Month: November 2022

Free Write

I’m sitting in an airprot waiting for my plane to arrive and board.

Really not sure how much I accomplished on the trip, but I think there’s a few things that are better than they were, at least.

I think we’ve got at least a partial path forward.

And holy shit that Intertubes there are fast.’

We get better downstream speeds, but the upstream speeds there are much, much, much better, and synchronous with the downstream.

I’m a little less concerned about the supar-fancy sekurity system, but there’s still things that make me uncomfortable.

I didn’t hook up the devices from Space Cowboy Jeff (Bezos). I’m wondering if there’d be a way to contentedly coexist with some of this shit.

But it still makes me nervous.

With all of my physical maladies, you’d think that I’d be less concerned than most about modesty.

So much for that.

Home is where you poop with the bathroom door open.

Yeah, I’m still not really okay with that, even when nobody else is home.

As far as the travel goes, it’s really not worth it to try to save that much money.

If the price difference between cattle car econ, and first class is a couple hundred bucks, really what am a saving going with the cheaper ticket?

I get a shitty seat in the back, have to pay for my bags, and so on.

Not having to deal with that, alone, is enough to spring for the higher-fare ticket. The bigger seats and Bree drinks is really just a bonus.

I can remember a guy whose financial advice show used to run on the station where I worked. He bought his engagement ring at Costco.

I didn’t do that.

Okay. Plane is here. Time to fly.

Election Reax

I don’t know if I mispasted the prompt on this, but it had the prompt for yesterday in my draft.

Whatever.

The results aren’t in, still.

Not upset to see that some of the more extreme candidates on “both sides” lost.

Also not upset to see that the NeoHippy Libertarian endorsement of the reactionary Republican in (Florida-Humidity)Arizona didn’t work.

In a way, I wonder if this might be a good thing. *shrug*. (I expect a monumental crash, financially, shortly. Myriad reasons, and it’s not because of what any of the pundits are saying. Clinton inflated real estate and equities. Dubya largely reinflated those bubbles. Obama and Trump did more harder. Meanwhile, the zOMG PETRODOLLAR!!1! crowd are still without explanation as to why things like precious metals haven’t taken off….or why inflation is just as bad, if not worse, in places without the hated FED; RON PAUL. Nobody has any real idea.)

So, resignation, and determination to do what’s best for me, and the people I love.

To that, I have things I need to do today, but seem to be in no particular hurry to go do them. I’m tired. Special thanks to the guy who’s been doing the lawn her for moving the sleeping materials into the bedroom, but I still didn’t;’t sleep well.

nfusion isn’t until the 22nd. MRI(s) on the 16th. Now like four of them with the symptoms I’ve been having.

Whatever. /GenX.

Thinking tomorrow’s free write might be from airport waiting areas. Something to do. Or maybe while I’m in the air. We’ll see.

Plans for Election Day

I can’t tell you how incredibly busy I am, but, at the same time, not that busy.

I think I’ve done most of what I came here to do.

In the morning, I’ve got a meeting with the security guy. Later in the morning, I meet with the guy who’s been mowing the grass.

Need to get these package off to my brother.

Maybe meet someone who can help me put these electronic devices back in place now that I’ve gotten replacement batteries.

I wish there was a way I could describe the complete ambivalence I feel at this point.

That somewhat applies to the pols, but not completely. I’m not all about calling a truce. No, there needs to be retribution towards the people who overstepped bounds. The pols get some of their punishment after today. On the personal side, I don’t know.

I voted absentee knowing I’d be out of town on Election Day. There was only one race on the ballot. The district where I live has been “blue” since the Northern Aggressors went back across the Potomac in 1876.

Whatever. I don’t expect the candidate I voted for to win, but I really think there needs to be some younger blood injected into the system.

Kennedy has repeatedly called for a GenX takeover. I don’t know. There are so few of us that we’re easy to forget.

I apologize. I’m really not tracking with this this morning. Waiting on deliveries, distracted.

Maybe I can circle back tonight.

Write about when you were tarted unfairly. (Flashback to writing from 11/7/2013 where I was writing about what happened at the four-letter company)

Oh geez. Um, yeah, what happened to me in 2013 through about 2017 is pretty incredibly awful.

Coming on my trip, knowing that people where I am make extensive use of the dropout Ginger’s apps (read: Zuckerberg…Facebook/InstaGram/Meta). Scrolling suggestions, and I see the guy who was my boss at one of the bad stops; the one I left voluntarily.

Was I being reckless? Maybe. But my entire world had been thrown into chaos course a guy who’s, as far as I know, still in Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison.

While that stint was pretty awful, it was led into by my stint at the four-letter company. My initial inclination when I got the way lowball job offer was to say, “add ten percent, and we’ll talk.” On advice, I accepted the really lowball offer. So less than 80% of what I’d been earning, in a position that wasn’t really suited to me, and in the office five days a week off of significant telework after I’d really chosen to stop driving.

