Category: Blogging

It was only three memes at View from the Porch, and yet I felt targeted.

Back around the turn of the century, I was a technical writer with prodigious output even though I am not a home-row touch-typist (even today).

One Friday afternoon, my password came to the end of its 90-day lifetime, so I changed the password last thing before I left (never do this on a Friday, by the way, nor install wonky software that requires a reboot and might brick your machine and you can’t remember what might have caused it come Monday morning).

On Monday, I was one of the first in the office as 7am start times were my wont back in the old days. I sat down in the empty office and tried to log in. I tried the password I thought I’d set on Friday afternoon, but it didn’t work. I tried again to see if I’d mistyped it. I slowed down and looked at every key as I typed it. Nothing.

So I waited in an empty office for two and a half hours for the hardware guy to come in to reset my password again. He then noticed that something was wrong with my keyboard. On Friday afternoon, after I left, El Guapo had popped off a couple of keys on my keyboard and had, anomg other things, had switched the n and m keys, and I was not a touch-typist, so I looked at them when I typed the password, and I was not familiar enough with keyboards to spot what was off. Oh, the laughs they had at my expense.

The story made it all the way to the C-Suite when the inside sales guy was on a trip to New York. Apparently, my name came up, and the originator of the Dosso Double-Snap (snapping one’s fingers twice when excited, a thing I still do today on occasion) told that story. Whereupon the company’s co-founder said, “He typed all that documentation with these fingers!” and wagged his index fingers in the air. To be honest, my method was kinda touch-typing, but not home row ASDF JKL;. I have gotten faster, and I can even type things I’m looking at, like book pages for book report quotes and whatnot. But, yeah, 3000+ pages of software manuals with mostly the first two fingers of each hand and the thumb sometimes for the space bar.

Jeez, Louise, I’ve seen references to fedora-wearing overly chivalrous young men (they say “M’lady” or “My lady,” see?) at Founding Questions, too, so I guess this is something of an archetype or more like a punchline, and when I see it, I cringe a bit inside. Literally, I figuratively cringe, not just recoil which is I guess what the kids these days mean when they say cringe.

Ah, gentle reader. I got my trenchcoat for Christmas 1993, and I got my first fedora a couple of weeks later at Donge’s down on Third Street in Milwaukee. I was more influenced by old movies with Bogart and Grant (still am, I’d like to think) than anything else–and fedoras had a brief resurgence amongst some people with television programs like Crime Story and The Hat Squad.

And, ah, yes, I did have an inflated sense of chivalry due to my exposure to medieval poetry and whatnot. So I would have been–and I was–that demonstrative in that fashion (one such story coming later). I suppose I affected a bit to portray a role to cover my natural shyness reticence. If you press me to admit it.

But, jeez Louise, I couldn’t have been following some pattern in popular culture from the 1980s? Certainly not from the John Hughes movies–I had not seen them yet. I WAS NOT DUCKY.

I’d like to think I was sui generis, but apparently not. Ah, me.

Meanwhile, this weekend, I got a new Alpine hat because I was at a German festival over in Lawrence County. I have reached an age, apparently having reached a half-C, where I think I might look okay in a stubby-brimmed hat. Also, it was a fund raiser, but there were not many opportunities to lay out greenbacks for the Lions Club and its endeavours, so I had to invent reasons to give.

But I still where my classic wide-brimmed fedora or wide-brimmed Panama hat out, so maybe not, m’lady.

There’s a third meme in the post, but I do not understand it. Otherwise, it might have been a trifecta of defensiveness. Or is it mocking my lack of understanding?

The whole world is not about me. But the Internet is.

Lileks today:

Anyway, I just remembered the name of the new place, the one that’s a cafe but also has COFFEE in its name in case you didn’t think the CAFE had COFFEE. The name?

BRIM

So I can’t wait until they open and I can walk in and ask if they have any coffee. It will also be tempting to say “Fill it to the rim,” and then have an expectant look on my face as I wait for everyone else to complete the catch phrase.

Which, of course, they won’t.

You can, can’t you?

I have been known to say, “Fill it to the rim. With grim.”

But I am a curmudgeon at best.

• The Commodore 64 Ultimate computer is the company’s first hardware release in over 30 years — pre-orders start at $299 (via Pixy at Ace of Spades HQ)
   
• A Funny Thing About Dave Barry, a review of Barry’s new memoir Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up (via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.com).

Unfortunately, we’re in the dead of summer, so no one is thinking what to get me for Christmas, my birthday, the anniversary, or Father’s Day. I’d put them on my Amazon Wishlist, but nobody in my family thinks of that. Oh, well. I can mark them here so when I’m motoring through my archives five years hence, I’ll remember them.

