whatever comes to mind
Dollar General. Parking lot. Car with three adult males lets completely naked young male child out to pee right out in the open.
Shift to the capitol: The leader allegedly elected by the majority regularly loses his place when speaking, yet can dispatch atomic weaponry.
It's already over, and no amount of pronoun gymnastics will fix it....
Less than fun work day in progress, here.
I awoke with numerous ideas and excitement to work on them, but immediately ran into a virtual machine that I needed to power down, but of course I see some assfuck message like to there effect of there being no power options available... as in I couldn't restart or shut it down... so had to dig for how to remedy that situation, eventually got there, restarted it... but it never came back up... so had to enlist IT department services, which in my situation is akin to raising one's hand, and waving it wildly whilst screaming “I'VE BEEN DOING THINGS ON THAT SYSTEM THAT COMPLETELY COMPROMISE ITS SECURITY!!! MUAHUAHUAH!!!”, when in fact all I did was user the fucking thing for about a week, and decided to restart it for aspects of it becoming flaky over time.
But, as I'm hinting, there will be questions I'll have to waste time answering....
Finally got that rectified, only to discover a server I've seen deliver content through its external IP address many times in the past no longer doing that... HTTP GETs seem to get through only when specifying the internal IP address... which of course is useless when you're hoping to have “webhooks” contact your server from without.
Something is providing an empty-html response, but it certainly ain't my shit. Probably some security mechanism... but that's going to mean more “swallowing on one's knees” in the IT department lounge... and more questions, including “Why do you want to do this anyway?” when of course the answer is “because my manager wants me to”, which should be sufficient, but won't be....
Point is, it's four hours after those moments of “ideas and excitement”, I'm drained for trying to figure shit out (on a system where I'm not allowed to do too much of value in the diagnostics realm because THAT WOULD CONSTITUTE SURRENDERING TOO MUCH POWER TO A MERE MORTAL (i.e. non-IT-dept personnel), or some ridiculous such. The initial ideas are mostly gone, or (likely) morphed to less informative – if not misleading – versions of their former glorious selves.
(Were this 40 years ago, I'd likely be en route to “filling out the forms in triplicate” to engage molasses bureaucracy....)
And what does this all come back to for me?
The fact that the bulk of my job keeps reverting to dicking with side-effects of Asshole Access Prevention™ instead of the at least somewhat more fulfilling act of useful software creation... not because “security is difficult”, but because we need it in the first place given it makes perfectly good sense that “shit happens” in the general vicinity of, um, shit for a species....
Selves are sufficiently finicky about – if not obsessed with – their appearance to find a form of righteousness in relegating those revealing other than “100% positive, all the time” to an unacknowledged silent treatment penalty box from which there is no escape until enough of the holier-than-thou's somewhat simultaneously find self-beneficial reasons to seemingly repent.
But, of course, by then the possibility of trust is long gone.
What mostly comes to mind on this end includes notions like “thoughtful”, “well-written”, “worth reading”.
But I'm open to learning about your faintly-alleged horrible side as well. ;–)
Sobering.
Sometimes with tangerine trees and marmalade skies, even.
> As with the astral larvae, they can be disintegrated with > sulfur powder.
Now there's a thought I didn't expect to have today!
Ego tires even of itself, especially when other egos – let's call them Zuckeregos, shall we? – find lordly addictive ways to control it – even whilst basking in its own LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! faux glory.
And then there's how about-ness (see also: re-presentation) conceals genuine is-ness....
> I wish I had tawdry tales and scandalous stories to share, > but I do not
Aw, c'mon! Give us the three-dumpsters-prematurely-full story again! :–)
By the time I could afford it, the seemingly-permanent-but-oh-how-wrong-we-were CD era was upon us, so now I've a bunch of spindles of those I've not physically accessed in, oh... has it really been at least a decade or two already? And the world somehow didn't end for not drowning in their content? And it turns out I mostly like the same dozen songs easily accessed on Youtube so long as I forget about having to click through and/or around advertising gimmickry.
<mental notes>
:–)
Can't complain about the meteorological situation where we live. It's a nice distance south of where I grew up, which definitely takes some bite out of winter. But it's also dominated by proximity to a rather large (some might call it “great”...) lake in ways that I think approach “increased stability” for what I'm imagining (hey, I'm not some cute weather person...) to be its, um... energy momentum, i.e. its cool slows down/lessens heat increases whilst (different season) its warm slows down/lessens cold increases.
But it's definitely a very northern (for the United States) locale. I can't imagine living much further south. A place like Florida or Arizona would likely kill me. And, of course, when places like that are warm but not hot, people flock there, and that's even worse. :–)
(except for college “libertines”, of course.... <coughs>)
Super fun night, last. My wife helped me through some glum (hard to explain..), and got in a ton of music practice, which is extra important as I phase in the looper (three channel, actually). We're definitely going to either fall on our faces, or take a series of quantum leaps in our performance skills, as there are gobs of things that can go wrong when one person is operating such a device, and the other has no idea what sections/phrases they're capturing and/or when they're going to re-insert them into the flow. You either work that out in advance and always do it the same, or you become what I want to call more Miles Davies – a laid back openness/responsiveness.
