The Month That Was - November 2020

For what I think is only the third time in history I am not going post this month (except this).  A while back I quipped that my expectation is that, eventually, we will all get Covid.  Well I can now say I have done my share to make that true.

It nailed me hard right after Thanksgiving.  Oppressive cough, monstrous sore throat, fever, chills, deep fatigue.  There was a three day stretch where I was barely ambulatory.  I am still fighting a lingering cough and general weakness.  It was as sick as I have ever been in my life.

Question 1:  Were you vaxxed?  Yes.  Since January.

Question 2:  Boosted?  No, that was delayed, for reasons I'll discuss in the full story next month.

I'll have a lot to say about the experience next month, along with a lot of other stuff, but for now I'm going to rest and heal and leave you with only apologies.  Thanksgiving-wise, I am grateful to be above ground and, at the moment, that's enough.

The Month That Was - October 2021

Another month passes into the mist.  Cognitively, I think I look at a year as about the same amount of time I would have thought of as a month when I was a wee lad.  A lot will happen, but once it's over, it just slips into an indistinct time frame of the past.  As a child, if I needed to know the month something happened in the past, I would probably try to relate it to things like summer vacation, who my teacher was, something that happened on a TV show, and from there figure out the more specific time frame.  I now do that with years.  If I have to remember when a certain event occurred, I will try to remember things like what car I was driving, or what tech I was using, or what happened on a TV show.    

Actually, most everything from the past 30 years has blurred into something like "grown up lifetime" and it's really hard to timeline the events in that era.  Apropos of nothing except that it's fall again, and I'm beginning to think I'll survive another year.

[Movies] Flick Check: Roundup

[Books] Book Look: Piranesi, by Susanna Clark

[Arts] Go Van Gogh

[Movies] Flick Check: Roundup

Many Saints of Newark 

Da hell?  That was awful. How did this steaming pile emerge from perhaps the most celebrated and renown TV series in history?  The tone is inconsistent; the motivations vague and unjustified; the acting (with the exception of the mighty Ray Liotta) was lame.  An entire subplot (maybe 30-40% of the film) was a misguided paean to social justice. It even fails as wanton fan service. Just a top-to-bottom disaster.

A month back I speculated whether any of the pantheon TV from the aughts could get made today.  I think this is the clear answer: no.  This is what The Sopranos would be in the current cultural atmosphere. It is a sad, sad time for the arts. My advice: do not watch this.  In fact, let's all agree it never happened.

Black Widow 

Not bad.  Nothing revelatory.  As seems to be common in movies of late, the tone is haphazard and the motivations contrived.  But then, it's a superhero film, not high art.  It's saved by likeable characters and engaging portrayals. Middle-of-the-road MCU fare. In the grand scheme it would probably have seemed more relevant had it come out a pre-Endgame.  

Dune

It's gotten to the point with movies that my first expectation of anything is that it will suck. Filmmakers generally have so many priorities that supercede dramatic quality (social justice, sequels and universe building, the Chinese market) that if you end up with a coherent, humanistic story you can count yourself lucky.  In that way, Dune was a pleasant surprise.

I read Dune as a youth and was left uninspired.  Perhaps I should read it again, but it strikes me as an odd story to have gathered so many admirers.  It is effectively an allegory of an aspect of late twentieth century cultural interaction between an advanced civilization (The Empire in Dune; The West in reality) and an un-advanced civilization (The Fremen in Dune; Arabs/Muslims in reality) where the un-advanced have a resource that the advanced need and will fight for (The Spice in Dune; Oil in reality).  From this we make a gumbo out of with imaginative tech and paranormal people and organizations as de rigueur for speculative fiction.  The elemental narrative is the bog-standard trope of The One.   

Saying Dune is visually impressive is an understatement.  On my 65-inch plasma it was mesmerizing; I can only imagine how good it would look in Imax.  It could have trimmed a bit of excess running time, but it never bogged down for too long.  To director Denis Villenueve's credit there was minimal wokery in a story line that is ripe for it.  To his discredit there was virtually no humor or light hearted moments to offset the rather grim tone and story.

Still it set the stage very well for the upcoming sequel (this movie only covered the first half of the book) and carried my interest enough that I am looking forward to the next installment.

