Ende

More than half the day finished here on the right coast.

I would say that 2023 has been a bit less-eve3ntful than the few before it.

Going month-by-month would be difficult.

Generally, though, the first half of the year was really unsettled; I didn’t know what was going to happen going forward.

I ended up heading to see my mother in March, as my grandfather was worried about her after a few trips to the hospital.

Message the Fantasy Football league where I finished dead last. Aaron Rodgers’s injury on the first drive of the damn season kinda iced it for me very early.

Oh well.

Work, after half the year being in doubt, has been incredibly stressful before December. I’ve checked out a bit the second-half of the month since the HR geniuses stole the equity (read: unused leave) I’d bargained for when I took the gig. Whatever.

Time to figure out what to do for the first bit of the year. Dreading the MRI results in a few weeks.

At the same time, whatever. I’ve done the things I need to do to get us in a good place.

Time to take a break?

But I’m really never going to do that as long as I can type.

This is what I do. Even if I don’t get paid. (And if you’ve been on the Intertubes as long as I have, you’d understand that a .org is for non-commercial endeavors…)

In Spite of Myself

I have a bit of work left do to pay my EBG!# protection racket. (Hint)

I hate it. Nearly every second.

But I got a few things out of it so far, I suppose. The audit tools available in modern Linux systems are kinda neat. I will think, however, that a Defense-In-Depth strategy is more effective, but I guess I get it.

I do still think it’s absolutely criminal that I have to pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege of continuing to work.

What.

Still trying to figure out how to align newer software development methodologies with Infosec procedures.

It’s worse in DoD, where often silly old guides have been grafted onto NIST standards.

I’m hungry; I should probably go eat something. All I’ve had today was a scone with my coffee.

Quitting

For All Mankind

I tried hard, but this discussion kept running through my head as I watched Ep. 1. While I was going to give it at least one episode, I just couldn’t.

The speech about Chicago 1968 finally prompted the stop.

But I could have done it before…

When Ted Kennedy cancelled his trip to Chappaquiddick to deal with the news that the Soviets had gotten there first.

Or when the controlling Navy wife was upset that her husband wasn’t going to go after drunkenly shooting his mouth off to a reporter, and the prospect of him going to Pax River or to Vietnam.

Or the fact that her name was “Karen.”

Yeah, I’m not wasting much more time.

I’m really bad at giving up on things that just aren’t working for me. See: my work history from 2013-2017.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t bring myself to try on that anymore.

Maybe I’m progressing.

Twiddle Thumbs

Furiously preparing for Shmoocon. Um. I guess it’s kind of taking away from me trying to pay my protection racket that’ll let me keep working. Until my vision finally gives up the ghost.

I have until May. The goal is to basically finish this coming week.

And I’m not doing anything for the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Except take my damned shot.

I was really worried about being late last month. I’m not sure if that was coming across in my writing.

Maybe that sort of thing gets lost in the November writing streaks.

Considering abandoning the November streaks after next year (year fifteen), but we’ll see. Really trying to commit to skipping what I’d been doing in the summer.

Had a pretty good conversation with my wife about the occupational licensing requirements that are pervading the business environment lately. Thou shalt pay union dues, and pay some group’s protection racket, even if you’re not gonna need a degree in MDDR. (It’s pretty lazy to say that every politician with whom you disagree is a Fascist while ignoring the kind Communist regimes from the last century. Many, many, many policies I see floated in Maryland would fit right in in East Germany. But we’re not going to talk about East Germany. Or Romania. Or any of the other nasty places from behind the “Iron Curtain.” Maybe I should make it a point to visit Victims of Communism Museum.)

I should make it a point to do that. I think going to the book signing, and the Liz Phair show was the sort of thing I was excited about moving up here.

We’ll see how the Shmoocon weekend goes. What do I take with me, what do I smuggle back?

Running Late

Didn’t get a Shmoocon ticket, but I think i might have a hookup.

If not, I’ll just take time, and watch online.

Still a little upset that they’re still on with the fu^H^Hmasks.

*wanders away and back*

Yeah, it looks like I’m going. Okay.

They haven’t released the schedule yet. I’m sure there’ll be something interesting.

Aside: the predictive text in the browser as I’m typing is really annoying. I miss the days when I could write my entries in EMACS.

Next week, I get to pay that IT organization’s protection racket. Something to do the week before Christmas. I do have to go in one day for work, but it’s fine.

I’m going to do a few things I enjoy.

Immediate thing is that it’ll give me a chance to write compulsively…which I’m not supposed to be doing.

Oh well.

So little motivation to do anything today.

What I do

Writing on Saturday mornings i sone of them.

Longish week, but I did make it through. Circling in on the things that I need to do for the rest of the year.

I’m tired, but think I will be able to relax some towards the end of the month.

November was really the busy month, and I did get through it.

