Category: Tech

Retail Therapy

It took me 50 years before I had a year where there wasn’t a christmas. This is it, folks. The year without a santa claus for reals.

On Saturday it will be pretty much a normal Saturday. Jen and I are planning on a nice dinner together. Maybe we’ll play some Mario Kart and watch a movie or maybe binge watch some TV or something. We’ll just spend the day together.

I was going to write this post about how I wanted to take my frustrations out on capitalism by buying a new guitar. A Les Paul Junior to be exact. I jokingly asked the love of my life if she would be okay with me buying yet another guitar and to my shock and amazement she said yes! That’s twice she’s said yes to me! Once in the backyard at the duplex when I was on my knee, and then again today. How wonderful!

That’s when she told me she was doing the same thing. Maybe a Nintendo Switch or a PS5. We had a good laugh. I’m not going to buy a $1,600 guitar, especially when it’s only a few months after Jen bought me a much more expensive guitar for my 50th birthday. There is a chance though that I might magically (though probably not christmas magic, given the circumstances) upgrade a pedal or two in the coming days. You know… magically.

Photo Geek Backup Plan

It was the last day of August 2019. Jen, Harry, and I had just played nine holes of par three golf and were out somewhere for lunch. Among the many things discussed were Flickr’s photo a day challenge (why?) and a scene in Family Guy where Peter takes a selfie a day for a year and turns it into a video. The next day I started a photo a day thing that has lasted for over two years now. I also started using an app to take a selfie a day and turn it into a video. I stopped that after one year, but a couple of months ago, while in my brief, ultimately unnecessary, quarantine adventure, I started another one.

The original idea behind the selfie a day app was that if I forget to take a photo one day, maybe I will have taken a pic for the selfie thing and I could use that. In the 2019/2020 photo a day thing it never happened. In the 2020/2021 photo a day thing it wasn’t an option, but it still never happened. In the current 2021/2022 photo a day thing… it happened yesterday.

I did take a picture of something but I deleted it. I think I took a picture of a letter where the text was too small for old people to actually read. I didn’t think that counted for the photo a day thing (why?) so I trashed it. Today I realized that I never took another pic through the entire day. But wait! Yes I did! I have a notification for the selfie a day app that posts at lunch time and I took that pic! I downloaded it, sent it to Flickr, and BAM! Back on track, babie!

Hey Siri

I need to share this before I forget about it. It is stupid and childish and it makes me smile.

I may have mentioned this on the blog a few hundred thousand times, but I am an Apple guy. iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook Pro, AirPods, AirPods Max, HomePod, HomePod Mini…. the whole kit.

I’ll give a little back story for those who aren’t fellow Apple people. Apple’s digital assistant is Siri. All devices that run Siri have multiple ways to activate it. Anything with a microphone has a voice command. You simply say, “Hey Siri” and it kicks off. It’s kinda fun to be in a room that is filled to the roof with Apple devices (like the room I am in as I type this) and say that voice command and watch all of them light up, though only one will respond.

Anyway, before work this morning I was sitting on the exercise bike trying to get about five minutes of work in. At one point I raised my AppleWatch to look at the Workout app to see how much longer I had to go. While I was looking at my watch I belched (excuse me) and the sound of the belch activated Siri.

That’s all. I told you it was stupid and childish, but Siri responds to burps. That pleased me to no end.

That’s it. Back to your regularly scheduled, belch-free day.

Find My

Yesterday afternoon I kept the Find My app up on my iPhone so I could keep an eye on Harry’s progress as he drove home from school. Today it’s Bellana’s turn. She’s not coming home though. She’s driving a roommate home to the deep south. The app might be up all day today and tomorrow. I have no doubt that she and the group she’s with will be safe and healthy. In these uncertain and crazy Covid variant Omicron days though, I am also nervous. Be careful out there folks.

It’s Friday at 8:40am. I have to punch into work soon. I don’t want to. Harry has a remote final exam today. After he finishes that I am just going to want to hang out with him. I’m really happy he’s here. I don’t want to do anything else besides just enjoy the fact that he’s here.

Eight days until christmas. I have one gift to wrap and one more on route. I am going to be ready this year with oceans of time to spare. On the subject of christmas I feel that I should note that I have done a better job making sure the tree is watered than I ever have in any real-tree-year ever. Look at me, patting myself on the back. HoHoHo, babie.

Happy Friday.

ADDENDUM: Find My tells me that Bellana is currently driving though Saratoga Springs, NY. That brings two thoughts to my mind. First, I wonder if they took the ferry across Lake Champlain. Second, one of the best Rush concerts I ever saw was on July 5, 2008 when Jen and I road tripped all the way to Saratoga Springs to see them at SPAC. I was only in the town for a very short time, but I thought it seemed like a wonderful place. Someday we’ll go back.

Rush 7-5-08 Saratoga Springs, NY 1002
Rush 7-5-08 Saratoga Springs, NY 416

On the Way

Harry is on his way home, I think. I have it on good authority (iOS Find My app) that he’s on route 89 heading South. I think he’s coming straight here, but I don’t know that for sure. This makes me happy. Very happy.

One of our christmas presents was ordered online and set to deliver to the recipient’s address. It wasn’t supposed to ship until next week, but it was delivered today. It’s like the theme from Facts of Life. You take the good, you take the bad, yadda yadda yadda. HoHoHo. The gift giving bonanza is officially underway.

Want to know something that I hate? I hate when I go to Google News, find an article worth reading, open the article, and find it’s behind a paywall. Can’t Google filter that shit out? Do they already do it and I just haven’t turned it on yet? I don’t know. I hate it. Either way.