Here's a question:  If Dune is an allegory for West/Islam relations in, say, the 1970s and '80s, why not make a contemporary movie of it.  Reset it in Riyadh in 1975, where Duke Leto is a British Petroleum exec assigned to Saudi Arabian production and the Bene Gesserat are, oh, I don't know, al-Jihad or something, and Ollie North is Baron Harkonnen.  I am only half kidding.  It could be the stuff of serious adult historical drama if handled correctly, which of course it would not be. It would require cliched, narrow, Aaron Sorkin-level viewpoints if it was to be greenlit.  Sigh.  But mix in some blasters and mind-control and you're golden.

[Books] Book Look: Piranesi, by Susanna Clark

This is a delightful book in so many ways.  Briefly described, a man is trapped in a sort of alternate reality which consists of a building of some stripe with an infinite number of cavernous rooms filled with gargantuan statues.  The building is such that it has its own sky, its own ocean, its own ecosystem.  The man, Piranesi, has completely acclimated to reality such that he never seems to question its existence or the existential contradictions of it.  Through his interactions with the only other person in the reality, a man he refers to as The Other, the mysteries surrounding the building resurface and he must face a disturbing new reality.

Yes, but.  The unravelling of reality is not where the beauty of this book is found.  The loveliness here is in the descriptions of the building (referred to as the House) and how Piranesi has adapted not only to survival in the House, but building a belief system and a scientific philosophy out of it.  It is both beautiful and, to my mind, quite realistic.  The house contains dangers, but also great beauty; natural rhythms and random surprises.  Confronted with this Piranesi has created both a scientific outlook -- he assiduously maps his world, tracks tides, observes causal connections -- and religious beliefs -- he has faith the house will provide for him, reveres the dead, accepts the fate the house grants.  Clark's prose builds a beautiful aesthetic for all this, as one would expect from the author of Jonathan Strange & Dr. Norrell, so much so that I was somewhat disappointed that actual reality had to intrude on it.

The other blessed aspect of this book is that it is short.  Clark offers no fluff, no padding, nothing to skip over.  My hobby horse over the years has been that books are almost universally 30%-40% too long.  Not Piranesi.  God bless Clark for that.

Should you read Piranesi? Yes. You may not be as touched by it as I was, but I can;t imagine you regretting it. If there is a larger moral to the story I can't see it, it's just a lovely and intriguing way to spend some time.

[Arts] Go Van Gogh

I had a spontaneous opportunity to see the rather popular Van Gogh immersive experience that is touring the country.  It was pretty cool (that's my deeply considered, intricately reasoned opinion).  The entire experience takes just shy of an hour.  I suspect the installations may vary in their processes. In Houston where I was, you are ushered into a  large room, roughly the size of the gymnasium and are seated on the floor on cushions or, if your entry is well timed, on one of a handful of benches scattered about the room.  You can get a feel for it from the website.

Various famous Van Gogh paintings are given subtle and quite lovely animations then projected onto the walls so you feel surrounded by the paintings.  The motion is gentle and the details of the paintings really get highlighted well.  Of course it is set to music which ranges from ambient to lo-fi to pseudo-classical.  Photography is encouraged, and the result is a room full of backlit people shaped images angling the brightly colored screens to get brief snippets of videos.  The net effect is to almost embed the audience in the animated presentations of the paintings.  Like I said, it's pretty cool.  Certainly worth a trip if it comes to your neck of the woods.  (It's been in Detroit, but I don't go to Detroit.)

I would love to see more of these sorts of shows.  Even more interesting would be to embed them in commercial areas.  There is a tunnel in the Detroit Metro Airport that connects terminals wherein they try to pump calming music and have a '70s era light show.  One of these installations would be much cooler.  Or better yet, how about a bar/restaurant.  It would beat the hell out of having a crummy guitar player with synthesized back-up. I hereby copyright that idea. Hit me up if you want to buy the rights.

The Month That Was - September 2021

For the first time in my life, I think I'm really beginning to feel my age. This may be psychological as my 61st birthday passed in September, but it sure seems like muscle and joint soreness have kicked up a notch and I can't tell you the last time I made it through the day without a short (10 minute) nap.  And if you want to see what an old man looks like, you would look at me when I get out of bed in the morning.  You would think I was 90.

