Good morning. Hello. How are you? #379
Mamas and the Papas, AOC and Airtrain, Apple ATT, Apple RTP, Gardening, Squirrel repellant.
Good morning! Hello. How are you? Monday, Monday, bah-da bah-da. I actually only barely remember how that song goes, probably haven’t listened to it in thirty years, even though every Monday morning it goes through my head. Hrm. Maybe I should check it out. Oh wow yeah this is a really good song. The Mamas and the Papas are so good. Fussy bridge, though. I feel so bad for people who think songs need bridges. What a waste of time. Also, as it turns out, Monday is not so good to him, despite what he sings in the first line of the song. Turns out Monday is a hard mistress and his girl might never come back. Man. I hope that doesn’t happen to any of us this Monday.
Some days you start a paragraph and have no idea where it’s going and you end up talking about the Mamas and the Papas. I heard that If You Can Believe your Eyes and Ears was the most expensive album ever recorded until My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, but I heard this back in the early 90’s before there was an internet and it might have been made up. I have not investigated since. Every fact you learned before Wikipedia existed is suspect and should be double-checked in the modern era, I find. This was a source of much contention between Emma and I early in our relationship, before I learned this lesson. She often jokes that the arrival of Google on cell phones saved our relationship. In any case, I just googled “Most expensive album every recorded” and looked at 4 or 5 articles, none of which agree, but none of them contain the Mamas and the Papas.
AOC has finally come out swinging against the Laguardia AirTrain boondoggle. I feel I have to mention this since in a previous edition I mentioned she was against the AirTrain but did not seem to be inclined to make it a whole big thing, but it seems like now she is making it a whole big thing, which is good. Kinda curiously timed, though. We seem to all have died down on our Cuomo outrage and even though enough NY State lawmakers came out in support of impeaching him, they seem to not actually be doing it, and the dude is going to survive in his job on pure hubris, even though he lied about a bunch of people dying. Seems like it would have been better, in this instance, to hit him when he’s down about the AirTrain. Also seems like if 100 people are going to stand up to a bully together maybe they should actually take the bully down since bullies, like Cuomo, are notorious for revenge and they have the power to prevent the revenge that is surely going to befall on them but… just aren’t? Kind weird and self-defeating. Also New York is going to elect a guy who just went and spoke to the gay caucus and decided to talk about Cubbyhole instead of one of the many amazing serious, progressive candidates, so, yeah.
Today is Apple day on two fronts: First, today is the day Apple finally enforces ATT, their new privacy framework. Which means today you will probably get a ton of pop-ups on your apps asking you if the apps can “track” you. And you will, reasonably, probably be inclined to say “do not track,” since that sounds evil and scary. And we will make less money, and it is all very sad, because it is an ostensibly noble endeavor implemented in a really shitty way, but there’s nothing to do about it. So, into the breach, wish us luck. Hopefully we stay in business. And, if you’re feeling charitable towards ole Timehop, consider clicking the “allow” button. I promise we’re not doing anything nefarious.
In additional Apple news, which I just learned about this morning as I was waking up, Apple is opening a campus here in the Triangle. Spending a billion bucks, hiring three thousand people, buying land, the whole works. This is pretty crazy and exciting for the Triangle, but also pretty ho-hum after Google, Fuji, and a bunch of other people have recently announced major new investments in tech in the triangle. Probably do wonders for my home value. I assume my poor neighbor — a rare bird of a work-at-home-even-before-the-pandemic employee will have to go into the office now.
But, really, this whole weekend was spent gardening. I had this whole plan where I didn’t have much gardening to do this weekend, and I was feeling pretty rundown from the week, so I was going to get all my gardening done on Saturday and then on Sunday I was going to lie around and do nothing, which one likes to do once in a while and I haven’t done in ages. It was Emma’s turn to watch Jane that night, and I was just going to do nothing. But then I woke up Saturday, and it was raining, threatening to blow up the plan. Maybe I should lay around and do nothing on Saturday? But no, that as pointless. I was going to have to Jane Bedtime. There really was only one thing to do: go ahead and garden anyway. So I did. I plowed through all the must-do gardening tasks, planting the seed potatoes, assembling my two new potting benches (it was a whole thing with Amazon and drop shipping and BS tracking numbers and refunds and buying a second one but in the end the first one showed up anyway). I got it all done and felt very wet, but pretty good!
