And the Band Played on...

This should be a political post. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. All I know if your vote didn't count ...there wouldn't be three hour long lines in Ohio. That special interest groups wouldn't have spent $30 million in Michigan. The Lindsey's sister would have used her married name, not her maiden name. And they wouldn't be trying to "less than manly tar and feather" the candidate in Texas. Your vote counts. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. 

We've done our best. Well, most of our best. Seriously, liberals need to stop waiting on perfection, and realize sometimes you go to go with you got, like damn. Rant over, we gave what we had when called and gave it our all. I'm staying off the news part of the internet until morning. Of course I did this with the last election and woke up to a truly soul cratering disappointment, but I'm not good with the tension. Not this tension. Tension isn't good for me right now. It just isn't. To many things moving at the same time that I can't gauge. 

I voted early, on a quiet Tuesday, maybe two weeks ago, at the library up the street. Made sure of my selections, made sure the paper ballot reflected my picks, made sure the machine took my ballot. 

It is what it is. 

And now....now we wait. 

Probably shouldn't have clicked That

Ramblings Post #425
The internet is a dangerous place. All kinds of foolishness on here. Promises of riches for just dreaming of work. People with no idea how things fit believing their opinion is on par whose put in the 10,000 hours. Short people who listed themselves as NBA height, knowing you forgot about Muggsy. Gurus who live in their mother's basement selling the keys to life (hint: it involves a basement). And finally, viruses and intrusions of all kinds. Which brings us to here. 

I used to be good at that, that thing where you could spot a virus. I'd get a piece of email and something would just say that this item is not to be trifled with. I spot a kink in the spelling, or the color of the logo would be off or something that set of the ol' spidey senses and I'd click this is phishing button or just delete it out of habit. But since my current email is chock full of "New Position" and "Job Opportunity" amongst the "Travel Planning for 2027" and CLE classes, I guess a new something just caught me eye. Or rather didn't. 

And that kids is how they get you. 

Because I'm simultaneously doing something on my laptop, which is right beside my main when suddenly the screen on the main goes blue with the message "Don't Turn off your Computer." But the mouse is still moving. So, I turned off my computer. It didn't say updating, it just said don't turn it off. This is of course right thing to do because I notice someone tried to access one of my accounts that has two factor authentication on it. So it's not like it was a question of what was happening, it was exactly what I thought it was. 

So, I spent a good part of last night and this morning confabing with Google figuring out how to turn this fucking issue off in Services, then change file ownership (which I didn't need to do) then go into command and remove them manually. Which upon reboot didn't work. Then I did all that again, then really tried to edit my own registry which resulted in a whole system reset, which wouldn't let my machine even boot, so I to then go for a fix which did let it boot, which put me back at the beginning, again. Then I found some other stuff, how to remove them from Services entirely, found some arcane writings from a very unhelpful company and there was learning some Powershell before building an small shrine in my front yard and sacrificing a goat before I covered myself with binary paint and joined forces to shrink down with the tiny fellow in my pen to call upon the power of Poke-Pac man to defeat the forces of computer evil with a pitchfork and bug spray. Okay some of that was made up. But the goat was delicious. 

I'm going to look back on it as a challenge. Which as of right now I've conquered, at least according to the goat bones and the shape of burning sage embers. But I've also felt it prudent to set all my accounts to two factor authentication, even the dumb ones. And reset some passwords. It's a weird feeling of violation. I wonder if they read any of my half finished writing, which was NOT ready for outside eyes. It's almost a blessing that I'm broke right now, so there was little to take. Okay fine, yes, I unplugged my network cable before I went to the bathroom. And again when I made lunch. 

Sigh. It's gonna be a minute. 

Barkeep. A coffee and some toast. I need to stay frisky. And unplug my network cable.  

Bar Chatter

Bar Chatter #41
When it's not enough to make a post, but deserves to go out to the world... it's just Bar Chatter.  

I've been seeing this thing where apparently Queen Bey sold people a box for almost $1000 and it was empty. And people are mad? This sounded absurd to me, like maybe a shipping issue or a mistake of some sort. She's an empire, this was done by an intern.  

I was mistaken. 

She sold a box - for a band - to hold OTHER STUFF you bought from her. The box, designed to "house and display" your Bey vinyl collection, doesn't come with the vinyl you're supposed to display. I can't imagine the Vinyl costing more than $200 total. I seriously have no idea how many pieces of vinyl she's released, but it can't be that many. They bought the box, they don't get no discount? And the box? I've seen Ben on HGTV's Hometown build something like this for funsies. He probably wouldn't have used a faux gator skin strap, but he would have built it using wood from the tree in the backyard of your mother's house you used to sit under and dream about the future. 

Sorry tangent. 

On the positive, it is numbered. So, yeah. 

I apparently live a sheltered life, because there is no way. No way. 

So, I Need to Focus

Ramblings Post #424
I have been a gamer for forever. But I don't appreciate those PvP things that game development companies have come to adore in recent years, designed to suck you in and basically keep you dropping of a little bit of coin regularly to keep their profits up. I'm a single player game kinda guy. Sell me the game, the whole game and leave me alone. For the record, I've been feeling like the extinction of my kind of gamer has been vastly exaggerated.   

