Early 2023, in easy blog form.
Friday, January 13th, 2023
I was looking at Sammy’s most recent blog post about the storms that came through/near/next to Atlanta yesterday, and I realized that I was bothered by the imbalance of stuff I’m reading (lots) versus stuff I’m writing (not that much.)
So I’m making a small effort to say “hello,” and to acknowledge my continued existence here, on line, at home, in this universe. Hi there. The storms did come through, we’re fine, our neighbors are fine. Some of our very distant neighbors to the south of town are not as fine, unfortunately. It’s cold this afternoon! I went out this morning to Trader Joe’s early this morning to stock up on a few things and was only semi-successful…I discovered that the mini-ravioli that we liked but hadn’t bought for months had been discontinued last February. There’s probably a lesson in that, but I did bring canned beans and tortillas home.
So, as Nancy would say in her much more updated blog, “With that, the weekend awaits us all. Let’s enjoy it.”
Enjoying it from my standpoint will involve staying warm (yes, we live in Atlanta, but I’m telling you, it’s cold!) My office, through some cosmic connection of well-placed heating pipe under the floor and a bunch of activated computers on every flat surface, is actually one of the warmest rooms in the house. But still! It’s a cold day, and appears to be a cold weekend ahead.
So I wish you warmth and clarity and peace and good nutrition and…well, you know, the good stuff. The good stuff.
One more worry.
Friday, May 27th, 2022
The local weekly in the central Upper Peninsula ran a big headline asking the question that…well, I don’t think it was on anyone’s mind before a few electrical firms and coops nationwide put out an PR alert of sorts.
Well, will they? Will that rain of powerlessness ruin our summer enjoyment?
I would go with: no. But apparently it gives us something else to fret about amidst inflation and missing baby formula and armed manic school shooting teenagers and…I don’t know, people being unwilling to work for substandard wages? The article said that the local government is taking this seriously, buying new generators to make sure water will be pumped because they had only one gen that they could run only part of the time because of EPA concerns.
And they have a plan if they have to ask villagers to turn off excess lights or other electric-consuming things.
Yikes.
Hi, from here.
Saturday, May 21st, 2022
Wow, after a period of writing very regularly through some of the covidstress and doing my best to communicate a feeling of, well, ultimately, optimism, it appears I then took a break. From May 22 of last year until, well, now, the 21st of May, 2022.
2022.
I still have trouble writing that year on my psychic checks and yet, there it is, staring at me from every device display thingie we have.
It also “stares at me” from lots and lots of NPR stories, and reporting on the television, and yes, even from newspapers. We are here now, and I can observe the amazingly messed up things in the world around us, but my collection of tools to make a difference is a sparse one.
I can (and have) received covid vaccines and boosters. Didn’t hurt a bit. I wear a mask in stores and public restrooms and pretty much everywhere we’re tossed in with lots of our fellow humans.
See? Sparse. Effective, but sparse.
Encottaged.
Saturday, May 22nd, 2021
Lupins await, but maybe not quite yet. Not sure whether Sammy took this pic, or I did.
Hey, we made it to Michigan. That’s a good thing. And the Green Cottage was in reasonably good shape, give or take a small repair, tightening, or replacement.
We enjoyed our cross-country gallivant, and it was sure great to see loved ones in various states, and, well, I think we’re taking a breath or two and relaxing a bit. Contemplating our lives while vaccinated, retired, and surrounded by bird song.
If you go back and read through the posts I wrote last May, you can detect a slightly more intense tone, with more than a little concern for our town, our state, our nation, our world. This year…phew. Better. Not perfect, but better.
Still too early?
Wednesday, March 10th, 2021
Last year at this time we were looking at primary election results from midwestern states, where there was more back-and-forth about Biden vs. Warren vs. Sanders (and so on) than there was about Covid and safety in a pandemic. That changed over the next couple of weeks.
Now I find myself looking at other states hopefully as I see that they are vaccinating people who are, say, 60 and above. They’re vaccinating teachers, thank goodness. The job (a big one!) is getting done. Here in Georgia, it feels as if we’re a tad behind the national trend.
