Compass Housing: Archaic Trogolodytes

 So we finally get a forward thinking manager for The Karlstrom. One would think that was awesome news, however for us who live here it's like nothing changed.

The reason is that Compass Housing Authority won't even listen to the people they hire, instead they choose to do the same bullshit. So here is a list of things they do wrong, and all of them could be so easily corrected if they'd just embrace new technologies.

1. No Communication

If you send anyone an email, and you are lucky enough to get a response, it's no less than 7 days before you get said response. It's as if none of them check their messaging systems but for the two hours they spend in the office.

There are several possibilities as to why, from really inexperienced tech department to plain old laziness. There is no department email address system either, it's all to individuals using predetermined email addresses which the staff have zero control over.

This is straight out of the handbook of "how to handle this new thing called the internet" from the 1980s. Given today's environment, checking email should be an hourly thing and the staff should have a mobile app available to check it on the go as well.

2. Bad Web Design

Their website is generic, bland, and something that could easily be thrown together from a Wix template in about five minutes. Ironic given that they claim to have an IT department.

So it makes you wonder if they are even receiving emails. A short time ago it was discovered that their email system was filtering out most of the emails that were being sent to them.

3. No Modern Payment Methods

This one makes them seem suspicious as well as inept, given that the most secure and accessible payment methods are with credit card systems. These are inexpensive and easy systems to setup, and yet they are insisting on using the archaic, insecure, and often very slow methods of payment for rent while pretty much every other organization which manages low income housing offers a credit card payment system.

The new manager has been trying to convince them to implement such a system, which can be setup overnight by any competent technology or financial professional. Yet nearly eight months later no such system has been employed.

4. No Accountability

Often companies they employ for any task are unheard of, almost not internet presence and sometimes their office location on Google points to a residential house. Then when the residents file a complaint about the services, CHA tells us to complain to that company, then that company tells us to either complain to CHA or fuck off.

We have a laundry facility that can't even wash sheets well, and then whenever new residents move in with bed bugs we end up with a massive infestation. These are new problems, relatively, that started when they sold off the expensive laundry machines that were installed in the building when it first opened.

The machines we had were not prefect, mind you, but they were functional and didn't require cash to operate. The company they replaced it with not only remains elusive and avoids all contact with residents, their machines are from the late 1980s and are designed for low and infrequent use.

When attempting to discuss this issue with them, the best we can hope for is occasional access to their better facilities used for cleaning the laundry from the shelters. If the company they contracted cannot provide machines which could work for shelters, what makes them think it would work for an apartment building?

5. Retaliatory Practices

A few of their staff will watch the social media of the residents, thankfully they don't know how to do this well because they do response to any criticism with anger. Given they are also constantly looking for things to hang over the heads of the residents as threats for eviction, this is really bad practice and looks suspiciously like they are attempting to silence any criticism.

Several residents have mentioned as much, many too paranoid to even complain to the authorities which are supposed to hold CHA accountable for their actions. When a resident mentions anything to them, CHA will hold onto that and blow it out of proportion, even making up complaints from "some neighbors" even when no neighbor has made any official complaint.

Now it is possible the neighbors are just too afraid to talk to each other, but this would be in response to the fact that CHA has created such an environment by ignoring legitimate complaints, delaying repairs, and blaming some residents for the damage caused by other residents who have routinely flooded the building. When pressed on any issue, the staff complain about their insurance rates increasing while defending the very people who caused it and moving more such people into the building.

As I write this, the residents in the apartments above mine are smoking marijuana, which they have done almost daily since the COVID lockdown. These are the residents responsible for so much damage to the building, and the property of those of us who have caused no damage to the building.

Instead of even considering compensating us who have lost property, then making things right by fixing out broken services, they defend and protect the ones who actually caused the damage. To make matters worse, they blame those of us who have been harmed by these incidents for the results of the damage.

My newest neighbor has brought with him bed bugs, which would not have been a problem if we had functioning laundry facilities which were easily accessed. As it is, there is no way to launder the linen so I have to spray poisons almost every day to keep up with the invasion.