Still, I don't count myself out of any physical activity, and am in fact quite healthy in general.  My mind is not as pliable and quick to understand new concepts as it was, but I can still focus as well as ever (although that may not be saying much). So, no, as much as I may feel like I'm slipping, I am far from out of the game.

Aging is tricky.  It's easy to blame failings on age, but that can also be a convenient excuse.  Whenever I'm tempted to use "because I'm old" as an explanation I ask myself, is it really any different than before and often I find I may be romanticizing the past.  And, even though I can't do everything I used to, behaving as if I could at least keeps the degradation from being self-fulfilling.

I now have two separate versions of my manuscript.  One is not historically accurate but flows a little more smoothly and is more economical, the other is historically unimpeachable.  I'm on the fence about which one to publish.  I think the accurate one, since the work is very niche oriented, meaning the handful of people who eventually read it may be jarred by any inaccuracies. I remain disheartened by this last minute setback.

[House and Home] Amidst Pestilence

[TV] Outer Banks

[Travel] Weekend Warrioring

[House and Home] Amidst Pestilence

I am inundated with Stink Bugs.  These pestilential nasties are an invasive species from Japan.  They look like dime sized alien life forms.  If you crush them they make a horrible cracking sound and the smell they emit upon crushing is the very definition of dank.  To kill without crushing them you have to carefully grab them in tissue and flush them down the toilet.  They are slow and stupid.  All they do is fly around very awkwardly and haphazardly seeking heat sources and breed at an alarming rate. They thrive here as they have no natural predators (yet).  I have a south facing wall in my house and when the sun comes out, they cover the outside.  That's bad enough, but at peak times I'll kill as many as 20 that have somehow wandered inside over the course of the day.  I hate them.  I want to end their species.

Chemical warfare can help and I have called in pest control services for that.  I've also taken to sealing up any cracks in window casing or other structures like the fireplace where they might be sneaking in.  Still, it seems like an eternal battle.

There are some minor rays of hope.  One is that it seems local predators (birds, larger bugs) are very slowly adapting to eat these things.  More promising is the arrival of a new invasive species from Japan, Samurai Wasps.  These heroic little critters are the native predator of stink bugs in Japan and so it only makes sense they should follow the stink bug invasion with one of their own.  Not to be confused with murder hornets, samurai wasps are so small as to be barely visible.  They do pretty much nothing else but hijack stink bug eggs to grow more wasps.  God bless them.

Long term, it's hoped that the samurais will bring the stink bugs under control, to the point they aren't a nuisance.  I should note it's not just having these nasty things in your house that's the problem.  They can devastate crops.  So our little samurai buddies have real economic value.

You know, I post occasionally about what I call the "Roaring 20s 2.0" and the astonishing technological and scientific advances that will pay off in the coming years, yet here we are in the 2020s still fighting plagues and pestilence.

[TV] Outer Banks

A teenage acquaintance of mine developed a minor obsession with the Netflix series Outer Banks.  Evidently it's quite popular with teens so in an effort to be the World's Dopest Boomer I did a quick binge. 

It's a standard Romeo & Juliet variation.  Instead of Montagues and Capulets we have the Pogues, who are the poor folks, and the Kooks, who are the rich folks.  It is unclear where those labels came from, I suspect they are just made up words. (Insert Thor meme: "All words are made up.") The Pogues and the Kooks fight and rage against each other, while the Pogue boy and the Kook girl start at odds but eventually become a couple.  Their first kiss was named "Best Kiss" at the MTV Awards.  Because teens.

Interesting to me is that the Capulets and Montagues were equivalent families (IIRC). An R&J rehash from the 20th century, West Side Story, featured whites and Puerto Ricans, both equally stupid and racist.  In contrast, the factions in Outer Banks we have clear good guys and bad guys and, as you can guess, the rich Kooks are the bad guys. There is a think-piece to be written about how the earlier opposing sides have a rough moral equivalence, whereas this current one clearly has a bad guy and it's The Rich.  I will not be the one writing that think piece.

Still you have the proven star-crossed romance theme coupled with a Scooby-Doo level missing treasure mystery as the McGuffin.  Pile on more teen targeting: The adults have little effect on the teen scene, they don't understand them, they just want control.  The teens want nothing more than independence and to pursue their lives away from the pesky grown-ups. Yup. Another timeless theme.