I fully admit I was an asshole while I was there.

I admit I was drinking more than I should have. (But that was the only thing that was kinda sorta keeping my weight up….)

But after they moved me into, essentially what my previous position had been with no salary adjustment, I was pissed.

When the guy responsible reached his plea agreement, they set me adrift.

And, after mildly attempting to do the sort of thing that’s now widespread in the IT world about five years before it became widespread, I took yet another job that underpaid me. I took it to keep us housed, fed, and clothed.

The work wasn’t really my forte, but I had enough knowledge to be okay at it. When the more senior person they’d been trying to bring over to the new company fell through, I got promoted again…without a pay increase. Adding to the stress was that the company’s health insurance didn’t work where we lived, so I had to buy insurance through the Federal Exchange. That’s all after-tax income…so imagine your bills going up several hundred dollars a month. None of the specialists I’d been seeing accepted the Exchange plans, so I had to find new ones. Just as my disease modifying therapy had quit working. Good stuff. (I will say that the only bright spot out of that was it led me to come up to DC to volunteer myself as a test subject at Georgetown. (I can’t thank Dr. Amjad, and all the other folks at Georgetown who’ve really rebooted my life.). Maybe all the doctors in my past who were convinced I had mononucleosis mistreated me?

No. That’s a cop-out. I forgive them. I was diagnosed right at the median age of diagnosis for MS. I’m also a dude, which makes me half as likely to have the. condition.

For that, I had to live back at home with my mother during the week, and only see my wife on weekends.

Thank you to my mother for putting up with me during this time, and giving me rides to and from work because the short bus wouldn’t run to her house a bit more than a mile out of the service area.

Happy birthday, too, to my mom. That was part of my calculation for traveling when I did, so I could come and see her today. I’m writing this laying on the floor in her vacant brand new house that I’m trying to figure out what to do with (she’s in memory care, so she’s not living here….she’s got a permanent address there, and the little dog is with my wife and I….I was looking at doing short-term rentals with it, but I’m leaning towards just having all her stuff put in storage, and leasing it outright…)

The joint birthday party her family had over the weekend for her, and her dad, was great. I’m happy I got to go.

So sleepy time. Saints game tomorrow night, work on the house, and election night reax Tuesday.

And maybe I’ll quit hitting these a day early.

Write about your writing tools. (Flashback to 2004 post about the switch away from MovableType)

These days I’m pretty much back exclusively to WordPress.t

There might have been something I used prior to OpenDiary, but that’s lost to the Internet Archive, and I have no idea what my username would have been more than twenty years later.

Getting information in to the CMS is now pretty much an in-browser operation. I remember fun things with things like LISP things for EMACS.

For my writing lately, it’s all within an OS-native browser. I typically type into WordPress, then copycasta other places. But I can save the archives in XML files I can easily move around.

I probably ought to write scripts to scp things periodically, but manual copying and pasting makes it um…yeah, I’ll get to it.

But that WP uses documented, open data specifications makes me feel a bit better about throwing my data into it. When OD went on hiatus, I just had ASCII files of all I’d ever written there from the export tool. Some of the things I’d done with things like black text on a black background get lost. In the XML file, maybe, things won’t disappear so easily.

I guess I could print things to PDF, too, but holy god that’d be unwieldy.

I still do need to consolidate some, but it’s not been something high on the priority list. I say that as I write in a house where I basically can’t find anything, and am trying to figure out how much energy I want to spend on trying to get this set up.

Ugh.

More tomorrow.

Of which libations do you partake? When were you last drunk? What’s in your glass now?  What will be later?

Libations? I’d say the most common is Gin & Tonic followed by beer. Occasionally I’ll do the Swabbie Special of Red Bull and Jagermeister. If I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll make a good gin martini. I need to finish of my Cachaca, but I’m kinda pissed off at Brazil after they put Lula back in. (Maybe that’s more reason to empty that bottle…)

What’s in my glass right now? Barq’s Root Beer. I’m traveling, so I’m not drinking. I had a couple of G&Ts on the train ride down, but nothing since.

Slightly tempted to order some Coor’s Light for football. It’s probably been twenty years since I had any. Back then, it tasted vaguely of apple juice. I’m not expecting much, but….

I failed in my mission in finding a 40oz of O.E.800 to ship to my brother today as a birthday present.

He, and our wives, all didn’t get the reference I was going for on my 40th birthday….

Oh well.

Gifts sent. It’s the morning, so time to get about the day.

Debating whether I should roust up something for election night, but I’m leaning against it.

Write about someone you’ve recently lost (Flashback to 2016; this would have been just after my uncle had died)

I don’t know that I’ve got a good answer for this one. I’m listening to The Fifth Column where they’re talking about the crazy person who broke into the Pelosi house a few days ago.

