Author: Mark Alexander

Posted on

Quote of the Day

The praise that Trump got from his campaign staff for belatedly covering his face is the kind of positive reinforcement that any parent who ever tried to toilet train a toddler knows well.” ~ Karen Tumulty, columnist

0 comments

Posted on

So. Many. Duplicates.

You may or may not have noticed that my usual fevered pitch of posting has dropped off this weekend. There’s a reason.

I needed to step away from the madness that is our world right now for a while and concentrate on something that wasn’t related—at least not directly—to the downfall of Western Civilization.

As I’ve written before, I’m more than just a bit of a digital hoarder. That was brought into succinct focus last week when my laptop’s drive dropped under 10% available, adding even more anxiety to my already frazzled psyche. I have several different archive drives available, but they’re all nearing capacity as well and the last thing I wanted to do was add yet another one to the mix. So I bit the bullet and bought a 2TB Sandisk external SSD. (I have a 512GB  version that I use for my nightly Carbon Copy Clone that’s performed flawlessly for over a year, so I felt comfortable committing to an all SSD archive strategy.) I figure since my archives are currently a bit shy of one terabyte this should hold me for a while since those archives stretch back decades.

Everything was going smoothly until in my haste, I accidentally deleted a bunch of old pictures that existed on only one of those archive drives. To be honest, they weren’t that important—it was only about 12 years of old (1995-2007) “art prints.” I knew the quality and resolution of the earlier stuff especially wasn’t worth crying over, but it was still annoying that for someone who should know better, I’d lost it all through my own stupidity.

Turns out the stuff wasn’t lost, but it was going to be a pain to restore it. I’d burned all those images onto a DVD optical disk in early 2008. Unfortunately, the images weren’t as meticulously curated as I’ve been doing for the last fourteen years, all types of pictures existing in simple yearly folders.

Now any sane person would’ve just copied everything over in the yearly folders, backed them up on the new SSD and called it a day. But I’ve never claimed to be sane.

No, I was determined to put everything back the way it was before I’d wiped out those files from the archive; the way I’d done many years ago that matched the folder structure I’d been actively using since 2008. It was painful  then, and I knew it was going to be painful now.

I won’t bore you with any further details, but suffice to say that two days into this project, I’m still not to the point where I can actually offload my “art print” collection in its entirely to the new drive. Everything else that had been on disparate drives (documents, non-pornographic pictures, software, etc.) was moved, but not the menz—because in my anal retentiveness, in addition to sorting the images into subfolders and renaming to match my existing nomenclature, I’m also weeding out duplicates, and OMG, are there ever duplicates!

I’ve sorted about half so far and have weeded out duplicates as I’ve run across them, but I can’t do a thorough weeding until everything is in the proper folders and I can run PhotoSweeper on the master folder to find duplicates across all the yearly folders.

I know it’s crazy, but it is providing a nice respite from the awful swirling about in the world, and it’s kind of nice seeing some of the old…um…faces…that I haven’t seen in a decade or more.

3 comments

Posted on

I—We All—Need to Hear This

From John Pavlovitz:

Hey.

I don’t know whether anyone’s told you lately or not, but you’re doing a great job.

Really.

You probably don’t feel that way, but under the conditions that’s understandable. You’ve been busy.
You’ve had your hands full.

Friend, take a second and think about what you’ve been through in the short span of the Spring:

You’ve dealt with an unprecedented health crisis that has paralyzed the planet.
With almost no warning, you’ve had to alter the way you do just about everything.
You’ve lost the ability to travel.
You’ve lost a good deal of income.
You may have even lost your job.
You’ve had to become a homeschool teacher.
You’ve had to become a primary caregiver.
You’ve had to become your own marriage counselor.
You’ve had to learn how to fix the dishwasher.
You’ve had to learn to cut your own hair.
You’ve had to search the dark web for toilet paper and then ration it like it was spun gold.
You’ve had to digest a relentless, ever-shifting barrage of news stories and expert recommendations and changing timelines and behavior restrictions.
You’ve had to experience birthdays and graduations and milestone moments you’d have never missed, through a jittery Zoom connection or a scratched phone screen.
You’ve had to grieve people you love dearly, from a distance and alone in a private funeral at your kitchen table.
You’ve been terribly lonely or you haven’t had a moment alone.
You’ve had to try and help your kids understand why they can’t go play with their friends, knowing it will still feel like a punishment to them.
You’ve sat with your sobbing teenager as the first breakup came at the absolute worst time.

