November 2012

Structure.

So last night Earl and I got home from our ride (it took a full tank of gas for our “short ride”) and I promptly sat down at the computer and started writing some code. While we made our way down the darkened back roads, my mind wandered a little bit. This is a good thing.

One of the things I need to do to keep my life organized is maintain a ToDo list. I’ve tried several different programs over the years and have tried a different couple of approaches to maintaining a ToDo list and sometime last week I decided that I needed to Keep It Simple. I maintain my ToDo list in a flat text file that can be accessed by any computer or my iPhone. If I still had a tablet, I could get to it from there as well

The mechanics of my ToDo list are detailed on my geek blog. The reason I bring this is up here is because of the fact that I have to have a ToDo list to begin with.

As I get older, I find that I forget various things that I have to do. I can recite the name of every service area on the Thruway, in either direction, in order. I can tell you the SKU (inventory number) of a candy bar if purchased from the old department store chain, Ames, but I’ll be damned if I can remember the tasks I need to get done, especially when it comes to work stuff. I don’t know if it’s from the sheer volume of things that I need to do or some sort of disinterest in the whole ordeal (we’ll examine that at a later date), but the fact of the matter is, if I think of something, I need to write it down. Stat. Or else it’s going to be a long lost memory within 10 minutes.

Another reason for my ToDo list motivation. I need to have structure in my life. If I deviate from a routine (for example, the order of events in which I get ready to head for the office in the morning), it can end up in chaos. It makes me nervous. Structure is important to me, and achieving things that are done on a routine basis makes me feel better. For example, I have a couple of obvious “structure” based things on my electronic ToDo list:

Make the bed due:Daily +Structure
Shave due:daily +Structure
Find the humor in every situation due:Daily +Structure

The last one is courtesy of speaker Jeanne Robertson. She’s the humorist that was recently touted as “Grandma Goes Viral!”. Jeanne has been speaking at corporate gatherings and the like for years, telling very funny stories as a way to urge the audience to always find the humor in a situation. You’ll be much better for it if you do.

I need that reminder every day so I don’t get wrapped up in a negative frame of mind. It works well for me.

The other two on my list are purely structure things that help me stay on track for the day. I hate getting into an unmade bed at night. It’s not comfortable. It feels like an incomplete way to end the day. So the bed gets made every morning as soon as it’s empty and, barring any of the dozens of houseboys that pass through the doors of our house, I make the bed. I’ve done it for years. It’s the first sense of accomplishment I usually feel during the day and it’s a good way to get the day started on the right foot.

The task of “shave” every day is important to me. Shaving makes me feel good and “groomed”. I feel like I’m presenting my best look to the world when I’m cleaned up and ready to take on the events of the day. Even if I have a beard at the time, I still shave around it every day. This is my attempt to put my best face forward and it works. I think sticking to this has helped me with my recent weight loss. I feel better about myself and shaving and looking my best helps me want to feel even better about myself.

I’ve been focusing on this structured approach much more since my birthday in July and I feel that I am a better person for it. Now, this need for structure is definitely a part of my eccentric tendencies (which I think I’m going to start writing about more) but I think it’s a harmless need. It’s important that we all be who we are to the best of our ability.

And that’s exactly what I’m doing.

11 November 2012 by Ponderings and Musings Quirky. 2

Simple.

Be who you are
and say what you feel,
because those who
mind don’t matter
and those who matter
don’t mind.
-Dr. Seuss

11 November 2012 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Stopped.

So Earl worked this morning and I did some routine stuff for work (it’s an on-call weekend). We did our obligatory workout at the gym and then when we got home, we looked at each other and wondered what we wanted to do for the rest of the day. I wasn’t really in the mood to sit at home; the weather being quite nice for this time of the year, so we decided to go for a ride. Armed with two computers (one personal, one for work) and a cell phone, a husband (and his cell phone and computer) we hit the road and headed north.

I decided to take some back roads through the Tug Hill Plateau and then climbed up into the Maple Ridge Wind Farm, where I snapped a new photo to commemorate my favorite road to drive in Upstate New York.

We then made our way up to north of Watertown, where I wanted to be a complete geek and check to progress of Interstate 781.

