“I’m a sworn enemy of convention. I despise the conventional in anything, even the arts.”

Attributed to Hedy Lamarr

Pruning my email inbox, I’m made aware again and again of how overuse of buzzwords and phrases really bothers me. It’s my special personal problem, I know. But the word “premium” and the phrase “hand crafted” really bother me. I hardly had to go more than a few messages before encountering them both.

Premium is such a truly rare thing, and the things described as premium are not rare nor unusual. It’s like the use of the word “classy” – which, in my view, is also a negative indicator or unintentionally ironic. I drive a car that has a “Premium” trim level. There are two more trim levels above Premium. That makes no sense to me.

And “hand-crafted” (in contemprary use) says to me only that you weren’t able to fully automate the process you use to make everything as close to exactly the same as possible. In other words, there was a human involved, poor you. But you use that as a selling point as if that makes your coffee or printed t-shirt somehow more remarkable than another coffee or printed tshirt.

I’m sorry to harass you with my thoughts. I only want to push back against the copycats.

Unfortunately, there is someone, somewhere, who is going to think these terms are good idea and will launch a new campaign using them.

I don’t know what my deal is, but, in the aftermath of “Trick or Treat,” I’m really enjoying the sour candies this year.

Alex: Wherever you are, I owe you an apology. I’m 55 with a customized OLED Nintendo Switch. I’m sorry I laughed. At that point in my life I didn’t get it, and I was a judgemental asshole. I’m super excited for the Switch release of Hogwarts Legacy. I’m still low key an asshole.

Feeling sorry for myself, today.

I can’t manage sugar and carbs. I need to make dramatic changes because the meds only do so much. What I have been doing has not been enough.

A very Happy Halloween to all those who celebrate with Tricks and Treats.

Me and Mom at Queen’s Rhapsody Tour

Status

I just can’t even. I don’t know a way forward right now. Half an hour just to get to recovery mode, and this result on a clean volume. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

That was quick. Erased volume. Trying internet recovery again.

If I don’t get anywhere tonight I’m going to recycle it at Apple. No one needs this kind of trouble. Re-erased and attempting Monterey reinstall. If that doesn’t work a third time, I will give it termed recovery one more shot. But that’s all I have.

Try, try again. Erased volume and recovering from on-machine recovery partition. I hope.

Welp. That didn’t work, either. “An error occurred installing the update.” Okay

I have an Intel MacBook Air with TouchID. I have never had a Mac that was so resistant to updates. SMC and PRAM resets at a minimum. Disks that won’t unlock, this time. Recovering now with new volumes and a clean installl.

Ugh. When the progress bar goes back up in time.

Lots of little things make me irritated. It passes. Until the next thing that does. On the inside it doesn’t feel like I’m always angry. But people observing me sometimes tell me I’m always angry. That’s not at all what I want. Not sure how to be better. I want to be better.

Well, that was fast. Hardly got a profile set up on Pebble and they’ve announced a November 1 shut down

Today learned a small amount about British trains. I had purchased a small set, movie specific, but it does not include as many coaches as depicted on screen. Canon doesn’t offer detail, so tradition will have to do.

I note, tonight, on my street in Saint Paul, that all of the street lamps are shining white light. After all of the experiments for decades with many types of lamps with many gasses inside, white is back.

Yes, it was me in the kilt

My first visit to the Renaissance Festival in many years lead to my first kilt.

I went to print a Word document from preview mode in “New Outlook.” New Outlook “generated” a PDF which opened in an Edge browser tab. I have questions: Why would Microsoft use another vendor’s document presentation technology? Was I ever looking at a “DOC”?

Remember listening to whole albums?

Sometimes one from the past demands my attention. Lately it’s Tinderbox

I don’t remember hurting myself, but it’s clear to me now—at some point, the coffee was too hot.

I was reminded today of why I stopped using drive-through fast-food procurement. So much easier to deal with issues at the counter, instead of trying to do an inventory in-car. What a mess.