It has been a while — three weeks exactly — since the last post here. I haven’t been idle, though; quite the opposite. I reached three-score-and-ten last fall and have taken it as a mile-marker indicating it’s time to get some stuff done.
I hibernated through the winter, but now that spring has arrived, I’m out of my sleepy cave and roaming around organizing things, getting rid of other things, keeping appointments, and (gulp) spending money.
But this Friday Notes edition has a tiny significance that demands my attention.
The significance lies in the date. Regular readers may recall that I’ve been tracking which day of the month I post Friday Notes. For some time now, I’ve fallen into a rhythm of monthly editions, and I discovered a strong bias towards posting later in the month.
[For whatever reason, “rhythm” is one of those words (like “occurrences”) that I can never remember how to spell. An eternal nemesis. With “occurrences” it’s mostly the damn schwa that defeats me (is it “e” or “a”?) but the double double-letters also seems to catch me by surprise. With “rhythm” it’s … the whole damn word: the “rh”, the “y”, and the “thm”. My brain just can’t latch onto it.]
Anyway.
So, I set about smoothing the distribution and, in particular, filling in some actual gaps — month dates on which I’d never posted. And one of those dates happens to be today:
A particular glaring gap because it fell in the middle of the month. The lack of posts on days early in the month makes sense — a new month rolls around, and it takes me a week or so before I start thinking of a Notes post (hence the strong bias towards posting later in the month). But that gap on the 15th was weird.
As an aside, the median is 19.5: there are 31 posts on dates 1 through 19 and also 31 posts on dates 20 through 31. (The mean is ~19.02.) And as it happens, the 19th has the most posts (5). One way to look at it is that there is a 50/50 chance I’ll post after the 19th.
[One date is highlighted in red because the original point of the charts was to discover how often I’d posted a Friday Notes edition on Friday the 13th. Given the later-in-the-month bias revealed by the chart, only twice isn’t surprising.]
Anyway, again: gap filled.
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Whatever happened to Fāk Mēt™ (meat alternatives)?
Several brands of the stuff (Beyond, Impossible, and others) were really hot for a while, but the buzz seems to have died down. I recall seeing or hearing somewhere that, despite being competitive on flavor, “vegan meat” (if I may use an apparent oxymoron) wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
I’m guessing some burger chains must still sell them, and I’ve always wanted to give them a try. Not that I am, in any way, vegan. Tried it for a few years back in college but decided two things:
- Meat is both too efficient a food source and too tasty to give up.
- I’m comfortable as an apex predator and fully embrace being an omnivore.
That said, industrial meat production — a necessity with a large population — can be pretty horrific. A balancing argument for me is that humane methods are possible (but cost more). Further, I believe that eventually we’ll clone meat directly and not require harvesting living animals.
But ultimately, I’m unapologetic about consuming other life, fauna as well as flora.
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This meme I came across recently:
Not to disparage Watson and Crick (“it’s complicated”), but it gave me a big grin. And I knew a really sweet dog named Rosie who was in fact named after Rosalind Franklin.
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I realized recently that I no longer care about quantum computing.
It was interesting for a while, but it has become too specialized and too deep for me to keep up with. And too full of tall tales, wishful thinking, and hyperbole for me to take it seriously anymore.
My bottom line is that, firstly, it’s only useful for certain specific types of problems: mostly modeling of other quantum systems (such as new drug molecules). It will almost certainly never be useful for nearly all classical computing tasks: accounting, communications, entertainment, etc.
The gotcha is that one task it is expected to do (and some worry it’ll happen all too soon) is factor very large numbers comprised of two very large prime numbers. That capability means quantum computers can decrypt the bulk of what we encrypt today.
Researchers are developing quantum-safe encrypting algorithms, but there are two worries. Firstly, that quantum computers might beat the clock on widespread adaptation of the new algorithms, thus leaving a window open. Secondly, that quantum-based decrypting can potentially break historical encrypted data — communications and databases that have been captured and stored.
