Even though masking rules are still in place in Los Angeles, I see a lot of uncovered faces every time I go out. I sense a lot of wishful thinking there: It's over, it's all over, it's not coming back. It would be great if that's so but I'm not that optimistic. I have one of those milestone divisible-by-ten birthdays in ten days and I think I'll err for now on the side of skepticism.
I'm not watching much in the way of news or politics but when I turned on the TV this morning, I saw Ted Cruz denouncing the Biden Administration for the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. I did not hear the reporter remind him that the agreement for the U.S. to do this was signed in February of 2020, nor did I hear Cruz reminded of who was president in February of 2020.
Jeff Zucker was ousted recently as the president of CNN because — and I quote — "…he had failed to disclose a romantic relationship with another senior executive at the network." A friend of mine asked me if I didn't think his firing was unduly harsh given the stated reason. I gave my stock reaction to this kind of thing: "We know what they announced but we probably don't know the whole story." That's proving to be true and I think it's almost always true when someone is fired like that. In fact, I think it's often a matter of "You're going to resign now for these reasons so all the other reasons won't come out." And sometimes, those other reasons don't come out.
If I make more typos than usual here lately, I'm going to blame it on getting used to a new keyboard. For most of my computing life, any non-laptop work I've done has been either on old Northgate keyboards or clones thereof. None of those keyboards are still made and while I had a good guy who'd fix and clean mine, the seven-or-so I had have just plain worn out. I tried a new Dell membrane-type keyboard but it had what I don't like (but tolerate) on a laptop…that kind of "spongy" feel without the sensation of individual keys. My computer guy recommended a new mechanical model and I like it so far. If I like it for another week, I'll tell you about it.