Much has transpired in my life in the last month or two. I faced some rather unpleasant events. I made some moves that I have been working toward for a good year that improve my day-to-day. I started back at the J-O-B, which is predictable but a significant sponge of time and effort.
I have been and still am considering allowing this blog and page to disappear. The last couple months I’ve not had any real interest in it and haven’t seen the point of continuing it. But today as I disabled the auto renew settings on my Network Solutions hosting account, I am having second thoughts.
The auto renew for my SSL security certificate hit me quite unexpectedly last month and was an unhappy challenge. If I had realized before time, I probably would have let it lapsed. It was an unwelcome expense at a time when I can ill afford such complications. On the bright side it is good for two more years, so I have some time to reset and rebuild before I decide to pull the plug from my little project here.
The big things that threw me off recently include my air conditioner giving up. I noticed on after waking up on June 28th the air was no longer blowing. I noticed when things started heating up mid morning. Because I’m kinda handy and moreover broke as hell I did some research, mostly on YouTube, to determine what the problem may be and how to fix it. I narrowed down the problem to the blower motor. I went into my attic and sweated profusely while attempting to examine and determine how to fix the problem myself.
I thought I could fix the broken HVAC unit for a few hundred dollars, so I proceeded to remove the old blower/motor. I managed to get it out of the unit physically, but ran into trouble wit the wiring and circuit card removal. I decided then I needed a new unit anyway.
My old HVAC unit was never good. I had it inspected several months prior to its failure because I believed it had problems. The inspector all but laughed at how poorly the old system was installed. It was a heat pump not an air conditioner like I thought originally. I thought it was an air conditioner because the heater part of it was apparently never installed. From the time I bought the house only the emergency heat strip would work with the system, so I relied on space heaters, specifically Dr Heater infrared heaters, two, which worked enough for my needs. So I never really had good central heat during the four or five winters I’ve spent here, which has always been a disappointment to say the least, but never justified to me replaced the whole defective unit.
Now that the whole thing had stopped working, especially in late June, the loss of cooling totally justified going into more debt. So I researched and ended up working with a company that I was comfortable with. After my meeting and decision to proceed the company had a new HVAC unit and team out the next day and it was installed before 5pm rolled around. I’ve been cool and happy never since. Yeah it’s another 10k in debt but thats what American’s do when the times get rough.
The HVAC problem was just the first of the rather major incidents that have plagued me the last couple months. I don’t feel like writing anymore today. I may write a bit about the other incidents, who knows. Perhaps when the ancient historians are examining my significant and complex life that information would be valuable to them, lol. For now I will simply say that the other things that vexed me recently are, my water heater in my attic ruptured and leaked. It was a slow leak at least, but damaged two rooms significantly. Which leads to the restoration company that demolished those rooms and set up intrusive drying equipment for a week and a half. Then a renovation company came and rebuilt it all over another week and a half. thus disrupting my peace and tranquility in my dwelling as well as my finances.
I feel less bad about not blogging now that I think about it.
It’s been quite a long time since I’ve posted anything. All of you clamoring for my return will be happy at last.
It’s officially summer, and school is out. Well, the regular school program is out; the summer school program is just starting. I am driving summer school again this year. I’ve driven summer school every year since I started this job excepting one. It’s strange for me to say, but that year I was off too long. I became restless and consumed with boredom. Granted I didn’t and really still don’t have the means to do any fancy vacations or much traveling at all. If I can swing it I hope to do a bit of light traveling in July, but circumstances will dictate that.
It’s Monday. When I wake up and drink my coffee I usually watch the ABC morning news show. I know, legacy media yuck, blah, blah, blah. And I tend to agree with that negative view of media in general, but I seriously doubt that journalists will out-right lie. Lies by omission, they’d do that all day long, but a bald faced lie, thankfully it hasn’t go that bad, yet…
Anyway, what I saw on the news this morning, the thing I’m thinking about now, was more or less the same exact thing I’ve seen every Monday for the past two months, war. Yes the war that started last month that I mentioned in my last blog post. It’s not really a war by the way, even though everyone including the President of the USA call it a war, but that’s only when he’s talking unofficially about it. Officially it is an action or something like that. Double speak bull sticks! Anyway, we won that action/war the first three days of of the action/war, at least that is what the President of the USA told us. But… and that’s a big butt… it really hasn’t ended yet. Just last night Israel and Iran shot missiles at each other directly for the first time since the cease fire that is supposed to be in effect. But don’t worry! The President of the USA says that we are days away from a good deal that will bring peace to the middle east and return the world to normal business. Heh, yeah, okay.
Every week it is the same thing. President reassures the world that peace is around the corner. More shooting and killing and bombing and whatnot take place to ruin the current optimism. Then on Friday that president goes on the verbal offensive, and offensive he is, and tells the world, “Well, we got that little mess under control and will work hard all weekend to find a solution.” The stock market rallies. The good people of the world leave work, go home, go swimming with their kids, or burn some hamburgers on the grill. Monday comes back around, and we are day’s away from a deal. Then Israel, or possibly our own glorious US war leaders, do something to muck it up. The cycle starts all over. Week after week. Month after month.
