I am currently reading Stephen King’s new book “The Institute”. It’s great, and I’m really enjoying it. It’s about a bunch of kids that were kidnapped and taken to “The Institute”, a building complex located out in some remote woods. I’m not sure exactly what state it’s in at this point in the book, but I’m guessing, since Stephen King wrote it, it’ll be in Maine. The details are so rich you actually care about the kids. I’m about 35% done with it, mostly listening to it to and from work, but I’m going to start listening to it on the treadmill, as it’s getting to the point where I keep wanting to drive “just a little further” to listen a bit more.

We’ve had some nasty thunderstorms the past couple weeks, so there’s been a lot of flooding in the area. Nothing at home though, our sump is working well and keeping us dry. The puppies aren’t phased one bit by the storm either. We’ve conditioned them early, giving them treats for tolerating loud noises. Now they look at us like they’re begging for food during thunderstorms.

Kevin and I went to see “IT: Chapter Two” last weekend. We loved it. Quite different than the miniseries, but that was expected. It was much closer to the book than the miniseries, and with the actors they cast in the adult versions of the kids for the second part, they made it much more amusing than the first part, but I think that lightened it up just enough. Stephen King even made a cameo appearance in the second half, completely confirming that this version has his blessing. Much more work of Stephen King and Joe Hill (his son) is coming too, and I’m looking forward to all of it.

On the geeky side, Google recently removed “Google Photos” from “Google Drive”, which is disappointing. Their Google Photos service allows you to backup every single photo and video you take automatically to the cloud, and I have used it for years. And since all Google Photos showed up in Google Drive, it worked out perfectly for me, because this way I was able to use my full backup of my Google Drive, which I have on my PC at home, to access any photo or video I’ve ever taken in one place on a single drive. This is great, especially if you’ve only accessed photo online for awhile. It’s just super-quick for everything this way, with all photos and videos “local”, right there on a hard drive. So, when they separated Google Photos from Google Drive, my local copy of Google Photos on my Google Drive hard drive no longer updated. No more simplicity. Thanks Google. They claim too many users got confused about the two services. I don’t believe that. I’m thinking there was something much more technical (or legal) involved, so they had to completely separate the two services. Anyway, it sucks, so I’m trying to work around it now.

My main use for a local copy of my photos is to copy them all to my SD card on my phone. I have 1TB of space on my phone (512GB internal, 512GB SD card), so I have plenty of storage and plenty of room to copy all of my photos to my SD card–I’m talking close to 60,000 photos I’ve taken over the years and even those I’ve scanned from photo albums. Even every screenshot. Anything and everything saved as an image, actually. I just found something that works pretty good too. It’s called Bulkr. It works exclusively with Flickr to allow you to very easily backup your photostream, or any group of photos individually. Since way back when I started using Google Photos, I’ve also used Flickr. I bought a “Pro” subscription of Flickr, which offers unlimited photo & video storage, giving me a alternate/additional backup for all of my photos and videos, which are also backed up automatically from my phone just like Google Photos does. Maybe it’s overkill, but if you come from an IT background from “way back” like I do, you know the pain of permanently losing something as a result of data loss, and having multiple backups provides a lot of peace of mind in the area.

Bulkr will simply “Backup My Photostream” with just a click of that button. It looks at your Flickr account in its entirety, then looks at the folder you want to copy your photos stream to, and it instantly knows what’s already there backed up and copies only new photos and videos it finds. This makes it really smart and simple, which I haven’t found with any other tool or app I’ve tried to use. So what I did was create a “Flickr Photos” in my local Google Drive folder, then I run Bulkr’s Photostream backup and it backs up to my Google Drive. This makes it work pretty close to the way it was with Google Photos worked, except that I have to periodically open and run Bulkr to update my Flickr backup. If I could further automate that part to run weekly, or even once a day, that’d be awesome. I’m looking.

Spotify recently removed the widget from it’s Android app, and this really ticks me off. No warning, no notification whatsoever, they just took it out. So when my phone updated the app the other day, my widget on my home screen stopped working and the controls disappeared. After a bit of frustration troubleshooting the issue, I searched the web and found this article:

https://www.slashgear.com/spotify-retires-its-android-widget-for-some-reason-13587148

So it wasn’t a mistake, they took it out with no notice or explanation whatsoever and have no plans to put it back in. After reading this I am very frustrated, and now I’m talking a much closer look at Tidal. Tidal’s app still has a widget, but it also has 20 million more songs than Spotify. Spotify sits at 40 million tracks, Tidal at 60 million. Sheesh, I remember when 20 million was ALL that Spotify had. Anyway, Tidal also offers a “Hi-Fi” option, which provides much better quality tracks than Spotify, for those really picky audiophiles. It costs more, but at least it’s an option Spotify doesn’t have.

I was on a Family Plan with Spotify, so I’ll do a trial of Tidal’s Family Plan and I’ll have Kevin try it out too. Tidal really looks like a serious contender, and I think Spotify just made a huge mistake pulling the widget from their Android app. This could result in a lot of users switching to something else!

We watched “A Dog’s Journey” tonight. Awesome movie!! We all loved it. Even the puppies barked at the screen a lot during many of the scenes with dogs in them (which was pretty much ALL of them).

