J.P.

FaceAOL.

They say history repeats itself, that things go in cycles and circles, or something along those lines, but not the lines of a parallelogram. Cycles repeat. Even on final spin.

I’m in a silly mood and I’m blathering a little. The truth of the matter is, now that I’m teetering on that unnecessary label of “late 40s”, I’m starting to see history repeating itself. I saw a car that was the same color as the shade of orange as a relative’s 1970-something Pinto back in the day. Hairstyles are always repeating some earlier decade. And now the online experience is coming full circle.

Back in the 1990s you couldn’t go a week without receiving some sort of America Online marketing package, whether it was by mail, a free handout at the store or someone was chucking them off a float in your favorite gay pride parade. America Online was the onramp to the Information Superhighway for many and AOL did their best to keep everyone hooked by being inclusive. They provided a connection, lots of information, they provided chat rooms and discussion boards, communication tools such as Instant Messenger and it was always a charge of excitement when your computer exclaimed, “You’ve got mail!”. Yes, America Only WAS the Internet as far as many people were concerned back in the day. The broadband came to town and people realized that they didn’t really need America Online to get online and that there was a whole world wide web outside of the AOL walls. And people sought it out. Folks built web sites and blogged and technology picked up speed and moved forward. Life was grand.

Many years later, Facebook came to town. What started on a college campus soon took over the world and anyone that was anyone was on Facebook. You could easily find people, see photos, exchange messages, plan events, do pretty much everything you could do inside the walls of AOL back in the day, except with more glitz and glam and a heck of a lot faster. Like AOL, Facebook does its best to become an essential part of your online existence: they want you to use their Facebook Messenger, share anything and everything with friends, join groups and discussions with others with a common interest, look up restaurants and boutiques through location aware magic, share photos, videos, get your news, etc.

While I have been a Facebook user for many years, I’ve tried to enjoy everything on the Internet, not just the offerings of Facebook. I’ve kept my blog going, I Google things on an hourly basis, I read all sorts of news feeds, I tweet. My love/hate relationship with Facebook runs deep, but it isn’t my entire Internet experience. I know there’s a heck of a lot more outside the walls of Facebook.

But just like the days of AOL, people are becoming Facebook centric.

I am the web developer for a scholarship program called “Miss Mohawk Valley”. It sounds like a beauty pageant because it is a beauty pageant, in fact, the winner of “Miss Mohawk Valley” competes in “Miss New York” and can end up as “Miss America” if the cards and points are all in her favor. My friend Laurie was the Executive Producer for years and I enjoyed maintaining the website. When there was a change in leadership a couple of months ago, I agreed to continue the website, but there doesn’t seem to be an interest in it.

The current Miss Mohawk Valley does everything on Facebook.

Now, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with this approach, everyone that’s anyone in the intended audience is probably on Facebook, but as an old geezer in the tech world, it seems a little dangerous to hand all that information over to a single entity. It resides on their servers, in their framework and on their dime. People getting to the Miss Mohawk Valley page are giving up information in all sorts of ways through Facebook’s ad-opportunity snooping mechanisms and, lack of tin-foil hat aside, this would make me nervous. This is one of the reasons that I go through the exercise of maintaining my blog on my own server with my own copy of software, etc. It’s mine and I want to make sure that it’s mine and I want to be sure that it’s available to everyone, not just folks with a Facebook account.

As more and more friends and the like tap me on Facebook for friend requests and such, I can’t help but wonder if everyone is jumping back into that AOL-like walled garden again. While I can play in the garden, I certainly don’t want to live there.

And I hope the walls don’t close completely someday.

16 July 2015 by J.P. Geek 2

Recreation.

I was recently going through some old photos from my childhood and found some pictures from various summers when I was in the late single-digits. I can vividly remember my childhood and can remember many of these photos being taken. Seeing smiling faces in the summertime back in the mid 1970s made me smile again.

One year, I think it was the summer of 1976, the school district offered a daily recreation program at the elementary school. Our family hadn’t moved into the house yet, we were still living in a 10×50 mobile home with an 8×45 addition containing a living room, master bedroom and a laundry room that had room for only the dryer (the washer was in the bathroom in the original trailer). It was a tight space for a family of four, but when the weather was good I would be outside running around, playing on an area called “the path”, which was a dirt path that went down through some maple trees and old grape and other berry vines along the pasture fence. The path was my favorite area to play, it was a road, it was a runway, it was whatever my imagination wanted it to be. And because of its location, my mom could look out the kitchen window and my grandmother could look out any of her back windows and see what I was up to.

