Tag: Cat Smith

Green Pill Secret: Romance Scams

TimeHorse December 7, 2024 No Comments

The thing about life is, sometimes it gives you lemons and you’re allergic to lemonade. For instance, although the date on this post is the right date, I am only able to write it 48 hours later, which allows me to tell you not just about the frightful topic but also why my telling you about it has been so hard.

First and foremost as viewers of the podcast will know, my dear friend and co-host Cat will be going under the knife to hopefully resolve their neck issues this Thursday and I for one am concerned for my friend and their overall recovery. However, I am confident that they will at some point be returning to the show but most of all I am hopeful for my friend’s swift recovery.

That said, I wasn’t able to secure an alternate co-host for my Romance Scams discussion. I had a wonderful discussion with one of my neighbors who talked a lot about fake male profiles, typically in their twenties, and in uniform, running the typical romance scam. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to schedule a time when she could appear so I did this one, and likely the next one and the last December episode solo. But, I do have something special planned for the Winter Solstice!

Meanwhile, on the job front, my next employment seems to be further delayed and I might not be working until after Christmas. As usual, I refuse to look at as a setback but rather I see it as a wonderful Christmas gift as I head into 2025.

I’ve also been flying recently but my instruction has been forestalled because my fundamentals are still quite rusty. So, while I’m still unemployed, I’m focusing my day-to-day work in studying the PHAK and AFH. I found a great channel on YouTube by Philip J Murphy. The recitations are a little dry, but I find the contents quite educational. I personally think my instructor is a little annoyed with me being so rusty, so I hope the next time I’m able to schedule a flight, I’m able to show great progress. Hopefully, I’ll finish before my FAA license expires on 31 December. I have submitted an extension to the FAA, but I don’t expect the new license to be issued before mid February.

But, the big thing I am most thankful for is that I’ve reconnected with my brother. For the last year, my brother has eschewed my contact, and ghosted me because he went off his meds. His Breton, now ex-wife reached out when he was at his darkest and fortunately we were all able to convince him to get the help he needed, since he filed a medical directive to prevent anyone from helping him save himself.

Now, he has the right meds, is stable with his work, and able to live in his now empty house. He reached out just after Thanksgiving and we made hummus together thanks to his home-made recipe. It was delicious. After we ate and caught up, he made me a custom batch with extra garlic. Yum!

Suffice it to say, I’ve been busy. But, I was able to record an episode in time, right before my semi-annual toastmasters training. I missed the last day of the Reston Farmers’ Market Market and my weekly workout but I had the episode recorded and submitted to YouTube with an hour to spare, at 07:30 on Wednesday. Finally, I clicked to schedule it, and set the schedule for 08:30, which is the time we normally would have released this episode. Only, I got the day wrong as it was supposed to be 7 December, not 8 December! D’oh!

So, I submitted the episode, went to the Toastmasters training, met a beautiful friend from the last Toastmasters social event I was at, hurt my arm, and then rushed home.

Unfortunately, there was no time to check on the episode because my poorly-fitting Airpods fell in my iced tea while I was smiling and eating during my Maryland Science Book Club meeting last Wednesday.

When I went to the apple store to complain, they said just buy a new set of headphones. I tried on a different set but let me just say apple earphones are the worst designed earphones ever built! Sure, the ATMOS sound is cool, but what good is an earphone if it can’t even stay in your ear when you have the temerity to even smile! I mean, isn’t apple just making their 1984 Commercial a reality? Apple is making you constantly frown while you listen to their airpods while a real, professional earphone maker, like Shure, is in skimpy shorts and tossing something and Tim Cook droning on and on and preventing you from even smiling. Touché, apple. I see you!

The point being, my new earphones were scheduled for arrival on Saturday and I spend the time after the training working with the concierge for the missing package to no avail. Since my Denon AV Receiver broke after a power cut just before Thanksgiving and I knew I could replace it with a Black Friday discount. The unit arrived and I lugged it all the way up the 16 flights of stairs because I need to be fitter if I want to attract women. However, I wanted to test the audio out of the old receiver to confirm it was the receiver and not the speakers. Since the Shure earphones are optionally wired, I was able to confirm the receiver was dead and I bought a label maker to perform the rewiring.

I will say the climbing of 16 flight, or 40 flight if I move to the apartment across the street, even if they made the most awesome flat a three-bedroom well outside of my budget. I still need to figure out if I want West-only or South-East exposure and my dilly-dallying is my way of saying I’m willing to forsake either while I consider my job situation.

