The Pay Wall

I like browsing around in Google News, scanning headlines and clicking here or there on links to interesting looking articles. More and more, once I go to a website like the New York Times or the Washington Post, I encounter a paywall, which keeps me from reading the article until I sign up for a paid subscription. As if I had enough money to buy a subscription for every web site that I encounter this way.  It would cost me hundreds of dollars a month.

I know.  We used to pay for newspapers delivered to the full gutters of the streets in front of our houses, or somewhere near the base of our driveway. We would read them while eating a bowl of cereal (your routine may vary,) and do the crossword puzzle. But that was the paper from our home town.  It was understandable that we were all willing to pay by the month to have it delivered to our doorstep, or even somewhere vaguely on our property.

But this is the Internet. There are thousands of web sites that provide information of some sort, and the customary way of reading them is to browse. People are always referring to "browsing" the Internet. It doesn't seem reasonable to buy a monthly subscription to a site just because one stumbles across it via a link somewhere. I'm not saying all this stuff should be free.  Just that it's a goofy business model.

Of course if I love a certain site and I read something on it every day, I suppose I might want to get a subscription. As it is, though, when I click on a link supplied by Google or Facebook and it leads me to a news article, say, that throws up a paywall after showing me a couple paragraphs, that seems more like an advertisement for that web site, and not a useful link at all. Just more click-bait. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I say this all the time, but what's maddening is that I already pay for the medium that is bringing me this junk.

I'll end this with the idea that I already understand these companies aren't required to give out free stuff. It only seems that way because that's how the Internet started. And it all seemed great at the time--but not that great.


I want to add that the two sites I specifically mentioned, NYT and WP, probably are worthy of any reasonable subscription fees they might levy, and they're not the only ones.  It just really gets funny when other, perhaps lesser well known, sites have the nerve to even act like they should get money from anyone for subjecting them to their misspelled headlines, horrid grammar and sloppy and ill-conceived articles. That would be like me charging you to read this blog. Please.

Views

The following pictures were taken, at various times, from the rooftop of my building downtown.

East

North

West

buh bye facebook

I deleted my Facebook account about a month ago, which means that about now all my data has gone away.  That's the theory. Paula at Light Motifs did this and wrote about it, which inspired me at the time but I was only able to build up the nerve lately to perform my own FBectomy. What finally pushed me over the edge was when I attempted to remove my deceased wife's account from Facebook.  I couldn't remember her password, so I was instructed to produce a death certificate before they would remove the account.

This is, of course, the height of arrogance on their part and a tremendous invasion of privacy.  Perhaps it's all our faults, but Facebook has gotten the impression that it is important. We may assign importance to it, or not, but the reality is that it's just a web page, and I refuse to give them the information on a death certificate.

Maybe I overreacted. At any rate, I pulled my own account and I suppose my wife's account will just sit there. It's not all bad. Some of her Facebook friends remember her by posting comments occasionally, and birthday messages, which is harmless and probably even beneficial.

Maybe there is such a thing as Internet Feng Shui. I do not miss Facebook at all, and the Internet seems just a little brighter and airier now. I think that every now and then it's good to consider what kind of garbage and negative crap we are letting into our brains, and try to minimize it. I'm pretty sure humans were not designed to deal with this much outrage and angst and engineered stupidity.

It's all been said before.

Hack Schmack

As promised, here is my well considered rant about the use of the term life hack:

We've all seen them. You usually run across them in Google search result pages, revealing seemingly mysterious ways you can do things, like "10 Ways to Amaze Your Friends Using Only a Spent Toilet Paper Tube."  Stuff like that. There are two categories of these things. One (1): ways someone just thought up to do things that you would never need to do, nor want to, using things that normally get thrown away, like how to keep your computer mouse cord from slipping off the corner of your desk using common office supplies stolen from your company--these are usually just click-bait, and, two (b), things that if you are alive and have been paying attention, you would, or should, know anyway.

