Electile Dysfunction

Yesterday was the rescheduled primary day in Kentucky.  While some state officials and national pundits praised the state's turnout, not everything could be considered something to crow about.  I first saw signs of possible trouble when the governor delayed a original May election date by a month during the first week of the lockdown.  At that time, it was premature to delay anything, not knowing how the pandemic would be playing out.  As it was, some form of an election could have been conducted on the original date, but it would have needed major changes to work as normal.  A month after the first announcement, details about how the election would be handled came out.  Mail-in absentee balloting would be expanded so that fewer people would be showing up at polling places.  Voters could email or call in to get a ballot.  They could also set up appointments to vote early, as can be done in regular elections.  The biggest change was that only one polling place would be set up in each county, regardless of the needs of the county.  Every registered voter would be sent a postcard with the information needed to vote.  Things didn't turn out that way.  I never got a postcard.  I heard from many others that they didn't get one either, mostly in eastern Kentucky.  It could be the postcards got lost on the way to or from Charleston, West Virginia. [A few years ago,  the postal service closed the main processing hub for the region and sent all future mail to Charleston for processing.  While this saved money, it could add a day or so to the delivery of out-of-state mail and two or more days to intrastate mail, as it had to go through another state to get to its final destination.]  Some people never got that information, even though the same information was available elsewhere.  Not everyone had internet access either, as not everyone owns a computer or smart phone, and many free internet services, such as public libraries, weren't open yet.   I'm not sure how many knew about being able to make appointments, even though the service has always been available.  Furthermore, some counties were able to have more than one polling place.  Pike county had five, six if you count the county court house where one could still make an appointment, if they were in a high risk group for contacting anything.  Jefferson and Fayette counties, the two counties with the highest population in the state, only got one place each.  [For argument's sake, Pike county is the largest county in area in the state.  In fact, it is one of the largest counties in the nation east of the Mississippi River.  It can take over a hour to drive from one end of the county to the other.  Having multiple sites may have been needed.]. With populations in the hundreds of thousands, more sites were needed.  Some tried to get more sites open, but the legal results were not in their favor and there would not be enough time to appeal, not without the possible confusion on behalf of the electorate.   On Election Day, I heard of waits of over an hour, outdoors, in the rain, locally.  Fayette county had it worse.  Waits of over two hours were common.  The last voters left after eight pm, two hours after polls were supposed to close, only because the were in line a six.  In Jefferson county, election officers actually shut the doors at six, even with people still trying to get in line.  [At one time, I was an election officer.  Anyone still in line at closing time can still vote, but officers can shut it down at exactly that time.  Picking hairs, but it is still a borderline call.] Difficulties with getting in and parking caused delays.  Candidates tried to file injunctions to keep the doors open, although, the last I heard, a judge at 6:30 pm allowed those still on site to vote.  How many were still there, I don't know.   Afterwards, sites announces the day's results.  A few races were declared, but the major ones that were making national headlines were still too close.  The final totals cannot be announced until all of the absentee ballots are counted, and they are due back in until next week.  Only those postmarked by the election are to be counted.  However, there is no way of knowing how many of these ballots were filled out correctly or if any were not filled out seriously.  Once the final totals are in, there could be a few lawsuits about the legitimacy of the results.  I'm surprised more lawsuits weren't filed beforehand, but, since the courts and state government weren't fully open, it does make sense.  The governor could have asked the state legislature to do something during the last days of their session to help make the process run smoother, but he didn't.  He couldn't, not without losing like a hypocrite.  He had complained that the legislature shouldn't be in session at the height of the pandemic, and that they should do the basics of passing a budget or just close and he would call a special session that would cover the budget, and only that, at a later time.  [Kentucky is just about the state where the legislature cannot call itself to order.  Aside from a regular yearly session, only the governor or acting governor can call a session, and they are the ones who get to decide what can be considered.  The legislature can always close the session if they don't want to consider that action, though.] So, while turnout looks great, I wouldn't call this a success, by any means.  Many voters may have inadvertently been disenfranchised by these actions.  It was all a confusing mess, with a hint of controversy surrounding it. November's election can't be held this exact same way, even if there are those out there who think this is a viable way to conduct the democratic process.

