Average Tuesday

I thought I lost the adapter for my Mac. Another byproduct of moving is misplacing the smallest things that I intentionally set aside because they’re some of the most frustrating missing pieces. The MacBook Pro I have from however many years ago requires an adapter if I want to use the mouse (a Logitech M510) I like most. Without the adapter. No mouse. With adapter, I’m able to reach for and use mouse. However, the mouse has a USB plug, it is not Bluetooth or any other kinda wacky wireless. So if I leave the plug in the adapter and misplace the adapter it doesn’t matter if I order one from Amazon 20 hours ago, I still can’t plug the plug that’s missing. Finally, I had one last thought. Think more you silly human, it’s not like this dwelling is very big so where the fuck could it really be hiding? I’ve half set up an office space where I have a desk-type surface, a half assembled monitor and a printer – and guess what? The printer has been used since it got unpacked which means it had to use the same adapter as the fucking mouse. Problem solved. Laziness exposed.

While in the frustration zone, I went to the Logitech website thinking, fuck it, I’ll order a whole new mouse. Not what I wanna do but I went there anyway. On the website, I got the pop up asking for my email so I could get that whatever percent off. Sure, I signed up, why I do this, I do not know. At that point I decided to get away from the computer and do a few non digital things like dump the dehumidifiers in the basement and consider the dusty, linty, insulation bits on my way back up the stairs.

When I sat back down at this little table without a view, I looked at email and decided to find the unsubscribe link on the Logitech spam. That’s why I realized, 18 minutes into this hour of 10 AM, yet another broken website. How little do people have to care to let this be a page someone sees on the web?

Something Went Wrong. Ya think?

Something went wrong. please try again later.
Sure looks like something went wrong

I can even venture to guess how this happened based on the text case (lower case) where it says ‘please try again later’. Let’s just say the person who did it was doing their best to fulfill the user story: as a user, I want to see an error page so I know something went wrong.

It’s almost the end of 2025 and I fear for humanity as a species but the issue isn’t that we’re going to go extinct anytime soon. The issue is that we’re going to get even dumber than we are now way before we get close to gone which is the most horrifying part of all of this.

Back to the adapter for a sec. I am disappointed in myself for not looking a little harder, for spending money and Amazoning, for being the thing that’s contributing to everything else. What I can say is that I won’t do this again anytime soon. It’s not every day ya move across about 3,000 miles of massive country with a cat.

So while I will take responsibility for my end of this, I will keep my shiny new adapter and keep organizing this house. Grateful for the luxury of all of this. None of this is complaining and if it sounds that way, I guess that’s why this is a blog and not some post on some antisocial thing.

Validation for the experience isn’t my version of meaningful. I’m too tired for that shit.

We’ve entered a zone

What’s it called when everything is pretty constantly fucked up. Twilight Zone. Fucked Up Zone. Too simple. Too easy. Nothing describes this.

Software that doesn’t work while people who can make it work are wrestling with other software just to customize the 147th version of a fucking resume. Sounds like that company that put my name on a RIF list. Fraudulent, coasting on its market capture because the alternative sucks and it’s too hard to change. It’s called The Rot Economy for these very reasons. There are humans behind the rottenness. The big names and the ones that will always be less well known. Poor bastards probably want to be invited to places that have buy in price tags. That’s just bribery. Funny they said they wanted to make it like it used to be when they treated people decently. I guess they forgot about everyone else after a while.

Fuck all the way off Randall Lipps cuz you’re the reason I’m in this situation. Am I bitter. At this point, yes. And fuck you if you can’t understand why. Fucking Randy should simply drop the cash in a bank account for me, do something decent for someone else you greedy, whiny, weak ass, dough boy mother fucker.

There’s no place like it

Maybe just think it

Don’t say welcome home to me

My home is not here

There’s no place like it. At least that’s what the movie line says. Click the heels of the bedazzled Mary Jane’s together and say it with conviction: there’s no place like home. When you open your eyes what are you supposed to see? According to the script that’s when you see the family who loves you so much that they know when you’re home.

That family never says welcome home because they know it’s meaningless and patronizing. Or worse, it’s actually a way of claiming a space, making it clear you’re now in their version of home so play nicely with the others, please and thank you.

I don’t have to play at all but I’ll play along with the people in the first circle of polite chit chat. If I get to the fifth layer, I’ll reconsider even though at that point it’ll likely be way too late.

For now I’ll smile enough to make the lie mostly believable but I’ll always wonder why people have to make themselves feel better instead of acknowledging that the person they’re talking to just might feel differently.

