Ysabel’s Room

Posted on June 28, 2018 by bluedepth

We’ve finally got Ysabel’s Room in order. I moved the bed to the library where the resident cats eat and hang out. It’s next to a big pair of windows, so that’ll work out for bird watching and relaxation. We set up the introduction crate with a kitten cavern and a poly pad cushion on the base of her crate. The crate is in the corner so she will feel maximally safe and protected.

Then we put one of the Google Homes in the room and set Spotify to play feline relaxation music in the background.

Ysabel will be ours at 3pm tomorrow, Friday 6/29/2018. We’ll go to KL Cat Hospital and then home.

Wish us all luck!

200 Hours

Posted on June 18, 2018 by bluedepth

The last time I was logged into Facebook was June 9th at 11:45pm. I was scrolling along the wall feed and I distinctly felt ill that I was on Facebook. It wasn’t making me happy, it wasn’t rewarding, it was a chore. More than that, it was an unpleasant chore, and at the time it felt repulsive. The kind of repulsion that makes your stomach go sour, hurk a little and the metallic acid tang at the back of your throat, that sort of raw physical displeasure. I closed the tab, and wrote a little in my journal.

It’s been 200 hours and a few since that moment. I haven’t logged on once since. I don’t feel like I am missing anything, except when I have something to cheer or gripe about. There are a few things that I could have posted on Facebook, and thanks to Yelp, some of that has made its way on to Facebook, but that was automation doing the sharing, not me.

I made a break with Facebook. I’m not going to close anything or remove anything, that would require more exposure to their platform. I simply won’t be there. I’ve got this blog, where I can share things, and of course my journal. Almost everything ends up in the journal anyways, the important things in the blog, and I will leave Facebook and Twitter to the machines, let them suffer it. The universal answer to “Did you see on…?” will default to no. I didn’t see it. I don’t really want to see it, but you’ll show it to me anyways. There may never be freedom, true freedom from Facebook, because it leaks in around the edges and is in the news a lot, so it will become something like a persistent fungal infection. Nothing that actually hurts me, but it makes my toenails ugly. Just leave the socks on.

Facebook, and Google both have contributed to the death of smalltalk. What’s the point of saying anything when nobody believes you and they tell you that you are wrong, up until they read it on the platform and then you hear in a small voice, “Oh, yeah… there it is.” So, whatever. It’s best to just leave everything to the platform, it has in so many ways replaced so much for us. The matter of record, truth, facts, and even basic conversation. The only thing left is to pretend to be a dullard. You don’t know anything, you have nothing to say, and everything is a mystery novelty.

The platform is very interesting. We created something we can’t control, it’s bad for us, but we don’t really care. We’re throwing flowers at Frankenstein’s Monster and celebrating it with daily parades, despite the fact that it rampages and burns down random buildings and causes such conflict and suffering. Hooray for the Monster.

I won’t see it on Facebook. Save your bus fare. Keep whatever it is to yourself. Whats the point of talking about it anyways? All the possible conversations are there, up on that platform, go there, knock yourself out. The Monster loves daisies.

Hyundai – Never Again

Posted on April 13, 2018 by bluedepth

This tale of woe begins in October of 2015. I take my 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe into Maple Hill Hyundai for an oil change, and I learn about a service campaign, there is a recall on the Valve Cover Gasket for all Santa Fe’s like mine. Maple Hill performs the operation; I get a new gasket and a new alternator and the oil change. I drive away happy; everything is back to normal.

At the end of 2017, I start noticing some odd lights in my car, and generally odd behavior starting to crop up. I’ve got 130000 miles on the vehicle, so I figure that it’s cold weather and old age. The gas tank needle gets daffy, not registering full tanks of gas, so I use the trip-o-meter to measure out 200 miles and then fill up from there. I can adapt. Then on really cold mornings, I notice the battery light flickers for a little bit, alternating with the seatbelt light, but after a few minutes both go out. I drive it around, and everything is normal.

