Fourteen

Somehow I omitted this from my writing schedule. Nobody noticed, but that’s because there’s very few people reading. Whatever. I do these for me.

Is the aversion to Fourteen based on hangover from Andy Dalton as a Saint?

Tough to place that blame, but it’s a starting point…if not a decent starting quarterback.

So look though the old entries, and stumble on this.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about being sick, what my current medical state is, etc..

After popping positive for antibodies on my JCV test, I’m now on Keysimpta.

The switchover was during my summer writing streak this summer, and I hated it so much to start.

Even after three full doses, the fourth will be towards the end of the month, I still get all sorts of concerned about how it’s going to affect me.

Relax.

Um. No.

The new drug, as I’ve become accustomed to it, really isn’t that big a deal. One Sub-Q shot in the thigh once a month. Take it after work, spend the evening kind of as normal, and go to bed.

The doctor at Georgetown who was good enough to see me, then not get upset when my out-of-network Tidewater insurance didn’t cover the visit, has been my neurologist since I got up here. I appreciate all that she, and the rest of the staff at Georgetown have done for me.

There’s many aspects of my life, related to my health, that are a ton better now than they were back when I first wrote about what was going on.

On positive side, I’ve been able to continue to work far longer than I ever anticipated. My wife is, now, excelling in her career, and we’re not on the lip of destitution.

Some things, of course, are worse. My vision continues to get worse. Certainly not as markedly as it was early on, but things really aren’t good. I don’t know when they’ll want to put me through more vision tests. I am not, I don’t think, to the point of legal blindness. I still do find random tricks that help me be able to see/consume things, but it’s still difficult.

(Random hint: If you’re using Sarai in IOS, you can actually bypass many paywalls simply by activating the Reader mode.. Don’t tell anybody, okay. Pay for your news!!1!)

One of the pods I used to consume had a Tweet, I mean Post, about some breakthrough in nerve repair.

Am I interested? Absolutely. Is that going to really convince me to continue avoid taking advantage of the options I have?

Um.

Off to buy a physical copy of Walt Hickey’s book, and get it signed. Subscribe to his Substack.

Thirteen

Disappointment (Flashback to 2013.)

Geez. This prompt really hit at an odd juncture.

My current work situation is really in an odd place at the moment. And, because of entrenched people, I’m going to have to make a trip tomorrow I didn’t anticipate.

Not happy about that.

Reading back on what I wrote back then, however, does bring some perspective about the whole situation. I had glowing things to say about my former employer — things I wouldn’t even come close to saying now. They had glossed over criminal activity. There were things that people there did know about, and kept conveniently hidden from me.

I remember one guy the old company hired. I told the division manager, specifically, NOT TO HIRE him. There was something fishy going on. I could tell that, but I didn’t have any idea what it was.

As far as I know, he’s still in Federal-Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison. DOJ link.

Shortly before all of the news had come out about everything that was going on, I interviewed with a company that was touching the problem.

After the government guy reached his plea agreement, they fired me laid me off.

I can say, without any reservation, that I have never done anything as an adult I knew was against the law.

Never.

Not once.

Maybe that doesn’t pay the bills, but it’s how I can live with myself. Maybe that makes me a square, but so be it.

I’m always going to do what I think is right. *shrug*

Twelve

Write about Reason event in DC

Ah, yes, the thing on tap for me.

I think I missed most of the fun stuff that was earlier in the day.

It’s not something I paid particularly close attention to, but I was really just going to kinda show my face as a donor.

Katherine Mangu-Ward, and a couple of others I sorta recognized were out front of the building when I showed up.

Looked like people partaking in various smokable materials. I didn’t ask to partake.

The new office is a nice location.

I was only there about an hour. Had a drink, talked to a few people, especially the couple from LA who are on the foundation. A bit of discussion of other Reason events I’d attended; how I thought King NeoHip Scott Horton lost the debate-to-end-all-debates from NYC last year.

Nick Gillespie came and introduced himself, shook my hand.

I kind of touched on it yesterday. There’s a lot of instances where the US has done things it shouldn’t militarily. But it’s also done things that don’t have any benefit, whatsoever, for a particular Defense contractor.

I don’t know how much time and effort the agency I used to support, spent copious amounts of resources getting the hospital ships ready to go do humanitarian operations around the world.

But, nawp, everything is to put more money into Raytheon. (And they missed that that moniker has kind of been abandoned in the past year or so. But they also think that the stuff that comes from the hippies circa 1983 is still all, and forever true.)

So more money going to support what they’re doing.

I do wish they’d push back harder on some of the stupidity that’s coming out of Auburn.

Eleven

Veterans’ Day

Many of the things happening in the world lately are, ultimately, an outgrowth of World War I, which ended 105 years ago today. As I said in the last entry I wrote, I was kind of distracted trying to find the photo I have of my dad in BDUs from his last assignment in the Army.

Both my father, and my father-in-law were career military.

I’ve written here before about how few people these days even know someone who was in the military, much less served themselves. Obviously, I’ve been related, at least tangentially, with the US military most of my life.

