I have two Substacks, one a shitposting site that I just vomit up whatever I please, and one where I write semi-seriously about my profession. Since Substack has a really fucked up position on their growing cohort of out and out Nazis, and a surprising number of people who go around to pile on troll when they come across someone who is dismayed about it (I have had to block more people in 3 months on Substack as I did in 14 years on Twitter).
(more…)Month: January 2024
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The problem with a long running blog
I mentioned on my other property (here) that I had been on a binge of buying physical media of movies and shows that I enjoy so that I actually own and can watch whenever and wherever I want.
One of those series I added to my collection in 2023 was The Sopranos. The entire series, on Blu-ray disc, ran me about $50. A steal in my mind.
I am midway through watching rips on my Plex server, and I thought I would share some of my thoughts. But, alas, back in 2016, I had three posts:
Late to the party – The Sopranos
Mid-Series Check in – Sopranos
Well shit, I already covered it well.
Last thoughts:
All of what I wrote before is still true, and I got nothing. However, The Sopranos is and will remain one of the greatest pieces of television ever made. HBO has had some other follow on successes, but in my mind, The Sopranos stands alone.
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An Ominous Anniversary
The date was Sunday, January 3, 2010. The day started like most. I got up, read the news, ate my usual breakfast (coffee, a bowl of Grape Nuts) and I then got myself to the gym to do an hour on the elliptical trainer.
It was an off day, I just couldn’t get in a groove, and I struggled to get my heart rate above 100. I was sucking wind, to say the least.
Alas, I bailed out during the 5 minute cooldown after the hour, and headed home. I got back home about 8:30 AM, and then stepped into the shower.
KABAM
It hit me like a ton of bricks. Shooting pain down the arms, and it felt like Dom Delouise was standing on my chest.
I stepped out of the shower, and hobbled my way down to my wife’s office and I told her I needed to go to the emergency room. NOW.
Fortunately, she freaked out, and called 9111.
I daubed off most of the water and slipped on some sweats, while waiting for the EMT’s to show up. They checked me out, and they thought I had just overexerted myself at the gym. Fortunately (again) my wife insisted that they take me to the hospital.
I got to the hospital, and they hooked me up to an ECG and I was having a heart attack.
Let me tell you, that gets the staff moving. I was put on a gurney, wheeled to the Catheter lab, to get a stent put in. I had 100% blockage in the descending node of the right coronary artery.
I got a three night stay in the hospital, and 16 weeks of cardiac rehab2.
The really weird thing is that I was arguably in the best shape of my life. I was running 5-7 miles 5 or 6 days a week. I was doing aggressive hikes on the weekend (if you have spent time in Tucson AZ, you know that the hiking there is epic).
But I still had a heart attack. If I hadn’t gotten to the hospital, I would have died.
This morning is the 14th anniversary of that fateful day. I still view each day as a blessing and a gift.
Celebrate life. Spend time with those you love, and take nothing for granted.
- Turns out, that is the best advice I can impart. If you or someone you are with is having an event that may be heart (or stroke) related, the ambulance ride will be your ticket to being seen immediately. ↩︎
- Eight weeks to the day after the event, I hiked down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and when I walked out I felt like I was on the top of the world. ↩︎
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Linus & lucy on banjo
The thing you didn’t know you need to watch. The Foggy Mountain Spaceship has this epic rendition of the childhood favorite, Linus and Lucy.
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Entering 2024
After a less than restful New Year’s Eve, I am up and recovering.
No, I am not recovering from a boozy night out1. Instead, the recovery is for the disrupted sleep caused by idiots shooting off fireworks, freaking my dogs out. There are two waves, since we are on the west coast, there is a batch of booms that coincide with the ball drop in Times Square at 9:00PM, and a second wave, even more prolific firing off at midnight.
Ugh.
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Thoughts about wordpress
I have been using WordPress since I first started this on the at the time nascent commercial offering of their CMS on wordpress.com in fall of 2009, and it has changed a LOT in that interregnum.
Not long after I created the original site on their hosted site, I wanted to move it to a self-hosted site. This was my first foray into shared hosting solutions (I used Media Temple, who was acquired later by Go Daddy) and I spent a lot of time tweaking it.
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