August 2012

Woods.

Traffic has been backed up in front of the office all day due to construction at the intersection down the street. My office building is just off a road ambitiously called “The Arterial”, but “The Arterial” means that it’s a two-lane road with traffic lights and no businesses directly connected to it. It’s the cheap version of a freeway. It behaves cheaply.

Since traffic is backed up, the driveway coming out of work was blocked. When a space opened up for looking to get out for lunch time opened up, a woman zoomed her ugly red Taurus ahead and then glared at the woman waiting in the car in front of me. It’s apparently all about her in the red Taurus. The woman waiting in the car in front of me drove up the shoulder and found a gap to scoot out into the free lane that headed in the direction away from construction. I did the same with the Jeep, though I did stop, point and glare at the red Taurus woman. She glared back. I shook my head disapprovingly but I didn’t call her any names. She knows what she is.

Since “The Arterial” is all over the place and under construction, I drove into the countryside, found a brand new Dunkin’ Donuts where they didn’t have my iced tea ready and then drove just inside the Adirondack Park, stopping at the parking area I found a couple of weeks ago on an exceptionally hot day. The cell service is spotty for my iPad, but I’m able to crank this blog entry out under the shade of big pine trees that are making the whisper noises I love so much and the wonderful scent of the forest. I think this weekend might involve walking in a forest somewhere where there’s pine trees. I haven’t done that in a while. I miss it.

Unfortunately there’s a lot of trash along the parking area here just inside the Adirondacks. This would be a good spot for NYSDOT’s “Adopt-A-Highway”. I’d adopt it if it wasn’t almost 70 miles from home. Maybe someone will find a kind spot in their heart and adopt this lovely spot.

I wouldn’t bet on the woman in the red Taurus doing that though.

If someone doesn’t do it by a year from now I guess we’ll just have to do it and make a trip a couple of times a summer to clean this spot up. I’m enjoying it a lot. The bright side is that whoever is dumping trash is doing it on the side OPPOSITE of the “NO DUMPING” signs. At least the litterer can read.

9 August 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Old School.

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8 August 2012 by J.P. Instagram 0

You Can Help.

So last week I started a campaign to raise money for the Ali Forney Center. I am doing this by letting you decide the fate of my mustache with the ‘Stache On-‘Stache Off Campaign. Through the 24th of August, you can make a donation to the Ali Forney Center by voting on whether my ‘stache stays or goes. If it is determined that my mustache stays, I’ll let it just keep growing through the end of the year (though I might clear some brush from my lips once in a while so I don’t miss important kisses.) If it is decided that it’s time to go, I shave it off completely and then probably grow a little mustache because I can’t being completely clean shaven.

As of this writing, ‘Stache On is winning.

If you would like to contribute, and again, it’s for the worthy cause of helping homeless LGBT youth (click here for more information), here’s what you do:

Follow this link to vote ‘Stache ON.
Follow this link to vote ‘Stache OFF.

And thanks in advance for helping the Ali Forney Center.

8 August 2012 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Calm Down.

I can be an emotionally responsive person. I usually don’t realize how emotionally responsive I can seem because it comes naturally to me. I don’t know that I fly off the handle at the drop of a hat, but when my mood is in a certain space and the circumstances are in a certain place, I can get loud. I usually try to restrict this sort of behavior to my alone time but my family occasionally gets to see the best of it. It’s not something I’m proud of.

I never used to swear. I don’t remember my father swearing that much; I think my mom would occasionally swear around us kids. I didn’t really pick up the habit until I worked at the radio station where you needed to drop a few f-bombs to get anyone’s attention. Screaming and yelling and swearing was the normal course of action for speaking at any sort of meeting while I was working there, so I adopted the tendency as a matter of survival. When you work at a place where people throw knives (wish I was making that up), you sometimes need get rowdy. Again, not something that I’m proud of.

As I was going through my work email this morning, I found myself yelling out loud in my office. “What the F^!K did you think, numb nuts?” Now I don’t know if this person has numb nuts. Since the email in question was from a woman, I kind of hope that she doesn’t have nuts, period, but that’s her business. To each their own. I started firing off a snappy email when I decided to just close my eyes, count to 10 and then reassess the situation.

It really wasn’t worth raising my blood pressure over. You see, after I counted to 10, I realized that the world was still spinning and that nothing had changed, other than my blood pressure subsiding a bit. This prompted me to send out a simple tweet this morning:

I should probably stop calling other drivers “flea-bitten whores.”

Now I wasn’t driving at the time and actually the thought was completely random (that happens a lot with me), but it is something that I am going to remember via a sticky on the dashboard of my Jeep.

