Author Archives: anachostic

Another Renewal

Posted by anachostic on September 9, 2025 No comments

I’m having sort of a forced vacation. At work, you’re only allowed to bank so many PTO days before you either have to use it or cash it out. So this week, I’m taking off. It wasn’t that long ago that I had taken another week off and that one was purely recovery from burnout. To summarize that week, I allowed myself to not do anything until Tuesday – which also included the weekend, so four recovery days of doing absolutely nothing. What actually happened is I didn’t leave the house until Thursday and even then, I didn’t do much for the rest of the time off. So I wasn’t really refreshed at the end, only recovered.

This week though, I actually have a plan. It’s nothing grandiose, but it is fairly significant. I’m refreshing my wardrobe and getting back to where I used to be. So here’s a short post on my history with fashion and the "eras" I’ve been through.

My Upbringing
Looking back, I can say I was raised pretty upper class, but clueless. Obviously, when things are bought for you, but never explained, you just sort of go with the flow and you get what you get. I wore a lot of designer label clothes, but I didn’t understand what any of it meant. My mom was definitely into high fashion and trends and whatnot, since she was in clubs with other high society women. Even if we were in a small town, we could drive to bigger cities to get clothes. I can’t say any of that time had much influence on me, but some of the brand names and labels might have stuck in my subconscious.

Young and Dumb – mid 20’s – mid 30’s
During this time I was living in a tiny town working minimum wage jobs. I didn’t have a lot of money and my primary shopping source was a closeout store in a neighboring town that would be similar to a TJ Maxx or Marshall’s. Even though my funds were limited, I wouldn’t buy any typical utilitarian clothes, what i chose always had to "speak to me" or capture my attention. I don’t think I always bought good things, and I didn’t always dress to impress. I had some favorites, but my fashion wasn’t intentional.

Stumbling into Professionalism 30’s – early 40’s
When I got my first professional job, the guy that brought me onboard actually had to have an intervention with me and explain that my dress had to change. He was already levels above me, wearing button down shirts, ties, sport jacket, etc. Tennis shoes – out. White socks – out. Stop it with the fanny pack, people are talking about you. So I ended up with polos, khakis, and loafers. That was pretty much my staples for that era. It was extremely bland and didn’t have a lot of room for expression.

Refinement – 40’s – 50
I started experimenting with dress shirts, learning the importance of undershirts, belts, and ties. My shoe collection bloomed. I primarily wore khaki’s but transitioned to jeans with dress shirts, after finding a brand of jeans that suited me. I would say I was 80% button down and 20% polo during this phase. It was probably the most confident I’d felt, fashion-wise. I owned two suits and a tuxedo and actually had occasions to wear them.

The Fall
And the last few years, I fell into an ultra-casual style, literally nothing but jeans (later, shorts), t-shits, white socks and tennis shoes. Instead of being refined and attracting attention that way, I wore shirts with silly and clever designs. It still engaged people, but it was labelling me as the "old guy with the shirts". And there’s nothing really wrong with that, I’m just sort of tired of it. I want to go back to where I used to be.

So
Today and tomorrow I’m spending the mornings clothes shopping. Some years ago I had purged my closet of all my dress shirts, since most of them didn’t fit anymore and I didn’t see myself wearing them anytime soon. So I had a couple dozen hangers to fill. After the first day, I got four button down and four polo shirts. Some are more outdoor-oriented, so I can use them for hiking and they’ll also fill the casual part of the spectrum.

I still have room for about 10 more shirts, maybe a couple more pants and I need fresh socks and I have to decide where I’m going as far as shoes. People really notice shoes. When I last changed from New Balance to a classic Reebok style, I had people pointing them out. Whether it was out of ridicule because it was cliché, I don’t know.

Because I have a natural curiosity and also a desire to do things correctly, I did a quick search online for "find my style". This is actually what prompted this post, so as usual, I’ve created a big lead in for what I really wanted to talk about. And my search landed me on a site that offered a quick quiz and an assessment. It was maybe six questions, asking me what shirts, pants, accessories, etc. I would choose from a small selection. And my result was labelled: "Old Money". I found this was as funny as it was accurate. So then I did a quick search for Old Money Aesthetic. And wouldn’t you fucking now, it’s current.

Apparently Gen Z wants this look. It’s a show of upscale living, even if they can’t really afford it. And the hilarious part to me is, I can afford it and I’m old. I am Old Money. But here’s the thing, I want to believe I have a pretty good sense of value. As the AI readers have pointed out, I value quality and am willing to spend to get it, but if I can recognize quality at a cheaper price, that’s just a bonus. And that’s kind of how my shopping went today. Total sticker shock looking at the original prices. Really? $70 for a pair of pants? $109 for a linen shirt? But after all the discounts and coupons at the outlets, I’m getting items for $15-$30 each. I suspect I’m not going to get to get lucky on shoes, and I’m prepared for that – they’re somewhat important.