This is a difficult post. We’ve been busy recently, and literally, “around the house.” We installed some security equipment this month after Sandy’s car was broken into and some things stolen from it last month. I would love to go into just what awesome tech is now actively working to protect us, but I’m always worried that giving out too much information could possibly come back to bite us down the road, so I won’t. Believe me, I’d really love to post about it, but I just can’t. That’s what makes this post difficult for me. I’ve been mulling it over for awhile too, which explains a little about the delay in posting anything for a few weeks. I’m supposed to be posting more frequently, I keep telling myself, but that’s been my focus lately. There are other less-critical things happening though, so I’ll have to post about those instead.

The puppies had their “triple procedures” a couple weeks ago and are recovery nicely. They both got neutered, chipped, and had baby teeth extracted, all at the same time. They were pretty sleepy and sluggish the first couple days, on several medications, and really hated their “Elizabethan Collars”, aka “The Cones of Shame”. We only needed to use them a few times, and only for brief periods of time when they insisted on licking. I think they learned very quickly that if they kept licking their wounds they would end up with those cones on, which pretty much made them freeze completely, not knowing what to do or how to move around. They continuously bumped into things, knocking themselves over or startling them quite a bit the first time they had them on, and quickly learned to dread them, so the licking became very minimal. And as a result, they’re healing very well.

The only problem we’re seeing now is that since their surgery, both dogs seemed to have completely forgotten all of their house training. They are back to literally peeing and pooping anywhere they want. Maybe this is their payback for what we’ve done to them. It reminds me of an episode of Rick & Morty where their pet dog is turned into a cyborg – part dog, part robot, and can now talk. In anger he asks his master “Where are my TESTICLES?” I found it hilarious at the time. Now, not so much. We’re re-training them now and controlling their feedings much better to get a handle on it.

Kevin and I had a nice Independence Day this year. Sandy had to work, so Kevin and I went to Emily’s 4th of July party at her house. It was pretty nice. The food was awesome, and they had a few little fireworks for the kids. It was pretty hot and humid though, so a bit uncomfortable, and it even drizzled on us a bit as we sat outside. Their plan was to walk to the Racine Fireworks following the party, but Kevin and I weren’t interested in that, so we headed home awhile after we ate.

The puppies had to stay penned while we were away from home, so it was also good to get back home sooner so they could get out. Not that they were stressed from people in the neighborhood setting off fireworks though–they’re pretty used to it already. In fact, we used Zak George’s techniques for conditioning them to loud sounds, so now they’re pretty much indifferent to loud noises and even get excited at times, thinking they’re going to get a treat. When they do this and we notice, they do get a treat too. It’s kind of funny to see them get excited instead of scared when there’s a loud BOOM though, and they come running and stare at the treat container. I also watched Black Hawk Down last night, which had plenty of explosions and loud noises of it’s own, so I don’t think they could tell the difference anyway. It also helps that I listen to my movies and play my music pretty loudly at home (when Sandy’s not there), so they’re pretty used to all that noise.

Speaking of movies, “Shazam!” just came out on digital this week, so Kevin and I watched it. We had been looking forward to it, since we missed it in theaters. We both thought it was pretty well done. I think DC is learning a lot from the success of Marvel’s movies and using a lot more humor in their stories, which is nice. We also watched “Little” last week, at Kevin’s request. It seemed a bit childish, with a premise that has been well-used in a lot of other movies: A successful business woman who is really really bossy and used to getting everything her way is taught a lesson when a spell is cast on her so she wakes up as a 13-year-old the next morning and struggles to get through life trying to convince everyone that she’s still a successful business woman and not a 13-year-old child. Remember the movie “Big” starring Tom Hanks? Yeah, it doesn’t compare.

I watched “Batman and Robin” just to see the only Batman (George Clooney) with nipples. That’s right, nipples. I only planned to watch it up to that point, but it became so over-the-top and ridiculous that I couldn’t resist seeing it through to the wacky ending. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s one-liners were oh so bad. In fact, everyone’s was. It was like they were trying way too hard to be a comic book instead of a movie.

I watch “After Earth” too, thinking “It’s a Will Smith movie, it has to be good.” Whoops, my bad.

Lastly, I watch “Mercury Rising”, an old Bruce Willis movie from 1998. I hardly remembered what it was about at all, so it was fun to experience it again and I liked it.

You might be wondering how I remember everything I watch so well, especially at my age. I must confess, I don’t. Plex does. I’ve noticed recently that Plex keeps changing for the better, embedding more and more great features. But its ability to sort movies by “Date Viewed” is pretty handy for jogging my memory. It’s other nice and very cool features include the display of the ACTUAL time your movie or show will be done, once you start playing it. This seems like a pretty simple thing, but I haven’t seen any other service or player do this and it’s pretty handy, I must say. You instantly know, the first time you pause your movie, when it’ll be done (if you watch it straight through without pausing from that point forward). Then there’s the in-depth statistics–I can see all of the users who have played our movies, TV shows, music, and videos, what they’ve watched and for how long, since forever. I can rate each movie and TV show we have and sort movies and TV shows by those ratings or sort them by many other criteria. The Plex interface is very much like many other movie interfaces such as Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Movies Anywhere, etc., except for the fact that everything is local–meaning all of the movies and TV shows are on my local Plex server itself–it doesn’t have to stream anything over the internet (unless I’m playing a movie or TV show remotely). And since most home Internet services don’t support streaming FROM a home very well, Plex uses “syncing” of specified content to help resolve this issue. This lets me choose the movies and TV shows that I want to “download” to my device (phone, tablet, etc.) and Plex automatically syncs them with the server. That way they play as easily on my phone as they would if I were playing them from home where my server is.

