Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

Should I Scream?

Should I scream?Yeah, I think I should scream.Screaming would likely help a little.Yes, I agree. Screaming would make me feel a tiny bit better.Okay, then. Let's scream.Yes. Let's scream.(Insert sound of deranged screaming here)

— Rob (@robj1971.bsky.social) 2025-03-20T19:51:21.955Z

Robin waits for me to pause for a breath and then asks if I’m done being a jack ass or not?

Big Red Haired Ball of Stress

Woah, boy… today… am I right, or am I right?

The stress level today has been through the roof. The contractor experience went off without a hitch, but the first half of the work day was… woah.

We caught a customer issue before the customer did and went into a mad scramble to get it straightened out for them. It took a little while to get a band aid in place but now we’re dealing with figuring out how to stop it from ever happening again while also talking the customer down from their panicked state. The code/app that my team is responsible for is downstream from the actual cause of the problem. It didn’t happen in our piece of the system, but it did present itself to people using our piece of the system. Yikes is the word of the day. Everyone involved, both on my company’s side and on the customer’s side, did a bang up job getting everything straightened out, and I bet that when the dust settles we’ll all agree it wasn’t that big of a deal… but for the moment. Yikes.

Back to the home owner situation, two more contractors are coming tomorrow. One is a plumber who will put everything that was taken apart today back together again. The other is just a routine maintenance thing. I will be in the office for both of them though. I am thinking about trying to find a way to be able to stay home for all of it. I don’t want my wife to have to deal with either thing. If I work from home tomorrow it means I will have to be in the office three days next week…….. yeah, I think I am going to work from home tomorrow. Command decision made. Three days next week.

On an unrelated note, today is the anniversary of my Uncle Johnny’s death. It’s been 17 years. He was godfather to both me and my sister. He was my father’s only sibling. He had a tough life but he overcame a lot of awful shit. He was good people and I love him and I miss him. I wish he could have known all of our kids. He would have been proud, I know it.

Okay. Back to the stress. Look out below!

Jail

We are having work done in our kitchen today. Normally we keep the cats’ food and water in the kitchen but with the impending chaos I moved them into our bedroom.

While I was getting ready for work this morning, the two cats were hanging out in the bedroom with me. I took advantage of the situation to do something I am not proud of. When I left the room to go start work, I closed the door behind me and trapped the cats inside. Their food and water are in the room with them, and they can get to their litter box from there too.

So effectively… I have imprisoned them for the day. I am a mean and terrible cat owner. Shame on me.

Random Thoughts

I am wrapping up my lunch break on this random Wednesday in March and I thought I’d jot down a couple of thoughts for posterity. Ready? Okay, let’s roll….

  • Want to know something that sucks? I brought two ounces of Planters Salted Peanuts with me for lunch today (14 grams of protein). I took a small handful (my gastric bypassed body can’t handle more than a small handful at a time without getting sick) and popped it into my maw. I chewed it up a little (again, part of the post-gastric bypass world means chewing the holy hell out of everything, which sounds silly and obvious [like, didn’t you chew the holy hell out of everything before surgery? I thought I did, but apparently not] but until you fail to chew something down enough you can’t really understand) and suddenly and without warning I had to sneeze. Know what’s gross? Sneezing with a mouthful of partially chewed up peanuts… that’s what’s gross. Worse? 20 seconds after you sneeze, when you think you’ve recovered and cleaned up the mess… you sneeze again. Ugh.
  • Elon Musk posted to his nazi social media site that he didn’t understand why people are out to get him. He said he sells things that are good and that he’s never hurt anyone. Never hurt anyone? Are you fucking kidding me, you fucking moron? This nazi fucker’s end can’t come soon enough. Deport his moronic ass to mars and be done with it.
  • We have a contractor coming tomorrow. We have two contractors coming Friday. March 2025 will go down in family history as the month of the contractors. We just can’t get away from them. Please please please let this be the end of it for a while.
  • We are one week and one day away from the start of the Boston Red Sox 2025 season. No matter what happens, they can’t be any more painful to watch than the Bruins were this year. Even if they come in dead last again it still won’t suck as badly as the B’s. I’m thinking about signing up for an online subscription to NESN (the New England Sports Network. The TV network that carries both the Red Sox and the Bruins). I think my days of being a radio-only Red Sox fan might be coming to an end. I haven’t decided one way or the other yet, but I think it’s going to happen… we’ll see.
  • I don’t want to buy a tenor saxophone. I don’t want to buy a tenor saxophone. Did I mention I don’t want to buy a tenor saxophone? Who am I kidding. I want to buy a tenor saxophone. Only if it’s a good one though. Aw, hell.

Okay. I have to get back to work now. This is all I have time for right now. I’ll probably write up some more brain droppings later. It’s one of those days, if you know what I mean.

Parking Lot Worries

I work in a facility that has two buildings and two parking lots with one driveway leading to both. My company is in building two and we have other tenants on a couple of floors in building two and in all of building one.

This morning I was stopped at the stoplight outside of the driveway and I saw something concerning. Someone pulled into the facility in a tesla cybertruck. Apart from questioning the cybertruck owners politics (musk is a nazi) and taste (cyber trucks are the fugliest vehicles on the road) I immediately started to worry about my own car’s safety.

In recent weeks, teslas in general but more specifically cybertrucks (aka swasticars) have been targets for vandalism. Apparently someone even threw molotov cocktails at a tesla dealer in Las Vegas yesterday. While I don’t condone violence of any kind, I have to say that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer nazi billionaire, right? Still… knowing that there is a swasticar parking near where I park my car makes me worried that maybe that swasticar might spontaneously combust and cause damage to other, non-nazi, cars parked nearby? That would be terrible.

I did not see if the tesla went to my building’s parking lot or not. I think it went to the other building. I hope so. I kept my eyes pealed as I searched for a parking spot of my own just to make sure my little Kia wasn’t going to be anywhere near any dangerous swasticars. I am pretty sure my car is safe, but constant vigilance, you know? Stay safe out there.

Distract Me from Reverb.com

Okay… it’s a really good thing that the new episode of Daredevil came out on Disney+ about five minutes ago because I found myself on reverb.com tonight looking at tenor saxophones.

While they are nowhere near as expensive as electric guitars, they are on the pricey side and I do not have the money no way no how.

Stay away from reverb.com, Robert. Stay. Away.

Selmer Mark VII Tenor Saxophone… I played one when I was in high school and it’s still among the finest musical instruments I’ve ever been in the same room as. I really miss that high F# key.