It must have been the sound of reindeer hooves on the roof that woke me up just a few minutes ago.
A joyous Christmas to all!
Ponderings and Musings
Being Social.
So I haven’t been feeling very social lately, though you would never guess this by my online activity because it seems like yesterday I was checking in all over the place on Foursquare. Many find Foursquare mundane. To tell you the truth, I too find it mundane, for the most part, because whether I’m standing in the middle of a random Dunkin’ Donuts is really going to have no bearing on the big picture of the world, except that I’ll be standing next to a jelly donut or something on that big picture, but I must admit that I get a kick out of seeing others that I recognize from Foursquare checkins. That’s kind of cool to me.
I have been doing some weeding and pruning of my various online social media accounts, trying to see what is going to fit right for what I want to do in the year 2012. I’m not a huge Facebook fan, though I am active on there because many family members, many friends and co-workers and a good chunk of my old high school buddies are on there. My rule of thumb for Facebook is that we have to know each other outside of the internet but if we don’t yet, we are going to meet somewhere, somehow within the next year. I’m not big on numbers, I couldn’t care less as to how many friends I have on Facebook; I’m content to have quality over quantity. My Facebook is, for the most part, intended for general audiences with a rating of PG-13 at the most. I do drop an occasional blue word on there, but not while I’m at the Dew Drop Inn. (And I don’t remember what show that is from, to my horror.)
Twitter is a bit of a different animal. I just honk out updates that are seemingly random. Well that’s because I think my brain acts randomly. I follow news makers, I follow actors, I follow geeks, I follow bears. I actually have a couple of Twitter accounts, including the one under my pr0n name, but it’s usually “TheTechBear” that gets the most activity. That particular account is not pr0n and you won’t see any shots of either my meat or my potatoes.
Since a lot of tech people who feel that they are important are on Google+, I try to maintain a presence on there but it feels like a desolated place. I have a couple of hundred people in my circles but there’s less than a dozen from that group that use that service with any sort of regularity. I keep hearing that Google+ is going to CRUSH Facebook and Twitter, spit them out and then laugh like a monster from Scooby-Doo (complete with bouncing jaw) but I have yet to see any sort of indication that this is what is really going on. I find the Google+ app on the iPhone to be rather annoying because it feels limited; on the iPad it’s just a mobile version of the web site and that’s buggy. In all actuality, I have been moving away from Google provided services over the last couple of weeks, the only thing, other than search and Google+, that I am using the service consistently for is Google Reader, which is maintaining my RSS feeds. They’ll probably get moved to Flipboard, now that Flipboard is available on both iPhone and iPad.
As I mentioned earlier in the post, I use Foursquare for location check-ins. Over the last couple of days I have started using Path 2, a social network designed for “family and close friends”. Path 2 is a gorgeous app and does everything in a timeline view. So far I have three connections on it, and these connections are people that I really like (based on internet interactions over the years) and that I have full intention in meeting very soon. I have yet to get the rest of my family on it, but someday that will happen. The thing I like about Path 2 is that I am able to forward selected information from Path 2 to Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare, so I am able to do things in one spot and then share at will. I like that.
I jumped on the Instagram bandwagon pretty early in the game and I love the service. You can see my Instagram photos in the left hand column of this blog thingee, here. Since I’ve been playing with Instagram I haven’t done much with my Flickr account, but one of my goals of 2012 is to take many, many more photos with my non-iPhone camera equipment, so I’ll probably revive the Flickr account soon. In fact, I have a model that has agreed to pose sometime in January for one of my ideas so I have to admit that I am rather excited about that.
Several weeks ago I completely stopped watching podcasts from the folks at TWiT and therefore I’m off of their IRC channels. I found myself unable to sit through an episode because everyone was trying to ham it up and I just wanted to hear what they had to say about tech and the like. When the producer started chiming in like an off-camera voice from god I decided that was enough and deleted them. Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m not interested in folks that are tipping the scales in favor of self-serving behavior. Maybe I’ve just grown tired and need a rest.
So despite all of these connections and networks that I am part of, I haven’t been really feeling that social. I have quite a bit of email to catch up on due to the things that have been going on in our lives over the past couple of weeks. Chatting in realtime is better anyway; though I’m not big on Facebook Messenger (there’s something that creeps me out about it but I couldn’t tell you what exactly), but I like using IM when I am on the computer, it just seems that folks are on differing systems (Skype, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, etc.) so I never know which one to sign into and I don’t want to be signed into a bunch at once. Unlike many of my gay brethren, I’m not looking for pseudo-sexual activity online when I’m logged into chat and I’m not going to go through the effort of getting myself pretty to start up the webcam and perform like a trained seal (I always tell people that I have plenty of benefits at home, thank you and no, Earl isn’t into trained seals).