Apart from the class warfare thing, it's not overly wokey.  It's a pretty solid teen fantasy aimed mostly, but not exclusively, at girls.  If your teen is obsessed with this, it's probably nothing to get too concerned about.

Three further observations:

First, I don't know if the soundtrack is a good source for understanding what music teens are listening to.  I don't recognize the songs so I guess it's possible.  One exception was at the high point of the season when we got an episode closing to "Police On My Back" from the Clash.  Straight out of the late 1970s.  Yes, I did think it was better than anything else on the show, by miles.

Second, there is absolutely no reason for this show to be called Outer Banks.  It is not shot in the Outer Banks -- evidently the producers disagreed with the politics of North Carolina on woke grounds.  There are no Outer Banks locations referenced.  The show-specific vocabulary -- Kooks, Pogues, The Cut (where the Pogues live), Figure 8 (where the Kooks live) -- is entirely made up.  Literally the only thing related to the actual Outer Banks (a place I love) is the name.  I supposed they started by hoping to really create a locally flavored show, but when they needed to cancel the State of North Carolina, they decided to keep the name because it's so cool sounding.  It's actually shot in South Carolina near Charleston.  I guess "Hilton Head" wouldn't have gone over so well.  Hmmm.  There's also a Folly Beach nearby.  That would have been more apropos.

Third, everything I said about the show only applies to Season 1.  Season 2 is abysmal by any standards. Just astonishingly bad.

[Travel] Weekend Warrioring

I took three long weekends in a row for differing reasons.

Savannah/Hilton Head

The purpose of this trip was to help a college student at Savannah College of Art and Design move from one apartment to another.  That was a trip down memory lane -- last minute packing scrambles, multiple trips with large boxes, scumbag landlords, unexpected expenses -- been there, done that.  I didn't get any time to see Savannah, but I've been to Savannah on several occasions so it was a small sacrifice in the aid of youth.  

Fortunately once the moving was over we were able to decamp to Hilton Head, about an hour-ish north into South Carolina, for some beach and chill time.  I knew enough to snag a well located airbnb in the Sea Pines plantation.  A quick explanation:  Hilton Head is divided into districts which they call "plantations" although they are nothing of the sort.  They are basically gigantic homeowners associations with their own commercial district and services. A couple have gone so far as to limit access by the public.  To my mind, the best of these is one called Sea Pines.  It has the best commercial areas and a fine beach club.  If you're not a resident or renter it'll cost you a tenner to get into the plantation.  As snooty as that sounds, it works to keep the area from being overcrowded.  (I would say "works to keep the riff raff out" but really there is very little riff raff on Hilton Head.  You have to pay a toll just to get on the island to begin with.)

Even within Sea Pines parking can be tricky.  The beach club parking is limited to actual residents, not renters.  There is a shuttle of questionable convenience for renters.  So if you're going to have a beach day, the smart thing is to get your rental within walking distance of the beach club as parking elsewhere, while troublesome, is manageable.  Of course, the better plan is to ride a bike if you can.  (I write this as much for my own future reference than for any other reason.)

This was the last weekend in August so it was quite warm, both air and water, but the beach breeze was strong and 4-foot waves were rolling in steadily. I can't imagine better beach day conditions.  It was a perfect reward for a couple days of hard moving. 

We also managed to take an afternoon sail on the Stars and Stripes, the America's Cup championship sailboat from 1987.  In 1983 the America's cup was lost (to Australia) for the first time in 132 years.  In 1987 this was the boat that was built to win it back.  It has been modified for safer cruising, but you still have to crank on massive winches to raise and adjust the sails.  In this activity guests are recruited and naturally I volunteered.  It's a workout, believe me.  The gearing is very long to facilitate precise adjustments, so cranking is a very arduous task.  The winds were light so the sailing was sedate.  Still a great way to nab some drinks out on the water.

Hilton Head is a good spot and worth a visit if you have the means.  (If you don't have the means, you go to Myrtle Beach.)  A little intense at times, in the sense of crowds and money and rules, but it's as fine a beach vacation as any.  

