One of our favorite places to visit had a ridiculous sale this weekend and we couldn’t say no. For those of you who know us, you’ve probably already guessed, but we’re having a nice, relaxing time at the Hotel Havana. We needed this. The weather, the political climate (when did “hate” become a legitimate position? Don’t bother answering because it’s always been that way), and some deeply weird shit at work has left us on edge. And, loathe though I am to admit it, a night away from our four cats feels like a relief. A big, clean bed without any cat litter crumbs is a luxury we’ve not experienced for some time. I’m falling back into my COVID routine even though we don’t have it, which is a good thing I guess. Finding ways to stay amused away from the crowds, wearing masks, baking bread, and stuff like that. I guess that’s appropriate given that the virus is coming back with a vengeance (get your shots, folks). It’s not just me. The masks are coming back at the grocery store and other shops, the curbside slots are filling up again. I’m hoping we take it a little more seriously this time. The virus killed more Americans than any war (or all wars combined if you’re not feeling generous towards the confederacy) and the survivors are going to tax an already dysfunctional healthcare system. I’m not feeling optimistic. The bread, on the other hand, has been great. We love the little town where we’ve landed, but it seems to be slightly cursed. We haven’t had any rain to speak of since May. It’s bad enough that some of our trees have started losing branches. What’s coming down feels lighter than balsa wood. It’s that dry. Oh sure, we’re saving on lawn mowing, but this weather is getting old. We’re still topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day. We have the heat and dryness of the desert but none of the rugged charm. I like deserts, but that’s probably because I’ve never lived in one. The grass is always greener. Compared to what we have, any grass would be. Work’s in a weird place right now. I don’t want to go into detail, but a lot is going on. One note, though, and it’s not just the company I work for. Getting pay adjustments to consider inflation is like pulling teeth. I know that’s hardly news, but having to fight for a 4% raise for an employee is frustrating. “Are they 4% better than last year?” The answer is “yes,” but that’s not the important thing. The money we’re paying that employee is worth 4% less than it was last year. A 4% raise is just a cost of living adjustment and should be given across the board. Otherwise, you’re giving your employees an effective pay cut. Unionize everything. Finally, something that’s weighing on me a little personally: I think my fantasy baseball league is going to die. That’s a small thing in most ways, but this is a league my father and I were involved with starting…oh lord, has it been 25 years now? I think so. I disagreed with my father about a lot of things, serious things, but we could at least always talk about baseball. Now? He’s gone, I don’t think I’ve seen a major league game in over a decade (Nicole likes minor league parks even though she doesn’t care about the sport), and we’re getting old. I’ve been the youngest person in the league for most of its run and my beard is fully white now. The other guys (and yes, it’s all guys) are really getting up there. Most of us have moved away from the Dallas areas where we started the league. If I’m being perfectly honest, I’d tell you I haven’t enjoyed the league for some time. That’s not the point, though. It’s a “thing that had been around long enough to feel permanent suddenly not being there” feeling. Time plays the long game. -RK
Category: Journal
“Matchmaker, Matchmaker” in Eorzean
In which we try to find a suitable NPC partner for my FFXIV Warrior of Light. This is some niche stuff here. My WoL, a white mage who has defeated the Garlean invasion of the Eorzean alliance, accomplished some extremely political stuff in Ishgard that I won’t describe in detail as it gets very spoiler-y, fought for both Ala Mhigan and Doman independence, fought back against the flood of the light in The First, and saved the universe from The Final Days at the very edge of said universe, has a problem: All of the aforementioned accomplishments have left little time for socializing. I’ve played the game largely as a solo adventure, having never joined a free company or even made friends with any of the other players. This is very much my kind of MMO. Having read many accounts of people shipping their OC with any number of NPCs (I told you this was niche), I started wondering: “Which NPC would be attractive to my WoL, and which would he consider a relationship with?” Let’s start with the position that his tastes are not wildly different than my own. He’s a little more adventurous than I am, but not so much so that he would be interested in any but the most incredibly attractive males (and, assuming you’ve played through Endwalker, you can probably guess a name or two who might be an exception to the rule). With that out of the way, let’s get started. We’ll break it out by expansion to keep this from being a wall of text. Update: My wife has started playing! Obviously, her Lallafel summoner has my heart, but I don’t want to discard all this work. Besides, now that she’s playing Heavensward, she has discovered that there are numerous tasty Elezen boys. She has a very specific glamour for her meetings with the Lord Commander of the Temple Knights and is constantly trying to shoo Alphinaud away from their encounters. Not that I can blame her. Anyway, the point is that in-game, this poor cat boy may not be as taken as he thought he was. Update 2: She’s about to do The Vault