Pink Floyd just surprise released a shit load of live albums today. They are all from 1970-72. Almost all of them are from 1971. Back in my bootleg hunting days, I went through a major Pink Floyd bootleg obsession. I have heard most of the shows they released today. I was hoping they were going to magically have high quality, multi-track recordings of those shows but they didn’t. They basically just released the same bootlegs I listened to years ago. I tried listening during work, but the bad sound quality stopped me. Don’t get me wrong, I am going to listen to every note that came out today 100 times each. I am not complaining about the sound quality. My favorite bootlegs are all from 1970, but the 1971 shows were magic too. Echoes! They were still improvising then. Not as much as they did in the beginning, but it was still a big deal. I am going to listen to all of this stuff in headphones and get as much inside of it as I can. Oh, and there’s a partial show from ’72 that has most of a pre-release Dark Side of the Moon. The song titles match the studio versions, but does the music? Might there be a Preacher in there? Might there be a jamming version of On the Run? (please?please?please?)

Okay, enough of my yakkin’. Back to work. When Harry gets here and the work day is over, we’re doing Marvel and Burgers night, just like we did before he went off to college. Awwww.

Spoiler Avoidance

A new episode of Hawkeye came out yesterday. We haven’t watched it because Harry is coming home tonight and we want to watch it with him. Yesterday morning I started seeing a lot of social media accounts tied to cast members from the now cancelled Marvel Netflix shows posting pictures of Charlie Cox. Uh oh. Is that a spoiler? Did Marvel announce something? Did he show up in Hawkeye? Even worse, does he show up in the new Spider-Man?

Spider-Man No Way Home is out in theaters now. Harry is going to put on a radiation haz-mat suit and see it in a theater next week. I am not. I will be waiting for it to come to Disney+.

I am now in full Spoiler Avoidance mode for both things. At least Hawkeye we can get out of the way quickly. No Way Home though… I don’t want to know anything, not even a tiny thing. Nothing. lalalalaICantHearYou.

I don’t think they have announced when No Way Home will start streaming. The only thing Google found was sometime in 2022. It’s going to be a long wait, folks. A long wait.

  • Write the post
  • proof read the post
  • publish the post
  • read the post
  • find the grammar error in the post
  • edit the post
  • publish the edited post

Coming Home Tomorrow

My step son is coming home tomorrow. Have I mentioned that? Do you/they know it’s christmas time at all?

Jen just came into my bedroom/office/work nook and said that to her, today feels like Friday. It was a great minds think alike moment because I had been thinking the same thing all day. It’s only Wednesday but it totally feels like Friday. That’s going to make the next two days suck. I checked my work schedule tomorrow and it’s blank. I don’t have any meetings booked at all. It’s almost creepy.

My christmas wrapping is almost done. Did I mention that? I’ve still got a couple of things on the way (package delivery, a symptom of ‘Covid Christmas Too’) but as of now, everything I have to wrap is wrapped… and there are still 10 days left until christmas. That is also almost creepy.

I was going to do car music this morning, but I didn’t. I did a couple of errands instead. I snaked the drain like a faux plumber. As it turned out, I was able to sneak in everything I had left to do during lunch. You may have noticed that there wasn’t a lunch break blog post (no you didn’t. No one did. No one should). Two songs need both rhythm and lead guitar parts. Four just need lead guitar. Two more are already ready to mix. Music, ya know?

Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden has a podcast. World class fencer, airline pilot, novelist, metal god. The dude has range. It’s called Psycho Schizo Espresso. It’s Bruce and a psychologist talking about stuff. Okay, I’ll give it a spin.

Four minutes until the work day ends. Fingers crossed nothing comes my way during those four minutes, because I am cooking dinner tonight and the oven is already pre-heated. Chicken and Quinoa. They should call Chicken and Quinoa, ‘The Robert’ because it’s pretty much the only dish I am capable of making.

Three minutes to go…

Okay, clicking Publish now.

The Downside of Blocking People

I think I just found the downside of blocking people on Twitter.

A couple of weeks ago I was being very petty and picking on a creationist who was insisting that the Big Bang and Evolution were fantasies because the sky daddy who is his own father told him so. I got into the discussion because he claimed that no one could tell where rocks came from and I responded that every high school kid who takes a basic science course will get a Geology segment that will clearly teach them where rocks come from. I asked him why he didn’t take that class in high school and, predictably, he said he went to a christian school that taught the truth.

After having fun with the idiot for a little while I did the smart thing and blocked his idiot ass.

Now today I am suddenly getting mentioned in posts that I don’t seem to have anything to do with. A little digging shows that apparently the blocked idiot user has fired up the conversation again and other non-creationists are getting involved and tearing him a scientific new one and including me in the replies.

Well… it’s nice to be mentioned and all, but I can’t really follow along unless I unblock the idiot. There’s a little part of me that wants to do it. There’s a much bigger part of me that thinks better of it. Let the ignorant-by-choice fool stay blocked.

Spam Filter Fails

Want to know something that would make me really happy?

It would make me really happy if the damn spam filter in Gmail would actually do it’s damn job.

I can’t tell you how many junk emails I get over the course of a day that I have already, on multiple occasions, marked as spam. I know I’ve already marked the from addresses as spam because when I send the new emails to the spam folder I don’t get prompted with the unsubscribe option the way you do when you send something to spam the first time.

It’s not the end of the world or anything, but it does get on my nerves. It is something small and annoying that really pisses me off when it happens.

Come on Gmail. I’ve been a user since 2005 for crying out loud. Do your damn job.