The Game's a Foot, or Actually a Higher Body Part That I Don't Mention in Mixed Company

I like playing games.  That is one of the main reasons for this blog after all.  Just look at the overview sometimes.  However, I have been having problems with many of the games I play online, and these problems have begun to irk me.  Most of these games I play through my Facebook account.  I am not sure if that is entirely relevant, but it could be.  Just this past weekend, I did not have access to one of my games.  At all.  It disappeared from my page.  It disappeared from the Facebook Games menu.  It disappeared from my Activity Log.  It was as if it never existed in the first place.  I couldn't even remember its actual name.  By Monday, it was back as if nothing had happened.  I was even able to continue my daily log in bonus.  Not the weirdest thing that has happened, but very close.  At least it wasn't as bade the game that couldn't download for over a week and I ultimately had to delete it from my account.  Didn't like it too much anyway, but still.  I have had other ongoing issues with some of my other games as well.  One game, which like the others I will be mentioning I will not be naming, has had some strange glitches lately.  First, there is the ongoing one where it will reset the daily log in bonus every time I play or even refresh the page.  This means I can get an unlimited number of bonuses, as well as refill my life meter, whenever I need to, but only when using my regular browser.  Whenever I play using a different browser, or computer, the games works normally.  I can get the better daily bonuses this way, but I need to wait for the life meter to refill, so I sometimes switch browsers and log into Facebook using the other.  I used to do this just once a day to get the bonus, but I have had to do so more frequently since a new group competition mode started up.  The game bunches people up randomly to help achieve certain goals, and at certain points, award bonuses, some of which are time limited.  If a team doesn't achieve all the goals within a certain time frame, the group is broken up and you join a new one.   A week or two ago, I was put into a new team.  At that point, the weirdness started.  My picture was no longer included in the game, as if it couldn't be uploaded.  None of the other people in my group had actual pictures either, just cartoony filler spots.  They didn't have any actual names either.  However, one of my teammates was racking up huge points.  Hundreds per day, even though the max one can get for beating a level is about 200, and that is from finishing up a stage.  How one player do this is all but impossible, especially since none of the other team members gain points on anything near a regular basis.  On the other hand, I'm reaching major goals every other day or so, leading to longer games sessions with better bonuses.  It is getting tiresome.  I wish I had this kind of problem with other games.  One game randomly forgets how to fully upload, leaving me unable to play at all for hours at a time.  Another randomly has some graphics drop, making it harder to figure out what my next play should be.  It is one of two games that have their daily bonus clocks reset about 10 pm every night.  This means I have to be careful with how long a play them.  I sometimes have to forego a games session because I started playing it again too late.  I didn't want to waste a good bonus if I only could play for a short time before going to bed.  Then there is the sports game.  For the past two weeks, I have been very streaky on it. I actually got downgraded in it this weekend because of a bad losing streak.  Fans of the game frequently complain that such streaks are built into the game so that players would buy extra equipment to improve their playing.  I can't be sure of this, because I never make in game purchases, but things were very bad for awhile.  One day, I would be making miracle plays, almost out of nowhere.  The next day, everything would be off by just enough, that I couldn't win unless I was perfect on every shot.  Even then, I would wind up losing the tiebreaker, as the in game physics would seem to change or the controls would be off by just a fraction.  Just enough to cause me to lose.  Who knows?  Maybe it is my fault that my reflexes are off, not the game's.  On the other hand again, with all of the weirdness I get lately, I am willing to accept all theories.

