Writing

Dec 11, 2024 ∞

Delight - Get You Some



It sounds a little frumpy to declare one's self to be delighted. It's the type of word your grandmother would use, or maybe someone else not quite as cool as they ought to be. Personally, I think that is hogwash. I think delight is an outstanding word. You know what is better than the word? The feeling of being delighted, that's what. Let's define it.

Delight - A feeling of great pleasure and satisfaction: the little girls squealed with delight

I don't know about you, but I'm ready to have something to squeal at. Bring it on!

Today, what delighted me was the release of an update to my computer that featured an app that can take pictures of my grandkids and turn them into cute-ass princesses and cowboys. I've been waiting to use this app ever since it was announced. I updated my Mac immediately and started making pictures and sending them to my kids, my wife, and my grandkids. I was delighted. I had great feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. A lot of grumpy, stick up their ass types do not like this new feature because it uses AI, but there have been similar apps around for ages. It's a neat parlor trick. It makes kids and old men happy and if you don't like it, I feel sorry for you.

I am also delighted to get off work every single day. I value my time in the evenings to be with Wonder Woman, to eat whatever I want for supper and to engage in my hobby - writing this blog. At work, I have to do stuff I don't always like doing, such as installing Windows or helping ungrateful people who think it is my fault they forgot their damn password again. I'm at the point where after many, many years of suiting up and showing up, doing eight hours for the man no longer sparks joy. Ever.

Climbing into bed at the end of the day is another wonderful event. I have a good bed with an expensive mattress. My pillows won a tournament for the privilege of serving me. I have a great iPad I bought just to read every night for 15–30 minutes before I go to sleep. Through the miracle of modern technology, I have a silent machine that helps me breath all night long without interruption, something I am unable to do by myself. It allows me to sleep so soundly that I do not have to get up and pee every 90 minutes like I used to. That is a delight, I don't care what anyone says. I am able to climb out of bed in the morning to make my way to the coffee pot feeling rested and ready to start the day.

I am on the lookout for opportunities to be delighted throughout the day. My phone is a delight machine if I have ever seen one. It is capable of producing music that not only makes me happy today, it's been making me happy since childhood. Every time I hear Paul McCartney sing “Hear Comes the Sun” or Bruce Springsteen and the boys play “Cadillac Ranch”, I am delighted. When I take a quick glance at a text message from my profane daughter complaining about something spectacularly fucked-up, I am delighted that she is so good at expressing herself and that she chooses to share it with me. I will not lie, I have notifications turned on and that sweet stream of dopamine that I get when one of my social media posts resonates with people — my friend, it brings me great pleasure and satisfaction.

Wherever you are right now, whatever you are doing, start thinking about finding something delightful before you go to bed. Call your Mom, buy a Snickers bar, read an article from The Onion, howl at the moon. Do something to find some pleasure in this world that seems designed to drag us down and keep us at the bottom. Don't let the bastards win.

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Dec 11, 2024 ∞

Race and Music



I'm not a music historian, nor have I taken any classes on theory or appreciation. I'm just a reasonably well-read layman who knows that for over a century, white people have had some wacky ideas about race and music. I's been going on since the Jazz age. If you play hip-hop around most white boomers, they freak out on a pretty regular basis. If it's not the language, it's some other criticism, usually centered around rap, and it's fellow travelers not being “regular” or “American” music. These are the same boomers who all listened to Motown when they were in school and came of age watching Elvis Presley get away with movements only a white boy could get away with.

Today there are regular controversies over institutionalized racism in country music, with the CMA ignoring the immense popularity of Beyonce's country album, Cowboy Carter. Then there was the ridiculous and unnecessary inclusion of Billy Ray Cyrus on Old Town Road by Lil Nas X, who being both black and gay was as big an affront to Nashville as there could be for someone who made a damn fine song.

Fortunately for me, I was born 52 day into 1965. Thus, I am firmly in Generation X and I feel no irony in my appreciation of Public Enemy and NWA from the heady days of the late nineties. In fact, I am just the right age to have enjoyed Rapper's Delight by the Sugar Hill Gang when it was being played on the radio.

If you are a hip hop loving boomer, don't be offended. I am happy there are outliers like you.

Debates Around Rap Music’s Validity Rooted in Racism – The Oberlin Review

The Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight (Official Video) - YouTube

Black artistry is woven into the fabric of country music. It belongs to everyone | Music | The Guardian

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Dec 10, 2024 ∞

Bits and Pieces



I'm feeling a little scattered today. Yesterday was traumatic and today had some rebound from that. Luckily, I had a project to work on this afternoon that kept me from stewing in my own juices. It was nothing complicated, just upgrading some old laptops to provide for a student led research project in our athletics department. I had to swap out some parts and install Windows for the millionth time in my life (x4). I'm glad someone can make use of these devices. It makes me sad when we recycle usable equipment. I'm always contemplating building my own home lab, but it would be a time suck that wouldn't go over well with Wonder Woman.
Here are a few updates

Tech

Like plenty of other people, I am waiting for the updates from Apple to iOS and macOS with promised new AI features. The image playground looks like something I will play with for about 30 minutes and then never use again, but I want my 30 minutes. I've made use of the writing tools Apple included in the last update. I'm still waiting for them to be added to my writing app of choice, Obsidian so that I don't have to copy and paste text in other places to use the service, though.