But despite some glowing reports (and some growing fears), we’re still having trouble developing a quantum computer capable of factoring large numbers.
On the other hand, never bet against technology.
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I never was that into birds (although corvids are kinda cool as are some parrots). I prefer mammals — my metaphorical “birds of a feather”. I’ve never entertained owning a bird (or birds), nor even put out food or bath for them.
But I have been feeding my local squirrels lately:
I know they’re rodents, but you must admit they’re pretty damn adorable ones:
Every morning (and sometimes also in the mid-afternoon), I put out a bowl of raw nuts — some in shell — as well as a bowl of fresh water (of which they do partake).
There are four. At least, that’s the most I’ve seen at one time. I’m trying to learn to identify individuals but not having much luck. I do have some degree of face blindness, and maybe that contributes to the difficulty.
I’ve been spending a few months getting them used to me and the daily feed. My eventual goal is to see if I can hand-feed them. So far, they’re okay with me being right behind the glass door, but they generally run away if I open it. At least two have lately been getting bolder. One almost took a whole walnut from my fingers but kept chickening out.
They’re fun to watch, though, and a nice part of my mornings. It’s adorable how they sit up and hold a nut in their tiny paws and chew away at it.
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Speaking of birds, where did I get the idea that robins are obnoxious?
Harbinger of spring and all that, but there is something about their attitude that rubs me the wrong way. I think it’s related to their boldness around humans. Most birds hide in trees, but robins hop around just looking at you like, “Hey, I’m walkin’ here!” They all seem to have that impatient New York mindset.
But maybe it’s just me.
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For the last year, every day I record the count of spam emails to my primary email account (one I’ve had since the 1990s). The results have been intriguing:
(But perhaps I’m easily intrigued.) I thought the holiday/shopping months (November and December) showed a notable increase, but they pale compared to the increase in the first quarter of this year. Then in April, they dropped off (but still topped the last two months of 2025).
Halfway through this month, if the volume continues, I should get close to what I got in April.
It’s mildly amusing watching the waves of particular scams. Recently, there were a lot about my supposed cloud space being full, and I needed to click this link to prevent my data from being erased. TODAY! ACT NOW!!
More recently, they were about needing to validate my email mailbox or be locked out of it. A long-running one involves getting a FREE complementary roadside emergency kit from AAA (just click this link).
Perhaps oddly, I object both to how lame they can be: how the perpetrators could possibly believe anyone would fall for their atrocious grammar and spelling but also how alarmingly good some of them are. (Though from what I’ve heard, the former is actually intentional to screen out all but those dumb enough to be fooled.)
A particularly good one came as a text message to my phone (and quite a few lamer ones have come by email). It told me my T-Mobile “points” were about to expire. TODAY! ACT NOW!! Click this link!!!
The spelling and grammar were both good, and T-Mobile is my carrier, so it almost seemed legit. But the link was garbage and T-Mobile points never expire (and I don’t have any anyway).
The general scam — your expiring points; act now — seems the latest trend. Quite a rash of emails about my supposed Walmart or CVS points expiring.
What I really object to is the lying. Advertising for a legit product is one thing, but these (pardon my language) fuckers are nothing but thieves. And usually pretty lazy dumbass ones at that. So cheap to send out thousands of lying emails, but a large return on the (I assume) very few actual bites.
But dishonesty just might be at the top of my list of sins.
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Which is why sometimes:
Both a sentiment I often feel these days and the name of the very first play I did tech for back in my high school theatre days. [See My Life 2.0 for the deets.]
I have very fond feelings for those carefree high school days as well as that particular play (a musical by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley).
That said, not a big fan of musicals, especially cinematic ones.
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If last month you got an email about a new, but mostly blank, post from me, blame it on something that is either new or that I never noticed:
The screen grab is from the top of the WordPress Reader’s Following page.
Either I never noticed that it’s for posting a new post or it’s a recent addition. In any event, thinking I was writing a comment to a post I’d read, I inadvertently created a new post. Which presumably sent an email to those subscribers who get email notifications of new posts.