Like Soap Through an Hourglass

I had made many comments on this blog about my love of comic books.  However, there is a similar form of entertainment that I have frequently enjoyed--soap operas.  To be honest, the history of these two literary forms are quite intwined.  Both started as forms of advertising detergents to the masses based around the New York World's Fair back in the 1930s.  Comic books started as collections of newspaper strips bound together with advertisements form detergents included.  Remember, these books were originally intended for an adult audience.  Later, the books would be filled with original material, ultimately focusing on the superhero genre.  Kids would become the presumed audience, and, as such, the detergent ads faded away.  On a different front, another company decided to go with the new radio audience,  Here, the advertisement would be blended into a conversation a woman had with news (okay, gossip) about her neighbors.  Soon, the dramatics would overshadow the ads, and the serial began.  Some of these early shows would wind up moving to television, where detergent companies would still be the primary sponsor.  Hence, "soap" opera.  Both comic books and soap operas feature many of the same traits.  They both feature ongoing plotlines, with stories building up to dramatic finales.  Revisionist histories are explored, as new information on past events are revealed, or even changed to better suit the needs of current stories.  New characters are brought in, or old ones return, sometimes from impossible events.  They really are pretty much the same type of form, just based in different formats and with different primary audiences.  I was forced to watch my first soaps when I was a very young boy and didn't have any choice in the matter.  Fortunately, I wasn't forced to watch them anymore once I entered school.  During summer vacation, I began to take over the television, and no one else really watched them anymore either.  Then, the summer after my freshman year in high school, I somehow started watching Santa Barbara.  It was still fairly new then so it was fairly easy to get into, although I must admit to never finding out about every single back story.  I was bored at that time in the afternoon, so I started watching it.  I continued once school started back, sometimes setting the VCR to record it so I wouldn't miss even the first few minutes.  Santa Barbara was a great show that didn't go too far over the top.  Over its run, it had won multiple Daytime Emmys in almost all of the major categories.  Unfortunately, once the actors playing the main super couple left, the show went quickly downhill.  It was cancelled during my third year of college.  However, all wasn't lost.  I had started watching Days of Our Lives during the summer before my senior year of high school.  Yeah, I got bored a lot during the summer.  I would go on recording and watching it to this day.  Many things have changed since I started watching soaps, though.  Back then, the three networks of the day had a combined twelve soaps on, three one hour ones and one half hour show per network.  The cancellation of Santa Barbara marked the beginning of the end.  While each network tried to bring new shows about and get viewers, nothing seemed to work.  Longtime shows would be cancelled and some new shows brought in, to mixed reviews.  On NBC, for example, there was Sunset Beach and Passions.  I watched the former for the last two or three seasons of its run, possibly a tad longer.  I could never figure everything out about it; too much backstory wasn't unclear.  It kept doing fantasy sequences, even suggesting on its last episode that the entire show had been one long dream sequence of the main female character who never left her small town.  Or something.  Passions I watched from the start.  It was supposedly about this small New England town that was suffering under the curse of a morally ambiguous witch who had been punished for her ways.  That show was known for its very strange plots, which I won't go into because they were that weird.  It was mostly known for having a character, a doll who became real, die to give his heart to one of the show's purest characters on the same day that the actor died in real life.  The angel of that doll would later push the witch into redeeming her ways and asking forgiveness to save the town from a volcano that was threatening to destroy it during its final episodes. By the end of its run, which included being cancelled by NBC and moving to a cable service, only one super couple featured during it first week remained together.  All others had been broken up for one reason or another, even when both actors wore still on the show.  A real downer.  Today, only for soaps remain.  Two on CBS, and one each on ABC and NBC, including my Days of Our Lives.  Unfortunately, the outback have hit shows hard.  Most have been in repeats or classic episodes for weeks now as they had short follow through times.  Days, however, shoots months of episodes well in advance, meaning they have a month or so of new episodes left before they too will be forced into reruns.  Production might start back soon, in some form, but I might have to wait awhile before the sands run through the hourglass again.

Baby Got Backer

Last week marked the end of the first Kickstarter campaign that I backed.  I missed out on the last campaign from this company, due to unsureness of the process involved, and I have been second-guessing myself ever since.  I really didn't have that much money to get involved, but after finally receiving confirmation of my rejection, I decided to fund this new campaign.  Sure, I could have gone the basic route, and pledge on a level that would just give me access to the early draft of the work, but I decided to go with a tier where I could get the finished product once it comes out, in a PDF format, after editing and artwork were added.  It will be sometime next year before everything will be finished.  In the meantime, I will get some benefits from the stretch goals that got included.  There will be a second, companion book to go with the first one, which I also will be receiving as a PDF.  I will also get four novellas written in the gaming universe.  Not sure how connected they will be or what effect they will have on the overarching metaplot.  I will get three older books, again as PDFs, as further bonuses:  a short story anthology, an art book, and a cookbook.  Yeah, that last one confused me too, but the company produced it for some reason.  It connects a recipe, or two, with many of the groups in the game.  I also get digital wallpaper for my computer.  This will probably be one of the first things I'll get to receive.  Most of the PDFs might not come out until after the backer kit process starts in the next month or so.  Finally, I will get a coupon for the t-shirt.  Yep, a special shirt to commemorate the project.  This bonus I will probably skip, but it will depend on how much more it would cost me to have it shipped.  All of these bonuses come for my backer level.  If I had pledged at a higher tier, I could have gotten other freebies, such as extra copies of the final PDF or physical copies of the book. I couldn't go that high at this time.  I did pledge extra, though.  One of the goals included PDFs of nine older books, many of which I missed out on when they first came out.  Actually, there are twelve books, as two are compilations.  I will be getting them all for about the same cost as getting two or three of them.  This was about as far as I was planning to go, until another goal opened up to get a newer book that I wanted, again at a fairly good discount.  I was waffling about whether or not to add it, when I had a visit last week from someone I hadn't seen in a long time.  [By the way, thanks again ABH.  That brief talk cheered me up.  I just hope that we will get to actually do something once again, besides talking from across a room for a few minutes.]  That visit helped me make up my mind and add to my pledge just as the campaign was winding down.  There was some controversy, as Kickstarter had connection issues during the last hour.  Fortunately, my pledge addition was accepted.  Unfortunately, the final stretch goal wasn't reached.  While the art staff will get a pay bonus, the rest of the creative team will not.  At least they will get paid for all of the extra material they will have to write.  One of the reasons I got into this was so I could a feel for the process, and maybe start my own campaign.  One of my many daydreams is to actually work in the gaming universe.  It feels like a great fit for me; I'm just not sure how to get involved.  This could be a first step.  I just have to wait until my rewards come in.