for the first time. This is gonna be rough. Obviously, Quta’wo is a good deal more attractive than I am. And he has a capybara. Not gonna lie: I’m pretty jealous of him. A Realm Reborn: Y’Shtola Rhul: The walking thirst trap is the obvious place to start. She’s beautiful, she’s brilliant, she has the most cutting wit of anyone in the game, and she’s another Miqo’te. What’s not to like? Well, the biggest problem is that, as of Shadowbringers, her heart resides in The First. And, to be honest, while she’s undeniably attractive, she’s not the woman for Quta’wo. That’s not just sour grapes. Honest. Minfilia Warde: Probably the most OS* character design of any of the main NPCs, her characterization is weirdly thin. She’s also a little too much an avatar of Hydaelyn to be her own person and she’s kind of…unavailable…by the end of the expansion. Plus, and this is key: Thancred would kill me. *that’s “overtly sexual” for any of you who aren’t Arrested Development fans Thancred Waters: The himbo of the scions, Thancred is the only guy in ARR who’d be tempting. However, after his demise (he gets better), he comes back with a soul patch. Hard pass. Yda Hext: Aside from the fact that (if you know the spoiler here, you know, but I ain’t saying it), Yda’s a keeper. Headstrong, funny, independent, but also very caring towards those she holds dear. Pity about that spoiler, though. Tataru Taru: Good lord. That would be a match, wouldn’t it? Honestly? After I get over the shock of even thinking of what it would be like to be in a relationship with this whirlwind of organization (she would have spreadsheets for everything), Tatatu is pretty great. Another maybe. Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn: The Chief Admiral of Limsa Lominsa, the former pirate is mostly business-first (she’s the leader of a city-state after all). She’s married to her job. I don’t see her as being down for any kind of committed, long-term thing. Kan-E-Senna: Unlike Merlwyb, Kan-E-Senna is married to her role more than her job. She recognizes that she’s a symbol of hope for Gridania and she has subsumed her own wishes to the role she plays. That said, as a native Gridanian and a fellow White Mage, she and Quta’wo have a lot in common. If they ever could find some time to spend together away from their day jobs? Also, is it just me or does she get a little flirty at the end of the tank role quest from Endwalker? Strong maybe. Nanamo Ul Namo: The Sultana of Ul’Dah, on the other hand, would like nothing more than to escape her job and/or role from time to time. She is easily the closest and most familiar of the heads of the Eorzean city-states. Her sense of humor and her understanding of how the world is going to change whether we will it or not make her another “maybe,” with the caveat that Raubahn would literally kill anyone who did wrong by the Sultana. Mother Miounne: She doesn’t play much of a role in the story once Quta’wo’s career is launched, but she has a lot going for her. She knows more than she lets on, she’s a great judge of character, and as an innkeeper/bartender…well, you have to have a certain personality to do those jobs and that’s a good thing. 100% she rolled a tank class when she was an adventurer. Underrated. Also “maybe.” Lunia sas Junius: Included for completeness rather than as a serious possibility. She’s a horrible person who knows what she did and if spurning her adds to it? So much the better. Heavensward: Alisaie Leveilleur: Someday in the future, Alisaie is going to make the best partner of anyone in the game, bar none. While her twin has a passion for trying to save the world, Alisaie’s passion is for saving every person which isn’t the same thing at all. She communicates better than anyone else Quta’wo has met, her heart is in exactly the right place, and she has the willpower to act on those feelings. But she’s 16 and only a cad…
A Fall of Rain? That Must Have Been Another of Your Dreams
8/22/2023 It rained this afternoon. That was the first rain to reach the ground here since mid-May. It’s normally dry here, but not this dry. That made the day feel a bit surreal. Everyone seemed to be aware that there was a chance of rain, but almost afraid to speak of it for fear of jinxing it. And then, suddenly, the sky opened up, and we got a month’s worth of precipitation in an hour. Joy mixed with fear. The weather had been so hot and so dry that trees were dying. We had a branch, a full foot in diameter, fall between our car and our neighbor’s house on Monday. The wind was suddenly tropical, and the rain was ripping the leaves off of the trees. And then it stopped. The sky was still, the air was full, but there would be no more rain. Still, it was enough. If you’ve ever seen nature specials about the desert, then you’ve seen how the plants reacted. Dry stalks came back to life and turned green so fast you didn’t need time-lapse photography to see it. Today didn’t feel real. I love days like this. I’m trying an experiment. I’m trying to repurpose a decade-old Dell laptop. It’s worthless as a Windows computer even with a fresh install. I’ve got another old laptop I’m running MX on and, it’s fine, but I thought it’d be interesting to try something different. I put ChromeOS Flex on this machine to see how it would work. The answer is “shockingly well.” It’s essentially just a Chrome browser running on top of a Linux kernel, so it’s fast as all get out (I live in Texas; I’m allowed to use phrases like that). Now, this being my old work computer, it’s a pretty standard hardware setup and it’s on the “ChromeOS Flex-compatible” list, so my experience may not be universal. My experience, so far, has been excellent. It turns out that an old business-grade laptop runs rings around the hardware that’s used for most Chromebooks. The setup was nothing. Download the installer, copy it to a thumb drive, boot it to the thumb drive, and click “install.” So long as you don’t have any kind of boot protection on your machine, you can legitimately be fully up and running in 15-30 minutes. That’s kind of ridiculous. Now, this only makes sense if you’re a Google user and there are ample reasons to avoid having anything to do with them. I’m phasing them out as we speak. But, for an office stuck with a bunch of hardware that’s in good condition but out of support? It seems like a pretty attractive option. The ironic part here is that I’m using an old Windows laptop to replace my Chromebook because…my Chromebook is too old to receive updates. Funny old world, innit? 