The primary goal for maintaining and/or losing weight is so I don’t mess up weight and balance in the airplanes I fly. I enjoy flying with full tanks, especially when taking my husband on a cross country flight, and to do that in the current airplanes available to me we have to meet certain weight and balance requirements. We’re well within the margin of concern but I don’t want to mess that up.
Hence, at lunch time we throw around Pretzel Crisps with a smattering of something that resembles buffalo dust like their poker chips at a World Tournament.
I’ve been tracking every single calorie consumed since the day after Christmas and I’m happy to say that the yo-yo is swinging in the good direction again. My weight is below that which it was at Thanksgiving. With all the weight I’ve gained and lost over the years I should be the size of a thimble.
When a package says I can eat 10 crisps, I eat 10 crisps. The fun part is assembling the broken pieces to resemble full pieces so I know I’m getting every last morsel in the serving I am allowing myself to eat. Luckily, many packages now also contain the weight of a serving so we can use the precision scale we have for such a thing.
Going to McDonalds however can be cumbersome when you have to slide the weights across the bar to compute the weight of a Big Mac.
I know in the long run this will all be worth it. It’s the mathematics that are exhausting.
It’s amazing what runs through my mind when I’m writing code at work. When I get into my “awesome development zone”, that wonderful place where the code just flows from my fingers without an error or bug to be found, my mind goes into this multi-threaded mode where I’m writing amazing software without really thinking about it and daydreaming about something completely unrelated and random.
Today my brain started thinking about the 1970s television series, “The New Adventures of Wonder Woman”. Everyone is familiar with the Lynda Carter led show, and I specifically thinking about some of the music cues in a couple of the second season episodes before they went full-tilt disco with the “stepping” disco beat theme song.
Not only was the “transformation music” of the second season consistently awesome, there were other music cues that were quite fun. In the episode “The Pied Piper”, Martin Mull plays an evil flute player named Hamlin Rule has hypnotizes women, including Jan Plumb, to do his evil bidding. The audio processing on his flute tracks was super groovy, even for the 1970s, and one would think it would be confined to when he played the flute.
But no! There’s a brief five to ten second interval in the later episode, “Seance of Terror”, which features Bobby Brady/Mike Lookinland’s younger brother Todd Lookinland as a kid with psychic and telekinetic powers, who is being cared for by his evil aunt and uncle. Said relations want to sabotage peace talks and guarantee ongoing border wars for the country Tarmania, securing funding for the meanies that hired them.
I can vividly recall watching this episode in the spring of 1978 on my Mom and Dad’s 19-inch Zenith in the Family Room. I remember noticing the groovy flute music cue back then, and here we are 42 years later and I’m still talking about it.
I remember liking the actress that played “Aunt Theodora”, the mean aunt to Todd Lookinland, “Matt”. She was played by Kres Mersky. I really liked her speaking voice. When working the room with the ambassadors, she had such a classy presence, even though we all knew she was evil. There was a certain je ne sais quoi about the way she carried herself and I found it entrancing. It was perfect for the role, even though it was Bobby Brady’s brother that had the special powers.
I remember Ms. Mersky being on various shows in the 70s and 80s; she seemed like she was everywhere, but looking at her IMDB profile she wasn’t on as many shows as I had thought. I think I might have been confusing her with Lynnie Greene, who starred in the one season “On Our Own” the same year, and who also went on to play “Young Dorothy” on “The Golden Girls”.
Anyways, I got to thinking about Ms. Mersky again, she also reminded me of a woman I worked with back in my days at Digital Equipment Corporation, so I decided to look her up.
Ms. Mersky’s latest entry on her IMDB entry is a short called “Rope” from 2008. It’s hard to search for a short called “Rope” on Google, but perhaps I’ll eventually find something further.
According to her bio, Ms. Mersky was 28 years old when she played Aunt Theodora on “Wonder Woman”. (My how the looks of 28 year old have changed in 42 years!). I found her personal website, but it looks like it hasn’t been updated in a number of years.
Nevertheless, I hope she is well and enjoying life and doing what she loves. I know seeing her today when I watched the entire Wonder Woman episode of “Seance of Terror” made my smile.
Now if she could have done something about Diana’s disguise wig.
Photo downloaded from wonderland-site.com. If you watch this episode, you’ll notice the housekeeper above doubles as an ambassador wearing sunglasses at the very beginning of the episode.
One of my goals in this New Year is to eliminate much of the cruft that is nipping at my personal bandwidth. The vast majority of this extra noise is of my own doing; I willingly use apps like Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook to feed my need for information.
The thing is, it isn’t always good information.
