What places hold particular allure for you; where might you like to live?

Oh my. I really don’t know at this point. So much of what I like is kind of dictated by other things in my life.

I think when this prompt first came my way was before the advent of things like ride-sharing. Getting around used to be very difficult.

Even doing things like getting to my doctor’s office in DC used to be a major production, even after moving up here. Today it’s as simple as hailing a rideshare, or calling a taxi.

I got the email about my ride back after my doctor’s visit Monday. It wasn’t cheap, but the fare really wouldn’t have been a lot different than if I’d booked it myself.

But I only paid the usual paratransit fee.

And I help keep the taxi companies in business.

Speaking of DC, a lot of worldwide attention paid to what happened there yesterday.

The initial reactions haven’t aged well at all. Don Lemon will continue to race Tucker Carlson to the bottom of viewership numbers.

I glanced at the four local senators’ X feeds. Three of the four had appropriate responses. Timmy stayed silent; go figure. (Yes, I’m talking about Kaine, Grok. You’d think it’d figure out that I live in Virginia….)

Was a little surprised there weren’t early takes saying that thoughts and prayers are stupid, and this wouldn’t have happened if there were commonsense gun laws.

Time to go watch the parade, dog show, and football.

Thanksgiving Plans

Staying home.

Ten years ago, I was writing about many things Detroit. Thanksgiving football is the Detroit Lions. Period. End of Story. The Cowboys were Johnny-Com-Latelys, but I do remember viewing more than a few Dallas games. Leon Lett blowing the game. I remember a Cowboys game with Ryan Leaf starting as they searched a decent quarterback in the wake of Aikman. I think I actually caught most of that game driving to Charleston, SC to have dinner at my uncle’s house.

But Thanksgiving football is a Lions thing.

I stumbled across a question in one of my Substack groups (Probably The Fifth Column) that was a guy from New Zealand who connected with a woman in Hawaii. I think they’re engaged. But he was looking for information about what to expect on his first trip to Michigan to meet her family for a real American Thanksgiving.

LIONS FOOTBALL.

I think staying awake to watch the late Cowboys game when I was growing up in Europe was hit-or-miss. The Lions game would kick off just about when the tryptophan was really kicking in, and Dallas would have been something like 1am.

They added a third game probably about fifteen years ago. Probably in an effort to increase viewership on the Sinister Coast. But, for several years there, they were loading it up with all-NFC games. Yeah, I appreciate Lions-Packers. Or Dallas-Redskins Football Team Commanders, but both of those games make me a little less appetized to see Cardinals-Seahawks at night.

Last year they paid a bit better attention, and had some AFC teams playing.

This year, it’s a division game in the NFC North, a cross-conference game with the Cowboys, and an AFC-only game for the night contest.

I am more than okay with this.

So. What else.

News last night and this morning was making a lot over OrangeManBad’s turkey pardons.

Something something remarkable lack of class something something what you get with a Jets’ Fan slumlord from Queens something something.

I’m happy that I don’t have to deal with family who think I voted for him because I didn’t vote for Officer Harris.

Out Thanksgiving is going to be pretty simple. Just me, my wife, and the sickeningly-sweet tiny dog. We’re not going anywhere, and don’t have any guests coming. Money constraints make things a little less-celebratory.

When do I write tomorrow? What do I write about? My prefab prompts seem to be disappearing.

We shall see. But winding towards the stop of this streak.

I’m also trying hard, again, to miss having to work on Thanksgiving. That was kind of an expected thing when I was in radio, and working deep IT support. When was the last time I was in this situation, really?

Free-write

(Discussion of a writing question…that Perplexity did provide an answer to…)

I checked to see if there was anything I’d set aside, and maybe could complete. Nothing was really hitting. so here goes with the free-write.

One of the first listens today was Matt Welch on with LA Mayor Karen Bass.