8/28/2023 Well, I lost momentum really quickly there, didn’t I? I’m struggling to do anything beyond “get through the day” at this point. The world feels broken. The weather has gone back to impossibly hot. In my youth, I reveled in weather like this, but that was many years and about a hundred pounds ago. Now it just drains me. Work is, well, it’s work. It feels worse than normal right now, but I can’t be sure this isn’t recency bias. We have never been, shall we say, a process-driven operation and there seems to be no enthusiasm for changing this. Same as it ever was. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you just how surreal the whole national scene is right now. The governor of my state has made cruelty the number one priority. Whether it’s tossing children into a river filled with sawblades, replacing school libraries with detention centers, taking the governing functions of cities that vote against his party, denying needed medical care for vulnerable populations, or just trying to ensure that there are as many mass shootings as possible, it’s depressing. It doesn’t help that the attorney general is openly corrupt and has been under indictment his entire term. Oh, and COVID is back with a vengeance and we seem to have learned less than nothing. Of course, the fact that a man who openly tried to overthrow the government is a leading contender to be the next President is just incredible. I don’t think anyone genuinely doubts that this man is absolutely steeped in criminal activity, not even his supporters. That’s the bit that’s depressing. It’s not that evil people exist, it’s that their evil acts increase their popularity with a frightening number of people. Yeah, it’s so “Homelander” that I’m not even going to link it. It literally hurts me to try to wrap my head around it. This fills me with a sense of “what’s the point.” Let’s ask grumpy mustache man: Thanks, Cameron. Y’all oughtta follow him if you like making music or just enjoy a silky baritone in the key of nihilism. I just found that a friend had posted on exactly this subject two weeks ago and I just saw it. I need to clean up my RSS so it’s just shit I care about. I’m also transitioning away from the Google-sphere and I’m missing stuff, so if need to call something to my attention, please don’t hesitate to blow me up on every channel. Side note: I need fewer channels. Second side note: The concept of “friend” is so fucking weird now, isn’t it? Anyway, yeah, I’m feeling a lot of “what’s the fucking point.” I love hanging out with my wife, cooking with her, playing games, and petting cats, but outside of that, I’m a bit paralyzed but the awfulness of…everything. My therapist would kick me for saying that, but that’s where I am. Unfortunately, I reckon I’m the only one who can restart this motor, so…let’s see what we can do. Sorry I don’t have a hugely optimistic wrap-up, but, as you may have guessed, I’m not feeling hugely optimistic right now. -RK
The Bird and the X
Yeah, I think I’m done. I still have a ton of friends on Twitter and there are folks I’ll miss, but…this shit just isn’t good for me anymore. Under the old management, there were obvious problems: The algorithm leaned to the right (by their own admission), the moderation was inconsistent, they couldn’t settle on a feed (make it chronological), wouldn’t add an “edit” button, but it was free and you could usually curate your follow list into something that was useful to you. The current owner seems to have really leaned into the flaws as though they were strengths. While he’s done the world a great service by demonstrating that billionaires are bad people and not even necessarily clever, he doesn’t seem to have a handle on what made Twitter appealing. The algorithm is a trash-fire, the site is wildly unreliable, it seems like the answer to every problem is “pay for Twitter,” and then there’s the moderation. I reported a bunch of tweets for misgendering a woman because, you know, they were. That’s explicitly one of the things you can report a tweet for. Unusually, I received a response to my report and the response was “Yeah, no, this is totes OK now LOL!” (I may be paraphrasing). So, yeah…that sort of crap is now Twitter-Approved! As for the algorithm, it seems to have its “encourage a race to maximum radicalization” turned up to 11. You might think I’d be pointing my fingers at the right-wing, and yeah, there is oh-so-very-much of this. What’s interesting and infuriating is the far left race to the bottom. I listed a bunch of examples and decided against posting them. Let’s just say that it’s just as bad and leave it at that. I don’t need that garbage in my life. I’m getting riled up just thinking about it and I’m tired of it. I was willing to put up with some of it, but the balance between “useful content” and “rage bait” is getting worse. It was already a compromise, and an increasingly dicey one. Of course, it’s not as simple