That was a bit more detail than I intended, but you get the idea. I love Plex. And movies.

We watched the new version of Pet Sematary last night. It was pretty good, but they really messed with the story. I had thought Stephen King would have hated it, since they completely changed the child that gets hit by the truck (a major part of the story) from the toddler (Gage) to the older girl (Ellie), but it turns out King really liked the movie.

Don’t worry, there are no spoilers here, at least not if you watched the trailers for the movie. The second trailer pretty much tells the whole story, in fact. This is interesting, and I assume they figure the movie is solid enough to reveal all of the major points right upfront in the trailer, so they did that. I guess, since they already have King’s endorsement, it probably can’t lose anyway. Those millions of fans will see it, good or bad, and they’ll make their money.

Stephen King says he was sent a copy of the movie early, so he saw it before it was released. I’m assuming this was to get his reaction and possible endorsement, which apparently did the trick. He said it was watermarked with a huge “STEPHEN KING” on it throughout the entire movie, which was a bit distracting, so he planned to see it in the theater as well.

Even with the endorsement of The King, I think I still prefer the original version though. I understand how they could do more with having an older child be the one who gets killed and is brought back, but it’s just not true to the story as a whole. Then again, all of the connections, atmosphere and “feelings” that are expressed in the book can’t possibly be expressed in a movie, so I guess they have to make up for it somehow.

They also completely removed the old man’s (Judd Crandall’s) wife, but I think they pretty much did that in the original movie. She had medical issues, which Louis helped with as the story in the book started unfolding, and it set a good foundation for what was to come in the story. I guess she just wasn’t as important a character as I had thought.

If you’re a Stephen King fan, see it. If you’re a horror fan, see it. It’s decent for what it is. If you’re a huge fan of the book though, like me, it just whips by like a freight train and it’s over before you know it.

I also recently re-watched Hollow Man (2000), the “Invisible Man” movie starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Shue. I remembered a lot of it, though I forgot a few “naughty bits” that were quite fun to find again. And for a movie made in 2000, the effects were pretty awesome, especially when they injected the orange stuff into a human or animal and watched as it flowed throughout the entire body and all the major organs and then the entire body faded in or out, including the skeletal structure, all organs, and skin. Very cool.

Lastly, I re-watched “crash” recently (yes, its title is in all lowercase), an excellent movie from 2005, where all of the character’s stories are strangely interwoven, resulting in a great story overall. It is based in Los Angeles and was inspired by an actual carjacking that took place in LA in 1991. It has an awesome cast too. I love this movie.

Who would have thought it would be so difficult just to get a nice comforter delivered to a house?

It all started a few months ago when Sandy realized just how nice the comforter was that she got me for Christmas in December. It was on sale at K-Mart, so she bought one for me. We tend to sleep with separate blankets in the same bed now, since we both sleep completely differently–I get too warm and kick off my covers often, and I also roll over constantly throughout the night, while she says tucked-in, covered and toasty all night long, barely moving. As a result of this, Socks always preferred to snuggle up with her instead of me so he rarely gets disturbed when sleeping.

Once I got my big new comforter for Christmas we both realized how soft and warm it was after I started using it, and once the puppies were old enough to sleep outside their pen, they too learned how nice and comfortable it is, and they didn’t care how much I tossed and turned during the night, they just rolled with it and adjusted their sleeping places as needed. This also often resulted me me getting slowly nudged to the edge of the bed, nearly falling out, but I don’t mind them getting a little revenge once in awhile, so I put up with it just as they do.

So Sandy started wondering, out loud, how she could get the same comforter for herself, so they both matched. I took to the internet using the information on the tag of my comforter. I quickly found the exact one she bought from K-Mart. It was on Amazon, but from a different seller. It also costed a bit more, since at K-Mart it was on sale. Since it wasn’t a “Prime” item, it would also take much longer than the one or two days for shipping.

So after a couple weeks our credit card was finally charged and the item was shipped. After another week or so, we were notified that the carrier had returned the item to the seller claiming the package was damaged in shipping, so we were refunded our money.

I went back to the same seller on Amazon and re-ordered the same comforter again, and we waiting some more. After a couple weeks with no change in the status of our order, I contacted the seller (no easy feat to get them to respond, believe me) and asked what the status was on our second order. I provided the second order number, and eventually was told that the order was cancelled. I asked why, explaining that the FIRST order was cancelled when the carrier returned it as damaged, but the SECOND order should have been ok. I received no explanation, just that the order was cancelled.

Back to the drawing board. I went back to the seller’s page on Amazon again and this time I got the “This item is no longer available” and the “We’re not sure when this item will be in stock again” messages, which pretty much mean “Give it up, go find it elsewhere.”

