If we were having coffee, I’d first agree with you that 2016 was a crazy year, but it’s also full of fun times.
After going on at length about the grand Star Wars celebration this past summer in London, I’d transition briefly into the surprisingly good gaming(and a few salty moments) had with Overwatch. I’d probably need a new drink at this point. After a brief nod to San Diego Comic Con, it’s on to Blizzcon. So much fun!!! Met a lot of gaming buddies.
Then we’re heading into the insane election and the somewhat troubling outcome, wrapping up with how we intend to keep our part of the world sane.
Things I did today included the usual. I walked, I did some work, I learned a few things. Not a bad Friday, for sure.
Now, I am looking forward to a weekend of festivities. That’s a bit unusual since it’s been a while since I’ve celebrated the changing of the calendar year. I’m glad that I am this year since it’ll be with good friends and it’ll even be a joint celebration for a wedding and another friend’s birthday.
That’s pretty impressive, and I note it here, so I’ll know that I anticipated it highly. I also do not have any sense of dread of awkwardness that usually comes at the countdown to midnight. It’s a good feeling. A very good feeling. I can get used to it, but I will not take it for granted.
I’d already posted recently about my intentions for the new year, so I’d like to add another one. It’s a renewal of previous year’s attempt to post daily. I simply did not push myself hard enough to do over the past year. There are no excuses, and this post is me being accountable for it. Now that I got that out the way, here’s me renewing my intention. If you know me personally, I really want you to nag me about this. I should see “did you write today?” messages and texts if it’s getting close to the evening and nothing’s up on the blog here.
Yesterday was interesting. I think that’s the word I’ll use. I’ve been using the WordPress software to power this little blog of mine, and it’s been hosted on a set of VPSes at the company I work for. That’s not unusual since free hosting is a perk of working for a hosting company. I believe, however, that it may not have initially have migrated properly over, and that’s finally started to manifest itself recently.
The problem’s very technical and pretty obscure. It literally does not appear to be a flaw in WordPress, but likely a configuration issue that stemmed from the incomplete(?) migration from a regular shared server, and it only affects my use of the blog (as far as I know). So, after trying literally all the usual troubleshooting steps, it’s come to the “hit the reset button” step of downgrading back to shared and then retrying a migration to another VPS set. The migration process has improved over the years, so I hope this will be a minor blip in this blog’s lifetime.
It’s been a good learning experience and the performance underlying this seems solid to me. We’ll see how it turns out, hopefully in a couple days, when I make a test post or even a new draft.
Christmas was yesterday, and it was great. Morning brought the traditional opening of presents, a visit from a cousin and my significant other in the afternoon, and capped it off with some Christmas TV watching/hanging out with geeky friends in the evening and into the night. There are no blues here, with an epic New Year’s weekend incoming.
It’s Christmas Eve again! Feels like just yesterday that I was looking forward to 2015’s Christmas morning. That one went relatively uneventfully and peacefully. The immediate family and I convened for the day’s festivities once again, at the casa.
This year, it’s again looking like a smooth day is coming up, but so many good, and a few not-so-good things have come to pass. First, the not-so-good.
America is celebrating the holidays as usual, but it’s been a kind of crazy year. There’s still some pretty serious racial tension in the country, and it’s only been worsened by the surreal election of our next President, who is going to be a person not known for having much in common with the majority of citizens. He’s almost trying to bring a different, more centralized rule. Not even inaugurated yet, he’s known for using taxpayer dollars to spend the majority of his living time at his personal residence, in his mansion-like penthouse in New York.
I’m sure New Yorkers affected by that aren’t super happy about that, with the traffic snarls it’s likely caused already. At any rate, the next 4 years are going to be interesting, to say the least.
On to the good, though.
Work’s been going decently well, with the company continuing its growth and reorganization into a “product-oriented” style. There are product managers and marketing managers for pretty much all the core and even the newest, cloud-related products. Some coworkers have come, some have moved on. The annual Halloween party was pretty fun.