But anyway, I think this is going to be really shocking to the people I work with every day who have only ever seen and known me in t shirts, coming back after a week off with a completely new style. A new style to them, but an old style to me. And that’s funny to me, because when I started the job, I also had (and continue to have) long hair, and no one at any prior job (except for my fast food days) has seen me in long hair. So it’s like two different versions of me switching around the details.

Living In Oz

Posted by anachostic on August 30, 2025 No comments

There’s something about me that I don’t bring up often here and don’t really mention to anyone in person. That is, the fact that I’m diabetic. One of the self-made ones, not one of the born ones. I’ve recently decided to describe it as having a long, abusive relationship with sugar. While thinking this post out, I had a lot of ranting and validation I wanted to say, but I’m ditching all that. The bottom line is, this condition doesn’t define who I am and I don’t let it stop me from being me.

That prelude out of the way, I’ve been on a cluster of medications to manage this condition for years now. I thought I had reached a point where I was satisfied, but it was not what my doctor was satisfied with. I steadfastly refused to begin insulin injections, and that was pretty much the final step that could be made. That is, until recently. After a lot of deliberation, I accepted that a GLP-1 med would be acceptable. And so we swapped out one of my meds for Ozempic.

Before I get into the details of my experience so far, I feel it’s worth saying that going on Ozempic gave me a little bit of guilt. It is a very high-profile drug, very headline-grabbing. It’s been tabloided as a quick fix cure for famous people to lose weight. It’s been hyped to the point of supply shortages, where only the rich people can get it and the ones who need it for actual diabetes are left short. So being associated with that whole thing is a little shameful. I never really feel I deserve any special treatment, especially with how I treat myself. But here I am, five weeks into treatment.

Oz has a unique feature in that it slows the emptying of your stomach, so you feel full longer. That is how it achieves the weight loss. My doc said I need to lose weight, but I didn’t believe so. I’ve been hovering around 200lbs for years and while, yeah, I do have a gut, I’m not what I would call obese. And I’m generally pretty body-positive, so I’m not ashamed of how I look, and losing a lot of weight by taking a drug that rich and famous people take to lose weight is not what I’m about. I’d rather be somewhat fat.

I said that I’d been maintaining my weight for a long time. And that’s despite the diet I was keeping. Prior to my first dose, I would consume a full bag of pretzels each day. That’s about 10 servings, 1200 calories. And on top of that, I would have a couple packs of peanut butter crackers, sometimes a small bag of gummy bears, and my typical morning apple and portion of carrots. Lunch would be the same as ever, a small pizza or a burger meal. Dinner, could be whatever. This was a routine. And balanced with the exercise I was doing, everything seemed stable.

I took my first .25ml dose on a Sunday morning and assumed nothing would immediately change since it’d need to get into my body, and I was correct. But Monday morning, everything did change. Like my experience with the SSRI, Ozempic is literally magic.

I did not snack. AT ALL. I did not open a bag of pretzels. I did not eat any crackers. I ate my morning apple, but didn’t eat any carrots. Lunch came and I could only eat half of my normal amount. Dinner came and again, less than half before I was full. And as others on Oz have said, I didn’t even have to eat. I wasn’t hungry. I only ate because these feeding times were a strict routine for me to get out of the house.

As the days and weeks went on, this pattern became the norm. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t exactly nauseous, but I didn’t feel good. Food wasn’t appealing. I didn’t get any increase in energy, I only got lethargy. Today, as I write this, I’ve spent more time lying down than up and around. This isn’t the utopia it was supposed to be.

Some days are better than others. Today just happens to be a worse than normal day. I can still get out and hike on good days. Some days a meal can be satisfying. But right now, it feels like I’m holding out for some payoff. I’ve lost 12 pounds at my last weighing, but I won’t know the effect on my guiding star, the A1C, for another couple months.

I’ve searched before for Ozempic malnutrition and that does appear to be a thing. While the core of my diet isn’t super heathy, the cuts to my diet have all been useless calories. But they were a massive source of carbs which gave me energy – the energy I am severely lacking right now. And this goes back to something I’ve repeated multiple times here in my blog, why live a long life in misery? If you’re not happy, why are you living? I’ve got like 10 bags of pretzels in my cabinet that have expired because I haven’t opened any in over a month.

