Good morning. Hello. How are you? #589
HVAC repair, Curling, RIP Joy Elementary, weird tangents about Flash and McCoy-era Dr. Who.
Good morning! Hello there! How’s it going? Do you like my new header and footer, advertising my seminal new work, Good Morning. Hello. How Are You? Is it weird that I title these posts with “morning",” “are” and “you?” lower case but the book has them capitalized? It makes perfect sense! Buy my book pleeeeese. Let it sit on your shelf as a talisman of the dark times of 2020 and 2021, you can pour your PTSD into it. You don’t have to touch it or read it, it will just be a bad vibes filter, like an air filter in the corner of the room, removing all that shit from your house. And some day, when your kids ask you what the pandemic was like, you can lift your shaking hand, point to the book and look away. It will be useful!
There are a bunch of men in my house this morning. They got here at 7:30. We’re spending some ungodly amount of money having our main HVAC unit for the first and second floor of the house replaced. This seems to all be because a mouse climbed into the old one and died and killed it. They came out and fixed it, that didn’t work, then they came out and fixed it again, and that didn’t work, and so Emma decided “screw it” it was time for a new one. Thing is pushing ten years, on its last legs anyway, and the company is crediting the cost of the failed repairs against the new unit, so I guess that’s fine. Spending tons of money to replace things on your house is always such a bummer, there is absolutely no benefit felt from the large amount of money spent. A few months ago, I had watched a Technology Connections video about heat pumps and how efficient they were, so I thought to myself “oh cool, at least I can get a heat pump this time round and be more efficient,” but it turned out that yes, the new unit will have a heat pump, but so did the old unit, so, oh well, no environmental gain there. The guy said I could spend $50k or so and go full geothermal but, yeah. Maybe that’s a bit much.
Also, surprise surprise, they keep asking me questions because I am a man and I keep telling them that Emma is in charge of this operation. They are not endearing themselves particularly. This must happen so often. Do men everywhere really predominantly oversee domestic HVAC operations? That seems…unlikely.
Watched a bunch more curling and wow things are not looking good for our American Men’s team with that one guy’s fancy shoes. I mean, we are a day behind, because we watch everything on replay because it is so much better, so no spoilers, but yeah. They really whiffed that last game against Italy.
I will tell you though, I am really coming to enjoy the break after the fifth end where the curlers all eat little snacks. I really want to make a spreadsheet of every curling team and the type of little snacks they eat, because they all seem a little bit different. I also like how they have a little blue chest to hide all their personal affects in, so it does not clutter up the camera picture. I also like how the stones have magic technology in them to tell you if the curler cheated by crossing the hog (a terrible term) while still holding the stone. This technology worked perfectly well in Pyongyang, but here in Beijing it kept breaking, and they kept having to call technical time-outs, and so they stopped using the tech, and even though every curling match has a ref, they decided “nah, we don’t need to use the tech or the ref” because heaven for bid that guy guy off that chair and do anything it is all very weird. Also I imagine there is some sort of mini-scandal brewing in China because they opted to use some new, maybe-untested, domestically produced curling sensor tech instead of the proven tech used in Pyongyang, and it failed, and now the Chinese are embarrassed and some low-level sports-tech dignitary has fallen out of favor with the party. Hrm there might be something racist to this whole scenario, but I’m a child of the Cold War, I swear I’m coming at it from a POV of parallels with Russia instead.
This is mainly for Felix, but I talked to the Framers again, and they are now saying that they will have the giant four-foot-by-four-foot piece of matte board needed to frame our Mythbusters blueprint by the end of March, which means they will have had the piece for about six months by the time we get it back. She was very nice about it, I told her it was fine, that it was like buying a new couch when they made you wait 20+ weeks for it, at least from what I rememeber, the one time I was sucker enough to go down that path. She helpfully pointed out that it’s even worse these days, with ordering a new couch. I guess she thought that helped her case.
I’m really glad she called, though. I had been thinking I needed to call her and get a new ETA, but I hate using the phone so much. I did screw up the courage to call twice, but once was on a Sunday, and they were closed, and once they just didn’t answer the phone. I still have to call these landscaping people to order 2-3 years of potting mix. They’re website is gloriously archaic—it is a single-entry Blogspot blog last updated thirteen years ago—and it does not have an email address. I think they’re still in business? They’re listed in all the local directories. But yeah. A phone call. I miss so much when I had that virtual assistant that I could email and they would make all of my phone calls for me, really was one of the best things I ever spent my money on, but it was very hard to justify paying all that money just to indulge a neurosis.
I talked to my mom last night and — wow this one is also for Felix — she told me that they are closing Joy Elementary, which makes me so, so sad. There are fewer children in the Fairbanks schools right now than a few years ago — a combination of population decline, demographic change and an increase in home schooling. Not fewer than when I was a kid, but the district has built a lot of schools since then, and Aurora isn’t the big population center it once was. And Joy is one of the older physical plants in the district. It is such a shame. I loved that school, that wacky building so much. What is going to happen to that building? I wish I was (more) absurdly rich, I would totally buy it from them.
Charlie Hoey, an old coworker and friend of mine who married another old coworker and friend of mine Ashley. Back when we hired him, one of the reasons we had hired him was because he had just made this amazing game—a parody of 8-bit NES games, but based on the novel The Great Gatsby. It really was a masterpiece of technology and narrative. The game was made in Flash, which was one of the primary mediums of work at the Barbarian Group in those early days. God I miss Flash, Flash was great, Steve Jobs was wrong, but also Adobe sucked because they never made Flash run on the Mac half as well as the PC, so they pretty much backed Steve into a corner, they asked for it, Adobe never banked on Apple becoming so powerful again, and they paid the price for quite some time before those two companies made amends. Anyway, Flash went away, which is sad because I bet it would scream on Apple Silicon, given the warm(er) relationship between those two companies now. God, I have a lot of Flash baggage. Anyway, Charlie and his friend have not only rebuilt the game so it’s playable once again, they did so and re-built it so it is actually playable on the NES, which is fucking awesome. Well done. That is real dedication to a project and my hat goes off to you.
All right that feels like enough for today. I still have some topics in my topic list, but nothing that is going stale or can’t wait. It’s a warm feeling when my topic list isn’t completely barren and I have to wing this thing, because then when I’m winging it, you know, the fear, and suddenly I start writing about pandemic paranoia and who wants to read that stuff we must be happy. We’re like that planet in the Sylvester McCoy era of Doctor Who, god, I think he went there twice? The Happiness Patrol, was it? Let’s look this up, I might be mixing it up with The Monster of Pelodon and The Curse of Pelodon, where he definitely went to that planet twice, but did he go to the always-be-happy planet twice? Okay, I looked it up. The planet was Terra Alpha, which was also the name of the Doctor’s fraternity. They did not go back. Oh yeah, he sang “As Time Goes By,” that was great. And it had Ace, underrated companion, Ace. I liked her jacket. Ace was a badass.
Today’s mix is a moody and quiet one and it is just great there is so much good music out there, so much good new moody and quiet music. People are so into making moody and quiet music these days, because people do not live on Terra Alpha and/or under Thatcherism (it was a parody, you see) and they are free to be sad. Or quiet. Or just moody. Man I am really doubling down on this Dr. Who tangent. Anyway, mostly new here, excrpt the Microphones and Katie Jane Garside which are just my personal current obsessions. Along with McKenna Grace I am so excited she decided to make a second single. It’s not as totally weird as Haunted House but it is still pretty solid.
Talk to you guys soon!
i’m sure you’re aware, but mogwai is touring and immediately thought of you!