June 2017

Scenery.

My love of road trips and roads in general goes back to my elementary school days. I’ve always been fascinated with the view from a roadway. I vividly remember riding in the back seat of my parents’ vehicles. The first one I remember was a VW Beetle. I don’t remember where we went in it, as I was just a toddler, but I remember riding in it and watching the scenery whizz by. 

Earl and I are currently on the Indiana Toll Road headed for Chicago. We’ve passed a couple of cars with video monitors installed in the backseat, movies or cartoons playing. I peer in the windows as we go by and see kids fixated on the electronic gizmo. The world is literally passing them by as they’re being entertained by electronics. 

I find the surrounding world so entertaining. I am so happy these electronic gadgets weren’t around when I was a kid. I love discovering the world from the road just as much as I love discovering the world from the air. 

Earl handles the drives to Chicago and back because he has more of a lead foot than I do, plus I worked from the passenger seat for the first 4 1/2 hours. Once we were out of New York and Pennsylvania I put the work computer away and started watching the world go by. 

I nod to truck drivers. I smile to kids and parents. I see all the different types of utility poles and high tension wire towers. I spot difference in road signs, I compare fuel prices, I wave to cattle and I smirk at horse and sheep. 

The world is out there waiting for us to explore it. Take the opportunity to see it whenever you can. 

You might appreciate your surroundings much more when you’re in their presence. 

8 June 2017 by Deep. 0

Trust.

Some days, especially when it’s cold and rainy outside, I opt out of listening to music when I work and look for a TED Talk to watch or listen to as a source of inspiration for the task at hand. Today, I chose a TED Talk from 2013 by Angela Ahrendts, Senior Vice President of Retail at Apple since 2014. Prior to Apple she worked for Burberry.

A quote from the talk made me stop, rewind and listen again. Twice.

Trust, since the creation of man, is where we all derive our greatest strength and power. It’s like the exterior heart that all energy flows through.
-Angela Ahrendts, 2013

This quote, this statement really struck a chord within me today. The quote was surrounded by a discussion about turmoil in the world at that time. That was 2013 and quite frankly, 2013 has nothing on where we are today in 2017. It all suddenly clicked in my head: I’ve lost trust in the world. I don’t trust our government, I certainly don’t trust the president, I don’t really trust corporations and I’m finding it more and more difficult to trust that people will do the right thing. Without trust we have nothing. As Ms. Ahrendts stated, it’s the exterior heart that all energy flows through. Without trust, there’s no heart, there’s no energy flowing.

One of the most important things about our marriage and our little family is that I have absolute, unwavering trust in both Earl and Jamie. It’s the very foundation upon which my life has been built. We have no secrets from one another and I don’t think I could function if that changed. There may be hesitation for someone to share something but I trust that I will never be deceived and I will never, ever do anything to lose their trust. It’s bedrock. It’s what allows us to stand tall.

If we are truly going to Make America Great Again, we need to start with putting people we trust into positions of leadership. We need to trust our leaders and more importantly, we need to trust one another. There’s not a lot of trust going on in society today.

Here’s the entire TED Talk called “The Power of Human Energy”. Angela Ahrendts is one woman I’d like to meet in person, shake her hand and thank her for the inspiration.

6 June 2017 by Spiritual Stuff. 0

Flashback Post 2008: Mix With Me.

I was looking for a photo from my heavy blogging days and stumbled across this video from nine-ish years ago. It’s me dancing around the studio and doing some mixing on my Apple PowerBook G4.

Here’s the video that was featured on that post. The two songs in the mix:
“I’m Gonna Get You” by Lonnie Gordon
“Don’t You Love Me” by the 49ers (sampling Jody Watley)

[MEDIA=46]
6 June 2017 by DJ 0

WWDC 2017.

I keep saying that someday I’m going to attend WWDC, or the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. This is a yearly event where developers for Apple’s various platforms get together and Apple shares with the developers as to why Apple has the greatest platform in the world to develop for. They have workshops, product announcements, platform upgrade announcements and sneak peeks and basically a great opportunity for software developers from all over the world to get together and geek out on Apple products together.

Yesterday Apple kicked off WWDC 2017 with their annual Special Event, in which they took the opportunity to announce a few new products and their planned upgrades to their operating systems (macOS for the Macintosh, iOS for iPhone and iPad, etc.)

As much as I wretch about Apple and their Quality Control practices of late, after exploring other options that are out there I’m still fully committed to the Apple line of products for a myriad of reasons. When compared to other platforms, I find that Apple’s approach to computing works best for my needs. The fit and finish of their devices meet my expectations (long gone are my days of using cheap, plastic technology that breaks down in less than a year). And, probably most importantly, Apple is not funded by ad revenue that is gleaned from my data. In the wide scope of things I don’t really care if Search Company X cares if brush my teeth with Colgate or Crest but I absolutely, positively despise advertising, especially ads embedded in software I’m trying to use. Forget about web pages that have dancing ads or autoplaying videos about Athlete’s Foot or whatever. I am always willing to pay that little bit extra to keep the ads out of my computing experience.

