Travel wrap-up

I flew down on Sunday and came back yesterday. *checks past entries to see if I’d written about the unmitigated disaster that was the trip in May*

Nope. Didn’t write about that. The summation was me stuck in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, so hot I couldn’t breathe, vision got even worse than usual, have to put on shoes to hike to the end of the car to use the bathroom, etc..

By the end of that trip, I was very much of a mind to never take Amtrak down again. It was not good. So chose to fly. Again, if I book somewhere about 100 days before the travel, the prices are similar.

My brother went down, too, but our days didn’t really line up neatly. Though he flew to new Orleans, he stayed near the Gulfport airport. I looked at staying there, but it was going to cost more than I wanted to pay. Same for the casinos. Flights down were largely unremarkable, though whatever aircraft we had from CLT to GPT was very cramped. I really couldn’t sleep on either flight.

So back to the place I’ve stayed many times. Geez. I didn’t write about the shitshow that was last trip, either.

The hotel had been hit by lightning during one of the numerous South Mississippi thunderstorms the night before I arrived. They had to move be down to a lower-quality room on the ground floor because the elevators didn’t work after the lightning. So, the room where I’d stayed a couple of times before, 126, and the entire place smelled of mildew due to the water infiltration during the storm.

Since I couldn’t find anything else, check that same hotel. Lower-level, accessible room….and i end up in Room 126 again.

Everything had been rehabbed during the intervening four months. It was actually pretty comfortable.

Flights down were also okay despite the government shutdown. Yes, it’s a pain. Yes, I’m supposed to point the finger at “one side” or the other. But it’s a function of the really last quarter-century of spending.

Why are air traffic controllers Federal employees?

Why are TSA agents Federal employees?

So, get down to Biloxi without too many issues. My mother was in the hospital again. Did end up getting to my grandfather’s birthday party without any issues; I’d thought we were going to be late, but I didn’t calculate the time change correctly.

Travelling west on the first day of the “fall back” screws everything up even more. Try to stay awake to adjust to both Central Time, and Standard Time.

I did have trouble staying awake to get back on schedule.

Lots of time spent with my mother. About a 90-minute FaceTime session with her best friend from college, my godmother.

Kind of just swimming on all that happened, sorry.

Did have lunch with her on her birthday. She enjoyed her potato salad and Barq’s out of the glass bottle, but didn’t touch her Po’Boy. I brought her a piece of chocolate mousse cake that she ate after I’d left, and really enjoyed.

But I was worried the whole time about travel back. Mr. Rachel Campos, and his staff, had decided to start cancelling flights because of the government shutdown. (Oh, come on. I know I’m not the only 90s high school dude from the 90s who had impure thoughts about her on The Real World: San Francisco.). Three percent of flights cancelled at busy airports on Friday. Four percent on Saturday. Going up to ten percent by the end of this week. My travel path was to/from National Airport (DCA) connecting through Charlotte (CLT). I phoned the airline as this news started breaking on Wednesday evening. I phoned the airline Wednesday night, and they hadn’t made plans yet. I know that this is coming; you all can bump me up, fly me to Dulles or BWI, stick me in an open coach seat, whatever. Nope. We’ll see, and we’ll let you know.

On Thursday, there was an alert that there might be disruptions. Do I call again and repeat my willingness to move around? Look at whether I can take the train from Hattiesburg. Um. Just a bedroom available for more than $700. And I’ve gotta figure out a way to get to Hattiesburg. My relative who’d said he was going to give me a ride to the airport in Gulfport had had to bow out, so that was going to be an Uber or Lyft trip. I didn’t bother to check what it would have cost to drive me to Hattiesburg, Slidell, or New Orleans so I could get on the train up.

There’s only a 4% chance my flights are going to be cancelled; I’ll risk it.

