This. Just this.
J.P.
Iqaluit.
I just read a Facebook update from one of my in-laws. And so I did this.
It might have been politics related. I really need to stay off Facebook. Maybe I just need to go to Iqaluit, Nunavut. I hear it’s surprisingly beautiful up there.
I mention Iqaluit because a Swiss Air flight from Zurich to Los Angeles made an emergency landing at their airport yesterday after they had a malfunction with one of the engines on the Boeing 777. Everything was fine with the landing, Swiss Air sent another airplane and picked up the passengers and they went on their way after a half-day visit to this little northern town.
This prompted me to “walk” around Iqaluit via Google Maps and it looks quite lovely. Remote, wild, small yet interesting, intimate and friendly. I mentioned this on Twitter and the mayor replied within five minutes that it’s a lovely place.
During supper tonight I mentioned to Earl that I thought we should visit Iqaluit someday. I was surprised when he agreed.
I need to look into this further.
Anger Management.
God, I miss this show. CBS cancelled it when it was still in the Top 20 as far as ratings go because they wanted to put some other drama that was more dramatic on. The replacement show (I don’t even remember the name of it) tanked after 1 1/2 seasons. Then we moved into the “Two Broke Girls” era where idiocy is hilarious.
Anyway, I stumbled upon this clip from “Judging Amy”. I needed to see it. I wish this show would come back or at the very least, come out on DVD because the message of this excellent show needs to be broadcast far and wide.
Anger.
A popular meme on the Internet these days goes something like this: “Sally voted for Hillary. Bob voted for Trump. They realize the election is over now and even though they have disagreements when it comes to politics, Sally and Bob agree to be friends. Be like Sally and Bob.” Several of my friends and relatives have shared this meme and I have to say it just makes me angry.
Then, when I go to Facebook (which I still do when I know that I absolutely shouldn’t be there), I see all sorts of whining and complaining about all the political posts that are flying by on the feeds of folks that I’m friends with. They complain that they go to Facebook to see recipes and happy pictures of people and they wish that everyone would stop talking about politics all the time.
I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but the Trump Administration has pretty much been a god damn dumpster fire since his mediocre inauguration. We have Executive Orders coming from the White House like they’re freaking decrees. Rights are being stripped away from Americans left and right. Some friends from high school say it’s the whole “one bad kid ruined it for the whole class” mentality but I don’t know if anyone’s noticed or not but the vast majority of Americans are not in high school. I do not need to be treated like some wainked out teenager who gets spanked because everyone in the room is getting spanked. I am an American and a god damn patriotic American at that. I was fairly attentive in my social studies classes when I was a kid. I read. I research. I watch the news. I even listen to folks that have a different political viewpoint from mine if they are able to support their beliefs, just like I support mine. But anyone that rolls over and puts up with the horse crap that is coming out of Washington D.C. should be ashamed of themselves.
My beliefs of what this country should be are very simple. The populace should be working hard, contributing more to society than it takes, leaving the world better than we found it and doing good things for themselves and other people regardless of skin color, race, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity or whatever other label you want to slap on someone. I don’t have to pray to your God and you don’t have to pray to mine because quite frankly, as an American it’s none of my business whom you pray to. If you want me to read your Bible, don’t start out by beating me over the head with it every chance you get. Just because I believe that a woman has the right to do as she wishes with her own body doesn’t mean that I want women getting abortions at Wal*mart (Always White Trash, Always). I happen to believe that abortion is the wrong answer to the question 99.5% of the time but you know what, I don’t have a vagina, I don’t plan on getting a vagina and therefore I should have absolutely NO say as to what a woman can or can’t do with her body. If we want to outlaw something let’s start with face or neck tattoos or something, but that’s a rant for another day.
I’m not only angry about people telling me that I shouldn’t discuss politics, I’m angry that people are telling me to get over it. I’m not getting over it. Ever. I’ve had to listen to that cantankerous old stupid man Mitch McConnell contort politics six ways from Sunday to do everything he can to make President Obama’s term as short and miserable as possible and now I’m suppose to be happy that a man with fake hair, a fake tan and completely without a clue is sitting in the big chair in D.C. Give me a break. When we have a failed reality star who has done everything he can to make himself important in Hollywood since he was big enough to throw his junk around women become president it’s obvious that this country is a raging dumpster fire that’s about one and a half steps away from a completely meltdown to an “Idiocracy” scenario.
And don’t even get me started about any relatives who voted for Trump thinking that I’m going to be happy and cordial at the next family reunion. “But I didn’t agree with Hillary!” Wonderful. I’m happy that you’re offended by pant suits and that you made the bold choice to vote for a man who was supported by the KKK, is intent on taking away any right I have as a gay man away from me as quickly as possible and has loaded up his Administration with every white, rich, swamp dweller one can name. Draining the swamp? Get the hell away from me with that BS. The swamp is overflowing with raw sewage but Benghazi and an email server. Shall we discuss all the Administration officials using a private email server? No, because they’re not Hillary. Hillary stood by her man. Any woman that voted against Hillary because she supported Bill during the Monica scandal is a woman that would rather have a man make decisions for her.