Travel

Our December plans include a Christmas trip to two spots on the North Carolina coast where our parts of our family live. We'll also make our way down Interstate 40 to the Piedmont area of NC, where one of our daughters lives. The big trip will be a three-day getaway to Savannah, GA. Wonder Woman was initially going to run a marathon down there but decided to do the one in Miami scheduled for February instead. On this trip, we are just going to do typical tourist stuff, including a tour of the cemetery that was on the cover of the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, one of my all-time favorites. 

Work

My boss promised to speak to the supervisor of the crazy woman who caused me so much grief yesterday. He tried to talk me into being one of those people who lets everything roll off their back. His background is in medical IT, and he had many stories about abusive doctors. I just told him that we aren't in the high stakes world of saving lives. We are a staid liberal arts school in the South where people are supposed to be nice. I spent my late teens and twenties in the Infantry and working in a prison. I got a lifetime of abuse between those two places, and I don't have room in my psyche for anymore.

Family

My dad let us all know that he's hired someone to help him and my stepmother. His health is declining with a recent stroke, auto accident and surgery, while he is also serving as the sole caregiver for his wife who has advanced Alzheimer's. Having someone in the house to do some of the chores and give him a break from the constant need to be on alert is going to make things better for both of them. I live closer to him than any of my siblings, but I still don't get over as much as I'd like.

Indie Web

Even though I missed a day of posting to one of my blogs a couple of weeks ago, I haven't been discouraged by having to start a new streak. I look forward to writing every day, to finding an app to review and deciding what links to share. I wrote a piece for the December Indie Web Carnival. Furthermore, I have been trying to be active on both Mastodon and Bluesky with some success. Mastodon still feels like home, but the larger Bluesky community has been good for getting more news on Apple tech and Obsidian resources.

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Dec 10, 2024 ∞

How to Do the Hard Stuff



My favorite time to do most almost anything is "not right now." I am a world class procrastinator by nature. In case you are wondering, yes, that can be a serious impediment to personal and professional goals, so I've learned a few tricks over the years. None of them are really surprising, but they can and do make life easier when i use them.

1. Say yes to less stuff. I am a people pleaser by nature and take pride in being helpful, but that can get you put in the middle of the 20% of people in any group who do 80% of the work. That's cool if you enjoy the work, not so much if it is a burden.
2. Knock out the hard stuff first. More often than not, the pain for procrastinators is in the dread of having to do things they don't want to do rather than in actually doing them.
3. Have hard hobbies - whether it's riding a bike for 100 miles at a stretch, dead lifting and squatting 400 lbs. or hiking the Appalachian Trail, I've done enough hard things that I can't lie to myself when faced with lesser tasks.
4. If you fear doing something, if that is the hard bit, having someone to talk it through with is a life saver. I'd rather relax my ego some and confess trepidation than pretend to be stoic when I'm scared.

How to Convince Yourself to Do Hard Things

10 Ways To Train Your Brain To Do Hard Things

How to Do Hard Things — JOHN MASHNI

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Dec 9, 2024 ∞

Talking Myself off the Ledge



If one of my friends came to me upset because they had been treated disrespectfully by someone at work, I'd ask them not to let themselves be defined by some random rude person. The world is full of assholes and unfortunately, we all encounter them from time to time. I'd let my friend talk it out and vent because that can help people begin to deescalate a bit. I'd help them come up with the best way to handle the situation. Was the asshole a peer, a supervisor, or a customer? Most of the time, the best advice will be to just go on living your life, doing your job and not to give the offender the satisfaction of knowing that they got to you. I would feel some compassion and gladly help them work through it because that's what friends are for.

I don't do so well when I have to give myself the same treatment. For the second time this year, I got absolutely blindsided by someone at work today. I was setting up a workstation for a chemistry professor when the admin for his department came in and announced "Make sure you check everything before he leaves because when they set up my stuff, nothing worked for two weeks." I looked at her dumbfounded.WTF? I set her up when she was hired and never got a single ticket from her afterwords. I've deployed workstations to hundreds of people on the campus and have never gotten that kind of feedback. I was embarrassed and knew better than to engage in front of the professor. I later emailed the admin and found out that part of her original issue was with her telephone, which isn't something IT handles. She doubled down on the rest of her story, though, claiming I'd left her with a laptop that couldn't access the network or print. That would be pretty difficult because part of deploying a computer is printing a page from a network printer that the user has to sign. 

Wonder Woman, who actually has an important, high-powered job at the same university, unlike my low-pressure, just doing it to pass the time job, did her best to talk me off the ledge. She swears that I am a well-loved and valued person who has a reputation for being super-helpful and nice. That's absolutely what I strive to do. I swear I'm not one of those mean IT guys that fusses at people. Nor am I a slacker. I'd never want to embarrass my wife or myself like that. I genuinely like helping people out with computer issues. I've been doing this for 30 years. During my career in public K-12 education, people were more professional and respectful than what I have encountered in higher ed.