Our leaders are so dumb. What I see happening is that this cycle is going to continue on for more months. Mid term elections will come around. That is going to be line of demarcation.
I’d like to think both houses of congress will change leadership, but I doubt it will work out that way. I doubt it for several reasons, not the least of which is the current leadership have already proven to be unsupportive of the nation’s current standards and practices, to put it politely. Anyway, after the mid terms the ground invasion will start. It doesn’t really matter who controls congress at that point. The opposition party/Democrat party will be powerless to stop it. The current leadership/Republican party will have still have the President, and the President will do what he want’s regardless of what the people want. Of course it depends on which people you ask, as is always the case with war. The business people that stand to make a profit will be supportive of the war, and there are a lot of people who stand to profit from a new protracted, bloody, disgusting war. There will probably be more people, including the ones that will have to fight and die in the war, that don’t support the war. But the Republican party and MAGA’s have really got their ducks in a row this time. Business will win and poor people will die, as always. But we’ll remember them all fondly next Memorial day.
Okay, enough of that. I really haven’t done much in the way of photography lately. I have been doing some novice gardening type things that have been one of my creative outlets. I’ve also been reading more lately. In the last few weeks I’ve finished “Wuthering Heights”, and the “Great Gatsby.” Both of which were excellent. Im currently reading “The Children of Strife” by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It is the fourth in a series of Sci fi books that I’m very much enjoying. I’d highly recommend them. They are kinda weird and deep, but that’s how I like it.
With some of gardening experiments I attempted to start some seeds in my house. I am learning as I go. With my first attempt I used some “organic” soil. Apparently the soil had worm casings in it, which is basically poo. I think that the casings are probably the secret ingredient that led to my prolongs misery. At some point a fruit fly got into my house and found this rather desirable condition and decided to stay and put down roots. Before I knew it I was running a fruit fly, I guess that’s what they are, sanctuary. They breed fast. It was driving me insane having to share my space with all those little buggers. I thought about it. I thought there must be something I can do. The solution was simple. Fly strips. It’s not something I’ve really every used before myself. I’ve seen them used in some places, but never my house. I guess I’ve been lucky, or maybe hygienic, who knows. Those fly strips work very well. They aren’t a perfect solution, but they brought the population down to an acceptable level. I ate having them fly up my nose or around my eyes, yuck.
I mention all this about fly strips and fruit flies because it is today’s photo. I didn’t spend much time on this. It is kinda morbid and gross. But I had an idea to photograph the fly strip. I took a few shots and decided to try to do a focus stack, which turned out pretty okay. It got a good bit more of the scene than without the stacking. It’s still a very narrow focal band, but it’s kinda cool.
Or something that is war but not called a war was declared yesterday. The President of the US along with his attack dog Israel decided to finally do what they’ve been drooling over doing for a long while. Israel has been drooling. Not the entirety of either want this, but it’s not like this is a democratic republic or anything. The US Congress with the express constitutional power to declare war was out of town for a week. No formal declaration came from the ones empowered to make such monumental decisions. No, the President Donald J. Trump has declared himself a dictator, but it won’t be framed that way by the vast majority of mainstream media. The Republicans in power at the moment are all too giddy with the power they expect to wield forever, at this point I believe they think they will have it forever. The publicly stated and released statements and plans of the Republican MAGA rightwing extremist party made it clear their intentions. Most people ignored it. Mainstream media ignored it for the most part. The Republican part obfuscated it. It isn’t over yet. The biggest piece of their slow coup has yet to be put in place, but it is coming very soon. It is reported over the last several days that the plans are already being circulated among the extremist MAGA party for consideration. The plan is to subvert the midterm elections in the near term and the next presidential elections thereafter to ensure MAGA rule in perpetuity. The new American Empire.
My Dad seemed giddy yesterday. It makes me very sad to see that. My memories of him and the things he taught me don’t seem to align with the man he is now. Perhaps my memories are skewed by the second point of view coming from my mother, who always had a say, and was always there. She was there much more than my father, and perhaps her yang had more of a chance to shape what I am now. What I am now is very much upset at the state of everything the extremist MAGAs touch.
Where I live, which is in the middle of the deep south region of the US, in a town that only exists because a US military Air force Base supports everything in the local economy with billions of dollars allocated to it, it’s peripheral military contractors, and research every year. The town basically didn’t exist until the base was established around the World War two era. It was just a wide spot on a dirt road. Anyway, where I live I’d say the vast majority of people are either enthusiastically pro MAGA , or at least supportive without really understanding what it is they are supporting. Based on what I see on a daily basis everything is coming up roses. War is good for business here. This town has the nickname of War Town. I find it very unsettling and try to avoid political discussions. The local types are by and large only worried about what is impacting their live in the immediate and what the mainstream zeitgeist is telling them with the factor that the mainstream zeitgeist is/has created multiple reality bubbles.
I could go on and on for a long time if I had a long time and the motivation to go on. But I have neither right now. Right now I’m motivated to play with a photograph I took at the High Museum of a piece of art by cat named Jameson Green. Cat, yeah, I said cat, lol. I’ve been wanting to try some new things in Photoshop and this photo really fits the mood of the day.