as deleting my account. It never is. I want to keep the account alive in case anyone tries to reach out to me and to ensure that the username doesn’t get picked up and spoofed (not that there’s a lot of value in spoofing me, but still…). But, I would like to remove my tweets. There is, of course, no mass delete function. There are 3rd party tools to do it, but they are expensive now that the API has been restricted. The default functionality isn’t especially reliable, but there’s a workaround: You just have to provide the ID of each tweet you want to delete. This is a pain in the behind. You have to request an archive of your tweets from Twitter, come back a day later. Then, when you download and unzip the archive, you find that everything is in pseudo-JSON files and it isn’t immediately obvious what is where. So you have to find where the tweets are, find the field with the ID, find a way to parse the JSON into a list of IDs, paste that into the 3rd party tool, and voila! It’s worth it though. I don’t leave stuff up on an abandoned account since there’s nothing but downside to doing that. I’ll just leave links to where I can really be found and leave it at that. As for “where I can be found,” I’m rethinking that as well. Bluesky would be the 1-for-1 Twitter alternative and that appeals to me less than you’d think. Mr. Dorsey sold us out once already and there’s no reason to think he won’t do it again. I’ve been doing the “everyone is here!” social networking for a long time now and it has never been as satisfying to me as the LiveJournal “a smaller group of mostly friendly-minded folks sharing their diaries” paradigm. I understand that there is value in having the opportunity for broad engagement. If I were to ever write a book or make a real album, that would be helpful. But, if I’m being honest here: I do not do “engagement” well on Twitter. When I look at the traffic this blog gets, most of it comes from search engines, Facebook, and then Mastodon. Even with several hundred followers on Twitter, I might get two clicks. I’m really not losing anything in that sense. Speaking of Mastodon, I’m enjoying it. Not nearly as much going on, but I’m pretty happy with that. There’s not the sense of missing anything if I take a few days off. I like that. I don’t think the twitchy refresh every few minutes cadence of Twitter is good for me. The people I interact with aren’t celebs, generally aren’t people I know in real life, but I’ve enjoyed the conversations I’ve had. So, I’m committed to making it work. Anything else? I’ll keep my eyes open to see if any other social network looks like it’s worth checking out. Maybe I’ll give Ello another look-I always liked the look of it and it certainly had a vibe. But…maybe it’s a hole that I don’t need to fill? Oh, and of course, the “X” thing is just dumb, but that’s Elon for ya. -RK
There and Back Again
A short holiday during which Nothing Much was done and it was Glorious OK, let’s just cut to the chase here. We got to hand-feed Galapagos tortoises and capybaras! Even in the heat (and the heat was significant), this was a very good time. These are the same capybaras we’ve encountered before. They’re much more accustomed to being around people, much more insistent with the feeding, and much less likely to run away if you move in an unexpected fashion. This was our first time meeting the tortoises. They don’t move quickly, but they do move insistently and they will corner you if you let them. Not in a threatening way, mind you, just in a “we know you have lettuces and we would like very much to partake of them” sense. They were a bit of a revelation; they demonstrated far more personality than we expected and I would recommend them to anyone who likes spending time with giant, gentle creatures. I took all my social media off my phone during my time off and it’s making me re-think what I’m doing on Twitter, Facebook, et al. I have more to say on that subject, but it was a nice change of pace, not being fed things designed to make me angry. I’d like to say I’m too clever to fall for it, but I very much am not. The whole point of taking the time off was…well, it wasn’t the point when I scheduled it, but I needed to defrag. A very large project is winding down and, while it was successful, it could/should have been more successful and that’s down to me not recognizing where fires were burning behind signs that said “everything’s fine!” Frustrating. So, the goal was just to let some of that tension go and not think about work for a few days. Sadly, two-day weekends are nowhere near sufficient to recharge the batteries anymore. An entire day was spent, wasted really, just being horizontal and not doing much of anything because I just didn’t have it in me to do much of anything. You know that feeling when you think you’re squandering your precious time off by not doing the dozens of things you’ve been putting off? Yeah, very much that. It was necessary, but still… So we did a lot of exploring on the other days. We’ve been eating at home almost every night for months, so we found some decent places to eat. This is the sort of thing we used to do quite a bit in the before-times, but money doesn’t go as far as it used to. It feels very luxurious today, even if the places we’re going are “pizza by the slice” and “Vietnamese sandwiches.” And, to be fair, they were very good so they were luxurious. When I sat down to right this, I was imagining more of a travelogue but it wasn’t that kind of a vacation. This was a disconnect/retreat/recharge thing and we are so fortunate to live in a place that’s more than a little disconnected. That helped. So did shutting myself off from work and from my immediate distractions. Which is a long