Yesterday (Saturday), I kind of bided my time in the hotel for a while until I went to my mom’s facility. We FaceTimed with my brother after lunch, then over to GPT. No real problems getting on the plane. But, because of the ATC staffing issues, they modified the route. Instead of flying basically northeast, they routed the flight north, then made a right turn over Tennessee/Kentucky. That change added about 30 minutes to the flight time. We did get to CLT in time to make the connection, but they were boarding as I got to the gate in a different terminal.

And I don’t remember much at all about the flight from CLT to DCA. I finished my vodka tonic, and was out until the announcement of final approach to DC. Got home, and started watching something my wife wanted me to see on Netflix.

I think I need to jot more notes if I’m going to have more entries like this in the future. The OPSEC for this one wasn’t quite as stringent as it’d been when I was still working; you could have figured out I was in Biloxi, but I really didn’t telegraph everything.

My mom is kinda okay. Have things a bit better figured out for family staying there. Distracted by just how FUBAR government is.

Following, too, this about January 6th. There was a lot tossed around about Treason during OrangeManBad’s first term. If it’s true that she was the one who planted at least one of the bombs on that day, and fired less-than-lethal munitions at the faces of protestors outside The Capitol, I think making a case for war against the country is a lot more straightforward than it was in the narrative created by the J6 committee.

Shoot. I also didn’t write much about the VA election results. Or NYC mayor. Or what CA did to get more Democrats in the House. Or the DSA Islamist in NYC, or…

Still wholeheartedly recommend Free Media. Perspective, though I’ve been informed I’m a conservative, which is news to me. Also MCM’s Stuff, with various clips that fall into IG.

I’m going to go watch football. I am home. Biloxi, and the people I care about there, are okay.

Maybe better work as I settle some the next couple of days.

Two major stories have come to light in the time apart from writing.

Most notably, and what will probably be consuming quite a bit of my time for the rest of the year, is the again death of Open Diary.

Most of my entries were private. I’d kinda turned off a bunch of stuff just when I left radio, and met my wife.

I have outputs from the old site in ASCII. the new stuff is largely a rehash of what I’d posted here in my writing streaks.

I suppose it’s sad to see it go, still, even if it’d really been taken over by the advertising bots. Even here, I spend a lot of energy making sure that junk doesn’t flood the site. Let’s blacklist that phrase. Automatically mark as spam anything that uses that one Cyrillic character. Time limits, approvals, firewall rules, and so on. I get it. It requires a ton of effort, and probably isn’t generating a ton of revenue.

I will probably send a thank you note to Bruce after I’ve gotten everything I want. I do appreciate what he provided.

So, what else….

Washington is really good about burying news to times that people aren’t playing attention.

Reporting came out yesterday about January 6th. I know, I know, biggest attack on democracy ever, Trump from his bruised, swollen, orange left hand. (h/t, too, to Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand)

But it looks like one of the pipe bombs found the morning of 1/6 had been placed by a.UC Capitol Police officer who would be one of the ones firing less-lethal rounds at the assemblage, really starting the riot.

Um. Okay. Yeah, if true, that is big news. But it’ll be ignored because it dropped late on a Friday.

Rep. Thomas Massie posted some very interesting to X last night about it. Pretty damming.

Does it even make the Sunday Morning shows? Even if it does, Director Smith is going to be unavailable to comment to answer questions on the network shows. This is important to Tyler and Olivia, and he won’t be missing it for the world. Those ruffians from Loudoun County do have a lesson to be taught, after all. Potomac is going to make sure it happens this year; lacrosse is not a joke.

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So, back to what I actually had prepared for writing today.

I wanted to write a bit about the twenty years that have passed since my last day in radio.

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11/7/05

The closer I get to zero-day, the more behind I feel, and the more sad I get.

So, it’s not at all easy….not in the least.

I’m really going to have to make a concerted effort not to hate this new job.

I think I’m also going to need something to occupy my free time, since I’m going to have a hell of a lot of it.

One of the salesbabes seemed really bummed that I’m leaving. I’m not quite sure what to make of that.