Mackinac Island

Or "The Island'' as I refer to it.  The Island is a paradigmatic wedding destination and that's why I was there this time.  The wedding itself was being held at Stonecliff, a lovely country house-style resort about a mile and a half outside town and a truly beautiful setting for a wedding, in fact weddings are kind of their thing.  

Now, here's the thing about The Island: Staying anywhere outside of town presents difficulties unless you are in good physical condition and inclined towards activity.  It bears reminding you there are no cars.  You can get a horse drawn taxi with a significant wait as long it's not too early in the morning or late at night.  Otherwise you will be biking or hiking anytime you need to get somewhere and back, often up steep hills.  As there was no way the Stonecliff resort was able to house all the wedding guests, there was much long range to-ing and fro-ing among the wedding party.  In my case I made a couple of trips back and forth on foot, including one at about 2AM in a state of significant inebriation.  Since I am in good physical condition and inclined towards activity, I was mostly fine.  The inebriation part was a throwback to my college days from whence I knew most of the attendees, and was mostly less than fine.  It has been decades since I was in a true state of drunkenness and I'm good if it never happens again.  I did a 6 mile run the next day as penance...although you'd have to define run very broadly to include any manner of forward locomotion.

That aside, it was still a wonderful trip to The Island as always.  The wedding went off beautifully. Though it was a rainy day, the rain timed itself exquisitely to allow the ceremonies to continue unhindered.  And it was good to see many familiar faces from all around the country -- Virginia, North Carolina, even as far as California.  The Island is such that in a situation like that you will randomly happen across folks you know as you are trolling around, making it all feel very serendipitous.

More often than not, my trips to The Island have been solo; occasionally I've had Island-savvy friends along, but this is the first time I got to see The Island with a number of first-timers.  They confirmed my view of it as a very special place.

Saugatuck

A last word about The Island is that it was packed.  It was as busy as I have ever seen it.  Frankly, I was lucky to get a room.  The following weekend was the weekend of the 8-mile race I did for ten straight years pre-covid. I could not get a room for that weekend, and believe me I tried everything.  That has never happened before.  I have occasionally

had to pay an arm and a leg for a room at the last minute, but I have never been skunked. That left me and a few friends with no destination, no race, and an empty weekend.

Enter Saugatuck and the Mount Baldhead Challenge.  Saugatuck is a little "arts" community on the west coast of Michigan.  By "arts" I mean a very picturesque, wealthy, walkable town with lots of shops and bars, frequented by boaters, with a sizeable and visible gay community. I'm sure there is some actual Art involved too.  It's a sweet little place about a 2.5 hour drive from my house. It's actually closer to Chicago than Ann Arbor or Detroit, so it gets a lot of weekenders from the Windy City environs.  So when The Island fell through for us, I picked it for an alternate destination.

Serendipitously, this was also the weekend of the Mt. Baldhead Challenge, a short-ish (less than 10k) but truly brutal trail race through the woods and dunes of Saugatuck.  So, lucky us, we not only had a new destination, but a new race also.  

The race was beautiful.  It started on the beach, wound through wooded trails of rolling and fairly steep hills, featured a stair climb of 300+ steps (a staircase built over the highest sand dune -- Mt. Baldhead, hence the name), and a beach run.  Beautiful, yes, but I bonked early and it became real torture for me.  I struggled as hard as I ever had in a race, even though the distance was relatively short.  My friends were a decade or so younger than me, so I had an excuse, but these are folks I was generally able to keep with previously.  Now I was finishing a short race 10 minutes behind them.  The specter of my age, and the degradation of my body, is starting to hover over everything I do.  Something must be done, but I don't know what.  But my angst aside, it was a great race in a great setting.  I'd probably do it again, and endure more angst.

One thing that stands out about this weekend for me was how compatible everyone was.  When I travel with others, I usually find that my inclination is to be more active than everyone else.  Not this group.  No ubers were ordered for short walks into town.  Walking a more scenic route was gladly accepted at the cost of an extra few hundred yards.  Besides the race we had a beach day that included a 5k beach walk in addition to the usual sitting and sunning.

Another thing that everyone was agreeable about was food and drink.  Usually in a group of people you have strong feelings about where to go and who likes what kind of food and who wants to go somewhere nice or somewhere casual.  Again, not here.  Nobody really worried about where we ate, knowing they could find something they liked anywhere. 

