Ponderings and Musings

I am in a fantastic mood today. I know it’s Friday and all of that, but this morning I decided to get up and be in a good mood. It was a conscious decision I made. I got out of bed, after a terrible night’s sleep (it was 87F in the bedroom and I was awoken half way through the night to fix an issue at work) and I said to myself, “I’m really a nice person and therefore, I will smile today.”

It was a good day to start the day.

I logged onto my new favorite online hangout¹, Google+, and found my stream populated with some drivel from some of the tech crowd that claim their famous, in particular, a bleached out, blown out blonde that tries to act like an alien. While I appreciate her love of all things cats, I found her most annoying. As I stared at the overly Photoshopped icon showing her looking wistfully into the sky, obviously looking for something better than the character she portrays herself to be, I decided that this chick wasn’t real and I really held no interest in what she had to “offer” the world.

Delete.

She hasn’t beat out Out-Q’s Romaine Patterson for my “top 10 most despised media whores” list but she’d get a bullet if Casey Kasem was doing the countdown.

As I looked through my growing Google+ friends list, I decided to wipe out several tech-media folks. I mirrored the effort on Twitter. And then again on Google Reader, where I had been reading the blogs of these folks. I don’t need someone to tell me how great something is when I stumble upon flaw after flaw in a software product (ahem, OS X Lion).

There are some people that are just lunatics in the world. I am proudly one of them. I think I’m more in the league of the eccentrics but nevertheless I like it when people embrace their quirks because it’s part of who they. The quirks are real. It’s when people come out wearing a pork chop for a shirt and a fruit salad for a skirt that it gets on my nerves. Am I judging them? Probably, but I know when I have to say to myself, “you know, that’s not my thing and there’s nothing forcing me to partake in what they have to offer.”

It’s about keeping it real. That’s why I like the folks I chat with through this blog and the folks that share their lives in this fashion through the technology we have today. They’re real people reaching out. They’re not folks painting themselves into a character for others to notice.

I’m still smiling as I keep it real today. I hope you are too.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I’m hidden in the shade of the sign proclaiming that I am in the “Arterial Plaza” near work. The ‘arterial’ is actually a two lane road with several traffic lights on it, but it has a speed limit of 55 and the adjacent businesses are actually on a service road. People still drive 30. The sign is being used as a method of finding shade. It’s 85 and very humid today and there isn’t much of a breeze. I refuse to run the car when I don’t need to and I don’t believe a person in a Jeep should be using air conditioning anyway, so I just sit here and sweat a little bit.

I considered going for a walk at lunch today but it’s just too damn hot, which is a shame because I’m feeling fidgety. Ever since our return home I’ve been feeling the need to move about and sitting at my desk at work and staring at two monitors is not quite fitting the bill. I want to breathe fresh air and I want to move around. I let my mind wander as I’m working on the routine things of my job, but that doesn’t cut it. I want to move. Every once in a while I walk and I join a couple of co-workers for a 15-minute walk every morning and afternoon but with the relatively nice weather it seems like I should be outside. I’d even be happy driving a delivery truck or something, like the UPS guys that run around in shorts and drive with the doors open.

Several years ago I worked in an office where we could wear shorts. I miss those days. I often went barefoot in my office back then. It was a liberating feeling and I like being barefoot best. Here I am wearing jeans and sneakers and it feels like a bit much.

If it isn’t too hot when I get home it might be appropriate to go for a walk or a bike ride tonight. Perhaps that will help with the fidgety feelings I’m having today.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

It was in early September 1973 that the big yellow school bus stopped for the first time in front of the little mobile home surrounded by cow and horse pastures. Mom had walked with me out to the road, my sister Jennifer trailed along, her chance to get on the bus was still a couple of years away. My grandmother waved from the bedroom window in the house next door.

I walked up the stairs and made my way down to the first emergency exit row on the right, where my cousin once removed, Jill, motioned for me to sit. I was sitting across the row from my two other cousins once removed, Amy and Ann. Though my five year old brain was not quite grasping the concept, I was beginning a new chapter in life that first day of school. I was excited.

I mention it here because of the bus. My mind makes these odd connections. It was bus 43.

I turned 43 years old today.

Now that when asked my age I will respond with “I’m 43” for the next year, I feel like I’m in one of the best places I have ever been in my life. 43. It’s a good number. It’s the number of the first bus I rode, it’s the exit number for Kellogg Hill off of Interstate 81, which is where you can get off to see Talcott Falls, the falls I highlighted in a photo a couple of years ago. It’s an age I can easily remember my parents being and they seemed happy.

I know I’m happy. My life is good and in a multitude of ways, it feels like it’s just begun. I am surrounded by an immense amount of love.

And that rocks.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

We are sitting at Newark-Liberty International Airport in Terminal C waiting for our flight to Denver. The first leg of the flight was delayed for a bit, we ended up sitting on the ground in Syracuse for 40 minutes or so while the airspace around Newark got itself straightened out.

So far the flight to Denver is on time and ready to go in less than an hour.

