Month: December 2020

The holiday season is inextricably tied to toys, and even here in my 50’s I still look forward to buying myself some small totally-useless-but-ultimately-fun item each year.

Now, I’m not talking about things that are actually useful or needed, those are always good presents, but they’re more than likely not a toy. What I refer to here is something purchased simply to have fun with and enjoy for no particular reason.

In recent years, for me at least, this has usually been some oddball thing I really, really, really wanted as a kid but never got for whatever reason, or some random trophy from bygone days. This year it was the Powerbook G4, for example; totally useless, but I love having it as a memento and it’s fun to fiddle with.

I tend to think this is what separates child-like Christmas Joy from more adult Holiday Obligation… So I endeavor to keep my inner-child active and healthy with some pointlessly fun thing each year.

This theory came about back when I was in the Navy and living through that transition from child to adult that most of us go through… The transition from getting up super early on Christmas morning to see what new thing(s) you got to play with, to trying desperately to sleep in on Christmas morning because it might actually be a day off if you played your cards right.

I realized a few years after I’d gotten out of the Navy that I’d become my father; bah humbug xmess is just an expensive waste of time if you need me I’ll be at work… And I needed to not do that, even if I was generally alone every holiday season. 

So, I try to get myself something pointlessly fun each year to keep the holiday alive.

Over the years this has gone from something small like a literal $5 toy when I wasn’t making very much, to more recent commissioned bits of art for a character or picking up some antique doodad that I always wanted as a kid but never got.

I have a few things on the list that I may or may not get to over the years; like an Edmund Scientific “Astroscan”…

Another thing on the list is a Parker Brothers “Merlin”…

I had a friend who had a Merlin, and in the early 80’s it was truly a “magical device” as Apple would say.

I think I’m going to start a new series here in ye olde journal where I detail some strange, interesting, or strangely interesting facet of growing up in the 70’s and 80’s.

I mean; I was there, man!

For example, you’ve probably used the term “Generic” before, but did you know that back in the early 80’s generic was such a big deal there was literally a “Generic Store”?

I’m not kidding; an actual store full of nothing but plain white wrapper stuff with block-print stating what it ostensibly was. Even the store’s sign was in this style, and simply said “Generic Store”.

The ‘Generic’ age came right before the dawn of the ‘Store Brands’ era which we live in now. Back in the late 70’s, early 80’s most stores had a Generic aisle full of not-quite-up-to-snuff stuff placed into plain white packaging and sold at a discount, and it was just a matter of time before someone made a free-standing store out of the idea…

My mother shopped at the Generic Store quite a bit.

See, my mom tended to treat grocery shopping like a personal conquest to try and squeeze every penny until it screamed. She would spend each weekend clipping coupons, and spent about a week before every monthly grocery run planning meals around whatever coupons she had acquired, and woe be unto the grocery store that offered things like ‘double coupons’…

It often took just as long for the person at the register to go through all of the coupons as it did to ring up all of the groceries, and if mom was on her game she’d drop the cost from around $50 to $30 or less… And, being the 80’s, $50 would literally fill the back of mom’s Opel 1900 wagon, seats to tailgate.

But all of this frugal had its own cost… I ate a lot of garlic butter baked cod, spaghetti, kielbasa and potatoes, hot dogs in stuff (mac-n-cheese, baked beans, etc), sloppy joes, quiche… Anything that could be made cheaply, in bulk, and kept well in Tupperware.

So, mom and the Generic Store had a bit of an illicit affair for a while, and I remember making a few trips to the unhappiest place on earth… The store was dimly lit, filled with gray colorless boxes, tins, and cans, and full of slow moving old people in shades of ash.

Walking into the store was like walking into a black and white TV.

Fortunately the Generic Store was fairly short-lived. I seem to recall it only being around for a year or two in fact.

Another Generic thing that happened at about the same time, though at the other end of Longmont, was “The Hamburger Stand”.

The building was white and black, the packaging was white and black, the employee uniforms were white and black, and most of the stuff on the menu was $0.39. Burger? 39 cents. Fries? 39 cents. Drink? 39 cents…

There was other stuff on the menu, like a 49 cent cheeseburger or corndog, but no one bought the expensive stuff.

About once a year my father would head over to the Hamburger Stand and buy like $20 worth, bring them home in several sacks, and we’d eat cheap burgers for far too long. But it was only once a year, so it was still a treat. 🙂

If I squint, I can see 2021 sitting there at the end of the week.

2020 has been  — interesting, but I’ll not be overly upset to put it behind me.

