Tag: Family

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WOW! Apple does it again! Not in a good way!

Apple one icons logo 100857611 largeThe other half and I decided to go with the Apple One subscription back when they first started it. 

Both of us were paying for Apple Music and individual iCloud Storage. We’d purchased Apple TVs for the living and bedrooms, but Apple’s original programming wasn’t anything we were interested in at the time. 

I knew that I was going to be interested in Foundation when Apple released the first season.

When we did the math, we found we were already spending nearly the initially high 29.95 monthly fee for Apple One individually, since we could share the Apple One subscription we went for it.

Honestly we were only interested in the Music and iCloud storage. There was a high probability that Apple TV+ would become interesting to me. Although to date I’ve only watched Foundation and Invasion. There are some Apple produced movies that looked somewhat interesting but not enough to captivate my attention so that I sat down and spent 2 hours of my life watching them. 

I was interested in the Apple Fitness guided training. I’ve used it a few times just to get a feel for it. At first it only worked on the Apple TV so training had to take place in the Living Room or the Bedroom. Honestly, that didn’t really work. Since then Apple has expanded the functionality to iPhone and iPad so it’s a little more portable.

It’s understood that Apple is a “Woke” company. Okay, that’s fine, I’ve always known Apple was full of blue haired people with so many piercings they can’t get through a TSA metal detector. However, recently I thought I’d get more familiar with Apple Fitness and take advantage of regular workout routines during the Winter. 

Opening the Fitness+ tab on the Apple TV I was a little put off.  It wasn’t that DEI was front and center, it was.

It was that so many of the workouts appeared to be geared for way younger folks than I am. After some digging I was able to find some things geared toward older adults. I’ll try a sampling to see if Apple Fitness+ is for me.

The other half and I also liked being able to share our purchases and subscriptions to many applications.

Neither of us cared about Apple Arcade, we were adults, while I looked at some of the games, none were interesting to me and so that part of the Apple One subscription was never used.

Apple News+ is okay but neither of us were really interested in much of the magazine offerings and I literally locked out of my news feed, the extremist news organizations both left and right. The other half eventually got tired of News+ and stopped using it altogether. I know this because he needed help turning off all the News+ notifications. He generally preferred BBC and NPR until the age of COVID. Then he, like me, found  very few news organizations that passed the reliability test.

At this point I could take or leave Apple News+

All of this has come to mind because of a few things.

1) The other half is dead.
2) Apple One increased its prices from 29.95 which was already expensive to 32.95 back in spring. At the time, I wasn’t capable of making too many decisions and chose to let that go.
3) Apple sent a notice of another rate increase either Friday Night or Saturday morning, (which is kind of chicken shit,  because NONE of the executives will be in over the weekend so the folks answering the phones get to take the brunt of the complaints,) The new rate is 37.95 a month.

At this new rate, we’re starting to approach old Cable TV rates. (Yes I know the Cable TV people charge far more obscene rates these days. That’s why I don’t have Cable.) As a point of interest, that’s also why I’m looking at new places to live where I can receive local TV with a damn antenna. I don’t even care if it’s only one channel as long as it’s in English. (Where I live now, I can receive one channel but it’s in Korean? or Chinese neither of which I speak.)

I know I’m not getting $37.95 value out of the Apple One subscription. I no longer have a family. (I do have a family but they don’t live with me and have their own stuff going on. It’s a big pain in the ass or was, to merge this stuff or unmerge it, if necessary.) The merge / unmerge task is so daunting, my other half is still listed in family sharing on the account. Although in truth, I’m not ready to remove him. It seems so final and I’m not ready for that yet.

The problem is that when I look at what I”m actually using regularly, and try to break out only those items, I come up with a cost that’s about the same as Apple One. Obviously this pricing structure is to keep Apple One subscriptions. 

As an older person, I don’t want to spend any more money than I have to. Well, I never wanted to spend more money than I had to. The problem for me now is that since I”m not employed, and living on retirement, I am far less loose with my money.

I’m sure there are a lot of people in the same boat I am. We’re either retired or nearing retirement and being forced out of our jobs explicitly, or surreptitiously. (Ask one of my friends about his experiences after 25 years or more with the same company. Ageism is real. Oh, and by the way, there’s nothing you can do to fight it! The law may be on your side, but lawyers… You’re lucky to get one of them to return your call or email! Maybe the next time I reach out to an attorney, I’ll say Trump did something to me. Perhaps then I’ll be worth calling back!)