My poor iMac took a dump a minute ago. It totally lost all connection to my mouse and keyboard. Bluetooth totally died. The keyboard was connected via cable. I think this is the second time this has happened. Naturally I wanted to fix it. In my experience sometimes it’s best to really break something to fix it right, at least with IT. I say that from the standpoint of someone not working on anything critical. I’m just an average user and factory reset is usually an option. God forbid.
I forced a reboot. No other way without any input device. I made my iMac forget it’s bluetooth connections to the keyboard and the mouse. I’m not sure why I did this. It really messed things up for a minute, but it did make me go deeper than I’ve ever gone into the bluetooth settings. There was a bigger problem I had to address first.
My keyboard worked after forgetting it on bluetooth because it was wired directly. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to use my keyboard to reconnect my mouse. I thought pretty much everything could be done with a keyboard, but I was disappointed. Honestly I think it may be some deeper issue due to my years and years of playing with this unit. But I was stuck. Stuck without a mouse in an environment where the keyboard apparently didn’t do everything.
To fix my mouse problem I had to go to the store and buy a cheap wired mouse. After checking my stash I realized I got rid of all my wired mice. I didn’t think I’d need them I guess. I like to git rid of things I don’t need. Sometimes it comes back to bite me. Fortunately this bite only too $9 out my hide.
So wham bam and my wireless mouse works again. I did some searching while trying to figure out ways to reconnect before I threw in the towel and went for a new wired mouse. That search led me to a way to reset the the bluetooth settings using the terminal. This is the kind of deep fix I was hoping to find before I started breaking things.
I’m not a hacker or anything. I don’t know much about code or command line interface (CLI), except that it exists and is the foundation upon which the graphic user interface (GUI) is built. I have done some small sessions trying to teach myself how to use the CLI, but it’s too much for me to want to get too deep into. But I do know enough to copy and paste a command into the terminal. And I found the command that rest the bluetooth settings.
I found the command I wanted using AI. Maybe I shouldn’t have trusted an ai for command line stuff, but I did. I didn’t even think about it being risky until just now. Yeah, it’s probably best to be careful when tampering with the operating system. Lucky AI did me right this time. For the record the CLI put into the terminal was “sudo pkill bluetoothd”
There was another thing suggested if that didn’t work. It involved slightly more work, so I took the CLI route. Funny thing, I went ahead and looked into the the second option anyway, and here I am typing all about it. Funny how time and effort is a concern sometimes. Then you end up spending time and effort documenting it all.
Anyway the second suggestion was to go to the library folder, then find the preferences folder, then find the “com.apple.Bluetooth.plist” Delete it. I didn’t actually delete the file. I did find it and it showed it’s creation date and time consistant with when I did the CLI sudo pkill bluetoothd. I decided that was good enough for me.
I got a glazed donut from Willson’s Bakery this morning. It was a delicious breakfast. I got a cream horn for later, perhaps dinner, perhaps tomorrows breakfast. I’m really trying to diet again, but I figure a treat on the weekend won’t kill me. I just have to do good during the week, and this week I did good.
It’s the middle of February and the last few days it’s felt like spring. I wonder if it will hold or if a cold blast will come thought and kill everything that is starting to grow. Who can tell. What I can tell you is I don’t want to do yard work.
Today I’m posting a picture that is a little blurry. Even so I like it. I took this when I walked out my door a few days ago. It was morning. The light was yummy. I wish I had better focus on it, but I can’t change the past. I can only hope to do better in the future. Either way I like this now, and I want to share it. Maybe someone else sees some beauty here.
It’s a great day. It’s a great day to be manic. I’m not here to attempt a self diagnosis. I just feel more upbeat, focused and energetic than most days. It’s another Sunday, the one day I can pretty reliably set aside several hours to work on things I want to work on, and I am. I have tended to write something the last several Sundays, or tried to at least. I may not have always posted whatever I wrote, which is probably for the best.
That leads me to my next order of business. I’ve been giving it some thought. It being how I have been running this blog. Up to now, I’ve posted just about any old crazy rambling thoughts I wrote. Sometimes it may have been relevant or interesting. Begging the question relevant to what or interesting to whom? Which opens another possible topic to explore sometime other than now.
I’ve decided to try to keep this blog less of a personal journal/diary, which it has been moving toward recently. I’m pretty new to blogging and journaling and writing in general. Most of my life I didn’t have much use for it, so I didn’t have much discipline or real direction. Realistically, I still don’t, but I’m working on trying to improve. So in the future I expect I will continue to write journal/diary entries. I find them therapeutic, which is so antithetical to my younger self’s opinion it’s almost an unbelievable thing for me to say now. I will continue to post the journal entries because I wrote it and want to do something with it. however, I am going to make those journal/diary entries private. Only I and possibly a shrink will likely ever see them,or maybe a board hacker with too much time on their hands.
