Thought I could escape out the door this morning without a coat. Oklahoma has increasingly just given up on Spring. Turns out today is 50s, windy, and wet. Whoops.
Status: The cat gets treats in the morning when I wake up and he has increasingly decided he can try and compel me to get up by walking over me an hour or two before the alarm goes off.
Last Watched: Baseball’s back thankfully. A few hours of easy background noise broken up with action at various points. I entirely ignored Netflix getting to claim “opening day” on Wednesday night and it was the right call, seemingly everything about the game was terrible. Instead I started with the Mets beating the Pirates with former OSU player Carson Benge hitting a home run in his big league debut. Much better.
Today: The governor’s seat is open in this year’s election and we’ve had ads for months now. First it was the Speaker of the House and the Attorney General flooding the airwaves. Now it seems to to be the “outsiders,” neither of which are really anything close. One is a former three-term state senator, the other is literally the son of Frank Keating, the former two-term governor from 1995-2003, and a former cabinet member in the outgoing administration. I just needed to get that out because I yell at the TV alot.
Status: Terrible sleep last night and woke up this morning feeling like death warmed over. A two mile round trip walk to collect my new glasses kind of improved it, but it’ll also be up into the 90s later today.
Last Watched: The Pitt, still crams way too much in, still thoroughly enjoyable.
Back to reality after a week of Spring Break. Spent most of it catching up on reading and taming the backyard. All the while Oklahoma has apparently decided to simply skip spring and head right into summer. Now that we’re past the true beginning of spring we might as well have high temperatures in the upper 90s. None of this should be normal, but it is seemingly going to become our new normal without much protest.
Status:
Sore, a week of weeding, cutting down bushes, and moving mulch and top soil makes you sore.
Reading:
I rebooted the BOOX Palma I bought to try and avoid screen time and then quickly discarded. A phone sized e-ink reader gave me so much joy at the thought of it and then using it was less than ideal. It was kind of slow, the text would skip, so it just sat unused and dead on my bed side table. Charged it this week and have used it for reading prior to bed. It runs Android 11, which hasn’t been supported since 2024, so I assume it’s EOL is pretty soon. I doubt I’ll be buying another given the fact that the Palma 2 runs Android 13 which ended support at the start of the month. The Palma 2 Pro with color e-ink runs Android 15 and BOOX doesn’t seem to push new versions out.
Listening:
I got all caught up on the podcasts and then lost that by the end of last week. I should recharge my old beats that stay on the ear for yard work because too often the airpods just fall out so I just don’t use them.
Last Watched:
Spring Break was spent getting through the first season of The Pitt, which is the newest show I’ve watched in quite a while. It’s fast-paced, entertaining use of time, although one I’m sure isn’t particularly, uh, real. That being said, the show does cram so much in it makes it overwhelming at times. In the first season it was how many current events can we smash into one 15 hour day. The answer was a lot, and most of them were treated with a heavy hand. I won’t spoil anything, but there was a point in every episode seemingly made for people to scream at the TV.
Status: Eye doctor at 8:45AM, meaning even though it’s Spring Break, I was basically up and out at the usual time. Eyes are fine, new prescription ordered.
Reading: The Economist’s Espresso app is really lovely. Short and simple stories that provide a quick overview of the significant issues of the day.
Listening: Train Dreams was one of my favorite movies of the year, and while he was never going to win, Nick Cave’s song for the movie is like all of his music, a lovely song.
Last Watched: The Oscars, which as always are too long and have the presenters try to do bits that just don’t add anything. Just have people present the awards and let the winners say what they want. Except Javier Bardem, he can say whatever he wants before presenting. Bravo to Amy Madigan, the best part of Weapons, a delightful movie, but one that really didn’t hit in the way I was hoping. But not only do we get to see horror recognized at the Oscars but we get to be reminded that Madigan, Ed Harris, Nick Nolte, and others were rightfully annoyed at Elia Kazan’s honorary Oscar.