My comment in the comments § on the Substack post for this interview was something along the lines of it reminding me of the Douglas Adams Somebody Else’s Problem field.

Things are iffy in LA, but things are getting better, and if there’s a problem, it’s because of somebody else.

There’s a few different ways to approach thins when you face questions/criticisms about something that’s your responsibility.

There’s no problem.
Yes, I see the problem, and here’s how I’m trying to fix it.
If there a problem, it’s somebody else’s fault.
If there’s a problem, it’s because of something that’s beyond anyone’s real control.

Response two is probably the correct one, but it’s not what you’re going to get from a politician.

Also had some good discussion with my psychologist about health issues, and some of the OCD-related issues. For many (most?) people, there’s a point where people get stuck in the “D” of the OODA Loops.

Worry about criticism in the AAR prevents any action.

During the AAR, too, I think you have to describe the first two Os that fed into the D step.

*searches for something about a job interview I had with a particularly-overbearing potential manager.*

There was this interviewer who seemed not to like my response to a question that I wasn’t interested in the do-something-even-if-it’s-wrong approach to IT operations. Just Act. Don’t focus on the Observation or Orientation. I think I said I didn’t want to behave that way because if you do, beating the problem device with a hammer was always a legitimate option.

I didn’t get the job. Given that the operation went out of business not long after should ease my mind a bit, I suppose.

The other thing I had for something related to the do-something-even-if-it’s-wrong attitude is from a 2003 private entry where I was talking about the USA PATRIOT Act. Circling back to the entry a few days ago, Lady G.

Or you could just let temporary things expire? So many things go to that in today’s news.

I think I’m finished for now. More tomorrow.

I started writing this waiting to see my PCP this morning. Before I went to see my mom earlier this month, I’d gone to the urgent care clinic because it felt like something was going on with my right ear. They said I had an outer-ear infection/inflammation. You’re fine to fly. Use these eardrops, and it’ll be fine.

No, I went, and was still having issues. After being back for almost three weeks, I decided to head in to see what’s going on. Since my PCP didn’t have any avails herself until next year, yeah, okay, go Monday.

Nasty ear infection. she wondered why the urgent care clinic hadn’t prescribed any oral antibiotics.

Um. I don’t know?
Are you allergic to any antibiotics?
Nope. Just the eardrops.
Are you allergic to antibiotics?
I don’t know? A doctor thought I was because of something that was probably an early MS flare when I was in high school.
Not sure if this is an allergic reaction to antibiotics; don’t take them again.
Okay, doc.

Since my brother is pretty good friends with one of that doctor’s sons, I should ask if anyone knows how he’s doing.

Back to the entry…

I stumble across this when looking at stuff I’d written the month I left radio. From 12/6/2006:

---

Checklist

Job? Check.
Raise at job? Check.
Moonlighting at radio station? Check. (bad me)
Wonderful girlfriend? Check+

Just haven’t felt like writing lately. Since August my division has gone from eight employees to three, and it may be down to two (me and my boss) by the end of the week.

The girl and I are getting along amazingly. We’ve been going out for over six months now, amazingly enough. Not talking about getting much more serious anytime soon. Her parents actually like me, which is good, I suppose. She’s not ready to get a lot more serious until she’s out of school.

Now, travel starts. Richmond today. New Jersey tomorrow. Home friday. .

---

It’s fascinating to see something that I wrote nearly nineteen years ago. Stranger, still, I’m still with the girl I was writing about back then; who’d have thought?

My regret back then was that I wasn’t writing enough. As I’ve said before, it’s probably a compulsion as part of my OCD. But unlike most ruminations, it doesn’t really affect what I’m doing. I can stop whenever I want to. I don’t feel that guilty if I miss a day, but the techniques I’ve developed do a pretty good job keeping me on track.

One of my earliest bookmarks from OD, seriously, like 1999, was talking about her decision-trees, and evaluations. My wife walked in while I was listening to the entry on it…and started nodding along knowingly.

