Chicago ween ’06 – H6

After I had moved to Chicago the following year, I helped Ed and Rita build the next Chicagoween.

2005 – Metal

Pics from a job I had where I cut and welded metal parts.

Chicagoween ’05 – H5

This is the first Halloween party in Chicago, in which I flew out to stay with my friends Darryl, and also Eddie and his (then) fiance Rita.

The Bystander Effect

It would’ve been my dad’s 71st birthday.

His old best friend Paul reached out to me today to tell me (for the 100th time) “He was my best friend. I loved him very much” but he never asks how me or my brothers are doing. What the fuck?

I wanted to reply “Yeah, I’m glad you ‘hope we’re doing well’, but how about, I dunno, write all of his sons and maybe try to be a part of our lives? If my dad was so fucking important to you, don’t you think you might want to keep the people, that were the closest biological ties to your friend, in your fucking life?”

It’s odd to me, how this guy, who supposedly can’t take a sip of water without mentioning his love for my poor father, can go over 1,000 days and not think to ask my father’s sons how the fuck they’re doing.

Well, I’m kind of having a fucking shit day, Paul. Where the fuck were you when my dad was abusing alcohol and not talking to his kids? I don’t recall you ever saying “I’m so sorry your dad treated his body like shit. I tried to help him turn that shit around.”

Nah. You just sat there and watched. Then, when he was dying on that hospital bed, you and your other god damn friends came down, saw him for a few minutes, went out and got shit-faced, and then fucked off back to California. Then you just sat by while his sons grieved and suffered. You fucking idiot.

My last breath.

Today I was thinking about my lastlast on Earth. I was walking around my condo saying things like:

Someday, you will have your last cup of coffee. Someday, you will wake up and make your last plans for the day. Someday, you will say your last word to someone. What will it be? Will it be a good word? Memorable?

I went into a whole existential rabbit hole of thoughts on how, on a long enough timeline, my entire existence will be forgotten, just as countless other people’s entire history is forgotten every minute of every day. I wondered how long it would take for my history to be erased from existence.

These are the types of things I think about when I’m trying to motivate myself to do the little things in life; to be productive.

So I started work on organizing my office/studio better. I’ve always been somewhat dissatisfied with the layout. But I think I’m getting closer to a better place. I hope it will be more relaxing when I’m done with it. Currently, when I try to write music, all I can think about is all the things I ought to be doing, instead of just doing.

So I did.

Test post from Razer phone

I was just thinking to myself that WordPress ought to have a comprehensive app for Android, so here I am testing out its posting capabilities.

Here’s a random picture.

Here’s some stylized text.

[End test post.]

Why does Apple’s LaunchPad still suck?

Apple, it’s been what, almost 8 years since you implemented LaunchPad on OS X Lion. Almost 8 years and you still haven’t fixed it’s core usability in how a user is supposed to organize their applications. See the video below:

As you can see, any folder stack on the right-most column will not let me drop an application onto it because LaunchPad is assuming that I want the folder stack to move out of the way. It’s like this on the latest version of iOS, and one of the reasons I left Apple’s iPhone for Razer’s Razer Phone (seriously, it’s awesome and I’m probably never going back).

Another problem I’ve seen with LaunchPad is that it takes ages to organize applications in the first place, especially if you are starting out with a lot of apps. You have to spend so much time dragging apps back and forth between “pages” of virtual space, wherein LaunchPad correctly recognizes what you’re trying to do about 60% of the time – such as dragging an ap to the edge of the window.

What about readability on a brand new iMac with a gigantic screen? The folders are small and the text is tiny. Where is my customization? Why can’t I arrange folder stacks exactly however I want? Why can’t I resize them? Why can’t Dashboard widgets live right next to the folder stacks? (probably because of a software patent, I know)

All in all, LaunchPad is an alright application that can help with productivity – that is, if you’re often looking to launch different applications like I do. I bounce from Photoshop, to Coda (web development), to Motion (motion graphics), Final Cut Pro (video editing), to Logic Pro (music production). But if you’re like most Mac users, who use maybe Safari, Messages, Mail, and iTunes; then chances are you will never use LaunchPad or you will get quickly frustrated by it.

Agree? Disagree? Please leave a comment below.

Blackhawks Game Review: Nov 9th, 2017 vs Flyers

Chair near fireplace

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a poor passing game!

