Tag: General

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Grooming day!

Oh boy!

Today I get to load up the dog for a trip to the groomer. He’ll be happy I’ll just be tired! The groomer in question likes Jesse and he seems to like her. His grooming appointments are more expensive than mine, and that’s saying something!

Well… if I have a massage As part of my monthly grooming I still have him beat.

I’m not going to know what to do with myself while he’s getting bathed, trimmed, fluffed and made ready for his close up.

Due to distances, this is going to take a huge chunk of the day. 1 hour or so just in transport to and from the appointment. He’ll be indisposed for about 3 hours.

It’s okay, I haven’t been taking him on a monthly basis. Mainly because the cost is prohibitive. I miss being able to take him to local folks who knew him. But the local folks have retired or moved elsewhere and the remaining “Locals” can’t keep an appointment.

The last local person I tried canceled 3 appointments in a row. Jesse and I never met her and I decided that she obviously didn’t want the business. She also was about as expensive as what I’m doing now, going to one of the big box groomers.

Previously, other locals, provided great services at reduced prices because they liked having regular business. We tended to book monthly appointments regular as clockwork. 60.00 for two well behaved dogs versus 80.00 for one.

Candy was the best. She let my retrievers run around, out of the holding cages (on nice days out in her yard,) until after their baths. Then they’d be in the cages for blow drying and out again. Those two retrievers were protective of each other and Candy figured out that working on them was easier if they could hold each other’s paws. They also liked her and she them. My boys knew how to wrap a person around their little fingers.

Jesse is excellent at wrapping people around his fingers, he’s not so good at doing what you’ve asked him to do. He’s getting better about it, every so slowly.

Well it’s time for me to get cleaned up and get this show on the road. I think a nap this afternoon will be in order.

On the plus side, this will mark the second day in a row that I’ve left the neighborhood. That’s a good thing because I’ve gotten to the point that leaving the house is an ordeal. I just hate dealing with people in general.

I like select individuals but the majority of folks… I can’t stand. I didn’t used to have this problem this bad, but isolation during COVID and isolation over the past 7 months has made me really antisocial.

Little excursions seem to help as long as I can avoid asshole drivers. I ran into a gentleman at Costco yesterday that said he’d noticed an increasing rudeness and even had people hit him with their carts as if he wasn’t there, or wasn’t human, or wasn’t worthy of courtesy.

We entered into this conversation right after a lady had run into me for a second time in the same aisle and… well I sort of let her have it.

There are reasons people like me don’t like people in general.

A lot of people have ZERO standards of behavior in public. I can’t educate everyone but I sure as hell don’t have to put up with them.

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Thank goodness!

Okay, things are finally starting to bend to my will!

I know that sounds terrible! Maybe not terrible, just arrogant as hell!

The second car is in good shape, the overheating issue had been addressed.

I cleaned out one of the two dead trucks today and I’m sitting my ass on the couch! I got hotter than hell sorting through all the crap the other half left in his truck. It’s cool outside, but damn! Inside the truck it was hot and with no battery power I couldn’t drop the windows since they’re power.

I’m hoping my truck is in better shape. Although since the other half was driving it until he blew the engine, I have no idea how much crap he left inside.

I found all kinds of interesting things inside his truck. Hymnals for example, that I distinctly remember him being upset about misplacing. I found it amusing, I was laughing as I pulled stuff out. I used to tease him that he had too many places to lose things. I’d get a glower and go hide in the office.

Now I can schedule the dog for his grooming appointment, I can pay the registration on the other halfs car, (Needed a SMOG Certification). This clears the way for me to be able to load and transport the boxes and boxes of music to where they can be sorted. I’m working toward getting rid of the dead trucks and feel like I’m moving forward.

Tomorrow the backflow inspection is happening it’s only 3 weeks late! Another one of those things that you can’t just call and schedule. The folks who do this service, want to schedule a lot of stops at once. I get it, It’s not cost effective to send someone 30 minutes up the hill and then 30 minutes down the hill for one 15 minute appointment. So folks that do this kind of thing want a cluster of inspections in town because it makes the trip worthwhile. Especially now with gas prices what they are, and considering that a lot of these inspection guys are plumbers and therefore driving a truck with a lot an equipment. Coming up the hill costs a bunch of gas.

I’ll be sad to see our old trucks go, yeah they’re non-functional but they’re from a time when we were both younger and healthier. They need to go, they’ve needed to go for years. But there’s a nostalgia associated with them.