While the marking of the calendar most certainly won’t actually change anything, from a psychological point of view it’s a fixed point in time that heralds a turn of the page and the start of a new chapter.

And I think a great many people can use that right now.

I’m pretty sure everyone has heard, ad nauseam, about all of the problems that rode along with 2020, but I prefer to look back at the good stuff…

I moved, which seems to happen every two or three years, so that in and of itself isn’t exceptionally news-worthy. But this time I managed to time the move into a brand new never-been-lived-in place right as the zombie apocalypse happened. So, during the subsequent lockdown I’ve had a new place to get to know and a really nice place to hole up until it blows over.

I acquired a Vespa and rode it around for a few months, which was ridiculously fun and really got me wanting another motorcycle. Once the plague subsides and things even out (glass half-full), I’ll go get my “M” endorsement for my license just in case the opportunity for a motorcycle arrises.

I’m better prepared for things now. With the riots, looting, arson, supply chain problems, lockdowns, and people generally not being bolted together very well these days — I got my poop in a group in case everything goes truly pear-shaped.

Having a plan is most of the battle… For example, at work I had a plan for everyone to be working from home long before the zombie apocalypse, so the transition into the lockdown was fairly instant and really painless for everyone. And due to this we’ve not had to lay anyone off throughout this lunacy. In fact, company-wise we’re on track to have a slightly better year than last year.

Other than that I picked up some new computers this year; iMac and M1 MacBook Air which are both pretty incredible; living in the future ain’t half bad! Oh, and an old-new computer — the Powerbook G4, which still manages to be better than most of what’s out there.

Speaking of computers, I will soon start the great password migration; my yearly systematic update of every login and password for everything that has a login and password. And, being so involved online and requiring that everything has a unique, complex login and password, means it’s an all-day event.

Simply to get out of the house for a bit and get some fresh air and sunshine, the roommate and I drove down to the Waffle House in Castle Rock for breakfast.

The reason for the 20 mile trek was that of all the Waffle Houses in the area, the guy who runs the one in Castle Rock has outdoor seating — which complies with the zombie mandates.

He’s also just a really nice guy and good fun to chat with, and we’re doing our part to keep a local business open.

Anyway, as we pulled up another customer did as well; a car with Texas plates. The driver rolled down his window and asked if they were open…

I had to stifle an immediate chuckle, and answered that they were but the seating was all outside.

See, the driver of the car from Texas was the spitting image in both look and voice as “Skank” from the movie “The Crow”… I mean, identical. I briefly thought it might actually be the actor behind the character.

This fellow and his wife took a table nearby and while she was inside ordering we all got to talking (as people still do, even with zombies). Turns out as we talked about zombies and whatnot that he was just your average rando from Texas, but it was still really interesting to have a discussion with “Skank” at a Waffle House in Castle Rock. 😀

Back in the 70’s the holidays were ruled by catalog showrooms like Sears, Montgomery Wards, and the big-dog around my house — Service Merchandise.

The ritual was to make note of when the catalogs arrived, which was pretty easy as they were the size of phonebooks, and then wait for mom to finish with them. Once the catalogs moved from the top of the coffee table to the shelf under it — it was game-on. See, mom would spend a few days looking through them and circling things with her customary red pen. Once she was done, I got my turn to ‘wish-list’ with whatever blue/black ballpoint was handy.

The trick here was to play the economics of Christmas. See, our father had fairly tight purse strings when it came to us kids, and we knew that the budget was somewhere in the $30-$50 range ($100-$150 in 2020), per kid, for presents. And when you’re a kid faced with a hundred pages of toys and you want to both get lots of stuff, but also that one “coolest thing ever!” you saw on TV, and you have around $40 to do it with — you can agonize over the catalogs for a solid week.

Our 70’s holidays were also supplemented by the yearly Christmas party put on by my father’s employer. It was held at the BPO Elks Lodge in Boulder the weekend before Christmas, and the company really did it up; bought fairly up-scale gifts for all of the kids, had a “Santa” on hand to give them out, catered a really nice meal for all of the families, and then gave every employee a turkey or ham for their Christmas dinner.

My sister and I had something of a silent competition when it came to gifts — seeing which of us would get the bigger ticket items. But when the 80’s rolled around I had an unfair advantage when it came to the Gift Wars as I was big into computers — as was my father. So it was slightly easier to score some expensive computational doohickey simply because my father would be interested in playing with it too.

