Good morning. Hello. How are you? #998
School practice run, the infinite complexity of Liftmaster remote pairing, Threads on Desktop, Walmart and Mandinka, health and aging, chores chores chores
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am good. I am tired. Couldn’t fall asleep last night, and woke up a bit earlier as part of mine and Jane’s practice runs for school starting on Wednesday. We did pretty good. Were about ten minutes late, but that was my fault, because I got her out of bed ten minutes late. We can do better. We will do better tomorrow. The main thing is getting her sleep adjusted. It’s a two-hour shift in what time she wakes up. She usually wakes up — well, gets out of bed — at nine. Yesterday I did eight. Today I did seven. That’s a pretty big shift, but she seems to be taking it like a champ.
But not me. I am tired. Wow. I thought maybe this would be easier after being up for a while but nope. Seems harder. Hrm. We shall see if that improves.
I seem to be (mostly) over my Claritin withdrawal. That was very unpleasant. Took about six days. I think there are still some effects lingering, but they are manageable. I am learning that even on top of my other three allergy medications, however, that Claritin was still doing something. I am slightly more congested. It is somewhat unpleasant, but quite tolerable. So now I have to decide if it’s worth it. If quitting is worth it, or if taking it is worth it. Fuck if I know. It’s weird how I used to think all these pills and drugs were modern marvels and embraced them and science and now I’m like “eh, my body should be a temple” or some shit, and it’s clearly all externally imposed on my, cultural pressure one way or the other, shifting through the decades. Impossible to make a uniquely individual opinion. The mystery here is that as I get older, I remove unhealthy habits, but I am also getting older. So the great two trends in my life are in conflict, and over time I find myself getting less healthy even as I get more healthy. I have to assume that were I to still be a drinker, smoker, consumer of euphoric drugs and massive amounts of junk food, I would be even less healthy right now, due to the effects of the aging. But it sure feels like I’m getting less healthy because I am quitting these things. Sure feels like you can’t win.
Anyway, lovely weekend. No meeting week was great wish every week could be no meeting week. I actually don’t mind meetings. It’s a paradox. *I* get more done without meetings, but *we* get more done with meetings.
Friday I went to Walmart and they fucked my up by playing Mandinka, so I’m walking around the store, singing silently along to Mandinka while all these people are going about their normal lives, not noticing Sinead O’connor on Walmart radio and just living their lives not fucked up by her death. I am envious and disgusted. I feel for whatever Gen-Xer out there is programming Walmart radio and their sadness about Sinead O’Connor’s passing and I salute them for sneaking her into their programming even though it messed me up. I went to Walmart late this week, again, because Jane isn’t staying at Grammy’s anymore on Thursdays — it might move to another night once school starts, TBD. So I did morning and breakfast and all that, then shredded an ungodly amount of cardboard for mulch, then packed up the truck for the recycling run and then Walmart. No McDonald’s for the second week in a row but I guess that’s fine, my blood pressure is still through the roof, it’d probably kill me anyway.
I finished an episode of my podcast on Friday. I had started it on Thursday. It is a long one — almost two hours. I didn’t rush through the albums this time. I do not encourage you to listen to it you are already getting most of the goods here. But if you are a glutton for punishment, here it is:
Saturday I did a bunch of chores, lovely chores, beautiful chores. Mostly small ones, puttering around the new house. I got the ultra-bright LED light bulbs installed in the attic, which was not easy cuz they are 13 feet up and they are VERY heavy and I had to use the suction-cup pole we’ve been carrying around since my SoHo loft, but the bulbs were so heavy they flopped around in the thing. But I got it all done without breaking anything, yay me. Got some wood chipped in the chipper — I have accepted its limitations and only ever chip dry, leafless wood now. And I made a cool sort of jig to keep it higher up with a large bin as an outflow instead of that joke of a little bag it comes with. Whole thing works better. Gonna convert my prototype into a rolling cart just as soon as my pool partner drops off a bunch of 2x4s he’s been promising me. Also patched up a hole in the wall in the bedroom where the old, now unneeded, thermostat was.