Facebook buys Moltbook - So now Facebook can be filled with even more AI slop. Dead internet is probably no longer a theory I guess.
Status: Late spring temperatures have arrived far earlier than they should and the house has been annoyingly humid/hot for this time of the year. So naturally sleep last night wasn’t great.
Reading: I subscribed to The Economist to be that person while paring down my magazine subscriptions on Libby. Also, if you’re not actively using libby through your local public library you’re missing out. Yes, reading a hard copy would be better but I can use my tax dollars to read far more magazines than I can actually read.
Listening: So many podcasts.
Last Played: I finished Spiderman 2 on the PS5 yesterday when I realized personal issues were not going to let me actually work during the day.
It’s the Monday after Daylight Savings Time, so naturally everyone is complaining. As a reminder we tried year-long DST in the 1970s, that time of terrible economies and fashion, and it went as well as Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
So anyway, my choice being in Oklahoma would be yearlong standard time. In the summer it’d be bright before 5 but so be it. But if we need DST, at least bump it back to April and end it at the start of October.
Today: Karoline Leavitt wouldn’t rule out a draft - I’d live to re-animate Nixon and LBJ and have then discuss this one.
Status: I feel fine, this morning I was no groggier than usual.
Last Watched: Big 12 wrestling championships, I am who I am.
I teach three days a week, the other days days of the week we I have off from commuting. But, in theory, I should still be working. I’ve never managed to find a system that truly allows me to feel productive at home, even when I do get stuff done.
Today: Storms? Probably? It’s the start of March and the weather this week has given the vibes of April and May, we’ve already had small hail and now they’re predicting the likelihood of severe weather at some point this afternoon and evening.
Also Markwayne is going to be DHS secretary, so now Misspoke will be everyone’s problem.
Status: Less than ideal. I had a health issue last May and yesterday kind of felt like the beginnings of what happened then. Feel more confident it’s not happening again but I guess we’ll see.
Reading: Black Moses, Caleb Gayle. The story of Edward McCabe, the major proponent of Black settlement in Indian/Oklahoma Territories prior to statehood.
Listening: Smooth jazz, need to calm the nerves here.
Last Watched: House of the Dragon, first episode. Not nearly as sold on it as Game of Thrones at its best, but I’m committed to finishing this television universe.
Today: Apple announced new studio displays and I’ve always been tempted by them, especially when the old Asus monitor would constantly flicker when using an M Series mac. Luckily the Dell Monitor I picked up a few years ago has worked really well and reduced by desire for a studio display, but darn if it isn’t still there.
Also curious about the cheap Macbook Neo they’re releasing. I really do not need the level of tech I have, and the allure of a cheap, efficient laptop is really compelling. That being said I don’t exactly have faith the 8 GB of RAM is going to hold up very well.
Status: Spent past of yesterday tinkering with screen time and app limits. Frustrating I have a few apps that are defined as separate based on if it’s an iOS or MacOS app.
Reading: I read some more of Martyr! after about a month of not reading it, still not sure I’m committed.
Last Watched: Penultimate Game of Thrones episode. It really is rushed. I never paid attention to why people hated the end of the show, but the final season really does feel like a sprint to get everything tied up as quickly as possible. You’re already in for so much money in these seasons, would seven more episodes across two seasons have added that much to the cost in the long run?
It’s nearly 80 degrees outside and we’ve got rain on and off for the rest of the week. Spring in other words.
Today:
These explanations fail because they assume something has gone wrong. If we start instead with the premise that something has gone right, the puzzle solves itself. - Why Are American Passenger Trains Slow?
Status: Bought a new low profile mechanical keyboard and I’m ready to throw it out the window already. Never had so many typos with a keyboard as this one, which I just switched away from mid sentence.
Also considering experimenting with utilizing Obsidian, templates, and it’s various plugins to run a self-hosted Hugo blog. My idea was to utilize micro.blog as my default blog platform moving forward but even though I like a lot about it, it just doesn’t feel right for a number of reasons, none of which are the platform’s fault.
