March 2017

Earl and I have always had an open and honest relationship. For the last nearly 21 years we’ve had thousands of discussions. A small minority of them have been heated, the vast majority of them were peppered with laughter and once in a while I’m good from a really good spit take. For example, we were talking about taking a vacation to Disneyland Paris sometime in the future. I mentioned that I needed to brush up on my French and should look into Berlitz or something. He said that I don’t have the attention span to listen to Rosemary’s Baby. 

It took me a few moments and lots of laughter for us to both realize that he meant Rosetta Stone. 

Since the beginning of this surgical journey back at the end of January, my diet has had to hover in the bland zone, especially since the latest surgery at the beginning of the month. With Earl retired, he’s been experimenting in the kitchen a lot more. We’ve started supper in the dining room again instead of eating a fast paced meal at the kitchen table or in front of the television. The meals have been wonderful and I’m lucky man to be married to a man that was able to retire at his age.

The best part of sitting in the dining room eating supper is the after dinner conversation. After we’ve both finished eating we actually sit and talk for a good 10-15 minutes before getting up and clearing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen. I know it’s a really small thing, but it’s small part of what I’ve always dreamed of having in my perfect world. Growing up we had pleasant enough family meals, sometimes in the dining room, sometimes in the kitchen, but my Dad would hastily depart the table when he was done eating. My mom would ask him to sit down and talk but that wasn’t really his thing. He wasn’t mean about it or anything, it’s just that my Dad would rather be sitting in his chair reading a book or magazine or something. Couple the rule of “no politics, no religion, no sex” discussion at the dinner table with the quick exit by my Dad and it’s small wonder that I didn’t really know how the world worked until I was out on my own.

Since the election fiasco of 2000 I’ve tried really hard to be aware of what’s going on in the world of American politics and the world in general. I know just enough to be loud and not sound like a complete fool when I go on one of my rants and a lot of that can be attributed to conversations that Earl and I enjoy after dinner. When Jamie is home, he sits and chats as well.  The conversation occasionally goes off the rails but it’s good to sit down and have family dinner time, whether it’s the two of us or the three of us.

Perhaps more folks should get back in the habit of sitting down for dinner time and having a conversation. Maybe folks would be more interested in what’s going on around them if they talked to the folks around them.

I think it’s been around 10 years since my grandmother’s piano made its way to our home. As a kid I always loved it when she played the piano and would let me (and/or my cousins) play the piano from time to time. Once when my sister and I were staying at my grandparents’ house while my mom and dad were on vacation, I was playing the piano rather loudly. My grandfather came over, put his hands on the piano and said in his typical voice, “Do you know what the word ‘refrain’ means?” He then closed the lid over the keys and that was that for the rest of the evening.

Beyond my love for music and my amateurish abilities at being able to play piano, one of the things I love about having the piano is that it still smells as it did when I was a kid. I don’t know if the piano smells like the 1959 mid-century house it used to live in or if the house smelled like the piano, but the scent lingers on and it makes me smile from time to time. 

The piano is a 1949 Gulbransen, so I’m assuming it was in the original farm house that my grandfather tore down to build the mid-century modern house he had custom designed and then built in 1958-1959. There was a special spot designed for the piano in the living room. As the estate was being settled after his passing, I couldn’t bring myself to go into the house with the piano (and other things) missing. I didn’t want to put dents in my memories of that house and that home. My sister and I were the lucky grandchildren that lived next door; I would visit Grandma Wing every day after elementary school and watch “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie” after she watched her stories while baking or cooking or doing other housework. She sometimes saved the ironing so she could iron while watching TV with me.

I tell Earl that if we had the money we would build a mid-century style home based on those custom plans, with a couple of modifications (vault the living room ceiling, make the dining room bigger). To this day I am absolutely in love with the design of that house. 

But in the meanwhile, I’ll make music and revel in the memories.

I have never made it a secret that I look up to Steve Jobs. Yeah, he was a bit crass and he might have improved on ideas that he got from others, but the man had a vision, more importantly he had a set of standards and expectations but most importantly, he did everything in his power to make all of those things come together.