In any case, all of us in this position are re-evaluating where our money goes and trimming the fat. If only we could trim the fat of taxation that gets us very little of use in our daily lives but might just drop a nuke in our backyards…

I digress.

Apple One has become too damn expensive! So effectively older folks or poor people are completely priced out of the Apple One service. DEI my ass!

I’ll evaluate Apple One for the next month or two. Maybe it’s time to cut this shit down to only what I find useful. If we can’t come to an arrangement that works for me, then maybe it’s time for me to stop paying for Apples services entirely.

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Here we are in November. I wasn’t going to blog today…

I’ve got to run a couple of errands. Then it’s back to the house to try to get something done.

Last week I was pretty productive. Then the weekend hit and I haven’t felt like doing a damn thing. It’s getting cold, and for some reason the house feels colder than usual. 

On the plus side, Jesse has taken to sleeping cuddled up next to me. I think he’s worried about his dignity, so when we first go to bed, he’s at the foot of the bed looking out the sliding glass door. Then sometime during the night after I’m asleep he stretches out with his head tucked against my chest. I’ve promised him that I won’t tell other dogs that he sleeps cuddled up next to me.

God forbid that he’d tip his paw about actually liking me!

I’ll admit I like waking up with him next to me.

Both of us slept late today, and we’ve both been sleeping later in general. I’m pretty sure it has to do with the sun. This time of year, the sun doesn’t make it above the mountains to the east until late in the morning. In summer, the sun rises and starts blasting into the bedroom about 5:45 am. This time of year, all you get is an orange band resting on the eastern mountains. It’s very easy to turn off the alarm and just go back to sleep.

IMG 2877The master bedroom never gets direct sunlight from fall through spring.

You can tell time watching the sunlight move up the line made by the wash. The wash itself points almost due north. The shadows cast by the mountains onto the banks of the wash mark the passing of the day. It’s not actually an earthen works sundial but after having been here for so long, I can ballpark the time of day from how much of the wash is in shadow, and which bank, the light is falling on.

I was thinking about the issue of moving. When I had the apartment in San Diego, the bedroom didn’t get light until afternoon. This was a problem because I had to be in bed by 8pm to get up for work at 3am. The room, indeed the whole apartment got, and stayed hot in springtime and summer. The winter sunlight barely hit my apartment so the place was cold as heck. The upshot is that I had to run the heat or air almost all the dang time.

I was thinking about specifications for a new place I’d like to live. I thought perhaps having a master bedroom window facing east would be good. I could wake with the sun, and the room wouldn’t be baking all day so perhaps I wouldn’t have to run the air all the time just to be able to sleep.

I just realized something else. I prefer to have the windows open. I like breezes and the smell of grass, flowers, and rain. This house for example almost always has the windows open in spring and summer. (Unless crazy pants is screaming, or the flood control folks are driving dump trucks, bulldozers, or graders, up and down the street, or the jackass up the road is cutting and grinding metal or running a chain saw at 10PM.)

Still, even with all of those annoyances, we kept the windows open most of the time. The neighbors would open their windows when the other half was practicing harp or piano. Sound carries quite well here. The mountains form a natural amphitheater. It seems too big to be an amphitheater but you’d be impressed at how small sounds echo up and down the canyon.

That suggests that where I go to live should be in a more temperate zone. Northern Florida almost but not quite fits the bill. I think further north might be a better fit for me personally. I have been very surprised at certain friends reactions when I mention that I’m considering or have considered FL.

Almost universally they’re against FL. It’s very strange. When I remind people that I was born and raised in FL until I was 14, the response is, “well you’re different,”

Different from what, I wonder.

Then I remember the continuous hit jobs the media has done on Florida, from the COVID panic to DeSantis running for President. Absolutely nothing Florida does wins the approval of the media. Although, a whole lot of the people of Florida seem pretty damn happy. 

If the media would stop for a minute, get past their bias, and really look at Florida objectively… Well they’d be ashamed of themselves if they had any shame left.

In the media, Floridians are almost universally lambasted as ignorant redneck doofuses. Everyone in Florida drives monster trucks with confederate flags. Everyone is white and racist. (Most of the white people in Miami came from New York… so New Yorkers are racist by that measure…)

It’s gotten to the point that rather than fight it, Florida is having some kind of “Florida Man” festival where it looks like they’re going to lay claim to the caricature the media have created. Knowing Floridians, they’re going to blow the caricature way out of proportion as a huge middle finger to the rest of the country that loves to badmouth the state. I’d also say that many of the Floridians want everyone in the big cities thinking Florida is dangerous, because it keeps the real shitheads from visiting or God forbid moving to Florida.