Still listening to too much Exile In Guyville. I don’t think I actually had that on CD back in the day. I did have Whip Smart, and Whitechocolatespacegg, the latter of which got significant listens going back to and from Carlisle to visit the Form(er)skins training camp in about 2002.

I had one of my vivid disturbing dreams about the vehicle I drove back then. The dream was probably sparked by something I was dealing with health-wise.

I was angry about how I was being treated. Or not, depending on how you look at it.

I revert to my default position of just removing myself the situation, completely. You Can Leave.

It’s probably not healthy, but it’s how I operate. Along with randomly writing things that few people will read.

Sort of getting back into the podcast queue.

So many meetings.

Ugh.

EDIT

I forgot to link the story I saw coming on early today.

It’s about Lake Meade. Shortened version, so you don’t have to try to read that absolutely awful article — it’s not completely barren, as we’d expected, but CLIMATE CHANGE scary, and you should be really, really, seriously, truly worried about it.

You say that when your previous proclamations were incorrect.

Admit You’re Wrong/Oh, no, not yet

So you missed on something. Okay, and?

I guess any self-reflection is a sign of weakness.

.

Okay, then.

Step Away Saturday

I barely worked yesterday, and didn’t succumb to the temptation to do so.

I didn’t completely avoid work, even though I “took the day” off.

What’s an hourlong meeting, really?

Rumors on the Internets that I nodded off towards the end of it are untrue. I did manage to close the close out the app; I couldn’t be that far out of it, right?

Oh well. I’m engaged, even when I’m not supposed to be.

But the extra sleep helped me out.

I should spend time rearranging things here in my office space, but I’m really not finding the motivation to do that.

Thursday night, I watched both the football game, and debate between Newsome, and Ronnie De.

Whoever lost proved my hypothesis — you give up forty points, serve up the Fortyburger, you lose. I still haven’t seen it disproven. Yes, there’s been instances where teams have come back, sent the game to overtime, etc., but I’ve yet to see one come back and win. You serve up the fortyburger, you lose.

Then the debate. Newsome said, maybe in his opening remarks, even, that he and Ronnie De were going to be their parties’ nominees. Agreed.

But I was watching, really, with my own weird political confirmations. With the utter destruction of the Libertarians Party, I’m kind of to the point of where I am really only concerned about voting against someone I don’t like.

But that’s where I am.

It opens me up to live pretty much anywhere. Whatever. I’m going to vote against the worst candidate only in situations where my vote might make a little bit of a difference.

Hm.

Little dog needs to go outside, I think, but I’m going to do my late charitable donation first.

Thirty

Wrap-up

I really do need to make an effort to go back through old entries various places, and consolidate them here.

I mentioned yesterday that I was looking for inspiration from the past. I’d glanced at something from 11/29/2011, but didn’t have it anywhere. It was on OD, but what I wasn’t the longish survey I’d seen at first glance.

But I didn’t have it here.

Now I do.

I’ve been pretty good about moving things around, but with multiple CMSes, etc., I have a lot of what I’d done in places I really can’t access.

The stuff from OD before it went away for the first time I had in ASCII exports spread far-and-wide. Finding things in there is easy enough — ^F (MM/DD)

I did lose all of the formatting, but I can’t be too upset about that.

I understand that the amazement about your MySpace page was the cool embedded drawing

Maybe you said something incredible.

More likely, however, you were putting up something that looked cool, and distracted people from trying to punch the monkey.

Know Your Meme is failing me on that one. Younger people probably aren’t familiar with the sorts of stupid ads that’d pop up when you were surfing the Information Superhighway back in the day.

Whatever you’d cranked out could be obscured by something annoying put there to distract you into giving away money.

I, on the other hand, tended to use HTML tricks to obscure content. I never do that anymore stopped doing that sort of thing. Or did I?

At the same time, for the most part the content persists in spite of the efforts to hide or delete it.

You can strip things away, and get back to what came out. Since it’s coming form a person, you start in with things like Chomsky’s generative grammar. (Which I’ve seen other langoustines describe as “creationist.”)

At some point, however, something comes out. It’s saved somewhere. Once the buffer is written, the effort it takes to remove it is pretty steep.

Everything Gets deleted eventually.

But you have to work at it to make that happen.

Whether or not you really want to throw things away is another story, altogether.

There aren’t a lot of people who’ll want to read my shit. In fact, I don’t want to read my shit a lot of the time.

But it’s there. It might be spread far and wide, but I can wrangle it back. If I want to.

Doing it is going to require a bunch of time, and I might not want to exert the effort to do it, but I think I know where the bodies are buried.

Eventually I’ll coalesce things into one thing, and store that far and wide.

Maybe all that’ll be a random MariaDB dump where someone can pick through and find what came out of my numb fingers.

Probably not; I’m not that interesting. But it’ll be there for someone to find if he/she wants to see it.

For the past fourteen years, I’ve hammered out whatever’s been seeping from my scarred brain the vast majority of days in November.

I can still type. For the most part.

