Ugh! Monday!

Not that I have anything much to do.

Job Search of course, but that’s feeling more and more like beating a dead horse.

FYI. Typically, beating a dead horse isn’t going to make the horse move any faster. In other words… It’s a pointless exercise. I know there are a lot of people out there that have no idea what a horse is. Perhaps the phrase should be updated to beating a dead electric only Prius?

Anyhoo.

Got the plumber here, taking care of some long overdue plumbing issues.

As an aside, I don’t do plumbing! It’s not that I can’t, it’s that no matter what I buy at the hardware store, it’s always the wrong whatsit. I’ll leave it to the professionals. Now I know why plumbers always have big assed trucks, it’s to hold all the wrong whatsits until they’re someplace where the part actually fits.

Thus far today, I’ve paid bills, updated & balanced the checkbook, taken out the trash, vacuumed, showered, shaved, started an automated process on the computer to back up files to other storage, and currently I’m looking for a new job. (Albeit writing this blog isn’t looking for a new job, I’m using this as a break from depressingly unfruitful job search.)

I’ve also scanned the news. Another depressing endeavor, the headlines tell the tale, and it’s not a happy one. I’ve purposely avoided the impeachment stories. However, every once in a while I do get sucked in. 

One of the things that has made me sort of say huh? Is that some of the testimony appears to lead back to the Bidens and potentially the Obama administration. If that is the case and the Biden family is drawn into the investigation, doesn’t that mean that Joe Biden is not a viable Presidential candidate?

PE4EM.jpgAfter all, If Trump was involved with the Russians and he’s bad. Then by extension if Biden was involved with the Russians he must also be bad.

Which begs in my mind another question. If the Democrats are so enraged that they’re willing to burn down their own party to get at Trump, do I really want them to have control of the nuclear football?

Where would they stop to end Russian collusion? How far exactly would they go?

Trump only has one more year in office. It’s taken Democrats three years to even get to an impeachment hearing at this point… Let the American People decide in November 2020.

This kind of wasted time and taxpayer money is exactly what the American people don’t need. 

The Democrats would be far better served by providing a reasonable candidate instead of what we’ve seen thus far. Provide someone who is so far and away better than Trump, that the American People all say, “YES! That’s the person for the job.” 

That’s what happened in 2008. Hell, I voted for Obama because I believed in his message.

In 2016 I didn’t vote for either candidate. Hillary had too many scandals and / or bodies around her. Trump pretty much had the same problem.

Bernie was right out because living in California, I know all too well what his kind of government would be like. Since I want out of California precisely because of that kind of governance I certainly wasn’t about to vote for it nationwide.

It’s a lot harder to leave an entire country behind.

IPARedTape sitepostLARGE v1 061516 APAs an example, my CAR registration for next year is $543. I’d have no problem paying that amount if California had the finest roads in the country. But California’s roads suck donkey balls! Potholes, trash, rough broken concrete, flooding in the rain, and top that off with some of the highest gas taxes, and the inability to import gasoline from refineries other than those that make the “California Blend” and you can see why I might think that amount is excessive.

IMG 9809Oh and by the way, there’s a move afoot to divert the registration fees to mass transit and other “Public works” projects neglecting again the decaying roads, which most of the population is reliant upon to get to and from work, so they can pay the taxes that aren’t being used for their intended purposes.

Don’t even talk about the water taxes that aren’t being used to build or maintain reservoirs for use in time of drought. The politicians think it’s better to ration water year round, instead of plan ahead for lean years.

We already have a Federal government that thinks the citizens are a piggy bank, I couldn’t vote for Bernie because I believed his ideas would have made us much closer to indentured servants who were still paying out of pocket for everything.

We just would have been paying more in taxes to fund a government bureaucracy that was more wildly out of control.

69-vs.jpgWhich brings us to the 2020 democratic candidates, and the party itself.

Given the circus in Washington pissing away millions of dollars, leveling forests for documents no-one is going to read, and generally distracting from the business of running the country. Is there any democratic candidate that’s worthy of my vote?

Time for more coffee. Time to turn back to job searching.

Mondays! Ugh!

When I buy a Season Pass from iTunes…

I expect that for the price of that Season Pass, I won’t have to watch a bunch of commercials.

I’m even less interested in seeing a bunch of commercials for shows that I’ve shown absolutely zero interest in watching.

Really? 2 to 5 minutes of commercials embedded in the episode download? That’s not what I paid for. Worse yet, the commercials are for the same un-interesting FX productions over and over again, and will become outdated in six months.

Screen Shot 2019 11 16 at 11 27 54 AMI expect Season Passes to be commercial free.

FX obviously didn’t agree. 

None of the rest of the Archer seasons have commercials.

It’s annoying.

I’ll also be weighing the purchase of any future FX season passes because of this experience.

It’s a pity because there are a couple of other FX shows that I actually would be interested in owning. But not with commercials.

So If you’re buying television season passes from iTunes, you might want to check with other folks to find out if the seasons meet your particular preferences.

