Nineteen years ago today, this lady and I went on our first date. I’m still smitten.
Looking For A Quiet Place
“I don’t know exactly when I stopped being able to tolerate environments like this,” I yelled to my wife three feet across the table from me, “But it seems recent.”
“I know,” she yelled back, “it’s like somebody flipped a switch and suddenly…”
“I know right!?” I replied as she took the words right out of my head. “I mean, we’re old now right? Maybe this is something that happens to everyone at a certain age…”
I continued, “I just want a place where we can have a nice cocktail or glass of wine and have a conversation at a normal volume. Some soft music or jazz playing below conversation level in the background. I know we don’t go out as much as we did when we were younger but those places don’t seem to exist anymore. Everywhere we go is like this is.”
We were at a recently opened new, hip, cocktail lounge. It was late-ish and they couldn’t seat us in the main section right away so we opted for their speakeasy-esque “dive bar” in the back. Being new we were not quite sure what to expect but almost as soon as we entered we were hit with the realization we had made the wrong choice. It was LOUD. The early 80’s hair band soundtrack was turned to 11 and, thus, all of the young and over-served the bar was full of had to be even louder. The cocktails were mediocre at best (I suppose this also might be by design to give it a “dive bar” feel). Despite every effort to try we couldn’t even find ironic humor in the experience. Our only goal became to finish our overpriced terrible drinks as quickly as possible and leave.
But other people seemed to be enjoying themselves. We’ve recently noticed that this seems to be the norm now. Every place we go — for a beer, for a cocktail, for a nice dinner — is JUST SO LOUD.
But, here’s the thing. This doesn’t seem like a change in all of these places. It feels like a change in me. We’ve been to several places recently and had the same experience. It feels like these sorts of places have always been this loud and what’s changed is my ability to adjust, tolerate, and possibly even enjoy it. But here we are.
Them Handy Sisters: An A!R Exhibition By Sultana Isham – New Orleans
If you are or will be in the New Orleans area in the next few months, be sure to check out this art exhibition/installation by Sultana Isham about my Grandmother and her Sister at The Ace Hotel. I’ll be down to see it myself in 10 days or so.
“An eye for an eye would leave many people blind.”
In Praise of DIY YouTube
Can I take a moment to talk about how useful and awesome YouTube is for DIY stuff? Yes? Good!
This morning I started with having never installed a dryer vent before. I watched the above video and in less than a couple of hours had a freshly and properly vented dryer. How cool is that!
I’ve had at least a dozen different times during the Hague House restoration where, like that one scene in the Matrix, I went from complete lack of knowledge to success thanks to DIY videos on YouTube.
This feels like the future.
It’s a good plan.
DAK and the Golden Age of Gadget Catalogs – cabel.com
I’ve been working on this post for over 10 years.
How can that be? It’s simple. For a decade, I’ve been snapping up copies of a certain gadget catalog, one by one, when they’re up for auction. Collecting and waiting.
Dedication to craft. What we believe in.
“We used to do that” | Seth’s Blog
What you were trained to do, what you did yesterday… that’s a gift from your past, not an obligation.
This Blog is 20 Years Old Today
The very first post on this site is dated November 7th, 2003. Of course, I had been blogging before that, and there used to be posts dated slightly earlier. But, this blog actually began as an internally hosted one at the college I used to work for and I lost those earlier posts when I moved to a different platform and brought it public… Gosh, that seems like it was just yesterday. Not 20 years ago. Such is life.
This blog has had many different points of focus over the years. From geeky, mainly Apple, tech stuff to GTD-driven personal productivity stuff, to practical/actionable life advice stuff to the anything goes sort of thing it is now. And, that’s exactly what a blog should be — a reflection of your interest and attention over time. A reflection of who you are right now and where you’ve been. Blogs are living things that should grow at the same rate we do.
I don’t want to make too much of it. I just wanted to mark the occasion and reflect a little on how long 20 years is but how short it seems.
I’m still having a lot of fun here. More than ever. Let’s do it for 20 more!
POLLS are PROPAGANDA
The season is now upon us that I have to make this public service announcement:
Polls are the reality TV of journalism. Drama draws eyeballs. Never trust them. Do the math.
The recent NYT poll is an especially egregious example (No, I’m not linking to it). It is no better than media clickbait. Let’s do the math…
- 3,662 individuals polled out of about 48 million… Not a representative sample size.
- The margin of sampling error for each state is between 4.4 and 4.8 percentage points (which in this political environment where races are decided in under 1 pt is HUGE).
- Also, they polled by only calling landline numbers? LANDLINES in 2023.
And yet, the vast majority of the rest of the media on all sides is treating it as fact with no journalistic skepticism (or, frankly, integrity).
If I use a poll to tell you Candidate X is way ahead, what effect on lazy voters (i.e. folks that don’t vote unless they have to) do you think that will have. Do you think that if they like Candidate X they will be more or less likely to get off their asses and vote? Now, what if that poll came from the “Paper of Record” that you know leans more heavily towards Candidate Y? Do you think they might have an interest in motivating folks with the fear that Candidate X might win?
POLLS are PROPAGANDA. Don’t trust them.