What's the Deal with Blogger

I just noticed that I have reached the 200 post mark for this blog.  That is a lot of posts, especially when one considers how short many of the first posts were.  Barely a paragraph or so of text.  I can't be sure if this was the first or second of my blogs.  Whichever the other one was, I no longer post regularly for it.  The same can be said of my third blog, the literary one.  After I finished with my novella, or whatever I decide to make of it, I couldn't come up with any good ideas to continue it.  Now, there is only this one left.  I don't even feel really like much to write anything today.  In fact, I didn't come up with an idea for this post until I noticed I had reached 200 posts.  Since I started this blog, Blogger has changed greatly.  For instance, the interface has recently been changed.  I'm still getting used to how to deal with the new formatting features.  Most of them are the same, but they still feel different.  I don't think I have the large range of colors for text and backgrounds I used to have.  Another thing missing is the Icon app.  For much of the time I had this blog, I wanted to create my own icon to show up when people looked for this blog.  I even dedicated posts with preliminary looks I created using Pages from my Mac.  It was okay, but I wanted something more.  It took awhile to find an art app for free that I liked.  Then, I had to experiment with working with it.  Just as I started with getting a basic design for the icon for one of my other blogs, the update occurred and the Icon app feature was removed.  At least I can't seem to find it anymore.  Let's be honest.  I never really looked through all the possible features when I first set this blog up.  I didn't own a computer yet, so I was limited in both time and flexibility with what I could do.  Even after I got my Mac, I rarely went back to see what all I could now do.  I'm not sure what else has been changed that I have now missed out on. Even the counter that my Mac is on is getting uneven, causing me problems as I type.  I guess I should quit today's post while I still can.  I'm about an hour behind schedule today, and I really need to catch up as soon as possible.  See you next week.

The Case of the Missing Comic Books

As I have mentioned many times in this blog, I like comic books.  In fact, they are one of the main reasons why I was already reading by the time I entered kindergarten.  I still get a few a week, sometimes a lot, all but one or two a month from DC comics.  However, for the last two months, I haven't been able to get any, as there were none to be found.  Let's get into the details.  In the last week of March, just before I was able to pick up that week's pull, Diamond, the exclusive distributor of comics to the direct market, announced that they would be shutting down due to the disruptions of services stemming from the lockdowns sweeping the country, particularly those in their home state of Maryland.  While some of their warehouses nationwide had already started to get the following week's titles in, Diamond felt that this was the best thing to do.  It didn't hurt that the continent's main printing press for comic books, in Ontario, Canada of all places, was shutting down as well.  This meant that there would be no shipping of new products until the lockdowns were relaxed.  Many stores weren't even allowed to be open, although some did manage to get by with delivery of products already on hand and the small trickle of non-comic books merchandise that was still being shipped out.  There would be no new comics anywhere for the next few weeks.  Except at Walmart.  See, a few years ago, DC went into an exclusive deal to supply Walmart with special titles, with a mix of new material and reprints.  Many stores balked at this, leading DC to start reprinting special versions of the new materials to sell to the direct market.  In the following year, DC allowed for the new batch of Walmart titles to be sold to the direct market, a few weeks later and with a different cover.  This titles were still being sold at Walmart when no one else had anything.  (On a side note, I have been noticing these off-brand new comic books at Walmart.  I hadn't heard of the title nor the company that makes them, only that they are new.  I have no idea of what to make of them.)  Then, DC mad a major announcement in mid-April.  They were breaking their exclusive contract with Diamond, one they had helped to come up with that ultimately led to Diamond becoming the only direct market distributor of most comic books in the country, and started dealing with two new companies to provide product.  Technically, they weren't new companies.  They were actually start-up divisions of two major mail order subscription fulfillment services.  They would be splitting the country into geographically arranged areas to provide to any store that was still open and wanted to get in some new books.  DC was able to do this because they still had some of the overprinting from a few titles that they could use.  Naturally, this upset many stores, especially those that couldn't fully open.  Why would a store go through one of their competitors, just so they could sell a few comics? This announcement came just before Diamond said it would resume services in late May, albeit with an abbreviated schedule.  DC followed this with the announcement that stores would now be allowed to sell their product on Tuesdays, instead of Wednesdays, as had been the case for decades.  Supposedly, this would allow all of DC's products (trade paperback collections [tpbs] and original graphic novels [ogns], not just comics) to be sold on the same day everywhere.  Before this announcement, comic book stores would get to sell tpbs and ogns the day they came in, while book stores would have to wait until the next Tuesday, which is the usual on sale date for the majority of titles.  This way, all of DC's products would be on sale at the same time everywhere, with no one getting an extra benefit.  This new date would also apply to product received from Diamond, once they started back up.  The next shoe to drop, after so many, was that DC would be producing new product for the digital services.  The first lineup of titles was just the recent material from the Walmart comics, just repackaged without the reprint material included.  Still, it allowed DC to have 'new' product out for a long time before anyone else.  When Diamond then made the list of product available when the started back up, many of the title DC published early would be included all at once.  However, there appeared to be gaps in the schedule, for not DC but other companies as well.  It turns out that both Marvel and DC were delaying some bigger titles until more of the country had opened back up, so that everyone would get an equal chance at reading them.  What's more, Marvel would be shifting some new series, as well as an ongoing, to digital format only.  Reader would only get a physical copy once the series were collected into a tpb. DC would follow suit, with shifting the last few issues of two series to digital only.  Fans would have to wait a few months later to get the physical copy once the trades came out.  [Disclaimer:  I read the two series in question, one of which was already cancelled before this mess cam about.] This came on the heels of DC announcing a new digital series, which may or may not ever get a physical run.  This is angering many long time readers, many who prefer physical copies over digital, where ownership is difficult to determine.  The consensus suggest that this is all a plan of DC's parent company, AT+T/Warner, who would make more money on the digital copies than with the physical books.  The final straw in all of this?  The shipment of many of the DC titles that had already been sent out with the new distributors was delayed to Diamond.  This means that I won't be getting all of my late books this week, when the first shipment finally arrives.  I don't know when I will get them either.

