I noticed a lot of broken images in posts from days gone by and found the issue was with an add-on to WordPress called JetPack. I’ve never really been a fan of this add-on, so I removed it. Things should still run as intended. If you see something broken, please let me know.
And here’s what I look like right now.
My friend Chris offered me a Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 that he had destined for the recycle bin. Apparently the unit had an issue with Windows and he thought I might have fun installing Linux on it to give it a whirl.
Giving devices a second lease on life is right up my alley.
The laptop arrived today and I have successfully installed Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS (Long Term Support) on the device. One would think it wouldn’t be an easy thing installing Linux on a device made by Microsoft but the experience was mostly painless.
I’m writing this blog entry on the laptop.
This is my first time messing around with a Surface Laptop. The build quality is very reminiscent of Apple’s MacBook Air line. I like the cloth-like covering of the keyboard and dare I say it, the keyboard on this Surface Laptop exceeds the keyboard on my M2 MacBook Air.
It was very kind of Chris to offer me this machine for tinkering. It keeps my geek juices going, and that keeps me in my happy place.
You’ll notice the display is quite reflective.
The 2024 home hockey season started last night and we made our way to Tucson Arena to see the Tucson Roadrunners take on Coachella Valley.
It was fun to be back at the arena for hockey. The game was not as enjoyable; the Roadrunners were shut out, losing to Coachella 4 to 0.
They introduced new items at the concession stands and it appears they’re still getting used to how to ring up these new items and how to prepare them, as the line was quite long populated with people waiting for their six digit number to be called out. We enjoyed the food when it finally arrived. I also had two beers. Earl drove us home.
I always enjoy they people watching at the hockey games as there’s folks from all walks of life in attendance. It’s interesting to see what folks living in the desert are going to wear to an ice rink; I usually add an extra shirt but still wear shorts. Quite a few people were wearing sandals. One woman I dubbed “Swiss Miss” (because of her pig tails) was not in attendance. I was a little disappointed. She usually has a dub of some sort of color on the end of her Swiss Miss pig tails.
Overall it was a fun night but I hope the Roadrunners get their act together. Hockey is even more fun when your team wins.
I didn’t get video of this moment, but Truman was banging his tail on the ground about something when I took this photo. He enjoys relaxing nearby when I’m goofing around on the computer, but the irregular “thumps” of his tail indicated to me he was a little agitated about something. It turns out he wanted a few extra “kibs” in his food dish as a mid morning snack. Once I had completed that duty he was good and the thumping stopped.
OK, this is beyond ridiculous.
Disney+ is increasing from an annual fee of $79.99 to $109.99 on our next renewal in November. That is a very large hike and we’re deciding if we still want to pay for the streaming service.
The streaming companies are getting out of control with their fees. It’s like every one of them said, “we know no one liked cable, so let’s see what we can do to make it worse.”
Like so many things Disney as of late, this is very disappointing.
“Temptation Eyes” by The Grass Roots is one of my favorite songs from the early ’70s. Here’s a live(-ish) version from The Ed Sullivan Show.
There’s a reason I still find mustaches and sideburns hot.
Over the weekend I used a little bit of saved up money to purchase a new watch band for my Apple Watch. I’ve had my eye on the Braided Solo Loop and decided to make the purchase while we were in Las Vegas.
I asked the kind Apple store representative if the band would stretch over time. She said for the most part it shouldn’t stretch, but it might stretch a little bit after putting it on for the first time. Apple has one try bands of this type on for size before making a purchase, so we went through a couple of bands for sizing and I found a band that felt comfortable.
Two days later I’m not really enjoying this band that much. After 40 hours or so of wear my watch already feels loose. It’s not going to fall off or anything, but it does feel like the watch is sliding around a bit more than I enjoy. I switched back to one of my older bands this morning and things feel a bit more normal. Perhaps I’ll try the new band again over the weekend or something.
I’ve been on the fence about how I feel about my Apple Watch in general for the past several weeks. It’s starting to feel extraneous to me. I have purposely shut off the vast majority of notifications because they’re just annoying. I work around some of this by using Apple’s “Focus” modes baked into their infrastructure.
I’m likely going to continue using my Apple Watch until it is no longer a viable gadget but I don’t know that I’m going to buy another Apple Watch to replace it when that day comes. I miss the look of a classic wrist watch and I definitely don’t need the constant stream of data coming to my wrist that I once thought I needed.
I just don’t know if I’m going to use that new band I purchased. We’ll see if it gets too stretchy over time.
As we were traveling over the weekend I noticed a continued trend with folks working in the service industry: the younger people working jobs as cashiers, etc. really like wearing AirPods (or something similar) all the time.
Back when Walkmans were all the rage in the late ‘80s and we had a corded pair of headphones attached to a portable cassette deck on our hip it was kind of fun to listen to music while out for a walk or something. I once tried to wear my Walkman at work while writing code, but I missed one phone call from a colleague (because I couldn’t hear the phone ringing) and I was scolded for my inattentiveness.
I didn’t wear the Walkman at work again.
There are times when I need to wear headphones at work these days to drown out the noise of the landscapers working in the yard or something that’s distracting me from doing my best work, but for the most part I feel to disconnected from the world around me when I tune out my surroundings. One of my strongest beliefs is everyone and anyone should always be aware of their surroundings; it makes the world much better when everyone knows what’s going on in their immediate vicinity, but too many people bumble and stumble through life, blissfully unaware of the safe that’s about to crush them on a sidewalk or something.
When I’m at Target and the person directing folks to the self-serve checkout lanes and their wearing AirPods I wonder why they’re even employed. I have enough IQ digits to figure out the green light means the register is available and the red light means it’s occupied. I don’t need a tuned out teenager telling me to go when the light is green. I’m aware of my surroundings. If the director is Target’s way of keeping a human presence at the self serve registers so they don’t feel bad about eliminating jobs, I’m not buying it. I don’t even know if the person doing the directing can hear what I’m saying so I purposely mumble and smile.
Don’t get me started on someone wanting to check my receipt; I always refuse, opting to just wave the receipt in the air.
I’m starting to go on a tangent and I feel my blood pressure rising a bit so I’ll stop the tangent right here. Suffice it say, there’s a lot of world around us to take in. I don’t get the appeal of replacing the world for music or podcasts or whatever while you’re working with the public. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
And it probably never will.
Maybe I should change the title of this blog to “Get off my lawn”.
I stumbled across this interview with Agnes Moorehead during the fourth season of “Bewitched”. I’ve heard she was an interesting woman; here she’s very frank on various Hollywood subjects of conversation.
I would have enjoyed meeting her in person. I really admire her work ethic.
Earl was enjoying the large wall of screens in the Sportsbook area of Circa Casino here in Las Vegas. He’s always wanted to multiple TVs stacked upon one another so he can watch several football games at once. This 75 foot by 15 foot display takes all of this to the next level.
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!