I’ve always fallen back on the stance that I maintain a Facebook account to keep up with what’s happening with friends and family back East. I chat with other pilots, read about a geeky things in geeky groups, and follow people I don’t know but would like to meet in person someday. I’m intelligent enough to discard all the political misinformation and the like, but discarding the “keep scrolling!” hooks takes bandwidth and quite frankly, my bandwidth is more valuable than that.
I’ve been delving deeper into Apple News. I’m finding that I can keep tabs with what’s happening in the world through this fairly simple to use app and I’m noticing Siri’s AI is making things better on a daily basis. After consistently using Apple News for the past couple of weeks and providing the app feedback, what I like, what I don’t like, etc., I’m finding it’s giving me news I’m looking for. I will say News is not validating my viewpoint, there were a few articles highlighted today that wanted to make my blood pressure go up, but that’s a good thing. There’s too much tendency for apps to reinforce silos and narrow viewpoints. Apple News doesn’t feel like it’s doing that.
One of the best thing about using Apple News is that it doesn’t automatically show comments to articles. If you’ve ever dealt into the comments section on The Washington Post or New York Times, you know that it’s a dismal and hopefully inaccurate view on where society it is today. There’s no way of telling whether the author of a comment is a citizen, a human, a bad actor, or a bot. And as long as the engagement keeps ticking up the ad revenue for these outlets, we’re never going to know this. So I find it’s best just to stay away from the Peanut Gallery Commentary. That’s what Twitter is for.
If you haven’t given Apple News a try I suggest giving it a whirl. Try it out for a week or two, give it valid feedback with what stories you like and what stories you’re not interested in.
So I’ve been working from home for over five years. Prior to my current gig I had a cubicle in an office building that I would visit every week or two; since taking my current job in 2015 I have been an official “virtual employee” at a Fortune 500 company.
I enjoy the gig.
Remote employees are quite commonplace here in the new Roaring 20s, especially with all the telecommuting technology at our disposal. Most of my team works remotely. I have employees reporting to me that I’ve never met in person, though I see them on an almost daily basis via videoconference. I like my team.
People have visions of remote employees kicked back in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, propped up on a couch, working on a laptop. For me that’d be a great way to lose focus and start slacking at my job. One of the things I never want to be is a slacker. There’s too much to do, too much change to make in the world, too much example to set. I have a routine that involves working out, eating breakfast, and getting cleaned up in appropriate work attire, even though I’m working out of an office here in our condo. I stay focused because I look the part of a corporate executive. I dress for success.
A few months into working from home full-time I realized I had a need to get out and about when I wasn’t working. Being at home all the time seems awesome, and in many respects it is, but there are times when I want to be outside, seeing other people In Real Life, and interacting with other humans. Occasionally I’ll jump on the ‘L’ just to walk around another neighborhood or The Loop or whatever just to get a change of scenery. It helps keep me sane. I also go for a walk in the morning and a walk in the afternoon, short walks mind you, and that helps me process whatever opportunity I’m processing in my head at the moment. Plus it gives me a chance to see something other than the grayish-green walls of my office.
I love working from home but I firmly believe it’s not meant for everyone. It takes extra discipline, extra focus, and extra effort to stay productive and be a prime contributor to the goals of your employment.
I deleted the blog post that originally occupied this time slot. It was the first thing I did upon waking this morning. It wasn’t like it was making me sleepless or anything, I simply woke up, decided I didn’t like the original post and deleted it. Because, of course I don’t want a Giant Meteor to wipe out the planet. I wouldn’t mind a close call, just to scare everyone a lot and to reboot perspective of our place in the Universe, but extinction? Not my jam.
The original post was about the choices thus far in the 2020 Presidential election, the associated monotony, and commentary on the general chaos gripping the United States. You see, I’m tired of people saying Pete Buttigieg doesn’t have enough experience to be President. I’m tired of candidates making promises they have no intention or capability of keeping. I’m tired of people promising “free stuff” to win votes. And I’m really tired of this narrative of demonizing people that are successful and thus living a very rich life.
I have always believed one must work hard. You give more than you take from society. Of course I believe in safety nets; everyone in the United States should have some sort of healthcare that is reasonable and affordable, but I don’t believe every citizen should have the same healthcare. I also don’t believe college should be free. Trade schools? Yes. Vocational programs? Yes. But my tax dollars shouldn’t fund some hippy dippy individual that wants to study something frivolous for four years just so they can declare they have a degree. Do you want to become a teacher? I’ll help fund that, as long as you promise to use your degree for education for (solve for X) number of years after obtaining the necessary education.
The majority of candidates for the Democrats are swinging way too far left. And of course the failure in the Oval Office is a nut job that really doesn’t know where he is, let alone where he’s swinging.
