Musings from Brian J. Noggle

While I was researching yesterday’s post (that is, reading the Wikipedia entry on the Surfside condominium collapse), it (the Wikipedia entry) mentioned that the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse was the most deadly (non-aviation) engineering failure in history (so far). In that disaster, a walkway loaded with party attendees gave way and collapsed onto a ballroom floor with other partygoers under it.

Ah, gentle reader; I remember the engineering failure that caused it.

I read something about it in a magazine, or perhaps in the hotel itself–might we have stayed there on one of our trips to Kansas City over the years? But I think it was a magazine because I remember seeing a diagram like this:

It has stuck in my head over the years. I’d also say it has informed me of my twee little two-by-four engineering projects around Nogglestead, but probably not much.

Ted Gioia posts Why Secondhand Is Now Better Than New, Or how the thrift store suddenly became cool:

Something unusual is happening in the world of gifting. I saw it during the recent holiday season—and you may have too.

The Wall Street Journal noticed it a few weeks ago. People are now buying secondhand gifts. The sheer numbers are staggering—in a recent survey, 82% of consumers said they’re more likely to purchase pre-owned items for holiday presents.

Ah, gentle reader. As you know, I’ve been doing that for a long time–and I’ve mentioned it from time to time especially since I started doing “Good Album Hunting” posts where my Christmas shopping has resulted in more for me than gift recipients (like this post from 2016).

I have found some delightful things for gifts. And because I have often relied on the Gift Schtick, I’ve found it easier to find Duck Dynasty, Dallas, duck, chicken, flamingo, owl, or eagle-themed gifts at second hand stores. Even now, or at least this year, I noticed an awful lot of owls available, which is what I would have bought for my sainted mother.

In my case, it’s not so much quality but other things that have led me to secondhand stores for gifts. But as they grow popular, the prices will go up, and they’ll have less appeal for me.

I posted earlier today about us seeing the policy activity after a local shooting.

Turns out, on this very date 14 years ago, something similar happened.

Man, right about that time, I was assuredly questioning the safety of my new home. In addition to passing that crime scene, right about the same time we had serial killers at church (who came to Nogglestead for dinner after the unfortunate instance of one of their victim’s dying); the coach of the little league team I also coached and my boys played on shot his wife and killed himself; and someone rang our bell at 4am because the stolen car they were driving broke down or something–he abandoned it and fled from the helpful deputy we summoned to try to help while I waited inside the house cradling a shotgun just in case.

Even worse, on this day eight years ago….

My beautiful wife and I are doing the Whole 30 again this year, which will be our third time through it. You know, it won’t really affect my intake much. I won’t cook bacon or breakfast sausage. I haven’t really eaten as many doughnuts as in the recent past. I won’t have the opportunity to throw in a frozen pizza or something else from the freezer for a quick lunch. I won’t be able to cook a can of beans as a handy side. I’ll not have my nightly portion of wine. I won’t be able to snack on tortilla chips in the evening, which is something I do, what, once a week? No melted cheese tortillas or ham and cheese on rye.

I’ll have to be mindful, and that’s what is difficult, especially at lunch time. I can eat all the raw vegetables I want, and all the nuts I want, and meat and eggs. I’ll have to make sure there’s plenty of things in the refrigerator, so I’ll hard-bake a dozen eggs or two and cook extra cheap steak or chicken for snacking. But I’ll make it through, especially since I get to concentrate on the Winter Reading Challenge, which also starts today.

Babbel in the New Year: Lifetime language learning for $199

So the monthly subscriptions must be tailing off, ainna?

I’ve mocked the monthly subscription language places before, saying they’re not geared to help you learn the language–they’re geared to make you come back tomorrow.

Or maybe I’m just bored because in Duolingo, I only got far enough into Japanese to introduce myself and to order green tea and rice. After a couple of weeks.

I opened a bookshop. It was the best, worst thing I’ve ever done:

January 2025
Slate-grey skies and relentless rural gloom. The Wiltshire idyll that my husband and I moved our young family to 15 years ago entirely loses its charm at this time of year. I long for London. For high heels on pavements. For culture around every corner. I head to the butcher in Tisbury, a picturesque, largely independent high street between Shaftesbury and Salisbury, to buy something cheering for dinner. And that is when I see it: the three arched windows of the shop opposite, formerly a gift shop full of cotton nightdresses and the type of wooden toys no child ever wants to play with, a “For Sale” sign hanging outside.

February
“A bookshop?” says the solicitor we have instructed with the conveyancing of the purchase. “Lovely, romantic idea. You’ll go under in a year.”

I read The Bookshop in 2021 and saw the film in June.

My beautiful wife’s barometer and comfort level with the idea of opening or acquiring a book store waxes and wanes. Given our current fiscal situation, it’s definitely not in a gibbous state.

God, I hate this song.

I am pretty sure I hate most of John Lennon’s oeuvre, especially if it’s not with the Beatles (and I’m not that much of a Beatles fan either).

I find the sentiment artificial and cloying, and I also tend to feel a stinging indictment that I’ve mostly frittered away another year, that I have continued to squander my inheritance that I’ve been given, and that the next year will probably be more of the same.

I did have some accomplishments this year:

• I got to the rank of 3rd degree black belt in martial arts (but I’ve been very intermittent in attendance since last January).
• I did manage to get three apps into the Apple App Store (Boxing Drill Companion, Dr. Franklin’s Art of Virtue Tracker, and Nico’s Kitty Translator).
• I had two poems appear in a university publication (the Green Hills Literary Lantern).
• I have four poems submitted to a major, actual print, magazine, and they have not been rejected in seven months.

  

I mean, I guess that’s a couple of things to hang one’s hat on, conversation starters and whatnot, but some other numbers are less encouraging.