I don’t plan the whole decision tree. I list the possible options, and just choose the best one. So much of what you’re trying to do in things like team leadership is find ways to progress through the OODA Loops more rapidly/efficiently.

I guess there’s been times when I worried about making maximum use of physical resources, but, to me, time is a resource. If I have 30 free seconds to do something that doesn’t absolutely need to be done right this minute, and doing it right now might require more resources. Whaver. I’m going to clean off that surface with a paper towel. Yes, I understand that cleaning it is on the to-do list tomorrow, but, a) seeing it bothers the shit out of me, and b) there’s not anything else that’d be a much better use of my time.

Maybe this is one of the problems I have with both government and religion? I don’t think you can pre-plan everything. You react to the situation what’s presented, and make do with what you have.

Yes, this is how I end up buying something I thought was deodorant, and was actually sunscreen.

But it sorta worked for a few days, maybe? The writing was too small for me to see until my wife let me know when she was going through what I’d bought.

Wow, this stuff doesn’t work very well; need to make sure I’m properly showered, and am wearing an undershirt.

I’m going to put your mini grooming products into your suitcase so you don’t forget them in the future.

Or i can keep reacting.

Maybe I should do better after-action reviews, but, in my experience, it’s just some small inconveniences. Accidentally spending a buck-and-a-half on something I thought was deodorant isn’t that big a deal.

But I think you you can get caught in a loop trying to figure out all the things you might have screwed up, and working too-diligently to avoid reporting that mistake.

And you end up with a suitcase full of grooming products you’ll never use.

More tomorrow. I think I’ve gotten enough for today.

The little dog arrived yesterday. She is alarmingly-sweet. I will describe further, provide photos when the blackout period is finished. I don’t even know that a western-friendly name has been awarded yet. I found “Daria,” which is a common name from whence she hails.

Crossing my scarred brain was “Ykaterina,” nickname “Kat.” So you’ve got a dog named “Kat.”

.

SMDH. I had an entry stored here, but didn’t have anything in it.

I’m starting to better-understand the concept of “doom scrolling.” Instagram, especially, can lead you into just unlimited time looking at stuff that’s really not, in the grand scheme of things, that important or even interesting.

There was something from WTKR with a reporter joining a crew replacing light bulbs on the building where I used to live in preparation for Norfolk’s annual holiday lights thing. “Celebration of Lights?” You’d think that someone who was in/near there from 1998 – 2017 would remember the marketing.

But there was something that happened in during the year we were living in “The Wainwright” where one of the solid strips across the top of the building had had an end come unmoored, letting the entire strip swing into the building. We lived on the ground floor, but, if memory serves, the end of the strip made an awful noise when it slapped our bedroom window.

Long story short, I spend a lot more time glancing at it than I did when I wasn’t working. Very skeptical about whether that’s improved my life in any way.

Trying to remember where I was with the whole light strip thing, I tried to look at some past years’ writing to see if there way good inspiration.

The stuff from very early is me, I think, caught in a meme cycle. The 2014 situation might have been a big brighter, but it was really still the clankity-clank of things going up the hill of the roller coaster.

i’d tried, and failed, at starting a new business. Strange that that the sorts of things I was considering are now commonplace in IT. It was almost an unspoken truth that you needed to be some place with good Intertubes services to even consider doing something online.

Memories of the 757.org machine shuffling first from Ethan’s house, then to 757Tech office, Ethan’s apartment in The Botetourt, 757 Labs at the Wainwright, then finally a datacenter in NoVA.

This was all after it’d been spun up in a bedroom in Virginia Beach.

I’m sure I missed a few of the interleaving steps.

Same goes for the HR Geeks stuff, which started as something like a Pentium 4 notebook motherboard I’d moved into a cheap rackmount case after the screen on the laptop died.

Wow. I think the Thai place where we had the first meeting in 2004 is still open.