I realized my error immediately and deleted said errant post, but I was vexed. Seemed an unexpected place for a new-post entry box.
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I’m not a big fan of the song Layla (1970, by Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon), but I love the piano part.
The song is much acclaimed but recently watching Clapton perform it as a solo acoustic piece (sans piano part) made me realize I only like the piano part. I find the song, especially the lyrics, rather boring. (The guitar riff is okay, though.)
That piano part is in fact a tacked on separate bit credited as being written by Gordon but said to actually be by his one-time girlfriend Rita Coolidge. Clapton heard him playing it the studio and wanted it tacked onto the song.
I’ve always preferred instrumental music to lyrical music, and I especially love rock piano and keyboards in general. (One reason I was a Springsteen fan was that his band had both rock organist Danny Federici and rock pianist Roy Bittan. Any I like bands with both lead and rhythm guitars.)
Another favorite rock instrumental (albeit with no piano) is Jessica (1973) by Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band.
Hopefully these links won’t rot too soon. I’ve gotten away from posting links to YouTube videos because of link rot.
And I’m finding I’m watching fewer and fewer YT videos because of all the damned ads. The interstitial ones were bad enough, but the ones that interrupt videos make me less and less inclined to bother. Quite a few channels I don’t watch much anymore.
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A few weeks ago, I watched The Game (1997), directed by David Fincher, and starring Michael Douglas. I really enjoyed it when it came out. It’s twisted (in a good way). It’s one of those movies that become a different story after you’ve seen it once.
[The canonical examples are The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Usual Suspects (1995), but my favorite is a lesser-known example, the Florida Noir Wild Things (1998). A classic example, also Florida Noir, is the sultry Body Heat (1981).]
If ‘directed by David Fincher’ sounds familiar, it could be from seeing it in a number of memorable movies: Alien 3 (1992), Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999), Panic Room (2002), Benjamin Button (2008), The Social Network (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and Gone Girl (2014). Plus, three Netflix movies.
So, thumbs up on The Game. I think I watched it a second time back when it came out (or more likely when it became available on cable). I didn’t have any sense of watching the seen-it-once version for the first time. But knowing the plot didn’t detract from the enjoyment. Highly recommended if you’ve never seen it (and you’ll probably have to watch it twice).
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I’m thinking of pushing the weather reports I often do here off into a Weather Notes version of Friday Notes — similar to the infrequent Science Notes editions but less infrequent. But for now:
A bit warmer compared to previous Aprils. A minor cool chill from the 13th to the 19th followed by a bounce back from the 19th to the 22nd. No snow during the month, so winter is probably safely behind.
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Stay squirrely, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.
∇
Logos con carne 
May 15th, 2026 at 10:37 am
I tried a veggie burger ages ago and didn’t care for it. I’m waiting for lab meat to become a thing. That won’t be fake, just meat from a different source. Seems like it could obviate the ethical concerns about being a meat eater, although the conservatives will try to block it at first. (I think it’s currently illegal in Florida.)
I’m agnostic on whether quantum computing will ever have widespread commercial use. My interest in it has always been more theoretical, but that’s mostly played out now, so I almost never pay attention to new announcements.
I have a squirrel who’s been moving around in the yard lately, driving both the dogs and cats nuts. He/she seems to be doing well so I haven’t been tempted to feed them.
Seems like my WordPress spam lately has been very limited. I have an alert to check it daily and it’s usually empty or no more than a dozen or so entries, which I usually just empty out. I have had a few trollish comments on old posts, which is making me contemplate limiting commenting to the more recent stuff again.
I think with that “Write your post here…” thing, WordPress is making an attempt at the Substack Notes dynamic. But it feels half hearted. Seems like they’ll need to do a lot more if they want to get people back.
May 15th, 2026 at 5:39 pm
Was it a veggie burger representing as a meat burger or as an alternative to meat? Back in the day, I used to buy some pretty tasty veggie burgers at a restaurant, but they were presented as an alternative to a meat patty. Like some have fish or chicken burgers instead of beef.
