Author: sean

No flashback today. Just free-write.

There’s not a ton to say other than I’m tired, and feel accomplished.

I finished paying protection for my certification protection racket paid so I can keep working for a few more years.

Seriously. How the fuck is this not a racket, exempt from RICO?

Hopefully it’s worth it. This is different than at some of the times in the past; I didn’t pay for the materials with money I don’t have.

But I’m finished.

And now, maybe, I can relax after my bit of work tonight.

Happy birthday to me, I suppose.

The daily writing didn’t really feel like much of a drag. I can only think of once when it seemed like I was getting distracted by other things.

More to come in November. Maybe I can enjoy that this year, finally.

Tysabri tomorrow. It can’t come quickly enough, though I didn’t get an answer when I called today to confirm my appointment.

I think the place where I get them is actually only open Tuesday and Thursday at this point, which would explain the lack of a callback.

That leads me to the news I started looking at before I started writing. Even though I really don’t much like the rich white people’s welfare that is NPR, or their cited source, of Reddit, interesting story about fitness speakeasies.

No shit..

Is anyone really surprised by this?

Eat special foods, drink alcohol, have sex, engage in capitalism. You, know, basic human things. Government can’t stop them. Not in prison.

Those things even happen in prison. Government isn’t going to stop them.

I would say, “sorry,” but there’s nothing to apologize for. I shouldn’t be sorry that you don’t understand that.

And, no, people who engage in those things aren’t bad, either. They’re humans. Deal with it.

Spent time today trying to plan out time off so I don’t lose a bunch of PTO at the end of the year. Ugh. I kind of played hard-to-get with this job, and, as a result, I ended up getting a lot of PTO in lieu of money. I loved my last gig, and would have stayed for just a little more money. Oh well.

Flashback time.

08/19/2010 – 8/19/2010

So, after last night’s knot, tonight’s was a gusher. Must have hit a vein or something.

My mother has discovered she likes text messaging on her iPhone. I’m not sure this is a good thing. Neither is my dad, considering he’s having to modify their plain to support it……

Work is a mess. I’m just not sure why I’m doing the work they have me doing. It’s nothing but frustration. The processes are insufficient, so you bolster them, so people just ignore the processes, which means more processes are needed, etc.

Systems engineering is perhaps a bigger pseudoscience than homeopathy. Why am I doing it? I can read, write, and speak. Many other IT people can’t be bothered to do the first, and simply can’t do the last two. A year ago, I might have recoiled more, but at this point, I’m operating under the realization that it’s something I can continue doing if my body further fails me. But it also means I probably ought to think more about grad school. Ugh.

I am halfway tempted to see what additional accommodations I could get as a “disabled” student. Is that wrong? 😉

Homoeopathy. Um. Ever see people start acting drunk when they’re plied with non-alcoholic beer, but don’t know that?

The mention of higher education was interesting considering that it’d not be terribly long before my wife was in that world.

I’ve seen bits here and there that say that, yes, I could do what I considered back then.

But, why?

I’m finished, and I shouldn’t be wasting someone else’s money doing it.

Very long day. I’m tried, but almost finished with this stretch, at least.

News:

New coronavirus! Everybody panic!

Still discouraged about the thing I stumbled across yesterday. I think I might like living “in the swamp” if there were things around to enjoy.

Instead, there’s just creeping statism. I can’t really bring myself to approve.

Or care.

I would like a nice cocktail. I kinda suck when it comes to bartending.

I also don’t have the right stuff, and being now-eternally-blue Virginia, I can’t get things delivered.

I have to go somewhere to get my vote cast so it’s counted, and buy liquor.

But I only have to show ID at the ABC Store. How’s that work, again?

Flashback:

…and I didn’t even drink last night – 8/18/2002

Weird fuckin’ dream. I think I was down along the gulf coast, and I accidentally drove my car off a bridge. The rest of the dream was spent looking for and then fixing the car. In the meantime, I was finding all sorts of weird shit off the bottom of the ocean…..

But I got some good sleep….

Oh. Good sleep. Um. Yeah, being on the next-to-last day of my Tysabri infusion is probably part of the reason I’m not sleeping well right now

*yawn*

Rather uneventful day, though I’m guessing that Microsoft pushed an update that broke a lot of smartcard applications.

