One Bite At A Time
21/03/21 07:14
It was cold as a witches tit out there yesterday. It was far too cold and far too windy to go biking so it's just as well that I found something else to do with my time. The Ev man and I worked on his apartment for the better part of 3 hours around mid day to get it in shape for an upcoming inspection (update: passed with flying colors.
Suffice it to say that there was a lot of work to do. We also got his air fryer up and running. He threw a few tater tots in for the maiden run. We might have overcooked them just a little bit but Ev said they were just fine after all was said and done. It's an interesting machine to say the least.
It's a good thing that the Ev man is insightful enough to know when he needs more help that he himself is capable of mustering. I'm more of a spit and polish kind of guy so I come in after the fact to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. Ev mentioned that he noticed that there was a Maids car out in front of his building the other day. He said he'd never seen that before.
I think he may have been slightly intrigued by the thought of someone coming along periodically to help tidy things up. I've only lent a hand twice in two years so there's that. Not sure the Maids thing is for him. He just work a little harder at getting it done.
Remind me to pick up a mop and a dish drainer for him. What is this business, by the way, of one of his neighbors giving him groceries? He had a couple of jars of instant coffee sitting on top of his refrigerator that caught my eye right out of the gate. "Do you drink that stuff?", I inquired. He kind of chuckled and said that he didn't but there the jars sat. Neither had been opened. Talking to the missus later that evening she suggested that he donate the coffee to one of the many donor receptacles around town. Why didn't I think of that?
I ordered everything that Mrs G needs to breathe a little more life into her computing experience. Her device stopped accepting updates some years ago although how many I'm not sure. She'll be getting a snappier machine at a fraction of the original cost of her old machine. I promised that her desktop would look and feel just like her old desktop after I finished setting it all up. She responded by saying something about not having to get up to speed on learning something new. I'm paraphrasing, of course.
She's more of a browser than a carouser so she'll not have to spring for a computer that can send a man to the moon and back. If she can get out to her favorite web sites without much of a fuss, she'll be happy. I'll get the call from time to time when the batteries run low on her bluetooth devices but that's about it. She's had some printer issues as of late too but I suspect those issues are directly related to the age of her computer. They are likely to go away with the new set-up. We can always restore the default settings on the printer.
I might have fibbed a little bit when I told Mrs G that her new desktop would look just like her old desktop. I think the new operating system will put all of the existing icons from her old desktop into one folder on her new desktop after the migration. I think Mrs G is comfortable with the resulting clutter that goes along with having a shitload of icons on her desktop so I hope she's not too traumatized with the look and feel of the spartan-like appearance of her new desktop. As long as she knows where to find them, she should be okay. Here's hoping.
I always get a little antsy when it comes to ordering expensive computer hardware online and then having it delivered. The antsy part comes in when I'm sitting around waiting for a delivery that never arrives. What then? Whose feet do I hold to the fire? Who will compensate me for something stolen, misplaced, mis-delivered, etc?
How long will it take me to put my universe back together once the proverbial ball of yarn starts to unravel? How many bloody doors will I have to knock on before someone, anyone, believes me when I tell them that I never received the package that they say they delivered? Welcome to my world.
I had the computer mailed directly to Mrs G so I had little to no control over the logistics once it arrived. What befuddled old fuck, when seeing a package that he/she thinks might be his/hers, walks off with it without a second thought. How long might it sit on someones countertop before they realize that it doesn't belong to them? What are the chances that they might even forget that they picked up a package much less that they have a package that needs to be opened? Mrs G is sharp as a tack so no worries there. Others in her facility? Maybe not so much.
Who in her place is looking to make sure that the elderly residents of her building follow the proper protocols when and where it comes to the mail room? I received an e-mail from the vendor when it was delivered so I sent off an e-mail to Mrs G to confirm that she received it. Hours passed during the afternoon without any response. Yes, I was checking every hour on the hour. Finally, I asked that the missus call her mom after dinner to confirm one way or another that she received the computer.
I had put Mrs G on notice that the computer was being delivered to her place but I didn't tell her that the package wasn't much bigger than a pack of cigarettes. I think she was expecting something big and bulky but she got something that was small and compact instead.
The good news is that she received it so that was one less thing to worry about. Her new monitor is coming from another store and should arrive today. I'm less antsy about the monitor. Probably because it is less costly and less likely to disappear once it arrives. If the monitor comes along early enough in the day I'll pop over and put it all together.
