorneys on all sides, committed multiple felonies, crimes, and faux pas. :P

The word “abuser” is stated here publicly and without equivocation. A formal offer is hereby made to reaffirm the word in writing and under oath. Attorneys will understand the significance of the point. In short, there is little terror of a threatened defamation suit on this side. Actually, we feel that such a suit will fit nicely up Jim Kiraly's abuser ass.

Jim has one son, Ken Kiraly, who invented the Amazon Kindle and is one of the leads at Amazon's secret Lab126. Another son, Tom Kiraly is one of the leads, a Vice President-CFO type, at medical insurance firms, including one of the largest, Humana Corporation.

These people and some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley legal circles have committed or are involved in multiple crimes.

For the next decade or two, we're going to explore the crimes that these people committed, the motivations and the denial involved, the background and histories that led each person to make the choices that they did, and ways to build upon what happened and move towards positive societal goals.

There's plenty to go over. These people committed or were involved in: Spousal abuse, child abuse, DDOS (a highly prosecutable violation of CFAA), extortion, perjury, conspiracy to commit perjury (a possible felony), false police reports, conspiracy to file false police reports (a possible felony), unlawful threats, barratry, defamation, malpractice, civil harassment, criminal harassment, abuse of process, and violations of SCCBA Professional Standards.

The point was to force Jim's oldest son and victim, me, to sign a gag order. I was in a wheelchair. I'd never made a single inappropriate threat against my abuser. I wasn't even asked to not to call anybody. But Jim threatened to put me in a violence database unless I agreed never to write about him.

I won the right to write, but I lost my home of 25 years, most of my possessions, my chances for retirement, everything. Everything but a realization.

I can make a difference. I can conduct research for legitimate and reasonable purposes, document what happened, and analyze the choices of the people involved:

Maggie told me that she didn't know what she could say to me about what happened. However, we have decades to work it out. It will be productive. I'd like to direct the attention of attorneys and other parties to the:

Legitimate and Reasonable Purposes List

Questions or comments are welcome. For technical notes and disclaimers, click here.

Free Downloads


The current free ebook is located at this link:
http://haggishell.com/ridgeproject.pdf

For details about the ebook, click here.

^ TOP

Thursday 2012-11-15 — Flow is Not Slow

121115. Swizec is working on a book that discusses the concept of “flow” as it applies to software development. He asked for comments and I'll post some here. They're addressed to the author.

The book's home page is:
http://leanpub.com/nightowls

As of 121115, drafts of the book were located at:
https://github.com/Swizec/nightowls

* Perhaps the text that defines flow should be moved up to precede the Ayrton Senna anecdote.

* Holding an entire program or at least large structures in one's head: Yes. I've tried to explain to people before that this is what I do. For me the process isn't necessarily about “writing” code. It's more about moving an object that already exists piece by piece from mental space to online space.

I'm wary of mental models that come across as popular psychology. However there may be something to the notion that I need to be in the flow state, absorbed and even swept away in the current, for the process to proceed rapidly.

* I'm not sure it's correct that the developer “must feel a sense of purpose, even joy, in what they're doing” to be caught up in flow.

It's possible that what I experience is pure joy of an inarticulable sort. I perceive it as a state of being. It is what I am and what I do.

* Phenek, a startuper friend, offers the following comments. These are his points as opposed to mine:

this flow has been discussed quite often lately relating to productivity and interruptions. many people were saying that it might take many hours to get “into the flow”.

short interruption like client calling and asking why his mail is not coming through might take you out of flow for 2 minutes but might be that it takes next 2 hours to get back. and they are saying that if developer has few that kind of interruptions per day then it's not very productive. he is basically working 10 minutes.

I am not the originator of this research. but I have witnessed something similar myself. I just remember how frustrating it was when I used to get some calls that I needed to act upon, how it interrupted the state called “flow” and how hard it was to focus back.

* The book suggests that autotelics may experience flow “more easily and more often”. It notes that autotelics are not “self-centered”. Also that they engage in activities for “intrinsic reasons”. What do the latter two points mean, exactly, in this context?

For what it's worth, I don't know if I'm an autotelic or not. Possibly. I can't comment on the “self centered” or “intrinsic reasons” points without better definitions. But I'm intensely curious and remarkably persistent.