My wife, with our travel earlier in the month/week, saw first-hand, the sort of world my parents came from.

More than anything, however, I think time in the military really gets you into a particular routine for everyday life.

You could say the same of organized religion.

This is the time when you do a particular thing. It might not be something that particularly helps you, or makes a lot of sense, but it’s something you do to center (not sure if that’s the right statement, but go with it…).

There’s something important, there.

I would not expect a Marine to steal my stuff. My expectations of a faithful member of a major religion is the same. Or someone who’s on a sports team to which I belong.

Are there concerns with the use of the military?

Absolutely.

Does that make what the NeoHips say true?

No. There’s lots of things that aren’t just there to feed private corporate profits.

Yesterday, the political party of which I used to be a member, put out tweetpost about how JFK was a great antiwar president. I brought up Rocky Versace who came to my attention while I was living in Norfolk.

Check the date of his capture, and square that with the antiwar president’s tenure.

Tempted to go with a Dr. Lexus quote, but there isn’t anything I’m seeing that fits nicely.

Excessive militarism isn’t good for anybody.

But not everything is because some company wants to make money. There’s lots of things that are, actually, done for noble reasons.

All of that said, there is a point of the military. Use of force should be a last resort. And its use in defense (or retaliation) is fine, in my opinion.

What Israel is doing in Gaza is a direct response to the attack on October 7th.

Maybe that would be a role for something like something that’s been operating in the Sinai for around thirty years.

More tomorrow.

To those who’ve served, thank you.

More

Slight apology for the truncated NoJoMo post earlier. I was kind of distracted trying to find a photo of my dad from late in his time in the Army. I did find it squirreled away in social media I’d hidden from public view back during the great de-monetizing of about summer 2019.

That is really the only photo I have of him kind of as I remember him from his time on active duty. He retired from the Army maybe six weeks after I’d finished high school, and, really before the ubiquity of digital photographs.

Attempts at on-line dating in about 1999 were difficult with things like the QuickCam.

Let’s do a camera over the parallel port with power coming from the PS/2 mouse port…

So there’s not lots of photos.

With a good, modern scanner, I might be able to import some things, but that’d require access to the photos (and books) where they reside. Unfortunately, those are split among various boxes at my mother’s house, and various relatives’ houses after they’d scooped up what they could in amongst moving her to assisted living.

Doing much of anything is difficult from nearly a thousand miles away.

But I eventually did find it, and sent it to the coordinator at the facility where she is now.

I’ve also been distracted by various news things that are popping up.

I guess the woke contingent are upset at John Fetterman for supporting Ismael. So, too, I saw something on X that Elizabeth Warren was trending because people came and bothered her at dinner for her support of Israel.

While my initial reaction was, “you reap what you sow,” I’m not going to go there.

It was bad when the BLM protestors were doing it to diners at Le Diplomat.

It’s bad when they’re doing to to Senator Warren wherever the hell she was.

Don’t do that.

Don’t ever tolerate those who do.

Even if your blessed DEI training tells you otherwise.

Leave people alone. If you don’t like what they stand for, you can always leave.

Ten

Free-write

Um. Figures I’d pull the free-write when I don’t really have anything particularly concerning on my min.

I’m looking for a photo of my dad in uniform to send to the memory care coordinator at my mom’s retirement community.

My mom’s dad, as well as my dad’s dad were too young for World War II. Both were in the Navy during the interwar period.

But the biggest male role model as a kid was his maternal grandfather (so my great-grandfather). He was an Army officer during World War I. My dad wanted to be like his grandpa. And ended up being on active duty from 1973 (last days of Vietnam) to 1997.

I have some photos of him in his civilian capacity, but I’m not finding the one I’d dug of him in his civilian clothes, but I’m not seeing him in his uniform.

Obviously, with him retiring in 1997, that was kind of before the ubiquity of digital phots.

And I’m getting distracted from a bunch of things.

There’s so much going on.

The football game last night was actually sortakinda interesting, though I kept flipping back-and-forth with something on the DVR.

Still trying to figure out what’s going on with the situation in Gaza.

It is absolutely amazing to me how you can be on the wrong side of almost every single issue.

I should go get some coffee.

Nine

Trip Recap

I was a little circumspect about what we were doing over the past week. My wife, the dog, and I went down to Biloxi to see my mother and grandfather.

My wife was really uncomfortable flying in the past. She did have to fly sometime earlier in the year for work. It was on one of the frequently-used, now, regional jets. National to her destination in New England. Economy in one of those is tough to say the least, but she made it, and was a little more open to flying.

Hm. Let’s see how she does in the Kmele Foster never-fly-coach method.

I also found that American has a direct flight from National to New Orleans.

Biloxi and New Orleans are about an hour and a half apart by car.

I’m kind of in a thrice-per-year visit schedule to visit my mother.

Would you like ot come? You can get to experience first class. We’ll rent a car, so getting to and rom the airport, and to various places on the Land Mass.

We were going to board the pup, but we chose to bring her, which required selecting different seats on the plane. We wouldn’t be sitting together because the dog couldn’t be sitting with us in the first row.