I look forward to a vat-grown perfect tenderloin. It’s just cells.
I think squirrels figure out when dogs and cats can’t reach them and aren’t above taunting. Cute to watch, though.
Same here: I hardly ever get WordPress spam. They’ve gotten very good at filtering it out. (I think some of that might come from new ways of identifying human input from programmed input?) My oldest email goes back to the 1980s when we had no idea about the coming flood, so that email address is on lots of lists.
May 15th, 2026 at 7:35 pm
I don’t remember the brand name, but it was clear on the packaging it was a veggie patty. The first one came out tasteless, but a vegetarian at work told me I had likely overcooked it, so I tried again cooking it a lot less. It was better than the first attempt, but didn’t really taste like hamburger to me. That and I remember looking at the nutrition label and being underwhelmed. But that was decades ago, so not sure how the contemporary stuff tastes.
My oldest email account was probably on Compuserve, which I obviously don’t have anymore. My university and Hotmail addresses go back to the 1990s.
Back when Unsubscribe links became a requirement, I started using them aggressively to get off mailing lists, and blocking addresses that either don’t have them or don’t honor them. It mostly works. But I’m probably still voluntarily subscribed to too much crap.
May 19th, 2026 at 8:48 am
Sorry, didn’t mean to leave you hanging; I’ve been without internet for three days! Really highlights how much of what I do does rely on internet connectivity.
The veggie burgers I used to get (this would have been 1980-1984) didn’t represent as meat, just as an alternative bun-based meat-free meal. They didn’t taste, nor intend to taste, anything like meat. They were their own thing. Tasty enough, but I prefer a beef patty. Most of the contemporary stuff attempts to taste like beef and, from what I’ve read, does a fairly good job. I’ve seen blind taste tests where self-described beef-lovers guessed wrong.
Never thought about it before, but I’ve never had a hotmail address. (Nor Compuserve or AOL.) I got my own domain back in the 1990s when the web craze started and have had it ever since. My email addresses have always been attached to various website platforms I’ve had. I only got a gmail account because I finally got a YouTube account for the videos I occasionally post.
Unsubscribing to a given outlet usually works fine for that outlet, but if they’ve sold their email list to someone else, you can have no idea who has got it. Back in the day, spammers used to harvest email addresses from our post signatures on USENET and various BBS networks (such as FidoNet; I was active on that one back in the 1980s). We had no idea that any masking was necessary (e.g. “bob at my server dot com” for “bob@myserver.com”).
May 19th, 2026 at 10:48 am
No worries on hanging. Three days is a long outage. I think I’d be traumatized. Usually when my internet goes out, I use my phone, although pairing between Windows machines and an iPhone hotspot can be finicky. And three days would be a very long time to do that.
The veggie thing I remember eating was definitely pitched to be something like meat. If the current examples are getting closer on taste, that might work for me. Although the nutrition matters. I need the protein.
I originally got my Hotmail account primarily to observe how they made the web app work. It was an early example, and we were in the midst of trying to build our web presence at work. I also eventually had a bunch of others (Excite, Yahoo, etc), most of which I long ago lost track of. Although my cable provider migrated all of their customers to Yahoo a few years ago, so I have that one, with the cox.net address attached.
The only reason the Hotmail one got preserved was because Microsoft ate them and it became my Microsoft account. Although Microsoft makes it a hassle since they don’t provide a mechanism for being logged into both a work and personal account at the same time.
On unsubscribing, yeah, I religiously unsubscribe to every new marketing email I get, if it has a working unsubscribe. And block the ones that don’t. It doesn’t eliminate it, but it keeps it to a manageable trickle. The worst, I’ve discovered, are the political organizations. I donated money several years ago, and it seems like I’m going to get hit by every new campaign now, forever. They do usually have a working unsubscribe, but it only counts for that specific campaign.
