The Green Pill Secret: Your Inner Critic

As some of you may know, I have been going to therapy on-and-off for a number of years. The main reason for this because, like many young men of today, I left college with nothing, and couldn’t get a date to save my life. When I finally did find someone who would date me, I clung on as if my life depended on it. In hindsight I know this was unhealthy, but I also recognize as a neglected child and baby, according to my parents, that it’s no wonder I have abandonment issues and historically had a Anxious Attachment style. Of course, naturally I was most attracted to rejecting women who recapitulated my childhood neglect and finally married someone with an Avoidant Attachment style. Therapy has helped me get through this, and helped me stop hating myself and helped me become someone who is more secure in his attachment.

Now, I’m hoping to do into more depth on Attachment Styles in a subsequent episode, as well as therapy, but this week, my wonderful friend Cat returns for the first of 6 topics of discussion. This week, it’s all about that Inner Critic. That inner critic who makes me think no woman will ever find me attractive because of all my recent and historical romantic failures. That inner critic who makes me think I’m not a real cosplayer because I don’t make my own outfits. That inner critic who says I’m an awful composer. That inner critic who says I’m never going to be a pilot after two and a half decades of trying. That inner critic who tells me I can’t deliver a good speech. Celle critique de la interior que dit que je ne parle pas français, oder Deutsch, o italiano, или русский, 日本語または 中文. That inner critic who says I’m a failed Physicist because McGill didn’t even give me credit for the 3 years I studied the discipline. That inner critic who reminds me I’m a software engineer without a job. And that goddamn inner critic that reminds me I’m not a successful author because I’ve only had a few of my short stories published and I’ll never be as successful as Stephen King, or even Nev Fountain or Martin Wilsey.

Now, should you always ignore your inner critic because it’s shit-talking you? By all means, no! The critic is there to keep you from embarrassment. But sometimes, when you’re constantly rejected romantically, and having trouble finding the time to finish the first draft of your novel, and realizing how long it’s been and you still don’t have a pilot’s licence, or your sewing machine sits idle, don’t sweat it. Because I may not be the best, but have been on some successful dates, I do cosplay, I do write music, I am licensed to fly, I ran a great Toastmasters last Thursday, I practice my linguistic skills when I travel, I run a science book club and have read over 100 science books, I’m a very skilled coder with sufficient clearances which make me expect I will have a new job soon, and I have my own Amazon page if you want to read some of my work. And I fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, for a National Popular Vote, and Electric Car access, especially for National Drive Electric Week!

And this channel, well, I hope it will grow too. I don’t mind only 10 subscribers oas of this writing. I’m happy that two of my shorts got over 150 views. So don’t let that Innere Critic Rule you, making you fall into self-sabotaging behaviors. Control your Inner Critic, and just don’t let it control you!

https://youtu.be/HC2FuSiykBE

Got Melk

Stift Melk
Melk Abbey, a full view. The photo is out of focus as the focus lock on an iPhone 3G was wonky. Friday, 22 October, 2010. © 2020 Jeffrey C. Jacobs

Melk, Austria, is a small, monastery town in North-Central Austria. I visited there in ten years ago today, in 2010, on a trip across Austria. Melk was our first stop as we left for there right after landing in Wien.

2010 was kind of a melancholy year for me since I decided to become a Vegetarian for just that year. I wasn’t ready so reverted back to meat in 2011, but a couple years ago I stopped liking the taste of meat so I went back to vegetarianism. The sad thing was that here I was in Austria and I couldn’t eat authentic Wiener Schnitzel.

The sky was clear that day, perhaps too clear, and the buildings of the abbey shown beautify. I wish the photo could give it justice but the iPhone 3G back then was just not up to snuff.

That said, the Chapel was lovely and I did like how that photo turned out. I love Austria and hope to return someday. Grüß Gott!

Stift Melk, Kapelle
Melk Abbey Chapel. Photo from Friday, 22 October, 2010. © 2020 Jeffrey C. Jacobs

EDIT 2020-12-12: Forgot to post this on the day in question. It was originally scheduled for posting on Thursday, 22 October, 2020. Sorry for the delay.

Jeffrey’s Jammin Birthday Bash

Join me to find out how I like my new job, the exciting plans I have for the upcoming year, and so I can give a personal thanks for your personal friendship!