My searches everywhere else on Amazon over the next few weeks turned up nothing remotely similar to the original comforter, so I eventually gave up trying to find one on Amazon. But while I was on the web one day, on my phone, looking at something completely unrelated, I saw an add for comforters at Home Depot. It caught my eye, looking just like mine, or at least very similar, and it was cheap–and even on sale! So I checked into it further and it looked too good to be true. This one was almost exactly the same one as mine, except that it also came with two pillow cases made out of the same material as the comforter. Since the price was so low, it was truly hard to believe, and Sandy had already given up on getting a matching one at that point, figuring we’d never get one delivered, for one reason or another. But I gave it a shot and placed the order, directly through Home Depot’s website.

Our credit card was billed again, and I was notified a week or more later that the package was on the way. When the package didn’t show up a day or two after the expected delivery date, I contacted Home Depot support. They looked into it quickly and told me the package should be delivered that evening (the same evening I contacted them). If it doesn’t arrive, please contact them again and they will open an investigation with UPS to find out what happened. When it didn’t come that evening or the next day, I contacted them again and they soon replied back stating the package was lost and I was refunded my money. Here we go again.

I don’t know what it is with us and comforters–two completely different merchants and we can’t get a nice comforter successfully shipped to our house without something getting totally screwed up! Home Depot’s support apologized and offered us a 10% discount if we wanted to order the same item again. So again, I went back to Home Depot’s website and ordered the same comforter again. I was half expecting it not to be available again, but it still was, and this time the site was offering free shipping. After ordering it again, I sent the order number to Home Depot support so they could apply the 10% discount. They replied back stating that they gave me a 15% discount instead of 10% because the shipping was free. Even better. All seemed ok at that point, and I started playing the waiting game again.

A couple weeks later I got a notification that my shipment would be delayed one week later than expected. Sandy and I were not surprised at this point, as we both now assumed we’d never get another comforter delivered to us from anyone. But after another week, guess what finally arrived. Yup, the comforter.

It turned out to be pretty nice too–even much softer and warmer than the first one and the puppies love it.

Ah, but the saga doesn’t end there. Guess what arrived the next day. The long-lost package that was ordered from Home Depot the second time. You see, apparently the first one that arrived was the original lost package from UPS. The second one that arrived the day after that was the new one we order to replace the lost one. So NOW what do we do? We wouldn’t mind keeping both of them, now that we know how nice they are. My account on their website shows 1 comforter ordered and delivered, the other ordered then returned and refunded.

At this point, we like it so much, we’d rather have an extra on-hand, so we’re keeping it. Maybe we’ll get some credit for advertising… Here’s what we got.

I hardly ever post on Facebook these days. It’s not because there’s nothing is going on, it’s just nothing I feel the need to share with the world. And believe me, posting to Facebook IS sharing with the world. Sure, I can set it to only post to my friends, but there is little difference between the two. Once it’s out there, it’s out there, in public where anyone can do anything with it, keep it, use it against you, or whatever. Post your favorite videogames and the game systems you have and you’re a potential target for robbery. Post details about your day-to-day and you’re a potential target for many more things. These days, literally anything can potentially get you in trouble, so you have to be very careful to pick and choose your words, posts and photos very very carefully. Post a simple photo of a vehicle and you need to blur the license plate out. Post a photo of your front door and you have to blur out the address numbers. Heck, post a photo of someone or a bunch of people and you need to get their verbal or written consent before posting the photo or you’re taking a risk there too. Everyone posts photos of everything and everyone these days though, so there’s also the ever-increasing chance that your photo just gets blended into the mix and no one even notices… Until maybe far down the road when it comes back to haunt you, perhaps even in a background check for a potential job, someone just out for revenge, or a deranged psychopath with weapons he has nothing better to use them on.

Wow, that got ugly real quick. I’m serious though, this is all the stuff that comes to mind every time I sit down to write something for my website. It’s ridiculous and I hate it, but that’s just the way it is. And as a result, you’ll almost always find only very carefully written and structured posts and photos here, everything curated, edited and sanitized so it’s safe for posting, yet sometimes crossing the line just a little in one or more areas, just because I know there’s only a few friends and family reading anyway. At this point, anyway.

Can you imagine me posting something that actually goes viral and gets millions of people visiting my site? Nope, me neither. I can dream though. Or nightmare. At least I can’t ever imagine posting anything anywhere near as unfiltered as President Trump has though. I guess being at the top gives you great responsibility, and what you choose to do with that responsibility is ultimately completely up to you. I don’t think most ‘mericans realized that until it was actually put to the test during this presidential term. No other president has ever dared to be so bold and transparent. Whether that’s a good thing or not, I don’t know.

Look at me being all political and shit. I really don’t know crap about this particular topic and just posting this makes me worry someone smarter might reply, prompting an actual conversation on the subject. Oh, the horror. Nah, it’ll never happen. This is my soapbox. I’m stepping down now.