I’m going to wrap up this post and go lay back down.

Gen-Z NPCs

Posted by anachostic on August 28, 2025 No comments

The Gen-Z Stare has gotten plenty of press and mixed reactions from people who either say they’ve never seen it or they always see it. I was in the former camp, but today I just had my second instance. The first one just had me rolling my eyes, the second one infuriated me for no real reason. So here I am, trying to work it out.

These cases I’ve experienced, aren’t exactly in line with the "stare", I would just generally call them disengagement. In the first instance, I was at a Burger King waiting to order and the one kid there (because understaffing is chronic everywhere) was doing a dozen other things and when he was finally available, he just walked up to the register, punched in a few things, and looked at me. I understood that this was my prompt to begin ordering. It’s probably the closest thing to the stare I’ve gotten, but in most reports, the stare is in response to an initial interaction. This was just a non-existent greeting.

The second example was at McD’s drive thru where I was waiting for food. The kid bringing the food to me was glued to their phone screen, walked up beside my door and just sort of lowered the bag towards me. I took the bag, said thank you, and they just walked away, still staring at their phone screen. A robot would have had more personality. And that’s the one that pissed me off. Maybe I was hangry.

So on the drive home, I thought of rationalities. These are both fast food workers and you know, why should they care one bit about their jobs? Maybe this has come about as the end result of corporate abuse? Maybe this is a chicken and egg thing. Who gave up first – the company stopped treating employees as humans, or employees stopped acting like humans at work? My guess would be that it’s probably companies that started it, but after thinking about the progression of how things used to be to how they are, it didn’t seem to fit that well. The problem is, it shouldn’t matter that they don’t care about their jobs, they don’t care about other people.

Most articles about the Gen-Z stare talk about the stunted social skills that are the result of the pandemic, where everyone had to be locked inside and didn’t have any face-to-face social interaction. That has some weight, but really, we weren’t locked down for years on end. Less than a year, maybe?

Some articles, and these are the ones I’m coming to think have it right, are the ones that say that Gen-Z is disconnected from society because of constant screen interaction. To them, people in real life are no different than people on their screens. They don’t talk to people on their screens, they just consume whatever is happening. In this regard, they’re like NPCs – non-player characters – just going through life experiencing what life has to offer whenever it’s available. or maybe I have that backwards. Maybe they see everyone else in the world as NPCs. Regardless, it’s like they’re playing some video game. And some of the other behaviors seem to bear this theory out. The lack of understanding of consequences, the lack of empathy. If GenX were the kings of apathy, their offspring are heirs supreme.

Here’s my take. There is a protocol that has to be followed and Gen-Z is not following the protocol. When we developed computers and built them to communicate, we patterned it off of we humans communicate. It’s not hard, it just involves greeting the other computer/person and prompting for a response. These prompts and responses make communication efficient, predictable, and accurate. If a computer connects to another computer and doesn’t get any prompt or any response, that’s a dead connection and the computer disconnects. If you call someone and no one says hello, you assume the line is dead and hang up. And wouldn’t you believe it, there are anecdotal reports of this happening when you call a zoomer.

So, are we living in a simulation? Some of us seem to be.

What Do The Robots Think?

Posted by anachostic on August 23, 2025 No comments

If you weren’t aware, I have a blog and post on it every once in a while. Every one in a while over a very long while. And I don’t have any metrics or analysis trackers or cookies or other bullshit (outside of what’s the standard WordPress default) – you don’t deserve that. I have comments disabled and I don’t solicit feedback from anything I’ve written – I don’t deserve that. So that leaves me with really no idea how my writing "lands" with people.

But, a recent technological development has created fake people that can actually provide you with somewhat constructive feedback. They call it Artificial Intelligence. It’s creepy shit. And also, sometimes hilarious. Also, occasionally insightful. One day I had the idea that I should ask the fake people what they think of my blog. Of course, I don’t want them to think I’m fishing for compliments or anything, so I just ask them anonymously. Starting with an innocent question like "If you look at the blog, anachostic.700cb.net, what assumptions could you make about the author?" And, like all AI chatbots, they don’t want to stop talking, so they provide you lots of canned prompts to continue digging deeper. And "deep" is about six inches for these silicon analysts. (insert Oh My! Takai meme here)

I tried both Copilot and uh… what’s Google’s? Oh yeah, Gemini. Both had the same limitations and both generally said the same things in different ways. The limitations for both were how much they could actually access on my blog. Both seemed to be limited to pages they had already indexed, which in both cases, was probably no more than five posts, out of the (maybe) hundreds I have. What this resulted in was trying to glean as much information out of a very small source of data, and that means that they repeated themselves over and over again.

