Category: Uncategorized

Little Nicky is an underrated movie.

John:
Hey, by the way, Nicky, check this out! [spins Ozzy record backwards, but just makes noise] What’s Ozzy trying to say there?

Nicky:
John, absolutely nothing. The Blizzard always came straight with his messages. But wrap your minds around this, gentlemen.

Beefy:
Oh no! Heh heh heh!

Nicky:
Chicago. [plays “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”]

Todd:
I love this song.

Chicago album spun backwards:
I command you in the name of Lucifer, to spread the blood of the innocent!

Pete:
Oh, my God! Chicago kicks ass!

Couldn’t sleep last night, at all. Periodic bouts of insomnia are nothing new. So, when I know it’s a lost cause to even try, I kind of go off the rails digging into basic front end dev. I’ve been slowly making the Marfa theme (Hugo/Micro.blog) my own, with little tweaks.

Some things I got done last night:

– Finally figured out my issue with Tinylytics and got both the TinyKudos and the hit counter working.
– Was successful in modifying the direction of the pagination since it was intuitively backwards to my eyes. I’m pretty proud that I figured this out on my own as I was not expecting any of this to be in CSS.
– Actually read the plugin instructions on how to properly reference short codes for “reply by email” and “reply on Mastodon”. I spent too long trying to organize these within the author panel under individual posts.
+ Created a prettier link to the “Conversation on Micro.blog” from individual posts. It didn’t look right clumped together with the other reply functions, above.

I failed at:

+ Updating Font Awesome so that I could use the Bluesky logo on my Social page. Above my head. Attempted for the first time to fork and modify a plugin, which may have been over the top but a learning experience nevertheless.
+ Understanding if it’s possible to use a hamburger menu for navigation.
+ Still need to figure out if there is a way to get the TinyKudos button into the actual theme for individual posts so I don’t have to type it out for each post {{< tinykudos >}}.

On my to-do list:

+ Figure out how webmentions work in Echofeed. For some reason I’m not finding the documentation.
+ WTF is going on with the formatting of these bullet points.

An excerpt from an interview with Noam Chomsky prior to the October 7 conflict.

> For 50 years, Israel has been explicitly trying to use the Holocaust as a propaganda weapon to justify crushing the Palestinians, occupying Palestinian territory illegally, practically destroying Gaza [which is] almost unlivable now. A million children can’t even get potable water. The constant atrocities in the West Bank. You read journalists like Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, others, daily reports. They think they can get away with this as long as they can wave the Holocaust in front of people’s eyes.

> I should say, this is explicit. So if you go back to 1973, Abba Eban, a leading Israel statesman and highly respected, wrote a very interesting article in the more liberal Jewish journal in the United States, Congress Weekly. In this article, he said the duty of American Jews is to show that any criticism of what he called Zionism, meaning the policies of his government, any criticism is either anti-semitism if it comes from non-Jews, or neurotic self-hatred if it comes from Jews. And he actually mentioned two people. I was proud to be one of them.

[Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges & Dr. Shir Hever on Israel & Palestine](https://youtu.be/wYcowSYyHV0?si=7AOp4vJWLEIEQscz)

My 18-month-old sleeps great at night, but she has a hard time napping by herself during the day. My presence is usually enough to calm her anxieties so she can sleep, so I just hang out with her a bit after lunch on the weekends.

I’ve come to really enjoy this hour (sometimes two) of downtime with her while she sleeps soundly next to me. It’s a bit of a siesta and lets me focus guilt-free on reading, blogging, catching up on news, or checking Mastodon.

It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to conquer anything this big in terms of home projects. Honestly, I don’t have many full days to dedicate to projects like this, but I’ve been sneaking in an hour or two here and there. Even though it’s nothing fancy, it feels good to work with my hands.

Last week I removed a soffit, which previously held some cabinets I removed a few years back. Mostly I’ve just wanted to remove it because it was aesthetically ugly and functionally useless.

However, we’ve always heard a “knocking” noise from this area whenever anyone showers. It was just enough to be annoying. So, two birds, one stone.