Tfffftbt….I have more to say, but can’t really figure out how to spill it out in an orderly fashion right now.

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Unemployed

I officially am, for the first time since 1998, until 0800 tomorrow morning.

Really wanted to cry as I was leaving….really, and I’d planned to let it come when I got on the drive home, but I had a hassle getting out of the parking garage (I had to turn in my transponder, so no automatic drive-out), and by the time I really got on the road…..

Gone.

Still nothing.

*sigh*

Reading documentation about my new job now. 967 page PDF. Egad.

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Transitioning away was abrupt. Once I got into the media biz, I kind of figured it’d be what I did for the rest of my life.

Obviously, that proved to be untrue. When all of this mess with the private disability gets straightened out, I can rest satisfied that I made the correct decision to leave. I absolutely appreciate what Bob and Lisa provided, and where those opportunities led.

I learned to live as if I don’t have a budget, to figure out how to do things with what I can find.

The people who work at the big companies, and control the certification paths, really don’t like that sort of operating.

Oh well. I’m finished. Please leave me alone.

I know, I know, you can’t do that. I should be beaten about the head for not treating the correct things with adoration.

Okay. Fucking shoot me. But do it in public where everybody can watch.

You still won’t get anything meaningful accomplished.

But you did get your participation trophies in the form of letters after your name you have to pay for forever to use.

I’m anticipating pushback on the “do it in public” part after some of the things I’ve written previously. Adjuration for doing things that would normally not deserve any notice seems odd to me. I recall Harry Browne writing about personal hygiene, teeth brushing, in How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World.

So you brushed your teeth. Congrats, I guess. But I don’t care either way if we’re not going to be close enough that I’d smell your breath.

And I’m all over the place. I am sitting waiting for last bit of responsibility on this trip, then wondering if the trip home is going to happen.

I anticipate that tomorrow’s entry is going to be more like what I’d typically write on a Saturday.

Will kick this off with the pending permanent closure of OpenDiary. That’s where I started writing in 1999. Its first death was something like 2013. I tried several other sites, but wasn’t completely satisfied. I’d started using WordPress, and, for a brief time Drupal, on my own shitty blog, but it wasn’t quite the same.

To go along with the zombie motif of the mid-and-early 2010s, OD came back. My lifetime membership was grandfathered in. I considered purchasing new subscriptions on the resurrected site, but neither was interested. One of them actually unfriended me on FB. No idea why, but luck wished.

The past year or so, OD has been beset by ads about how to purchase social networking accounts, earn money off crypto, etc.. Very few people actually writing.

I reconnected with my ProseBox account, but it really feels like an afterthought (which is why I stopped posting my outputs for years).

Yesterday, I noticed an announcement that the reanimated OD would shut down permanently by the end of the year.

I have what I’d written in ASCII files before the shutdown.

Export to PDF of everything is pretty straightforward, but there’s a lot of stuff that really isn’t for public consumption anymore. I don’t know if I want to spend the time to import it all into WordPress.

There’s a reason the tagline on ^H is, “everything gets deleted eventually.” Because it does. Or does it? The pre-9/11 despair about my life at the time can, and maybe should, be difficult to discover.

I will miss some of the interaction. I value some of the long-lasting associations I formed, but I’m not nearly as broken-up about it as I was the first time it died.

I appreciate, now, some of the design decisions at the time I really questioned. I’m thinking, especially, of using at database as the backend datastore. Shared data blocks/objects make a ton of sense. Some of what’s been happening the past decade or so shows that how pretty much everyone was operating in 2003-ish was really stupid in retrospect.

Now, that doesn’t mean Microsoft Exchange’s embrace of X.400 instead of SMTP end dusty, buy…emailing out the same 2K jpg is really masterful. Moreso when that 2K file is going to take up 4K for every recipient.

I seem to remember a promotional email that went out to thousands of folks on one of the radio stations’ lists. It took hours on the Frac T1 I was working with, on something like a P5-166.

