Author: sean

I am off work. I have nothing to do until Monday.

This feels weird.

There’s not a lot to do, really. I could be doing training, but I wonder what’s even the point.

So, catching on the podcast queue. Maybe I’ll get around to watching some TV; I have two nights’-worth of Kennedy, and I’m still trying to get through The Wire.

(Totally random aside — I think after the COVID craziness is over, I could deal with living in Baltimore….)

You can change one significant event in history, and only things directly related to it will change in the future. Do you change it, and if so, what event do you choose?

The more that I think of things, the more I think that it’s time to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The presidents elected straight from the Senate have been largely terrible.

What am I listening to right now? This.

I get information from many different sources. Not just one source. And that’s dangerous.

The discussion is fascinating to me, honestly, as I’ve lived so much of my life in isolation.

I work by myself. That’s largely been the case since I started working. I can’t imagine how it is for other people.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, even if the folks on the Reason editors’ roundtable were picking on the Lions on Monday.

They started this stuff.

News.

I’ve been trying to follow this, and I’m not sure why. My wife and I would order Pizza Hut while we were out in the middle of suburban sprawl.

Was that because the food was great? No. Did I find something small, local, that was better? Yep. But it hit the spot from time to time…and for not a lot of money.

Would I prefer to do something from a local shop? Yes. Is that really difficult when you can’t walk/take public transit/drive? Absolutely.

My property management company just sent an email reminding me to follow them on Instagram. I guess I could do that, but I don’t want any Facebook spyware on my phone.

I think I’m going to stop for the day, however. Thanksgiving tomorrow. Should I write about what I’m thankful for this year?

Hmm.

Stepping away to ponder….

Feel like I’m Tom Brady throwing a pass to one of his running backs last night. Something I should be doing with ease, but I manage to screw it up.

The prompt I had queued up for today’s entry is suspiciously close to something I’d written about a few days ago. It involved which book has had a lasting effect on you.

I wrote about How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World. In discussions yesterday, it occurred to me that despite years that had passed since I last read the book, I was actually sort of doing some of the things he recommended in the path to freedom. I was getting rid of debts, getting rid of complicating commitments arrangements, etc.. I moved, and continued down that path.

You can leave.

(Though it wasn’t running through my head when I wrote that, it sorta jibes with Charles Grodin’s book title — It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here). Looking at the linked entry, however, I did sort of do that again. There’s little other than toxicity, and misinformation on Facebook.

I’ve been posting links to my ramblings up there somewhat sporadically, but wonder if it’s even worth doing, anymore.

On to a newfound prompt for this today….

Is there somewhere specific you like to go when you want to come up with ideas? 

There really isn’t a place. I really can’t leave my apartment. I do occasionally just sort of zone out, and try to get thoughts to come to me.

A lot of what I’ve been listening to with Pete’s podcasts about what he’s done/is doing with meditation. When I started at CNU, I was in the Honors program. The stuck-in-1974 professor had us reading Ram Dass.

I was very opposed to doing anything I considered um, mystical, back then.

Around age twenty, I considered myself a committed atheist.

The more that I considered the, as I call them, evangelical agnostics, really bothered me. Unsurprisingly, South Park had an episode about those sorts of people.

My psychologist also recommended someone who was pushing meditation.

I don’t know that I’m ready to go whole-hogom, and try to do that.

But back to the topic, I don’t go anywhere. I just relax and think.

News.

I’d started in on something about a border conflict among China, India, and Bhutan. But this is more on with what I’ve been tracking lately.

Flashback to my radio days; there were lots of Saturday Morning infomercials extolling the virtues of microdoses of various substances. Take a whiff of garlic, and you won’t have problem X.

But with something like a lower-dose vaccine, maybe it does work?

The puzzling part about Astra’s results was that bigger doses were less efficacious. The vaccine was only 62% effective in a group that got two full doses spaced about a month apart. But among about 2,700 people who got a half-dose followed by a full, the number rose to 90%.

Why are you puzzled by this?

You do tests with different doses, and choose the one that proves most-effective.

This isn’t tough, really.

Okay.

Here’s the point in the month when I’m ready to be finished writing.

I figure I’ll get a bit more pep about it when the vacation time starts, and I have some time to think more clearly.

