November 2024

6

Will get into the election real after the prompt I’d written:

Likes and dislikes, plus things you thought you wouldn’t like, but have come to very much appreciate

The thing that rest came to mind when thinking about what’s happened since 2021 is this:

Never Do It

I think the Party of Harry Flood Byrd did just that in 2021 and 2022. The Dobbs ruling stopped the reaction to that in 2022, but yesterday was that delayed by a couple of years.

Whatever.

I’ve not ventured to watch things like Kennedy’s reactions; what happened?!?! *sniff*

As I said, I voted for Chase Oliver. Looking at the vote totals, he’s looking more like Browne 2000 than Marrou 1992. I’d said that an unwritten goal of the Moses Caucus was to garner fewer votes than 1992. Looks like they might fall short of that.

There’s still nothing showing that President Trump will be able to fix any of the problems that exist.

The Federal Government has spent recklessly for nearly a quarter century now.

Maybe there’s something Trump can do to breathe a few more breaths into the again-reinflated equity bubbles, but I’m not at all confident.

If things do, as I think, collapse hard, it’ll be Trump’s fault.

Even if Kamala had won, and the Republicans hadn’t retaken the Senate, it’d still be Trump’s fault.

Oh well.

Last night, I watched TheFP’s livestream until it ended, then witched over to BlazeTV.

I did look some more at Cable News this morning to see some of the kvetching from “Morning Joe.”

I’m sure I’ll have more as the week progresses, but so many people did “go full…”

5

Incredibly odd. I didn’t have anything in the draft folder for today.

Maybe I was going to write about my brother, and happy birthday to him, but I don’ know.

Obviously, today is Election Day. I did send off my absentee ballot on Saturday before I left.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have a hunch, but I’m right there with a lot of the The Fifth Column folks.

The issues the country is facing are incredibly deep. It’s not culture war stuff. It’s some really serious fiscal problems to which neither of the major candidates has an answer.

There is a lot that can be learned from Javier Milei, and Argentina, but neither party is really in doing anything to address the problems.

Bubuhbut Kamala is going to give first-time homebuyers a $25,000 credit!

Which will be a small patch to something that’s still a bubble.

Trump is going to eliminate Income Taxes completely!

Income taxes that the majority of taxpayers don’t pay anyway.

I think there’s a strong argument that your “FICA Taxes” really aren’t taxes.

I guess we’ll see what happens.

From my archives, November 5, 2000:

I really hate mainstream politicians.

I don’t know that I’d throw around hate is readily today. But the overall idea really hasn’t changed.

Perhaps I was a bit more hopeful around 2012ish, but my underlying suspicions continue to ring true — government doesn’t work.

I don’t know what I’m going to do today. Might go do something for lunch/dinner.

We’ll see.

But is there something I can do to switch off the breathless coverage of the election?

I don’t know.

Football might be as much of a disaster as politics.

Will the Saints win another game this year after firing Dennis Allen?

No idea.

Is there someone coming out of college who could be the next Jaden Daniels?

Don’t know that, either.

That’s about all the Good Morning America I can take. So I’m going to move onto something else.

4

Write About Loss

Doing this because I’m remembering my uncle, whose birthday would have been today. But i wanted to write about things you’ve lost, or you’ve left behind. Kind of goes to my oft used You Can Leave. so, what’s gone away that you miss? How about things that are gone, and you don’t really care are gone?

Speaking of this, this morning, I was invited by a community I’d abandoned on Locals. It might have been a please-come-back-here’s-a-free-month thing, but I actually dismissed the alert before I could read it.

It’s kind of what I do when I leave. I rarely look back. When I say I’m finished, I’m finished.

And there I of again starting to type out something about how “maybe I shouldn’t do that,” but my reaction is always that it’s my fault. If I’d done something differently, maybe I wouldn’t be in this s situation.

But, no, really, my judgment isn’t that fucked. When I get to the point when I decide it’s necessary to depart, I should just stick to that.

Thinking about it, though, I can’t think of a single instance where I’ve been really regretful about not rekindling something I’ve left.

That was a period of life. It’s over now. Move on.

On the issue of loss, I think that came up because I’m pretty sure today would have been my uncle’s 65th birthday.

I knew him, but the physical separation maant we weren’t really close. He was my dad’s youngest brother. My two uncles weren’t terribly close while I was alive for a variety of reasons, but had reunited for a couple of years after my dad died.

He did not have a fun life. It sounds like it was tough from an early age. I didn’t have a lot of insight into it, and there was a reason my old man was in such a rush to get out of where he grew up.

I don’t know. We never really talked about it that much. But now they’re all gone.

Things here, now, are, though, better.

A Lot better.

My wife was telling me that there was an out gay guy working as a greeter in one of the national chains she visited yesterday.

I seem to remember a story of one of my uncles getting in a fight after being accused, not being gay, but being an airman.

Sorts of things that people outside Air Force towns will never understand.

I forgot to set my Out-of-Office message before I left.

Oops.

3

I was looking back at what I’d written back in 2017.

On that day, I was writing about the reaction to the 2016 election.

