June 2012

Local.

Today is the first day of my weekend. Tomorrow isn’t the second day of my weekend though, that title goes to next Tuesday. I have a four day work week that starts tomorrow. I need to drive to work for three of those days. Tomorrow is not one of those days.

Usually when I have a day off during the week I go on a road trip and explore the back roads of the Empire State, but I decided earlier in the week that I would approach today different and stay local. Ever since starting my latest job over two years ago and commuting a total of 2 1/2 hours a day, I have felt a little disconnected from home life and really disconnected from the neighborhood. Most find reasons to complain about this area of New York (it’s not the most prosperous area of the Northeast by any stretch of the imagination), today I tried to find a reason to boast about it.

The “main street” of Utica is actually not called Main Street (though we do have one of those), it’s called Genesee Street. Today I drove the length of Genesee Street and admired the houses south of Oneida Square. Many have been turned into law or medical offices, but down towards South Utica the houses are still houses and look quite nice. I didn’t want to be labeled a stalker so I didn’t take photos of any houses, but I did take a photo while driving up Genesee Street and it looked a little bit like this.

If you look close you can see a tiny reflection of me in the windshield.

Today was my “take care of me” day, and since someone at work commented that I needed a haircut (I haven’t shaved my head in a couple of weeks), I decided to go to the barbershop in Union Station, the train and bus station that sits just north of downtown on what is really called Main Street.

Near the tracks in the Farmer’s Market area.

This building houses many county offices, including the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is right in the main lobby of the train station. The building also hosts a Farmer’s Market every Saturday morning and has a couple of little eateries and a barbershop. The barbershop is one of only three left in the country that are in a train station and has been in continuous operation since the 1910s. It’s currently owned by a father and son. I met the father today. His name is Leo and he buzzed my hair back down to a shadow. I also took the opportunity to enjoy a hot lather, straight razor shave. During the shave he mentioned that he had never shaved around such a large mustache before but it’s what barbers must have done in the late 1800s. He tamed it a bit with some wax while chatting away. I like Leo, he did a good job, I didn’t feel the razor at all (and I have experienced some heavy handed barber in my time) and I will be visiting him more often. It’s good to support the businesses that are trying to keep the local culture alive.

I then stopped at Bagg’s Square Café Express (link goes to the full café which is a couple of blocks away on Broad Street), which is also in the main lobby of the train station and features Starbucks products. We don’t have Starbucks in this area, only folks that sell Starbucks products. I picked up a Venti Unsweetened Green Iced Tea and it was delicious. The cool thing about that experience was that I was able to pay using the Square app on my iPhone. My photo appeared on their screen, I told them who I was and they charged it to the credit card linked to my Square account. I could have added a tip if I wanted to but I opted to drop some cash into their tip jar instead. No credit card, no numbers exchanged, just my photo and that’s it. That is wicked cool to me and I wish more businesses would adopt the same approach in this area.

Earl and I enjoyed a nice lunch together and then I spent the afternoon cleaning my home office, joining a conference call at work (sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do) and then visiting my chiropractor to get my neck and back back on track.

My mind, body and soul are soaring today. And I owe it all to my home turf. Sometimes it’s good to stop and see what’s close to home instead of venturing off into faraway lands.

Pop.

So I just made an appointment with my friendly neighborhood chiropractor. I haven’t been able to visit the chiropractor since starting my current job over two years ago; with a 1 1/4 hour commute in each direction, there isn’t really time to squeeze in a chiropractor appointment without using PTO (benefit) time. I have missed going to the chiropractor because I firmly believe that it did me good when I was going there regularly, and now that I have a little more flexibility in my work schedule I’m anxious to start going first thing in the morning before starting my work day. I get to go tomorrow because it’s my on-call week, so today is my Friday, tomorrow is my Saturday and Friday is my Tuesday. Yes, it’s one of those weeks.

We have a friend that’s a very good chiropractor but he’s too far away to visit him, so I settled on Dr. Tim a few years ago. When I first started seeing Dr. Tim I had quite a few headaches and after a few sessions with him the headaches went away. I continued to visit him for maintenance/wellness purposes and I felt much more grounded then than I do now. I really do believe that going to the chiropractor made me feel better and not going lately has been a little bit of a deficit in my life. I’m not a big fan of deficits.

