I was a smoker of 30+ years. I smoked a pack a day and, for a few years, I smoked two packs a day. Almost two and a half years ago, I tried an e-cigarette and I stopped smoking and started vaping. Millions of smokers try to quit every year and fail. They try patches and gum and drugs, but none of it works effectively. Electronic cigarettes, however, have been exceedingly effective in smoking cessation. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to regulate e-cigs and I’m not keen on kids getting into vaping because of the candy-flavored juices, but that’s no reason to let a small group of puritanical zealots smash the one industry that smokers can count on to quit into little bits. After all, you don’t use a sledge hammer to put in a thumb tack. If anything, the e-cig industry has been looking for regulation, but you have to understand vaping is NOT smoking. You can’t just apply the same laws that are applied to cigarettes.
I know, right. Seems insane, but it's true. It's been coming for some time now, but recent life events have moved up the time table, so I'm somewhat caught starting over again and being relieved that I've moved on. First of all, there's almost nothing wrong with WordPress. It's a fine platform and I've dedicated many years to knowing it inside and out (as much as any non-developer can, of course). I'm just done with it's unnecessary complexity and... lack of certain things.
Granted, I'm not entirely in love with the first season of Amazon's highly anticipated Clarkson, Hammond, and May vehicle (that's a pun), The Grand Tour, but it needs to breathe (that's a wine reference) somewhat before it starts to shine.
Day 1: Welcome To Uber, n00b
Went online and hung out near John Wayne. Within five minutes my phone started buzzing. I accepted the ride and was surprised to discover that I was being directed to the North side of the airport. I picked up my fare at a private building, likely a jet charter. It turns out that the destination was in Beverly Hills, 45 miles North. I asked her if the temperature was acceptable and offered her a charger for her phone. She had an iPhone, and I hadn't picked up a thunderbolt cable yet. She had her own, which I connected, and she thanked me. The rest of the trip was silent.
So, I gave up on Apple a few years ago and have no ragerts. Apple has simply lost the thread of late and Microsoft is the real innovator these days. For the record, Windows 10 is the bomb and is far more functional than Mac OS X. Regardless of my enthusiasm, however, my wife Rima still insists on using her dumb ass iPhone 5s and it's admittedly sweet 8MP camera. She takes a lot of images, and that takes up a lot of room. She needed to archive the images she had taken and make room for a few thousand more.
But, ahem... iOS only lets you delete images one at a time, or a bunch, but you have to select them manually. One. at. a. time. How annoying, and terrible UI/UX design. Jesus, Apple, I thought you guys were supposed to be awesome at this.
I wanted to write about Slack and my new project, The Human Family Foundation, but I landed on my admin page and was smacked in the face by my reality.
Emotionally, I’m about as drained as one can be, without simply keeling over dead. Spending day after day after day just being little more than alive, constantly searching for a solution that cost more than my heart can afford, is like a desiccant for my... me. I have these little fires in me somewhere, but I can never quite track them down. I know they’re burning and sometimes, on good days, I can even see a wisp or two of smoke, but then it’s gone. If I could just find one, I’d stoke the flames as high as I could.
On Monday morning, we'll need to check out of our hotel. That's significant because, after that, we don't currently have another place to go, though not for any lack of trying. Ever since I got my job at Mirantis a few years ago, and lost it a few months later due to a big shakeup in their ranks, I have been unable to find work. That leaves us on a fixed income of a few hundred short of $3,000. Considering the Extended Stay America we're about to end our relationship with costs us just short of $100 a night, the math isn't difficult to understand. Of course, we need the kitchen that the hotel provides, or our daughter would get sick all the time. She has terrible food allergies, which basically means she can't eat much of anything.