It feels weird to write anything long on the platform. Yes people do it, yes you can do it, but it doesn’t feel like the right place, especially when you look at the social feed.
While Micro.blog backs everything up to github, it still doesn’t provide the simplicity of something like a regular static site where all my posts and materials are in individual files and I can easily move them around and use them as I see fit.
The templates in Obsidian and the ability to use git to publish the blog generally solves my major issues with Hugo in the past, namely that it never felt simple to write and publish something.
Anyway, it’ll probably get filed away in my to-do list for the summer.
Last Watched: I can see why Game of Thrones lost support towards the end. We’re in the last season and there’s basically three episodes to wrap everything up and a lot of the plot points in the 4th episode were iffy at best.
We had a thunderstorm and hail yesterday, which yes, fell on the start of meteorological spring, but feels far too early. We had one snow storm this winter and while it could still happen, our temperatures are very quickly trending up. Time to put away the winter coats and uncover the outdoor faucets.
Status: Tired, went to bed early and did nothing on Sunday but a busy week last week is still hitting it seems.
Reading: Trying to plan out lectures for the African American experience in Indian and Oklahoma territories
Last Watched: Game of Thrones, “The Long Night.” I remember the complaints about how dark this when it came out but it wasn’t nearly as dark as I expected. The ending was less than pleasing for a handful of reasons, but a good, moody, hour and a half of violence.
Listening: Eric Church in concert. This is the first concert I’ve left early in quite a while. Not because it was terrible, but because it started so damn late and I’m just not really committed to Church’s music to stay out past 11PM. He didn’t take the stage until after 9PM (thanks to playing the full suite of Pink Floyd’s Time / Welcome to the Machine / Run Like Hell, as the intro music). I like Church for basically three reasons: the nostalgia of “Springsteen”, the Mr. Misunderstood album, and his willingness to play covers relevant to the area. After getting “Springsteen”, JJ Cale’s “If You’re Ever in Oklahoma,” and “Record Year” I called it a night.
Also, venues, please notify people ahead of time when you upgrade seats to close off the upper bowl. While it’s always nice to find out the cheap upper level seat is now a more expensive lower bowl seat, at least email and tell me to check in at the box office if you can’t distribute a new ticket. If a section is that undersold, you know about it well in advance. Don’t make me stand in the security line only to have to fight my way back out and walk around the whole building.
Last Watched: Game of Thrones, nine episodes left.
Today: The TV upstairs that I saved from the dump a few years ago by replacing the motherboard, may finally have decided to give up the ghost again. When it first died it starting acting weird, not correctly changing inputs, turning off when told to; basically little annoyances that piled up until it just died. If it is dead, I’m not all that sad, it managed to make it another few years with a relatively cheap motherboard off ebay, I’d just rather not buy a new TV right now. Although being able to buy one with an antenna jack will be nice because I currently can’t get over the air channels seeing as how this TV is a glorified monitor.
Status: Spring weather in Oklahoma. One day it’s 24 in the morning and 48 hours later it’s 50s and 60s. We’ll be passing 80 by the weekend if the weather is to be believed.
Listening: Roger Deakins talking about cinematography at Magic City Books in Tulsa last night. My favorite response to a question, on lens flares: “I wouldn’t put it that way, but I hate them.” (in response to his wife saying he hates them). He was thoroughly British in all the best possible ways.
Today: Big blizzard flying through the northeast has tied up a bunch of travel plans and left us (blessedly) with an extra houseguest for two days as mom cannot get back to New England with the weather.
Status: Tired, slept at the hotel last night in Stillwater and none of the doors had soft closing mechanisms, so naturally every let the door slam at all hours of the night. But I did get up this morning and go to the gym for the first time in months, I do kind of miss it.
Last Watched: Oklahoma State-Iowa wrestling dual. A full arena of 12,000+ fans for a wrestling dual is not something you see many places.
