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Monday

5-1/2 hours sleep, 42% sleep quality. I simply could NOT fall asleep last night. I finally got up at 12:30 and took a Benadryl. That knocked me out, but I’m comatose this morning.

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Good Enough

I don’t know how long most people own a car before they reach the point when washing it that they say, “good enough,” but I’ve definitely reached that point with Anderson.

When I first got him, he’d get washed twice a week. Sometimes I’d even get up early, just to do it before heading to work. I’d obsess over every nook and cranny. No streaks were allowed anywhere and he’d get a full waxing every couple months. I’d even jack the car up periodically take the wheels off to clean inside the rims.

But now? This past year or so he’s lucky if he gets washed every two months. I just want to get the dirt off. Every nook and cranny does not get obsessed over. I still want it to look nice, but let’s face it: Anderson is eleven years old and no matter what I do he’s showing his age. Because of the way I get in and out of my car, the driver side upholstery is in tatters (happens with every car I’ve owned). The one headlight that wasn’t replaced five years ago has completely oxidized. All the black plastic trim has faded beyond repair, and the black rubber gaskets at the base of the windows are revealing themselves to be black rubber paint on top of metal frames. So that’s why today, after wetting the car down, doing a quick wash, rinse and dry followed by an equally-quick once-over of the interior I announced “Good enough!” and packed it in.

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Quote of the Day

We must never never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue, with the tone set at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve. ~ Senator Jeff Flake, (R) Arizona

I am no fan of Jeff Flake. Never have been. But it was quite heartening—not to mention just a little bit surreal—to hear him stand up in the Senate yesterday and finally say (as a Conservative) what we on the Left have been saying since last November. Trump is unfit for office. Period.

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I Have a Problem

My latest additions, the Blade Runner 2049 collection.

It took me years to buy my first Pop! because I knew that once I did, it would become an addiction. And it has.

Next weekend it’s a trip to IKEA to buy two more LACK shelf units because the collection has now officially outgrown the three current shelves it occupies.

I suppose I could have a worse addiction…

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Sleep

I have an app on my phone that tracks my sleep. After the initial novelty wore off years ago I deleted it, but lately I’ve been wondering if my sleep patterns have become truly as awful as I’ve suspected from the way I’ve been feeling upon getting up in the morning, so I reloaded the latest version.

The old version required that the phone be placed under the pillow on the mattress itself to track motion. I can only surmise there were some overheating incidents, so now it’s designed to sit on the nightstand and instead of tracking motion it listens to your breathing.

While I can understand how the previous version of this software would track your sleep stages via mattress movement, how this works now simply by listening escapes me (especially with more than just me in bed, the ceiling fan, the gurgling aquarium, and the humidifier whirring in the background.)

Even not understanding how this works, seeing this data has been—pardon the expression—eye opening. It verifies that I do often wake up—and remain awake for some amount of time before falling back to sleep—anywhere from 3 to 5 am almost every night. The fact that I almost immediately fall into deep sleep after going to bed explains why I’m almost never aware of Ben coming in later. It also shows the times I get up to use the bathroom.

What’s less clear is how “Sleep quality” is computed, because it seems the higher the score on that, the less rested I feel upon waking. Of the data I’ve posted here, the 67% night was subjectively the best night’s sleep I’ve had in weeks, while the 91% night was among the worst.

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Blog Hosting

I’ve been with my current blog host for a little over four years now. I originally switched because I had issues with the service and reliability—not to mention the corporate philosophy—of my previous host. I don’t think I need to name this Phoenix-based company; they’re infamous.

My current host, while not cheap, has been rock steady, lets me post whatever the fuck I want (obviously), is very WordPress friendly, and when things have infrequently gone sideways, they’ve been fixed almost immediately.

That being said, they are a business whose job is to sell, sell, sell. Their website is confusing as hell to navigate and find what you’re looking for. My current hosting plan was due to expire in two days, so Friday night I logged in to renew my plan for another three months as I have been wont to do for these past four years. This time, however there was no “renew” button available, just “upgrade.” Oh great, I thought, they’ve changed their pricing structure.

Sure enough, clicking “upgrade” took me to a page with horrifically priced plans, all billable only on a yearly basis, none of which was in my budget.

I didn’t relish the plan of switching hosts because of the hassle of actually moving the website, but I asked Ben what host he was using because I couldn’t afford to stay where I was if these “upgrade” plans were my only choices.

I checked out their plans and they were dirt cheap in comparison to what I had been paying. I got signed up with them and with Ben’s help we transferred the domain name and hosting without issue. We ran into a problem, however, when we engaged the company to actually move my WordPress installation. I received a very curt email from their technical support:

Hello Mark,

Thank you for contacting [Hosting Company] Support Team.

Per our check, the voenixrising.com website violates our Hosting Acceptable Use Policy that you may find at https://www.[Hosting Company].com/legal/hosting/aup.aspx , namely Paragraph 8, Prohibited Activities:

‘By using any Services, provided by [Hosting Company] You agree: not to use [Hosting Company] services to host any website, other content, links or advertisements of websites that contain nudity, pornography or other content deemed adult related’.

Thus, before we assist you with your website migration, we would ask you to delete the content that does not comply with the above.

Feel free to contact us back anytime.

Well fuck that. I replied to the email telling them that was their prerogative and it was also my prerogative to spend my money elsewhere because of it. I asked that my hosting be cancelled. They responded with a link to cancel the service (which of course turned out to be a hot mess), but I eventually found what I needed and cancelled the hosting. I understand I’m stuck with the domain registration through them for 60 days because of ICANN rules, but I can live with that.

Seeing that I was growing increasingly angry and frustrated, Ben discovered another host that didn’t limit what could be posted. I checked them out, but they were the same price as my original host’s new plans and also could only be billed in yearly installments.

Reluctantly I returned to my original host’s website and looked at my renewal offer again. This was when I noticed that next to the “upgrade” box, there was also a link under what was showing as the price of my current, soon-to-expire, bill-3-months-at-a-time hosting.

When I clicked on that, it took me to a page that gave me the option to simply renew my current plan. Clicked and done.

Why couldn’t that have been on the original landing page, clearly marked?

Because they’re job is to make money. That’s why.

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Shower Thoughts

If you have filled up your house with shit to the point where you need a storage unit for the rest of your shit then you probably own too much shit.

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