I sent the Ev man a couple of pictures I took of computer desks while at Staples yesterday. I figured I'd stop by after going to Trader Joe's to see what they have in stock since Ev will be needing a desk once he gets his new computer. He responded but with the usual few words and then nothing.
I gathered that he liked what he saw in the photos that I sent but he said something about needing to sit at the desk. I get it. That's where the conversation ended. Are you planning to do that anytime soon? When can we move forward with this? All questions of the sort that never get asked and never get answered when it comes to the Ev man.
What is going on at our southern border here in our country? News reports say that people from across the world are now coming across our borders in droves thanks to Sleepy Joe Biden's immigration policies. "It's who we are", he tells us. Trump was the first president in generations who developed a policy in concert with other countries that kept the immigrants in Mexico while processing their asylum claims. Biden then threw the proverbial doors wide open when he got into office and this is where we are. It'a a fucking travesty.
Biden is doing this in the midst of a pandemic which is beyond reprehensible. Not a one is being tested for covid and we estimate that 25% of the illegal aliens have covid. The aliens are flooding the southern border states and are being bussed into the interior of our country to infect even more people. What's the goal, Sleepy Joe? Is it to turn Texas blue? Is it to ramp up the covid numbers in order to keep our country shut down so you and your damn democratic party can continue to steal elections? What's the end game, Joe? Americans want to know.
It's enough to make you sick. I feel so bad for the good people living in those towns and cities along the border. They and their people are probably living on the edge as it is as we're still trying to come back from an economy that has been shut down for the better part of a year due to covid. Resources and budgets are stretched thin and can barely meet the needs of their citizenry even under the best of circumstances.
The massive influx of illegal aliens who have come to our country to avail themselves of what little we have left to offer by way of free health care, free education, food stamps, etc., is just not helping matters. Is this what 80 million people voted for when they voted for Joe Biden? Spoiler alert: Nobody in their right mind believes that Joe Biden got eighty million votes.
The other little dirty secret here that nobody seems to be talking about is what our government is doing with all of these so-called covid relief checks they're mailing out to Americans. The last boondoggle of a bill that the democrats in congress passed in Washington sends checks out to Americans without any means testing whatsoever.
It guarantees monthly checks to families far and wide that look a lot like a guaranteed basic income. If you can depress the economy long enough and keep sending people checks that effectively disincentivizes them from working, you've got yourself a citizenry that will happily continue to feed at the trough and will vote at the polls for the party that promises more of the same. Let's call it what it is. It's a socialistic circle jerk.
Trump said something while in office about our country never becoming a socialist country. I don't know that he's right about that. I'd like to think that's true but where are all those so-called patriots who are willing to stand up for the America we've come to know and love but that now seems to be slipping away by the day.
Maybe the democrats have known this to be their path to endless rule right along and have decided that this is the moment in time to implement their grand scheme. It's worked for them if you look at the blue states where democrats have a veto proof majority so why not implement it at the federal level. And to think that they're just getting started. It's bold and bodacious but there's no turning back now. Victory is at hand.
People are fleeing blue states and going to red states in record numbers. That should tell you something about how people feel about blue state governors and their tyrannical inclinations. The people who can afford to leave are leaving as quickly as is humanly possible. The people who cannot afford to leave will be left to pick up the pieces. If and when every state turns blue, then where do you go?
You only have at look at shit hole cities like Baltimore and Minneapolis to see how that turns out. It's also no secret that people in the red states harbor little to no affection for the newcomers knowing all too well their proclivities when it comes to voting for government to play a more significant role in their lives. I'm not sure what this looks like when push comes to shove. The factions are far too entrenched in their own ideologies to budge in the least on the social and cultural issues that divide us.
Who knew that the gaming desk we bought for the Ev man was going to take the better part of three hours to slap together? You wouldn't have guessed it from looking at the somewhat flat but elongated cardboard box containing the unit. There were an endless number of screws and fasteners that in and of themselves told us all we needed to know about the job that lay ahead of us. The manual was reasonably good and with Ev's help at every step along the way we got her done. It was definitely one of those, "How do you eat an elephant?" types of jobs. One bite at a time, my friend. One bite at a time.
There is no turning back once you get started on this sort of thing so we did our best to make sure that we were doing everything in the right order per the instruction manual. We read and reread portions of the manual as we went along and we overcame obstacles as they arose.