Today: Obsidian daily notes were showing me notes from last month on any days this month that had a corresponding note from January. The problem seems to be that even though the plugin is a default plugin and offers the option of sorting notes by YYYY/MM/DD it doesn’t actually work. So now all the notes are filed by YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD which is fare less elegant and means I need to go back and edit all my previous paths to make them show up again, but it does now work.
Status: Woke up on Wednesday and the foot hurt and it still hurts. The joys of getting old, luckily it doesn’t impede walking all that much.
Reading: Student exams mostly
Listening: For years I paid for MLB.tv because they had old rates on their Apple subscription page and I found it lovely I was getting a bargain and paying $30 less a year for the service. This year I finally decided it wasn’t worth it, I simply wasn’t watching enough games to justify it. But I still want to listen to games sometimes so I went to subscribe to the radio package MLB offered for $20. Frustratingly, they got rid of it at some point in the past, replacing it with a new MLB+ package that bundles the radio broadcasts with access to MLB Network for triple the price. Sigh.
Last Watched: Battle of the Bastards from Game of Thrones, a truly delightful ending.
I bought a lovely wood wrist rest so I can, after years of owning it, finally use my mechanical keyboard with some comfort. The problem remains that my desk at the office really doesn’t have the space for both a keyboard and monitor and have it be comfortable.
Today: It’s Ash Wednesday. I’m not getting ashes but there’s still something soothing in the idea of “For dust you are and to dust you shall return.” More on that idea
Status: I’m not one to care too much about the lawn but ours has some barren patches and some big divots that present problems when mowing. As we move back into the Spring and Summer seasons, I’ve been looking into simple ways to improve the lawn while not going full-on make it look like a golf course and spend the equivalent of a part-time job on it each week mode. Epsom salt seems like a benefit and cheap, while Native American Seed would be an effective way to not destroy the environment with pointless seeds that need too much water.
Reading: Honestly, nothing.
Listening: Had to break out a paid of wired airpods today because the wireless headphones were acting up. And kind of feel like I should just go back to the wired all the time. There’s no connection issues and they store easier.
Last Watched: Half way through season six of Game of Thrones and there really are times where I wonder how people tolerated this show’s just abysmal sex and gender ideas. I’m going to finish it because I do have a long term goal of getting through all the HBO prestige shows I never watched.
Today: The daily notes in Obsidian are showing last month’s notes and I have no idea how to resolve that alas.
Status: College baseball is back and spring training is coming back around in Florida and Arizona. Don’t get me wrong, I deeply love any number of sports, but baseball with it’s unwritten rules and innings that could in theory go on until the teams simply fall over dead is the ideal sport for me. Let me sit in the bleachers and watch 2-3 hours of baseball and I’ll be rejuvenated like nothing else.
Reading: Do I give up on Martyr! or no, that is the question.
Listening: Did not realize I had “hear Mandy Patinkin sing Harry Chapin and say fuck a few times” on my wishlist, but that was before I saw Mandy on Saturday put on a lovely show. I was not one of the people allegedly upset by the swearing for the record.
Last Watched: Game of Thrones, where some of the plot points are increasingly becoming so easy to figure out it’s making it a less appealing show.
Status: Less than ideal sleep last night, 64/100 according to Apple with over an hour awake. Left earlier than usual this morning and forgot the energy drink, which honestly is probably for the best. I don’t drink more than three a week, but they still kind of scare me.
Reading: Itching closer to ending Martyr! and returning it unfinished.
Listening: I always forget how much I love the Broadcasts app. A simple app for collecting internet radio streams that makes me think every time I open it and start a random stream that I should just cancel Apple Music. I never do, but it makes me think it.
Last Watched: Game of Thrones, nearly done with season 5. The two episodes last night really encapsulated my conflicting feelings about the show. The first has an entirely unnecessary and obnoxious scene that seemed to be put it just because it could be and made me want to quit the show. The second had a deeply hilarious ending that really made me want to keep going.