way of saying ‘We really didn’t do much, but that was what I needed.” We did go out and about Saturday and Sunday and it got a bit surreal. You might be aware that it has been warm in the American southwest of late. “Warm” in this case meaning “weeks on end with high temperatures over 100 F and no rain at all.” On our way home on Sunday, we came through San Marcos which is only 20 miles north of here. We drove through a flash flood, the kind that covers streets in a foot or more of water and turns traffic lights into blinking red beacons. Did we get any rain at home? No, no we did not. There were traces of heavy rain as close at 5 miles north of our house, but when we got home, there was nothing. I am certain that there’s a metaphor lurking in there somewhere, but I’m not sure what it is. So…that’s it? Yeah, that’s about it. Sometimes you have to dig through a box to realize there’s not as much in it as you thought, but at least you cleaned the box out. Or something. In the words of Sr. Cardgage: “I dunno.” -RK
Homemade Polytimbral
In which I do something fairly basic with electronic musical instruments and feel quite accomplished. This weekend, I decided to stop faffing about and Do The Thing. There’s a song I’ve been working on for a long time and the writing is probably 75% complete, but nothing has been recorded. So, my self-assigned remit: Get something on (virtual) tape so I can mess with it, figure out what works, what doesn’t, and move forward. One thing I’ve been struggling with is the sound design. I really want to do this on hardware instruments instead of virtual ones, at least for the initial pass, but haven’t found any patch that gets the “right” sound for the main section. I have a lot of good sounds, but not the one I’ve been looking for. But what if I stack multiple sounds on top of each other? Now, three of my four big polysynths can do that but it comes at a price. They go from being capable of eight notes at once to four note at once. For this particular section, that’s not an issue, but still…there’s a better answer. What if I connected the four over MIDI and just used a different patch on each synth? So, let’s control it all from the DW8000 and use it for a nice fuzzy pad. The SQ80‘s strength is chime-like transient attacks that fad into a dreamy sustain, so let’s do that. The VZ-1 gets to do the low note to make it sound huge. The CZ-1 finishes it with a slow-attack, evolving sweep. Seamus perched on the DW8000 at my old apartment. He was one of the many reasons I couldn’t have nice things, but he was nicer than them all, so it was worth it. After playing with the volume levels to get the mix it right it sounded…awesome! OK, inspiration is now flowing. I sat down and recorded it against a click and, after 10-15 takes, I got something down. As usual (for me at least), the timing accuracy was…not great. So, I re-recorded it as a MIDI track (think of that as recording a roll for a player piano that can then be played back on any piano over and over) and corrected the timing and…hey, we’re sounding pretty good. Too good, if I’m being honest. But, I kept the original audio track, so what if we play them side by side? Word to the wise: If your timing is anything like mine? Don’t do that. Ugh. It sounded like a poor performer trying to play along with a good one. However, all was not lost. I could move the “imperfect” performance…wait, no, let’s not put that in quotes. Let’s take the imperfect performance and drop the volume down to about half what it was and give it a ton of reverb to smoosh it around a bit. Now I’m super excited because that sounds fantastic. Now to record the playback of the MIDI track. To do that, I have to send the MIDI data (the piano roll) to the first synth in the chain and record the output. Unfortunately, that’s literally what happened. I was getting the DW8000 but none of the other synths were playing. That defeats the whole point of the damned thing. After half an hour of beating my head against the wall, the solution dawned on me and I felt really…not smart. To explain, we have to go back to the dawn of MIDI, the networking protocol that musical instruments still use to talk to each other and to computers. All three of my keyboards have three MIDI ports on the back. The first two are the ones I used the most often: “In” and “Out.” They’re pretty self explanatory. “In” is used to receive information from another source. “Out” is used to send data from the machine to other machines. What was happening was I was sending data from the computer (the piano roll) into the “In” port on the DW8000 and it was playing it. However, nothing was going out to the other machines because I wasn’t actually playing anything on the DW8000. I needed to use…the “Thru” port! “Thru” takes the information going to the “In” port and passes it on down the chain. Once I switch the where the cable from the DW8000 to the SQ80 was plugged in, it all worked brilliantly. So THAT’S what that one on the left is for! So…yay! Stuff that anyone who knew what they were doing would have sorted in a matter of minutes, but that’s how one learns. For funsies, I did a drum track with the MS-1 instead of a proper drum machine. The kick, tom, and snare all sound…passable, but totally inappropriate for what I’m trying to do with this track. All in all, there’s still a lot of work to do, but I’m well pleased with what I have and I’ve learned some new tricks along the way. I intended for this post to be about how much fun this weekend was. That’ll have to wait, but Coco found some awesome stuff that I can’t wait to share even though I just said it’ll have to wait. Bother. Thanks for sticking with me through this. I hope you found it a little interesting.