We are now stopped at a Panera, where we are enjoying a tea and splitting an oatmeal cookie. We are not ready to eat supper yet, that will come along in another city along this ride, but for now we are content. Actually, we’d really be content if the wi-fi at Panera was actually functional. This crazy “maybe it will, maybe it won’t” approach to wi-fi doesn’t really lend itself to building consumer confidence in technology.

10 November 2012 by Fun and Games Dept 3

Manners.

I just went to my formerly favorite Dunkin’ Donuts for an unsweetened iced tea with lemon. As mentioned in a previous post, this DD now has an all new lunchtime staff, and since I’m no longer here on a routine basis, they don’t know me or my usual order. I can handle that.

What I can’t handle is when I’m handed the unsweetened iced tea with lemon and I say “Thank you”, the clerk responds with “No problem.” No problem? I just made a purchase that contributed to your paycheck and you respond with no problem?

If my grandfather or father were alive and that happened in the family store, we’d be scolded to the brink of tears (by my grandfather) or to a very uncomfortable silence of disappointment (by my father).

I have prefaced quite a few Facebook statuses with “I might be getting old…” lately but I am really starting to think that I am one of those old people that talks about the good old days. While I find canned phrases such as “Thank you for shopping at wonderful Hills” to be absolutely ridiculous, I do expect cashiers and the like to say “Thank you” on behalf of the retailer that employs them. The truth of the matter is, I should be happy that they haven’t spit in my tea, but I find it very disheartening when I hear “no problem” in response to someone doing their job. Maybe I’ve watched too much Downton Abbey lately and my head is stuck in the early 20th century, but I am feeling increasingly obsolete with my expectations and ways and quite frankly it disappointing to me.

Earl says I worry about little stuff too much. I think that when you have a million cases of “little stuff” to worry about, you have a whole bunch of big stuff to worry about because all of the little stuff was a symptom of a bigger problem.

Thank you for reading this.

8 November 2012 by Fun and Games Dept 6

Future.

Earl and I were talking about employment options last night and he mentioned that I’ve gotten to that age where I need to always keep my retirement under serious consideration. He is a wise man and that is a very true statement. One of the best gifts he has ever given me was on my 30th birthday where he insisted that I start a Roth IRA. Luckily, I’ve been saving up for retirement since then through various means. However, last night he mentioned that I need to always keep in my pension in mind.

That’s when I broke it to him that I don’t get a pension with my current job. I think he paled a little. When I reminded him of my 401K, the color returned to his cheeks.

The truth of the matter is that I don’t have wide sweeping plans for retirement. Since it’s probably over 20 years away, it’s not something I give a lot of thought to, but when I do think of my “sunset years”, I tend to go with what I know: rural location, no neighbors, comfortably sized mobile home. Flat terrain would be best. Something like Kansas or Oklahoma. After all, living in a mobile home in the middle of Kansas or Oklahoma would give my life just enough zing to keep it interesting. I might travel once in a while but right now I feel no need to travel the world. I’d rather we do that when we are adequately funded and still young enough to climb a mountain or jump off a waterfall.

Earl really pales with any mention of living in a trailer but I think it’s because it’s way outside of his paradigm. The only time he’s mentioned that it might be acceptable was after we visited my godparents in their retirement village in Florida. I don’t see me living in a retirement village (I’m really not that fond of people) but at least he saw that downsizing to something like that could be an option.

I guess we’ll just have to see what the future brings.

8 November 2012 by Ponderings and Musings 3

Forward.

So last night Earl, Jamie and I sat down and watched the election results on CNN. They certainly love their touchscreens and other wizbang gadgetry on CNN. Maps were flying around, things were being touched, colors were pulsating and Wolf Blitzer even donned a pair of hipster glasses to bring a certain serious frivolity to the numbers that were streaming in. I mentioned on my Facebook stream that it’s not really an election result unless it’s accompanied by a couple of Orchestral Hits, preferably the first being in the key C and the second being in the key of D. I did notice that CNN did not try to make like Princess Leia this time around and skipped the whole hologram thing that they were doing the last Presidential election. I was a little surprised by that.