But what else is going on?

Seeing my mom for her birthday. I’m tempted to see if I can dig through and find information about sojourns down here in the past. Trying to recall exactly when it was. 2003? I may look more later.

But post-Katrina reconstruction communed with technological progress has moved the idea of living down here from unthinkable to possible. I can live and operate pretty well, now.

My mother seems about the same as she has been. I think, for the most part, she’s being well cared-for.

Still difficult being so far away, but so it goes.

With me not working anymore, planning is a little easier, but the travel can still be grueling.

Free Write

I started writing this chowing down on breakfast earlier, but I scrapped it all.

There wasn’t anything memorable, much less interesting, so away it goes.

Still trying to digest some of the aftermath of the election from Tuesday, but I am calming down a bit. One of the things I’d mentioned before is my ability to hold a grudge. It could be familial, but it is there.

I can’t find where I’d written about it previously, but my cousins were very complimentary of a Po’Boy shop near my cousins’ residence. My mom had actually had something nice, and was appreciative of it.

I recognized the surname. The guy who’d founded it had almost gotten in a fistfight with my dad in Church, calling my dad a draft-dodger because he’d gone to college instead of enlisting straight for Vietnam. My dad had wanted to be an Army Lieutenant like his grandfather had been during World War 1. He was actually in Infantry Officer Basic training when the Paris Peace Accord was signed. After he was commissioned, he ended up going around Southeast Asia for a few months while the Army figured out what to do with the units that’d been relocated out of Vietnam.

My mother, who’d never been east of Pensacola, or west of Houston, got in airplane to fly to Japan to be with him after they’d been moved to Okinawa.

But I’d remembered the name, and my dad’s reaction about the bait shop he’d opened, and how we shouldn’t shop there. This negative reaction was probably around 1990?

Turns out the founder had died around the same time as my dad. I don’t know that they’d ever really spoken again.

I don’t recall us buying many products after this.

I recall my then-girlfriend being confused about why I wouldn’t go buy Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. If you search the Reason site, you can find things that date back to the 1990s recounting their, um, excesses.

Maybe holding grudges is an inherited trait?

I suppose, too, however, that it speaks to why I get so annoyed with people like Mamdami; I am very suspicious of anyone who describes himself as a Socialist.

You do know that it never works, right? You do know how many people it murdered within the lifetime of people still alive today, right?

My brain might be scarred, but there are things I don’t forget, and others I will never excuse.

Two more nights. I’m ready to go home.

But I’m clumsily following the news about flight cancellationns My destination is one of the ones listed in the limitations category. My scheduled flight is one of the last for the day, so I’m triply-concerned. I phoned the airline yesterday kind of volunteering for adjustment if needed. My flights hadn’t been affected, but they told me to stand by.

Then this morning, they emailed saying please don’t call us to ask.

.

Why are they Federal employees, again?

I didn’t have a prompt planned, Burt I think a lot of that was in anticipation of writing about the election results last night.

OrangManBad lost. The Democrats passed a bunch of things that may make it possible to Gerrymander further…impeach, then publicly execute him.

Whatever.

The fiscal situation for the entire country is so awful that nobody can fix it. The Federal Government has been spending way too much money since about 2004, and there’s no way to change that. The situation is similar in many other places, but they’ve relied on US stability, largesse, to fill their basic government needs while they don’t have any ids, spend on Green Alhchemic pip dreams, and let the undeveloped world flood in.

Good luck, I guess. Despite your earnest convictions, OrangeManBad didn’t create the nightmare, and burying him isn’t going to fix it. What I wrote last year is more true than ever. It’ll be multiplied if Trump’s emergency tariffs are overturned.

I am disappointed that Sears didn’t win. But she wouldn’t have done anything at all to address the serious fiscal problems that exist.

Do I expect Rep. CIA to fix Virginia’s broken revenue system?

Nope.