A few months ago, on a humbug, I did something that I don't normally do - I watched online as people played a game I was never going to play myself. For me the only reason to ever really do so was to watch what other people did so you could get past a particularly tricky spot or improve your own play style. I used to joke about people who JUST watched other people play. The idea that it was something in and of itself, like watching any professional sport and just for funsies, sounded weird. But as I said bored, and needed some house noise, I clicked a YouTube channel to watch someone play Project Zomboid. There are like a thousand of those.  

Note - For the record I do not like zombie games. It feels a little like the developer is cheating and instead of developing a true villain, they can just litter a good sized gaming map with hordes of things to shoot. No motivations, no evil schemes, no lair, no character building - just undead things that are always attacking. I don't play PvP either, but at least there your actual live opponent has the motivation of 'win and talk shit.' As a result zombie games feel a bit empty to me. So if it's got zombies, I pass on playing.  

I half suspect my interest in this game because of the map. I love a good map (lightly drools). For those who are unaware, the game is about a Zombies outbreak in Kentucky in the mid-80s. Not New York on Los Angles, but an isometric map view of version of Louisville, Kentucky and about seven or eight surrounding small towns. And the map is very detailed. VERY DETAILED (more drool). Veteran users set up private servers, run modified games, with modified maps and invite other players and run these huge hundred player PvP scenarios. Then they film themselves role playing survivors struggling with things like hunger, depression, illnesses and the abject terror trying to keep it together. 

The in-game map lets you make notes.

The reason for this post is that I recently, accidentally, watched the same game/match three times from three different perspectives due to the setup. In this group match, I watched one player's story of him gathering a group and build a kingdom, co-op style. A few days later another story of a group setting up a hotel, but didn't connect the two. It wasn't until I happened upon the third video of group trying to rebuild civilization that I made the connection, as they showed the same scene from the earlier two videos where the groups all briefly met - in game and in character - to discuss some issues. As a writer, it was absolutely fascinating watching three different players describe the same conversation from their own point of view. It's me with some the framing on the story I'm currently working on. 

How the map you play on looks. 

I wrote all that to say that watching people play a video game I'm never going to play I got to hear the same conversation from different angles, which I feel will help me with my writing. Wow. 

That was kinda depressing, now that I think about it. Yeah, I'ma have to get out more. 

Barkeep. The bowl of peanuts, and another cold beer. I have to think on some things.  

There was supposed to be...

Ramblings Post #422
One of the great tragedies of life is regret. In the looking back upon the road you decided to travel and imagining that another path would have been better. Or in my case, just different. I suffer no illusions that someone other than I am responsible for my circumstances. I made these choices. They weren't always good. But like everyone, I had a vision of how my life was supposed to be. And my mind, my imagination, it plays that life out for me. Not a "better" life, just different. 

PROBABLY NOT HERE. NO BACKYARD

There were supposed to be dinner parties. Yes, dinner parties, and YES, it sounds bougie. Where I would have invited over five or seven people and I would have spent hours on a Sunday cooking for them. Not during football season, of course. And we'd have drink found wines and discussed things of great importance, odd minutiae and inadvertently work through childhood trauma. There would have been light jazz or old unto ancient hip hop playing at a low volume. There would been tense moments and raucous laughter. One weekend I would have declared my house a shoe free zone and forgotten about it a few months later. After dinner, a the back patio or deck we'd have sipped whiskey, smoked cigars and engaged in despicable small talk as we watched the sky darken. Maybe a fire pit or loose lights. I wouldn't want to clean up but would have to, lest the house smell like that dinner for two days. 

I envy what might have been. I have come to envy the mundane.  

Bar Chatter

Bar Chatter #40
When it's not enough to make a post, but deserves to go out to the world... it's just Bar Chatter.  

It's like the new neighborhood resident thinking it's dumb that the local corner store has a 'No Alligators' sign. 

One of the big check marks of the conservative party is that there are just too many regulations. And that we get rid of them, things will just be better. Not sure why they think that but they do. And our current administration is implementing that with speed. And as a result, I think the only FOOD ITEMS not under recall or contamination watch are hydrogenated cookies, tofu and whiskey. Which for the record is not good thing. And because of how much of our needed information is currently disseminated - conspiracy theory, social media, popular TV character screed, and political operative talking point repetition - a lot of people don't quite understand just how much the U.S. government actually does for them. Er, did for them. Because recalling Garlic Powder is a systemic failure of cartoon like proportions. 

Capitalism doesn't care if you live or die unless it affects the profit margin. And we're supposed to be better than that. 

And for the record, the corner store has a 'No Alligators' sign because Ricky and Earl's Gator Farm and Boat Rental is down the road and Earl will bring The Gen'ral with him to get them two cases of beer he needs to get through the weekend if there ain't no sign. Earl respects signs. And although The Gen'ral has slimmed down as of late, running into an eight hundred pound primal beast while trying to get your scratch-offs and pack of cigs is not experience you want to have more than once. Or ever if you can arrange it.