Right now, Sammy and I remain in Georgia’s notrightnowland of being in our early sixties but without any of the other factors that might qualify us for an earlier spot…and I think we’re both fine with that, for now. But we sure hope that our state works hard to get as many qualified folks vaccinated quickly and before too many more days, we’ll hear that it’s now people 60 and above who can get the shot, and let me tell you, we will line up and do just that.
Happilies ever after?
Wednesday, January 20th, 2021
Hey, did you watch the inauguration and attendant hoorah today? I did, we did, for the most part. Felt good. Feels good. Feels like something good happened because of the fervent work and hopes and persistence of several million people, at least one million more than those who wanted Donald Trump to stick around and do inexplicable rallies and pardons and depriving people of their rights.
Let me just check that on the internet and…holy huge numbers, Batman, Biden got 7,058,909 votes nationwide more than Trump. He got over 81 million. Wow.
And here in Georgia, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff each tallied more than 2.2 million votes, defeating their hapless GOP opponents by 93,272 and 54,944 votes respectively.
So we have a United States Senate that can maybe take up some of the bills that Mitch McConnell has been standing in the way of. And we can help people in this pandemic.
Today was, basically, the first day of that improved world…in DC, in Georgia…really, pretty much across the land.
Maybe it’s just getting better on it’s own?
Monday, December 14th, 2020
This is a (slight) continuation of my thoughts related to stuff going wrong in general from the last post. Since the end of last month, I have been fighting/poking my desktop machine, and I have it now in a configuration where it “works,” or at least is working well enough for me to be able to do something like this.
I’m sitting here in front of it! I’m typing words! The part of the hard drive system that was failing is now just basically bypassed, turned off, still inside the machine but unused. Nothing dangerous about that, right?
Ah, I never really can tell if my sarcasm makes it “onto the page” and out in front of your eyes.
I think what I’m trying to do is get it to a place where it’s “safe” (enough?) to use and I can keep using it for, oh, let’s say until an entirely newly-designed iMac comes out. How many months might that be? Oh, that many, huh? Hmm. Hmmmmmm.
We’re in a good place to just relax and enjoy the delights of December and make sure our vote(s) count in the Georgia US Senate Runoff. Not just for ourselves. Not just for our neighbors. But for America as a whole, gosh darnit! We really don’t need any more McConnell-led delay. We have things to get done. Don’t get me started.
Some sort (of problem.)
Friday, November 27th, 2020
I’ve got some sort of problem with my desktop machine that I’ve been trying to track down and see what my options are for making it better. Yeah, the machine I’m typing to you on right here.
I think part of the hard drive might be going. And if not that, then the question is: well, what is causing the problems I’m seeing? So I’ve been spending a lot of time googling phrases like “MacOS Error 67050” and “How to replace a fusion drive.”
And then other times (like at this moment) the “stuff going wrong” quotient drops down to zero and I think “maybe it’s just getting better on it’s own,” but the problem there is that these things legitimately almost never get better on their own. Not on a desktop machine, not on a pickup truck’s air conditioning unit, not on…well, you see I have been in this mode a lot lately and the desktop is just the latest place to enjoy this drama.
Five ‘A’s into Wednesday.
Tuesday, November 24th, 2020
It’s the very end of the last Tuesday of November. I had to double-check that with the official calendar on my desktop machine because I’ve been confused before by this month. Too many holidays, birthdays of people we know, and then the whole election thing, which this year seems stranger because we’re not done yet—we’re going to attempt to get Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock up there just enough over 50% in each of their U.S. Senate races because, well, Mitch McConnell, need I say more?
So a lot of the real-world news centers on this alongside coverage of Biden and Harris making relatively quiet announcements from Wilmington, Delaware about which sober, qualified people they’ve asked to join their administration.
And the American media in all its disparate parts can’t seem to keep from reporting on the actual current president (for just a few more weeks) and his attempts to encourage lawsuits and what amount to press conferences with lawyers or lawyer-like people describing what went on at the beginning of this month as something like voter fraud. Except they avoid saying specifically that in court or on actual courtroom documents because, well, they swear an oath when they go into court and you can’t just make stuff up when you do that (as I’m sure they have to explain to their client, daily.)
So I try to distract my political brain by reading reports on the speed and efficiency of the new M1 (Apple Silicon) computers Apple has now released, which definitely have some fine benchmark numbers for the people who discuss new machines by starting with their fine new benchmark numbers to..uh..discuss.