Please note, the official start time is 20:00 because I want to make sure not to start it before I finish my first full day of work at the new job. If I finish sooner, I will open the room earlier. This is, after all, an exciting time for me. My first new job in 18 years, and the first of four steps on the route to make me a better man, and much, much happier!

This event is opened to everyone who claims to know me! All of my software colleagues, all of my fellow authors, fellow science readers, fellow Doctor Who fans, fellow cosplayers, fellow Electric Car drivers and enthusiasts, all of my Equal Rights Amendment sisters and brothers in arms, all of my National Popular Vote Interstate Compact supporters, all of my avid gaming friends, all of my friends abroad except those in Europe—have your kip, mates—all of my fellow Toastmasters, all of my fellow aviators, all of my fellow musicians, tous mes amis qui parle français oder Deutsch или по-русский o italiano, my acting friends and my friends who eschew meat!

The only thing I ask is you be respectful, kind, and know that I hope you all consider any friend of mine a potential friend of yours!

There is a password to this event. It’s not hard to guess if you know me but if you want to know, and you are reading this on from Twitter, message me, on Tumblr, message me, on LinkedIn, again, message me, or join me via the Facebook event. Or, just comment on this blog, with your email address, and I will mail it to you.

See you all next Wednesday!

[zoom_api_link meeting_id=”83969414860″ link_only=”no”]

Tesla OS 2020.16.2.1

Finally!

TeslaFi had been spamming me with news about TeslaOS 2020.16 for a while and I’ve been itching to see what, after giving us the amazing stop at a stop sign in the last minor update.

Turns out, not much. I am mostly unimpressed by Tesla with this update, though nonetheless very appreciative. Autoformatting a DashCam drive—I wonder if it supports 2TB yet—and a better layout for Easter Eggs are, after all, improvements, even if the Easter Eggs aren’t really hidden gems anymore.

The coolest new feature, though, is the new SuperCharger filter, allowing the driver to only see Version 3 stations and filter out all the slower ones. I love the fact that I have free, lifetime SuperCharging, and one of these days, I’m gonna cross the continents with that perk.

Overall, I’m not disappointed despite being underwhelmed. And one rumor is that this, or a soon to be released version will add V2G to the Tesla. I can’t wait until that rolls out as the Tesla Battery Pack may make for a new, mobile Powerwall. Mind you, even if #CO2Fre could do V2G, my house isn’t equipped for it anyway. So, even if it doesn’t have V2G, it’s still a cool update!

Tesla OS 2020.16.2.1
Tesla OS 2020.16.2.1 adds a new toy box interface, a SuperCharger filter, and auto-formatting of DashCam media. © 2020, Jeffrey C. Jacobs

Gentle reader, if you have been keeping up with me since 11 February of this year, you know that I have been posting once a day since then. As such, today marks a hundred days of a hundred daily posting. Through that, I’ve shared with you exciting electric car news, updated to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, my struggles to get the Equal Rights Amendment to be our Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, written about my many works of fiction, and the many books of nonfiction I voraciously read to be a better scientist. I’ve shared with you my cosplay adventures, and my love of Doctor Who, my love of games, and a bit of my speaking in tongues as well as delivering speeches and singing to my heart’s content. I’ve talked about international travel and how I love to fly there in my own plane, discussed my acting and my dietary needs. And most of all I’ve told you I’m an excellent coder who is always keen for new work. Thanks for riding with me as we cruise upon the cloud to another one hundred posts!

Ascension of the Cybermen

WARNING: SPOILERS!

The Cybermen are back and they mean business! So, who’s that orphan then?

Tonight’s episode was quite a wallop with non-stop danger interspersed with a tranquil orphan story in a quaintly Georgian or Edwardian, Northern Irish village where the only jobs seem to be farmer (appropriate when following CountryFile and tonight’s series [season for the Yanks] finale of Call the Midwife) and the Garda, the local constabulary.

I’ll get back to the farm boy constable in a moment but first this episode immediately follows The Haunting of Villa Diodati. The half-man, half-Cyberman is back, the Doctor having traced his position from the data left in the previous episode. There, they meet the last seven humans in that part of the Universe.

At this I want to stop. I mean, we got that at the Utopia, one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who serials! In that story, Captain Jack Harkness grabs the TARDIS as it’s taking off from Cardiff. They land on a planet trillions of years in the future, where the last of humanity is protected from total annihilation from lack of resources by a Professor Yana—You Are Not Alone—who turns out to be… the Master.

