Category: Uncategorized

Happy Record Store Day!

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Ben and I noticed the other day that development has started on a long-vacant tract of land on Thomas Road at 3rd Street. This parcel has been vacant for as long as I can remember. Imagine my horror when we learned it is slated for yet another overpriced “luxury” high-rise apartment development that will sit empty. Just what Phoenix needs.

From the developer’s website:

“When creating Alta Paradise Ridge, it was important to us that we offer residents an unparalleled living experience,” said Todd Taylor, development director for Wood Partners in Arizona and Nevada. “Our internal design process has continued to create beautiful multifamily units with fully-equipped, elegant amenities attractive to young professionals, families and empty nesters.”

Each unit includes a large quartz kitchen island, stainless steel appliances and wood style flooring, creating a functionally dynamic environment for cooking and entertaining. USB outlets, gigabit internet speeds and Bluetooth speakers seamlessly connect residents and their technological devices directly to their home.

Exclusive community amenities have also been incorporated to match the lifestyles of the Alta Paradise Ridge’s targeted audiences including a 24-hour fitness center, personal training, and yoga and spin rooms. Residents are also able to enjoy a wide range of opportunities for collaboration and relaxation in inviting spaces that include a clubhouse with an 11-foot television, a beach entry pool overlooking a private reserve, private dining room, and a rooftop terrace.

“More than just a place to live, Alta Paradise Ridge connects residents to the vibrancy of Phoenix and their community,” added Taylor. “We are proud to offer a top-tier living experience with a unique sense of place and culture to our targeted renter.”

And we know exactly who your “targeted renter” is, don’t we? Urban professionals with more money than sense who don’t own a single item and only use their apartment as a fuck-pad…

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1. Public college tuition in the United States was 3.22 times more expensive compared to 1985 adjusted for inflation.

2. Meanwhile, the cost of college textbooks has seen a 1,041% increase since 1977 — three times the rate of inflation. 

3. The average American student debt upon graduation is about equal to the price of a Tesla 3

4. Roughly two-thirds of college students face student loan debts after graduating today. One expert said more than 25% of those students almost definitely won’t be able to afford the burden, according to a guest column in Time.

5. Student loan debt in America has surpassed credit card debt.

6. Over 40 million Americans faced student loan debt in 2014. “The population with student loans is actually greater than the entire population of Canada, Poland, North Korea, Australia and more than 200 other countries,” the Huffington Post noted at the time.

7. According to the Bay Citizen, the rate at which graduates defaulted on their loans nearly doubled from 2005 to 2010, from 4.6% to 8.8%.

8. For the 7 million Americans who defaulted on their student loans in 2014, they may have become ineligible for certain government jobs, according to the Huffington Post.

9. The student loan debt crisis has prevented millennials from spending on many other life milestones.

Source

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Limitless is apparently on the fence in regards to being renewed for a second season. I hope it makes the cut, because in addition to it being a fun show it would be a shame if we didn’t get to see cute Jake McDorman’s hot scruff every week.

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…into the bathroom with the Sears catalog when I was a teenager.

And don’t even get me started on the summer swimwear catalog!

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A few weeks ago the remodeled house down the street from CopperStar finally went up for sale. Ben and I laughed when we saw it being marketed for half a million, even with the crappy, unfinished back yard. It was a ridiculous asking price for the ‘hood, even if it had been pristine. I mean, the place is nice and all, but it’s not worth that much.

Well, it sold—for the full asking price.

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I graduated high school in the top 10% of my class thinking the world was my oyster. I dropped out of college after 3 barely-passing semesters.

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The fanboy in me just peed his pants.

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It’s been a while…

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I’ve given up on thinking that Apple’s Magic Mouse is ever going to work reliably with my MacBook Pro again. It’s just one of those things that’s broken and apparently can’t be fixed no matter how much Apple mucks around with it. While it worked flawlessly and the Bluetooth connection was rock solid under Snow Leopard, I can say with certainty that it hasn’t worked properly since Lion, and the problem has become insufferable since Mavericks. I keep hoping that with each new OS release/patch that the obvious bluetooth issues are going to go away, but nooooooo…

At first I believed (based on what I’d read online) that the issue was the batteries flopping around in the battery compartment, causing the mouse to lose power for a moment and drop connectivity. Who knew at AA batteries weren’t all the exact same size? Sure enough, different brands did fit differently, but the issue never resolved itself no matter what brand I bought. Even when I gave up on AA cells completely and bought the rechargable Mobee power pack (which fit very snugly in the battery compartment of the mouse) it would still drop connection.