This approach to distraction isn’t necessarily very successful (for me) but I do give it a try. Hope you’re having a good and safe week and your numbers are impressive in their own regard.
Dubious authority?
Monday, November 23rd, 2020
Sammy came across this today while out walking or getting exercise or whatever the heck exactly it it she does. She thought I might be amused. She thought correctly!
Of course, I’d like to think this is the front of Stacey Abrams’ car, but…maybe not.
Midweek.
Wednesday, November 18th, 2020
Okay, somehow these three recent Instagrams are speaking to me at this moment, in the earliest minutes of Wednesday, the 18th of November.
The middle one is from the Upper Peninsula, and shows a sign in front of an ex-restaurant that has also seen better days. The bottom one is from the very early 1980s, when I was shooting lights in the studio in hopes of creating some light bursts that would look good behind a baseball. And the top one is some very old tech indeed, but in fact captured just about a month ago in a program that emulates an early Macintosh down to the last detail.
As far as I can figure out at this moment, there’s nothing that links these three together (except they’re from my Instagram feed and are fairly recent, which is to say since the middle of October when it’s now the middle of November.) Only the falling sign is an actual photograph—the other two are from images I’ve captured in other ways and had lying around.
So when I look back on this in a month or so and say “just what what I thinking?” …well, your guess is and will be as good as mine.
Is it not quite Monday?
Sunday, November 15th, 2020
Yes, I think that’s the case. It’s still Sunday night as I write this. And if I don’t say much of anything at all and push it up onto the internet, then there will be not one but four posts I’ve pushed out that are really impressively content-free while simultaneously agonizing over that state and, when you think about it, there’s a lot of the Internet Out There that has those characteristics.
So I’m fitting right in.
Is it Saturday or Sunday?
Sunday, November 15th, 2020
Well, in this case I know clearly that it’s still Saturday. For another 52 minutes or so.
And then after that, and by the time you read this, yeah, it’s probably extremely Sunday.
Oh, great. I got distracted again and it’s now definitely Sunday.
I seem to get going on a post somewhere in the 11 o’clock hour and then, well, I start moving things around and cleaning them up and, whamo, it’s the next day already.
Which is Sunday the 15th. Halfway through this problematic month!
Not-so-headlines.
Saturday, November 14th, 2020
It’s just one of a bunch of graphics I created at TBS for CNN in the early days of the 24 hour news channel. It ended up on a piece of videotape that ended up as a digital file tucked away somewhere on the older of the two machines here in my office, and I spent some time looking at it tonight, wondering who I did it for and why? Now I’m starting to think it was some sort of headline thing that aired on WTBS, but we already had other graphics for that purpose and…ah, who cares other than me at this moment?
I also spent some time watching a 1989 interview of David Letterman on the NBC show Later, hosted most of the time by Bob Costas.
And then I spent some time (re)reading some of The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll, which I’ve been thumbing through since 1988 or so.
And then finally I had my brain in some sort of place to write this.
Is it Wednesday or Thursday?
Thursday, November 12th, 2020
I thought I had been conscientiously working on this very post, but looking back over the last 45 minutes I’d have to say that I was reading what Sammy wrote, and then what Nancy wrote, and then some other stuff online, and then spent some time earnestly cleaning up some folders on my desktop and…well, what time is it now?
I have no one to blame but myself for these…delays. Interruptions in productivity. Diversions. I’m sorry. What was I saying?
Hello and welcome back.
Tuesday, November 10th, 2020
Tim Cook saying “hello and welcome back” to the amazingly empty innards of Apple Park, or at least to the TV version of the innards of Apple Park.
Because I was trying my best NOT to scroll though every moment of the Twitterverse today I managed to not think about the 1 pm Eastern Apple ‘One More Thing’ announcements until sometime after two, so I went to Apple.com and just rolled the presentation when I was good and ready and I’ll be darned if it didn’t pretty much feel like watching it “live” with most of the world.
After establishing the basics of what the M1 Apple chip was, they went on to show it off in a MacBook Air, a Mac Mini, and a MacBook Pro, any of which you could order today. (You know, the usual outcome of an Apple ‘here’s new stuff’ event.)
Did we order anything? No, no we’re OK for now.