I wrote an angry email that I didn't send. As the hours pass, I am less and less upset, but I am still bothered. I know I am not responsible for this person's lack of social skills. I don't question my ability to do something as simple as issue a workstation to a new employee. I don't know what it will take for me to feel whole after this. I plan to talk to my boss tomorrow to ask him to have a word with this lady's boss. I fear that my boss, who is very much a "don't make waves" type, will opt for ignoring it, and I don't know how to handle that. I'm not working these days for the dough as much as I am to have something to get me out of the house and keep me busy. If it starts feeling like a net negative, I can just head right back into retirement.

Anyway, thanks for listening/reading as I work this out in my own head.

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Dec 9, 2024 ∞

Cheap Recipes for Hard Times (or Nostalgia)



I grew up in a family of five. I've never been hungry a day in my life but as a kid, we weren't eating much steak and shrimp, if you catch my drift. My mom employed tricks like using bread to stretch hamburger and making her own waffles instead of buying the ready-made kind. It was the 70s and grocery stores were not the multi-choice bonanzas they are today. It was also a time before refrigerated cargo-containers, so we didn't have the year round access to all the fresh produce you could ever want.

The biggest luxury of having a good income to me isn't the opportunity to travel or to buy whatever i want in the technology arena, it's being able to go to the grocery store and put whatever I want into my cart. When I was finally able to do that, I felt like I'd arrived. Plenty of the meals I enjoyed in my poorer days are still among my favorites.

These include:

• Chicken and rice
• Chili
• Spaghetti
• Homemade tacos
• Vegetable soup
• Tuna casserole
• Meatloaf
• Hot dogs and beans
• Pinto beans and cornbread

I enjoy fancy meals too, but these staple dishes have gotten me through some hard times. Here are a few websites with low cost recipes for anyone, not just the budget conscious.

Cheap Family Meals Under $10 - Julia Pacheco

Recipes under $10 | Budget Bytes

Ten buck dinners! – Well balanced and delicious meals for 2. $10 or less!

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Dec 8, 2024 ∞

I updated my /now page - What I’m reading (The Hot Zone) and watching (Silo), plus links to this week’s blog posts, the week’s best purchase, (Phone case) and the links I added to my personal bookmarks.



Dec 8, 2024 ∞

The Modern Miracles



I just returned from the grocery store. On the way home, I thought how different the experience is now compared to what it was like going with my mother back in the 70s. Back then, we had dramatically fewer choices than we have today. There were two kinds of apples back in the day, red apples and yellow apples. Today, there are a dozen or more to choose from. I like watermelon. Check that. I love watermelon. I could eat it every day. Thanks to the miracle of refrigerated shipping containers. In 2024, I can eat it every day. I no longer have to wait for the middle of summer to get here before I can enjoy my favorite treat.

Did you ever make a special trip to someone's house because they owned a record that you didn't have, and you just wanted to listen to a song from it? Kids these days don't have that experience. They can listen to practically any song ever recorded whenever they want to through the miracle of Spotify and Apple Music. If your budget has room for it, you can go from hearing about a book for the first time to reading it in the span of a couple of minutes, thanks to the availability of downloads from the major publishers. The same goes for movies and TV shows. We don't even mention instant gratification anymore because all gratification comes immediately, it seems.

My grandmother lived most of her life in a square mile patch in a rural community in southeastern North Carolina. She never left the country, and she rarely left the state. I have grandchildren still in school who have visited Europe more times than I have. My son, who is single and has a good job, often travels to cities across the country on the weekends just to take in art museums and experience new cities.  I remember going on a field trip in the sixth grade from the small town I lived in to the state fair in Raleigh. One of my classmates was terrified as the bus crossed the bridge over the Cape Fear River. That bridge was only two miles from her home, and she had never been across it before. In so many ways, the world is much smaller today than it was in the past.

Brilliant people have designed systems to make my personal information available wherever I go. From my work computer to my phone to my laptop at home, I can work on the same document and look at the same pictures with little to no effort. 

I can clearly remember the first time I retrieved a local weather report from a computer. When I was growing up, you could listen to the radio at a certain time of day or, better yet, wait for the six o'clock news to get a weather report. The idea that I could get one whenever I wanted to just by typing on a keyboard was miraculous, and it impressed me to no end. Even though the modern internet seems designed more to take money out of my wallet than for any other purpose, it still serves as an endless source of fascinating information available whenever I want it. Brilliant people have designed systems to make my personal information available wherever I go. From my work computer to my phone to my laptop at home, I can work on the same document and look at the same pictures with little to no effort.

Like most people, I take all of this for granted and seldom take the time to consider what a true miracle it is and how rapidly it has all evolved. I even get irritated when my mind can conceive of an idea that no one has invented yet. Actually, that rarely happens. People seem to come up with ideas and make them realities faster than I can master the skills to take advantage of them.

