Humanity has made a mess of the world over the last couple of centuries or so. We’ve also experienced an unprecedented amount of progress on many fronts. Halting our destruction of the environment is mandatory if we want to continue surviving on this planet, but halting all technological progress is also not the outcome I’d like to see.
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Life does not organize itself for our convenience or happiness. The past seven days have delivered two losses that have left my wife and I bereft.
Irene’s Mum, Celina, died on Thursday, November 28 after a brief stay in the ICU at Trail Hospital. My sister Judy passed on Tuesday, December 3 in the Agassiz Senior’s Community after a short couple of months of extreme decline from rapidly progressive dementia.
I’m trying to figure out how to deal with these events, bumbling my way through being supportive of other family members, and generally feeling quite lost and rather irrelevant.
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I did some driving over the past few days for some family-related reasons. It was about 1,300 km in total through mountain passes in the winter, but I was fortunate that the weather made the drive fairly easy.
I did something during the drive that I haven’t done in several years: I listened to music. I’m not some sort of weirdo who hates music or something, but the way I like to listen isn’t really compatible with my normal life. I like to play music fairly loud, and Mrs. Ubergeek (Irene) is not fond of my preferred volume. She also, to be honest, isn’t a fan of the same music I like.
I used to listen to music while commuting for work, but I’ve been either remote working or retired for well over five years now. And I kind of forgot to listen the last couple of times I drove a significant distance by myself- but not this time. I played my weird collection of music on shuffle for a total of about twelve hours during the sessions of driving this week. I even made a mental note of the artists from my collection I listened to.
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I’ve been trying to restart my aborted ‘go for a walk each day’ habit. I could not say I have been successful: I’ve managed two days in a row, and feel like that’s plenty of walking for the rest of the year.
The walks are lovely despite my quickly fading interest in my physical health. We are having our first ‘real’ snow of the season at the moment: it started falling early this morning before I woke up, and I’d wager it will still be falling when the sun sets in a few hours. It makes the world look strange and freshly-born, and with an accumulation of perhaps 8 centimetres so far it does nothing to make the walk any harder.
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I can tell when a holiday is near based on the volume of spam email in my inbox. I receive twenty or so spam emails per day throughout most of the year: this is the curse of having a 20+ year old email address. But when the taps open wide in holiday season.
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I mentioned in October that I was not yet practicing daily gratitude. I decided to fix that and, as is the routine for me, I felt compelled to buy a couple of things to get started. Thus far I’ve managed to find several things each day to feel positive about.
I probably couldn’t have picked a worse time to start this, though. The next four years of craziness and likely despair across our Southern border are going to be challenging to set aside each morning. But I am making the attempt, and finding it is a helpful habit to work on.
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Our cat Pie (Magpie) has been under the weather for a few days. He was hiding and a couple of the times we saw him try to eat he hissed and ran away from what we were feeding him at the time.
The ‘food’ he ran away from was a treat- a little quarter-sized dollop of milk. We decided to get him to the vet pronto given his reaction and the fact that this happened twice on two days. It was a bit of an adventure and we learned a few things in the process
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Trump has won the presidency again. The American people have proven once more that they are, in the majority, outrageously poor judges of character as well as full of hate, fear, and bigotry. The Republicans now hold the Presidency, the Senate, the majority of state Governorships, and the Supreme Court: the House of Congress is almost certain to end in their hands as well. I am, to put it mildly, disappointed.
So what now? What can we expect in the upcoming four years starting in January of 2025? I have no crystal ball, but I have some thoughts. And think it might be interesting to look back on this post in a few years, assuming I survive to 2028, to see how many things I worried about came to pass. My thinking here is based on what Trump has said, the contents of Project 2025, and my own speculation.
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Irene and I have three Roombas in our house, two of which are in working order. I spend a fair bit of time and money maintaining these bots, but maintenance on these machines is generally a rather satisfying process for reasons I’ll get into.
This was true until very recently, when our s9+ started throwing ‘uneven surface’ errors and stopping mid-clean pretty much every time it ran. If you have ever owned a robotic vacuum, you probably know that a big reason for having these machines is to magically and automatically keep the floor tidy. Failing on nearly every clean is not a happy situation.
This post is about the problems I had with our s9+, the great service I ultimately got from iRobot support, and some suggestions for the future
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There is a lot of anger and anguish pouring out on the internet over the past 48 hours. The Washington Post, a bastion of the ‘old guard’ news media, has chosen to be silent on their recommendation for the 2024 U.S. election.
Their stated position is that this is a ‘return’ to historical political neutrality. But they haven’t been quiet about their recommendations in previous elections for the past several decades. Why the sudden shift? Because Jeff Bezos is a narcissistic and pathetic little pissant coward. The editorial staff of the Washington Post had an endorsement of Kamala Harris ready to print, but Bezos stopped it. One of the richest men in the world is cowering under his $200 billion dollars of wealth against the possibility that the Almighty Trump might win the 2024 election.
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