So let’s recap, just in case I start feeling social again:
Twitter = TheTechBear
Facebook and Google+ = under my name, click the Facebook badge in the left hand column here on the blog
Foursquare = who knows, I think it’s tied to my phone number
Instagram = TheTechBear
Flickr = TheTechBear
Instant messengers = it could be anything. I need to find one service and create an account and go from there. Suggestions? Skype is iMachias.
Oh, and Google Voice (forgot I still use that until just now), in case you want to leave me a voicemail without actually reaching me: (315) 313-4579.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Today.
I have no idea what day it is today. Rumor has it that it is Friday and people are wearing jeans at the office today, but the fact that people are wearing jeans and the rumor that it is Friday aren’t necessarily related, because people wear jeans a lot. It saves on the dry cleaning, which in turn saves the environment which, among other things, gives our company the ability to say “we’re green!”.
I can’t really determine which day it is by using people bringing food into the office as any sort of barometer either, because I brought in food today. We all signed up for different days of the month to bring in food to share with the rest of the group so that we could have our own zip code by January 1. Earl has been out of town on business, so last night we had a discussion of where I was suppose to pour bags A and B into crockpots C and D and then slather with slathering stuff E and F. I have received several compliments on the swedish meatballs, sweet and sour meatballs and barbecued little weiners, so apparently I did something right. Perhaps I should change my DJ moniker to DJ Heat-n-Serve. I suppose it’s better than DJ Poppin’ Fresh. Both make me giggle.
I had yesterday off because I am on-call this week. I work tomorrow but I didn’t work Monday due to being in the greater Philadelphia region with my in-laws. I’m off next Tuesday, again, due to on-call and there are rumors that Christmas hasn’t arrived yet so I’m going to do all my non-online shopping on Tuesday. I also have a lunch appointment with our friend Mike, whom we haven’t seen in nearly a year, so that will be nice.
So I guess I am certain that today is Friday (hah, I just typed Tuesday and had to correct it) and that it’s still the tail-end of 2011. Spirits are good, I’ve just been in another, another world (as opposed to be my own little world that I’m usually in). Yesterday was spent with family and the weekend will be sort of revolving doorish with me working, determining if we still want to get a Christmas tree and the like. I can’t wait for everything to get back on track the day after I go shopping next week, where I will then work two days and have four days off for the Christmas weekend.
It’ll all make sense.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Turning.
With the all the changes in our lives the past couple of weeks I feel like I have turned some corner around a major point in my life. Going back to work I find myself asking questions on the projects that I am working on and not getting emotional or stressed about it in the process. I’m still passionate, I’m just not raving about it. I was out the door five minutes earlier than my normal time, and getting out then felt good. I worked out this morning, doubling the number of situps I did the last time I worked out in our makeshift gym in the basement. I want to make another run at working out this evening after work.
I feel like my priorities have changed a little bit and it’s all for the better. I want to do what needs to be done in regards to my father’s affairs and the like. On the other hand, I really want the world to slow down a bit so that I can catch my breath. I don’t feel stressed as much as I just feel there’s a lot to do. I want to be able to sit down, with no expectation or no upcoming plans, and just enjoy not doing anything for a little bit.
This isn’t the time for that. And that’s okay for now.
Turning this corner and entering this new part of my life is good. It’s different and right now it’s rather sad, but in the long run it’ll be good. One of Earl’s colleagues wrote that boys don’t really become men until their father has passed on and it is then that we carry on their legacy.
I get that. Having turned this corner, that’s how I feel.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Normalcy.
So I’m sitting in the Jeep at lunchtime, after a morning’s worth of work. I had a good number of emails to catch up on when I got in and reports for November were due before close of business today. I’m happy to say that I was able to still beat the deadline.
Everyone is expressing their condolences with me today and they are all much appreciated. I thanked my supervisor for the cooperation of the company during this difficult time. He said it went without saying, I still think it’s nice to say thank you. I also had to let him know that my father-in-law is not doing well and that I might some additional time off to be with my in-laws. He was perfectly understanding.
As an avid people watcher, there is a part of me that was fascinated by the folks that I shook hands with and hugged during my Dad’s calling hours Monday night. Each human being is so unique. No two people said or did the same thing. I love that.
So today I work and do what needs to be done. I find comfort, satisfaction and enjoyment in doing this.
