J.P.

As I write this blog entry, there’s a Big Event going on somewhere important. It’s all about the latest incarnations of the iPhone. I hope they announce the immediate availability of iOS 5, because my beta testing has not been as smooth as I would like it to have been. It’ll be golden though when we have the real version.

I’m not following the Apple event closely, though, because it’s my lunch hour (albeit later than normal) and quite frankly I’m enjoying relaxing a bit and watching a pair of blue jays jumping around on the grass along side the parking lot. They are taking turns darting in and out of a dense group of trees; I suspect there’s a nest in there somewhere.

The blue jays seem rather bold but I don’t want to risk taking a picture and scaring them off. Their presence is bringing a sort of zen to my lunch hour and I kind of like that. Besides, the photo would be taken with an undoubtedly by-now outdated iPhone and I don’t want to risk the shame of being shunned by a passerby for having outdated equipment.

I have been finding a lot of ways to find stress in my life lately. Work is busy and trying to meet lofty goals is stressing me out a little bit. I found ways to relax this weekend and oddly enough, working on one of my work projects yesterday helped me relax a little bit. Milestones are important. Ticking an item off a list makes me feel better. I wish I could work from home more often as I am much more productive in my own habitat.

My customary bout of Sunday night insomnia made an appearance last night and as I stared at the ceiling and flipped around in the bed a few dozen times, I came to the realization that I just need to chill. This helped me catch one more hour of sleep before it was time to get up and start this thing we called Monday morning. The pleasant feelings of this realization have continued on through the day. Work is going better because somehow I found a way to keep the stress levels down.

Maybe I worry too much. I should just remember to breathe.

So the folks at Bank of America have decided to start charging $5.00 a month if you use your debit card for purchases. If I do the math correctly, that’s $60.00 a year, or in layman’s terms, a tank of gas.

Quite frankly, I think the folks at Bank of America are a bunch of bastards. Because now that they’re doing this, the rest of the banks will jump on board and start doing it too. I’m so happy that we bailed them out of bankruptcy.

I asked Earl if he had any interest in moving us to a local bank. I was surprised when he agreed. Since we have two sets of accounts at BOA and HSBC (the world’s local bank!), there will be some legwork involved with direct deposits and the like so I’m going to wait until HSBC’s planned desertion of the area is completed and then we are going to move everything to a more local bank. Maybe a credit union. Maybe we’ll just start paying everything with money orders or PayPal or something. I just love the fact that the banks have been pushing to move everything to debit and credit cards and now they’re going to start socking us with extra fees.

It’s time to start stuffing the mattress with the millions.

I just deleted the blog entry that originally occupied this space because it was overly indicative of my frustration level today. Writing down my thoughts sort of made me feel better but I didn’t really want to burden my gentle reader with the tedium.

I have been chastised in the past for commenting that things in the U.S. seemed better in “days gone by”. I’m talking about the days when people dressed up to board an airplane or wore a full set of clothes at the dinner table and actually sat at the dinner table. Folks remind me that the gays present at those dinner tables usually had a fake girlfriend or wife and they hid in the closet. Maybe that’s why so many people drank. But honestly, I don’t give a flip about that part of it, we all know that we’ve made progress in the diversity department and that’s great. What I’m talking about is that people had class back then. There was respect. You were nice to each other. “Thank you.” “You’re welcome.” Cashiers counted the change back to you without handing you a bunch of wadded up bills stacked helter-skelter. There was conversation between people. Quality trumped quantity in your work most everytime. “Made In the USA” meant something.

I must be getting old.

I have this unsettled feeling going on with my chi that has me in a little bit of a weird funk. This isn’t an entirely bad thing because it’s good for the soul to have some uncertainty in your life, but this unsettled feeling is a bit, well, unsettling.

Last night I had one of my elevator dreams again. The elevator dreams vary but there’s usually a common theme, things are happening that I can’t control. At times the elevator starts to rotate and I have to try to keep up. Other times the elevator opens to an abandoned floor where the halls have been replaced by wall-less corridors and if I fall off the resulting beam I’m going to plunge somewhere that isn’t good. Last night the elevator just stopped and I was stuck but as long as I kept contact with someone on my cell phone I was going to be okay. Well, actually, as long as I kept in contact with Earl on my cell phone I was going to be okay. I think the symbolism in that part is self-evident.

I hate the elevator dreams because they’re just amplifying what I am really feeling in this world and last night was no different. Work is getting busy and I’m feeling overwhelmed, but hearing a few words from Earl, even though he’s out of town, makes it better. The elevator dreams have gotten to the point where I even say out loud, in the dream, “oh God not this again.” I do that a lot, realize I’m dreaming when I’m still in the dream and then try to steer where it’s going, but the psyche usually wins. Sometimes it doesn’t though and I wrestle control of my own elevator dream and jump out bionically or something. There’s even a ch ch ch ch ch sound.

