Wednesday is the official work-in-the-office day, but this week I’m bumping it up to Monday. The traffic was bad, but normal bad. It wasn’t 2+ hours like last week, it was just the usual 80 minutes for 40 mile bullshit today.
Author: robertjames1971
The Ideal Week
This is probably going to sound a little on the boring side, but just remember… I’m old.
Right then, the ideal week…
- Monday through Friday
- Spend some quality time with Jen
- Help one of my staff members figure out a complicated issue that helps a customer provide quality healthcare to their patients
- Play some guitar
- Take a couple of fun and interesting photographs
- Hit all of my exercise, diet, and vitamin goals
- Pet two cats
- Saturday and Sunday
- Spend some quality time with Jen
- Play some guitar
- Take a couple of fun and interesting photographs
- Hit all of my exercise, diet, and vitamin goals
- Go somewhere or do something fun. Take a drive, see something interesting, explore something new, it doesn’t matter what or where as long as Jen and I do it together
- Pet two cats
And there you have it, gentle readers. My ideal week. Or should I say, the somewhat boring ideal week of a 52 year old red head in Massachusetts.
I hope you enjoyed that. You’re welcome.
A Good Week
Suck it, morbid obesity.

Lazy Sunday Cats
A pair of Hipsta-Kitties on a lazy Sunday evening. Jen and I are eating dinner in the living room, just hanging out. It’s really nice.
Wish My iPhone Luck
The lightning connection on my iPhone 14 Pro Max isn’t working. It’s been spotty for a couple of months, but over the last couple of weeks it’s failed completely. I plug a lightning cable into it and nothing happens. Zilch. Nada. Fun that something goes wrong right about the same time I decide to make it my go-to point and shoot camera again. As eight year old Bellana (my 22 year old step daughter) used to say, aw fiddlesticks.
I made a genius bar appointment for this afternoon to have it looked at. I had something similar happen with a headphone jack on an older model iPhone once before. In that instance they were not able to fix it and they gave me a new phone. I hope it doesn’t come to that today. I don’t want a new phone. I don’t want to have to go through the restore process. I did force an iCloud backup today, just to be on the safe side, but I hope I don’t have to use it.
Fitting that this is happening two days before Apple is expected to announce the new iPhone. Will it be called the iPhone 15? Probably but who knows. I am not planning to upgrade this year. I will probably do it next year, but I’m going to give it a miss for now. Part of the reason I hope I don’t have to replace my phone today is because it would suck to get a brand new 14 two days before the 15 is announced. That would be almost like adding insult to injury.
My genius bar appointment is in one hour and 35 minutes. Wish my poor, sick little iPhone 14 Pro Max luck. Poor, sick little monkey.
ADDENDUM: The iPhone lives! It was just some schmutz jammed into the port. The genius bar dude cleaned it out and now it works fine. Life is good!
Doctor Robin
Robin (Hipsta-Kitty) is trying to watch Doctor Who with me. I’m on the last serial in season nine. The next thing on the series list is the 10th anniversary celebration where they brought back the first two actors who played The Doctor. Fitting as we’re getting the 60th anniversary episode in a couple of months, and the last episode I watched from the current series had a bunch of past Doctor actors come back as well. It’s like a small world or something.
Daily (spooky) Haiku for You #25
Today’s daily haiku for you is brought to you by the new Walking Dead spin off that debuts tonight.
Zombie TV night.
Daryl is going to France.
Zombies and croissants?
Back Up Your Files
Do as I say, not as I do (or in this case don’t do what I didn’t do). Back up your files. Always back up your damn files.
Yeah, you know that car music I did yesterday? The one where I put vocals on four songs? Yeah, I just accidentally deleted the vocal track from one of those songs. I didn’t notice until after I was past the point where undo could bring it back. Also, with all the travelin’ fun yesterday I never got around to backing up the work I did in the car and now that vocal take is gone forever and I have to do it again.
On the up side though, I did manage to put rhythm guitars onto four songs today and lead guitars onto three. It should have been leads on four, but one of them needs to have the vocals redone because I am a friggin’ idiot.
Back up your files. Always.
Note: Today’s work has already been backed up. That doesn’t fix what I didn’t back up yesterday though. Moron.
Respect
There was a time when I felt okay about holding up some pro athletes as worthy of respect, but those days are over. There have been too many times when an athlete or a celebrity I admired on a public or professional level turned out to be an utter scumbag on a personal level. Jen and I were literally talking about this during our long drive up to Vermont yesterday.
The last straw was Bobby Orr. The single greatest hockey player in the history of ice on Earth let it be known that he was a Trump supporter. Everyone who knew Bobby Orr raved about what a kind, decent, respectable man he was and then boom, he’s at best a nazi sympathizer and at worst a full blooded, card carrying nazi himself. To hell with him. I can’t ignore fascism. Any and all respect I had for him as a human when right down the toilet.
There are still a few folks that seem respect worthy, but are they? Are they worth it? David Ortiz and Patrice Bergeron both seem like good people, but is there something in their personal life that will dispel that theory someday? It’s just not worth the effort. I choose to keep their professional lives as isolated from the rest of reality as I can.
Sorry about that.
Hipstamatic Road Trip
Random pics with random hipstamatic settings from today’s road trip to Vermont.