I’ve discovered that taking photos and the like all day on my iPhone makes the battery go down pretty quick. I need one of those solar chargers in Skymall.

The adventure du jour has just begun.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Indiana Department of Education has decided to no longer require cursive writing as a requirement of school children come this fall. They are now going to teach children keyboarding skills at an earlier age. Progress, technology and all that.

I kind of think that this is unfortunate.

Good keyboarding skills are very important in today’s job climate. I have seen many people struggle while working with a computer, simply because they didn’t have a good command of the keyboard. And I have to admit that I was very lucky in this regard; I had a habit of wanting to play with my Mother’s typewriter when I was in third grade and she said that if I was going to do it, I was going to do it right and she taught me how to type properly at that young age. People that don’t know me are often amazed at my typing skills when I sit down in front of a computer. Since I do it for a living, I have had a lot of practice. It’s one of the things that I feel confident enough to brag about.

Nevertheless, there is little in the way of expression in the typewritten word, especially with the shorter tweets and Facebook updates we see crammed into 140 characters. A person’s writing habits, the display of their penmanship, generally says a lot about their personality. I know a guy who used a ruler as a guide when he wrote his annual holiday cards. I look forward to his beautiful penmanship every year. Grandma Country had outstanding 1920/30s-era penmanship that carried on to her kids. My mother has beautiful handwriting that has the flair of someone that learned to write in cursive in the late 1950s. Earl’s dad has the penmanship that matches his charisma, as does his son, and my dad has the penmanship that displays the confidence I see in him.

Abolishing required penmanship lessons is like taking away one tool that a kid has available to him in an effort to express himself. This is unfortunate. While keyboarding skills are quite necessary, we should never take away a person’s method of expression. Teach them how to use the tools and then let them decide whether they want to use them or not.

And just for kicks… (click to make it moderately more legible)

I am sitting at the local Panera, where I believe that the natives have finally learned that it is not appropriate to ask for fries with their meal. They still haven’t broken the habit of standing as far away as possible from the counter before being called upon to place their order, but I can share a big sigh of relief that no one mentioned wanting fries with their happy meal for their screaming kid that is taking his pants off whilst standing on a chocolate chip cookie.

Even though it’s Friday in many parts of the world, it is Tuesday night in my world and tomorrow is a workday for me. It’s my quarterly turn of on call. Longtime gentle readers of my blog may remember the old job where I was on call every few weeks and on the brink of insanity under all circumstances. They newish gig I have doesn’t foster that type of response since on call isn’t nearly as involved as it was with the old job. I’m feeling good.

Other parts of the family are out exploring the world tonight. I’m in the mood to chase a thunderstorm. It seems like Mother Nature is giving me the opportunity to do so. I took some shots of an impressive line of clouds on the ride home.  It looked something like this.

The bark was much worse than the bite, because there was hardly any lightning and thunder, nary a tornado but plenty of rain. We get rain with everything now. It’s like the sprig of parsley on a mediocre dish. Rain always comes with the landscapes in these parts. One of my co-workers from the Dallas-Fort Worth office commented that he didn’t know it was so much like the northwest in these parts. I said that it usually isn’t unless this is the new norm.

I have received quite a few emails and tweets about my marriage post (the post previous to this one). Since writing that post the New York big wigs have announced that the NYS Senate will vote on the same sex marriage bill (they call it #SSM) tonight. Should the vote be the right one, I will be proposing to Earl before morning. We have dreamed about having a big shin dig. I think it’s high time that we finally did. I hope all of our family comes from all parts of the world to share the celebration with us.

I posted such random things when I am at Panera. I just noticed that the Turkey Focaccia sandwich looks less appetizing than your standard grilled ham and cheese made with welfare (yellow) cheese. At least cheese in a can would have spruced it up a little bit. Perhaps they need a sprig of parsley.

Earlier in the week I shared a few comments about some of the podcasts (netcasts) from the TWiT network. I have adjusted some of listening habits and am now focusing on TWiG, “This Week In Google”.  The regular participants of that particular podcast rock. I am a fan of geek girl Gina Trapani. She is an out lesbian, writes a book now and then, writes plenty of articles about all things tech but most importantly, she loves Chipotle and isn’t afraid to dance to a little bit of “Glee” like we all do. Along with CUNY professor Jeff Jarvis,  they join Leo LaPorte to talk about all things Google and the cloud. Google has made a few missteps along the way and I’m not a huge fan of ad-based products, but I have to admit that they write magnificent code, and ever since switching to my Android-based HTC Thunderbolt, I’ve learned a few good tips here and there.  I hope to shake Gina and Jeff’s hand someday. I think they make wonderful contributions to the community.

By the way, I’m becoming a bigger fan of the Google Chrome web browser. I actually run Chromium, the open source version that doesn’t have the Google branding in it, but it still allows me to sync with my Google account. It’s all good. I figure Google doesn’t have enough time to sit down and read my stuff. There are other more interesting people in the world.

