Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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TOO MUCH STUFF!!!

*sigh*

Purging. And not just household items. Data.

Several years after my first computer, I went “big” for a 5MB hard drive on a 486. I ended up, in the long run, “purging” (well, discarding) most of the data I had on 5.25 floppies, tape (even audio cassette tapes *heh*), etc. I may never get around to sorting and purging the boxes (and boxes) of CDRs that are slowly decaying, although I do have quite a bit of original work I saved to 3.5” floppies transferred to other media/stored in several different archives. *shrugs* Useful mainly for review of how my views have changed/remained the same after dealing with new information. Apart from that? Destined for destruction when I’m gone.

The other day, I actually found an external 500GB drive I thought I had scrubbed; it’d been stuck in a (wrong) box during some house changes. Never missed it, since the data was all elsewhere, anyway.

I have way too much stuff, including just junk sitting around on various drives. Some of it is the result of a habit of saving web pages/sites for offline reading or even reference archiving, something I do for things that are more interesting/immediate than would fit in my 1,000s of bookmarks (also need purging, though I do that now and then with an app).

The flood back on the last day of April was good for purging stuff, but we need to go much, much farther, and are doing so. It just seems to go so slowly. . . *sigh*

It’s a daunting task, but must it be done.

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Perspective

Living the 1970s dream: A lesson in critical thinking

This is an excellent exercise. I spent my childhood in the 50s, teens in the 60s. Nowadays, even most on “welfare” live in more creature comfort, with many more convenience factors and just flat-out luxuries than we could even have imagined. Whenever I feel a yen for more (of whatever), I still try to ask myself just how much what I desire is really necessary. *shrugs* I still succumb all too often to the siren call of “more,” but recalling just how satisfied I once was with much, much less helps keep things a wee tad more restrained.

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DSM-XX: Increasingly Harmful Criteria Proposed by Well-Meaning High-Functioning “Norms” or Just a Scam?

Maybe a lot of both.

Let’s take the ever-increasing “diagnostic criteria” for ADD/ADHD/autism “spectrum” and other such squishy “disorders”

It’s a complex issue, and the desire among p-sychs and drug companies to have insurance billables make sales compounds the problem, especially for those for whom ADHD (and those with real autism) who actually do suffer from real world consequences of real conditions are just as much harmed by excessive diagnosis and treatment of others as are those others who should NOT be tagged with “disability” labels and drugged out of their minds–especially children.

Some real people with real problems do exist, but I am in no way convinced that it is the dire mental health issue it is presented as.

If viewed in the most positive light possible, most of the DSM “diagnostic criteria” that has spawned these expanded classes of “disorders” has simply been efforts by (often high-functioning) “Norms” to explain away behavior by “Odds” who simply do not fit their view of societal norms. . . because Odds frequently do not adhere to societal norms. when those oddities do not cause direct harm to the Odds in question, or to those around them, save perhaps in the secondary effect of bigoted Norms who refuse to allow Odds to be themselves, these (often high-functioning) Norms feel behooved to label the Odds as. . . odd, but in pejorative, and actually harmful terms.

Where’s the love for diversity of viewpoint, eh? *heh*

(BTW, had current standards and practices existed at the time, I too very likely would have been diagnosed as “having” a “disorder” that would then be treated by quacks. My current–and lifetime–signs say I fulfill diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV for a certain so-called “autism spectrum disorder,” but since I long ago learned how to feign normalcy when I want to, it isn’t so much a disorder–causing physical or social harm to me or others as a REAL disorder does–as an occasional inconvenience, primarily when I attempt to explain some complex subject to a “Norm” who can’t–or simply won’t–grasp my frame of reference easily.)

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Mitt hjerte alltid vanker (My Heart Always Wanders)

A recent Xmas music favorite of mine (OK, “last decade or so” is recent, isn’t it? 😉 ) is the Danish/Norwegian hymn, “Mitt hjerte alltid vanker.” Both the tune and the lyrics speak to me.

Here’s a beautiful rendition by Sissel:

But I’m strongly drawn to Tine Thing Helseth’s instrumental version:

As translations of lyrics go, this is rather rough–sacrificing both a good wedding with the meter of the tune and rhyme scheme–but I think this captures the heart of the meaning about as well as it can. I like the twist Tine Thing Helseth’s album featuring this piece takes on the title though: “My Heart Is Always Present.”

