A year ago, give or take a couple months, my father left this vale. It was unexpected, the result of an accident that put him in the E/R, and a week later, rendered further treatment unnecessary. Not too much later, a friend of mine lost a daughter. In her case, every day and week of life, for nearly two decades, was a precious joy held close against a lifelong chronic illness. That said, it too caught his family off guard when she suddenly took a turn for the worst. The term he used, describi…
All posts in culture
The Dark Herald has an excellent post where he dissects some SJW word salad and points out something that is worth a reminder: that critics are no longer really, as a whole, evaluating whether or not movies are good entertainment and stories [https://darkherald.net/2019/12/01/the-critics-real-job/]. Instead, as he puts it, they are telling you what you should be seeing - not the same thing. Dare I say he didn't go far enough? Not caring about craft has been obvious for a while. I'd been maki…
I wasn't going to disrupt a post in gratitude with petty worldly concerns, but it's now the day after, and those who have gathered are going on with the rest of their lives, and so I turn my focus to other things. One thing seen in the lead-up to the holiday was a Saturday Night Live skit with Will Farrell I got in my inbox from family who for some reason still think SNL is funny. Yes, every once in a blue moon on odd leap years, they can be self aware (look up the liberal…
Stavanger was interesting. First of all, it's the de facto oil capital of Norway, and the source of much of its wealth. Where Denmark relies on it's shipping and biomedical for paying for all the "free" health care, Norway leans on oil. It's also not a mess of sckyscrapers, though there are some moderately tall buildings. The food was excellent, but of course hideously expensive in actual restaurants. Yes. 7-Eleven's are a thing in Europe. And Japan.The cathedral there was in early stages o…
Filed under "stuff doesn't work" and "consequences of lost focus" - I ended up dealing with an interesting bug in the new "Catalina" update for Mac OS. No, not the one giving antivirus and other "data protection" types nightmares about the kernel being locked down, no extensions, etc. It turns out for a lot of people, you walk into a Starbucks, hotel, etc., that when you connect to the wifi, it connects, but that login/authentication sheet that is supposed top open up to allow you on the netw…