It's kind of funny. I learned to do things by watching people, perhaps acting in my behalf in response to me asking them how to do something, or maybe by trial and error, or, you know, just looking at it and figuring it out--the normal way we all learn things.  If you can't figure something out, you ask someone. But now, with the Internet, you Google it, and your answer is called a "life hack." Whoop-de-do. Hack is what you do when you break into someone else's computer system--you sneak in using devious means and then do something you shouldn't. You "win" because you did something that someone else does not want you to do. Good for you.  But, how to change a flat tire, or what to do to keep your iron from clogging up from using the steam setting, those are thing that, really, it's OK to do. We encourage you to. Just fucking learn to do it, like everyone else in the world did, and you're good to go. No big deal. No laws broken, no winners, no losers, just getting along in life.

Because even though the Internet seems to be telling you otherwise, the truth is that you are, most likely, average, or very close to it, as we all are. Granted, some of us are stunningly average, but otherwise, just normal people, some good at some things, some good at others.

OK, end of rant, which (as poorly written as it was,) started out intending to show how smart and cynical I am but wound up demonstrating that I'm trying to get along in a world full of twenty and thirty-year-olds when I'm, like, a thousand.

But seriously, it has something to do with all the toys they got for Christmas when all I had to play with were sticks. Maybe some dirt.

Time

Time slows when there is more going on. This is the basis for "Internet time," wherein if someone doesn't answer your email within three days, you suspect that they may be dead. I think something like this happens while driving, because we all know how long those 15 second red lights last. Also, try this while driving (have someone hold your beer): glance at your watch and note where the second hand is, then watch it until it moves. It should only take one second, right? It's amazing how long that seems to take--not if you're waiting for a red light, but if you're driving along. (If you own a Rolex, this won't work. It has to be a quartz-timed watch.) Perhaps it has to do with hyperfocusing. So, same with the Internet. Apparently. This is also my basis for explaining the eternal summer vacations when you were in grade school. OK. I guess, also the watched pot. (Millennials: this is a reference to the old adage, a watched pot never boils, from back when phones had round dials and what you are calling "life hacks" were simply known as "life.")

Note to self: write a blog post ranting about the use of the term "life hack."

So, my point is, damn, I arrived back in Kansas City less than two weeks ago?  I moved into my apartment four days ago? A lot has happened. Same with the last year--it's been now.

One of the things that happened to me was that since I had to finally reduce all of my belongings to a pile of stuff that would fit in my admittedly small SUV, I got rid of a few too many things. I did the best I could--when I drove to KC I had so much stuff in the back of my Ford that if I opened the tailgate, something would fall out. So at one point during packing, I decided my desk top computer "tower" was too damn big, and I've been wanting to get rid of it anyway, so I took the hard drive and an expensive video card out of it and threw the tower part away. I hope I can figure out how to get all the pictures off the hard drive . . . Bottom line, I am using the Macbook Air.

Note to self: you could write a long blog post about trying to switch from Windows to OS--what is it now?--High Sierra, you could write that, but don't bother.

Also I have no furniture again, so I watch TV while sitting on the floor. Seriously, I really am too old for this. It is not just an adage, it is the awful truth. Getting furniture is on my list. Also--the age thing--getting someone to deliver said furniture right to my living room. That would be a plus.

OK. I am down to two guitars, having shipped my son's Fender Stratocaster to him in Seattle, so that helped, but again I note that while you may think a guitar is not a particularly large instrument, you would stop thinking that if you had to put two of them, in their cases, in a car. Special care was taken so that when I opened the tailgate, neither guitar was what fell out onto the pavement. Usually it was a box of computer cables and small accessories that would roll far away if given half a chance.

Well, time's a wastin' and I have another list of things to do. Anyway, all is well.

