Countersigned by Pierre Andre! In *Ink*!

Not far from our credit union is another place of business bearing the name of "Apline Castle Lake Insurance." Every time I see it, I wonder how much they had to pay per adjective.

Probably got the same deal these folks on on nouns, touting their "Proton Lottery Raffle Draw."

I mean, I guess people fall for this crap. I imagine if I'd followed through I'd be taken down one of two popular scam primrose paths (if I can also pile on the modifiers):

Path 1: Be prompted to surrender bank information so the lottery raffle draw prize money can be deposited into my account without them touching even a single penny that's there,

OR

Path 2: Be promped to pay a trickle of custom duty funds release fees (I got all of *those* modifiers for free) in the hopes they'll eventually send me my funds, on the pinky promise that once I pay just one more fee, the money will be in my lap, thus:

I'm too cynical, first of all, to believe this is real. Also, I'm not stupid.

Dreng Has No PT Cruiser

Twice today a very excited yet hard to understand woman from Pennsylvania has called to inquire about the PT Cruiser I have for sale.

I don't have one to sell or give away.

I don't know what's worse: Knowing she's dialed the wrong number twice, knowing she'll probably call again, or that she's looking to buy a PT Cruiser.

Wingus and Dingus, Listen Up

I just wanted to see how much this fancy dog food cost ($2.16 a day, they say, which is pretty expensive) but I didn't want to use my real name. Or the real names of our dogs. So these names came to mind.

I anticipate a lot of email from these folks over the next few weeks.

Do our dogs care? Not really. They eat their kibble and enjoy it. They get the occasional cheese tax, and other things. They're not overweight -- one of them is downright skinny -- and they're healthy enough for both being senior dogs.

They're always game when ol' Zapp wants to tell them the plan.

Excited Much?

I have seen a grand total of two of his posts. I shared one of them. Man, are they excited about that.

Today, I Was An Electrician

Today's adventure: Lots of switches. And a few outlets.

Michelle is painting the entry and living room. For the entry at least that meant moving from almond-colored switches and such to white. Which is just as well, as a few of the switches were showing their age.

As you can see in the picture, the boxes were sunk into the wall as well. That meant yet another trip to Home Depot for box extenders, but I figured since I had the boxes apart, doing them right was the best thing.

I did get one shock -- working in a switch box I forgot was fed by two breakers.

And I displayed my typical lack of brain in another box -- also fed by two breakers -- when I got frustrated that one of the switches wasn't working until I noticed I hadn't turned the second breaker back on. And I still had the wiring screwed up, since I jiggered with the wiring before I noticed the breaker thing.

I also put in a new light fixture, replacing one that I noticed was broken when I took it down, so also a good thing. The new one:

Got a few shots of Michelle painting, this time in the stairwell:

Everything I know about sketchy scaffolding I learned from Dad and Albert, and applied it here copiously. Note I am not on the scaffold I built -- but it did work, and we'll reassemble things for the second coat tomorrow.

Not to be outdone, Isaac helped me with my breaker wiring diagram:

For those not paying attention, he got his addition from this:

Got to go about 11:02 for the joke. Then pull the plug.

And about 9:46 for the tractor beam joke.

What, *My* iCloud Account?

I've been getting a TON of emails like this one, warning me my iCloud storage is going to be shut down:

I appreciate that these folks, whoever they are, keep kicking that deadline down the road, because at this point I'm convinced my nonexistent iCloud account will never be shut down, no matter how many emails I ignore.

Aside from the "from" addresses being total gobbledygook (they're not even trying to spoof anymore) there are enough tells here for me to know instantly this is a fake. Aside from the fact I don't have an iCloud account I actually care about.

They must get enough hits to keep trying, though. Could wish I wasn't on full blast for their scams.

$126 in Overcharge . . .

Here, I present evidence of . . . something.

On Saturday, I was at the Home Depot buying some hardie board as I continue working on the basement bathroom. They no longer carry the kind of hardie board I'm used to using, but the stuff they had was similar in price and size to what I'd been using, so I got it.

At the checkout, the UPC scanner couldn't read the symbol printed on the board. The cashier looked it up in the system and said "Okay, $36, does that sound right?"

No, it did not sound right. The price on the shelf was $14 and some change. But the cashier insisted the price was right for the merchandise. Maybe the sign was wrong, I thought. So I paid.

But all that day and into Sunday it nagged at me. So I got onto their website and found, yeah, I'd been overcharged $22 a sheet. What they'd sold me was their bigger sheets, but I'd come home with the smaller ones. The ones I need.

