Good morning. Hello. How are you? #498
Air Train, Safari Tabs nightmare, A transcendent drama about antiquated voice assistants, allergists and bagels.
Good morning! Hello! How’s it going? It’s Monday, just dandy, just dandy, they are the freakin best.
There’s some good news, though: The stupid backward LGA Air Train is a few steps closer to being dead this week. State Senator Michael Gianaris came out opposing it. He’s the senator for Queens, instrumental in killing off of the dumb Amazon deal. Governor Hochul is reviewing the deal, but her comments thus far have been “lukewarm at best.” Next we have reports that the FAA is also considering pausing the project. I can’t really read that article, though, because it’s behind a really quite solid paywall, nice job Newsday. This is all good news. I mean, I am obviously an LGA afficianado, but there really is something especially depressing about this project, just so blatantly the wrong idea, and at such a gargantuan scale. It’s really come to be a symbol, in my head, of how messed up this country is when it comes to public works projects. To see common sense prevail, and not spend $2 billion, the world’s most expensive train per rider, on a train that heads in the wrong direction. Just give us this one, little thing.
One thing we apparently cannot have is a decent Safari. I can actually kind of like with where Safari ended up in iOS 15, with the location bar at the bottom. I kind of like it. But the new Safari for OSX is a monstrosity, it is unusable, and I’m so sad about it. I spent, god, like a year of my life getting used to Safari, switching from Chrome. It was never fully perfect — Safari is unusable with Google Hangouts due to the pissing contest between the two companies. But mostly, it is (ahem was) great and just a couple weeks ago I finally took the plunge and started using Safari’s “read later” functionality instead of Instapaper. And this is how I’m rewarded. With an unusable tab feature that I can’t figure out and makes things worse. I will let Daring Fireball explain, in detail, the atrocity. He does it better than I could.
Anyway, yes, nice weekend. I did some gardening. I harvested my last batch of long beans, cut down and took out the plants. The Thai long bush beans did great but the other two types of beans I planted were mediocre and never really delivered. Plus I wanted the beds for snow peas. I refreshed the beds, planted two large containers of snow peas. I have the worst luck with snow peas, every year they fail. They will probably fail this year, too. The beds are too small I can tell. But we shall see, and we’ll hopefully learn something. Things are mostly ready for fall, I think. Broccoli, Cauliflower, Snow Peas, Carrots, Beats (why are all these capitlized?) Spinach and Lettuce planted. I should really plant some Garlic but I think that might be over the winter, not sure.
I did not make a video. It just seems so uninteresting, they were kind of boring. I wish I lead a life interesting enough to make a video of something. The early gardening stuff, the planting and whatnot, was all visually interesting enough, but now it’s just a lot of boring maintenance and I don’t know how to make it interesting. Alas.
I also made bagels this weekend. It was a real battle, let me tell you. I mean, I went into a three-day weekend with only three tasks I wanted to complete: make bagles, do some gardening, and play some of my dumb video game. Except it was one of those Monty Python Spanish Inquisition set of goals, no, four goals; Get my allergy drops from the doctor, make bagels, do some gardening, play my dumb video game. And attach the new tablet holder to the treadmill. And and and. So I had to get these drops from the allergist and it’s just this giant ordeal. But first I had to, like, get the car moving, and since I had a new phone, I needed to pair the new phone to the car so I could have some soothing music for this horrible drive through traffic and the new speed trap. And to pair the phone I have to navigate this horrible, version 1 voice assistant in my car, that has no help, no main menu. And I only have to interact it once every year or two when I need to add a new phone so i can never remember how to do it. And it is so frustrating, and I’m just caught in this stupid loop of it offering up my old phone to pair with and I can’t find the right words to say to get it out of this loop. And I’m yelling at my car, and acting like a lunatic in the driveway, and Janet comes out of her house to do something like get a package or something, and she sees me in the car yelling at the car and generally looking like a lunatic and I want to, like, roll down the window and explain to her what’s going on, but I can’t, because I am trying to interact with this archaic voice assistant and I don’t want to mess it up any more than it already is. And I’m banging on the little voice button on my steering wheel and none of it working and I am so frustrated. Finally I try “settings!” instead of “cancel,” “help,” “main menu,” “bluetooth,” “connect device,” (N.B. none of this is in the manual, either, which I am consulting by this point) and it works and I get the phone connected. So I put on my soothing music and off I go to the allergist, and there is so much traffic of course, because it’s Friday at 1 PM and apparently that’s rush hour in Chapel Hill (it was impossible to figure out rush hour around here pre-COVID and is doubly so now) so it takes like twenty-five minutes to do what should be a ten minute drive. And at this point, my finger is killing me, like it hurts so much. Like permanent nerve endings level of pain, and I swear to god I did not hit that button that hard, so I am either getting old and frail or I was twice as upset about that dumb voice assistant.
