Category: Life

Well, not a quiz per se, but yesterday Lileks posted a screen grab from the original Taking of Pelham 123:

Ooops, sorry, that’s something else, and Travolta was in the remake, not the original.

Here is what Lileks posted:

And I thought: “Hey, I’ve been in a physical book store in my life!” Wait, no, I thought: “I have that book.”

Later book club editions that I bought in 2008 and will read…. someday. Undoubtedly, they’re way out of date for modern things but are still appropriate for things that still actually work.

Neo posted this video, 10 Old House Styles No Longer Built Today, on her open thread today:

As you might remember, gentle reader, when we lived in Old Trees, we took our baby-at-the-time out walking for sometimes four hours a day, so we covered a large portion of the area. And of the ten styles included in the video, there are only three that I cannot remember seeing: Atomic Ranch, Brutalist, and Shotgun Shack.

Which is not to say that you cannot find them; it just means that I cannot remember seeing them, although the area had several smaller houses which might have been Atomic Ranch or Shotgun Shacks, they might have been torn down for bigger houses by now.

You might think that all-steel Lustron houses would be hard to come by, but we had one across the street and two around the corner from our house just off the highway. Not as many as Brentwood, another suburb of St. Louis, but enough that I recognize them.

Well, he is breakfasting on a hunk of French bread and cheese (not French), so….

All signs indicate yes.

(See also: a crust of brown bread as a snack.)

Ah, again. Facebook is starting to show me contacts with whom I’ve not had much truck in a long while (because Facebook generally prefers to show me suggested posts and whatnot) but whose expressed opinions are disproval of the current administration (which is a little over a month old and has already apparently ruined everything).

I mean, we’ve got the professional poet whom I knew 25 years ago who disapproves. We don’t comment or like each other’s posts–why is she back with her disapproval?

I dunno. I guess Facebook has an interesting idea of whom I want to see anyway. I get posts from an ex-pat with, erm, modernly special child or children, with whom I worked twenty years ago. I get my cousin the yoga teacher who just married a woman.

I also get this Twitter friend whose webinar I attended this month, but who probably could do without my Internet acquaintance:

Jeez, man. Tell me your job depends upon government funding without saying those words.

Facebook is not nudging me to more modernly approved opinions. I’m getting nudged to not bother any more.

I’m pretty sure I’ve grabbed my best one-liners from Facebook and put them onto the recycler tour posts here anyway.

One of the things I’ve been diletanting with with my extra free time the last couple of months trying to build a mobile app using Flutter, which is a framework that’s supposed to be write-once, run-anywhere (where have I heard that before?). Between ChatGPT and me, we’ve actually completed something and got it approved by the Apple App Store.

It’s a little thing that lets you pick boxing or footwork drills and then run them where the app (in my voice) calls out the numbered combos and the strikes if you want to hear them.

It’s not a big thing, and I expect to make about the same off of it as I make from this blog (more, actually, since I don’t actually have to pay money every year for its continued presence, and $0 is greater than negative hundreds or thousands after a couple of decades).

But it does represent the first application I’ve actually completed in, what, 25 years?

I often have ideas for applications or Web sites that I start messing with until I get to a difficult problem which I can’t figure out or find an answer to. Where I shelve it to come back to it later. And often, I don’t.

I mean, I have a project I’ve had the idea for for a decade, and I’ve started writing it in a couple of different languages, but hit a spot (JavaScript promises or having to re-write the front end in a different framework like Angular or Razor) where I just let it go.

But the Boxing Drill Companion? I tried writing it in Swift/SwiftUI natively for iOS (iPhones), but ran into difficulty handling the audio playback (it requires playing the same audio files over and over but in different order for a duration of time). But, last year, in a job interview, someone asked me if I had experience with Flutter, and I said, “No,” (and didn’t get the job). So I (we, with ChatGPT) tried it in Flutter.

To be honest, the LLM has made the difference, I think. Instead of a Web search that yields ten years’ worth of Stack Overflow answers, it gives me a couple of quick answers presumably up-to-date which I can try out and ask further questions if needed. It doesn’t always get the answers right–I got the correct solution for the last problem I was having myself after ChatGPT could not give me the right solution after three tries–but it is pretty helpful. I’m going to miss it when the AI boom collapses.

At any rate, it was briefly gratifying to complete a thing. And then it was followed very quickly by the normal sense of “If I have done it, it must be easy. If I have not done it, it must be impossible.” sentiment that is part of my core operating system.

I’m not talking about the people on the Internet, who are generally nuts (me included), but rather roasted nuts with sugar or caramel on them.

They’re pretty common at festivals and whatnot, generally with a free sample which I tend to avoid. But my beautiful wife received this pack of them in a gift basket she received for a speaking engagement. She tried one and passed them off to me, and I put them in my office. I’ve often had a bag of almonds or a jar of cashews or in headier days, a jar of mixed nuts (oh, the decadent luxury!) for little afternoon snacks, but since the great long walk off of a short pier, employment-wise, last year, it’s been one of the budget trimmings.