Then we went to Chicago, Illinois to C2E2. The Santa Fe loaded with suitcases and comic books, I drive it into the parking structure, and that’s that. We have a wonderful time in Chicago, and then we pull it out of the parking structure. I notice that the battery light and seatbelt light have started to blink, but then it goes away and I figure that it’s business as usual. I drop off my niece and her boyfriend at their car and then drive off. As I approach the highway, the battery light and seatbelt light continue to flicker. We get on I-94, headed back to Michigan, and right after we cross from Illinois to Indiana, the battery light is on. Then TPMS, BRAKE, ABS, AIRBAG, all the lights turn on and Check Engine comes on. Then the lights get dimmer and dimmer, and we roll into a Walmart parking lot.

I’m panicking. My car is dying, I’m 125 miles from home, and it’s late Sunday night. After I chill out in the Walmart, we get back to the car, and I turn it on. Check Engine is still on, but everything else is off, and the car is behaving like everything is fine. So we tool around the parking lot a few times, and everything remains fine. So I get on the highway again. We get 25 miles down the road, and then the battery light starts to blink. Then again, everything goes downhill. The car gradually slows down, until I’m pretty much just crawling along on idle speed, the gas pedal is hilariously worthless. We turn a few times and get right up to the parking lot of an Econolodge. All that is left is one tiny little lamp in the instrument cluster, and it’s half-lit anyhow. The car is fully dead. Transmission is stuck in everything but park, and so I get out, and with Scott’s help, we try to push the Santa Fe up the little incline to the parking lot of the Econolodge Hotel. A stranger appears out of nowhere and runs over and asks if he can help, and all three of us push the Santa Fe to the middle of the empty parking lot. I turn the car off, but the panic sets in again because I can’t put the transmission in park. I wait a few minutes and try to turn the car on, I get accessories to come on, and the transmission goes to park. I turn everything off and get a room at that Econolodge.

Now, here is where we place a mental pin in the tale, keep this spot in mind because what happens next is full of consequence.

I wake up the next morning, I don’t know what is wrong with my car, and my first idea is to see if I can find a repair shop. There are lots of auto dealers around, there’s a Kia, there is a Chevy, and a Toyota, but no Hyundai. So I figure I need some sort of shop, so I search Yelp for “auto repair,” and I find Adam’s Towing and Service of Porter, Indiana. I call them, reach Adam, and tell him what happened to my car. He suggests that it’s the alternator and I ask for a tow so he can work on it. The tow guy comes, super amazing fellow, and they get my Santa Fe on the skid and tow it away. I follow after in a rental car I picked up from an Enterprise location in Burns Harbor. We get to Adam’s shop, and they start working on it. I take the rental back to Kalamazoo and drop off everything; we get a call from Adam, my car is ready. He replaced the Serpentine Belt, and the Alternator and everything is back to normal. We get back, drop the rental car and pick up the Santa Fe and drive it back to Kalamazoo. Everything is back to normal. While talking to Adam, he asks if there was anything about motor oil with my car, because the alternator was soaked with oil and that’s why it died. I remember back to the service campaign that Hyundai performed and immediately do a Google Search, and many other people have had the gasket go out on them and struggle with Hyundai about repairs. So I’m thinking that’s what is going on with my Santa Fe. I go to Maple Hill Hyundai, and I learn that the job cannot be cleared because the leak is coming from the Timing Cover Gasket and that repairing that is a $1200 to $1600 process. For me, that totals the Santa Fe.

So then I start talking with Hyundai Corporate, talk to many people about my problem, and I believe that the problem is still the valve cover gasket. That motor oil that was inside my engine got outside and killed the alternator. I’d like my money back from the repair job, and I’d like someone to fix the gasket, just like Hyundai did in October 2015. Just like all those other Santa Fe owners who had this EXACT SAME PROBLEM.

So then, after being told that it wasn’t covered by Maple Hill, I reached out to another shop where I had my brakes done previously and brought it to them. The owner said “How do they know where the leak is, did they clean the side of the engine and run a dye test?” and the answer is no. While we had the hood open, he also pointed out that the plastic cowl that covers the engine was missing nuts, and one was cross-threaded and abused badly by a torque driver. But I don’t know who did it, so who is to blame? Haven’t a clue, but there are only three shops in this tale, Maple Hill, Adam’s, and the place where it sits now.

