Tag: coronavirus

3 Days To The Village By The Lake

Rob SaysLeave a comment

white house near sea and mountains

3 days and counting.

I’m looking forward to seeing my Brothers, Vince and TJ. I’m looking foward to the meet up that we are having on Saturday the 26th when we will be meeting some fellow Men and having some food, some drinks, and maybe even a couple of cigars with these guys. It’s going to be a good time.

In other news, I was serious when I said that I was going to limit my activity and my time on Twitter and I meant it. It’s been nice being off of Twitter. I have more time to pursue other projects and my stress levels and my blood pressure has dropped quite a bit.

It’s a good thing I’ve taken time away from Twitter, learning my new MIDI controller so that I can start creating music has been a challenge to say the least. The device itself isn’t too hard to figure out, it’s 8 pads, 8 knobs, a joystick, and 25 keys of a keyboard with other assorted buttons that do different things. Pressing keys, turning knobs, and tapping pads isn’t too difficult.

The difficult part is getting the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that I use to interface and recognize the MIDI controller. I was hoping for something that would be a “drag and drop” type of interface where I could just throw “kits” and samples into the DAW and then assign them to the MIDI controller, and then I could just start to play and record.

That’s not what has happened so far. So far, I need to tell the DAW about each and every button, pad, and knob. Thank god I don’t need to do much of that for the keys. That part seems to be fairly straight forward. It’s been a challeng to say the least, and it has taken a lot of time to get things sorted out and working. I still haven’t got it all figured out at the time that I’m writing this. One thing I know though is, once I have everything sorted out and set, I’m saving the profiles so that I can use them without issue.

I’ve also been recording some “B-Roll” video footage to use in upcoming videos. I broke down and bought a decent stand for my phone so now I can set the phone up and use it to record different scenes and footage and not worry that it is going to fall or shake or any other sort of nonsense. Stay tuned to my YouTube channel for future videos to see some of this new and somewhat interesting video footage.

I also broke down and bought a couple of video games. One of them is called “Among Us” and is something that you play online. I’ve played it enough so far to understand the general movement and mechanics of it, now I’m excited to play with some other guys from the ‘Sphere and see where it goes.

It’ll be a good way to get some additional video footage for future projects at least.

I also bought an Atari 2600 “package” that has 100 video games on it. Some of them are the actual arcade versions from back in the day, and many others are from the Atari 2600 console days. I’ve been playing Asteroids from the old console days. Talk about absolutely shitty graphics compared to games today, but man, were they fun and simple to play. No weird button combos to do special moves, no extra controllers or levers to push or manipulate to execute different actions. It’s literally up, down, left, right, and shoot.

Those are the games that I played the most when I was young and it’s what I remember the most fondly even though I had the original Nintendo, the Atari Jaguar, the Playstation, the Playstation 2, and the Wii. Not that I didn’t enjoy the games that I had on each of those particular consoles, but it was the old Atari 2600 that I played the most and had the most games for.

I’m still wondering what the State of Utah is going to do over the next few days because we have had a spike in ‘Rona cases. Apparently we have had more cases in the last few days than we did when the bug first hit Utah and peaked out in July. I know most of these new cases are because the schools are back in session, both the elementary levels as well as the college levels, and that’s where the spike in cases are coming from.

It’ll be interesting to see if Utah is going to shut the schools down again and make the “kids” do everything remotely, or if they are going to suck it up and keep going. I’m hoping for the latter. What we don’t need is another “lockdown,” though. The mandatory mask mandate is still in effect, and is supposed to go on until the end of the year from what I’ve heard, and that’s bad enough.

A lot of other people are getting sick of it as well from what I’ve been seeing and many of them are not wearing masks when they are going about their day. When I think about it and remind myself, I tell those people “thanks for not wearing a mask,” and I mean it sincerely.

I’m sure I could get a lot of grief for this view, but I don’t care. Life goes on and I want to get on with my life, and not under this “new normal” bullshit that a lot of people are calling it.

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“Half.”

Rob SaysLeave a comment

blue toy car

Half.

That’s what my workforce has been reduced to since the beginning of our ordeal with the virus. Half. I don’t know if my work can reduce the workforce any more than they already have. If customers keep closing their doors to keep out the virus, there won’t be enough work to warrant keeping our doors open at some point. And there we are.

In other news, I’ve been working on a video for a couple of weeks now that I fully intend to finish and release, but with the latest turn of events with the earthquake and the virus, the video doesn’t seem to be very relevant right now. So I’m shelving it for the time being and I’m going to focus on other topics and other things. In a lot of ways, the video would not only seem to be irrelevant, but it almost smacks of cyber-bullying at this point. Kicking a person while they are down, while they might have it coming,  and would feel immensely gratifying, it would not be very challenging or very “honorable.” It would feel like, “Oh, that girl wanted to fight you, and so you did. And you won. Cool bro, but you beat up a girl.” She wanted it and she got it, but you beat up a girl. I hope that makes sense.

