I’m two weeks away from my next storm chasing trip. I’m like a kid looking forward to Christmas. I’m so excited to see what Mother Nature is up to in one of my favorite parts of the United States.
This capture is from May ’23. I was somewhere in Kansas.
This song is still one of my favorites of all time. I can’t believe the track is over 15 years old!
The radio/video version doesn’t do the track the justice it deserves, feeling a bit rushed. The full length original remix is a little long, but the interludes in the middle are awesome, giving the track the room it needs to expand and envelope the listener.
From 2009, here’s David Guetta Featuring Kelly Rowland with “When Love Takes Over”.
Earl and I finished watching the first season of “Mid-Century Modern” last night. Available on Hulu, some have described the series as a spin on “Golden Girls”, like a “Golden Gays”. Three gay men of a certain age, having been friends for many years, decide to live together in Palm Springs. Already living with Bunny Schneiderman, played by Nathan Lane, is Bunny’s mother Sylvia, played by the late Linda Lavin.
I ended up enjoying the series much more than expected. Being on Hulu, the production can take some liberties with colorful language and some of the humorous zingers going back and forth. As a gay man of a certain age, the show feels quite comfortable and familiar. I love the three camera format, the set design, the characters, and what are hopefully just the first 10 episodes of several seasons to come. Yes, Hulu, please renew this series for a second season already.
Linda Lavin passed away at the end of 2024, during the production of the last few episodes of the season. Her passing is handled in a respectful, amazing, heartwrenching yet humorous way; probably better than any other such scenario in a sitcom. At age 87, you could tell she was having a ball being a “Sophia-like” character in this series. The other three leads are having fun as well, and after the first episode or so, they seem to settle quite nicely into their character portrayals.
As I said, I had much more fun with the series than I expected to and I was wanting more when we finished the last episode of the season last night.
I hope we get to see more of Bunny, Jerry, and Arthur very soon. Us “Golden Gays” need all the joy we can get in this world.
You can’t tell in this photos, but I had a lot going on in the way of sniffles today.
I’ve been trying to get two walks of two miles each in every morning before 10:00 a.m., when the sun generally becomes just a little too much for me. The fresh air always does me some good.
I don’t know where the sniffles came from, but other than that I don’t really feel bad or anything. It’s not the best way to start a Monday but for the most part the week is off to a good start.
I was planning on recording an in-studio video for the YouTube channel tonight, but I’m going to put that plan on hold a couple of days until I feel just a little bit better.
It’s simple but controversial: Computers were more fun when they weren’t for everyone. There, I said it.
I stumbled upon this quote in a blog I follow, Welcome To BASIC, the specific post being Honest and Elitist Thoughts on Why Computers Were More Fun Before. That post leads to another detailed post, and like the author of Welcome To BASIC, I find myself nodding my head in agreement as I read through the post.
I have said this before and at times I feel bad about feeling this way, but I still hold the quote at the top of this entry to be quite true. Computers were much more interesting, and much less dangerous, when folks had to have a good understanding of how their computer actually worked. This approach made it easier for users to identify scams and viruses, and it conversely made it MUCH harder for ads and the like to infest our computing experience.
Yesterday we were expecting a package from UPS. At the end of the expected delivery window I received an email: we tried but there was no answer, see you on Monday. Since this was an important package that we needed yesterday I was torqued. I went to the UPS site and confirmed the status after punching in my tracking number. I needed to speak to a representative to find out what was going on.
The UPS website makes it really hard to find a phone number to reach a customer service representative. I kept getting pestered by some AI driven chat bot. After asking it a dozen times to just give me the customer service number, it finally acquiesced and I made the phone call.
The customer service representative answered the phone, “Hello?”
I barked, “is this UPS?”. I was not pleased.
I was assured it was UPS and after a long conversation, I got the representative to tell me the driver would be back that day to try again.
Where does modern technology fit into this?
So yes, it does make me sound like an old guy yelling at the clouds, but no, I don’t believe all of this modern technology has made things any easier for us and honestly, the horrid belief that these Large Language Models (AI) being shoved into everything is going to make things better is naive at best.
Especially since no one really knows how LLMs really work at all.
Maybe the little bit of glumness I’ve been feeling lately (have you see the state of the United States?) is impairing my thoughts on this subject, but I do miss a world where we used green screens and our interactions on the Internet were mostly text based.
I encourage folks to have a basic understanding on how all this works. It will make your technological life safer, more secure, and hopefully less stressful.
I’m going to go back to yelling at the clouds.
Earl and I are sitting in our local Starbucks on this Easter afternoon. Yesterday was Jamie’s birthday and so we had a big meal with plenty o’ food last night. We’ve had leftover for breakfast and lunch today, so no yearly Easter picnic for us this year. The sun is bright, the air is cool, and we’re sitting in Starbucks.
I’m OK with that.
Many of the retail establishments in these parts are closed today, in recognition of the Easter holiday. For some reason this feels like something new, as in retail hasn’t done this in the past 30 years or so. The United States is changing. I don’t have anything against establishments being closed on Sunday, in fact, I think it’s a good idea. Society needs to slow down.
Yet, here we are, sitting in Starbucks.
While reading past blog entries about Easter I stumbled across this photo from 20 years ago. We had just gotten our first digital camera and I was doing a photo shoot to test out the timer and other functionality.
I miss technology being nifty.
Spring, and Easter in particular, has always represented renewal for me. I’m trying to find that spirit today as I type away on my laptop in this Starbucks. I want to bust out of the “same old, same old” and find the excitement of hope again.
I know it’s out there waiting for me.
Our friends Jeff and Mark are in town. I took the afternoon off from work so we can do a little bit exploring together.
The Titan Missile Museum is about 40 km south of Tucson just off Interstate 19. If you know anything about Interstate 19, you’ll know why I referred to the distance in metric instead of using the standard U.S. Imperial measurements.
The only remaining Titan Missile site still intact, visitors can go on a 45 minute tour of the underground facility. This includes taking the 55 stairs down to the area, visiting the control center, and then walking the long gangway to the actual missile silo. The now hollowed out Titan II Missile is still there, its launch doors locked in the half open position, indicating it’s not live and can not be launched if the doors are in this position. This stipulation was part of the SALT Treaty, and is apparently confirmed three times a day when a Russian satellite passes over Tucson. Changing the position of the launch doors would signal bad things to Russia, and then we’d have a whole international thing around it.
I am a big fan of older technology. I enjoy the aesthetic of the cabinets, I respect the industrial feel, and I particularly enjoy the user interfaces, with big lights, knobs, switches, and the like.
If you’re in the Tucson area and interested in how peace was kept through “Mutually Assured Destruction” during the Cold War, I highly recommend take the trip to this museum south of Tucson. The entrance fee is reasonable, the gift shop has a bunch of interesting things, and I feel like it’s a good thing for U.S. citizens to see all the measures that are taken to keep our country safe.
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!