As for me, yes I’m talking about the condescension, the tribalism and the judgement. I’ve always felt that but never more so than here with most of the people. Different groups with different rules but mostly it’s me. It’s my issue. I feel groundless. I

‘m the one who’s never found a way to be comfortable fitting in with the fake hippie or being in the insect-ridden summer while everyone else looks at me like I generated those welts on my skin, because they didn’t see any mosquitos.

Yep. I’m sitting in this latitude conjuring the mosquitoes. Nope. I don’t want to sit outside in the grass.

Cattywompus

Sweet, kind V who gave me a post it with the name of a restaurant where I can get a plate of rice and beans. Spanish (not Mexican) food. I ended up in the ice cream after the winding Wednesday. I guess I didn’t expect to hear the word surgery but at least it’s not that bad. Maybe it’ll be covered but if not, holy fucking credit card bill.

And then there’s everything else. Things are heading in a multiple bad directions like the whole issue of these ‘debates‘ which make it pretty clear no one from debate club is in the video. After that, I needed some humor so I ended up on Colbert’s monologue and picked up the word cattywompus. I’m not sure what it means but it’s a good one for 1:30AM.

I’m not sure how to feel about the whole eye surgery thing so I guess tonight I’ll try to forget about it. These are the moments when I wish my bedroom was set up so I could burrow into bed but it’s not yet. Hopefully by mid August but at this rate, nothing is going exactly as hoped. Patience. New noises. Workarounds. Compromise. Credit card bills.

Cattywompus.

Sleep by numbers

By sleeping I go elsewhere and somehow I can’t allow myself to go there because it’ll just end up bringing another day which isn’t exactly a rational cycle of swirling pinball thoughts.

Count something. Breath somehow. Do the sleep hygiene and the spoons. How many spoons is it? Or is that not how the spoon thing works.

It’s sideways rain that shifts directions under the bright blue sky but only in my mind and only sometimes – there’s no all. No nothing. Only all the in betweens.

Tricky when counting on things. They go away and haunt or something always past midnight when day is closer again.

Unfold and count the exhale. Forget the numbers and the paint and the holes in the bathroom wall. Fuck why bring up the fucking holes. Just stop.

Stop.

Liquid Glass

Wha? Material is now the name of a visual effect. It’s a liquid element for dynamism that allows color to pass through from background to foreground, according to the Liquid Glass guidelines.

Is this coming to my Apple device? Do I have a choice?

D’fuqs w the bubbles?

the donald

not a duck. the donald is a creation of its own making. it called the news and used a fake name to promote itself. it paid for full page newspaper advertisements to promote lies. it believed the hype around it that was made to sell crap to people. the worst of all is that it made for entertaining television at a time when that screen was changing rapidly in size and reach. by the time it landed on fucking jack dorseys twitter doorstep, it was already entrenched in the american psyche by way of media. then all that needed to happen was to keep the media hooked on the mainlining of high ratings and big advertising dollars alongside the continued propping by roger and rupert and here we are heading to where the fuck no one knows.

when the people around you say 2 + 2 = whateverthefuck with the greatest confidence and hubris and you’re the one to say no, 2 + 2 = fucking 4 in front of the liars you will be the one out on your ass. i know from my own personal experience in this warped world of the truth is what I say it is and if I am more powerful or wealthy than you then that as they say is that.

2 + 2 = whateverthefuckyouthinkitis

Here it comes

When it’s easier to tap tap tap on a mobile device and buy a car than it is to tap tap tap and find a friend or hire someone to move a couple of chairs that won’t fit in standard sedan seems to be we’ve mediated our way so much closer to robocop than most people can even begin to comprehend.

RoboCop Movie Poster 1987

It’s not bullshit. It’s absolutely true and almost happening like the movie. The cops are still human but their faces are almost always covered, they can and will grab anyone off the street they’ve been told to arrest and if they do their jobs the way they’re supposed to, the person they arrest will be taken into custody immediately.

The Constitution and Amendments and due process don’t seem like they’re for little people at all anymore. Only for the hefty, wealth-laden, gold plated, egotastic mother fuckers like Donald, Zuckerberg, Putin, F’Elon, mother fucking Stephen Killer Miller, Mr. Google and Mrs. Paramount.

Donald may be the president but a fucking disgusting, abusive, trolling, bullying, baby of a human male does not make a president. He’ll have that moniker but he’s nothing but a slumlord from Queens (no offense to the place, my family is from there too but we didn’t abuse anyone, tromp over them, stomp on that last step, and keep going) who has never succeeded on his own in his entire life. The veneer is lab-made, a manufactured image projected onto TV screens for so long that the lies became acceptable and even unquestionable for some. That’s leaning toward cult by anyone’s definition.