I wish I could do that when the impetus for the dream is really happening so I could just avoid the unsettling elevator dreams all together.

I’d be such a gas on an analyst’s couch.

I am currently sitting in a Panera in Horseheads, New York. Today is my comp day for working the weekend, so I’m celebrating the event by going on a road trip. It’s my first time doing one of these road trips in the new Jeep. I am loving it. And I am eating healthy by eating an Asian Chicken Salad. I find it tasty.

My route of choice has taken me through the Southern Tier of New York State, mostly along the Susquehanna River thus far. Shortly, when I reach Corning (home of Corning Glass Company), I’ll turn right and head up through the Finger Lakes and then head home.

Driving along the banks of the Susquehanna River has been an eye-opening experience, and one that I was not anticipating on this trip. They are still in the process of cleaning up from the recent flooding of the river. Since I mostly avoid the interstates and drive the back roads, I am seeing a lot of homes with huge piles of what appears to be most of their belongings out by the road awaiting garbage removal. These piles include countless toys, tons of insulation that has been pulled from water sogged walls and, a little surprisingly to me, beds and mattresses, evidence that the water was high enough to flood second-story bedrooms.

While I didn’t drive into Binghamton (I try to avoid the cities on these trips as well), I was stunned by the amount of destruction in the Village of Owego and the hamlet of Tioga Center. Whole shopping centers are closed, downtown book stores are throwing away everything and boutiques and the like are dumping their contents and by the looks of it, trying to start anew.

Tears welled up in my eyes when I saw one of many banners hung from houses that were in the midst of cleanup: “We R Owego, We Will Rebuild.”

I have all of my photo and video gear with me today but I can’t bring myself to take photos of what I’m seeing. Photographing this to share on the internet seems to be callous in a way. Instead I stopped at an open snack counter, noticed one of several jugs collecting donations for local residents, and made a deposit in the jug.

As you head west out of the downtown area of Owego (which, by the way, is quite a quaint village if you’re looking for a little out of the way place to spend an afternoon sometime), there’s an area where there is just piles and piles and piles of household belongs and the remnants of buildings. I couldn’t decide if this used to be a shopping center something but now it looks like everyone is bringing their stuff here and then big trucks are taking it out. At least that’s what it looked like to me.

As I look out the window here in Panera in Horseheads, I notice that it’s raining again. And it’s raining quite hard. I’m guessing this is not the type of weather these folks need right now. I hope they continue to stay strong as they clean up and get their lives back in order.

“We Will Be Owego Again!”

All signs show that these folks are going to do just that.

I’ve been writing some pretty heavy blog entries this week. I guess it’s reflective of the mood I’ve been in. There is one thing that has really been bugging me that I haven’t talked about yet, though. I need to get it off my chest.

What the hell has happened to Facebook?

I logged in early this other morning and things were different. My chronologically sorted timeline was gone and replaced with “Top Stories”, items that someone deemed were important to me. The birthday list that I review everyday had been shoved down to the bottom of the page and replaced with a scrolling, blob of uninteresting drivel that I couldn’t move and couldn’t delete. If I scrolled the page, that blob of uninteresting drivel remained, slowly recounting what my friends were doing to other people that I don’t know. “Mandy likes unicorns.” “Bobby responded to Edgar’s post.” Who the hell is Edgar?

As a web designer by trade, that unmovable blob of uninteresting drivel’s presence irks the hell out of me. The fact that it’s just shoved there and that everything scrolls around it is just wrong. Bad, bad design. It’s like a fly landed on the screen and started pooping. Hate it.

I know that I’m getting rather on in my years but I thought that a timeline was suppose to be presented chronologically? Why is Facebook trying to tell me that my friends losing at Mafia Wars (what the hell is that?) is akin to a newspaper story? If I wanted to read a newspaper I’d buy one. If people are telling stories then they need a life and to get out of the house more. I’m looking for a chronological view of what’s going on in the people I’ve selected to care about lives.

Honestly, I want to dump Facebook completely. It’s reminding me more and more of MySpace and the reason I left MySpace is because it looked like someone was serving shit on a stick. Facebook is becoming awful. I think the ONLY thing that’s keeping a good chunk of the people engaged in the service is the fact that they and millions of their friends and family are already on there.

Sorry, I’ve never liked a hostage situation and I’ve never liked being told what to do. I might still bag the Facebook thing completely and do something drastic like write a letter or dial a phone. Hell, I might just hang out on Skype and talk to people face to face and leave me witty one-liners to Twitter. And unless someone invents a solid way to import my contact lists from Facebook to Google+ and a lot of people follow along with the conductor, Google+ ain’t gonna do much for me. I know it’s in beta but I’ve seen people take less time to build a rocket to get to the moon. (I don’t know why I selected that outdated metaphor but I did.)

To sum it all up: Facebook sucks and it’s time to Dial-A-Visit. One ringy dingy.