So I had this in my office, albeit briefly as it was only four ounces, and….

I realize these things are supposed to be “healthy” snacks, but with a dusting of sugar, c’mon, man, this is candy. Just a little chocolate and binder short of being a candy bar.

Not to slag on the producers of this particular product, but definitely not for me.

But….

Slow-roasted by hand? Jeez, Louise, do not get your recipes from ChatGPT! Use a pan!

On Facebook, I posted this photo with the caption “Hopefully, this $60 worth of kindling will last us the rest of the year.”

I was waiting for someone to say You paid $60 for kindling? which is not the case.

This collection was made from the remnants of two of our front peach trees which cost $30 each a number of years ago. One died the year I pruned it. The other was half-dead, so I cut it down, too. Which leaves us with but two peach trees to not produce peaches this year due to any number of factors which has led them to not produce in the past. And probably more for us to discover if none of the known issues occur.

You know what we grow in the orchards of Nogglestead? Firewood.

Oh, and about that kindling: I had filled the box in the autumn, and we made it through the contents of it already. We’re not using “cheaters” this year as we are not spending dollars a day on Duraflame logs. I’m building the fires from scratch, so I’m using more kindling than some years. When I cut down the peach trees this autumn, I left the kindling-sized limbs and branches aside for later breaking into kindling-sized pieces, and I did that last weekend, spending a couple of hours snapping, lopping, and sawing them down and filling the box again. Given that it’s February and has been pretty warm this winter, it should hold us. And who knows what will die in the orchard next year? I might take down the fallen but growing apple tree.

Last week, a…. friend? Fellow I know? died of cancer. He was 51.

Todd was a year behind me in high school, and he was pretty close with Mike if I recall. To be honest, I knew of him more than I knew him. Was more on the jockly spectrum than I was–he was a cross-country runner and wrestler, and I was National Honor Society and writer’s group. I guess he was pretty smart, too, so they tell me, but, again, I didn’t know him in high school that much.

When I was out of college, he was in a gap year between high school and the Navy, and he was in a couple of local performances, including one with the Goldenrod Showboat in St. Charles. I took my girlfriend at the time to go see the performance and the small nonspeaking part he had. I also rooked him into doing a staged reading of The Courtship of Barbara Holt which meant that a bunch of people read the scripts to each other to a mostly empty coffee house on Sunday afternoons. One of the open mic hosts had an actors group called Stages St. Louis which did this whenever it could shanghai a play and enough actors to do it, and in my younger, energetic days, I gathered a group of my friends (plus Todd plus one Stages St. Louis actress) and even got another couple of people to come see it. Todd was a little disappointed that it was only that, but he was a trouper and made it to three of the four performances.

I didn’t really hear from him for a long time after that. He went into the Navy, got into the SEAL program but did not make it completely through and became a search and rescue swimmer. After the service, he went Hollywood. We became Facebook friends sometime this century; I sent him a copy of The Courtship of Barbara Holt when he was in Hollywood–partly because he was in it and partly because, hey, maybe he would tell his friends about it.

A couple years ago, he moved back to his parents’ house in Missouri, up in Jefferson County, and he asked me to call him. I spoke with him a couple of times over the phone, hoping to become, I dunno, friends, but….

Ultimately, he wanted me to write his biography with his stories about his time in S&R and as a stuntman in Hollywood. He told me “stories” on the phone which were basically just “I met so and so when I was bartending in L.A.” with no details. To be honest, I don’t remember many of them. You can see him, what, jump over a fence as Steven Van Zant’s stunt double in some film (the one where Van Zant climbs over a fence).

So I set up a Google doc and a process where he could start telling/writing his stories about his tae kwon do classes and his military stories and his Hollywood stories. I made a number of sections and a couple of prompts, and I hoped he’d start telling/typing those stories and that I would maybe ask questions based on some of them to flesh them out and then eventually organize them into an autobiography. But he didn’t touch hit, although he started posting on Facebook that the story of his life was being written. I think he wanted me to interview him a couple of times with a steno pad and turn that into a book.

After some time, when he hadn’t even looked at the framework I set up, so I told him that I could put him in touch with a couple of former journalists who might better be what he was looking for via text, and our contact fell off after that.

He was sick the whole time, of course, although he never mentioned it.

He was a nice guy, and I’m sorry we couldn’t find a way to work together on his book. I’m also sorry that I did not get to be a better friend, but he seemed to be looking more for something from me than to be my friend. Unfortunately, I feel that way about a lot of people whom I eventually try to become better friends with.

His death has left me shaken for the whole weekend just because of my remorse–couldn’t I have written his book or at least left him the illusion that I would–and a bit of anger that that’s all the good I was to him. And guilt at making it all about me.

Whatever the lesson is to be learned here, I will continue to not learn it.