And then there's shit like wanting to capture a phrase, but you botch the capture even as you're playing and singing, thus scrambling – without visibly losing composure – to erase the bad capture and be ready for another opportunity, which of course opens other less-than-ideal possibilities like losing one's place altogether, forgetting lyrics, playing a capture one forgot to erase from the previous song, etc.
The device's biggest shortcoming (although I suspect increasing experience will slowly mitigate it..) is not having a means to set two discrete volume levels – one for more rhythmic guitar work, and another for solo volume. Yes, of course there's a pedal. But say you've captured an eight bar section at normal performance volume. You want a solo to rise above that. So you increase the volume via the pedal. And that's fine. But you may want to capture another section in the same song, so you need to get the fucking level back to “rhythmic guitar level”... or you need to end the song with a little rhythmic guitar, which you don't want blaring away at solo level. But we're talking accomplishing this in real time, and the pedal is anything but a discrete-settings device, and focus upon it detracts from focus on other matters whose ignore-ance can lead to varieties of embarrassing disasters.
But oh my gosh, the dimension it adds when propitiously utilized!
But, again... whereas it likely wouldn't be too much trouble for just one performer, adding another that doesn't know what the pedal-operator is doing can be harrowing. How to communicate what was captured, when one is about to come into (re)play, etc.? I'm talking about with a headset microphone mostly permanently on (could mute my channel to talk, but that cheats the playing a bit... and if not understood the first time? try, try – and maybe fuck up – again...).
How to communicate, for example, “I'm about to start a copy of the music behind the second verse to solo to twice through” without talking?
So it seems we shall be learning a lot more about mutual improvisation.
I've come to view writing software as mostly an exercise in stupidity coddling.
OH! In related news, you wanna know why software developers have to mostly waste their time on mind-numbing security matters?
ANSWER: because humanity is mostly assholes.
In related news (that I promise to keep the word 'mostly' from appearing in..):
> Probably do more harm than good for the world, in all honesty.
That's not a half bad definition of “company”....
Rather enjoying the writing in these parts, of late. I do love well-described moments. Doesn't have to be true – just needs to make me wanna wink back.
What happens in software is you keep learning that most people are so incomprehensibly stupid that it's strong temptation to do for them things they ought to be able to do for themselves. Like remember to turn things on and/or off.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before (yep.. here it comes..), but Kia apparently thought people were sufficiently stupid to have the Soul (our model in its time, at any rate) automatically lock all the doors after a while. That means if I don't carry the fat fucking fob around at all times, chances of me getting into the vehicle (e.g. because I'm seeing it in the garage, and seeing it triggered a memory of something I left therein) are either zero, or the even more frustrating “Murphy's Law Zero”, i.e. you'd think it would be zero for consistency's sake, but somehow it occasionally doesn't lock, and you swear it's just to get you leaning that way, so that the next time you really need to get in the car but don't have the fob, that's when the fucker will be stone cold locked, leading to either going without, or having to take a long walk to retrieve the fob (that's too annoyingly bulking to keep in the pocket, especially how that constantly risks leaning into something in a way that presses the “emergency alarm” button on the fob, and then the fucking thing is annoying not just me, but the rest of the neighborhood – as I fumble in a panic to undo that shit....).
So it's not really the developers' faults. The MX Keys people? Probably super smart. But their customers? Ummmm.... probably not, for the most part. So of course they're going to need to whip out the equivalent of Playskool blocks in the design....
(And of course there doesn't seem to be setting for it, although there are tricksters online offering protracted sets of borderline ridiculous steps that more desperate types will likely actually attempt, much to the joy of said “tricksters” – ho ho ho hee hee hee ha ha ha.)
> OK, conserves battery, right? > > Or, make a bigger, better battery!
Can't. Climate Change™.
(Or so some of us think. Or believe. I mean, are there even really facts about much of anything anymore, or is it all just mostly (OH FUCK I JUST USED THE WORD 'mostly' AGAIN! SORRY!!!) about who's saying it, and being seen to align therewith for the Cool Kids Blessing Upon Us Power it connotes?)
<laughs sufficiently hysterically to border on demonically>
> That's all. Filler for filler. Apologies.
In my experience, one person's seeming (to themselves) filler at a given moment, in a given mental context, is another's fun glimpse into another's moment(s). And there's nothing to say the originator won't see the same as other than filler at some other moment, in some other mental context.
I think that suggests there's nothing objective about the “isness” of how one's post(s) seem.
I think that suggests it's all roughly the rose-by-any-other-name zone.
Kind of a rough morning, starting with my alarm going off an hour early for having disabled my phone's airplane mode in another timezone, and then not reestablishing the timezone of where we live. I got so into getting ready for work that it wasn't until 10 minutes before I was about to start work that I noticed other clocks telling a different story.
