I know there are parts of the country (HI, VERMONT!) where it’s still below freezing on a regular basis.
SoCal is not one of those places.
We might get some rain on Friday and be back down into the 50’s and 60’s, but for the last several days and today it’s been pushing 90ºF.
On the rough days, one advantage to working from home is the chance to go out for a quick stroll around the back yard and recover your sense of balance and re-connect to the real world.
Even if you’re in an office and not working from home, I highly recommend it once every couple of hours!
I had every intention of starting off friendly, cooperative, maybe even upbeat with March. Just like I did with February. Look where THAT got me, but I’m an eternal optimist. Let’s start by encouraging March to be the very best March that it could be!
That approach lasted all of about ten seconds.
March had other plans, and announced its presence with authority…
(In case it’s too subtle, I’m the guy in the white shirt, March is in the brown shirt.)
I did NOT see that coming!
You might remember that last night I was trying to finish uploading payroll at the end of an extremely long day. I was writing a post because I had gotten booted off of the payroll site about 22:30 because they had shut down for “maintenance” but would be back “shortly.” I (foolishly) assumed “shortly” would be some time period, say, of less than an hour. SURELY less than two hours. WRONG! After I posted I kept trying until after 01:30 before I gave up and went to bed.
After something on the order of maybe four hours sleep, I was back on the computer and finishing data entry, looking and feeling my best. Semi-conscious at best, I managed to get it done and avoid that disaster. (Folks tend to get cranky when they don’t get paid on time. Go figure!)
Still without a shower, breakfast, my other four hours of sleep, or anything resembling a civilized existence, I was leaving my computer to go get at least two of those things when I noticed the count of unread emails in my personal email. It should have been on the order of a dozen, not ten times that. WTF?
There’s a flood of emails from Match, the dating website. As I said, WTAF??!!
Someone has obviously set up a new account on the dating site and put in the wrong email address. This has happened before with several kid’s education type sites (online math & science tutoring) and with several French websites. (I don’t speak French, so that’s my first clue in that case.) Match is a new one.
However “Kate” described herself she must have hit all of the hot buttons for every middle aged, (presumably) single, horny black guys in the Deep South. They ALL want to meet “Kate!”
Alas, none of their passionate attempts are going anywhere, much like most of the red-feathered finches in the back yard, hopped up on hormones and the endorphins that lengthening days bring. All of those guys are now ending up in my Spam file, and they won’t even make it to there once I set up a filter to simply delete them.
I attempted to contact Match through their customer support email address. There’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back! They sent a standard response with several dozen FAQ’s and answers, none of which had anything to do at all with my issue. Thus, the kill filter!
From there the rest of the day was “nibbled to death by ducks” levels of stupid annoyances.
The MLB owners and players aren’t even talking and the owners have started cancelling games, so I’m seriously pissed at both. Probably 3/4 owners and 1/4 players, but still.
The Russians continue to try to provoke WW3 and I’m horrified that their next tactic, even if it’s not lobbing nukes at everyone, might be horrific crimes and autocracies against the Ukranian people. If that doesn’t depress the crap out of you, I don’t know what will.
And an Illinois house that I’ve been seriously lusting after on Zillow, like a LOT of house lust, got sold. We weren’t ready to pull the trigger and that opportunity is waving at us as it pulls away.
It’s been a long, long day and I’ve got a while to go yet – some deadlines are more serious than others and payroll’s one of them.
I’ve been listening and watching live webcams from Ukraine. I’m shocked every time the air raid sirens go off and you can hear announcements being repeated over loudspeakers in the middle of the night. On the other hand, one camera is probably on a church bell tower of some sort and the ancient, mechanical chimes that sound at :15, :30, :45, and the top of the hour are enchanting, as are the crows being especially raucous just before dawn. The juxtaposition is … something.
Looking for something different for music to process payroll by, I opened Sirius/XM Channel 26, “Classic Vinyl.” The first song up is The Doors’ “Rider on the Storm” from their “LA Woman” album. Listening to it was transformative. That was an album I got when it came out in 1971. I would have been fifteen and VERY into music. I listened to this album, and this song, until I wore out the grooves. I had a pair of headphones that were bright red with Snoopy on one ear and the Red Baron on the other. I would kill to have those back, but they fell apart from overuse. And that was probably over forty years ago, so I’ll be having a bit of a mind blowing and “Jesus F’ing Christ I’M OLD!!!” moment now.
This should give us some interesting payroll results…
Anyway, “Riders on the Storm.” Yeah. Look around at the world and check to see what kind of progress we’ve made in 51 years.
I’m sure that so many of you feel the same way. I hope that for all of us on the big things (COVID, Ukraine, the GQP) get better, or at least stop getting worse, or at a very minimum slow down in how fast they’re getting worse. I hope for each of you that the new week and start of the new month are less stressful and easier on your spleen, although I’m not sure that’s going to be the case for me. Nothing life threatening, I’ll live, but time-wise I’m still trying to put eight pounds of pickles into a five-pound pickle bag. The fact that it used to be ten pounds is only mildly comforting.