News is rather slow, but I heard one of my various podcasts read this today.

Shit.

I kinda feel the same way, and the things about being in a big city are really gone. Who knows when they’ll come back.

Can I hold out long enough to let me get settled there? I really don’t know.

And after I do get settled, can I live peacefully? I’m not worried about the mob violencemostly-peaceful protests, but the agents of the state, itself. Would whatever I rig up for protection be protection against low-level criminals, or would be against agents of government?

Montgomery County, Maryland Democratic Republic (MDDR) got rid of no-knock warrants in drug cases. Plus, like, Marijuana has been decriminalized, anyway, so it’s not an issue. But they’re still fine for things other than drugs, so Duncan Lemp still happens.

I think it was TFC who were discussing recently that the “War On Drugs” is being replaced with a War on Guns.

But you don’t use drugs, or own guns!

I know, but that’s not the point.

They’ll still enforce it against the people who are least-able to take on corrupt government.

I have no idea what other site I was using when I wrote this. I transposed it to OD, but don’t have the site’s name anywhere.

Lessons?

1. Be rich
2. Put up whatever signs you think will dissuade looters
3. Vote Democrat!

Maybe it’ll work. But I can’t do any of those, easily. I’m working on the first, but it’s a whole-hog approach.

We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it…..

Flashback:

OJ #6 – 8/17/2002

Saturday, August 17th, 2002 2:55 am

I used to be 1337, now I’m just 14m3

So, yeah, I bought a Mac. B+W G3. Got it in Thursday afternoon. It’s been a bit of a chore to get everything up and running, but I think I’m finally getting there.

The machine I bought didn’t have an OS installed. No problem, because I wanted to run OS9 and OSX, anyway. I figured I’d grab a copy of OS9, and wait for OSX 10.2 to come out next week. First of all, I couldn’t find a copy of OS9. Nobody is selling it. I only found one copy on Pricegrabber, but it was like 85 bucks, and didn’t seem to be from a reputible dealer. So I went down to CompUSA and asked whether I’d still get the $29 upgrade to 10.2 if I went ahead and bought a copy of OSX 10.1. They said that’s the deal, so I decided to go ahead and buy it. When I opened the box, guess what was inside? A copy of OS9. Turns out OSX actually runs a copy of OS9 inside a virtual machine in order to run legacy apps……sorta like what OS/2 used to do with Windoze 3.1.

Anyway, to get “Classic” mode to work properly, you’ve gotta have a working OS9 install. But OS 9.2.1 refused to install on my machine. I needed a firmware upgrade. Okay, so I’ll just do that from inside OSX, because that installs fine. No dice. The installer only runs in the old OS. Shit. Long story short, an older version of OS9 I found at work allowed me to run the update, then install 9.2.1, which is what I’m running now. I always dug it anyway.

OSX is sweet in its own kind of way. Right now I’m basking in the nostalgia of old skool mac, yo. It’s been a long time away, and I feel like a tool for not getting one of these sooner.

In conclusion……see the subject.

Current Mood: nostalgic

I gave that Mac away after lending it several times. OS X 10.1 was fun in that if Finder crashed, you couldn’t do anything with the machine at all. Unless you turned on ssh access. Then you could ssh to it, and reboot it.

With my opening topic in mind, I can only imagine if computers were regulated like the rest of the economy. There’d be a regulation that says I have to be able to run 68K Carbon binaries on my new Macbook Air.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

Motivation to not write is kind of high this morning.

In a way, this is a good thing.

No, today I’m working to not do anything work-like.

I should plan some time the rest of the year when I’m not going to work.

Maybe when my protection is finally paid, I will finally take some time to myself.

But what can I do?

I really don’t have any idea.

So. News.

CNet has a story about when the next stimulus checks could arrive.

But nothing’s been passed. Is CNet just itching for people to get more checks so they buy new tech stuff? I know that most of the ones we got before went to buy new iPhones for me and my wife.

But I’m still having trouble putting my finger on a few things I want. “What do you want for your birthday??!?”

I don’t know. There’s new stuff I could use, certainly, but I just don’t have the really do anything..

Maybe that’s a desire to retire in a way?

