Just make it a priority

A rant on Twitter:

Can I talk about the "Just make it a priority to ___" school of advice for a minute? 'Cause I hate it with a deep, burning passion.

— Michael Mock (@MockRamblings) November 7, 2017

Like, my reaction to "Quit making excuses and just start {whatever}" is basically just "Fuck you."

— Michael Mock (@MockRamblings) November 7, 2017

Or here's another one: "You just have to make it a priority!" Listen, if it wasn't a priority, I wouldn't be stressed about it. 1/2

— Michael Mock (@MockRamblings) November 7, 2017

2/2 It's just that it's one priority among many, which include things like "eating" "remaining employed" and "spending time w/ my family."

— Michael Mock (@MockRamblings) November 7, 2017

If the shit was as easy as any of these bits of advice made it sound, we'd be *doing it* already.

— Michael Mock (@MockRamblings) November 7, 2017

And I see this stuff for all kinds of things: exercise, writing, martial arts, learning music. 1/2

— Michael Mock (@MockRamblings) November 7, 2017

2/2 And just... no. Fit it in as best you can, take care of yourself, do what you can do, and try not to add unnecessary stress.

— Michael Mock (@MockRamblings) November 7, 2017

A Promotion Within The Family

Firstborn, age 9, has just been promoted to age 19.

Why?

Because Microsoft is being an massive bag full of dicks, and has apparently decided to make setting up a new Windows machine as much of a colossally intrusive pain the ass as humanly possible. Either that, or they've come up with a plan to make the whole thing much more user-friendly, only they turned the implementation phase of the plan over to a bunch of socially-challenged software engineers. But personally, I'm going to go with the "giant bag of dicks" explanation.

Firstborn got a new computer for his 9th birthday. It's both a laptop and a touchscreen, so it's Windows 8.1 -- and setting it up as his computer with his own user account turns out be even more horrible than setting up Windows 8. And Windows 8 was... No! I won't think of it! You cannot make me think of it!

I use Windows machines because that's what I'm used to, because I can generally get one that suits my preferences for less money than I would need for a Mac, and because there a few programs I like -- games, mostly -- that only run on Windows. But if Microsoft is going to insist on making it hugely difficult to install their software -- as they are -- and if their software is randomly going to deactivate itself -- as it apparently does -- then I'm perfectly prepared to abandon their platform completely. I use my computer mainly for 1) Writing stories, 2) music and movies, and 3) browsing the Internet -- and there is nothing that Microsoft produces that's essential for any of those functions.

Listen up, Microsoft. I should not need to have a "Microsoft ID" in order to install your software. I shouldn't need to have a Microsoft ID at all. But if that's too much to ask, then at the very least could you manage to not reject the account that I just created -- at your insistence -- for my son's computer, on the basis that he's too young to have an account?

Seriously, fuck you. Keep this up, and I will shell out the extra money for a Mac. Hell, if it comes down to it, I will learn NFBSKing Linux. You are not the only game in town. You are not even the best game in town. Stop acting like you are.

Let the Training begin!

This morning we started the training for for our brand-new completely-revamped website (the Content Management portion in particular). It went almost exactly the way I expected it to.

That is, we got the laptops set up in the room where the training was supposed to take place. A phone switch then died, which prevented our network guys from setting up the switch that we had planned to use to connect the laptops. So, we set all the laptops to use the WiFi. This worked, mostly, except for one laptop that simply couldn't pick up an IP on the internal WiFi network - presumably the wireless router was overwhelmed by all the attention.

The training was due to start at 9:00 a.m., so naturally that was when the trainers (/technicians) arrived.

The new site is not set up - they haven't finished enough of the code for us to put it on our server yet - so the training was going to be done on their development server. Which, unsurprisingly, crashed last night, and was therefore completely inaccessible this morning. And since the trainers arrived just in time to start the class, they didn't find out until we already had everyone waiting at their computers. So, naturally, they were unable to get it fixed despite buying some time by showing off what elements the website contains and what cool things it will be able to do.

