Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1431
Super Bowl, travel sucks, Alaska was nice, Twilio is making my life miserable, Drop Nineteens
Good morning, hello, how are you everyone? Good to be back. Just returned from taking Jane to school, we missed our ideal queue spot by two cars but no biggie. We got our Wordle done in four. We brought Caticorn, and Aurora, the new plush kitty I bought for Jane in Fairbanks, because Jane has enough Alaskan plushies, though come to think of it, she has enough Kitty plushes too but whaddyagonna do. She woke up this morning telling me she did not like the feeling of clicking the back of her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and then kept doing it. Not sure what to make about that.
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“Yesterday,” I “slept” at the following times:
Two hours at the hotel before my redeye flight when I was not really tired and therefore probably did not really sleep much
The entire flight from Fairbanks to Seattle
About 80% of the flight from Seattle to Raleigh
I should have, by all logic, been “well-rested” when I got home. I was not. Airplane sleep is BS. I cannot fathom how uncomfortable those seats were - in First! Just the worst.
Went to bed at 9:30 last night, slept till 6:30. Had zero problems falling asleep after supposedly sleeping the entire day before this. Because it was not real sleep.
Travel sucks, man. Travel sucks.
The TSA stole my toothpaste. They pushed aside my pill container containing an edible and went straight for the toothpaste. Can’t have toothpaste on a plane.
OH. I did see Rob Riggle on my flight from Seattle to Raleigh, though. Or at least an incredibly convincing doppelgänger. I did not say anything to him.
And I saw a woman reading a large print Danielle Steel novel in the airport. The thing was huge, like maybe 9×12 inches or something. Just an absolutely massive Danielle Steel book.
I sit in 1A when I fly, because I hate being on planes and I want to get off as quickly as possible and I am abnormally wide and can’t fit my shoulders into a regular plane seat. And I gotta tell you: all four legs of my flight, the person next to me was an Alaska Airlines employee. Really does tell you a lot that the employees of an airline do everything in their power to make sure that when they fly, they are in first.
I’m sure it’s different for people whose shoulders aren’t as wide as a boxcar, but it’s just so inhumane.
But you now what is awesome? Not being on planes! It rules!
I am glad I went to Alaska for this funeral, though. I did not do it justice yesterday, I was pretty beat up when I wrote those words. Family matters, just like they say in Fast and Furious. It was all very moving. I like my cousins.
And now I am home, sweet home. I am listening to the Drop Nineteens “album” 1991, which is really just a remastered version of their demo tape, I think. I would compare, I was 100% sure I still had my cassette copy of their demo tape from “back in the day,” but I do not, and my archiving obsession has failed me. It is very hard on me when this happens. It causes me vow to redouble my archiving efforts. Anyway, it is actually better than I remember it. It is impressively competent MBV-influenced shoegaze, but made on 1991 home equipment, no budget, no big studio. This sort of music is pretty easy to make now, garage band, pedals renaissance, Blue mics and whatnot. But in 1991? Hard as fuck, on a budget. I am newly impressed. Boston was too hard on this band, we owe them an apology.
Not that I was hard on them, I fuckin’ loved them.
I did not watch the super bowl because. But I have heard about it. Here is what I have heard:
Blowout game, Taylors boyfriend lost, this makes me happy. I don’t know why, but I have turned on him. Even though he seems a nice enough guy. But i saw some photo of Trump with him or his brother or some shit and.. yeah. No.
Kanye West aired an ad that advertised a website that sells one thing, a swastika, and this is not hyperbole or exaggeration and Fox just fuckin aired the thing and no one seems to be apologizing for it.
Lotta AI garbage.
Trump
Kendrick’s performance sounded amazing and I need to watch it so if anyone knows of a good HD source, hook me up.
One of his dancers jumped out of a car and they had a Gaza flag and now they are “banned from NFL events from life” and I cannot tell you how jealous I am that someone gets to be banned from NFL events for life.
The NFL is an interesting thing. They put Kendrick on. The NFL are, to some extent, resisting the anti-Woke BS of the US right now because they know their audience is heavily black. I respect all that.
But also the players are basically killing themselves and the league seems to want to put their head in the sand about that, even these days, where they pretend to care.
Though I do think maybe it’s like smoking where, you know, after a decade-plus of them telling you its bad for you, maybe it’s on you if you keep smoking. The bulk of the modern players of the NFL know what they’re getting into, I guess.
But there is a union and a health plan and come the fuck on, pay these people.
Also most owners suck.
I do… like football? I think it’s a far more strategic game than its detractors acknowledge and it can be deeply pleasurable and immersive to watch it.
But it’s just contextually such a shitshow these days. The Super Bowl especially, with Trump and all his sycophants and America’s royalty cavorting in $10,000 boxes and seriously they can all go screw and actual ads for actual Nazis.
You can make an ethical case, I suppose, for watching the Super Bowl. You can make a stronger ethical case, I suppose, for not watching it. Or, you know, you can be the master of your own time. At that time, I happened to be with my mother and sister and I chose to spend it with them.
Although! My mom and I did sneak out of her apartment and head down to the common area of her elderly-living facility (wait does the no-hyphen-with-ly rule also include cases such as elderly-living? probably). And there were a bunch of old people watching the Super Bowl and it was very cute. And we raided their snacks. So that was fun.
Twilio makes a 2FA app, Authy. It is better than Google Authenticator, et al, because you can keep it on more than one device. It was also better because, until recently, they were one of the few apps that took Apple up on that whole thing where you can run iOS apps on the Mac. So I had my 2FA app on my Mac, instead of my phone, and it was so much easier, since I have to enter in 2FA codes oh, maybe 10 times a day.
But they just put out an update — a forced update, which is never good. Always annoying, also probably means you’re working with a security vulnerability. OK fine, but in the update, they removed the ability to work on the Mac. Because Apple has always made Mac compatibility with iOS apps optional — you have to click a box at compile time to make it work. And Authy got rid of it. And I am bereft. Verklempt. Pissed, as they say.
And so now I guess I will begin my migration to the stupid Apple passwords app.
Except! Get this: Justworks, the HR software we use at work that I generally recommend to people, does not let you change 2FA authenticator apps! I seriously feel like I am taking crazy pills! There’s just no option for it!
Look at that! No ability to remove the old one! No ability to add a second one!
(Don’t get me started on their refusal to support hardware keys it drives me so fuckin crazy).
What a world. What a world.
Last night after her bath Jane came down and snuggled with me while we watched Real Civil Engineer dig a hole in a game called A Game About Digging a Hole, which is a great name for a game about digging a hole. As with most of the games RCE plays, it’s mostly a game of buying upgrades that add multipliers and then the whole game is basically just a ton of math. But my god, Jane loves these games. Just can’t get enough of them.
It was so nice after a long (physically, not temporally) trip to just sit there with my daughter in my lap. Freshly clean, her hair smelled like soap. We snuggled, it was great.
Happy to be home.
Got a drone mix for you today. Drone music best music. All newish stuff except for Anders Parker, one of the masterminds behind the underappreciated Space Needle. Jesus this one goes back to September, that is a long time to be workin on a drone mix, Rick. I thought you liked Drone Rock.
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.