Wordless Wednesday: September 15th, 2021
categories: personal; word count: 0 words
September 2021 archive
I guess it’s that time of year… again, y’all.
categories: personal; word count: 258 words
Since the renewal for my medical insurance has come due for the second time this year, I anticipate having to continue to fight the state over leaving my children’s child support orders in non-enforcement. Normally this is a requirement for the kind of medical insurance that I have, but if one can prove to the state that enforcement efforts could cause some kind of harm to come to parent or child(ren), the requirement for enforcement can be waived with what is called a good cause waiver. I have pursued and kept these waivers for as long as I have had medical insurance under the state, although I was not made aware that Bub’s case qualified for one until 2014. Then came earlier this year when I had to fight for both of these waivers to be put back onto their cases because they were mysteriously “lost”, and I had to contact a lawyer in preparation to sue the state to make sure that Bub’s good cause waiver stayed on his case. Funny how all of that worked though — as soon as HHSC and the OAG were informed that I had begun to consult with a lawyer, both cases had good cause waivers applied to them that have stayed to this day. I don’t screw around with this.
As much as I hate reliving the incidents — the trauma — that causes these waivers to need to be sought, I will continue to do so again and again to protect both of the boys and keep us safe for obvious reasons.
Music Monday: September 13th, 2021
categories: music; word count: 41 words
This is another old, but good, song that I liked to listen to when I was in high school.
I got to listen to a lot of songs during gym classes because the severity of my asthma benched me for them.
My thoughts on an article that’s percolating…
categories: personal; word count: 364 words
https://luciferiandominion.org/nothing-works-the-way-the-satanic-temple-thinks-it-does/
In the wake of Texas’ “Heartbeat Law” coming into effect, various people are exploring strategies to undermine it or have it done away with since it is stricter than Roe v. Wade. One of the groups doing this is The Satanic Temple (surprise, surprise), having asked the FDA to allow abortion-inducing drugs to be disseminated to Satanists without a prescription as is generally the norm, and taking Texas to court for… well, numerous things at this point. People who are outside The Satanic Temple have varying thoughts on the effectiveness of some of their strategies, and I have been a loyal member of The Satanic Temple for awhile so thought that I would add my two cents into the matter in, of all appropriate places, my own blog.
They’re trying. And we need that kind of effort to combat the questionable legality of this law. All of it.
I would rather see The Satanic Temple fail a few times, get back up again, dust itself off, and keep trying just to eventually be successful at undermining this law or even cutting it down at the knees than not see them try at all and not see anyone try. You can’t know if you’re ever going to be successful at something unless you try, although we already know that the United States — whether it ever cares to actually admit it or not — favors Christianity for a country that was founded on deism so many years ago. And given that this is not The Satanic Temple’s first lawsuit against Texas, it’s becoming increasingly more apparent that they are going to continue to attempt to litigate until their litigations, as many of them should already have been, are successful. Texas is bad enough as it is with our governor making it clear that he believes that Texas is a Christian state. If I had wanted to become a Christian I wouldn’t have quit the religious conversion classes (RCIA) that Bub’s father’s family coerced me into all those many years ago, which I still do not regret doing.
We need more people, more organizations, and more religions like The Satanic Temple, prepared to fight.
The mystery behind the elusive Google PageRank.
categories: blog maintenance, personal; word count: 233 words
Almost a decade ago (which makes me feel old just typing it), Google PageRank was everything.
You wanted to have PageRank if you wanted to monetize your blog, let alone be taken seriously in search engine results. With a bit of work it wasn’t very hard at all to get something like a two straight out of the gate. But in recent years, it has seemed more difficult to actually get that coveted PageRank… and then, not too long ago when I ran a PageRank checker on my own blog and other blogs and sites that were known to have it, suddenly they were all gone. This has left many people scratching their heads trying to figure out what the best metric to measure website popularity (“importance”) was, or should be, especially since Google hasn’t really… said much on the whole matter. I mean, I run Google Analytics behind this blog, but it’s mainly to let me know if two very specific people (Bub’s paternal grandmother and his great-aunt) ever actually access this blog, that way I can go to all of the trouble of IP blocking them and do it as many times as becomes necessary until they get the point. Aside from that, I don’t really mind how many hits it gets…
Although it could have done with improvement, if PageRank is gone that’s sad (and the end of an era).