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Dec 8, 2024 ∞

Where to Find Discounted Software



I've shared plenty of places to get free software over the past few months. I use plenty of it. Many people say that when software is free, you are paying with your data. That isn't always true. There are plenty of independent developers making FOSS tools that aren't data collectors, but there are also popular programs that collect as much as they can get away with. Take the time to read the privacy policy from Threads, the Meta microblogging platform. Sometimes, you just can't find certain features in free software, and you have to rely on a paid product. No one likes to pay full price, so here are a few places to get name - brand software titles at a discount.

Student App Centre

Student App Centre is a paid, but cheap service that provides discounts on more than 200 well-known software titles to anyone with an education affiliation who can verify it via email or providing documentation. I'm nether a student, nor a member of the faculty, but I am employed by a university and that qualifies me. Some of their popular titles are Downie, Better Display, Little Snitch, Al Dente, Cleanshot X and Parallels. A membership is $21.40.

Bundle Hunt

Bundle Hunt is a website that periodically offers 40–50 titles at the time for very steep discounts. I have purchased dozens of programs from them over the years. They email you download links and serial numbers for your purchases, but they also have an online database for you to reference. I recently re-downloaded an app I bought nine years ago. Some of the current titles they have on sale are Mountain Duck, MacPilot, MonsterWriter and Smultron.

App Sumo

App Sumo specializes in business software, although they sometimes have consumer titles and training discounts available. Their titles include apps for SEO, static website creation, CRMs, email marketing and lead generation among many others.

Setapp

Setapp is a $9.99 service that lets you download, install and use over 250 quality Mac apps. I currently have over 40 of their apps downloaded. They offer some of the most highly rated programs in the Mac ecosystem, including Bartender, Default Folder X, CleanShot X, CleanMyMac, Dropzone, Downie, Permute, Houdah Spot, Mind Node, Pathfinder, Soulver, Ulysses and MarsEdit. I can't recommend them highly enough.

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Dec 7, 2024 ∞

Holiday Season Life



I've worked in education since the 90s. December is one of my favorite months, particularly now that I am in higher ed. Our final exams were last week and the students are gone until the middle of January. The only ones left on campus are our contingent of international students on Davis scholarships, most of whom cannot afford to fly back to their country of origin for the holidays. In the IT department, the first part of the month is reserved for projects we can't do while school is in session. This year we are replacing wireless access points in a couple of buildings, which involves much climbing of ladders and talking on radios to make sure the new devices come online.

On the personal side, even though we are not religious, Wonder Woman and I still have a tree and decorations inside the house. My only contribution to that happening is carrying the boxes of supplies from under the house into the living room and then getting out of the way. She gets everything put up efficiently and quickly because that's the way she moves through life. She gets things accomplished while I am still deciding how to get started. Today I worked on a couple of my own projects while she did her thing while Christmas music filled our living room.

We, and by we, once again I mean she, buys all the Christmas gifts online. We are not the type of people to go bargain hunting in crowded stores with crowded parking lots. For a couple of weeks at the beginning of the month, we come home to what we call "papages," a word coined by our grandson for the boxes the man in the brown truck leaves on your porch. Then, in one marathon session, she wraps them all and puts them under the tree. My part is staying out of the way.

I enjoy some special foods during the season. I am partial to Clementines, the small, easy to peel tangerines and lots of salty country ham and southern style biscuits. Although I love the taste of eggnog, I avoid it because it reminds me too much of my drinking days, when I used to have it with bourbon at Christmas. My sobriety date is December 28, so the last days of my drinking career sadly happened during Christmas of 2008.

Our travel during the holidays is pre-determined and has changed little over the course of our marriage. On Christmas Eve, we gather at my in-laws, who live near the coast. They are of Italian heritage, so the big meal is lasagna. After we eat and exchange gifts that evening, Wonder Woman and I will drive another couple of hours up the coast to my mother's. She is a widow and without us would be alone. We will spend the night with her and visit some in the morning before making the drive across the state to my daughter's house.

We often take a getaway trip during the holidays, usually to the mountains. This fall, our favorite mountain towns were all extensively damaged by the flooding resulting from Hurricane Helene. The town of Asheville just started pumping potable water two weeks ago. As a result, this year we are traveling down to Savannah, Georgia to enjoy its delights. We thought about taking the train, but our recent Amtrak experiences have not been positive, so we are going to drive.
Whatever your December plans happen to be, I hope you get some time off and an opportunity to relax and to see your family if that brings you joy.

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Dec 7, 2024 ∞

Default Apps for 2024



A year ago, I was just getting back into the tech scene after not paying close attention for a couple of years. As I was updating and cleaning up my RSS feeds, I saw many people talking about their default apps as a result of an episode of the podcast Hemispheric Views.. I learned about a lot of great software that I'd missed out on during my hiatus. I wanted to get in on the fun as well, so I started a blog for that express purpose, and the rest is history.

A full 12 months have passed, and some apps have been replaced or discarded over time. Here is my current list. Apps with a ⭐ are new choices since last year.

