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After a year, I still really like my M2 MacBook Pro

There are a lot of things to complain about with technology companies these days. Chief among my complaints is that technology companies seem to think they can and should be arbiters of social and moral standards. For the record, they can’t. 

I wish that technology companies would just do technology. I’d love it if they all just made their products, improved them, and stayed out of politics and / or social justice.

That’s not the world we live in. It’s futile to wish for these technological behemoths to change. 

Even X / Twitter for all it’s fanfare about freedom, has started sending message to people that say things like, “Most authors wouldn’t say this to other people, would you like to edit your post?” The implication being that if you don’t make your post acceptable to their Algorithm your post will be limited in its reach. A.K.A. Censorship. 

Apparently calling Shelia Jackson Lee an idiot for saying the moon was made out of gas and the sun might be too hot to live on is a no, no. Even if idiot is exactly the right term.

Meaning for me at least that Twitter is once again losing me. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

Apple is not much better. It’s easy to overlook Apple’s social justice messaging because they’ve always been a closed ecosystem and spent a lot of time breathing the rarified atmosphere of their own farts.

That being said, Apple has generally made products that I liked from a hardware perspective and because of that, I’ve owned multiple generations of Apple products. It doesn’t mean I agree with Apple’s political, ecological, or social justice stance. It means their products work in predicable ways that I understand. For me owning Apple products is not a fashion statement, it’s a practical one.

My current MacBook Pro is about a year old. I find that shocking because usually by the time a machine reaches a year old, there are little things that tell its age. I’m not talking about scratches or stuff like that.

The machine starts to “feel” slow, or the battery doesn’t last long enough, and a ton of little things that individually are nothing but collectively they tell the user the machine is “old”. It’s subtle, but over time, dissatisfaction and boredom set in and you find yourself checking out websites looking for the next new thing.

I’m pleased to say that my MacBook still makes me smile. I run it most of the time in low power mode if I’m on battery. I don’t notice that I’m technically running the processor “slower”. I’m always blow away by how long the battery lasts, even with a combination of teleconferencing, web surfing, and me writing, I have yet to have the battery die before I was done looking at screens for the day.

Running Windows, in VMWare Fusion, either in low power mode or in “normal” mode I’ve noticed a few things. This computer provides buttery smooth operation of Windows, and the fans are either never on, or they’re on at such a low level I don’t hear them. That’s a big difference from my Intel I7 MacBook Pro. On that machine, within a minute of bringing Windows up, the fans were screaming at full power. The battery life isn’t significantly affected, VMWare makes the machine very busy but I think I could still get most of a day out of the battery even running Windows all day long. 

Then there’s the speed at which this machine handles rendering Video and Audio versus my older MacBook Pro. The performance is so high, the first few times I rendered something I thought the render had failed because the computer said it was done so fast.

For the sake of this post I did go look at the new M3 lineup. I hadn’t looked at any of the new machines until today.  Let’s just say I could probably spend $7,000 on a laptop. However, I’m not sure that I would be any happier with that new hotness than I am with the machine currently in front of me. 

That suggests that right now, for my needs, the machine I have will last me quite a while.  Fingers crossed, I might get 5 -7 years out of this machine. Who knows? This machine might last me until I kick the bucket.

I’ve been looking for a job for a while and not having any luck. A friend of mine has just started a job search and is having no better luck than I’ve had over the past 4 years.

I suppose this is part of what led me to appreciating my MacBook. 

We were talking about podcasting, blogging, and various alternative income methods. It was during that conversation, I thought, “My current laptop has more than enough horsepower to do those kinds of things effortlessly.”

I might need a better quality microphone. I could probably use one of the mics Jerry owned, but I can’t find the interface that would allow me to power and connect a standard XLR cabled mic to my computer. I know we have such a device, but I don’t know where Jerry put it, or if he might have been using it at the Church or Temple.

That’s a pity because we have two very nice microphones.

I’ve got more research to do before I start trying to podcast or whatever, so I’m going to keep looking for that interface. Ideally I might not have to purchase anything.

Who knows? Maybe for once in my life, I’ve actually got exactly what I need, when I need it. 

That would be a novel thing to have happen!

Hope your Monday is a good one.

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Yesterday was pretty good.

I’ve been bordering on being blue for the past few days. 

I don’t really know what’s causing the problem but I’ve been thinking a lot about Jerry, our life together, acknowledging that I was happy and feeling sad about missing him and the goofy life we made.