Sorry, I don’t have any sunflowers growing in the yard – yet. But this beauty popped out over the weekend as the roses realize that spring is almost here, so it will have to do.
An open list of suggestions to the MLB Players Association and owners, who are currently involved in a months-long pissing contest which is delaying the opening of spring training camps and threatens to very soon delay or eliminate a chunk of the regular season —
As I said above – READ THE ROOM!!! In case it might not be obvious to all of you chuckleheads, we, the American and baseball-loving public, are ***NOT*** in the mood for your shit right now.
Russia is invading Ukraine while Madman Putin threatens worldwide destruction.
It’s year three of COVID, where we still have over 1,800 deaths PER DAY in the United States, but the CDC is bowing to political pressure from morons and cultists and reducing mask useage mandates.
It’s year seven of the GOP revealing itself as a fascist cult and enemy of democracy in the United States.
The aforementioned fascist, white supremacist, anti-science, anti-knowledge, anti-democracy cultists are trying to ban and burn books, ban medical care regarding abortion and medical treatment for trans folks.
Given all of this, we’re exhausted, frustrated, and furious. We need a break. We were really looking forward to going to the park, sitting in the bleachers, having a beverage and a couple of hot dogs, and catching a game.
But again, it’s the greedy billionaires vs the greedy millionaires, debating once again which group is the most clueless and selfish.
Guess what, guys? WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THE DETAILS. We really and truly don’t.
But we’re going to care a LOT for completely different reasons if you don’t pull your heads out the bodily orifices where you’ve stuck them. If we don’t actually have baseball to go to in April, if we don’t have a way to shut out all of the things above for a couple of hours, if you can’t see common sense and compromise, we’re all going to be mightily pissed off.
We’re not going to be pissed off at the players. We’re not going to be pissed off at the owners. We’re going to be pissed off at ***ALL*** of you.
You think you’ll get by because you have massive TV and radio contracts… which are worthless if you’re not playing games. You have massive naming rights on your stadiums… which are worthless if no one’s in the stands.
Consider also all of those who rely on you for jobs at your stadiums, parking, office staff, and all of the tens of thousands of suppliers and merchants near your stadiums. Bars, restaurants, and so on.
It’s been one thing when you’ve pulled this stunt before, in relatively good times. We got by, although your finances and attendance and popularity always took a hit.
No worries! The fans will always come back! Right?
But these aren’t good times, relatively or not. Things sort of suck right now. We need a pick me up, we need a break – and you’re going to pile on just to prove that you can be more petty and shortsighted than the other guys?
Think very, very carefully about that decision. Take a look at what’s going on in Ukraine and ponder how badly Putin has miscalculated. Your decisions are inconsequential compared to Putin’s mistakes, but for those who love the game, who need the game, and whose livelihoods depend on the game, they’re non-trivial.
Hey, y’all! You know all of those tips and suggestions that you get about internet security and safety that you’ve been ignoring about 99% of the time?
Now’s the time to take every one of them incredibly seriously 24/7/365. The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! And you can bet your ass that they’ll be scattering spam and phishing and ransomware out there like cluster bombs. Touch one of those by accident and you’ll be extremely messed up for a long, long time.
So remember:
NEVER open an email of any kind unless you know who it’s from. Hopefully you’ve got a spam filter that these malware laced little threats get put as a first line of defense. If so, assume that everything in there is in there for a reason. And even if something slips through to your regular email box, be suspicious of everything.
NEVER go to a site based on clickbait. C’mon, folks! Be smarter than that! Why do you really care for two seconds about Kanye or Taylor or Beyonce at all to begin with? You all know what these things look like. With what’s going on in the world right now, one of these days real soon now it’s going to take you not to a mindless site filled with vacuous celebrity drivel but instead to something that’s going to lock your computer and erase everything on it.
It seems obvious but I know folks who have fallen for it recently – NO ONE WITH THE IRS, FBI, POLICE, CIA, M6, YOUR BOSS, OR ANYONE ELSE IS COMING TO COLLECT A BILL WHICH YOU CAN ONLY PAY OFF IN GIFT CARDS. Okay, so this isn’t necessarily part of a Russian World War III plot, but you’re more likely to get one that almost kinda sorta looks like it might be legit in the near future. IT’S A SCAM!!! Trust me, if the IRS is going to come after you, you’ll get something legal IN THE MAIL. If the police or FBI want you, they’ll just kick your door in. If it’s a creditor, they may make your life a living hell, but they won’t be paid in gift cards.
Make sure you have a good anti-virus program, make sure it’s running, and make sure that its definitions are current.
Make sure you have a full backup of your computer and make sure that it’s offline and not going to get locked and/or corrupted at the same time your computer does. Better yet, get three external hard drives (hell, you can get 10+ terabytes for about $130, and drives over 20Tb are now available) and make three backup sets. Keep one at home (NOT plugged into the computer), have one nearby but not at home (can you store it at work? can you and a friend swap holding onto each other’s?), and have one way off somewhere (do you have a family member in another state?) where it can’t be touched.