So back to the depot I went on Monday. That meant finding the receipt -- not a problem, I have them in a folder like the nerd I am -- but it also meant hauling the six sheets of hardie board out of the basement and back into the car so I had some kind of physical "proof" that I had indeed bought them. I wanted to avoid that step, but Michelle said it would probably be a good idea to take them.

I did get my money back -- a total of $126; the tax alone almost paid for a single sheet of the stuff I needed. And they did indeed want to see the stuff I'd bought. I'm glad it worked out. Next time, I'll be a bit more stubborn at the store.

Nevertheless . . .

Sundays are hard.

I watched my Dad get what we call the "Sunday Scaries," when he'd stew that the weekend was over and that Monday was coming, ready or not.

He knew he had to work to provide for his family, just as I know I have to do the same. Nevertheless . . .

I generally enjoy life. Church is great. I love my job. Nevertheless . . .

Sundays are hard.

Nevertheless . . .

Deep inside each of us is a desire to return to our heavenly home, and Jesus Christ is our heavenly guidance system. He is the way. His atoning sacrifice makes it possible for us to make sacred covenants with God. Once we make covenants, we will at times find ourselves swimming against the current. Danger, disappointment, temptation, and affliction will test our faith and spiritual strength. Ask for help. Jesus Christ understands and is always eager to share our burdens.

Remember that He is known as “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” The Savior taught, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” His atoning sacrifice allows our sins to be forgiven to the point that He no longer remembers them.

~ Elder Sergio R. Vargas

Decorated in Early Demolishkion

Yanno, I know I just got the floor done. But that was only the first of many, many stages to renovating this bathroom. On to the next phase, which is removing drywall where the hardiboard for the tile is going to go.

So I got all of the drywall coming out removed, cleaned up the ensuing mess (except for the crud that fell in the bathtub) started stringing ethernet wire through the wall so I can get a concealed connection to the router upstairs for the network swich I'm putting in downstairs, and got some insulation put in the wall that is shared with the study, becase I'm kinda tired of knowing when the whole western world is taking a dump.

Michelle, meanwhile, has been in the front entry, busily painting. We've had a greeny look to that part of the house since we moved in, and she finally decided she wanted to get rid of it. She and I (mostly her) spent some time patching holes and gouges in the wall, including from when we moved a piano in before we technically owned the place. It'll be nice to have a better-looking entry.

And in the basement, I'm looking forward to soon having the sink and toilet back.

Reading: Nathaniel Popper's "The Trolls of Wall Street"

"The Trolls of Wall Street" is less interesting for its exploration of the WallStreetBets phenomenon but far more interesting for the glimpses it gives of people living their entire social lives online and being much more interested in chasing money and "disruption" than they are in actually improving upon the entities they regard as corrupt and in need of disruption.

Distrust of mainstream media -- well earned, given mainstream media screw-ups, agenda-pushing and the like -- led to increased trust in social media, which Popper points out is even more ripe for screw-ups and agenda-pushing than the mainstream could ever hope or fear to be.

Distrust of the big Wall Street firms, also well earned, led to increased trust in the likes of Robinhood, which, per Popper, so poorly understood the industry it was disrupting they were confused as to what laws they'd broken when they were fined by government regulators.

And these little zealots have now been unleashed on government, God help us all. Too busy distrusting and "disrupting" that they're not pausing for a nanosecond to learn exactly what it is they're doing and what their activity will lead to.

Tears and revolution, most likely.

So read this book and weep for the species at large.

I wrote about the book here and here as well. Highly recommended reading (the book, not necessarily my posts).

Way Too Late at the Movies: Weird, the Al Yankovic Story

Michelle got me a copy of "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story," for Valentine's Day as she and our oldest headed out the door to drive our Expedition to North Dakota to sell it.

Finally popped it into the DVD player today. And I'm trying really hard to like it.

I mean, the parody of the artist's rise, fall, and rise again is spot on. That I'm having trouble liking it might be due to my general distaste for that kind of tropery less so than the film itself.

Nevertheless, I'll try to finish the film and regard it on its own merits.

I really liked the film up until Madonna showed up. I know her presence in the film is supposed to be the peak parody of the successful artist letting success and drugs and sex and alcohol go to his head, but it grates, and grates hard. It goes on much, much longer than it should, slowing the story down.

I'll be honest -- the only thing that might make me get to watch the film again are the cameos. Conan O'Brien as Andy Warhol and Jack Black as Wolfman Jack make the Dr. Demento party scene work far better than the Madonna sequence makes the entire film work. So maybe this film is better for the little bits than the whole.

Yeah. The Madonna bit is going to WAAAAAY too long. There's about 25 minutes left, and I hope it gets better.