Okay, I seem to have lost my train of thought again. Maybe I’ll talk more about how I have two red flags against me because I’m bald and not six-foot tall. Meaning, women already have a lot of good reasons to reject me and why I’m mainly attracting scammers and lower quality women. I’ll leave it at that, as I want to talk about Hypergamy in a different episode.

Anyway, I was unable to get the earphones after the training, and then I had a Tesla Light Show event with the Maryland Tesla owners. We got 190 cars for our part of the display in the Christmas lightshow. I have video from both up close and on a hill, though on the hill the audio is somewhat messed up because people were talking near the camera.

After that, I had a special neighbor party organized by an absolutely gorgeous women who is a good friend but is very much not in any way, shape, or from attracted to me and is utterly disgusted by the prospect. Did I mention Hypergamy?

Thus, I wasn’t able to confirm the video uploaded all day Saturday, and had some things to take care of on Sunday so I wasn’t able to see until last night that it was posted and it wasn’t until now that I could write this long updating post to you. If you read this far, I thank you. Now, go enjoy the episode where I talk all about how I, personally, was scammed.

The Green Pill Podcast: Seeing the Doctor, Part 2

TimeHorse November 30, 2024 No Comments

Last week we brought you stories of bad Doctor visits, like to Devil’s End, Auderly House, Seaspite base, or U.N.I.T. HQ… oops, I mean stores of doctors behaving badly.

In any case, this week, we return to our conversation and discuss Cat‘s work as a Medical Performer known as a Standardized Patient. Cat and I are very proud of their work, especially if only to prevent nonetheless brilliant diagnostic physicians like Dr. Gregory House [not Holmes], living at 221 Baker Street, in apartment B, and with best friend oncologist Dr. James Wilson [not Watson].

In fact, having seen many clips on YouTube, and being a huge fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s work, and having a subscription to Peacock, I decided to watch the entire House series. Also, as a huge fan of Blackadder, a show which Dr. House keeps on his DVR—that Dr. House is a dead ringer for Hugh Laurie from that series! Overall, I very much enjoyed the series and the rotating cast of characters, though when House goes nuts and ruins his boss’s first post-breakup date, the shark has been jumped. I mean, the takedown of the narcissistic cop in series 3 was just funny, but what happens in series 8 was just creepy. But, I won’t spoil it any more than that. It’s a fun ride and I much encourage it!

But before you start binging House, and then “A Bit” of Fry and Laurie, please check out this week’s episode!

The Green Pill Podcast: Seeing the Doctor, Part 1 OR Update on my watching Doctor Who from the beginning 61st Anniversary Edition

TimeHorse November 23, 2024 1 Comment

This week, Cat and I return with a special 2-part series on Seeing the Doctor.. We both discuss our various doctor visits and experiences and of course we have to talk about the elephant in the room. Some doctors are just absent any form of bedside manner, especially when it comes to women patients and dismissing symptoms, especially pain. Nothing exemplifies this more than the famous Golden Girls scene where Dorothy Zbornak (played by the late, great, and then there’s Bea Arthur) when she confronts a dismissive doctor who ignores her clear set of symptoms for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Meanwhile, I wanted to give an update with respect to my Doctor Who rewatch. I’m currently in the Jon Pertwee and thoroughly enjoyed watching The Dæmons (I have a bit of a crush on that Olive Hawthorn) and the ghostly apparitions from Day of the Daleks (which has the wrong Dalek voices—sorry Nick, shows light beams on weapons which are literally described as sonic, and I miss the camp visuals!) around Halloween. I enjoyed seeing the Royal Navy (I and the BBC thank you! But Doctor, are you telling me the Silurians evolved in the Age of Mammals? Is that much better than the Age of Molluscs?) base where The Sea Devils was shot during Veterans’ Day, and on Monday, in keeping with the 61st Anniversary today, I’ll begin me rewatch of The Three Doctors (the last live appearance of William Hartnell as the Doctor and of course it’s great to see Patrick Troughton return since his last story last Summer) ! I could not have asked for a better synergy between stories and real life!

Anyway, enough about the Doctor, on to this week’s episode!

The Green Pill Secret: Voting

TimeHorse November 2, 2024 No Comments

In the United States of America, on 5 November, 2024, you have your last chance, as a citizen, to vote for your next President. But, did you know there are also down-ballot elections? Do you know who your Congressperson is? Do you know your Governor? Do you know your state Senator and Representative or Delegate? Because, believe me, fixing the flaws in the system starts in the grass roots and all politics is local so please do read up on your county or parish ordinances up for vote, and be mindful of who’s running for School Board or Soil and Water or County Attorney General.