AI is well known for being overwhelmingly positive, so it’s no surprise they had no criticisms about anything I said or about my perceived personality. Despite that, they both seemed to pick up on the tone of the blog correctly, as well as the recurring themes and some of my motivations. Flattering, but I don’t take anything a machine says as an absolute truth, only as a guide or a pointer to find the truth myself.

Copilot was definitely more umm, emotional about how it presented its findings, where Gemini was more basic explanations. They both liked to use the word "authenticity" in their reports. Gemini made some very strange comparisons that didn’t make a lot of sense when trying to figure out the meaning of what I was writing about and that seemed based on the limited amount of data it had to work from. When all you know is I have a hammer, everything is related to hammers, somehow. Copilot got heavy into my style of writing, pointing out cynicism and sarcasm, talking big about my attempts to make an "authentic" impression. Copilot actually went so far as to break my blog down into "eras", which conveniently coincided with the few posts it knew from different time periods.

I specifically asked Gemini for criticisms about the blog and one comment was "As a personal blog, there is no marketing or business agenda behind the posts." Oh, well fuck me, then. It went on to soften that by saying that it might not be expected from a personal blog, but still, that hustle culture. Gemini, if you had more post data available, you’d know that I despise monetizing your life.

Overall, I’m fairly satisfied that if the reports they are giving are consistent with how a general viewership would read my trash, I’m doing things just how I want to. Now, once they index this page, I wonder if they will change their minds.

To SAV

Posted by anachostic on August 17, 2025 No comments

After my last disappointing flea market trip, I started thinking maybe I shouldn’t be so limited in where I go. That thought led to a search for the biggest flea markets in GA. Of the ones in the results, the most promising were in Macon and Savannah. Each was about 5 hrs away, so I filed it under "someday". As the week went on, that kind of became "maybe", and by Thursday, I was probably about 50/50 on whether to do it or not.

Friday, I made the choice that yes, I’d go up to Savannah after work, stay overnight, hit the flea market in the morning, some shops in the afternoon, and come back home. I booked a room, packed a bag (which highlights that I need an even smaller travel bag for literal overnighters), took the car cover off the TourX and steeled myself for the drive.

At 5 hrs, the trip isn’t the worst I’ve ever done. I’ve driven to Atlanta before, which is 8 hrs, and decades ago, I drove down from PA, which was probably 14 hrs. But, like many other things, I’ve quite out of practice, so it remained to be seen how I would fare.

The drive up was fairly uneventful. Unfortunately, the TourX had been sitting idle for a few months and the tire pressure was low, so I had to stare at a low pressure warning for most of the trip. I did have to stop for gas on the way up and also had a small stop for McD’s for sustenance. BTW, the McD’s was really good, but since I don’t eat near as much as I used to, I couldn’t really enjoy it.

I got to the hotel right on time, at 10:00, and climbed into bed. It was already an hour past my normal bedtime. And sleep, I did not. I didn’t pack a melatonin pill, so I blame that. The hours went by with eyes closed, body fairly relaxed, but no sleep. I tried all my usual tricks for getting to a sleepy state and none worked. At around midnight I got the (probably to be expected) loud fuckers down the hall. I don’t mean these were just jerks being loud, I’m talking about loud fucking. Like, does anyone know that real sex is not always like a porno? And even if it is – more power to you – that you don’t have to turn it up to 11 when you’re away from home? Luckily, unlike porn which goes on for an hour, this couple was more realistic in duration. I eventually got some sleep in the early morning hours.

Despite the poor sleep, I didn’t wake up exhausted. I checked out, got some breakfast, and paid for some air in the tires. Something curious that I wonder if it’s going to cause me a lot of trouble in the future is that the air pump had a lot of condensation in the air line. Like enough that it was spraying water vapor. I didn’t notice that until I had filled up two tires. I wonder how much water is rolling around in the tires now.

So anyway, off to the flea market. A quick summary is that it was smaller than I expected. The layout was like a series of buildings and outbuildings linked together. I did find one CD guy and I bought some things at the crystal place. CD guy recommended a music store a little ways away, so that was my next stop. It’s about noon at this point.

I arrive at the shop’s location and well, it doesn’t look like I’m going to get to go there. In this town, this is like a downtown area with residential homes right off the main street. None of the houses have driveways, so everyone has to park on the street. There’s NO parking anywhere. Downtown shops have no parking lots, just street parking. I did spy a paid parking lot a block away, but when I got there, the entrance was blocked by a FedEx truck that I guess was making a delivery somewhere. He blocked the parking lot entrance because there was literally no where else to stop – it was the only open area on the street other than cars up and down the street on both sides. I wasn’t going to fight it. I just gave up.

