Blogging to work out my thinking about issues in technology, programming, religion, and politics.
James 5:14,15 – “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.”
I’m standing on this promise, and holding God to His Word about it.
Pain is realizing this is true, not just for society, or the world, but for our personal lives as well: family, friends, church, hobbies… everything. Sure, growing up and growing older should involve maturation and changes in direction and perspective, but no one told me I would be betrayed by my own body and my closest friends and mentors.
I’ve had two personal, related “911’s” — events that shook me to my core and changed everything — that struck at the same time 4 years ago — and I’m still trying to figure out how to get through it all and get better. The medicines I take for my health problems keep me continually off-balance, and make it nearly impossible for me to marshal my inner fortitude to make the changes and do the work to address the long term issues.
It’s just… hard, man. Really hard. No one really understands, nor do I really want them to. I don’t want to put that on them. There’s nothing they can do about it. I’ve never been stoic. I’ve moaned and bellyached to everyone who would listen my whole life. This time, though, there doesn’t seem to be anything ANYONE can do about it, because there’s no one thing that’s wrong. If there’s a way out, it’s through a dozen small things done with a measure of discipline that I have never been able to muster, even at my best.
The outlook is bleak, and we’re on the precipice of a second civil war, and at the verge of the End Times.
I just “upgraded” my gaming PC to the latest big Windows patch, and wouldn’t you know it? They turned this infernal setting back on.
Because of this, I have to get up, and remove a USB device, and plug it back in to wake up my Bluetooth mouse. WHILE I’M SITTING HERE USING IT! On what planet does this make any sense!?
Before I figured it out, this is the same problem that almost made me return the computer a week after I bought it.
What moron at Microsoft is responsible for this? Wait. Don’t tell me. Because I think I’d drive to Seattle, and kick them in the balls.
It’s simple: The PC gaming market is “scavenging” Microsoft’s own console market. Why buy a console when another $100 can get a PC that would play games about as well, and still be a general purpose computer? Don’t get me wrong, I love my Playstation for not being a general purpose PC. I love the ability to just put it to sleep and then fire it up again and continue from where I was. I love never having to deal with flaky drivers, constant updates, or cheaters. But I “get” that most people in the market for a single “computing device” that can play AAA games would opt for a PC.
Additionally, I think it’s another subtle data point that proves my hypothesis that more and more people are choosing Apple hardware when it’s their money, and therefore not spending in the Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft loves to tout how, decade after decade, Windows accounts for a crazy-high percentage of the market, but personal experience proves that this doesn’t hold up with people. For years, I’ve argued that if you could subtract corporate purchases from the equation, the situation would look very, very different. Finally, from Extremetech, which draws from this archived article from the Seattle Times, I’ve stumbled on a report that proves my theory.
This chart says it all: From 2004 to 2012, Microsoft’s share of the consumer computing market has plummeted from 95% to 20%. For 20 years, Microsoft enjoyed an almost complete monopoly of consumer computing — and yet today, it is a minority stake holder, languishing behind Google’s 42% and Apple’s 24%. This report at CNET says gaming PC’s are selling at about parity with consoles, and we know that Xbox sales are 1/5th of Playstation, so the bottom line is that the AAA-gaming world is coming down to gaming PC’s and… Playstation.
I’m cooked. Apple’s “Classic” Rock playlist is a selection from the 80’s. I guess I’m officially old now.
I have an M3-based MacBook Pro. Before that I had a MBP with an nVidia GPU. Before that I had a MBP with an AMD GPU. All 3 have been bad at running any games not 1) specifically written for a Mac or 2) not ancient PC games that a Raspberry Pi could run. I fired up Steam on my Mac, and was asked to do a survey. Yes! By all means, I would love my Mac to be counted as a computer running Steam. Here is the marketshare of the results by operating system.
Even Linux is only at 2%, and that includes the supposedly wildly-successful Steam Deck! After all of these years, and the alleged advances in Proton over various implementations of Wine, I would have thought there would be better penetration after 25-30 years.