The knocking was from the expansion and contraction of a plastic pipe across wood. Whenever hot water rushed through the cold pipe, it rubbed against a joist ever so slightly.

Thankfully I did open it up, though. This is right below where two showers meet on the second floor, so lots of tight plumbing. Turns out that the master bath shower drain had a small leak. We were worried something like that might be the case and didn’t want mold growing under there.

I pulled out the side wall because it wasn’t mounted well and bowed in the middle. I also wanted to check for mold there.

On Friday, I replaced the side wall with mold resistant drywall and added outside metal corners. Yesterday, I fixed the leak (and the knock). Tomorrow I drywall the ceiling and start patching.

Honestly, I might hire out the texture. I’ve never done a job this big and it’s pretty much right in the middle of our house. If I screw that up, there’s no hiding it.

no

Spent a good chunk of the weekend cleaning the house and making the yard look presentable because we had some friends and family over on Sunday for a barbecue.

The kids played with water balloons and a cheap slip and slide I picked up from Sierra. It was kind of cold but they didn’t seem to mind.

When they tired of that, they played on the tire swing. That has to be the one thing I’ve ever done that has ever been worth anything, installing that tire swing. It has paid for itself in free entertainment. No matter who comes over, they’re always using the tire swing. 

We all sat out on the back deck, had a few drinks, and ate too much food. My mother-in-law and one of her good friends’ family came, too.

After our barbecue, we ran over to the coast on Monday for a short hike. Both of the kids seemed to really enjoy it. I was a little frustrated at first because the trails weren’t clearly marked and we couldn’t find the waterfall we were looking for. But it was hard to stay in a foul mood because the weather cleared and the beach was pretty nice. 

I also got most of my tomato starts planted:

After a nice long weekend, things have been pretty busy at work in preparation for me starting a new position in a few weeks. I unfortunately got behind on some monotonous tasks while we were out of the office due to Covid, so I’ve been playing catchup with filing and such. I’m also managing a project that is transitioning a very offline bureaucratic process into an online format. It’s unfortunate that I won’t be able to test out the system in real life, but I feel good about leading this project and hopefully providing a good tool for whoever takes my job after I’m gone. 

I heard from my new boss today. He and the director would like to get coffee with me next week as an informal way to get to know each other better and talk more about the position. I’m looking forward to it, and excited but nervous about the new direction my career is taking. 

Who needs ChatGPT when Google Photos randomly creates slideshows of pizzas I’ve eaten over the past 5 years. 🍕

Here’s a fun one. Ratio of Median Sale Price of Single-Family Homes to Per Capita Income, by Metro Area.

When you save a meme with Jesus in it and Google Photos asks if your deceased brother and Jesus are the same person.

Our meal delivery service just sent us Hamburger Helper and billed it as French Onion Beef.

Finally saw my first in-line Apple Pay button on a paywalled news article. Now give us the option to pay you 25 cents per article instead of subscribing.

I started going to the gym a couple months ago to improve my mental health. My times are not at all impressive, but they are slowly improving. When I was a teenager (half a life ago) I used to run a 5K in the 17s. One of my goals this year is to run a 5K in under 30 minutes.

Is this…normal? Seems like a lot of activity in the Pacific.

September already and the nights are getting cold. I got the new TV on the Radio record and I'm loving that shit to death. The main problem I had with their last album was their lack of a percussion section. I need something with a beat, and Return to Cookie Mountain delivers some foot loose grooves to set me rolling and put me in a good mood–I always need some recorded pick-me-ups when the weather starts changing. Seems like I get most of my records in the fall.

School has started and it really hasn't set in yet. Even though I was working and taking summer classes, it's never the same because even though it was time consuming over the summer, it wasn't all that difficult. Throw five classes in there and I get frantic at times, pulling all-nighters to get everything done. I was really hoping for a relaxed senior year, but I guess that probably never happens. I wish I was done, I wish I could not care about it anymore, and not lose sleep over nonsense. Pitty I might even have to attend grad school to get a decent job, but at least if I had my bachelor's degree I could take it easy for a bit, and take whatever job I could get that pays halfway decent. Also, as it turns out, I don't think I'm going to take the internship this fall. I won't get credit, and they don't pay, but I can get credit for it in the spring, so I'll do it then. I work at the university now, and I'm looking for a second job (that pays).

