I have adopted a new philosophy of task management. It's the Do It Now initiative.
Essentially, it means that instead of adding it to a to-do list or putting it off, I just do it right then and there whenever possible. I notice something that needs fixing, and I fix it. I remember something I've been meaning to do, and I do it. If something needs to be cleaned, I clean it. This is a direct result of me spending more time managing my list of tasks instead of actually doing tasks.
It applies to blogging as well.
For the longest time I've been wanting to write a quick post about how much I loathe current software trends. And so here we are. This mostly applies to these two abominations...
Let's start with the subscription model which has become the darling of the software development industry. I fucking hate it, which is tough considering that it seems to have become the default. Adobe wasn't the first to go this route, but they're the most infamous to me. Instead of buying an app and owning it forever, you instead pay a fee to be able to use an app, and immediately lose access to it the minute you stop paying. This has caused me to abandon apps that I love, because I am beyond sick of this bullshit. And what's so stupid is that I usually bought an update anyway! Take for example Home Designer Pro. Half the time I buy the new version if there's a reason to do so (usually features or compatibility with new hardware). But this year they've moved their 2026 update to a subscription. Which means I am forced to pay for the annual update whether I want to or not. Doesn't matter how much I love the program, I am moving on because I just don't give a fuck about this kind of predatory app development. Just let me pay for what work you've put into the app up to that point... and come up with something compelling to get me to upgrade to the next version.
And then there's In-App purchases. And I don't mean apps which are free to download and you can then purchase it if you like it. That's fantastic. I'm talking apps which require you to keep buying shit to use it. And it's mostly games. I've done this exactly once with Simpsons: Tapped Out where you could buy in-game currency with real money and be able to buy stuff in-game. It didn't last long once I figured out how much money I was spending just to have the latest cool stuff in my online Springfield. The even worse scenario are games which are free, great, and addictive... but eventually get to a difficulty level which makes it impossible to play unless you buy in-game items in order to make the game playable for normal humans. I fucking hate this so much that I don't even bother downloading a game which has "coins" or "gems" or "credits" or what-the-fuck ever in-app purchases that guarantee the game will one day become too difficult to play without paying a shit-load of money.
I sincerely hope that one day consumer backlash convinces developers to go back to straight-up purchases of their wares. And we just might be taking first steps. Canva, a company which bought out the excellent Affinity apps, took a bold move to combine all the apps into one do-it-all design app, offer it as free-to-use, and only charge you something if you want to enable their AI features. Now, given that Affinity is already serious competition for Adobe... what is Adobe going to do? If people weren't willing to toss their subscription bullshit when the Affinity apps were a low-cost alternative, maybe they'll be willing to do it now that they're free. It'll be an interesting ride. And hopefully one which initiates some changes.
And now I need to get in my kitchen and unload the dishwasher since it will likely be finished with its run by now. I'M DOING I! I'M DOING IT NOW NOW NOW!!!
Yesterday I had one of the easiest drives home from Seattle-side that I've ever had. 2 hours and 10 minutes of motoring bliss.
This morning I had one of the worst drives to work I've ever had. What's usually five minutes ended up being ten minutes of hell that had me wishing I would have walked.
Honestly, I just don't understand what is getting into people lately when driving. They're hostile, inattentive, impatient assholes. I had somebody come up behind me and was so close I honestly thought I was going to get rear-ended. I had a car lay on the horn because I dared to wait for two kids to cross the street. I had one car come at me half into my lane, and I had nowhere to go... and if I hadn't braked and laid on the horn as quickly as I did, there would have been an accident.
So, yeah. Not a great start to my morning.
I left Spokane on Sunday around 3:30. That gave me an hour of daylight before the sunlight was fading into darkness. Fading into the abyss.
Now, for the longest time, I loved night driving. It was calming and peaceful and, when I was younger, I did it a lot. Mostly while traveling around the United States because I didn't want to waste daylight driving when I could be seeing stuff.
Or maybe I liked it because the first driving I ever did was on my Atari 2600 with Night Driver...
But then... things started to change.
I was bordering on night blindness, where headlights (or any lights) would become a massive blight in my field of vision. I couldn't see. The amount of concentration required to drive safely was headache-inducing and I was genuinely worried I was becoming a danger on the road. And so I stopped driving at night. Completely. I couldn't justify the risk... not necessarily for myself, but for other people.