Florida and Floridians are not what the media says they are. I personally think that Florida is badmouthed all the time simply because Trump lives there. And wherever Trump is ALLOWED to live, must by definition, be simply awful. There’s a whole lot of really weird shit regarding Trump. I’m still blown away by how much venom is spewed his way and how so many people are willing to look the other way when his rights as a person are taken away. There is a lot that is simply wrong on its face.

None of this is why I’m hesitant to move to Florida.

I want four seasons, and occasional snowfall. I want a little more property than most of the Florida homes for sale have around them. Well, at least in my price range… How is it, if Florida is such a shit hole that the home prices have shot through the roof and indeed the availability of homes in the state is constrained? 

Even northern Florida, might be a little too hot for me to be really comfortable with the windows open. As I said, I like having the windows open. That being said, I might still spend a month in Northern Florida before I make a final decision about where I want to live.

It’s got to pass the Jesse test too. He’s probably going to last about as long as I do. I know I don’t have another move in me. Once I get where I’m going, I’m probably going to be there until I die. Not to be all Egyptian about it, but he & I will likely kick off about the same time.

I was thinking about moving someplace based on the governor, or the state legislature but realized that was only temporary. Governors come and go, legislatures change too. I’ve decided that I’ll choose my next home based on the general population. 

It’s people that vote and make a state a good place or a bad place. The majority of California’s people are bordering on socialist / communists and the state reflects that. The majority of Florida’s people are conservative, constitutionalists, obey the law, ain’t nothing free, capitalists, and the state reflects that. I’m way more comfortable with the latter. Having decided that, it’s a matter of degree. 

Where on the scale between Blue (Communist Leaning) California, and say a super RED state like Florida, Wyoming, Montana, or South Dakota do I want to live?

Were It not for the winters in Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota, (and their house prices,) I’d consider them. Problem is, I just don’t want to do harsh winters. I’m too old to really enjoy them. The snowy winters where I live now are too much. Visiting Wyoming or Montana might be something I’ll plan to do in Spring or Fall.

I don’t know… I’d like to have a destination in mind before I put the house on the market. I think I’ll be spending this Winter, sorting and tossing stuff in preparation for getting out of California.

I’ve gotten to the point where getting rid of stuff doesn’t seem like I’m violating the memories of the other half and our life together. I guess that’s what grieving is about. You have to come to peace with the loss and let the wound heal in its own time. The healing can’t be rushed or forced. You’ll know you’re there when tossing junk your other half just had to have, no longer has an impact on you. When it’s just stuff, you’re nearly there…

I’ve wandered all over the map for a post I never intended to write.

I Promise, I’ll try to do better. But when we move to DST, expect some really wonky posts. 

Time Changes and I do not get along!

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Wow! The other half had a lot of musical scores in digital format.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a filing system for either Paper or Digital scores.

Screenshot 2023 09 30 at 7 29 50 AM

I’ve been trying to collect up all the music (Digital and Paper), and sort it with the intention of making sure that it got to the people that could use it and who would appreciate the effort.

I’m using a 32GB thumb drive now and unlike previous attempts will hopefully not run out of space.

I’ve also been finding a lot of duplications. I suspect that is in part due to the lack of a filing system and in part it might be further evidence that he’d been “off” for a while and was doing a damn fine job of hiding that fact from me.

No, I’m not angry about it. I’m just a little sad. He did his life, his way, as do I. We called “Shotgun” on each other’s journey through life and rode together for a long time. It’s cool, even if I am a little sad about the way things went from time to time.

As an aside, I have no clue how music is supposed to be catalogued, or indexed, or anything else.

I’m just doing what seems “Right” with the music much the same way I’ve done with every other curveball that’s come my way over the past 10 months.

In addition to the actual musical scores, some of which are only identifiable by opening them. (I’m fixing that slowly but surely.) I’ve also run into actual recordings where he was playing and recording into GarageBand either via a MIDI connection or he was using a microphone. Hearing him play has been somewhat jarring because I recognize his style and technique. It’s okay, but I’m still prone to crying over stuff like that, because the memories of him practicing a particular piece come flooding back. 

I’ll be a little sad over not being annoyed and hiding out in the office as he played the same measure over and over again trying to get it just right. In a way it was like RAP with Classical music!

I hate RAP!