I am fond of saying that, while traveling with others is good in that you create shared experiences, it also means everything is a negotiation.  This weekend was a counter-example to that.

The last thing that stands out to me is how everyone (all Michiganders) commented, "how did we not know about Saugatuck before this?"  As with the newbies to Mackinac Island the previous weekend, it felt wonderful to share such a gem and have it so well appreciated.

So that was that.  Three great weekends in a row.  Could I live my whole life like that?  Make every weekend a fabulous getaway with friends? I'd like to try.

The Month That Was - August 2021

Swamped.  Multiple straight weekends of activities have severely cut into my ongoing plans. That's why I'm later than ever and with some very thin content.

I was soooo close to having the next book published and then I discovered a timeline problem.  I know how to solve it, but I won't have a chance to get to it until mid September so the book is delayed a month or so.  In fact, I've pretty much written off accomplishing anything until after I get through the late August/early September weekends. I hop at least to generate some good travel posts.

I am officially un-layed off at work.  I was to be terminated with severance in April, but the corporate hive mind has backpedalled. I'm relieved...I think.

[TV]Binging Oldies

[Tech] Waffling Into an Upgrade

[Roaring 20s] Roaring 20's (2.0) Watch, Coding AI

[TV] Binging Oldies

It's amazing how TV shows even as recent as ten years ago could not be greenlit today. I've been binging shows from the first decade of the 21st century.  With each passing year, I feel more and more like that was a truly special time for the medium.  A real peak, unlikely to return any time soon.

Sopranos

This is the one that started it all; ask yourself if HBO would allow it today.  This one is borderline.  David Chase would have had to seriously up the number of roles for POCs, and he might even be pressured into a female mob boss, but maybe it could get done.  We are still allowed to delve into the darkness of various forms of crime, so it's possible we would still have gotten it although I bet it would be reduced in quality to something on the level of, say, Sons of Anarchy or Animal Kingdom.    

Mad Men

Insufficiently diverse, of course. Insufficiently negative about women's roles in the '60s.  Attempted to portray the era in which it was set realistically, rather than in accordance with popular mythology.  Insufficient comeuppance to the male characters for their sins.  Smoking glamorized (was a problem even back then).  Even in its day, period dramas went the way of things like The Nick or Masters of Sex to promote corrrect cultural values over realistc looks at humanity. Complete unacceptable.

Deadwood

Every sin known to man, yet all the sinners had their place, and the drive to civilization was led by a murdering racist whoremonger.  Casual and constant ethic and racial slurs.  Indians are referred to as dirt-worshippers, Chinese as celestials, the n-word is dropped with regularity, the single Jewish character is frequently just referred to as "The Jew".  The slurs go beyond names into negative stereotypes. One of the female leads is called a "loopy f-ckin' c-nt" on a number of occasions and women are generally referred to by euphemisms for their genitals.  And that's the Good Guys.  The Big Bad is actually more polite.  Honestly, if cancel culture ever turns its eye to Deadwood, everyone who ever came within earshot of this production will never work again.  (I just hope they don't come after the people who binge it.)  Despite all that it remains the finest TV show ever created and one of the finest works of art of our lifetimes.

Entourage

Obviously not is the same dramatic class as the others but it shares a similar fate.  It was the male equivalent of Sex and the City, that is to say: a fantasy.   Fantasies are our often dark, unhealthy, desires that need to be overruled for the sake of civilization.  It's probably psychologically beneficial to have such fantasies and satisfy them through fiction. But we can't do that any more.  Even acknowledging the existence of lusts and untoward thoughts is a transgression.  Entourage was pretty much non-stop lusts and untoward thoughts. I thought it was fun. I have no illusion that it represented anything short of make-believe, but it's portrayal of a male fantasy life appealed to me.  I guess that makes me one of the bad guys.  (I'll leave it as an excercise for the reader to determine if its female counterpart, Sex and the City, could be made today.)

Leaving Entourage aside, the other three are absolutely pantheon level drama.  It may be possible in this brave new world to create shows of equivalent quality that do not violate any of our new hyper-moral constraints, but nobody has yet.  Perhaps there is the belief today that socio-political validation counts as good drama and delving into personal humanity is passe.  More than anything else, this leads me to believe we are wandering into an artistic dark age. 