Moving In Day

It's Friday morning, moving day, in Kansas City. The sun is just coming up--I just pulled up the shade of the motel window so the sun is pouring into the room now.  It is moving day. It will not hurt my feelings to move out of this "extended stay" motel, but it wasn't so bad. Could've been worse, like the Econo-Lodge I looked at first, the one with the room that looked like the last occupant might have committed suicide in it. You couldn't blame him.
There's not much to say. I bought a futon mattress and a wooden bed frame, which I will pick up this afternoon after unloading the contents of my little SUV.  I got my renter's insurance, got my checkbook right here. I set up the Google Fiber, got my little self-install kit on the floor of the back seat. When I move into the apartment I will furnish it, initially, with the bed I just mentioned, and a small table and two chairs that I managed to fit inside my car when I left Tucson, and that's about it. I have a TV with no stand.
When I moved from Chico I donated all my kitchen stuff to Paradise fire victims, as well as some of my furniture. The last few times I moved, I got rid of stuff each time. I am now down to one well-packed carload. Once the owner of a mountain of shit, I am down to this, a small pile of stuff, a whittled down spear point of . . . ego?  It's sort of an improvement.
But now I have to get going.  Really. And I'm getting hungry.

How I Spent (am spending) My Summer

Just about a year after I left Kansas City to live in Chico, California, I am now back in Kansas City, Missouri. It was like an adventure--a very disorganized adventure, one fraught with errors and lapses in good judgement, but here I am. I suppose without errors and lapses in judgement, adventures, by one definition, would never happen.

Once in Chico and getting settled in nicely, the neighboring town of Paradise experienced what turned out to be one of the most devastating wild fires in recent California history. Nearly a hundred people died, and an entire town was wiped out, displacing something like 50,000 people. On the second day of the fire, the smoke, at first high above Chico, began to settle toward the ground and of course proved irritating and smelly to everyone. I had friends in Tucson, Arizona, with whom I was going to spend Thanksgiving, and though it was still three weeks out, they invited me to come down early to avoid the risk and the smoke. I did so.

While there I made the decision to move from Chico to Tucson. California was once my home, way back in the Sixties and early Seventies, but it had changed and was, is, not the pleasant place it was then. Too expensive, too crowded, bad tax laws, congestion, and so on. The weather was nice, though Chico might give Tucson a run for its money regarding heat, at least during the peak of summer. And I met a nice lady in Tucson with whom I got along very well. It seemed like a good decision.

Tucson and the Sonoran Desert were interesting places--great places to visit, but I have to say, not to live in. At least in my opinion--and one's own opinion, when deciding where to settle,  is arguably the most important gauge.

At the same time, as relationships move along their sometimes seemingly predestined courses, as this one did, we all know they either smooth along fairly and mostly nicely for long periods of time, or veer off a cliff. And you can't dial them back, as we also all know. When it was over, and I found I had no compelling reason to live in Tucson, I left. With nowhere else to go, I came home. I guess I have to say it.

The first interesting thing was Guthrie, Oklahoma. I stopped there for the night while traveling back to Kansas City. I never knew Guthrie existed. It is a very pleasant small town north of Oklahoma City (far enough north to  . . . uhm . . . allow it to be pleasant) once the state capitol, now a well preserved little town with great architecture and a kind of Americana feel to it. Huh.  Funny I lived in Oklahoma City for two years, in the Eighties, mostly disliked it, and never knew about this place.

Second thing: dreading the return of humidity after leaving Arizona and returning to the Midwest, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it felt OK.  Arizona is dry, when not in the "monsoon season," but in the summer, temperatures routinely pass the 100 degree mark, the 110 degree mark, and even higher, and the dryness, while purportedly making the heat more bearable, comes with its own unpleasantries, like making your skin turn to leather, or parchment, let's say. UV indices are scary as well. When told I was moving to Arizona, people would say,"Oh, great!  Do you have a dermatologist yet?"  Huhng? No, do I need one?  Yes. Anyway . . . Midwest humidity, while not ideal, is OK since maybe the temperature is 90.  Big deal.

So here I am. I found an apartment downtown, but I haven't moved in yet.  I'm still at an extended-stay motel in Independence, which is the town east of Kansas City. But my apartment, once I move in, will be convenient--close to the heart of downtown, but not directly in it, and close to the River Market area, where I once lived and have friends, and, once again, close to a streetcar stop--a plus, here, because it is still free and its route pretty much makes everything downtown within walking distance.

So here I am. As lost and aimless as ever. Stay tuned.