Voting Time!

 I guess this will be just a bunch of mini updates as I have a lot of things to talk about, but not a lot to say about any of them. 

College Football
This whole entire season will need to have an asterisk next to it.  At this point 33 games have been canceled, postponed, or rescheduled.  It's week 7.  That's less than half of a regular season.  Did I mention that the Big Ten, MAC, PAC 12, and Mountain West haven't even started playing yet?  Nick Saban himself caught COVID.  

Seriously, this has just been a shit show of a season.  Spring practice was canceled for just about everybody, fall practice didn't include much contact and some teams hadn't even been hitting during practice before playing their first games... and it showed.  LSU, the defending national champions, lost to Mississippi State who's breaking in a new coach a new quarterback and a new play system.  Mississippi State got more yards than any other SEC game.  Ever.  And then the following week lost to Arkansas, a team so bad that it generally makes Mississippi State look good.  And the following week, Mississippi State couldn't get an offensive score against Kentucky.   

Kirk Herbsteit had to broadcast from home one week because he was a close contact.  Corso broadcasts from home every week because he's ancient.  Even from home he's not doing well because he picked Texas to win one week.  Not that I'm dissing on Texas, but the game he was picking was Alabama at Ole Miss.  

The Big Ten is going to play an eight game schedule, all conference, with no breaks.  If COVID comes in and takes down a team, they'll just end up missing that game.  The final week though will be glorious as it won't just be the championship between the winner of the east and the winner of the west.... it will be east vs west all the way down.  Number 2 in the east vs number 2 in the west.  Number 3 vs number 3.  That will be SWEET! 

I don't know... it's kind of hard to get behind college football this year.  It's fluky and weird and I really am a Michigan fan first, a Big Ten fan second, and a Pac 12 fan third.  Watching nothing but Big 12, SEC, and ACC (plus Sunbelt, conference USA, and AAC) just isn't right.  

iPhone 12, Pixel 5, and getting a new phone
This one is easy.  I'm staying with my iPhone 11 Pro Max.  The iPhone 12 (Pro Max) is certainly an upgrade with it's new processor, 5G, squared off edges, and beautiful new blue color... but it's not worth tossing my 11 Pro Max to the curb for it.  

As for the Pixel, Google went entirely middle of the road.  I was scared that Google would woo me back with incredible battery life as that's the primary thing I couldn't take with my Pixel 4 XL.  And to Google's credit, they made sure the Pixel 5 had battery for days (well, not days but at least A day which was a huge improvement over the 4 and 4 XL), but they sacrificed on a lot.  No squeeze to get google function.  It's an all aluminum body but its covered with plastic.  The screen is still 90 Hertz but most of the good screens have stepped it up to 120.  Oh, and they don't have it in an XL version, so it would be the smallest phone I've owned in like 5 or 6 years.  

So, I should be happy with my phone for the next year or so.  I'm not sure I'll ever be a full Apple devote, but its the best phone around for now.  Oh, and I'm going to squeeze every bit out of that $1000 mistake that the Pixel 4 XL turned out to be.  I now keep it next to my cigarettes at 'home' so that when I step outside to smoke I can take it with me and not have to carry my phone with me all the time around the house.   

I hate cats
My niece moved in with my brother and I and I'm honestly happy to have her here.  She's a wonderful young lady who has found a job at a nearby child care place and is taking online college courses.  But she brought her cat.  And I hate cats.  I hate all pet style animals, but cats are worse than dogs.  Ziggy, our Shi Tsu at home, is annoying and bad but you at least get the impression that he loves you.  All cats give you the impression that you're the one thing standing between them and a wonderful life.  I'M in HIS way.  

Fuck cats. 

Sweater Weather
The seasons just keep on moving.  I just stepped out for a smoke and it's 35 degrees outside.  It snowed in the upper peninsula so I got quite a few friends' posts from up there regarding it.  Sure, its likely to warm back up before winter gets here, but its nice to finally get some good damned cold weather.  

I know that my body gets used to the temperatures outside each season.  In the spring when it starts hitting 50 degrees, it feels warm and I start turning on the AC.  When it gets into the 80s I feel like I'm going to die of heat stroke at any moment.  But eventually I get used to it and while I'll never love the heat, it just becomes part of the background scenery.  Right now 35 feels truly frigid.  Yesterday morning it was 38 when I was ready to go to work and I remote started my car to get it nice and toasty.  I left the heated steering wheel on for half of my trip to work and left the heated seats on for the whole trip.  But when winter actually hits, I won't even bother starting the car for temps above freezing.  I'll be pissed off as my coat will be too hot until it gets down to the low 20s and my jacket will be fine for anything down to the upper 20s.  

One thing the colder weather will bring is my snow tires.  The general consensus is that when the average high temperature doesn't break 40 degrees, you put the winter tires on.  Last year that was January.  Then when the opposite happens and high temps get above 40 degrees every day for a week, you put the all season or summer tires/wheels back on.  When I got them last year I put my all seasons tires/wheels in storage with Bell Tire and paid the $85 for seasonal storage.  I guess I just assumed that would cover me  until December or January when I needed them again. I mean... who puts winters on in October?  But evidently it only covers six months.  I'll have to call them sometime today and figure out what this all means.  If I have to pay $85 every six months AND get them to change the tires over whenever I want, that's fine.  But if I have to pay $85 now and then pay $85 again when I get them changed in two or three months, that's some bullshit I won't stand for.  

Election Cycle
Just a few more weeks of this bull shit.  I got an absentee ballot for the same reason I'm not living with Mom.  I'm not too worried about getting coronoavirus while voting, but I AM afraid of spreading it to others while voting.  Which sucks because I really enjoy going and voting in person.  I guess I'll technically be voting later today, but I'll have to go over the ballot and see who I like and will vote for, who I dislike and will vote against, and who I don't care about.  

