Smoke

From NJ.com: Wildfire smoke to cause dangerous air quality, darken skies again today.

Yesterday wasn’t great, but today is really bad. I don’t remember air quality around here ever getting quite this bad. I managed a short walk early this morning, but when I tried a quick walk after lunch, it was too bad and I had to give up and go back inside. (And it’s not perfect inside either.) I’m not sure how much of this is due to air quality, but I’ve had a headache all day today and most of the day yesterday. And I’m getting itchy eyes and a rough throat. I may take a nap this afternoon, if I can get away with it.

I think I’m glad that I’m working from home today, but I’m also wondering if my office building’s HVAC system might be doing a better job of filtering out the bad stuff than my apartment building’s HVAC is doing. It wasn’t bad in the office yesterday, but overall it wasn’t as bad yesterday as it is today. I guess that if it’s really bad again tomorrow, I’ll find out how good the office HVAC system is, since I’m supposed to go in tomorrow.

Old Habits, follow-up

This post is a follow-up to yesterday’s Old Habits post.

On the E-ZPass thing: I’d posted a request on the E-ZPass website, asking them to keep the account open, and surprisingly, they responded, and told me that they’d keep it open for another year, but would close it in a year if there’s still no activity. So now I guess I have a year to drive through a toll plaza at least once. I guess if I go another year without driving on the Parkway or Turnpike, then I should just admit that I’m not the kind of person who drives on the Parkway or Turnpike anymore.

On NYCC: I activated my badge today. It was less annoying this year than in previous years, since I only had the one 4-day badge, rather than 4 one-day badges. Badge activation is still a pain though. (See this post from 2017 for the full rant. Most of the stuff in that post is still true.)

On football: The Giants won! And it was a pretty exciting game. So, yeah, I guess I’m going to be watching football this year, at least for a while. If the Giants collapse and wind up on a six-game losing streak or something like that, they I’ll probably stop.

Watching the NFL is a little more complicated than it used to be, but most games are still on regular broadcast TV, so I shouldn’t have any trouble watching them. Thursday night games are now on Amazon Prime, which I do have, so I can watch those too. Monday Night games are mostly on ESPN, which I don’t have, but some of them (including tonight’s game) are on ABC, so I can watch those. This article has some details on the schedule. (Of course, I may just stick with the Giants games, and skip all the random Thursday night, Sunday night, and Monday night games.)

I’ve noticed that there a lot of clickbait articles out there with titles like “How to Watch X Without Cable”, where X is baseball, or football, or tennis, or whatever. And they’re all basically just trying to drive traffic through affiliate links to DirecTV, Hulu, and other services that offer cable channels over the internet. There must be a lot of money in those affiliate links, since so many people are posting these articles. And very few of them actually have any useful info in them. They mostly just seem to be copy & paste from a template, then tweak for a particular sport or event. Oh well. I guess that’s how folks running web sites make money these days. Can’t blame them for doing that.

Old Habits

I’ve been thinking lately about old habits, and inertia, and what I should be examining and rethinking. A lot of this is due to the change in seasons.

And a little is due to a letter I got in the mail from E-ZPass last week. Apparently, I haven’t used my E-ZPass since 2019, so they’re going to close out my account. I was a little surprised by this, but when I stopped and thought about it, I realized that it’s true. The last time I drove on the Parkway or Turnpike was June 22, 2019, according to my E-ZPass history. Looking at my Day One journal, I see that I’d gone down to Whiting on that day, to visit my old friend Gloria’s family, and to visit the cemetery. And I haven’t been down there since. I’ve thought about visiting the cemetery on multiple occasions over the last few years, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.

I guess I can keep my E-ZPass account active if I use it within the next couple of weeks. So maybe I should drive down to the cemetery and say hello to my parents. Or I could just give up on E-ZPass and return it.