So then this morning I call Hyundai and I relate the tale to the rep, updating with my misgivings about which gasket really is the problem, and that I want proof that it is either the valve cover gasket or the timing cover gasket, and that I don’t want my money back from the alternator fix, but I really want to prevent this from happening again because I want my car to work for me for a while longer if I can manage it. I relate the tale, and then when I mention Adam’s Towing and Service and the shop that will wash the engine block and run the dye test, the Hyundai rep stops me and tells me that I can stop right there. Hyundai refuses to honor any warranty, expressly or implicitly formed because I took my vehicle to an Independent Repair Facility. So, go back to the pin I mentioned about the momentous choice I made. I was stranded on the highway, no warranty from Hyundai, no clue it was the gasket, and so because I didn’t push the vehicle to a Hyundai dealership, I’m quite shit out of luck.

So that’s the end of it. Hyundai walks away, from a service campaign that they botched, maybe, how can anyone tell? Nobody but the IRF even mentioned cleaning the engine and running a dye test! And what burns the most is that while I was regaling the Hyundai Corporate Rep with my tale of suffering, she searches for a Hyundai dealer in Chesterton, Indiana. Norris Hyundai. She then proceeds to waggle this Hyundai dealers location in my face, over the phone. If only I had pushed my dead 2000 pound Santa Fe to Norris Hyundai, then maybe Hyundai would talk to me. But because I was in the middle of the dark, with a dead car, work on Monday, and all the other stress, that I didn’t search for Norris and I didn’t PUSH MY CAR THERE, that there is nothing left to talk about and that I should have a nice day.

So I am done with Hyundai. I am done with the brand; I’m done with Maple Hill. There is no point in calling Fox Hyundai or Norris Hyundai, or anyone else. Hyundai only has one thought, and that is to hide in their fine print and treat me with such disrespect that it takes my breath away. They have no interest in their customers, no interest in repairing what is their fault. So I’m going to find out since it doesn’t matter now, I’m throwing in all the way with my new repair shop. This fellow will wash the side of the engine block, add the dye, and give me an authoritative answer as to which gasket is leaking. And then I’ll face the question of what to do from that point forward. It will answer the question, is it the timing cover gasket or the valve cover gasket? And if it is the valve cover, I might pay to have this new fellow do the work.

It is clear to me that Hyundai is uninterested in being human to me. They want to be a company, and that is their prerogative. It is my choice to associate with humans or companies, and I make my choices based on what I perceive to be the humanity of whom I am dealing with. Hyundai hides behind their fine print and their rules. That’s perfectly fine. I don’t want anything to do with a company like that. And if that means that I burn all the bridges to all the automakers in my life, then so be it. I have to make a stand, and I will live with the consequences. I will fucking walk if I have to. This deep violation of the Golden Rule is so upsetting to me that I cannot even see straight, so that’s fine Hyundai, hide behind your fine print and your rules and utterly fail to treat others as you would have them treat you.

There is a place in hell for you, and the punishment for a company is expressed regarding karma. You deserve what you get.

Dreamscapes of Chicago

Posted on April 8, 2018 by bluedepth

While I’ve been enjoying Chicago, and we’ve been pretty much carless the entire time with the Santa Fe parked in the hotels parking structure and taking Uber rides everywhere it has done nothing to reduce the nightmares that I suffer every night sleeping in this place.

Car Theft.

These nightmares are riffs on a theme, different thieves, different cars, different lives, different settings. Cars without wheels, somehow rolling away, cars without any internal parts whatsoever operating as if they had them. Thieves that are anonymous or thieves that are caught but chatty occupy the dreamscape.

I’ve had three cycles of sleep here, and in each cycle, the same exact thing. My vehicle is stolen. When I try to stop the thieves, they explain to me that it has to be this way, that it always has to be this way.

And while I’ve had a delightful time at C2E2, I am going to welcome my exit from this place. I can’t stay in Chicago much longer, if nothing more that I can’t endure many more of these nightmares every single night, like clockwork.