I know some people get nervous about the cracking, snapping and popping sounds that might happen during an adjustment, but like the freak I am, I find it all quite fascinating. The second time I had a neck adjustment I got a little dizzy afterwards but it was kind of cool and I felt a VAST improvement. A “better balance” is the best way that I can describe it. These days I don’t have the headaches that I had before my first visit to Dr. Tim, but I do feel a certain amount of tightness in my shoulders and neck area. I’m hoping that after a few visits with Dr. Tim that tightness will go away and I’ll be able to spin my head like an owl again. I’ll even hoot once in a while.

When I was a kid I remember asking my mom what a chiropractor was and she was kind of vague on the subject, stating that they moved bones. I remember finding this rather startling, because I liked my bones right where they were. It was only after gaining interest in holistic and natural healing methods in my early 20s that I really knew what chiropractors did. My bones stay where they are, they just get some routine maintenance now and it certainly helps me feel better. Anything that helps keep the results of stress at bay is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. I know that there are many that don’t believe in chiropractic adjustments but I know what works for me and that’s what’s important. If loosening up my neck and shoulders helps reunite my mind, body and spirit, then I figure I’m doing a good thing, and that’s what matters.

13 June 2012 by J.P. Fitness. 2

Sleep.

So last night I had the house to myself and I had plans on getting a lot of sleep. The thing is, I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I didn’t even get as much sleep as I usually do because I kept waking up thinking the house felt awfully empty. Plus, I had today’s work schedule on my mind; I had a meeting this morning about a change to some of my responsibilities at work and I was pondering that. The meeting went really well and I am wholeheartedly pleased, so it wasn’t really something to lose sleep over but I still did.

Today I decided that I had gotten bored with my routine at the local Dunkin’ Donuts, even with all the chaos that occurred there yesterday (I love it when people feel the need to entertain me). So instead I drove to the alternate Dunkin’ Donuts which is a six minute drive from work. I will have to figure in the extra three minutes to get back to my office. Math is hard. I think the restlessness with DD can be attributed to the fact that I’m tired today.

Let’s see where I end up tomorrow. For the time being, I’m going to take a nap.

12 June 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Observations.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoy life when a blog entry practically writes itself when a little episode unfolds right in front of me. It’s these little things that make me smile.

I walked into the local Dunkin’ Donuts for my daily lunch-time iced tea. A good share of the time my iced tea will already be poured and waiting for me. People know who I am and therefore respond accordingly. This pleases me. With it being Monday, I wasn’t overly surprised when my iced tea was not waiting for me. Like most folks on Monday, the staff seem to be slightly off-kilter on the first day of the work week.

I stood at the register for a few minutes when one of the more important ladies behind the counter peaked around from the drive thru shoot and said, “we’ll be right with you, hun.” They always call me ‘hun’ at this particular Dunkin’ Donuts. I don’t know why they do this, but I’m thankful that they at least acknowledge my presence, because at the Dunkin’ Donuts closest to home we are happy if the change isn’t airborne when we get it.

There were three people working the store. One in drive thru, one assisting drive thru (who apparently was also working the counter) and one in food assembly. The manager was wandering around with two six foot fluorescent lightbulbs. I kind of thought of him to be like Fred Mertz carrying the plant across the stage repeatedly while Ethel sang for her hometown in New Mexico. He’d walk by with the fluorescent bulbs, then he’d walk the other way with the bulbs. I felt like I should be singing “Short’nin Bread.”

As people began stacking up behind me (well, not literally stacking up, that’d be silly and rather intimate for Dunkin’ Donuts), the girl with assistive drive thru skills zoomed over to the counter, gave me a wild-eyed look and said “We are brewing more iced tea!” Apparently they had blown through the day’s worth of iced tea by noon and this was creating chaos. I said, “no worries” (because after all, I am Australian[?]) and she rang me up, successfully swiped my DD card on the third try after completely missing the register the first two times and then told me it’d be right up. The drive thru girl screamed, “I’m making it!!” and the manager walked by with the fluorescent bulbs.

I sat in a booth closest to the Food Receiving Window and waited patiently. The woman that had been behind me at the counter placed her order after asking, “Why don’t you tell me about today’s specials?”

