This alarm clock has been a staple on my nightstand for over 30 years. Every time I wake up in the middle of the night, and that happens quite a bit, I glance at the clock to see what time it is. I then do math to figure out how much more sleep I can get. And the result often causes a bit of midnight anxiety.
I don’t need anxiety in my life.
The truth of the matter is that if it’s dark and my alarm hasn’t gone off yet, do I really care what time it is? The facts (darkness, no alarm) point to my eligibility for sleep and who really cares how much of that sleep remains? Sleep is sleep so get some sleep.
So I have stored this old faithful alarm clock in my drawer for a few nights to see if it helps reduce my anxiety when I wake up in the middle of the night and decide I must know what time it is. A few more steps to controlling the chaos.
The Doomsday Clock is once again at 90 seconds to midnight. This is the second year in a row the clock has been at this position; it is still at the closest point to “doomsday” in the history of the clock. Prior to 2023, the clock was at 100 seconds to midnight. Near the end of the Trump presidency, the clock was moved from two minutes (120 seconds) to 100 seconds to midnight. I find it somewhat interesting that the clock has moved closer to midnight and remained there during the Biden administration.
As a Gen-Xer that was constantly reminded of the threat of armageddon during the Reagan years, it still makes me quite nervous to see the Doomsday Clock so close to midnight, and things not getting better.
It’s an extreme clock setting in extreme times.
I know I’m not alone of really being tired of the constant chaos in the world. Wars, grandstanding, childish social media posts, focus on anything other than what’s important, greed, and a looming U.S. Presidential Election that will probably boil down to the “vote for the least worse of the two very old guys”.
I really want the chaos to calm down. I want to live to see the Doomsday Clock ramped to a less volatile territory.
But most importantly, I want the world to get better, not “less bad”.
Joyce Randolph, most famous for her role as Trixie in “The Honeymooners”, passed away earlier this month. She was 99 years old.
Joyce was not the first actress to play the role of Trixie; the role was originated by Elaine Stritch. Joyce took over the role after Elaine’s first and only outing as Trixie, and in the process the character was toned down a bit with a bit more wholesome image.
Here’s a shot of Joyce as Trixie in one of the early episodes on the DuMont Network, featuring Pert Kelton as Alice.
It’s rained most of the day here in the Sonoran Desert. At times the rain has been pounding on the roof quite hard; the forecast calls for more rain through Wednesday. It is that time of the year, after all.
While my husband watches the football playoffs, I’ve been studying up on aviation and weather. I’ve been organizing my flight bag a bit. For the past couple of years I’ve been trying to go “completely electronic” with organizing my weather, notes, and other flight bag goodies in the cockpit. I started off with paper on the my kneeboard and during the last flight I migrated back to that, using my EFB, or Electronic Flight Back, for approach charts and as a reference. My EFB lives on an iPad mini 5, which is still quite capable but the Apple Pencil, which is a generation 1 of the plethora of pencils Apple now offers with specific iPads, can be spotty. Pen and paper are more reliable in that regard.
I’ve also been studying up on the weather, watching videos from various sources on using the various tools, improving my forecasting skills and the like. I found this video from MeteoTechWX, a storm chasing channel on YouTube. I really liked the vibe of this team and look forward to watching more of their videos this week.
Amongst all the other things I talk about on Ye Ol’ Ancient Blog, I’ll be mentioning my Storm Chasing toolbox as it gets assembled for chase season coming up this spring. The Accounting Department (otherwise known as the love of my life, my husband), has blessed a solo storm chasing trip again this year. I haven’t figured out the timing yet, as it’s a bit too early in the year to pinpoint that timing down, but the smart people out there are saying this year could be above average for severe storms and I find that quite exciting. Unless, of course, I’m flying an airplane. Then I want Mother Nature to be as calm as a cucumber.
It’s a shame the New York State curriculum for Earth Science back in 1982 made for a duller than a dishrag experience when I was a freshman in high school. This stuff is super interesting to me.
Truman patiently waits for me to complete my feline related chores after being gone all morning on a hike.
After the litter box has been scooped, Truman jumps up on his cat tree expecting four treats. I’m not sure he can count but he jumps down when I say, “last one”.
He had his annual wellness check this week. The vet said he’s in very good shape. no concerns, and he’s exactly the weight he was last year. He’s a big boy at around 18 1/2 pounds. He’s big boned, I guess.
For some reason that I absolutely can not figure out, Reeder 5 on my iPad Pro stopped showing the content of articles coming to me via RSS. Everything works fine on my iPhone and my Mac, but the iPad version just shows me the title of an entry and no content at all.
This is not the way I want to consume data.
So, I moved away from Reeder 5 on my iPad Pro and introduced NetNewsWire to the mix.