TWSBI Fountain Pen

Posted on April 1, 2018 by bluedepth

A few months ago while talking with a friend about technology the conversation turned to throwback items that we enjoy using. I brought up my fondness for fountain pens, which always seems to surprise people. The idea of a pen as a writing instrument goes back a really long time. Around the turn of the last century, there was an explosion in patents related to fountain pens and how they hold and dispense ink as you write. After my conversation with my friend, I was inspired to go shopping a little bit. I had some money that I set aside for small little gifts to myself that I had set aside over the past number of years. I never really touch it, so the money sits in my accounts. I came across a company that sells a highly regarded fountain pen, called TWSBI. As I got to browsing the options on Amazon, I looked at my Lamy branded Fountain Pen and realized that it was good as entry level pens go, but I wanted to move up a notch. TWSBI seemed a good option. The pen I selected was the TWSBI Diamond 580AL Silver Fountain Pen with the medium nib. I also got the “Broad Nib” as many reviewers expressed pleasure at writing with both.

TWSBI 580AL Fountain Pen

I have to say that writing with it is quite an experience. I started writing with fountain pens back in college and found that the way the ink flows beat any other sort of pen hands down. Plus the way the nib moves on good paper makes writing longhand a pleasure. It can still work on rough stock, but it struggles with the rough material, and there is more skritch-skritch-skritch while writing on some of the lowest class papers out there.

The Lamy I have uses a piston-convertible insertable tank, while the TWSBI has its piston tank built into the frame of the pen itself. I find that the TWSBI holds more ink, way more ink than my Lamy ever did.

Another little bit to note, fountain pens aren’t meant for left-hand writers as far as I know. The ink doesn’t dry fast enough for the way a lot of left-handed writers have to use a pen. Although I don’t have many folks I know that are left-handed writers, so there is no way to see if they could use it or not without making a mess of their hands with the ink.

If you have a little bit of spending money, this pen can go a long way in both its look and its function to add a little something to your workaday life. It won’t solve problems or anything like that, but it is something nice to have that a lot of people appreciate. I always chuckle to myself when people remark on how I use a fountain pen, and what I do for a living, which makes people think I should be keyboard bound. Sometimes old things peak, and iterations afterward are all downhill from that peak. In a lot of ways, just like Windows 2000. LOL.

Kalamazoo #NeverAgain March

Posted on March 24, 2018 by bluedepth

Today we drove up to Western Michigan University and joined the community in the anti-NRA #NeverAgain March from the flagpoles on campus to Bronson Park.

It was surreal to park on that campus again. We walked up to the flagpoles and the crowd was quite well organized and burgeoning. Several schoolkids were there with the event organizers to speak to the crowd and offer their viewpoints and context to what we were about to accomplish. Here’s a sample of what we saw:

The group was peaceful and orderly, there was no violence and no exclamations. As we walked away from the flagpoles, and down past the entry to Sangren Hall on Western’s campus, that was the only point that I noticed any counter-protestors. There was supposedly going to be counter-protestors from the local Open Carry group, but Western’s Public Service does not allow open carry on University grounds, so the only counter-protestors we saw were some people with signs. There were very many of us and maybe a handful of the counter protestors.

The event organizers helped a lot by telling all of us that counter-protestors were expected and that the best way to interact with them is to not interact at all. This was an exercise of First Amendment Rights on both sides, the teeming horde of us in the #NeverAgain march, and the handful of counter-protestors. Nobody that I saw made contact, there were some glances, but nothing overt that I witnessed. The march downtown was met with lots of honking horns from the rerouted traffic. The police were kind, principally silent, and really to keep watch around the edges and to handle traffic. We came into contact with one police officer who was attempting a charm offensive, he thanked us for our orderly civic display and we thanked him for traffic control and keeping watch over us all.

The march itself was very pleasant. There wasn’t anything remotely provocative about any of the progression down to the central park downtown. There were no accidents that I saw, no foolishness from anyone, and we all demonstrated our political viewpoints in a very calm, exceptionally orderly manner.