This is one of the reason that I am an Apple fanboy. In a way I can’t believe that I am saying this, because I’ve toyed with many operating systems over the years. I was a Linux evangelist for a while. At one point I had used every iteration of Windows starting with Windows/286 in the mid 1980s right up until Windows 8.1. (I’ve toyed with Windows 10 a bit, it’s good but it still underwhelms me).

I could never get into Mac OS before Mac OS X (later MacOS came around), but ever since that day I bought Earl one of those pedestal iMacs, I’ve been hooked.

It just works. Notice that I didn’t say “It just works, most of the time” or “It just works some of the time.” Because even though some later iterations of MacOS and iOS have undergone some speed bumps in the quality control department, when you boil out the BS you’ll find that the offerings from Apple are still top in class.

People like to complain about the specs of new computers and how underpowered they are. Since the vast majority of computer users are using a web browser, a mail program, possibly a calendar and maybe a chat program of some sort, how much power do they really need? Do we need to fleece a 65 year old senior of their life savings for a computer with enough specs to render an animated film? No!

I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a Chromebook and storing all my stuff in the cloud. The NSA, the CIA and probably a whole bunch of other organizational alphabet soups are monitoring my behavior on the Internet at any given moment, why should I encourage them anymore by storing anything and everything I do in a web browser? There’s a certain amount of comfort in using a quality built laptop with a robust operating system to store my files. It’s taken me a little while to warm up to my latest MacBook Pro (which I purchased in July 2016 to replace its stolen older brother) but I love it. It works the way I want it to, it does what I want it to do and most importantly, it doesn’t create friction in my computing experience.

Working on a computer should be frictionless.

Folks at work are often surprised when I add features to the software that I write and maintain because I don’t provide documentation. I design and build software that doesn’t require a manual to operate it. If you need to refer to documentation to run a software program there’s a couple of things happening, namely, the software is poorly written and/or designed or the user is not educated enough to be embarking on the task to begin with. I believe in computer education. I believe in educating people to use computers safely. But more importantly I believe in making that education immersive. People learn best by doing, and a person should learn something every time they use a computer.

For much of his adult life, Steve Jobs asked himself one question on a regular basis: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” If the answer was “no” for too many days in a row, Steve knew that he had to change something about his life. I ask myself that question a lot. Am I happy guy? Am I happy with what I’m doing? Am I happy with where we live, with our opportunities?

My answers are almost always positive. I have the love of my life in my life and I have some extra love on top of that. I have a great group of friends. I fly airplanes, something that I’ve always dreamed of doing. And I love my job. I enjoy what I do, I work for what I believe is a great company and I believe that I am making a great contribution to the company I work for. There’s one sticking point that’s been bothering me but I’ll work through it.

My former manager sought me out for my position. When I accepted the position I insisted that I be able to use a Mac as my work computer. The company is a solid Microsoft shop. Working with Mac, and I’m not the only one in the company doing so, results in occasional shunning from new collaborate features the company is rolling out to its users. I work around them, I work through them, but that’s the part of me that doesn’t always get a positive answer when I ask myself if I’m completely happy. There’s too much friction in my computing experience at work and as I said before, I believe the working with tech should be as frictionless as possible. I know it’s of my own doing, using a Mac in a company that loves Microsoft, but nevertheless, I’m not alone and I believe that the powers that be should broaden their horizons and look at the entire wall, not just one picture.

Ever since my last surgery a couple of weeks ago I’ve decided to keep my blood pressure low by unbottling my feelings. Earl and I have had some lively discussions, mostly about politics. Some of the liveliness has been fueled by the good meds they had me on for a week or so, but it’s been good to feel engaged. Earl teaches me a lot. He’s the smarter man in the room. I learn from him every day. And the learning is frictionless. Except when I’m yelling with passion (not in anger).

I’m focused on living in the moment. Living for today. Unplugging and listening from time to time. Plugging in and sharing. Life is best when we know it’s finite for then when try to do as much as we can in the time that we have.

And we try to do it with as little friction as possible. Don’t be friction. Help the world glide and grow.