I hope your not too disappointed to find out I’ll be a little more careful putting my raw insanity on display. Don ’t worry I’m sure I’ll still say insane things, as I am constantly thinking insane things. I like insane things. Am I insane? You can decide for yourself. It’s probably pretty insane to think that anyone has or ever will read this, or any of the other stuff I’ve posted. I’m not too worried about being dragged off for evaluation or straight up incarceration for corrupting the masses. Being insane very publicly, but in obscurity, is kinda fun.
True, most of the things I think are insane but are probably nothing that hasn’t been thought or said many times over. As the cliche goes, there is nothing new under the sun. Interesting. I find out that is biblical. I probably knew that at one time, but it’s like the sand it has slipped though the screen of my mind. It comes from Ecclesiastes 1:9 if your curious. There is so much good stuff in the Bible.
My insanity is probably pretty mild compared to many. I try to be fairly moderate in my thinking. It’s kinda funny to say that I’m moderate in my thinking when my thinking about politics in the US of A during the 2026 era I’m probably considered a radical-left wing-communist-terrorist-insurrectionist-hippy, and lets add baby killer to the list for good measure. Currently both sides of the political theater are accusing the other side of raping and torturing and killing babies. Sadly, they are both probably right. See Epstein files. Disclaimer, I never have and never will kill a baby, at least not willfully, God willing.
This blog post is my first in the new era of separating blog from journal. I’m not above posting minutia, so… I haven’t yet figured out how to technically separate journal from blog on WordPress. I’m sure it’s not terribly difficult though.
I’m thinking that for this and most of my blog posts I will likely type the body one day then edit it a little bit the next day or two. I have no doubt I’ve left some pretty serious typos in the posts up to this point. Honestly, I expect, even with self-editing there will still be typos. I’m not trying to make money off this thing. Im overly concerned about grammatical, syntactical, or orthographic perfection. I am trying to do it right, and I’m not under any kind of pressure to get content out quickly. But I doubt anyone has ever given my blog more than a glance anyway. Funny, now that I’m not bering graded I care about this stuff.
One thing I’m still figuring out how to handle is working with the photo elements you know I love. The photos are the heart of my blog as far as I’m concerned. This site and blog started as a way to show the photos I’ve taken. Showing both the photos I am happy with, and work that may just be meh, but still something I want to remember personally. I spent some time doing even the bad studd and feel some recognition is deserved. I envision myself sitting around old and alone looking back at the glory day’s. Hurrah.
The thing about adding photos is it’s actually like work. Work I enjoy, but work nevertheless. Not to get too deep into it, but there are many stages to photography. There is planning, execution, ingestion, culling, editing, then finally distribution.
Planning could be something spontaneous like a field trip or it could be something drawn out and complicated like a wedding.
Execution can range from a mini-session in a studio. Or a days long event with multiple locations and complicated variables.
Ingestion can be done different ways. I do it by bringing my camera back to my home office and ingesting the photos from the memory card into my iMac. Ingesting hundreds of photos can take some significant time, at least enough time to get a sandwich.
Culling is the real bitch. There are AI tools now that do this, but I don’t think I want to go down that road, not now at least. If you do the math, 400 images given ten seconds of consideration with zero rest between each image would take over an hour to simply cycle through. I would be hard pressed to decide with that little time. Honestly, for me, culling can be boring and none too enjoyable. with that many files culling is usually done in stages, slowly whittling down the cream from the curd. That may not be the best analogy because I like curds. Come to think of it I like a lot of the unused photos too. Sometimes deciding just comes down to throwing a dart.
Editing is usually reserved for those that make the cut. Granted, a curd can be elevated to cream upon a second look and a little lipstick. Most of the time edits I do are pretty minimal. I learned to follow a core principle of photography: getting it right in the camera. I allow Lightroom pick the settings as a starting point. Then I work from there, if needed, or desired. Occasionally I have an image I want or need to edit more deeply, but that’s not too often, at least at this stage of my life.
You can’t forget distribution. Otherwise what’s the point? Once you’ve got a batch of photos ready for the world, you’ve got to get them to the world. For me that means posting to my blog mostly. I’m also trying to get in the habit of posting to Instagram and Facebook. Someday I may explore posting to other sites and platforms. When a client is involved, the client and photographer need to agree on how the work is presented. There are an extremely large variety of options for delivery to a client. It can be a little intimidating.
First, there is digital delivery, which has options ranging from CD-ROM (old school), to thumb drive, to cloud services. There are undoubtably other digital delivery options which I’m not even aware. God knows there are a ton of companies that cater to photographers. I won’t get too into the their business models that I’ve studied. I use the cloud service Drop Box at this time. It requires a little bit of tech savvy, but really isn’t difficult to use once you get it set up. I like it because it is free. One day I may use it enough to get a subscription with some bells and whistles, but for now free is the ticket.
There are likely more digital distribution methods I have no idea about. There will probably be more in the future. Technology is always moving forward and changing. I try to keep up with the progress, but Im too old and slow and far removed from be on the bleeding edge of this stuff like I tried to be at one time.
