Author: sean

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.

Free-write

I drafted this a few months ago.  I’m trying to get out some of the stuff that’s stuck in my drafts queue.

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I’ve complained, perhaps incessantly, about the stupidity that is LinkedIn.

Late last week, I got a suggestion that I connect with my father.

My dad died nearly eight years ago.

Words fail. Please, please, please shut off your email snooping, you all.
Yes, I’ve got emails dating back years and years; it doesn’t mean that I ever want (or can) speak to those people again.

Still, what’s happening, though, and why LinkedIn is a pond filled with just about only recruiters these days, is that companies are moving almost exclusively to having contract employees.

My new role, I get, at least, paid holidays, and time off. What do I not get? The sacrosanct health insurance, and any 401K match at all.

You know what, though, for most of my life, I’ve not had those things.

Older politicians ran on destruction of the “gig economy” not long ago, while people her age are working forever, and getting rich off reflated housing and equity markets.

So What?

I’m going to point out what I’ve had to deal with as one of the youngest Generation Xers. You will see it on my resume, which will be as long as it needs to be to cover my varied work history. It will not be a two-page Microsoft Word 97 document. Sorry.

To the arts major recruiters, consider your favorite author. How would his/her (yes, I know, that’s sys-gendered…..) works

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I don’t know why I didn’t publish this back when I wrote it.  It does speak to the whole data mining.

How does government fix that?  It can’t.

I write this as I listen to a Libertarian take on the issue of birthright citizenship.

The more you read, and the more you think about things, the more your opinions change.

That makes me a bad person, I suppose.  Rachel Maddow might be able to whip up some tears about it.  *shrug*

Stuff in my sights at the moment:

Well, this.  I guess the idea is keep-it-big-but-regulate-the-fuck-out-of-it.  No.  Don’t do that.  If something’s too big, instead of forcing things, leave.  All you can do is take your attention and money away.

That, of course, is what I’m doing.

I’m also paying attention to the NFL, even if the fans, and the TV audiences have largely left.

Rams at the Saints tomorrow should be interesting.

Not a lot more to say, really.  I’m making prime rib for dinner for me, my wife, brother, and sister-in-law.  Similarly, I will declare that done when it’s done.  Like this entry.

So on to tomorrow.

Just in to the prompts today.  The second prompts are harvested from someone on OD, who’s trying to sorta resurrect the old NoJoMo bits there.

I am writing because I’ve already hit my work target for the week, and am out of workable hours.  Maybe, though, Sunday, I’ll actually have a full day off for the first time in like two weeks.

So on to it….

Are you listed as an organ or bone marrow donor? Why or why not?

I was.  My disabled guy ID doesn’t show it anymore, though.

At the same time, like anybody would want my organs with the sheer amount of chemicals pumped into my body, I wonder if anyone’d want them.  If there was something on/in me to salvage, I guess someone could have it, but I’m having trouble figuring out what of me might be of any use.

My blood?  No, I ate British beef in the 1980s, so nobody will take that while I’m alive.

Hair?  Well, what of it’s still left, maybe.

How would you describe yourself to someone who had never met you?

This one is tough.

I’m a married guy in his late-thirties.  No kids.  Nerd.  Not much of a professional future left on account of my physical disability;  I have multiple sclerosis.  MS has taken most of my vision, and quite a bit of my mobility.

My father was a career Army officer, so I grew up all over the place;  I attended three high schools.  While I was in college, I started working in television, then radio.  I stayed in broadcasting for the better part of a decade.  I left radio in 2005 to try to pay off my college debts, in preparation for going to law school.

Instead, I met the girl I’d marry.  I got sick, and she stuck around.

And I got turned around while writing this.  The work I thought I was going to do tomorrow got quadrupled.  Oh well.  I like what I’m doing.