Month: November 2025

This Thanksgiving was ok. My wife and myself spent it together at home. No one in my family is here, and the only family my wife has here she doesn’t really talk to anymore. That’s unfortunate, but that’s how life can be sometimes. The people that are forced upon you as “your family” are not really people you gel with or care for. Perhaps some things were done in the past that weren’t appreciated and as human beings we are prone to holding grudges, or writing people off. My wife’s daughter and grandson are all the way in Connecticut, and they were spending time together traveling during Thanksgiving. Maybe one day we’ll be closer to them and we can hang out together for the holiday.

I helped my wife cook on Thanksgiving day and the food was pretty darn good. My wife is an excellent cook and she doesn’t give herself enough credit for it. She’s getting older, so I want her to teach me how to cook some things so maybe at some point I can take over the cooking for us. She taught me how to make deviled eggs on Thanksgiving and they came out pretty good. I’ll try my hand at making some myself in the near future to see if I remember the steps correctly. It’s pretty simple, but like anything else you make practice makes perfect.

I’ve enjoyed being off these 4 days, but its Sunday night and it’s time to get ready to go back to work next week. The next holiday is Christmas, and I’m looking forward to getting a week off from work at the end of the year. My wife and I are thinking of visiting San Diego for a few days around Christmas, just to get away from the house and see beautiful San Diego. Wherever we go, they have to allow pets, because we want to bring the cat with us. She’s getting older, and I don’t want to leave her in the house by herself for any period of time like that. We’ll see what happens with that trip, maybe we’ll just stay home and enjoy being off work for the week.

I have to reach out to some people and find out what they’d like for Christmas. I want to buy some people some gifts so they have something to open on Christmas AM. I know Christmas gifts are mainly for kids, but we are all big kids at the end of the day and its nice to get a present you can open and find something cool inside. It’s the reason we wait for Amazon packages to arrive with such anticipation. We look forward to opening the box and getting our goodies inside.

I ordered my cat a “Speedy Tail 2.0” cat toy, and just like I thought, she couldn’t be less interested hah! That cat is like a jaded cop waiting to get her pension. Nothing excites her and she couldn’t be less interested for the most part. Unless she wants me to pet her or feed her, she wants to do her own thing. I hope she just wasn’t in the mood to play at the moment, as she’d just woken up from a nap. Sometimes she’s like that with a cat toy I know for a fact she likes. It came in a pack of two for $14, so I set one of them on the floor in the living room so she can get used to seeing it, and maybe when she’s feeling feisty I’ll turn it on and let her chase it around. I’ve gotten the impression she’s bored, so I wanted to get her something to entertain herself with.

I also bought two new cat litter boxes for her. Her old two were plastic and stank to high heaven, so I bought two metal ones off Amazon on the cheap and vacuumed around the area where they sit. It looks and smells a lot better over there, so I’m hoping they’ll be easier to maintain and keep clean. I’m burning some strawberry oil I got from the smoke shop over in that corner, and it smells a lot better in the apartment already. The cat has already used it a couple of times, so she seems to be cool with the change. I need to get a metal cat litter scoop, because the plastic one bends with the clumps as I’m trying to pull them up onto the scoop. I got that one from Dollar Tree and it sucks. A metal scoop will be much better and rigid enough to dig through the litter and pull the waste out and let it sift the litter through the slits/holes.

Here’s to a chill week up ahead! Hopefully the time at work will go by quickly, and before we know it, it will be Christmas and we’ll be off work. I’m looking forward to it for sure. Have a great start to the work week tomorrow, stay cool and don’t let stress kill ya! L8r!

So when I look at society from afar, it seems that a lot of us are in environments where its very competitive. We find ourselves pitted against our neighbors in some sort of very low level competition at times. Some people check out of it, some people are in it to win it. When I really observe things though, it seems that this greatly depends on where you live geographically. If you live in New York or Chicago, the downtown rat race is serious, and the competition is fierce.

When you walk out of the revolving doors of one of those department stores downtown, you better start moving right away or you’ll get knocked into. No hesitation, move with a sense of purpose. “I got somewhere to be”. That’s the mentality a lot of times in those places. Especially during the AM rush or the nightly home goers. I grew up in Chicago, so I’ve experienced that first hand.