So we called off the training, and rescheduled it for Monday. And then I went back to my desk to try to catch up on the stuff I'd missed while I was in training waiting for them to get their shit together. And then I went to lunch.

On the plus side, that meant I was able to attend the Weekly Family Lunch; and they did manage to get the thing fixed in time for the afternoon training, which didn't help any of our content suppliers but was something of a relief to those of us with publishing rights. The system looks pretty easy to use from their end, which is also to the good.

Tomorrow, we'll start looking at the back-end stuff: generating and modifying templates, setting permissions, creating workflows, and like that.

Anyone care to place a bet on whether we actually manage that training?

The Seventies are over, man...

A note to politicians and the media:

President Richard Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. The actual break-in which eventually caused his resignation occurred just over two years earlier, on June 17, 1972. That means that the Watergate scandal ended thirty-seven freakin' years ago.

Now, I realize that it was a Big Deal at the time. I realize that for a lot of the fossils people currently running our government, this was a formative political experience. I can see how the media might consider it their finest hour, when a couple of reporters revealed a truth that ended a presidency. Really, truly, I get that.

But, again, thirty-seven freakin' years, people. Thirty-nine if you count from the break-in itself. Can we please, please, please stop attaching "-gate" to the end of every single political scandal that comes along, no matter how important or trivial? Seriously, and I say this with only your best interests at heart, LET IT GO, already.

I mean, okay, I'm only human. "Wienergate" is funny to say. But if you're going to call it that, why not go all way back? Why not call it the "Wiener Dome Scandal?" At least the middle-schoolers will actually recognize that reference. (History classes through the high school level generally start with Columbus, and almost never get past The Roarin' Twenties.)

Politicians? Media folks? I'd like to extend a personal invitation to all of you. Come join the rest of us in the new millennium. Let's talk about today's problems, instead of rehashing old culture war issues from the sixties and seventies. It'll help you retain the illusion of relevance, and - who knows? - it might even give us a start on fixing our current batch of problems. You might even like it here...

Identifying the Looters

I don't want to get too deep into the relative merits of Randian beliefs, mostly because I don't feel qualified to talk about them. My exposure to Ayn Rand has been limited, thus far, to a single book - and, while it was thoroughly packed with her philosophical outlook, it was also self-evidently a fantasy novel.

Having said that... it seemed pretty clear that even in Ayn Rand's own morality tale, being rich was only loosely tied to merit. The folks who were extremely wealthy on the basis of their own work were an extreme minority; few enough, in fact, that the entire group of them could comfortably occupy a single valley hidden away in Colorado. The vast majority of rich people, the upper crust of society and goverment, and in fact the majority of companies and corporations with whom these heroes were competing (if not opposing outright), were clearly shown to be looters.

And yet, an awful lot of the Rand devotees I run into online seem to reflexively, axiomatically support big business. Or, inversely, it seems that an awful lot of the reflexive support for big business has its roots in some version of a Randian outlook. So my question is, basically, how is that not at odds with Ayn Rand's writings? How do those views not conflict with their own source materials?

First World Problems

We've hit that point in the semester. My wife is... grading. A lot. And she stayed up late to try to finish, so she missed her window for going to sleep, so she stayed up later. Right before I went to sleep, she told me: "I may need you to hold Secondborn so I can send an e-mail in the morning."

(On the days when she teaches, she gets up quite early. Secondborn - he'll have his first birthday in about a week and half - does not like sleeping alone. He tends to wake up and start screaming. Usually, if that happens, I hold him for a few minutes while my wife finishes getting ready.)