There is also a resident selling drugs out of their apartment here, and though I don't know who it is nor how valid that accusation is, it would not be surprising if that was true.

Compass Housing Alliance is one of the most dysfunctional and archaic organizations in the system, a far cry from the original Compass Center that maintained the building to high standards, kept very strong relations with the residents, and took responsibility for their role when things did go south.

You can't complain about insurance rates increasing when you remove amenities that helped maintain the building and protect those who are flooding units regularly.

Living in the Future - Chaos Incarnate

So what does it mean when we say we're living in the future?

This question dawned on me when I said the phrase to someone who is less tech capable than I, he had no idea what it means. The phrase was introduced to be through a song titled "Living in the Future" by Akira the Don.

Recently he did a version 2.0 then 2.5 was the one released, those are part of the title if you search YouTube. Listening to those songs in sequence will explain it to the musical artists and enthusiasts, the rest of you will just have to keep reading this.

When I was growing up we had a lot to worry about, medicine was still primitive and technology was both unwieldy and unconnected. We took the bus to school, and lugged massive backpacks full of heavy books, and our sack lunches were in actual sacks.

By the time I graduated from high school computers became manageable, music began sounding all the same, movies lost their luster, and phones became portable … the prices became obscene.

Then the internet happened, twenty years after I was born, twenty years too late for me to truly benefit from. Now kids can miss days in school and get their homework through electronic mail, email is what we call it now.

Most kids today can get away with using a kindle or tablet PC for all their school books, weighing less than 5 lbs. for all their books. Students can safely walk to school now, there are eyes everywhere so less crime and disappearances happen.

Medicine has made us nearly immortal, and in about 26 years it may do just that. We now have access to more movies, music, games, books, art, everything, and no one can say they don't find something they like online.

We now see, hear, and read facts with the lies, online we can see what is really happening anywhere, no more censored and doctored media monopoly. Truth is more clear and everything gets tested, only empirical evidence survives this scrutiny now.

We can not only talk to anyone we want at the touch of a button, we can now see them in real time over the networks. The wool our governments and religions placed over our eyes is now cast aside and we can see everything as it is.

The future today is today, because we have no idea what's next. When I was young we predicted all of this, smart phones and world wide access to information, friends across the globe, conquering of most illnesses, and the increase in exposure giving us more safety in the physical world.

But now we have run out of predictions, we are at a point in which anything goes, tomorrow we may conquer death itself, or land a human on Mars, or find intelligent life on another world. Tomorrow we may destroy ourselves, or perfect bio technology allowing us to enhance ourselves.

We may find a manufacturing method that makes everything so inexpensive that money becomes obsolete, or we may find a new valuable resource that will drive a wedge between the rich and poor causing another revolution.

We may see peace in the Middle East, though unlikely in my lifetime it is still possible. We may see religious people become intelligent and sane, or we will see them destroy our species just to protect their delusions.

No matter what happens from here, we are living in the future, and today is the best time to be alive.

A True Doomsday Possibility

I can be quoted numerous times saying that our species growth rate is unsustainable, this is supported by simple math so … let's do the math. Prior to modern medicine, before even primitive medicine, before safety offered by social structure, any human was lucky to live past puberty.

Because of this selective pressure we evolved a breeding cycle that rivals rabbits, and sex drives to match. There were only a few million of us during the best years at that time, luckily we were never less than a few hundred thousand or we'd not have made it at all after breeding the neanderthal into our species.

So we were short lived yet quick to reproduce and smart enough to hide from the lions instead of taming them on unarmed. It was the latter trait that gave birth to the first step toward over population.

We formed social structures, allowing us to organize tasks based on abilities, and helping to protect our young so they had a better chance of reproducing before dying, and our population began growing beyond the boundaries of land and sea. Then we invented science, by then we were past sustainable.

Our population has begun to grow exponentially due to modern medicine, a result of science, increasing our lifespans to nearly five times what it was at our beginnings. This same science has also explained why we must stop breeding, hypocritically many people deny that part while enjoying the medicine the same science developed.

