I haven’t heard that Beatles song in a long time. The ice isn’t just melting at the poles too, it’s actually starting to melt off the rail trail, though yesterday was as slippery as fuck part of way in and I spun out and banged up my shins. This morning is terribly windy and cold, but I’m severely mentally ill, so I’ll probably end up riding in.
Still my social media feeds are full of ads schizophrenia medication and treatment, probably because I like mocking advertisers and because honestly I’m interested in psychosis mostly because I like smoking pot up in wilderness, giggling my brains out next a waterfall, singing along with the Dire Wolf. I was disappointed that Trump didn’t mention legalizing smoking grass on federal lands and bringing it across state lines in his State of Union. It’s like burning garbage, got to be sneaky about it’s as it’s illegal you know. It’s a criminal activity, maybe you give you free college tuition for it. Oh do I hate advertising, even if helps to pay for my blog, because the algorithms are so dumb and fun to troll. Advertising feeds such bad behavior, including by the news media, and even bloggers like myself.
It’s nice that before 6 AM the sun is up , which was good when I was baking bread and making rice up on the stove, along with eggs and butternut squash. Good eats for the weekend ahead. I figure I’ll freeze my ass off and at least ride in this morning, as I will most likely have a Friday meeting to attend downtown in the afternoon, and that beats figuring out the bus and shuttle schedules. Unfortunately starting Sunday, mornings won’t be so bright, with time change though the impact on darkness in the morning is short lived in March, as we are so quickly gaining daylight especially in the morning due to spring approaching and earth wobble biasing daily light increase to them morning this time of year.
All week I’ve been heading in early. I just have so much work to do these days, and I’m trying to build up a bit more comp time for summer. Part of it is I’m trying to get the database as up to date as possible, feeding new info into it constantly, and get the records as lot cleaner then they used to be so it’s better for client use and because once something is fixed and scripted today, it makes it much easier in the future.
First thing I had to think was what an odd combination of states, as neither one touches each other, as illustrated by the map I posted this morning of the Midwestern states. I knew that somewhere in my mind, but still I had to check and make up a map in the process so I could fully visually the relation of those states that often get blended together a bit in my mind. Illinois is south of Wisconsin, while Iowa is south of Minnesota. Not completely but in general.
The next thing I was reading was about the problematic nature of the plastic mesh bags that a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables come in, especially from a zero waste and recycling perspective. They’re plastic, they don’t break down if you landfill or litter them and don’t burn them. Honestly though, I’ve always just tossed them into a white garbage sack or in with papers, burnt them up and didn’t really even notice them as they’re such a tiny part of garbage that burns quickly, and completely and doesn’t stink when burned or take up much space.
I’m all for recycling, but this form of plastic waste is so miniscule compared to all the plastic we’re using and discarding everyday, often that is much more substantial – and noxious to burn or landfill. You know, the PVC poison plastic, the Styrofoam, the polypropylene containers and even ABS plastics. It’s oil but a trivial amount of oil compared to what we burn in our cars and trucks, or to heat, cool and electrify our houses. Especially if those fruits and vegetables are healthy for our environment, the cores and peels saved for compost. It’s not like fruit or vegetables or even paper breaks down significantly in a landfill due to the lack of oxygen.
I get it, not everybody lives out in the country in the Midwest, on a farm or rural homestead where things like that are easily burned on up in a burn barrel or bonfire. A lot of trash ends up landfills or becomes litter. But of all things to go after, this seems one of the silliest.
It’s a popular meme that Excel is not a database. And I mean, they aren’t wrong.
But spreadsheets are a good way for looking at tabular data and manipulating data when you need to quickly, manually edit many rows of data at once. I woud argue there aren’t many good web apps for manipulating a spreadsheet’s worth of data with quick filters, sorts, and searches quite as easy as your typical spreadsheet app.
Spreadsheets have their place for manipulating individual rows quickly, doing data entry and searches of smaller datasets. I often find myself using spreadsheets as a way to read and edit dumps from databases like duckdb and db2. Often I will pull data out of a database using SQL, then format it up, purty it up with some R code before sending it to a client, or looking at in Excel. While RStudio can “preview” datasets, the interface is clumsy and slow, and in most cases for all but the quickest views, its best to dump to an Excel file or at least a CSV file and opening up in a spreadsheet.
Would I store a database in Excel? Hell no, that would be slow and error prone. But I will input and output data using Excel, and send data in that format to clients, as few of them know what an Apache Parquet file is, and while most can open a CSV, nothing beats a beautifully formatted Excel file output from OpenXLSX in R.
Riding beats busing it to work and certainly beats driving to work with the cops hiding around every corner with $1,000 tickets in their back pockets ready to hand out as you swerve on the pothole filled roads says the boy with the big jacked up truck.
I’m probably going to get wet but I’ll bring fresh socks and my office is already warm. And probably sewage treatment plant smelling with all the rain. It’s fine, I have my candle warmer. Little rain never hurt nothing and I enjoy the exercise and saving at least a buck thirty on my bus fare. But mostly the mental health benefits!
Yesterday I walked laps in the Plaza and took the later local home. It’s fine I got my steps in and did some reading on the bus ride home. The beans last night were delicious and I’m not that farty this morning but I decided to skip them for chocolate wild blueberry pancakes homemade with oatmeal and whole wheat flour.
Weekend still is sliding downhill, I think I’ll probably be stuck in the burbs bored out of my mind, reading and maybe riding or searching for sheds up at the Black Creek Marsh if I ride out there on Saturday. We’ll see!