If you live some place like Los Angeles, the foot traffic may not be as adversarial as the aforementioned places, but the vehicle traffic can be like a Roman gladiatorial battle. The people driving like a bat out of hell, “Oh here come the fast moving chariot archers”. The guy in the big truck with a giant grill sitting 10 feet off the ground. He’s the big warrior wearing a helmet with horns sticking out moving slow but there for intimidation purposes. It’s like navigating a gauntlet trying to get where you’re going in Southern California sometimes. However, there are some places here that are not necessarily like that. Some places are moving at a much slower pace without the stress of traffic and heavy foot movement.

I’d like to move somewhere like that. I gotta find my wife and myself a place where its not a got damned chore to go to another town to shop or go grab a bite to eat. I understand going to a fair or sporting event, sure there’s going to be traffic. But having to meander through traffic just to go across town to get a salad you like or a burger you saw on a Youtube restaurant review show, well quite frankly, that shit sucks.

The final payment was made on my MPC Key 61 early last week. It took me over a year to pay this thing off, but she’s all mine now! I’m happy that I own it, and I don’t see the need to upgrade to a different MPC at this point. This thing has 4GB of RAM in it, just like the MPC X SE, and it does everything fast and quickly. It’s held up very well even with me setting plates and headphones on top of it! I wish Decksaver would release one of their units for it, but that’s wishful thinking. Hopefully sometime soon they will release one, but we’ll see how that goes.

I am trying to start making some Dub style beats on my Key 61, as I’ve found that I like the sound of Dub samples a lot. I’m looking forward to the next time I have some money to go to the record shop and search for some good dub/reggae vinyl records to sample. For now I’m using Splice.com and I’ve got some good stuff to work with in the interim. I’m already working on a banger of a beat on the Key 61 this Sunday AM, and I’m going to flesh it out and use some vocal samples on it as well. Maybe some will be me and others will be vocals I pull from Splice.

Music has really been a great savior of my sanity. It keeps me grounded, and I need to make sure I keep doing it even when I’m tired after work and just feel like gelling. It’s very important to be creative in your life, whether that’s painting, making music, coloring, carpentry, or whatever you’re into. Creativity is what separates us from the animals, so we need to hone and cultivate that part of our makeup. It really sucks that with the 9 to 5 wage slavery most of us are caught up in, we don’t have very much free time to be as creative as we’d like.

If you’re a young person reading this, make sure you take advantage of living at home with your parents and only needing to work part time or not at all. Use your free time to pursue creative endeavors and find your passion. I was trying music when I was at home, but I didn’t go at it full bore and ask questions about it like I should have. Otherwise, I would have gone after it more vigorously in my youth. If you like to play video games, that’s fine too. Just use your time to get a stream going, advertise it, start a Youtube channel, and find a way to monetize what you enjoy doing. That will be the new hustle in this technological age we’re in right now. Jobs of the past will go to AI and robotics, so people will need to earn income by having a popular Youtube channel or Twitch stream. The Future is Here!

Today it’s a rainy fall/winter day in SoCal. We get rain so rarely here I really enjoy when it happens. I don’t necessarily enjoy driving in it, because people here act like they are stuck on stupid when it starts raining. They either speed and won’t slow down or they drive so slow you’d think they have Ms. Daisy in the backseat.

However today, I’m sitting here with a cup of nice coffee and messing around with my music gear. I can hear the pitter patter of the rain outside and it’s very therapeutic. I look forward to times like these, and it’s the reason I refuse to believe anymore that we are in some type of “hell realm”. Yes, life can be rough sometimes. We live dull workaday lives and slave away every day, but there are times where we get to enjoy time with our families and have fun doing our hobbies. There is peace amidst the storm, and you just have to be able to find it and hold onto it.

I have the TE EP-40 Riddim and Ting devices, and they are pretty good. It has a reggae vibe to it and it’s a lot of fun to play around with. I have a pretty good Jamaican accent, so I use that when I’m talking into the Ting. All together, my music equipment is the MPC Key 61 at the center, the Roland SP 404 mk2, the Teenage Engineering KO II & EP-40 w/ Ting FX device, as well as the Roland GAIA 1 synthesizer. I think that between all those devices, I should be good to make whatever type or music, wherever I want to. I will stop buying music gear and just hold onto my dough to pay my debts off. I can keep my Splice.com and Tracklib.com subscriptions and just use the samples/sounds I get on there to make my music.

I don’t really have aspirations of trying to become notorious for my music, but I would like to share it with more people. Perhaps I need to put a bit more effort into it, then market it on social media. I want to make sure it’s at least listenable, and not something that would be annoying for someone to listen to at least one time through. I’ll move towards doing that, but I would like to incorporate some other people into it as well. My friend Aaron in Chicago is a good emcee, so I’d like to make beats for him to rhyme over and put those out as a emcee w/ producer/DJ, ala Eric B. and Rakim. I’ll talk to him this weekend and see what would be the best way for us to pull that off.

