Month: February 2024

Thinking more about what I’d written this weekend along with the problems I’m facing at work.

You need an expert to do whatever.

But that brought me back to what was perhaps my first ever certification, the Red Cross babysitter certification.

I had to have that to charge to babysit kids on post. On Carl Schurz Kaserne in Bremerhaven.

Out on a date with my girlfriend (she is forever my girlfriend, even if I did put a ring on it…), I demonstrated folding a cloth diaper.

Who needs to do that anymore?

But that was a part of the certification. So I learned it, and it stuck. That unused extra napkin meant for the ribs I’d ordered, served as a representation of a cloth diaper.

I remembered hot to fold it. And secure it.

What use is that today? Even, almost twenty years ago, it wouldn’t have increased my chances of reproducing. (Though I really nixed that by determining she and I would form Butters?)

What use was that during the Bush 41 Administration?

I’ve also learned how to set engine timing using a timing light, and change carburetor jets. What use is that in 2024?

.

You figure it out.

I really don’t like comparisons to cooking or cars (as he says with Chapped running in a background windows), but I also learned how to run a timing light, and how to gap ignitions points.

Does that make me a competent source for auto Maintenace?

Things change; get over it. Still, there’s things that stand the test of time.

Even if there was a way to buy something that cleared those, I don’t care.

Didn’t write yesterday because, as I said in my sign-off Friday, I was livid about a work situation.

First, if you schedule a meeting for 1500 on a Friday afternoon, you’re an asshole. Second, my general attitude towards meetings was very much in play. You need to publish an attendee list, take then publish minutes. If you don’t do that, you’re wasting the time of all but about the five most-active participants.

Unfortunately, I was one of those five most-active on something I hadn’t really been following all that closely.

The solution isn’t that difficult, but you have to know what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it.

Lots of thoughts this week about how there’s so little appreciation of things that don’t last.

Figure out what’s the problem you, and your team, are trying to solve. Solve the problem. Leave. None of the particulars about how you fixed the problem are important.

And they shouldn’t persist.

Though I was never even an adequate programmer, I’d understand that you don’t import libraries that you’re not going to use, then leave them around forever.

Oh, look! There’s a smaller library that’ll allow you to do what you were trying to do more efficiently. Nawp. Can’t use that. We use this library. There’s no other way to do it. Further, still, we don’t have the slightest clue about what we’re actually trying to do. Nope. We use this tool.

*headdesk*

Imagine refusing to use a toilet if the toilet wasn’t the manufacturer you prefer. Or if the toilet paper was different.

But that’s where things are so often in big IT.

We have to buy this expensive stuff. There is no alternative. Here’s an old document that says you have to use the expensive stuff.

To. Do. What?

---

Somewhat-related, I suppose. The Marines passed their audit. The RON PAUL chorus will say about as much about that as they’ll say about the rallies in support of Ukraine yesterday.

But their foreign policy experts, who you can see if you take an Uber in Austin, said Russia was going to win quickly after they weren’t going to invade.

Um.

I still haven’t filled out my ballot so I can vote in my heavily-gerrymandered district against someone in the uniparty.

It’s really not that big of a concern, I guess.

.

Trump won South Carolina. Bigly. So another election where there’s nobody I’d even consider voting for.

Rambling. Time for coffee.

I was listening to this today.

I did post some response there, but it’s another example of something that goes to what I’ve been on for a long time.

If you don’t like me, great. Please calmly let me know, and I’ll just go somewhere else.

When I say, “you can leave,” I do take that advice, myself. If you’re firing employees for something as innocuous as refusing to be physically attracted to a member of the same biological ses, again, please just be up front with that so I can not give you any of my money.

Along the same lines, you can refuse to do business with places that do what you think are the wrong things. For an example of a place trying to do the right thing, look here. For one who didn’t, there was this.

In both circumstances, the owners should have:

1. Apologized
2. Fired the staff who caused the issue

You don’t have a right to a job. If you refuse to work, that’s fine. You quit.

Callback to the late, great Lewis Grizzard.

Kinda fits with what I’ve been listening to, today, surrounding Rachel Dolezal, as well as somewhat came out during the Fani Willis disqualification hearing.

Call me a prude; I don’t care.

There’s things about you that you should keep to yourself Nobody needs to know how you look, what your sexual proclivities are. I really don’t want to know about your personal activities.

If that makes me a prude, whatever.

If I’m lucky enough to see your normally-covered bits, or know about your sexual habits, it’s because you find me special enough to share that with me. If I accidentally catch a glimpse of something that you haven’t willingly shared with me, privately and personally, I’m not going to obsess over it.

it’s Saturday, so that’s when I write.

Yesterday, I went an had MRIs following the medication switch over the summer. I really don’t know if there’s been any progression. The Keysimpta was brutal on the first half-dose, but i barely notice it now. This last one made me feel kinda lousy, but that might have been due to something else.

We we’ll see. I need to work getting the CDs sent off to my docs for review, though I did put them up on one of my VPSes so they could download.

We’ll see how that goes.

---

And figured out what the issue I’m seeing with one of my VPSes is. Pfft.

I hate BIND Sofa King much

But that was actually an issue with the domain registrar. Why they switched the nameserver records again is beyond me.

Hopefully it’ll get straightened out soon.

Why I’m continuing to do all of this myself is a really good question. Kind of speaks to where I am with so many things in life.

What is the value of the time that I’d spend doing these things?

I just don’t know.

At one point, I think I enjoyed this stuff. I’m not sure I do anymore.

What better could I be doing with that time? Um.

I’d probably listening to podcasts, and watching TV.

