December 2023

As 2023 comes to a close, I’m reminded of some of the dialog in this “Maude” episode that aired on December 30, 1974. The retching about 1974 giving way to 1975 starts around the six minute mark. It’s shocking how much hasn’t changed in nearly 50 years.

2023 wasn’t my favorite year. 2023 wasn’t my best year. A lot of good things happened in 2023 but it seems like there’s a bit of a wet blanket over the country. I wish I could say I’m looking forward to 2024 but I feel like it’s going to be a continuation of 2023… more war, idiotic American politics, and that looming presidential election. Oh how am I dreading the presidential election. It’s going to be another exercise in “vote for the least worst candidate”. And freaks are going to be running around with their weird cult behavior, folks are going to be saying asinine things online (I really wish you needed a license to get on the Internet), and people that are rich through idiocy are going to continue their idiocy. I know, I sound like a Debbie Downer on this New Year’s Eve.

I’m hoping 2024 proves me wrong.

I have made a list of personal goals and aspirations for 2024 and I’ve already begun work on them with the Winter Solstice. That’s a bright spot. I’ve also purchased a couple of bottles of decent champagne for tonight’s celebration, so that’s always fun. Living in the Mountain Time Zone, the time zone that America forgot, we get to celebrate New Year’s Eve at 10:00 PM from New York, again at 11:00 PM from New York when the rerun the whole affair for the Central Time Zone, and then we’re left with someone dropping a giant taco on Downtown Tucson at 12:00 midnight Mountain Time. I’m not really jazzed about the New Year’s Eve celebrations on the television anyway. We’ll probably just hang out with family and friends and call it a night. It’s like that one New Year’s Eve when I was kid when my mom and dad went square dancing and we were left with a babysitter named that didn’t move off the couch the entire night and forced us to watch “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?”

Maybe I should go take a nap so I’m ready for the frivolity.

I found this marketing display on the cash register at Wendy’s to be interesting. If you read the fine print you’ll notice it’s meant for the drive thru.

When I shared this with the family on our private chat, Jamie posted this which made me laugh out loud while I was still waiting in line.

Even though I took a half day off from work, the last workday of 2023 has officially come to an end.

Here’s what I look like while out for a walk after the last workday of 2023.

A trend that I’ve noticed over the past few years is retail workers working with one or more AirPods (or equivalent) in their ears. At first I was naive around my thinking and figured this was a way they were tapped into notices from management or something, you know, like in lieu of announcements over a loudspeaker or a ding-ding-ding-ding at Sears and Roebuck.

Silly me.

Of course the retail workers in question are listening to music in at least one ear, which is something I couldn’t manage in that environment. Today I saw a worker at a local Wendy’s with a Drive Thru headpiece on one side and an AirPod on the other. That would make me insane.

I stopped at this local Wendy’s for lunch. With careful planning this morning I spontaneously took the afternoon off from work and decided I was in the mood for chili and a baked potato from Wendy’s, so there I was in line. The Katherine of questionable skill behind the counter kept asking customers to repeat themselves as they were placing their order. While I was waiting to place my order two previous customers came up to the counter to ask for their order to be created, because in one instance she had misheard “Eight” instead of “Bacon”, resulting in the wrong meal for the customer.

I was asked to repeat my request for my chili. That’s when I noticed Katherine of Questionable Skill was working with an AirPod in her ear. Apparently her music was more important than her job.

I’ve moved on from the observation (though I’m writing about it) and am now sitting in our local Starbucks. There are more workers than customers at the moment and all of them have headsets but no AirPods (or equivalents) are in sight. I’m good with this. However, it’s probably because they have the music cranked fairly loud here. ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” is playing at rockin’ volumes, enough that I could hear the dub in the second chorus where they artificially extended some of the notes under “Queen…” before going into the bridge. (You didn’t know that was there, did you?) The volume is also loud enough to mask my tinnitus.

I’m thankful for that.

Now that I think about it, perhaps the folks working with AirPods are suffering from tinnitus and they’re masking it with music.

At the aforementioned Wendy’s, I also noted a customer using his speakerphone at a loud volume on the other side of the restaurant. I have always found speakerphone use to be rude, long before Steve Jobs blessed us with today’s modern smartphone. I once worked for man that used a speakerphone for EVERY call because he was multi-tasker at all times but master of nothing.

Some of the screeching on these speakerphones sound like glorified tinnitus to me. If the AirPod set isn’t masking tinnitus today they’ll probably have tinnitus to mask tomorrow.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is always weird to me. On one hand, work is quiet so I’m able to get things organized in my professional life for the New Year. On the other hand I know in the back of my head that New Year’s Day is just an arbitrary moment in time and there’s nothing really that magical about it. Hence why I tend to think of the Winter Solstice as the beginning of a new cycle instead of the 1st of January.