Instead I decided to go to the outlets, mostly because I was drenched in sweat from the flea market and I didn’t bring a change of shirt. I picked up a couple shirts from Columbia and then set the destination for home. I don’t know why, but sometimes, my car and phone do not want to cooperate with Android Auto and it just disconnects and reconnects over and over. Such was the case on the drive back. I had to briefly check the map to see what my next waypoint was and then let it crash.

The drive home was much worse, not because of traffic, but the on and off downpours of rain. But I did make it home only a shade over 24 hours after I left. A whirlwind trip for a couple of CDs, shirts, and rocks.

Post-trip thoughts: After my last rant about flea markets in FL, I only noticed long after I’d left that I didn’t see a single Trump merch booth in GA. I didn’t see any flags, banners, signs, or anything. Now I know GA in general is not a fan, but it really drove the point home that FL is full of the dumbest, bottom-feeding, most hateful, offensive, griftable people anywhere. That was my big takeaway from the trip is that things are better outside of FL.

The other noteworthy thing is NULL’s handling of my 24hr absence. More like his lack of handling it. I came back to poop on the carpet, puke on the floor, and one of my shoes dragged across the room to be beside his bed. He does seem to have separation anxiety.

The Epidemic Of Authenticity

Posted by anachostic on August 10, 2025 No comments

"Just be yourself!" It’s the guidance given to people throughout all modern times. Whether it’s dating advice, a job interview, first day of school, or anything involving being social, the long-held wisdom is that it’s best to be honest and true; be yourself; don’t be fake. The advice is well-meaning. It’s useful to not pretend or lie or be fake, because you can’t keep that lie up forever. Eventually you’ll be found out and it will be harder to dig yourself out of that mess. The follow-up to this advice was usually, "Never apologize for being yourself."

This is what is also termed "authenticity" – you presenting your authentic self to the world. Authenticity is also used a lot for high-profile people. Do they walk the walk or just talk the talk? (Not sure if that’s a proper saying, but it fits here). And if these people don’t present a level of authenticity, the accusation is "fakeness". "They’re so fake!" And that was considered pretty brutal, because if you can’t be respected, why are you a high-profile person, unless your goal is infamy?

When the Internet came about, there was a complete epidemic of inauthenticity. where people could say and do things they would never normally do just because the Internet gave them anonymity. There was a lot of hand-wringing and worry about how normally upstanding citizens were behaving badly on the Internet and what can we do about it. Oddly, the advice, "just be yourself" was not really offered. Because, in the online world, people can take on a persona, and that persona is being authentic to itself. It’s just that the persona is a terrible person. To quote Billy Joel, "They’re the faces of a stranger, but we love to try them on." It’s like role-playing, just as a villain.

Well, I hate to say it, but all that analysis and explanation turned out to be wrong. It’s not role-playing. It was always about the anonymity, and it was always the authenticity. What’s different now is that the online world has become the real world, where anonymity doesn’t matter anymore.

if you look around there are a lot of people out there that are taking the advice of "just be yourself" and doing exactly that. They’re being horrible people. And they also listened to the secondary advice, "never apologize for being yourself" and that has actually become a greater mantra for how they live their lives. If you’re offended, that’s a you problem. Go ahead and try and cancel me, I have more supporters that cheer on my behavior than you do. Even if I don’t have more supporters, who needs you and your kind anyway?

When the stigma of being shunned and cast out means nothing, and there is no benefit to being a polite citizen of the world, where do we go as a society? What greater motivation can there be when fear of isolation means nothing? And within that question is the upsetting knowledge that it was the Internet that caused it all. What started as an opportunity for bad people to act out their inner desires individually, lead to a discovery of other like-minded malcontents. And after years of testing the boundaries, they’ve all decided they have numbers large enough that isolation means nothing. So, where do we go from here?

Bak Into It

Posted by anachostic on August 10, 2025 No comments

As part of my usual morning routine, I checked Woot today and saw they had Canelbaks today. And,as part of my usual purchasing routine, I can’t pass up a good deal on quality stuff. I mean, have you seen the prices of Camelbaks lately? WTF. Even the prices of reservoirs is like $35, so when Woot is selling a Camelbak for $30, I’m going to pause. Because that’s a good price. Like my mom was fond of saying, "they paid me to take it."

Let’s have a look at the existing family member and the soon to be family members. But first, let’s stretch the leg muscles out (more on that later).

Here’s the first one I bought – the Classic. Camelbak has gone through tons of design changes over the years and mine is like 15 years old. But this is the design I have, except in blue.

