Rose is Rose. Hall is Famous. Tech is shit.
The original Gertrude Stein quote is not "A rose is a rose is a rose," although she apparently said it that way on other occasions.
I know more about that rose than I do about this one:
It was just, well, there, stuck to a street sign near our house, as I finished walking the dog yesterday morning. The "why" of it may be a mystery, but the "when" naturally resonated. Yesterday marked 35 years since a just as cold, but just as sunny, morning on Jones Beach when I proposed to Eleanor. It ended a weekend I've posted about before. We'd gone to Long Island for the wedding of two law school friends, who, not surprisingly, posted about their 35th wedding anniversary the day before. I'd already decided to pop the question on that trip, but hadn't decided on exactly when and where. It was my dear sister Sandy who recommended I pass on anything big and blingy on our night that weekend in Da City, where she treated us with tickets to an off-Broadway performance of Little Shop of Horrors and Eleanor and I visited the Twin Towers together for the first and last time.
Take her to Jones Beach, Sandy said, it's pretty down there in the wintertime.
Indeed it was. So that mystery rose became the talisman of this year's remembrance of it. This morning, after a night's snow, it looked a little chillier, but it was still holding on:
----
We shall not speak of the weather the night before I took that first picture, for it was quite windy in nearby Orchard Park, and the Bills put on a pitiful effort in the elements against our arch division rivals from New England. The Sabres are continuing to suck even more consistently. Yet it's baseball that brought the good news since I was last here, despite it being the middle of its off-season and there being a good chance of the season not turning back on in time for Opening Day 2022; the millionaire players and billionaire owners are fighting again. No, that good news came from Cooperstown, where an original Mets player and first championship Mets manager finally got his call to the Hall of Fame. It came just short of 50 years from his sad and sudden death just before the start of the 1972 baseball season, and after numerous near-misses. One of them, I argued seven Decembers ago when he was last on the ballot, wasn't a near miss at all but a clear case of voter fraud. No matter now, though, for the Doors of Fame finally opened and let in Gil Hodges, Senior, in time for his Junior son and his still-ticking wife Joan to revel in the news. My prayer is his widow will still be with us for the induction in July.
She, if she remains a living she, may be joined by any number of more recent players not yet voted on by writers; by the Twin Teammates Kaat and Oliva, both in their 80s and the only living Golden Agers to have been voted in this weekend; and by descendants of several others, who, like Gil, were sadly overlooked on previous ballots if they were even ever named on them.
The biggest longtime shames being rectified include Negro League legend Buck O'Neil, who played before the color barrier was broken and scouted many future major leaguers of color, who he will finally join on the walls of the Hall; and Minnie Minoso, a Cuban-born player who faced two barriers for his early career- the outright pre-Robinson ban and then "sorry we already have a Negro" quotas that pervaded in the 50s and even into my lifetime for another New England team. Minoso finally made the bigs and even played in single games in the 70s and 80s; his plaque will make those of the new and current Mets there shine even bronzier.
----
I end this post hoping it will post, because tech has not been kind to me today.
Since early this morning, a recent occasional problem has become Every Occasion: I've got a bug in my bank. Because every. Stinking. TIME I try to log into M&T to check my business account transactions, it doesn't recognize SOMETHING and challenges me with a "Let’s verify your identity" nag. I'm sending from the same OS, browser and IP address every time. I can log out and back in a second later and still get challenged.
Their only option to prove I'm me is by my entering a two-factor code that they send via email to my work account. It only takes a minute to receive and enter it, but it's still an annoyance because I try to turn off my office email at 5:00 every day and all weekend, so I don't get 24/7 stress.
I'm guessing it's that their system doesn't recognize Windows 11 yet, or something like that. There's no "click here to trust this browser if you're not in a fucking airport" option, and no option other than the email. There IS a "save userID" ticky to tick, but it doesn't seem to matter; I get the challenge whether it's checked or not.
Oh, and this last time they offered me a survey. They did not want to offer me a survey. After down-Yelping the shit out of them on everything connected to login, they asked if I had any suggestions to improve their "online experience." Not wanting the FBI at my door, I went classy and just said,
LEARN TO CODE.
At least that was the problem I knew about. I got to work early today for a court appearance and checked my office email for a dial-in code for the 9:30 hearing. They usually email from a uscourts dot gov account a week or so ahead. No such email. In fact, I suddenly realized, NO such emails from that court all week. I used a workaround to find it- cost me a whole dime!- but I couldn't figure out why I was suddenly being ghosted by my major source of case information. Going in and manually checking every case where I know I've filed something, plus hundreds of others where a court or opponent might have? Those ten-cent pieces add up!
Making it worse for me? I finally filed a major-for-me case this afternoon, after finally corralling all needed information and signatures on it earlier in the week. It will generate a lot of initial activity and notices, and none of the first seven of them came through. Only my receipt for the filing fee did, and that is from a different dot-gov address.
Turns out the problem was with our lovely internet provider. We confirmed, two different ways, that the court was indeed sending the emails, but Roadrunner was rejecting them. Must be distracted by all that FREE BIRDSEED. I learned how to whitelist the site in question, and I've now gotten an email from the court on New Case, so hopefully that fixes it. Maybe there are more, but I still turn the damn thing off at the end of the day.