Don’t know.

So flashback….

Billy, You like movies about Gladiators? – 8/16/2001

Blah blah blah…not working, tired, blah blah blah porn.

Billy, You ever been in a Turkish Prison?

I’ve developed a distinct problem as excess testosterone kicks in. See, it’s like this….although I’m twenty-two in less than a week, I cannot grow a beard, despite my best efforts. I get weird patches of growth, and none of it ever comes in very well. I still have that problem. And it was okay, though, because although shaving bothers me, I was able to go two days between shaves if needbe. Not anymore. I’m developing five o’clock shadow. So I have to shave. Or not. I can just look…..scruffy.

Billy, You ever hang around a gymnaisium?

Am excited that I may get to meet an OD’er IRL. 😉 Will give details if it happens, and if there’s mutual consent to do so. That’s later today, now, I guess. It’s going to be busy. [REDACTED] birthday today. She was born on the one-year anniversary of Elvis Death Day.

Billy, You ever seen a grown man naked?

My head works like a radio show. Stern. Don & Mike. Corolla. Various drops interspersed in the main though stream.

Kinda how I roll.

*quackquack*

Yeah. Never was much in to Imus.

Last night’s discussions were somewhat infuriating.

Though his prescriptive pretention annoys the living shit out of me sometimes, I do listen to Mike O’Meara normally a couple of days a week. One of concepts that comes up on his show more than a little is the concept of “douchebag thirties.”

For dudes, especially single dudes, it can get to be completely maddening.

I’m wondering if I avoided a lot of that with my health issues combined with the employment issues I’ve had helped me avoid a lot of it.

It’s hard to have any cocksure attitude when basically nothing on your body is working properly.

But I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have been quite that um….there’s a word, but I’m not sure what it is.

So. After spreading around the idea that the Non-Aggression Principle, and Libertarianism are the roots of all arguments, you try to argue from authority, and use a source that pretty much nobody’s ever heard of?

Maybe it’s easier when politics is your faith. You’ve embraced certain precepts, and those who dare question are heretics, well…..

I talked recently about people missing my hints on what I wanted for my birthday least year. So, I’ll leave it here, and see if anyone who’d be repeatedly asking me about what i want is paying the least bit of attention.

I want IT stuff. I need a new PC. This ancient AMD desktop is incredibly annoying. Plus it’s running Windows 8 because the Windows 10 install wasn’t allowed when I try. I gave up trying, and don’t want to mess with it too much because I’ve used a license for Microsoft Office on it, and don’t think I can reactivate it.

I also think I want a non-Amazon tablet.

I was also thinking about a NAS device so I can back things up, and stop paying Amazon for storage. Or anything. I’m purposefully trying not to give them my money. I have my own reasons for that. I could go on and on about that decision, but it’s not something that most people would care about. It’s my choice. Why I made my choice is my own business. Please don’t try to prevent me from making a decision different than what yours might have been.

Freedom is difficult to undrstand.

News.

Toronto strip club employee may have exposed 500 people to COVID-19

Well, the customers get paid to get exposed in a way…

Flashback —

8/15/2011 – 8/15/2011

It’s always amusing to listen to your higher-ups try to explain something to you that they, themselves, don’t understand.

This is something continues to be an issue. With the date on this, it wasn’t perhaps the most egregious misinformation I ever heard from management, but this obviously annoyed me.

Maybe that was less egregious considering it was someone trying to explain it to me, not someone else. You know, like a customer?

i had someone I worked for describe something I’d cobbled together as being “written in Java.” No, you Moran, the interface was written in PHP, and the hardware interface was written in C. Trying to do RS232 communications in Java was barely possible then. I don’t code anymore, but it’s probably still really questionable.

Whatever.

This was the same guy whose wife was getting corporate direction by consulting with a medium in Sedona. No. I didn’t make that up. Nor could have I. That place was that nuts.

Towards the end of my time there I was driving about 150 miles a day getting to and from the office. I was driving so much because the company had just walked away from the lease on the local office where I was working.

I’d taken to, in my last couple of months there, to cashing my paychecks at their bank, then driving back to Tidewater with a bunch of cash to deposit into my credit union account because I was worried about their check bouncing.

And I’m stopping now.