Happy birthday, Aymeric (part 2)
So, we had a party. Nicole is amazing at throwing parties. She’s doubleplus good at throwing parties for animals. She set up the room with the cats absent as they have a habit of eating (or at least gnawing on) decorations. The first thing we did was set up Aymeric’s tower, nicknamed Ishgard, in the living room (that’s Jermajesty in the background). Bonus points if you know the origin of the “no loafing” sign. And no, it’s not Homestar Runner. Next up, we brought out the presents! Again, this was largely Nicole’s doing because she is the best. Of course, it’s not a birthday without a cake. Cats don’t generally like actual cake (although Aymeric is obsessed with bread), so this cake consists of a Fancy Feast pate treat on a bed of Churru and a non-burning “candle” because he’s had enough fireworks for a lifetime. The cake was a hit! Ramza was thrilled for his brother! Just kidding, he was jealous AF. The first present we unwrapped was the new feather toy. Aymeric likes feather toys…a lot. He goes through them at an alarming and expensive rate. He looks sad because the video of him playing tug of war didn’t load properly. Once we finally got him away from the toy, we unwrapped the salmon treats and the “rainy day puzzle & play” toy. It’s one of those toys that lets you hide treats inside it and it challenges the cat to try to figure out how to get to the treats. I was skeptical at first. I should not have been. This thing worked like you wouldn’t believe. I’m so proud of my boy for working out most of the puzzles. Not all of ’em, so the room still sort of reeks of salmon, but it’s a good start. Meanwhile, Ramza being Ramza, he just had to find a way to get into the box the toy came in. The box being less than an inch and a half tall. So, my little baby boy is a year old today. Thanks for sticking around this long for a second round of “here are some orange cats that are totally different than the other orange cats on the internet for…reasons.” Here’s the full birthday photo-op setup that Nicole made because, and I cannot emphasize this enough, she’s the best. Please no comments about the…you know. It was an innocent and honest mistake. We all make them. Anyway, I love this kitty so much. I hope I give him the life he deserves which is the best life in the history of ever. -RK
Happy Birthday, baby Aymeric (part 1)
Baby Aymeric is a baby no more. Since he was a stray we picked up from a shelter, we don’t know the exact day of his nativity. We worked our way back from his approximate age, made an estimate, and arbitrarily chose 4 July as the date. “Easy to remember” was a major consideration in the decision. This means that today, we celebrate his first birthday and his passage into what is ostensibly maturity although you’d never know it if you spent any time with him. He will probably always be The Baby well into his dotage. It’s those eyes. Well, the eyes and the fact that he acts like an idiot half the time and a perfect angel the rest. Here is the photograph that broke my heart: It’s the photo the shelter put on its adoption website. That is one scared kitten. I wasn’t looking to adopt but I couldn’t forget the look on his face and I kept the adoption site up on my desktop for a couple of weeks. I was starting to get worried that he might be deemed unadoptable and I imagined the worse. Nicole wasn’t having it and drove me there to meet him. He was still there, the only cat in the building, in a stainless steel cage with just a tiny blanket. Dogs were constantly parking. They put us in the meeting room right next to all the dog cages. It got even louder in there and Panther (as they called him) curled up behind my back to shelter himself. My kitten, right from the start. I couldn’t take him home immediately; he still need shots and neutering. It was a long couple of days until we could bring him home. Because he was so small and had obviously been feral at some point, we delayed introducing him to Ramza and Red Velvet. He lived in my office, hiding behind or underneath whatever would make him comfortable. Day 1. You can see the little pet taxi carrier in the foreground there. That was the first time I ever got to pet him. Nicole, the paragon of patience that she is, couldn’t wait to introduce him to Ramza. In fairness, Ramza was showing tremendous interest and couldn’t be budged from outside my office door. The first meeting was a little tense, but they quickly grew close. Ramza took the mantle of “big brother” and ran with it. Red Velvet, being Red Velvet, wanted nothing to do with either of them. Fortunately, the boys were inseparable and didn’t really want to mess with Red Velvet either. All of those photos are from Aymeric’s first month with us. They warmed up to each other pretty quickly. And, it wasn’t long before he was sleeping on me as well. Nicole, in the most Nicole way possible, did everything she could to make the kitten feel welcome. Check out this gym she made for him. Oh, and we bought that blanket because we thought it would look good with his