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This time last year I hit Hong Kong Market with a friend and dodged kids throwing poppers on the floor in celebration of Lunar New Year - Rat. Some folks were beginning to wear face masks. We were not yet wearing masks ourselves.

A few weeks later, another friend and I went to Rockfish Grill for their Mardi Gras specials. We decided we needed to do this again next year, but with many more people in tow. It was simple fun, folks going around handing out beads to patrons, and just lots of people enjoying a great evening out.

This year, I'm expecting to see a polar bear outside my window, and given the 133 car pile-up on the nearby freeway due to only a slight layer of ice, I'm avoiding freeways like the ... well, hell. I think we determined that phrase is kind of null and void now.

Just like how Mythbusters busted the Bull in a China Shop phrase.

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How is it that I can successfully file for unemployment, renew my driver license, renew my toll tags, renew my license tags, file my taxes all online and/or by phone without having to come into physical contact with a single person (with the exception of once every Blue Moon when the DMV insists on a new, updated picture, which I can't just upload like I can for a passport - oh yeah, another thing that can be added to the list), and which all involve varying state and federal agencies, yet we're still sitting here arguing over mail-in versus in-person elections?
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They lost a band member, and not due to some illness, but instead on bad terms.

I would like to applaud them for their pro-action.

Details as posted by one of the band members as a pinned comment to the below song that was just re-edited to remove the offending band member. )

Cheesey

Jul. 1st, 2020 07:59 am
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I couldn't resist sharing this article about a man whining on behalf of his wife regarding a shredded cheese incident. Considering I am a cheese junkie myself, I get it, but I also get the backlash, given what the rest of the world is going through, both with the virus and with the Black Lives Matter v White Privilege. This is a prime example of someone out of touch and in his own little cocoon world.

Shredded Cheese Incident at Allen Mi Cocina

In other news, I had carne asada last night (which required NO shredded cheese) while at dinner with a couple of co-workers. They wanted to celebrate my birthday, and I obliged, knowing that all of us are working from home and limiting our overall exposure on a regular basis. I'm both instantly regretting it (going out when I am otherwise refusing to dine-in anywhere, to include bringing home sushi) and feeling guilty for enjoying it (OMG, it was so tasty). We had the entire main dining room area to ourselves until the last 5 minutes or so when other diners were being seated. Most everyone else that came to dine sat outside on the patio. I said it was too windy for the patio when we first arrived, and I'm glad I did. There were at least 4 tables of folks on the patio, most likely 6ft apart, but it still looked "crowded" to me. Had there been more diners inside, I would have suggested we take the food back to someone's house, or even I might just head straight home and eat it.

So that's my biggest exposure to-date since Lockdown (it's its own proper noun now in my world). Considering how anxious I felt, I won't be dining out again for quite some time. At this point, I'm betting on whether or not I will feel comfortable enough going to see Black Widow in the theaters, which was pushed back from a May release date to Nov. I have a feeling Nov will still be about like how it is right now - hopefully not worse, but probably not much better. I was very much looking forward to seeing Black Widow, The New Mutants, and, strangely enough, Maverick, the Top Gun sequel that I was planning to see as my "birthday movie". There are typically new releases of "summer blockbusters" near my birthday just in time for the July 4th holiday, so I try to pick one each year, similar to another friend who's birthday is near Christmas when holiday hits are being released, although her and her twin sister's tradition include dressing in pajamas and taking blankets to a late movie so they can come straight home and to bed afterwards. Good plan. That reminds me of when License to Drive was my OMGOMGOMG I HAVE TO SEE THIS MOVIE for my birthday. That was in ... 1988.

I feel old.

3AM

Apr. 23rd, 2020 03:35 am
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The world has turned upside-down.

Our house has turned upside-down.

I can't sleep.

Too many to-do things on my mind that I either can't get to or don't have the willpower to take care of once I'm off work.

Wall-O-Text )
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Important man in today's time has been stabbed in the back too many times before.
Important man in today's time tells his story to the news paper media.
Important man in today's time gets his story out to the entire Dallas-Fort Worth area. (The story I posted about 2 days ago.)
Important man in today's time gets noticed by Dallas higher ups.
Important man in today's time gets noticed by the state.

Important man in today's time lands a contract that is at a minimum acceptable to him for the time being.

Here's to hoping that contract was a decent one and not based on threats by the state that if he didn't start producing there would be trouble.

Well

Mar. 27th, 2020 07:04 am
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I didn't get the better-paying job. I was told that I was one of their top two candidates, but they went with the other person who has more high-level corporate experience.

I'm pretty crushed, and I keep getting reminded that given the rest of the world's situation I shouldn't be. That doesn't change how I feel.

I'll get over it in a couple days.

So, I still have the accounting consulting job and am now working from home even though our cubicles are easily 6ftx6ft each. The better to limit human contact in general. Even walking past someone in the hall from another department or touching the coffee machine buttons risks cross-contamination, not to mention touching the elevator buttons and door handles in a 40-story building.