Note to Michael Bonetto of Hoge Fenton: If you happen to read this, perhaps you understand the lawful and appropriate implications of the preceding paragraph. I'm starting to understand them myself. I know now that I'm supposed to find out how this was possible. What you've done so casually; like a boy crushing an insect simply because he's bored and he can. My own books will proceed.

* The line which states that “All programmers are engineers at heart” strikes me as trite. Not criticizing the point but tweaks to the wording might help.

* Another part says that “relentlessly hunting down bugs is a source of great pride for most programmers”. Is it actually about pride for engineers who spend much of their time in flow?

My code has been called “f*cking beautiful”. I'm amused by that and I do take pride in the code. But none of that was in my head originally.

The code existed, somewhere; perhaps embedded in the Implicate Order. It was my task to move it from there to the online world and to preserve its original structure as I did so. Removing flaws or, better, avoiding them to begin with was part of the process.

* One paragraph states: “It could be argued that programmers are very selfless people”. Sure. We're angels sent to relieve the suffering of a world that cries out for the selfless compassion we're known for :P

The point you're addressing here is important in general, of course. Probably needs a book of its own. I'd add a bit more here and fill in minor gaps related to context. If it matters, for the purposes of the current discussion, that programmers are “selfless” or not, why does it matter? This may be clear to others but I missed it.

* The book states: “Yes, flow is indeed much easier to achieve in the evening.” Is it? Flow is easier to achieve when conditions are right. Not in the evening per se though for some people the conditions are right at that time. The text acknowledges this, to some extent, in the same paragraph. But the thesis, which is what this part seems to be getting down to, isn't clear to me.

^ TOP

Thursday 2012-11-15 — General

121115. I was unwell on Wednesday due to eating. But I worked until 1:15am Wednesday night on a project related to Phenek. Slept from 1:15am to 5:30am Thursday night.

^ TOP

Wednesday 2012-11-14 — General

121114.1. I stayed up late on Tuesday night to finish some work on a legal document. This was related to material prepared previously by Michael Bonetto; at least, it's my understanding that he's the one who prepared or at least oversaw it. It was odd. I didn't, and don't, understand what he was thinking.

Michael's material will be posted along with everything else over time. So you'll be able to assess it yourself and form your own opinions. But my sense is that he didn't try very hard to make it work. There is no intent to mock Michael here, at least not today. My attention is on other matters. But I'm puzzled. This particular Michael document wasn't very good.

Update: My attorney confirmed it a few days later. Michael's document was sub-standard. Neither my attorney nor I are clear about what Michael was thinking.

121114.2. Slept from 1:00am to 8:00am Wednesday.

121114.3. I ate on Wednesday. Previous meal was Saturday. I was looking forward to eating this time. Had planned to travel to a restaurant I liked. But it was too far away given things that were happening. Ate locally. Was unwell a few hours later as expected.

^ TOP

Wednesday 2012-11-14 — Pet photos

121114. Phenek and I discussed photographs of pets briefly just now. Here's part of the exchange.

<OldCoder> The dogs are funny
<OldCoder> I helped the guy in Mexico. And I said:
<OldCoder> “You must pay me. I demand a picture of your dog!”
<phenek> hah :)
<OldCoder> And he gave me the picture of the little dog
<OldCoder> It is a true story
<OldCoder> I was feeling playful that day

<phenek> I have a LOT of photos. some of dogs too.
<OldCoder> Pets are important
<OldCoder> I will write of them
<OldCoder> I miss the white cat on the photos page
<OldCoder> More than any member of the immediate family
<OldCoder> The family was there to hurt and cause pain
<OldCoder> The cat...
<OldCoder> was simply happy and friendly and grateful
<OldCoder> She would always purr
<OldCoder> As soon as she saw LittleCoder enter the room
<OldCoder> All he needed to do was be there
<OldCoder> And she was content
<phenek> nice cat

<OldCoder> Yes

^ TOP

Tuesday 2012-11-13 — Pray for a Start

121113. The following gift was unexpected. Bennett has offered a poem. I've edited the piece but the heart of it is his. As far as I know, the piece is original.

Incidentally, some of those who know me are aware that I cared deeply about an uncle and a grandfather. Both are long dead but I miss them still. Bennett's piece refers to an uncle and a grandfather. But I don't believe he knows about mine. The reference appears to be a coincidence.