It made no sense to lose our collective shit as we sat on the floor poring over the manual and the endless sea of screws and such. There would be nobody to blame but ourselves if things went awry so we were, if nothing else, overly methodical in our approach. "Can you read step number 13 to me again, Ev?", I asked.
Maybe the most satisfying part of the exercise, apart from doing the father-son thing, was putting the fully assembled desk in its rightful place against the wall near his bed and throwing away all the extraneous boxing materials in the trash receptacle outside his apartment. I have to tell you, the Ev man couldn't have been more pleased with the end result.
The desk was the perfect size for his small apartment and really just the bees knees in terms of upping his gaming platform and experience. If you can believe it, this thing even came with cup holders which we plan to attach at a later date. Next steps, a chair and a lamp. He thinks he knows what he wants. Sounds like we''re good to go.
I'm covering a lot of territory in this blog so bear with me. I never think I have anything to say when I start out but one thing leads to another and there you have it. A lot of hoo-haw, really. Anyway, what about this white guy who killed a bunch of Asians down south because he got in over his head about porn and went to his local massage parlor looking to cast out his demons while discharging his AK-47? We all mourn for those lost souls. Maybe more insidious is that the democrats do what democrats do best. They never let a crisis go to waste and they didn't this time around either.
Biden and his entourage of morons got on Air Force One and flew down to Atlanta, GA, where he stood at a microphone and bumbled at length about the curse of white supremacy, the legacy of Trump and the impact of his hurtful Kung Flu comments, and the overall impact on the Asian communities across our nation.
This was in stark contrast to the comments of his very own FBI who reported that the killings had nothing whatsoever to do with race or ethnicity. That's right. This is the very same Joe Biden who promised to bring our country together after four years of the divisive Trump Administration. You pathetic little man. You fucking little pathetic man.
I will say that it's been a pretty good week hereabouts politics and porn aside. I wrapped up Mrs G's computer business yesterday and it went about as I expected it would but with a few twists and turns. I sent her an e-mail this morning with additional recommendations that I hope she'll consider. You know, little things like adding a different mouse and maybe a full sized keyboard to her current set-up.
I'd like to think that I can show her a thing or two about using bookmarks in her browsers rather than dragging all of her site links to her desktop in the form of shortcuts, but I think that horse has left the barn. Maybe there is something to be said for consistency.
Suffice it to say that there was a lot of work to do. We also got his air fryer up and running. He threw a few tater tots in for the maiden run. We might have overcooked them just a little bit but Ev said they were just fine after all was said and done. It's an interesting machine to say the least.
It's a good thing that the Ev man is insightful enough to know when he needs more help that he himself is capable of mustering. I'm more of a spit and polish kind of guy so I come in after the fact to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. Ev mentioned that he noticed that there was a Maids car out in front of his building the other day. He said he'd never seen that before.
I think he may have been slightly intrigued by the thought of someone coming along periodically to help tidy things up. I've only lent a hand twice in two years so there's that. Not sure the Maids thing is for him. He just work a little harder at getting it done.
Remind me to pick up a mop and a dish drainer for him. What is this business, by the way, of one of his neighbors giving him groceries? He had a couple of jars of instant coffee sitting on top of his refrigerator that caught my eye right out of the gate. "Do you drink that stuff?", I inquired. He kind of chuckled and said that he didn't but there the jars sat. Neither had been opened. Talking to the missus later that evening she suggested that he donate the coffee to one of the many donor receptacles around town. Why didn't I think of that?
I ordered everything that Mrs G needs to breathe a little more life into her computing experience. Her device stopped accepting updates some years ago although how many I'm not sure. She'll be getting a snappier machine at a fraction of the original cost of her old machine. I promised that her desktop would look and feel just like her old desktop after I finished setting it all up. She responded by saying something about not having to get up to speed on learning something new. I'm paraphrasing, of course.
She's more of a browser than a carouser so she'll not have to spring for a computer that can send a man to the moon and back. If she can get out to her favorite web sites without much of a fuss, she'll be happy. I'll get the call from time to time when the batteries run low on her bluetooth devices but that's about it. She's had some printer issues as of late too but I suspect those issues are directly related to the age of her computer. They are likely to go away with the new set-up. We can always restore the default settings on the printer.
