Ponderings and Musings

Sometimes I think my greatest accomplishment is as completing Lippincott Book L.

I was recently inspired to embrace my “geeky side” and decided my office would look good with a Raspberry Pi powered computer controlling the monitor off my shoulder in my work Zoom calls. I found a good deal on a Raspberry Pi 4 full kit this morning and by supper time Amazon had dropped it off at the front door.

As much as I don’t like Amazon killing brick and mortar businesses, that’s pretty amazing.

It took about 30 minutes to get the new Raspberry Pi 4 kit up and running, complete with downloading and configuring Raspberry Pi OS. I’m using the setup to write this blog entry.

I still have some tweaking to do on the system but I feel like I’m off to a great start.

On Saturday I had enjoyed a great hike. I was home, feeling wonderful. I had hopped out of the shower, I was staring at myself at the bathroom sink, assessing things before finishing getting ready for the day. “Hey, Siri, play the news”. It actually worked and the typical noises indicating an NPR broadcast starting coming out of the HomePod mini.

The lead story from NPR was about President Biden’s recent State of the Union speech. I hadn’t watched the speech as I’ve been trying to avoid the news since it’s usually very depressing and my mental health is more important than the mental activities coming from the vast majority of elected people. But, I try to listen to the news at least once a week so I know what countries have been blown up and other asshattery going on in the world.

NPR’s lead story wasn’t about the content of Biden’s speech but rather one word uttered during the speech in an off-the-cuff remark. In response to screaming from the audience (how dignified!) apparently President Biden had used the word “Illegals” instead of “Undocumented individuals”.

First of all, President Biden is up there in years. It’s also well known that he has a speech impediment in the way of a stutter, and folks that stutter sometimes have a hard time getting the words in their head to come out their mouth. I’m often in the same predicament and I recognize that Biden does what I do; when he sees himself getting stuck he does a quick word substitution so something comes out and he avoids stuttering. I firmly believe in this case the word “illegals” came to mind and it just came out. It’s not a great word and in this age of thought and language policing from all sides of the aisle, people flip out over these things.

NPR leading the hourly news round up with this, nearly two days after the event, is just throwing gas on a societal dumpster fire. With all the crap going on all over the globe, THIS is what they choose to focus on? One word? I get it, folks don’t like the word “illegals”. Everyone is a human and a border is just a human created barrier anyway. I get it. But focusing on this aspect of the speech, instead of accentuating all the great things he said and has demonstrated during his tenure as President, is just making this election cycle a bleak, dismal, money grab for the media companies. NPR is just as guilty as the corporate owned media conglomerates when it comes to skewing, spewing, and carrying on about “the news”.

Dark times.

A few weeks ago I mentioned an old cash register system on Mastodon. I think it was either the Data Terminal Systems Model 440 used at many grocery stories back in the day or the NCR 220 that was used at some Kmart stores back before Kmart realized they should be embracing technology. A fellow human being on Mastodon saw my update, did a web search on the model cash register I was talking about, and then shared they were surprised to see my blog entry at the top of search results.

This happens from time to time, as I occasionally talk about things that no one else talks about. Like old cash registers at Kmart.

I’ve never thought much about this blog coming up in search results on various topics, but I know that I’ve seen this blog more than once on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo in the past. I just didn’t think anything of it; I’m sharing things on here and search engines are suppose to show what’s shared.

What I didn’t realize until today was that there are probably lots of “AI” (Artificial Intelligence), or more accurately, “LLM”, or “Large Language Model” programs out there vacuuming up every bit, byte, vowel, and consonant of well over 20 years of blog entries from my site. Hell, they’re probably gathering up the punctuation as well.

I don’t think much about LLMs, inaccurately called “Artificial Intelligence”, because in some ways I think it’s going to be a passing fad like Google Glass or Bitcoin. However, there’s a lot of people worked up about AI and the way it takes bits and bytes from various places on the Internet, regurgitates it just a bit to make it look like it wasn’t stolen, and then presents the outcome as fact. It wasn’t that long ago that ChatGPT told me the population on Mars was around four million people. Don’t tell Elon.

The realization dawned on me when I read a blog entry around this subject by Les Orchard. Les nails it in this regard, and now I’m wondering what hazy memories I’ve posted on my blog that have been regurgitated as absolute fact because some WhizzGPT said it so.