People who have lost much
Gained little
For those, I pray

I pray for freedom
I pray for love
I pray for care

This was not written
This is from the heart
There's no simple solution
I pray for a start

For the fear of being forgotten
For the fear of never waking up
For the fear I'll lead an empty life
For myself and my undoing
It's odd how calm I feel
But I have a hole in my chest

For those who were forgotten
For those who lived an empty life
For those who couldn't escape
For those who couldn't fight

For my uncle, my grandfather
For me and you
For every one
Some say pain comes with loneliness
But those forgotten don't feel pain
They feel nothing

Before I go I'll explain this part
When I speak
It is not me speaking
It is my heart
And whatever else may be true
I pray for a start

^ TOP

Tuesday 2012-11-13 — General

121113. Slept abruptly from 7:31pm Monday to 5:31am Tuesday. That's 10 hours so any sleep debt is probably repaid.

^ TOP

Tuesday 2012-11-13 — Tweets are Neats

121113. Just some tweets from Monday and Tuesday.

<CompSciFact> 'So much complexity in software comes from trying to make one thing do two things.' -- Ryan Singer

<BoldCoder> Is it wrong to ask // For multitask // Two can run // As cheaply as one

<Swizec> My book is taunting me to write moar

<BoldCoder> Then moar you shall roar

<randomdrake> Per aspera ad astra. Thanks @BoldCoder.

<BoldCoder> I learned the other wording about 40 years ago. But Ad Astra is the important part. Metaphorically. Someday perhaps literally.

<Swizec> Non-hiring practices. He recommends telling job applicants clearly whether they've been accepted or rejected.

<BoldCoder> I've mentioned in the channel I did some recruiting in 2011. I phoned every person to discuss the issue. Anything else seemed wrong.

<Swizec> @BoldCoder in my experience almost nobody does this.

<BoldCoder> O.K. Not sure of your point. The principal figure seemed dubious but the engineers were appreciative. It was common courtesy.

^ TOP

Monday 2012-11-12 — General

121112. Slept abruptly from 5:10pm to 11:30pm Sunday. Early to Bed Early To Rise is a sensible adage but this is ridiculous.

A couple of people have suggested that I work on a landing page for the blog. They're right. But there's other priorities. More than a few things to do.

I figure it may take years to build significant traffic. For this side of things, at any rate. Phenek says the timeframe may be shorter.

121112. Daeken laughed at the Daeken Forsaken poem. He's a bit stodgy and I told him as much. Ego is inflated too. But he has a sense of humor. That helps.

^ TOP

Monday 2012-11-12 — NDA Hooray

This post may only be interesting to developers.

121112. I needed to sign an NDA for Phenek. More was involved than I expected. For those interested in technical notes, the NDA steps unfolded as follows:

  1. Phenek emailed me a PDF that contained an NDA. But Yahoo Mail, the account that I used, was broken. Attachments couldn't be downloaded today. I spent some time trying to debug the problem. However, it was entirely on Yahoo's side and couldn't be fixed. In the end, I forwarded the PDF to an account at another mail host and was able to get it from there.

  2. I printed the document using my Samsung ML-2545, which has proved to be quite nice, initialed each page, and signed and dated the last one.

  3. I scanned the pages I'd worked on. Or tried to. Newer versions of sane-backends were broken and didn't work. But I downgraded to release 1.0.19 and then I was able to scan.

  4. I used the GIMP and ImageMagick to crop and scale the scans, and to merge them into a new PDF document, which I then emailed to Phenek.

^ TOP

Monday 2012-11-12 — Of Mist, and Sand, and MyBB

This post may only be interesting to forum admins and developers.

121112. Mist runs forums. He's stubborn about it; doesn't give up easy. This is good.

Special purpose forums can thrive. But general discussion forums often fade away. It takes commitment to build these things. I've seen them come and go. Mist is the only person I know personally so far who's kept at it.

I wrote the MyBB tutorial on the OldCoder site for Mist and others like him. It covers setup but I should add quite a bit more. This is on the task list but it'll need to wait, as so many things will need to wait, until the Kiraly Cases situation has been dealt with.