I do expect there will be more token things passed. (see: ERA ratification, push of capitol punishment to the Federal Government, decriminalized weed, etc.)

For me, personally, it actually means almost nothing. My contrarian votes will have exactly the same effect as they have for the past thirty years. Again, I live in a locality that’s been “Blue” since the Yankee aggressors vacated in 1877.

That said, I am going to dispense with the politeness I’d previously used. If you, or the party support, do something disgusting, I’m going to call it exactly what it is….if asked. Others, I will just deprive money as I can to make sure your plans fail.

What’s that mean, practically?

I’m going to avoid spending money, as much as possible, with businesses in the places that went “full retard” yesterday. Buying local isn’t going to be much of a concern for me going forward.

See how this much affects my spending towards the end of the month, but I’m sure I can find things I might want from small businesses outside the Commonwealth.

Further, I will do as much shopping as I possibly can elsewhere.

For NYC, I’d stated before the election that I was planning to basically stop spending money with NYC-based entities while he’s there. Sorry NYC retailers. There’ll be no money coming your way. If I change trains, I’m not leaving the station.

Deal. This is what you wanted. (And, clearly, you didn’t want my money….so you won’t get it.)

Going to be fun towards the end of the month; is there going to be a small business near me that makes it worth my while to give them any money?

We shall see.

This is going to kind of be a free=write again, as I didn’t actually have anything set out to write about.

Today is my grandfather’s 97th birthday. I did speak to him, and he seems to be doing well. Repetition of stories he’s told for years, but, overall still sharp. I could profess envy for his longevity, but I’m not sure I”m there. It’s not that I have a wish to die, but I’m hoping I can live long enough to really enjoy some things, finally. I’m nor sure that’s going to happen.

Election Day today, too. I expect some really wrong-headed people to win. If Jay Jones loses in Virginia, I’ll be slightly pacified, but I expect Representative CIA to win the governor race. It’ll be a nice piece of solace for the authoritarians who are really upset about Dick Cheney’s death.

I checked some of the usual zOMG SITHLORD sites easly this morning. Finally saw a mention at about 0600 Central.

(It should be completely obvious how little attention I’ve paid to Star Wars. I did get through Attack of the Clones, but I don’t think I could fully explain what happened. Watching all of the movies….another one of the tasks I haven’t been able to stick to!)

I’m not sure if my inability to stick to big tasks is MS-related, or if I’m really just bored with it all. The same is true for things I consume aurally; a podcast that’s going to last more than about an hour is almost a guaranteed multi-part listen.

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And I get disrupted again by the swirl of things happening today where I am. I will say that the Community Coffee Pecan stuff out of the dispenser hit the spot. Same goes for the blueberry bagel.

We’ll see how much more happens for the rest of today and the trip, but I do want to go home.

Write about something that annoys you-that really shouldn’t.

I really didn’t have something held in the drafts table for this. I miss things lately. Blame eyesight, blame MS brain fog, blame MAGA, The Russians, whatever.

I did have things, I though, wrapped up, but obviously not.

I beat myself up for mistakes. My wife experienced that just yesterday. But, with the end-of-the-world so often taken on any number of things lately, I guess it’s unsurprising.

Donald Trump is not an existential threat. Nor is climate change. Or any number of issues. Or gun violence. Or rich people not paying “their fair share.”

Just try to be the best person you can be, and let things go from there.

The Free Press is doing a thing on reading “the great books,” in an attempt to get people to chill out a bit. Very much respect this, but it’s difficult for me to participate with my affected reading ability.

But it is a good idea.

My dilemma is whether to engage people in presenting the biggest possible of catastrophe, or to just ignore them.

Nope, I’m really bad about it. I do want to hit them with the most extreme things they’ve said, and hold those things against them in perpetuity. Yes, that’s probably unhealthy, but I don’t know that there’s a good way to erase what gets seared into someone’s memory.

So, what else?

