Good morning. Hello. How are you? #514
Discombobulation, Plex problems, and the story of Charles Garland
Good morning, friend, how are you today? Doing all right, I hope. I, myself, am somewhat out of sorts. I had a horrid dream where I was still in my life doing pre-press work — that part wasn’t horrible, that was awesome I miss those jobs so much. But I fucked up an important first-time client’s CD-ROM duplication job and lost the original. Somehow I knew the original was the original and I was completely screwing the client. It was giving me so much anxiety my subconscious had to send in the hand of god into the dream and fix things and hand me a do-over copy of the CD-ROM. It was not good.
Then, of course, I overslept, which is real weird since who wants to spend more time in that awful dream. Also I managed to work in a bit of the Alec Baldwin/Halyna Hutchins situation into the dream, and my friend was keeping a bunch of loaded guns in the back of their van. Their van was my old 1983 Dodge Ram Van 3500, though, and god, I miss that van so much. Maybe that’s why I overslept.
That Alec Baldwin situation is so fucked up. Of course our sympathies should lie mainly with Hutchins, and I suppose I need to check myself, but my god, I feel so bad for Alec Baldwin. I could not handle that. I would be curled up in a ball, unable to function for YEARS after that. I could never show myself in polite society. I suspect ultimately I’d pick Alec, but if you told me I had to be one of the two people in that situation I would give serious consideration to choosing Halyna.
(I was just listening to this new 2XLP 45 RPM repressing of Ladytron’s 604, accidentally on 33 1/3 instead of 44 RPM and my god it sounded so awesome).
Then I came downstairs and the grow light was already on. I have a faulty plant light timer, it can’t keep time, which is real weird. I’ve got others, but I’m going to have to swap that out today. But it gives you a real low-level sense of anxiety when something so analog breaks. Like… How dooes a thing with nothing but a few analog dials and some wiring stop telling accurate time? I mean, if it breaks completely? Sure. But to be… off? So weird.
Also we had a big storm last night, or one came close I don’t think it actually hit us. But it did cause the power to go out briefly and to flicker. This is basically bullshit because our Tesla Powerwalls are supposed to come on so quickly that the flicker doesn’t do any real damage, and usually they do, but not always. So, the worst kind of bug, the intermittent bug. Not only that, my super-expensive computer has, in addition to the Powerwall battery replacement, an uninterruptible power supply between it and the wall. But somehow the UPS conked out, and my computer shut down, and it took me forever to realize that hey maybe the UPS needs re-setting and to be turned back on. It did. I guess I can console myself with the fact that maybe there was a giant power surge and the thing did its job, but it took me like fifteen minutes to get back up and running again.
I am discombobulated.
And very, very behind schedule this morning.
Yesterday I learned that Brendan Fraser is in Doom Patrol. Why did no one tell me this? People say that show is good. I have been wondering what happened to Brendan Fraser for years. That guy was a great actor and, like, on top of the world, and then he just… disappeared. I always wondered what happened to him. He never got enough credit, which is a paradoxical thing to say about an actor in so many blockbusters, but he really was far more talented a thespian than he got credit for. I guess I’ll have to watch Doom Patrol now. It’s good, yes? I’m not imagining that?
We’re watching Foundation and I like it a lot more than the critics, though I did just get to a plot point that is completely absurd and could easily ruin it for me if I was not already committed to not having it ruined for me. I’m not sure why I’m bothering, though. I worry it’ll get cancelled. Although it looks like season 2 has already been greenlit, that is good. Maybe they’ll fix it so critics like it more or something. Though I don’t think critics know what they want in their sci fi anymore.
I was watching my shows, my YouTube videos yesterday, and I watched the monthly update from Project Kamp, those wacky idealists hanging out in the Portuguese wilderness trying to make a “more sustainable way of living.” And they were doing their Q&A Video where they talk about their problems and what they need help with, and they said that making the YouTube videos was a giant hassle for them and they wanted someone to come join them on the land who could just make YouTube videos full time for them. And they’ll pay room and board, and 10,000 Euros. This is next year — March to October or so. And it just seems so great. Like if I did not have a wife and a kid I would 100% run away to a Portuguese commune and make YouTube videos of people clearing brush. My god. My god.
I did manage to get my YouTube videos done from gardening last week. I made two: one normal gardening update, and one that is an instruction on how to move a Birdies raised bed. I predicted that the latter video would be YouTube click bait, but, so far, no luck. But we’ll give it time. My shredder videos both have over a thousand views now.
Yesterday my QNAP asked to do a firmware update. This happens, like, once a month or so. I said “okay,” restarted the thing then did the firmware update. Everything worked great. But when it came back online, Plex wouldn’t launch. It probably corrupted a playlist. I could probably fix this by, like, I don’t know, removing the playlists and then putting them back after it successfully re-launches, but then you’re messing with potentially corrupted playlists. Better to just suck it up and rebuild your libraries, which is what I am doing now. Plex is terrible about this, happens like once a year or so, so I never get too attached to my playlists in Plex. But still, it sucks. You lose all your data about the order things have been added. If you added any custom covers to movies, they get lost. I am annoyed. Also I suspect I need to go back and manually re-add the new libraries to all of my friends with whom I share. If you are a Plex user friend of mine, can you check and see if my libraries are available today? That would be very helpful. Maybe not till this afternoon, though, once this thing is rebuilt.
Yesterday I learned about a fun guy named Charles Garland, who grew up very rich. His grandpa was a senior vice president of the First National Bank of New York and died in 1900 and left his father like ten million dollars. Six years later, the father died and left Charles his share of the money, like one or two million bucks. Charles decided he didn’t want it. He was going to renounce it completely. He was married, and his wife grew up rich and she was in full agreement with him — don’t take the money. Charles, an Eaton and Harvard grad, decided to do just that and make his living as an auto mechanic. He said that “because as part of his study of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the works of Leo Tolstoy and H.G. Wells, he had come to the earnest belief that the money ‘is not mine.’” So he was going to just not take the money but then Upton Sinclair got wind of the situation and talked to Charles Garland and convinced him to give the money away again. So he did just that and helped set up the ACLU and the NAACP. Most impressively, the NAACP used his money to set up their legal defense fund, which then hired the amazing black lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston, who was currently serving as the head of the Howard University Law School. Charles had too much work, and also at the time, his young assistant was saying that he would have to go back to his paid practice because he couldn’t afford to keep giving all of his time to the NAACP pro bono. But Charles Garland’s endowment came along and let Houston hire his star pupil, Thurgood Marshall, who went on to use the funding from Garland to fight the most important cases around school desegregation.
Charles’ wife eventually left him. But Charles went on to found several communes, practice polygamy, have several run-ins with the law for it, and spent the rest of his days working as a machinist. The fund disolved in 1941 and returned a balance of $2,000 to Charles, who was living with one of his commune members, Ursula, and their four kids. He died in obscurity in 1974, the world having forgotten about his major impact.
But he has a real sweet Wikipedia page.
Oh god I am so late.
Mix time. Except I can’t find Spotify because my computer restarted and Mac OS is still so bad at remembering app window locations across multiple monitors and spaces at restart. I mean I know it’s an edge case but Jesus you’d think they’d fix it after twenty years.
Modern synth pop mix! Enjoy! Dance!
Janey’s birthday tomorrow! I gotta wrap presents and make a cake today!
Plex says "Webbles is currently unavailable"