But by the 80’s I was also in my teens, in junior/senior high, and Christmas was taking a back seat to hanging out with friends anywhere but home. This also meant my sister, being seven years my younger, was taking the family focus — so I guess it worked out for both of us.

Christmas also included my grandparents, and my Grandfather seemed to delight in antagonizing my overly protective mother with his unique brand of gifts…

In ’81 I got I got a six-inch stag handled Bowie knife with a tooled leather scabbard. I was 12 at the time, which in PawPaw’s opinion was the transition age to cigars and whiskey.

My father took possession of the knife and I never saw it again after that Christmas.

The next year, 1982, I got a rifle from my Grandfather; a .22 LR lever gun. I never got the chance to even touch that present, though it did hang above the mantle (with a trigger lock on it) through ’86 when I left for the Navy.

I think after the rifle every present my Grandfather sent was pre-screened before being put under the tree.

One gift I got from PawPaw before his passing is a 1971 Eisenhower silver dollar — and I still have it.

I remember him handing it to me and saying, “As long as you have this, you’re not broke.”

He wasn’t wrong. 🙂

Took a stroll to look at everyone’s lights tonight; some really impressive displays out there.

I also find it interesting how much blue LEDs have changed the color of the holiday. 😀

The new lease for the townhouse arrived the other day, because I have to give them 60 days notice. So I need to accept or refuse the new lease by January 6th for the March 6th deadline.

It’s already been most of a year? Time definitely flies…

Anyway, the complex was sold to some new company a couple months back. This has, of course, come with certain changes — some good (hopefully), and some bad.

The good stuff is that it sounds like the new company might actually start enforcing a few rules around here, like people cleaning up after their dogs and not parking in front of the garages at night.

The latter is a problem because all of the garages face each other across a fairly narrow driveway, and when someone parks out there, the rest of us with anything bigger than a bicycle have a hard time getting out.

The down-side is they’re raising the rent $150 a month; from $1890 to $2040. And while this wouldn’t be too bad, by the time they get done with ‘grounds fees’, ‘storm drain fees’, ‘trash fees’, ‘common area gas, electric, water and sewer fees’, ‘pest control fees’, ‘administration fees’ and even ‘payment processing fees’, that $1890 turns into about $2200. So I’m guessing $2040 will work out to about $2500 a month — or $625 a paycheck just to keep a roof over my head.

My CFO / real estate mogul is still working on the details for the place I mentioned a while back, and says to give him 10 more days to work it out — but even then it’ll still be close to $2500 a month… Though in a larger, nicer place.

It’s just getting too darn expensive to live in Denver.

I walked over to the local Village Inn to get a little outside time and to pick up my breakfast. With the zombies and all, even at T-minus-5 days until Christmas everything is deserted…

The above is the sad little strip mall near my place… Most of the stores are empty now; out of business because of the lockdown that’s lasted most of a year. The theater is the taller bit there on the right. Not sure if they’re going to make it either…

I don’t normally get much in the way of gifts during the holidays; my few friends will ask if there’s anything I’d like for the holidays, and I’ll say “that you have a really great Christmas”. 

See, it’s easier if I just buy myself something. While there’s no real surprise with this method, there are also fewer hassles with returns. 🙂

Conversely I like giving the few friends I have something out of the blue. So this year I sent the gift of meat.

Christensen Ranch is the place I’ve been buying my meats from since the zombie apocalypse started. Well, it turns out they do gift boxes too, so that’s what I did this year.

Painless and Griffy, friends of mine from down in southern Colorado (and technically my neighbors down there), returned the favor and got me this ginormous gift box from Swiss Colony:

I love Swiss Colony meat and cheese sets, but rarely get them for myself because it’s super easy to burn yourself out on the stuff— so this is awesome! 

I definitely need to go get more crackers though…

And last but not least, my custom watch band arrived this evening. 2-day delivery took two weeks thanks to the USPS — but the band is really nice and even fits my 8.5″ gorilla wrists.

It’s brand new, so it’s stiff and a little tight, but that will work out over time because it’s leather.

The Apple Watch works with it; ECG, Blood Oxygen, Heart Rate — all of the sensors appear to function just fine.

It was made by Rockstar Leatherworks, and now that I’ve seen his work first-hand — I can recommend him if you need something leather made.

I’m on “vacation”, which just means it can take 30 minutes to an hour for me to get around to the current world-ending problem at work. My roommate also starts vacation today, so if anything physical happens at work, one of us will have to drive in — which takes all of ten minutes — so they’ll survive.

This morning I splurged and had breakfast delivered from Black Bear Diner over by work.

