🎵 K-Pop, Fred Willard, Dual Monitors 🖥

Hey! Thanks for reading! Just a reminder that I wrote this some years ago, and may have much more complicated feelings about this topic than I did when I wrote it. Happy to elaborate, feel free to reach out to me! 😄

🎵 The song for this post is Catallena, by Orange Caramel. 🎵

I have a cousin who's… about 15? 16? When she hit the young teen years, her "thing" was reading genre fiction, but her mid-teen years have been all about K-Pop. Trying to be the Cool Relatable Family Member, I told her I enjoyed K-Pop too; we passed a phone around, her showing me BTS and I showed her Mr. Simple by Super Junior, telling my "joke" that I planned to do an all-dad tribute band in 10 years or so, doing the dances (DOCUMENTATION). This was one of the earliest examples of "you're not The Youth, You're 30" when she roasted me by trying to be kind, indifferently saying "it's alright for an older video."

Anyway! I just didn't appreciate the knowledge bomb she dropped on me. According to this Vox Explainer, all the K-Pop I listened to and internalized was second generation, and we're now in the third generation. So really, I liked it before it was cool. It seems I used to be "with it," but then they changed what "it" was, and now what I'm with isn't "it," and "it" is weird and scary.

Back when he played for compLexity gaming, Kevin "qxc" Riley wrote a post on its blog, lost to history, where he listed his favorite K-Pop songs. I made a YouTube playlist from that post and it was a go-to from about 2012-2014. Feel free to give it a listen if you want to get roasted by a teen in the near future.

(also… why is PSY's David Letterman impersonator the same dude who creepily goes into SISTAR's dressing room 🤔? Maybe this guy is a fixture or something? idk, I connected those dots once and now you can see it too)

Anyway, your reminder that K-Pop rich and delightfully entertaining. Also, if you want to turn a critical lens to it 🧐 there is a lot to chew on lol.

Hey, Wha' Happened?!

Fred Willard died, which, while a great tragedy for the world, I'm at peace with. Like Joe Armstrong, I mostly feel grateful for his contributions than robbed or gutted or anything. He appeared to continue doing cool things into a golden age without becoming a shitlord, which I always appreciate. Like J.K. Simmons, he was in a lot of shit and always made it better.

He's not a household name for many, but almost everyone's seen his work. I think my favorite bit of his was Wha' Happened?!, from A Mighty Wind, a criminally under-watched movie:

Anyway, RIP buddy. I'll keep saying "Wha' Happened?!?" and be disappointed that nobody knows what I'm referencing.

Back on my bullshit

I upgraded my setup again. We moved the desk, and are dual-monitor now:

The cables are a mess, and I have a few things left to work out before I start cleaning them up. I have a KVM switch which mostly works (my PC's graphics card has only one HDMI out, and it's an HDMI KVM, so my DisplayPort -> HDMI cable isn't being read properly. It's fine, I've got a workaround).

Previous articles about beefing the setup are here, here, and here.

Subtle improvements:

• Now that my PC is near the router, it's got a wired connection, meaning I can stream 😎

• I walked 4 miles to my office this weekend and got a̶ ̶b̶u̶n̶c̶h̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶s̶n̶a̶c̶k̶s̶ my noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones back, which makes A LOT OF DIFFERENCE.

Upcoming improvements:

• Hardwire an Ethernet cable for the Mac (though she's running out of ports) for even more reliable/fast Internet.

• Maybe start investing in a better mic or lighting setup. idk though.