5 November 2025

There were a couple changes to different streaming services recently, because of that we canceled everything. We only use YouTube kids for the girls and that’s ad free. A couple new programs came on our radar, some that should have been on Disney+, which we had but couldn’t find anything good. Inside the company’s streaming service they want people to watch the new show allowing producers to talk about how successful it is. The audience’s view is restricted to what the company chooses to put on the front page of any search. A business telling its customers what is valuable is bad for business, it’s anti-free market. All this got me thinking there is going to be a streaming bubble like there was a dotcom bubble. When Netflix first switched from physical to digital they created something new in the world. Binge watching wasn’t the thing it became. There were commercials, rewinding tapes, one season of a T.V. show would be four DVDs, when houses could digitally transfer “content” was a big step toward the internet of things. Netflix became a huge success which led greedy corporations to take a slice of that pie, they owned the rights. Today there are countless streaming platforms and none of them are good. The real crime I see is the streaming platforms themselves have poor user interface. Streaming is a technological breakthrough and just because a company produced a network sitcom in the 90’s or animated movies in the 50’s, it doesn’t qualify them to create a streaming service. The best art is worthless if no one can find it.

4 November 2025

The elder princess is home sick today. As of writing this, she’s doing better, but she can use the rest. While I have the girls today, I’m also going to have them to myself this weekend while my queen goes on a trip. They’re good kids and I’m getting almost full nights of sleep, so I’m not complaining. Logistical issues arise with two kids, three animals and one me, the biggest issue being no one will let me go to the bathroom alone. Mostly I need to go from fixing one thing to another and sometimes while solving one problem, a mess is being created elsewhere. Outnumbered by kids or living the rest of my life, that’s how things go and there’s always more work than we have time for. Then we also need to balance fun and appreciating the moment, they won’t be little forever. All that’s exhausting, you know some people will go the whole day with only a couple of thoughts in their head while I need to be in the past, present, and future. It’s only a need as part of a bigger plan. As said these lessons apply to life in general that I’m trying to build a future, meaning I have to retain the plan. Using the lessons I’ve learned from the past, I take actions in the present. What does it mean to live in the moment? Is it artsy nonsense? Largely it is, but art touches on emotion. Living in the moment is taking time to observe our surrounding to aid our emotions. The process is grounding, confirming physical reality to the spirit in our head to give a more realistic picture of the future ahead.

3 November 2025

This year Halloween did in fact fall on Halloween and the person who said it wasn’t was a trouble maker. The weekend went well starting off with trunk or treat at the elder princess’ daycare. That was one of the first times for me handing out candy, at first I handed out a single candy and could see on the kid’s faces that wasn’t going to fly. From one to three pieces, I ended up passing out handfuls of candy. As the sun was setting, we were trick or treating around our own neighborhood. Houses are spread out enough that we drove the car around, maybe in the future we’ll have a golf cart. I knew people would have golf cart, but thought we would stick out driving a car until it came time for us to hand out candy and there were so many cars they were waiting in line. The visitors to the neighborhood seemed respectful, there didn’t seem to be any damage or lot of trash left around. Through this even we got to meet some more neighbors we haven’t yet and learned about a Facebook group for community events like next there will be some sort of candle vigil where everyone puts out paper bags with tea candles in them by the side of the road. The pictures I’ve seen from the past look great and we’re happy to live in a place that brings people together with fun events.

30 October 2025

Today might be Halloween, yesterday we got word our neighborhood would be doing trick or treat tonight. Apparently there is a highschool football game tomorrow and there isn’t enough police to be at our neighborhood and the game. I had mentioned before that people bus in to trick or treat here and apparently a lot of people bring their golf carts. We’ll see what actually happens, changing the date the last week from the actual date on a Friday to an arbitrary date on a work day seems like a bad idea. We live here and didn’t get a memo, my queen heard it at work, no one told me personally. That leaves the question if the bus drivers are available today, maybe they’re sharing with the high school. This also touches on another annoyance I’ve had my whole life, towns and cities revolving around sport. In my opinion these positions are celebrated above all else and that creates a ceiling for the citizens who grow up thinking that’s the top. Sports have a lot to offer kids in developing physically and mentally. For 99% of athletes, serious competition is finished before they start adult life. I’d argue the professional athletes don’t live adult lives like washing their clothes and cooking their food, but that’s another topic. Kids and adults need to be championing behavior and people that want society to grow towards. Treating high school football as the biggest event growing up will leave kids confused as to what they should be after high school.

29 October 2025

I’m getting some life back, the little princess was growing four teeth at once, so there was a lot of crying and little sleep. Things seem to be improving with her sleeping until 4 AM last night, big win! I know I talk about my sleep too much, but it’s probably the biggest issue in my life. It’s been so long since I knew normal sleep that it consumes my brain, all I want. A new topic on the board is Japan, on the heels of the president’s successful trip we’re planning a visit for next year and I think now will be a good time. For years we’ve talked about visiting Paris, maybe some French countryside and beaches, but from what I see on the internet now is not the time. The 2010’s were plagues with emotional thinking and most of Europe opened up to refugees. An expression I’ve seen is, “Import the third world, become the third world.” Now the last statistic I saw on Paris grape is up something like %6,000. The U.S. has it’s own immigration crisis, as does the world, people that live in bad places want to live in good places. Japan, with it’s first female prime minister has taken a “Japan first” policy and keeping invaders out. Watching the world change is fascinating, countries come and go, science that was championed is found to be wrong, heroes become villains and vice versa. A Tale of Two Cities was vital in my understanding of how the world handles time. The two cities are Paris and London, an Englishmen is in Paris when the Bourbon’s, French Royalty, was overthrown by Napoleon. Napoleon then gets over thrown, later he gets back in power and finally removed. During the book, the Englishmen and others like him are being captured as political prisoners and trying to get out before the pendulum swings again.