Rebecca Solnit:"[…]In education, the ultimate product is not your term paper or essay or grade point average; it’s your self. You are supposed to emerge more informed, more capable of critical thinking, more competent in your field of study. The students who begin by cheating their professors end by cheating themselves."
Today: Being frustrated with the entire edtech industry. Everything they sell is billed as making lives easier for everyone involved, yet it always seems to do the exact opposite. I got nothing else, just frustration.
Status: Grading and more grading.
Last Watched: The Olympics. My quadrennial watch of all the fun nordic sports the US isn’t very good in.
Three hours of commercials about AI, crypto, and sports betting last night in the middle of a boring game. I miss the time when Super Bowl ads were actually clever marketing and not just how many celebrities can they stick in an ad. Is anyone going to remember the Dunkin Donuts ad in two months? Meanwhile, how many people alive in the ’80s or ’90s remember Spuds Mackenzie or the Budweiser Frogs?
Today: Listened to a podcast on the bus discussing the writing and reading process and two things have lingered. One, so much of the process was outsourced to AI in terms of editing and amazingly fact checking. While there was discussion of reviewing the material, it’s really disheartening to see how many writers and media personalities are migrating towards AI usage. Secondly there was a comment about how no one pays to read things they dislike. Even though the movement back towards independent blogs and sites is heartening, the economics of subscriptions means people really are building castles with moats rather than islands all over the internet. Sometimes they put the moat down, but if you want into the castle all the time you have to pay. So at the end of the day, we’re not really solving the bubble problem.
Reading: I don’t know if I’ll really finish Martyr!, there’s parts that still grab me but a lot of it feels like a slog.
Listening: I saw Ghost on Saturday in Tulsa. It’s always funny to me to see how this is a band that has such an outlandish public persona (demonic pope!, nameless ghouls band!) and then plays the melodic heavy-ish rock and make dumb jokes during the show. The show was so threatening there were kids and friendship bracelets!
Last Watched: I can’t lie, the Super Bowl was boring but as someone who detests the Patriots, watching them get embarrassed for the entire game by a good Seattle defense was entertaining.
Status: Decent sleep, but still feel like I’m dragging.
Reading: Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar. Slowly.
Listening: USA Women’s Hockey v. Czechia. I’m ambivalent about the Olympics this year for obvious reasons, but it’s still the Olympics, the two week orgy of sports nearly impossible to see any other time in the US.
Last Watched: We’re into the 5th season of Game of Thrones, I’ve increasingly liked it more than I thought. Again, not the highbrow TV a lot of people saw it as in my view, but an enjoyable watch nonetheless.
Today: It’s 39º outside and the high is only supposed to hit maybe 50º today. By the weekend and into next week we could be pushing into the 70s, only to probably drop with another cold spell or two. Increasingly by body rebels against the temperature swings you find in Oklahoma during ever season but summer, when the body rebels against the obnoxious omnipresent heat.
Status: I write all of these as daily notes in Obsidian. I click on the calendar and it creates a note for the day, filed away in a cascading folder system. It’s a wonderfully simple system and part of my resolution to more fully explore and utilize Obsidian and the other tools I’ve settled on. Except the calendar is presenting me with entries for later this month that go back to January, so not sure how long this reminds a blissfully peaceful system.
Reading: How Food Delivery is Reshaping Mealtime - I’m not going to begrudge anyone who chooses to use any of the delivery apps, each person has their own reasons and if you’re willing to deal with the added cost, hassle, and exploitation of workers, then I guess have at it. But 200 to 300 dollars a week in deliveries could be my eat out budget for multiple months.
Last Watched: Hairspray, the 2005 musical version, not the original John Waters movie. Musicials aren’t my thing overall, but it’s an infectious movie that really did a good job overall.
Listening:
After Hairspray I immediately had to come home and watch the Christopher Walken dance in Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” music video. This came out at the perfect time when MTV not only still played music videos but I was watching them. This, more than any other music video, is the first image and sound that pops into my head when you say music video.
Bacone Indian College, photograph, Date Unknown 