And it was fine. I could always get a ride with somebody else or pay for an Über or whatever.
Then, as I was having another surgery for my ongoing injury problems, I ended up getting my lenses replaced with cataract surgery (something I documented here). And even though I was told my cataracts weren't terrible and wouldn't need to be addressed for five years or so... I could suddenly see at night again! Night drivin' here I come, baby!
So I went ahead and drove home in the dark, it was perfectly fine, I could see great, there were zero issues.
At least when it comes to my vision.
Because there will always be assholes on the road, and that's something you can get fixed with cataract surgery.
Maybe a lobotomy, but not cataract surgery.
This year I had a whopping 16 trick-or-treaters. 2024 was 56, 2023 was 60, 2022 was 45. It was sprinkling rain off-and-on, so maybe that's why. Oh well. More candy for me. Not that I should be eating bags and bags of candy at my age, but maybe if I just eat one piece two pieces six pieces a day it will all be fine.
And now, this... something I posted on Facebook a few hours agao
As we yede into All Hallow's Eve, a blessing from me to thee...
Maye thy trick-or-treaters be sparse so the candy bounty left for thee be heavy.
Maye thy pets be not alarmed by the many intrusions unto thine house.
If the weather be not pleasant, maye it not intrude upon thy home when thou openest the door.
Maye wicches and devels and the foul forces of the orange satan passe thee by, and blessyngs be upon thee and thyn this night.
Amen.
It's tough to have Halloween without thinking back to nine years ago when I very foolishly scheduled a colonoscopy for November 1st ("We're wide open, so you can have whatever time you like!"). Which meant I had my clean-out on Halloween. When I was trying to pass out candy to trick-or-treaters. And having to sit on the toilet every five minutes. What I remember most is not wanting to get anybody sick with pink eye or whatever, so I was washing my hands as usual, but in scalding hot water before grabbing the bowl of candy. My hands were raw for days. Which was worse than the colonoscopy. But not worse than the clean-out, of course.
Today was payday! After turning out the lights at 9:00pm as the rain picked up, it was time to place a grocery order for tomorrow morning.
I am single.
I don't eat a lot.
I am vegetarian so I don't buy expensive meats.
I grocery shop frugally. Very frugally... only buying things that are on sale, and I purchase a lot of in-store brands instead of name brands.
Doesn't matter.
I just bought groceries for the next two weeks... the total was $206 ($12 over what I should have spent because I splurged and bought two packages of "fresh" pasta and a box of donuts, all at discount). My savings from shopping sales and special offers was $83. Meaning that the retail price for feeding one person with a low food intake for half a month is $289.
For half a month!
How can a family of four afford to eat any more? What happened to "lower grocery prices on Day One?" This is fucking abhorrent. People are having to use credit cards to finance food to eat while grocery store chains rake in billions of dollars in profit. People are going hungry while the government is financing multiple private jets, ugly million dollar marble bathroom renovations, and an even uglier golden ball room to entertain the millionaires and billionaires that own them.
How the fuck are people okay with all this? We've been completely sold out while the people who represent us rake in billions of OUR MONEY. It's all grift and scams from here on out.
Happy Halloween. For the USA it's 100% trick and 0% treat.
It's the busy time of year for me! I start work at 4:30am, head into the office at 8:30am, then head back home at 3:30pm, grab something to eat, then work until I fall asleep.
The problem is that I am so exhausted when I go home to eat that every little thing feels like too much effort. Just look at the number of times I dreaded having to do something menial...
But anyway...
Eddy is back, and this time he's entering psychosis with CHATGPT...
How does this not scare the ever-loving shit out of people? He did this for fun, but you just know there are thousands upon thousands of people going through this for real.
I have turned off every AI option I can find on all my devices and have done what I can to eliminate AI with the services I use (including Google, where you can search with "-ai"). I do this not just because it's rarely helpful and a waste of time, but also because I don't want to contribute to AI farms stealing resources and destroying lives.
Maybe AI can destroy my life so I can stay in bed tomorrow.
Last night I went out to dinner with some friends that just got back from Vegas.
Back before pandemic, they went almost every year. But now they say they’re probably never going back.
