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Due to some recent snowfalls, we have nice wintry scenery around here. I wandered around the yard and took some photos to share with everyone. No commentary, just photos.

I’ve seen the internet grow and change, almost from the beginning (read the whole post for context). And it continues to grow and change.

I’ve also seen my kids grow and change, from the beginning. And they continue to grow and change.

With humans, there is a known growth and development process. Imma gonna list the typical stages of growth of a person, and then compare it to the internet.

Human developmental stages, according to Erik Erikson

• Infancy : Birth to 18 months – A strong, positive and loving connection is established between a mother and her infant during this period.
• Early Childhood : 18 months to 3 years – Children learn to become more independent and develop a sense of personal control.
• Play Stage : 3 to 5 years – children become more observant of their environment and the people surrounding them.
• School Age : 5 to 12 years – Children begin to expand their world to include more people. Children at this stage have a need to be productive and experience a sense of accomplishment.
• Adolescence : 12 to 18 years – Adolescence is a complex stage as individuals search for a sense of identity. Acts of rebellion and withdrawal may occur.
• Young Adulthood : 18 to 35 years – Young adults actively seek out love and companionship in this socially active stage. Some young adults may wish to start a family, others may wish to embark on adventures.
• Middle Adulthood : 35 to 65 years – Significant importance is placed on work and family matters. Significant life changes can develop during this time.
• Maturity : 65 years to death – Individuals tend to reflect upon their lives at this stage. Some adults may look back with a sense of fulfillment and happiness. Others at this stage may feel regret, despair and a sense of failure.

Ok, that was for a human. Now let’s move to the internet, which is really just interactions of people remotely.

Internet developmental stages, according to Some Guy

• Infancy : 1965-1982. ARPA – Network users learn to interact remotely, proving out technical concepts
• Early Childhood : 1982-1993. BBS – Users learn to interact socially
• Play Stage : 1993-1998. WWW – Users experiment with presenting information to the world
• School Age : 1998-2008. Search Engines – Users find ways to organize information
• Adolescence : 2008-2014. Mobile – A new frontier opens up, with new freedoms and little responsibility.
• Young Adulthood : 2014-2020. Social media – Users present and are presented with round-the-clock updates, banding together sometimes, othertimes isolating themselves.
• Middle Adulthood : 2020-???. Whatever now is – People decide to focus on either real life or online life.
• Maturity : ???-x. Whatever the future is. Not sure how long it will be, but it’s the final stage, so whatever was birthed in the previous stage or two should be in adulthood by this time.

There, that’s my 5-minute delve into that topic. For more in-depth analysis, find someone who needs a thesis topic on societal development. Or read the Foundation series by Asimov.

I just watched Encanto last weekend, so I have that going through my head. And one thing that popped into my head during the movie was something like this:

Not that I ever saw that other movie, but I heard enough references and saw enough memes to figure it out.

Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

• There is the phrase “standing water”. But to me it looks like the water is sitting. How can you tell if water is sitting or standing?
• All store-label chocolate milk around here seems to be made with skim milk, and it’s the cheapest chocolate milk, but you get what you pay for. If you want stuff that actually tastes good, check that’s it’s whole-milk chocolate milk. We buy the stuff from local dairy, which our grocery store is kind enough to stock on their shelves.
• What did Water do to get kicked out of the band Earth Wind and Fire?
• When I’m not drinking milk – or water, or orange juice – I like iced tea. But the flavors vary with the brands. For instance, I prefer Pure Leaf raspberry tea but their peach tea is not so good. And Snapple has good peach tea but not so good raspberry tea.
• With animal testing not so popular anymore, what is the modern equivalent of a guinea pig? Like what do kids these days call someone who is the test subject?

I wish I would have started working on cars earlier in life – it would have saved me a bunch of money. Here are some things I’ve learned over the last few years of working on my own cars.

• When replacing suspension components that involve removing sway bar links, plan ahead and get new sway bar links. This tip does not apply to places where cars don’t get rusty. But around here, sway bar links are considered single-use. They are designed to be able to be removed and re-installed, but that’s only in a perfect world. They’re cheap enough that it’s not worth my time to try to save them. I’ll give it one attempt to undo them, but if they don’t cooperate I just get out the angle grinder and off they go.
• Speaking of sway bar links (and other stubborn rusty connectors), a good tool to have is an impact wrench. It doesn’t loosen everything, but it has helped. And it helps tighten those sway bar links. I got a cheap electric one from Harbor Freight. I went with corded electric because I don’t have shop air and I don’t use it enough to make it worth managing batteries.
• The steering wheel on the van was wobbling. Slowly at low speeds and faster at higher speeds. That seemed like an easy diagnosis – one of the front tires broke a belt and is now out of round. So I swapped out the front tires (normal to winter or vice-versa) but the problem continued. I took it to the shop and told them what happened. It didn’t take them long looking at it to find it was a rear tire with the broken belt. Moral of the story: just because the symptom is in the steering wheel doesn’t mean the problem is in the front end.

It is time once again to update Some Blog Site readers on the results of my Some Fun Site project to create a more accurate football prediction method.
The 2021 NFL season is over, and here are the most accurate methods for predicting regular-season game results (wins-losses):

• MPWLS: 63%
• ITPLS: 63%
• MYW: 60%

I thought the Home Field Advantage factor would come back into play this year, after being diminished last year due to lack of crowds, but oddly enough it did not, and the biggest factor was how the teams did last year.

If you think you have a formula that can predict the winner of an NFL game better than 62.8% of the time, let me know and I’ll add it to the list.
(For the ideas behind the methods, please visit the Some Fun Site page.)

Okay, okay, it is 2022 at this point, but the results are headlines as 2021 because they match with the 2021 predictions made in 2021 for the 2021 season. Also, the results are not all-haiku, just the predictions were. A more accurate title would be “Results for the All-Haiku Predictions made in 2021”.

Before the bowl games commenced for this past college football season, I made some predictions and some more predictions. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the tally of those predictions. Note that the results are not in haiku form, in contrast to the predictions.
Read the rest of this entry »