You’ve had your faith shaken to its bedrock or may have lost your religion altogether.
You’ve watched your mental health deteriorate, as reality has become the nightmare you always imagined it was.
You’ve seen the death toll rise well beyond the worst of your fears when all this began.
You witnessed the absolute worst of humanity: hoarding pasta, berating grocery store clerks, protesting with weapons at capitol buildings, burning masks, calling 911 on people for simply existing.
You’ve watched more than one black man be murdered in the street.
You learned the levels of racism afflicting your family and your friendships and our leadership.
You’ve been reminded how fractured this nation is.
You’ve had to do all of it without a single hug.

The level of difficulty of your current life is a few steps above Batman.

So yeah, you’ve gained a few pounds or you’ve slacked on the meal planning, or you’ve let some stuff slide around the house, or you’ve ignored the shrubs, or you’ve missed sending that birthday card, or you’ve binged watched a few dozen shows, or you’ve served cereal for dinner and called it “Breakfast Night”—give yourself a damn break.

No, you’re not equipped for this and yes, you’re overmatched and overwhelmed—because this is a special kind of creative and historic hell that no one could have prepared for and no one is thriving through.

No one.

Everyone you live with or love or see from a distance or marvel at on social media, is pressed so far past their limits that they are often near tears. Everyone is so beaten down by all the unknowns, that their minds are exhausted from a million swirling contingencies and scenarios and possibilities. Everyone is working with Plan B (or Plan Q) at this point, and we’re all feeling like we’re floundering and failing.

It is enough right now to survive and to accept that as a victory.

You’re here and you’re somehow making the unworkable work: with the sub par dinners and the less-than-stellar haircut and the occasional tantrums from your child or your lover or yourself.

You’re MacGyver—ing a makeshift life from the odd assortment of stuff that you can cobble together around you, and honestly it’s a thing of beauty to behold.

So have a good cry or a piece of cake, go scream into your pillow or run around the block, toss up a prayer or drop an f-bomb—and then take a look around and survey your handiwork: the stuff you’ve made or the things you’ve fixed or the people you’ve cared for or the work you’ve done, and appreciate the duress under which you’ve managed it all.

One day you’re going to look back on these days and realize you weren’t a failure or a fraud or a lousy parent or a crappy partner, you’re going to see that you were a frickin’ superhero doing world-saving work in Kryptonite circumstances that should have leveled you but didn’t. You’re going to see that it was your finest hour.

And because you likely can’t see that right now, I wanted you to know that I see it in you.

So, yeah you’ve got a lot on your plate, but you’re making it work.

Life is not what you planned but it’s yours.

Keep going.

You’re doing great.

0 comments

Posted on

Just a Thought

Maybe I’m a goddamned bleeding heart liberal hippie, but I would gladly pay $0.50 more—oh hell, I’d pay $1.50 more—for fries if it meant enough of a pay increase for the person making those fries that they didn’t have to work 3 jobs to survive.

1 comments

Posted on

Karma

0 comments

Posted on

I Would Really Love to Get This

…but I found it through an Instagram ad, and my luck buying things from Instagram ads has been less than stellar. It’s also been appearing via two different sellers, raising red flags. What I’m most concerned about is that the posters are available up to 36″x24″ in size, the image will be all pixelated at that resolution—especially since it’s only $29 and being offered “for a limited time.” By the time I throw in local mounting and framing it will easily hit $100.

So…do I take a chance or not on the poster or?

0 comments

Posted on

Quote of the Day

The taverns are full of gadabouts making merry this eve. And though I may press my face against the window like an urchin at a confectioner’s, I am tempted not by the sweetmeats within. A dram in exchange for the pox is an ill bargain indeed. ” ~ Diary of S. Pepys, Great Plague of 1665

0 comments