Category Archives: About Me

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.

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.

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.

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.

Return To MEL

Posted by anachostic on July 26, 2025 No comments

While I was rebuilding my blog post-by-post, I ran through some trip log posts I had made for drives to nearby areas looking for CDs. I thought I should revisit that idea. Last weekend, I woke up too late to get a good early start, so I planned for this week and this morning, off I went. This time I had less of a plan compared to my previous runs. My initial plan was to go to the flea market and some music stores. You know, just kind of ease back into it and see how I feel about making trips again.

The driving wasn’t bad. Took the beater car so it was loud and rough, but familiar and still comfortable. Traffic wasn’t really bad at all. Got to the flea market maybe 30 mins after opening time and the market parking lot was a little eerily empty. Overall, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience. I hadn’t been to Melbourne for 3 years. But I have been to flea markets in Daytona and one up north of me and it’s the same in all of them. Hold on, let’s have this discussion at the end.

I walked all the rows and there were some CD sellers there, but one was not open, and I remember they weren’t open the last time I was there years ago. So weird. And of all the others I looked at, I didn’t buy anything new, just some dupes that I plan on comparing on relative waves (something else I want to get back to). So overall, not really productive. And it was hot. It’s been really really hot this year. I don’t want to really go outside anymore it’s so bad.

So after that flea market, I did a search for music stores and found one not far away. When I got there I recalled being there years ago. Good for them that they’re still around. I ended up buying 4/$10 of new stuff. Nothing valuable, mostly just collection filler. So that wasn’t unpleasant (except for the running and screaming kids who would be scolded half-heartedly by their dad, who just wanted to buy some records – priorities!). And with that done, I located my standard roadtrip lunch – Carrabbas. And with that done, I was just ready to get back home.

And on the drive back, I had a lot of time to reflect on the flea market situation. It feels like, for about 10 years now, going to a flea market is just… offensive. I’m talking specifically about Trump merch dominating the entire place. Now don’t get me wrong, I know flea markets have always been a little offensive. It was like a Super Spencers. You could get bongs and bowls, switchblade knives, and signs that say, "Don’t like it? Suck my dick." and "All white is all right" But even with all that nonsense, there was a sense that people would buy that stuff, and maybe they really were the lowlifes that actually liked and thought that way. But you also felt assured that they would do their bad stuff with their bad friends in their bad backyards and they would still be upstanding, presentable people in public areas. But since that taboo has been shattered and that mask has come off, it seems being a racist or an asshole is just an American trait now. There’s no shame in holding those values. In fact, judging by the merchandising, it’s celebrated. And that is just so saddening.

And I have a less obvious observation on this as well. Flea markets used to be sort of a commoner’s market. People might sell their old belongings, flip or resell stuff, offer services or even do some retail sales. But there’s something different about the Trump merchers. I mean, that’s all they do. That’s a really specific thing to be selling and the customer base is pretty well set in stone. On the way to Carrabbas, I saw a dedicated trailer set up in a parking lot selling merch. What’s the lifespan for that business?

While it would be easy to poke fun or simply call these merchants stupid, are they stupid? I don’t think so. I think they’re predatory. They’re opportunists and they know who they’re taking money from. In a way, they are like drug dealers. And they’re feeding an addiction of hatred. They moved into the flea market like pawn shops and vape store move into distressed communities. And they’ve taken over.

And it’s been the same at all the flea markets I’ve been to (except for the Hispanic flea markets – go figure).

Just A Reminder

Posted by anachostic on July 20, 2025 No comments

The site is back up after nearly 5800 hours of downtime. Good job!

So

Posted by anachostic on July 16, 2025 No comments

So, that was quite a while.

The short story is that my web server had a failed hard drive back in… let’s see… according to Amazon, it was at the end of November. The funny thing is it’s kind of an annual tradition for me to review and update my website at the end of the year. Last year wasn’t much different, except the update was all new hardware and no backup.

The no backup part is partially true. I did not have a backup stored of my WordPress database, which held my posts, but I would never leave myself completely lost. I use Live Writer to publish all my posts, and it keeps a local copy of the post on my computer. So all I had to do was repost all my old posts. Piece of cake.

However, I was not in the mood for cake. And I was even less in the mood for the full meal of setting up the web server, installing and configuring WordPress from scratch, and all that extra that goes along with it. At the time, I was kind of figuring myself out again and wasn’t sure I wanted to interact with anyone or put myself out anywhere.