So I finally get there at about 1:30 and they’re all surprised and put out, even though these people only let you come get your drops on Friday after 1, and whenever I’ve asked them to mail them, they’ll do it but they’re always so surprised and offer let me come pick them up. And the last time I did this, it was like 2:30 PM and they called and they were like “are you not coming to pick up your drops today?” And I answer yes, yes I am, you said Friday after 1 and you’re open till 4 what’s the rush? But it was clear that that this whole office was staying open just so I could get my drops and they were all hoping to leave early. Okay. So this time I come right on time, or tried to, but traffic, but still I get there early enough they cannot possibly complain that I’m keeping them at work. And then they just make me wait twenty minutes. Awesome. You cannot win with these allergists they are like a parent figure that withhold affection.
So. All of these delays have compounding effects, because before I left, I skimmed through the bagels recipe (a version of Reinhart bagels annotated and modified by my baking genius friend Katherine), and I had forgotten bagels need, like, three separate proves, and the first step is like three things then wait two hours. And by the time I realized this, it was time to go to the allergist because they were gonna yell at me if I was late, so I didn’t get prove one going before I left. And now it’s a whole thing because by the time I get home, prove one will be finishing up during the time dinner is being made, so that’s a hassle. So now I need to wait an hour two, and time it so that prove one starts before dinner, but is done after dinner and our walk, so I can do prove two and three and get the bagels in the fridge tonight, because it’s a two-day process and dammit I want a bagel.
And I’m driving home, through more awful traffic, thinking about my hurt finger, and how much I hate driving now, and how I just want to be able to walk places again, even though I don’t go anywhere, and how I only set out for myself the smallest, simplest set of tasks for the weekend, and on day one of the weekend everything is going to hell and I can’t even accomplish this basic set of tasks and my god, humans went to the moon once, and I can’t do anything. I had potential in life once, I accomplished things, etc. Etc. You know the drill. It spirals. It never really went away. I mean, does it ever?
I did read a nice little passage about Thoreau, though, that said “look the guy didn’t really do anything interesting, his genius was that he wrote about the simple things, the really quite nothing things, and made them transcendent,” and I’m like “yeah, okay, I can aspire to that that seems like a worth aspiration” so maybe you find my bagel frustration transcendent.
I did finish the bagels. I got prove one done before dinner, and proves two and three done after dinner. That part was easily the best part of my weekend. My phone played a beautiful song by Fauns back-to-back with a “You and Me Song” by the Wannadies and I was happy for a moment, a good ten minutes, twirling around my kitchen, as much as a man my size can twirl, but lord knows I tried to twirl, I did, I did.
I woke up early (well, weekday time) and got the bagels done before breakfast so I could have a breakfast bagel. I wrapped it in freezer paper, cut it, wrapped it in tin foil and made it just like a New York bodega breakfast bagel and it was delicious.
I offered Jane some bagel for breakfast and she said no three times but on the fourth time, when I showed her a little piece of the bagel, with a little melted cheese on it, something kicked in in her child brain, reminded her that she had had this treat before, a year ago, and that she liked it. I did my best to use it as a lesson for all the times she won’t try things to eat. It was one of my greatest regrets, as a kid, it is one of my greatest regrets, how absurdly picky of an eater I was, I am trying to spare Jane that fate, but so far I literally can’t even get her to try a french fry. She used to be so good before the pandemic, she was eating sushi and dumplings and all sorts of stuff. But it’s gone. It’s hard to work on this without giving her a complex, Bringing up Bebe says just offer, over and over, and eventually they will go for it, so that’s what I do. It was nice to have a little victory with the bagel.
Mix time! Old goth mix. I recently took delivery of a great batch of mint/near-mint 4AD vinyl releases and they’ve put me in the mood, though none of them are on this mix. Oh wait that’s lie I got a sweet copy of Livonia by His Name is Alive on vinyl, god, I remember first discovering that album at Second Coming in Harvard Square, a new 4AD band, enigmatic and goth looking, know nothing about them except the cover, reminded me of the old days with the Comic Shop in Fairbanks and the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil albums. Except His Name is Alive turned out to be so much more complex and varied, lot more going on in Warren’s musical brain. And I remember the first time hearing this Cranes song, over the loudspeakers at Tower Records on Mass Ave and Newbury, because Phil had put it on, and I thought “oh yes, sir I need to hear more of these Cranes folks.” And seeing the Moon Seven Times at the Middle East up my god, my god. Wow. Yeah. Okay yes I am feeling good goth nostalgia today I will run with this.
Till tomorrow! Thanks for reading. I’m gonna go have a breakfast bagel now.