Now he's redeeming himself. And his mom got fat. Which segues into Weird Al writing "Fat," of course. There's a lot of hint-dropping for Weird Al's songs throughout, and while some of them are Easter eggs, a lot of them like this are, well, eh . . .

So the film's pretty uneven. It's a perfect parody of the artist's rise, fall, and rise again, but while the first half has a lot of great jokes, the second half takes the parody just a bit too seriously.

*This* is What the Bot Told Me

Who do you trust?

There are a lot of people out there asking that. And the vox populi seems to side against traditional media. And I know traditional media makes its fair share of mistakes, pushes agendas and occasionallly outright lies.

But the "people" the people say they trust are even worse.

Read this a few days ago in Nathaniel Poppler's "The Trolls of Wall Street":

Dopierala vehemently denied the accusations that were flying around the internet. BUt once a suspicion is planted on social media, it is hard to pull it back. And by this time, the GME Owls were talking about several other strange patterns and portents floating around GameStop. One of the GME Owls began documenting every message he could fine encouraging people to sell GameStop. He noticed that many of them were from newly created accounts and that all the messages were using the same phrasing across different social media platforms. "I track a lot of social media challens and the volume is insane, all the same things," he wrote. . . 

Melvin, of course, denied that it had paid for any sort of social media campaign But the fears swirling around were the kind of thing that often happened as online social movements grew. Social media maede it hard to know who was real and who was some plant from the opposition. People had come to social media because they distrusted traditional sources, but this was one of the many areas where social media ended up exacerbating the distrust.

This has, of course, evolved a bit. There've always been people who'll look to social media (or traditional media) and believe what they read because it already jibes with their beliefs. But there's growing evidence that people can now look at the kinds of patterns outlined in the book excerpts and *still* insist that what's being said is true, even if it's an orchestrated attempt at disinformation and pushing agendas.

It reminds me of what Terry Pratchett wrote in "Making Money":

Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.

The Joker is about to kill all the people following the parade. And they don't care, because he's giving away free money. Hubba hubba hubba, who do you trust?

Need A Downer? This is *Your* Film.

So I thought I'd do a few things to cheer myself up this weekend.

Succeeded yesterday by nearly completing the grouting of the bathroom floor and also by picking out the tile for the rest of the bathroom. We still have to go back to the store to get most of the tile as they were out of stock, but we did get the fripperies.

Then I decided to stroll through YouTube to find a new movie to watch.

Found "When the Wind Blows" from 1986.

Oops.

It's a bit of a downer.

A product of the times, of course. In America, we had "The Day After," which was a phenomenon of its own when it came out in 1983. And as it aired on broadcast television, it was pretty much in everyone's living room.

But this film might be a little scarier. These two are completely alone in their suffering. And so dependent on the "official literature" that was meant to placate and not at all help if the event actually came. And no corner of England would have been spared the radiation. Maybe parts of the US would, it being a bigger country. But not England.

So if you're looking for a downer, look it up.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

It . . . Could . . . WORK!

So it was do or die day today, bathroom grout-wise.

And lest that sound a bit too dramatic for bathroom grout purposes, allow me to tell you a story.

Back in 2003, we were going to remodel this basement bathroom. Dr. Who themed. We found online some glow-in-the-dark grout that we thought would be a fun way to do the floor a bit differently. So I bought a one-pound bag.

You'll note it's now 2025, meaning that bag has floated around the house for more than two years.

But the bathroom floor tile was in, ready for grouting.

I took the bag outside and left it in full sun for a few hours. Brought it in, and the glow was weak and spotty. I was disappointed. But I thought I'd try something else: I put it in the bathroom, turned on the LED lighting, and closed the door. About forty minutes later, I checked on it, and it was indeed glowing brightly:

The picture does't do it justice. It was *really* glowing brightly. And not spotty like it had been out in the sun.

So it's only a pound, and though the floor is small, I had my doubts it would be enough. So I cut it a bit with some white grout, grouted, and still didn't have enough. So I went online and bought another bag of the glowing stuff; it'll be here Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the floor:

Again, the picture doesn't do it justice. It's really bright. It does fade over time, but a bit of light on it brings it right back.

I'll have to put a good grout sealer on it, but I'll test it first to make sure the light can still get through or whatever. But I'm excited with the results.

So in the words of Dr. Frankenstein:

Roots of Modern Trolling

 

I'm just over 60 pages into Nathan Popper's "The Trolls of Wall Street," and so far I'm most struck by Popper's description of one of the founders of Reddit's Wall Street Bets subreddit, a central focus of the book, and associated other unerdlinings of the Internet that have led to some not-so-nice places.