The Blackhawks had some good looks but some of their shooters need to stop thinking so much. By that, I mean the milliseconds of over-thinking are costing goals. Passing is in the absolute shitter right now. A lot of these guys resemble Solo 3s in Rocket League, chasing the puck and not thinking about their teammates or rotating in the D zone.

  • Kane looks like a body on the ice who’s without his spirit animal (Panarin). There was even a time where Toews and Kane entered in the zone (2 on 2 I think) and Kane was wide open, tapping his stick, ready to fire, and Toews shot at the goal instead. Now, it’s possible that the Flyers defensemen were in the way of a pass, but they certainly were in front of Toews’ shot.
  • Toews seems like he’s really frustrated that things just aren’t falling together like they should. He’s out there, trying to make sure his positioning is picture-perfect, and passes aren’t connecting, a stick is always in his way, or he doesn’t win a battle. And even if he does win, it looks like nothing is done with the puck so it must be very mentally draining to try to win every battle only to have your team not step up and do something with the puck.
  • I’m back to the point where, whenever the opposing team takes a penalty, 2 free minutes just got subtracted from the game for the opponent. It’s so hard to watch a team with so much talent have such a hard time getting goals.

The last handful of games I’ve watched, where we lost, it looks like those teams just have us figured out. They don’t even seem afraid when we have scoring chances. “What’s that? Patrick Sharp has a breakaway on our goalie? Eh, we’ll get to him in a minute. I want to ask for this girl’s phone number first.” (Sharp didn’t score on his last breakaway in case you were wondering)

Sure, on one hand it’s just the start of the season. The team is figuring things out and our schedule isn’t helping us at all. Games are too unevenly spaced where it seems like our guys are having a tough time playing enough to develop consistency in the first place. It seems like either we’re doing very well, either outright winning or shutting out the opponent, or we’re starving for any offensive chances and our passing is abysmal.

 

Proposed solution:

Passing plays for 3 days. No exceptions. Q, quit fucking with the lines. Can’t get consistent chemistry if you keep stirring the bowl.

Rant: Political xenophobia on the bus

This morning I got a dose of “assholism” on the bus, on my way to work. After I sat down, I noticed a much older man talking to a woman who was across from him toward the front of the bus. He is White, she is Black. He was saying something along the lines of “I am an [unintelligible] and I’m from America” and the woman responding, in a very, very thick accent said “I am from America too!”

He went on a mini-rant talking about America and “Obama” but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. She was yelling back at him to leave her alone. He then tried to point out that she had dropped something on the floor. I think at that point all she expected was more harassment because her responses were “Stop talking to me. Leave me alone!” but then she realized when he said “Shut the fuck up, god dammit. You dropped your [unintelligible] on the fucking floor!”. She picked up the item and didn’t say anything to him.

He then cocked his head back, eyes widened, and said something along the context of her not appreciating his “kindness”. She responded and said “You are drunk! You are not well!” while she got up to exit the bus. He started slapping himself and said “Hit me again. HIT ME AGAIN!” and then started mumbling to himself.

A moment before this point, I was teetering on my chair about to stand up and tell him to shut up. Initially I thought this guy was harassing her for being Black, but I couldn’t tell exactly what he was saying to say with 100% certainty. But my gut says he was being xenophobic. He was 100% an asshole, for sure. When the next stop came up, she got off the bus. Then he departed a few stops later, but not before rambling to the people around him. He looked like he was searching for some kind of approval, like “You see? These foreigners have no appreciation for people like me! You get me, right?”

No, man. I don’t get you.

After he got off the bus, I let out a big audible sigh and said out loud “Boy, what an asshole!” No one looked up. No one said anything. The passengers were just as still as they were when the man and woman were arguing. I almost wondered why no one closer to the couple said anything. Maybe the same thought that was going through my head was going through theirs: “Don’t escalate the situation. Sure, this guy is being a prick, but what will confronting him solve if he’s drunk or deranged?”

I certainly didn’t want to escalate the situation. When things like this happen I always try to remember an old police story in which the lesson is similar to “the best situations, the ones you can walk away from, are the ones you can deescalate”. I felt like any outside stimulation would agitate this man, and as long as he wasn’t touching anyone or acting threatening, then it wasn’t my place to intervene.

Still though, fuck him for being a prick to that lady.

Death at Every Size

I saw a post about “Fat, but fit” in a fitness community I follow and I wanted to write up a summary on how the “Healthy at Every Size” community (from which the “Fat, but fit” myth likely spawned from) and why it presents a danger to the fitness community, and the public at large.

No, you fat. Stop eating so much.