I even find myself smiling from time to time.
Family.
My sister and brother-in-law just left after an afternoon visit. We spent most of the time going through the family photo albums looking for photos of my Dad to display at the calling hours and memorial service. It’s not easy to summarize 64 years in 40 photographs. We made a decent attempt.
I haven’t left the house today. Everyone at my dad’s thought I needed downtime today because I’ve been going non-stop since the crash answering phones, answering questions and coordinating things. If this were to happen again I guess I would need an assistant. On second thought, my family here at home has been very helpful. Scott spent the day adding to the outside Christmas decorations he put up yesterday. They look beautiful. Jamie scanned all the photos we selected. He was kind enough to crop out my ex. That made me happy.
Even though I haven’t left the house today I am exhausted. Oddly, the blahs that I felt a few months ago have not returned. This should be a good thing. My sister remarked that dad smiles a lot in all the photos. I need to remember that and follow his lead.
It was nice to visit and reminisce today. I feel centered. I’m ready for the services tomorrow and Tuesday. There is comfort in knowing that I feel ready.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Repost from Aug. 23 ’05: “Flying With Dad!”
This is a repost of an entry from Aug. 23 ’05.
Tonight I had the opportunity to do something I haven’t done in a long time. Dad and I went flying together.
My father has been a private pilot for a long time. I’ve complained about flying in the past, but those complaints are limited to flying the commercial airlines, mainly because they herd you like cattle through a shoot. I also have another beef, no pun intended, about flying commercially. I don’t know the pilot. And I can’t trust a pilot I don’t know.
I’ve been flying with my father since I was six months old. My grandfather was a private pilot, so we’d fly with him, and then my dad became a pilot in his late 20s. Where most people have blood flowing through their veins, my father has aviation fuel.
When I was growing up, we started off flying in the pilot’s association’s Cessna 150 (which is still going this day, I might add) and then a Piper Tomahawk. Later in the early 1980s, my grandfather and father bought a 1940 Piper J5-A that my dad stripped down to the metal and rebuilt. He had that for several years, before building the plane you see in the picture, his Acrosport.
The Acrosport is a lot of fun to fly in, but it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s open cockpit, so you get to wear all the Snoopy gear. I had the honor of wearing my grandfather’s pilot gear tonight. The passenger’s seat has the ominous warning: “PASSENGER WARNING: THIS HOME-BUILT AIRPLANE IS EXPERIMENTAL AND THEREFORE DOES NOT MEET FAA SAFETY REGULATIONS”. Who cares. It’s rare that I feel that free as when I’m sitting in the passenger’s seat of my father’s airplane. Just be sure to sit low in the seat so the wind doesn’t blow your sunglasses off!
Right after take off, the engine backfired a little bit and did a little sputter thing, just as we were banking to the right. My father straightened the plane to the horizon and it stopped. Another quick bank to the right to make sure it didn’t do it again, then a zip around 180 degrees to buzz (that means fly really low and fast) my sister and Earl, who were standing along the airfield watching us, both waving. Did the sputter worry me? Absolutely not. I was in the capable hands of my father, so that meant there was nothing to worry about. He’s been in worse situations and has never had even a close call. Nothing to fear.
The rest of the flight was awesome. We flew eight or nine miles to the west of my hometown to fly along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario a little bit before heading back home. I wasn’t ready to take the controls to fly yet, though Dad would have let me. I used to fly occasionally with the club instructor or my dad when I was younger, given the controls of the Cessna or the Apache. And I’m eager to try my hands at a Cessna 150 or 172, but not his Acrosport. Not yet.
Afterwards, we had a wonderful meal with my Dad, his girlfriend Karen and my sister Jennifer. Great conversation, delicious food and a flight down memory lane.
A wonderful evening.
You can click on the picture above for more pictures from the flight.
Angry.
There are some things in this world that make me very angry, even though I have no connection to these things, that it makes me want to spit nails. One of these occasions have occurred. I wasn’t going to write about this, but I feel that I need to.
There is a teacher in the Mystic Valley Regional High School (in Massachusetts) named Kevin Hogan. Well liked by his students, Mr. Hogan is a sports coach and I believe an English teacher. Earlier this week, Mike Beaudet (Twitter handle = @channel_mike) from Boston’s Fox affiliate, Fox 25 went “Fox Undercover” and confronted Mr. Hogan, on camera without warning, about a couple of gay porn videos he had participated in a few years ago. Apparently these videos were released to the public last year. Caught completely off guard by this confrontation, Mr. Hogan denied everything but was then put on administrative leave from MVRHS after the news story ran on the Fox affiliate. The reporter was kind enough to share some clips from the videos during the newscast. The teacher has never exposed his students to porn, by Mike Beaudet gleefully exposed the world to it by sharing it on the Fox News broadcast.