The Mac fares even worse. I have a few actual Mac games, and they play great. I even have a couple of Steel Series game controllers that work well with them. But visually and conceptually, they’re no more advanced than a Nintendo Switch game, and the Switch is a glorified tablet. When you click through to games in the App Store, there are some AAA titles there, but 1) they’re really old now, and 2) I already have them on other platforms, and I don’t want to buy them again.
This is just sad to me. Various reports are painting a picture that Microsoft is letting Xbox be scavenged by PC, and people are worried they’re going to get out of the hardware game. So gaming is boiling down to PC’s running Windows, Playstation, and Switch. And phones, I guess, if you want to count mobile. I wish there was increasing competition in the space after all this time. I like my Playstation just great, but I don’t want Sony thinking they can just do whatever they want because they have no competition in the “real” gaming segment.
“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.”
It’s a quote from the HBO miniseries about the Chernobyl disaster. You can see the truth of it at first glance, but the REAL problem here — in the disaster, and in personal life — is that the narcissistic, sociopathic, and avaricious (extremely greedy) people who tell the most, biggest, and longest-term lies are often NOT the ones who pay the debt.
I’ve gotten emails about being in 3 class-action settlements against Verizon, Anthem, and Walgreens. I usually click through them and just see what happens. The Verizon one started distributions today. My take? $12.15. On a prepaid, digital-only card that the plan administrators probably are getting kickbacks for using. This stuff is all such a joke. There ought to be a law that says if the settlement won’t yield, like, at least THREE figures of money for people, the lawyers don’t get to file and make all their filthy lucre.
Many, many years ago, a preacher I respected mispronounced “concupiscence” — or maybe it was “incontience” — some “bible” word — and I made the mistake of pointing it out. It was even privately, one-on-one, well after the fact. He proceeded to tell me a long story about how he heard his pastor mispronounce a word once, and as he struggled to get a note to him to point it out, he heard him explain the word correctly anyway. The lesson was obvious. You shouldn’t try to correct your spiritual superiors. It’s not your place.
Several years later, he told a story about a woman in Las Vegas getting into an elevator with 2 black men, and thinking they wanted to rob her, and she got all scared and dropped her bucket of slot machine coins. As the story goes, it turns out it was Eddie Murphy and Michael Jordan, who thought it was funny, and sent her a bunch of money wrapped around roses or something. It was one of those stupid email chain letter things in the 90’s, the kind that Snopes was invented to debunk. It never happened.
Having seen this long before, and not being about anything spiritual, and ignorantly thinking he wouldn’t want to relay “fake news,” I sent the Snopes article to him. Just him. I didn’t CC anyone else. I wasn’t trying to embarrass him. A few months later, he told the whole story again, with nary a hint of it being fake. I took that as a direct shot at me, to show that he was going to say whatever he wanted in the pulpit, no matter what. I understood the point to be that I should never question him. About anything. Ever. After that day, I didn’t. In fact, I can’t recall ever saying anything to him about what he preached again, good or bad.
Because I never brought it up, and never talked about his preaching again, I’m sure he felt the “teaching moment” had achieved its intended effect. However, the lesson I actually learned from it was that he played fast and loose with the truth, even if he was in the pulpit, and I never looked at him the same way again.
Little did I know that this was the first few snowflakes that would eventually start an avalanche.
According to Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan, every undocumented immigrant should worry they could be arrested at any time, even if they have no criminal record.
Source: Trump’s border czar: ‘If you’re in the country illegally, you got a problem’ – ABC News
That this administration has arrested and deported over 500 violent illegal aliens within days of assuming power isn’t really the story, is it? The real story is that law enforcement knew these guys existed, exactly where they were, that they were illegal, and that they had committed violent crimes, yet the previous administration did nothing about them. The Democrats were apparently happy to leave them in place, continuing to commit crimes and harass their communities. Not deporting them clearly wasn’t a problem with intelligence or manpower. Not using these resources to protect our citizens was a choice. It’s always been a choice. ABC is trying to report this new policy like it’s a scandal, but how is this divisive? Where is the grey area? How can any sane person not be in favor of this?
Source: macos – No route to host on iterm2 only – Ask Different
This is the second time I’ve had to do this. I really must remember this this time.