So the first problem I had with it, actually really the only problem I had with it, is that it had no storage. It has a little side zipper and room enough to hold maybe your keys. No wallet, no phone, no room at all.

And I was just getting into hiking at the time. I didn’t really know much about the different models and I wasn’t really keen on spending a lot of money on one of these new things, back then when they were the only hydration pack out there, they commanded a lot of money. I suspect I probably paid $60-75 bucks for this one. Probably retail at a sporting good store.

But I didn’t spend a lot of time with it. I moved on fairly quickly to its big brother.

The big brother is called the Rogue. Again, the design has changed over time, but again, this is the design that I have. It doesn’t look much different than the Classic, but it is. The lower part is a zipped pocket that holds a decent amount, and the top flap is also a pocket that holds even more, larger things, like a modern phone.

This one was good enough to use most everywhere and it has remained my go-to pack for riding. Again, I’m pretty sure I paid retail for this, in a physical store (so retro!). The details elude me. I probably justified it by saying the reservoirs were the same size, so it was just like buying a backup.

But around this time, I was getting into a relationship with someone who was pretty outdoor-savvy. She also had a Camelbak she’d used for many years. And hers was like full backpack sized, and she carried a lot of cool stuff that you might need for outdoors and for geocaching, which we were doing a lot.

I won’t say it was envy that made me upgrade, but it was the realization that having more on the trail was important and useful. Obviously, I didn’t want everything with me. We weren’t camping overnight, but more storage space would be welcome.

But I was also happy with what I had, so I just kept an eye out.

And after a short while, Woot came to my rescue. In May, 2015, they had a sale on… Camelbaks! And this one only cost me – once again – $30! this one is the Daystar 18, which is the "female" version of the Cloudwalker model. Something about the shoulder straps and boobs or whatever. It fits me fine and it is my current choice for hiking.

You can easily tell that has a lot more cargo capacity. This holds everything I need and still has lots of room to spare. My Frogg Toggs, whistle, compass, knives, multitools, maps, hat, whatever. If I need to take a fleece or if I end up shedding a fleece along the way, there’s room to hold it.

Like I said, this is my current choice for any hikes I make. And all three of these packs are holding up well. Maybe the Rogue is wearing out a little. The letters of the logo are pretty much rubbed off, but none of them have holes, so they’re all perfectly usable.

So let’s quickly meet the newcomers.

Here are the ones coming soon: The Arete 14, Arete 18, and another Classic Light. I expect the Arete 18 will have the same capacity of the Daystar, and the Arete 14 will be a possibly "just right" size, which will eliminate the extra unused space I have in the Daystar. Both of the Arete models are 50oz reservoirs, whereas every other Camelbak I own is 70oz. So it was a little calculated to get two 50’s, so they could share a reservoir should something happen to one. And so far, I have never drained a 70oz on a single hike, so it will be interesting to see if I can get by with a 50.

But what’s up with getting another Classic? I don’t like or use the one I have now. Well, part of it is to give the latest design a try. Part of it is the bright color, which would be useful when riding on the bike, and part of it is that all of these were $30/ea and I can’t get reservoirs for that price, so having an extra 70oz, with the new hydrolock design, even, is good, even if I hate the pack itself.

So what did I do to celebrate this purchase? Grabbed my Daystar and went on a hike. It’s been so brutally hot here I haven’t been outside doing much for months. Sometimes I could get in a couple miles after work if the weather wasn’t threatening, but this was a longer planned hike. Up to my local state park, purchase an annual pass – might as well, maybe the guilt of the money spent will make me go more – and get on one of their longer trails I hadn’t been on in years. It was mostly cloudy, which meant there was a chance of getting rained on briefly, but I lucked out. On the drive home, I saw other areas around did get rain. Awesome FL weather.

I got to try my new fitness band on the walk and quickly remembered what I hate about hiking with fitness bands. I wear a long-sleeve sunshirt for sun and bug protection. This shirt gets soaked in sweat fairly quickly. After all, they are designed to wick sweat. The sweat soaked sleeve rubs against the face of the band and the stupid thing thinks that I’m touching it to pause or end the workout. That has happened with every fitness band I’ve ever had. It’s not a new thing. So you just gotta roll up the sleeve to avoid contact. So annoying.

And the hike itself? Shorter than I thought (by a mile), and the recovery I expect to be longer than I thought (by a mile). I’m out of practice, but I still remember how to do it. I have the tools (with more tools on the way!) and progress shall be made.

Those Who Can, Do. Those Who Never Get The Chance, Can’t.