On Tuesday night we had some sort of public spectacle to announce Trump’s pick for the vacant Supreme Court position. The position has been open for a year but because Obama was black he wasn’t allowed to get any traction with his nomination because, well, you know, these things take time. So instead we were stuck with an American Idol-type fiasco from the Orange Cheeto making grand gestures to tell us that he’s nominating a man that started a “Fascism Forever Club” in high school. That should be a hoot and half.
Crimminy.
Look it, I’m an American. I am a 48 year old, married, white, gay American male. I take my hat off when I hear the Star Spangled Banner. I like to believe that the United States of America is land of the free and the home of the brave, but if we continue to be completely stupid and make stupid choices and bury our head in the sand, there ain’t gonna be a country to be proud of for much longer.
Get your heads out of your ass, America, stop telling me to be all Pollyanna over something that is nothing more than a travesty waiting to go nuclear and for the love of God, get a friggin’ clue.
Burnout.
I follow a lot of aviators on Twitter. I follow musicians, I follow fellow bloggers, I follow friends both from real life and those I’ve met online. I follow politically minded people.
This morning I decided that I needed to shut down Twitter for a few hours.
I noticed that I’ve been checking Twitter upon waking each morning to see if there’s been some sort of global catastrophe, because my spidey sense is worried about what looms on the horizon and let’s face it, the country has been a bit of a dumpster fire since the Inauguration.
My Twitter feed has been all about politics. Well, that’s an exaggeration. My feed has been about 98% politics. My tweets have followed the same ratio. My handful of followers know how I feel on any given subject.
Today I just had to step away from it all for a little while and just practice some breathing exercise to get my head back to center.
The reboot helped. I no longer feel overwhelmed and I feel ready to continue the quest to do my part to make the United States the best it can be.
Onward and onward. Now if we could just do something about the dumpster fire.
Hello, Piano.
The first time I went to college (right out of high school), I went to study music education. My plan was to become a music teacher. I went on an instrumental study, having originally auditioned as a vocalist but after being rejected by the school I went and tried again as a tuba player. It was easy for me to get into the music school as a tuba player, tuba players are rare. I had played tuba since the fifth grade. I wasn’t exceptionally good nor passionate about it, but it helped me fill in the “bottom” of a given band, so I was good doing my part.
As a Music Education major I took many music theory classes. In depth study of how good music is constructed was quite interesting to me. In many ways music is math. Musical passages are fractions of the song and a well constructed piece of music makes use of equal fractions. I was always interested in how classical compositions related to modern music, especially dance music of the time. The college had just constructed its first electronic recording studio in the summer of 1986 and was offering classes in music recording, editing and the like. Because I was a music education major and because the equipment in the studio was very expensive, I was denied entry to any of these classes. I sometimes wonder where I would be in life today if I had pursued that line of music instead of the more traditional music education track.
One of the best ways for me to get centered for a work week is to listen to a composition of well constructed electronic dance music. It’s not really EDM in the sense of going to a rave and getting hyped up on E or anything. The intensity of the track needs to be subtle. Lyrics should be minimal and actually I prefer vocalizations that are instrumental contributions rather than the centerpiece of the creation. The use of real instruments, are at least very accurate representations, soothe my being. The track needs to have a “flow”; a logical construction that tells a story.
Please enjoy “Hello, Piano” by Inkfish and David West. This track is near perfection for my ears. Someday I’m going to figure out what the vocalizations are saying but I don’t get lost on trying to discern their meaning. I just let them blend in with the other instruments, the flanging between my ears adding to the bliss I feel when I listen to this track.
Best enjoyed with headphones.
Passport, Please?
Imagine coming home to the U.S. from a wonderful trip to the beautiful city of Montréal. As you make your way through customs, the agent asks you for your phone and password. Your passport is no longer good enough. He then takes a moment to flip through all your contacts, looks at your Facebook contacts and interactions, sees if you have Twitter and then takes a glance at your email. Perhaps before handing you back your phone and granting you access to cross the border, he peruses through all your photos. If you don’t do this you can’t get back home. Would you, as an ordinary American, be OK with this? Because there is speculation that we are about one and a half steps from this sort of thing becoming the norm.
Privacy.
As an avid tech enthusiast (what kind of enthusiast wouldn’t be avid?), I am starting to become a little paranoid about my online activity, especially in light of the fact that I’ve become rather outspoken on Twitter about the Trump Presidency.
I’ve started using a couple of tools in my online arsenal to make my experience with the Internet a little bit safer, and I thought I would share these with you.
Private Tunnel
Private Tunnel is a service that provides VPN (Virtual Private Network) connectivity to the Internet. This basically “hides” your location by routing all of your network traffic encrypted through a remote server. It also assures that all communication between you and the remote server is encrypted. This is particularly important when you are on the road using public hotspots.
Private Tunnel is free up to a certain amount of bandwidth and I found their subscription model to be affordable for my needs. The software client is available for a number of platforms which includes Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android. At the very least I use this service for all monetary transactions. I routinely use it for all other browsing, especially if I’m using a public, unsecured network.
