< Notes...

Tonight is the night and I kid you not: I am going to bring two bags of popcorn—one for me, one for Ashlii—to it. It is going to the a HOA to remember.

We have VIP designations at work, specifically when fulfilling service requests. As the acronym implies, they are higher up management, considered “very important people”. Then there is the rest of us. My approach when serving anyone is, everyone is a VIP. Granted, for the originally labelled as such, all tasks get dropped to fulfil their requests. So, there is a sense of emergency, but other than that, I treat everyone as if they were VIP.

Some colleagues’ approach would follow the adage “give someone a fish, and you will feed them for one day; teach them to fish, and you will feed them for a lifetime”. So they encourage, or often require, a service request before any work is performed. Now, would they do the same to the VIPs? Absolutely not. Thus, if a service request comes to me, excellent. If it doesn’t, I create one on their behalf.

My Ghostty configuration under macOS, in case it is handy as a starter point for anyone. As you can see, it has one macOS specific line, and my font of choice, Hermit.

# Theme
theme = iTerm2 Pastel Dark Background

# Mouse and cursor
cursor-style-blink = true
cursor-color = #33FF33
mouse-hide-while-typing = true
shell-integration-features = no-cursor

# Key bindings (tmux pane ALT arrow left/right)
# Unbind the default word-navigation behaviour
keybind = alt+left=unbind
keybind = alt+right=unbind

# Font
font-family = Hermit
font-size = 17

# Window and colours
background-opacity = 0.85
background-blur = 10
foreground = #33FF33
maximize = true
macos-titlebar-style = tabs
split-divider-color = #505050
unfocused-split-opacity = 0.5
window-padding-x = 20
window-padding-y = 20

Tomorrow we move forward one hour (going into EDT), and with it—or, rather, before it—some kind of allergy has started its Spring “vacation” on me. Itchy eyes, watery eyes, sneezes, and running nose. So. Much. Fun!

Well, lots of noise around the neighbourhood about this now. Maybe there is hope, after all, and enough of us will show up at the meeting to stop the change.

Feeling guilty beyond belief after eating around 8 fluid ounces of Häagen-Dazs’s caramel cone ice cream. I told the Horsie not to buy it (she ordered rum and raisins, they delivered caramel cone), but she didn’t listen. Can that be considered an excuse? I mean, once it is paid for, it would be a shame to simply toss it, wouldn’t be?

That’s it, this was the last time. No more ice cream for me!

“Special Assessments. In addition to the Annual Assessments authorized above, the Association may levy, in any assessment year, special assessments applicable to that year only for the purpose of defraying, in whole or in part, the cost of any construction, reconstruction, repair or replacement of a capital improvement upon the Common Areas, including fixtures and personal property related thereto, and/or for any other purpose deemed necessary by the Board, including to fund a deficit in the annual budget, provided that any such assessment shall have the assent of two-thirds (2/3) of the members of the Board of Directors.”

Our upcoming Home Owner’s Association (HOA) annual meeting is going to be difficult, to say the least. That proposed change above takes away home owners’ financial decision making, and places it solely on the Board of Directors. A no-no, in my opinion.

Maybe it is just me—though I hyperbolise, as I can’t be alone—but I have zero issues using Safari (Apple’s web browser). I exclusively use it on mobile, and desktop, not a single problem. It is fast, lean, renders perfectly. Truly, “it just works”. I can’t fathom installing Chrome, or Edge, or any other web browser, on any of my Apple devices.

When mum messages me, no matter what, I reply right away. Now, when the topic of the conversation is food—food that she cooked—I almost-literally fly.

And then an hour or so later, with a belly full, and a happy heart, and from the comfyness of our couch:

She says she is lucky to have me. I say it is the complete opposite: I am lucky to have her!

I want to nap, but it is almost 17:00, and tomorrow is back to work, so I feel the need to use my time in something more useful than sleeping. Then again, sleeping is useful, right? Yeah, here I am, seeking a justification.