On this site, we won’t tell you how to vote—however, I did suggest you listen to Taylor Swift instead—but for your state and local elections, think about how we can make politics more responsive to the people. For instance, do you know where your state lies on the Swamp Index? If you’re like me, you may be surprised to learn that Virginia ranks 46th of 51 in the Index; my co-host Cat (who couldn’t make this episode) in New York is all the way up at 14th place, by comparison. This is why my special guest Nancy Morgan and I have been fighting to get money out of politics. After all, since Citizens United v. FEC, we’ve seen astronomical growth in dark money political spending under the guise of legitimate businesses. While you’d need a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens, many other reforms are best performed in your local state capitol, from Atlanta to Salt Lake City.

And you know I, personally, have been a big proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment and women’s bodily autonomy, for electric vehicle access and support, and for good governance of one person one vote and for every vote to be equal with a National Popular Vote bill. The National Popular Vote is a bill passed in states with a total of 209 electors—only 61 more electors are needed to have the voters choose our President. After all, the system we have now causes both large and small states, both deep red and deep blue states, both rich and poor states to be totally ignored because they aren’t a battleground. And if you are in a battleground, your days are numbered. After all, Ohio and Virginia used to be battlegrounds, but not anymore. That capriciousness just isn’t a good way to select the leader of world’s biggest military. Is your state part of the compact? Great, maybe you can help in some other states! If not, write your state legislators, and consider, if your governor is against it, add those 888 words as an amendment to your state constitution, like Nevada.

Of course, there’s also the issue of Opened Primaries to keep our candidates more centered and weed out the unstable ones. And of course First Past the Post voting is one reason we get such diametrically opposed and out of touch candidates and are so afraid of the Spoiler Effect. I’m glad that Ranked Choice Voting / Instant Runoff Voting is gaining traction, though I feel that it’s not as intuitive as Star Approval Voting, which is what you see in, for instance, your Amazon ratings, and has a much better chance of being Condorcet. And of course there’s the issue of Gerrymandering, which we tried to fix with OneVirginia2021 but failed miserably with obstructive politicians added at the eleventh hour to the “independent” redistricting panel. Gerrymandering allows the politicians to choose their voters, and not the natural other way around.

If any of these non-partisan issues matter to you and you’re in Virginia, please come to our Democracy Day on 21 January in Richmond, on the Quindecennial anniversary of Citizens!

The Tough Lemonade: My Co-host’s Cabaret

TimeHorse October 3, 2024 No Comments

Folks,

As we begin the autumn series of the Green Pill Secret, we welcome my good and dear friend Cat back onto the podcast, I was reminded of a wonderful cabaret Cat shared, which we discussed on the podcast in the episode coming out this Sunday.

On the Cabaret we have Cat performing a number of wonderful pieces, including a shout-out to use Baritones what never get no love from the Tennors of the world any more than dems Sopranos care about the poor Alto masses. We also get a heartfelt duet with Cat’s daughter Gracie, a preview of the wonderful performance they gave at L.I. Who. And who can forget Cat’s boyfriend and our returning guest Alex, as they sing together so romantically!

Please check out this amazing performance by my amazing and delightful friend Cat. I’m sure, like me, you’ll never notice how long it is and just wonder how the time flew by!

Thanks for watching and see you Sunday.

The Green Pill Secret: Convention Roundtable, Part 2

TimeHorse September 29, 2024 No Comments

In the second part of our Convention Roundtable, we go through how we all got here. We begin by embarrassing Gracie by talking about how she grew up on the convention circuit. Lawrence Neals then talks about his convention experience and what it’s like now with money. Then Alex Boruff chimes in with how much fun he has coming to these conventions. Cat tells us all about how she got into the convention scene. And finally, I talk about how my Mom was part of the Mark Twain Masquers and how I went to conventions at a young age in both Connecticut and Montréal, and then founded the Northern Virginia Doctor Who Viewing Society in 1999, then did a bunch of Electric Car events and got into cosplay—beginning with Ian Chesterton, and most recently in a Fuck Yeah!, complete with Pornstashe—and finally back into the Doctor Who conventions with the Convention which shall not be named, where I met Cat and eventually started attending L.I. Who.