Since counting to 10 worked so well for me this morning (and my day has been just fine since), I decided to see if there was a way to remind myself that I should just take a deep breath. Of course, there’s an app for that.

Introducing CalmDown. Now when I get a bit riled up, I have the little ying-yang symbol in my menu bar to click on and remind me to calm down just a little bit. Yeah, it costs a buck but sometimes you have to invest in yourself. If this will help me lower my blood pressure and be a little more rational about things, then it’s worth it.

Now, if I could just stop the fucking swearing. Jumpin’ Mice.

8 August 2012 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Come To Daddy.

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7 August 2012 by J.P. Instagram 0

Spelling Counts.

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7 August 2012 by J.P. Instagram 0

Quickly.

One of the things that amazes me about getting older is how much time seems to be speeding up. I feel like I have kind of lost track of time a bit; it seems impossible to me that Earl and I have been together for over 16 years. It’s funny to think that I graduated from high school over 25 years ago. Heck, I can’t believe that I’ve been in my current job for 2 1/2 years already. I still feel like one of the new guys.

I guess there’s a part of me that wonders what it’s going to be like when I grow up. I still feel very much a kid at heart. The other day I watched an episode of “Maude” and Walter, Maude’s husband, mentioned that he was 48 years old. What? That’s only four years older than I am today and I don’t think I look or act like I’m only four years from looking or acting that worn out (no offense to Bill Macy).

Where on earth is the time going?

I ponder this because I am working from home today and I realize that it is nearly three in the afternoon and I feel like I just started my day. I then realize that I feel like I’ve just started my life and here I am at 44. Hell, I could be at my halfway point already.

I feel like I’m just getting through the warm ups.

~~~

‘Stache On-‘Stache Off Update: ‘Stache On is ahead right now with some nice contributions to the Ali Forney Center. If you wish to contribute, please see this blog post and/or click ‘Stache On to vote for me to keep my mustache or ‘Stache Off for me to shave it off.

7 August 2012 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 2

Geek Weekend.

So I spent the entire weekend being a geek. This is something that I like to do from time to time, and on-call weekends lend themselves to being of a geeky nature anyways, so I figured I might as well just jump into the geek with both feet. It was a wonderful feeling.

A geek weekend for me is kind of like a weekend for Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory”. A few seasons ago he mentioned that he had delightful plans for his weekend by installing several different Linux distros on his laptop to see which one he liked the best.

That’s what I did!

I tried several different variations of Linux on both my non-Mac laptop and my old desktop PC that resides in the darkest corners of our basement. Just for kicks I threw in a second test install of Windows 8 and determined that I still hate the learning curve associated with the completely new interface of Microsoft’s latest offering, so that quickly gave way to another Linux test. I laughed manically as I wiped out Windows. I haven’t done that in a long time.

Earl and Jamie were off to a concert on Saturday night so I had the house to myself. Being alone in the house and in complete geek mode is one of the most recharging things I can do. I suppose that if I were in the same situation a century ago, Earl and Jamie would have been going to a different kind of concert and I would have either been reading a book or taking apart the Victrola. I’m sure I would have felt that “recharged feeling” on the Monday after that weekend a century ago, just as I am feeling recharged today.

Part of my geek weekend was inspired by the fact that I upgraded the studio iMac to Mountain Lion. We purchased this 21-inch iMac in 2009. With the upgrade to Mountain Lion, I now have a dark band across the screen, 1/8th of the way up from the bottom. The gradients of the gray background now look like the stripes in one of my favorite Atari games, “Super Breakout”. I don’t know if Mountain Lion gave the iMac a heart attack or if it was just a coincidence, but I’m really disappointed that an Apple piece of hardware is failing at only three years old. With the premium price paid for Apple hardware, one would expect further longevity. The aforementioned desktop PC is nine years old and it’s holding it’s own just fine and it was cheap!

I’m going to continue to use the iMac for as long as I can still see what I’m doing but when it comes time to replace the studio computer, I’m probably going to reconsider the Apple approach and go with something that can run Ubuntu Studio (Linux). The Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software I use (Ardour) works in both Linux and on a Mac, we might as well save some bucks if the hardware experience is going to be the same. I get a tingle of delight thinking about the geek weekend involved with changing out the studio computer someday. I don’t usually tingle very easily.

So after trying out all these different distros of Linux (and the two instances of Windows 8), I have decided that Ubuntu Linux is my distro of choice. I am making a concerted effort to not purposely break the install on my laptop to see if it can hold its own for a month.

Being a geek for the weekened does have me recharged. I guess it’s the ISTJ* in me. That’s not a bad thing.

* I’m not usually a fan of labels, but this one doesn’t bother me as much. Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging.

6 August 2012 by J.P. Geek 2