1. Google Maps/Navigation FINALLY added a speedometer. Nice!
2. The puppies will each have BOTH surgeries at the same time so we don’t have to pay for anesthesia twice… Boy, they’ll be hurting at both ends at once. I feel so bad for them already. Surgery is in July.
3. Just started a 90-day trial of TIDAL. It supposedly has 20 million more songs than Spotify. We’ll see how it compares. I passed on 14-day and 30-day trials of it, but with 90 days I just had to give it a shot. So far, no good: Oceans, the awesome Modern Jazz band from Milwaukee that I went to see play at The Brat Stop with Hans once, is still nowhere to be found. At least on Spotify I can use a PC to add “Local Files”, create playlists, and still download those playlist songs on my other devices. So far I haven’t been able to tell if this is possible in Tidal.
4. McDonalds has a breakfast deal: 2 breakfast burritos & a beverage for $3.50. Burritos normally cost $1.00 each and a large coffee is $1.49. We are sheep.
5. Trump is running for a second term. Oh joy.
6. O.J. Simpson is on Twitter. Oh joy.
7. I’m looking forward to “The Loudest Voice”, a series on Showtime that starts June 30th.
8. Hey Hans, remember the movie “Scanners”? Wow. Re-watched that one this weekend. Ah, good times. I was a huge horror and gore fan back in the day. I worshiped Tom Savini and Dick Smith.
9. Thanks for introducing me to Stephen King when I was a kid, Mom. Seriously. I still seriously crave his next new book, film & TV adaptation, each and every time.
10. I binged the entire third season of Designated Survivor on Netflix last week. Wow. Great stuff–and I don’t usually like political shows. Is it just me or did the show just get tons better once Netflix got hold of it?

The puppies had a checkup yesterday and they’re doing fine except for a couple of upper baby teeth that refused to fall out. They’ve been working hard on their rawhide chew sticks, so I don’t think it’s from a lack of trying. They’ve also been shredding their pee pads in their pen whenever they’re locked up for more than 4 hours, but that’s another story.

So they’re going to require those two top baby teeth to be surgically extracted. It’s the exact same two teeth on both puppies too–you sure can tell they’re twin brothers by their teeth. It must be hereditary. They’re also ready for neutering, so the poor boys are going to be under the knife at both ends pretty soon!

We’re in the process of scheduling both of these procedures for both dogs right now. Other than their teeth though, they’re in great physical shape, normal heartbeats, weight, appearance, and bloodwork. Tiger gave us a bit of a scare after their last checkup when his liver enzymes were abnormally high, but we stopped the soft treats altogether and had him rechecked a couple weeks later and his numbers were back to normal.

They’re keeping each other in great shape by wrestling and chasing each other around the house and the backyard as often as possible. The neighborhood bunnies and birds don’t seem to like it so much though… they constantly get chased out of the yard. And our neighbors who walk their dogs past our backyard seem to be a little more challenged as well, as you can imagine.

We had a wooden cabinet mounted on our bathroom wall above our toilet that held all of our bathroom essentials, which recently fell on the toilet tank, resulting in a leak. We found a rubber washer on the floor and water leaking from one of the bolts on the bottom of the toilet tank. I put towels down to soak up the water and then set out to find a plumber.

I could probably fix it myself with the proper tools, and a few years ago I would have, but with my new knee now and the other knee getting worse, I thought it best to have a professional to it properly instead of me doing a crappy job and possibly hurting myself. I’ve never been much of a home handyman, that for sure, but even less som these days. If it were a computer or a gadget though, let me at it.

The first place I called (this was last night in the evening) answered promptly and said they’d send the info to their on-call tech and he’ll give me a call shortly. I was impressed they had an answering service. The tech called me back a little bit later and I explained our leak. He said that if he came tonight there would be an additional “after-hours” charge of $125, plus the $100/hr for the repair, or someone could come tomorrow and he could have the office call me in the morning to schedule it. I said it could wait until morning, so I waited for someone to call. In the morning someone called promptly and we scheduled them to come out later in the morning. Shortly afterward someone called me again and said their technician called in sick today, so now the soonest they could come out would be 3:30pm, and they would have to charge me the $125 after-hours fee in addition to the $100/hr for the repair. I told them “If I had known that, I would have just had it done last night for the same price”. So I reluctantly agreed, and it was scheduled. Shortly after that some called back and said, “Based on the details you provided about the toilet issue, you’ll need a new toilet, so which type do you want, round or oval?” Very frustrated, I said “Oval, but I’m going to need to discuss this with my wife before agreeing, so I’ll call you back shortly.” A new oval-shaped toilet would be $380.

Instead of calling Sandy, I called another local plumber. I explained what happened and the issue. They’re $125/hr, a little more than the other one, but they can come out between 1pm and 3pm and repair the toilet. That sounded fine, much better than the minimum $605 the first plumber was going to charge us for everything.

The second plumber arrived within their time window, performed the repairs well, and we’re good to go (literally). Just gotta be careful out there with everything these days. Some companies will try to talk you into things or services you don’t need. Just slow down and look at the details before agreeing to anything. Yelp and Google reviews can also help a lot–I used those when I chose these particular local plumbers.

I just had one of those very rare do-nothing weekends. I felt kind of guilty not getting anything done, but I went ahead an did it anyway just to see what it would feel like in the end. A weekend filled with catching up on a few games and TV shows, playing with the puppies, and that’s about it. I was on-call though, but even that was unusually uneventful with no pages at all, so everything just worked out nicely. Not even any employee terminations or Gift of Hope pages to remove or add network access.

