Category: Uncategorized

Looking out over what portends to be a very sticky day weather-wise.

I get it. This isn’t Climate Change. I’ve spent many of my summers here, and it starts getting really hot around the middle of May, and stays that way until the middle of September. July to about the third week in August can be oppressive. Unless there’s a hurricane.

What’s the most important lesson I’ve learned about myself this year?

Didn’t I answer this one already? Yay recycling!

YouTube took to recycling Remy videos for me.

Because I’m a glutton for seeing stupid discussions, I allow Nextdoor for the DC suburbs.

Today’s lesson was someone trying to explain why Democratic Socialism wasn’t a problem. There’s been a truism floating around in the circles I frequent; Socialism Always Ends In Famine.

Kind of an odd situation, now.

Obviously things aren’t great, but kind of settling in to sanguinity. I’ve done what I can do, and there’s not a lot of reason to keep charging at things.

So many things are the end of the world. I just can’t bring myself to care. Whatever I might think about it is unimportant because I’m not one of the elect.

That was driven home listening to Marc A. with Malice.

AI is gonna kill everybody, or keep us all from having jobs. Or something.

Okay, then. Do it. Be public about what you’re doing. State it loudly and clearly so everybody understands exactly who you are, and what you want.

This afternoon saw a story about the Democrats wanting to stop the Skydance/Paramount/WB./etc. merger.

Why? State it clearly. What do you want to use government’s tool, destruction, to stop it?

I won’t be holding my breath for an answer.

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Think I’ve gotten the OCR straightened out on cards my wife gifted me for writing.

I’ve scanned enough for my next adventure.. It’s kinda sweet, but this is the sort of thing the scourge of AI will keep from happening; somebody earning A LIVING WAGE should be reading and typing all of these things.

Nope. I just need to use tools as I can regardless of the origin. There’ll be things I don’t like; things I go out of my way to avoid. But, for the most part, I just need to use them and continue trying to be a person I’m satisfied with.

Ergo the trying to pay the bar from the other night after I’m not seeing that my order went through on Apple Pay.

But, for the AI (and resulting OCR)…..

What do I want my voice to stand for?

Integrity. I don’t want to be incredibly embarrassed by anything I do or enjoy. There’s things that maybe I don’t eagerly admit to, but there’s nothing I know of that’s harming anyone else. And, if there was, that’d bother the hell out of me. (And I’d probably set whatever it was aside.)

From my archives….

For the record - 6/7/2006
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Just because you miss a girl's phone call because you're blasting Avril in your car on the way home....

DOES NOT MEAN YOU'RE GAY.

So I missed one of my new girlfriend’s calls because I was cruising around listening to Avril. Okay. And?

How am I using it right now, and where do I want it to go?

I don’t know. I’m broken. But if I can live until about the time the money cuts off and not screw anybody over, great. Whether that’s here inside the Beltway, I don’t know. But it can be anywhere, really, if I can get to Georgetown to meet the commitments I’ve made for their study.

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-But this next week could be fun. We’ll see.

The way I did the entry pre-selection has proven to be off. Again. More.

It’s like I’m following my doctors’ suggestions or something, and breaking free the writing compulsion.

Looking back at previous stuff, I wrote this in 2016:

I’m trying to keep an open mind about the electoral results. This, really, could be real change in Washington. Notsomuch due to the Trump surrogates’ bigotry, but because at least it’s a completely new crowd.

Regardless of what happens, it’s not going to be an administration full of recycled Ford and Clinton folks (which is what we saw with the last two administrations). If an opportunity presented itself to get me to DC to work in the Administration, I don’t know that I’d turn it down. (Though they probably would want nothing to do with me after I didn’t vote for them…..)

• Kind of correct on the recycled Ford and Bush 41 folks. Instead, Trump was largely recycled Reagan folks. Some were better than others, certainly, and I’m still very angry about what happened to KT McFarland.
• I’ve still continued to glance at Federal jobs throughout. On my very short do-do list, I would consider again. But I’m hoping hte disability appeal gets finished up, so I can just retire; I’m exhausted.
• there’s also a bunch of stuff about my lack of excitement about what I experienced with my trip to Georgetown. I have to admit that when I came up her, I sought to do something different, but reached back out to the neurologist who’d seen me when I came up.

But it does speak, I think, to my willingness to give second chances.

I can, though, shut things off completely. It might take a long time for me to get there, but I will do it.

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Time to go figure out what else is going to go on today.

Medical Update(s)

This is really fitting as I’m going to spend part of my Sunday getting shorts at the drug store. Picking back through things from 2016, and saw the prompt about my first trip to Georgetown to see if they might have an MS study that might be appropriate for me.