I might have fibbed a little bit when I told Mrs G that her new desktop would look just like her old desktop. I think the new operating system will put all of the existing icons from her old desktop into one folder on her new desktop after the migration. I think Mrs G is comfortable with the resulting clutter that goes along with having a shitload of icons on her desktop so I hope she's not too traumatized with the look and feel of the spartan-like appearance of her new desktop. As long as she knows where to find them, she should be okay. Here's hoping.
I always get a little antsy when it comes to ordering expensive computer hardware online and then having it delivered. The antsy part comes in when I'm sitting around waiting for a delivery that never arrives. What then? Whose feet do I hold to the fire? Who will compensate me for something stolen, misplaced, mis-delivered, etc?
How long will it take me to put my universe back together once the proverbial ball of yarn starts to unravel? How many bloody doors will I have to knock on before someone, anyone, believes me when I tell them that I never received the package that they say they delivered? Welcome to my world.
I had the computer mailed directly to Mrs G so I had little to no control over the logistics once it arrived. What befuddled old fuck, when seeing a package that he/she thinks might be his/hers, walks off with it without a second thought. How long might it sit on someones countertop before they realize that it doesn't belong to them? What are the chances that they might even forget that they picked up a package much less that they have a package that needs to be opened? Mrs G is sharp as a tack so no worries there. Others in her facility? Maybe not so much.
Who in her place is looking to make sure that the elderly residents of her building follow the proper protocols when and where it comes to the mail room? I received an e-mail from the vendor when it was delivered so I sent off an e-mail to Mrs G to confirm that she received it. Hours passed during the afternoon without any response. Yes, I was checking every hour on the hour. Finally, I asked that the missus call her mom after dinner to confirm one way or another that she received the computer.
I had put Mrs G on notice that the computer was being delivered to her place but I didn't tell her that the package wasn't much bigger than a pack of cigarettes. I think she was expecting something big and bulky but she got something that was small and compact instead.
The good news is that she received it so that was one less thing to worry about. Her new monitor is coming from another store and should arrive today. I'm less antsy about the monitor. Probably because it is less costly and less likely to disappear once it arrives. If the monitor comes along early enough in the day I'll pop over and put it all together.
I sent the Ev man a couple of pictures I took of computer desks while at Staples yesterday. I figured I'd stop by after going to Trader Joe's to see what they have in stock since Ev will be needing a desk once he gets his new computer. He responded but with the usual few words and then nothing.
I gathered that he liked what he saw in the photos that I sent but he said something about needing to sit at the desk. I get it. That's where the conversation ended. Are you planning to do that anytime soon? When can we move forward with this? All questions of the sort that never get asked and never get answered when it comes to the Ev man.
What is going on at our southern border here in our country? News reports say that people from across the world are now coming across our borders in droves thanks to Sleepy Joe Biden's immigration policies. "It's who we are", he tells us. Trump was the first president in generations who developed a policy in concert with other countries that kept the immigrants in Mexico while processing their asylum claims. Biden then threw the proverbial doors wide open when he got into office and this is where we are. It'a a fucking travesty.
Biden is doing this in the midst of a pandemic which is beyond reprehensible. Not a one is being tested for covid and we estimate that 25% of the illegal aliens have covid. The aliens are flooding the southern border states and are being bussed into the interior of our country to infect even more people. What's the goal, Sleepy Joe? Is it to turn Texas blue? Is it to ramp up the covid numbers in order to keep our country shut down so you and your damn democratic party can continue to steal elections? What's the end game, Joe? Americans want to know.
It's enough to make you sick. I feel so bad for the good people living in those towns and cities along the border. They and their people are probably living on the edge as it is as we're still trying to come back from an economy that has been shut down for the better part of a year due to covid. Resources and budgets are stretched thin and can barely meet the needs of their citizenry even under the best of circumstances.
The massive influx of illegal aliens who have come to our country to avail themselves of what little we have left to offer by way of free health care, free education, food stamps, etc., is just not helping matters. Is this what 80 million people voted for when they voted for Joe Biden? Spoiler alert: Nobody in their right mind believes that Joe Biden got eighty million votes.
The other little dirty secret here that nobody seems to be talking about is what our government is doing with all of these so-called covid relief checks they're mailing out to Americans. The last boondoggle of a bill that the democrats in congress passed in Washington sends checks out to Americans without any means testing whatsoever.