Honestly, I didn’t find this surprising because it was then that I noticed that the woman had her wig on backwards. The poor wig looked like it had been run through a Frigidaire Wash ‘n Wear cycle (that old washing machine with the bouncing agitator) and flung onto her head like the mop it might have really been. The part/swirly part was up near her forehead. The flipping bangs caressed her neck. It was rather disconcerting.

The girl didn’t call her hun but told her about a lovely ham sandwich made on a croissant.

It was at this moment that the manager walked by with the two fluorescent bulbs and then the drive thru girl flung the brewing iced tea into the Official Iced Tea Machine. She then banged some keys on the register closest to the drive thru window. The Food Assembly Person looked at the screen and started assembling a sandwich. I could tell that it was a roast beef sandwich because she took out the meat wrapped in plastic that was marked with larger, helvetica letters: “ROAST BEEF”.

Chaos was occurring at the counter where the woman with the flipped wig was asking about the freshness of the donuts. She wasn’t being called “hun”. She was being glared at.

The manager walked by with two fluorescent tubes.

It was then that the drive thru came tearing out of her nook and made a honking noise at the Food Assembly Person. “The roast beef sandwich is tuna!” This pissed off the Food Assembly Person because she had discarded the ROAST BEEF lettered roast beef and had assembled the sandwich. The drive thru girl grabbed a bag and went shooting back into her nook, where the Food Assembly Person yelled, “don’t give it to them it’s not tuna!”

The manager walked by with THREE fluorescent tubes.

The girl that no longer used “hun” got the woman with the backwards wig all settled in with a regular coffee and came racing across the kitchen area to straighten out the Great Tuna-Roast Beef Debacle of 2012 where Drive Thru Assembly girl screamed “YOU WANT LEMON!” I figured out that she was directing that declaration at me, so I bellowed “YES!” as loudly as I could, which made the woman with the wig on backwards flinch a little bit but it got my point across.

The manager walked by with one fluorescent tube.

The girl that was no longer using hun came racing over to the Food Receiving Window with my freshly brewed iced tea.

I put a straw in it and left.

11 June 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 7

Bummed.

I didn’t get a DJ gig I was vying for. It was a one-time gig at a special event. I must be getting old. Gotta admit I’m a little bummed about it. I’ll just go back to sitting on my porch, spinning tales of my radio days and making sure the kids stay off my lawn.

8 June 2012 by J.P. DJ 3

Balance.

The true key to happiness is to dare to dream from a stable platform. The balance of maintaining stability while allowing myself to dream is the nirvana that I search for. I’ve dreamed a lot during my life and I have achieved much of what I have dreamed about, but I’ve only dabbled with stability in the process. I think I need to find the balance to keep it all in perspective.

And I have no idea why I am writing like a Fortune Cookie today.

7 June 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 2

Motivation.

This is an article that appeared on the intranet site at work. As one who can easily be distracted at times, I found it kind of motivating.

Calling time out on work interruptions
6/7/2012
Edited from an article by Rex Huppke, Chicago Tribune

For most, the modern workday is one long series of interruptions punctuated by brief bursts of productivity.

For example, it took me 17 minutes to write that first sentence. I got an email after the word “modern,” had to send a tweet after “interruptions,” and then a co-worker stopped by after “brief” to tell me that if you sprinkled powdered sugar on Newt Gingrich, he’d look like a beignet.

The devil is in the distractions.

At a recent multi-generational gathering, we began talking about ways that we waste time. We unanimously agreed that cell phones, social media and the Internet were responsible for countless misspent hours. We were also quick to recognize that electronic gadgets weren’t the only culprits. In fact, any activity that we do too much or that interferes with daily responsibilities becomes a candidate for wasted-time status. Even supposedly lofty pastimes, such as reading, practicing a musical instrument or going to the gym can be distracting if we do them instead of completing our chores. The key isn’t condemning modern devices. Rather, it’s managing the myriad disruptions we encounter throughout the day.

Ever since work was invented, humans have struggled to avoid distraction. But at times even a passing piece of dust can be more exhilarating than writing a status report, so our attention is called in other directions.

And the interruptions have proliferated.

