Good morning. Hello. How are you? #936
Trials and tribulations of the greenhouse delivery, writing about depression, shooting the blue collar shit, Bluesky's CCPA implementation and the Fediverse, cancelling Starlink.
Good morning! Hello there, friend. Happy Friday. How are you? I am good, sorry I’m late. Greenhouse delivery. Second try. It was supposed to be delivered yesterday with, and I quote, “three men and a forklift.” It was delivered in a box truck by one dude, no crew, no forklift, just a pallet jack. It was insane. He and I tried to get it down from the truck onto the liftgate and down to the ground, and even that was impossible. The expediter called a crew of four more dudes. All six of us couldn’t get it down. Eventually, around 3PM, we managed to get the thing back in to the truck using come-alongs, one of mankind’s greatest inventions. And then we all, one by one, assured the dispatcher and expediter that no, we could not do this, we could not get it off the truck, let alone to the curb, let alone up the driveway. We were all adamant. And eventually they relented and rescheduled for today.
The poor driver sat in his truck from 8 AM to 3PM. Seven hours in a truck cab in 95 degree heat.
So today we get the forklift delivered, then the operator shows up, then the same guy shows up with the greenhouse in his truck again. He was about 30 minutes later than the forklift operator and delivery guy, so I described the pallets, the other two packages, their weight and dimensions, and I offered exorbitant bribes for them to get it up the driveway. We walked the driveway together, made a plan. Truck guy came, we got the big pallet – 1,600 pounds, 8 feet tall, vertical, just a monolith – off the truck, onto the forklift, strapped on, and the dude drove the forklift all the way up my hilly, winding driveway. After that pallet the other pallet was a breeze – same size, but only 500 pounds. Then we forklifted the two 20 foot packages onto the flatbed truck and he backed the truck up my driveway which really was impressive.
They were all well-tipped, expressed shock at it, and the mystery of “curbside” vs “to the door” delivery continues, it was pretty clear that even though I’d paid for curbside, each of those dudes expected that they’d have to do door delivery. Maybe the dispatcher was making up for the debacle yesterday. Who knows.
I did learn from the ad hoc four-man crew that showed up at about 1 yesterday that there’s this company called A-to-Z Logistics that is basically Uber for logistics people and they were all called for the job individually. They all traded cards. It was pretty interesting.
And, every one of them, all seven of these dudes across two days, was super interested in the Lightning and I am telling you blue collar dudes want Lightnings so bad it is awesome. Also I fuckin love love love these dudes, I sat around for an hour shooting the shit with them about so much shit: how the trucking industry works, how much they made doing what during the pandemic — one guy made $300k in a year just doing overnight local driving for Dollar General. Just awesome. We talked about our kids and schools and trucks and the LIE and rich people’s wine cellars and what we’d do if we won the lottery.
Good shit. I will forever be blue collar at heart methinks.
Thank you all for your kind words about the depression entries this week. A bunch of you wrote and said how much it helped, and I am so, so glad. Writing about depression is monstrously hard, of course, and it carries with it a profound responsibility. Also requires a light touch, because you need to write about it, or at least write about it publicly, once it’s started lifting, so you can look at it more honestly and with better perspective. But you also need to let just enough of the feeling of the depression to shine through to let people know you feel like they do. It is hard. You always feel like you’re making light of it, because you’re not writing down your blackest, darkest, depressive thoughts, which is what it feels like writing “about” depression should feel like. But also you want it to make sense to those who do not suffer from depression. I think Emma has been a big help with that through the years. Her curiosity and our habit of communication meant that in the early years of our marriage I had to find common language to try and illustrate, at least through metaphor, what depression felt like. Both the ailment, passing aspect of a bout, but as well as the feelings when you’re in it. Like describing migraines, which is part of the language I found to explain it to her.