Because there's stuff to write about, wot I just did. And things we (or I) have watched or listened to, which will probably be the subject of the next post here. This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1677832.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
I know more about that rose than I do about this one:
It was just, well, there, stuck to a street sign near our house, as I finished walking the dog yesterday morning. The "why" of it may be a mystery, but the "when" naturally resonated. Yesterday marked 35 years since a just as cold, but just as sunny, morning on Jones Beach when I proposed to Eleanor. It ended a weekend I've posted about before. We'd gone to Long Island for the wedding of two law school friends, who, not surprisingly, posted about their 35th wedding anniversary the day before. I'd already decided to pop the question on that trip, but hadn't decided on exactly when and where. It was my dear sister Sandy who recommended I pass on anything big and blingy on our night that weekend in Da City, where she treated us with tickets to an off-Broadway performance of Little Shop of Horrors and Eleanor and I visited the Twin Towers together for the first and last time.
Take her to Jones Beach, Sandy said, it's pretty down there in the wintertime.
Indeed it was. So that mystery rose became the talisman of this year's remembrance of it. This morning, after a night's snow, it looked a little chillier, but it was still holding on:
----
We shall not speak of the weather the night before I took that first picture, for it was quite windy in nearby Orchard Park, and the Bills put on a pitiful effort in the elements against our arch division rivals from New England. The Sabres are continuing to suck even more consistently. Yet it's baseball that brought the good news since I was last here, despite it being the middle of its off-season and there being a good chance of the season not turning back on in time for Opening Day 2022; the millionaire players and billionaire owners are fighting again. No, that good news came from Cooperstown, where an original Mets player and first championship Mets manager finally got his call to the Hall of Fame. It came just short of 50 years from his sad and sudden death just before the start of the 1972 baseball season, and after numerous near-misses. One of them, I argued seven Decembers ago when he was last on the ballot, wasn't a near miss at all but a clear case of voter fraud. No matter now, though, for the Doors of Fame finally opened and let in Gil Hodges, Senior, in time for his Junior son and his still-ticking wife Joan to revel in the news. My prayer is his widow will still be with us for the induction in July.
She, if she remains a living she, may be joined by any number of more recent players not yet voted on by writers; by the Twin Teammates Kaat and Oliva, both in their 80s and the only living Golden Agers to have been voted in this weekend; and by descendants of several others, who, like Gil, were sadly overlooked on previous ballots if they were even ever named on them.
The biggest longtime shames being rectified include Negro League legend Buck O'Neil, who played before the color barrier was broken and scouted many future major leaguers of color, who he will finally join on the walls of the Hall; and Minnie Minoso, a Cuban-born player who faced two barriers for his early career- the outright pre-Robinson ban and then "sorry we already have a Negro" quotas that pervaded in the 50s and even into my lifetime for another New England team. Minoso finally made the bigs and even played in single games in the 70s and 80s; his plaque will make those of the new and current Mets there shine even bronzier.
----
I end this post hoping it will post, because tech has not been kind to me today.
Since early this morning, a recent occasional problem has become Every Occasion: I've got a bug in my bank. Because every. Stinking. TIME I try to log into M&T to check my business account transactions, it doesn't recognize SOMETHING and challenges me with a "Let’s verify your identity" nag. I'm sending from the same OS, browser and IP address every time. I can log out and back in a second later and still get challenged.
Their only option to prove I'm me is by my entering a two-factor code that they send via email to my work account. It only takes a minute to receive and enter it, but it's still an annoyance because I try to turn off my office email at 5:00 every day and all weekend, so I don't get 24/7 stress.
I'm guessing it's that their system doesn't recognize Windows 11 yet, or something like that. There's no "click here to trust this browser if you're not in a fucking airport" option, and no option other than the email. There IS a "save userID" ticky to tick, but it doesn't seem to matter; I get the challenge whether it's checked or not.
Oh, and this last time they offered me a survey. They did not want to offer me a survey. After down-Yelping the shit out of them on everything connected to login, they asked if I had any suggestions to improve their "online experience." Not wanting the FBI at my door, I went classy and just said,
LEARN TO CODE.
At least that was the problem I knew about. I got to work early today for a court appearance and checked my office email for a dial-in code for the 9:30 hearing. They usually email from a uscourts dot gov account a week or so ahead. No such email. In fact, I suddenly realized, NO such emails from that court all week. I used a workaround to find it- cost me a whole dime!- but I couldn't figure out why I was suddenly being ghosted by my major source of case information. Going in and manually checking every case where I know I've filed something, plus hundreds of others where a court or opponent might have? Those ten-cent pieces add up!
Click to viewMaking it worse for me? I finally filed a major-for-me case this afternoon, after finally corralling all needed information and signatures on it earlier in the week. It will generate a lot of initial activity and notices, and none of the first seven of them came through. Only my receipt for the filing fee did, and that is from a different dot-gov address.
Turns out the problem was with our lovely internet provider. We confirmed, two different ways, that the court was indeed sending the emails, but Roadrunner was rejecting them. Must be distracted by all that FREE BIRDSEED. I learned how to whitelist the site in question, and I've now gotten an email from the court on New Case, so hopefully that fixes it. Maybe there are more, but I still turn the damn thing off at the end of the day.
Because there's stuff to write about, wot I just did. And things we (or I) have watched or listened to, which will probably be the subject of the next post here. This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1677832.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.