• 📨 Mail Client:⭐ Kiwi for Gmail/ Work Outlook via Office365
• 📮 Mail Server: Gmail
• 📝 Notes: Obsidian and ⭐Scratchpad
• ✅ To-do: Things3
• 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: ProCamera
• 🟦 Photo Management: Photos.app
• 📆 Calendar: Fantastical legacy features, not paid
• 📁 Cloud File Storage: Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox
• 📖 RSS: Inoreader
• 🙎🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Cardhop
• 🌐 Browser: Vivaldi on macOS and iOS
• 💬 Chat: Messages.app, ⭐ Discord, ⭐ Caprine for Facebook Messenger
• 🔖 Bookmarks: Raindrop.io
• 📑 Read It Later: ⭐ Pocket
• 📜 Word Processing: Obsidian and Drafts
• 📈 Spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel at work, Google Sheets at home
• 📊 Presentations: nope
• 🛒 Shopping Lists: Anylist, a great app!
• 💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance: Monarch on Mac and iOS
• 📰 News: Google News, ⭐ProPublica, ⭐DemocracyNow!
• 🎵 Music: Apple Music
• 🎤 Podcasts: Overcast
• 🔐 Password Management: ⭐Apple Passwords
• 🐘 Mastodon:Ivory, social.lol, 500.social
• 🦋 Bluesky: ⭐ Skeets, ⭐Deck.blue
• 🚀 Launcher: Raycast
• 🎞️ Media Tracking: Trakt via Watcht, Sequel
• 💻 Screenshot Tool: Cleanshot X
• ✍🏻 Blogging: Micro.blog, OMG.LOL, Scribbles, BearBlog
• 🔗 Websites: Amerpie, Living Out Loud, AppAddict, Linkage
• ⚙️ Automation: Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Popclip, Better Touch Tool
  
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Dec 6, 2024 ∞

Nope

A list of situations and questions that deserve a negative reaction:



I decided it was time to expand my /nope page so that I could get all the Bah Humbug! Out of system before we get any deeper into the holiday season.

• No, Mr. Paywall, I do not have to pay to read. I haz skillz.
• Pay TV with commercials is an oxymoron
• I don't want to upsize, super-size or biggie size. Bruh, have you seen my waist?
• Person at my door, I don't want to buy magazines, home security or anything else
• I want gas, not a carwash for my rusted out 2005 Camry
• How about you change your password, huh?
• I don't want to talk to the pharmacist. I just want my pills.
• I never want a $12 desert
• Don't want to talk about Jesus or any other Republican candidate
• Why didn't you apply those updates to macOS last night like you said you were?
• I have enough Facebook friends
• Read a EULA, are you screwing with me?
• Try to put decaf in this cup. I dare you.
• Nobody wants to see your Obsidian graph
• Being told to "like and subscribe"
• Unless I ask, don't try to drown me with affiliate links
• Not debating you on anything unless I like you
• Dear Dr.'s office receptionist - I will write my information one time on one form
• New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN
• Centrist Democrats
• Salvation Army
• Any medication suggested by an insurance company instead of a doctor
• To spammers - every part of my bodies is the size I want it to be
• Nickleback
• Volunteering for anything at work. People get paid to manage, so manage.
• "Live and let live" with fascists
• Not following back any Only Fans ladies, no matter how nice they are
• Windows 11, Android, Bubonic Plague
• Using SEO on my non-monetized blog
  
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Dec 6, 2024 ∞

A Collection of Mastodon Tools



I'm maintaining a growing collection of links to various Mastodon resources. You can bookmark this page or subscribe to the collection via RSS.

With these tools, you can do things like:

• View RSS feeds as Mastodon links using RSS Parrot
• Find Accounts popular with your friends follow that you aren't following with Followgraph
• Use the Mastodon web client, Phanpy
• Get all your Fediverse questions answered at Fedi.tips
• Get stats on your account at Mastometrics
• Get stats on the entire fediverse at Fedi.db
• Learn how to bridge you mastodon account with Bluesky
• Learn to use Mastodon search
• See other collections of mastodon tools
• See meta posts on the Fediverse from the Fediverse
• Find cool accounts and topics to follow on Fedi.directory
• Find tending topics
• Explore your Fediverse connection by servers, follows and followers
• Use the web Mastodon client, Elk
• Use the wen Mastodon client, Statuzer
• Schedule your Mastodon posts with Fedica




Dec 5, 2024 ∞

Checking In, How Are You Holding Up?



It's early December. The sun is setting about as early as it ever does. I don't know about you, but it's very nearly dark by the time I get home from work. It's been about a month since an election that shocked and saddened many people. Politically, things are happening exactly like we knew they would when Trump won. The felon is nominating other criminals for jobs. So far, he's selected over a dozen current and former staffers from Fox News for government positions. There are less than 20 shopping days until Christmas, if you're into that. Hopefully, you aren't an employee of UPS or FedEx because December has to be the hell month of all hell months for those folks. One more year and we will be halfway through the 2020s. How in the hell is that even possible?