I don't know how old the guy is, but I suspect post-Millennial. From the book:

There had always been something of a split between the different sides of Jaime's personality: the class clown and the theater nerd, the party guy and the intellectual, the wonk who liked the options matrix and the trader who enjoyed big risks. He had learned to reconcile the conflicts - or at least repress the more boisterous side. He knew the rowdy young man in him wasn't so welcome in the polite society of the modern world . . .

. . .The conversation in the chat room made it clear that this little community was providing something of a similar release for many of the other regulars. They would jokingly recount the police conversations they had all day as they kpet it together at work. Jamie and outsquare and several others generally put some limits on the freewheeling spirit. They did not fully give in to the worst impulses of he locker room and often made fun of the homophobia and misogyny that still permeated so many traditionally male environments. INdeed, part of the reason the chat room was so attractive was that it gave them a new kin of masculinity that didn't just focus on macho bravado. . .

Boys being boys, you might say.

But a bit later:

But WallStreetBets also played directly into a rising current of defiant young men who had been energized by the political currents roiling the American scene in 2015. During the final years of the Obama presidency as progressive movements like Black Lives Matter gained steam, 4chan gave voice to a growing group of angry young men who were unhappy about their own diminished place in the world and angry that Obama seemed to be elevating the political priorities of women and various underrepresented minority groups. This swirl of anger and activity led to a new universe of online communities taht catered to the young men who did not see their interests represented anywhere else.

We'd do well to remember life and politics and economy are not zero-sum games; gains for one don't have to come at the expense of another. But we seem prone in politics and nature to continue to fall for this fallacy. Giving in to baser influences or feelings doesn't elevate -- well, it might temporarily, but rarely for long and never for good. So maybe I worry less about the time I spend on Facebook exchanging MASH and Simpsons quotes with my friends, as long as I'm getting other stuff done in the real world and not betting butthurt that my need aren't the center of everyone's lives.

Thanks, Trump. Part II

UPDATE: Thursday, the Dow fell more than a thousand points. Trump come, Trump go.

Markets up remarkably. Trump pausing "new" tariffs for 90 days. Who the hell knows what's going on? The situaton may be, as they say, fluid.

Poor, Poor Solomon . . .

Solomon Ibra of the "PayPal Security Team," not content to try to scam me once, tried within the span of ten minutes this morning to scam me four times, and I haven't even checked my spam filter yet.

[Checks spam filter]

Nope, nothing from Solomon there, but plenty of people warning me that my iCloud account is about to go belly-up.

Just out of curiosity, I opened each email. They all say exactly the same thing, right down to the bogus reference numbers.

Most scammers aren't that bright, but the current crop are about as dumb as a sack of hammers.

NaNoWriMo is Dead

UPDATE: As of noon on Tuesday, April 8, the NaNoWriMo website is still acvtive, with no news whatsoever about its closure. So either what's posted below is the product of a rogue board member, or the demise of NaNoWriMo has been exaggerated. Or they're in denial. Who knows?

Found out late last night that NaNoWriMo -- the originators of National Novel Writing Month -- have pulled the plug on their website.

One of its board members posted this video to YouTube on April 1 (an odd day to do so indeed):

The video does address, albeit briefly, the two elephants that have been in NaNoWriMos's room for the past few years: Allegations that people who were grooming youngsters on other sites also had a presence in NaNoWriMo forums and such -- I don't know that there was any evidence of grooming at NaNoWriMo -- and the board's flip-flopping on the use of artificial intelligence as an "assist" in completing the novel-in-a-month writing challenge the group started on.

You'll see in the video, however, that this board member pins the site's demise on poor financial performance, though even that is lacking in quite a bit of detail. Many in the video comments take offense that the board member is pinning NaNo's demise on "the community," but without actual figures shared, it's hard to tell whether that's true or not.

As with all things, however, there's probably a grain of truth to it. I participated in NaNo for three or four years in the aughts and such, and never made a contribution to the site. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Yet in this video, there's no accounting for how many employees the group has -- they mention pay and benefits as a major expense -- nor how much they were compensated. I don't know all the ins and outs of running a site like this, or a nonprofit like this, but if you're going to nail your community for not supporting the group through donations, you probably should have an honest accounting of how many employees the organization has and how much they're paid, and how much work they're doing.

In other word, transparency. It's lacking in this video, so it's easier to brush off the accusations of non-support from the community.

Hard at Work

Caught Isaac in a candid moment working on his 1992 Ford Ranger.

Out of Quests. Sorry.

I play this game called Sea Port on my Kindle Fire. I'm on Level 930, and apparently have completed all available Story Quests, as you can read in this announcement I got on the game.

