"Is he your partner?"

So that I can write my thoughts out faster, lemme set some things out here first.  I don't look at or see 'Gay' as an offensive word.  The thinking voice in my head almost always uses the term 'Gay' when it's forming thoughts about homosexual men.  When I speak or write, I often will change that internal 'gay' to homosexual.  But that's my internal censor especially when talking to people who have anti-homosexual feelings.   I guess I want it to sound both more intellectual and at the same time want to remove the idea of a derogatory term from their vocabulary.

But I don't think of it as derogatory.

OK. With that out of the way let's get into this.  I've often had the feeling that some if not many people assume I'm gay.  This goes back to the 90s while I was in college and afterward while working in Chicago.  I don't know where that thought came from.  Maybe it was my own internal struggle.  I was reading a lot of transgendered stories, and had fantasies of being turned into a woman.  I had and have spent a lot of time imagining what it would be like to give a blow job.

I'd often take a step back and look at my life and see... gayness.  I would wear more flamboyant clothes.  I was working on a career as a photographer.  I didn't follow sports closely.  I wasn't dating.  I was living with a guy.  Does any of this mean gay?  No.  Gay has a very strict definition; being sexually attracted to a person of the same gender.

Musak for July

I've complained before about music discovery.  Sometimes the best music just falls into my lap.  I hear it on the radio (internet) at work.  I hear it on a TV show or in a movie.  I hear it on a game video or someone posts it in a forum I frequent.

Well this month has been a bad one for that free discovery.  It might be the TV, or more specifically the lack of TV.  I watch John Oliver's Last Week Tonight on HBO, but that's about it.  The rest of my TV time is currently spent re-watching The West Wing on Netflix.  I'm sure once the fall season starts back up and I start watching Fear The Walking Dead (just a couple weeks for that!), The Walking Dead, Person of Interest, and a few others, I'll get back into some good discovery.  But for now, it's just a wasteland of pop and songs that I already have/like.

Even iTunes has started to let me down.  The first few years I was using iTunes I could rely on them to get me some good music.  I just had to look at their 'recent' music, or better yet their recommendations specifically for me.  Eventually the 'recent' just turned into more and more major label stuff (i.e. pop), and the recommendations broke down.  They recommend songs that I already have (that I didn't purchase from them), or they are so close to what I already have that I've already heard it, considered it, and decided not to add it to my collection.

That's about the time I started looking at their 'top songs' lists.  I couldn't use the main one as they more or less listed the bilboard top ten lists (more pop). So I would hit up the genre specific lists... but even those are getting screwed over.  When I go over to the classical top ten it's all the 'pop' classical.  Five guys on a piano, or whatever was last played on America's Got Talent.  The Alternative list varies so much as the Alternative genre is, by definition, simply 'not mainstream'.  So sometimes it's pop (ick) and sometimes it's rock.  Occasionally an artist will break in with an alternative take on bluegrass or country, but that's rare.  The Rock stuff.... well damn it Journey is still on the list.  JOURNEY!

Bastards.

A new computer for Mom

Windows 10 is out now.  I really hate how companies play the expectation game.  Since around April, when Microsoft announced that Windows 10 would be a free upgrade to every current Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 user, I've been excited about it.

I haven't been excited because there was something wrong with Windows 8... I just wanted something 'new' to play with.  Taking out the Start screen and changing it back to the Start menu isn't a big deal to me.  I actually liked the Start screen and I had become accustomed to it.

I guess as a 'design' minded guy, having the entire screen dedicated to lining up the programs I use appeals to me.  But I know that most people hated it.  I couldn't care less about adding Cortona as the only microphone I have attached to my computer is the one on my headset.  And I'm not going to put on and take off a headset just to ask my computer a question.  And oddly enough, I didn't even need a clean install.  I normally have to install the OS cleanly every 18 months or so and I've been working off the same install for over two years now.

Well... now that I think about it, I DID build a new computer last year... so yeah, I guess this install is only 9 months or so old.  Anywho... I didn't HAVE To have Windows 10.  But I wanted it.  And Microsoft knew it.  And Microsoft played with my expectations.  They said they would have it out in Summer.  YAY!  That means I can get it in June right?  No... when they announced the date they said it would be July.  When they put a specific date on it, they said July 29th.  And when July 29th came around... they said it would be installing in waves.  That I would probably get it before September.

Grr.