So this morning I spent at least an hour - maybe an hour and a half - in Secondborn's bedroom, half-dozing, and rousing myself enough to comfort the baby every few minutes. He might have been calmer if we hadn't had a massive thunder storm raging outside the house during this time. After a while, the child struggled up to a sitting position and voiced a particularly loud complaint - Toddlerese for "I am done sleeping now, so quit trying to settle me down" - so I picked him and carried him to the back hallway. Where I stood on the tile floor, rocking the baby, while my wife finished loading the car. The baby was the last item to get loaded.

So I headed back and flipped the switch on my alarm clock - and in the process discovered that I had a whole minute and a half to spare, before it would have gone off and (doubtless) awakened firstborn. So, fine. No more sleep for me. I made myself breakfast, then went and showered. Then I went back to wake Firstborn and get him ready - usually just a matter of putting pants and shoes on him - and discovered that he'd created a mid-sized lake in the middle of his bed.

Fortunately, we keep a waterproof sheet on the mattress. Unfortunately, that still meant chasing the boy into the shower, gathering up his clothes, stripping the bed, and completely sterilizing my hands. Once the boy was clean and dressed, we got into the car and went on our way.

So now I'm at work. Also, I'm grumpy. This is not exactly how I wanted to start the day.

Still... First World problems.

What Santa really wants

You know what Santa could really use? A spell-checker for the e-mail submission form. The nine year old who wrote in entirely phonetic spellings was somewhat understandable - all I had to do was read it out loud.[1] But the kid who typed the entire thing in Textspeak and left the first five lines as one giant, unpunctuated, run-on sentence? I have not the words. I already have eyestrain from looking over the 2.2 billion names on my list. I. do. not. need. this.

Proofreading, people. Please. I'm begging you, here. At the very least, capitalize your name for me. And please, please double-check that you gave me a working e-mail address. I just know if you're naughty or nice; I can't pull your contact information out of the air. You want a letter from Santa, ya gotta give me something to work with.

And you know what? As long as I'm ranting, Santa does not grant any of the following Christmas wishes:

1. A poodle, a pet fish, a chihuahua, and a parrot; if I put them in my bag, they get squished. No pets.
2. A Lambourghini; you seriously think I can fit that under your tree? For that matter, do you know what that would do to your chimney?
3. Alan Rickman; he squishes, too. You want to see Santa hauled in for kidnapping and negligent homicide? I didn't think so.
4. A new boyfriend or girlfriend; that's Cupid's schtick, not Santa's. And again... squishy.
5. To be an Elf; look, you're either born with pointy ears, or you aren't. Not much I can do about that.
6. A job; here's the thing. There's a whole category of requests that I would love to give people. Problem is, I can't. I run a toy factory; I don't have the power to fix the world.
7. An obscene sum of money; yet again I remind you that I run a toy factory. I don't run a bank, and I'm certainly not going to start printing money up here.
8. A baby pig; no. No pets. Also... how disturbed should I be by this request?

C'mon, folks. Legible letters with reasonable requests and the season's greetings. Is that too much to ask for? I've got elves pulling double and triple shifts, reindeer who want double feedings even though they know they get too heavy to fly when they eat that way, and a wife who's started referring to herself as a "Christmas widow". Cut me some slack, here.

I swear, we ever get these toys delivered, I am taking that tropical vacation I've been promising myself for the last hundred and seventy-six years.

~Santa

[1] This trick works surprisingly well when reading Chaucer, too.

What the Hell is going on?

I mean it. What. The. Hell?

Have I offended a stereotypical Hollywood Old Gypsy Woman and been cursed or something? Has God decided that, while I don't deserve a full-on smiting, a Plague of Urine will cause me to mend my wicked ways? Is there some astrological configuration causing this affliction (Mercury is Retrograde and Venus is in the House of Piss, or something)?

Seriously. Firstborn woke up - and woke me up - at four o'clock this morning. Since he obviously wasn't going back to sleep, I took him out to the living room and put on a video. Somewhere around six-thirty, he managed to urinate on the couch despite wearing pull-ups. One couch cushion and one regular pillow needed to be washed as a result. Also one small boy (who appears to be a conscientious objector when it comes to potty training).

