Ratpuke7 – Page 10 – Tao and Zen

Wednesday, February 17th 2021… “Glad I bought Dell…”

Had my first experience with Dell Customer Support this morning. Now, being an IT guy and having dealt with all manner of experienced and non-experienced types all over the globe, I had a low bar and lower expectations. I have a laptop that I purchased last January for my business. I wanted something portable that i wouldn’t have to mess with very much, easy to use, because my wife would also need it for her things. I have had good experiences with Dell at work so I went with that. Ive had my fill of building stuff at home and I’m at a point in my life where I know what I want from a number of technological perspectives. I didn’t just fall off the truck – I’ve dealt with all manner of computers and programs. I want something that can be wireless and wired, can be used for graphics programs, for manipulating photographs, create websites, program, do email, run all standard Microsoft software, run all Adobe software, run a myriad of VM’s if I should need it, and play games. In other words, “a jack of all trades”. I want a large hard drive, I want it fast, and I want horsepower. Now, all of those things together are really a hardware juggling act. So the PC that I got, is a laptop, has a SSD – which is kind of small in the grand scheme – only 200Gb. So I bought a second SSD that is 1.8Tb which requires a bit of juggling data. I have a RAID 5 NAS that’s somewhere on the order of 12Tb if I should want or need it. Hey, some day I may try recording. 🙂 A Core i7/10th Gen with 4 Cores, 8 Logical processors later.. Sorry, I went off into the weeds. Anyway, I called the Tech Support number, and was walked through a bunch of well thought out troubleshooting steps. Problem was eventually solved. What I found out was that my Bluetooth is integrated to the motherboard but has hooks into the network adapter. So I had to reinstall some drivers, restart and hard-restart the laptop. Problem solved. I think Nino, who is from the Philippines is very knowledgeable and patient. I had to kind of chuckle. I could hear a rooster crowing in the background every once in a while (he may be working from home in Hawaii). I would definitely buy Dell again. Thanks Nino and thanks Dell!

My watercolor class with John is over for this period, so its time to figure out what I want to do next from an art class perspective. Supposedly Beth Leahy was teaching a “master the method” class which focuses on artists, their lives, motivations, techniques, and history. You then mimic their technique to see what you will come up with. Sometimes, its eye-opening the hoops they (the artist) jumped through. Anyhow, I still have a ways to go on this watercolor. The color harmony is much better than my usual. I am still learning. My drawing is decent, my composition skills need some work, my color skills are lacking, my color mixing skills are decent, my color identifying skills are decent, I just need time.

-Rat

Tuesday, February 2nd 2021 …6 more weeks of winter…

Started the PowerBreathe training today. For whatever reason, I cannot for the life of me find the instructions. Spanish instructions, yep. English, nope. I decided that I am so gassed after the Octane in the morning, ill substitute it for the morning workout and use the PowerBreathe in the evening after dinner. The Octane is a recumbent elliptical. I try and push myself when I can.

Laid off the painting tonight. I think I’m going downstairs to clean and straighten for a bit.

We made Enchilada Cream of Chicken Soup tonight in the Instant Pot. It tastes yummy served with tortilla chips. So, you take the chicken out and pull it. Blend the contents, and put the chicken back. No actual cream involved – uses squash, tomato paste, a tin of hatch peppers, some beans, onions, a potato, and a hand blender for creating the “cream”.

-Rat

Monday, February 1st 2021… Lots of balls in the air…

HEY! It’s a reference to juggling, smart ass. I’ve been busy lately, not that I’m not always busy, I received my “PowerBreathe” in the mail yesterday. I bought this hoping to increase my lung capacity. Hopefully, it can help me on my bike this year. It’s a 4 week course of twice a day. I am supposed to not over-train like any other muscle and give myself enough recovery time. When the hell am I supposed to get my high-intensity training in? I’ve got to figure this thing out. On a similar note, I purchased some more weight to make working out at home more feasible. Yesterday, when I was snow blowing the driveway, I was using my neighbors snowblower and for a time and i actually felt that I was hurting my shoulder or bicep tie-in. I was a little tender this morning but not too bad. Today, I also began to just sit with my back against the wall, stretching my psoas. Trying to undo the damage sitting and working from home for long hours has caused.

One other thing that i have been working on is creating a book of watercolor paints and values of my limited pallet and all my convenience colors. It’s been interesting seeing what mixes with what and what the paint values look like.

With all the snow that we got yesterday, I had to walk around to the back of the house today to knock the hanging drifts off the roof. We got between 11 and 13 inches. I refilled some of the bird feeders and added some water to the bird bath.

-Rat

Sunday, January 17th 2021…Everyday is a new day!…

I found out that I have tomorrow off! Hooray for me! I think I will spend some time today painting. I started a new painting in my watercolor class and while I began on a 8×10 sheet, I realized that it’s way to small and so I went to a full sheet which is 22×30. I will post my progress. The subject was drawn to scale and some minor painting has taken place. I decided not to do the virtual watercolor seminar. I will continue with my current class from McCord.