But this week of in between is also when I tend to have time to tinker around with projects and think about positive things I want do when things ramp up to full speed after the holidays. One of the things I’m doing is “tightening up” my social media presence. I’ve talked about this before, quite a lot actually, and this year I’m being a little bit more realistic about things.

Instead of declaring that I’m dumping social media, which I won’t, I’m reducing my social media presence a bit. Ironically, what’s old becomes new again and I’m starting to discover more personal blogs to follow through folks I follow on Mastodon.

If you visit my blog via the web interface, you’ll notice the blogroll is expanding. I cleaned up the old “Blogroll”, eliminating blogs that haven’t been around a long while. Those that remain are now in the “Legacy Blogroll”. I’ve followed these blogs for a long, long time; they’re primarily from the days before social media infested our existence.

You’ll also notice a new category called “Blog Resurgence”. These are newer blogs I follow via RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. I’m going to write a separate blog entry on how RSS can work for you, so strap yourself in for that. The RSS protocol has been around for a very long time and powers a lot of things, including blogs like this very one you’re reading right now.

The “Blog Resurgence” category is a work in process and will continue to be built out and otherwise tweaked over the next several days. I encourage you to follow along if you’re so inclined.

So what about Social Media? Well, Facebook and Instagram are both run by an evil company and while I haven’t abandoned the platform, I have again removed IG from my phone and only access it via web browser. I gave up on Threads. I also gave up on the new, but unrelated BlueSky. The “limited number of characters” updates from me appear only on Mastodon. I like the folks I have found on there.

Unlike my earlier forays where I interacted with primarily folks from the gay community, these days I’m interacting with folks from all persuasions all over the world and I am a better person for it. Since Mastodon tends to put the power of content in the hands of the user, instead of a sick algorithm determining things on behalf of a large for-profit corporation, I’m content with sticking with Mastodon.

I’m also giving PixelFed another run in lieu of posting to Instagram all the time. I’ve had a bit of time making PixelFed “sticky” (don’t read into that) for me, but I’m giving it another go.

But honestly, I’m most excited about long form blogs like this one and discovering them again like I did like 20 years ago.

It’s giving me the inspiration to actually write again!

As a creature of habit (it’s just the way my brain is wired), I have a specific routine when getting ready for the day. I take a shower, washing the bits in the same way, in the same order. After my shower is completed, I go to the sink, fill the basin with a bit of water, turn off the overhead fan that’s been roaring for the past 10 or so minutes and then I announce, “Siri, read me the news”. There’s an Apple HomePod mini in the room so it’s not weird. I then squirt some Barbasol into my hand from the shaken can, apply to my face, and listen to the news while going through my shaving routine. While Siri is reading the latest news update from NPR I finish shaving, splash some cheap aftershave on my face, apply deodorant and finish up my routine just as NPR is wrapping up their spiel with “This is NPR”. I do all the post shower stuff in around three minutes and 10 seconds.

About a month ago I decided I just couldn’t listen to a daily report of the news anymore. At the time the 2024 Presidential Election was still 11 months away but polls and opinion and drama, drAMA, DRAMA has already swung into high gear and frankly Scarlett, I don’t give a damn. Let’s talk about the election in September 2024, thank you. The bombings and attacks in the Middle East are heartbreaking and the ongoing war in Ukraine is ridiculous. Couple all this frivolity with the other news NPR was belching out and my mental health simply couldn’t take it anymore.

I tried swaying Siri to play me a tech update instead of a world news update but in typical Siri fashion that request threw her into a tailspin that involved flashing random lights, music playing in the bedroom, loud questions like, “Do you want to open the Podcasts app on your iPhone?” and such.

After messing around with tech that didn’t do what it promised it did for a day I decided to start shaving in silence, save for the swish of the water when I rinsed my razor between strokes and an occasional purr or meow from the feline one who constantly wants more kibble.

The transition to relative peace has done wonders for my mental health when it comes to starting the day.

It’s not that I no longer care about the world. I very much care about the world. I just don’t want to hear about these things to start my day.

I tried watching the evening news hoping for something akin to a Walter Cronkite type of experience, where news was conveyed without zinger noises telling me to wait until after the break or contrarian opinions being hoisted up like they’re valid or important (e.g. “the sky is blue, after the break we’ll learn why some people believe the sky is green”). There is no longer a Walter Cronkite experience available for the average person. Even the local news has anchorpeople making weird laughing sounds, framing stories in outrageous ways, and weather forecasts blown away out of proportion, all in an effort to keep you tuned in to watch ads so you’ll buy more things.

I’ll find a sane source of news. I have faith I’ll find something that isn’t so emotional in presentation.