23 October 2025

There’s challenge to stay hard when times are good. Why would one want to stay hard? Life is hard, strong men keep the monsters at bay so civilization may happen. Recently, I talked about steel sharpening steel, but what does that mean? In order to become sharp, metaphorically the same as hard in the way I’m using it, also synonymous with dangerous, to get there one must come into contact with hard things. It is through stress and pressure the individual can become hard, the Nietzsche quote is, “Whatever dosen’t kill me, makes me stronger.” What’s the cost of staying hard? A real life effect of being rough is not being able to feel soft things, I will use the back of my hand if I want to feel something, the front is for a strong grip. There is a cost for this readiness and a cost if we’re not ready, the gamble is that we don’t know when evil will turns it’s head. To be prepared means disconnecting from others and not engaging with happy chores, this could go one forever with no danger happening; trading one’s life for nothing. The opposite being surprise attacked and losing everything. Happiness isn’t in between, the varieties that humans come in are in between those points, the disconnect is part of the service people are thanked for.

22 October 2025

Fun night yesterday with the elder princess, she’s still trying to figure out her new bedtime routine. Things in the big bed aren’t working out and she’ll be going back to her crib for awhile. She seems to need the restriction of a crib and a sleep sack, basically a blanket she wears. As the princess would lay in bed, she kept moving around unable to settle. I even tried laying with her in hopes she would fall sleep on me, but no luck. Hanging out in bed was still fun, like one time I told her it was time for bed and after a moment of quiet she told me to look at her because she had one eye open. She makes me laugh. After the mention from our neighbor that they will have mommy cocktails for Halloween, we’ve decided to clean our house in case anyone would be coming in. The days are counting down, we’re under 10 days away now with a couple of Halloween activities to attend. Adult life is tiring, while writing I’ve got Daniel Tiger playing in the background and he’s make bead necklaces. I never got really into bead crafting, but have spent some time with them. When I was a kid I remember thinking beads were so cool and that nothing could be more important than making the coolest necklace. How did things get like this? Just like when I was young I was bored looking for things to do, but now there’s more things to do than there is time to do it, plus I just want to do nothing but sleep.

21 October 2025

AT&T is installing fiber optic internet in my neighborhood. We currently use a local internet company and having lived in Philadelphia and New York using Comcast and Time Warner respectively, I have a healthy dislike of big internet companies. We likely won’t be switching internet providers. Regardless if anyone here plans to use it or want it, it’s being installed. Maybe the process is the company makes a deal with the city, the city receives money and whoever brokered the deal is going to get something. I assume the city is responsible because they’re digging on what I believe to be city land, about 4 feet from the street. The construction process isn’t too invasive, it’s loud so hopefully it doesn’t wake any naps and when I was walking the baby yesterday I had to pass by. My biggest complaint would be the workers that leave trash on the side of the road where they’re working, it’s not even work trash, it’s their personal trash like drinks and cigarette packs. They might go through when it’s all done to clean everything up, either way it’s not my responsibility. There are some patches of land I’ve seen recently I would like to be my responsibility, or at least I would be able to transform them into something more useful. When we moved out of the last place, I swore off ever working with my hands again. I don’t know if I will own land again, still it’s something I think about when I see a space going to waste.

20 October 2025

We had a good weekend and I hope the world did too. The elder princess has started sleeping in a twin bed and is out of her crib. She slept there for the last two days and hasn’t caused any trouble. It is hard to understand kids growing up because I’ve been grinding away try to feed, clean and teach this kids, then I look up on a walk and that one time baby looks like a little person. There’s still a lot of basics she’s learning like letters and recently I’ve put more time into using scissors. An inexperienced mind is interesting, when we were doing scissor exercises there was a straight line, a curve, and zig zags. She said she doesn’t know how to do the zig zags, I’m thinking they’re the same straight lines you already did, but to her it’s a new world breaking into the second dimension. Not much going on as we approach Halloween, it sounds like we live in a good neighborhood for it, that people bus in to trick or treat here, and we met a neighbor on our walk that said she’ll have mommy cocktails available. We have a very nice life and I thank God for all my blessings, still we are not used to living in nice situations. The queen and I have had our heads down most of our lives, we came here from taking evasive maneuvers to an emergency. Now we’re setting into a place nicer than we every expected or planned for. The Talking Heads are right that you may ask yourself, “how did I get here?”

17 October 2025

Yesterday I was writing about how tomorrow isn’t guaranteed and indeed it isn’t as last night the little princess was waking up in the middle of the night and by 5 AM she was ready to start the day. Those are some hard nights since there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do besides hold the baby, at least the screaming didn’t wake her sister. The reason holding at night is hard is because I want to lay down in bed and sleep, there’s no place to lay down with the baby and there’s a fear I’ll drop her if I fall asleep. What ended up happening is I’d rock the baby to sleep for a couple minutes and try to put her back down, then she’d scream and we’d repeat until the sun comes up. It’s annoying, but not world ending; I got good sleep the night before. Interrupted sleep is a reminder that I’m excess energy territory, everyday I’m trying to get through the day and hopefully the night.