As the above proves – BE PARANOID!
My computer holds tens of thousands of photos, video, financial documents, not to mention all of the entertainment content (music, videos, publications, books, and so on) that I’ve purchased over decades. One mistake, one idle moment of curiosity instead of paranoia, and I’ll be staring at a screen with that laughing skull thing that Jeff Goldblum had on the alien mother ship in “Independence Day” while forty years of content goes away.
I would be seriously pissed for the rest of my life about that. (When our car got broken into in Montreal and my briefcase stolen back in 2004 they took a couple of memory cards full of photos that I’ll never get back again and I’m still pissed!) I choose paranoia instead.
Actually, it’s not paranoia – there really, REALLY are folks out there who are and will be trying to mess up my life like that. And yours. And everyone else’s if they can. It’s random, it’s evil, but it’s happening.
Not to be too much of a buzzkill, but the Universe doesn’t care.
It doesn’t care about Russia invading Ukraine.
It doesn’t care about Putin masterminding Brexit to divide Great Britain or corrupting the American elections to get the Mango Mussolini into the White House.
It doesn’t care about COVID, or the evil forces manipulating the system to make a significant slice of the population anti-science and stupid.
It just doesn’t care.
Yesterday there was NOTHING but bare branches on this tree. Today, it’s got a dozen of these gorgeous pink flowers sprouting. Not sure if the Universe actually cares about this or not, but it’s what the Universe is doing every day and actions speak louder than words.
The Universe is going to move on its merry way, with or without us. If every human being on the planet woke up dead tomorrow morning, this tree would still be exploding with spring flowers.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. But it tells me that the only ones who will EVER give a shit about us is … us. Not the Universe. Not any invisible old dude in the sky.
Nope. It’s just us and only us.
So we had better get our shit together and do a better job about caring about us, ALL OF US, or the Universe will be short one human race in its entirety.
Mad men leading us to the brink again, an invasion that could lead to a larger conflict with no good way out, and a full-blown nuclear exchange just a little bit closer to reality.
Doomscrolling is hard, but ignorance doesn’t seem any better.
Take a moment.
Breathe.
Watch the clouds.
The helplessness and anger are strong.
How did we get here? More importantly, how do we get out?
Lots of twos today. “Tues”day. 02-22-2022. Celebrating, or at least noting the occurrence, at 10:22 PM, or 22:22 02-22-2022 if you’re on military time. I think that I missed precisely 22:22:22 02-22-2022 exactly for a whole new level of obsessive-compulsive behavior.
We humans do love our numerology and symbolism. Especially when it means NOTHING.
Days are well defined whether we’re here or not. The year is a fact, or at least can be defined for any body orbiting a central star. It’s just Newtonian celestial mechanics.
It’s that zero point, that starting point that’s tricky. Year zero, month zero, day zero, hour zero, minute zero, second zero is when? And how do you know? Hell, 2/3 of your units are 100% arbitrary!
But we’ll ignore that when someone finds “prophecies” in a document thousands of years old, totally made up, 100% fiction, translated from one language to another to a third to another… And based on that we’ll calculate to seventeen decimal places when the end of the world will be, or when a god will return, or when the alien mothership will show up in our skies to take only the select few home to Valhalla. Or something like that.
It’s a matter of hoping we have a shred of control or order in a Universe which has very little order and over which we have very, very little control. So is it better to believe nonsense and feel better, or to face the cold, hard truth and feel like shit?
Tough call.
I’m going to go with acknowledging the ridiculous, use it as an excuse for some joy (although, damn it, today was also National Margarita Day and I didn’t celebrate or observe the holiday!) because we all know there are too few reasons for joy, and avoid letting anyone pick your pocket or mistake your celebration for gullibility. If someone tells you that their precise to seventeen decimal places calculation means you should give them all of your life savings, maybe skip that round of grape flavored cyanide and have a margarita instead.
Just make it yourself. Just to be sure.
The fact that the deuces were wild today doesn’t mean that the cosmic slot machine is going to spill out treasure.
With one exception, not a huge fan of any of them in my adult lifetime, and I didn’t need to buy either a new car or a new mattress, so we ignored the holiday and started using the time to catch up on a season and a half of “Star Trek: Discovery.” Time well spent – I’m enjoying it a great deal. We’re current now and looking forward to the last four episodes of Season Four. Next, we have to pick something else to get caught up on. Probably either “Star Trek: Lower Decks” or “The Expanse.”
With significantly less time pressure and an eyeball issue that requires occasional eye drops, the practice of lying down and closing my eyes and relaxing has led to a re-discovery of this “nap” thing.
Mmmmmmmmmm! “Naps!”
I know this isn’t an original thought, but little kids who are “forced” to take naps have no freakin’ clue how good they’ve got it or how much they’re going to miss naps when they’re busy doing “adult shit” eighteen to twenty hours a day.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 