On Monday, Mist notified me he wanted to move his forums from one webhost to another. We'd done this before. He'd learned basic maintenance but wasn't able to handle moves yet, so I took care of most of it. For those interested in MyBB, here's roughly what we did:

Moving MyBB forums:

  1. Select a new webhost and register there.

    In this case, Mist chose a webhost that he liked and set up a hosting account. The account included FTP access, PHP5 and MySQL database support, and a Control Panel. FWIW These are reasonably standard features.

  2. Back-up the MyBB website directory tree and MySQL database stored at the old webhost. Note that these are two separate components.

    I'd taught Mist how to do this previously. He made two ZIP files, one for the directory tree and one for the MySQL database. Then he provided me with both ZIPs.

  3. Upload the directory tree to the new webhost.

    FTP is often used for this purpose. However, with FTP, hundreds of files are uploaded separately. This can be slow and unreliable. In this case, the new Control Panel supported a command that accepted a single ZIP file as input and then unpacked the ZIP file on the server side. This feature was quite helpful.

    I used the directory tree ZIP file that Mist had made, but one change was necessary. The procedure I'd given him to make website backups placed everything inside a top-level directory. The new webhost expected a ZIP file without a top-level directory so I created a new version of Mist's ZIP before proceeding.

  4. chmod parts of the website directory tree. This step is discussed in my main MyBB tutorial.

  5. Create a new MySQL database at the new webhost. Then create an associated database user. The procedure involved will vary. In this case, I used a relatively simple Control Panel mechanism.

  6. Edit a MySQL backup from the old webhost. Replace references to the old domain with references to the new one.

  7. Upload the edited MySQL backup into the new database. The procedure involved will vary. In this case, I used a program called phpMyAdmin.

  8. Edit two files in the website directory tree: inc/config.php and inc/settings.php

    The changes required are primarily (a) modify database access information appropriately for the new webhost and (b) replace all references to the old webhost with similar references to the new one.

After these steps were completed, Mist's forums seemed to be up and running. He noticed a minor character set issue. That turned out to be a problem with the MySQL backup as opposed to bugs at the new webhost.

^ TOP

Sunday 2012-11-11 — General

121111. Slept abruptly from 9:45pm Saturday to 5:00am Sunday. Woke up after about 4 hours but tried to get back to sleep this time. I spent the day trying to catch up with tasks of different types. I fell asleep again at 5:15pm.

^ TOP

Sunday 2012-11-11 — Potential Cat

121111. Here's a potential cat that Mr. Meow is waiting for. She's a stray. If she isn't claimed, she'll become a new pet:


image ^ TOP

Saturday 2012-11-10 — Goodnight, Puzzle

121110. Puzzle is somebody known to the Kiralys. This was a goodnight to him on 121110 in IRC. Quoted here with minor edits.

I've noticed that I'm writing poetry, or at least little pieces with rhythm, extemporaneously these days. Grace Kiraly, my mother, has characterized this change as unusual and frightening. I disagree. This is what I was meant to be. And it is what she and James, her husband, took away from me.

<Puzzle> thanks for the poetry maybe i can use that in a song

<OldCoder> The last stuff
<OldCoder> has no rhythm
<OldCoder> So, no
<OldCoder> But the stuff on my page does

<OldCoder> Rhyme is not song
<OldCoder> Rhythm is
<OldCoder> Rhyme and Rhythm
<OldCoder> Rhythm and Rhyme
<OldCoder> Is entertaining
<OldCoder> All the time

<Puzzle> ok i see what you are saying

<OldCoder> That is what I was praying :p
<OldCoder> But off the path we're straying
<OldCoder> If sign off you must
<OldCoder> Fun I trust
<OldCoder> You'll be having

<OldCoder> The night is young
<OldCoder> You are not
<OldCoder> Conflict is there
<OldCoder> Tear out your hair
<OldCoder> Make decisions

<OldCoder> Cup of tea
<OldCoder> Plate of brie
<OldCoder> A book to read
<OldCoder> Software to heed

<OldCoder> What will you do
<OldCoder> From me to you
<OldCoder> Is the question

* OldCoder dances a jig
* OldCoder has been told
* OldCoder is bold
* OldCoder has rhythm now
<OldCoder> !

<Puzzle> that is funny

^ TOP

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