I hope this isn’t a trend, if it is I’ll go back to purchasing seasons on Blu-ray.

I’m thinking it’s a spell …

Airpods pro PDP US 1 grandeI think that all of us can agree that Apple Stores are dangerous. 

No, not in the sense of personal safety but to the safety of our wallets.

I went to the Apple store to pick up my order of nifty new AirPod Pros.

They are very nice, comfortable, and have some really good sound along with the #1 thing I wanted, Noise Cancelling.

While I was there, I asked for the Apple folks to take a look at my series 3 Apple watch.

Nothing major, just a couple of issues that cropped up after the latest upgrade. I’d tried everything I could think of to resolve the issues and figured I’d see if they could point me in the right direction.

After the Apple folks poked around in my watch and my phone a bit, they came to the same conclusion that I’d come to. I was going to have to unpair and repair my watch & phone.

No big deal. We initiated the backup procedure so that the watch would be backed up to the cloud and I wouldn’t lose any data.

Backup completed normally, then unpaired and well, things were suddenly different on my phone. I hadn’t lost any data on the phone (all the health data that had been recorded was still there) but what had been two watches paired to my phone (I only have had one Apple watch) was suddenly no watches paired. The backup data was now gone after saying that the backup was corrupt.

My old watch was not wanting to pair with my phone and the Apple folks and I were confused. While I’d been waiting for the backup to complete I’d been playing with the new Series 5 watch and I’d been jonesing for one since they were released. 

Apple-Watch-Series-5-2019.jpgIt occurred to me that if I was going to have to download a new operating system to a watch and pair it… It might as well be to a New Watch.

They traded in my Series 3 got me a Series 5 and we started the setup process. Easy! Too damn easy!

That ladies and gentlemen is how I walked into an Apple Store for a new set of headphones, and walked out with new headphones, a watch, and a couple of cables I’d forgotten I needed.

Sometimes all I need is the slightest excuse to do something crazy. Thank god I didn’t look at iPhone 11 pro!

On the plus side, while I was waiting for the watch to do it’s thing I sat in on an iPhone training session and learned some nifty things that I didn’t know my phone could do. So that’s a win. 

I like the Series 5 a lot. I’m still getting used to the “Always On” feature and thus far my battery life has been good. Not yet the two days of my Series 3, but the battery is still young and does seem to be lasting longer each day. I suspect this is, in part because I’ve finished tweaking the watch and now It’s presenting information as I prefer it and I’m not in configuration all the time.

The only thing I wish the Watch would do is when my phone goes into “Night – Do not disturb” that the watch would turn off it’s display as well. Maybe I’ll send that as a suggestion to Apple.

The Apple Store magic is strong.  Make sure you’ve got the ability to counter it before you walk inside.

What are you doing Sirius?

I get into the car, turn the engine on and…

I’m suddenly listening to George Michael crooning.

I do not own any George Michael music. None, Nada, Zilch!

There were a couple of songs that I’d hear back in the day but they were never interesting enough for me to buy an entire album and as I transitioned to pretty much all digital music I’ve never felt the need to include any of George’s work in my library.

So this is not coming from my phone…

I jab the number 1 preset on the dash console, there’s a pause and then George Michael resumes playing. 

The Number 1 preset is Sirius “Spa”, it’s what I prefer to listen to while driving because it’s calming and keeps my foot out of the gas tank in Southern California traffic.

Oh, I think Sirius has once again updated all their stations so I spend some time trying to locate Spa’s new station number. It’s not there, Spa is gone.  Grrrr!!!!!!

I flip around to try to find something else that I want to listen to. No Joy! I don’t feel like listening to anything currently on my iPhone. I turn the music system off and drive in silence.

While I’m driving, I realize that Spa is the only station I really listen to on Sirius. Then I think, “Why don’t I listen to NPR or one of the Canadian channels?” It occurs to me that I don’t listen to any of the news channels, or any of the talk radio channels, and I’m not listening to any of the local news channels either.

I can tell you why. Two Words. Donald Trump.

If you listen to NPR or virtually any of the talk radio stations, You get Trump Bad, Trump Evil, Trump did this or that and it’s this constant wailing and gnashing of teeth about how absolutely awful everything is because of Trump. On the other side of the coin you can listen to conservative talk radio. There, all you hear is how rotten, corrupt, shitty, or screwed up the Democrats, ANTIFI, other countries, or whatever. There’s little if anything that I’ve found that is moderate for those of us who are not yet ready to burn the country down.

Neither of these options is going to enhance my calm while driving. In fact listening to stuff like that can put me in a foul mood all day long. 

As it turns out, George Michael will go away tomorrow which is just fine with me. 

However, before I found out that this wasn’t a permanent change I’d investigated the options that my iPhone provides. I’ve found that with almost no trouble at all, I can switch entirely to music from the iPhone and not miss Sirius Satellite at all.

So as previously noted…

When it comes time for me to re-up on Sirius Satellite, I won’t.

Apple Music (which I’m paying for anyway) is more than sufficient.

Welcome to the new age.