A study released last year by the market research firm uSamp found that 45 percent of workers make it only 15 minutes before being interrupted, and more than half say they waste at least an hour a day on distractions.

The study was based on a survey of more than 500 employees at U.S. businesses of varying sizes. Predictably, most of the interruptions, nearly 60 percent, involved email, social networks and instant or text messaging.

Many of us see our incessant toggling between tasks as proof that we’re brilliant multitaskers of a wired world. But research does not bear that out.

Every time you take your attention away from one task, it takes a little time to catch up once you return. That’s time wasted.

A 2009 Stanford University study found that people who routinely receive information from multiple sources don’t pay attention, control their memory or move from one project to the next as well as workers who handle one task at a time.

“Our human physiology has been in formation for tens of millions of years,” said Jeff Davidson, author of “Breathing Space: Living & Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Sped-Up Society.” “We are hard-wired to give our attention in one essential direction when it’s a major task or project we’re undertaking. Yet here we are, making excuses as to why we need to be interrupted around the clock.”

Part of that, I believe, is our innate desire to feel important. Admit it: When cellphones first became prevalent, you felt kind of awesome walking around with one. It meant you were someone of such value that you had to be reachable at any moment.

That vanity-driven sensibility is alive and well, with smartphones pinging throughout the day to announce urgent emails or texts.

“We have people that cannot confront solitude,” Davidson said. “They need to know who has noticed them lately in the world. We all have become hooked on the next communique. We make excuses all day long about why we need to be on all the time, wired, connected, ready to be interrupted.”
And that comes at a cost, forming what Davidson calls “a perfect Catch-22.”

We face so many interruptions that we struggle to fit our work into an eight-hour day. So we multitask, which makes it harder to concentrate on an individual task, and we’re still allowing interruptions to happen, so we’re not getting everything done. Thus we work longer hours and multitask more, and on and on.

Clearly, we would benefit from breaking the cycle of distraction. But how?

“It comes down to self-confidence,” Davidson said. “We need to get back to a state in which we say, ‘I know myself, I know how I work, I know what it takes for me to do this kind of job.’ So then you give yourself, for example, a two-hour stretch uninterrupted.”

That’s, like, five years in Twitter time. But a big part of dodging interruptions is recognizing the ones that we can control.

Julie Morgenstern, author of “Never Check Email in the Morning,” said: “It’s important to recognize how much is coming from outside and how much is self-interruption. I think we self-interrupt just as much as we’re interrupted by others.”

She called email “an interruption chute” on which you can easily close the lid. By not letting yourself check email until 10 a.m., you can secure a good hour or more to focus on bigger things.

“The temptation is, ‘Let me take care of all the little things people need from me, and then I can relax and focus,’ “Morgenstern said. “That’s kind of misguided, because the little things never stop.”

She recommends flipping that plan – tackle the big tasks first and then pay attention to the ticky-tack stuff.

Morgenstern and Davidson agree that if you introduce a no-interruption policy for a couple hours a day, your bosses and co-workers will not only understand but also might follow suit.

“Everyone is dealing with the same problem,” Morgenstern said. “You could ostensibly have a department meeting, a team meeting, a meeting with your boss and talk about how you need to balance responsiveness with individual work streams. Say, ‘Can we agree that generally speaking the mornings are for uninterrupted work, unless it’s a real emergency?’ ”

I can say from personal experience that the two times in my life I’ve focused solely on work have been fabulously successful.

But while we face a blinding array of potential distractions, it’s bound to get worse as technology grows and we start getting Googles implanted in our bionic eyes.

To that end, Davidson points out the importance of training yourself now to shut down interruptions.

“Every day for the rest of our professional lives, the pace of society, the pace of business and the pace of communication are going to speed up,” he said. “We’ve got to put our stake in the ground now and say, ‘I’ve got to establish some personal discipline here, I’ve got to carve out some breathing space.'”

7 June 2012 by J.P. This Ain't No CNN. 5

Energy.