Speaking of Halloween, that marked a pretty good life transition for me. It feels pretty good to have an adventuring partner in real life and I’m glad it grew from a friendship of a few years already. I look forward to reading her messages, hearing her voice (and laugh), and, of course, spending time together with her. I like to think of myself as a hopeless romantic, which extends to the fact that even though I don’t really think I’m the coolest guy around, I still manage to delight her, even while she is enchanting me (hopefully, she’ll read this and find my written awkwardness adorable.)
I’m still trying to grow and improve every day, expanding my knowledge as much as possible, while also having as much fun as I can along the way. This is about as close as I’m going to get to an annual retrospective for 2016. I won’t dwell on what I did not accomplish more than to say that my intentions for 2017 are fairly similar and continue on some from 2016. We’ll see what the new year brings, soon.
…hearing the rain after a long drought.
…smelling the air outside just after rain has begun.
…hearing your number called in a prize drawing.
…completing a blogging challenge.
…the title screen of a long-awaited and newly acquired game.
…downing an insanely hard boss in that new game.
…seeing “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” on the big screen again, and again.
…seeing it with a loved one.
…a silly message from a pal.
…a silly message from the significant other.
…a hug. A real hug.
…waking in a warm place in the morning.
…seeing the beginnings of a big smile on your loved one’s face.
…knowing they’re laughing with you.
…when you first catch sight of your significant other after an absence of any length.
…hard to completely describe.
…a gift.
Hmm. What’s this curious object I hold in my hand? It’s roughly double the length of one of my fingers, and a bit thinner as well, tapering to almost a point at one end, and with a clip-type thingie on the other. It almost looks like two cylinders-I think that’s the word for them-with one sitting inside the other.
As I push the clip between my thumb and index fingers, I notice the “top” (just a guess since it’s got the clip on it) section rotates, and, what’s this? There’s something slowly emerging from the more “pointy” end. A tiny, more pointing thing! It’s rounded on the end and not at all sharp-looking. There seems to be something on it. I touch it with a fingertip. It leaves a mark! Interesting. What if I move the “tip” across a napkin I have handy? The tip leaves a rough line.
This can be fun. Maybe I can make a set of lines and shapes, some sort of art of some kind. I try this. It’s not going so well, as I’m not much of an artist. Perhaps there’s some other use for this that I’m better at. Well, I know some letters, maybe it’s good for that.
Old King Cole was a merry old soul, and a merry old soul was he;
He called for his pipe in the middle of the night
And he called for his fiddlers three.
Every fiddler had a fine fiddle, and a very fine fiddle had he;
Oh there’s none so rare as can compare
With King Cole and his fiddlers three.
This is an interesting one because it’s not entirely clear exactly which king, with the name Cole, this is referring to. I see 3 contenders listed here:
The origins of the Nursery rhyme lyrics of Old King Cole are based in history dating back to 3rd century. There is considerable confusion regarding the origins of Old King Cole as there are three possible contenders who were Celtic Kings of Britain, all who share the name Coel (which is the Celtic word for the English word Cole). Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) by Geoffrey of Monmouth (1110-1155) refers to a King Cole as a king of the Britons.
My interpretation is that, whichever king this was, he was a king who liked to party, and late into the nights pretty often. Whoever created this rhyme was likely a witness to at least some of the festivities, likely a servant of some kind. That’s just my best guess, as I have no particular expertise in this field of history.
I like how the article says that it’s unclear if Freeman was paid. Yeah, I think he got paid, and probably handsomely. That’s definitely a good choice of voice for a personal assistant. I was using the Waze voice for quite a while. I would also consider Susan Bennett (the voice of Siri) as well. Knowing that Susan was only paid for her initial recording sessions (before Apple acquired that company), and no royalties, I doubt it’ll be anything beyond his recording fee.
It’s Christmas Eve again! Feels like just yesterday that I was looking forward to 2015’s Christmas morning. That one went relatively uneventfully and peacefully. The immediate family and I convened for the day’s festivities once again, at the casa.
Prompt: 