Woman thought phone call was a scam before she inherited stranger’s £400,000 estate:

A woman who was told she was set to inherit a distant relative’s estate at first thought she was being sucked into a scam.

Lorraine Gesell, a 60-year-old living in Canada, received a call to say that her mother’s English cousin had died and that she was a beneficiary. In September 2021, Raymond Barry died alone aged 85 with no next of kin. However he left behind a sizeable estate worth more than £400,000. With no will either, there was no one set to inherit it.

I’ve heard this story before.

Big plans?

Lorraine hopes to go on a holiday with the money, but says she will probably spend it on home improvements instead.

Probably for the best, as:

In total, Finders International found 47 beneficiaries across New Zealand, Canada, Australia and throughout the UK – each taking a share of the estate.

Quick Internet math indicates that the at current exchange rates, that’s about $487,400. Heirs will give 30% to the heir hunter, and the recovered estate would pay for all legal bills, and each share would cap out at about $7,000 dollars. Hopefully not life-changing money, but helpful.

Ah, but what of your long-lost cousin’s case, Brian J.? I did not sign on, but fourteen different people apparently responded to the heir hunter. It’s in the window of six months for debtors to come forward with two or three months to go.

In a low trust society, every four way stop becomes a Mexican standoff.

Which is not much different from what they are today, which is a standoff of people waving at each other to go first.

I’m not crazy; I’m talking to the Large Language Models getting trained by all the apps that have turned my phone’s microphone and/or camera on without my permission.

And remember, gentle reader; it’s not that your phone is listening to you; it’s that the phones and so many other devices belonging to other people are also listening to you.

So the day after Christmas, the heating elements in our oven went out (for the third time since we’ve lived here). In the past, we’ve called an appliance repairman, a local company (not a lead generation company of any sort, although I guess most anyone now is a dispatcher for subcontractors unless the same guy answers the phone that shows up), he has ordered a part, and he’s come back to put it in when it arrived. Apparently, it’s two screws and two electric connectors, so this time, since I’m more seasoned now with washer, dryer, and refrigerator repairs, I thought I would maybe do it myself.

So I ordered a part from a seller on Amazon, not fulfilled by Amazon, and:

To be clear: Apparently, this part shipped from St. Louis, Missouri, two days later (December 28), and:

• Arrived and left the carrier facility in St. Louis twice.
• Arrived in Kansas City on January 1, and then left the facility twice.
• Arrived in Springfield facility January 2, last Thursday, twice.

And there it sits. It is still scheduled to arrive by Wednesday, after I ordered it and twelve days since it shipped from St. Louis. Which is a three hour drive away. For some reason, it was routed through Kansas City for a week.

Criminey, I hope it’s the right part. The males in the house are missing their frozen pizzas.

And you know what else I’ve gotten this year? A couple of returned Christmas cards with this label:

What does that even mean? I would have thought I scrawled the address incorrectly, perhaps put the zip code from the wrong line on an envelope so it didn’t match the street address or the city and state, but…. No, these were the proper addresses, and Internet maps indicate they have not been bulldozed for new roads. So what gives? No clue. Maybe the Post Office’s new AI scanners (I just made that up but now looking at it, I see they are).

Meanwhile, the current Postmaster General responds to criticism like this:

That’s him. In Congress. Responding to criticism. Man, he sure trolled those Republicans, ainna? Benjamin Franklin, he is not.

Hey, I understand that the Post Office has many fiscal challenges. Public pensions, public employees, and diminishing use of the post. But it’s not helping things by adding Sunday delivery to accommodate Amazon (and then lose a bunch of that revenue when builds out its logistical network). Or extending first class mail delivery times to, what, a week now? Combined with the fact that apparently my creditors don’t send their bills until a week before the bills are due, well, even I am not mailing many checks these days.

Jeez, Louise. I hope it’s the right part.

Ah, behavioral economics is not just for humans anymore. Now it can just be made real by algorithms.

I’ve been following Scott Walker on Facebook since he was a governor (and should have been a presidential nominee in 2012).

Anti-Scott Walker random posts? I’ve been ‘following’ them since Facebook decided I need to see them as a preface.

And, to be honest, I’m not sure why I’m still seeing Scott Walker prominently in my Facebook feed. Because he posts about the Packers? I have no clue.

But feel free to discuss amongst yourselves or to think amongst yourselves whether it’s predictable or not that the person with the handwritten note has to long-term borrow a vehicle from a parent.

Oh, one presumes so much.

For some reason, I get a lot of “Actors Then And Now” recommended posts on Facebook. And occasionally, I get one where the “now” picture is of an actor who has been dead for a number of years.

Anyfulekno Corey Haim died in 2010.

But the AI? Nah, it’s more fool than any human fool.

Weird, ainna, that presumably paying customers can post incorrect info without getting any warning or blocking or whatnot. Because that’s how the money is made.