Another thing I’m thinking about, and this one is definitely related to the change in seasons, is football. I haven’t paid much attention to the NFL the last few years, but I’m going to give it a try again this year. Today is the first Sunday of the season, and I’m currently watching the Jets game. I’ll watch the Giants game at 4 PM too, and maybe the Sunday night game on NBC after that. Or maybe not. I’m not paying a lot of attention to the Jets game right now, but I’m getting a nice feeling of comfort and familiarity from it. Just the sound of the game in the background is kind of nice, especially on a rainy Sunday in September.

I just googled “comfort of the familiar” and found some interesting stuff. It can be a good thing and a bad thing. I don’t think there’s any harm in getting some comfort from the sounds of a football game. But if I find that it’s not doing much for me, there’s also no harm in turning it off and reading a book.

On another subject, I just got my badge for NYCC in the mail. I still have plenty of time to decide if I’m actually going or not. I haven’t made a hotel reservation. If I go, I guess I’ll just take the train in each day. And if I don’t go, I’m out $210, unless I can resell my badge to someone else, but that’s not a big deal if that’s the way it goes. I’m fine either way.

I just looking at Evernote and Day One, trying to figure out when the last time I’d been in NYC was. When I went up to Albany in March, I spent an hour or so in NYC, to switch trains. But the last time I really did anything in NYC was October 2021, for last year’s NYCC. I’d thought about going in for some museum visits on various weekends this summer, but just never got around to it. So I’m wondering if I should keep paying for my Met and MoMA memberships, or let them expire.

I’m starting to wonder if my life is ever going to get back to what it used to be, pre-COVID. And I’m wondering if I actually want it to, or need it to. Part of me is fine with my “new normal” of spending a lot more time in my apartment, and a lot more time closer to home, in general. I need to think about what I should hold on to, and what I should let go of.

passport photos and the passage of time

I’m thinking a lot about the passage of time today. I got a new passport photo taken this week, and compared it to my last couple of passport photos. I took the current one and the last two, put them next to each other, and scanned them in together. Since you need to renew your passport every ten years, looking at the photos gives me a look at how I’ve changed over the last few decades. I thought about posting that scan here, but it might not be a good idea to make my passport photos publicly accessible.

Looking at them together, I see, first, a guy in his mid-thirties, with a fair amount of hair and a mustache that he apparently thought looked good on him. He looks pretty happy. Maybe a little overweight, but not enough to bother him. He hasn’t really lost anyone close to him yet.

Next, I see a guy in his mid-forties. He’s recently lost both of his parents. He looks a little more subdued than the mid-thirties guy. The mustache is gone, and there’s less hair on his head. He’s still smiling, but it’s a less confident smile, maybe. He’s definitely overweight and needs to lose a lot of weight, but it’s not bothering him that much yet.

Finally, I see current-day Andy. He’s got bags under his eyes and looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. He’s lost a lot of weight, and a lot of hair. He kind of looks like he just got punched in the face.

Now, comparing the current photo to the previous ones is a little unfair, since the rules for passport photos have changed since the last one. You’re not allowed to wear glasses, and you’re supposed to have a neutral expression on your face. And of course the photo was taken by a random Walgreens clerk under bright fluorescent lights. So, yeah, maybe I don’t look quite that bad in “real life.” Still, the guy in that photo, staring back at me, looks like he needs a hug. And a good night’s sleep. And maybe a sandwich.

On a semi-related topic, today is the twenty-first anniversary of this blog. I wrote posts on the tenth and fifteenth anniversaries, but seem to have missed the twentieth last year. So I guess it was the mid-thirties passport photo guy who wrote the first entries on the blog, and the mid-forties one who wrote that tenth anniversary post.