May 20th, 2026 at 11:41 am
It was a little disconcerting when I realized my internet was apparently going to be out for an extended time. Typically, when something server-side happens with my DSL, it’s caught and fixed quickly. Not sure if this time it was something major that actually took three full days to fix or whether the phone company doesn’t work weekends anymore. My DSL went silent Friday evening. Saturday, I called their 800 number. AI, of course. No options for immediate attention; just the ability to schedule a service call. Monday, between 8 and 12.
Got a call Monday a bit after 11. Outage in your area. Yeah, since Friday. Scheduled fix time is 7 pm. We’ll text you when it’s up.
I never did get that text, but perhaps they noticed that I noticed the DSL was back up and my internet connection was working and figured the text wasn’t required. I would have thought it would be automated, but whatever. I can say I used to view the phone company and the electric/gas company to be the last two technical companies that I still held in high regard. I might have to take a star off the telco rating… I want to see about upgrading my modem and possibly upgrading to fiber, and how easy they make that will say a lot about how they’re doing business these days.
I mostly took the three days as a chance to get seriously off-line. Watched some DVDs and read books. The phone gave me some connectivity, but as you say, using it as a hotspot can be dicey. Plus, my phone is old enough that providing Wi-Fi from it would take out the battery pretty quickly.
Heh, I remember the web taking over business. We went through something I’m sure was similar in trying to figure out how to build web-based apps. In the earliest days you couldn’t even count on cookies, so we did everything using forms with hidden data fields. And trying to maintain state in a multi-step transaction: ugh! Request/Response was such a weird way to build an app. Fast forward a decade or so, and it’s all PHP or J2EE. I’m still amazed at how fast the web caught on.
Oi! Charities. They never forget you. I still get snail mail from charities I used to donate to decades ago.
May 20th, 2026 at 6:26 pm
Yeah, phone companies in general suck now, and this one doesn’t sound like an exception. I’ve had enough dealings with AT&T to make me leery of switching to their internet, although I have thought about getting it (it’s fiber here) and keeping my current cable setup as a backup, particularly since Cox was bought by Charter, who I rarely hear good things about.
I’m not sure my DVD player even works anymore. It’s been years since I used it. With even reading now done electronically, when my internet goes out, all of my home entertainment goes with it.
We went through the same evolution with web apps, complicated in our case by our leadership insisting we use Lotus Domino. We were also piping the interactions behind the scenes to a mainframe IMS system, which had its own hidden fields for preserving state between transactions. I largely made my name in the shop building interfaces between them.
In my case the charities I donated to (Care, Red Cross, etc) honored my unsubscribes. Although I still get occasional mail from the Southern Baptist church I attended for a few months in the 2005/2006 period. They’re currently searching for a new pastor and I know far more about it than I should. (I don’t make too much of an issue about it since I still have friends there.)
May 21st, 2026 at 9:05 am
I was a little surprised my DVD player still worked. It has been a while since I watched a DVD on it. Funny how one’s practices evolve. The last of the DVDs I watched during the outage was Howl’s Moving Castle, and I’d gotten halfway through it before tiredness kicked in and I went to bed. Now that service is restored, I’m having a hard time getting back to it to finish. In part because I’ve seen it before, but also because streaming is just too attractive with all the stuff I haven’t seen before. (Plus baseball.)
Over the years I’ve gotten rid of well over half my DVDs. Donated them to the library or Goodwill. I’ve got yet another load to drop off. I’m down to ones I’m reluctant to give up (for a variety of reasons). Less than 200 now, and I find myself questioning why I am hanging on to at least half of them. I’m pretty sure I’ll never rewatch them, although that “you never know” voice in my head keeps me from just getting rid of the lot.
Oof. Lotus Domino. I never had anything to do with it, and I don’t think we used it much at The Company, but all our email was the much-hated Lotus Notes, and I did once have a project that involved some programming in the Lotus environment. I mostly recall it as being awful.