Today I don’t really feel like doing anything other than eating what my wife made for me, that will be in the fridge until after my morning meeting today, and listening to podcasts or watching TV.

Or being on holiday vacation.

Take your pick.

So. Prompt. How do you handle hypocritical people? 

I make a mental note of it, then do my best not to interact with them. This is kind of what people like me do — we mind our own business, and don’t let whatever antics the nervous Nellies of the world have in mind for us.

It used to be that you could do that.

COVID’s given people an excuse to be all up in your shit; they care more about you than you do, don’t you know?

One of the words floating through my scarred brain the past few days has been “prescriptive.”

Yeah, sounds pretty accurate, Karen.

The Astra/Oxford vaccine for COVID was announced.

Not the new technology used by Phizer and Moderna, but still pretty effective for a “traditional” vaccine.

Multiple Independent discovery. Imagine that.

More tomorrow. But things are moving along.

So Sunday Morning.

I’m not even sure what to say this morning.

There’s football today. Let me take a look. On TV here, we get Baltimore and Washington games on TV. Then an afternoon game, and the nighttime game.

Hm. Yeah. underwhelmed. What’s possibly the Saints’ new era starts today with Taysom Hill getting the start at QB, and Breeesus out for the rest of the year.

Taysom Hill is incredibly fast. His passing has left me somewhat uninspired. Okay on the short stuff, decent long stuff, but not very much from 10-30, which is where you want to see most of the action happening.

Maybe another lost year. In many different ways. When it comes to football, could be worse, could be the Peckers.

Favre kinda got where I am with that during the Saints’ trip to Tampa earlier this year.

#FreeBuccoBruce

Do you think that you are hopelessly flawed? 

I can answer that with a firm “no,” today. There’s a lot of things I can’t do well anymore. Some of those are on account of my condition, but even more, there’s nothing now that I’m embarrassed about.

My wife and I have had some good conversations over the last few days. It’s almost like we work well together or something.

We were discussing Christmas presents. I want a new PC. This one I’m working on right now was kind of a novelty when I bought it, but it’s time to replace it.

I also need to pay Microsoft’s tax. Thankfully, their software cost has actually come down to kind of match the hardware price drop.

I found something I kind of like, showed it to my wife, and because it’s out of stuck, she wanted to build something with the same specifications.

When I was younger, I totally would have done that. Nowadays, sounds like just an exercise in unnecessary frustration.

So news.

I saw this, and had to look around to find out where it was from.

India, not Indiana. I was wondering whether the kid was trying to get daddy’s security guard gig at a camp in Afghanistan.

Yes, we’ve been over there that long.

Osama bin Laden is dead. Bring them home. All of them. Now.

But, yeah, India. My company has a pretty substantial presence there. My curiosity grows as I see things.

That leads me to think about last year’s party, where some of the finger food was some incredible Indian food. I am disappointed that there isn’t going to be a end-of-the-year party this year

Supposedly, they might have one after Governor Hoodor Blackface mandates that everybody get vaccinated.

I guess we’ll see.

Yeah, I’m not going to resurrect that draft for nineteen today or tomorrow. I’m not sure what to do with it, honestly.

The more I read it, the less I like it.

Fun meeting with the HR Geeks folks on Jitsi last night. Somebody had a photo of me from probably about 2005. I don’t know who was more unimpressed, or my wife. (This would have been probably just before we met….)

I’ll do my prompt, then get back to scarred brain murmurings.

If you had unlimited funding to start your own business, what kind of business would you have? 

Again, I go back to the Office Space clip. But, no, two chicks at the same time is kinda off the table.

Do nothing.

I don’t know how long that’d last. Eventually I would probably want to do something “productive,” but would that be of use to anyone but me; would anybody buy what I make?

Random aside — I’m really enjoying this cup of Lorenzotti coffee.

But I don’t have much of anything to do right now, and I’m okay with that.

Wake up. Shower. Take pills. Drink coffee. Listen to podcasts, and write.

Will I be allowed to do that after AOC’s reconciliation? I have no idea. She, and her fellow partisans, want to take everything I’ve ever produced, then kill me if I don’t continue participating. Whatever.

I just hope the cameras are rolling.

News. I don’t know whether mu connection with non-US news sources have something to do with it, or if the pace actually is picking up.

