Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1138
A dude marching with a cross, driveway cleanup, trying to get a phone number, silent generation death roundup, mini GMHHAY for work, Star Trek celebrities 80's speaking appearances in Fairbanks, AK
Good morning! Sorry I’m late. Jane is out of school, so we went and got biscuits and then I bribed her to go to the hardware store so I could buy pressure-treated 4x4s for grape trellises and Hoselink stands. Hoselink rules.
Her reward was a pack of M&Ms and a strange orange floating jellyfish toy.
On the way home we passed a procession of (I assume) fundamentalists doing a march down US 15-501, with a guy with a goatee and mirrored Oakleys carrying a replica of the giant Jesus cross. The cross was on wheels, and there were thick pillows on the guy’s shoulder. Take what you will from the symbolism of that. They were accompanied by a Chatham County Sheriff car, but I suppose that’s reasonable since they were walking in the middle of the lane.
I have so many topics today. Can I possibly hit them all, or even a subset. Who knows! But we will try.
I don’t know why it took me so long to have this revelation, but I have started doing a daily mini, work-related GMHHAY for work in the #announcements channel of Slack. It is great. I am very happy.
Follow up to yesterday and the use of @highlight: it works. BUT, when you choose it, Facebook says, and I quote, “some friends might receive notifications.” So I rescind everything I said about Facebook now going back on letting you actually reach all of your friends. You still can’t. That is fine. I have no idea what this function is for, then. Just to reach a few more of your friends. This, of course, raises the question of why those friends can’t be reached without use of this new command, who knows.
It reminds me of this guy Reggie I worked with at Copy Copy who also worked as a nurse at Mass General, and he would rage about how people asked for everything “stat,” when “stat” was supposed to be only used for emergencies. He was very disturbed by “stat creep.”
That guy taught me how to use an offset printing press. Good dude.
Anyway, I used the feature yesterday and it worked, and it pinged a few friends and they came to the post and realized what was going on and were annoyed with me but also I got to chat with an old friend so I love and hate the feature. But don’t worry I will not use it again.
Update from the saga of trying to get a phone number to go on Apple’s app store pages since the EU now requires it: turns out we do have a phone number as part of our Internet connection. Kyu figured this out, got the number, got voice mail set up. great. Except Apple sends confirmations three ways:
Text messages. No texting. It is a land line.
Phone calls. We don’t have a phone attached. Only voice mail. And Apple doesn’t wait for a message before it speaks the code, so we can’t get the code.
Send paperwork in proving the phone number is yours. This is the path we will take, except our internet bill is still under an old company name. Verizon refuses to believe you can get a new company name under the same EIN. We have to send substantial documentation. Is going to take a while.
Getting a land lane is HARD.
I was going to introduce a new weekly feature: Boomer Death Watch Roundup, where once a week I did a roundup of all the newly passed boomers. But looking at this list, I guess most of them are still Silent Generation. Boomers are still young! Good for them. So we have Silent Generation Death Watch Roundup instead. In any case, here we are:
Daniel Khaneman, the only non-economist to ever win the Nobel for economics, inventor of an entire new school of Economics: sad. Trailblazer. Hero.
Richard Serra: sad
Joe Lieberman: fine. Never liked that guy. Anyone who didn’t like the dems under Clinton because they were too liberal, lol, not on my heroes list.
Robert Moskowitz: sad
Linda Beam: fine
Verner Vinge: very sad
Peter Eotvos: Sad
Marorie Perloff: Sad
Lee Berry: Sad
Lisa Lane aka “woman who Queen’s Gambit was inspired by”: Sad
Julie Robinson Belafonte: Hero. Sad.
Longtime readers will recall last year I bought a poster of the year’s calendar and dry erase markers so that I could figure out my summer. This year I was gonna do it again but I realized that Apple’s Calendar.app actually has really good print functionality, and so I printed each month, March to August, one page each, and laid them all out on a work surface. You can select which calendars to turn on and off. It’s really good. So last night, Emma and I stood over the calendars, added a few things I forgot to add, and we figured out that we will be returning to Boston in early June to early July. So we’ll be there for Jussi’s birthday, that is nice. And now I can tell my friend Helena when she can come visit. All very productive. A+ recommended family coordination technique.
Yesterday driving around I saw one of those license plates that has a HAM radio call sign on it. And I thought to myself “well there’s a thing you don’t see every day around here. Or these days. Or something. I used to see those plates everywhere in Alaska. I wonder if it’s a geographic thing or what.”
And then ten minutes later, I saw another one. So that was weird.
Also saw G Wagon lady not at school yesterday. May have done a bit of stalking. Also, she is a speeder.
Walmart was chaos yesterday. Remodeling is in full swing. Also I ran into my wife at Walmart, that was pretty funny.
Congratulations to Duke, UNC and NC State, all of whom made it to the sweet 16 bracket in the playoffs or whatever they’re called in college basketball. First time it’s happened since 2015. Which is not that long ago. And — whoops, never mind, UNC lost their game, they are out. I guess I don’t care anymore. Well it was fun being a basketball fan for one night.
Last night as I was falling asleep, so tired, I started to dream about Gene Roddenberry’s speaking appearance at the UAF concert hall when I was a kid and how cool it was. Then that made me remember that Walter Koenig also came to Fairbanks in the 80’s and did a talk at the Fairgrounds speaking hall. I wonder if that weird building is still there. Let’s look at the map. Nope. Looks like Borealis Pavillion and the Ag Hall are both still there but not the other building. Anyway, Chekov came to Fairbanks and I was so excited. I think the first two celebrities I ever saw in person were both Star Trek related. That was great. The excitement of childhood. Really felt deep nostalgia for that last night.
Yesterday I finally cleaned out the driveway at Chore House. I am trying to get the front of the house presentable and I am so close. Grapes planted, arches up, mulch laid almost everywhere now, planters placed and filled. Only a few small things to go. I moved 18 pallets yesterday. Walked 6 miles, mostly just back and forth from one spot to another with a pallet on a dolly. SO tiring. But it looks great. I am very excited.
I also made a plan to fix Emma’s plaster mushroom lawn ornament that I accidentally drove over a few months ago. It involves a lot of Lexel and a new internal steel armature. Not messing around.
And, finally, the biggest news of all. Oh man, do I want to tell you yet? I should wait, right? Yeah I am going to wait. But I am not going to delete this. MWAHAHA.
I am such a jerk.
Okay well, I’m gonna go check out the new Ride, Beyonce and Adrianne Lenker albums. Which one is going to be best, I wonder. So far after one track each, the Adrianne Lenker is ahead. Did not see that comping. Also “Vampire Empire” is a great song name.
Today’s Media of the Day is this late-career banger by Peter Murphy, “The Ghost of Shokan Lake.” Is it a bit repetitive and a little too long? Yes. Is the guitar solo slightly anemic and making you ache for Daniel Ash? Very much so. But it still has a monster chorus and is catchy as hell and rocks, and it is stuck in my head now after hearing it again in the truck this morning. May we all write such a jam in our late 50s.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend and I will see you on Monday live from Somerville, MA.
My dad had a ham radio plate (Ohio, 'Amateur Radio' license variant; W1QDV). When he died a few years ago my mom wasted no time changing the plates, out of respect (since she isn't an operator)