Month: September 2024

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it’s a super nice day in Orange County.

I’m enjoying the cool overcast from an on-shore flow. Sitting out on the porch with Jesse napping is very pleasant. Knowing the most anything I might want to go get, is literally a few minutes away could really spoil me.

I’ll admit it, I like being in civilization. 

Don’t get me wrong, I liked living in the mountains. I liked my life and my other half and there was joy in our home. There were rough times to be sure, but any issues were offset by having silence, room, and a safe home. Those perks outweighed the inconvenience of having to drive a minimum of 30 minutes or more to get to a shopping center for stuff like clothes or a Costco. There were times when It felt like I needed a sherpa and we were planning an expedition to deepest Africa.

When I was working off the hill, stopping by one of those places, or as Jerry & I often did, meeting at a mall or whatever to take care of necessary shopping on our way home from our respective jobs, wasn’t a problem. We’d have a date night, have dinner, do our shopping and head home after most of the traffic was past.

Now that I’m alone and not working off the hill, being on the mountain is a bit more of a problem. I have little reason to leave and less reason to want to deal with nightmarish traffic getting to and from the various shopping centers.

Staying here in Orange County, with friends. I’m reminded of the advantage of being closer to a real city. In this case, an interconnected web of sprawling cities where the shelves are full and not every item is locked up behind plexiglass.

Over the past couple of days I’ve been struck by the difference in rite aid here versus home. Grocery stores, four within blocks of each other versus home where there’s only 1 or 2 within 20 miles.

Yesterday for example, was interesting. I dropped the dog off for a grooming appointment, drove 1/2 mile to a car wash, drove back to the plaza where I’d left the dog. Noticed there was a SportClips, got my hair cut, walked through a Trader Joes (hadn’t done that for years), compared prices at a Smart & Final, then got a message that the dog was ready.

Out where I live, that would have been an all day affair, possibly 2 days. The local SportClips closed during COVID. The groomer is 45 minutes away. The grocery stores and pharmacy are 20 to 30 minutes. There are 3 grocery stores within 35 miles, 4 if you include the Super Target and Walmart.

It’s funny. Before I settled down with Jerry, I was an Orange County boy. I knew my way around and  literally could lay my hands on just about anything I needed, anytime of the day and night.

Living in Escondido for the time I did, I was still out of the main urban areas of San Diego and honestly, I was glad of it.

This fire may have given me some direction. (Provided it doesn’t just burn everything down.)

I begin to remember what I liked about living here in OC and can directly contrast that with mountain life.

I know that I have too much stuff.

Being evacuated, I’m traveling uncomfortably light. The house on the other hand is uncomfortably heavy. There should be some nice balance in the middle.

Likewise much as I appreciate the convenience of OC, I don’t want to deal with the dense urban environment, the excessive noise and not enough open spaces.

This isn’t a criticism, it’s simply observing that moving back into a dense urban environment probably wouldn’t be the best thing for me personally. 

I think I need to search for a happy medium between the absolute rural out in the sticks places, and easy access to the niceties of modern life.

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Okay, Not how I planed to spend this week.

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, there are multiple fires burning in Southern California.

Tuesday afternoon I got an evacuation notice on my phone. Then, there was a helicopter flying overhead announcing mandatory evacuation. Then there was another evacuation notice on my phone, and finally there was the sheriffs department driving up & down the streets announcing evacuation on their loudspeakers.

Hmm, says I, they must want us to leave.

I suspected it was coming and I’d already planned to stage stuff in the event there was an evacuation. I didn’t get a chance to execute my cunning plan before the evacuation was upon me.

So I grabbed some stuff, put the dog in the car and away we went. 

By the time we left the house, it looked very much like somehow the neighborhood had been relocated to Mars on a very bad day.

Jesse was freaked out and would not settle down.

I was annoyed by that and of course the usual California driving skills or more properly lack thereof.

I made a brief stop, or what was supposed to be a brief stop at a storage locker where I unloaded a bunch of stuff in an attempt to give the dog more room to lie down & relax. This as it turns out was an error.