On a different note, I began listening to some lectures on Organic Chemistry. I have to divert my mind while on the octane (a recumbent elliptical machine). I finished the lecture series on “Why Evil Exists”. It’s about the history of evil and where it comes from, from philosophical, religious, and social viewpoints. It was a fairly interesting series. It was delivered by Professor Charles Mathewes, Ph.D. via “The Great Courses”. I have found that in this series though, since the explanations require illustrations to emphasize a point, i find myself re-watching the lectures because I miss quite a bit while exercising. Its interesting how much I have forgotten.

-Rat

Saturday, January 9th 2021…What to do, what to do…

I’m in a bit of a quandary with my watercolor skills. Do I sign up for a virtual seminar, take a couple of days off. Record the seminar and replay it at will, or skip it and just focus on my current watercolor class. It’s not very expensive, however I will need to take at least 1 weekday off and a whole weekend. Not that I get paid for weekends. The real quandary is that I only have 7 days to record the seminar. I only have one more day. I still haven’t recorded the meditation class. Just no time.

-Rat

Wednesday, January 6th 2021… art is da bomb…

I had my watercolor class after a stressful day at work. Something I look forward to. Afterwards, had a nice facetime call with my daughter and her fiance’. I like where they are going with the decision to elope. Makes sense with COVID and all the uncertainty of this year. Who is to say that we will return to normalcy by the end of the year. Why put money down on a wedding venue when there are no guarantees (crazy)? Will the venue even be in business when you get to your date? Too much money at stake for a business and for future couple. Got to run…

-Rat

Monday, January 4th 2021…really Mr. President?…

What a dumbass. Like a toddler who can’t get his way. He’ll throw a tantrum… he’ll cry and he’ll get his ice-cream. Nope, no you don’t. All we (the American public) have to do is wait your dumbass out, and the country reverts back to being run by a lying sack of crap. Can January 20th come soon enough? I think not. We tried an experiment, it failed, is rotting in the garbage can and stinking up the kitchen. So much for the experiment. All you had to do was act like a caring human being, you didn’t even have to believe the crap that you needed to speak, what the public needed to hear, and you needed a filter. Nope. Couldn’t do it. Too big of an ego. Yes, i know you are a bad liar, and that is exactly why I voted for you. Nope. And the worst part was you couldn’t even keep your mouth shut on twitter. So much damage done and documented. Words and thoughts exposed like rotting fruit and roadkill on a hot day. And the American public had to drive the only road that passed by. We had to hold our collective breaths in our convertible with the top down. Listening to the drive-by media rightly crucify you. Spewing it’s hate speech couched in what the elitist liberals think the country needs with a sprinkling of division. You gave them all the ammunition they could ever want. They didn’t even have to look hard.

On January 20th, 2021 the presidency pendulum will swing the other direction back to the Democrats. Not that it really matters anymore. That’s the greatest irony here. That’s what this experiment taught me in no uncertain terms. It doesn’t matter who is in the White House, the outcome is mainly the same – its a slow box step set to a discordant dirge that never really goes anywhere – in a circle, by design. We had one of the the biggest megalomaniacs that walked the planet in the presidency (bills still got paid and no one died) and nothing really changed, now the pendulum swings back the other way. To a guy who couldn’t hold a thought in his pocket. Not too much change mind you, we need to give the public the allusion of change without real change. Same with Obama, same with Bush, same with Clinton, wash, rinse, repeat. We are rearranging the proverbial deck chairs on the American Titanic. Republicans, Democrats, they are 2 heads on the same coin. Does it really matter if the coin flips? Not really. The American public loses.

Just find the approximately 11 thousand votes somewhere? Really, Mr President? I had to laugh at the Washington Post – you were set up, dumbass. And essentially, they said that Congress needs to work fast before the American public wakes up. No worries there congress. The American public has been asleep since about a year after the World Trade Center attack. Social media under the guise of “media” has been slowly dividing us and keeping us at arms length for the purposes of arguing with each other. Fanning the embers of discord and hate. Just look at the Election ads playing on the media if you needed a reminder. Watch the nightly news on the major channels and compare what you don’t see on the BBC news. Sprinkle a bit of the daily-mail in for good measure, and you’ll start to see that our news isn’t news at all. It’s filtered entertainment with the Weather and Sports. Actually, weather and sports anymore are the only fact driven segments that come with check-able facts.

I for one, am glad that this experiment is almost over. I will go back to quit wondering what would happen if we didn’t have a professional liar in the presidency, I am resigned to it. My liberal friends can relax and go back to just grumbling about their lives instead of railing about the dumbass in the oval office. They still make sense, we all want the same outcome, and although we don’t agree on the path – our destinations are still the same. We still have to get through life together, supporting each other, and doing all the things that we don’t really want to do – in our jobs. I think we all can eventually find joy in the process.

-Rat