True Fact:

The place on earth with weather conditions most inhospitable to human life is whatever gas station you are at right now.

Read Nicholas Bate’s Your 2022 Word.

My word for 2022 is Grow

It’s not a resolution, nor a command. But it encapsulates so much on my mind.

Inaugurating the movement of my Den to the main floor of my house with a viewing of the R40 concert film. Playback started before wiring was complete, but halfway through everything seems well dialed in.

Was just introduced to the ideas of Ken Wilbur’s Integral Theory via the SLOWW Sunday newsletter.

There’s a lot to unpack, here.

Status: tricked and treated

Friday began a bit of an odyssey to discover that I have a massive sinus infection. The kind that has been wreaking havoc on my sense of balance and my hearing in one ear.

2 ER visits and two primary care visits later, I have the right meds that will allow me to sit upright and participate in family life and running a house.

I cannot express enough gratitude for the health care professionals who helped, and for the science behind the menu of medications that are helping me right now.

Now it is on me to heal.

My heartfelt thanks and gratitude to the many who have really gone above and beyond to help me and my family.

ADHD Tax: When I panic about losing my phone while I’m in a meeting. Phone was less than a foot from my person but I had set another object on top of it.

That feeling when you get the email from the vendor that an item has shipped. Yet the tracking number reveals only that the label has been printed and the shipper has not yet taken possession of the item.

A new day brought new places to type and click to resolve more kinds of technical issues. There was significant terror over several days. If I make it through the evening without a phone call, I may relax.

Homeward: Kill Devil Hills, NC > Dayton, OH

Status

My first name comes from Hjalmer Lindberg.

Had he lived, he would have been a great uncle.

In World War II, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge with the 94th infantry. He was a sniper who was killed by another.

The story I was told was that first, Hjalmer’s helmet was shot off. This revealed the position of the German sniper. Hjalmer quickly pivoted to return fire, but the German was faster. Hjalmer was shot in the head.

Many details are not known to me. A thousand questions have occurred to me after it’s too late to ask.

Hjalmer was very good friends in the infantry with Erich Gerloff. They had such a strong bond that they made a pact. Should one survive the other, the survivor would travel to meet the other’s family.

Erich’s own life had been dramatic at points. He had been born in Germany, and had crossed the Atlantic three times with his family to escape economic hardship.

He was captured at the Battle of the Bulge and was kept briefly at a stalag. He was on a death march when, because he spoke German well enough, German soldiers told him to get out of the line. They thought he was a spy or agent and were afraid of punishment should he be put to death at their hands.

Erich survived the war, rising in rank through battlefield promotions, assuming I’ve understood the details at all.

He also honored his pact with his friend. He travelled from New York to Wisconsin to visit the Lindbergh family in Wisconsin and proposed to one of Hjalmer’s sisters within a few days.

They married and had a family. Their eldest, a son, they named for Hjalmer, who they had both lost.

That man, the son, was on a tour of duty in Vietnam, when his sister, my mother, was pregnant with me. And she wanted her brother to know she loved him.

Hjalmer is my first name. Erich is my middle name.

Remembering Hjalmer Lindberg and Erich Gerloff, today.

Heard Take Me Home on satellite radio earlier today. Because I owned No Jacket Required, naturally, Sussudio is now an ear worm.

Phil Collins, y’all!

You’re welcome.

Bless you, Coffee Machine

Apple Beta program participation disadvantage I haven’t seen mentioned before: media-sharing requires signing out and back in, or de-authorizing and re-authorizing—after applying each update. On AppleTV this means not being able to connect to my server or access iTunes Match

Second dose acquired.

The Vaccination, Part II: Return to House Pfizer

The Voice seasons seem to move really fast now. I don’t feel like I get to know the contestants and their personalities like we used to

Have lost a cousin to COVID today. It’s still killing people.

Be careful, everyone.

My work day started with my awesome new Logi MX KEYS keyboard not Bluetoothing to anything, anywhere.

I was worried I owned a nicely-weighted, space gray brick.

It’s rechargeable and therefore sealed. The power switch didn’t change anything. None of the key presses in the Quick Start guide changed its behavior. None of the forum posts addressed what I was seeing. So I went rogue. After a lot of searching for any mention of what I was seeing, I began experimenting with long key presses and multiple key combinations and finally got to where I could pair the keyboard to my Mac again.

I was able to hold the fn and F13 keys to get it into pairing mode for device 1. Then, on my MacBook, I was able to use the Bluetooth preferences in the System Settings application and subsequently the Logi Options app saw it again, as well.

Phew.

When you don’t use the filter basket, the coffee maker doesn’t behave the same way.

I’m left astonished with wonder at how I failed to notice this while I did everything else in anticipatory preparation.

After cleaning up, I’m making a second attempt at coffee, now.

Also: Coffee is hot. Because I have no patience, my thumb will continue to remind me of several failures throughout the day.

The end result is I have cleaned my coffee maker and I will shortly be sipping hot, delicious coffee.

TIL The Trashmen were from Minneapolis.

This just in:

COVID is still deadly.

Putting some thoughts here, while they are on my mind:

Political parties and news organizations love to pretend that an election is an ideological mandate. When the candidate you vote for wins, it’s fun to feel that way.

I think an election is simpler, it’s a snapshot in time, and it’s very much about who is on the ballot. Sometimes a vote is yes to a candidate, to a party or to a platform, but sometimes a vote is against a specific person. I suspect that the 2016 and 2020 elections reflect this in America more than Americans traditionally would admit.

I think the political parties are their own machines, representing their own self-preservation and the agendas of large donors. As such, neither party in the U.S.A. would ever change anything fundamentally.

I don’t think that political parties represent a mandate any more than an election does.

I think political parties aren’t representative of us, of We The People, because the parties generally and the candidates specifically are beholden to money.

I think Ranked Choice Voting is worth a try and might better represent overall preferences, or show where more of us actually agree. We really need to pay attention to what we have in common and fight hard for that.

I think it’s really hard to step outside of a bubble I have willingly been inside of for decades.

I used to wonder why George Carlin seemed so angry toward the end of his career. I’m starting to understand.

Hot coffee and cookies on a cool morning