color. We were right. He celebrated his first Christmas with us in typical Aymeric style. He showed little interest in the presents and was utterly enthralled by the tree: As luck would have it, his mostest favoritest thing is climbing into my arms and rumbling really loud (as opposed to his brother, who likes to jump onto my back when I’m upright which is unpleasant from my point of view). My little kitten isn’t a kitten anymore. He’s still a baby, though. He’s an incredibly loving friend who brings me more comfort than I can express. I had no idea what I was getting into when I brought him home, but I couldn’t have asked for a sweeter kitty. I hope he feels safe, comfortable, and free from want. He deserves the best life and I’m committed to doing the best I can to give it to him. To be continued… -RK
I Wish It Would Rain Down
What an interesting day. Dry, oppressively hot, and a lot going on. In case you weren’t aware, today is the (most recent) day that Twitter imploded like an ill-designed submarine. Mr. Musk decided that he didn’t want to pay Google for hosting but failed to plan accordingly thus things went pear-shaped in a hurry. He decided to frame it as a conscious decision to limit user access to tweets, which is sort of Twitter’s core functionality, as an effort to combat “data scraping.” No one believed him because, among other things, it obviously wasn’t true. To make matters worse, the Twitter app, which is now the only mobile app for Twitter since they nuked the API, didn’t handle the new limitations gracefully. Instead of just failing, it failed and retried…infinitely. The net of this is a self-induced DDOS which is hilarious and wholly in keeping with the way the site is being run these days. By the way, I’m on Mastodon. I may give Bluesky a spin because but I’m skeptical. While it is owned and run by someone who understands the microblogging space, the biggest difference between Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk is competence. They’re both right-wing billionaires and thus not to be trusted. Not that left-wing billionaires are great, but you get the idea. Maybe I don’t need that kind of social media in my life anymore. This is the Venus Theory visual album documenting Cameron’s road trip to NAMM. He’s one of the best sound designers out there and he makes good stuff. This is always on when I commute to the office (~70 miles or so). My creativity failed to fire today. A lovely day off and I just didn’t have anything. Instead, I went through my old Reaper projects to see if there was anything salvageable in there. I (almost) never delete the projects because, if I got far enough to record something, then maybe there was an idea there that I could use or that would at least inspire me. It was a, being generous, a mixed bag. There were more good bits than I expected, but their cringe quotient was pretty high. This may sound weird, but there was more cringe in the projects I completed than the ones I abandoned. I spent months doing a glitch cover of Genesis’ “Afterglow” using samples recorded at an empty, decaying warehouse. Conceptually, I love the idea, but my reach exceeded my grasp by several miles. I leaned waaaaaay too hard into the glitchiness and the weird percussion samples and the result was plodding, dull, and deeply disappointing. Nicole made a suggestion: “What if you back off the glitch by, say, 50, make it less sparse (i.e. more musical), and sped it up a bit?” So, OK, can’t hurt to try, right? It’s already a failure, so what do I have to lose? What’s the most important element of the original? It’s got to be the swirling organ pad, right? So, I dial up a convincing organ sound (Tony used a Prophet 5; I ain’t got a Prophet 5), and got a decent take on the first try. And, suddenly? The whole thing works a zillion times better. I’m going to remix the whole thing and I feel confident something decent will come out of it. The lesson? Oh, there are several:-If something isn’t working, maybe set it aside for a long while and come back to it.-Listen to feedback. If it isn’t working the way I originally did it, then maybe I don’t have all the answers.-Unless you really know what you’re doing, carving out the core of a song is probably not a great idea. Oh, and another lesson is “keep your notebooks.” When I’m writing, I’m not nearly as good about keeping the failed bits around to reference at a later date. So, even a day when my imagination is busted can be productive and fun. Speaking of “imagination is busted,” this is one of the Brothers Chaps’ greatest moments. It helps that They Might Be Giants contributed the song. And speaking of learning, I may have some new insight into Why My Back Turned Into A Giant Burning Red Wasteland – The Musical! I’m on blood pressure meds and water pills to mitigate the blood pressure meds and potassium pills to mitigate the water pills. My back broke out in a rash right at the end of the last refill of my prescriptions, which was a pretty lousy thing. The urgent care doctor and the local dermo put me on prednisone, which