Month: July 2021

Stay On Schedule

Late writing today, but it’s Saturday, so I feel like it’s what I’m supposed to do…..even if I did write yesterday.

So, what have I done already today?

  • I messed around, more, with figuring out the mess that is Mailman3. When I updated ^H, Mailman2 was deprecated. Getting things back up and running has been a real pain. This is even more true with a completely headless system. What to do, what to do…..
  • Switched away from Apple Podcasts. New player is PlayAPod. H/T Todd Moore. Apple really screwed up with the last update; the app takes about five minutes to load after being off for a while. Nope. Not doing that. But it’s a question of what I should subscribe to, mainly. Oh! I forgot that one. *search* Subscribe.
  • Fantasy Football. Sent pings to some folks who’d previously been in leagues prior to the disaster that was 2020. Not a disaster with the Fantasy season, but just with everything. If anyone is reading here, too, please send me an email if you’d like to join.
  • I still need to figure out the rest of my prompts for this summer’s writing period

Time to keep dragging along

Burning Hunk Of Friday

This is sort of a writing-a-day-early thing.

I wasn’t feeling well last night, and decided to go ahead and try to take some of the copious leave I have.

So. What’s up.

Well, my left-handed comment last week to Brian McWilliams get a lot more punctuation. (Link to long, very disjointed Twitter thread…which will probably not work a few months after I initially write this entry. I periodically go back and delete all of my Tweets. Not because I regret many of them, but because things can come back and be misconstrued out-of-context). The discussion, however, did affect even my way of thinking about things.

Government does a couple of things well — breaking things, and killing people. Everywhere else, private industry does a better job.

If you knew of someone who needed immediate help with a problem, would calling some bureaucratic agency, or starting a Go Fund Me be more effective?

The host of the Peddling Fiction Podcast had a friend whose daughter was in the hospital with an unknown medical issue. Johny put out a request to listeners like me, and we gave money to support child and mom as they dealt with whatever the problem was/is.

Complicating matters, there, is that John, and his friend live overseas.

How long would it have taken to get things organized through government?

Much longer, I’m certain.

Would the money have gotten there with more taken off-the-top? Of course. That’s not a good thing.

People want to help. Paying a thug with a gun and a badge doesn’t increase generously.

But, back to the disagreement I was having with Brian, the way he was describing it is making the focus on the consumer when pitching Libertarianism.

No, that’s a pitch to a shrinking segment of the population. But that segment of the population, historically, seemed enormous, and the educators coming from that segment, focus on those like them.

Think Globally, Act Locally. Things will work out better than if you’re worried about what others are doing.

Maybe more tomorrow, but I should go do my daily stuff.

Pushing The Pollster

Got a call today from a push polling outfit.

When you don’t really think that government is the answer to, well, much of anything, questions about whether you think your representative in the state capitol is doing a good job by pushing the government-enforced monopoly to lower prices.

“Has your impression of $Local_Democratic_Delegate improved because his effort to have electricity savings sent back to residents?

“No.”

“Has your impression of $Local_Democratic_Delegate improved because he’s trying to lower prescription drug prices for Medicare recepients?

“No.”

*confused silence*

Have a nice day!

Local communicatees should be handling electricity; maybe individual neighborhoods/developments/etc…

Why would increasing the amount of government influence over any of it raise my impression of a particular politician?

And this is what I call my last Saturday before going back to work….

But I’ll put in for the Monday after the Comedy show I’m seeing next month off. Even if it’s only in DC, I have leave I need to burn.

Spreading Things Thinly

I am, but it’s really all I can do at this point.

Monday (the Federal holiday for Independence Day, as the 4th actually fell on Sunday), I took the train down to see my mom. Overall, the trip went okay, though I did manage to lose my glasses on the trip back up.

Just now, I bought a replacement pair. $12.95. Yeah. I can deal with that even if I have to essentially throw them out when I finally get a replacement prescription.

But, largely, I didn’t do much of anything. I did get to Waffle House on Wednesday before I scrambled back to NoVA early to avoid the tropical storm.

I checked email when I got back on Wednesday night, then did some things on Thursday, but largely I’ve been off.

Am I re-energized, ready to get ack to the grind? *shrug*

Thankfully, the news has slacked off a bit this week.

Listening to this Podcast, there’s ads from Facebook advocating new Intertubes regulations.

So that they can make themselves bigger, more indispensable.

No. I am not in favor of anything that’d do that.

I need to figure out what my topics are going to be for my summer writing compulsion session.

Independence Eve

Busy week. Lots of discussion about some of the things I heard towards the end of last week.

Still keeping my thumb on the pulse of the tumult with the LP, and becoming increasingly convinced that there’s lots of folks with exactly the wrong approach to well….just about everything.

That was definitely a left-handed compliment. You can find the sarcasm by clicking on MyProfile, and selecting Insight.

But the tweet speaks to the push on messaging. He was talking in the podcast about focusing messaging to individual personal benefits.

It’s all about you.

That is exactly the sort of messaging that was aimed at the Baby Boomers.

Run a survey of your friends on your My Yahoo.

That’s tack B. So much has gone in to focus in super-serving what used to be the biggest segment of the US population.

Tack A is a refreshing of the RON PAUL 2008 campaign.

Let’s ignore the fact that it didn’t work back then. Or in 2012. But if we do it harder, it’ll be done correctly this time.

Something else I was listening to recently was talking about the Socialists’ push on Socialism. They wanted Sweden or Denmark. They got Venezuela.

But if they’d forcedconvinced one more book more ardently, everything would be A-okay.

Nope.

So as people exhale more-urgently into the sails of a potential campaign, the less attention and support I can muster.

Maybe that makes me

Nope, I’m not supposed to say that sort of thing.

What else is on tap for this week?

I am off work from tonight until Thursday night.

I will be turning my work phone off.

My corporate email account will get checked because I have the account on my personal iPhone.

I will kind of be marooned, but that’s part of what I want.

(And the other part is Waffle House….)

Maybe I’ll get around to getting Mailman fixed on this VPS.

Maybe I’ll figure out what to write about this summer (Yes, I’m going to do that, even though it’s contrary to doctor’s orders…..)

We’ll see.