This is where the guy with the maybe gray mustache would start with an “in my day” story about needing to find a place and time to hold meetings.

On closer examination, it’s still pretty much golden, and needs to be trimmed. I should do that before I go into the city tomorrow?

Other stuff…..

Many thoughts about this from TheFP. While I appreciate the way he’s going with the article, I got derailed thinking about the things that are happening in Virginia with Gov.-Elect CIA. My fine neighbors on Nextdoor are very excited about the things the Party of Harry F. Byrd are planning to do now that they’ve wrested full control of the Commonwealth from the Northern Aggressors. One of the things that’s high on the list is repealing Virginia’s Right-To-Work. law.

If you want to exercise your natural right to work, to pursue your happiness, you have to pay alms to a union that might not represent any of your values, who’d take money from you to give to politicians you don’t support.

Freedom!

Whatever you want to do, you will do it in the manner we prescribe, or men with guns will throw you in prison.

I don’t need another cup of coffee, but I do want one after plunking all that out.

How do you feel about people’s need to post every detail of their relationships on social media? Are you guilty?

This pairs so well with my overall approach to so many things today. It strangely fits in with what I was tinkering with yesterday, debating about how to go get a medical issue reexamined. (My questions were along the lines of, “where am I as far as my deductibles for this year?” and “How much is this going to cost out-of-pocket while you’re waiting for the disability appeal?”) Is it potentially something really problematic? Do I want to know with the holidays starting next week?

I am going to go Monday after all; it’s the last opening my primary doc has this year, so it’s a bit of an opportunity to send holiday wishes, too.

But, even here, I’m not going to blab share my worst thoughts about what it is. There aren’t any really any gruesome photos that can be shared. (I can’t see any of it; it’s an ear problem.) But if you were to encounter me, you’d be none-the-wiser about what’s going on.

MS is kind of the same way; But You don’t look sick! Nope. Sure don’t. And if I hasn’t told you, you’d never know.

I just look like a forty-something dude with a suspiciously-blonde mustache. I’m starting to wonder if that’s just how my body is expressing gray hair; it appears blonde. No salt-and-pepper here.

Maybe I should let the hair on my head grow a bit more to see if it’s the same shade.

But back to the topic; while health issues aren’t relationship issues, I think they’re treated with same circumspection. As I’ve slipped into the Ginger Dropout’s Social Media tool more, I’ve seen where information gets filtered/sorted. It’s very strange, and I’m not exactly sure what to make of it.

Often the things I’m seeing, now, are about professional athletes being cut, or coaches being fired. You dig a bit more, and it turns out to be untrue. Maybe there’s folks within the organization who are dissatisfied with how things are going, but…

I don’t need to know much about what’s going on in someone else’s life. In face, for the most part, I don’t want to know.

I wrote a few days ago about asking one of the AI tools to tell me as much as it could about the address where I used to live in Bad Newz. (Yes, y’all. I lived on a numbered street in Newport News, and saw Ookie play high school ball…) I think in very old radio days, there used to be a tracked stat — TSL (Time Spent Listening). Many, many of these sorts of stories are very short TSL. The real information might be buried somewhere in the story, but you’d need to read way down to find the information that doesn’t necessarily match the headline.

But people are getting better at sifting through data, and drawing conclusions from the sift job.

Senator Graham was very upset that Jack Smith had been spying on his phone activity. One of the FB comments about it said something along the lines of They found Lady G’s Grindr account. And you can STFW, yourself, for the meaning of “Lady G.”

But do I really need to know what he does in his downtime? (Given that he’s a Senator, there’s a ton…) No, not really. Reason is upset that he helped clear the path for the tools to be developed. (And the obligatory disclaimer that I have been a financial donor to The Reason Foundation…)

I understand why he’s upset. I also understand why Reason is upset.

But this was going to happen regardless of what government did or didn’t do.

You can ferret out whatever information you want about someone else’s relationship, and you’re never going to have the actual story.

