Every article I read about the Chicago Cubs' off season has the same pattern. It basically says, the Cubs have checked in with so and so player to find out their interest. I imagine after every one of those phone calls Jed Hoyer says, “Oh, so and so won’t play for nothing? Oh well” and moves on to the next player on his list. He only makes the calls and tells the press he made the call for the appearance he actually is doing something.
The pattern is the same every single off season to the point to which I think Ricketts and company are insane because they keep expecting a different result. First, there is complete turnover in the bullpen with hope it will pan out in the upcoming season. Never mind that hope is not a strategy.
Next, they find every single player available at the start of the off season to be too expensive. Then with about a month left, which we are now approaching, the Cubs seem to panic, trade away some prospects and sign someone they either don’t need (Dansby Swanson) or have no chance re-signing (Kyle Tucker).
In short, Hoyer manages the Chicago Cubs like he is managing a Fantasy Baseball team. And the real irony in all this is Ricketts thinks he is saving money when in reality he is wasting money.
For Most, Christianity Is A Religion
The problem of Christianity is that like an onion, there are many layers of understanding about it. What started as an adjective associating the way people lived to who they followed became an institution, a religion, a church, and a set of beliefs some equate to being faith.
The Christianity known to perhaps 90% of the world is a religion and the institution founded by the Roman emperor Constantine. A hallmark of religions and institutions is that one can be kicked out of them.
If you have spent any time studying what Jesus taught, does it make sense to you that he would create something from which you could be kicked out from?
Religion is a necessity for and a product of man’s ego, in fact it may be one of the most dangerous things ever created by man. It is often used by Powers and Principalities to control people and to gain wealth.
I think the most enlightened part of the founding of the United States was the recognition through experience by the founders of just how religion is used by people in power, and attempted to wall off the threat of religion in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The first amendment does not just exist to protect religions from the government but also, and I think most importantly, to protect us from the government using religion to take away liberty.
The Clicks Communicator
I noticed some entries in my RSS feeds this morning making reference to the Blackberry, and I suspect they were in reference to the Clicks Communicator, a new Android-based phone to launch later this year. This is from the company that has been selling a physical keyboard case for the iPhone. The Clicks Communicator has a built-in physical keyboard, hence the reference to Blackberry.
The device software is built on Android 16 with a customized launcher that is optimized for communications. What it looks to me like is the Android notification shade made front and center to the device. It has hardware buttons to initiate voice to text input, if one prefers and has an LED around the primary button that will flash different colors one configures for different notifications. The color LED reminds me of the roller ball of the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1.
The negatives start with the price, while one can reserve one now for a $399 total price by paying $199 to reserve it, the Communicator will retail for $499, which I think is too much for a device being promoted as a second phone. The intro video compares the Communicator to a Kindle as it compares to the iPad, but Kindles cost much less than $499.
Another big miss in my opinion is not providing a removable battery nor Magsafe support, although I imagine this might be something that could be provided via special “cover.” The device includes the things smartphones lost over the years like the physical buttons, storage card slots, and 3.5mm audio adapter, so why not go all the way and provide removable batteries?
The Clicks Communicator is going to be a niche device, it’s not going to take over the smartphone leaders. I got to think that $499 starting price will have to come down to the $300 to $400 range to justify the purchase as an “accessory” to an every day carry smartphone. The question then is, will enough sell for the device to last long enough for the price to come down? The answer depends on whether there is truly a demand for this type of device.
Woke up this morning to the news that the U.S. has illegally invaded in to another country, captured its leader and his wife, and kidnapped them out of their country. I see this as an act of war, no matter the claims of crimes that the leader may have committed. Unfortunately, these events will continue to happen so long as the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) of 2001 is in place. Congress must repeal this blank check it gave to the President for military force. Stop feeding the Military Industrial Complex.
Lots of sunshine today but the temperatures stayed in the twenties.
At The Start Of 2026
Mother Nature set the scene today by providing freshly fallen snow, sunshine, and frigid temperatures, which I take as a sign for a fresh start. Today is not only the start of a new year, but for me it is the start of the fifth chapter of my life, now as a retiree. My most specific plan for now is to savor more of life, to take it in fully and continue to learn and grow.