Meanwhile, my beautiful wife has a birthday coming up, and I’m not sure I have anything for her. Maybe I do. I should check the closet, and I should get out of the house and find more for her. And get onto my Christmas shopping.

On of the vacation days in May which we spent at home instead of the resort we’d booked, we went to a couple of game and card stores to make up to our youngest, the Pokémon speculator, for the fact that we didn’t go to any such in Branson. So we hit a few, and when we went to Meta Games up on Sunshine, I saw a big display for Pathfinder, but not much else.

I started to tell my beautiful wife that White Wolf Games were really big in the 1990s, but you hardly hear about them any more.

This weekend, Lake of Lerna started a series on the history of White Wolf Games which apparently are still, sort of, a thing.

Two things:

• It turns out the RPG section of Meta Games was on a wall we passed on our way out, not our way in, and it does indeed have some White Wolf Games.
• I’m not just turning into a referrer for Yakubian Ape’s Substack, but I do find his deep-dives into Millenial and Gen-Z culture interesting.

Lileks today talks about his coffee cup of the week and asks his commentors:

My favorite coffee cups have a meaning that might seem odd to someone else; my least-used has the most emotional connection; my most frequently used means nothing at all.

So share your mug stories! Worst, best, faves, etc.

C’mon, man. This is a blog. I’ve gone on about my coffee cup accumulation multiple times:

Out of My Cups (2012), wherein I talk about maybe divesting a couple of the plastic travel mugs I owned (spoiler alert: I got rid of two of the four).

I Am The Coffee Party I Was Waiting For about how many coffee cups I had back then and why I should not get rid of them (spoiler alert: I did not).

A couple of notes since the writing of the last:

• Every year, I do the library’s Winter Reading Challenge which results in a mug; I’m about halfway through this year’s (as a reminder, although the rules say you only have to read 5 books from the 15 categories, I try to get all 15 before turning the form in). I have quite a collection of mugs from years past:

  

  I actually use some of them for tea, miso soup, or anything I brew downstairs, so they see some use.
   

• In 2013, the boys would have been seven and five. I mentioned that I might get rid of some Monopoly themed cups, but I did not. And soon thereafter, my youngest, who had been exposed to the game, was delighted when he discovered them. They became his favorite cups for apple cider and hot chocolate (briefly).
   
• I’ve only gotten a couple of additional cups since then: A cup for winning a trivia night in 2014, the plain white coffee house-like cup I got for the photo on the cover of Coffee House Memories, and a couple of additional cups that were part of the gift sets, including a camoflauge cup that my brother gave me for Christmas the year before last, come to mind.

However, the number of cups that I use has dropped.

I’ve gotten back into the habit of drinking coffee from the same cup for days on end (which was basically how I did it when I worked outside the home, using the same giant Marquette University plastic mug day after day with but a rinsing in between). Since I’ve been underemployed for a couple of months and cut the K-Cups from daily expenditures when the company I worked for no longer covered them, I have been using the drip maker upstairs and have left the cup up there, generally full, as well. So I don’t finish the last cup I pour on any given day–I start the next day by slamming that (followed by any cold coffee left in the pot). So it’s rare that the cup on the counter is empty to put into the dishwasher. I tend to use a faded Washington Times mug I got when I subscribed twenty years ago or a similar large mug whose source I have forgotten. So I use those two cups and one or two of the Library Winter Reading Challenge mugs for most of my coffee/hot brew needs.

Still, I cannot really cull them because they’re personal relics.

One thing I really do want to cull, though, is the insulated tumblers. We have received a bunch as swag or for various charitable contributions, but since I work from home, I don’t need something like it for a commute (and I use a plastic insulated Green Bay Packers cup I got from my brother some years back to take coffee on the long ride home for those long trips where I want to start out with coffee). They replaced the plastic water bottle swag we got previously for chartiable contributions and in 5K gift bags, and they occupy basically the same cabinet space. But we hardly ever use them. A couple of plastic bottles fit into bicycle water holders, but that’s about it.

Ah, well, we do have the space for them, so I don’t have to make a decision now.

UPDATE: As I was writing this post, it made me want coffee. As I headed upstairs, I told my beautiful wife about the post, and she mentioned she has another insulated metal tumbler in her office that she just received. So maybe we don’t have that much room after all.

I went to bed last night in the 8 o’clock hour and was up before 2am. As I wandered around Nogglestead awake, I thought I would maybe get back to bed about 4am and get a couple more hours of sleep. As I drew a glass of water from the kitchen sink, I thought that in the olden days, people would get up in the middle of the night for a while before going back to bed.