This is on top of the cats, who - probably feeling unsettled and territorial because of the arrival of Secondborn - have been spraying all over the firk ding blast house, which now smells strongly of cat urine in some very unlikely areas.

Then Firstborn, who had been playing on the Sesame Street website so that I could take a much-need and discouragingly-belated shower about an hour ago, manages to poop in his underpants, and piss all over my computer chair. He doesn't bother to tell me about this until I get out of the shower and come to see how he's doing, presumably in order to make sure his urine has a good chance to soak in.

Now the drain basket on one side of the kitchen sink has broken, causing the sink to pee all over the cabinet underneath. I can fix it - pretty easily, in fact - but I sooooo did not need this.

Once I've finished changing the cat litter, I'll have to go outside to get in my car so I can pick up a replacement part for the sink. If it starts raining urine the moment I walk outside, I honestly won't be surprised. This is just exactly that sort of day.

The Lunatic Fringe Is Back

So, apparently Dennis Markuze noticed something I said on another site. Either that, or he's just randomly decided to come target my blog again. He left one of his rants, which (as a matter of policy) I deleted. He also left me a personal note: "you die today..."

So, first of all: I don't die today. God won't strike me down; He likes me and He thinks I'm funny. And you sure as hell won't kill me, because you're all the way up in fucking Granby, and I'm in Texas. You couldn't get down here today even if you wanted to. And let's face it: you don't want to. You gave us our final warning six goddamn months ago. If you were actually going to do anything, that would have been the time.

Look, I've tried to be polite. I've invited you to post actual responses, I've given you the opportunity to talk about why you post these long... rants, diatribes, whatever. Whatever they are, they're nonsensical - and you either can't or won't talk to me like a normal human being. You were amusing for a little a while, but that was novelty value and the novelty has worn off.

Seriously, take a look around the Internet. The only person posting things even remotely like the things you post... is you. Nobody else even comes close. There's a reason for that: that sort of behavior is insane. Even the Christians are asking you to stop, because you're making them look bad.

I'm sure you think you're impressive, mysterious, and threatening. That might even have been true, the first time you posted. But you're not mysterious. You're a known quantity. You're a kook, a crank who lives on the outskirts of Montreal and visits a variety of Internet cafes in order to avoid the more obvious sorts of IP blocking. Those long presentations that you post? They're neither persuasive nor impressive... to anybody but you. Leaving threats in my comment section? Your threats are empty, and everyone knows it. Everyone. Fucking. Knows. It.

Remember that moment when you decided that you were doing just fine and didn't need to take your meds anymore? That was a bad decision. Please start taking them again. If you can't do that by yourself, seek professional help.

Your rants and your threats aren't welcome here. I will delete them. Come back when you have something worth saying.

Another Confession

I recently confessed that I don't actually watch TV, a revelation which has caused people (both here and in everyday life) to question my sanity, my morality, my health, and my worth as a human being. Since I am precisely the sort of person who tries to put out fires by pouring gasoline on them*, I am now going to offer another confession:

I don't listen to the radio, either.

Oh, I used to. I love music, and I play quite a lot of it. I used to have the radio on all the time. That changed about three years ago - maybe four. Or maybe five. (Having children has done horrible things to my sense of the passage of time.)

Well, whenever it happened, it wasn't a sudden change so much as the culmination of a growing disgust with the radio stations in my area. Why? Well, I can narrow it down to three basic reasons.

1. Popular music was going through a dry spell. This happens every couple of years: there's a period of a couple of months where the radio stations just aren't playing anything that I actually care to listen to. Come to think of it, that was true of most of the 90s, too.

2. Dee-Jays were becoming measurably stupider. This has actually been a trend throughout my life. To be fair, I don't whether they were actually getting stupider, or whether they were always this stupid and they've just been getting more air time in which to display their stupidity. (Honestly. The fact that Kidd Kraddick is still on the air... well, that's another whole rant, but call it Exhibit A.)