While I was able to offload, I wasn’t able to get back on the damn freeway. Either the exits were closed, or they were blocked by the aforementioned Excellent California Drivers. Many of whom wouldn’t allow a change of lanes. At least one of whom used the emergency lane to “get ahead” and forced me out of the lane so I was unable to get on the freeway safely. 

Mind you by this point we were 15 – 20 miles away from the evacuation zone and in no danger whatsoever. This was just normal California assholery. It is also the kind of behavior that begets freeway shootings.

I figured “Screw it” and stopped for gas. Then I found a whole string of entrance ramps blocked off forcing me to take surface streets parallel to the freeway until just before Pomona.

Once on the freeway it was a simple matter to get to Orange County and stay with some friends. It’s good to have great friends that will put you up in a pinch. It’s even better to have friends that will put you and your big ass dog up when they have a lovely pet free home and it is pet free for a reason.

My friends have gone above and beyond in this instance and I truly have no idea how to thank them.

At this point I know the firefighters are doing all they can do. I know that there’re no guarantees but I hate not knowing what is likely to happen. Is my house going to burn? Is it not? If it burns, then I have a clear direction. If it’s not going to burn, I’d really rather be home and not imposing on my friends like this.

In an attempt to minimize the mess and stuff that a dog invariably brings into your life, I had Jesse groomed today, while I was at it I had my car washed and my hair cut too. My hope with Jesse being groomed was that he’d shed a little less and wouldn’t be in any way offensive in terms of dog stink.

He’s been sleeping since we got back and I know I’m going to have to take him out on at least one, maybe two more walks tonight.

I don’t really think about it, but having a fenced in back yard is super nice. Their yard is not fenced in, so I’ve been walking Jesse on his leash a lot. Normally Jesse & I go for our morning walk, then I leave the sliders open so he comes and goes as he wishes the rest of the day.

If I move off the mountain, either because of the house burning down, or just because It’s time for me to move on, I will be looking for new digs that have a fenced in back yard after this experience, I’ve decided that is a must have.

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Well Today is the Apple Announcement day.

I’m tuning in. I just want to know when the new OS stuff will be available.

I might be interested in a new set of AirPods.

I’ve also been playing around with dictation via the current Siri. It’s not too bad, I’m really getting interested in how the AI stuff enhances dictation.

IPhone 16 Pro Max 1.After watching the event, I have to say I like the iPhone 16 Pro, but not enough to ditch my iPhone 15 Pro.

Maybe I’ll wait for the iPhone 17 or 18.

I wasn’t impressed with anything else.

New color on the Apple Watch Ultra 2. Ehh. My Ultra Version 1 still supports the O2 data that Apple had to remove due to a patent infringement case. The changes to the Ultra 2 last year weren’t enough to make me want to buy a new watch and adding new color to the Ultra 2 this year isn’t going to make me run out & buy an new one either.

Apple Watch 10, is nice but again Ehh.

New colors on AirPods Max? But no changes other than making them USB-C which they had to do because of the EU requirements.

AirPods 4 okay… but nothing more than my current AirPods Pro 2 provide. 

So Wow! Just kind of disappointed. 

New OS should be available next week but not with the Apple Intelligence features. Okay, there are some things about the various OS versions that intrigue me even without the Apple Intelligence. 

I guess the real interest will be the various OS changes across the product line.

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WOW! This really pisses me off!

By this, I mean the not safe for work image below.

There used to be several very nice collections of nudes, both male and female going about routine things. They were artsy, and in particular there were images of normal human beings in nature, or other settings.

Now look at the search 

“nude man in rain images”

That’s a pretty fucking specific search and look at what is returned.

Literally one male, he’s not in the rain, and all the rest are females, or pseudo females, or women who think they’re men, but this search and in fact a dozen other searches specifying males, men, or guys, returns to greater or lessor extent the same results.

This pisses me off because if entering a search cannot be relied upon to return expected results, then the whole purpose of search engine indexes is corrupted and in fact no search engine can be relied upon to produce results of any accuracy.

In other words. The internet is useless.

There used to be some pretty artistic sites where amateur photographers uploaded some of their work to share. These sites were great and gave artists exposure to sell prints.

Oh, BTW. The screen capture above is the tamest. Scroll down a bit further and it’s all hard dicks, and hard core sexual images culminating with a truly horrific scat image.