We need reasonable candidates in the center. Don’t hug the far left and then say you’ll drift to the center closer to the election. When I’m watching the endless litany of debates and town halls and every other ad generating ploy for the news media, I want to see who you are. Period. Full stop. End of story. I’m taking you for your word, right now, that you’re going to do what you’re saying you’ll do and if you’re too far in one direction or another, mark me down for not interested.
Theatrics, hysterics, grandstanding… all of these things must come to an end. Perhaps a close pass by a really big meteor will help get things back to a more reasonable timeline.
My husband and I are out for a drive today. Normally when we embark on this activity we tend to head south or west out onto the Illinois Prairie, once in a while we’ll head north up into Wisconsin. Today we are hugging the Lake Michigan shoreline as we wind our way through the south side of Chicago, into Indiana, and probably a bit into Michigan before we turn around and figure out how we’re getting home.
We are stopped at Panera in Michigan City, Indiana at the moment. Earl is perusing his business on the iPad he received from Santa a couple of weeks ago; I have my trusty iPad Pro with keyboard that I tend to take with me everywhere I go. Remember when we used to use laptops? Remember when we used desktops? Mainframes? Punch cards?
Oh my god.
Previously to this journey the only time we’d been in Michigan City is when we would stop at the Culver’s just off the Indiana Toll Road on our way to Chicago. This is before we moved to the area. We’d always rejoice over being in the Central Time Zone with a delicious Butter Burger from the incomparable Culver’s.
I was planning on flying today, in fact, I had a solo cross-country flight planned to Dubuque, Iowa and back. I’ve been watching the weather for the past two days and I had a feeling I was going to have to cancel. The ceiling is just too low for my tastes. I don’t mind a high ceiling as it’s usually very smooth up there when there’s a solid cloud cover that is well out of the way of my intended attitude, but when clouds are lingering at 2500′-3000′ AGL (above ground level), it’s a little too close to the ground for my comfort. Even when flying over the prairies and plains of Illinois, which tends to offer a bunch of emergency landing spots should I ever need it.
I was surprised to see a huge cooling tower in the middle of the Michigan City. I’ve always associated cooling towers of this nature with nuclear power plants, but this cooling tower is at a coal and natural gas power plant. Hence the reason we could drive so close to it. I grew up not too far from a group of three nuclear power plants. The road to the complex mentioned the use of deadly force if you ventured down that road without a reason to do so.
To think back in the 1980s, when they were building the third plant, my dad and I would fly right over the plant in the 1940 Piper J-5A. I can remember looking down into the cooling tower from 3000-feet.
My husband and I just had the oddest television viewing experience. With the New Year Earl is encouraging me to venture outside of my viewing comfort zone. Instead of watching the handful of series we follow on network television, let’s look at the streaming services and watch things we wouldn’t usually watch.
Netflix suggested “John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch”.
Now, we’ve been to see John Mulaney before. He’s a funny guy. We’ve seen him live, we’ve watched his stand up specials, I think we even watched one episode of his self-named series so we were familiar with his comedic style.
There were moments in “The Sack Lunch Bunch” where I wasn’t sure if I was suppose to laugh or cringe or applaud or whatever. And that was perfectly OK.
Pre-teens singing about their father, a drag queen, or grandma’s boyfriend Paul, well, was interesting. It was funny but I felt a little odd laughing. I was constantly wondering if the kids knew what they were singing about.
The production value of the special was spot on 1970s and 80s “Children’s Television Workshop”. All that was missing was Rita Moreno’s “Hey You Guys” and Morgan Freeman looking young and hip in a leisure suit.
Overall a catchy show with catchy music and catchy graphics and production values. I suggest watching it, even if you do it ironically.
So at the beginning of a New Year I always evaluate many things in my life and this blog is one of them. Personal blogs have gone by way of the analog television signal for the most part; I think there’s less than a half dozen that I follow that are updated on a regular basis. For the past two months I’ve been trying to make at least one update a day, I missed the mark last month twice.
As I evaluate the pros and cons of the various data input points in my life I include the blog in the mix due to it’s slight financial obligation and the amount of effort I spend keeping software up to date, writing content, deciding what points of my existence I want to share publicly and that which I don’t. Engagement is low but not awful; when I bother to look I get decent “hits” here. However, the blog was never meant to be a popularity contest for me, it’s always been more of a “hey, I’m an introvert and here’s what’s happening in my life, as shared by me on my terms”. It’s kind of like being on something like “Big Brother” where people can peek in but there’s little to no interaction. And no cut throat competition.
So I’m going to continue this journey into the 20s for as long as I maintain interest and technology lends itself to this type of experience. I’m dabbling with some ideas on contributing more to General Aviation and to the Tech Community through writing in other places; they’ll come to fruition as my timeline and thoughts allow.
Happy New Year to everyone peeking in through this blog. I hope 2020 brings you happiness, health, and all the good things.
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.