And you need this common understanding in your relationship, because if you start to “spin out” as the kids call it these days, and start accusing them of shit or starting that your relationship is the problem or something, they need the knowledge and toolset to not panic and to postpone “talking about it” until later.
Because, like I said, the main trick is to do absolutely nothing, make no major decisions, refuse to act upon any depressive feelings in any way, and postpone all major decisions until you’re out of it. But of course doing exactly that is made infinitely more difficult by the symptoms themselves.
And you guys writing in this week really made me grasp how lucky I am to have learned that lesson — to not do anything until its passed — and how hard it is to follow and how many people can’t do just that. And Sinéad’s passing really drove that home. Also thank god I didn’t learn about that a day earlier it fucked me up enough would have fucked me up a lot earlier if I had learned of her death on Tuesday.
Anyway, thanks. You guys are great.
Speaking of “spinning out” in a coincidence my place in line in the waitlist for Starlink finally arrived this week. Starlink is, to those of you blissfully Elon-unaware, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service. It’s the reason he is mucking up the sky for the astronomers. I had it in my head, four or so years ago, that it would be good to have as “backup internet.” Since then, the service has been delayed, oh, six or eight times, and the monthly price has doubled and oh yeah also Elon turned even more terrible, really beyond and border where I could give him my money, as we have discussed.
So anyway, I get this email saying it’s my turn, and it’s all mean and hardcore and Elon and it’s like you have three days to say yes or you’re losing your place in line and we’ll refund you. And I think “great, that’s exactly what I want,” so I promptly ignore the email and look forward to my refund in three days.
But this being Elon, of course that’s not what happens, but rather what happens instead is a litany of increasingly desperate emails saying I should sign up. We are now two days past the deadline and you will be shocked to hear this but the refund has not yet shown up. Who could have predicted it.
What did happen, though — and I am mildly surprised it happened — is that Bluesky got back in touch with me about my CCPA data request. They asked for more data proving myself, which is BS since I emailed from the account with which I am registered on the service, but within their legal rights. So, so far, they have a) decided to apply CCPA to the entire US, or at least assumed, absent proof to the contrary, that you’re eligible. And they b) have answered me within the 30 day window. They got back to me in 18 days. Not bad! They have still not fulfilled my CCPA request, but they seem to be working on it.
It did make me realize, though, that CCPA and the fediverse are gonna have some interesting interactions. Because it introduces a new path to plausible identity confirmation — that’s the whole point of the fediverse — which means there are many more ways to potentially prove your identity, which means there will be, theoretically, many more cases of CCPA qualification. Because right now basically if you don’t have access to the email with which you registered for a service, they don’t really have to help you, cuz you can’t “prove” who you are. But the fediverse will offer more options. It all seems deal-with-able but man o man am I jealous of whomever gets to work with some privacy lawyers on that shit, because that is extremely up my professional alley. Some real groundbreaking work can be done there. Not that I aspire to this, but that could set you up on the privacy conference circuit for life.
Jane is at grammy’s last night and this morning and it was my night off last night so I haven't seen her in a bit but night before last we had a “bed party” — did I tell you about this? I taught her about entropy, personality traits, and potential energy, she fuckin loved it. When I taught her about potential energy she said “it’s like when I stuff too many stuffs in a box and when I let go, they all pop out.” My god.
Well yes it is, Jane. Damn.
Here’s a mix for you, old and new, starting out with James, rounding out my recent James revisiting, including the first of the lesser-known Sinéad songs you’ll be seeing on mixes for the next few weeks. New Blake Mills, just great. And Abby and Emily’s cousin Andy, whom I used to see every Thanksgiving, great guy, plays with Alan Parsons Project these days but also has this great new solo hit super catchy, very into it. More new Peter Gabriel and Jason from Neptune’s band with Thalia from Come. New Big Their, and an old Boston post rock band The Burning Paris who are so awesome and I’m so bummed I never knew about them.
Have a lovely weekend. Talk to you guys on Monday. Xoxo Gossip Girl.