Why vote for a liberal when so much of what they do is utterly meaningless? I have to reflect back upon the NYS DEC’s old “Recycling Works” signs at state campgrounds and a few other state facilities where the now decades old signs haven’t yet been crushed and packed into the local or increasingly long distance dumping facilities – the garbage mounds that surround our cities. I get it was a clever campaign, a double entendre reminding people that not only recycling good for the environment it employed people separating and reprocessing waste material. And it certainly made people feel good, even if relatively little waste ended up getting recycled in such programs. Certainly those tin cans and plastic bottles don’t amount to much one way or another when we are constantly buying, using up and tossing things.
Truth is that much of liberalism has become a feel good racket like “Recycling Works”. It has in words of Trump become woke – addicted to feel good, politically correct things – that don’t have any real impact or change things to the “non-negotiable way of American life”. It’s the electric car and solar panels on the roof and virtue signaling all that involves on the way to the local big box store to buy organic junk food wrapped in plastic with a big recycling logo for your blue bin. Does it make a difference around the edges, like recycling the plastic milk jugs, yes, not also not really. If you aren’t willing to attack the “non-negotiable way of American life”, you’re just being woke.
Wokeness was intended to be a first step in the minds of liberals. We have been told we can’t change the established order or inconvenience people too much. Tell that to the Trumpster! We don’t have enough political capital or the votes to do much besides meaningless action. The American way of life is non-negotiable. We have to respect established convention and our governing institutions, not such inconveniences are impacting Trump 2.0 that much. Truth is that the cards have been called on the liberals and it’s just a bluff, their weak soup no better than white bread and cheap television dinners wrapped in plastic. All the promises of the liberals to address the climate crisis, or the growing mounds of toxic shit has lead to nowhere. Good intentions pave the road to hell.
Now the solution is not in brutality of the Trumpster or tossing our hands in the air. But liberals offered no real alternative to Trump, nobody wanted four more mediocre of Biden’s bland soup. At least Trump is spicy, good for some laughs even if he tosses more logs on the fire as the world burns, literally. He won’t be such an ally to the gun control and animal rights activists. He won’t play footsie with foreign nations. But he also won’t even tap the brakes or pretend he’s doing the right thing with his wokeness. Truth is we all were sick of consensus building, establishment reinforcing small steps of the left. Shit needs to be blown up, and while we might not like the direction Trump is taking our country, at least he’s doing it with dynamite. And was what came before Trump 2.0 really worth saving? Maybe the American way of life needs to be negotiated. America was a pretty shitty place plunging towards climate disaster and fascism long before the Trumpster was on the political scene.
My hope is that liberals are learning a thing or two about power. Sometimes when you have power you just got to ram shit through. Not give a fuck if you’re breaking things or hurting people in the process. Not be afraid to be deamonized or called a fascist nazi. Not be afraid to smash through the American way of living. Not be nice, ask permission, build consensus, and carefully follow the law but get things built. Why the hell didn’t Joe Biden did not declare a climate change emergency? Suspend laws to get renewable energy projects to be built. It has far better of a basis in reality than Trump’s delusional energy emergency when gas prices are lower than a decade ago. Fire people who are in your way and if that is illegal or is stopped find other ways to cut off their balls so they crawl back in hole.
I was riding home yesterday and saw a decent size buck down in Norman’s Kill hollow by the waterfalls. Still had it’s antlers. But it’s getting to that time of year I was thinking I should put on my barn boots and start wandering the woods looking for sheds, maybe this weekend. After this rain, the snow is rapidly disappearing.
I thought about camping this weekend but it looks like after the rain it’s going to turn cold again. Plus after Saturday the time changes, which makes it much easier to get away for multiple nights without taking off from work early.
probably because I like mocking advertisers and because honestly I’m interested in psychosis mostly because I like smoking pot up in wilderness, giggling my brains out next a waterfall, singing along with the Dire Wolf. I was disappointed that Trump didn’t mention legalizing smoking grass on federal lands and bringing it across state lines in his State of Union. 
It’s like burning garbage, got to be sneaky about it’s as it’s illegal you know. It’s a criminal activity, maybe you give you free college tuition for it. Oh do I hate advertising, even if helps to pay for my blog, because the algorithms are so dumb and fun to troll. Advertising feeds such bad behavior, including by the news media, and even bloggers like myself. 
, which was good when I was baking bread 
and making rice up on the stove, along with eggs and butternut squash. 
Good eats for the weekend ahead. I figure I’ll freeze my ass off and at least ride in this morning, 
as I will most likely have a Friday meeting to attend downtown in the afternoon, and that beats figuring out the bus and shuttle schedules. Unfortunately starting Sunday, mornings won’t be so bright, 
with time change though the impact on darkness in the morning is short lived in March, as we are so quickly gaining daylight especially in the morning due to spring approaching and earth wobble biasing daily light increase to them morning this time of year.
but I’ll bring fresh socks 
and my office 
is already warm. And probably sewage treatment plant smelling with all the rain. It’s fine, I have my candle warmer. 
Little rain never hurt nothing and I enjoy the exercise and saving at least a buck thirty on my bus fare. But mostly the mental health benefits!
It’s fine I got my steps in and did some reading 
on the bus ride home. The beans last night 
were delicious 
and I’m not that farty this morning but I decided to skip them for chocolate wild blueberry pancakes 
homemade with oatmeal and whole wheat flour.
I think I’ll probably be stuck in the burbs bored out of my mind, reading 
up at the Black Creek Marsh if I ride out there on Saturday. We’ll see! 