However, Mom thought it would be better if my sister and I were away from the trailer and went to recreation at the school, so every morning we were whisked off to the elementary school to see kids that we went to school with. There was a structure to the recreational program, we did gym like stuff on the track and the playground, running and playing ball and whatnot. And then later we’d go inside to the music room (which was the old elementary gymnasium when the school housed all the grades in the district) and do arts and crafts and sing songs and the like.

Looking back on the experience, I can say that I was not amused. I didn’t need the structure, I was getting plenty of exercise playing in the path and jumping the pasture fences and the like and quite frankly I didn’t want to see the kids that I was going to school with when I wasn’t in school. I was a loner. I was quite happy and content with amusing myself without being told how to be amused. Arts and crafts were exceedingly boring to me, I could sing anytime I wanted to and I certainly didn’t want to be riding a school bus in July. But Mom insisted and off to recreation we went. I tolerated it by daydreaming about what I’d do when I got home.

Luckily, recreation didn’t take up the entire summer and by mid August I was back playing on the path and doing my own thing without having to worry about things I found pedestrian: throwing a ball, making popsicle stick trinkets, coloring inside the lines, etc.

It’s no wonder that I rebel at being told what to do.

15 July 2015 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Reruns.

This evening I had a tiny rant on Twitter about all these reality shows polluting the airwaves, cables and Internet vibes of the wire-cutters. Do we really care about reality shows that have nothing to do with reality? Mind you, this is coming from a guy who made it to the semi-finals for one of the Big Brother shows a million years ago, but at least when the gay man cried he did it because he meant it and wasn’t just following a script or something, or so we were told. Where is Bunky anyway? They wanted me to be Bunky, Jr.!

I’m digressing.

Back in my day, summer television was populated with reruns. Even though Kris Monroe was working for Charlie, during the summer you could still see Farrah Fawcett-Majors being Jill Monroe because they brought back the reruns for the summer. We didn’t see reruns during the actual television season because the length of a television season exceeded the length of your average burp, but today we don’t do that. Burp, a million dollars per episode, and back to the mans we go. That’s what the stars do.

There is a bright side to all this and it’s some of the game shows that have that family time feeling, with a fire in the fireplace, wood stacked in a strategic location on the stage and celebrities sitting on the couch playing fun games to help a couple of contestants win some cash.

It’s not “Circus of the Stars”, but they can be a hoot in this otherwise bleak television time.

14 July 2015 by J.P. Let's All Rant. 0

47.

So today I completed my 47th ride around the sun on this big blue marble. I’m feeling pretty great for 47 years old; I’m in good health, I’m where I want to be in most aspects of my life and I’m enjoying each day. I might get cranky about something once in a while but that’s usually a passing fad. My life is good, I can’t complain.

Here’s to going on the 48th ride!

13 July 2015 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 2

Good Morning!

I am back on my game this morning for the first time in a long while. I’m recovered for my surgery with my follow up appointment scheduled for this afternoon. My plumbing is working the absolute best it has ever worked in my lifetime and quite frankly I feel amazing.

13 July 2015 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Customer Service.

This evening Earl and I went shopping at Destiny USA in Syracuse. Destiny USA is the sixth largest mall in the United States. There are many of entertainment, shopping and dining options and it’s one of the reasons that we like going there. It’s something to do in Central New York.

I had a couple of gift certificates for “The Art of Shaving“. I enjoy their products very much and though the local boutique does not have the attached barber shop like other locations throughout the country do, they still have a wide variety of items to making my shaving experience enjoyable. I selected a couple of different soaps and I purchased a new DE (double-edged) razor to use; my current razor will be relegated to travel use and when I’m in the mood for something different but not feeling the need to live dangerously by using my straight razor.

My customer experiences at The Art of Shaving have been hit or miss over the years, though the variance of quality has not been limited to this one location. Actually, the folks at the Destiny USA location have been consistently pleasant. Tonight, Christopher was the sales associate that assisted me with my purchase.

As I was checking out, Christopher made some small talk and asked what I was up to this weekend. I responded, “I’ve been flying airplanes all weekend and will probably continue to do so tomorrow.” I was surprised when Christopher mentioned that he grew up flying a Kitfox, a popular homebuilt airplane that is built from a kit. My grandfather built a Kitfox late in life and had a good time flying it. I asked if he had his license, he said that he didn’t because the Kitfox was no longer available; his grandfather had passed while flying the Kitfox. I mentioned that my Dad had been killed in his homebuilt airplane and that while I had always wanted to become a private pilot, it wasn’t until then that I realized that I had to become a private pilot. We continued with a nice conversation about flying and the awesomeness of it as he finished up ringing the sale. We ended the transaction with a handshake. The look on his face went made it evident that he was happy that we went from just making small talk to actually talking about something that he enjoyed. And it all started because he was pleasant and I returned the pleasantries.

