Author: sean

Veterans’ Day.

I’ve been watching the services marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I on C-SPAN.

None of the cable news networks had anything on.  Somehow that’s fitting.  It also explains the stupidity I saw when I mistakenly looked at what was out on Facebook. The Marines didn’t want to fly in typically-poor late-fall European weather.

At some point, you have to leave the negativity behind.

So, WWI.  The C-SPAN coverage has been interesting.  One of the callers was talking about his grandfather on a ship out of Newport News.  I looked it up, and one of the photos shown was it sitting pierside at the Coal Piers in Newport News.

Hey!  I’ve worked there before.  On the USNS Red Cloud.

Of course, there’s also the Victory Arch in Newport News, which was built on West Avenue for the returning troops to walk underneath as they were getting off ships from France to get on trains home.

My great-grandfather was a young Army officer during the war.  He died before I was born, but my great-grandmother would tell the story about how, following Infantry Officer Basic, they let the new soldiers go home one last time before shipping out.  They were admonished not to go home, and get married.  All but one or two in my great-grandfather’s company, him included, returned as married men.

My dad turned down a Merchant Marine Academy appointment so he could go be an Army officer like his grandfather.

There’s so little known about all of this, and how it affected world history.

Off to watch Vice President Pence do the ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown.

Write about someone who is no longer a part of your life. Could be a love, a friend, a relative. Why aren’t they a part of your life anymore?

This might be one that’d be better for my wife to write about, considering all the drama that’s happened this week with her extended family.

I’ve made nods towards this recently.

There’s a group of people who don’t know how to deal with me because of my disease’s effects.  I’m not up to do the sorts of things I used to do.  Although not as fragile as it used to be, my financial standing doesn’t allow me to pick up the bill on almost everything.  Maybe that makes them “users.”  Maybe it means I was a sucker, spending money I shouldn’t have in exchange for attention/affection.  So those people have drifted away, but I can’t bring myself to really care.

There’s never been an instance when I really wished I could call up $name for advice on how to deal with a challenge.  Not that I really share things, even with those closest to me.  I do miss having my dad around for some of those things;  he was the one I went to on those.

Here’s where I refrain from writing about something that didn’t go well…..

So, there’s another group, those who’ve been taken with things I view negatively.  In a lot of ways, and maybe this makes me a bigot, it usually revolves around religious adoption.  Few, though, have actually adopted an internationally-recognized faith.  More often, they’ve adopted, with religious fervor, crazy ideologies.

Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Barack Obama, Paul Krugman, Dave Ramsey, Alex Jones, to name a few.

There’s no single way to live, and letting people choose different paths is not a bad thing.  

Don’t like someone doing x?  Okay, fine.  How long do you plan to lock them in cages for continuing to do that which you don’t like?

That question is never popular.  Even less popular when you dig down to the essence of a sanitized political argument.  So, you go on MSNBC, and say that someone is guilty of treason.  Translation:  You want to see that someone executed.  Proving an actual crime is less important than actually seeing someone with whom you disagree murdered.

So those folks steer away from me.  Maybe I should be concerned about that, but I can’t bring myself to care;  good riddance.

Is there an outfit, a meal, a drink, a style, a whatever, that you feel is the quintessential “you?”

I’m not at all sure why I picked this prompt.

What I wrote in 2012:

Maybe when I was younger. Notsomuch anymore. My wife is befuddled by my like of button-down shirts. I don’t know.

My normal outfit these days?  Jeans and a T-shirt.  Drink?  DHMO.  Style?  As if.  Whatever?  Exactly.

I’m very disturbed by the reports about this.  I’m not a TC fan, but ANTIFA is a terrorist organization.

Kinda forcing myself to write some during my lunch break today.  I’ve been sofa king busy with work the past few days.

I am tired, and need to force myself to step away from the humdrum.

But on to the prompt.

What is the most expensive thing you have ever bought for yourself?

Obviously, my Mustang.  I really probably shouldn’t have bought it, but it was a lot of fun for awhile when I had it.

Frivolities are kind of an afterthought these days.  I say that just as I’d confirmed yet another MRI.

Tube Cruise?

Party!

(The “tube cruise” bit is sarcastic.  I do take Valium to stop twitching, so I could seem stoned AF….)

I was hoping that I could pluck off another prompt from one of the OD folks, but there’s nothing there.

So, what else am I remotely excited about today.

Andrew Heaton coming to The Blaze with a podcast.  He had a couple of funny bits in the announcement this morning.

• Oklahoma is Texas’s Canada
• Alex Jones reading NPR stories

I am sort of going to root for the Steelers tonight.  Yes, it’s because I want a Panthers’ loss to help the Saints.  But what can you say.