I was tossing a bunch of little things that were junk when Jerry put them into the junk drawer and they were still junk when I pulled them out of the junk drawer. That man couldn’t throw anything away!

Spring_flowers_2015_longwood_cr_Longwood Gardens L Albee.(I smiled as I typed that.)

Then a wave of sadness washed over me. The dog had been walked, but I felt like I needed to step outside. The sun was warm, the breeze pleasant, and as I looked over the back yard I noticed weeds had sprung up with a vengeance.

I went down stairs with the intent to just do poo patrol. Once I’d completed that chore, I thought, “Might as well do the weed whacking too.”

That felt good. I took all the weeds down to nubs, Then I did the patch of grass & weeds between my fence and the next door neighbor. During one of the winter storms, some limbs had broken off of one of his trees and were laying in the way. I moved them, then cut the weeds which had been growing under the limbs. The battery on the weed whacker died just as I finished the last pass against the fence.

“Great Timing,” I thought as I put the weed whacker away. Slipping the battery into the charger I noticed it was the bigger battery that came with my chainsaw.

This led to checking the oil in the chainsaw, and since I was holding the saw, I grabbed a charged battery pack, shrugged and headed out of the garage. Happily I went out to the side of the house where the limbs lay and started cutting them into small manageable pieces. 

From the winter damage I’ve seen on the tree that lost these limbs, I’m not sure it will survive. That’s sad because it’s a beautiful tree. Similarly, the butterfly bush in front of my house is looking pretty shabby too. I’m hoping it will recover but I’m not holding my breath.

The singing of my chainsaw blade made me happy. I’d noticed some of my neighbor’s Mountain Lilacs were overgrowing the power pole we share. So before he gets an abatement ticket or worse, Edison “Helps’ by butchering the plants, I started pruning.

Well, I had the chainsaw in my hand…  

I cleaned up all the trimmings, came inside covered in sawdust and debris from weed whacking, and asked Jerry if there was anything else I should do before I cleaned up.

Yeah…

My heart stopped for a second. In that breathless moment I figured out part of the blues I’d been feeling.

You see, I always did the outside work.

I can run the snow thrower and always could. In winters, Jerry wanted to help and contribute. But Jerry had shitty balance, doubly so on ice, so we agreed that he ran the snow thrower. I was pleased with this arrangement because while he was holding onto the machine, the odds of a fall were greatly reduced.

When It came to yard work, trimming, digging, planting, painting, and that kind of stuff. I did the work, Jerry supervised. He made sure that I was staying hydrated, and wasn’t out in the sun for too long.

Jerry told me enjoyed watching me working in the yard. He said I looked hot, and he liked my confident strut and my confidence while using the tools.

At the time, I’d never thought that I could be hot looking doing chores. For me, it was just chores. Other guys, looked hot doing construction, or farming, or whatever. I never thought about myself that way, but I was happy knowing I was good enough for him.

I suppose what I’d been secretly dreading was this “first” spring.

Last year, I was just going through the motions still “numb” from his passing.

This year, I’m getting back to something like “normal” and those normal things remind me what’s missing.

One “missing” ritual is this. In the first days of Spring, We’d have discussions about planting spring flowers, or changes in the yard, and trimming of various shrubs and trees. Sometimes there wasn’t much discussion, Jerry would come home with flats of flowers and ask me to plant them. I’d do it because I enjoyed the work and because the flowers made him smile.

It’s that time of year and probably why there was a bit of a sting yesterday. This is a part of the healing process. It’s just going to take time.

The good news is that being outside and doing the usual, normal work felt really good. There’s more to do, but I wanted to see what my arms and shoulders felt like before using the pole saw on some Cottonwood trees that are spindly and overhanging my fence line.

The other good news is that I’m not blue today, it seems a little yard work was all it took to make the blues disappear.

Maybe I’ll go look at some flowers up at the hardware store.

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Holy Shit! Trust NOTHING on the Internet anymore!

Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1800.This morning, I was looking for a quote from Thomas Jefferson.

It was a quote I vaguely recalled but couldn’t recall exactly or where Jefferson had written it.

Jefferson had been involved with negotiations to stop interference in American trade and shipping by the Barbary Pirates. Jefferson recommended that we simply build a navy and go to war with them.

Others in the newly formed government chose to go the European Route and pay the Muslims tribute to leave our ships alone.

Jefferson believed that in the long run, it would be cheaper to build the navy and destroy the ability of the Barbary Pirates to be troublesome.

That’s a short summary from what I recall reading decades ago in the UK Library in Lexington, KY.