No. Nope. No.

Do you know about what happens next? Do you know how bad it can get? Do you understand how much the fake government has stolen in Q1? Do you understand the hell that will be unleashed upon all of us because Donald got 49.9% of the popular vote? Do you know how many people will die?

Do you want to know? No? Didn’t think so. I can’t help anyone who’s not interested in caring beyond our own cults. The families of origin, the circles of old friends, the new friends, the people significantly younger than my 57 years. There are some who are engaged and active.

In the next several months, it’ll become clearer whether enough people act to oppose the darkness with some light and better ideas for a future we’ll have to share whether we want it or not.

It’s not what you thought it’d be

be entrepreneurial, they said. have a vision, they said. guide cross-functional teams. make an impact – in 90 days or less, they said. add value, they said. get shit done, they said. make a difference, they said. be dedicated, they said.

how’d that work?

no more job

Why?

I did the things they said they wanted NOT the things they actually reward, recognize, protect, promote.

I also make one other crucial mistake; I attached my whole sense of self to the work, the job, the outcomes in the short mindset that never has room for all those things they said they wanted in the first place.

I took it seriously and personally and didn’t fortify myself. Had I known the key is to develop a deeper level of emotional intelligence and detachment, build a network shamelessly, keep my distance and not only save myself but climb the dumb ladder.

Treet. What cats want.

It’s everywhere

Everywhere I look I see how I feel is also how others feel. Bummer. And it’s a huge relief to finally see evidence from others that the crap and the overload is real. I’m not the problem. I’ve been made to be the problem by a system that’s just fucking fallen apart. How’d that happen? Slowly then all of a sudden. Yep, I’m revising too. UX? Feh. What a slap in the face. Yeah it was what I did for a living but I never called it an industry. Skills you can use elsewhere. So that’s what I’m doing. Maybe I’ll use one of this persons tools tips snippets whatever.

Read all of it and appreciate that sad old Mac face.

What cats really think?

Nope

Done. Nope. Not. Nope.

The device is called i (phone). That’s a nice marketing ploy but the phone part of the device is the least useful aspect of the thing. The number of phone calls that include a smooth, easy to have, back and forth dialogue are damn near zero in this year of 2025.

The phone is not a phone. It’s a computer with software that simulates phone calls of yesterday.

Does anyone remember full duplexing?

I do. It was what a fucking telephone used to do and it was amazing. I have not done any research but my gut feeling is they it’s as dead as a dinosaur. When was the last time anyone talked to anyone else on this stupid pocket computer and had a real dialogue where both parties – especially if there were only two people talking – could hear all the words spoken?

Maybe it was Y2K. Or thereabouts. Full duplex communication doesn’t exist easily in our wifi world because it’s cheap. Cheap as in it doesn’t include the necessary technical layers to enable full duplex comms. So. We get voip and chop and drop and sure call from anywhere but don’t expect to be able to have a real dialogue.

Well, that’s weird.

No. No it’s not at all weird that the calls drop or sound weird or exclude a packet here and there so you cannot hear properly.

It’s weird that this shit works at all. It’s very rickety and very insecure.

No full duplex. Only half. And no COBOL is not just an ‘archaic programming language’, it’s also extremely hard to break into which is why your bank – yes, bank – has it running in their systems too.

They’re everywhere

These guys wrecking all the things in the so-called administrative state are the same ones who have funneled money into our payment processing systems so insidiously that there really is no escape and no extraction.

Parents and schools need to be able to connect and communicate with each other. It’s a problem as old as schools and humans. What happens when a government is starved for money because tax breaks go to the super rich guys? An example is a for profit entity funded by the guys who took the tax breaks and then used their money to make more money for themselves while integrating their tech into schools around the world.

I won’t name names for the sake of black listing myself. Who knows at this point maybe I’m already on a list. At this rate it won’t be long since nothing is private and hasn’t been for well over a decade.

It’s too little too late. There is absolutely no one coming to help the people. The overlords have the keys to almost every room of the kingdom with one massive and crucial exception. The hearts, critical thinking and souls of the people who see the truth and will not be told they don’t.

Keep some cash in your fireproof box and fine, you can keep calling me chicken little but you should be calling me Cassandra.

Directions

Can’t find a way there

Being the nerd that I am, I wanted the exact mileage based on googles default route from here to there. I’ve never seen this result before.