J.P.

Dark.

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So I’ve been trying to workout in the morning again. Last week I worked out after supper and it didn’t, well, work out well for me (god that’s awful syntax) because I ended up feeling all hyped up and therefore I didn’t sleep very well. Plus, my scale couldn’t care less that I had done any sort of exercise.

On Monday morning I awoke and headed to the gym at oh-dark-early, where a bunch of chipper elders did their thing on the various machines as I did the same. Did I mention that I’m not really a fan of the gym? I think I would be much more content if I could just work out in the basement and do things on our own equipment, but it’s not in the budget, so we haul off to the gym across town. At oh-dark-early.

Yesterday morning I was up before the sun again but I made the determination that I wasn’t going to go to the gym, after all, the weather is still enjoyable and even though it was dark, it was plenty warm enough to go for a bike ride.

So I rode the area roads in the dark, dependent on the white light of a single headlight and the red light of a single taillight. I wore a reflective vest on top of my cycling gear to complete my ensemble.

When I’m out for a relatively short ride I usually enjoy riding along the nearby paved Canal Trail, but when it’s dark I fear the presence of skunks. I’m not really afraid of the skunk as much as I’m afraid that I’ll make them afraid and then there’ll be an unfortunate Skunk Incident and I’ll end up spending the next three weeks in the garage as I air out. So I avoided the Canal Trail and any suggestion of skunks and rode around town a bit before heading out towards the open country, doing a lovely loop (horizontal, not vertical), and heading back home. Once I was away from the street lights I was able to see a beautifully clear, starlit sky that was accented by just a hint of moon.

It was exercise perfection. I’m hoping I can do it again before the end of the week.

2 October 2013 by Fun and Games Dept 1

Lync.

So at work we have this internal communications tool called Microsoft Lync. It’s an Instant Messaging platform offered through the company’s Office 365 subscription and has replaced the multiple and makeshift platforms we were using before (some of us were on AOL, some on Yahoo, some on an internal Jabber server, etc.)

As a telecommuter I feel that it’s important to have Lync up and running at all times. This keeps me connected to my peers and it lets people know my current status: whether I’m at my computer or not, whether I’m in a meeting or not, etc.

While Lync is wonderful for impromptu and quick conversations, I have to admit that I often feel like this as more and more Lync windows open up on my MacBook screen. (Video may be loud and contain salty language).

2 October 2013 by Ponderings and Musings 1

Shutdown.

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Photo courtesy of Aljazeera America news website.

So Earl and I were going to drive to DC today to visit the Smithsonian and perhaps the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Actually, we weren’t going to do that but if we were going to do that we would be wasting our time because as of 12:01 a.m., the government has shut down all non-essential services. This is all because Congress has been wasting our time by pretending that they’re going to do something. The truth of the matter is that we all know they’re not going to do anything because they’re incapable of progress. And they wonder why they have an approval rating close to the single digits.

Look, I’m on a happy vibe today so I’m not going to debate the arguments of who is right and who is wrong and who should do what to make whomever happy. I will admit that I am frustrated that the government basically cherry-picked what services would be shutdown and what would stay open. I think that if you’re going to go through all the grandstanding and politicizing and drama of getting to the point of where you’re going to shut down the government, then those making these decisions shouldn’t be paid. If you’re not doing your job, you don’t get a salary. Plain and simple.

I also feel that if they shut down the government then they should have shut down the FAA, the Post Office and other services they have deemed as “essential”. People may strongly object to this, but I think all FAA directed air traffic should have been brought to a ground stop at 12:01 a.m. with the shutdown of the government. There are other ways to get from point A to point B. It’s inconvenient, I know, oh do I know, but if you’re going to use a shutdown as a grandstanding measure, land the planes and turn the equipment off. Not being able to get into National Parks or delaying the arrival of a new passport? It’s inconvenient and will get some press but it doesn’t really demonstrate the incompetency of our current government to the majority of the American people. If there were thousands of airline passengers stranded in our airports or Suzie Citizen couldn’t get her QVC shipment because UPS can’t fly from there to here, all because of our the idiocy of Congress, more American citizens would take notice and I bet they would think twice before just blindly casting a vote at the next election.

I know, I’m being optimistic to think that a lot of Americans vote these days.

