I won’t go to into depth about “Wandavision”. I can tell you were watching it every week. I’ve enjoyed a good share of the kitsch. I know it’s set solidly in the Marvel Universe and I am familiar with most of the characters.
The show feels like it’s moving at a glacial pace, is mixing universes together, and is a little uneven to follow. Admittedly, I enjoyed the practical magic effects in the first few episodes. It was fun to find the nods to classic TV series. But as far as tying it all together, I have little in the way of a clue of what’s going on.
What I have noticed in the past couple of episodes is that neighbor Agnes lives in Darrin and Samantha’s house from “Bewitched”. Good ol’ 1164 Morning Glory Circle is still standing, has been updated a bit for contemporary times, and is still quite familiar to the class TV aficionado.
This photo is from 1987 and obtained from Flickr. The cash register is an NCR 255 at a Super Fresh somewhere in New Jersey. In the back office of the Super Fresh is an NCR 726 Minicomputer handling the bulk of computing power for this and the other terminals in the supermarket. I believe the NCR 255 was the first cash register with scanning capabilities.
As a young lad I was always fascinated with cash registers, especially the NCR 255. The grocery store near Grandma City, independently owned Nichols IGA, had NCR 255 registers in the late 1970s and early 1980s and they were quite nifty. They just seemed so high tech, with their glowing little indicator lights, tilted display, and efficient impact printer that quietly typed out the receipt and journal tape. Built to typical 1970s standards, they keyboards were robust, they machine itself weighed nearly 100 pounds, and the mechanics of it all brought structure and organization to the handling of the associated information in a way my geek mind really appreciated.
I briefly used an NCR 255 as a cashier at Hills Department Store. Even though it was tasked with non-grocery functions, the register had the same number of buttons and made the same noises. Within a few short weeks of my starting at Hills the registers were replaced with IBM’s latest and greatest at the time, the IBM 4683. Even though the IBM 4683 was quite capable and did the job well, it felt less robust with a lot more plastic and tepid response on the keyboard. The dot-matrix printer whined.
Once in a great while I’ll find a video or photo about the NCR 255, or its less capable but still quite robust sibling the NCR 250, and ponder about how great it was to be alive during the early days of computing we take for granted today. This is where being a solid Gen Xer is awesome; witnessing how things were and how they became to be.
Photo from an image search about Texas Power on DuckDuckGo.com
Ah, Texas. It’s been just a week or two since my husband and I drove across the panhandle as we made our way from Chicago to Tucson. It was fairly early in the morning when we crossed the Oklahoma State Line along I-40 into Texas. The temperature was well below freezing and the roads were covered with ice. The bridges were particularly fun to navigate. We made our way to Amarillo at a crawl as it seemed that whatever state agency maintains the roads and bridges along Interstate 40 had absolutely no interest in doing anything about the slick roadways. There were at least a dozen tractor trailers off the road in various spots. To be fair, your neighbors in Oklahoma had the same approach. Now I understand why you guys freak out when Mother Nature decides to take the temperatures to the low side. You act surprised (though it happens every year) and you don’t do a damn thing about it.
Apparently that was just a glimpse into the way Texans feel about winter weather.
For most of the state, the Texas power grid is independent from the rest of the continental United States. I’ve known this for a while but I didn’t know why. This week I learned it was to escape federal regulations and oversight on power grid maintenance. By maintaining power independence, Texas doesn’t have to do things like winterize power generators or build in costly redundancies, both required along the rest of the United States power grid. After all, Texas doesn’t see that kind of weather.
Except it does.
Our friends in the Houston area have been without power for tens of hours. Like 30-40 hours. No power. No heat. And probably no running water. In the freezing cold. This is not uncommon for The Lone Star State this week, millions of Texans have been in the same situation since this cold snap began. The Texas power companies have been instituting rolling blackouts to keep up with high demands, except the blackouts don’t roll, they just black out and not come back up. Our friends slept in sub-freezing temperatures in their house Monday night. They honestly didn’t know if they would survive.
What was it Trump said about “third-world shit hole countries”?
There is nothing great about the “greatest nation on Earth” when its citizens, no matter what state they live in, are freezing to death in their homes, especially when the powers that be have willfully decided to privatize and rely on good ol’ American capitalism for essential services such as electricity, water, and heat.
I will never understand why Texans elect representatives who put them in this situation. I feel terrible for the Texans that are having to live through this ordeal, regardless of who they elected. I just pray the folks down there will remember this catastrophic event come Election Day and start voting sensibly and start taking care of one another.
By the way, the power outages are not due to “windmills freezing up”. That’s a lie being propagated by the usual conservative “news” outlets and idiots on social media. All forms of power generation in Texas are freezing up due to a lack of preparedness for this type of weather. Only 5-10% of the wind turbines in The Lone Star State are having an issue right now. So please, let’s put all of that to rest and deal with the real situation.