The “Healthy at Every Size” (or “HAES”) community has all the elements of a movement that has good intentions: Promoting awareness that people have feelings and some people don’t like feeling ashamed for being obese, short, deformed, or tall, etc. But what’s wrong with this movement is that it was hijacked by the Identity Politics movement. Some people refer to them as “Social Justice Warriors”. Some call them “special snowflakes”. But no matter what you call them, at the root of the activism has become a circus of mental gymnastics, identity politics, and a victimhood state.

Mental Gymnastics

What these people have done, is taken the HAES movement to include a militant style of *”if you disagree with me, you’re a \*-phobic person. Therefor you’re disgusting and it gives me the right to verbally abuse you.”* The philosophy of the movement has now morphed itself into it’s own self-fullfilling prophecy, where if a person is morbidly obese, the world must accept them and conform to their own perceptions of health and beauty – and if the world does not, it only proves to them that their paradigm is correct: “People are inherently bigoted against [obese] people, therefor I need to remain diligent.”

Identity politics

It’s probably safe to assume that most of you are well aware of the in-fighting that happens within modern political activism groups. If you aren’t of a certain social status, race, or religion, for example, then you aren’t allowed to have an opinion about a socio-polital issue, or you aren’t awarded the same respect that another person might have. This has the same effect on the HAES community, where if you don’t list dozens of other afflictions, or identify a certain way, then you won’t be taken as seriously, or people might view you as a fraud. IMO this causes people to branch out as far as they can to become as unique as possible. Think “Level 5 Vegan”: https://youtu.be/RtuMIaOGRy8?t=14

Victimhood state

It’s also safe to assume that most of you are aware of the meme about how “kids these days” are handed participation trophies and are coddled to avoid having any hurt feelings. There’s some truth to be found in these skin-deep perceptions about today’s youth. Some elements are found in these political activist groups, where as long as you cry victim, other people will listen to you. So if crying victim guarantees to yield an audience, then you’ll find fraudulent victims within activist groups to promote their political agenda. This might be the worst and most harmful elements of these kinds of activist groups, because the victimhood state creates a danger in delegitimizing *real* victims in the eyes of the public, causing real victims (e.g. people who suffer from depression or have an eating disorder, etc) to lose their audience, or causing real victims to feel like they aren’t worthy to seek help because they don’t have dozens of other afflictions or don’t identify a certain way.

I’d say, the best way to combat the “Fat, but fit” myth, is to stay diligent in showing people that will, exercise, and diet, are some of the best tools a person can use to get into a more healthy lifestyle, to link to peer-reviewed studies, and to show kindness and respect.

Do you even Google, bruh?

“John” from an IT department in another city had a pressing question that required him to go through multiple channels of esteemed IT professionals, only to fall into my lap so that my immense experience could thrust into action and help this poor soul.

John:

Hi, [Name of person who’s responsible for Mac IT in another city] gave your name to me as someone who might be able to help. I have a [VIP] who wants a Mac but needs Project and Visio. Do you have any suggestions?

Me:
Hi John. If a user needs Project and Visio they need to run Microsoft Windows, as I’m sure you know these pieces of software have not been ported to the Mac. A remote Virtual Machine would solve this problem.

I then go to Google and start searching for “MS Project Mac alternatives” and see a list of software that might help this person. Eh, there’s some software that might help, but whoever is requesting this Mac probably has no business owning one.

It’s common for a VIP at my work to want a Mac because, well, they look pretty and “important” people just love having a Mac with them.

John:
Thanks.  I understand that, but a VM won’t work for this Officer and I know there are project and visio alternatives out there, just need to find the right ones that can export into Project and Visio themselves.

OK asshole. If your VIP needs to have this software, and you know it’s not available for the Mac, and if you know there are alternatives, what the fuck are you doing asking me? Do all IT managers have their abilities to do Google searches revoked?

Me:
I’m sorry, I thought you said they need Project and Visio.

Which is correct. I was so irritated with him I couldn’t help but splash this back at him. As in “Dude, you just told me your customer needs this software. I went and did a Google search for you, and now you’re shifting the goal posts.”

Me:
I’m unaware of any alternatives at this time.

A few minutes go by. He’s probably bitching to his coworkers about me not being helpful. I want to help this guy about as much as I want to help an ex-prostitute get hooked back on heroin. I can’t stand it when lazy people reach out to me for questions they could easily research themselves, in about a fraction of the time it takes me to have this conversation.

John:
thanks!

Fucking idiot.