I got to one point on both Saturday and Saturday where I actually felt blah, just so lazy things actually ached a bit–almost like me muscles were atrophying. Kind of achy, but I was too lazy to even try to pull out of it, so I rode it out. I know that can be bad for my new knee, I’m supposed to stretch and exercise it very often, so I hope I didn’t do any damage there. I was a little concerned this morning when I woke up and had to go through my regular routine to get ready for work, but that worry quickly dissipated as I realized I feel great, and even much more refreshed than usual, ready to get out and go.

In the end, my day at work was pretty good and I felt much more energized and eager for everything throughout the day. I think the weekend really helped. I think I have to modify those rare weekends a little though and actually force myself to take a walk or do the treadmill for a mile or two each day. That would be even more healthy. But at least I have something to compare it to now, so we’ll see what happens.

I did feel bad at times though, knowing I shouldn’t “waste” a single day, since they’re so limited as it is. But I don’t think it was wasted, it was more of a recharge. Or so I tell myself just to make me feel ok with it. I did spend some quality bonding time with the puppies though, and they enjoyed the crap out of all of it. Oh, we DID walk a little, I totally forgot… Saturday afternoon Shadow, Tiger and I went to the lakefront – Eichelman/Wolfenbuttel park – and walked the path. It was less than a mile, but they loved it. As usual, Shadow choked a lot, since he constantly pulls on the leash, and Tiger was skittish as usual, but always kept up and walked nicely, never choking himself. So there, at least one day out of the two had a bit of exercise in it.

I binged a 8-episode show on Amazon Prime yesterday called “UNLOCKED – The World of Video Games, Revealed”. It was a pretty nice history of video games and provided a lot of inside information. One question often asked was “What was your first video game system?” I had to think on that one for awhile, and couldn’t remember the name of mine and the image in my head was pretty vague at this point, but after searching the web for less than a minute there is was!

My first game system was the RCA Studio II. It came with 5 games built-in and that was it. It came out before the Atari VCS (2600), and I’m not sure what made me choose this particular system, but I saw it in the Christmas catalog and chose it as one of my Christmas gift picks one Christmas. I remember it being black and white, coming just after Pong was released, so at the time it was really exciting to have more than just a single game to play on our TV. I didn’t remember any gameplay at all, but I’m sure I got it for Christmas 1977, when I was 14 years old. I thought it was so cool to have more of a “computer” to play with instead of just a game.

I was quickly able to find videos of it on YouTube though–it is SO friggin’ awesome that the whole world is now at our fingertips, isn’t it? Several of the videos dubbed it “History’s Worst Home Console”. I think that’s a bit unfair unless you were actually there, and the reviewers all seemed to be much too young to have actually been born before the release of that system. In one review, the reviewer didn’t know how to play any of the games on the system and it was obvious he didn’t spend any time even trying to understand it or learn to play any of the games, he only reiterated how crappy it was, over and over. So unfair.

Those of us who were there and lived through the Atari 2600 years know it was a great experience and we understand that everything has a starting point and this was it. These were the earliest stages of video games, when gaming was in its infancy. Someone needs to give these old games a fair shake, someone who was there, who experienced it first-hand, in the moment. And that’s where a few of the people in “UNLOCKED” come from. They don’t make fun of or put down these old systems, they understand it’s all a part of the history and they respect it and accept it.

Yeah, I guess I just sound like an old curmudgeon now, spewing the ratchety “Back in MY day…” and “When I was a kid we had to…” but that’s my right, and someone has to preserve history properly and accurately, dammit! Hell, if I even still HAD that old system, I’d get it up and running again and give it a fair and honest review based on my actual experience.

I do like how everything is coming full-circle now though: 8-bit graphics are coming back, blocky is cool again, Minecraft is awesome, and retro gaming is everywhere! Even all of the old games are available everywhere as ROMs now, playable on home-built Raspberry Pi kits, allowing kids and adults to cheaply build their own custom retro gaming systems with hundreds, even thousands, of games built-in. Awesomeness!

I drink a lot of water. I always bring a bottled water to work, I usually freeze a few bottles, then move them from the freezer to the fridge for a day or two so they melt about halfway, then I drink them. This provides ice-cold drinks of water for a good portion of the day, as the ice block inside continues to melt.

I am also currently going through a “bubly” phase. I tried a few 12-packs of bubly recently when they were on sale pretty cheap and I liked it, so I brought a case to work. Since then I’ve been drinking about a 12-pack per week at work, along with my frozen bottled water. It sure beats drinking from the tap. I don’t have a preference in the flavor of the bubly, I think I’ve tried them all. They have very little flavor anyway. I guess it’s more the carbonation that I like about it. Bubly has one of those “all-zeros” nutritional labels, so there’s basically nothing in it, or at least nothing that’ll effect my health numbers at all.

At home we also enjoy a lot of Sparkling Ice. This is another water with an “all-zero” nutritional label, but it has a nice flavor. Not just any flavor though–there are several, but I like the Strawberry Watermelon flavor the best. So much, in fact, that we get this flavor only, whenever we find it on the shelf, and often take several cases, leaving nothing left of that flavor on the shelf. None of their other flavors taste as good to me as that one. Sandy and Kevin like a few other flavors and buy those as well sometimes. I’ve tried them, but I always come back to my Strawberry Watermelon.

