Oh this so groovy that this works in duckdb, at least if all columns are varchar type:
copy (SELECT trim(columns(*)) FROM email_name.parquet) TO email_name_trim.parquet
How becoming a stoner has changed me 🌿
After cannabis was legalized in New York State, nad I bought my first couple of pre-rolls at the advice of bud tenders, I set out to learn all that I could learn about cannabis. That said, thanks to long-standing government prohibitions around the growing cananbis and research into the plant, good science still does not exist, and most of what you read is either pro or anti cannabis advocacy.
I am not a heavy cannabis user, it’s something I like to drag on around a campfire, or a lazy summer day up at camp. Certainly wouldn’t call me a stoner in any of the conventional sort of way, although much of what I think is stoner culture is not actually from smoking the weed but the the kind of people who get enjoyment from smoking pot – and celebrate it openly. Many others, who you might think of cannabis users are much less open about their use of the plant. So in that sense, I guess I’m not strictly a stoner, as my liberal views are not as extreme as some of widely documented stoner’s.
But what smoking pot has done to me is realize how bullshit the pompous laws that are much celebrated and usually arbitrarily enforced against the colored and poor really are. Often laws don’t exist because they actually protect individuals, but because they make some politician or cop feel morally virtuous. Ban pot, save the children from the weed! Or keep those dangerous stoned motorists off the road! I am sure if you look somewhere, you’ll find a tragic story about somebody who done something really dumb after smoking a lot of weed. Or had an outbreak of psychosis. It’s tragic how many people have been deprived of their rights and liberties for smoking an agricultural crop that is pretty damn harmless, even if it does stink. At least the cheap crappy pot.
Not all that long ago, it was common belief that what the government does is right and just, and that you as a citizen had a moral obligation to follow all laws. But the legalization of cannabis in the majority of states is a reminder of how shockingly wrong government can truly be. Maybe we are getting this reinforced every day in the Trump administration which not only is skeptical, if not openly disobeying the law, but also is a constant reminder of how wrong laws are to our society. A law enacts a punshiment for it’s violation, but it’s not a moral statement on right or wrong. Something that long standing prohibitions on pot are just a constant reminder.
I don’t advocate the constant use of cannabis due to health impacts of breathing in smoke of any kind. As my health teacher decades ago said, smoking is no different for your lungs then standing of a smoldering garbage burning barrel. Yum! I mean yucky burnt plastic mixed with have-rotten food! Even if it’s not physically addictive, it is desirable and can become a habit for heavy users to break. I know after that first real stoner vacation how kind of a downer that day back at work was. But I do think pot bans and all criminal penalties associated with marijuana are just a constant reminder of how unjust our society is when it comes to possession of drugs and for that matter firearms too. Government really should be off our backs.
Summer Wages
....and the hooker stands watchfully waiting by the door!
Did you know you can save a lot of money by blowing out your brains out with a gun 🧠 🔫
That was my exact thought when I saw yet another post reminding me that buying a $60,000 big-assed Ford F-350 is a bad financial decision, because nobody whose not hauling cattle needs such a big truck, and soon enough it will be 2040, and rusted out garbage that I’ll get $250 bucks for scrap metal. But then I remind myself, those 15 years will mark a 1/5th of my time on this earth, and you got to spend money on something that gives you pleasure – I don’t want one of those plastic houses in suburbs or a 25-year old Honda Civic to drive back and forth to work.
I’m quite happy taking the bus or my mountain bike and not putting fuel in a 7.3L Godzilla every few days. I hear funerals are only like $10,000, kind of the price difference between a diesel and gasser SuperDuty. But I think I’ll go for the gasser, as I’m not planning on doing a lot of long-distance towing, plan to do a lot of mountain driving and need cold-weather wilderness starts. It‘s good to save and invest money so I can buy my acreage and have my fires and horney buck goats and hogs some day, but you got to also enjoy life.