I’m wondering whether I should write tomorrow’s entry tonight because I’ll likely be out of it this time tomorrow.  Hmm.

What is your favorite kind of weather? Why?

This is kind of coming towards the end of my favorite part of the year.  If I went outside more often, maybe I’d have more comments.

I like feeling it get cold outside.

That said, I really don’t like being cold too much.

I look forward to seeing the snow covering everything from inside where it’s warm.

 

Another of the things I’m doing is digging through my drafts, and finding things I wanted to write about.

This has been floating around lately.
How can you purport to support “Net Neutrality” while supporting this sort of editing?

Yes, the link still works, which is a relief.

But it does speak to the start of my self-imposed isolation from big tech.

This shit isn’t good for anybody.

I really dislike bigots.  I probably wouldn’t knowingly sell them my products or services (excepting, of course, things covered as public accommodations under the Civil Rights Act.)

If you sell a Nazi a domain name or hosting space, whatever.  I don’t look down on you and your company because of it.

Are they not allowed to have their names on their mailboxes outside their houses?  How about a listing in a phone book?

No, you, with your illiberal beliefs, want to see them dead.  

Kind of ties back to yesterday.  I voted against Tim Kaine, someone I’ve met, and for whom I’ve voted in the past.  I was okay with him winning, and hoped that it’d still be with a mere plurality.  With him in the Senate, maybe he won’t raise another ANTIFA terrorist.

Election Day

Yes, I voted.  My wife and I voted for opposing members of the House, the same for the Senate, and split on two of the ballot initiatives.

On many things, I tend to agree with KMW, but not here.  I think you do get better people, overall, with indirect democracy.  That said, the Senate was never supposed to be directly-elected (mark me down as being against the Seventeenth Amendment), and I think the House should be made proportional again.  If they’ve gotta hold session in the Kennedy Center, so be it.

Chances are everyone I voted for will lose.

But how many candidates did I really vote for;  was I just voting against certain people?  Perhaps.

What are some qualities of bad bosses? What would you not do if you were supervising others? 

I missed part of this prompt, somewhere.  Oh well.  It happens.

After a very long day working, today, though, I guess a key would be communication.  There’s a difference between Lumbergh-style micromanagement, and leaving people on islands with zero feedback.

If you thought that I’m seeking feedback this evening, you’d be correct.

Yes, I’m adept at what they’ve got me doing.  Still, it is beyond tedious work.  My eyes are not happy that I’ve been staring at a poorly-constructed Java monstrosity pretty much all day.

But it does pay the bills, and the Saints beat the Rams yesterday afternoon.

I kind of have a working theory of football that was once again proved correct — if you serve up the fortyburger, you lose.  Even if you managed to come back and tie it up, if you served it up, you end up losing the game.

 

I’m very much in the “no” coalition on this one.  Things happen, but the background circumstances are rarely the same.  Maybe the outcome is the same, but…..

Apologies to the non-existent readers for the curt entry;  I’m tired.

Write a bit about your drivers’ licence. How old were you, where did you get it? What kind of car did you drive?

Not applicable.  I haven’t had a driver’s license since my unexpected move in Norfolk.  Prior to that, I had one, but I hadn’t been behind the wheel since late 2012.  I barely passed the vision test when I renewed my license in 2009, before I was diagnosed with MS.

I really stopped driving, though, sometime in the summer of 2012.  I had a pickup truck drop its under-bed spare tire in front of me.  This really screwed up my car, and I was very scared when I got it back out of the shop.

When I tried again between Christmas and New Year’s in late-2012, I realized that I couldn’t see a red stoplight with a green tree in the background.

Probably, if I wanted to, I would qualify as legally-blind at this point.

I was also having real trouble working the clutch without toeing the brake.

I never owned a car with an automatic transmission;  I’m happy about that.

What does it mean to be a good friend?  What type of friend are you?

I’m contemplating this one, and I really don’t know.

I’m still on good terms with a few friends.  There’s others with whom I’d just never speak again.  Some of those are due to adoption of beliefs I find insane.  No, none of them has become a Scientologist, at least.  Those who are fascinated with politicians who are disguised bigots I don’t worry too much about.

A couple folks might avoid me because of something I did, but I think the vast majority probably don’t know how to deal with me.  No, I don’t have nearly the energy I used to.  I also don’t have the money to blow on frivolity.  I made mistakes trying to live a life I couldn’t afford, then they figured out WTF was wrong with me.

Maybe there’s never any reward, but at least I can still live with myself.