That's on top of a proverbial “too much fun” day/night, featuring varieties of psychoactive chemicals, and eventually my wife getting into a sort of dance marathon to old favorites via Youtube... and eventually some surprisingly (given the inebriation..) protracted (oooh!) mutually beneficial bio-activities.. so we're talking muscle aches, joint (oooh!) pain, and so on. (Oh, and somewhat nauseous to boot....)
But, my <deity>, we seemed such a “power couple” at the one winery, and then the bar... interacting with familiars, meeting new others – most of their names fading to where the momentary seeming significance of blogs posts possibly lays to rest.....
The morning after a fun day with younger relatives.
It was marred a bit by the behavior of the grandchildren, which alarmed even my wife as way too much ego in the mix for their ages. Maybe I've just been out of the child-rearing game too long, but they seemed to like hurting and/or humiliating each other beyond what I was remembering as “normal”. And, my <deity>, when they'd start feeling sorry for themselves, the world was literally ending. I even said to the youngest at one point, “Hey, if you're trying to have a crying contest with me, think again, because I'm the absolute best at it!” That brought a little bit of a smile, but I was honestly approaching wits end at trying to pry him out of his fairly obnoxious display of self-pity.
It all made sense in a way, though, as my wife's daughter is an extremely busy nurse, and the father, well, seems well-nigh useless but for his he-man job, and occasionally grunting out a word of agreement/affirmation.
(Heh... chuckling now because as I was about to type “the kids are waaaaay out of their league”, I suddenly realized that's likely the case here, where I likely seem inept relative to young-ins sensibilities and/or screen skills/blog-social-protocol(s)-understanding....)
> Cancelled myself – don't want to add to the > conversation. My fault.
Aw, shucks!
As intelligence devolves to egoism, it seems a point of no return is reached at which learning above/beyond egoism is impossible, and all that's left is to be rent asunder, perhaps a few of the not-demonically-selfish surviving to try, try again in an environment hopefully cleansed of said irrevocable devolution.
> Do we really need digital social networks?
Those who do, do? And those who don't, don't? And so there's really no singular “we” to which such a question could possibly reasonably apply?
Makes for a heck of a metaphor for read.write.as.... ;–)
Having a place to go with the stuff doesn't help. We've a second garage slowly willing with junk from the previous house, and working things we've replaced purely for stylistic reasons.
I'd love to have a rummage sale, but that means people, which means some will be hagglers, others will be thieves, other will be “professional” rummage sale goers that find ways to wreck it for others, etc.
So all that shit's probably headed to a landfill at some point, because the opportunity to make the planet unbearable (“climate change”) for assholes trumps (not an accidental word choice..) being at the mercy of assholes.
Or am I being too bluntly honest in that statement?
Anyhoo.. humid day, here.. daughter/son/grandchilden-in-law are enjoying our rental. Weather could be touch and go with occasional thunderstorms in the forecast. And it sounds like they'll all be here for dinner – which I'll take over possibly feeling pressured to eat indoors (which we're not really ready for, yet).
You want to say it, but suddenly remember you're the only in the audience that could possibly know what you mean.
So how could attempting to say it be but last gasps and thrashing of ego seeking ego attention?
I could be wrong... but seems to me... that means... it's.........
..... HAMMER TIME! :–)
Heh... does a self ever really want to talk about anything else?
In the vicinity of that, I'm on-and-off plagued by what I want to call Robert Smith's “it's always the same”. I can hardly watch TV/movies anymore, because I invariably detect a poorly disguised instance of what seem like just a handful of go-to human stories. You know: someone “falls in love” with someone they shouldn't; someone is treated in unimaginably bad ways; someone is in an environment in which they can't “be who they really are”. And so on. Just so fucking tired of same old. I mean, I kind of get that new generations arise and might temporarily find such new and/or exciting, but at 60 I feel it's been painfully repetitious for the last several decades.
Blog posts tend to provoke similar ennui unless the writing is enviable.
(Not that this post is any different/better, mind you....)
Like posts going on and on about “privilege” in ways having nothing to do with what it really is, the repeated ignore-ance of which guarantees its never being solved.
There is no “West” as an objective self-entity capable of making promises.
I think it would be more important to never forget the said “vaccine” neither prevents people from becoming infected (else why are self-righteous “vaccine” quickly – never mind me-too-club self-righteously – concerned about who around them hasn't been “vaccinated”, and thus is its status as a genuine vaccine right up there Bugs' status as a genuine bunny.
Seemed that way earlier in the online game, but for quite some time its felt like yet another flawed, burdensome role to remember to properly play, i.e. in accord with others' expectations.
Funny how mood and weather dance.
But, then, what isn't funny about this seeming existence as an alleged free-willed nexus of individuality?
A wee bit humid, sun poking through, dinner in a state of preparation, an “Oh my God, it smells so good out here!” from my wife near the grill on the deck just outside the sliding screen door.
And it does. I think I'm actually smelling roses from this laid back position on the family room couch.
<a bit of a conversation about the theoretical role of humidity in wafting odors about>
Life – like “self” – is fine until polluted – if not denigrated – by thoughts about it.
Best to witness, find the path back to the raw witnessing of awareness sans the danger of getting caught up in re-flections thereof.
For I am that “I am”.