Like most people, I'm apprehensive. I have one less weight on my shoulders (interviewing for another job), but again, I'm crushed, so there's a slight hint that my brain would like to go into a depressive tailspin right now, but I'm not one to let my brain do such things.

Yesterday morning (before I got the bad news) I thoroughly enjoyed my morning, sipping coffee by an open window with a nice breeze, listening to the neighbor's kids playing, them doing yard work, the smell of them grilling for lunch, and even their damned rooster was pleasant sounding. I'm hoping this morning will help get me back into a similar headspace. I gotta buckle down and focus on my actual job instead of daydreaming about a no-longer-potential job. I'm missing that coffee/tea machine at work, and being able to actually talk to my coworkers in person rather than slow group chat and/or email, but at least we've got a group chat, and we send little jokes a few times a day and talk about our lunch plans.

Head Count: One roommate working from home in the living room. One roommate on furlough for two weeks, because he took the previous week off due to sinus allergies to be nice and not worry his co-workers, but they aren't trusting him to not still be sick/contagious/whatever, even though he never ran any fever nor coughed during that time and no one else is being furloughed - he's pretty sure they have it in for him. Third roommate is in a small handful of folks volunteering to still go into his place of work since instead of 150 people in the office there's now only 5 of them, and he's worried about our house bandwidth with 3 people working from home. I think he's also worried about being cooped up with all the roommates for so long. Of all of us, he'd probably be the one to go stir crazy first.

I'm already tired of the news about the virus and what's going on with other countries and all of the daily predictions regarding how things are going to go moving forward. Good thing my job takes me back to dealing with debits and credits and even more debits and credits, and a few debits and credits on the side. With a whipped debit and cherry credit on top.

Bummer

Mar. 24th, 2020 07:25 am
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“All of this says that what we need right now is a government-backed Strategic Toilet Paper Reserve,” Wolfers added.

“The Strategic Toilet Paper Reserve removes the incentive to stockpile. It ensures that even if you see others running to the store to stockpile toilet paper, you no longer need to try to run to beat them,” he said.

“You can relax, knowing that you’ll still be able to wipe your bum.”

Source: Why people are buying so much toilet paper amid coronavirus outbreak
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Of all the COVID-19 emails I have received from places of business in the past 48 hours, the one from Barnes & Noble came off rather cryptic, as though it's really a secret spy message in need of being decoded.

Most of them probably copy/pasted from someone else and talk about how they've been following the news, health and safety of patrons and employees matters, and then specifics of what they have implemented within their business and/or closing info.

Some of them include special discounts for the weekend and free delivery to encourage continued patronage.

Here's B&N's:
-----------------------------------------
Dear Reader,

We’re living through turbulent times together. Our booksellers are your neighbors, your friends and family. Your stories are our stories, and we know how resilient our communities are.

Sincerely,

The Booksellers of Barnes & Noble
-----------------------------------------

Um...yeah...okay.
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I understand that the point of using those words is to calm the hysterical masses, but quite frankly they annoy the shit out of me. In this instance, there's a highly documented reason, and it's called physics, but our dumb ass human brothers and sisters don't want to hear it, or say it, or go into it. It's that need of having to dumb things down that annoys me so.

"Naturally eroding coastline" leaves 3 dead north of San Diego"
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"...[W]e cannot emphasize how much the Moon is not a part of Mars."

- Brian Williams on The 11th Hour, in response to one of our notorious president's tweets

If MSNBC posts the video clip of this segment of his show, I'll update this post.

Getting Old

Nov. 2nd, 2018 08:21 am
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I just discovered the truth of this a couple months ago.

From shirt.woot.com

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The news of today is about a fear that Trump will take his Twits to a whole new level by "planting a Government-controlled loudspeaker in the home and on the person of every American."

Not only is this a system that has been in place for a while now, Japan still has us beat.

In case of missile attack, they 1)set off local sirens (check), 2)send out alerts to cell phones (check), and 3)magically turn on televisions to news alerts (nope, we're not there yet).

[Reference 1:51, The Third Awakening, for the television]

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I've been watching the crap out of Tiny Houses on YouTube, which includes permanent houses (I have that bed), mobile houses on trailers, refurbished school buses ("skoolies"), RVs and vans, creative apartment designs, multipurpose Tetris furniture, amazing designs, and traveling castles.

In the middle of all these videos, I came across this guy with his 5 kids in a small condo. Interestingly enough, he's running for city council in Vancouver. His biggest platform is city living for family and the deconstruction of suburban sprawl.

I was also sent this article denouncing the open concept great room, which seems kind of fitting with some of the tiny house mindsets.

Funny enough, I picked out a random audiobook while awaiting other books I have on hold to become available. It's called The Bookshop on the Corner, and I picked it out after reading only the first info paragraph without knowing much more. The heroine goes from city dwelling to urban farm dwelling, living in a barn that's been converted into a cottage with a refurbished van she turns into a traveling bookstore. It's interesting in it's ability to role-combine (as opposed to role-reversal) the mindset of urban living + travel van.

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