May 21st, 2026 at 12:28 pm
Interestingly, I first saw Howl’s Moving Castle a few years ago when I streamed it.
I got rid of most of my TV show DVDs years ago, knowing I’d never go back and watch all those seasons. I did keep a few like Babylon 5 and FireFly, but I haven’t watched them since. I still have most of the movie ones though. But I haven’t watched any since well before COVID. The last thing I watched off DVD was at my cousin’s house. He bought the first Dune movie on Bluray and we watched it before going to see the second movie. He insisted he could see and hear the extra quality over the streaming version.
Lotus Domino was actually the server side of Lotus Notes, and it was a pretty awful platform. Ironically it got better once IBM sold it to HCL, but our efforts had long ago shifted to cloud hosted systems by then. We finally shut down our Domino infrastructure last year, along with the mainframe. It was the last part of the epic project we’d been working on for the last several years.
May 21st, 2026 at 8:02 pm
Likewise, I’ve kept Bab5 and FireFly along with a bunch of others. I’d like to watch Bab5 again someday, but I’m not sure I ever will. Hard to imagine taking the time anymore. FireFly is among those I seem to be hanging onto for sentiment. So good that I hate to give it away. But I’ve seen the episodes quite a few times now, and the last time had a small dash of being a slog. I realized I was tapped out on ST:TOS and ST:TNG some years ago and gave away those DVDs (to the library, I think). I need to focus on that ‘tapped out’ mindset in getting over my sentimental attachments.
Total guess on my part, but streaming might have video compression that Blu-ray doesn’t? The latter has a much wider data channel, I’m sure.
Was Domino also a regular webserver capable of serving regular webpages to generic http browsers? Or am I misremembering? I sort of recall Domino being the server for our Notes clients, but it was just “the server” to me in that context. My “ugh” was from a memory I have of co-workers hating working with Domino as a webserver. My one experience with coding in Notes was enough to determine me to never become a Notes Developer.
May 22nd, 2026 at 6:18 am
As it turns out my home internet is down this morning. I’m here through my phone’s hotspot. Sigh. Modern conveniences are great when they work.
Definitely a lot of compression involved in streaming. I don’t doubt that there’s an objective difference in the quality, but I know my near 60 year old senses can’t detect them, and my cousin is the same age. He has a very expensive setup though, so maybe I could have seen the difference if he’d played them one after the other.
Domino had a webserver as part of its functionality. You could serve static HTML and CGI scripts through it. But it’s chief function was providing a web interface for Notes applications, although making them work correctly and consistently was three times harder than if we’d just used generic tech at the time. (I tried to make that case and almost ruined my career over it. I finally read the room, shut up, and just made Domino work.)
May 24th, 2026 at 9:06 am
Is it rare for your home internet service to be down? It is for me. Very rare and usually fixed quickly. This past outage of three days was unique. How long was your internet service down?
I notice the video compression artifacts in scenes that push the limits of MPEG compression. For instance, a shot of a car or any object moving against a complex background. Any rapidly moving visual pushes it. A while back someone posted a video of falling confetti that pretty much blew up the YouTube compression algorithm.
I can identify. I always found it hard to keep my mouth shut. I was not made for the corporate world. Gave me a pretty nice retirement but I was ever at odds with the powers that be. When you retire and no longer have to deal with any of that, the quality of your life will go up. A lot. It took me a few years for it to all wash away, but I look back at then and now and see a night-and-day difference in my temperment.
May 24th, 2026 at 9:42 am
My internet goes down maybe three or four times a year, although it’s usually brief. This time it lasted all day Friday, and the notices from Cox were maddeningly uninformative. The outage did finally spur me to order AT&T Fiber. My plan right now is to keep Cox as a backup, although if AT&T proves reliable enough, I may knock the Cox plan back to the lowest bandwidth they offer. If it proves as reliable as yours, I might let Cox go completely.
Work right now isn’t too bad on the don’t-tell-us-what-we-don’t-want-to-hear front. We still make dumb decisions, but they’re the common ones happening in the industry, not uniquely blinkered like they were in the early days.