makes sense given the symptoms. But, being on prednisone meant that I couldn’t get any meaningful bloodwork done, which meant my GP didn’t want to refill the blood pressure scrips. After almost three weeks, my back calmed down enough to go off the prednisone, get the bloodwork, talk to my doctor, and refill my scrips. I started back on the meds again today and…my back immediately reverted to the hot, prickly awfulness of three weeks ago. So, unless I’m missing something, what we have here is a reaction to one of the three meds. My money is on the potassium pills. I should talk to my doctor about it, but I’m incredibly uncomfortable and he’s not going to be around until the middle of next week, so I’m going to stop the potassium pill and see if that gets me back to normal. This is probably loosely related to the scientific method, or at least my misunderstanding of it, right? Wish me luck on this one. This is a cruddy thing to deal with in the middle of a heatwave (and a heatwave that’s a heatwave by Texas standards is a Heatwave). Also, I am afraid that this is a glimpse of the future: A lot of medication that may or may not play nicely with my other meds. Everything will be a compromise from here on out which I don’t look forward to but, you know, beats the alternative. That’s it for tonight. Nicole made popcorn and I don’t want to get it on the keyboard of this laptop. My beloved Chromebook is still kaput, so I’m using an ancient Dell E5530 that I threw Linux on to extend its life. This thing has the best keyboard of any laptop I’ve ever used, but…
Long Weekend
Nicole made it her mission to ensure that this holiday weekend was more memorable and relaxing than the last one and, spoiler alert, she aced the assignment. This is despite the fact that my skin is stubbornly refusing to respond to any prescription medication and I find being outside in this heat intolerable beyond “getting in and out of the car.” Friday evening we had what I think were the best hamburgers I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating. She spent all afternoon making a mushroom/truffle spread, a homemade garlic aioli, and baking some french “fries” in such a way that you didn’t really notice that they were baked. Once you’ve added entirely too much brie, the burger itself is almost beside the point. It was really good, but everything else was transcendent. Not at all a bad start. On Saturday, we did some exploring around town. We started by hitting up a local apiary called The Beeswax Department over on the west side of town. They sell honey from their bees and those of other local folks, as well as beeswax candles and other goodies, and even beekeeping equipment. Mark spent a good twenty minutes chatting with us which was awfully generous of him. They’re good folks, and we wound up leaving with far more than we’d intended to buy. Since we were almost literally across the street from ’em, we stopped by Granzin’s Meat Market as well. The only reason we didn’t pick up any of their wares was that they were so busy that we wanted to come back later when we’d have more of an opportunity to check them out without inconveniencing anyone else. The dried goods and the pre-packaged cuts looked great, but it was the meat counter itself that deserved closer inspection. Sunday morning we drove into San Antonio to visit the Alamo. You may say “Gee Ridley. You’ve been in Texas for a long time. Have you never visited the Alamo before?” Well, yes, of course, I have. But what I have not done is see the Phil Collins collection. Yes, the famous drummer/singer/producer is also one of the world’s foremost Alamo buffs. His private collection of memorabilia was considered the largest and most important of any on the planet, and he donated it all to the Alamo. He also narrated the story of the battle in the room with the diorama: Given my unabashed fandom, this was kind of thrilling to me. I mean, there are only so many old guns and documents and such you can look at before your eyes start to glaze over, but the fact that one of my favorite musicians just gave it all away made me smile. Totally worth it to me; your mileage might vary. This morning, we popped over to the local theater to see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. My expectations were high given how much I enjoyed the original, but this was another level of awesome. Instead of just stretching the visual limits of cinema, this film (damned if I’m typing the full name again) absolutely destroyed those boundaries. The things they do with frame rates as a storytelling device are unreal and must have been incredibly expensive. Oh, and the story was pretty great too. Hobie Brown is the best representation of “punk rock” I’ve seen in a film. It was all just awesome. Also, going to a local cinema at 11:00 AM on a Monday sometimes means you have the auditorium to yourself, and that doesn’t suck. So yeah, #$%$%^ great weekend. Thank you, Nicole. Somehow, you made a 3-day weekend feel like a lot more. Hope y’all are doing well and keeping cool (109 here today), -RK