I’ve been meaning to get over there and try their reportedly epic breakfast which apparently results in hour-long lines at the other locations, but they opened right as the zombie apocalypse happened. So, it’s just not been possible to actually go there when I have had the time.

It turns out that they do pickup and delivery as well, but they don’t open until 8am, which is several hours after I get to work or have already eaten on weekends and that’s made it difficult too.

This morning though, I finally pulled it off and got the “Breakfast Combo Family Meal”; which appears to be the sort of thing they offer for catering and says it feeds four. After adding a coffee, a sweet tea for the roommate, the delivery fee, and taxes it was about $50… It arrived in 30 minutes, in various serving trays, and was really good; scrambled eggs, bacon, country potatoes, biscuits, condiments… The works!

Of the lot, the biscuits were the impressive/scary part; they basically fill a ten-inch cake-pan with biscuit, bake it, and cut the final product into four pieces. The end result is a really good biscuit, but it’s a really dense four inch cube… I ate half of one and hit my bread limit. 

The roommate seems happy with the breakfast spread as well, and he’s super picky — so I guess it’s a win.

In other news the USPS says my new watch band is apparently going to be delivered today… I’m not going to hold my breath, but it’s nice to get some kind of indication out of them that the package still exists.

I’m also currently tracking the UPS delivery truck that contains my Atari VCS as it meanders around the neighborhood.

Soon ™.

I’m still waiting for my new Apple Watch band to arrive; apparently the USPS is having some problems and packages are backed up nation-wide.

The website says it’s still on a truck somewhere between Minnesota and Denver, even though the artisan who made the band shipped it on the 6th… So much for paying for 2-day delivery.

From what I’ve been reading on sites like Esty, where lots of artisans are having the same issue getting products to purchasers, I’ll be lucky if I see it before Christmas.

Then there’s FedEx, who tends to always be a day or two later than they estimate (because it takes time to mangle the package or something). They also like to leave things at my visible to the world garage door (where if I didn’t have a backup camera I’d run over the package) versus the secluded and covered front porch — because that would require a dozen more steps I guess. This is how the case for my MacBook Air arrived; fortunately the case was fine even if the box looked like it was delivered via WWII.

UPS on the other hand is super professional, doesn’t load their trucks via trebuchet, delivers on time (usually within a three hour window even), and has no issue putting the package on the porch.

Which leads to the next thing UPS will be delivering to me…

Back in May of 2018 I paid into an Indigogo campaign for a bit of reimagined retro wizardry; the Atari VCS.

Atari and I go way back… The family had an original PONG machine in ’76, then a four-switch 2600 sat on top of the living room TV back in ’80. I still recall coming home from school to my mother playing breakout, which was so incongruous for my totally non-technical mother that it sticks with me to this day.

In 1986 I got an Atari 800XL, and used that machine until I picked up the Amiga 500 in ’89 after making the really hard decision between it and an Atari 520ST.

Here we are a couple of decades later and Atari has re-embraced their console roots with the new VCS — and I joined them in the name of 80’s memories.

Initially the new VCS was supposed to be delivered July 2019, then October 2020 — which came and went with louder portions of the Internet proclaiming that the new VCS would never amount to anything but cash-grab vaporware.

Much to their chagrin I’m sure, my “collector’s edition” VCS, two classic joysticks, and two modern controllers shipped yesterday and UPS is telling me it’ll arrive Friday at around 5pm.

I’ll be sure to post some pictures and my thoughts on the thing next weekend — shipping willing. 🙂

It’s been a few years — five in fact — since the infamous Bigfoot of fast-food last roamed the Rockies.

Of course I’m referring to the McRib; McDonald’s here today-gone tomorrow BBQ pork sandwich. Which is available for some random period of time right now.

The McRib is pretty polarizing; people either love it or despise it. I’m in the former group as I’m a big fan of BBQ anything — even if calling the McRib BBQ is being extremely generous.

Either way, I like them and decided that today I’d go get one.

I personally think that the mystique comes from the sandwich’s random availability. It’s ‘okay’ as far as pork product goes, but because it’s such a once in a long while thing it makes it perceptually better.

The patty is basically Spam, the sauce is what you get in those little cups with your McNuggets, the onions and pickles are typical burger fare, and the bun is pretty basic — but combined it’s just unique enough to be a special treat.

Special enough that I went out in the snow to slog over to the local McD’s to get one.

I used to eat these a lot back in the 80’s, back when McRibs came with a special hot sauce that was a lot like Wendy’s chili sauce. So when I do manage to score one of these things, it’s a bit of a way-back moment for me… Sitting in my ’69 Toyota Corona at the McDonald’s just down the road from Golden High School during lunch.