And by drop connection, I don’t mean that it would disconnect and reconnect a few seconds later. I mean it would disconnect, and the only way to get it talking to the laptop again would be a complete reboot. Until it happened the next time. Ad nauseum.

So when the Magic Mouse 2 with it’s integral rechargeable battery came out a few months ago, of course I jumped on it. And to be fair, the problem did clear up for the most part. But lately it’s come back and it’s as infuriating as ever.

(This problem happens even with a fresh, virgin load of the OS, so it’s not some other piece of software interfering with the functionality. And BTW, there are reams of discussion online regarding this issue.)

So why do I insist on sticking with the Magic Mouse? Because—ironically—while I hated how it felt in my hand when I first got one all those many years ago, I now prefer the ergonomics. I also like the inertial scrolling, which Apple only seems to make available with that particular model.

“So why are you using a mouse at all? Why aren’t you using the trackpad on your laptop?”

Because even with as excellent as the Apple trackpads are, I’ve used a mouse most of my adult life and far and away prefer it over the pad. I will use the trackpad if I’m away from a hard surface, but using a mouse is still my preferred method of moving around the screen.

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Ben and I came into The Walking Dead at the beginning of season two and spent a week or so playing catch up with season one. We’ve both really enjoyed the series.

But this past season has been disappointing on so many levels, and while Ben abandoned the show a couple weeks ago, I soldiered onward, hoping there would still be something to keep me coming back for more.

But there isn’t. I’ve lost all sympathy for any of the main characters and simply do. not. care. any more whether they live or die.

Tom & Lorenzo (who I actually stopped following a couple months ago because of their constant bitchiness about pretty much everything) actually hit the nail on the head; the reason myself and apparently many others are abandoning the show:

Good job, TWD creative team! Attaboys and girls! You did it! It took you all some time, but you’ve effectively chipped away all the coolness from your few cool characters. You’ve managed to turn Carol into Andrea, Morgan into Dale and Daryl into season 2 Carl. Brilliant. We expect Michonne will start trying to run in heels any episode now. At the very least, they should have her flip her car into a ditch on an empty road, for old time’s sake.

We’ve spent roughly two whole seasons listening to Rick & Co. talk about how unprepared and naive the Alexandrians are, only to watch Rick & Co. consistently do idiotic things to demonstrate that they’re really no smarter or better equipped to handle the world than anyone else. Because really, is Denise the dumb one for leaving the safety of Alexandria in pursuit of can of pop or is Carol the dumber one for leaving the safety of Alexandria because she’s tired of killing people? Because you know what happens when you leave the safety of a place like Alexandria? You’re almost immediately plunged into life-or-death situations that call on you to…kill people to survive. In other words, Carol left Alexandria because she’s killed too many people, and then within hours of leaving, she kills another half-dozen. How does this make Carol anything but, well… an idiot? Then again, literally EVERYONE who walked out those gates—all of whom are counted among the best fighters in Alexandria because they’re all Rick-ites—are insanely and implausibly stupid for leaving the compound right after having declared war on a rival group by attacking and killing them.

Christ, what an awful episode. What a waste of time watching these people all inexplicably turn into other people for no reason than to service a plot that seems fairly weighted with inevitability and expectations at this point. Someone Important Is Going To Die. And in order for that to happen, Everyone’s IQ Has To Plummet.

And right on schedule, as we’ve been predicting all season, the Saviors suddenly and without warning went from a ragtag collection of smug Barney Fifes to the type of people who can sneak up on Daryl and shoot him before he gets a chance to react. Ugh. There is not one person in the cast right now whose death would upset us. Michonne, maybe. But it’s hard to remain concerned with (or even interested in) the fates of people who go dumb at a moment’s notice.

Even Kris, a friend of mine from DISH who is a hardcore fan responded to a text this morning wherein I told him I thought I was done with the series because of all this crap. “For me it’s the plot issues—the fact you can tell every episode has a different director. Doris and I very frequently look at each other and say ‘He/she wouldn’t do that!'”

At this point, I believe that whatever horrible things happen to Rick’s band at the hands of Neagan (I don’t follow the comics so I don’t really know what’s going to happen, but I have a pretty good idea) are well deserved. Rick & Co. have turned into exactly the kind of people they’ve been trying to avoid since the beginning of the Apocalypse.

I could go on and on, but I’ve already expended more energy on this than I’d intended, and it just isn’t worth it, but I will leave you with this thought posted by a commenter on another board:

“There doesn’t seem to be an end game or conclusion to this story; just endless suffering.”