This very morning, Neo posted a video about the Medieval Two Sleeps:

But, Brian J., did you read any portion of the long books you have selected for the 2025 Winter Reading Challenge? Oh, but no. Mostly I sat in the darkness and worried. Because I did not want to spoil my night vision for when I did want to sneak back to bed.

In a post entitled Report: Most Counties Have Little or No Local News Sources, Wirecutter admits:

We’ve got the Macon County Chronicle, published on Wednesday or Thursday. I enjoy it, it gives me a chance to catch up on all the local gossip and happenings.

I mean, he’s not doing as much to keep print alive as I am, but it’s something.

The current count of local papers I take from around Missouri is:

1. The Greene County Commonwealth
2. Mound City News, which is where my “cousin”‘s death notice appeared
3. The Licking News
4. Houston Herald
5. Douglas County Herald
6. Wright County Journal
7. Branson Tri-Lakes News
8. Phelps County Focus
9. Marshfield Mail
10. Stone County Republican
11. Ozark County Times
12. Benton County Enterprise

I think that’s it. I’d have to go rifle through the stack again.

Unfortunately, we’re cutting expenses, so I’ve had to let The Current Local lapse for the nonce and have not been able to subscribe to the two weeklies we picked up in northeast Missouri on our trip to Iowa. Also, it’s fortunate that the subscription bills have not come due at the same time or I’d realize how much I’d been spending on newspapers I only page through, read a column by a local person, and use to light fires.

One thing about the local papers, though, is non-local newspaper conglomerates are starting to buy them up. The Branson Tri-Lakes News bought the Stone County Republican, and the papers share a lot of content, so it might not be worthwhile to keep them both. The Douglas County Herald got bought by a network in Illannoy, and its letters to the editor tend to be a little more media-traditional, if you know what I mean. A nationwide concern just bought the Phelps County Focus, so we’ll see if that thins it out some–given that the Focus is published in a college town, it already had views out of step with its readers. I guess the Greene County Commonwealth long ago joined a group owned by a publisher whose columns have also been out-of-step with his readers. As the new owners “trim” their budgets, they might be tempted to trim the local columnists which make the papers interesting. Or, heaven forfend, they’ll all pick up Jim Hamilton whom I already see in several papers and Ozarks Farm & Neighbor (where he replaced Jerry Crownover, who unfortunately retired).

So in addition to the belt-tightening, we might have otherwise pruned the list.

Which is unfortunate, because I do really like reading about my adopted hometowns across the state.

Patrice Lewis writes An Issue of Contentment and quotes a book:

For some reason that phrase – she was happy then and didn’t know it – stayed with me. And it made me wonder: how many of us are happy but don’t appreciate it, know it, or realize it?

“Happiness” is such a loaded and multi-faceted word that no one can really define what it means for them. It’s different for everyone. Happiness can be found even in places and circumstances you may not like; but it’s often there, buried among the less enjoyable parts. Facets of happiness (contentment, satisfaction, pride of achievement, etc.) can all contribute to the overall qualities of the emotion.

I think what haunts me about the notion of being happy and not realizing it, is how many of us let overall happiness slide through our fingers because we’re too concerned with little things we don’t like. Anyone who takes their health for granted and then loses it, for example, will appreciate how much happier they were when their health was good.

That’s why this moment of contentment was so powerful.

This little bit of John Hughes’ best movie, She’s Having a Baby, has stuck with me over the years:

As you know, gentle reader, I struggle with feeling contentment. I have given it plenty of thought this summer. I’ve made a habit the last two years to step into the pool in the evenings if only for a couple of minutes, because I have a pool. And I’ve watched the sunset and have really, really tried to be content, enumerating things that I have, including the things I would never have dreamed of in my youth.

I suppose it’s because I don’t know if I’ve earned what I have, nor that I have much control over whether I can keep it. Maybe the next book on mindfulness will cure me, but perhaps not. Perhaps my efforts in something will yield the intended result (aside from a cleaner house after the weekend or trimmed weeds in the summer or even a freshly painted room sometime when I get around to it). Most likely, I’ll bet on the book.

Well, I guess he couldn’t steal it since I didn’t publish it on the blog, but our air conditioner failed us on Saturday. When I came in from cutting and screwing some record shelves, I found the A/C was blowing warm air. As it was going to be a mildish weekend, I didn’t call the HVAC company on an emergency basis, so we trotted out some extra fans. And I joked that we were on only fans this weekend.

Today, Wilder included the joke in a post:

AOC: “In this house, we’re environmentally conscious – no air conditioner. Instead? Only Fans®.”

Except I think the registered trademark is OnlyFans. Or so I’ve heard.

Well, he got there on the Internet first. And if someone beat him to it, I’m not researching it by searching for Only Fans on the Internet, thanks.