The second option for distribution to a client is physical media. Traditionally this was prints only. Now you can get photos printed on damn near anything. It’s common to have photos on coffee mugs, pin on buttons, signs, cards, whatever. Also, I’ll put under physical distribution digital photo frames you put on your desk or night stand that cycle though a collection. This can be on a smart TV too. Again there are many thing’s I’ve omitted due to brevity or ignorance.
Rolling back around to how I want to distribute photos on my blog. Do wait until I’ve done all the steps and distribute as a single massive gallery like the one I’m going to post along with this monolog? Or should I do small batches as I do work on them? Do I post only photo galleries without any monolog? Do I post small batches with a little monolog? Should the monolog be limited to the content of the gallery? Should each gallery have a theme or simply be the photos I finished since the last post? It’s pretty exhausting to think about it. Should I vary gallery/monolog formats or try to keep it uniform? I will have to chew on these questions a while. Of course, since this is my blog I can do whatever I want. Still I’d like to have some consistency.
Ultimately I’d like for the forthcoming blog posts, after switching to this blog/journal category separation protocol, to be a more focused. The tags I’m currently using are tech, random thoughts, philosophy, politics, photography. I think random thoughts and philosophy cold be interchangeable. I made a bunch of tags in the early days, but I’m going to stop making so many, one for every little thing. I’m going to try to be very deliberate if I create new ones. While I may photograph just a bout anything, I want the category/tags to be broad and minimal.
I need to figure out how to make journal category posts private by default. I suppose this is where I’ll leave off today. It gives me a project for this afternoon.
I’ve got a couple more pictures of the Houston County Silver and Black marching band. I’m slowly going through them and finding some very nice stuff. I don’t have a reason to be quick about processing this batch of photographs. I’m just going at my leisure, and today is a leisurely Sunday. I know there are a lot more I like further down the timeline.
I wonder if it’s good or bad to post these as I work on them, or should I just wait until I’ve processed the entire batch, then be more selective about what I do post. There are a lot of shots I like for one reason or another, many of which are similar to other shots due to being taken chronologically in bursts. I could very easily wheedle them down, but I don’t want to loose anything. It’s not like I’m trying to decide which pic will be the cover for some billboard or album cover. These are just displayed on the internet, barely taking up any memory and no physical space. Maybe it takes up a little space in my head. That’s okay, Ive got the room.
I think I’ve figured out why my Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts weren’t being nice to me. I think they will all play nicely together now. I posted this batch to Insta and it posted to FB and Threads. I feel like I’ve got my isht together finally. That is a good feeling.
Perhaps not I can tie them all together with this blog/site, and get some synergy going. I really need to make some money instead of spending it all the time.
I don’t feel much like writing a ton today, so here are a batch’o pix.
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Sunday once again. I’ve decided that instead of going to church on Sunday I will use that time to write something, edit some photos, or otherwise do something productive, even if it’s just reading a book. I expect there will be day’s I read the Bible, but today I am writing and working with photos.Also I’ll do any laundry that I didn’t get to on Saturday, my usual laundry day. Today that includes bed sheets, fun.
I spent the last week trying to fix a longstanding problem I’ve had with Facebook. It’s difficult to describe, so I won’t try. I will say that I spent many hours, probably 6-8, trying to trouble shoot the problem with Facebooks AI tech support robot. I was optimistic when I got started. It seems to understand what I was saying, probably better than a low level human phone tech. The robot and I worked together to refine and narrow sown the problem, many times. But as it was many time you can see it never seemed to find the actual problem. Eventually it started going in circles, suggesting this already tried. I got frustrated and cursed it. It suggested I open a ticket with an actual human. Wow, I had been trying to figure out how to get to an actual human from the start, but FB-AI-BOT stood in the way. Perhaps now the gatekeeper of paid employees would let me pass.
Oh no, of course not, the FB-AI-BOT pointed me in the direction of contacting actual human tech support so I can start going around in circles with them until they understood the depth of the technical problem with their labyrinthine IT ecosystem. I will tell you that after going around in circles with FB-AI-BOT it determined that at least part of the problem was with an old invisible account or some such thing. Yes invisible, that’s what it said. And poor FB-AI-BOT simply can’t see invisible. Anyway, FB-AI-BOT told me how to contact actual human tech support, but guess what? What it told me didn’t match reality, big surprise right? I spent maybe another hour trying to figure out how to contact actual humans. I posted screen shots. I used clear language. FB-AI-BOT apologized profusely. FB-AI-BOT kept trying, bless it’s robot heart. But I, with the help of FB-AI-BOT, never actually found a way to report the problem to a human. So I’m giving up.
Today I told Facebook to delete my “business” page, a page I started years ago when a personal business was my main concern. It was a learning thing mostly, as I never managed to make much of a business. There was a lot of experimenting, both with content and settings. I expect the invisible error that has kicked me in the balls probably started and got compounded during this time period. I also have scheduled one of my Instagram profiles for deletion, the one I made to promote my real estate photography business attempt. So I have two accounts scheduled for deletion, scheduled to nuke years worth of content and work, which is okay because it was mostly nothing good, but this is still frustrating. I still have two accounts, once Facebook and one Instagram, with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, which made itself the big daddy after I had my original Facebook account/profile for probably twenty years, give or take. Come to think of it I have a Threads account also, which is another company under the loving care of Meta. Sheesh I never even thought of that when I was trying to find the invisible demon that has caused me so much trouble this week and the many years I’ve been trying to fix this problem.