As with many of these kinds of things, it feels like I’m letting go of “US”. This is normal. In fact I am letting go of stuff that didn’t add to our relationship or life and now it adds even less.

I’ve sort of concluded that donating the music folios will be a good thing insofar as buying me back a lot of space. If this music was sorted, I might consider putting it up for sale. Some of the items are kind of rare. I’m not qualified to curate it all. The other problem is I don’t even know what he had.

To be honest I’m not sure that he knew what he had. I’ve found a few duplications of music here in the house, he had two storage areas, neither were anything other than “stacks”, it’s no wonder he lost track of what he had versus what he thought had been lost in the fire.

The music and Truck should be taken care of this month. That leaves the stacks of junk stored in the basement. Toss it? Or should I set it up for the Labor Day garage sales???

I’m still thinking about what to do…

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One of those nights…

I’m tired but not able to sleep.

I was sorting some of his music and there’s something about seeing his handwritten notes in books that he played from every week that makes me feel blue.

I’ve been packing up things that I won’t be needing. DVD’s CD’s and their players since all the movies are streamable as is the music. I’ve been considering packing up the ethernet switch and relying on WiFi only. The switch handles all the CAT-6 cable connections throughout the house. Removing it would disable all the wall sockets.

The new computer, and iPad have the latest WiFi radios and provide more than acceptable speeds wirelessly.

The goal is to have all the tech that can or will be shipped boxed. There are a couple of items of tech that I’ll be transporting with me, so that I have them ready to use when I get wherever I’m going.

The same is true of kitchen appliances / utensils / glasses and dishes. I might not be actually taking these things with me, but I don’t have to have them occupying space, especially if I’ve got little need to use them.

I hope to have both the cubbies in the dining room empty by the weekend. It’s hard going through all the materials.

Some of the paperwork is more than 7 years old and once I’ve figured out the date, I’m pretty quick to put stuff on the shred pile. The trouble is that old and new are mixed in a jumble and that jumble isn’t sorted in any way. I’ve been sorting in a gross way. “Banking”, “Utilities”, “Paystubs”, and “Other” if the paperwork passes the initial date check. Doing a subsort of each major category is easier and provides a little crosscheck. For example, all the utilities end up sorted by provider and date.

I see some banker’s boxes in my future where all of this stuff can be filed and properly stored.

This all sounds like it’s a tedious time consuming mess. It is. However it must be done because there are still taxes to be filed and paid.

Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean the fucking government isn’t making your shit someone else’s troubles.

I really do hate the government. State and Federal, they’re parasites of the worst kind.

The dog has gone to bed. I’ve poured myself a second drink. I’ve become very much aware that my writing has suffered over the past year. I was reviewing some of the blog posts I’d written going back a couple of years.

It wasn’t advanced narcissism, I was looking for a piece I’d written a while ago. I haven’t found the piece, but I did notice a distinct difference in my writing. The time at the shithole company in San Diego, plus my concern about the other half, and all the other stresses in my life are visible in my style, choice of words, and even subject matter.

I need to write my way through the darkness. I need to get back to the quick turn of phrase and making my point.

For someone who has hated politics all my life, I’ve dedicated considerable keyboard time to it. I’m honestly not sure what that is about. I’d like to think I have something of interest to say, but I don’t think that’s entirely true.

The more likely truth is that I reached an age where I was able to compare the political system that I grew up understanding and being taught, with the system as it is today. In that comparison, either I’ve discovered significant differences or lost my naïveté.

I’m not sure which, if either is true. I only know that there are serious differences. Those differences have caused a dissonance that I’m having a hard time resolving.

I don’t think of my sudden interest in politics as fear, or white nationalism, or whatever else the SPLC might come up with. I’ve always believed there was a certain low level corruption in the political system and that corruption was held in check by there being more honest people in politics than dishonest ones. But now I’m faced with corruption that I can’t ignore and questions that are not being answered despite investigations and inquiries.

As a citizen, I believe that I deserve answers. Moreover, I deserve to see these bad actors perp walked out of the halls of power and into the halls of prison.

I’ve also come to believe that it’s a very good thing I’m not holding my breath.

I found a printout of a series of messages that the other half had with an artist friend of ours. Time flies! The other half was inviting our friend over to have a three way. I remember the night well and blogged about it too.

This is the first time I’ve seen the messages that led up to the three way. It appears that the other half had absolute faith that I could handle both of them. It was his overselling of my skills that led to me being somewhat annoyed at the other half because there is only so much sexual gymnastic magic I can perform in a night.

Nonetheless, reading the message thread and remembering that night put a smile on my face.

