Well, we made it to another year. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I remember at the end of 2020 thinking that 2021 just had to be better than the previous year. It’s amazing how wrong that sentiment was. Then 2022 rolled around and it just got worse. Now we’re welcoming 2023 into our lives and I just can’t help but wonder what new hellscape awaits for us as the months progress. Surely it can’t get any worse? Famous last words, right?
Category: Random Bullshit
I’ve been thinking about my life lately. How I approach things. How I avoid things. How I tell myself I want to do things but then never do. I have a list of things a mile long that I very much want to start doing again but somehow, when my free time comes around, I’m always just too tired or too unmotivated to take up any of those activities. I just sit in my chair and watch TV or a movie or play video games. And don’t get me wrong, I enjoy doing those things, but I also enjoy doing the things I want to do more of. But those other things take effort. Anyway, I’m a fairly introspective guy. I know myself pretty darn well. I know the things I will and won’t do. And I know from 47 years of life on this planet that this is the status quo. I have things I want to do but I choose not to do them. And the other day, a thought hit me out of the blue. I wonder if I’m depressed. Not ragingly so. Not suicidal. Not so deep in my misery that the world is a dark uncaring void that I only want to escape from. Rather, that insidious quiet sadness that just sits behind your ears, never really saying anything but weighing your heart down just a bit. Making you think you’re not quite good enough. Making you think that maybe your friends are only there because you can give them something they need, not because they’re truly your friends. And this quiet sadness just seems to align with everything that’s happened in your life up to now, making you realize that things will never change, this is as good as it gets so you might as well just relax and let the world pass you by. Do you know what I mean? It’s funny because many times in my life, I have been so beaten down by life and it’s reality that feeling the way I do every day now would seem like a gift. But I’m starting to think that maybe, just maybe, there could be more. Maybe I just need to find a way to lift myself just a bit higher. Recognize that the quiet sadness I feel isn’t my fault and doesn’t belong in my life. But that also takes effort. And I’m not good at that.
So, I do a tremendous amount of things in the computer industry. My current job is focused on DevOps. I maintain the cloud accounts for my employer and help to maintain and configure the architecture all our applications run on. And in that regard, it’s pretty much just me. No one else in the company really has a solid grasp on what it is I do. I also write software for the company when there’s too much for the Engineering team to handle. I’m also the database administrator for all of our MariaDB, PostgreSQL and Snowflake environments. I also function as the main systems administrator and network admin. In other words, I wear a whole lot of hats in my role. I’m definitely in a unique position. But, when people ask what I do, I generally say I’m a software developer. Why? Because that was honestly my first love. Writing code. Creating solutions from nothing. If you ask what my favorite language is I will always respond with C++. Why, because it was also my first love. There is no other language that I’ve loved and hated more than C++. I’ve not written anything with it in probably 12 to 15 years but it’s still my #1 joy. If you ask me what language I would love to program in every day? I’d tell you PHP. Why? Because there’s no language I know better, no language I am better at finding solutions with, no language that I can write faster in. It’s the only language I would ever assuredly, without question, tell you I am an export in. Because I am. :). So what’s all this got to do with? In a word, WordPress. Well, that’s kind of two words smooshed into one but you get my meaning. The thing is, WordPress is the tool that made and continues to keep PHP in the forefront of languages. Keeps it on the scene and relevant and moving forward as a language. And for me, that’s a problem. Why? Because WordPress is a hugely bloated, monster of a software base that’s just terrible. The only problem is, it’s the least bad option of all the options. But that doesn’t make it less terrible. I work with WordPress pretty much every day. Our company runs 100’s of websites and about half of them are WordPress and that number is growing every day. I am the back end administrator of those sites though. I don’t do theme or plugin development. I only pitch in and help when we run into PHP issues that no one else can figure out. Some days I look at WordPress and think, I should join the community, help make it a better product. But then I remember how much I hate it. And then sometimes I think that maybe I’ll go read up on how to make plugins or themes. Refresh myself on how it all works. Because I used to know how. Then I remember how much I hate it. The unfortunate thing is, that no matter how hard I try, I always come back to hating WordPress. So either I suck up that hate and try to help make it better or continue my sullen refusal. So far, the sullen refusal continues to win out though my resolve has been lessoning over the past few years. We’ll see where it all leads…
So I used to review movies on here before I realized nobody read my blog and nobody fucking cared. That was back in the day when the thought that someone might stumble upon my blog and go,”Hey! This guy is cool! I’m going to read all his shit and be moved by his prose!” still somehow seemed realistic. These days, nobody cares. Unless you’re buying traffic, you’re not going to get traffic. Unless you’re an actual author or something. I’m not. I know no one is reading this. I do it for my own edification. A place to spew my unending thoughts and opinions into the tubes of the internet so that some internet archeologist may find my random sputterings a millennia from now and go “Hey! This guy was stupid! I ain’t reading this shit!”
Anyway, movie reviews. There was one movie reviewer in my lifetime who I agreed with. Just one guy. Roger Ebert. I loved his reviews. He was super cool. I miss his weekly reviews very much. We rarely disagreed on things, mainly because he reviewed every film in the light that it was intended. Not every movie is meant as an Oscar contender and should not be reviewed with those that are. Anyway, even Rotten Tomatoes reviews leave something to be desired. I bring all this up because there are two movies currently out that I was very excited to see. One is Peppermint, with Jennifer Garner. The other, The Predator, with a bunch of no name actors. I made the mistake of looking at Rotten Tomatoes this weekend to see how the reviews stacked up. The critics universally despise both movies. It was disheartening. The audience gave Peppermint a decent rating but not the Predator. So I then had an issue. I was going to see one on Friday night and one on Saturday. The reviews so disheartened me, I skipped going on Friday. Instead I feel asleep on the sofa and drooled. Saturday, I said “Fuck it!” I’m going to go see Peppermint. And so I did. And it was glorious. I enjoyed every minute of the movie. Was it high cinema? No, absolutely not. In fact, the snotty reviewer that called it Gun Porn was probably pretty on target. But it was fun. It made me laugh and groan and have a good time. And that’s what I wanted. So, having now reassured myself that critics, both professional and non, can go suck a fat hairy donkey dick, I’m going to go see the Predator as well. Fucking hell. Stupid critics.
Oh, yeah, one word of caution. I have been told, repeatedly, that I have a super high tolerance for really bad movies. It’s like a super power. Anyway, don’t ever listen to me about whether a movie is good or not unless you know me really well. Because generally speaking, if you trust my movie reviews enough to go see a show, you’re going to hate me for lying to you and yourself for listening to some random lunatic on the internet.
Happy Sunday!