He was crazy. The situation I’m dealing with isn’t that, but it is someone who’s very close who’s clearly “not there” anymore.

Gone, but not really yet.

The flashback to my uncle was my dad’s youngest brother. My dad’s younger brother had died a couple of years earlier. His wife, my aunt, is also my mother’s cousin. My dad was always worried that my mother, with her short-lived genealogy obsession would find that they were related. Thankfully, no, but my first cousins are also my fifth cousins.

So, yeah, I’m not going to elaborate too much on what I’m doing, but these things are top of mind.

Happy birthday to my grandpa. I’ll see him on tomorrow. 93 years old. I’m not even halfway there, but am not at all convinced that I’ll get anywhere close.

Describe your year to date. (Form 2014, but it’ll be something I can really sink my teeth into while I’m on the train.)

January

Well, Shmoocon was delayed, so it was mostly watching Football, and working.

February

Looking back, it looks like the war in Ukraine and football were the things most on my mind. As far as the war goes, I kind of feel like one of the followers of Miller, and the Great Disappointment. (And this is really leading me down a path….). The Rams won the Super Bowl. I was really not that upset this way or the other. I don’t really like the Rams’ schema; — 3-4 Defense, West Coast offense, etc., but I’m still happy they[re back in LA/

March

Obviously, biggest thing was Shmoocon.

I had a good time, but I’m really not up to do that sort of thing anymore. I’m happy that the unanimity of thought that was there, say, 2009-ish.

Do the math, and show your fucking work. When someone reviews it years later, if it shows to be complete nonsense, that should be a point for self-reflection. Apologies; I’m distracted by the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel speech before the pandemic.

I guess I’m really bothered by certitude.

April

More stupidity from the new LP overlords. Preparation for medical tests. Lots of work. Following the start to the saga of my mother moving back to her hometown. (As I write this in November, I’m actually on the train headed down there again…)

May

Medical exam…clean. Good for three more years.

June

Some work certitude until February, so breathe a little easier. The only thing I wrote about what following the shitshow with the Libertarian National Convention. My initial reactions have proved correct, and I’ve withdrawn further.

July

I gave in to the compulsion to write ian the moth before my birthday. I felt like I had a few things to say. I was also minaking my first trip to deal with the mess surrounding my mother’s situation. And pick up the dog.

August

Lots of work, new dog adjustments, birthday. The steaks my wife cooked for my birthday were amazing. A coupon of notables — very long survey that I think was from about 1999. My original answers are in, with my updated ones.

September

Reading, now that I’m in the hotel room (please see back later when I give more details about the shit show that’s happened so far….)

October

Thirteenth wedding anniversary. Four-day weekend as a bachelor with my wife and dog down visiting her parents. It’s incredible the feelings I have my wife; I didn’t think that sort of thing was at all possible.

November

I’m out of town. I tried to write this before en route to my destination. I’m in a hotel room, which was not the plan, but it’s adjusting on the fly.

Write about preparing

This one is because I’m preparing to head on my trip.

I need to stuff some clothes in the suitcase, but I think I’m pretty close. Weather is sitll supposed to pop into the eighties while I’m there. Comfortable nights.

(An aside, this predictive text stuff that’s in Edge now; I think Safari does it, too, is annoying as hell. Yes, I often type not looking at the screen, but seeing the word it thinks I should type is bothersome. You think you know what I’m going to say, but you have no idea; okay, Computer? Might be the same in Chrome, but, aside from the email where I’ve paid them not to spy on me, I still tend to eschew products from that totes-used-to-care-about-not-doing-evil company)

But more on preparations other than just travel, I’m trying to work through what I might need to figure out:

• Absentee ballot completion, mailing
• What I need to do immediately on the house
• What I need to retrieve from it
• How I should approach long-term relocation/storage
• Paying my protection racket for the sheet of paper that lets me keep working
• What to do when I stop working
• Medical stuff for the rest of the year (Neurologists want three MRIs later this month instead of the routine one; I should ask for some something that’ll keep me from twitching; make me sleep)
• Life insurance (I think I can keep paying on the supplemental policy I have with work after I leave…the primary one goes away, but the extra stuff I can keep paying on)

Still, I’m not obsessing about preparing. Everything’s going to work okay. I’m not going to die. I’m not going to go broke.

I don’t know, but maybe I owe a lot of my approach to many things to Bob Zubrin/The Case For Mars.

(Aside: The search results on the book yielded this video. I’ve never done any psychedelics, but I wonder if that’s what it’d be like…)

In that situation, people might well die. With what I’m doing, almost certainly not.

Just Do it. Git ‘er done. Whatever your chosen catchphrase….

Similar idea about writing every day in a month.