As before, the audio quality is frankly atrocious. I’ve done my best to clean it up but me thinks short of magical computer code, this is the best I can do. I think I’ve boosted the audio of our guests as best I can and since even I find them still relatively unintelligible, even subtitles are out of the question.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the special crawl at the beginning to bring you up to speed, and may the Force Be With You, until next time!

The Green Pill Secret: Convention Roundtable, Part 1

TimeHorse September 22, 2024 No Comments

In the first episode of our Autumn series, I bring you the best I could do with the difficult recording I made at the L.I. Who convention on 25 August, 2024. When I recorded the episode, about half-way through, I noticed that the pickup mic wasn’t on and so the only audio being recorded was from the microphone next to Cat and myself. Consequently, the raw recording has Lawrence Neals, returning guest Alex Boruff, and Cat’s daughter Gracie practically silent. I tried to use Final Cut Pro to amplify our guests voices, but it was limited to only 12 dB gain. However, since Zoom records both video with audio and audio by itself, I used Audacity to amplify all the quiet sections by up to 20 dB and the normalize the audio to remove any of the pops. This is probably the best I can do without some Peter Jackson type AI Audio jiggery-pokery.

In part 1, we describe our podcast to our guests and have them each introduce themselves. Thanks again for your patience with the sound quality and we hope you can take one more episode as we bring you part 2, next week.

The Green Pill Secret: Embracing Change

TimeHorse September 15, 2024 1 Comment

In the final episode of the Summer Series, we get ready for the change of seasons with an episode about change. I recently quit my job and I’m loving it, because change is what I needed. Sure, I’m unemployed now, but I have a budget and a plan and am moving forward. It’s far too soon to panic!

I also am happy to be alone. I still care about my ex but I’m glad I’m no longer married to her, even with my current unemployment and no-one but myself to rely upon.

And, let’s not forget in 51 days we have a Presidential Election here in the United States, and that’s going to bring change either way. Have you registered to vote yet? Don’t wait too long, as time’s running out!

For this episode, my alarm didn’t go off so it ran rather long (about 18 minutes). Because of this, I edited out all my non-sequiturs and brought it down to a still too long 12 minutes, but the last couple are just summarizing the exciting summer season we’ve just had.

As for the excised bits, I’ve added them as shorts, which will be posted over the next week and will bring us into the Autumn season next Sunday. For now, though, please enjoy this week’s episode with me, hoping Cat will be back soon!

 

The Green Pill Podcast: Dealing with Failure

TimeHorse August 31, 2024 No Comments

This week I am by myself again as Cat finished band camp and with the two guests I was hoping one of them could make it today were both either in Scotland or going to New York, where I was last week, ironically.

However, in life, you have to deal with failures, and not being able to find a guest, or unable to get a date, or your microphone failing to record your podcast, or your bank charges you overdraft unreasonable fees, whatever it is, it’s a failure and it’s not that you can avoid them, you can only learn to deal with them. And that what this episode is all about.

I hope you will find my advice helpful and consoling as we all deal with the various failures in our lives, and thank you for watching.

The Green Pill Podcast: Conventions

TimeHorse August 24, 2024 No Comments

Folks, this week I had to record a solo episode as Cat was pretty busy with their convention prep and rather than trying to shoe in an episode for our regular spot, we decided to instead see if we could do a live episode Sunday at 15:00 if we both feel up to it. Not saying we will, but you know how conventions are—or maybe you don’t—but they tend to wear you out!

What? You’ve never been to a convention? Well, don’t be shy, as that’s what I’ll be discussing in this week’s episode. Maybe you’ve never been to a convention—like the Doctor Who convention I’m currently attending—perhaps because there are none of your interest in your area. Don’t let that get you down because even informal conventions, like a basic meetup, can help you get out there and make new friends… and even potentially meet someone.

I know most of us who don’t already have someone special, are out there hoping to find love. There’s nothing wrong with that. You shouldn’t feel ashamed either that you have those desires or are unable to satisfy them. Even if your room is next to a happy couple enjoying each other heavily, intimately while you’re trying to record a podcast, don’t be jealous, be happy that, while they probably were once in your position, they found each other and you could find someone too.

Of course, we can’t know where you will find that special someone, and you should never put all your eggs in one basket. Sure, it may seem like there are a lot of opportunities on dating apps, and I did have one wonderful, long-term (6 months) relationship thanks to one of them, but there’s something to be said about meeting organically, through a convention or a meetup.

So get out there, and I hope you enjoy this week’s episode. And if you’re at Long Island Who, come see me at the Is Doctor Too Woke panel at 14:00, or Cat at one of their many panels!