Posted by anachostic on August 5, 2025 No comments

In kind of a full-circle, or multiple full-circle thought at dinner tonight, I was thinking about consulting. The beginning of this train of thought was a consultant who had been hired by my employer to help up speed things up, because right now, things kinda suck. It’s not the first time that has happened at a job I’ve been at, and to some degree, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. There are people out there that have a lot of time to dedicate to a specific skill and they can get very good at it because they are not busy adding features and fixing bugs as requested by millions of users.

Me, with my very long career and plenty of experience had a little bit of skepticism about this guy. You know, I don’t know the guy at all. But duh, there’s this thing called the Internet, and if the guy is really as good as he should be, I would certainly be able to find him online. And that search pretty much shut me up. I found a few bio pages on him and his video channel where he discusses and demonstrates what he does. And while I had a pretty good gist of what was discussed in the first video I watched, it was still on topics that I had never heard of in my years of development. Never. But you, know, I would have loved to hear about them. It’s just that work and life got in the way.

And there’s reality number one for me. If you look around, you’ll find I have a blog for programming and tech stuff. I haven’t posted in it for a very long time. I’m just sort of out of the game. I thought maybe I could retire into consulting, but now I’m not so sure. Things haven’t stopped, but I haven’t been exploring like I used to. I still try new things, but I’m not pushing the envelope like I used to. And this consultant is like in a different realm of technique and troubleshooting.

So I’ve sort of made peace that I’m probably not cut out for that life. And I probably never was, because I’m not an entrepreneur anyway. I can’t run a business, I like doing the business. And also, as mentioned, I’m out of the game. This consultant is like 20 years younger than me. Back then, I was sort of doing the same thing, out on the edge, so it’s familiar to me in a nostalgic way as well. Ah, listen to the old man talking…

And that led me to other related thoughts. The people that I work with, who are also like 20 years younger than me, they aren’t like that consultant. Given the chance, I think a couple could be, but while they have age and the drive on their side, they are being held back by where they are and what they’re doing. They’re just programmers. And now I can sort of bring everything together here.

A lot of the techniques this consultant is using, we can’t use. We don’t have the permissions to do it. That’s just how it works for any reasonable security-minded corporation. Developers can’t be database administrators. They hire specialized database administrators for that job. But DBA’s aren’t developers, or aren’t skilled developers, and even if they were, they wouldn’t be touching the code at the company – that’s another security boundary. So you have developers and DBAs that each are good at what they do, but they aren’t allowed to touch each other’s areas, and to really make things work the best they can, you need people who can work in both. That’s what the consultant can do. And when he’s gone, we won’t have that anymore. And that’s kind of why we ended up in the position we are now. So while there’s no shame in hiring a consultant to point out how we can fix our problems, to not give us the capabilities to solve those kinds of problems in the future is a little sad.

Now back to the people who could do it. Young, go-getters, eager to learn. Well, they just can’t have that opportunity working here. Best-case scenario would be that they set up a home lab and experiment at home in their free time. But it’ll never compare to real-world stuff like what we do. Each job I’ve had presented a unique technical wrinkle that added to my skillset. Two jobs ago it was database replication to 45 sites across the country. My previous job had a massive database of half a billion images. Now this job has data magnitudes greater than anything else I’ve done, but the difference this time is, I can’t touch it. I can’t experiment with it. The best I can get out of the experience is optimizing database queries. I’ll never get to see how the databases are constructed or managed. I’ll never get to experiment on them to see if I can make them any better. I could never get to try the techniques the consultant is explaining in his videos. But this is how security-minded business is. And this is also what all my co-workers are limited to as well.

And looking at that from a wide view, it’s sort of fascinating how a top-rated consultant gets there. Because once a company gets big enough, the security and the segmentation of the teams becomes a requirement, so you can’t get that blended experience from that. You can get to a certain point in startups, in that explosive growth before they "go pro", but how many chances can you get at that in life? For some doing their best programming in a large company, it might be zero. For me, I got my chances at smaller (but still significant) environments, but now in the big leagues, I’ve been shut out.

Banding, Again

Posted by anachostic on August 3, 2025 No comments

During the blog’s offline era, I took on a new hobby: cycling. I say it’s a new hobby, but it’s really just a return to being a kid again. Let’s go ahead and discuss that before getting on to the titular topic.

I don’t exactly know when or why I decided that I wanted to start riding a bike again. I had tried this a while ago with a clearance bike from Sears many years ago and that turned out to be terrible. I had a road bike many years before that and never really liked it. I hadn’t ridden in any appreciable amount for maybe 30 years? But I just decided that I wanted to do it again.