So, stop trying? It probably isn’t any of your business, anyway.

---

In tangentially-related news, looks like JFK’s grandson is running for Congress. Do I really care if he engages in the sort of excess his grandfather, and other male relatives purportedly did? Nah, not really. If he does, he’ll probably get away with it, which raises all sorts of other questions.

Recap of your year month-by-month

I do feel like this should be something that runs December through November, but implicit in the prompt, this is only this year, so that’s what I’m going to do.

I think I’m going to just seat-of-the-pants on this. Not going to be well-researched, but I don’t have all day to spend on this. I do spend a lot more time on stuff I put up on Substack.

I actually started on this earlier, but it was getting unwieldy. I’ll be as brief as I can. I do have links to my writings for each month.

• January

Cold, final Schmoocon, inauguration, plane crash.

• February

Lots on what was going on with DOGE. Lots of problems with the return-to-office for USG folks. A few layoffs, early retirements, etc.. I remember dreading getting to my former formal work site. In the early days of the, I think, below 50% butts-in-seats periods, the traffic delay to get on to post was something like 75 minutes.

• March

The only thing I wrote about was sort of related to something that was discussed on BARPod. I remember working incredibly hard, and worrying about when they were going to get me back to a site more often.

• April

Decided that my body wasn’t up for doing something different, so started planning how to go to disability.

I can’t go and be in spend hours in a car getting to the site, then go back-and-forth to and from various places I’d need to be to work. I can’t go and do the things that are needed in order to buy more letters after my name in order to work for even less money.

• May

Frantic work to leave things in as good a shape as possible. Stopped working. started the nightmare that is disability paperwork.

• June

Fumbling about with disability. Lost Miss lacey.

• July

Horrible trip to Biloxi.

• August

Long-Term disability denied, so everything I’ve been goin through since. Birthday, etc.

• September

Still trying to figure out what’s going on.

• October

Government shutdown, and trying to get things for my lawyer.

Why do I feel like I should apologize for the abbreviated nature of this? (And the answer is the reason I’m seeing a psychologist…)

November, of course, I’ve woven in things here.

---

I just had an appointment with a financial planner regarding my various retirement savings. One, I don’t have enough money to be one of his client. Two, a lot of my “income” is really dependent on this private disability appeal. When I get that, I don’t really need to worry about much; the long-term disability will carry probably to the end of my expected life.

Keep. Moving. Forward.

Now if I could have done that during the workout this morning….

Free-write

I admit that I started plunking away at this some yesterday.

I’ve been playing around with various AI tools the past couple of days, having them do things like review my writings.

They don’t get everything right, but you can get nibbles that start you probably get somewhere to start

I notice that there seem to be lots of requests for robots.txt. I’m wondering if totes-didn’t-used-to-do-evil-co’s bots are obeying robots.txt. Maybe move that out of the way for a couple of days to see what happens? Hmmmmm..

I still need to figure out things with past writing. At the same time, perhaps letting the stuff I’d hidden languish in an ASCII file forever. I’ve not reviewed a ton of it. Obviously, the writing isn’t good, and there’s a lot that’s me being a whiny twenty-something. Still, there’s maybe some stuff from the radio days that’s worth keeping.

There was something that came up recently somewhere else in social media. How many air checks of me are there? Some of the more notable stuff may be forever lost to history; BBC, Appearing on the Matt Drudge radio show during some event affecting Norfolk. (Aside: Bill Cunningham has been hosting that really since Drudge retired to somewhere in Florida. Haven’t heard much of Bill lately, either. I should dig a bit more to see what’s up there; Bengals’ Embarrassment?)

Hmmm. Let me check DuckDuckGo‘s news section.

Not much.

But they have an AI tool, too…

His writing style is conversational and often introspective, revealing a sense of humor while critiquing societal norms and technology. He frequently shares his opinions on issues that affect everyday life, especially in the context of information security and technology's role in society.