I could use a little human tough right about now, but I’m not into being with complete strangers. I really want to get to know someone before we’re having sex.

It was a really good night!

I suppose in the near term I’ll have to be content with the large selection of X-rated movies. It is extremely unlikely that I’ll find anyone close at hand who would like to develop a friendship prior to getting naked.

It’s time to go to bed.

I hope you’ve had a better night’s sleep than I have.

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Wow! That was more difficult than I thought it would be.

I’ve been thinking about buying a pair of nice bluetooth over the ear headphones.

I’ve got a set of AirPod Pros 2nd Gen and while I like them very much, I don’t like that my ears get annoyed with me if I wear them for more than a couple of hours at a time.

Were it not for that, I’d have them in all the time.

It would be so much easier than listening to the crazy lady screaming about whatever she screams about, or hearing her fella, yelling at the yappy dogs, while grinding away on some piece of metal, driving or “Fixing” a vehicle that’s on it’s last legs.

What he needs to do, is stay out from under the hoods of the various vehicles he’s destroyed (5? I think at last count,) and leave it to a professional. His version of a properly running engine is very different from mine! 3 of 8 cylinders firing, punctuated by 5 consecutive backfires is not proper operation! There’s also the thrilling sound of him running a chain saw at 10 PM. I’m not kidding, I’ll turn the lights off and he’ll start the chainsaw. That motor is also on it’s last legs! One can only hope that when It dies we’ll be spared the restful sounds of him cutting whatever he’s cutting.

Don’t ask…

All I can say is this used to be a quiet neighborhood. This is what happens when you let riff raff move into nice places!

I’ve been in hollers in Tennessee, and Kentucky where folks were dirt poor, and not school educated but they weren’t this kind of white gutter trash.

It’s funny in a way, California can’t even do white trash or rednecks right.

You can see why I might be looking for noise cancelling headphones, that are comfortable in the long term.

There are literally times when I can’t watch TV in my living room due to the noise coming from that white trash. I like having the windows open this time of year, I like the fresh mountain air (even when it is full of pollen).

So I’m faced with, turning up the volume to unbearable levels, closing the windows, not bothering to try to live my life and watch a movie or TV show in my house, or a set of headphones.

I know there are those of you saying, “Why don’t you call the police?”

Hahahahahaha! Where the hell have you people been living? Police? Helpful? Responding to a noise complaint? The police can’t even arrest and hold her for more than 8 hours after she assaults someone. Which she’s done 3 more times since she assaulted me last year.

BTW, if I lived in one of those “Fly Over” redneck places… Let’s just say this whole thing wouldn’t be a problem. Folks go missing in hollers all the time…

I digress, I was considering the Apple AirPods Max. They’re expensive! But I can also buy them from Costco and save $70. I saved $50 on my AirPod Pros at Costco. My concern there is that the Max is generation one and come fall Apple may be releasing a replacement version.

This led me down a rabbit hole of reviews and firmware versions for both the AirPod Max and my AirPod Pros. That’s when I discovered something interesting and strange. I did a search for “Latest AirPod Pro Gen 2 Firmware” then I got articles from last year through this year. I told the browser to limit the results to only this year. You’d think that would narrow your search but oddly it didn’t by much.

I was still seeing articles listing last years firmware as current and it was clear from context, the article had been written last year but the date was today’s date. I looked at several similar articles thinking perhaps there was a current update but there wasn’t.

There was however a shit ton (Technical Term) of ads.

Then it dawned on me, these outdated articles are monkeying with the dates to appear current so they can serve these shitty ads.

This reduces the usefulness of the internet and honestly makes me discount the validity or accuracy of publications MacWorld and 9 to 5 Mac I’m looking right at you!

It occurs to me that because of folks doing stuff like this to keep serving the same 5 ads over and over again, overall the internet is becoming less useful all the time. If the filtering doesn’t work, then the user is faced with a wave of outdated and current information with no ability to determine what is real, and what is useless.

Imagine writing an article about Trump when he was President, packing that article with shitty ads, then updating the date.

A query like “Who is President of the United States” could return Trump, Biden, Obama and Bush. How would someone know? If they had to turn on the TV to figure out who the president is, then the internet would be kind of useless.

All this ad crap and targeted marketing was a bad idea to begin with, and it’s only gotten worse.

I come again to a question I’ve asked myself a lot over the past few years.

“Is the internet’s usefulness eclipsed by having to filter through all the crap to get valid information?”