3. There is no escape from Morning Shows. Look, I'm not exactly a People Person, and nobody will ever mistake me for a Morning Person. So when I'm in my car on the way to work, the last thing I want to listen to is someone blathering on about their ill-informed opinions and idiotic attempts at humor or relevancy. (See point 2, above.) Play music. That is all I want out of a radio station in the morning. Frankly, it's all I want out of a radio station, period. You have to run commercials to stay in business - okay, I get that. You want to name the song, and maybe the artist? Fine... but after that, shut up. You want to play practical jokes on people on the air? When I become Emperor, you will be first in line for the Gulag. Keep it in mind.

Fortunately, technology came to my rescue. I burned a couple of mixed CDs as a stopgap measure, thinking I could play them when there was nothing on the radio. I titled them Dallas Radio Sucks volumes I and II, respectively, and dropped them in the console of my car.

A week later I added Volumes III - Volume IX. They were now on steady rotation; when I reached the end of one disk, I'd put the next one in. Two weeks after that, I worked my up to Volume XIV. Dallas Radio sucks is now up to Volume XXIII, and I haven't turned the radio back on in years.

And honestly, I haven't missed it.

---

* Well, it could work. I mean, the sudden rush of flames could use up all the oxygen in the area, which would cause the fire to go out. Admittedly, it's a poor strategy for campfires and other outdoor applications... Also, come to think of it, if it worked in an enclosed space, I'd promptly asphyxiate. Maybe I should reconsider.

Ten Commandments: The Sex Ed Edition

This is another list that someone else wrote up, which I am repeating here because I think it deserves to be repeated. (Thanks, Denelian.) The person who wrote it used to mentor teens, and would - once trust was established - share the list with them and ask them to pass it on.

She says that out of the seventeen girls and twelve boys she mentored, at age 18 none of them had become/gotten anyone pregnant, none had any STDs, and 21 of them went to college.

Comprehensive sexual education: it works.
(Abstinence only education: not so much.)

Anyway, here are the Ten Commandments:

1. always use a condom
2. always use another form of BC, like the pill, foam, shot, etc.
3. always use a condom.
4. always use a safe space - a REAL safe space, not "an empty alley no one will look here", not "the backseat of the car". A SAFE SPACE where you won't get caught and won't get hurt.
5. always use a condom.
6. make sure your "no" is listened to immediately, and your "yes" even more so. if s/he won't take "no, don't do X, i don't like" when you're just kissing, s/he won't take it anytime.
7. ALWAYS use a condom.
8. if you won't kiss it, don't put it in your body/put your body in it
9. always use a condom.
10. get tested A)at least twice a year B)before a new partner C) after you've been with new partner 3-4 weeks.
[11. don't get caught.]

Texas Drivers

Grrrrrrah! All right, you useless waste of neurons, look: if your driving is so freakin' sloppy that I can't tell whether you're actively changing lanes or just drifting randomly, maybe you should reconsider whether you ought to be driving at all.

Just sayin'.

A Message to D/FW Drivers

Hey, you! Yeah, you - the one in the driver's seat. That thing you're driving on? It's called a road. Got that? Good. You see those little stripes that run up and down the road? They divide the road into lanes.

Now, the reason we have lanes - stay with me, here - the reason we have lanes is so that cars can travel side by side without bumping into each other. That means that you don’t have to wait: you can get onto the road even though I’m already on the road. Or vice versa. We can drive along, side by side, and as long as we stay in our lanes, we won’t bump into each other. That’s right, even when we’re going around a curve, or over a bridge, or... well, just about anything.

Thing is, the system only works if you stay in your lane. You start drifting into my lane, and bad things happen. So whatever it is that you’re doing, there in the driver’s seat? Do less of that, and more driving. Okay? Thanks.