As we watched the results, I followed the Twitterverse as well, and I started seeing more and more mentions of ABC’s Diane Sawyer acting somewhat drunk. Unfortunately, every time we cut to ABC to take a look, they had cut to commercial. One can only assume they did this so that Diane could top of her glass of chardonnay. This morning I found some video and it appears that when Diane was touching base with the journalists in the field, they were struggling to maintain their composure on the air as she asked about important things such as exclamation points and the lack of music for their projection announcements (apparently CNN had used up all the orchestral hits).

Diane’s frivolity aside, it was good to see that the American people chose the better of the two candidates to lead us for the next four years. I’m interested to see how President Obama does now that he doesn’t have to worry about getting reelected. I’m hoping that he’ll be able to accomplish good things for the entire country.

Speaking of which, I was REALLY happy to see that Maryland and Maine approved same sex marriage via ballot last night (w00t!) and Minnesota struck down a referendum that would have narrowly defined marriage to a union between a man and a woman. As of this writing, we are still awaiting the results of the Washington State vote.

One thing that didn’t get a lot of mentions last night was that the people of Puerto Rico voted 65% in favor of becoming a full state of the United States. President Obama has said that he would respect that vote and ultimately it’s up to Congress to make the call, but historically Congress has never turned that sort of thing down. I think it would make for an interesting flag design.

I think the next four years are going to be very interesting and I’m hoping that we will see some forward progress on many fronts. I am delighted that it’s the end of campaign season for a week or two and am feeling pretty good about it all today. Better choices were made, and that’s what’s important.

Let’s keep moving Forward.

Here’s a compilation video of Diane’s apparent drunkenness last night.

7 November 2012 by Equality Politics. 4

Voting.

Casting a vote in an election is one of the most important things a U.S. citizen can do. Not only is it your right to vote, it is your duty to vote. Democracy works best when everyone lends their voice. It is very unfortunate and disappointing if you choose to be silent by not voting.

When Earl and I go to the Town Hall later today to cast our votes in today’s elections, it won’t feel the same as it has in year’s past. Ever since New York State mandated the use of Electronic Voting Machines, voting has become a mediocre experience at best. In the past, the voter would enter a voting booth, which was basically a large machine with a wall of levers and cards next to the levers to indicate which each lever was for. One stepped in front of the machine, swung the handle to the right, which shut a curtain around you and gave you privacy, which in turn, gave you a sense of the importance of casting a well thought out, responsible vote. You pushed the levers next to the names of the people you wanted to vote for, or you answered yes or no for the various laws and such that were being voted on that particular day. When you were done, you swung the big lever back to the left, whereas the levers went up and your votes were tallied and the curtain swung back so that you could step away from the voting machine.

It was a pretty simple system and it worked.

With today’s electronic machines there’s no lever. There’s no privacy. You sign in and are handed a sheet of paper and a pen and told to color in the dots over there on the card table. There’s no curtain, there’s no light, there’s no clunk of your votes being counted. You simply sit at a table that might have a makeshift barrier so that you don’t cheat on the test and you color in the dots. When you’re done, you make your way over to a big fax machine like device and feed in your card and you see either a green or red light indicating that your card was scanned properly.

What happens after that is anybody’s guess, because it is a trade secret.

Here’s where I get really angry. With the voting machine with the curtain, anyone qualified person could take it apart and see exactly how it worked. You could look at the mechanics and make sure that flipping level A1 didn’t end up casting two votes when it should have been only one.

Most electronic voting machines are written using closed-source or proprietary software. It’s like purchasing a car where you couldn’t see the engine, only where you put the gas and the oil. You feed it stuff and stuff happens. But you don’t know why it’s happening, how it’s happening or even if it’s happening properly. Open-source software, which of course I am a huge proponent of, is when the actual code is available for anyone and everyone to see. They can see under the hood and see if there’s something in there that might be a bug or something shady that might make votes not tabulate correctly. With closed-source software we don’t know what the hell is going on, we just have to trust that the company did their due diligence and that no one influenced the code in either direction in any way.

I’m a pretty naive and trusting guy, but I do not trust closed-source electronic voting machines AT ALL. If there’s nothing to hide, then just make the code available for any and all to see. We don’t need proprietary secrets involved with our election process. Plain and simple.

That all being said, please do your patriotic duty and if you haven’t already please cast your vote today. Make your voice be heard.

6 November 2012 by Politics. 4

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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