And after the road bike dislike and the cheap mountain bike experience, I was sort of lost. What kind of bike do I want? I want the most simple bike you can get. No fancy gears, brakes, or features, just a bike. This is exactly what beach cruiser bikes are, but man, I did not see myself riding one of those. And doing some research, I learned that adult-sized BMX bikes were now a reality. I found my bike.

After removing all the gaudy stickers from it, I rode that bike everywhere. Well, I rode it everywhere that I could drive it so I could ride it. Suburban nonsense, amirite? And that was really good for me. It made me happy. But, like every hobby of mine, it soon becomes not enough. I wanted more. This bike was great for riding the paved trails that were available, but trails leading into the woods kept beckoning me. My tires are road tires and the one time I tried riding in my back yard, I ended up crashing down on my side when the tires just slid out under me. So then what? Upgrade time?

Hell no. You should know me by now. You never get rid of anything. That leads to regret. The answer is another bike. And after research, I chose a gravel bike, which is midway between a mountain bike and a road bike. Not perfect for either, but can do both acceptably. And taking advice from the girl at my local bike shop, I found a deal on FB marketplace for a high-quality gravel bike.

And that was fun, until summer arrived. It’s been a couple months now that I can barely go outside at all, much less consider expending the energy to bike on a trail, paved or god forbid, unpaved. But someday, that’s going to change. And when that happens, I hope to be ready with some additional data collection. I’m talking about a new fitness band.

At lunch today, I wondered when I last had a fitness tracker. And my blog indicates it was a little over six years ago. And Amazon confirms that I had spent a little over $50 on a cheap Chinese fitness tracker. Well, times have changed and that same fitness tracker is now $10 more, but who would want to buy that same model as trackers have advanced a lot in 6 years.

Hmmm. You know, I did consider getting a band when I started biking, but at that time there was a huge tariff scare and when I researched prices, they were all really high. Not that ANYTHING is any better now, but an Amazon price tracker showed that a device with which I would be happy dropped its price nearly 50% in the last month – to a ridiculous $29. I mean, what’s the argument to not pick up one of the highest rated "budget" (I’d still just say cheap) fitness trackers at that price? And that’ll be here tomorrow.

It won’t go completely to waste. Sometimes I do get in a short hike when I can. None of that 8 mile shit right now. This weather is good for maybe 3 miles. And the tracker can still gather some data from that. I’m curious about my sleep, which I feel has kind of sucked lately. And the heart rate and SpO2 and "stress tracker" (?) will be useful at some level.

Rest easy lads, you’ll be on the road again sometime.

The Cookie Killers

Posted by anachostic on July 30, 2025 No comments

I read in the news today (oh boy) about a new thing called nitazenes which are magnitudes more deadly than fentanyl. This news sort of sucks the wind out of a post I had planned to make long, long ago on fentanyl, but I guess the story is still the same. So now’s the time to write it.

When you hear stories about overdoses on street drugs – copycat pharmaceutical drugs especially – because they’ve been cut with something much stronger, like fentanyl, the question comes up: why are drug dealers so stupid? Why kill off your customers? And while in most cases, the dealer isn’t the drug maker, you can still point the finger up the ladder: why are you killing your customers? And it’s not that they want to, they really don’t. They’re just making cookies.

If you read much of my blog, you should know I don’t cook at home. I eat out for nearly every meal. But, I can cook. You know, I can do the basics. And another basic that I can do – and I do it well, I might add – is chocolate chip cookies. So I could also be a drug maker, I suppose. And the results would likely be the same.

Let’s look at the cookie making process. If you haven’t made cookies before, it’s quite simple. Put some flour, baking soda, sugar, more sugar, eggs, and butter in a bowl and use a spoon to mix it all up. Then you add chocolate chips and mix them in. Then you portion them out and cook them. That’s really it. Even I can do that.

So let’s say that customer research has found that 7 chocolate chips is the perfect number of chips to have in a cookie. Companies that specialize in cookie making will have spent a lot of money on equipment that ensures that every cookie has 7 chips in it. No more, no less. And they will have quality control to ensure that remains true. Because when you’re selling cookies, your customers demand perfection because they are spending their hard earned dollars with your company.

But my cookies? You might have some cookies that have 7 chips, or 5, or 3, or some might have some extra, like 9 or even 12. Additionally, some cookies might have a extra mix of butter in them, which is always a treat. That’s part of the charm of homemade cookies.

The problem with drugs is, 5 chips might be a little disappointing, but 9 chips will kill you. And to be sure, I didn’t want to kill you. That’s just how the cookie crumbles.

Anachostic