Exciting story, isn’t it? How’s it going to end? Well, all this water has to go somewhere, doesn’t it? I have to run to the restroom constantly throughout the day at work and at home. This results in more steps, as I’ve come to realize, but it can also be a nuisance at certain inappropriate times. I can’t sleep for more than two or three hours at night before I have to get up and go. I might be able to fix that issue just with timing though–no water if it’s too close to bedtime. That’d certainly be a better solution than taking another pill I think. During my walks it can also be an issue. I always have to be sure to plan out my walks–if they’re going to be of any significant distance–so that there is at least a restroom along the way or at either end of the walk so I can take a pit stop if needed.

The dogs sure love lounging out in the backyard. They’ll jump up and tear after anything or anyone that comes by though. Yesterday I even took them both down to Library Park and we walked around the block–all three of us at once, for the first time. They need a lot more practice, but I was surprised how well they actually did, having such totally different personalities.

Shadow seemed to act pretty normal, sniffing everything, looking around and being very curious on his first adventure away from home and our neighborhood. Tiger, on the other hand, was extremely tense and nervous through the whole walk, very paranoid. He would walk a few steps forward quickly, then immediately stop and just wait as I caught up, then he’d walk a few more steps and stop again and wait, ears way back, seemingly afraid to look around much, like he’s afraid to get pulled or choked at any second. He eventually loosened up a little, but not much. He’ll need a lot more practice.

Shadow has a lazy ear. It bugs me a little how Tiger’s ears are both always the same–whether they’re up, down, pulled back when he’s scared, etc., they’re always both the same. Shadow, on the other hand, has one ear that’s lazy. One stands up nicely and the other one stays down like it’s broken. I see it all the time in his photos. Well, this weekend he had an instance with both ears fully UP. Yes, this is one of the little things that tickles me. So I grabbed my phone and snapped this picture quickly before it dropped again. I’m sure he (and Sandy and Tiger) thought I was nuts, but it really thrilled me to see.

NOS4A2 is coming to AMC on Sunday, June 2nd! What a birthday present! I’m excited. This is a TV series–not sure how many seasons it’ll be–based on a really creepy novel (as well as a graphic novel that extends the story even more) by Joe Hill, one of Stephen King’s sons. I enjoyed the novel a great deal a year or two ago, but I’ve only read a little of the graphic novel. I can’t wait for the TV series.

I thought Game of Thrones was an excellent series. I hear nothing but complaints about the last season. I guess it wasn’t done by the people who did the first 7 seasons for some reason, and everyone’s complaining that it was screwed up. There’s even a petition, signed by over 1 million people so far, to demand that they redo the last season over. What?!?! Wow, people are pretty bold. It’s a TV show, people. It’s entertainment. Some of us liked it and thought it was very well done, others didn’t. That’s it. That’s how it works. You can’t please everyone. Deal with it and move on.

I think the show would only be diminished if there were two Season 8’s and two different endings. That’s just crazy. And it sounds like the cast and crew agree. They did mention that a couple of spin-offs are coming though, which sounds pretty good. I, for one, would be very interested in a spin-off about Aria and her adventures searching the new frontier “West of Westeros”, but I’ve already heard that she’s not even interested in staying in show business. She said is a crazy world and she only wants out of it. Maybe she made enough money and that’s all he needs out of it. If so, good for her. She’s cute though, and was very exciting to watch on-screen. I hate to see her go.

No one’s saying what the spin-offs might be yet, but whatever they are, I’m sure I’ll watch them. With Game of Thrones, American Idol, and The Big Bang Theory all done now, I feel kinda lost. I have to re-plan my entertainment time back around video games again or find new TV shows and movies to watch. Ah, First World Problems.

For my family: I got a letter from my sister Karen this week. She has no tech – no e-mail, no internet, etc., so it’s a bit of a struggle to reach her, but I do. We write each other, and I recently sent her a photo frame containing thousands of family photos, both recent and those I scanned from the old photo albums my mom and dad accumulated over the years. She enjoyed it a great deal. She’s my oldest sibling, so she’s getting up there in years and having health issues, which she explains a little in her letter. I have transcribed it below, from her writing:

Dear Jimmy & Family,

I need to tell you what’s going on. I have COPD Emphysema and a fracture in my lower back – a vertebrae that’s not enough now. I have to go for a biopsy on my boob, I’m on a nebulizer and oxygen, and now I’m having a huge problem with my roommate. She has alcohol dimentia and sclerosis of the liver. I can’t go into details, but it’s bad.

I’m living in this big old house alone. But I do have my two “children” here. Their names are Snappy and Maggie Mae. I love them tremendously. They’re all I have. I’ll be your hug… I stopped working on it for awhile but I’m getting back into it. I’ll send that and mom’s yearbook ASAP.

I love the picture album you sent me, it’s so cool. I look at it almost every night before I go to sleep. THANK YOU so very much!!

I’ve got to go for now. I love you so much. I’m so happy that life turned out so good for you – you deserve it!

Write soon. I love hearing from you.

Always,

Karen

I’ll be writing her back very soon. I’m pretty concerned with her health, but she’s in Florida, which makes it a bit difficult to visit. But there you have it. It was pretty personal to post on the web, but in this little corner where only family and friends (and a few web wanderers) visit, I figured it’d be ok.