And isn’t that what customer service is all about?

I’m not big on hearing someone’s woes; Earl and I have had too many servers tell us how busy they are instead of smiling and looking at the bright side of life. After visiting “The Art of Shaving” we ate one of the many restaurants at Destiny USA and the server told us about moving to Syracuse from Key West to work at that restaurant (Margaritaville) and how she was still receiving from seeing snow for the first time. Again, just a simple conversation that probably started out somewhat scripted but she was pleasant, we were pleasant and it made for a pleasant experience.

If we could all just be a little more pleasant to one another I think that we would have a more pleasant experience here in the U.S. in the 21st century.

And I think that would be something to smile about.

11 July 2015 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Truth.

I turned on the television this afternoon during lunch and noticed that “I Love Lucy” was on the local over-the-air retro channel. It was a rerun.

Let’s go back to a simpler time and watch “I Love Lucy”, shall we?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1oDgMNZ0j8

9 July 2015 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Laws.

Kathleen Staples of Calais, Me. suffered a terrible loss this past weekend when her 22-year old son lit some fireworks and put them on his head. The predictable explosion killed him immediately. Apparently he thought the explosive was a dud. She is now calling for stricter laws on who can have access to fireworks. Because, of course, the problem was that the fireworks were accessible to her son, not the fact that her son put a live explosive on his head. While he was drunk and “goofing off”. And, let me emphasize one point, he was 22-years old. He was an adult.

On Sunday there were several videos floating around the Internet of young men shoving live firecrackers up their nose and blowing a hole in their face. Another man held a live explosive mimicking his genitalia and then either severely burned or just blew his nuts off. Stupid people do stupid things. Everyone does stupid things. It’s the level of stupidity that determines if you’re going to kill yourself or not in the process of being stupid.

I’m going to say this again. I’m going to sound like a broken record but the fact of the matter is that you can not cure stupidity. You can not legislate common sense. Laws do not make people smarter. You can not introduce enough legislation to protect idiots from being idiotic. Rules and laws are not meant to replace the responsibility of parenting. Dumb people are going to do dumb thing no matter how much red tape is involved to get there and the general public should not be forced to live under legislation that is designed to protect the absolute lowest common denominator of society.

I’m sorry that the Staples family is mourning the loss of their son. It’s heartbreaking. But calling for more legislation is not going to bring her son back from his fatal, incredibly stupid mistake.

8 July 2015 by J.P. Why. 3

Try Again.

So on Monday I dropped our Jeep Wrangler off at the local Jeep dealer to have some work done. It needed an oil change and the tires needed to be rotated, plus there was some hesitation/jumping around if you stepped on the gas too hard. It was obvious that either the spark plugs and/or the plug wires needed to be changed. The check engine light came on during one of the jumps.

$2300 and two days later, the Jeep was declared fixed and it could be picked up. The requested maintenance was completed, the check engine light was out, the spark plugs and wires were changed and a few other goodies added to the bill: it needed tie rods, brakes and a complete transmission flush.

$2300.

This evening, 39 miles after picking up the Jeep yesterday, the ABS warning light and the anti-skid symbol lit up the dash light a Christmas tree. On cue, one of the brakes started making a scraping noise.

I swore. I got angry. We dropped the Jeep off at the dealership without an appointment and I filled out an “early bird” form that simply said: “$2300 in service on Tuesday, 39 miles later, the ABS light is on and the brakes are making a scraping noise intermittently. FIX IT.” I authorized ZERO dollars in repairs without a phone call.

Anyone want to guess how much the dealership is going to fleece us for this next round of repairs. My guess is zero, because the contact information for the Jeep is Earl, and he puts up with nothing.

It’s one of the reasons that I love him so much.

It’s rare that the Jeep can get fixed in one pass, it usually takes two visits to the dealership to get it fixed properly. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Last autumn it was backfiring, again due to bad spark plug wires, and they told me it was because the oil pan was loose. The problem is, when the check engine light comes on, the other garage we use wouldn’t touch the Jeep until the dealership looked at it first.