So I’m driving home from work this evening and I decided to tune into “Stand Up With Pete Dominick” on Sirius/XM’s POTUS 124. I don’t always agree with host Pete Dominick’s views but there are times when we think alike and he has interesting guests so I listen to him when I’m in the mood for a little political discussion. Today’s topic for the last half hour of his show was about the government’s mandated use of CFLs, or Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs. Because I was in the midst of my commute, I briefly pulled over to the side of the road and sent this tweet to Pete:

As Pete was fielding calls, mostly from callers that did not believe the government should be mandating the use of CFLs, he mentioned the aforementioned tweet. And then he blew up, focusing on my points of “they’re junk” and “they slowly light up.” Apparently I’m selfish.

Okay, here’s the thing. First of all, it’s nearly impossible to get a full point across in 140 characters, and hence the reason for this blog entry. First of all, I don’t believe that the government should be mandating the use of technology that isn’t all the way there yet. That was my point with “they slowly light up.” A couple of years ago I replaced the majority of lightbulbs in the house with CFLs. It was an expensive venture but I thought it would be best for the government so I went ahead and did it. The damn things are awful. We have replaced more CFLs than regular light bulbs since making the switch (initially we replaced about 75% of the lights in the house). They don’t work with dimmers, so when we use them on the home automation system (which turns on lights only when we need them), they blink erratically when the home automation system turns them off (which I think is actually achieved by dimming them down all the way). When you turn the lights on in the morning, you can’t see anything for the first five minutes of use because they’re warming up and you’re left in this weird, seemingly drug induced haze. Because of this, you end up turning the light on EARLIER than you intended to so you can see what the heck you’re doing when the light finally ramps up to full brightness, resulting in the light being on longer and using MORE electricity. Pete suggested that folks put in more lights during his rant in which he mentioned my Twitter handle on several occasions. Putting in more lights defeats the purpose of using CFLs in the first place.

I fully believe that we should be doing everything we can to live as green as possible by conserving energy, not using fossil resources whenever possible and consciously making an effort to reduce are carbon footprint. I believe that it is the responsibility of every individual to do their part. But like so many other well-intended laws, regulations and the like, the government is going to go at it half-baked at best and ultimately make the situation worse. CFL technology is not at 100%. To compensate, when forced to use this technology, people are going to end up using more of what we are trying to save. That’s not the right approach. It’s like emission standards that reduce gas mileage. Yes, we are putting less crap from our exhaust pipe in the atmosphere, but we are burning more oil to achieve less emissions.

I don’t have an answer to this growing problem. I think lifestyle changes, such as the voluntary disuse of air conditioning when it’s only 55F outside, will make a greater impact on trying to get us on a greener path. Education, not edicts, is what the government should be doing until the technology is where we need it to be and people have a TRUE incentive to use greener technologies instead of just demanding it be so.

6 June 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Vista.

One of my relatives has a computer running Windows Vista that is spamming my email with random factoids and address book information. Windows Vista was touted as Microsoft’s “most secure version of Windows ever!” I’m so glad that it’s doing its job so well and I’m happy that the person that owns the computer is attentive to the required upkeep and maintenance of a Windows-based operating system. Despite claims to the contrary, owning a computer is a responsibility that entails a fair amount of hard work. I still believe that users should be required to own a license to operate a computer.

But then again, licenses don’t seem to mean much these days. I just watched an elderly couple barely miss being flattened by a Wal*mart truck that was well within the speed limit and right of way because they apparently didn’t see the monstrosity coming through the light. Truth of the matter is, they didn’t even look. The light was green so they went. They probably got their license to drive 60 years ago. I’m sure at age 77 or whatever that they still have the stamina, reflexes and intact thought processes to navigate a 2000 pound hunk of metal down a roadway. Silly licenses.

I recently saw an online letter to the editor where a man was upset that the Department of Transportation had installed “Deer Crossing” warning signs on a busy roadway. The writer thought that this was foolish and that the signs should be installed on a roadway with lower traffic so the deer would cross where there weren’t as many cars.

Wow.

I bet you think I’m nuts. Here ya go.

I can spin a tall tale like the best of them, when suitable motivated, but lately I haven’t felt the need to make any of this shit up. We are in Rome, the bricks are falling but the general public keeps fiddling.

6 June 2012 by J.P. Geek 2

Uncommon.

The need for this graphic makes me wonder if our society is even going to be around for another 100 years.

6 June 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 2

June 2012

Local.

Pop.

Sleep.

Observations.

Bummed.

Balance.

Motivation.

Energy.

Vista.

Uncommon.

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