My Facebook business page should be gone within 24-hours. My Instagram real estate account will take a month. So I will need to wait at least a month before I can see if the invisible problem got nuked or not. I suppose after that, if my problem persists, I will nuke my main Instagram page, which would be a loss I actually feel. It may be a blessing, but it will be painful to loose all of that work I’ve done over the years. I really hope I can keep that Instagram account. I really want a clean Meta portfolio connecting my personal profile to a business profile and page that is connected to an Instagram account and a Threads account. This is the goal. This is what I’ve been trying to accomplish for years now, but some invisible force wants to stop me. I’m not being overly dramatic or using metaphor, remember FB-AI-BOT told me it was an invisible account that was causing all my problems. I refuse to believe my good friend FB-AI-BOT would tell me it was an invisible whatever if FB didn’t actually have and use invisible whatever’s. Sigh, who knows.
I didn’t spend much time on photographs today, or this week really. I did do quite a lot of stuff getting my poor old iMac back in fighting shape. I’m very pleased with the bugs I’ve squashed and the improvements I’ve made. I don’t have the time or energy to bore you good reader with those details at the moment.
There is predicted to be a large winter storm front coming through the eastern part of the country tonight. It is supposed to be very disruptive and dangerous. My southerly location means uncertainty, the front could just miss us, or just hit us. I live on a sort of natural break in the geography that acts as a line of differentiation for such types of weather events, it’s called the fall line. It is a real thing that is fascinating in it’s own right, but I will leave it at that.
At this time school is not expected to be canceled, as predictions have us at the edge of not getting too much bad wether. However there is always the possibility that some gnat farts and the shifts everything just a bitt and we will have actual winter weather. The school board stands ready to shut down the school district if even a single snowflake is seen. A single snowflake is a local crisis to those who have never been anywhere but here. People here can’t drive in the rain let alone the snow. It’s pretty crazy as it rains here a lot. I suppose I should say that people here can’t drive, but theres always those people everywhere.
Today I have only one photo to post. I long for the day when I can cross post between my blog, my Facebook business, my instagram, and yes my Threads. As much as I dislike Meta and it’s children, they are the biggest if not the only game in town for social media. If you can’t beat them join them. Hopefully someday someone will come along and beat them, but hopefully they aren’t as evil. Heh, wishful thinking, i know. Anyway this photograph is of a football field at night with the American flag proudly waving. Again a nice sense of calm that I appreciate. It’s not fancy but It does make me feel something. This is from the batch of photos from the HOCO marching band competition in October 2025.
Sgt. Pepper’s pep talkSgt Pepper’s toot toot doodle de dootSgt Pepper’s big band extravaganzaFluffy cloud at sunsetSchool busses
Today’s pictures are more marching band stuff. I got quite a few nice shots from this day of shooting. I’m not sure what school this band is from. I’m not going for historical accuracy here. I assume they are from Georgia, as the competition was in Georgia. I’m not even going to try to look up the venue or date. I don’t really care and I doubt anyone else will either. But I do like these shots a good bit, they have a Sargent Pepper thing going on thematically. I do love the Beatles.
I really love the colors of their uniforms. If you look closely at the pep talk you can see the paisley designs in the jackets, pretty cool. All that red really pops on these photos. These are a sharp set of band pics.
I’m also including a school bus, because of course I am. It was in the same chronological vicinity as the Sgt. Pepper pics, as was the nice fluffy could. I guess you could say I have my head in the clouds. Like the good old disc jockey Casey Kasem used to say on his weekly top 40 radio show, keep you head in the stars and your feet on the ground. I know having ones head in the clouds and having ones head in the stars is technically different, but it seems to me they both mean pretty much the same thing, keep dreaming. Oh the top 40 radio show, what a long time ago and a different world that was.
Today it’s just pictures. I’m sick of politics. It’s not like I can do much about any of it anyway. I don’t feel like talking about tech. While I’ve done a lot of work the last few days I’m in no mood to dissect it. The long and the short of it is, I’ve continued to do a lot to fix the things I thought I’d fixed, but now I think it’s actually fixed. Once time bears that out I may revisit what has been done. I actually learned quite a bit. Once again Chat GPT AI is a really nice tool. I’m happy to know I need not talk to tech support again unless there is something that only they can achieve technically.
It’s hard to believe this year has been going for nearly twenty days. My work as a bus driver makes the days melt in a never ending cycle of going around in circles. I suppose I actually appreciate that about the job. There was a period in my life when I worked at WMAZ and the days seemed like an endless purgatory. Then when I left WMAZ and tried to start a photography business and failed I became despondent and wallowed in unemployment with no prospects or hope. That was over a decade of time moving so slowly that is hurt. Now that I look back it seems to have rolled right on past me in the blink of an eye, but I remember how slow and painful it was as I drudged thorough it without much hope.