As I typed that, I was smiling through misty eyes.

I’m sorting the music as best I can. If something has Hebrew characters in it, then it’s obviously going into the Jewish music folder. If it’s written in Russian It’s probably a fair bet that too is going to be Jewish Music. That is also true of German and Spanish.

I’m so out of my depth!

I’ve been looking for keywords in the scores. If I find anything that is recognizably Hebrew or Yiddish I know where to file it.

Christian music is a little easier because there I only have to scan for “Jesus” or Holy Ghost or Father, Son and Holy Spirt. You don’t find those kinds of references in Jewish Music.

Things start to get dicy when there are no lyrics, only the musical notation. If the title isn’t obvious, then I’m in a bit of trouble. 

If I can sound it out and recognize the roots or the rhythm of the piece  then I’ve got a shot at getting it in the right place. Some music is instantly recognizable as Jewish when you hear it.

I recognize the names of many classical pieces, or at least the composer so those scores go into the Classical Folder.

But wait! There’s more…

The harp music, the organ music, the piano, harpsichord, and even accordion music is all in one big assed digital pile.

For him, this presented no problem. He’d open an arrangement and know exactly what instrument it was for just by looking. Hell, I think sometimes he didn’t care what the score said the instrument was supposed to be. I think he’d just figure it out on the fly. That’s what a classically trained musician can do. It’s a skill built up over a lifetime and it’s amazing to watch in action.

I’ve been trying to sort the Harp and keyboard music into separate folders. Some of the folks that will be looking at this are classically trained musicians, but others aren’t.  Some of the amateur choir members can carry a tune and read music, but I know the other half curated very carefully what he gave to the choir.

It wasn’t about him disrespecting them, it was about not wanting to frustrate them with super busy scores. Sometimes he’d sit down and manually do choir only notation as a new file that he’d print here. Then we’d assemble the choir books if he wanted or needed my help.

I was probably next to useless because I didn’t read music. But I could follow instructions, run the printer, punch holes in pages, and we’d be spending the time together.

I know I could just hand all of the over to “Real” musicians instead of a hack like me. One reason that I don’t is because also mixed in this big pile of musical scores are receipts, and medical evaluations, and all the usual documents that one accumulates. So I have to be the one that filters all of this stuff out. 

Some of the pieces of music where he’s actually playing are in Apple only formats. Not a problem for me… But the Synagogue and Church are Windows based. So I’m letting my super fast computer handle processing the music into something universally playable. That takes time. Not much in the way of computer time, but time listening to the various edits and editions to determine which one is most likely to be the “Final” version that he’d want distributed.

Perhaps I’m doing all of this as much for me, and the other half, as I am for the Synagogue and Church.

It’s tedious, and time consuming. But I’m hoping to construct something that he’d be proud of. 

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So this thought hit me while I was making the bed

I caught a blip from the news that a children’s show has recently added a non-binary character.

For some reason I flashed to my childhood, watching Looney Tunes, and Hannah Barbera cartoons. Nowadays, Looney Tunes is too violent so children must be protected. GI-Joe and Transformers were sponsored by Hasbro.

Sometime in the late 70s or 80s there was parental uproar over children’s cartoons because they were sponsored by folks like General Mills and Post. The cartoons were marketing sugary cereals to children’s every Saturday Morning.

Hasbro nakedly used cartoons to market transformers and GI-Joe toys to boys. Mattel peppered The Bugs Bunny / Roadrunner Hour with Barbie, Malibu Barbie, and a ton of other toy ads.

Generally speaking the Parents, and FCC came to the conclusion that using cartoons to focus marketing to children was probably not a good thing and enacted some controls. Around the same time, Parents became aware of a growing phenomenon called Anime. Typically Anime characters have exaggerated features, particularly the female characters.

Female Anime characters tend to have exaggerated breasts, hips, and often have very caucasian features. They are also scantily clad, or depicted in skin tight outfits where their breasts are barely contained. Anime shows and movies are not for children, they’re for adults or young adults. Teen boys in particular were getting very interested in Anime. If you’re old enough you might remember Heavy Metal… Anime art is much more detailed.

A great example is Ghost in the Shell. There are some really racy images and it makes sense that Teenage boys would have been very interested. Especially prior to the internet.

At the time boys had National Geographic, the Sears Catalog, perhaps they’d sometimes find their dad’s Playboy, or Penthouse magazines and “just read the articles”. Where else was a read blooded American Boy supposed to go to see partially clothed members of the opposite sex?