And last but not least, I caved in and trimmed my mustache back but left the beard untouched. I have a habit of chewing on my mustache when it’s long. The trimmed ‘stache with big beard makes me look trendy. Especially when I have my hat to the back.

I vividly remember my first kiss. Now I’m not talking about the first kiss I had, sometimes in the late 1970s, when I stole a kiss from a girl named Lisa behind one of the airplane hangers on a Sunday afternoon. I’m talking about my first _real_ kiss, which took place in a 1982 Dodge Omni, behind Alumni Hall at SUNY Fredonia in the fall of 1986. It was quick, a parting gesture of a fantastic evening of a lovely dinner in the small college town. His name was Steve and he looked like Herbie, the one who wanted to be a dentist. Though I had kissed many times before that moment; heck, I had even copped a few feels, removed a bra or two and even tried to do it a few times before then with a lovely girl named Kristi, that kiss in the 1982 Dodge Omni behind Alumni Hall was just a confirmation of what I had known all along. I like guys. It was like the protective cover had been removed from the pane of glass and I could see ahead clearly for the first time in my life.

It was in November 1995 when I first saw the huge fireworks in my head. I had seen a sparkler or two along the way up until then, but the moment I spotted a man named Earl standing in the corner opposite of the DJ booth I was working in, I saw huge fireworks exploding in my head and I knew that I was somehow, somewhere, going to spend the rest of my life with that man. I just knew it, and I wasn’t going to accept any other answer along that path. Luckily, Earl knew it too. After a bit, the “happily ever after” came to life and we had a small, private commitment ceremony at Penn’s Landing late in 1996. Though the ceremony did not take place in a church, we opened our hearts to each other and to a “higher power”; many in this part of the world call him God. Personally, I think he’s much more than any “him” would aspire to be, so I just think of all of it as a Higher Power. I figure if man is the best that this world can do then we have fallen way behind in the curriculum.

I talk about fireworks and first kisses and the like because the New York Senate is debating whether to approve legislation for same sex marriage again today. I will be the first one to tell you that I am tired of hearing about the debates of the topic. I’m sick of reading about people doing and saying hateful things all in the name of their love, the only love that is valid. I’m weary of people saying that if it is legal for me to marry Earl, my one true love, then somewhere in the country, someone must be allowed to marry their cat because it feels right to them.

I imagine that my grandfather saw fireworks when he met my grandmother, and that applies to both sides of the family. I remember the slightly mischievous grin my grandfather got when he sat at the dining room table next to my grandmother. I remember the way my aunt’s eyes would light up when she saw my uncle, I am able to decipher the excitement my father exuded in his own unique way of expressing himself when he sees his wife (either version 1 or version 2). I see love and it is the same kind of emotion that fuels the fireworks that I saw this morning when Earl was making my lunch in the kitchen. The same fireworks I saw in 1995 but even stronger. I tell him everyday, “I fell in love with you today.” And it’s true.

I believe that the folks that protest same sex marriage have varying motivations that all share the same undercurrent: fear. I believe they fear change. I believe they fear obsolescence. Perhaps they fear that if nothing mean and nasty happens when a gay couple gets married that this must mean that there are more inaccuracies in their beliefs. I understand that this lack of vengeful response from a higher power might rock their faith. I get that; they believe out of fear, not out of love. “If I don’t do this, then something really bad is going to happen to me for eternity.” If that’s their belief then I say great, whatever gets you through the day. Just don’t impose your beliefs on me. My business is not your business. And marriage shouldn’t be a governmental business. The folks that scream for smaller government are always wanting government to intervene on gay marriage. If it weren’t for the fees for the license, the government wouldn’t care less. They just want the filing fees and the like.

We have no desire to get married in a church. We believe that the higher power is everywhere and that it is not confined to a man building full of lavish adornments. When we get married, and we definitely will, it will be a celebration of our love and a symbol of the commitment we have lived for the past 15 years. That commitment deserves the legal recognitions afforded to our heterosexual counterparts, because the government has made it their business. Our love is just a strong, if not stronger, than all the straight marriages that we know.

Living in constant fear must suck. If people lived with a motive of love, celebrating all that was around us, instead of telling the world how wrong it is for us to love someone of the same sex, when we know that we were made this way, the world would be a much better place. There has been more bloodshed in the name of religion over any other reason.

There is going to come a day when I am going to have to make decisions for Earl and/or vice versa. Luckily, we have legal paperwork in place to grant us the ability to do so, but the legalities of this only extend so far because we are not able to get legally married. (Heaven help anyone that would try to stand in my way. The only thing that will ever keep me apart from Earl is death, and if necessary, I will go to that point in a most spectacular fashion to protect the one that I love.) Can a married couple imagine what it is like to be kept apart from their hospitalized spouse? Can a mother or father imagine what it’s like to have their kids taken away because the government hasn’t sanctioned their love? I didn’t think so. Imagine how you would feel today knowing that the government was voting on your right to legally love someone. Think about that for a moment.

Today the New York Senate will most likely vote on this hot topic. Let’s hope that they vote with their heart and their conscience and not out of fear.