Anyway, let me get back to my chill weekend. I’m about to run to the bud dispensary and pick up some Indica weed to help me chill through this weekend. I hope it’s a good strain I’m getting, and that it doesn’t make me feel weird or anything. I have a pretty good tolerance, and I know that meditation and respect for the plant always leads to a good experience. Til next time reader! Have a good one!

So I had to pick up a replacement Razer Ornata V3 gaming keyboard on sale at my local Micro Center today. It’s a nice keyboard, and I really like the click clack of the keys. I tried to use a Red Dragon keyboard, but it sucked, so I’m going to return it to Micro Center. I now have an all Razer setup with the keyboard and mouse. My mouse is a Razer Death Adder, which is an amazing gaming mouse like I mentioned in a previous post.

People complain about the Razer Synapse software, but I haven’t had any issues with it. It lets you setup the RGB lighting for the devices, and its really easy to setup shortcuts on the mouse AND keyboard. I want to do my best to keep this keyboard from getting gunk and grime in between the keys, as well as I don’t want to use it with food on my fingers in general. I think doing that caused some of the lettering to rub off the keys on my old Ornata keyboard.

I got off work early today to go get an oil change. We really need a new vehicle. This one is on its last legs, and I think it’s time. I’m nervous about having a car note, but we need something that doesn’t have leaks and isn’t as badly damaged as our current Honda Civic is. Hopefully I can find a good deal on a decent vehicle that will reliably get us from point A to point B. My wife doesn’t drive anymore, so it will mainly be me driving the car around to work and so forth. Maybe if we get a nicer car, it will motivate her to renew her license because she’ll want to be able to drive it without fear of being pulled over with no license.

I’m looking forward to having time off at the end of the year, even though I’m sure it will fly by like a fart in the wind. The company I’m working for as a contractor closes for one week around Christmas going into New Years, so I’ll be able to stay home and enjoy some time with my family. It should be a nice time, and maybe we can get out and go to one of the old Missions to do something out of the ordinary. We used to go to those all the time but we stopped going. I’ll find a list to print out of all the Missions in the area and we’ll go to them and get a souvenir at each one as a keepsake.

Anyway, tomorrow is Friday and it’s been a long week. I’m looking forward to the weekend and getting some much needed rest and relaxation in. I hope you enjoy your weekend as well reader, and I’ll catch you in the next post! L8r!

So I am playing Battlefield 6 and its a great First Person Shooter. I’m having a lot of fun playing it and its very enjoyable. The gunplay is amazing, and what really stands out is the environment. There’s bullets flying, helis and jets flying around. It’s a real off the chain battlefield. Well, one of the most important things to being able to survive in a virtual battlefield like that is being able to control your character with a good gaming keyboard and mouse.

I was using a very old Razer Ornata I bought from Walmart on sale a long while ago for the longest time. I’ve also had a good mechanical Corsair keyboard put away for a while too. The two mice I have is the Razer DeathAdder and a Corsair M65 Pro. I’m finding that I like the Corsair setup much better than the Razer setup. The DeathAdder is a cool mouse, but it doesn’t have enough buttons to do what I need to have shortcuts for in game. The M65 has a bunch of buttons, feels heavier in my hand which I like, and it’s very precise. The Corsair keyboard wins over the Razer Ornata because a while back I replaced all the keys on the Corsair and I love the mechanical clickity clack of the keys on it.

I’m typing on the Corsair right now and the tactile feel and the sound is very satisfying. I think I’m going to stick with the Corsair setup over the Razer, and if anything ever happens to my M65Pro I’ll bring in the Razer DeathAdder to the rescue. The DeathAdder feels good in my hand as well, but I just find I’m able to control the crosshair on screen with the M65Pro much better. The M65 is an older mouse, it was out in 2014 if I’m not mistaken. That’s around the time I got it, but I hadn’t used it much and recently brought it out of retirement, lol!

Gaming can be very relaxing and a lot of fun. I’m finding I don’t have the patience to play through a lot of the story driven games, and the fast twitch games of FPS are much more suited to my liking. Anyway, I need to get ready to start work. I will probably jump on some BF6 after work if I have the energy and inclination to tonight. Have a good week and don’t stress! L8z!