I got a bit of good news the other night, but maybe I'm just getting my hopes up. And people that know the situation between me and Justin so many years ago might perk their ears at this, but he's coming back from Seattle. I'm excited about it. He was one of my best friends for so many years, and we played in bands together on and off for fun. I've already talked to him about playing again, and that alone would make my year. It will be really interesting to see what we could come up with after these years. Who knows if it will pan out, but here's for hoping.

I'm getting over Sarah more and more every day. The more time that passes, the more I realize what kind of situation I was in, and the more laughable it becomes. What's life if you cannot laugh.

One year left. Feels good to say that.

Turn, calendar, turn. What month is it, anyway? Loved and lost. Alive, but grown fat. Got a haircut, but it's grown again. Sit second row in history, last in geography. Wiped some of my slate clean, filled a lot of it back up again. Grown restless with the agitations of spring: rain, sun, rain, snow, sun, rain. Instant communication became passe. Work a shitty night job. Wondering where I can barter blood for time to concentrate on the things and people that matter. Wondering how I can barter that time so that I might find some for myself. Tired of so many people around. Since when did space become such a valuable commodity? I need a ten by ten space with only a couch, a desk and an ashtray…maybe a balcony on the 25th floor. A balcony would be nice. A nap, a smoke, a poem, a breath, a smile, a free fall. Here's number three, but I only have a cold basement.

so yeah, i'm leaving.
did you know that?

So this Tuesday I'm going to LA, and I'm pretty excited. I was a little bummed that we didn't have enough time to head out there last year when we went to Coachella, because I had to make it back in time for exams [we opted for the Grand Canyon which was cool anyway]. I haven't been out of state since, save for the drive to North Carolina to move my brother out of his apartment when he went to Iraq, so I was feeling like a trip was in order. I'd rather it be a road trip, but I'll take what I can get. I get to hang out with Derek who just moved out there, my new friend Zoe, and I get to see the Pacific for the first time. I have to see what everything is all about, since us 'meek, backwater midwesterners' are so naive and only know the LA we see in the movies. Maybe I'll never come back here. Or maybe I'll never want to go back to LA. I bet it's somewhere in the middle of those two feelings. Anyway, I don't write in this thing anymore, probably due to the fact that I don't lead a very interesting life and it gets kind of monotonous writing about the same bullshit, but I thought this was LJ-worthy. Peace, and until next time.

it's felt so good to distance myself from this techy shit.

i have 4 really crazy classes.

i'll be involved in ethnographic field research projects for MSU.

i'll be proposing ideas in my local community and hopefully receiving grants to make positive changes around me.

i'll be learning about and presenting on various different social movements across the globe.

and i'm learning about european civilization and history, mostly dealing with empires and conquering the globe, post 1500 ad.

i'm already really busy and this feels weird.

i want to be done already, but at the same time i feel like i'm really learning and doing shit that i've always wanted.

i'm back at a decent University, with less idiots in my class per capita, (and the people in my 400 level class are just simply brilliant),

my roommates seem to generally kick ass (hey shawna),

I'm within walking distance of downtown, and buildings, and Elderly Music, and the library.

I have crazy ghetto neighbors, and hipster neighbors who drive mopeds.

the weather has been fantastic (maybe a touch too hot, but the nights are perfect),

I've made a couple of new friends, and even one from across the country (hey Zoe!)

I'm inconsistent with capitalization.

I hope the winter doesn't ruin me.

maybe my follow-up post for the semester (or maybe even in a couple of weeks) i'll be complaining that this really sucks. or maybe not. but right now it's okay.

I got an awesome quilt and pillow cases today from Target.

I never knew how expensive nice quilts were.
I'm such a consumer.