Every drink they had was watered down. There was no meal they enjoyed, even at the expensive restaurants, because the quality of the food has taken a dive and the portions are much smaller. Slot machines don’t pay out. And there are extra charges, mandatory fees, and additional taxes on absolutely everything.
My friend’s wife said that it was impossible to enjoy their vacation because she spent the entire time counting the outrageous amount of money they were spending on a mediocre vacation.
As somebody who went on work trips to Vegas a few times a year for a decade, this is strange for me to contemplate. People flocked to Vegas to roll like a millionaire on a modest budget. Without that, what’s the appeal? Unless things seriously change soon, I wonder how Las Vegas can survive.
In other news...
Today I had my annual eye exam. The first since my cataract lens replacement. I have 20/15 vision. Which means I'm seeing better than I probably ever have in my life, since my eyesight was less than good even as a kid. Now I want to have another surgery. I'm going to try and trade up to 20/10 with X-ray vision next time.
A shame I need readers, but even there I'm told I only really need 1.25× instead of the 1.5× I've been using.
Such a nice surprise to have good news about my eyes for a change.
There was once a man who was being chased by a ferocious tiger across a field. At the edge of the field there was a cliff. In order to escape the jaws of the tiger, the man caught hold of a vine and swung himself over the edge of the cliff. Dangling down, he saw, to his dismay, there were more tigers on the ground below him! And, furthermore, two little mice were gnawing on the vine to which he clung. He knew that at any moment he would fall to certain death. That's when he noticed a wild strawberry growing on the cliff wall. Clutching the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other and put it in his mouth.
He never before realized how sweet a strawberry could taste.
—Zen Buddhist parable
As our world continues to continue its descent into madness and ruin, don't forget to look around and find those simple pleasures which still make life worth living.
They're everywhere.
I ordered something that was shipped from Kentucky. It made it to a hub three hours from me... then got shipped to Ohio... then ended up in Illinois... and now is estimated to arrive on October 29th? It was due TWO DAYS AGO!
I swear, these automated package routing centers for all the big carriers make a shit-ton of mistakes, and once something goes wrong they just continue to make mistakes for some reason. Humans are out of the picture, so if there's a mark on the barcode (or whatever) you're fucked. Totally and completely fucked.
This is not the first time this has happened. It happened in July where a package coming across the country from Florida ended up in CONNECTICUT before being rerouted to CALIFORNIA. At that point it sat for two days until somebody bothered to take a look and get it rerouted to me. And of course UPS doesn't give a single fuck.
But of course the cost to ship packages just keeps going up and up, so you're paying more for shittier service, which sounds right on-point for where things are headed.
I have no idea where the days are going. The weekend passes so quickly it scarcely feels like it existed... then it's back to work where it's an exhausting blur until it's the weekend again. Months feel like weeks. I swear it was just July and here it is October. I can barely remember any of it. At this rate It will be New Years when I wake up tomorrow.
In the meanwhile, there's the here and now.
So there I was... scrolling through Facebook tonight and trying to avoid all the AI slop that is plaguing social media, when I see this...
A little scrolling later and I saw this...
Then I scrolled a little further and saw this, with both cosmic events in the same graphic...
Both of the maps showing that my neck of the woods had good visibility!
Except... it's Fall, which is to say that my odds of having "good visibility" here is not great.
And, sure enough, the night sky was completely obscured.
Oh well. There's always old reruns of Columbo to occupy my Thursday evening.
Our brave firefighters keep gaining ground on the wildfires in the area that have been burning for over five weeks, and it's looking like there's finally light at the end of the tunnel. Today the fire to the north reached 55% containment. And while the fire to the south was holding steady at 7% for weeks, today they announced that the crews there have managed to achieve 10%.
The bad news is that what kind of day I have depends entirely on how the wind blows, because the smoke is still pretty bad.
Every once in a while blue skies will arrive... for a while... which means my lungs won't feel as fuzzy, my eyes won't be burning as severely, my head will be less likely to start exploding, and I won't be coughing as much. I also won't have to take an excessive amount of allergy medication.
But it's always fleeting.
Which is to say that I still go directly to work in the mornings then go directly home afterwards. And still feel awful most days.
Thank heavens for grocery delivery! But even then, having to open the door to receive my order guarantees an instant headache until the air purifiers can get things under control again.
Can you believe that I honestly thought we'd make it through the Summer without a wildfire?
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