Tonight’s little disappointment got me thinking about our previous vehicles. The only vehicles that we’ve had issues like this with are when we bought an American vehicle. The Hyundai and the Acura rarely had any trouble. The first Jeep would be fine for a couple of years and like our current Jeep, would require a hefty investment every couple of years.

I am hopeful that the brakes will be fixed properly this time and that the Jeep will last us for a few more years. I like it and I’m enjoying not having a car payment.

Let’s hope there’s no screaming tomorrow.

8 July 2015 by J.P. Why. 2

Apple Music.

I was excited when Apple announced the release of “Apple Music”, the revamping of their iTunes store to include streaming music and some other goodies. As an Apple dude, I had dreams of a beautiful interface that would be easy to use and work seamlessly across my Apple devices.

And what a dream it was.

I have been a monthly Spotify subscriber for the past couple of years. I’ve always maintained at least two music services on my devices: iTunes and the “Music” app to manage my personal collection and Spotify to listen to new music and more importantly, discover some tracks I would enjoy. By having all of this available in one app, life would be that much easier because after all, “it just works”.

Except it doesn’t.

I tried rebuilding my Spotify playlist entitled “Morning Ramp-up Two” in the new Apple Music. I used my iPhone to do this.

In Spotify you find the song and you tap on a “+” sign to add it to an existing playlist or create a new playlist. In Apple Music, the best I can tell, you have to create the playlist first and then find the song you want through the search of “My Music” or “Apple Music”. When you find the song you then have to tap at least FIVE times before the track is added to the playlist in question. And there is no confirmation that the addition has actually happened. I discovered this by tapping on the “add” button several times with no response. Upon giving up, I discovered that I had tapped the “add” button of Lenka’s “You Will Be Mine” at least 15 times because the track had been added to that playlist 15 times in a row.

No “you have a duplicate entry on your playlist warning.”
No “you have added this track to your playlist.”
No “track added, search for another?” prompt.

Nothing.

This morning I tried to play the “Morning Ramp-Up Two” playlist on my iPad. Apple Music just sat there. It showed the playlist, it offered a play button but mashing my finger on the little icon did nothing.

Or so I thought.

Actually, mashing my finger on the playlist made the “data is flowing” icon up in status bar spin but it seized up Apple Music. I couldn’t slide it around, I couldn’t back out, I could shrink it down, nothing.

I had to reboot my iPad.

Because insanity is defined by someone performing the same action and expecting a different result, I went insane when I went through the same exercise of trying to play “Morning Ramp-Up Two” not once, but twice. Both additional times brought the same result.

I’m nuts.

I ended up closing Apple Music and going with Spotify where everything worked effortlessly and easily. The way Apple products are suppose to work.

To add salt to the wound, my iPhone keeps losing its Wi-Fi connection to the Wi-Fi router here in the house, which, surprisingly enough, is a five month old Apple Airport Extreme.

Because, after all, it just works.

My brand new work MacBook Pro Retina is having some sort of seizure with using the built in Mail.app to do, well, email, so I had to resort to downloading Microsoft Outlook from the company website and running with that. And to top it all off, the beautiful, brand new 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt Display that work provided does not connect properly to my MacBook Pro Retina, I had to buy an adapter. Because, you know, technology standards. And to top it off, this is the second display I’ve had from Apple that has some sort of glitch embedded into the screen, this is a small piece of dirt that lives in the glass, appearing behind anything the appears on the screen with some weird 3D effect.

I feel bad that I insisted on using all Apple equipment for my newest career move.

Waiting for my brand new work Apple MacBook Pro Retina to reboot for the third time this afternoon so that I could get to the terminal prompt got me to thinking as to why we pay so much money for what is suppose to be a premium experience. Use of Apple products USED to be a premium experience, but it’s not anymore. While it’s fun to go into an Apple store and browse, it can be a hit or miss experience as to whether the shopping experience will be a premium excursion. The clerk that helped me try on various Apple Watches really couldn’t have cared less if I was actually there or not. The whole mantra of “it just works” no longer holds true. My biggest fear is that Apple still offers the premium experience and their latest mediocre at best offerings are what people now expect as the premium experience.

I expect more. I want more.

I just fear that I’m not going to find it anywhere.

So I’m back on Spotify and I’ve put Apple Music on the back burner, with a reminder to myself to cancel payment before the three-month trial is up. Sorry Apple, I’m one of your biggest fans but this just ain’t cutting it lately.

7 July 2015 by J.P. Geek 1

J.P.

FaceAOL.

Recreation.

Reruns.

47.

Good Morning!

Customer Service.

Truth.

Laws.

Try Again.

Apple Music.

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