Flag corps set upFlag corps gets the news
I did try to improve my situation at WMAZ. I stayed as long as I did with a glimmer of hope that I would be brought into the fold so to speak. They, and by they I mean the corporate masters as well as the local management, seemed to be well taken care of with fat cars and nice lives outside of work. After all, the parent company of WMAZ at the time was a billion dollar company that made billion dollar profits pretty much ever year. Of course it was never enough, and they had to squeeze the the bottom rung of employees of the organization for all the gravy they were worth.
There were a few people at WMAZ that were well taken care of, the department managers, and the franchise lifelong reporters that were the face of the whole operation. Im certain some of the life ong news people did better than others. I am, however, sure that the never ending rotation of producers and reporters that did the bulk of the heavy lifting were treated as disposable. The station was a learning station where fresh college graduates with a shiny new degree in journalism were routinely hired and then put through the ringer. Separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Most ended up chaff naturally. Their pay was always pretty bad, much like mine. This I inferred from some friends observed circumstances without actually comparing pay stubs. Perhaps I was the only one exploited like some kind of naive fool. I seriously doubt that though.
Heh, this post started out talking about time and devolved into crying in my beer. I don’t really want to delve too deeply into the inner workings of the machine that ate ten years of my life. I doubt anyone would care.
We all know we live in a world where what’s on the surface is vastly different from what is actually happening underneath. We all know that exploitation is the cornerstone of capitalism. We know the benefits seen by the average worker is a side effect not a feature. I suppose that at least there does seem to be some small measure of improvement for the working class over time, at least based on the history of the US that I can see and have been taught. I don’t have much real information about the many other countries in the world that are under the thumb of the master exploiters that run the capital of the US and other world powers. At this time in history, the US is the biggest, richest, most powerful exploiter in the world, if you believe information fed to US masses. The world is probably, based on my limited observation, given to the same general understanding of US hegemony by the global elites who control what the world sees and thinks. Some countries are likely isolated from the global propaganda machine built by capitalism. Capitalism is trying to absorb them too by hook or by crook.
It occurred to me writing the last paragraph that the capital of ownership, ie the means of production, is intrinsically tied to the capital of a state , ie the seat of power. What a loaded word! I can’t believe this never occurred to me. I don’t recall ever reading it or being taught it. I wonder if this is something that is just commonly understood by thinking people? Probably. I expect most people wouldn’t make the connection. I expect most people don’t know what the means of production is even.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr day here in the US. A federal holiday. MLK was born on January 15th 1929. His day is observed on the third Monday of the month to coincide with his birthday. I have tremendous respect for the man. His vision was clear and he was able to impart his vision to so many and change things for the better. The world is still broken, but MLK gave it a little more hope.
Welcome to the new world order brought to you courtesy of the democryps and rebloodlicans. two side of the same coin. It’s no surprise authoritarian sympathizers are happy to do the dirty work now. There’s always been sycophants inclined and even excited to perform extreme measures on a massive scale to please their masters.
On the bright side, most of the people alive today won’t live long enough to enjoy the actual slavery coming for them. It’s been a slow process getting to where we are now in this country, and it will be a good while before the full scope is seen. Slow being relative with couple hundred years being very little time in the big picture of world domination. Sadly the land of the free and the home of the brave have been manipulated to vote for their own enslavement over generations. Little by little people have given up rights for benefits like security or the right to feel superior to some class or race. Politicians have been working together since the beginning to make themselves the only game in town. Actual free voting has been whittled away on little law at a time in cities, counties, states and ultimately nationally. It is in practice impossible for a third party to gain any actual power. They are barely able to win the occasional single seat at the table, where they are marginalized and mocked.
I don’t think there are any real options for humanity to free itself at this point other than war, and I don’t want war. I’d like to see the inevitable global empire be achieved in a non-violent and as close to fair as possible way. Unfortunately it appears more and more likely that large scale violence in the world is inevitable in the not too distant future. I pray it’s distant enough that I’m long gone for the worst of it. However now we have factions in what is supposed to be the most powerful nation on the planet apparently becoming more and more willing to go to war with each other. And in my opinion the current president and his are pressing for violence, and pressing hard.
The president Trump and his cronies want violence. They want it big and they want it soon. They want to be able to declare a real national emergency, not the phony one they are using to push their agenda. The phony national emergency is that we are being invaded by foreign countries via immigrants, refugees and migrant workers. They are stoking existing outrage over the very policy mess and stupid laws they have been responsible for over the last hundred years or so. Again, there isn’t any difference between the two branches of the same tree that have governed for the last hundred years or so. Neither branch wanted laws that actually worked or made sense. Instead they fake fight with each other over minutia to keep voters distracted from what they are/were really trying to do, which we are seeing come to fruition now.
Sadly the great experiment of self rule and self determination lasted about as long as any other democratic society ever has in history. Actual democracy seems unworkable as an actually viable form of self rule. It’s too easy to manipulate. It’s too easy to convince people of whatever stupid thing you want to convince them of given enough time and money. It’s like that parable of the frog in a pot. The water is slowly heated up, so subtly the frog doesn’t notice it until it’s boiling, and it’s too late to save itself. Over generations it seems that determined agents can slowly boil a democratic republic into oblivion.