Apple’s experience is the best way to accomplish that task.

I totally get that there is a wide array of folks out there that absolutely despise Apple and everything that they stand for. I’ve heard everything from “they force you to upgrade every year” (they don’t, in fact, Apple’s MacBook Pro line usually lasts longer than anything belched out by one of the PC Notebook companies), “I shouldn’t have to pay for a grounded spaceship in the middle of Northern California” (honestly, I hope the new Apple Campus becomes a beacon of how environmentally friendly a company, and any person, should be these days) and “Pffff, who cares, Android has been doing that forever” (which I think is wonderful. I’ve used Android before, it feels like a second rate, kitchen-sink operating system to me that could fall apart at any given moment, but if it works for you, use it. I’m not going to evangelize why you shouldn’t use Android, that’s your business).

The Special Event yesterday has a bunch of announcements that pretty much followed the script predicted by the rumors that have been floating about. iPhone and iPads will get iOS 11. Macs will get macOS High Sierra, which sounds like it’s going to follow the same precedent that Mac OS X Leopard followed years ago when they added refinements and tweaks to Leopard to give us Snow Leopard. Getting totally geeky, macOS will get a new filesystem that will immensely speed up file operations on the hard drive and as a person that copies a lot of video that’s a very cool thing. Apple also announced the new HomePod (not completely a fan of the name) which brings Siri to the smart speaker paradigm currently led by Amazon with the Echo and Google with Google Home. It’s pricey but apparently it has amazing sound. Siri is built in. Everyone tells me how awful Siri is and that it’s worthless but I use Siri all the time, especially to control our Philips Hue lights when Amazon Echo’s Alexa responds with “I can’t find the device you’re looking for” after every other request. Siri always knows how to turn off the lights on dining room hutch. Alexa can turn them on but forgets how to turn them off.

The two standout features that really grabbed my attention had to do with mobile and are both in iOS 11. The first one is safety oriented and is called “Do Not Disturb While Driving” mode. Basically, iOS 11 now has the ability to detect while you’re driving and will put your phone in a Do Not Disturb mode, replying automatically to messages on your behalf indicating what you’re doing. The screen will remain dark and when you get to your destination everything will unlock and you can catch up on your activity then. You can build a VIP list that allows select users to reply to the alert with “Urgent” and it will force your iPhone to display the message.

I think this is exactly what they driving American public needs in a smartphone right now and I am eager to use it.

The second update to iOS 11 that really got my attention was the vast improvements to using iOS on the iPad. Apple made great strides in making the iPad Pro more of a content generation device and less of a content consumption device. The addition of Drag and Drop to the interface, along with a more familiar Mac-like dock along the bottom is a welcomed enhancement. I have always wanted to use my iPad Pro as my primary computing device, especially when traveling, but I’ve always felt boxed in by the experience. While not perfect, iOS 11 takes a hearty step forward in making this possible, at least within my realm, and I’m eager to try it out.

The hardware upgrades announced were a welcomed addition to the event, and one that should calm folks screaming about Apple being behind the curve on processing power in their MacBook Pro line, at bat for a bit. One of the hardware announcements, the new iMac Pro coming in December, really grabbed my eye. This is an iMac designed to be a powerhouse of a machine and to be used in professional environments (photo editing, graphic design, video creation, etc). It’s pricey but the specs are out of this world. And the best part it, while it is amazing, it’s NOT a replacement for the Mac Pro, which is going to be updated in 2018.

It also comes in Space Gray with all new Space Gray accessories. It looks bad ass.

All in all, I’m a very happy and content Apple Geek. I purchased a couple of things yesterday (tell my husband to calm down as I didn’t spend a great deal of money at all) and I’m looking forward to watching some of the workshops at WWDC 2017 online in my spare time this week.

6 June 2017 by Geek 0

Ear Bug.

During my Jeep adventures this weekend I had this song cranked up as I was bumping around on a nearly non-existent road.

Here’s Agnetha Fältskog with “I Won’t Let You Go”.  You probably recognize Agnetha from ABBA.

4 June 2017 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Mindset.

This picture of me was taken just shy of the turn of the century. Earl snapped this photo; we were sitting on the shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio.

IMG 3891

This photo sits on our dresser in the area that acts as Earl’s nightstand. I glance at it from time to time when I’m getting ready for the day. This morning I was selecting today’s pair of underwear and thought back to life at the time this photo was taken.

If you think about it, it’s rather startling as to how much as changed in our lives with the great leaps of technology. This photo was taken back in the days when we relied on our film cameras. We’d fill up a roll of film with memories and take the film to be developed. There was much excitement when we picked up our pictures and looked at the results. Memories were relived. The ability to snap a photo, see the results and share the snapshot with the world, all within the span of five seconds, has kind of made the exercise a little less special to me. When I was out on my Jeep ride yesterday, some of the photos of the solar farm were taken with my trusty Canon digital camera. I didn’t see the results until I transferred the photos from the camera to my MacBook. This added a minute bit of anticipation as to how the photos really turned out. It was a moment of excitement.