This is not a good way to inform a society. Misinformation is misinformation, whether it’s emblazoned on a screen by an overly engineered computer or spewed out of the mouths of the likes of Kellyanne Conway.

Never forget the Bowling Green Massacre.

I’ve never really thought of the longevity of my writings beyond when I turn dust to dust. I figured someone wouldn’t pay the ongoing web hosting bill that keeps all this running, and some lackey would hit delete and it’d all be gone not long after I’m gone. But if my writings are now being vacuumed up by this latest fad of AI? I might have to think a little bit more about my content, the accuracy, and the volition of my musings here on this bloggy thing.

Nah. I’m just going to keep doing what I do. I hope it doesn’t clog up the electronic Hoover.

I had a great hike yesterday. Starting at the “Broadway Trailhead”, appropriately named for the end of Broadway Boulevard just outside of Tucson, I made my way into the Cactus Forest in Saguaro National Park East. For some reason openstreetmap.org has the trail in two parts. I believe it’s a 10 mile round trip end to end.

The desert is amazingly green after the recent rains. The views and foliage was quite stunning.

I went for a hike along the Cactus Forest Trail in Saguaro National Park East today. I made another video.

“John is a loner”. I’ve mentioned this statement before in my blog. It was written in one of my kindergarten report cards back in 1973 or 1974. Back then I enjoyed being around people from afar, and 50 years later this is still the case.

My family here at our Desert Compound is rather social. My husband has been a social butterfly since retiring nearly eight years ago. As I type this he’s off to the movies with our friend Marshall. Jamie, Chris, and Mike are all socially inclined as well. A lot of their social interaction is online and they have popular feeds and the like on the social media platforms of varying qualities. Jamie has always been quite gregarious and when he graduates from barber school later this year I’m sure that quality will make him that much better of a barber. He knows how to talk about more than just the weather.

Meanwhile, I talk about the weather a lot. From afar. I can go to events and chat with the best of them but only for a while, then I need some alone time to recharge and get myself back in order. I’ve always been this way.

When I mention this to people they say things like, “but you used to be on the radio!”

As far as I was concerned, back in my radio days I was sitting behind a microphone and talking to no one. At the last station I worked at I figured we were so low powered no one was listening anyway. It was easy to be alone while being “on stage”, I was sitting in a room by myself with a bit of studio equipment and a computer or two.

Even back in my club DJ days it was easy to be alone. I was in the DJ booth, not on stage like the folks do today, and it was just me, crates of records, two nifty turntables, some lighting controls, and hazy figures dancing on a dance floor over there. The door was locked, I didn’t take requests after that nasty woman demanded she dance to Melissa Etheridge NOW, and I liked it that way.

The gay community doesn’t do well with folks that like to be alone. There’s events every weekend in every corner of the country and every other part of the world and like my experiences in the past, I want to be there, while everyone does everything over there. Earl and I were talking about going to a local club to an event called “MEAT”. The social butterfly likes to see all the half dressed people dancing and drinking. I go along because it can be moderately amusing, but I usually dress like a secret service agent or something and stand in the corner with a beer bottle in my hand. When we decided yesterday that we weren’t going to go after all, because honestly we don’t need to be staying up until all hours and drinking alcohol anytime soon, I was very relieved.

I’m going to gather up my wits for a hike on Saturday morning instead.

People that socialize a lot usually think that us loners must be sad or angry or something, and I am none of these things. I just like being alone in my thoughts, doing my thing, and focused on some sort of project or related activity. It’s just the way I’m wired.

And I like it that way.

The first nine years of my life were spent growing up in a mobile home adjacent to a horse and cattle pasture. Two sides of the back yard were lined with electric fence. Grandma and Grandpa Country lived to the east of our little lot and our front yard faced the south. In the lot to the southwest diagonal, Dad built the two-story colonial home I spent the rest of my childhood in.

The mobile home was made by Great Lakes and I believe it was a 1959 model. The trailer was 10×50, with a very small bedroom in the middle of the unit and the “master” bedroom (that could barely hold a double bed) at the end opposite the kitchen, which was on the east end of the trailer.