It looks like this latest storm brought us about a foot of snow. It’ll still be quite cold here but warming slightly as the week goes on. There’s a chance of a smaller snow storm arriving this weekend.
It’s February. This weather is not a surprise for this part of the country. However; this is the most snow I’ve seen in Chicago since moving here 3 1/2 years ago.
The snow continues to fall. According to the weather forecast, they heavier snow won’t arrive until later this afternoon and continue through the overnight. When all is said and done, we should have around a foot of new snow.
We have a good sized condo here on the north side of Chicago. When we were moving to the Windy City, there were a couple of things that we found about this location attractive, and one of those things was the space in our unit. It’s about the same size as our first house. We have plenty of room to live. However, there isn’t a lot of room to move about.
I usually go for walks several times a day. This helps a little bit with my cardio and I’m able to figure things out in my head, whether it’s work or something else I’m pondering about, while I’m strolling through the neighborhood at a decent pace.
With the wind chill currently at -20ºF, I’m not feeling the need to go for a lovely stroll today. This latest winter storm is suppose to continue for the next 30 hours.
This morning I decided to give Apple Fitness+ another try. I went through four different routines, each 10 minutes long. The core routine about kicked my butt, but it was a good kicking that I needed. I then did a couple of yoga routines with Dustin. I was surprised at how easily I remembered my yoga class from 1998. As I sit here typing this blog entry my muscles feel worked out and I feel like I’m off to a good start for a Monday morning.
The thing about Apple Fitness+, or any workout regimen for that matter, is that you need plenty of space to do this sort of thing. The spare bedroom lends itself to Apple Fitness+ for the most part, but I needed to make a couple of modification to accommodate what Dustin was asking me to do.
One of the things I’m looking forward to in the new house is having space for this sort of thing again. I have to admit I really enjoyed my Apple Fitness+ experience this morning, and I look forward to doing more this during the week’s cold snap, but I’m really looking forward to giving it a whirl where I have more space to move about and really get into it.
If you’re looking into Apple Fitness+, I recommend using an iPad or Apple TV to follow along. I don’t know how well it would work on an iPhone. Perhaps my eyesight is just at that point where I can’t see what’s going on using a small screen.
If you’re thinking of trying Apple Fitness+, I say give it a whirl. Just give yourself some space to go through the movements.
My husband started to tell me the results of the Senate vote on Trump’s impeachment and I politely asked him to stop the conversation. We already knew the answer, the Senate would not do the right thing; all of sudden they were more concerned about going on recess so they slammed through a solution as quickly as possible and after all, the folks at the Capitol that died are dead and not coming back so why worry about it now.
During the Trump Reign of Terror I kept an eye on the news because I wanted to know if my marriage was going to be invalidated or if Martial Law was going to be declared and I wanted to look my best for either occasion. Since President Biden has taken office I have calmed down on following the news. Yes, the Democrats have the majority across the board right now but they’ll be weak and worry about optics more than results and not do much with it and probably lose the majority somewhere come 2022. Biden is signing Executive Orders like hall passes and fixing a lot of things that the Orange Moron did. I’m OK with undoing stupid stuff, I’m not really on board with using Executive Orders to do everything else. The branches of government should be working together to make this a better country for all of us. Unfortunately, it appears those days are long gone.
I sound cynical. I’m actually disengaged. Things are getting better but we shouldn’t be digging ourselves out of this hole to begin with.
I’m not surprised at the Senate’s acquittal. I expected it. Few in government are actually in it for the right reasons and I just don’t have the energy to follow their script anymore.
Truman is very happy we’re home from Tucson. He didn’t eat much while we were gone; his food dish (as part of the automatic feeder) was filled to the top when we came rolling in. We cleaned up the mess and got back to his regular routine and now he’s happy. So are we.
He always wants to be in close proximity. He’s usually situated near my feet or at a reasonable place nearby. He’s good at being a cat.
I created a new Twitter account today. I still have my original account, and am still actively using it, but the original intent of that account was for my aviation purposes, discussions, and endeavors. I’ve moved the direction of that timeline back in toward flying. I created a new account with the intent of using it for everything except for aviation. And politics. I’m at the point now where I’m not surprised by what’s going on with the U.S. Government and I don’t have much hope for some magical turnaround to make things better anytime soon. The recent election of President Biden moves us in a better place. I think he’s a good guy, I think Kamala is a good vice-president and with all the work they need to do since the last administration, the best we can hope for is “bearable”.
I wish there were unicorns and puffs of candy in the sky but that’s just not realistic. The country is in a deep hole and has just started building the ladder. Let’s celebrate the small steps.
So my new Twitter account is out there and I’m keeping it tweaked and being quite selective in whom I follow. I have auto-delete safeguards in place and I’m making liberal use of muting functions. I’m hopeful this will help me keep in touch with what’s going on and let me interact with online folks I’ve gotten to know over the years.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