If I recall correctly Jefferson didn’t trust that the Muslims would honor any treaties. He worried that our country would forever be mired in the internal politics of the Pashas, and various kingdoms vying for control of shipping. He thought there’d be never ending ransoms to be paid for captives or unmolested passage in and out of Europe and the Mediterranean.

Mostly, he was right. Treaties were violated and when questioned it was always some excuse. The 3rd cousin of the Pasha didn’t get the message, or some other bullshit. Followed by worthless apologies, “I’m so sorry the ship and goods were stolen, you lost how many crew? The Pasha sends he condolences, and expects this year’s tribute payment on time.”

Jefferson owned a Quran and other middle Eastern books.

I suspect these books were an attempt on his part to understand the thought process of the people he was negotiating with as Secretary of State, and later as President of the United States.

I remember reading in the library, copies of  documents written in Jefferson’s own hand, and the florid language of the time about his dealings with the Pirates. They were more properly called Corsairs, and operated as agents of their king, Pasha or whatever. He didn’t like them, he didn’t trust them, and warned very clearly about issues dealing with people of the region.

Yeah! Imagine that! I can actually read cursive, old English, and understand what the hell was being said. Why? Because guess fucking what, I was taught a lot of it in school. More, I was taught at home by my parents (both of whom had to take Latin in high school).

Surprise, surprise, English, while evolving over time, was near enough to the English I was taught in school, that aside from slight spelling changes and characters that have fallen out of use, the definitions of the words remained the same.

As an aside, there’s a lesson there. Redefining words wily nilly is problematic to say the least.

Here’s the point.

When I searched for the quotes from Jefferson. The internet says that Jefferson was a Muslim!

WHAT?

Jefferson was a Christian. He said so in his quotes and papers. He was a skeptical Christian, to be sure, but a Christian nonetheless .

He had a dim view of organized religion in general because so often in history, religion had been used to control and enslave people. Religion had, time and again led to the priest class entering into politics and holding sway that they weren’t entitled to have.

Jefferson said his beliefs were between him and God and therefore not the business of anyone else.

So how the hell is it that Jefferson is now suddenly a Muslim?

Oh, because he owned a Quran! Well then, I suppose that explains him owning slaves! Now, we can’t talk about what a piece of shit Jefferson was because he owned slaves. It was part of his religious beliefs!

BTW owning slaves is still part of Muslim / Islamic belief today, so all you Muslim sympathizers… FUCK OFF! You can’t have it both ways.

My query was, “Thomas Jefferson Muslim quote”. Then It was, “Thomas Jefferson on Barbary Pirates”. Then I tried, “Thomas Jefferson on the Corsairs”.

All of which presented me with no less than 4 pages of search results, all of which said Jefferson was a Muslim. Which is more than slightly unlikely.

Jefferson was first and foremost about individual liberty and freedom. Specifically his own. He openly advocated questioning even God himself.

I cannot see Jefferson submitting to a religion that is as much about governance of its adherents, as it is about religion.

No, Jefferson wasn’t a Muslim. I’m sure that the Palestinians, anti semites, and Islamic/Muslim Jihadists in our midst would love to have people believe that as a recruiting method, I don’t believe it.

It’s simply too farfetched, based on what I remember reading. I also notice that finding original sources on the internet has become more difficult.

This is why the internet is circling ever closer to a point of information entropy. (Yeah, I coined the term, I think. Pretty cool.) By which I mean that the accuracy of information on the Internet will eventually degrade to the point of uselessness.

The data will become so corrupt and randomized as to be no better than a soothsayer casting bits of bone or colored rocks on a “sacred” cloth.

I could suggest that actual original sources of information always be indexed in all search engines before the various interpretations, comments, or scholarly works. No-one will take that path because it’s about marketing & pushing ads into potential consumers faces.

Maybe it’s time for a new internet, something that only contains real and verified information. Nah that wouldn’t get any traction either. It would be called racist, and destroyed the minute it disputed the existence of Wakanda as a real place.

I think it’s time to eschew the internet for anything other than entertainment. It’s time to buy real books, real encyclopedias, and real dictionaries again. Although I’m going to be partial to reference material printed prior to 2000. Anything newer is likely to have been corrupted by Information Entropy.

I’ve warned about the corruption before. I had no idea it had progressed to the point it has, much less that we’d see rewriting of the Founding Fathers.

I’m going to have to start looking for a copy of The Jefferson Papers printed before 1960 to avoid any nasty edits or reinterpretations.

P.S. I never did find the quote I was looking for.