In the negative four degree weather, ❄️ I walked down to Stewart’s and got milk and eggs, so I could have my coffee ☕ and cornmeal pancakes with lots of shredded onions and carrots, some Stevia and salt. Hey, I am not perfect, I use artificial sugar, though Stevia is actually a plant, you can grow it at home. And I kind of like things a bit sweet, even if you won’t see me scarfing down candy bars 🍬 well except when I’m volunteering over at the dungeon downtown. 🐲 I know I shouldn’t be going for a high-residue diet, but fiber is so healthy, when the toilet in my office stinks like sewer gas. 🚽 It’s so gross in the men’s room at work right now, last week it smelled like poop and sewer gas, this week it’s more a chemical smell. Who want to sit on a toilet when it so nasty? I don’t know what’s going on, I work across the way from the maintance department so they must be well aware of bathroom issues, but I hope it’s fixed so I can stop gagging when I go to the bathroom. Normally I don’t care, I’m a hillbilly with a tough nose, 👃 but it’s downright foul at in bathroom where I work the past few days.
I saw an extended cab Ford SuperDuty pulling out of Stewart’s and had to gawk a bit. Thinking soon enough I’ll have truck like that. I mean a month from now, I want to test drive one of those trucks, even if neither DePaula or Metro Ford on the bus line has the exact model I want currently in inventory.🛻 Don’s Ford in Utica has like 10 of the trucks in the specs I’m interested in but so do many of the outlying areas around Albany, but the Albany dealerships for the most part either have very-stripped down work trucks and high end Crew-Cab Latariats both of which I don’t want. I think it’s what suburban people in Albany buy, which is different then what people in rural areas actually want. At this point, I’m just trying to familiarize myself with the trucks that are being listed, and what for and their locations, and trying to become as knowledgeable as possible about features and list prices, even if they aren’t real. 💰
Yeah, too much thinking about trucks as I head towards my 43rd birthday tomorrow. 🎂 Fuck you, the boot lickers and the greenies, and Happy Birthday to me. One year closer to having that off-grid cabin in a free state, where I can lay down my money and buy any handgun or modern sporting rifle I want, have just a slop bucket for the hogs and one garbage can lined by a minerals bag 🗑️ that I empty into the burn barrel and dump the ash and unburnables into the hollow to be covered with rock, dirt and manure with my tractor. 🚜 Yes, even plastic, the eco-horrors! Butcher my own fucking beef and hog products. 🗡️ I was actually looking and the Capital Region Horicultural and Agricultural Coalition or something else is having a class you can sign up and for a small fee learn the ins and outs of feeder pigs. 🐖 If I only had a truck, I would probably lay down my money and do it, just to learn things I can’t learn from a book. Though you really want to learn, you just got buy the hogs, but first I need land. 🏡 I keep following more and more cabin builders pages, from prefab to luxury cabins, to see what people are building. I don’t know if I want luxury, as I care more about land as I don’t really want to smell my neighbor’s burn barrel or have my own hogs and horney buck and plastic trash fires upwind. 🛢️ 💩 It will be great though once I have that simple off-grid cabin, without electric or heating bills. I doubt I’ll have internet beyond my phone either. I wonder how bad my electric bill will be this month! 💰 I don’t know, Ibut I won’t tell liberal like gun-banning Donald Trump that.
I can’t wait until my Facebook feed is one again full of ads for Better Help and the 988-service for this blog post. 🤪 Or maybe they’ll mash it up with mental health resources for farmers. Breaks it up from the ads for extended warranties and 20-year old Honda Civics. 🚘 I got a lot to look forward when I have my SuperDuty and cab, cellphone booster for remote work, though I know such a nice truck will be a magnet 🧲 to every other car on the road that somehow wants to crash into it, as that’s what happened with the last nice truck I had, and then weeks and weeks for the body shop to get the truck back with the panels mis-aligned. But so is life, and it’s not like the expensive big trucks from Detroit come from the factory with the body panels well aligned. If it fits it ships, they say in the city, compared to us country boys who say if it burns, it burns. 🔥 At least it’s not fake like plastics recycling. ♻️ I never did subscribe to milk delivery, but I’ll drop the plastic milk jug off in one of recycle bins on way into the office today. Not riding in today, I want to, but it’s so damn cold out at negative five, even if there is no wind. Well, I guess I don’t have an excuse to miss the Guilderland Planning Board Meeting tonight. 🌲Truth is I am a bit too sympathetic towards Dale Houck, even though he’s proposing yet another development in the last remaining acres of Pine Bush, and it’s important to save the Karner Blue so I can ride trail there on my mountain bike. 🦋
I just wish it wasn’t so damn cold out and I could ride the bike path to work on my mountain bike. 🚍 Happy busing it! At least traffic is moving smoothly and the buses have been mostly on time. I was surprised, usually traffic is so backed up at rush hour after the snow due to the snow banks and abandoned cars narrowing the roads. Being so cold, the snow was light and easy to remove. I was going to shovel out the bus stop last night but it was already cleaned up.🚏But if you only owned a 20-year old Honda Civic, then you could drive to work like a normal person from your suburban plastic house with plastics recycling.
