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.
Truman enjoys sitting on the roof before I go to bed. I think it’s his way to connect with nature. I discourage him from climbing up to the higher roofs. They’re flat and he has no danger of falling off, but then he tries to get down on the slanted roof over the gazebo and the like and I don’t enjoy that as much as he does.
The flat roof outside our bedroom is accessible by door. There’s a mechanical closet and a storage closet out there, so we get situated out there from time to time. He’s usually purring during the entire experience.
Twelve years ago today was our legal wedding ceremony. 27 years ago today I got down on my knee in the Adirondacks and proposed to Earl, telling him I wanted to live with him the rest of my life. I’ve been with the man nearly half of my life and it is still perfection.
I’ve had a few people ask me over the years about the “secret of our marriage”. The secret is that it’s our marriage. Every marriage is different; I couldn’t prescribe a path for someone else’s marriage anymore than they could prescribe a path for ours. If there is a secret in there, it’s that 27 years ago, when I proposed, we both promised that divorce (or breaking up before the legal days) was never an option. Never. We wanted to be with each other for the rest of our lives and no matter what, we’d figure it out.
27 years later, it just is. If a rough patch comes along, we figure it out. That’s what we do.
To this day I still fall in love with my husband on a daily basis.
Looking at this building near the Las Vegas Strip, I can’t help but notice that this building looks a hell of a lot better than the Trump building in Chicago. If the design of a building ever screamed the personality of a person, it’s the Trump buildings spread around the country. I’m surprised Trump favors an orange spray for his tan instead of something leaning a little more golden.
I posted this photo on Instagram without comment. One person liked it and a few others added some pukey emojis. I decided to delete the photograph. I’m not in the mood for controversy.
Before Trump won the election in 2016 I would have considered walking into the Trump building here in Las Vegas just to see what it’s about. Earl and I toured the ground floor of his building in Manhattan years ago; it was very golden. I know Trump Hotels cater to the rich, rich crowd; I’m always curious as to what that experience is like. I doubt I’ll visit this building during our weekend here in Las Vegas, though. I’m not that curious.
We are in Las Vegas for a long weekend. The drive across the desert was pleasant today, though there was some slow going around Wickenburg, Arizona due to construction. I mentioned to Earl that it’s still weird to me that there was never a direct Interstate connection between Phoenix and Las Vegas built into the system back in the ’50s when they were planning this sort of thing. He reminded me the desert cities were much smaller back then. Signs along US Route 93 remind us it’s part of the “Future Interstate 11 Corridor”, but I doubt that’ll be finished my lifetime. There’s not much between Wickenburg and Kingman; but the drive is pleasant.
We are settled in at the Downtown Grand for a long weekend. We don’t have a lot in the way of plans. I can amuse myself just by people watching. I love doing this. We’ll probably gamble a little.
Maybe we’ll win a lot.
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!