Afterwards, when the words were said and the kids had their moment to shine, the march broke up and everyone drifted away. We ended up going to Kelvin & Company for a snack because we really wanted a break from the chilly wind and all that walking. After our little stop, we dropped by another new store on the Kalamazoo Walking Mall, RocketFizz. We enjoyed some Special Dark Hersheys Chocolate Bars and I bought a bottle of butterscotch root beer from a bottler in Washington State, Oh-So brand, I think. The walk back was long, and upon reflection if we had stashed the Juke somewhere downtown we probably would have had a faster way to get back to campus. Political marches aren’t very common, so that we missed out on a logistical tip wasn’t so awful. We got in a lot of walking steps on our Fitbits, at least.

Wayback Machine: March 22nd

Posted on March 22, 2018 by bluedepth

On a lark I thought I would go into my www.bear-writer Journal and see what I was up to on previous March 22nds. Here is a little view:

2017 – The Kalamazoo River was quite aromatic. Funny enough, it was aromatic today too, in 2018. There is a paper plant on the river and their effluent supposedly comes out at 150 degrees Fahrenheit. This cooks the vegetation in the river and then that releases various organic chemicals. The practical upshot is, the Kalamazoo River smells farty.

Cisco also released a gaggle of updates related to CVEs linked to a CIA release last year. Ah, cybersecurity.

2014 – An article about Marriage Equality. How quaint. I still maintain that such a thing goes nowhere because rights that people can vote away aren’t rights, they are privileges.

I also wrote about the little shower-thought epiphanies that strike randomly. That you were working on a problem for a long time and you stopped “thinking” about it, but you didn’t really. And then on a day, a fine March day, the solution comes plopping out of your subconscious, with a neat little red bow tied around it, ready to go. I had one for Western right before the end, but I whacked that idea with a shovel and buried it in a shallow grave. I apparently also had a similar idea for Meijers, since I was applying at Meijer corporate in Grand Rapids as well. As the Dalai Lama is famous for saying, “Sometimes you don’t get what you want, and sometimes that’s an incredible stroke of luck!”.

2013 – Returning from vacation, waiting for a flight in Charlotte, North Carolina.

It’s been a rather long while since I did a vertical memory exercise. Another hidden gem when it comes to my journaling.

Going West With Facebook

Posted on March 22, 2018 by bluedepth

Much like the elves in Tolkiens tales, sometimes the time is right to board the boats and head west. In this particular case, what to do with Facebook.

I’ve been using Facebook since July 2nd 2008. In the beginning it was wonderful, sharing and everyone seemed kinder, more conscientious, I suppose the world was better back then. Many people were looking for a new platform once LiveJournal collapsed, which if we are really serious about it, came when SixApart was sold to the Russians. Americans fled pretty much after that. And so, Facebook was a thing.

Mostly friends, it hadn’t taken off yet. Many of the later iterations that make Facebook the way it is today weren’t even thought up of back then, and in a lot of ways, it was better in the past. But then everyone started to join the service and we started to learn about the ramifications and consequences of using Facebook. I can remember that feeling of betrayal as Facebook posts were printed out and handed to my workplace management. That really was the first lesson in privacy and the beginning of the end of my involvement with Facebook.

Facebook has been on-again-off-again for a while. In time I realized that I was addicted to the service and the sharing. With enough time I realized that Facebook was actually fit more as a mental illness than an addiction. I had to stop it, because in a very big way, it was the service or my mental health.

So fleeing Facebook is the name of the game. First I downloaded all my content from the service, then I started to move the saved links from Facebook to Pocket for safekeeping. Then I went through and started hacking away at groups, pages, and apps. All of these tasks will be long-tailed, they’ll take a while for me to polish off because Facebooks tentacles run very deep, and in a rather surprising way, just how deep they actually go is remarkable.

So now I’m looking at writing more and sharing more from my Blog. This post is kind of a waypoint to this end. I installed a new theme with some new images featured, and the next step is to figure out a “Members Only” area where I can separate out the public from my friends. There are some items that I intend to write about that use specific names and I don’t want to play the pronoun game with my readers. I also don’t want hurt feelings or C&D notices, both of which some of my writing has created in the past.

I will detail my journey with disposing of Facebook here on this blog. I have eliminated publicity to Twitter and Facebook, but I left G+ on, because G+ is a desert.

So, here we go!

Protected: Time Stories – Estrella Drive Notes

Posted on March 4, 2018 by bluedepth

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