But then Sunday rolled around, and it was just lovely out (the weather forecast lied, damn you Obama), and I wanted to go outside in the morning, and so did Jane, so outside we went. Jane played in the sandbox, and what was I going to do, not garden? Preposterous. So I planted a ton more stuff – just a ton. I used up like eight bags of dirt putting more stuff in pots. I planted some spinach seeds and radish seeds – way too late but hopefully I can get something out of them before the summer heat comes. I planted some more luffa and watermelon and another Roma tomato some of my favorite basils in bigger pots and replaced all of the plants that got frost damage. It was grand fun. I reorganized and compacted the seedlings. I reworked some trellising, hanging some trellis netting for the cucumbers and moving a trellis panel to use it for some watermelon and luffa. I cleaned up the downstairs gardening area. I emailed the neighbors and offered them starts, and a few of them took me up on it. So that was good. I checked on the compost and it is still not warm, but i added this week’s stuff to it and turned it nonetheless, and it looks like it’s composting nonetheless. And then as I was finishing up for the day, I was spraying my home-made squirrel repellent everywhere (the stuff really works!) but I ran out. And it was dinner time.
So we made dinner and then after dinner, while Jane was in her “more things to eat?” K-hole that lasts another half an hour, I whipped up a new batch of squirrel repellent on the stove and assaulted the olfactory senses of everyone in the house and we had to turn on the fans and open the doors.
Yeah, that stuff really kicked up a smell storm, lemme tell you. But it works! Also I made a Youtube tutorial of cooking it - my first cooking video, ha. I am finding that sort of super-specific, searchable YouTube content does pretty well. My average gardening update video has, like, 17 views. But my video of the mulcher review has like 231 and it keeps going up. There’s some threshold you have to hit on Youtube in terms of viewership and likes and whatnot before you can a) monetize or b) name your channel, and even though the thing is never going to be a revenue generator, I am in the advertising business, so it’d be cool to learn how it all works, so I should probably occasionally make content that furthers that goal. I have a good feeling about this one. Squirrels are the bane of gardener’s existence. And squirrel repellant in the store is expensive.
In other Chatham County news, the Swap Shops have reopened at the Collection Centers. This is very exciting. They have been closed for over a year, and I loved those things: they are these little sheds at the garbage and recycling drop-off areas where you can leave things for other people to take. I have missed them dearly. I’m glad they’re back. It’ll add a little bright sprinkle to my shopping mornings as I run over and peek in them, even though they’re always picked over, because people are obsessed. Whenever I drop things off there, people are picking them up instantly. It’s crazy. Some people park there and just hover all day — which, come to think of it, is probably why they closed them in the first place, even though they’re outdoors.
Today’s mix is a mix of new goth music. Usual caveats of “goth to me not that dark synthpop people say is goth now” etc etc. Even though some of that dark synthpop might be on here, not gonna lie. Things are in flux these days in the world of new goth and it is just great. Also I am using “new” loosely here — like, the 21st century, let’s say. But still, it’s a god mix. I think you might enjoy it if your heart is secretly still goth after all these years.
I think that’s about it today. I have to do some redlining on a contract — one of those customers who insist on using their own contract, even though it has no bearing on reality or your actual offering, so you have to do, like, five passes trying to get it to accurately convey what you actually offer, since even if your potential end-client there does understand your offering, their legal department almost certainly doesn’t. It’s such a futile exercise, a total matter of pride getting in the way of efficiency in an organization. And you have no choice but to bend over and take it, because you’re the vendor and you’re providing services. And the fact that they’re a multi-billion organization and you’re not and this is gonna cost you a ton of money is not really relevant. Super fun!
And with that, I leave you! Till tomorrow!