This truly is the nicest part of the year where I am at the moment. The approach into the airport yesterday afternoon was just about perfect. See the outlines of the barrier islands peeking through the slick-calm Gulf. Barely a breeze.

But back to what annoys me that probably shouldn’t?

Really failing on digging deep on this.

Maybe I’ll come up with something, but I am distracted.

Write about your disappointments for this year

Goodness. I could fill a book; obviously, the issues I’ve had trying to get things set up with the disability is the biggest disappointment. Obviously, the difficulties have put a damper on some of the more relaxing things I’d had in mind for the last part of the year.

But the travel has been a problem my last couple of trips down here. The trip this summer was okay coming down, and absolute hell getting home. I’m not going to go into too much more detail about the late-fall/early-winter trip; that’s for a few days from now.

So. What else?

Medical stuff has been a problem still, sometimes. I’ve been dealing with an ear infection last few days; I can’t hear very well out of my right ear. But, the disappointment is that I haven’t been able to do what I’d planned to do when it comes to eating better, and getting in better shape.

I need to have confidence that things will get straightened out.

I’m disappointed by what’s going on with politics.

Jennifer Welch should not be a national name.

I was going to say that I’m disappointed that Charlie Kirk was killed. While that’s true, I’m a lot more disappointed that there’s people who are downright giddy about it.

I’m disappointed that the dog was sick.

I’m disappointed with how poorly the Saints have played.

But, you know what, I could bitch for ages, and it wouldn’t change anything. I could blame someone else, but sometimes it’s just how things shake out.

I haven’t done anything that’s embarrassing to me, that runs afoul of my standards.

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I think I’m gonna get a nap, then go grab some dessert.

I’m writing again this year. This is one of the few compulsions that you can associate with my OCD. If you travel through the archives on my site, you will see several writing streaks.

I started doing streaks for the month preceding my birthday when I was working at one of the successive really, um, low-quality jobs following an unceremonious layoff. It was something to do to settle my mind a bit.

Last year, and this year, I avoided the summer periods after cognitive behavioral therapy.

After shedding myself of the summer streaks, I’ve kept up with the winter periods.

The past couple of years have been, largely, trying to sequence things for heading into Christmas. Obviously, there’s a ton that goes on in November.

So, continue.

I think last year was the tenth year I’d done it. I was very much considering not writing this year, but here we are.

I’ve been attempting to go on long-term disability this summer and fall. To put it mildly, it’s been a struggle. Part of the reason I stayed in my last job as long as I did was the promise of being able to transition smoothly into disability. I kind of viewed it as a different way of doing things, and viewed it as kind of a retirement plan.

Of course, that’s providing it won’t work exactly as I’d sketched. I stayed at the last job for probably three extra years trying to help the company’s client despite really difficult physical ailments. I stuck around for years hoping to help get things modernized.

Now I’m working to get the benefit I’d been promised. I really am not excited by the prospect of Social Security Disability, and have been resisting it for the years since my diagnosis. The folks at the National MS Society have been trying to help. I absolutely appreciate them hooking me up with the lawyer, but my individual situation is different than most people’s.

That I muddled through for fifteen years since diagnosis should be remarkable, but, now, it’s a waiting game to see if I can breathe. I do have an attorney working on it, but who knows if the appeals will be successful, and how long that’ll take.

For this year, with all income being cut off, things are more than a little tight. My wife is earning good money, so not everything’s on me.

I do have some travel early this month; see how that goes. But it’ll be different than it has been the past few years.

My wife and I celebrated our fifteenth anniversary last month. Maybe that was part of the reason I’m continuing this year.

I do have all the days drafted out. There are fewer free write days this year; only three if memory serves.

I don’t know that I was looking forward to it as much as I was, say, two years ago. There’s a lot less planned, but I’m curious to see how things go.

I’m excited for cold weather, seeing the Lions on Thanksgiving, and some quiet time.

Here we go, November. Let’s see what happens.