It’s a skill that’s really second-nature at this point. I’m not sure that writing with a pen or pencil really is.

Am I proud of what I’ve barfed out for the month?

Ummmm.

Maybe I should reword that. Am I really upset about what I’ve generated?

No.

But I am finished.

That’s an accomplishment by itself.

I can use it is proof, even if it’s only to myself, that I can stick to something.

For miscellany vacillating between trying to watch the undercard presidential debate, and the Thursday Night Football game.

Honestly, neither is of much interest. Whichever one I end up with probably won’t occupy my attention all that long.

Oh well.

I can do that tonight because I’m finished.

Tomorrow, fingers crossed, my medication will arrive so I can take that.

And we can slide into December.

shiver

Twenty-nine

I didn’t really have a prompt for this one, either.

Again, an incredibly busy day. Eleven hours of work, and I’m not finished. I have something to do in a few hours. Oh well.

IN the meantime, however, I did get notice that, no, I’m not going to be taking my shot tonight because, yes, the med agencies couldn’t get the paperwork completed correctly to get me my medication today

I don’t know what it says that I’m not getting bent-out-of-shape about it. I did nothing wrong. That said, no, I’m not going to be conciliatory about the situation. You all screwed up. I don’t care that it wasn’t you, particularly, but you didn’t call me to let me know that there was going to be a problem until the day thathe problem was going to expose itself.

I could have spent a bunch of time trying to apply more pressure from my end, but it doesn’t change anything.

A kinder person might be more understanding, but I’m beyond the point of either outrage, or conciliation. There’s nothing I can do, so…”Whatever.” /GenX

I looked at past entries, and found this from this day in 2011.

3. How are you similar or different from the person you were 5 years ago? 10 years ago? 20 years ago?
Really, there aren’t a ton of similarities. Five years ago I was in a new relationship, my first significant one in several years. I liked it so I put a ring on it.
Ten years ago, I was trying to finish my degree, and working far, far too much at the same time. Still, I think that fall semester my last year was probably my best academically.
Twenty years ago? I was living in Bremerhaven, Germany. Memories are really fading. I think we were just about getting the hints that big changes were coming to American life in Germany. By May, the immediate changes were already happening. My high school had about 600 students when the 91-92 year finished. The next year, there were only about 150 to start the year. When I left in February, it was down to about 80. I had four lockers.

I’ve got a bunch of faves I apologize. Up too late last night watching Breesus give repeated doses of Manningface…

Let’s see….

Five years ago, I was settling in to my last job, working an insane amount of time. We were coming out of the bad situation around my employment.

I absolutely loved what I was doing in that job. I tried hard to find a reason to stay there, but the money really spoke. Given that that job would have come to an end even before the pandemic started, but at the time, I really did not want to head anywhere else.

(Wow, there was a weird formatting tag in that old §. I’m not sure what that would have been lost without it.)

Kind of replaying the entries from towards the end of NoJoMo a decade ago…

My initial temptation was to say that I was trying to be calm, and make the best of the situation in which I found myself then.

Thinking back on that, though, I really had good reason to be pissed off.

Did I let my emotions get the best of me more than once? Absolutely. But in retrospect, the anger was justified, maybe underplayed.

I was doing so much to really disconnect from the horrid situation in which I’d found myself both personally and professionally.

Kyle Orton’s (Not the former NFL QB who heard a boo..h/t TMac) Substack name — It can always get worse.

Something very British about that outlook.

But I had no idea what was ahead in just a couple of months…..

A missive here about the four-letter company, and the inmates partially responsible for me being there would absolutely be appropriate.

But I’m not going to do that.

I am finished for the day.

And, tomorrow, for the month.

I probably should set out how much I’m going to write on the wrap-up tomorrow night.

Let’s try to do a solid hour.

I’m not working Friday, and don’t really care to see the Thursday Night football game.

Twenty-eight

Really short-arming this one today.

So, start with one of T2K’s prompts…

What would a tree say if it could talk?

What wood it say?

I am so incredibly busy, but just trying to figure out what to do from here.

And no motivation to do much of anything.

Crawled back inside my head to see if there’s something from which I can sample.

Nawp.

Hangover from concert prep — this is running through my head the past few hours.

But it’s kind of one of those situations where I’m distracted enough that I’m forgetting what’s next.

When’s my medication supposed to show up?

Crap.

I’m supposed to take that tomorrow.

*wanders away to check when it’ll get here*

Everything’s on track for your order to arrive by Nov. 29, 2023.

Tomorrows.

I hope a) it gets here on time, since the pharmacy just says “shipped,” and b) there’s enough time to let it warm up so the shot doesn’t bother me too much.

Maybe the earworm is kind of wishful?

Who knows?

Two more days to write. Two more days to work.

I’ve got this.

I think.

I really need to put this entries from 2017 and 2018 into WordPress so I can dig through entries more easily.

Hm. What’s on OD?

2011 there’s a very long survey I did.

Maybe next year. Imma go eat.