---

As far as what I’ve consumed lately, following the end of the NFL season.

No OP Live tonight. The Shane Gillis SNL isn’t until next week.

Kind of caught up on Normal World. With company around, I stumbled across The Big Door Prize.

---

And I’ve kind of lost the bubble on where I was going with this.

Listening to other coverage of a lot of the things brought up in the latest Fifth Column.

Navalny’s death probably ought to give Elon Musk more than a moment’s pause about Tucker Carlson.

Follow-ups to yesterday’s entry.

I get why everyone interviewed is upset. Suicide is horrible.

But there’s something big missing from what these amazingly-knowledgeable educators absolutely are missing.

.

.

These ardent academics blamed everything they could think of for these suicides. Except for the policies they fucking set that sent people into unnatural isolation.

I really haven’t felt myself needing additional human interaction, but I’m weird. I know that. I admit that.

I can go weeks at a time without face-to-face contact with others. When I was in college, much of my time was spent by myself.

I’d have one or two breaks an hour in the middle of the night. I’d listen to the stations’ programming in monitors while I was doing my college research, and writing papers.

But I’m fucking weird. Most people can’t do that. On my nights off work, about my only interaction would be with the clerk at 7-Eleven or the diner.

Whatever. I’m comfortable with that. Most people aren’t. Most people can’t deal with just being completely without seeing others smile more than a few times per week.

This doesn’t have anything to do with the lack of minority representation among your faculty. It’s not because of systemic racism.

You did this; this is your fault.

I’m sorry if saying that bothers you, but it’s the truth. There’s people, including more than a handful of your students, who are dead directly because of what you did.

But you’ve got lots of letters after your name, so you can’t be responsible for anything bad. You’re a good person, and you were only looking out for others protecting that from a virus that probably wasn’t going to kill them, or cause significate harm.

You did this. You are responsible. Admitting your culpability is the first step in not repeating the mistakes you make. You did make them. I know I did. I admit them.

Maybe if I’d been rich, healthy enough to buy more, I’d feel absolved.

I think my jaunt to the Gulf Coast in a few weeks is the only thing on my calendar to which I’m really looking forward.

Maybe I did reword that sentence because I was thinking of something.

Kind of distracted this week with an insane work week for both me, and my wife.

Focus kind of disrupted by news from my old boss, who I’d emailed with an odd story about a radio tower being stolen in Alabamastan, about the death of the co-owner of the radio stations where I’d worked pretty much through college, and for a souple of years after.

Lisa was always very nice to me, and I’m very sad she’s gone. The first time I went back to visit after I’d left for the wild world where I’ve been for almost twenty years, she saw me in the lobby, and excitedly waved me in to her office.

How do you like your new job?!

I really like the work I’m doing. Not very happy with the company, but doing interesting work.

Her (then newly-ex) husband chimed in wryly, “They’re missin’ payroll.”

Um.

Yep.

I don’t know that I’ve got a ton here about my travails that’d follow with that company. I’m not dissatisfied that last news I had about he company president, he was living with his daughter in San Diego after his hippy wife had left him.

No, I’m not going to withdraw the aspersion about her. No shit, he actually was making business decisions based on what her medium in Sedona had instructed.

All that said, I was able to gain some knowledge while dealing with that less-than-ideal situation. Hopefully it’s served me somewhat later in my work life.

Towards the end of my time with that company, I was cashing my paycheck at their bank, then driving to my nearest credit union an hour away to deposit the cash.

Travelling on a crowded Interstate with hundreds of dollars in your pocket is more than a little uncomfortable.

But I got through it all. While I have some ill-will, none of it is directed to the radio world I left in 2005.

---

Listened to this during the first part of my writing.

I understand where Stockman is coming from, and generally agree with his analysis. I don’t agree that RFK Jr. is the answer.

Vote against the worst.

Looking at what’ll be on my ballot in November,

• Biden
• Trump
• RFK Jr.

Cornel West might well be on the ballot. The Libertarian Party likely won’t be because of the unmitigated disaster the Mises Caucus has unleashed.

Much like I would have if I was voting in the Nevada Republican primary, I’d probably vote “none of the Above.”

I should go try and prepare some for that big football game that shall not be named.

Don’t really care who wins. I’ve felt that way this entire playoff.

Finishing up Things Fell Apart Season 2. I understand where he’s going with it, but I guess I see a bit of a middle way with it?

Okay, there’s overreactions, certainly.

At the same time, if you’re writing something, and you portray yourself as a “thought leader,” you have to assume that there’s some gravitas that goes along with that.

If you don’t know, or wouldn’t ever do those things, you shut the fuck up.

If you can’t help yourself, you have to repeatedly add disclaimers in and around what you say.

Maybe it’s even more important when you’re with a governmental, or quasi-governmental body.

My reaction to so many of these things lately, especially when people are calling for untested policy prescriptions, is you’ve decided you’re not going to try to convince me to do what you think would be best. You’ve snitched. You’ve called the cops. Down to the point where the cop shoots me, I want you to speak through the sequence of events.

Taking things to the bitter end state makes people really uncomfortable.

But it can eventually help. Okay, Ms. Real Estate agent, you’ve scored this house for me in a teaser interest rate. What happens eighteen months from now when I can’t make the payments after the rate’s reset?

I’m sorry I made you do math. I know you didn’t do well on that in school. To be honest, neither did I, but I got enough of it to buy a Science degree.

Of course, you don’t focus on worst-case scenario when you’re trying to make the sale. But it there’s a catastrophic result as a possibility, you have to lay that out, show mitigations against it, and show its likelihood.

*yawn*

I’m gonna go take a nap.