I have long followed people who seem to be able to spend most of their time on whatever they find to be most fulfilling in the moment and dreamed of that for myself. My intentions for this year are to read more, to write more, to listen to more music, to spend more time with people I love, and to be grateful for every minute.
Year in books for 2025
Here are the books I finished reading in 2025. I fell short of my goal to read 20 books this year, and I am committed to meeting and exceeding that goal in 2026.
Freshly fallen snow, sunshine, and blue skies on New Year’s day 2026. A clear sign of a fresh start to a new year and new start. Happy New Year!
I am taking more pictures than normal the last several days as a way to capture the memories. The following summarizes what it is like outside on this New Year’s Eve.
Today I have a mixture of emotions. Disbelief and gratitude are highest among them. At midnight on New Year’s Eve 2026 I will become an unemployed bum.
Currently reading: The Gales of November by John U. Bacon 📚
The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a memorable event for one who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan during the 1970s and I am enjoying this book that provides all of the background about the Fitzgerald and shipping on the Great Lakes. Taconite, which is lower grade iron ore that is pulverized into little marbles for shipment, was the Fitz’s cargo at the time it sank. I remember trains that ran through my childhood home in the Upper Peninsula that carried the taconite to the ore docks to be loaded on these ships. The marbles often fell off the ore cars of the train on to the tracks and we used to gather them up for slingshot ammo.
I am going to fall short of my goal of reading 18 books this year, I have three that I am currently reading but this one is the furthest along at 26% complete and I don’t expect to finish it by the end of tomorrow.
We are in Grand Rapids for the annual Great Lakes Invitational hockey tournament while the big winter storm hits. Fortunately all I need to do is walk a block from the hotel to the arena later today, no need to drive.
Testing Android Desktop Mode
I enabled the Android Desktop Mode on the Pixel 10 then connected the phone to my BenQ Monitor via the USB-C port, selected the Desktop Experience as the option in the notification that appeared on the phone and behold this desktop. To complete the picture I paired the Logitech MX Keys keyboard and mouse to the phone using Bluetooth so that I can fully use the desktop experience. I am typing this right now in Google Keep and then I will copy and paste this into the micro.blog app to post to my blog.
All of the Android apps installed on the phone are available for use in desktop mode. Google apps like Gmail and Keep are working in tablet landscape mode with dual panes. Tabs that I had open in Chrome are retained in the desktop mode.
It looks like apps start in a default sized window.. When I start the Calculator the app window size is way too large. I can resize the window to something more reasonable but when I shutdown the app and restart it starts back at the larger size. When I run Radarscope the resolution of the radar is too low and doesn’t change even when the window is made smaller. Obviously, these are instances where the apps are not developed for a large display.
YouTube video playback is good but the audio playback is on the phone speakers and not the monitor. I think the USB-C connection should be able to support audio.
The final test was to enable the Linux Terminal mode which then on the first run downloaded the virtual machine which takes up a little over 600 Mb. The font size is too small for me to read but I found instructions at the following web page to increase it and the font family to make it easier to read. The main benefit to me for having this Linux terminal would be to SSH into a Linux server running on my home network, and for that task this worked perfectly.
There was a light amount of freezing rain by us yesterday and during my walk this morning I took a couple of pictures to test the digital and optical zoom of the Pixel 10 camera. Here is the digital zoom and you can tell its not as crisp as the optical zoom below.
Here is the optical zoom, which you can tell is much better.
We have freezing rain all around us, it’s a good day to stay indoors.
Checking out the new camera.
Merry Christmas to me I got a new phone.
Merry Christmas!
Bleed Cubbie Blue: Twas the night before Cub Christmas, 2025
Tradition has us celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25 although we don’t know the exact date of his birth. The date may have more to do with Roman tradition than fact, but what I do like about the date is that it coincides with the slow increase in daylight starting on December 21 for those of us in the northern hemisphere.
The light of Christ is constantly breaking in to the world but remember, light is that by which we see.