Macro

My bold prediction for Virginia governor election is that Winsome (republican) will win it over Spanberger even though right now Spanberger right now is ahead by almost 9-10% in polls. Even if Spanberger wins, the margin won’t be that big. Winsome is clearly gaining ground while Spanberger has gone into the same mode as establishment democrats do and trying to win over moderates middle with their absolutely stupid “I am a bipartisan” candidate bullshit. In today’s time being a bipartisan candidate means you actually think Charlie Kirk was some hero – yeah that’s were the moderate line is right now. She is turning off more people in the Northern VA area who are way more progressive by pandering the moderate bullshit. Please for heaven’s sake, learn a fucking thing or two from the general election.

Major pipe burst in our sprinkler system. One thing no one tells you about owning a sprinkler system is that literally on a year basis you have to repair underground pipes that burst. It’s the cost of convenience I suppose coz I have seen how useful they are hard to go back to pre days. We inherited it with the house and they hadn’t even said it was put in, and I have spent money on yearly maintenance but this is one equipment I won’t get rid of.

My intention of moving to a self-hosted platform (WordPress for now) was that I wanted to own the content I had. My experience with micro.blog was middling at best, and while I liked the platform for community, I couldn’t take the platform seriously that operated on whims and fancies of its founder who later seemed to have questionable views. Incidentally I pay less for my self hosted blog than I paid on micro and I have not lost any of the community aspect yet because of cross-posting to Bluesky or Mastodon using echofeed. When I look at my North Star of owning my own content, I have also begun to slowly start making my WordPress blog also slightly more private. A few changes I have put in now are no comments, no tags or categories on any post, no homepage with scrolling posts anymore, and no search. The only things you will see are movies and tv. If you want to read a specific post, the only way to get that post is if you reach it via my BlueSky or Mastodon account. I don’t know why, but given the highly charged political environment of this country I actually feel like I need to do this to protect myself and my account. And yes, my domains are also now private so dig/whois/nslookup won’t reveal my personal info. And if you’ve known me long enough you will know that I have also completely made my private blog… umm, more private.

While Apple has kept the pricing mostly same on the phones I am surprised nobody is talking about how they have increased the AppleCare pricing exorbitantly! The only option when I looked yesterday was a 13$ option and a 20$ option per month. WTF? Last year it was around 8 bucks for the same and they simply doubled it?

My teenager told me yesterday a lot of people she knew were sharing RIP messages on social media. I flat out told her what a horrendous human being he was, and he does not deserve any part of RIP. I considered a more measure approach about how you should be graceful when someone passes away but I also wanted her to realize that shitty humans don’t get the option of grace. So yeah I let it out and she admitted she felt the same about it. Proud of her!

Ugh, it looks like the Kamala Harris bug has hit Abigail Spanberger’s campaign too. She went from attacking Winsome her opponent to now airing ads that call her out as the “most bipartisan person in VA congress”. Like FUCK YOU. In today’s times if you are a bipartisan congresswoman it only means you are bending your knee to the nazis in the government. This is a party that considered Charlie Kirk “moderate” republican and you are telling me you are proud of reaching across the aisle and being the most bipartisan member? You can move 1 republican voter with that crap but you will lose 2 democratic votes in the house. Like for heaven’s sake drop the facade already and campaign on your goddamn strengths.

I honestly am not super enthusiastic about the new iPhone Pro colors. I kinda really like the look and view of Air. Ideally I’d loved to have the camera power of pro into Air. In all honesty 16pro camera has been a disappointment to me so I am kinda wary about moving to 17pro. I am probably gonna wait to see some actual reviews, and not by photographers who have all the best tools in the world to make their photos look great.

The iPhone Air looks interesting. Considering that the camera upgrades is my #1 reason to upgrade to newer phone models, and my recent thinking around buying a lightweight camera instead of using my iPhone around, I see a case for getting the iPhone Air instead of Pro and use it as a forcing function to use my camera more. I usually upgrade most years and was thinking of skipping this year, but maybe who knows 🙂

Nice line at voting center to vote for Gerry Conolly’s replacement. James Warkinshaw is widely expected to win this major democratic county but I will say that the number of people picking up the green republican sample ballot was concerning. Of course they all trended old, white and nearly dead. Yesterday when I took out doggo for a walk, an old gentleman and wife who live at the far end corner of our community who always been big fans of the doggo and pet him a lot, put up a republican candidate sign on their lawn. Fucking nazis I muttered under breath and I swear I will not be friendly to them anymore. They can rot in their sweet little garden. Tested negative for covid and flu this morning. Yay. Finally it’s behind us I hope and I am immune for a while before I get my vaccines!