Mitt hjerte alltid vanker – English translation/version

My heart will always wander
To where our Lord was born,
My thoughts will always go there
And take on their true form.
My longing does belong there,
With the treasure of my faith;
I never shall forget you,
O blessed Christmas night!

Oh come, and I will open
My heart and my mind
And sigh with longing,
Enter, Jesus
For this home is Your own,
You bought it for yourself
So I will remain faithful,
With you here in my heart

I’ll willingly spread branches
Of palms around your bed.
For you and you alone
I will gladly live and die.
Come, let my soul find joy
In this moment of delight:
To see you born right here,
Deep inside my loving heart.

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My Wonder Woman’s Got Staying Power

She tells me she loves me, and I remind her that it’s not my fault. *heh*

Well, yesterday was. . . different. Our only anniversary celebration was a full-on turkey meal, made here, since we had our Lovely Daughter’s wonderfully-prepared bird yesterday.

When she tells me she loves me (at least daily), I always remind her that it’s not my fault. 🙂

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It’s the Little Things

On being thankful for little things. . .

I am thankful. . . that I spent $0.00 for a book that starts with a sentence that is first person, present tense, and moves on to a second sentence that is present tense, passive voice. Why am I thankful I spent $0.00? Because I can send it to the bit recycler with no remorse whatsoever, and because I feel no desire, need, or obligation to subject myself to the lousy writing.

Moving on. MUCH better things to spend “eye time” on.

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Only the Stupid, Lazy, Illiterate or (and?) Disingenuous Deride So-Called “Grammar Nazis”

Yeh, I said it, and I mean it.

Grammar is the internal logic of a language. Deriding those who espouse good grammar and point out bad grammar is equivalent to deriding logic, indeed reasoning.

Most who vomit up stupid comments about “grammar Nazis” also claim English is inconsistent and illogical in its grammar and, indeed, in its spelling of words, massive numbers of words that either look (when written) or sound alike but mean different things, etc. *meh* That’s either because they are butt-lazy illiterates or want to encourage butt-lazy illiteracy for their own nefarious purposes.

Understanding the internal logic of English (its grammar) requires something more than a “literacy” comprised of the ability to laboriously puzzle out what words those funny lil squiggles are and assign (often incorrect) simplistic meanings to them; it requires the reading of a lot (no, much more than you think “a lot” means!) of well-written text, an interest in what the words in that text actually mean or meant when the writer committed them to paper, and a cultivated ability to actually think.

Those three conditions are not met by at least 99.999. . .n% of the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind who are the primary corrupters of English nowadays. Let one very small example from a CNN chiron this morning stand as a typical example. Referring to Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe:

“. . .his own party said they will move to impeach him if he didn’t [sic] resign by the deadline.”

When someone cannot even keep past-present-future clear, one is safe to assume that that “someone” is a self-made moron. And such is the nature of the influence on the English language that the Hivemind exerts: teaching a-rational thought processes, by inundation with example after example.

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Brief Note re: Neo-Victorian Bowdlerizers

Sidebar: when in soi-disant “adult” company, I do sometimes become a wee tad irritated by neo-Victorian Bowdlerizers who define anything that offends their po’ widdle feewings as “cussing.” *meh* It’s my curse just barely more than literate. . . unlike the neo-Victorian Bowdlerizers who are almost universally very nearly illiterate.

N.B. Sometimes a vulgar term is the best term to describe something/someone. Just sayin’.

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Thankful Even So. . .

It’s Thanksgiving season, but I’m trying to keep a grateful mindset as much as I can at more than just this season.

Here’s one: Thankful to live in America’s Third World County™ in spite of the town’s lazy, dishonest, incompetent, nepotism-riddled public “works” department. *heh* The rest of the county balances those dishonest morons out very well. 😉 (Working on 3rd week with almost no water flow–neighbors as well. Took the threat of involving an alderman again, like the last time, when it still took more than a month for them to do a bad job, repair hasn’t lasted any better than the last four before, and they failed to properly backfill their excavation.)

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Fav Things

It’s funny, but of all the cutting boards I have, the two I use almost every day (one for meats and another for veggies–that one IS every day) are a couple I made in shop class 53 years ago (or was it 54? *heh*).

One (the solid mahogany board) was a Xmas gift to my paternal grandmother, and family “put it in my pile” when she passed away 37(?) years ago. The other (walnut and maple) was a Xmas gift to my mom, and she left it with me about 28 years ago when she was paring things down for a move.

While I have–and have had over the years–others, these serve almost all my needs quite handily, and have worn very very well over the years.

simple things, but real favs.