I can vividly remember my dad, grandfather, and uncle building the 8×40 addition on the side facing south, which included a new “master” bedroom, a living room, and a laundry room just wide enough for the dryer. The washer continued to live in the bathroom. The old living room windows allowed us to look into the new living room. Mom kept the curtains in place.

Just out of curiosity I did a search and found a promotional photo taken in a 1960 model of a Great Lakes mobile home, and it’s the exact layout I remember from our trailer. In the back of the photo is a wall next to the small hallway; I believe we had a mirror on that wall.

Our stove and refrigerator were both a turquoise blue, with a small broom closet just to the right of the gas stove, and then the Hotpoint refrigerator. The broom closet had a can opener mounted inside. The stove was one that had a pilot light; no “click click” ignition system when you turned it on. In the photo above, the original main entry door is behind the young, handsome man; when dad built the addition that door led down two steps into the new living room. There were notches in the molding around the door noting the growth of my sister and me.

It’s funny that I can remember growing up in that mobile home like it was yesterday, and the sound of rain on the metal roof, the noise of snowstorms coming in off Lake Ontario in the winter and the amazing thunderstorms in the summer.

If you’ve been following along with my blog entries this week, you may have noticed that I have been in a bit of a reflective or pensive mood. There’s a couple of reasons for this. Sometimes I wonder if I’m in the midst of yet another mid-life crisis but then I realize in this day and age I don’t know what defines mid-life anymore. Is it mid 50s? Is it 50? 60? I really don’t know. But then I get lost in trying to figure out the mathematics when it comes to mid-life and I forget that I was trying to figure out if this is a mid-life crisis or not.

I’ve been reading more Stoic philosophical readings than usual. The theme is a continuation of my list of goals for 2024. I am really feeling drawn to reading again, and by reading I mean real books made of covers and pages and the like. I’ve restarted Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations, The Annotated Edition”, as translated, introduced, and edited by Robin Waterfield. When we lived in Chicago I read the “Enchiridion of Epictetus” and found it fascinating and it resonated well. “Meditations” continues this theme.

Every morning I’ve been pulling a quote from a Stoic quote generator and pasting it into my journal. It gives me something to think about. Today’s quote:

I will reveal to you a love potion, without medicine, without herbs, without any witch’s magic; if you want to be loved, then love

Hecato of Rhodes

It really is simple, isn’t it. If you want to be loved, then love. That’s it. In this day and age life seems way too complicated. These studies are helping me bring calm to the chaos.

I’ve kept a journal for over a decade. This particular journal is a personal one with no intention of sharing. While I’m pretty real and open in this blog, there are things that I still keep to myself. The personal journal has been maintained in the Day One app for almost its entire life. I’m not 100% satisfied with it, because I believe there is a certain je ne sais quoi achieved with the handwritten word. I’m thinking of writing some journal entries by hand using pen and paper and then filing them away and/or scanning them into Day One. I’ve also done some handwritten entries on my iPad using an Apple Pencil. For me to write unencumbered I must have as little friction as possible. Day One allows me to use the provided apps or a web interface if I don’t have an app on a particular computer, like my Linux laptop.

But honestly, the mechanics of my journaling are secondary to actually journaling. It needs to be freeform, flowing, and honest.

And now that I think of it, my blog entries are often the same way.

I know that since I’ve been amping up my reading and focusing on philosophies, my mood has been a bit better and I’ve felt more comfortable with being just me.

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”

Marcus Aurelius

This quote has been going through my head today. I read it a number of years ago when going through one of the many books I’ve read on Stoicism; it popped up again in a daily quote generator that lives on my “miniframe”.

It seems like society, and the mainstream news in general, wants us to focus on the negative. Everyone knows a car crash is more exciting than a high school graduation (just two random examples), and more exciting is what generates money via clicks and ad-revenue and the like.

But what does all the negativity pounding in from the outside do to our well being? How does it make us feel?

It makes me feel less than stellar.

If we are constantly bombarded by bad news we start to seek bad news. And if we seek bad news, perhaps we start generating bad news. We shouldn’t generate bad news. Look for the sunlight, even on the cloudiest of days.

There’s a reason I’ve stopped listening to news briefs and avoided the cable news networks and the like. Too many clouds that I can’t control obscure the sunlight that I seek.

If there’s one thing to take away from this random bunch of words, it’s this: find the sunlight and share the sunlight as much as you are able to do.