I wasn’t even tempted to see this, let alone eat it. Bon Appetit!
J.P.
Intelligentsia.
I decided to skip Starbucks this evening and instead went to Intelligentsia for a cup of coffee while I wrote this blog entry. My husband is hosting a business meeting at home this evening, so I decided to make myself scarce while they took care of business. I look forward to the leftover snack supply when I get home; like all good hosts my husband shops for an army when he’s hosting a half dozen.
Being a relatively new coffee drinker, I am still a little gun shy when it comes to ordering coffee outside of a Starbucks, but this coffee is a delight. It’ll probably keep me up tonight; I should have asked for unleaded.
I took a peek at Facebook earlier today and came across a photo of Ivanka Trump dressed as either the Jolly Green Giant or an avocado. I don’t know a lot about fashion but I’m sure this isn’t it.
I am curious as to whether the Trump family ever tires of being such easy targets. I’d laugh more if they weren’t destroying democracy and all that.
Speaking of which, I don’t know everything about weather, but as a guy that chases storms and a guy that flies around the stuff all the time, I’m pretty sure drawing a bubble on a weather map with a Sharpie doesn’t magically change the path of a hurricane.
Imagine being so incredibly insecure that you hold press conferences to show off obviously modified maps just to cover your own lack of intelligence.
It still boggles my mind that anyone voted for this idiot.
Once in a while I go back to my old blog entries during the George W Bush administration and I find myself pining for times when quotes like “Of course the California is important. That’s the only opinion I got.” (this blog entry) irked me.
I never thought I’d find the day I’d be pining for the likes of George W. Bush in the Oval Office.
The worse part of all this is I thought we’d move onto brighter times and recover stronger than ever after we got past 9/11, over the Bush era, and further into the 21st century. I just never considered how stupid the American populace really is.
I’m going to go back to enjoying my cup of coffee. It’s a delight.
Cross My Broken Heart.
From the very beginning of my club DJ days, from 1987 here’s The Jets with “Cross My Broken Heart”.
The Jets are the eight oldest siblings (of 17) of the Wolfgramm family from Minneapolis, originally from Tonga. I was curious as to what they’re up to these days, some of them are still performing and they actually sound pretty darn close to how they sounded 30+ years ago.
This used to mix brilliantly into Madonna’s “Causing A Commotion”.
Computing.
So on Saturday I took my mid-2015 15-inch MacBook Pro to the local Apple store for the Recall Battery Replacement. Not to worry, when I get the computer back, I’ll have paperwork indicating the battery has been replaced and I should be allowed to take the computer on an airplane with me.
If the TSA or airlines can even tell the difference between all the various models of MacBook Pro.
Anyways, I am a few days into two weeks without my MacBook Pro and this experience is proving to me that I’m not ready to go all in on an iPad Pro as my primary computer. There’s quite a few folks in the tech columnist community who insist that we no longer need laptops or desktops, we should be able to do everything on an iPad. I would LOVE to believe them, because I agree that tablets are the way of the future, but I’m not sure we are there yet, even with me running the upcoming version of iPadOS on my iPad Pro.
The whole “app” paradigm feels oddly restrictive to me. I’m probably an outlier in this, maybe we really just need tablets, but the old school geek in my likes to go in and mess around with the terminal from time to time. I can sort of do that on my iPad using the Prompt app to get to my Mac Mini, but my Mac Mini is horrifically slow and the terminal is over there, not here on my iPad.
Perhaps I just need to stop thinking how things used to be and start thinking about how things can be. Maybe during these two weeks I’ll have a change of heart and start crowing about the virtues of using an iPad full-time. I know I tried to do so earlier this year but I always went back to my MacBook Pro.
Maybe being forced to use an iPad will finally make me switch.
Cloaked.
In this age of Instagram Influencers and retweets and thumbs up on Facebook, numbers are the name of the game. This is reflective of today’s society; plastic surgeons are thriving as many opt to do things to look as young as possible. Me? Well, I do my part by shaving my head to disguise the fact that I’m bald but that’s probably as far as my vanity goes. I don’t go to the gym on a regular basis, I don’t have tattoos, and I’m no longer focused on building “social collateral”.
As a middle aged gay man in America, I’ve moved to that point in life where I’m essentially invisible or cloaked to many. The gay is a young person’s game. Young gay pilots flying big airplanes gather the follower numbers on the social media outlets. Big bearded, worked out men gather the same. Me? I’m just a quiet nut job who more geek than anything, shaves every morning, and flies airplanes for fun. Some would surmise my comments as competition, but it’s actually pure observation. I have no need to try to turn back time or be something I’m not.
Quite frankly, I’m content with being cloaked in today’s society.
In the short lived television series “Century City” (CBS, 2004), there was an episode that featured a very young looking boy-band that sued one of their members when they no longer wanted to engage in youth-enhancing procedures to look like a boy band. In reality they were 75 years old (though they looked to be in their 30s) and the one member had grown tired of being something he wasn’t. Again, a show that never found its footing, but spoke to society through storytelling.
I was recently watching a video of Paula Cole’s “I Believe In Love”. Originally filmed in the late 1990s, she looks and sounds great. YouTube suggested a live version from a recent performance; it’s 20 years later and Paula looks like she’s aged a little bit, because she has! The video is enjoyable, she sounds good, and the performance was solid. I was surprised at the number of comments of how “she looks like a grandmother” and “why is she letting herself look so old?”