The aspect of our modern species that is denied most is our tenacity to deny our own mistakes, even when our very existence is threatened by said mistakes. We invent reasons why it's either not a mistake, or some magical savior who will come and correct it for us like this Jesus myth.

Many of us have taken to living in our own fantasy worlds just because the fantasies that are causing harm to us and the planet are holding onto the minds of our society like a cancer. We become self absorbed in video games and novels to escape the horror caused by the mass delusion of religion.

Very few of us have the stomach, and the patience, to attack these delusions head on, but we are losing the battle against the cancers of religion, war, and ignorance. Now we are at the point of no return, we must slow our breeding even if it means forced sterilization and neutering, or those born of these acts will have no world to live on.

The Real Illuminati

The computer world is not only real, it is controlled by us geeky atheists. The geeks have inherited the Earth, and this is a good thing.

First, often people will call the physical world the "real" world and refer to the computer world as just "the internet." The computer world is real though, and the physical world today is dependent on the computer world's state, in such profound ways that no human society can exist without it now.

This is evidenced in regions where they attempt to censor or ban access to the computer world, those regions are often blights on our species, chaos and disease run the societies there. Modern society, the very health we all enjoy, money, business, everything depends on the computer world and has depended on it since the 1950s, in spite of some nostalgic lies told by deluded old fools in bars.

Our masks in the physical world are gone online, the honest personality, the real us, is exposed when we are typing in text. Often people will use slurs like "keyboard commando" when someone else shows their true colors, and this is true but it's the reason you can actually see who they are online, but not in the physical world.

In the physical world we wear masks, we are vulnerable and our fear forces most of us to behave how society demands even if contrary to our own personality, even if the behavior is bad. In the computer world we are not forced to behave based on social tenets and thus, we become ourselves.

The second part is why atheists and geeks control the computer world, most geeks and atheists are persecuted or even physically harmed by societies. In the computer world that we created we are safe to share facts, information, and blasphemy, in the safety of the world we created where we are in control of everything.

The drawback is that to avoid being hypocrites we must allow all people the same privilege, at least some think this is a drawback. It is actually a very great thing, for those who are causing the physical world societies to be dangerous to us are showing their true colors online, and it's easy to get them to say the stupid things online that they fear saying in the physical world.

The funny part is that they actually think they are anonymous, but only Anonymous is truly anonymous, and they remain such as a way of keeping control. Anonymous is our police, our military, and our judges for the computer world, so they are welcomed by geeks and atheists, feared by the religious, and hated by dictators, because Anonymous is us, all of us.

Since the first computer systems were installed, no one alive today has lived before that, geeks have had control of everything. From government defenses to records of everything you do and are, every keystroke is filed and recorded, every phone call is tracked and the number stored, every purchase (even with cash) is also on file somewhere.

The point is, the conspiracy nuts are all wrong, there is an Illuminati like organization, we are just not very organized.

Everything Rides On This New Year

Privacy is one of those things every older person, or younger person who is not a critical thinker, seems to actually believe exists. But like any of the gods claimed to exist, privacy is a myth.

The reason is less obvious than the fact, it has to do with our social need to belong. This social trait, selected because a single organism is more likely to survive if the species knows as much about it as possible.

The problem is that the human species has become spoiled by the illusion offered by our manufactured caves, walls we build between us and the rest of the world. Eventually these walls are built in our own minds as well, the mind always reflects the world around it.

This creates an illusion of privacy, while we ultimately share everything when we think there is anonymity. This illusion is shattered by the internet, now we see just how much of our lives is truly public knowledge, and it frightens many people.

The intelligent people just enjoy riding the wave of reason and accept these facts as revelations granted by it. These are the people I want to address today; I know, talking about the silver lining is not my usual style. But hey, it's New Year's Eve.

When you realize that privacy is an illusion you will see that every detail of our lives is public knowledge, because we shared it with them. It requires no spying, snooping, breaking into computer servers, because we posted that information somewhere or filled out a questionnaire somewhere else.

Today kids are less obsessed with the illusion of privacy, they grow up no longer wasting energy worrying about such things and embracing the reason why we should not worry about it. By sharing our life, our details, the real us, we ultimately offer a way for other humans to know what we need and one of them may be able to actually help.