I like that it doesn’t try to pigeonhole me. Maybe?

Sliding down towards the weekend. I think my wife is intent on cooking a turkey breast in the slow-cooker so she can spend time with [ ]. Yes, that’s unfilled. Not 100% sure that things are going to happen the way planned, and names aren’t set yet.

News stuff. The Q/BlueAnon Epstein stuff is set to be released, but that there’s going to be things that are omitted because of ongoing investigations will feed rampant speculation amongst some of the worst people in politics. From “both sides.”

Dig harder, gonna get OrangeManBad this time. Sorry, Larry Summers. Don’t despair! Rep. Crockett has the goods from the FEC filings! Yeah, about that…

I think there’s a bit of movement on my appeal. The timeline I was given was sometime in early-December, but it looked like maybe it’d get in before Thanksgiving. Maybe? But I’m not holding my breath.

2/3rds done. Let’s get the rest finished.

What opportunities that you’ve passed up do you regret passing?

You know, I think that reusing this one is something that looked interesting when I was trying to fill things out in preparation for this month. I did this recently. I guess I can see the initial appeal. There’s so many permutations I would be able to throw out in the future.

Should I have done that, professionally? Um.
Should I have asked her out? Um. Yeah, she’s still physically-attractive all these years later, but her social media presence says she’s absolutely nuts.
Was I not supposed to say that? No, and there will be a long session with HR explaining how you were wrong, and why your privilege made you wrong.
Should I have listened to…and bought that house that’s in a place where I don’t really want to be? Probably not; I still don’t really want to be there, though the proliferation of ride-sharing services has opened up all sorts of places that would have previously been unthinkable. Twenty years ago, trying to do anything in South Landmass without a car would have been completely unthinkable.
Should I have bought Bitcoin when it was cheaper? Maybe? But, also, maybe the early folks who spent fourteen BTC on a Papa John’s Pizza shouldn’t have done that.

I think I need to be better about imagining possibilities, and the incredible things that would happen with anything. Stop looking at all the bad things that could happen, and think about the good things that could happen.

I should make it a priority to catch back up with this podcast recommendation that has me listening to stuff on Edison. Certainly not one of my favorite people, but I think he did accomplish a lot when he was focused on the possible instead of the gruesome outlying circumstances.

Alternating current? DC is easier to understand, more predictable in small distances, and would you look at what AC can do to this convict?

Tangent related to alternating current. TheFP’s had a comment on its Front Page this morning that accused “right-wing” outlets of “gaslighting” by refusing to have Nick Fuentes on.

So giving something the ignorance it so richly deserves is gaslighting. Got it. VOTE BLUE!!1! Please don’t STFW and find those images of The Phelps Family as al Gore delegates at the 1988 DNC. History didn’t start until sometime in 2000.
I also think “gaslighting” is really an overused catchphrase, now. Totes-didn’t-used-to-do-evil-co’s definition — Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation where a person makes someone else doubt their own reality, perceptions, and sanity. This can include outright lying, denying events, trivializing feelings, and shifting blame to make the victim feel confused, anxious, and dependent. It is a serious type of emotional abuse that often isolates the victim from friends and family. 
Okay. With the zero people reading this on the same page, ignoring someone fringe fits right into that, right? Totally.

But back to the news of the day. Both houses of Congress have voted to release all of the Epstein files. OrangeManBad signed the bill. What happens now? It goes to DoJ, where some things are redacted, and it ends up looking really bad for some people, yet fails to justify public execution of the forever target.

*Looks away to see if there was something else I had in the drafts that might be interesting.*

Not really.

I ask Grok yesterday to tell me as much as it could about me by reading this site. I’d put the accuracy at about 80%, ballparking. There’s a lot here missing, but read the site tagline.

Wonder what other AI engines would do. Also wonder what the question did to my site traffic….

More tomorrow. I want another cup of coffee.