And on yet another almost-related topic, I missed seeing Paul McCartney at MetLife Stadium last week. It was apparently a great show. I regret not going a little, but I’ve seen him five times already, including once before at MetLife, in 2016. I think that, if there was some way I could have teleported myself to the show and back home, I’d have done it. But the grief of dealing with NJ Transit and staying out late and all that would have been too much for me. With respect to COVID, I would have felt relatively safe at the stadium, since it’s basically open-air. I would have felt less safe on NJ Transit though, since those trains to MetLife can get packed, and there’s no mask mandate on trains anymore. And if I’d gone to the concert, I might have decided to stay overnight in NYC afterward, and then I’d have gotten caught up in the NJ Transit job action on Friday, which could have been a nightmare.

So, yeah, mid-thirties Andy would have definitely gone to MetLife for McCartney and enjoyed it. Mid-forties Andy might have gone, but would have been tired and maybe sick for a day or two afterwards. Mid-fifties Andy is staying home watching old Star Wars cartoons on Disney+ and going to bed at 9:30 PM.

more Somerville stuff

As a follow-up to my previous post, I can confirm that I did indeed “hole up in my apartment and wait this thing out,” and rewatched the whole first season of Stranger Things. The big race was won by some guy from New Zealand, which is kinda cool. But they continued playing annoying music through all the races, which was kinda not cool. Turnout was pretty good, but didn’t seem to be ridiculous, at least based on what I could see from my window. I didn’t actually go back out at all after my morning walk.

Tonight, it seems like we’re getting our first big turnout for the classic car thing that happens every Friday during the summer. I don’t hear a DJ yet, so that’s a good sign. In the past, they’ve sometimes set up a DJ booth right across the street from my apartment, and that’s always been a pain. In more recent years, they’ve either not had a DJ at all, or had him set up farther from my apartment. Of course, regardless of that, there’s still the guys on loud motorcycles, and the guys who tune their cars to make as much noise as possible. So I’m still not going to be able to have a quiet Friday night again for a while. At least I can work from home on Fridays now, so I don’t have to worry about driving home through this stuff anymore.

In theory, Somerville should be having their June street fair this weekend, on Sunday. But, from what I can tell, it’s been canceled this year. I’m not sure why. That’s good news for me, since it means I can hopefully have a quiet Sunday, at least.

I’m not sure if there was much of a point to this post, other than to vent a little about how stressed I am right now, and how much I’d like a nice quiet weekend. I’m thinking about taking a couple of days off from work and trying to go somewhere quiet for a bit, but I have no clue where. I just did a search for “quiet vacation spot in NJ,” and I found what looked like a promising list, but then saw that Caesars Atlantic City was number 3 on the list, so that’s obviously an auto-generated bit of clickbait. I’ve been to Caesars, and it ain’t quiet!

 

Memorial Day and the return of the Tour of Somerville

Well, the Tour of Somerville is back this year, after taking two years off. I imagine that a lot of people are happy about that, but so far, I’d say I could do with another year off. I woke up at 6:30 AM this morning, and things were pretty quiet. Then, just a few minutes after I’d gotten up, a blast of music came in through the window. Luckily, it was only a test of the system, and they shut it back off after a few minutes. So I got a couple of hours of peace and quiet. But that blast kind of set me on edge, and I’ve been a little jumpy all morning. It doesn’t help that I haven’t been sleeping well lately.

It’s 9 AM now, though, and the “Family Fun Ride” has started, so the music is back. I’ve been drowning it out with music of my own, played through my AirPods. (I’m charging up my Beats now too, as I may want to switch to the over-the-ear headphones at some point for the better noise cancellation.) I’m hoping they’ll turn down the music when the “real” races start, but right now, I’d call it “aggressively loud.”

I went out for my usual walk this morning, around 8 AM, and walked the race course. They’ve got a lot more metal fencing up on Main Street than I remember them doing in past years. So it looks like I’m pretty much fenced in. Just getting across the street between races seems like it’ll be more trouble than it was in past years.

So I guess I’m just going to hole up in my apartment and wait this thing out. I wish I could get into the spirit of the thing, but I really just want a quiet day off. I’m still paranoid enough about COVID that I don’t want to go out in a big crowd, and it looks like it might indeed be a big crowd this year.