I had definitely hoped to have retired by now. Our epic project gave me a financial incentive to hold on for a few years. Now Trump keeps screwing up the economy and making me nervous about switching to a fixed income. On the other hand, work is making us spend more days in the office for political reasons, and that might push me over the edge soon.
May 24th, 2026 at 10:30 am
I can’t remember the last time I had an internet outage, and I think perhaps in part because there is an advantage to using the local telephone provider, at least with a DSL. It piggybacks on the existing copper local loop and uses the long-existing external and internal plants. And generally, telcos have a long-established service history. Until this weekend’s three-day outage slightly tarnished it, the telco and electric/gas companies were all five-star with me.
IIRC, you’re in IT for a university? I would guess that’s a somewhat more relaxed environment than a purely corporate one where everything is about selling a product and maximizing ROI. Not that any organization is BS-free; it seems to go with the territory.
Have you run the numbers? What you spend in a month versus what retirement income would bring in? There were two key decisions involved: when to retire and when to turn on Social Security. I retired slightly earlier than planned exactly because work finally pushed me over the edge, and I knew the income/outgo math was positive (not great, but definitely positive). A lot depends on what you plan to do in retirement. I lead a very simple life, no plans to get a motor home or even travel, so retirement has been pretty comfy for me. So far. As you tpuched on, Trump is treating our economy as his own private ATM, and I do wonder what the future will bring. (I have hopes — not high hopes but hopes — for the mid-terms. At the least, I think the results will be a sign.)
May 24th, 2026 at 11:14 am
What kind of bandwidth do you have with DSL? AT&T has had that as an option here for years, but I stayed away because I had better performance with Cox (currently gigabit). But now AT&T Fiber is gigabit for cheaper, with options for up to 5 gigabit. I already have AT&T for mobile, so it’s a bit of a consolidation for me. And they were my local provider when I still had a landline. Although their customer service has been uneven over the years.
Right, IT at a university. Based on what friends tell me, it probably is a bit more relaxed. We frequently have people who leave and come back a year or two later. Although we’ve had periods where the leadership tried to run us a lot more corporate. If that happened again, I’d definitely be gone.
I run the numbers relentlessly. 🙂 For me it would be a fixed pension, with only rare pitiful cost of living increases. And I’m not eligible for social security, so it’s the whole show (plus savings). OTOH, If I go now, I’d be making about 96% of my average salary for the last three years. So at least at the beginning, it’d be completely comfortable.
The big random variable is what happens with inflation. Which is why Trump starting pointless wars in the mideast is a big concern. And what his new nominee to the Fed will do. That said, I can’t hold off forever. At some point I’ll just have to take my chances.
I’m really hoping the midterms put some constraints on Trump.
May 24th, 2026 at 12:58 pm
They run two pairs, each rated at 40 mbs, so nominally 80 mbs (which has been sufficient for my needs). I usually get a bit more: 45 and 52 at the moment. I think the latter one does better because it’s not also supporting my voice line.
After years of holding onto my landline, I think I’m ready to switch to fiber and get rid of the landline as well as the DSL. Another bullet point on my Things To Get Done list.
Oof, no SS. I get about as much from that as from my pension, and the combo has so far kept me from pinching pennies. Do you have a 401K or other retirement fund in addition to the pension?
I’ve been waiting too long for the ship of state to make a course change to expect much change anytime soon but driving up gas prices (and especially diesel fuel for trucks), not to mention groceries (a key campaign promise), is affecting his base. The political pendulum has to swing back eventually. At least in theory…
May 24th, 2026 at 1:48 pm
I think you might notice a video quality improvement when you upgrade to fiber. Thinking about the compression artifacts you mentioned above, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen those, at least with any regularity.
No 401k. They did offer us a 403b plan, but with no employer contribution, and I didn’t like the restrictions it put on what we could do with the funds. I do have substantial savings, although I probably should have been more aggressive on that front.