It guarantees monthly checks to families far and wide that look a lot like a guaranteed basic income. If you can depress the economy long enough and keep sending people checks that effectively disincentivizes them from working, you've got yourself a citizenry that will happily continue to feed at the trough and will vote at the polls for the party that promises more of the same. Let's call it what it is. It's a socialistic circle jerk.
Trump said something while in office about our country never becoming a socialist country. I don't know that he's right about that. I'd like to think that's true but where are all those so-called patriots who are willing to stand up for the America we've come to know and love but that now seems to be slipping away by the day.
Maybe the democrats have known this to be their path to endless rule right along and have decided that this is the moment in time to implement their grand scheme. It's worked for them if you look at the blue states where democrats have a veto proof majority so why not implement it at the federal level. And to think that they're just getting started. It's bold and bodacious but there's no turning back now. Victory is at hand.
People are fleeing blue states and going to red states in record numbers. That should tell you something about how people feel about blue state governors and their tyrannical inclinations. The people who can afford to leave are leaving as quickly as is humanly possible. The people who cannot afford to leave will be left to pick up the pieces. If and when every state turns blue, then where do you go?
You only have at look at shit hole cities like Baltimore and Minneapolis to see how that turns out. It's also no secret that people in the red states harbor little to no affection for the newcomers knowing all too well their proclivities when it comes to voting for government to play a more significant role in their lives. I'm not sure what this looks like when push comes to shove. The factions are far too entrenched in their own ideologies to budge in the least on the social and cultural issues that divide us.
Who knew that the gaming desk we bought for the Ev man was going to take the better part of three hours to slap together? You wouldn't have guessed it from looking at the somewhat flat but elongated cardboard box containing the unit. There were an endless number of screws and fasteners that in and of themselves told us all we needed to know about the job that lay ahead of us. The manual was reasonably good and with Ev's help at every step along the way we got her done. It was definitely one of those, "How do you eat an elephant?" types of jobs. One bite at a time, my friend. One bite at a time.
There is no turning back once you get started on this sort of thing so we did our best to make sure that we were doing everything in the right order per the instruction manual. We read and reread portions of the manual as we went along and we overcame obstacles as they arose.
It made no sense to lose our collective shit as we sat on the floor poring over the manual and the endless sea of screws and such. There would be nobody to blame but ourselves if things went awry so we were, if nothing else, overly methodical in our approach. "Can you read step number 13 to me again, Ev?", I asked.
Maybe the most satisfying part of the exercise, apart from doing the father-son thing, was putting the fully assembled desk in its rightful place against the wall near his bed and throwing away all the extraneous boxing materials in the trash receptacle outside his apartment. I have to tell you, the Ev man couldn't have been more pleased with the end result.
The desk was the perfect size for his small apartment and really just the bees knees in terms of upping his gaming platform and experience. If you can believe it, this thing even came with cup holders which we plan to attach at a later date. Next steps, a chair and a lamp. He thinks he knows what he wants. Sounds like we''re good to go.
I'm covering a lot of territory in this blog so bear with me. I never think I have anything to say when I start out but one thing leads to another and there you have it. A lot of hoo-haw, really. Anyway, what about this white guy who killed a bunch of Asians down south because he got in over his head about porn and went to his local massage parlor looking to cast out his demons while discharging his AK-47? We all mourn for those lost souls. Maybe more insidious is that the democrats do what democrats do best. They never let a crisis go to waste and they didn't this time around either.
Biden and his entourage of morons got on Air Force One and flew down to Atlanta, GA, where he stood at a microphone and bumbled at length about the curse of white supremacy, the legacy of Trump and the impact of his hurtful Kung Flu comments, and the overall impact on the Asian communities across our nation.
This was in stark contrast to the comments of his very own FBI who reported that the killings had nothing whatsoever to do with race or ethnicity. That's right. This is the very same Joe Biden who promised to bring our country together after four years of the divisive Trump Administration. You pathetic little man. You fucking little pathetic man.
I will say that it's been a pretty good week hereabouts politics and porn aside. I wrapped up Mrs G's computer business yesterday and it went about as I expected it would but with a few twists and turns. I sent her an e-mail this morning with additional recommendations that I hope she'll consider. You know, little things like adding a different mouse and maybe a full sized keyboard to her current set-up.
I'd like to think that I can show her a thing or two about using bookmarks in her browsers rather than dragging all of her site links to her desktop in the form of shortcuts, but I think that horse has left the barn. Maybe there is something to be said for consistency.