• I “applied” for 1,035 jobs this year, of which I received…
• 26 responses requesting more information, assessments, or scheduling screener interviews, wherein…
• I talked to actual people at 9 companies, mostly screeners, but…
• 2 times I went deep into the interview process and got…
• 1 job offer in February, contingent on contract award in April. Given how the times have a-changed, there’s no telling if that contract was awarded. I liked my chances elsewhere, though, although this seems to have been an overly optimistic view of the market and/or my salability.

I have been blessed to have two part-time, sometimes, contracts to provide some income, although it’s frankly only enough to cover COBRA health benefits now. One of the contracts, though, requires me to be available a lot of the time but I only get to bill when I’m responding to needs. Which has left me feeling chained to my desk for many days over the year. And it has night meetings, which means I’m “on” until 8:30 or so at night, which leaves me little time for reading. I’m lucky to have it; it’s one of the few job offers I’ve had in the late over-the-transom period of applying on the Internet.

So, what am I going to do differently in 2026 to improve my lot? Probably not a lot, gentle reader.

I haven’t had “New Years Resolutions,” but I have tried to pin some themes on the years. Things to focus on improving, so to speak. The theme for 2024, for example, was “Focus.” I realized I was a little busy-minded, especially when reading at night, where I was constantly checking the Internet for this or that on my phone when I was supposed to be reading. So I worked hard to resist that urge to respond to a text until the end of a chapter or to not look up something when it occurred to me. I did okay at that one.

This year, the goal was “Industry.” Given my employment situation, I wanted to make sure that I spent the time at my computer and other daytime hours in a productive fashion. Well, kinda, especially early in the year. But my Industry yielded few sales of apps, which discouraged me, so, yeah, the latter part of this year has been less industrious.

Next year, though: “Get the hell away from the desk.” It’s not one word and not very snappy, but it will probably do a lot for me. One of the things that I’ve been proud of going into my fifties has been how sort-of athletic I am and how healthy I am, and the latter part of 2025 has seen me relinquish that day by day. Plus, I really could use the interaction with humans that I get from martial arts classes or business networking events or tech meetups.

I should probably start today. I should probably start right now. Maybe after a nap. Which is away from the desk, after all.

Kim du Toit is not interested in winning one and a half billion in the lottery:

Here’s the thing. The cash option on that beast was about $500 million, making the lucky winner a semi-billionaire. And that life-changing thing is what stopped me from buying a ticket.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I wouldn’t be able to spend the money — I have plenty of relatives and friends, all of whom I could make extremely happy/wealthy. But honestly, I don’t want to change my own life that much.

Believe me: change it would. With 500 big ones to your name, you become a target for all sorts of undesirable people: kidnappers, scam artists, robbers, whatever. You might think that you could disappear from public life and become anonymous, but you can’t; that sum of money is just too big. So you’d have to hire lawyers, accountants, financial planners and personal bodyguards… and that all adds up to a massive lifestyle change.

That’s the exact line of reasoning I express to my boys when we pass by the grocery store courtesy counter when the jackpots get that large.

I mentioned to my brother yesterday that the winning ticket was sold in Arkansas, and he said he’d have to check his numbers–he lives not far from the state line, and wasn’t sure what state he bought his tickets in.

Now that would be more my luck: he wins a billion dollars, and I’m the one kidnapped for ransom by some Eastern European syndicate or South American cartel. I mean, we’re close, but are we a million or ten million in ransom close? I’d hate to discover.

In a post about upcoming movies, he likes the trailer for The Odyssey but:

But now here’s some more Slop Superhero Content: Wonder Man. They did a race swap on Wonder Man which I don’t care about because, get this, literally no one cares about Wonder Man. The character was invented for purely cynical reasons — it was practice back then to steal another company’s IP by just flipping the gender of a character. Thus, Marvel created Wonder Man just because DC was making some money with Wonder Woman. (And Stan Lee created She-Hulk because he knew that someone, likely DC, would create a female Hulk if he didn’t do so first.)

If you never heard of Wonder Man, don’t sweat it. He’s a D-list team member on whichever Avengers team needed a spare body in the 80s. He was one of those characters I would actively avoid by not buying a comic if he was on the cover or if I knew he was on the team. Like Captain Mar-Vell or Quasar or a dozen other generic Superman-derivatives.

Oh, that’s going to leave a mark on my retirement portfolio which is heavy into Gen X Collectibles that later generations don’t want anyway.

I have the first 13 issues of the Wonder Man comic book from the 1980s and the first 17 of Quasar.

As a matter of fact, I recently saw a Facebook memory from, oh, a decade or so ago asking what everyone’s favorite Avenger was, and I said Wonder Man to tut tut the people who only knew the Avengers from the movies.

Probably not going to see a streaming series, though, so I won’t know about how it compares to the comics which were a little arch in their day.

How’s your comic book collection these days, Brian J.? you might ask. Well, the last comic I might have bought was Sarah Hoyt’s Barbarella in 2021, but I’ve read a couple from the older ones I reclaimed when my boy cleaned his room this summer, so I’m at 1216 logged in the spreadsheet. Don’t anticipate buying any anytime soon. Man, I miss the Comic Cave and it’s dollar-each multi-issue runs. But the business model that made it affordable to me put him out of business. But Comic Force is still going–I just was in there to buy a couple of short boxes and poly bags.

On the comic book movie/series front, I wonder why nobody has tapped into the Marvel 2099 titles. They came out in the early 1990s with imaginings of other people claiming the hero names in a dystopian future–Doom 2099, Punisher 2099, Spider-Man 2099, Hulk 2099, Ravage 2099, X-Men 2099…. And some of them ran for two or three years. I wonder if they could make something of that, but the people in charge are probably just too young.