Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

What to Wear

What are your two favorite things to wear?

Daily writing prompt

Not a lot of substance with today’s question. It’s an easy answer but it won’t generate much discussion from me. I’ll see what I can do though.

They are asking for my top two, but to give a full response I need to up that to my top three. Jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. That’s it. Weekend/telecommuting attire at it’s finest. As casual as casual gets without wearing shorts. That’s me, Mr Casual Man.

I don’t mind dressing fancier, I just don’t like doing the work. I’ll wear a suit when I have to, but ties are a pain in the ass and I hate them. Once they are on and tied I deal, but getting them on frustrates me and sort of ruins my mood. Having said that, I don’t mind tuxedos, but only because I generally look damn good in them. Well, I did look good in them. I haven’t worn one since the weight loss surgery so I cannot say for sure, but it used to be true that the tux look was a good look for me.

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My wife looked AMAZING.

UML at UVM

Tomorrow afternoon my step son and I are going to a hockey game. It’s my first hockey game in person since… 2016? 2018? I can’t remember. It’s my first NCAA hockey game since 2004.

I graduated from UMass Lowell. My step son currently attends the University of Vermont. Both teams are in the Hockey East conference and… well… both teams kinda suck. UVM is in 8th place (out of 11 teams) with a 3-3-1 record in conference and a 4-5-1 record overall. UML is in 10th place with a 2-6-1 record in conference and a 5-9-1 record overall.

I expect the game is going to be evenly-ish matched but also kinda crappy. I don’t care. I’m looking forward to spending an afternoon with Harry, probably trash talking each other into oblivion. I tried to get myself a UML hockey t-shirt to wear but I failed. Oh well. The Vermont fans in the building will know that they have a foreigner in their rink by me being obnoxious. I used to be a pretty obnoxious fan back in my minor league season ticket days.

It’s going to be fun.

Bad Tech

What technology would you be better off without, why?

Daily writing prompt

There are a lot of technological breakthroughs that are just plain dumb. The big one that comes to mind for me right now is what we laughably call Artificial Intelligence. It is just a language model combined with a Google search. You ask a question, it searches the web, and then the language model summarizes the search results in a way that makes it look like an uncreative person wrote it out for you. That is not artificial intelligence. No need to worry about Skynet at all. We could definitely do without it.

Self driving cars are dumb too. They only work if you are okay with killing your neighbors. Once I would have thought that no one in their right mind would be okay with killing their neighbors in exchange for a tiny reduction in inconvenience. Then we lived through the Covid-19 pandemic and clearly learned otherwise. Self driving cars is a technology that is probably 10 years away from being perfected. Unfortunately it will still be 10 years away 10 years from now, and it will still be 10 years away 20 years from now. You see the trend? It’s dumb, we don’t need it.

I’d like to add chemical and biological and nuclear weapons to the list of technologies we don’t need, but unfortunately the research into these evil nightmares has also lead to some positives. That probe that flew by Pluto a few years ago? It had a nuclear powered drive system. We wouldn’t have that without the effin’ bomb. It’s disgusting and painful but that’s how it happened. It sucks but I don’t want to say we can do without nuclear power when it brings us to other worlds. Am I a hypocrite? Probably, yes. Shit.

A.I. though… that’s just plain dumb.

To Do List

It’s Saturday. Jen is going to be working today so I will be fending for myself. I’m going to Vermont tomorrow to take my step son to a UMass Lowell vs Vermont NCAA Hockey game so I have to get all of the stuff I need to do this weekend done today.

It’s time for a to do list, babie! Yes!

  • Do my 40 minutes of exercise and eat breakfast. Gotta start the day off on the right foot.
  • Our bathroom tub is a disaster of mildew and soap scum and a partially clogged drain. Clean it!
  • Put together a desk for the new home office work space.
  • Go to BestBuy and curbside pickup two orders of stuff for the new home office work space.
  • Go grocery shopping.
  • Clean the cats’ litter boxes.
  • PLAY YOUR FRIGGIN’ GUITAR!
  • CALL YOUR FATHER!

There. That’s a good list of things that need to be accomplished today. Let’s see how many we can get to before bed time tonight.