I finished watching the first part of Stranger Things season four yesterday. I really enjoyed it. I especially loved the use of Kate Bush’s song “Running Up That Hill,” which has apparently kindled a lot of new interest in Kate Bush. I was a big fan of Kate Bush in high school and college. Her album The Dreaming came out in 1982, so I listened to that a lot in high school. And Hounds of Love, the album with “Running Up That Hill,” came out in 1985, so I would have been listening to that one in college. I guess I’m a little older than the Stranger Things kids are supposed to be, since they’re just starting high school in 85.

I may decide to kill some time today by going back and rewatching season one of Stranger Things, either through my headphones, or possibly just blasted through my speakers.

The real races are supposed to start any minute now, since it’s just coming up on 9:30. And they’ll be going until maybe 6 PM. Honestly, I’m not looking forward to any of it, but I guess I’ll make the best of it and try to have a good day cocooned in my apartment watching TV.

COVID exposure

I got a notification from the NJ COVID app that I was exposed to COVID recently. I’ve had the app on my phone since October 2020, and this is the first time it’s actually notified me of anything. The exposure was more than a week ago. Not sure why it took so long to get to me.

I’d pretty much forgotten that the app even existed. When I first installed it, I was “checking in” on the app on a semi-regular basis. These apps were a pretty big deal when they first came out. But they’ve really faded to the point where it doesn’t seem like anyone bothers using them anymore. But I guess some people still do, otherwise I’d never had gotten that notification.

At this point, I guess it’s a pretty useless notification though. If I was exposed more than a week ago, I’ve had plenty of time to spread it around. I went out to dinner with a friend Saturday, and to lunch on Sunday. That’s unusual for me, and I wouldn’t have done it if I thought I might have COVID.

The date shown is May 16, which was a Monday. Looking at my Day One entry for that day, I barely left the apartment, so I’m not sure how I could have been exposed on that day. It does say that it’s “estimated” though, so maybe it happened the next day, at work, in the office? (I work from home Mon, Wed, and Fri, and in the office Tue and Thu.)

Oh well. I did an at-home COVID test this morning, just in case. It came back negative. At this point, I’m not even sure if I’m supposed to report a “near miss” to work or not.

Hurricane Ida, and Labor Day weekend stuff

It’s been a rough week here in Somerset County. Hurricane Ida hit us pretty hard. A house exploded just a few blocks from here, and a building collapsed right here on Main St. I’m fine. My apartment building is fine. (I suspect we had some flooding in the basement, based on the smell coming from down there, but that’s the landlord’s problem.) Peters Brook overflowed, so that caused a bunch of damage to homes near it. I walk along the Peters Brook Greenway quite often; I walked along it yesterday, and saw a lot of downed trees and other damage.

It’s Labor Day weekend. In a “normal” year, I might go into NYC today, but the Raritan Valley line is still shut down due to the storm. And, even if it was running, the Delta variant has dimmed my enthusiasm for NYC trips this summer. So I guess I’ll be spending the day relaxing at home. I’d like to go out and see Shang-Chi, but, again, my enthusiasm for sitting in an enclosed space for two hours with a bunch of strangers ain’t what it used to be.

The Tour of Somerville, which is usually held on Memorial Day, was moved to Labor Day this year due to the pandemic. I guess the original thought was that the pandemic would be over by Labor Day. Of course, that’s not the case. It might actually have been safer on Memorial Day. Despite the Delta variant, and the flood damage, they’re still carrying on with the race tomorrow. I’m not sure how great an idea that is, but there’s not much I can do about it. I’ll likely hole up in my apartment all day and watch from my window. I wonder what the crowd will be like this year. It’s hard to imagine it being anywhere near what it usually is, but it could still be pretty big.

