Everything&Nothing: A Collection of Thoughts

Yesterday I spent the majority of the day playing Destiny and watching the second season of The Witcher . There are 8 episodes to this new season, and each are really good. So far I think they are doing a great job with the show, but my biggest issue with it is the casting.  Outside of Henry Cavill, I don't really like any of the people they picked to play the main characters. I don't care for the person playing Yennefer. Don't get wrong, she's a talented actress and attractive, but she looks far too young to be Yennefer of Vengerberg. If you played the games, Yennefer seemed older, and when I say older I just mean someone in their 30s and this Yennefer looks like she's just finished college and looking for a job. I just don't fully buy into her character.  Dijkstra was a very large fellow, but capable on his feet. The guy they picked to play him looks like an old fogey trying to hang onto his last piece of relevance in an ever changing world. Obviously the guy ...

The new NBA season has been underway for more than a few weeks now, and as we all know, Kyrie Irving still hasn't played a single game since the season started due to the vaccine mandate in New York. The Nets decided to keep Kyrie sidelined until he can compete fully and not just during games that aren't at home.  The Nets seem to be playing okay at the moment, but a lot of people feel the Nets would be a complete team if Kyrie wasn't riding the pine which is understandable because he is a great player and anytime one of the great players on a team isn't playing people always question the performance of the team in their absence. Even if the team is playing well and winning games, people will always question the close games a team won or lost based on the presence of their star athletes.  With all that being said, word from the grapevine is the Kyrie will only play if he gets traded, and I can see why he'd want that. He's refusing to get vaccinated and there are...

I keep reading and hearing about this "worker shortage", and to be frank about it, it pisses me off. I understand that sounds strong, but the truth is that there isn't a worker shortage. There is not a shortage of workers; the painful truth is that this is as close to a general worker strike as we may ever see.  Before the pandemic even started, people were still having a hard time finding suitable employment, or were underemployed, and most people were handcuffed to jobs that left them wanting for whatever reason. When the pandemic hit, and people got laid off they had an opportunity to do other things.  Some people went back college, some people took the unemployment money and started their own business, and some were just enjoying making the most money they've ever made since they started working. Seriously, some people were making upwards of $2k per month and the most they were making before the pandemic working one full time job was $1500 a month.  Whatever the c...

Yesterday news broke that Alec Baldwin had killed Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza on the set of the new movie 'Rust' by firing a prop gun that may have had live ammunition rounds. This accident has renewed the debate on whether real firearms are used on the set of movies and tv, but what really happened? There hasn't been a lot of information regarding exactly what happened, and rightfully so, it is an open and ongoing investigation, but if we use a little common sense while scanning through the different articles, it would appear that they were working on a scene when the assistant director gave one of the prop guns to Baldwin. He let everyone know on the set that it was a "cold gun" which is jargon for an non-lethal weapon.  Now this is where the details aren't quite clear because one article I read said that they were shooting a scene and another article said they were rehearsing the scene. Personally, I believe they were shooting the scene ...

I was scrolling through my Google News feed when I came across this article about why some employers don't put the pay for the job in the advert. Now before I get too far into this, I want to talk about my experience and why anyone should listen to me about the subject.  Some of might know, but for those who don't, my prior career was working as a recruiter. I've worked with Conduent (formerly Xerox), PeopleReady Skilled Trades, Digital Intelligence Systems, and a few other place. My job was solely to work with clients and hiring managers to fulfill their hiring needs. I would create the job postings, review the applicants, conduct interviews, and make my recommendations to hiring managers.  Early on in my career, I learned how adding pay to a job ad can help it or hurt it. I was working on virtually the same job, but the clients were different. The job was working at a call center. One client was paying $14/hr. while the other was only paying $8/hr. Obviously, I had more c...

Destiny 2's Solstice of Heroes event started a few weeks ago, and I've been working on completing the armor for the Hunter and the Titan. Usually I look forward to the seasonal events, but I've never been overly fond of the Solstice event because I hate the European Aerial Zone.  When the European Aerial Zone, EAZ for short, was first introduced, it was a little exciting, but after the one play through it was boring and the only reason to keep playing it was to get the XP and/or complete the armor set requirements. After the first year I didn't really bother with it. If I just so happened to playing Destiny a lot around that time of year and I felt like wasting time doing the armor, I would.  This year I decided that I would complete the armor from start to finish, and for those who don't know what I mean, I'll explain it. Each hero class has it's own solstice armor set which includes a helm, gauntlets, chest plate, boots, and then either a Mark, Cloak, or B...

Admittedly, I’ve only ever really seen Lin-Manuel Miranda in House and I’ve only heard about the productions he’s worked in and on, but I am familiar with his political stances and how he champions equality and inclusion for all; not just people in the Latino/a/x community,  so when I read about this “controversy” I had to see what all the fuss was about, and while I do agree that diversity and inclusion is a huge topic of discussion today, I think this is one of those issues that people are conflating with the overall issue of racism in America. Reading about the lack of darker skinned Hispanics in his most recent production “In the Heights”, felt like a trivial argument given the fact that we as spectators don’t know who or what considerations were made when casting this production. I don’t think anyone complaining stopped to think about just how many darker skinned people actually auditioned for the film as I am sure they had a casting call for Latino/a/x and Hispanic actors t...