PNG image 19.Really? What happened to celebrating the human form with dignity and beauty? Why can’t there be just nude men & women. Why must both be debased?

I had a collection of images like I’m describing. I actually thought the internet would be faster and link me to some additional works by new artists.

Obviously I was wrong.

The reason I was looking for a naked guy in the rain was to finish off the previous post. The image at the right is from one of the collections I’ve created over the years. I think this one came from Twitter.

I lay this fucked up search bullshit at the feet of the Transgendered assholes. Since we can’t identify male or female anymore, and everything is gender fluid, NOTHING is fixed and therefore our technologies which by the way, do Binary, really fucking well, can no longer be relied upon to give us results.

Why? Because the programmers and the corporations are terrified of mis gendering someone’s image and facing a law suit from some gender confused fuckwad who’s interested in only being a victim and as a side note making as much money from their victimhood as possible.

This kind of person is also known as a member of the Transgender community. A.K.A. clown, A.K.A. genderfuck drag show, A.K.A. someone who wants attention and is willing to play gender fluid or whatever the fuck new term it is today, to get attention and maybe score a few bucks too.

Why have we allowed our culture, or data storage systems and even our children to be corrupted by these loads their mothers should’ve swallowed?

I say all of this as a Gay fucking man.

I also say it’s time for this bullshit to stop!

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Ahhh That was so nice…

Thunder over the mountains and then the sky opened up for a little while.

We needed rain. The unrelenting heat and nasty air quality have been brutal.

For just an hour or so the air was cleansed of dust and little super annoying clouds of gnats that insist on flying in eyes and up noses.

Jesse and I both face the clouds of annoying bugs on our morning walks.

But best of all, the stench of whatever the fuck kind of pot one or two of my neighbors are smoking was washed from the air and the coolish breezes removed it from my house.

This stuff, whatever it is, smells like the dirty gym sock you blew a couple of loads into, then forgot behind your bed for 2 months, where the cat pissed on it repeatedly.

It’s pretty damn revolting! Give me cigarette, or cigar smoke any fucking day. If I thought I was going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life, I’d start smoking Marlboro Reds again, at least then I’d be smelling something not entirely unpleasant.

A comedian described New York City as a horrific stench of body odor, weed, and piss. At least all I smell is the rancid stench of weed.

It was nice to have the rain falling and just the sound of rain for an hour or so. It was calming, although Jesse didn’t care much for the thunder, he also wasn’t panicked by it. I take that as a good sign because if we move East of the Mississippi, thunder storms are a way of life.

Neither Jesse or I have been sleeping well. The crazy lady neighbor has taken to wailing, screaming, & cussing between 2 and 5 AM. 

Sometimes she goes from dead silence to full insanity in an instant. It’s like she wakes up screaming. Other times, she’ll work herself slowly into whatever froth she’s aiming for.

If she works herself slowly into a rage, Neither Jesse, or I pay much attention until she’s bellowing so loud her voice is echoing off the canyon walls. When she goes zero to 1000% in a second Jesse and I are startled awake and both of us have a hard time getting back to sleep.

It’s funny, because he’ll have his nose against mine, when I open my eyes he’s looking at me very intently as if to say, “What the hell is that about?”

Much as I like having the widows open. I’m looking forward to it being cool enough during the night to close the house. That would stop the disturbances. The random screaming and the clouds of pot or whatever.

The smoke locks my sinuses up within a couple of minutes and my throat starts to swell like when I have a cold. As luck would have it the one neighbor is an insomniac. So he’ll be powering through his pound of shit at all hours of the day & night.

I can literally go to sleep fine, then the wind will change & I’ll wake up choking because my sinuses and throat are obstructed. I’ve gotten up at 3am to hit the Flonase then waited for it to kick in before going back to bed.

The past few weeks I’ve gotten the double whammy. One of their habits will wake me up and just as I head back to bed and start to drift off,  the other one will start up so I’ve just started staying up.

This means that I’m getting maybe 4 hours of sleep a night and I really need at least 6. It’s making me cranky, impatient, & dopey as hell.

We might get some more rain tonight and into tomorrow morning. That would be nice. Who knows, Maybe for once I’ll wake those idiots up because I’m dancing naked in the rain at 3 am.