On an unrelated note, I got an email recently detailing some changes coming to ComiXology. In a nutshell, it sounds like they’re basically going to be shutting down the ComiXology web store and integrating it into the regular Amazon site. That makes sense, and I’m surprised that it took them so long to get around to doing it. Amazon bought them in 2014, but they’ve continued running their own site, separate from Amazon. I merged my old ComiXology account with my Amazon account a long time ago, whenever they first enabled that, but it’s still been possible for people to use a separate ComiXology login. I think that’s going to stop being an option, at least if you want to purchase new books. There’s some coverage of this announcement at The Beat and Bleeding Cool. Also, there’s some discussion on reddit, including responses from official ComiXology support.

I may be spending some money at ComiXology this weekend. There’s a big DC Labor Day sale going on, with a bunch of graphic novels at $2.99. That includes all of the Sandman collections, which I’ve been thinking about buying. I’ve read the whole series, of course, but I don’t have all the original issues anymore, and I’ve been thinking about re-reading the series. (Oh, and the first part of the Sandman Audible adaptation is still free, for a while longer. The second part is coming out later this month. I bought the first part on MP3 CD some time ago, but I snagged the free Audible version too, since it’s convenient to have a copy in my Audible library.)

And as long as I’m talking about Neil Gaiman, I might as well mention that I started reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane yesterday. It’s good! I guess I’ll keep reading that today, as there doesn’t seem to be much else to do.

Temptation

I’ve now been in “fully-vaccinated” status for a few days. I still haven’t managed to talk myself into going out without a mask though. I almost tried doing my laundry today without a mask, but, well, I guess I’m not ready.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on social media for a lot of upcoming in-person events, and I’m starting to get kind of tempted. I haven’t committed to anything, but there’s a lot going on. Here’s a few examples:

  • Duke Farms is running a farmers market every Sunday through the summer. There’s a fair chance that I’ll head over there tomorrow. An outdoor farmers market isn’t much of a risk, of course. I went to the Bridgewater farmers market a few times last summer, but that’s been discontinued. And I don’t think they’re doing one here in Somerville this summer either.
  • There’s a walking tour tomorrow at Wallace House & Old Dutch Parsonage. I’ve managed to live in Somerville for around 25 years now, without ever actually visiting Wallace House. I should really go.
  • A friend texted me about the Immersive van Gogh thing that just started up in NYC. I guess there’s actually two of these things going on in NYC now, but I think the one I linked to is the better one. Both of these seem like they could be major tourist draws. I’d kind of like to go and see one. And since they have timed tickets, I guess I could see it without having to worry about too large a crowd. (I guess it depends on how many people the organizer chooses to try to cram in at once, and how well they manage entry and exit.)
  • Garden State Comic Fest is taking place this weekend, at the Jersey Gardens Mall in Elizabeth. I’ve gone to this in previous years, when it was held in Morristown. I’d be tempted to go this year, but I don’t really want to drive to Elizabeth. And I’m not really interested in any of their guests this year. Nor am I that interested in buying any comics or toys right now. But it’s worth noting that this is (as far as I can tell) the first (relatively) big comic con to be held in NJ since the start of the pandemic. When they first announced it, a few months back, I was really skeptical about it. But I guess it’s safe enough to go ahead with it now.
  • On a related note, but on a much larger scale, I got an email about NYCC this week. They’re going to go ahead with the con this year, in October, at the Javits, as usual. I’m really hopeful that COVID will be entirely under control by October, but I’m still worried that it won’t be. Tickets are going on sale soon, and I’d like to buy one, but I haven’t entirely talked myself into it yet.
  • I also just noticed that the NYCC folks are doing an online Metaverse thing from June 7-13. I should take a look at the panel schedule for that and see if there’s anything I want to watch. And they’re also launching a Metaverse Membership program which probably isn’t worth the cost, but might be worth looking into.
  • I haven’t been to a Somerset Patriots game since 2019. They’re now affiliated with the NY Yankees, so a lot has changed since the last time I saw them. Looking at this page on their site, it appears that the stadium is now open at 100% capacity, with masks not required. I guess I wouldn’t be too worried about that, since it’s outdoors. There’s a double-header today, with fireworks afterwards. I’d be a little tempted to go to that, if it wasn’t going to be 90ยบ out today.
  • Only semi-related to the rest of this stuff: The Centre Pompidou is going to open a satellite location in Jersey City, in 2024. That’s quite a ways off, but worth mentioning, I think. I saw the Centre Pompidou in Paris once, a long time ago, but only from the outside. I’d love to go back to Paris and actually see the inside of the museum. (We also missed out on the Louvre on that trip, due to a scheduling snafu, so that’s two Paris museums I need to go see someday.)