Howard’s got a new book out. Yeah, I’m a fan, I admit it. I’ve listened to him since I was much younger. Probably a bad influence with his raunchiness and vulgarities, I know, but he’s real and honest. And these days his interviews are fantastic.

His book explains how he’s struggled over many years and evolved into what he is today and how he interviews people now versus back then. It’s very interesting, but I’m still only near the very beginning. I’m reading it on my Kindle Paperwhite, but struggling to make much progress. I had been hoping for an audiobook release along with the tree-killing version, but no such luck. He’s even mentioned several times on his show that there won’t be an audiobook release of this book. He refuses to record one or authorize someone to record one.

Howard Stern feels some things were only meant to be read, and this is one of them. This is something I disagree with. I feel there is a large group of people out there (me included) who just can’t find the time to sit down and read a book for any length of time, and have more time to listen than to read something. He’s on the radio, yet he doesn’t grasp this I guess. I’ve listened to plenty of fascinating memoirs and biographies while driving to and from work and other errands. I’m sure most of those were intended to only be read as well, and they were… by someone else to me, which is perfectly fine.

Hell, it wouldn’t even require much effort. The biggest percentage of his new book is all recorded interviews he’s done over the years… he could just include the actual recordings at those points and just read (or have a good narrator read) the rest of the text like a regular audiobook. I just don’t get it, I really don’t. It would even generate much more revenue for him. But I understand money is not an issue at this point in his career anyway, so that point is moot, so I will continue to struggle to get through the book, and I will. It’s good, I can tell, having read the beginning and from all of the feedback from others who have finished it. I’ll get through it, it’ll just take me awhile…unless someone out there would like to read it and record it for me….? I’d pay you. Seriously. I can’t afford an outrageous price, but if you’re a decent reader I can listen to, I’d pay you for your time to record this book. Like Stephen King did with his kids…he had them record many books on tape, he’d pay them, then listen to them on tape. This was way before audiobooks were a thing, but it just proves some people prefer to have books read to them.

I’m serious. Really. To the, what – about 10 visitors of my website who will read this? Send me a sample of your reading ability and we’ll talk. Dammit, I want this book on audio.

I have two brothers – Clifford and Clayton. Clayton still lives in Kenosha, the last I heard, but we don’t keep in touch. Clifford however, I have no clue about. When our father passed away in 2008, the attorney for his estate use a Private Investigator to try to find Clifford, but was unsuccessful. The last time we saw or heard from him when our mother’s funeral in March of 1992.

Clifford had a lot of issues with not paying child support after divorcing his wife Kyle, and his son Jayson has no interest in looking for or re-connecting with him at all at this point.

Jayson and I keep in touch well and he turned out to be a great kid, and an excellent father and husband. He and his mother Kyle live in Arizona just outside of Phoenix and are doing well. It’s quite the trip from Kenosha, but I’ve managed to make it out there a few times over the years for vacations, and always have a good time visiting and seeing the sights.

So at this point, after more than 10 years since the Private Investigator couldn’t find him, I am giving up hope myself and moving on. I have kept a couple “Google Alerts” setup since right after my dad passed away– one with the keywords “Clifford Trottier” and one with just “Trottier”. This results in a daily summary e-mail from Google which contains anything new it finds on the web containing those keywords. I figured if Clifford showed up in any newspaper articles or any web posting, I might have a chance of finding him. But in ten years I’ve seen nothing. Sure, I’ve gotten results, but only on the “Trottier” keyword. I am now well aware of Trottier Middle School in Southborough, Massachusetts and pretty much everything that’s going on there, as well as all of the Canadians in the news up there, especially the famous hockey player, but I am growing weary of shuffling through these e-mails daily hoping to find an inkling of news about Clifford.

I deleted the alerts this morning. I certainly hold no ill will toward Clifford, and hope that he is alive and doing well wherever he may be, but at this point I assume we may never know. (If anyone’s interested though, Google Alerts are pretty simple to setup and manage, just go here.)

Oh wow… as I am typing this post I have a slideshow of our photos going on my phone in front of me on my desk as I always do, and an old photo of Clifford just appeared with him from his Graduation in 1974 – white shirt, and a big smile on his face. A sign or just the luck of the draw? Out of the 50,000 or so photos it goes through, with him in about 75 of those, what are the odds? Seriously. How do I calculate those odds? I don’t know how.

Wait, re-edit. I think I got it: (75 / 50000) x 100 is the calculation, I think, for percentage of odds. So there’s a 0.15% chance of Clifford appearing in the slideshow at any given time. But there’s probably much less of a chance than that of him actually show up anywhere again.

We watched a great movie tonight: The Upside. It stars Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston (Heisenberg!). Check it out, it’s awesome. It’s based on a true story, which was a surprise, we didn’t learn that until the movie started. Duh. I guess I should have looked closer at the poster. Click the image to look closer and you’ll see what I mean.

Here’s the IMDB link, the Google Play Store link, and the Amazon Prime link. Go watch it, it’s worth it. And it’s definitely better than the 6.6 it currently has on IMDB. I think that’s just an early score though, since it just came out. I’m betting it’ll end up with a much higher rating.