No, the doctor I saw was pretty-well convinced that what I was on, Tysabri, was probably the best choice for me.

I ended up being on Tysabri until a positive JCV antibody test made me go to Keysimpta.

You know, I think the Keysimpta has opened up many parts of life that’d been sealed-off while I was on Tysabri. Though the energy crash coming towards the end of the Tysabri dose had largely abated, I did notice that things would still get a little weirder when I was due a dose.

I will say that I don’t miss the weirdness surrounding infusion sessions. Some of the other more-common treatments are even longer infusions. It actually looked, however, that some of the insurance companies were getting to the point where they’d send a nurse out to give the infusions at home; I actually could probably have worked through my infusions.

My MRI results have basically been steady for a few years. My vision is a bit worse, as is my concentration. There are things from the list of cognitive changes related to the disease.

• Process incoming information

This is something that I’ve had trouble with for a while. It’s not gotten significantly worse, but I just miss things. Oh! How the heck did I miss that?

• Focus, maintain, and shift attention

This is a real problem if I’m in a situation where I need to move around a lot. Am I going to be able to make it to the bathroom quickly enough that I don’t have an accident?

• Act on information

Very much related to the first point. If I don’t notice something coming in, my reaction to it is delayed. I think if I hear something important, I can still react correctly, but the speed is retarded due to my other physical maladies.

• Find words

I don’t know? I’ve always spoken slowly, and really try to be courteous when having a conversation. I know that there’s thoughts that’ll come across my mind in conversation that I never say. This has both positives and negatives; is it disease-related? Maybe.

I do take notes. This has previously gotten me in trouble when I wrote down something that wasn’t supposed to be recorded. I’m sure the automatic transcription of meetings is really something that’s come back to bite people. I’ve heard that there’s managers who are explicitly directing that those features be turned off in tools like MS Teams and Slack.

What have you said you don’t want anyone to know, boss? (And that response shows part of why my responses are delayed. I probably think that immediately, but wouldn’t say it aloud.)

• Relate visual information to others

Real problem since I just miss things.

• Perform calculations

I don’t know how much of this is MS, or just age. Quickly figure out how to calculate a tip? Um. Let me pull up the calculator on my phone. But that, too, is a part of the out-of-control tipping you might see in many retail locations, now. No, I bought a bottle of Coke. It already costs a lot more than it did just a couple of years ago. You don’t get 25% for running it over the scanner, and asking if I want a receipt.

Though, physically, I’m trying to improve my day-to-day life through diet and exercise, I am declining. Again, I’m not sure how much of that is MS or age. But I do recognize that things aren’t going to get better. There is no cure for this damned disease. Hell, they don’t even know what causes it.

I did get the bifocals prescription my last visit to the optometrist. Yes, they want to sell me the fancy glasses that have the reading glasses built-in. I’ve not bought those, yet. Again, it’s on account of not having money to spend willy-nilly with the disability situation.

Last roti-rooter was less-concerning than some of the past ones. I don’t have to have another colonoscopy until I’m 50. The ones I had starting before I even turned 40 were enough. This is one of the things that come along with having a parent who died during cancer surgery before 60.

Do I make it to 65? Who knows.

I’ve been looking some today into the work that went into the Nobel Prize for Economics award for this year.

Two things crossed my mind with it. The first was a comedy bit, Marc Steyn, maybe?, about cleaning up a broken compact fluorescent bulb. The switch to CF bulbs was something that was bit in the early Obama administration.

I didn’t hate them as much as some people, though I did think the light was a little off. There were some people who really hated them, and I think there was some Tea Party folks who ran on bringing back the regular incandescent bulbs.

Meanwhile, white LED technology progressed to completely obviate the need for the ordered CF bulbs.

Technology progresses. Government can’t stop it.

Just finished watching a livestream on TheFP about President Trump’s takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department in DC.

Yes, it’s probably legal. DC is an odd beast. Yes, they elect a mayor and legiaslative functions are handled by an elected city council.

But the judicial system is almost entirely dispatched to the Federal Government.

If things aren’t going well, the Federal government can essentially sack all of the elected leaders. Normally, this would be something the Congress handles, but the Legislative Branch has dispatched so much work to the Executive Branch. There’s important fundraising to do, don’t you know? The Executive can act until we decide we can be bothered to get back to DC.

The NBC affiliate in DC last night was very confused.

Clearly it’s awful, because anything Trump does is awful.

But the MPD Union are in favor?

Sent a news crew to somewhere outside rich Northwest, and the residents are in support of the takeover?

Good high-priced reporting education cannot compute. How is this possible? Doesn’t everybody know how evil he is?

Not sure whether to be dismayed or bemused.