Islands are eventually swallowed by the sea, but a continent will last for a very long time and always leave traces of it's existence. For this reason we need to bind together, those who embrace reality, to stand against the ocean of deluded human minds who fear losing what they never truly had, the ones that want to hide behind delusion and mythology.

The effect of this discarding of illusions, delusions, and childish fairytales is that we all live longer. When an advance made by one who accepts reality is made, it benefits us all, no matter the age of the one who develops this advance.

For this reason alone we now stand firm against the destruction of childrens' brains, done by religious parents. The cure for death may reside in a brain lost in a fog of delusion, worshiping death only because their parents made them too afraid of reality.

We would all benefit from such a cure, so use this new tool called the internet to find those poor children and protect them from the delusion called god. The last thing the older generations can offer in return for what children are advancing today is a chance to advance even more.

The Year Nears It's End - Summary Of Observations

One trend I still see, which started back in the late nineties of bulky and overpriced cellphones, is the notion that homeless people with smartphones means they are wasting taxpayer dollars. When it started it was almost understandable, cellphones were expensive, but when thinking clearly it begs the question: how else would a homeless person get a phone call for a job?

The problem is in the thinking that homeless people are inherently lazy, or unwilling to work at all. This is a stereotype started by the media, if you have been paying attention then you know the media is controlled by the wealthiest people, the very people who pay no taxes at all and collect welfare masked as "subsidies."

In the eighties, and most of the nineties, the media controlled all the information, they literally controlled how society thought. Today they still control the majority, who are delusionally ignorant, but are slowly losing their poisonous influence in information. This is thanks to the internet.

So now they still decry poor people, in other words the very people who listen and obey the media, owning anything beyond old technology. Anyone with half a brain knows why this is a very stupid stereotype, anyone who has had to pull themselves out of the gutter knows why this is a dangerous one.

First, again I ask, without a phone of any sort how are homeless and poor people going to get calls for jobs? A homeless person has to have a mobile phone, they don't have a home for the cables required for a landline!

The poor person is forced to run through appointments, almost daily, just to keep their home and feed themselves, spending little time at home as it is, then if they are going to interviews they have less time at home. Most often they cannot afford a car, so they have to walk or take the bus, both are very time consuming. Essentially, being poor is a full tine job which pays less than liveable wages and has zero chance of promotions.

Okay, that was the basic logic of the situation, and now the part that shows why media, Republicans, inbred hillbillies, and most religious people, are total idiots. The numbers.

I had a landline with internet access, internet is now required to apply for most jobs today, so it is as essential as a phone, perhaps more so as many businesses worth their name allow for email communication. The total I was paying, when I finally got fed up with the ever increasing cost, was almost 80 USD.

I found offers online for unlimited data, voice, and the nearly obsolete text, starting at 30 USD per month, prepaid. You could pay for that with change from your couch, but what about the phones, those must be expensive, right?

Wrong, so very wrong. The prices of technology have been effect by a very rare phenomenon, and inversion of value. Due to the false nostalgia and novelty of the old phones, I have seen phones that were considered junk in the 80s on sale, yes on sale, for 100+ USD. Most poor people cannot afford that, without saving up for a few months, even today.

The inversion effect made modern technology cheaper, smartphones for 100 USD were comparable to desktop computers costing 500 USD, and many times you could sign up for service and get the phone for free, or in small payments. My smartphone, I got to see if I wanted to even bother with the transition, cost me 15 USD and was delivered in three days at no additional charge.

My smartphone is not top of the line, but it's only last year's model so it's not an antique yet either. My unlimited plan is 55 USD for 2gb at 4g and the rest at 2g per month, that includes taxes.

Now let all that sink in a moment, wireless is becoming more affordable than the landlines for one important reason, one that neither the Democrats nor Republicans like. Lack of regulation and a huge amount of competition is keeping wireless services at prices everyone can afford, and allow homeless people a chance to drag themselves out of the gutters they have been swept to by a society which cares only about appearances.