Good times. 🙂

I got my end-of-year bonus, and that handily paid off the M1 laptop and the bespoke case I had made for it.

The case arrived last evening, by the way, and it’s really nice. It’s black calf-skin with blue stitching and my initials embossed on the cover in metallic blue. There’s something about leather that just makes things nice to carry around. And it’s more ‘grippy’ than the bare aluminum of the laptop, so the M1 Air is less likely to get dropped.

I’ve mentioned here a few times that my CFO is primarily a real estate mogul first and the CFO here at work second, and due to this he’s usually got some ultra-nice property he’s trying to set me up with… Well yesterday he signed on a place over in Pioneer Hills and mentioned that I should take a look at it.

It’s a 3br, 3bath, with a study and a ‘pro’ kitchen that includes a gas range — which is a rarity here in Colorado. The pictures are really nice; front of the house opens to a wooded nature preserve, so it has a lot of that wilderness ambiance I like. And it overlooks Cherry Creek state park, which means it has an unobstructed view of the mountains to the west. Which is also nice.

The garage is bigger, which would be really nice given the 1.75 gar garage I have now, and the house itself is about 600 sq feet bigger than the townhouse… Not that I really need any more room, but the layout is better and more ‘upscale’. There’s an unfinished basement as well, which isn’t included in the square foot numbers — so tons of storage space for all the stuff I don’t have.

The Pioneer Hills area is pretty nice and there’s quite a bit in walking distance. And just to the south are the Corner Star and Arapahoe Crossing malls.

My current lease is up in March, so I have some time to kick it around… I’m really not interested in moving again, but it is a pretty nice place and the numbers are right.

Welp, here we are — December 2020. TDay is now firmly behind us, Christmas is still ahead of us, and the long shadows of winter sunshine makes for short days and chilly evenings.

Things at work are starting the wind-down that happens in the last few weeks of the year — when everyone is either on vacation, or at work but still mostly on vacation. 🙂

I’m setting up for my personal end-of-year rituals; data storage and archive maintenance, physical paperwork filing maintenance, password and login maintenance… All of the things one needs to do in this robots and flying cars era to make sure they don’t get digitally mugged.

I’m also starting the acquisition of supplies for Christmas dinner. Today was making sure I have enough paper and plastic supplies for the event.

I’ve been using “Instacart” quite a bit over the last six months or so — in fact my latest grocery order for the above items just arrived a little bit ago. It’s a bit more spendy than actually going to the shops myself, but I don’t have to actually go to the shops so it allows me to get more done in less time…

The hour that someone else is spending driving to the store, making sure their mask is on according to mandate, going the right way down the isles, and maintaining social distance is an hour I get to spend cleaning the house, working on the car, doing laundry, or some other chore that needs to be done over the weekend. So it works out for me.

Lets see… Oh, the M1 MacBook Air is still impressing me. I’ve been using it daily as both a replacement for the 16″ MacBook Pro I used for work and the iPad Pro I used for watching “TV” in bed.

With regard to work, I have a hard time seeing the performance difference between the thousand dollar Air and the five-thousand dollar Pro. At the same time the Air makes a better iPad than the iPad because it runs longer on a charge, has a better screen, and has far better audio.

Definitely a win for Apple — it’s a really impressive bit of kit.

The new iMac is impressive as well. the 5K screen is gorgeous (as expected) and it runs all of my x86 tools and games with aplomb. It’s amazing with this new remote work paradigm as well with its new webcam and pro-grade mics. With the amount of time I spend in front of a computer for both work and entertainment, it’s nice to have top-of-the-line gear.

So, I guess my Christmas / Birthday gifts to myself worked out this year. 🙂

The last two Christmas gifts to myself are custom-made leather accessories. One is a bespoke case for the Air and the other is a custom watchband for the Apple Watch…

I seem to have a bit of an issue with the Apple Watch in that it irritates my wrist where the sensor sits. I’ve had similar issues with glass-bottom watches in the past, where they don’t allow my wrist to ‘breathe’ and I get a bit of a rash.

The leather band that’s being made is pretty similar to the bands I used in the 80’s in that it’s a leather cuff that the watch sits on top of, though now said cuff has a round hole in it for the watch sensors. Hopefully this will still allow the watch to do all of its watch-things while getting the sapphire sensor off of my wrist.

We shall soon see, as the shipping notification for the watchband just arrived in my email. 🙂