For more information, check out their webpage here. If you decide to go with a subscription, help me out by using this link. I believe my unlimited data plan was $29/year.
Better
Better is an iOS and MacOS Safari Extension that helps block all trackers, ads and the like while surfing the Internet on Safari.
While many of the ad blockers available for the various browsers do a decent job of blocking ads and the like, many are still supported by ad companies, which are placed on a “white list”, so their ads still get through to you. Better is not supported by any ad company or Venture Capitalist, so they have no obligation to anyone. Development is based solely on the purchase of the app or extension.
This blog entry better (heh) describes Better and if you’re interested in making your online activities untargeted, ad free and lighter (because all of that ad data is blocked from coming down your network connection) you should definitely check out Better. Link to the Mac App Store and Link to the App Store (for iPhone and iPad).
1Password
I’ve written before that no one should be using the same password across multiple sites. You should never have the same password for Twitter as for your email as for Facebook, etc. If someone has your password they’re able to get into everything and that’s not good.
Safari and other web browsers do a decent job of coming up with random passwords and storing this information for you, which in turn is stored behind another password to keep it all safe. The thing is, if you use both Windows and Mac or both iOS and Android, your saved Safari (or other browser) passwords may not sync between the dissimilar operating systems. Yes, Google Chrome works on just about everything, but remember, Google’s livelihood is supported by your data. You are not the customer, you are the product, so you probably should have another way of keeping track of all your passwords. Don’t write them down, put them in 1Password.
1Password is available for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. 1Password has a variety of sync options to choose from and no one but you can decrypt the data stored in your 1Password profile, so if you lose the password, you’ve lost your vault.
Their subscription model is quite affordable and I noticed that they now have a family plan available as well. Earl uses 1Password and finds it easy to use. I encourage users to keep their stuff safe with dissimilar passwords across platforms and to store them somewhere safe. 1Password definitely fits the bill.
FYI, the password to my 1Password account is over 25 characters long. I keep my stuff SAFE.
This is just the start of my arsenal of security tools. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below or feel free to drop me a line.
Safe surfing for all!
Surgery, Part 1.
I am having surgery today. This surgery is part of the saga that has been going on for most of my life, and the subject matter might make some readers uncomfortable. I share these things so that others that share my issues may read about my experiences. I will not be offended if you do not complete this blog entry.
For some reason, many doctors suspect that it was because I might have rammed my parts into my bike when I was young kid, I have scar tissue that likes to grow in my urethra. This is not hugely uncommon among men; the scar tissue is called a stricture and it makes it difficult to urinate. Don’t worry, everything else is functional and I’m happy in the sex department.
I have had four surgeries to remove the scar tissue to open things back up. They started back when I was 13 years old so, with surgery in 1982, 1986, 2005 and 2015. Since the last surgery in 2015 I have used a catheter on a daily basis to keep things open. In the back of my mind I knew it was a stop gap measure and there have been times that I’ve had to use the catheter two or three times a day to keep things feeling and working the way they should. Shortly before Christmas the catheter went the wrong way, I had a lot of blood come out and then scar tissue started filling in the gap again.
In the 2015 entry I mention that there is another procedure that they can do that should correct the problem permanently. This involves taking some skin from the inside of my mouth and grafting it where the scar tissue is in my urethra, thus completely eliminating the scar tissue instead of just cutting it back and hoping that it doesn’t come back. My urologist wanted to do this procedure the last time but it was summer time and I wasn’t in the mood to be down for the count for 10 weeks or so during the summer, so I opted out. It wasn’t a mistake, but it ultimately just delayed the inevitable.
So this morning I am having what is called a Supra-pubic catheter put in so things can “calm down” in my urethra. This catheter will be a small tube between my belly button and my junk. I figure if folks fighting cancer can have ports installed to go through chemotherapy, I can run around with a pee tube for five weeks. So after today and through March if we talk face to face, I could be peeing in your presence and you wouldn’t even know it.
In March, if all goes to plan, I will be having the second surgery, where they’ll do the skin graft thing and rebuild the parts that are currently damaged. I will then have two catheters for a few weeks, a traditional one that makes some men shutter and the other pee tube that I’m getting today, the latter being the backup plan if something goes wrong after the reconstructive surgery.
When all is said and done, I should be as good as new. I should be able to pee across a football field and if I don’t have one of those handy, at the very least blow toilets off the wall like a superhero but without the laser beams.
The success rate of this type of procedure is 90%-95% for long-term success and as all the medical information I’ve read on the Internet says, “should be considered the gold standard as a solution for this type of problem.” The previous surgeries have a very low long term success rate so it’s comforting to know that my body is behaving just as doctors expect.
I’m apprehensive about the length of time for the procedures and the recovery; when all is said and done it’ll be like 11 weeks of prep and recovery time. But, other than a couple of weeks after the reconstruction part in March, I should be able to carry on just as I do today, albeit with just a little extra hardware. I did it before in 2015 and I can do it again in 2017.
I’m looking forward to not living with this issue anymore; all my life when I’ve had to go the bathroom I’ve had to say a little prayer, “please let everything work”.
From now on I know that everything should just work.