The only reason I liked Reeder 5 was the Bionic Reading, the special font that is suppose to keep the distracted mind from wandering, but other than that I wasn’t particularly attached to the application.
I like NetNewsWire thus far, especially since it’s an Open Source application. I’ll be swapping out the app on my iPhone and Mac this weekend.
My RSS feeds are aggregated by a self-hosted instance of FreshRSS. Installation, administration, and maintenance is pretty straightforward, and my control freak side really enjoys not relying on a 3rd party service that usually costs money.
Last autumn, Agnetha Fältskog, the first “A” and one of the members of ABBA released a new album called “A+”. The album is a remix of the tracks from her 2013 album “A”.
“A+” continues a new track called “Where Do We Go From Here?”. This song didn’t cross my radar until just recently and it’s a delightful, catchy little pop tune with a cute, animated video. The track reached #25 on the UK Singles Downloads and #27 on the UK Singles Sales chart. It also reached #8 on Svensktoppen, a chart in Sweden. I don’t believe “A+” nor the single have been released in the North American markets.
Here’s Agnetha Fältskog with “Where Do We Go From Here”?
While reviewing my goals and associated personal accomplishments in 2023 I decided that last year was pretty much too “scattered” in my ways. It was a decent year and I feel like I generally moved forward in my humanness, but I didn’t immerse myself in activities that I thoroughly enjoy. I did some great things and I was able to “escape” into my hobbies on several occasions; I just didn’t feel enveloped in the joy I usually feel when pursuing my hobbies.
So, in 2024, I have decided to focus on my top three pastimes: aviation, weather and space, and retro computing. Things I’m not nearly as focused on this year include the other tech pursuits, including everything going on at Apple, or the latest in the world of Linux. These latter two subjects are covered sufficiently in my professional life and I don’t need to try to have fun messing around with Linux or buy the latest Apple gadget to escape into my hobbies.
I’ve had storm chasing on the mind a lot, and I’m anxious to see what El Niño brings to Mother Nature’s mood in the upcoming storm chasing season. While I had some great flights in 2023, I did not fly nearly enough, and that can be rectified fairly easily now that I’m a member of a local flying club. As far as retro computing goes, I don’t think my husband will let me purchasing an early 1980s NCR minicomputer with four attached cash registers to the system, but I do enjoy reading about these things and how they worked through various reference sources online.
Quality over quantity is the name of the game as I try to have a more focused, intentional life here in 2024.
When I was a kid I enjoyed reading anything I could get my hands on. My mom came into the kitchen on more than one occasion finding me parked in front of a bowl of Super Sugar Smacks reading our phone book.
From an eBay listing.
The telephone directory pictured above is not from our small town but it looks identical to the CONTEL phone book we had of the same year. When my paternal side of the family decided to sell the business, we had a collection of every phone book for the area from 1969 to 2010.
I’m digressing.
I would often be reading the phone book because I didn’t have anything else at hand to read at the moment. I gleaned a lot of information from the phone book, because after all, the phone book holds a lot of information, and I started memorizing phone numbers without even realizing it. For example, today I can still recite the phone number for the main office of my alma mater and for my elementary school, though I have no reason whatsoever to call these people and I have probably never called these numbers in my life. They were just there in the phone book.
Like many geeks I have tried to move from reading books to using their electronic equivalents, namely, the Kindle app from Amazon or Apple Books. I usually try to read using these apps on one of the iPads I’ve had over the years. And with the turning of the clocks to the New Year I have come to one solid realization.
I hate electronic books.
I don’t feel connected to what I’m reading. I don’t like having my eyes lit up in a darkened room by the words on the “page” and I feel like I’m actually just using a bunch of web pages.
Give me a real, printed book anyway.
Now, I’ve never had an Amazon Kindle with E-ink, which doesn’t rely on backlighting, so I don’t know if I would enjoy that reading experience. A couple of weeks ago my husband and I browsed around our local Bookmans, which is a delightful used book store with lots and lots of interesting things to read. I purchased a book on storm chasing that I’m currently reading and before going to sleep for the night it’s quite nice to not have an iPad staring me in the face as I’m starting to feel sleepy.
I’ve often quipped that the reason we have school violence is because students are no longer high on the fluid to make ditto copies. Perhaps we’re all getting cranky because we have too much blue light staring us in the face all the time.
I’m finding myself much happier settling down with a book before calling it a night. It’s a shame we don’t have a phone book in the house, just in case I have a literary emergency.
While Earl made his daily trip to the gym, I went hiking in Saguaro National Park east. I got started just before sunrise. I’d been on the majority of the trails I traversed today but the solo hike is just what I needed and as I write this I feel fantastic.
Feeling fantastic is good. I’m already planning my next hike for Saturday.
Our time is finite. Get out there and enjoy as much as you can before you reach your expiration date.
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.