Trump goes after gun rights ⚖️🔫
After the shooting of Alex Petti, President Trump has decided to stand with the government and ICE, rather then the people when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms, and to peacefully protest. He is choosing the government over the people.
While inevitably we need some government, we don’t need the heavy handed tactics of ICE in Minnesota or any other location. Police should be there it offer help when it is needed and requested, but it’s not their job to be an aggressive force or trample on inidivdual rights.
The government should be enforcing laws when called upon, those times when it’s actively hurting other people, but not just going out there to cause trouble because some statue exists on the book. We aren’t a nation of raids and investigations for no purpose. We as a society believe in protecting individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government and establishes requirements for issuing warrants.
Police should not interfere with or be otherwise bothersome for protests. While it might be reasonable to monitor protests and respond when there are complaints of law breaking, it’s not their job to interfere with others when nobody is complaining or causing harm. And they certainly should not be killing or harming people, who are disruptive, roudy or just disrespectful.
People in our country have a right to own, and in many cases carry guns for personal protection. That includes at protests, while traveling in a motor vehicle, while in their homes or even at a business. While most states have restrictions of some sorts, courts and legislatures have realized citizens have a right to self-protection enshrined in our constitution.
For the President to question people’s civil rights is a great disservice to our country. Moreover, to attack the gun rights of Alex Petti, is even more alarming for a President who claims to be pro-second amendment yet acts more like a liberal Democrat then any true advocate for the most fundamental of our rights.
Deeper Dives into SuperDuty Trucks
I’ve started to do a deep diver into individual dealership websites, and realized there are a lot of SuperDuty trucks out there with the extended cab and the FX4 off-road package. Almost every Ford dealer has at a least a few of them. Especially if I’m willing to consider either the XL base trim or with STX appearance package, the 3/4 ton or 1 ton axle (F-250 vs F-350), long bed versus short bed, and the 6.8L vs 7.3L. I have slight preferences on all of those things, like I think the 7.3L is slightly more reliable, the F-350 probably has better resale value, and the STX appearance package is nice, but also price and availability are considerations too. I really don’t want dog dish hub cabs, and fleet white, but also not a lariat trim. That said, if I have to spend several days doing phone calls, and driving a day to pickup the truck I really want and will serve me good through my estimated retirement around 2040 – and potentially save a few thousand bucks, then it’s definitely worth it. I keep studying dealer strategy videos. I will do it, get the truck I want. Just like I will have that off-grid cabin, land out in country, with goats and cattle, a trash burner, and lot more guns, eventually.
People say you should spend no more then 10% of your monthly income on a car, but I am not planning to buy on finance or at least not finance for more then a month before retiring the note to get dealer incentives. The thing is I am frugal on so many parts of my life, like riding my bike and taking the bus to work, living in a blighted apartment at County Welfare rate, cooking my own simpe food, keeping the heat at 50 degrees or lower, and my truck is a big part of my leisure and adventures in the wilderness. And certainly I can keep it below 10% of my income if I annualize a $60k the cost over 6-years, and let’s be honest, those low-spec SuperDuty trucks have long-established naturally-aspirated engines and simple solid axles that are likely to at least 15-years if I keep up on the maintenance. My new truck will be smelling like a sheep farm before next winter! I’m at mid-career, and a buying SuperDuty isn’t going to change my savings and investment plans at all, as I had the cash earmarked for this purpose for 5-years now. That said, I do feel guilty about it all, I know 2040 or whenever I get rid of such a nice truck will come sooner then I want it to. But then I’ll get another truck. It’s not like the stock market keeps rising, and paper valuation fly to greater heights each day.