The so called conservatives in the USA often say too much regulation stifles competition, which is correct, but then they vote for the ban (ie regulation) happy Republicans. Republicans are not conservatives, they are right wing liberals, they prefer government control based on an archaic ideology.

Democrats are becoming more conservative these days, as they vote against many bans, though a single party government is a bad idea. The problem is that there is no opposition, the third parties are often too specialized to be viable replacements for the Republicans, and we cannot afford to keep the Republicans any longer.

Personally, this seems almost orchestrated, in the same manner that the media was controlling information before the internet. What scares me is: if this is orchestrated then the very people who are openly pulling the string of the Republican puppets are the ones who want people to vote Democrat.

To close, the ignorance enforced by religion has allowed our society to be manipulated so easily as to make everything appear to be a conspiracy, even the mundane things like the price of a cup of coffee. But when you are in a mudslide, you have little choice but to grasp the nearest root and cling to it in hopes of not being washed away again.

The Corruption of Welfare - Not so Corrupt

There is a hidden problem with joining the future that I rarely discuss, because it's not a problem inherent in technology. The lag of upgrades.

Technology is a sink or swim endeavor, not something that can be done willy nilly or half assed. The most important thing an organization must do is how decent IT personnel.

To better understand this I will use Washington state as an example of how to do it wrong. The specific point of interest is the Department of Social and Human Services.

This organization is notoriously a mess, the majority of workers are lazy and callous. Visiting in person was always the best method to take care of issues, however, visiting in person has an inherent issue with convenience.

The Moyer traditional method is to call by phone, which should have very few problems. This office ha's average wait times of 60 minutes, even if no one if being helped.

So it was great to hear that they finally have an online method available. That is, until you visit their website.

The Washington state DSHS website is designed as poorly as those old Altavista websites designed for people's parrots and gerbils in the 80s. The Lansing page is bland and login links are obfuscated, and none of it is mobile friendly.

When you manage to find the link to create an account they demand you choose a password based on insane criteria, like including a special symbol. This  ensures that you will forget the password in the future.

So you sludge through their poorly conceived login system, but you still have no access to what they want you to complete.

For that, there is another account system you have to find, yes, it is also obfuscated. Then you create a second passcode.

Okay, now you're ready to begin the rebel process, if you can figure out which text word you're suppose to click on. Instead of obvious menus or links, they bury the correct links in the actual text that drones on about different languages and how to get help if you can't read this page in English.

Ladies and gentlemen, the stupid of that one page alone is a threat to the sanctity of the internet. We have not  reached the end of our misadventure yet.

Once you start filling out the forms, you glance at the URL and notice, it now looks like a document on its own. The session ID is probably about 1k of data on it's own, excessive barely covers it.

Assuming your browser and connection are both perfect, in which case you don't need DSHS anyway, you get through and just wait for the letter telling you their decision.

Most browsers or connections will crash, that session ID and the fact they use JavaScript in ways the spaghetti monster never intended.

If you are a poor person who needs this service, you load the browser back up an navigate to the page again. Instead of your application, you are greeted with a warning that you have to wait 30 minutes for the other session to expire.

Yeah, they don't use cookies, and they have no way of tracking your IP address. In server scripts your IP address is very easy to check, even some of the laziest coders will connect that with the session for reconnects.

Alright, 8 hours later you manage to get this all done and now you can rest easy knowing you have renewed your much needed benefits. Then you get the letter explaining that you no longer get any benefits.

You have to call them anyway, wait more than an hour on the phone listening to the annoying voice telling you that it's better to use the system that just screwed it all up in the first place. This is not how you join the future, or save the planet, this is the result of bad hiring practices that result in nerds working positions where geeks should be.

I type this after being on the phone for 55 minutes, my second time trying to call to figure out why my medical renewal was denied in spite of no major changes. I am still waiting for an operator, and I was using my cheap $15 phone's keyboard.

Disability - The Product Of Society's Faults

The notion that a disabled person cannot contribute to society is both foolish and based on old superstitions, a product of our fear of both differences and change. The reality is simply that no one wants to pay us a liveable income for what we contribute.