I understand that maybe they didn't expect people to hang on as long as I have, but that's my schtick. It'll be interesting to see what the "soon" means in more quests arriving. Quests are a way to earn extra in-game items, so they're helpful. Not a crippling stoppage, but an interesting one.

"The Road to Freedom," by Shawn Pollock

I've read a fair amount of literature connected to World War II -- I'm a male over fifty, after all; it's obligatory. I have generally stayed away from fiction related to the war, figuring there's enough non-fiction out there that tells the stories of individuals involved, whether it's Art Spiegelman's "Maus" or "The Good War" by Studs Terkel.

But reading "The Road to Freedom" helped me hark back to the time I did read fiction set during wartime, particularly Anne Holm's "North to Freedom" and "Snow Treasure" by Marie McSwigan. Shawn Pollock's "The Road to Freedom" isn't necessarily written with children in mind (as are the two other books mentioned in this paragraph) but the tale told has the versimilitude, tone, and narrative style I'd associate with the best World War II ficton I've read, right up to Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief," which I read last year.

That one of the main character is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints adds a personal connection that makes the book that much more enjoyable to me.

Don't be scared off by that -- the book isn't preachy in any way. A character in the book happens to be a "Mormon" and that plays into the story, showing one character anchored in a religious-based morality that helps him keep his head together as other characters in the book swim about in events and lives without a defined moral compass, though some characters' compasses are stronger than others, or at least pointed in a more humane direction.

What the story stresses to me above all is that we need to set our values now, and not let them bend despite the circumstances we find ourselves in. That can be harder to do than we like to think -- I had a weak moment this past week and did not live up to my values. I have repented of my fault. Reading this book and the battles the characters fight hors de combat made my own experience more meaningful to me as I look to right my own compass.

Thanks, Trump

Ordinarily I wouldn't blame one person for a serious tanking of the stock market. But this is fallout from Trump slapping tariffs on just about every island and nation on earth, including some populated solely or mostly by penguins.

He's golfing today while my retirement finds have dropped . . .at least $10,000 in one day. And one account hasn't updated for today's massacre.

And Starbursts that I used to be able to get for about $2.70 a bag are now more than $4.

I'm not impressed.

But I am learning still. This video might be the best explanation of the tariff situation that I've listened to. Yes, he makes fun of putting tariffs on penguin-oriented territories, but I think gives a balanced view on the discussion.

I Might Be Having A Stroke. Best Get on Social Media

 

I saw this post on Facebook about three minutes after it was made.

I couldn't access it, meaning it was likely removed in the three minute interval from when it was posted to when I saw it (if Facebook's timestamps are accurate).

I suspect the people who commented on it suggested this man was having a stroke or some other kind of medical issue and I hope they recommended getting off social media and calling an ambulance. A friend of mine had something similar happen, but he had the common sense to get himself to the emergency room rather than talk about his condition on social media. He was indeed having a stroke.

Maybe it was a good thing he posted, in that he (maybe) read the urgent calls to get himself help and quickly, so I can't exactly mock him. Still . . .

THE NEW CHORE LIST IS HERE!

Spring is here (well, by the calendar, not necessarily by the weather) so that means the chore list I typed and saved last fall is now printed out with EXCITING cross-outs on it as I did complete some of the indoor chores during the winter.

Bathroom isn't as far along as I'd hoped it would be, because of the whole toilet flange thing, but nevertheless progress was made. Hoping we can pick out additional tile for the tub and backsplash this weekend between Conference sessions.

I've also made a lot of progress on the work connected to the "ethernet switch," except I haven't got the wire from the upstairs router to the basement in the walls yet. That'll be a bigger job that I just haven't tackled yet. And it'll be all done just in time for me to have to go back to the office this summer.

A Way Too Long Introduction

Over the past few weeks, I've been trying to read this book, as it's been on my shelves for years and what the heck.

I'm still trying to finish the book's 43-page introduction. The book itself is only 188 pages. If it needs that long of an introduction, something's wrong.

I'll admit I'm not one who goes much for philosophy, let alone political philosophy. I *think* about this kind of thing, but reading stuffy old writing like this really doesn't help get the message across. I need to see practical application.

Also, this is one of these books that you read as you're reading other books -- I'm currently reading Tom Holt's "Who's Afraid of Beowulf" and Shawn Pollock's "The Road to Freedom" at the same time.

About the Tom Holt book. I note on Goodreads (or one of my social media presences) that I've read the book already. I have vague recollections of it now as I think about it, but it still came as a surprise to me that I've already read it. I don't have a copy on the bookshelves, so I'm not sure what happened there.