I dreamt we launched seven nuclear-armed missiles, and that they had reached their targets: one hit China, one hit Russia. The rest I don’t know, or can’t recall, but I clearly remember the apprehension I felt while waiting for the certain, imminent retaliation.

I don’t want a nightmare like that again.

What a way to start the week. Really, what a way. No exclamation points; just me, with my head down and watery eyes. A friend and teammate was let go today and, well, it was unexpected, stumping, and sad. I figure my reaction is only human, as I can’t help feeling down, disappointed, and a bit lost. See, more than just being a good teammate, my lunch-walking buddy, and my second conscience, he became my friend. Even though our friendship doesn’t end here, he will be missed at the office. I already do.

“Proponents of the diets praise them for being easier to follow than regular diets and offering greater weight-loss and metabolic benefits. But researchers have been growing disillusioned with them. As more studies have piled up, the gaps between the claims made for intermittent fasting and the evidence behind them has grown.”

I have experienced the benefits of this, as someone who has done, and still does, intermittent fasting. Yet, as the article says, it is not suitable for everyone. Of course, sustainable health depends more on the nutritional quality of food, rather than the specific timing of meals.

Next week I have a—dreaded—dental appointment. I had had a message waiting for my confirmation for the last two weeks. I have been postponing confirming it, perhaps hoping it would simply vanish. Today, finally, I dared to do it. My fate is sealed. Au revoir, cruel world!

I have set my out-of-office reply, as I was afraid I would forget. It will trigger end of working day this Friday, and it will expire next year. End of year holidays make me kind of anxious. I wait all year for them, and they come and go almost as fast as blinking an eye.

I feel I need to fully get out of social media—and I only lurk on ActivityPub (commonly known as “Mastodon”) these days. The things I see make me go research to check if they are real, then that deep shame sinks in.

These are delightful and, on their own, one of the real reasons for the end-of-year holidays: Italian Panettones. I know they have plenty of carbs and sugars and, yet, can’t stop munching them accompanied by a cold glass of milk.

Heavy cleaning towards Thanksgiving celebration/hosting completed. That means toilets gleam, showers sparkle, and overall kitchen area looks OKish. Got to wait until everyone is awake (yes, some are still in bed here), to finish up one bathroom, and for some cooking to end, to tidy up the kitchen. I’ll say half way there. 😅

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and we are hosting, like we do almost every year. This time around we are expecting 22 people, all family. As you can imagine, it is going to be a busy day. I am on clean up duty, before and afterwards. Yay! 😅 Still, happy to see a bunch of the family at once, and share a meal with them. As Horsie said, elders have their time left counted—but, don’t we all?—and we never know if we will be able to share a day again with them.

The ongoing HOA drama is annoying, and fatiguing me. I don’t know for how much longer I can hold to it. The dilemma is, no one wants to be on the board, so leaving it would probably make matters worse.

Fridays, just like Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays, have a certain je ne sais quoi for most of us. Each day kind of different, I am sure you know what I am talking about. Today, Friday, is missing it for me.

CPAP machine company calls me to see how I am doing with it, and to ask a few questions. I say “I have not been able to get used to it, I will have to return it”. They ask me for my date of birth, and email address. I tell them “I didn’t call you, you did. You should have all the information on file, I see no reason to provide it to you now”. After exchanging pleasantries we discontinue the call.

I then call back, and ask for the steps to return the machine. I am asked for my full name, date of birth, and email address, to pull up my account. They say an RMA number, and a prepaid label for its return will be sent to me. I offer to save them money by returning it to the same place I picked it up. I can’t, they tell me. That place only dishes out new machines, and doesn’t take used ones back. OK then!

The highlight of the mornings I am forced to come to the office was that trance-like flickering light at the corner Walgreens. I always looked forward to seeing it as it had an amazing, calming, effect on me. Now is gone; someone had the bad idea to “fix” what wasn’t truly broken.

To make amends for this, mum called me last night. “Come help me eat some food”, she said. Funny, I was about to drive over her house to drop off a case of beer, and a bag of her favourite coffee. I guess we forgave each other. Food was good, and I brought a whole flan home. Maybe priests should visit more often.