I find it interesting that some guys are talking about “women coming out of the woodwork on online dating apps” now that the plague is here. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, honestly I don’t know, I’m still not on dating apps and have no plans on getting back on them any time soon. Right now “dating” and even sex for the most part, has taken a back seat in my life. I’ve got bigger fish to fry at the moment.

My thoughts about the women showing up, if they are though? Good for the guys if they are. Keep in mind that we are just starting our ordeal with the virus. Women may be getting bored, but most likely they are frightened more than anything. Two or three weeks into a quarantine isn’t going to change their views or their natures. If anything, I think they are looking for reassurance right now. I think they are looking for someone to tell them that “everything will be okay.” Ladies, everything will be okay. There you go. We need to go a lot longer or have something even bigger and badder happen to really see honest change happen.

If the plague ended tomorrow and “Big Daddy Government” gave us the green light to go back to work and resume our everyday lives, women would go back to what they have been doing and what they have been taught to do over the last 50 years or so. Let’s not kid ourselves. I’m not saying don’t meet women for fun and sex, by all means, if that’s what you want, knock yourself out. But keep in mind if you are interacting with women during this time that they are adapting to their current environment at the moment, as well they should, but don’t delude yourselves into thinking that they’ve made any significant changes in their lives right now. Nature is still what it is.

It either takes a significant period of time to effect true and long lasting change, or it takes something that borders on the catastrophic to get there quickly. Working from home, not being able to go to the gym or to the bar, and runs on toilet paper isn’t it. Even losing a job, while that can be stressful, isn’t going to be that catalyst to effect a long term change. People talk about, “we are in hard times.” We haven’t even begun to experience hard times yet.

When the power becomes truly intermittent or goes out entirely, with no idea of when it comes back on, or if it does, that’s hard times. When the water stops running and the garbage piles up in the streets and the sanitation department is a distant memory, then we will be experiencing hard times. When you don’t know when you will eat next, or if you will eat again, that’s hard times. Not being able to sit down at your favorite fast food restaurant with your friends, and you can only pick up your food at the drive-up, that isn’t hard times.

When the semi-trucks stop delivering groceries to your supermarket and no one knows if or when they will deliver next, that’s hard times. We’re not there yet.

You’ve got internet, electricity, running clean water, guys picking up your trash, a working cellphone, working heat and air conditioning, and meals still readily available? Yeah, you haven’t hit hard times yet. Women are no different. You think they’ve “changed?”

Yeah, we aren’t there yet.

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Week Two Of The “Quarantine.”

Rob Says2 Comments

red and white signage

Week two of the quarantine is fully underway for my area. More businesses have shuttered their doors to ride out the virus. Less work to be done, which means the less demand for employees.

On a bright note, traffic and parking are still a dream. Even “rush hour” doesn’t have as heavy of traffic as it usually does. Getting home from work isn’t quite the chore that it was two weeks ago.

Part of me hopes that when this is all over, when the bug has come and gone, or we get immunity to it one way or another, that we will have changed. Changed in the sense that maybe society will wake up and realize that many jobs can be done from home and that the employees press that issue with their employer, thereby minimizing traffic and parking. Maybe the same could be said for schools as well. Maybe we don’t need so many buildings if the kids can all be homeschooled, or taught remotely.

But if things keep going the way they are going, I highly doubt it. Leaders from local up to the federal level have been talking about implementing martial law. Martial law shouldn’t even be an option. There shouldn’t even be a conversation about it, especially right now, at the beginning.

Yet here we are, leaders are throwing it around and the worst part is that there is a significant portion of the population that are not only embracing the idea of martial law, they are practically begging for it.

You realize that if martial law is implemented, you lose all of your civil liberties right? Do you really think that the powers that be, if given absolute power, would willingly give it back when it is no longer necessary? Hint: They won’t. They will always find a reason or a situation to keep it going. Even if that reason is, “Fuck you, I’m not giving it back.”

I’ve always been skeptical and even quite a bit cynical about society as a whole, but I’ve always wanted and tried to remain optimistic about it. These last two weeks have really opened my eyes. It’s only two weeks in, the “hard times” haven’t even begun yet. We’re not even into the first “inning.” This is only the “warm up,” a preview.

If we have people begging for martial law now, and we haven’t even begun to face hard times yet, what’s it going to be like in another two weeks or a month or more?

Socialism isn’t winning, it has won. So let’s not sugarcoat it and call it the fluffy word of  socialism. Let’s call it what it really is. It’s communism. That’s where we are going. And if we had had a democrat for a president, we would already be there by now.

We get what we deserve. As a society at large, it’s what we want apparently. So let’s bring on martial law so that “Big Daddy Government” can save us all from a bug and from ourselves. As a society we are proving that we can’t cut it without “adult supervision,” without our fucking hands being held.

There’s never been a time in my life until now that I truly despised society as a whole and I truly want to see it all burn. But here we are.

If we end up with martial law, we truly get what we deserve.

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