What’s going on in Ethiopia is both troubling and confusing.

Since it’s dangeous that I get news from a variety of sources, I’ll look at Chuck Todd’s outlet.

Nothing about Ethiopia on the front page.

Nothing if you use the search tool. (I get the Wikipedia page, which is, you know, 100% credible….)

Knowing about a war going on somewhere in the world? Yeah, that’s dangerous, Chuck.

Looking through my Drafts folder, I’m seeing the one I wanted to write about yesterday, but couldn’t find.

It has some bits that are relevant. I should finish it. But not today.

How current are you on pop culture? (Memes, creepypasta, etc)

I am totally up with all of this. Or not at all.

Part of me says that’s okay. I’m old. I’m not supposed to know what the kids are doing when I don’t live with any of ’em.

I do wish they’d learn some of the things that were common when I was young, but whatever.

Microsoft Word is getting really picky lately about me putting two spaces after colons and semicolons.

This is what you learn when you learn how to type on an IBM Selectric II.

When I could see well enough to drive, on the rare occasions I drove a vehicle with an automatic transmission, I’d naturally reach for the clutch with my last foot towards the end of braking.

My wife never did learn how to drive either of my vehicles with a manual transmission. She is beginning to love my cast iron cookware, finally.

News. This is something that isn’t showing up where i normally look for news.

But, with the incoming Administration, there’s something that’s been bubbling among the hipster progressive crowd — Student Loan Forgiveness.

I was opposed to it on its original mention. I worked during college, and took care of many of my expenses. There was no room and board for me. I didn’t want to take a bunch of my parents’ money when I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with my life.

Although it’d have been long-since paid, now, they would have definitely fallen into one of the two two quartiles mentioned here.

I can see how this would be attractive to a rich Native Americanwhite Ivy League professor.

But to someone who got into a state school, and comes out with tens of thousands per year less earnings, it’s a really bad deal.

But it might suit their suburban moms.

If you forgive the debt, any part of it, that has to be counted as taxable income, at least.

But this is a problem that’s only exacerbated by government. Government has only made it less affordable. Virginia’s senior senator, Senator Nextel, was complaining on Twitter earlier today that the outgoing Administration is going to stop spending money that doesn’t exist.

I’m having trouble being too broken up about that. Let people live their lives, and they will find a way to care for themselves.

Almost two-thirds of the way through. Not a lot to say today, really. Some good exchanges with friends about various podcasts to consume.

Thinking back, I had a lot more certitude about various things back then. That kind or serves as a good bridge into today’s prompt. I somehow missed a prompt somewhere, so I had to fetch another from the stash.

Who knows.

Do you feel the need to have an opinion on everything?

No. And, saying that, sometimes something you come around to understand why things were done a way that you viewed as stupid when you were first examining them.

I’m thinking, mainly, about things like design decisions I saw on IT systems/programs. Something that appeared completely insane to me in 2002 actually makes a lot of sense now. Several of those things were completely opposite of what my opinion was.

This kind of ties back to what I talked about with sharing podcasts. I sent this to someone. There’s aspects to being a human that aren’t at all explainable.

I used to not believe that at all. That certitude is, in and of itself, an opinion on everything.

Is it possible for me to figure everything out? No. Are there a lot of things that I couldn’t care less about? Absolutely.

I’m no longer ashamed to admit that there’s things I don’t know, and probably never will.

It would make me a shitty politician, or, now, reporter.

Detroit is cancelling its Thanksgiving parade.

You have a guy who probably was elected President a couple of weeks ago who ran on the idea that if only the guy he’s replacing had done something different, the world wouldn’t be having these problems.

Que?

The Belgians didn’t have the same decision-makers, but things are still really bad there.

Stupid Flanders.

I watched something on TV from Monday night. My notes were as follows:

Plaid Oxford buttoned all the way

Crew neck sweater

Jean jacket.

Not what’d work for me, but, yeah, you do whatever works for you.

What is something you want to do that you haven’t accomplished yet? 

How is this really different than the various bucket list challenges?

I used to want to live in one of the big cities, but I’m not sure I want that anymore.

New York? Yeah, I could actually go for that.

DC? Absolutely.

Now, however, no interest at all, really.