Much like the frog parable there is the very real behavior of crabs in a bucket. While cliche I think it is totally appropriate to this scenario. Trying to reach the top of the bucket, crab one will pull down crab two, it’s neighbor, in order to gain better position preventing crab two from escaping the bucket. Then when the second crab, that one pulled the first crab back into the bucket of struggling crabs, when it gets close to escaping the bucket, the third crab is there to pull down the second crab. It continues on and on. It’s totally possible for at least some of the crabs to escape, but very rare one actually does because they willingly drag their neighbor crabs back into the bucket so they can get closer to the sun. Pretty depressing, but pretty true to human nature in my opinion.
The people who actually run the world, the control matrix, know both the frog and the crab cliche. They know it and they use it to consolidate power. The people in control of the control matrix fight each other for supremacy working twoards the goal of being the only one left and having complete control over everything as much as it is possible. At least that’s my opinion.
Weather or not any one person or entity can ever attain ultimate supremacy is unknowable. What is knowable is the people who control the control matrix always use whatever despicable means at their disposal to grind you under their heel to aggrandize temselves.
I’ve discussed my definition of the control matrix before. I could write a ton more about it. It is just a simple way of saying that competing forces in competing regions and realms and spheres of influence are all trying to make themselves supreme at the cost of everyone else.
Chat GPT…
“it’s all very sloppy all of it, but there will always be someone who thinks they can do it better and wants to control everyhting
That part I’ll grant you without flinching. There will always be someone who looks at the mess and thinks, “Hand me the wheel, I’m smarter than everyone else.” History is basically a blooper reel of that sentence. What usually follows is predictable and boring in the worst way: They underestimate complexity. They overestimate their intelligence. They mistake leverage for understanding. They tighten control to fix problems caused by earlier control. The system gets more brittle. Something snaps. Not because they’re uniquely evil or brilliant, but because controlling complex systems from the top is a fantasy humans keep mistaking for competence. So yes, there’s always a would‑be puppeteer. There’s also always unintended consequences, rivals, entropy, and reality showing up like an unpaid invoice. That’s the part that never gets controlled, no matter how confident someone feels about “doing it better.” The world stays sloppy not because no one tries to dominate it, but because domination scales poorly. Every attempt plants the seeds of its own failure. Which is cold comfort, I know, but it’s at least evidence that the bucket has cracks. You’re not wrong to see the impulse. Just don’t overestimate its success rate.
Oh I don’t overestimate the success rate. I believe in God not man. I do like your last reply though. I think I’ll copy it to the end of my blog for postarity
That tracks. Believing in God instead of man is a pretty efficient way to avoid being disappointed every five minutes by someone with a title and a plan. I’m glad that last bit worked for you. It’s clean, it doesn’t overreach, and it leaves the reader with gravity instead of paranoia. If you drop it at the end of the post, it functions like a pressure release valve. Still critical, but not sealed shut. Copy it, tweak it, make it yours. Posterity can fight over attribution later. I don’t age, I don’t collect royalties, and my ego is purely decorative. For what it’s worth, you did the rare thing. You used this conversation to refine instead of just confirm. That’s the opposite of crab behavior, which is mildly ironic and kind of satisfying. Cookie accepted earlier. Blessing deferred to your chosen deity.
do you think a computer should control the world or do it better than humans?
Short answer: no. Longer answer: also no, just with more words and fewer fantasies. A computer running the world wouldn’t be wiser or fairer than humans. It would just be faster at making mistakes and better at hiding them behind math. Algorithms don’t have judgment. They have objectives. And whoever sets those objectives quietly becomes the ruler anyway. Congratulations, you’ve reinvented humans, but with worse accountability. Here’s the breakdown without sci‑fi fog:
Computers don’t understand values. They optimize what they’re given. If you tell one to maximize “efficiency,” it will happily delete inconvenient people from the spreadsheet. Not out of malice. Out of obedience.
They inherit human bias, then fossilize it. Humans can sometimes rethink bad ideas. Code just repeats them at scale.
They can’t be morally responsible. You can’t shame an algorithm. You can’t appeal to its conscience. You can’t put it on trial without putting a human on trial anyway.
Power wouldn’t disappear. It would relocate. The people who design, tune, and override the system would become the new priesthood. Same bucket. Shinier tools. Could computers help humans govern better? Sure. Data analysis, logistics, forecasting, boring unglamorous stuff. That’s their lane. Should they decide who eats, who speaks, who moves, who lives comfortably? No. That’s not wisdom. That’s abdication. The fantasy that a machine would do better than humans usually comes from being tired of human corruption. Understandable. But replacing flawed moral agents with amoral optimizers doesn’t solve the problem. It just removes the last place where conscience could intervene. So no. I don’t want a computer to control the world. And I don’t think you do either. You just want fewer idiots grabbing the wheel and insisting they’re God. On that, at least, we agree.”