Tangentially related: Also a Nike commercial dark age.

[Tech] Waffling Into an Upgrade

 t's time for a series of tech upgrades.  

My trusty Moto G6 is reaching the end of its life.  It has started with flaky behavior increasing lag time that requires a reset now and then and goes downhill from there.  I know because I've lived it before.  Everyone in the world will tell me to get an iPhone, but I am still anti-Apple enough not to.  Also, I just can't force myself to drop $1000 for a phone.  It's a psychological hurdle I just can't leap.  Part of it may be my tendency to lose and break things.  I have a decent pair of Maui Jim sunglasses but I leave them untouched and wear cheap aviators from 5 Below because I know I am going to lose them.  I'd feel better about having to replace a $300 phone instead of a $1000 phone.  I'm doing better at this.  I have a fairly decent pair of wireless earbuds as opposed to the $20 wired cheapies I used to use because I knew I would lose them. I also have an expensive watch that I wear daily because of its sentimental value, and I haven't lost that yet.  But still, a phone goes from pocket to table to car console to backpack and so on.  In the course of that I am sure I would do something stupid.

So no four-figure phone for me.  In my price range, the latest flagship phones are out.  The Google Pixel 5A looks awesome and lists for $450, call it half-a-grand all-in. Google's version of Android is the "purest" and they are really good about pushing updates.  That said, I really don't like the idea of Google having that much more claim on my life.  Of course, since it's going to be an Android phone, I don't know how effective this is at sticking it to the man.

Another option is the OnePlus Nord N10.  This is the latest darling of reviewers and it does seem like an incredible deal at a $299 list price.

A third option is to get the latest Moto, the G Power, which is on 199.00 at Amazon.  The camera is lame, but the battery does last forever and if I lose or break it, I can live.

A fourth option would be to find an older model of a flagship.

A fifth option would be to shut up, do what everyone else does and buy a damn iPhone, get the insurance if I'm worried, and don't pester us with 300 words of blather. Also shut up.

Next up, my laptop.  My laptop is also struggling with occasional issues, mostly regarding power management.  Also the trackpad is behaving badly.  Time to replace.  Here's the question: how much laptop do I really need anymore?  Virtually everything I do, I do on the web.  I have very little need for local computing power and storage.  Back when I was active in photography, I used to need space to store photos and processor power to edit them.  But I haven't done any serious photography in years, although I always tell myself I'm going to get back to it.  

All that seems to imply that I could do well enough with a Chromebook.  But then there's the Google thing again.  Also, I like knowing that I can work offline if I ever need to, like maybe writing on a plane without wifi, or maybe actually getting back to photography.  This amounts to buying aspirationally, not practically.  Like buying a huge 4wd pickup for daily commute in town, just because I might run the Baja 1000 one day.

I'm pretty sure I want a larger screen and a 3:2 ratio since I don't do gaming or much video streaming.  That's really all I need and, like the phone, I should just shut up and get a Surface Book and stop fretting the details. But then I get tempted by convertibles with detectable screens and I think maybe I could retire my one Apple product, my iPad, which I got for free a couple of years back so it doesn't count against my anti-Apple stand.  But I have to admit the iPad is pretty sweet and most convertibles suck as tablets.  So...yeah.

Sheesh, this has gotten borderline stream-of-consciousness, hasn't it?  I'll be sure to let you know what I end up doing because I know how extremely important it is to you.  For now, I think I'll take my own advice and shut up.

[Roaring 20s] Roaring 20's (2.0) Watch, Coding AI

This is a little Inside Baseball but this astonishing video came to my attention and hit home with me as a technologist.  It starts a bit slow, but essentially it involves two people asking an Artificial Intelligence to write a certain computer program -- literally asking vocally -- and the AI doing it live as we watch.  That in itself is remarkable, but the most remarkable thing is that the AI taught itself how to program from simply being fed tons of previously written programs and analysing them. 

Speaking as someone who has spent three decades doing this in concert with numerous teams of human programmers and fought through all the communication and coordination complications involved in completing huge software projects, I suddenly feel like my Model T was just passed by a Tesla.

Tangentially related:  There is a new and superior pasta shape.