Once again, organised religion is getting in my way. My very sacred Sunday morning with Mum and Ông, and our holy coffee time, has been excommunicated by the visit of “the priests”, as she wrote to me. Maybe I am a curmudgeon, but having someone visiting uninvited, and impromptu, doesn’t fly with me unless they are very close. I doubt these “fathers” are.

Due to my personality, I tend to be impulsive, and rather terse when answering to emails. That’s changing thanks to AI. LLM’s ability to rewrite emails and take away sarcasm and conveying my reasoning, all while keeping a professional and collaborative tone is very, very helpful.

I completely agree with the OP on this need for attention to details. I like it, and I try to adhere to it as much as I can. See the #elders tag, for example. Compare it to the #family tag. See the “1 note”, and the “5 notes”. A small detail, but it shows caring.

➝ Via Hacker News.

With 1°C (feels -6°C) temperatures today is, by far and so far, the coldest day of the year around here. Horsie freezes. I am already dressed with my shorts and tshirt to go grab coffee at mum’s, and go walking with ông. Sun shines!

Having our driveway and sidewalk pressure washed today. Saw a teenager doing it for a neighbour last week and, knowing that a “friendly reminder” is coming our way from the HOA, decided that let someone else have the fun I had had for the last 25 years. So, he was hired to do so. I think $150 USD, after 25 years, is kind of a bargain, isn’t it?

Today, after much thought and deliberation, I re-subscribed to The New York Times. It was hard to pass their $50/year offer, as I have been consuming it more and more through archive.today. One of the first things I did was to install their iOS application, and from it comes my first complaint: the amount of ads on it is distasteful. So much that I will probably mostly use the web version, as I can eliminate them fully that way.

Just a little note to record that my first night with the CPAP/APAP machine was horrible. It reminded me when I had the sleep study, all wired up. Well, no wires this time, but so very uncomfortable! I am sure this will not be the last I will note on this.

Finally, today I became the “proud” owner of an AirSense 11 CPAP machine. I have heard wonderful things about what a machine like this does to your sleep, so I am looking forward to getting used to it, and reaping its benefits. Mind it, using it is not a choice of my own; my doctor strongly recommended I do. So, here we go!

Over a month after this note, and I still continue to do it. I even caught myself conciously doing it. This lack of control over something so simple is driving me nuts. I might need to start meditating…

I told person A that I will be signing the papers later today but that, before I did so, wanted to know why two seemingly identical emails were sent to me by person B. The answer? “Person B accidently hit the send button twice.” What in the world?! How do you do that?

If anything “good” has happened from being mandated to come to office on Wednesdays that’s bagels. Today’s are still warm, and so delicious! I wrote good between quotes, because, well, carbs. 😅

Last year we placed a bowl full on candies, and left the porch light on, as an indication that Halloween was “happening”. Not a single kid, or adult, showed up. All candies were donated to work. This year there will be no candies, and light will remain off. Halloween is off.

So far having a fairly bad experience while trying to get a PAP machine ordered after having gone through a sleep study. I received an email from them stating the order was sent, while neglecting to send it. At square one now, a month after receiving the email. Ugh!

When I grow up, or in my second life if I get unlucky to reincarnate as a human (aiming to be a bird, though, but I digress), I want to be like Ariel.

“Best recent change I’ve done to improve my health: starting the work week on Tuesday and ending it on Thursday.”

➝ Via @ariel.

Often times when I am driving, or not on the desktop, notes come across my mind, but never make it here. Why? More often than not, I simply forget. With that in mind I am considering recording notes, if anyhing so that I can remember them later on.

Last night was “The Bourne Ultimatum” (★★★★★) night. There is no doubt, in my opinion, that this is the best movie of the original trilogy. That’s not to say the previous two were bad—after all, I rated the three the same—but this last one takes the first prize.

Even thought I went to bed late because of it, watching the movie wasn’t the reason for my 83 sleep score. Allegedly I woke up 7 times during the night, which is pretty disastrous.