I look at myself in this photo and try to remember where my head was at this time. I was very excited about technology. I wasn’t too plugged into politics; Bill Clinton was president at the time and I knew that there was a lot of shenanigans going on with the whole Lewinsky thing and that the Republicans were getting much crankier than I remembered them being when growing up. I watched CNN once in a great while. I read the news on various sites through our dial-up connections. It would be a couple of years before I wrote my first blog entry. 

My biggest takeaway from my musings was that I was much less encumbered by the weight of the world. I still felt the need to right injustice in the world but the world didn’t weigh so heavy on my mind all the time. I’m trying to decide if this is a result of tuning into the constant stream of noise on social media/24 hour news/etc or if I’m just growing old and I’m just following the natural path of an American male in his quest to keep those damn kids off his lawn.

I’m making an attempt to not add noise to the chaos online as my 30 day personal growth challenge for the month of June. If I have something to say, I want it to be a positive contribution to the world. I don’t want fame, I don’t want ad revenue, I don’t want notoriety and I certainly don’t want to base my self-worth or value on the number of likes or comments or responses I get to a contribution. 

As I come up on the last year of my 40s, while it’s natural that I’m going be older, I want to consciously be wiser without all the baggage of today’s chaos attached to it. I think that could be the best positive change I can make in my life today. 

And honestly, I wouldn’t mind bringing Henleys back into my wardrobe again.

4 June 2017 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Mud.

With Earl out of town in Chicago this weekend (moving things into our storage unit and looking for more places to live) I found myself with a little time on my hands today. I originally planned on flying this afternoon but winds were gusting to nearly 30 MPH so it was better if I stayed on the ground. I decided to go driving along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario in the Jeep. 

I enjoy following the “old version” of state routes. These are easily identifiable: the original routing usually splits off at a curve. The state route follows a very straight and wide alignment but the original route veers off and then comes back to the state route farther up the road. I found one such routing today along NY Route 3 in southern Jefferson County. The original routing had this lovely sign.

1

This presented me with a challenge for the Jeep. I hadn’t been off-roading in a while, so I followed the remains of this road, which ended up taking me through some farmland, closer to the shore of the lake and then ending abruptly at the remnants of a bridge. Along the way there were places where I could splash the Jeep in the mud.

This is what was left of the road at one point.

2

I did come across a scenic view of a tributary from Sandy Creek that flows into Lake Ontario. 

3

I was all by myself in the middle of nowhere and it was quite peaceful. I had a lot of fun off roading for a bit. A highly recommended exercise.

3 June 2017 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Safety. 

Has society become so unpredictable that we can’t be trusted with a spoon or knife without precautions?  

3 June 2017 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Sun.

Over the past couple of years solar farms have been appearing across some of the local landscape in our county. They are especially prevalent around the county buildings near the old county airport.

IMG 0077

I’m happy to see this type of growth in our region, as there’s a lot of open space that is being used with this clean energy generation. If Earl and I still lived on the big swath of land we owned back in the early 2000s, I’d probably be pushing for a solar farm of some sort on our land.

IMG 3846

While I kind of understand the community resistance to wind farms, I really don’t see why folks have fits about solar farms. Back when the Paris Accord was signed back in 2005, some of the reasoning as to why solar farms are bad for us were baffling. A retired science teacher in North Carolina was concerned that the solar panels would divert the sun away from vegetation. She claimed the solar panels would retard photosynthesis. The vegetation around the solar farms in this area are thriving. Perhaps she just wanted to throw out the word “photosynthesis” to prove to the town council that she was a scientific genius. She also claimed that no one could tell her that these panels didn’t cause cancer. So much for an open mind.

There have also been claims that the panels will suck all of the energy out of the sun and burn it out. My only response to this, “and these people vote”.

Solar Roadway panels only 1 580 435

There are efforts to build solar roadways elsewhere in the world. Basically, pavement would be replaced with solar panels which can also have LED lighting embedded in them. These panels would be wired to cabling in raceways along the roadway, which in turn would be tied into the local power grid. Imagine, all that asphalt replaced with solar panels. How awesome would that be? No more worries about an eyesore in a nearby field!

Rutgers board of gov 20110405 SolarLot

Another great idea is the addition of solar canopies to parking lots. In a previous job, when I would visit an office outside of Dallas, Texas, the biggest complaint from the local folks was that the new company building did not have a parking garage. Their vehicles were sitting outside, baking in the August Texas heat. Imagine if a relatively inexpensive parking lot canopy made of solar panels was installed over the area. Cars in the shade and electric power generation in one swoop. This would even benefit us in the northeast. Snow off the car in the winter while providing electric power for the surrounding area.

IMG 0078

We can have such a bright future if, as a society, we stop clinging to the past of young, fairly ignorant technology and keep moving innovation forward. Both wind and sun are an unlimited source. Being part of the Paris Climate Accord, no matter how “symbolic” it appeared to be, was a positive step in the right direction.

We need to focus on building a brighter, cleaner future. Stagnant thoughts and ideas will never get us anywhere. We have a future to build. As a world, let’s all build that future together.

3 June 2017 by Geek Why. 1

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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