I’m really wondering. I guess I’ll know when I see an article saying, “Australian farmers pig has piglets with wings, Farmer Stunned!” I’d bet that at least 25% of folks on the internet would read the article, and a lot of them would believe it.

I fell for one the other night, some bullshit about a mystery in some dudes backyard. It was written like some reality show script. A paragraph that said essentially nothing, then a commercial, and another paragraph then commercial. It went on and on, but it was putting ads in front of everyone that was curious late at night.

Spoiler Alert: The guy bought a house built in the late 50s, the “Mystery” was that someone who owned the house had put in a fallout shelter. Over time, other owners had added soil and landscaping that buried the hatch. Then the shelter had gotten forgotten about except as a dim rumor. The guy found the original blueprints at the county records office and decided to investigate. The shelter was in pretty good shape so the guy renovated the space. It was pretty cool. The article could have covered everything in maybe 4 well written paragraphs with photos. Instead they took almost 100 paragraphs all of which were poorly written.

I finally went to Apple for the answer. I’d not gone to them in the first place because often asking a simple question in Apple’s support section, does not provide a single Byte of data. You’re still going to have to sort through a ton data that’s not relevant.

By the way, as of 6/28/2023 the current AirPod Pro Gen 2 firmware is 5E135.

I still haven’t decided if I’m going to drop the hammer on headphones…

This is how I lose entire days…

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Something I never thought I’d say…

I suppose there are a lot of those things.

In this particular case, it’s I’m happy with how long my computer battery lasts. I’m also somewhat impressed with the iPad battery too.

The computer is insane. I’ll use the thing for days. I’ll be surprised when I get a low battery warning and then think, “Oh Yeah, it’s been a while!” This is very different from the older machines I’ve had. I lived by their power monitors and always carried spare batteries or adapters.

I’m still working on settings on the iPad to minimize its power consumption. My Computer and iPad both use the M2 chip but the iPad is more in line with a day or day and a half of use. I think that’s because there are background applications that wake up or are running on the iPad that aren’t as “busy” on the computer.

I believe I can probably trim more of the iPad background applications out of the background and realize more power savings.

The point is, when I started using laptop computers years ago, a 2 hour battery life was considered good. Now I’m talking about 2 day battery life between charges. I’m using the machine as I normally would, I’m typing blogs, surfing the net, working on stories, (although not fast enough there,) attending video conferences or watching lectures. Through it all, the computer doesn’t seem to care or get winded. I don’t think I’ve heard the fans come on, ever.

For the first time I’ll leave the house with my machines in my brief case and leave the chargers behind.

I suppose this is on my mind because today the computer asked for a bit of power. I plugged it in, and it said okay I’m charging to 80% quickly. (That would have actually gotten me through my typical day with ease.) The computer then switched over to a holding pattern at 80% and will finish charging by about 1:30PM.

This means that the machine has figured out my general habits and is using the charging feature Apple designed to extend battery life. It’s cool. I can override it if I want, or need to, but why? I’d rather have a battery that’s healthy in two or three years (like my iPhone 12 Pro) than force the issue. Besides, I’m using the big monitor in the office. I like this monitor a lot but I like working with the computer on the back deck more.

For the past 24 hours the wind has been kicking up to crazy gusty levels. I don’t feel like sitting out on the deck in all the blowing dust and pollen. Even though the sun is shining and the temps are nice.

It’s been all I could do to keep my sinuses open and the poor dog literally snorted a patch of pollen he thought was a food wrapper (I think). He’s been sneezing 5 or 6 times at a go for the past two days. I laugh at him… Then he saunters down the hall trying to look dignified, until another sneezing fit hits and he sneezes himself into a wall or something. My continuing to laugh gets me a dirty look and he retires to his “Room” where he can be alerted about food but doesn’t have to look at me.

All of which is to say that the amount of pollen in the air is so high that getting it into a keyboard would not be such a good thing. So I don’t need to be sitting outside for my sake, the keyboard’s sake, or the dog’s sake. All of us are quite comfortable inside.

I’ve got the leeward side of the house open for the fresh air but every once in a while the wind will shift just for a minute or two and blow a new batch of yellow joy into the house.

I was originally going to use a photo of my hand but when I looked at the photo I realized that you could easily see all of my fingerprints. Probably not a great idea to broadcast that kind of biometric information across the internet! With a little work I could convert the image into usable prints, so you get the swiffer. If the FBI ever needed non carbon fingerprint dust, I can recommend pine pollen.

I hope you all have a nice Monday. I’m hitting the sinus spray again!