She’s allowing herself to age gracefully. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Now, I’m not against anyone doing whatever they need to do to feel comfortable in their own skin. I might not understand their decision but it’s ultimately none of my business as to what they’re doing with their own bodies. It’s when someone says, “you should grow your beard back” or “have you ever considered doing something about the wrinkles around your eyes?” to me that I get cranky.
I’m happy with who I am, what I look like, and how I’m living my life. I want everyone to be happy. Allow me to be happy.
At 25 pounds overweight with no ink and no outstanding features like piercing blue eyes or anything, I’m very content at being “cloaked”, especially in the gay community.
As a quick aside, I totally get that American women have it a hundred times worse than men my age when it comes to physical appearance expectations. Just be happy. Just be you. You will always have my support.
Rules.
I find comfort in the structure of following established rules. Some find this surprising about me, as there are times that I show a rebellious streak, but it’s actually rare for me to deliberately ignore established rules. I cross the street at established crosswalks. I don’t lump our trash and recyclables together. And when leaving the nearby ‘L’ platform, I always use the designated exits instead of barging through one of the Emergency Exit doors.
At times I think my husband is amused by this and at others times he finds it incredibly frustrating. It’s usually the latter when we’re downtown in a snowstorm and he wants to dart across the street and then he ends up waiting for me to walk half a block to cross with the light and then make my way back to him.
To be fair, there are times when I don’t follow the rules. I rarely drive the speed limit on the expressway and if I’m cycling along the side streets of the neighborhoods I don’t stop at the stop signs; I usually look both ways but still cruise through. On the main thoroughfares I stop for lights and I won’t cross against them unless I’m certain it’s safe to do so.
As I said, it’s all about the comfort and structure of following established protocols. It’s just what I do and I figure it’s the simplest way to get through life.
My husband thinks I should have been a Boy Scout.
In Lyrics.
I will take my life into my hands
And I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes
And I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
And my passion flow like rivers from the sky
And after all the loves of my life
Oh, after all the loves in my life
You’ll still be the one
And that will be my life
My take on a verse from “MacArthur Park”. The goalpost of my life.
View From an Apple Store.
I’m sitting in the gallery at the Apple Store on Michigan Ave here in Chicago. I’ve always loved this store. Apple has always wanted their locations to feel like community centers, and this flagship location has always met my expectations around that goal.
Data Privacy.
My brother-in-law owns a company that maintains gas pumps and associated equipment at service stations in the Pennsylvania-New Jersey area. During a recent visit he noticed a station down the street that had “canopy pumps”, where the mechanics of the fuel pump is incorporated into the supports that hold the canopy over the area, presumably to shelter customers from the elements while they’re filling their vehicles with explosive liquid. While here he didn’t get a chance to snap a photo of the pumps, but I told him I would stop by and do so. He’d use the information to research where the pumps were from and if his company could get access to them for his customers.
The easiest way for me to share the photos I snapped this morning was to send him a message on Facebook Messenger. As I mentioned earlier this week, I no longer have “infinity pools of information” apps on my iPhone, and I’ve pretty much disengaged from Twitter permanently, but I still have a Facebook account that I can access on my iPad. I sent him the photos and he sent me a note of thanks. I like my brother-in-law, he’s a really good guy and I’m always happy to help out. Generally speaking I’d say I’m a pretty lucky man in the “in-law” department.
I decided to do a quick scan of Facebook to see what’s been happening with family and friends and immediately I was peppered with all sorts of service station related ads: Exxon Mobil, Shell, Gulf, the virtues of the environmental work of BP, etc. Prior to the three photos I had sent via Facebook Messenger, I had never seen an ad on Facebook for a gas station.
Anyone that believes their communication over Facebook Messenger, or any of their other associated applications, in out of their minds. I know family and friends that completely rely on What’s App. The company is owned by Facebook and the data is mined by Facebook. Instagram? Same deal. And Mark Zuckerberg has said on multiple occasions that Facebook’s intent is to tie the messaging mechanisms of all their apps into one database, one point of control, and one platform.
Earl remarked yesterday that he mentioned something while visiting with his brother the other night and now he had ads popping up on Facebook. He insists the only way Facebook could know about these things was to hear the conversation. The topic was so out of the norm, so off the wall, that there was no way he had searched for anything remotely related to what they were discussing so theoretically there should be no digital trail. That would mean Facebook had to be listening to him through the app on his iPhone.
There’s a reason I don’t have the Facebook app on my phone. How I wish there was something around the disrupt Instagram, but the likes of Flickr really screwed that up.
Please be cognizant that nothing you do online is safe, and nothing you do on your phone is completely private. I have lived by this rule for 30+ years and it still holds true today: If you don’t want it appearing on the front page of the New York Times, do not type it into a computer.
I guess that applies to innocent conversations as well.
Hacked.
NBC News is reporting Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account was hacked today. Several tweets were sent out from the hacked account.
How safe is the platform if account of the CEO and co-creator of the platform can be hacked?
Wow.
I’m very happy I pretty much dropped the service earlier this week.