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The Democrats are fighting over two amazingly qualified candidates. The Republicans are deciding which live bug they’d rather eat.” ~ Patton Oswald

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Via

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I love pointing this out to right-wing Xtianists who swear they’re going to boycott Apple or whoever because of the companies’ stand on equality.

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If only because I know who all these people are. And all of them are dead.

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Be careful out there!

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I received another little gift from my sister today: my mom’s daily planners from the mid 60s through the late 70s.

Some of the entries are cryptic: Bob/1. Some are humorous in that she recorded them: Owe Mark $3 Lawn. Mark started work at Sirloin Stockade. Others are bittersweet, like my class schedule for the first semester at college:

8:00-9:00 (M-Th) Russian
9:00-10:00 (M-W-F) Freshman Composition
9:00-10:00 (T-Th) Graphic Communication
10:00-11:00 (T-Th) History of Western Civilization
11:00-12:00 (M-W-F) Algebra
11:00-12:00 (T-Th) Graphic Communication
12:00-1:00 (T) Graphic Communication Studio

She also recorded every doctor/dentist appointment for myself, my sister, my dad, and herself. Student holidays, PTA meetings, early dismissal days, plant watering/fertilizing schedules, hair appointments, dinner parties, and some very personal stuff that I just simply didn’t need to know about.

If nothing else, the woman was very methodical. I guess that’s where I got it from.

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Eventually.

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THIS.

As some of you may know, I live in North Carolina.  This bill is a travesty.  It not only denies protection by the state, it legally strips away all local laws created to protect and assist LGBT (particularly trans) citizens.  If you follow me on twitter, I made it very clear how unacceptable this is to me.

North Carolina voted Barack Obama into office and elected a female governor and senator from the democratic party eight years ago and since then the Republican party has gerrymandered districts, passed a law requiring state id’s to vote, and passed every anti LGBT bill that’s come across their desks.

It’s time to fight back.  If you are not a bigot, you have eight months to get your state id and voter registration sorted out, because no single person who voted for this bill should be allowed to keep their seat.

Let me make a few things very clear:

If you do not vote in this election in North Carolina, you are implicated in the ruining of the lives of LGBT people.  You are a party to the discrimination against and assaults on trans people in NC.  You are the one holding the gun.

And if you decide not to show up at the election because you are unhappy with the democratic presidential candidate that the DNC chooses, you are guilty of bigotry and hypocrisy.  I know there are some of you out there that are very salty that it looks like Hillary is going to win and I’m no huge Hillary fan, but if you’ve been telling every person you meet about how Bernie Sanders supports the LGBT community and you don’t show up to support the LGBT community, you are a hypocrite.” ~ Princeless

This law was pushed through in an “emergency” session yesterday because the city of Charlotte, NC passed local ordinances supporting trans and LBGT+ rights.

This law was introduced, voted on, and passed in 12 hours in direct response to the largest city in North Carolina wanting to do right by its community.

“Bathroom defense” is bullshit. There have been no reported incidents of assault being perpetrated on women in restrooms by trans men ever. The more I read, the more infuriated I become, and at this point I’m convinced that—as usual—the republicans are projecting again. Projecting about sex in bathrooms? Yes. Because I would venture to say that a vast majority of those fucksticks know all about bathroom sex, and it doesn’t involve women at all.

Vote. In. Your. Goddamn. Local. Elections.

Thankfully major corporations who are on the side of equality are speaking up. Can Atlanta really afford to lose Coca Cola or The Walking Dead?

What these sad “religious liberty” laws are pointing out more than anything else—much like what happened with marriage equality itself—is the need for Federal LGBT protections—and ironically that may be the unintended consequence that comes from all this, proving if nothing else that the Christianists’ invisible friend in the sky has one wicked sense of humor.

And speaking of unintended consequences…

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“Not only is the Universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” ~ Sir Arthur Eddington, English Astronomer (1882-1944)

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft spied several features on Pluto that offer evidence of a time millions or billions of years ago when—thanks to much higher pressure in Pluto’s atmosphere and warmer conditions on the surface—liquids might have flowed across and pooled on the surface of the distant world.

This feature appears to be a frozen, former lake of liquid nitrogen, located in a mountain range just north of Pluto’s informally named Sputnik Planum. Captured by the New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as the spacecraft flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, the image shows details as small as about 430 feet. At its widest point the possible lake appears to be about 20 miles across.

A lake of liquid nitrogen…now frozen. Mind blown.

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