The problem with the political pendulum is it’s just been swinging back and forth for the last several years, just not very decisively. As long as we stay split more or less 50/50, the outcome will be decided by a narrow margin if swing voters, who mostly vote against whoever the incumbent is unless things are going well. And I’m alarmed that neither side seems to care about the debt, which has gotten out of control. We never seem to worry about that when it matters.
May 25th, 2026 at 1:10 pm
Huh. I assumed compression was always a factor in streaming but maybe not if they know you have a fast connection? I stream YT videos at 4K and 8K just fine on my 80+ mbs, but I don’t know how to see what Hulu or Netflix or Prime provide. Be interesting to compare DVD, Blu-ray, YT, and those other streaming services…
The political pendulum I had in mind is slower, but thinking about it now I’m not sure the one I had in mind still exists. There used to be a general mindset, a social collective mind that swung back and forth between conservative and liberal views. Roe v. Wade was enacted in the early 1970s during a time of general liberalism. It was overturned in the early 2020s during this time of conservatism.
Yet it’s true that, on almost any issue, this country seems to be roughly 50/50. I blame the sheer size of the U.S. population plus the fragmentation due to the internet has erased that collective mind. (Plus being educated these days has become hard.)
At the same time, there does seem a conservative reaction to globalization and the intellects responsible. I thought back in 2016 that maybe we needed a dose of the wrong kind of medicine to set our heads straight, but it seems no lessons were learned. Maybe this time the dose is bad enough to cause a reaction. (But I don’t have much faith in humanity stoned on internet for decades and now advancing to the much stronger drug of Ai.)
May 25th, 2026 at 3:00 pm
For videos, I think the compression is always there, but higher bandwidth gives the software additional options, particularly when the scene is complex. But I’m sure if we put a movie up on two 4K TVs, one on Bluray, the other streaming, we’d see the differences. But under normal circumstances I don’t miss the extra quality when I watch the streaming version.
I think I know what you mean on on political swings. In the 20th century, there were 8-12 year election cycles where Democrats and Republicans exchanged power. The 20th century was replete with landslide elections for one or the other.
But to your point, there was a broader cycle. The early part of the 1900s were conservative, even among liberals. But the 1930s-1970s was a liberal era, where even the Republicans (Eisenhower, Nixon) were relatively liberal, at least in economic terms. From the 1980s-now has been a relatively conservative era, where even the Democrats are relatively conservative (Clinton, Obama).
I do think you’re right that a lot of the current divide centers around globalization. The people who’ve been losing out from it started pushing back. Unfortunately, their only option has been a poisonous clown who’s just making things worse. (Sanders was another option in 2016, but even if he’d won the primary, he was on the wrong side of the electoral cycle.)
Not sure how we get out of this. I worry Democrats might get in on a blue wave, but if things are still the same once they’re in power, it will just be followed by another red wave, although hopefully not putting in anyone as corrupt, reckless, and vicious as Trump.
May 26th, 2026 at 12:05 pm
Yeah, good point. If the Dems did get a blue wave and didn’t learn any lessons from recent years, nothing will change. For years now, people have said that, in American, the choice is between The Evil Party and The Stupid Party. Certainly, the Dems have made some major mistakes recently. It was their mistake in not taking “fly over country” seriously that cost them dearly, and it would be nice to think the writing this time is writ loud and clear.
Sometimes I think we’re seeing play out before us one answer to the Fermi Paradox. “Intelligent life” reaching cleverness before it reaches wisdom. We dodged nuclear annihilation only to subside into ignorant mediocrity. I just saw a graphic last night that 40% of Americans polled “strongly” believe there should be fewer vaccines. (I keep forgetting that I essentially wrote off the human race as a “nice attempt” years ago, but I guess hope springs eternal.)
June 3rd, 2026 at 1:52 pm
Impossible burgers taste just like a turkey burger to me. So I tend to stick with turkey since it is cheaper and I’m not a burger connoisseur 🙂