Where, O Where Has My Google Account Gone; Where, O Where Can It Be

This past Tuesday afternoon, I went to check my email for the first time that day.  I usually do so earlier, but I was out that morning checking up on my store (which is closed for the time meaning) and doing some light shopping.  Instead of getting into my account, I received an error message suggesting that I was using an unfamiliar device and I had to verify my account.  This seemed fishy, as I had been using my MacBook all but exclusively for logging into my Google accounts for over a year.  Still, I began the verification process.  Unfortunately, I had a few delays in doing them.  So much so that it looked like I had failed.  I didn't immediately get my account back up like I thought I would.  I was frantic.  On Tuesday, I was expecting a very big preview of the Kickstarter project I was backing.  The preview would be available only through a link in an update email.  I was sort of scared.  As  a last moment tactic, I checked my Mac's Mail app to see if it still worked.  It did.  While I didn't have access to my email account, I still had access to my email.  Splitting hairs, but at least I could download my preview.  By Tuesday night, after various attempts to contact Google, I resorted to creating a second account, just so I could email them back with my concerns.  Turns out that I may have sent emails to a bot that doesn't reply to such things.  Anyway, I had one more thing to worry about that night.  I barely got any sleep from my worrying.  A neighbors porch light shining into the room didn't help, either.  The next day, I tried more things.  While I still had email, the rest of the Google suite was locked out.  This blog for instance.  Fortunately, I had a work around for this, at least.  My blogs, and Blogger account, actually started on my store's website.  With some minor tweaking, I found out that I could still post to my blog, even if I couldn't actually make changes to the site or access other features.  I may have been able to, but I stopped after the initial revelation.  I didn't want to risk anything else.  I still checked on contacting Google and tried more on my own, anxious about possibly losing access to anything I connecting to my original account.  Nonetheless, I had another sleepless night, even if a glaring porch light was the main cause.  I spent much of Thursday morning and early afternoon doing most of the weekly shopping, again checkin up on my store, where I currently had no wifi.  It was almost mid-afternoon by the time I could check on my Google accounts.  Still nothing, but I did try on last stupid attempt.  I tried logging onto YouTube, to see if I could merge my tow accounts. (I tried to do so with my emails the day before, but it went nowhere.). To my surprise, I found that I could link to my original YouTube account; from there, I could get back to my original account.  Aside from some security alerts, only one thing was different.  I now had the ability to have videos chats with others.  I almost wonder if my problem was the Google took the account down to add the new features without telling anyone. Or I could have done something wrong, like not signing out of YouTube properly or messing up the verification process.   Whatever, I have my original account back.  Now, I have a more pressing problem--what will I do with my second email address?