The Month That Was - July 2021

Another month of madness.  I was given the news that my day job position is (effectively) being moved out of the U.S. after nearly 28 years.  I have been given a termination date in the near future.  It sounds upsetting, but don't weep for me.  I'll get a decent severance package and there is the question of how many years I have left anyway.  More below. 

Overall I have a sense that my life is about to move to a new phase.  I'm not sure what that phase will entail or whether it will be better or worse. It is more than a little unsettling.

As much as I thought I was done with my manuscript, I didn't act like it.  I went through it one more time and found a few minor things to fix.  Then I found yet another problem; one of historical timing of events.  I have more original writing to do now. Sheesh.

And we seem to be once more on the precipice of pandemic restrictions.

Not a good month.

[Rant] Now what?

[Good Links] Steaming Pile of Links 

[TV] Loki

[Rant] Now What?

At some time in the future I may relate the entire story of my termination. In short, after 28 years my position is effectively being moved overseas.   I will say that, while my emotions run the gamut and I certainly disagree with the decision, I have to acknowledge that they had the right to make it. (Also, as a global, multinational company headquartered outside the U.S., I can't really fault them for not prioritizing U.S. jobs.)  I am not the first person in history to be laid off, and like everyone else in history my emotional response is to feel as though it's unfair, but I also know I'll get past my emotions.

And, although I am still in the negative stage emotionally, the way it was done was quite reasonable.  I have been given 9 months warning before my last day and I have a fairly generous severance package. So I am under no great duress.  The fact is, at my age (one month shy of 61), there is a question of how long I had to go anyway.

Still the question remains, what do I do now?  

One possibility is to outright retire.  I could almost certainly get a good price for my house. My 401k is doing well.  My IRA is doing well.  And if I literally didn't take a job I would start my Social Security payments before my severance ran out.  It wouldn't be a cushy life, but I wouldn't be stressed financially.  Would I be bored?  Maybe.  I would spend time writing and working out and maybe a road trip here and there.  Often over the course of my life there have been times I have said to myself that's all I really want to do. Maybe I should put my money, or lack thereof, where my mouth is.

Still, I put a certain amount of stock in conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom says if you don't work, you wither, and while it sounds good to have a life of undirected time, you end up planning your day around your 4:30 early bird buffet special.  I also fear that my penchant for detachment would turn me into something of a hermit or possibly put me in some state of depression.  But maybe it wouldn't.  I have intentionally kept work out of my social life (such as it is) for years so maybe I would just find myself with a lot more time to focus on things I do by choice.  And truth is, writing is work.  Really.

Alternative number 2 is to hop back into the job market.  I think I could get a comparable position and perhaps an even better wage.  With my short time frame, I can take risks on unproven companies.  I might even find enthusiasm again.  I am reminded of the movie Up in the Air where the layed off folks are interviewed later and decide losing their job was a blessing after all.  And the fact is, if I try it and it doesn't work out, I can then just retire.

A 3rd option would be a compromise.  An undemanding job -- something to "keep me busy" and keep me engaged with the world.  This compromise brings to mind 30 hour per week part-time jobs to maintain health insurance.  I'm not there yet.  But there are other flavors of this -- sitting on community or charity advisory boards, investing with folks starting small businesses, etc. -- that could be promising.

The big problem I have is the same problem I have had all my life.  I don't know what I want.  (I'm beginning to realize that every problem I have is a problem I have had all my life, but that's another rant.)  At some point I will have to pick a direction and go.  It would be nice if, for once, I did that with a solid purpose in mind rather than just because I had to pick something.

Geez, I just needed 3 or 4 more years…

[Good Links] Steaming Pile of Links

 

• Intrigue and danger under the Golden Arches: They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines—and Started a Cold War

• Twitter exchange: Best final episode of a tv series ever..  A lot of love for Newhart and MASH.  Personally, I think the endings of Deadwood and Sopranos were the best dramatically, with Boardwalk Empire being the one that added the most to the series.  A sentimental nod to Halt and Catch Fire.  Broadly speaking, those shows with an intentional arc end better than the ones that ended because of cancellation (Deadwood as the exception).

• An appreciation of my favorite author, the divine P.G. Wodehouse.

• Speaking of books, a guide to how to write a (nonfiction) book in the current age.