A Bill to end the Federal Unemployment Assistance program that has kept many of Americans afloat during this pandemic, and for some, it provided more income than they would have had if the pandemic happened at all, but now that the vaccine is being mass distributed and, employers are claiming their is a worker "shortage", and republican law makers, like Senator Chuck Edwards, believe that the pandemic is mostly behinds us and that our economy should not be stuck a Covid levels. He ended his statement by saying, "Now is not the time to being paying people more to not work."  Last month, Edwards pitched the idea to pay people $1,500 for accepting a new job within 60 days of it becoming law, however, the idea didn't catch. With his new Bill, work search requirements would be stricter requiring job seekers to respond to an interview request within 48 hours, schedule an interview with 7 days of an interview request, and attend any re-employment activities for associa...

The more I get immersed into the world of Twitch, the more I start to realize that I have no idea what's happening on Twitch. Case in point, I had no idea that Twitch streamers were getting sponsorships from casinos. Which casinos I have no clue, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that casinos are sponsoring Twitch streamers because some command a lot of attention.  Recently there have been some people who have been vocal about not liking the idea of casinos sponsoring streamers or streamers accepting their sponsorships because of they "sketchy" and "ethically ambiguous". With the debate picking up steam and not looking like it's going to die down anytime soon, I think it's probably a good idea to actually consider whether or not streamers should accept, or be sponsored by Casinos.  Sponsorships and Making Money on Twitch For anyone who doesn't know how Twitch works, here's a quick rundown. Once you start a channel, you start your path to b...

Last week Thursday I saw in the headlines that a building had just collapsed in Florida. My first thought was how the heck does a building just randomly collapse? Obviously, I had some questions so I followed the story and here's what I found out. Sketchy Developers and the Accusations of Special Treatment According to a report, the developers of the 12 story building developers, included some people with some sketchy backgrounds. One such person was named, Nathan Reiber . Nathan Reiber was a Polish-born Canadian lawyer, who in 1970, was charged with tax evasion by the Canadian authorities.  Reiber and his business partners were skimming cash from the apartments they were renting as well as skimming money from the laundry rooms within the building and pocketed $120k in phony construction checks. Reiber would also be hit with a professional misconduct citation for the tax evasion. In 1984, he would settle the suit by returning $60k of the pocketed funds.  In 1979, Reiber and hi...

I love Twitch, I really do, and being that I am relatively new to the streaming community, I don't know a lot of the lingo, so when I heard about the Hot Tub Meta ASMR, or whatever it's called, I was kind of disgusted with it. Now I'm not saying I can't appreciate a beautiful woman in a hot tub, or that everything a woman does shouldn't be sexualized, but the one thing people know Twitch for is gaming and these people were just sitting in hot tubs doing different things and the majority of it had not thing to do with anything other than trying to get people to tune in. Some of the content got very sexually suggestive and some bans from Twitch followed.  Now that the hot tube ASMR trend has seemingly cooled, some people have found a new ASMR. The new thing is called the Ear Licking ASMR Meta, not sure if meta is in the wrong spot or I should have left it out completely, but really I don't care because the whole thing is stupid. So here's the skinny on that, b...

Let's face it, there's just something nostalgic about rolling your flower, but sometimes it can be a hassle. For instance, how many times have you gone to the store to buy a wrap, get home, open it up, and that bad boy pretty much turned to dust as soon as you got to breaking it down? You know the second one isn't going to be much better, and if you messed around and got a 5-pack, you're probably stuck trying to piece together enough of the leaves to make a passable blunt, but it was without a lot of effort. Smoking shouldn't be that hard, like, ever and that's one of the reasons you should buy glassware or a pipe. It's way more convenient to just grind up some flower and put it in a bowl than it is to do all that rolling and I know some glass pieces can be very expensive, but if you think about how much money you'll save on rolling papers and stale wraps, you'll realize that a one time purchase can save you hundreds of dollars and the headache of de...

I read this article earlier today about streaming services, and the author had stated that in her opinion Disney+ and HBO Max were the best ones out there currently. I read the entire article, and honestly, I disagree and here's why. Streaming Services are great, but all are limited I disagree with her assessment because I don't think any of the streaming services are THE best. I think that each streaming service has it's merits, but all of them leave us wanting more. Netflix was the first streaming service I got and I loved it. Movies and TV shows on demand was everyone's dream and for a price under $10 per month, it was a value no one could pass up-- then came Hulu. At first I didn't have a very high opinion of Hulu because it was just television shows and a few a movies, but a few years after it came out I had an opportunity for a free trial and I did it which ultimately lead me to keeping the subscription.  The fact that I would watch my favorite tv shows on dem...

Family is a 6 letter word just like any other word, and I know that might sound callous to say, but it's the truth. If you look up the word family it has several definitions. The first definition on the Merriam-Webster website defines a family as parents and children, the next defines a family as a group living in the same household under one household head, and another defines family by bloodline. There are several other definitions of the word, but as you can clearly see from these three definitions alone, anyone can be family or become someone's family.  It's hard for many of us to reconcile this idea because we've all heard someone in life say something like "family is all we've got" or "family above everyone else", and based on that idea we elevate people to a status where we will tolerate a lot of crap because someone is family.  Case in point, we've all seen in the movies, on TV, or know someone in real life, that has a family member t...