Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

A.I. Band Names Follow Up

Here is a quick follow up to yesterday’s post about asking an A.I. to suggest some new names for my band.

Last night I went back to Google Gemini and asked a similar question. I didn’t reference where we are from, but instead mentioned something about how we were all getting up there in age. It again responded with a list of names that were mostly inane and lame.

There was one stand out though. I shared it with the rest of the band. I shared it with my wife too, and now she is really rooting for us to use it.

The Viagra Falls.

At last, A.I. does something useful. At last.

Growth

Daily writing prompt
Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.
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You want one? How about I give you two? Maybe even two and a half? I’m crazy like that. Also, the stuff that I give you today also happen to be things that I’ve written about in daily prompts very recently so… yeah. Repetition is good for growth and shit. I don’t know, whatever.

First, we travel back in time to the 20th century. The early 1990’s saw a certain tall red head dropping out of college. A dumb ass move, for sure, but at the time it was the only move that made sense to me. A job followed, then a year in a tech school, followed by a failure to get a job in that field, followed by a crap job in a warehouse. That’s when we get to the point of the decision that helped me learn and grow. I was making like $8.00/hour working in a retail chain’s warehouse as the guy in charge of customer returns and I just got fed up and decided to give college another try. This time I wouldn’t be a music major, this time I would take classes that might actually lead to a job someday. Going back to school was the big decision, but a secondary decision was to rig my classes so that I started from as close to the lowest level math subject that my new school would allow me to take. My primary hang up the first time through college was my shitty math skills, and the second time around I was going to major in a study that leaned heavily on math. I put myself into the lowest level course I could and basically started from scratch. It totally paid off. By the time I was through the mathematical pipeline I was acing high level courses and it felt great.

The second growth worthy decision happened on May 20, 2008. Jen and I were in the little postage stamp sized back yard at the duplex we were renting, cooking dinner on our gas grill. I reached a point where I just couldn’t stand waiting anymore and I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She said yes. Best. Decision. Ever. That lead to me learning how to be a husband, learning how to be a better human, learning how to be an adult, learning how to be a step father, learning how to be really happy, and basically learning how to be me at my best. Like I said, best decision ever.

The extra bonus decision is the choice to pursue weight loss surgery. I don’t know how much actual learning and growing have come from it. That’s probably a question for future Rob to ponder. It’s been two years (almost) but I will need more time to pass before I can pin down exactly what the differences are, apart from the number on the scale of course. That and the sizes on my clothes.

So there you go, folks. Two plus answers to the question of the day. No surprises here. Hope you all have a good Wednesday, unless you are reading this at some point in the future, in which case here’s hoping you’re having a good whatever weekday it happens to be on your timeline. Good day.

A.I. Band Names

Searching for a New Name for the Band

I asked Google Gemini to suggest some new names for the band. Click on the link above to see what utter crap it came up with. Mass Transit isn’t bad… but it’s not very good either.

New Leaves

Both of the clippings from Bellana’s plant are growing new leaves! Check it out!

Bertie Botts Every Flavour Plant Clipping is about to have it’s first new leaf. It looks like it’s just about ready to start unfolding itself. Good job, Bertie Botts!

DSC_2355

Bertha, our original plant clipping and the plant from which Bertie Botts was clipped, is also just sprouting itself a new leaf. It’s the first new leaf since I re-potted into this new, bigger pot. See that little thing sprouting off of that other leaf? I should have gotten closer for this one, but I wanted to capture the spirit of the thing.

229/365
229/365

Now if I could just get the cats to stop eating leaves off of Bertha. I’ve been trying to keep them out of the room, but they are crafty little suckers and keep sneaking in. Stop eating my plants, cats!

Keep Out

Daily writing prompt
What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
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Is there a place in the world that I don’t want to visit? I guess so, but even those places I would give a try if the opportunity arose.

For example: I don’t like cold weather. Therefore my desire to visit the Arctic or the Antarctic is exceptionally low. Low enough to effectively be zero. However, if someone said to me, I need you to go to the North Pole and do something interesting… I’d go. Yeah, I would go. Same with the top of Mt Everest. I don’t want to go, but if the opportunity came up I would.

Where are some others… the rural American south? Yeah. No thanks. Big cities in the south.. yeah, let’s go. Outside of the big cities? Naw, I’ll pass.

Most of the mid-western US? I’ll pass. They don’t call ’em fly over states for nothing. I guess my attraction to big cities would bring me to agree to go to any big city on Earth. Name a big city on any continent and I’ll give it a try. Name a jungle with no civilization where there’s a good chance some big animal will eat me? Yeah, let’s give that one a miss.

So that sums it up, I guess. There are places I would choose to avoid, but if someone made an offer to bring me to one of those places? I’d probably go. I guess from a travelin’ perspective (how’s that for a future album title?) I am pretty easy to please. I’ll go pretty much anywhere.

Cake

I mentioned in this morning’s edition of The Daily Writing Prompt that Jen baked me a sugar free cake over the weekend and it is wonderful in both the figurative sense (how great is my wife for doing that for me and my weird, redesigned, stomach pouch thing) and the literal sense (de-freakin-licious chocolate cake!!!).

I had a second piece tonight. Just a sliver. I can’t take much more than that. The downside is that I will never be able to eat the whole thing at this rate. Some of it is going to go to waste. That is sad, but I will never not be grateful for the gesture, and I will eat a little bit each day until it goes stale and can’t be eaten any more.

Like I said, how amazing is my wife? Amazing! I think she might actually like me. Insert a gigantic happy grin here.

In other news, I also mentioned earlier that today is my father’s birthday. 82 years old and still going strong. My sister setup a birthday party for him this coming Sunday. I’ll go to that in the afternoon and then go to band practice. It’s going to be an epic Sunday. Maybe I can talk Jen into going to New York on Friday after work and then coming home on Saturday after dinner. Let’s make the epic Sunday a full on epic weekend! There’s zero chance of that, but a boy with cake in his rewired innards can dream, right?