I think it’s horrible that the family that just trucked across South Dakota last night can’t see Mount Rushmore today. A beautiful national monument: off limits. What does that say about the country that is constantly touting itself as the “greatest nation on earth”? While this shutdown of non-essential services will have a somewhat detrimental effect in the short term, I don’t think it will budge the apathetic nature of the average American citizen. Stopping the planes? Stopping the mail? Stalling social security checks, Medicaid and Medicare? *That* would have a horrible, awful, terrible effect on our country, but maybe then the American citizens would wake up and see how dysfunctional our government is becoming and start making better choices at the polls. At the very least, maybe our elected leaders wouldn’t be so quick to bicker like children and start threatening ridiculous tactics like this shutdown.

A quick caveat, I am going to be flying all over the place this month. I would definitely be affected by any sort of ground stop on planes in the name of a government shutdown. But I would still support such a thing.

1 October 2013 by Politics. 1

30 Days Later.

So earlier this month I wrote that I was going to do a 30-day challenge, as inspired by Matt Cutts from Google in his TED talk from a while back. My personal challenge was to be a little more outgoing: I would try to steer clear of my shyness and, as the opportunity presented itself, I would talk to someone I wouldn’t normally talk to. I desired to be a little more outgoing.

Here it is 30 days later and I have to say that this first 30-day challenge was mostly a success. This month I struck up a conversation with a bartender at a bar, complimented a woman in an elevator on her lovely dress, smiled at strangers more and pulled myself up by my pant strings and openly participated in a seminar full of strangers, a scenario where I would normally be content sitting in the corner and just drinking it all in.

You know what? I feel good about these little things I did under the guise of this challenge and I think I’m just a little bit better for reevaluating my life in this way and addressing this. This is something that I’m going to continue in my everyday life. So if I come up to you and start chatting, even though we’ve never met in person or something, don’t be surprised.

Tomorrow starts another month and I’m going to try another 30 day challenge. My focus is going to be focus. I need to focus on some key areas in my life: my career and work responsibilities, my healthy living goals and on some extracurricular projects I have going on. One of the ways that I’m thinking I’m going to tackle this is by ramping way back from Facebook.

I am active in primarily three social networks, in descending order of usage levels: Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Twitter keeps me in touch with what’s going on in the world. I get a lot of my political information via Twitter and while I might not tweet a lot on some days, I do read quite a bit on Twitter and I try to keep on top of my timeline.

Google+ is where I gather information and debate the tech world. Google+ can be hostile towards Apple folks at times, but aside from that annoying aspect there are a lot of interesting people over there.

Facebook consumes a lot of my online time but I can’t tell you what I really get from it. It’s a great place for me to share witty events and photos and the like with those I call friends and family, but other than that, I don’t feel engaged. Don’t get me wrong, I like everyone on my Facebook feed, I just feel like there’s a lot of “stuff” without a lot of “important stuff”.

So taking the lead from the handsome lad Phil in D.C., I think I’m going to ramp way back from Facebook for 30 days. Inversely, I’ll concentrate on contributing more to my own blog right here. Everything connected to my Facebook account will still be connected; I’m not shutting anything down. I just think for the next 30 days I’m going to refrain from checking my news feed several times a day. I’ll live in the physical moment instead of the virtual one.

I’m interested to see how I feel after 30 days. I’m hoping I feel more focused.

Photo on 9-30-13 at 12.56 PM #2

30 September 2013 by Ponderings and Musings 1

More Colors.

This is my favorite time of the year. The colors, the crispness of the air, the magic of the wind… it all reminds me as to why I am proudly a boy from Upstate New York.

I just took a quick stroll in our back lawn.

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I will need to refer back to this post come January so I am reminded as to why I love Upstate New York.

 

 

29 September 2013 by Fun and Games Dept Ponderings and Musings 1

Peeping.

Please feel free to click on each photo to see in full sized technicolor.

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So yesterday Earl and I decided that we would enjoy a day of relaxation. And to accomplish this very simple task, we would take a “leaf peeping” ride in the nearby Adirondacks. So after a stop at our local diner for a little lunch, we embarked on a nice ride through some very scenic territory.

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It was a gorgeous day with just few puffy clouds in the otherwise crystal clear sky. The temperature was a comfortable 70ºF.

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Mother Nature is doing wonders with her paintbrush this season.

We zigged and zagged our way across the lower Adirondacks and up into the High Peaks, where we found lots of tourists in the famous village of Lake Placid. This old car was parked out in front of the restaurant that we ate at.