The politicians have completely killed any desire I might have had. Do I, once again, want to live in a city?

Nope.

Would I be okay living in the middle of nowhere assuming I could get okay connectivity?

Yep.

So News.

Looks like Lady G is in trouble for some of what he’s done with the election investigation.

Lindsey is pissed. This probably started around the time the Democrats filibustered Justice Gorsuch’s nomination. Then he really went off with the Kavanaugh hearings.

I don’t know whether he’s right on what he did with his call to the Georgia Secretary of State. It doesn’t look out-of-bounds, but he’s earned a permanent space on the left’s kill list. The only thing he can do, now, is come out, ala Kevin Spacey, as part of making the whole thing go away…..

I was listening to something this morning, however. If I understand correctly, Congress passed a three-year budget. What the….? But that’s why they’re doing things like talking about a forthcoming executive order cancelling student loan debt.

Jubilee for Arts Majors.

Or as something else I saw put it, welfare for rich people who went to expensive schools.

*shrug*

Today feels like it dragged on, even though I was busy.

Started writing early today because I woke up early.

Naturally this would be the day that my WaterPik quits working.

But at least something I can put on my Christmas list.

If you could have any career, what would it be? (Assume anything you choose, you are the best in the field).

I know I shouldn’t, but I’m really going to say, “I don’t know.”

I want to be in a situation where I can work as I feel up to it. My last gig came sorta close to that. I think we were expected to keep “core hours” sometimes, but a lot of the operation was more towards the West Coast; I could relax some.

That said, holidays there were one of the bigger down-sides. I would really like to ensure that I can eat Thanksgiving dinner, or watch a football game without disruption. I couldn’t necessarily do that there.

I would feel less bad about taking time off, though, knowing that there was someone around who could stamp out whatever fires might spring up.

I don’t know. I’m at a fork in the road, perhaps, professionally.

How long can I do what I’ve been doing?

I do know that I can’t do it in an office or datacenter anymore.

And that’s okay.

But there’s an option I have with my current situation that’ll pay me enough to live off of for a long time. Maybe I shouldn’t think as much about doing that as I do, but, well….

News.

I stumbled across a story about what’s going on on Armenia on Parler. The stuff going on over with Armenia and Azerbaijan. Wow. In a story I saw on another site, there was something about people setting their houses on fire to keep the invaders from taking their stuff. I think this has many of the same details.

Protecting property is something government is supposed to do.

In this case, absent government protection, people are torching it to prevent invaders from getting it.

People value their own shit. This should not be a surprise to anyone.

And, no, you can’t have a pony. Not yours.

And people might be willing to destroy their own stuff just to prevent you from having it.

Is that so difficult to understand?

Writing early again today, as I had a doctor’s appointment over videoconference.

This Telehealth stuff is really a game-changer. The particular doctor I saw this morning can get the clinical data he needs from a sensor, and I don’t have to actually go in to an office.

Even if I lived close to his office, that’d be something like two hours of missed work time. Given than his office is probably a good 30 minutes away, now, I’d be looking at an extra two hours for travel.

I’m wondering, too, what it’s going to do to doctors’ office space requirements. How much is a practice paying just for office waiting areas?

But, because I’m in my appointment window, I can write.

If you could have any career, what would it be? (Assume anything you choose, you are the best in the field)

I think I’d want to write. I can’t see very well. I can’t be on my feet very long. I can’t speak that well anymore. I can still write, sorta.

I’ve been trying to decide how I could do something. Everybody and his brother has a podcast now. I have a blog. Yes, like all of them, it sucks. Could I do something where I take the one biggest story I see for the day, and offer a bit of my take on it? Would anyone care? Probably not.

News for today…..Moderna is all like, I’ll see your 90% effectiveness on a COVID vaccine, and raise you 4.5%.

I do need to find some more analysis of what they’ve done with these vaccines. It sounds like they’re really a departure from what had been done for years.

It’s no longer finding a similar less problematic virus, or giving dead or live viruses to build immune response.

These use RNA that build immunity without using the actual virus, or something similar.

Medical science is advancing. But, if only Donald Trump had acted sooner, we’d have less of the sort of thing we were accustomed to, and maybe they’d sort of work.

I really hope that Biden is the least powerful president we’ve had since before the Great Depression.