Saturday night Emma did a slumber party at the new house with a college friend and I watched Jane. We had a lovely bedtime, and we pushed it early a half hour or so. We ran into a lot of neighbors on our walk, too, so that went a little later, so the whole thing was compressed a bit, but we got some good dancing in. Her choices were Caroline Polacheck, Linda Lindas, St Vincent… and Blackpink. Not too bad, not too bad.
After Jane went to bed I took a gummy had a glass of wine and watched Annihilation again and then danced around while watching a lot of music videos and it was just the absolute greatest evening strong recommend.
Sunday I literally spent the whole day mastering the protocols of Liftmaster remote control pairing which is just bonkers and complex but eventually I succeeded and a) got the gate and big garage door at the new house connected to the internet, b) got them paired with my iPhone and watch so that I can monitor them and open and close them from anywhere, c) got the garage door at our home, the big garage door at the new house, and the gate all paired with the built-in “HomeLink” buttons on my truck, d) got all the remote controls I had programmed as much as I could, e) got two physical remote controls for the gate working, one for Emma and one for the tenant, f) figured out which remotes I could buy that will work with all lift master openers (there are six different, incompatible protocols), g) figured out what I would need to do to get the other two, non-wi-fi compatible garage door openers on my phone and h) figured out what I would need to do to get them all working with HomeKit (the answer to both G and H is: buy more adaptor boxes, and different ones for each door and HomeKit integration, so, you know, $360 in dongles, probably gonna pass on that one.
If you were bored reading that paragraph imagine how bored I was spending four hours on that. Except, I dunno, I kinda like learning weird shit like that. Mysterious tech that is already in your house that you don’t know how to use but is perfectly usable if you want to just learn it. I mentioned that I learned all this to Jane and she said “you just watched a lot of YouTube videos” which is pretty rich coming from her.
Starlink finally, finally cancelled my preorder and refunded my money. In the original email where they said I could have Starlink, they told me I had ONLY SEVEN DAYS TO ACCEPT. In the end it was five weeks. Really feels like there’s a moral in here somewhere.
Speaking of Elon Musk’s disingenuity, Threads is on Desktop now and it is pretty pleasant. Still feels… primitive compared to Twitter in its prime. No search, no hashtags, no trending topics. Those are probably fine, I dislike trending topics and hashtags. But search would be nice. But I’m glad it’s here. Still checking Bluesky once in a while, and even occasionally Twitter (it’ll never be X), but Threads is rapidly becoming the goto for me. It’s interesting. At the beginning, grafting off of Instagram, I mainly followed friends. But normal human friends have never really been huge tweeters, so it was kinda dead. Over time, I followed more and more of the kinds of accounts I had followed on Twitter. And now it feels more like Twitter. And I miss my friends. But they don’t Tweet much, so I guess this is what I get instead. I guess what I’m saying here (sorry, no editors in these parts) is that at first Threads felt new and different, more wholesome, less shitposting and trolling and whatnot. But now it has slowly become more like old Twitter, and I guess that’s fine.
What a monumental waste of human resources. The death of Twitter that is, not the act of being a user of these platforms.
Well, come to think of it, that too.
Oh man today’s mix is so so good. Where has this extended, orchestral version of “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight” been my whole life why did I only buy the 7” of this when it came out and not the 12” with this amazing mix. Oh right because I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska and no one was selling the 12”. New MAN ON MAN is freakin awesome it is so good. Don’t know this Fiddlehead band but apparently they’re from Boston but I like them. I had a dream about TT The Bears last night. And that hotel — Swisshotel, I think — where we went one Hotel Bar Friday back in the day. And the new Rain Parade (!!!) is super good. And the new Miley Cyrus, well, fuck. So good. She has an old soul, I have to conclude. At first I was super pissed someone so young wrote the absolute best song about aging ever, but now I’ve decided it makes sense. Too bad Cash isn’t around, he should cover it.
Okay well I hope you don’t mind getting this an hour later that is the new reality now. See you tomorrow.
wow! when the vocals come in after 3 minutes i was like YESSSSSS. so great. very excited for the rest of the playlist ☺️
If you like that new Rain Parade, you'll likely love Stephen Roback's other band - Viva Saturn. He got lost in the shadow of his brother but the guy made some great music. I think this also feel through all the cracks. I don't think it's on streaming services and never got a vinyl release but this album is fantastic. Perfect psychedelic pop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n5MkIS3Aro