Blog News

You will note that there was not really a post yesterday. There really isn’t one today, and there may not be one tomorrow morning, either.

Events in my personal life have been taking up all of my time as of late. We went to retrieve Mom’s ashes from the Funeral Home, then there are work obligations, preparations for the coming holiday, final inspections on our new home, completing financing and preparing to close on the same, and preparing for our upcoming move.

In other words, something has to give, and there is no spare time for me to post for now. Maybe by Tuesday.

At least college is on semester break right now, so that helps a bit. College sure is easier when you are younger and have fewer responsibilities. The only nice thing about being so busy is that my life and time are so full that I don’t have time to dwell on the loss of my mother and the grief that would otherwise consume me.

I enabled user accounts because I wanted people to be able to get notifications when someone responds to their comments. The problem is that I get tons of fake user accounts. I just cleaned out dozens of what appeared to be fake accounts.

Any user account that posted at least one approved comment was not deleted.

If a registered account has never posted a comment, I looked at the user name. If the user name was just random letters like this: OIYgboyugLJHglihg it got deleted.

If the user name is John.Smith and the email was Em.ily.John.Son@mailbab.com then it also probably got deleted.

If your account was deleted by mistake, my apologies. As you can see, the best way to have your account not get deleted is to post a comment (any comment) under that account. That way, I know you are a real person and not a spambot.

We here in Sector Ocho are taking a break to visit family today. You should, too. Be glad that we still have these calm periods before things get ugly. Spend time with the family, and make happy memories.

No other posts today, unless something really stunning happens.

Here we go with having to point out the rules again, just as we have to do every few months. We discuss controversial topics here. Disagreement and debate is encouraged. Disagree with me all you like. Starting your post by claiming to be able to avoid a ban by saying?

I’m in the US using a VPN. Yo may have heard of them?

Before going on to pile on personal attacks? Your comment won’t make it out of moderation, nor will I even read most of it. Let me remind you of blog rules for posting:

I know that you can pull tricks like IP spoofing, changing your name, etc. So don’t think doing that is going to earn you “I’m so clever” points. It doesn’t make you clever, it makes you an ass.

If you don’t already know: The owner of this blog (me) has the final say on what you can and cannot post. It’s my house, I make the rules. Content here is moderated, and I will not be approving any comments that I find, in my sole judgement, to be unworthy.

Deliberately posting statements that are aimed at insulting the blog owner (me) will get your comment tossed in the trash. Feel free to disagree with me, just don’t think that i will allow you to call names or impugn anyone’s character.

On October 18, the data center where I maintain my server will be undergoing scheduled maintenance. The websites hosted on my server might experience server interruptions for up to 6 hours.

The Madd Medic over at Freedom is Just Another Word is having open heart surgery this week so I would like to ask all of you to wish him and his family all the best.

I usually toss comments that resort to insults directly into the circular file. Reader AZFloyd made a comment that I really want to respond to. AZFloyd’s comments are italicized, mine follow in red. So here goes:

No disrespect. A boomer who has finally figured out that cops are not on our side should be applauded. But, You don’t get it Boomer.

First, a boomer refers to a baby boomer, those born between 1946 and 1964. I am not a boomer, so you miss the mark there. You did intend to disrespect me, but reading the rest of your comment, I understand why. Even so, I get more about your situation than you know.

Many of of live hand to mouth. We already lost everything. We don’t bitch about property taxes because we don’t have any property. We don’t whine in the internet about our troubles with passive income because we have no income. A civil war might makes us truly equal. I don’t think you have any idea how many white men have been thrown into this oblivion. If you did, you would retire so a young white man could have your job. But you still have to make your wife happy instead of looking out for your posterity. You are part of the problem.

That’s because you would rather sit on your ass in your mother’s living room, wait for someone to retire or quit, so maybe as the last man on earth, you could get their job. That isn’t how the world works. You have to compete, and no one is going to give you shit. I know more about poverty, picking yourself up, and going out there to get a job than you will ever know, champ. Instead of sitting around complaining about how old white guys are stealing your future employment, why don’t you go out there and make yourself more employable?

Tell you what, throw away your permission slip to earn a living (Inlost my law license) throw away you house, the Chinese made crap it is full off. Ditch the wife, the cars, everything. Everything! Then figure out how to survive. After you spent a few brain cycles looking for a place to deficate instead of self actualization, we can talk.

I did that already. I have been homeless, twice. Instead of going on line to bitch about it, I went to school, got a better job, and now I get to listen to little immature assholes complain about how I am stealing a job from your unemployed, worthless ass. I also don’t believe for a second that you had a law license. In fact, your IP indicates that you are in Seattle, not AZ.

At least in a war, I can fight. Truly fight. Sir, I am not trying to disparage you. But you obviously have no idea about the degree of misery going on out here.

You could fight, but you won’t. Instead, you will sit behind your computer and complain that old white dudes aren’t doing your fighting for you. Why don’t you try to learn how to do something other than whine? It takes three years to become a registered nurse, and they are in such short supply that many hospitals are paying $20,000 sign on bonuses for licensed nurses.

Saysuncle used to be a daily read for me. He began blogging shortly after he got married in 2002. He was a prolific poster, often posting a dozen or more times a day. Sadly, his wife passed away in March of 2020. The frequency of his blogging fell off shortly after, and he eventually stopped posting. A year after his wife died, his house burned to the ground and was a total loss. That’s a tough run of bad times, there. I hope things have improved for him.

Tam over at Books, Bikes, and Boomsticks was also a daily read. Then she went and got herself a job as a professional writer, and her blog quality fell sharply. AFAIK, she still posts, but I stopped reading her stuff a couple of years ago. I do miss her snark.

There are many others: The Ambulance Driver, Munchkin Wrangler, and a few others. I just can’t think of them all at this point.

This blog is now 16 years old, and I began blogging because of them. I walk in the footsteps of giants.

I just upgraded the server here. Things should be a bit faster. In total, we are seeing about 14,000 visitors a day. This blog alone is getting about 6,000 of those. The extra traffic was causing a bit of a slowdown, so we did a few upgrades. More memory, a different set of IP’s, and a larger CPU. If you people keep wanting to share my server, I will just expand again.

Keep helping us preserve the First Amendment.