But I’ll return to that in a moment.

So, our intrepid time travellers, the Doctor, Yaz, Graham, and Ryan, arrive on the planet with the last humans and proceed to totally fail in their rescue attempt. When the Doctor tries to cover everyone so they can escape, Ryan is separated from Yaz and Graham, and he, the Doctor, and one of the human wunderkinds, who is able to hack cyber-ships and able to save the Doctor and Ryan.

Meanwhile, Graham, Yaz, and three more humans—three of the original seven having died—blow out their escape ships engines. But as luck would have it (can you say Deus Ex Machina) they’re in a cyber-war graveyard. They are able to pilot the ship into a Cyberman Troop ship and instead of doing the intelligent thing, knowing that the ship is full of Cybermen, of piloting it back to the planet with the TARDIS, they go and take it to the gateway to try and bring their problems for her to solve.

Screaming Cybermen? What’s that about. It’s mentioned once and then never again? But again, I digress.

Anyway, so the Doctor, Ryan, and the Wonderkind make it to the gateway and meet the last guardian of the gateway. He shows them the portal and the Doctor is aghast to see her ruined home Gallifrey beyond.

At the same time, Yaz, Graham, and a about a million Cybermen have arrived.

To add insult to injury—I told you I’d get back to him—The Master is back, stepping though the portal to Gallifrey.

Meanwhile, remember that orphan Garda? Well, it turns out, he has the same power as Captain Jack Harkness: he cannot die. He’s shot and falls off a cliff. He dies for a moment, and then he gasps, and recovers. On his body is no sign of his injury.

And does a Garda have to have his mind erased when he retires? Are they a cyber-nursery?

So many questions! How does the orphan relate to Captain Jack? How did Jack know about the lone Cyberman? How are the orphan and the half-Cyberman connected? Why was the half-Cyberman rejected for upgrade? Who is the Doctor from The Fugitive of Jadoon? Where is Omega? What happened to Gallifrey? And what was the Master doing there?

Next week, the series finale, Timeless Children!

Deux Bière, S’il vous plait…

André winced. “He’s no Prime Minister of mine!”

What if you could change history? What if you could put right what you felt in your heart was wrong?

André may have lost his bid for a Federal Riding in Québec, but when he’s given the opportunity to get his Francophone province to break with Canada, he’s unable to resist liquoring up his friend and stealing his boss’s time machine. But one piece of advice André never got: be careful what you wish for…

Giles is just a humble custodian. Just an ordinary Québecois with nothing to show for it but a well-paying job, a pension, … and his boss with a Time Machine. When his best mate André tricks him into visiting Canada in the 1860s, it’s not his hero Lincoln Giles meets, but the man who would become Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. McDonald. Can Giles keep André out of trouble. Can he keep his politician friend from effecting the future?

And isn’t it strange how similar André and John A are…

Read ‘Let’s Kill John A. OR John Wilkes Booth Must Die’ in The Witness Paradox, published by Tanhouser Press and edited by Martin Wilsey. Now available on Amazon, Books-A-Million, Barnes & Nobel, Powell’s Books. Alas, not available at Chapters, despite this story takes place in Canadian.

Double Rainbow over Portree

Double Rainbow over Portree
A Double Rainbow in Portree, Skye, in Scotland. The outer Rainbow can barley be seen but is just visible as a faint fuchsia streak that extends from the trunk of the tree on the right. Photo © 2019 TimeHorse, LLC

Every since I was a child, I dreamed of spending my mild summers in Scotland and my mild summers in New Zealand. Who needs winter?! Although I’ve yet to visit the lovely submerged island continent that is New Zealand, I have been to Scotland a few times and it never ceases to impress me. I’m so in love with the lands north of Hadrian’s wall I could happily spend months there just enjoying the sights.

As I got older, I became a bit of a polyglot, thirsting for new languages to speak. So when I read that you could secure Scottish residency by becoming fluent in Scots, I decided that was a language most assuredly on my bucket list.

The great thing about Scotland, and Edinburgh specifically, is that it has a thriving Doctor Who fanbase that meets monthly at an awesome bistro right off the Royal Mile, the Tron.

The Tron, Edinburgh
The Tron is a sports bar in Edinburgh where the Monthly Edinburgh Who show meets. Photograph © TimeHorse, LLC

I’m not sure when I’ll be back in Edinburgh or Scotland, but if you’re going, won’t you take me with you!