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We mugged a little for the camera. That’s what people do with their smartphones these days.

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Angles do amazing things with perception.

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Though we didn’t eat here on this trip, Lake Placid has one of the last two remaining Howard Johnson’s restaurants.

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We stopped at a popcorn shop where I picked up two varieties of popcorn: Red (with smaller hulls) and Rainbow Mix.

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I tested both this morning and they were quite tasty. Earl tasted the “Halloween Mix” of popcorn that was featured at the shop. It was orange and black popcorn and featured the flavors of orange and black cherry. It turned Earl’s tongue a funny color.

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It was approaching sunset by the time we left Lake Placid, and we made our way across the upper Adirondacks through Saranac Lake, Cranberry Lake, Tupper Lake and finally found ourselves in Watertown, where we stopped for a little snack for supper. And a beer, but just one since I was driving.

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After giving the beer plenty of time to wear off, we headed home and got home around 12:30. When all was said and done, we traveled about 400 miles in 12 hours.

29 September 2013 by Fun and Games Dept 1

iTip: Find My Friends.

Find-My-Friends

Earl and I use Find My Friends on our iPhones quite frequently, including when I’m out on a long distance cycling adventure, he uses the app to find my whereabouts when I’m ready to be picked up. Since upgrading our iPhones to iOS7, Find My Friends’ functionality has been spotty at best.

This irritates me.

I think I have found a solution to the problem via the Apple Forums. I know that others are having issues with Find My Friends (Erik, Mark), perhaps they will find this helpful as well.

The suggestions in the forum post I have quoted below worked for me, but I needed to have the Find My Friends app running in order to make these things work. Once I got everything set the way it’s described below, it stayed that way.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION
(or at least something that some people may have overlooked)

In iOS 7, if Find My Friends is working for you WHEN THE APP IS RUNNING, i.e. you can see the Locations of family members and they can see you as long as everyone has the App running, BUT it doesn’t work once the App is closed (or wasn’t launched since the last restart,) then check the following:

Make sure the app is listed in Background App Refresh under Settings > General … In my case the FMF App was NOT listed there. I chatted at length with an Apple Support Rep trying various things (reboots, Airplane Mode on and off, etc.) She was unable to explain to me how Apps qualify to show up in that list, or how to get an App onto the list. What finally worked for me was DELETING the Find My Friends App and then reinstalling it from the App Store (Purchases.) It then showed up in the Background App Refresh List, I confirmed it was turned On, and FMF instantly started working as expected! I was afraid I would have to re-enter Follower information or re-send Invitations to Friends after reinstalling, but those settings were retained.

Note: I also happened to update to iOS 7.0.2 earlier today, so I’m not sure if that mattered or not.

Find My Friends also MUST be listed under Settings > Privacy > Location Services, and must be turned On, obviously.

When upgrading an iPhone there are lots of things to do, so it’s easy to answer a screen prompt about Location Services or Background App Refresh the “incorrect” way (at least incorrect with respect to Find My Friends working properly.) Sometimes it’s not easy to go back and find the specific Setting where that function is adjusted…

I hope this information helps other families get FMF working for their devices. Ours are all now working reliably.

27 September 2013 by Geek Macboy 2

This.

I don’t know why this video is making the rounds today, as it’s date stamped over a year ago, but here’s a grown woman at a ballpark ripping a discarded baseball out of the hands of a youngster and then high-fiving her fans for her courageous act.

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I had a paragraph here that totally attributed the woman’s behavior to stereotypical behavior, but that type of language would have been a wild generalization that probably was unfair on my behalf. I’ll share three keywords though: Hummer, sunglasses, McMansion.

It’d be a hoot of someone really identified the selfish woman.

~~~

The Pasterasti, or whatever the head of Barilla Pasta is called, made some unkind remarks about gays and how they would never be featured in marketing of Barilla Pasta, because they don’t fit the Barilla sense of family and a woman’s central role. Reuters has a news article here, Huffington Post has an article here. There has been a call by some LGBT groups to boycott Barilla and I fully support this boycott. (I believe my husband will support it as well, I just can’t speak on his behalf at the moment). I just checked the cupboards and we have no Barilla products at The Manor, nor will we in the future. Since the Pasterasti urged gays to get their pasta elsewhere, we’ll do just that. Thanks for the heads up, asshat!

26 September 2013 by Ponderings and Musings Why. 0

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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