August 2024

Da Rut.

I am writing this at 06:06 Mountain Standard Time. I have just completed a 32 mile walk around the neighborhood, following the same route I have taken every morning this week. I have waved to the neighbors out on their walk, at just about the same location along the route, with maybe 50 feet of deviation from the norm at any given interaction.

I cleared the same 11 spam email messages out of my inbox this morning. I’m never going to buy anything from these companies again and for the life of me I can’t figure out why all the A.I. magic in the world can’t figure out this fact.

I will eat a homemade “egg bite”, as prepared by my husband this past Sunday. It will be the last one in the storage container in the refrigerator. I will have two cups of coffee, black, before 10:00 a.m. and then a cup of coffee, black after lunch to get my afternoon a little pep, unless I feel extra frisky and ask Earl to bring me home an unsweetened iced tea from Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks while he’s out running errands.

I’ll finish up my work week around 04:00 p.m. / 16:00 Mountain Standard Time, in which I will either have one beer or a glass of wine as I look over the news events of the day. I enjoy one alcoholic beverage after work on Fridays because it’s the last work day of the week. I will also review my list of work accomplishments of the week, which are many but I couldn’t list them right now for you if my life depended on it.

I’ll be in bed by 22:00 / 10:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. This is in preparation of getting up to go hiking in the morning. In between supper and bed I may do one of three things: 1. watching thunderstorms, depending on Mother Nature’s mood, 2. go for a ride with Earl and drive to a scenic spot to enjoy a few moments in nature and some together time in the car, or 3. watch some television. Whichever ends up happening, I will spend a few moments putting together the video equipment for tomorrow’s hike and jot down a few notes of where I want to go and what I want to talk about on my next video.

My life is too predictable at the moment. While I enjoy structure in my life, there are times when I need a few fits of spontaneity to keep the structure making sense.

I’m feeling the need for one of those fits.

9 August 2024 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Delete Delete Delete.

This is a screen shot. You can go find this travesty on YouTube by searching for the title in the screen shot.

I deleted my last Twitter account yesterday. I hadn’t been using it, other than pushing the YouTube channel releases as appropriate and tweeting at a particularly awful local politician once in a great while.

I kept the channel around for storm chasing oriented notifications as well, but as I get to know more storm chasers, I’m discovering that quite a few of them are probably not the type of people I want to be around. Also, since Space Karen took over Twitter, the quality of all content on the platform has dropped to incredible lows. While I’m sure we can all agree that we live in a society in decline, I prefer to believe that Twitter is no longer a snapshot of society but only an amplification tool of the worst of us.

I don’t know if that last paragraph makes sense but I hope it conveys the thought I’m trying to share.

Two things happened this week that made me say, “hey, I don’t want my name associated with any of this” as I gesture around the dumpster fire called Twitter, or X, or whatever the heck it is.

  1. Space Karen appears to want a Civil War in the U.K. His constant tweets (Xcrements?) on the subject just became too much to see when they were forced into my feed for my viewing when I took a look at the content.
  2. Linda Yaccarino, CEO of the dumpster fire, made a video highlighting why Twitter is suing the advertisers that no longer advertise with them because surprise, surprise, there’s just something inherently bad about Disney not wanting to advertise next to tweets full of race hate for Kamala Harris or informational tidbits around conspiracy theories that the Holocaust was faked to get more money for the space race that never happened.

The stilted, overly dramatic, awkward video from Linda Yaccarino was the last straw for me. Along the lines of Katie Britt, the kitchen woman that delivered the awkward response to President Biden’s latest State of the Union speech in a weird baby like voice that occasionally oscillated and contrasted with her overly dramatic crying and aggressive “anger” voice, Linda delivers one inane comment after another as to why people and companies not advertising on Twitter are a threat to freedom of speech.

I’m convinced Linda Yaccarino would also be using that weird baby voice, which I’ve learned is called “FBV” or Fundy Baby Voice, if her vocal cords were built for it and her accent was a little less harsh. Perhaps she can go for Baby Voice Elocution Classes after raking all the advertising money they’re now going to rake in because why wouldn’t someone advertise next to videos of a person gesturing awkwardly and making weird noises and looking like a hostage held by Space Karen.

I decided to pick myself up by whatever moral foundation I have and say, “I’m not associating with this. I don’t want my name associated with this. I have no interest in this.” Besides, we all know Space Karen is doing this because he wants to swing the news cycle away from the successes of the Harris-Walz campaign. Muskrat is not getting enough attention.

I know, I know, for a man with no interest I sure have written a lot of words to say why I have no interest. I could go on and but honestly, it’s best for everyone involved.

Delete. Delete. Delete.

8 August 2024 by Why. 0

Long Flight.

So there’s a pilot currently flying a Cessna 172 from Merced, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. Today I learned this is somewhat common; these ferry flights get new airplanes over to Hawaii when the winds are favorable and the weather is cooperative.

Working strictly from memory, a typical Cessna 172 has a range of about 650 nautical miles. This particular trip is nearly 2500 miles. For these flights these airplanes are fitted with extra fuel tanks, and the pilot makes the trip in around 18 hours.

That’s a LOT of time sitting in a Cessna 172.

I’m going to follow this flight on FlightAware to its completion.

6 August 2024 by Pilot. 0

Casual.

I’ve been on a casual, retro vibe t-shirt craze lately. Here’s the latest t-shirt to enter the paradigm. This limited run UNIX t-shirt from Cotton Bureau arrived yesterday and I am very much enjoying it.

For those not familiar with UNIX, it’s an operating system that’s been around for decades. Technically, Apple products run on a variant of UNIX, and Linux is based on the principles of UNIX. When I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, they had a variant of UNIX called Ultrix, which was frowned upon within the company because it competed with DEC’s VAX/VMS operating system.

6 August 2024 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Sunset.

Earl and I enjoyed a very nice sunset walk in Saguaro National Park – Rincon District this evening. Though the temperature was still quite high at 99ºF, we enjoyed our surroundings during our power stroll.

5 August 2024 by Desert Life. 0

Video: Hiking Mount Lemmon – hot fun in the summer sun

I had a fun hike up on Mount Lemmon yesterday. I’m happy I got this whole “hiking in the summer in the desert” thing figured out. Here’s a video of my adventure, with some bits about the history of Incinerator Ridge, some tips to make it enjoyable, and maybe a blooper or two. Enjoy!

4 August 2024 by Life In Motion. 0

Second Wave.

Our second wave of thunderstorms of the night is passing through as I type this blog entry. I grabbed some good lightning shots before the rain became too much.

3 August 2024 by Storm Chasing. 0

Caturday.

Truman stops for a casual pose while waiting for someone to either give him a treat or spur on his automatic feeder. I’ve been encouraging him to eat less, as he’s quite the big boy, but he does enjoy the kibble. Don’t we all.

3 August 2024 by He's A Feline. 0

Hi-NRG.

I’ve featured this video on the blog before, and it remains one of my favorite tracks of all time. A cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “Never Can Say Goodbye”, which is a disco remake the Jackson-5 track of the same name, this song was quite popular when I first discovered gay clubs in my college years.

From 1987, here’s The Communards with “Never Can Say Goodbye”.

I have to admit I had a crush on keyboardist Richard Coles, who became an ordained priest in 2005.

2 August 2024 by Gayish. 0

About J.P.

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.

Weird? Eccentric!

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