The people reading this are an eclectic bunch. One big group is my family. We are loyal, and also we like to know what's going on with each other. There are the folks I know in real life who see these links on social media and stop in from time to time. Then there are my Internet friends, many of them bloggers themselves. We have a sort of mutual support group where we read each other's blogs. Finally, there are a bunch of Internet strangers who know me through one of my many passions, but most likely through my witty political commentary or through my many posts about all things technical on the Mac side of the house.

If you are reading this, and we are strangers, feel free to introduce yourself. I take pride in answering every email I get. I follow most folks back on social media, too. Likewise, I may not always have the best in-person social skills, but I'm generally pretty nice on the Internet. I want to make sure that folks have someone to talk to during what are really some frightening times, and for many lonely ones to boot.

Please let me know how you are holding up after the election. Are you scared? I am. Are you mad? I am that too. Do you like the holiday season, or is it stressful for you? I'm on the side that likes it. I get a good long break from work. I like my family, and I am happy to spend extra time with them during the holidays. Even though Wonder Woman and I have a whole pile of kids and grandkids, we can afford to remember them all. It wasn't always like that. If you struggle with that part of the equation, I will understand.

Do you have any plans for the new year, any resolutions you are thinking about making? I want to be able to go on longer walks again myself. I'm hoping to take a fun trip with Wonder Woman in 2025, and I don't want to have to stay behind while she goes for runs or climbs mountains, not that I will be doing either of those things, but I would like to have some leisurely lakeside strolls. Not only that, but I am also contemplating retiring for good. I like the financial freedom working my post-career job brings, but there is more to give life meaning than one's occupation.
The universe is neutral. It doesn't hate you, but it certainly doesn't love you. The Internet can be a frightening morass of noise at times. There are people trying to cut through that. Personal independent bloggers offer little pieces of themselves all over the place. Some of them are quite funny. Others are strident but will give you real food for thought. If you take time to investigate this little slice of the online world, you're almost guaranteed to find someone who resonates with you. If you can't, please let me know and I will offer you some suggestions.

It's tempting sometimes to create an online persona, but it isn't worth the effort. Just be you. You have value, and you're special because you are unique. Don't try to model yourself on some plastic influencer. Live your life and share the parts you feel comfortable sharing. Start a blog. Get a pen pal. Find people who are interested in the things you like. We are all out here looking for one another. Get found. Don't forget to check in once in a while.

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Dec 5, 2024 ∞

Sandwich Origin Stories



During my time as a long distance hiker, I spent a lot of time fantasizing about food. I was constantly hungry, desperately trying to take in more calories than I was using making my way north through the Appalachian Mountains. More often than not, my go to order when I was lucky enough to find a diner or a deli while passing through the small mountain trail towns was the humble hamburger. There was a place in Hot Springs, NC that had a burger called the Hiker Special weighing in at 12 oz of ground beef. I ate two of them.

I still enjoy hamburgers and other sandwiches of all kinds. My favorite fast food-ish restaurant is Jersey Mike's Sub Shop where i get the #13 Italian fixed the traditional way plus banana peppers. They have gluten free bread for Wonder Woman who sticks with the lower calorie turkey and provolone.

Other than liverwurst, I've never met a sandwich I didn't like. They are best with good fresh bread and the toppings piled on, but I've eaten many, many plain bologna and cheese sandwiches on loaf bread in my day.

Here's the fascinating story behind some of the most popular sandwiches in America.

The History of the Hamburger

Who Really Invented the Reuben? | Saveur

Cuban Sandwich: The Complete History and Guide

The History of the Grilled Cheese | The Committed Pig | NJ

The Fried Bologna Sandwich Is A Southern Classic

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Dec 4, 2024 ∞

What Passes for Justice



In September 1991, I was working first shift at the medium-sized prison that had employed me for the previous five years. My co-workers were a mixed group of white folks, African Americans, Native Americans and one officer from Puerto Rico. Most of us had served in the military. Almost none of us had any college. Our spouses worked in various places: the few remaining textile mills, a Converse shoe plant and various chicken and turkey processing facilities, including Imperial Foods, located in Hamlet, NC, about 30 miles away. We'd finished the inmates' breakfast meal and were in the process of getting the prison through its daily cleaning when the switchboard starting putting through calls to the officers wive's who worked at Imperial. Something bad had happened, a fire. Over 100 firefighters had been called in, and the news was grim. There were many, many people on route to the hospital, many missing and the first bodies were being brought out. We had to call in people from second shift to come in early, so the worried husbands could get to the site of the fire.

During the next few days, the survivors began to tell the story of the rapidly spreading fire that was fueled by an ad hoc repair to a hydraulic line that burst right next to a sizzling hot fryer for cooking chicken. Few people knew that although the plant had two previous fires within the last decade, it had never had a state safety inspection. As the workers fled, they encountered locked and chained fire exits, closed at the order of the company's owner, who was worried about people stealing food from his company. Only one group of employees managed to kick open a door. That door, covered in sooty boot prints, is on display today at the museum of American History in Washington, DC. It bears testament to one of the deadliest industrial disasters in state history. Of the 90 people inside Imperial Foods when the fire broke out, 25 died and 54 were injured, many of them suffering lifelong ill effects from smoke and chemical inhalation.