So that’s my list of tempting in-person events that are coming up in the near future. I’m still not committing to anything, but I’m starting to bookmark some interesting stuff and create some notes in Evernote. So, who knows, maybe there will be a few weekends this summer where I don’t spend the whole weekend in my apartment reading comics and watching TV.

Memorial Day 2021

It’s been a quiet Memorial Day weekend so far. It rained all day Saturday and Sunday, and Friday night, so that kept most people away from downtown. It’s looking nicer today, so maybe Main St will be a little busier. There’s no Tour of Somerville today, of course. It’s been rescheduled for Labor Day. Hopefully, that’ll work out OK. The race attracts people from all over the US, and even some international racers, and I’d hate to see it turn into a super-spreader event for whatever variants are floating around in September.

Downtown Somerville is planning on returning to a somewhat “normal” schedule of events for this summer. I’m not too enthusiastic about that, since I’ve been finding them more of an inconvenience/annoyance over the last few years. But hopefully this summer will be a little more subdued than recent pre-COVID summers.

As I mentioned in my last post, the NJ mask mandate is now (mostly) gone. I haven’t gotten much of a feel for how that’s working yet, since I stayed in almost all day Saturday and Sunday, due to the rain. I did go out to my local coffee shop, and found that they were about 50/50 on masks now, among both staff and patrons. I also went on a quick trip to ShopRite this morning, and found that nearly all patrons and employees were wearing masks. I still haven’t gone out without a mask, but I may try skipping it for my morning walk tomorrow and see how it feels. Tomorrow will be exactly two weeks since my second vaccine shot, so I’ll be officially fully vaccinated then.

Apple TV

Since it’s been raining all weekend, I’ve spent a lot of time in front of the TV. (I guess I could have been reading books or comics, but I didn’t really have the energy for that.) So I have a few more thoughts on my new Apple TV box.

First, I had some trouble figuring out how to deal with HDR. My TV uses a different set of video settings for HDR vs regular HD, and I found that stuff that displayed in HDR looked way too dark. The first issue is that the Apple TV, by default, is always in HDR mode, regardless of whether or not the content you’re showing is HDR. As mentioned in this article, you can fix that by going to Settings > Video and Audio > Match Content, and turning on Match Dynamic Range and Match Frame Rate. That keeps the TV in regular HD mode for regular HD content, so that fixes the problem for most content.

But for actual HDR content, I had to keep messing around. This article from Wired addresses the specific issue of HDR content looking too dark, and was helpful. In the end, the solution was to turn off the “energy saver” mode. I’d really been resisting making that change, because, well… I don’t want to waste energy. But it seems to be the only way to get a bright enough picture.

On the subject of the new Apple TV remote: I like it, but I had a little trouble figuring out some stuff. Here’s an article that explains some of the less obvious commands. Initially, I couldn’t figure out how to do the “rewind or fast forward 10 seconds” thing or the new “scrub” thing. The official Apple doc on this stuff is here.

There’s a fairly long review of the new Apple TV here. It’s worth reading (or at least skimming) if you’re thinking about buying one.

WordPress

I was going to add another section to this post, talking about some troubleshooting I had to do with WordPress on Saturday, but this thing has gone on long enough, so maybe that’ll be a subject for another day.