Looking back at that, I have no absolutely no idea what connection I was trying to connect to with that. I think, maybe, I was thinking it was something to do with the 2016 election.

By the time I wrote in 2017, the morass that would have been the first bits of the Trump administration were already starting to swirl.

I could go back through to see if I can find some of the most egregious examples of overreach.

But, why?

Maybe I’d be smart to just forget most of those overreaches. But that’d require separating out what many of the same people excused with regards to the 2020 riots, and COVID.

But my reflex is simply to refuse to associate with the worst examples of overreach on either, or both.

Yeah, I’m just not going to associate with you, much less do business with you.

Maybe that’s unfair, but it’s all I can do in my position.

I’m subjecting myself to more Joe Rogan because I wanted to hear what JD Vance had so say, even though I voted against him.

Guy can speak. Can’t say that same of any of the other people on the major parties’ tickets.

I’m really following things at a distance. I’ll elaborate more in a few days.

Similarly, I’m glancing at the NFL scores. Fire Dennis Allen? Um, okay. But it looks like Mike McCarthy should probably go first.

*looks around for the entry where the Mike McCarthy offense-coordinated Saints beat the St. Louis Rams*

Um, yeah, I can’t find it right offhand.

Will I be long-appreciative to the coaching staff that finally brought a playoff win to the Coonasstrodome? Yep. Am I bored as hell by the string of teams that all look like it’s 2000 again? Yep.

2

Write about things that really bother you

A friend of mine once talked about a job interview he had. This wasn’t for any sort of really-professional job, and it was in Texas, so it makes a bit more sense. The anticipated parts of the interview had gone well, and it looked like he had a good shot at getting the job.

After the HR troll questions were finished, the interviewer thanked him, and said something along the lines of, “I’ve got just one more question, and it’s kind of a personal thing — What really pisses you off?”

This isn’t quite that, but, I’m sure there’s a nails-on-a-chalkboard thing for almost everybody out there.

When it comes to me at work, it’s the oft-proffered, “we have a requirement.”

Oh, yeah? Which one? Where’s it documented? Who approved it? How does it fit into solution design? What are the test cases that demonstrate its satisfaction?

I ended up working more yesterday to finish the ton of yearly training stuff for work. Of course, it’s due right after I’m supposed to get back, while I’m still technically “off.”

And I couldn’t get through it. But I did finally get into the benefits site so I can adjust the bits that are coming out of my paychecks.

Maybe I should do this by levels of annoyance.

Human Resources. It’s transformed over the past twenty years or so from a position of trying to get employees what they need to do their jobs to one of creating labyrinth processes to keep employees so busy that they can’t be individuals. Yeah, we’ll help them get what they’re after. After they do these 98 courses that make them into exactly the sort of people we want them to be. During my workout, I got Creep by Radiohead. I’m thinking Fitter Happier might be something that’s on repeat for a lot of these folks.
“Negative Impact.” This is an outgrowth from Dr. Santoro in college. In addition to whatever GE class he was teaching, he was really intent on making sure that his students could express themselves well. An “impact” is a collision. Learning to use “affect” and “effect” really improve your writing. With that in mind, “negative impact” started bothering me when I was writing mainly broadcast copy. Several years later, I was working with someone trying to “sexy up” language in something I wrote. He rewrote something, and used “negative impact.” My response was something along the lines of, “A negative impact is a vacuum; it sucks.” That was back when using such language in polite company, much less on TV or radio.
Catastrophizing. Sadly, this is in overdrive until Tuesday. I listened to this yesterday, and found myself disagreeing with pretty much all of the guests. I did sent my absentee ballot yesterday.

I probably could continue pounding things out, but I’m tiring of trying to think of things.

I also need to go fill out more paperwork.

1

I’m not supposed to be doing this again, but I figure it’s something that gets me into the mood for the holidays, and next year.

Things this year aren’t as jam-packed as last year, but I still do have a few things on my plate. I do have some travel the first week of the month, but why am I doing this? Well, some of the things in the Ep. with Susan Cain on EconTalk kind of spoke to some of what I do.

Even after a disgustingly-long day, it’s something I can do to kind of even out my head, as well as stay on track.

A lot of what I’m going to do this year is really recycled stuff from a particularly-low point in life, 2017, but I do have a few other things I want to write agouti.

We’ll see how it all goes, I suppose. There are a few blank spaces left, so I’m soliciting suggestions.

But, off we go. Let’s see what happens.

All that said, I really ought to consider not doing this next year. Fifteen straight years is a bit of an accomplishment, I suppose. Maybe I’ve stuck to this to keep some connection to what life was before everything went to hell.

Obviously, that started immediately after I finished the first month; my dad died. But this was something I did right after getting married, so that, too, fits into major life milestones.

Do I miss having things better set out for me before I started? Yeah, a bit. But I’m not trying to go back to then.

A particularly uninspiring politician is running on a general saying of “not going back.”

Okay, but when what you’ve got is completely screwed up, you do need to review how you got to that place.

I understand, Lessons Learned aren’t good Agile practice, along with things like proper engineering, but…..

Do I apply lessons from previous years to the next effort? Yes.

Let’s see how it goes.