Concerned parents… Actually known as prudish American women took action with Anime too. OH NOPE! My Son is not going to be a horn dog like his father!!!!

Secretly, some Fathers would rent VHS tapes and share them with their sons. Hyper-Realistic Animation is an amazing art form. I said it… I’m standing by it!

All of this flashed through my head when I heard that a kids show was including a non-binary character.

What I thought was, “I’ll bet a lot of Americans are wishing for the simplicity of just marketing Lucky Charms, Trix, GI-Joes, & Barbies right about now…”

If I were a parent now, I’d have ripped the TV out of the house. I’d have a nice monitor where we’d stream movies or plug in DVD’s and watch things as a family. Our internet would be locked down. (Except for a few dirty sites that I’d vetted for my son(s) to “discover” when they were old enough.) I’d be spending at least 2 or 3 hours a week making sure that inappropriate sites were always locked out even if they changed weekly.

I’d be looking at what sites my kids went to for their school work. I’d be paying attention and if my kids school started teaching all this woke bullshit, I’d be trying to figure out how to do homeschooling.

My children would be able to decide for themselves how their sexuality would play out. They wouldn’t be told by teachers what they were supposed to think or feel about how or with whom they wanted to express their sexuality.

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It’s a clean new morning!

A certain someone woke me as soon as he figured out the rain had stopped.

I have to admire the way the dog resets every day. He makes me smile more than most other things, so I’ll keep him around for now.

For those of you still below the grey cloud cover, here’s a sample of what you have to look forward to, later today.

The morning smells clean and fresh. The dog is beside himself exploring the yard. He’s already pushing for a walk, which he’ll get after I’ve had at least one cup of coffee…

I’m not sure if the trash folks are coming up today or not. I don’t know how crazy things are beyond what I can see.

I never lost power, or was inconvenienced in the least by the storm. I got to stay inside most of the day enjoying a movie or two, the dog cuddled up beside me with the sound of rain on the roof and the wash behind the house roaring away.

It looks like there’s some kind of inspection crew down at the bridge, I can see the lights but not what they’re doing. I guess I need a decent pair of binoculars at the very least.

I’ve been waiting for a pair that were all “techie” range finder, night vision, predator weapon interface. You know, loaded with SciFi shit like you see in the movies. You’d think by now someone would have put something like that together! 😁

I wanted to see if the smiley face would work. Don’t expect me to start communicating in modern hieroglyphics but I wanted to test it as an option.

It doesn’t look like there’s a lot to clean up immediately around the house. I’ll wander out in a bit to do an inspection just to make sure. I don’t believe there’s any damage either so I don’t have to deal with insurance claims or FEMA.

As you may have noticed I’ve posted some video in the past day or two. Yesterday it was because I was bored, and a video shot on my phone was not to my liking. I set about cleaning it up and learned more about editing video. I’ll never be a pro at it but it’s interesting to dabble with.

The reason I shot the video in the first place was to send to my neighbor who is helping out a sick loved one in Palm Springs and was curious about his house and the neighborhood. I suspect that he’s dealing with a number of messes out there which are more severe than what happened here.

Once I’d exhausted my patience with video stuff, I spent the rest of the day answering inquiries from family on the East Coast who had watched too much CNN. From the way they were talking I imagined CNN was saying that the end of days was here and it was starting in California?

Anyway after quieting their concerns and reminding them all that an 8000 Ft mountain stood between me and the storm, they lapsed back to normal anxiety levels. I’m so confident about my mountain I dare a CAT 5 hurricane to hit it directly!

Bring it! Mother Nature.

Seriously, most storms that come in from the South are gutted on the peaks of the mountains. I live in their shadow, the upside is those storms I don’t usually worry about too much, the down side is that in winter it’s dark at my house by 3pm.

The only storms I really worry about are those swirling storms that come in from the North. Those are usually bitterly cold and batter the town for days on end.

Those of you who were impacted by the storm, I hope you fared at least as well as I did. Remember things are still gooey in some places. So pay attention and don’t take any chances with mud or innocent puddles across the roads.

Have a good day

I just found out that part of my little town is cut off due to some roads and bridges being washed out. This doesn’t affect me per se because I don’t need to go anywhere today or probably tomorrow. When I secured the place due to the unknowns of the storm, I secured to stay in place for days… Even a week or two if necessary.

I find that having laid in supplies, having a plan, and not having to go anywhere tends to make me a whole lot calmer about this sort of thing.