One year ago today: January 20, 2022, considerably stronger.
Five years ago today: January 20, 2018, Tor is a hassle.
Nine years ago today: January 20, 2014, the Duo of Dumbness.
Random years ago today: January 20, 2017, established protocol, huh?
Google cans 12,000 as Big Tech topples over competition from super-solid free speech sites. I like to think it is also due to the awesome performance of anti-tracking software. I personally use three that I will admit to as a first line of defense. Ghoster, AdBlocker, and Badger. Those should be your bare minimum. Today found me in Winter Haven but there is not a single mom & pop left to grab a coffee. What’s left are steak houses and the survivors but my favorite, out by the railway station, has stayed take-out only since the hoax.
You need a quilt for a few nights a year, and when you travel north or west out of Florida. It does get cold. I have the perfect quilt for that, kind of a flannel mix that gets warm almost instantaly when you touch it. But it is twin size, perfect for the van. I’ve been using it in the cabin this cold spell. I’ve forgotten it more than once doing that. Now, the problem is solved. Ah, a full-size quilt on the bed. Let me find a picture because that was (sigh) a big deal around here. There you go, a couple paragraphs down, my fancy quilt in the back of the van.
I will say one thing about rescue pets. They are somehow more alert to when they know something unpleasant or painful is for their own good. This carries over a lot with our pets and I’ve mentioned how they become very defensive. They will follow Reb from room to room just to keep an eye on things. I would not mention if it was just ordinary following, they are protective. Oh, did I tell you last trip, I curled up on the downstairs sofa for a nap and the big dog jumped into the space along the back and half shoved me on the floor. This, folks, is a bit much. I reported this to the Reb, who sat down laughing. I don’t get no respect.
Next month is 35 years since I’ve played the piano daily. Both wrists sport injuries that still let me know I cannot ever sit down an hour like I used to. The guitar player has not been in contact, but he’s already shown a pattern for that. Suddenly he phones or e-mails for information. Every time I try to learn guitar, something comes along. Maybe I’ll never get anything going again, you know it was nine years since my duo with Jag & I, the most successful venture in my days at the trailer court—and we only played ten or twelve gigs before he left for college.
It’s stained concrete.
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I was hoping to get some progress, no way. By 1:00 PM I was reminded of my work career. By Friday, even if the week had gone easy, you felt like you’d put in the 40 hours. And for me that was well over 20 years ago since I did that. I’ve never regretted taking the early retirement, I saw the whole woketard changeover coming. Nobody wanted or asked for it, in fact most people wanted America to be isolationist in a world that was going to hell. I took a nap and zonked until 5:00PM, no work for me this time around.
Here’s the deluxe woodpecker diet, or half of it because the jar of seeds every second day is replaced by a sort of trail mix of nuts, they seem partial to walnuts. Aren’t they insect eaters? And I have another squirrel invasion. I cut down a tree they were using to leap onto the birdfeeder rack. Folks, I have to be choosy which wildlife I can adopt. Birds only get 20% of their diet from feeders, I’m okay with that. I have a budget and I’d rather have a few favorites done right than try to spread things too thinly.
Back awake by nightfall, I watched a short documentary on Tecumseh. I don’t view him as the great leader portrayed, but an idealist who wanted to unite the tribes. Um, if you look over the world, nothing ever really unites those with a tribe mentality, but he did try. That period in history was mess, the war with Napoleon was getting everybody involved. I don’t know that war, but I know the Royal Navy was blockading France and the US was neutral. They stopped American ships and impressed any sailors they found with a British accent. War was inevitable.
Italy has dropped from my second largest audience to less than 1%. All of Europe has dropped to less than 10% of my readership, which is 86% American. I don’t pay much attention, since there is no cause-and-effect that I can detect in these ratios. So hello, America. I don’t kn who or where you are, but glad you could join the party. This is the blog that made an amateur photographer out of me.
As for the movie, the script is far better than the acting. At least it was researched. Not many people know that prisoners of war are not given back any currency they had after release. It’s a spy movie, quite well done. What’s this on the feed? Microsoft is laying of 10,000 and T-Mobile just had 37 million customer records stolen. Some people never learn, well, except the hard way. I believe it was in 1984 I first said assume everything you let people put on a data base will be stolen. The bleeding hearts are crying because of a Republican bill that will stop people on food stamps from buying some processed foods. Makes sense to me, they should have to cook their own chili rather than buy it in a can.
In China, where being crazy is kind of part of the deal, there will be a crackdown on “scantily clad influencers” and criminals who post about what jail time is like. And Boston University has published a finding that rich neighborhoods are nicer than poor ones. Says girl-genius Jillian McKoy, “The findings underscore the need for comprehensive and accessible data platforms that researchers can utilize to better understand the role of the built environment on racial and health inequities, and inform policies that aim to create equitable neighborhood resources in all communities.”
Or
something like that. ADDENDUM
Talk about a mess, the business account is at a bank chosen because they had branches nearby both our locations. It wasn’t the optimum reasoning and there was a mixup. What happened, it turns out, they decided to redesign their web page and botched it badly. This was the only account where I allow auto-payments and Iong-ago instituted precautions so the bank can’t jack you around. You remember their old favorite of doing your deductions before recording your deposits. This can be a particularly thorny feature on joint accounts. For the better part of a month, I could not confirm they were logging the deposits, so I suspended the auto-payments. Sometime this week, their site came up again with the changes and I logged on to see they had continued the auto-payments, but thank goodness, they processed the deposits that I had mailed in. Good old mail-in saved the day.
Why is that a blog event? Well, because I so amply covered the chances of them throwing off my plans, there is now double the amount of money needed to cover the auto-payments. In fact, $1.450 more. Where would you like to go this weekend? Ha, I think I’ll just plow it into the Caltier Fund, which is due for another dividend payout, no wait, that’s not for another 11 days. Anyway, we are doing better than I’d thought. And that’s something nowadays.