Eventually, the owner of the plant, Emmet Roe was charged with 25 counts of manslaughter, He pled guilty and was sentenced to 20 years, of which he served only four. He was also fined the equivalent of $1.8 million. The plant was permanently closed. Based in part on public outrage, Jim Martin, only the state's second Republican governor in 100 years, nearly doubled the number of industrial inspectors to make workplace inspections more common.

The Hamlet fire is remarkable because it actually resulted in some accountability and change. For years, American companies scoffed at toothless safety laws and the relative impotence of inspectors. Paying fines was easier than paying for safe working conditions. There is an ongoing and concerted effort currently under way to cut through the so-called red tape of government regulations that supposedly make it too difficult to do business. Many of the regulations are ones created for worker safety. The state of Texas repealed a regulation that mandated water breaks for outdoor workers in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave of 100+ degree days. It interfered with worker productivity.

Even before the US elected a 34x convicted felon to be its president, most people were already aware of the two tiered justice system under which this country operates. We saw Bill Cosby released from prison despite evidence of dozens of sexual assaults. We saw Trump pardon crony after crony. Even in the local news in my hometown, there have long been reports of the wives of generals from the nearby Army base, Ft. Liberty (née Bragg) getting traffic tickets fixed, of the sons of prominent businessmen getting caught with drugs and guns at a public school and getting away scott free. The owner of a local car dealership not only bought his way out of charges for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy, the judge would not allow the records of the court proceedings to be made public in violation of state open records laws. It's an old story and one that gets repeated frequently.

When I see a rich and powerful person get real justice and pay a tangible price for decisions that have had horrible effects on working-class people, I really don't care whether the punishment was extrajudicial or not. The system we have is designed not to punish the powerful, but to keep the poor in line. Eat the rich doesn't have to be an idle threat.

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Dec 4, 2024 ∞

Health Insurance Companies Are Evil



It's common knowledge that the for-profit medical industrial complex in the United States is broken and has been so for a long time. Bills are inscrutable. Insurance companies provide little help when trying to determine the cost of care patients are considering, if they have that luxury. There may be occasional bright spots, but almost everyone who deals with the system has a personal horror story. For-profit companies are beholden to their stockholders, not patients, you know—sick people. Even non-profits have dubious decision-making skills. I am in long-term (16-year) recovery from substance abuse. I have a mood disorder that requires me to take medication daily. It's no big deal. I was diagnosed in the '80s, so I've dealt with it almost all my adult life. I once got a letter from my insurance company that explained they noticed how expensive my medication was. They suggested I ask the doctor to prescribe Valium instead, a highly addictive and often abused drug. They suggested that to me, a recovering addict.

I dealt with bone-on-bone arthritis for years. The only relief was a shot that I could get every six months. The red tape, delays, and stalling by my insurance company (I was a state employee in NC) would often result in delays of two to three months, stretching the time between shots up to nine months. Arthritis is a painful and debilitating condition that doesn't just get better. The policies of a company trying to save money resulted in my being denied coverage I was promised as part of my employment. I lived in pain and grew depressed when I met so many stone walls. This went on for years.

I am sorry that the CEO of United Healthcare was murdered in the street outside of a meeting for investors in that company. I am not surprised, though. If I thought some exorbitantly paid executive was responsible for the pain, suffering, and death of someone I loved because his company was trying to provide maximum value to shareholders, I might just consider violence myself.

Health insurance CEOs rake in millions: Here's the top 10 list

How Insurance Companies Get You to Pay Higher Costs for Less Coverage

Whistleblower Exposes Health Insurers' Most Evil Scheme

3 Medical Billing Horror Stories that Prove the Healthcare Revenue Cycle Is Way Too Complicated | AKASA

Health insurance horror stories

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Dec 3, 2024 ∞

What Do You Miss?



I am not one of those people who longs for the good old days. For big groups of people, the progress made in gender equity, civil rights, LGBT rights and other areas was much too hard fought to ever consider going back. I am very fond of progress, technology and medical advances. I'm happy to live in a time when HIV is no longer a death sentence. Likewise, I resent the hell out of the empty-headed RFK's of the world who poison people's minds with their anti-vax rhetoric. Having said all of that, I will admit to missing little pieces of the past.

I miss affordable prices a lot. Getting any beverage in a restaurant costs several dollars. I saw an app today that does one simple thing for Mac users. It toggles a feature (the FN key) on and off. The developer was asking a modest twenty-five dollars for the privilege of using it. As someone who has owned several thousand-dollar cars and who currently drives a 2005 Camry, I am outraged at the people who think a $30K car is cheap. The margin on simple things like shoes and eyeglass frames is robbery by another name. Going to the movies, a concert or a ball game is outrageous. I know, I know. Get off my lawn.

I miss the time when our society wasn't polarized about politics the way it is today. Sorry, Obama, there definitely is a red America and a blue America. I can't even.

I miss the time when people could live off a single income earned by a high school graduate. I supported my wife and son in the 80s by framing houses and serving in the National Guard. Twenty-five years later, my youngest daughter and her husband both worked full-time and had a lower standard of living than we did back in the day. 