My wife and the dog ended up in the second row, with me on the starboard side up front.

Whatever. It was a relaxing flight.

New Orleans has a new airport. I think what they did was just built a new terminal, and are using the same runways. They’re still using the old terminal infrastructure for the rental cars, so you have to ride a bus around to the rental car facility in what was the old airport building.

The pandemic really took a toll on the rental car industry.

The company we rented the car from used to be a smaller national chain. They’re now in with a couple of other smaller national companies. They share the same queues, etc..

It’s strange.

Birthdays dinner for my grandpa, and mom were at Cafe New Orleans. As usual, the food was good. Several people I didn’t know, of course, and very few of them had met my wife.

We’ve just been away.

Some of the younger people I’d met, maybe, when they were babies.

I’ve kind of lost my focus on this.

Other notable bits:

  • We ended at Waffle House a couple of times. The food was good, affordable, and always available.
  • Applebee’s got a couple of visits, mainly because they’re across the parking lot from the hotel where we stayed. One night was okay. One night wasn’t great. *shrug* It’s incredible how great I would have once thought it was.
  • I would say that regional jets suck, but I’m not sure they’d be big enough to even do that. The flight to New Orleans on the A319 was relaxing, even if we weren’t sitting tightener due to the late-addition of the dog, but regional jet we had going home wasn’t great.
  • My wife asked if we could relocate my mother’s house up here. Um. No. It’s on a slab, hon. But it is a nice little place. There’s nothing we can do similar here near the Beltway.
  • Little dog is very happy to be home.

I will be putting up bits later in the month as I remember them.

We’re home. Time to relax.

Eight

I’d penciled this in as birthday round-up. I’ll roll the celebrations into the trip recap tomorrow. We’re finishing up packing to go home this evening.

It’s been a somewhat-good trip.

Saw the Saints’ game on Sunday. Sort-kinda watched election returns last night, but I really don’t care.

There’s nothing I can do about it. I tried to explain this to several people during the get-out-the-vote pushes over the past few days.

Virginia is one again “blue.” Just the way Harry Byrd intended. Whatever.

I’ll vote in the primaries agains the most bad.

Potentially the bright spot of the night:

She was so awful, one of the Circuit judges in Loudoun pulled her off cases.

I honestly can’t remember that ever happening.

Still not amped on the idea of living in Loudoun again, but I guess it’s back on the table.

About two hours to vacate the hotel. Then to NOLA to fly back to DC.

Seven

Bucket List (Flashback to 2013, again)

Reviewing that one, and it sucked, it wasn’t as bad as the ones that would follow for a few years.

That said, the answer I gave then is still where I am — “I don’t have one.”

Is there an aspirational nature to the question, maybe?

I need to do these things before I die.

And if you don’t?

Maybe it’s a follow-up, and I’ll call it “lazy,” to the sorts of lists you’re supposed to put together as a young person.

But if everyone you encounter thinks you’re an asshole, what does it matter?

I do know that there’s people who’ll miss me, and that there’s very few people around who won’t communicate with me.

So, maybe there’s only one things in my list — be the sort of person someone, maybe several, will miss.

That’s pretty dark, but it’s where I am with it.

A decade ago, I wrote something about wanting to see Halleys Comet again.

At this point, in my current condition, and the prognosis for me physically, 2061 seems like a stretch.

A visit with extended family yesterday drives that home even more.

The 2013 post was probably about the time that I’d really come to terms with my limited mortality.

So it goes. So shall I.

Six

What job would you never take?

Flashback to 2012.

At this point, I have no idea. As I’ve gotten closer to resolution on my time spent working for someone else, there’s still a few things burbling around in my head, but I don’t know that I’ll be in a position again where I have to ardently just to meet the bare necessities of life.

I think I showed that there wasn’t a hell of a lot I wouldn’t do to keep the lights turned on.

Regrets? A few, certainly, but I’m now at the point where I can be somewhat choosy about what I do.

We’ve done what we need to do so that we don’t have to make those hard choices again.

What I’m not going to do is take a job like the ones I had mourned 2016-7. I understand that that model of working is what’s kind of the approach of many companies these days, but whatever.

I’m not participating anymore.

It fits with my whole You-Can-Leave approach on many things.

Maybe this is something that aligns with the overall performance of the larger economy; I don’t know. But I’m not going to be abused again. I don’t need to be.

Do you have any idea how much it fucking sucks when you’re looking at the holidays approaching, and you know that you’re just going to earn less for the next two months because Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.

But, like, paid family leave!!1!

Yeah, I don’t care about that. And it doesn’t make a bit of difference when government policies have really eliminated what was “full-time” employment.

I suppose the answer, then, is just about anything that doesn’t give me some personal fulfillment.

Running NetBackup on a busted-ass NT4 domain never did that.

So I won’t do it.

And I won’t be in a position, again, where I’m so desperate, financially, that I have to make that choice again.

I really should dig more into what I’m going to be doing when I get back “home.”

Next up will be the visit to the Reason new office in DC.