The other fallacious notion common, especially among those who are paid to actually assist us, is that we don't want to work. Many people have this idiotic notion that disabled people are as lazy as they are. This is demonstrably fallacious due to the fact that most of us are disabled because we were over worked and under paid prior to the disability.

Yet when we seek to change our situation we are greeted with contempt and hatred from everyone. Well, almost everyone, oddly the scientific community is mostly generous and easily the least judgmental portion of society. It is important to note that one does not need to work in a lab to be scientific, one must only comprehend the scientific method and not be a total idiot who asks "why are there still monkeys?"

Back to the topic at hand, disability is mistakenly thought as an inability or lack of desire to work, when it is actually lacking the ability to do a specific set of tasks due to a physical or psychological difference, making the person unable to function the same as others of their species. Fore example, Stephen Hawking, a genius who is unable to utilize most of our tools, you do not expect to make him flip burgers, but someone with arthritis of the hands is often called to do just that.

The flaw in society here is the definition of contribution, most incorrectly consider a contribution to be a marketable act for profit. Most of the greatest contributions to society offered absolutely no profit to those who have made them, and quite often resulted in their ridicule, discouragement, and even murders.

Many years after society has essentially destroyed them, removing the possibility of them offering more contributions that could benefit society as a whole, do we discover that not only were they correct, they just saved the lives of billions of their own species and never asked for more than food on the table and the right to live a healthy life. This is the legacy our species gives our offspring, even today.

As a species, are are fundamentally insane, for we create demons in the darkness because we fear lighting that candle called science we created to illuminate that cavern called life that we must all walk through. Instead we cling to the blindfold called religion finding a false comfort in the lack of answers offered by following the blind leaders who are looking only where we have already stepped.

To progress as a species we must now discard our notions of the importance of profit and excess, we must understand the true value of all contributions before we lose the sources for more. Look at those who face chronic illness, pain, disabilities of any sort, look closely as what we have to say, what we build and create, and what we discover in this ever darkened cavern called life.

I promise you, the cure for cancer lies in the minds of one who suffers from arthritis, they merely need someone to listen to them.

New Technology is Awesome

I have been one of those people who whine about upgrading all the time, mostly because I can't afford the cost of keeping up. But that's really the only reason I don't like it. The reality contradicts my own complaints, I love new technology.

My ten year old computer at home is like an old friend, on his last leg even, but he has done so much for me, from CGI to vlogging. Sadly, he is no longer capable of either, his hardware is finally breaking down. Recently I needed to borrow some money on my new credit card, so I can pay it back to build a credit rating, and decided it may as well be a tablet PC to start things off right.

Gotta say, I am impressed. Very impressed, and happy to finally see my favorite technology make a return. The technology has come such a long way, the apps actually recognize, and understand, my voice. My voice is one of those that technology just hates, for some reason. Voice operated phone systems never like me, even today, but this tablet understands me.

Autocorrect is a feature that's both awesome, and annoying, but more awesome. If it does screw things up, you get a good laugh, but when it works it can save your message. One of those double edged things.

The only complaint are the games, most of them look the same, and the standard look sucks. But meh, games are not the main use, just something to pass time when bored, which I have a 3DS for that anyway. The great thing about the apps is all the free stuff you can get, many of them are useful in many ways.

I have gained a new appreciation for Google Maps, and other Google apps, though I still don't like what they did to YouTube, and the YouTube app is less than adequate. The Twitter app has impressed me, a lot more than I thought it would.

At first the Twitter app seemed less than great, the timeline was bland and looked more like a chat list, but then I played around with other aspects and features and came to love it. Combined with the app switching that's seamless and smooth, the tablet PC has become my new favorite.

Soon I will get a smart phone, just because I may as well dive in all the way. Who knows what I will find with one of those, but I am looking forward to playing with the phone specific apps, like the compass. So if you're one of those resisting the flow, trying not to move into the future, do yourself a favor and give in.

You never know just what you will find in the new technology, and chances are you will also be impressed with it. Sure, the prices can be a bit daunting to some people, but if you can afford to buy one new tech today, do it. Google search on the go is one of the most useful things ever.