Oddly enough, in my own experience, racial self-segregation was less pronounced in the 80s than it is now. At my high school, the sports teams, student government and clubs were all diverse. Over the past forty years, I've watched the younger generation choose to have white and black clubs and white and black activities. Other POC just try to get in where they fit in. By the time my kids got to high school, the football team was almost all POC, while the cheerleading squad was lily-white.

I miss the days when security wasn't the overarching, ever present concern in tech. The impediment to efficiency at work because of security is huge. We can't put local admin accounts with static passwords on workstations to facilitate getting access to them. They have to use a server generated rotating password that I have to look up whenever I need to do something. I can't even use an admin account to log in on my own computer (on the PC side). I have to elevate privileges using my super-extra long admin password to each app I need. Two-factor authentication is neat, as long as it works. The aggravation of dealing with people who get new phones or have other hardware issues is just another wrinkle. Passkeys seem neat until you try to use them when you work on multiple devices.

Like I said initially, I don't want to go back. I don't think life was better 40 years ago, but that doesn't mean every change has been positive.

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Dec 3, 2024 ∞

The Resistance to the Nazis - Lessons from the Past



For some reason, resisting fascism and the historical lessons from courageous Germans in World War Two has been on my mind lately. Having been involved with social movements and protests over the last quarter of a century, I'm aware of the conservative attitude towards any group of people who don't wrap themselves in the flag. Modern police forces are terrified of ANTIFA and anarchists while they simultaneously ignore or tacitly support right-wing groups. Republican led legislatures across the country have passed laws designed to crack down on protests and those laws are always enforced selectively against POC, the poor, young people and anyone who opposes the power structure. Some states have made it legal for drivers to run over protesters who block traffic, essentially creating a de facto death penalty. Such is the morality of the "all lives matter" crowd.

For information about role models from the past, see these links.

German resistance to Nazism - Wikipedia

German Resistance to Hitler | Holocaust Encyclopedia

A Brief History of Anti-Fascism | Smithsonian

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Dec 2, 2024 ∞

This Is What I Believe  - December IndieWeb Carnival



This month's IndieWeb Carnival is hosted by Zinzy and the topic is belief.

This is what I believe:

The Universe is Neutral. It Neither Loves Nor Hates You - I am all for the power of positive thinking. I tend to act as if things are going to turn out my way most of the time. Pessimistic people, and you surely know a Debbie Downer or two, are a drag to be around, and they grate on my nerves after a while. I am not a Pollyanna, though. I do not believe that "everything will be all right" because I am fully aware that I could be in a car accident on the way home or that my house could burn down tonight. Bad things happen to good people every day. What I believe, based on evidence, is my absolute ability to deal with whatever happens. I have a proven track record of living through everything that has ever happened to me. Everything can be overcome. If you don't believe that, read Mans Search for Meaning about how concentration camp inmates survived.

People Are the Most Powerful When They Are Organized - Most of the rights and privileges we enjoy today, our freedoms, if you will, were not won on the battlefield. They were won on picket lines and in mass movements against the entrenched power structure. The rights of women, people of color, children, workers and the 99% were won by organized groups of people who strategized, struggled and fought and sometimes died to demand rights we take for granted today. The powerful know this and do their best to keep us divided along racial, cultural and class lines so that we won't do it again.

It Is Possible to Overcome Nature and Nurture - We are not locked into an immutable set of values instilled in us by our genetics or our environment. Free will is a hell of a drug, to paraphrase Rick James. I am a son of the South. I have been surrounded by conservative Christianity, institutional white supremacy, patriarchal behavior patterns and unquestioning nationalism my entire life, but I am not an adherent to any of it. The easier and softer way is to go with the flow. Don't make waves. Accept the status quo. Countless people can't even define their belief system because they are too damned busy getting ready for the next MCU movie or the coming weekend's football games. I'm sure there are areas where I need to increase my awareness too, but I try as best I can to be a part of the solution to society's problems. I am not neutral about much.

Curiosity and Sense of Humor are The Most Attractive Human Traits - I'm not an education major. I haven't studied learning styles, but I know there are plenty of ways to add to one's personal knowledge base. Whether it's reading books, surfing the Internet, interrogating the people in your life, or something else, there are an infinite number of things to learn. People who have a sense of wonder and a thirst for knowledge are my favorites. When that is coupled with the ability to laugh, to see the absurd, and to enjoy little moments of serendipity, it's hard for me not to be drawn towards a person.

When You Live a Fearful Life, You're Living Like All the Bad Things Have Already Happened to You - I am firmly in the camp with those who believe that asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission. I do not have on ongoing CYA strategy at work or in my private life. There is something inauthentic and sad about people who constantly self-censor or wait for others to make decisions for them. Granted, I am not rich nor am I a CIO. What I am is generally happy and productive, with plenty of room in my mind for things that I enjoy. I believe in acting in good faith. My experience has shown me that doing so is what works for me, more so than endless plotting to get ahead and avoid ruffling feathers. I feel confident that I can defend most of what I do to anyone who questions it.

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