One vote I'm already set for is Biden/Harris over Trump/Pence.  I mean, its no big surprise that I'm a liberal and therefore would at the minimum vote against Trump/Pence.  But I'm actually voting FOR Biden/Harris.  I don't think Biden was the best democrat running, but he was the last one standing and has some really good ideas without going overboard on liberal dreams.   You see, I think one of the problems that many people have is going to the extreme.  

Conservatives want tax cuts... all the time.  There's never a bad time for a tax cut or a good time for a tax raise.  And any mention of raising taxes, even if its on the 15 richest Americans and ONLY the 15 richest Americans, then you're a socialist evil Piece Of Shit and deserve to burn in hell.  

Liberals want universal healthcare and they want it NOW.  There's no time to shore up the ACA or offer up a public option, they want to abolish insurance companies and get everybody on super duper medicare where everybody's taxes will go up to pay for it.  And if you oppose that you're a capitalist evil Piece Of Shit and deserve to burn in hell.  

I believe most people, when presented with the facts and not the lies, will lean more liberal on social issues and more conservative on financial issues.  But you'll still have a lot of people on the 'other side'.  Which means you might not get all the tax cuts or all the healthcare.  You'll have to compromise, and compromising is great.  

But when I say conservatives want this and liberals want this, I don't think this is an example of equivalency.  It seems like ALL republicans in office are strong conservatives without any room for compromise while there are only a handful of democrats that are similarly ideologically one sided.  I haven't looked at my ballot yet, but I'm fairly sure I'll be mostly voting democrat.  That includes some truly bad to the extreme liberals... but there just aren't any moderate run of the mill willing to compromise republicans.  I'll look... but I won't hold my breath.  

And of course at the top of the ticket is Trump.  Yes, I think President Trump has horrible policies.  But I'm not voting against him just because of them, I'm voting against him because he can't articulate his policies.  I don't like what he's doing and even after he says why he's doing something... I have no idea why he's doing it except "Him Good, Those Not Him Bad".  I used to think that he's the worst thing that could happen to politics, but I'm coming across the point that it's not so much about him... idiots and egomaniacs will always exist... its about the people that support him.  

Seriously... how could you support this guy?  I know, I know... they might be supporting his policies which are fairly run of the mill conservative republican policies, but many are supporting HIM.  He lies.... I mean, he just lies.  Lying to him comes across like breathing does to normal people.  There's a bit difference between not being politically correct and just being an asshole and Trump is so firmly in the asshole category that it's sad.  

If someone is voting for him and tells me that they couldn't stomach voting for Biden or for any democrat, I could almost... ALMOST... understand it.  But if they say they not only are voting for Trump but support and like him?  Well I just have the lowest opinion of those people and pity them.  I also think there are plenty of people like that out there and that really scares me about our country.  Decency loses.  

Computer upgrade time?
When I got my computer one of the extra things I paid for was an upgrade service.  I send my computer back to them and tell them what parts I want to swap out.  They give me a decent market value for my used parts, then sell me the new ones at the prices they'd use for putting them into a new build and voila... I get a 'new' computer.  I have three years to do this, so I now have about 1 more year.  Don't get me wrong, my computer is still running strong and does NOT need an upgrade, but I knew I'd eventually want to upgrade it and this adds years to its life.  

And I already paid for the service, so I'd better use it!  Amiright?

So what upgrades do I think I'll do?  it really comes down to two components that will probably mean changing MOST of the system.  CPU and GPU.  

Nvidia announced its 3000 series GPUs and they are AMAZINGLY fast compared to the 2000 series.  I can barely push my 2080 so if I get a 3080 I'll be in a strong position for years and years.  But the 3080 takes a lot of power and I only have a 650 watt power supply, so it will need an upgrade to an 850.  The CPU... well, I think I'm ready to give AMD a try.  More and more programs are taking advantage of multiple cores, including games, and my intel i5 9600k 6 core processor might be overclocked to 5 Ghz, but that will pale in comparison to an AMD processor with 8 cores and 16 threads clocked at 4.8 Ghz.  And AMD just fully announced their new 5000 series processors which look really really tasty.  BUT, new processor means new motherboard and likely different (faster) RAM.  The new AMD motherboards support PCIe 4.0 which also means faster hard drives...

So, new CPU, motherboard, RAM, hard drive, power supply, and graphic card.  Yeah, it'll be like a new computer because it'll be a new computer.  More on this as I give it more thought.  I'm thinking January or February.  

My Health
Diabetes sucks.  I'm up to 23 units of Lantus per day and that likely won't be enough.  I don't see the Endocrinologist until January.  Fuck me.  

Mom's Health
I'm starting to get my head around the idea that I may never live with her again.  I think the COVID-19 system will be a thread for years to come and I don't think she has that much time left.  At my aunt's memorial Mom only got up to the graveside, which is up a slight hill, with me on one arm and my brother on the other.  She had to have her oxygen on AND have a chair to sit in.  A couple weeks later my brother took her for a day long car ride to see the leaves changing color, and she was wiped out for a couple days.  She looks bad and sounds bad.  I don't know how I'll feel.  I know in my bones that I'm currently making a good safe decision to help her out and NOT be there as I'm a risk... but I haven't gotten it yet.  I could have been living with her and helping her for 7 months now without anything bad happening.  What if she dies and I never get it.... I could have been there and maybe prevented this from ever happening, but was living elsewhere scared.  

But when I think like that, I just think back on to the healthy people around me that have caught this, some with really bad outcomes and I know that if I caught it and gave it to mom, I'd be even more devastated.  

I don't know.