That recovery took about half a year and then it was a matter of getting the motivation to work on the server. Over a month’s time, I slowly got things working and every roadblock made me reconsider putting in the effort. But one thing I’ve learned over my whole life is that personal deadlines are self-imposed. And further, it doesn’t really matter. This is not some fountain of knowledge that the world needs to have available as soon as possible and at all times. So, I worked on it when I felt like it and stopped when it wasn’t fun anymore. I’ve heard runners call this, "Jeffing".

And once the server was up and running, then rebuilding the sites with themes and whatnot, it was a matter of republishing my posts. 1,100+ posts, each loaded up in Live Writer, links and pictures corrected (because linked images disappear on the Internet, you know), and published to the server. That was at least a week of Jeffing.

And now finally, it’s ready to go live. I’m sure I’ll find a few other things that need addressed over the coming days, weeks, and months, but there will be time to fix it.

And what does the future hold for new content? Well, now that we’re in an era where your citizenship could be at risk for your viewpoints, I think the postings may be much tamer than they probably should be. And I haven’t completely recovered from my feelings that I don’t want to really share or expose myself too much, so that will be slow going. But I probably have some drafts I can revisit, and walking the road of my entire blog’s history from beginning to present reminded me of what I used to discuss and what can be followed-up on. There’s always some news to comment on as well…

So, it’s been quite a while – 17 years. What’s an 8 month downtime in all that?

Tea, Lots Of It

Posted by anachostic on September 21, 2024 No comments

Throughout this blog, there is mention of Nestea, a brand of iced tea with which I have a long history. For many years now, I’ve been satisfied with the imported Canadian Nestea from Amazon. It ain’t cheap, but it’s the real deal.

Something else that I’ve recently kind of been obsessed with is seeing how long things last in my household. Being a household of one and not really having the unfortunate financial burdens of the younger generations, I buy the largest size of things to get the most product per ounce or whatever unit of measure it is. I figure, I’m going to use it all eventually and it’s not going to spoil, so if I buy something that will last a long long time, I just won’t have to go to the store as often.

So, I buy the 100ct of garbage bags, when I use one a week. I buy 350 dryer sheets when I do load once a week. I buy the bulk packs of soap and the largest shampoo I can find. The funny thing about doing this is that buy the time I repurchase an items, the branding design has usually changed and shrinkflation has also usually occurred. I’ll write the date I started using the product on the package with a sharpie. Just for note, I recetly found can get over 9 months out of the largest shampoo bottle.

But anyway, this is about tea. I’m not going to bother researching how long a canister of tea lasts me, because there’s really only one size and it’s whatever. It’s not something I’m going to shop for alternatives on. But I am going to measure something else. I do not make my tea to Nestea’s specifications. I make my tea light. And I mean really light. Like tea flavored water. So here’s the numbers after counting the number of servings I just made from my latest can.

A canister is reported to make 68 servings. I counted 154. I might have been able to scrape another out of it, but because of the constant absorption of moisture as the can is opened over and over, you have to use more mix at the end than at the beginning, and honestly, the quality isn’t as good. So 154 is close enough for my needs. So right off the bat, I’m getting double the servings, so I’m using half the recommended amount of mix.

But wait. I said I like my tea light. These servings on the can are 16oz glasses. I drink my tea in a 32oz beer stein (my teacup). So my servings are double the recommended as well. So I’m using a quarter of the recommended amount of mix. The hard math on this is: a canister will make 1,088oz of tea. I made 4,928oz of tea. I am using 22% of the recommended amount of mix.

Now, let’s look at the downsides to this. Each serving of Nestea has 31g of sugar, which is 31% of your recommended daily intake (how convenient). So you can drink like three glasses a day. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s not how recommended intake works. Just play along. So each of my servings is 6.8% of the recommended daily amount and I can drink four of my servings to match one of Nestea’s servings. So I can have 12 a day. How many do I drink? Well, I don’t think it’s 12. Could be more than 6, though.

And you probably think that’s bad, especially since I’m not in great health. But I’ll tell you something. When I worked in an office, I didn’t have Nestea there. I had Coke. And I drank lots of it. Not as much as my tea, because Coke is very heavy and my tea is like water, but still, a lot. And since I’ve been working at home for the last 3 years or so, my A1C has dropped significantly very likely due to this change in intake. So, there, it’s not bad, relatively speaking.

Anachostic