Here’s where I get angry:
1. The teacher has done nothing wrong as a teacher. He hasn’t been inappropriate with any of his students and no sort of accusations of this sort have come forth. He is well respected by students and faculty. Because of this, his life is now destroyed. What is gained by this?
2. The reporter is painting this behavior in the same light as the recent sexual allegations at Penn State and Syracuse University. THAT IS BULLSHIT. The teacher had sex with a consenting adult. Nothing illegal happened, there were no goats involved and everyone was well above the age of consent. The man had sex with another man; it just happened to be in front of a camera. Has anyone noticed that most pedophiles are not gay men but rather heterosexual men? Why doesn’t anyone ever notice that.
3. The teacher has never discussed this part of his life with his students nor was he recruiting anyone to become a porn star. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. Some argue that a teacher must uphold a higher moral standard. Show me a teacher that smokes and I’ll show you someone that doesn’t meet my standard. It doesn’t mean they’re unfit to teach. Having sex with a consenting adult is far less damaging to a person than smoking is.
4. This was a ratings stunt, plain and simple. A man’s career was destroyed in the interest of garnering higher ratings. THIS IS WHAT AMERICAN MAINSTREAM NEWS HAS BECOME. Every time I read or hear something like this, a little part of the American inside of me dies, because we are drifting so far away from what made this country great it’s not even funny. American mainstream news does this all the time. They’re after ratings to generate more ad revenue. Accuracy and solid facts have little to do with the story.
I have retweeted a couple of the thousands of comments to the news reporter on my Twitter feed. Dignity is preventing me from formulating my own tweet and saying how I really feel about the reporter. Many are calling for the firing of this reporter and the support for the teacher far overwhelms the “shock and outrage” of the teacher’s past.
I’m sorry. I don’t think that a teacher’s past should be held against him, especially when it has no bearing on who or what he is today. Shame on Fox 25 and especially on Mike Beaudet, the “investigative reporter”. This is blatant homophobia under a thin veil of disguise. And quite frankly, it disgusts me.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Alarm.
So last night the fire alarm went off during the NBC Nightly News. Brian Williams, the anchor, was the perfect professional as the alarms went off, barely missing a beat with his story on the bankruptcy of American Airlines. As the alarm went off the second time during the newscast, he calmly reminded viewers that they knew they were in no danger and that’s why they were no evacuating. Watching the video on YouTube, I was very impressed with the way that Mr. Williams handled it, knowing that he wasn’t in danger and how he just continued on without losing it on the air. As a former broadcasting professional, I probably would have been distracted and my voice would have sounded funny as I tried to compensate for the extra noise. That’s why I don’t anchor NBC’s Nightly News.
Since this story has been all over the place this morning, I noticed some of the comments that folks made over on Huffington Post. It’s not often that I go over to that site, I really don’t like their style of journalism over there and I can find more balanced news elsewhere. I was surprised at the number of people who said that Brian Williams set a bad example for the public by not immediately leaping up and running out of the studio with his hands failing. I say I was surprised by these comments but I guess in reality I’m really not. Some people enjoy hysterics. Mr. Williams, a former volunteer fireman, does not. Plus, as he stated during the news broadcast, they knew they were not in danger because they were testing the fire alarm system.
I got to thinking about this a little bit on the drive into work. I have been in several places over recent years where the fire alarm has started blaring in a public space, for example, the local mall. No one flinched, no one looked for an exit, everyone continued shopping as if nothing was going on. Blaring klaxons, flashing strobe lights, automatic closing doors; all of these were ignored because people were on a mission, they were shopping, they didn’t see flames so they continued on. I must admit that I did the same. Like much of the American public, I think I have been desensitized to these alarms because the damn things ring a false alarm on so many occasions.
Earl and I made a trip to Wisconsin a few years back and on each of the first three nights of this five night trip we had to evacuate the hotel (which was a different hotel each time) because the fire alarms were going off for no reason. People get used to these things. The blaring sounds, the strobe lights, they’re all for naught when they cry wolf so many times. I remember fire drills back during my school days. Those bells never rang unless they meant business (a fire or a drill). We didn’t have flashing strobe lights or slamming doors or announcements coming over a speaker, the fire bell simply went clang clang clang clang clang (pause) (repeat). It was rare that you heard that clang but when you did you got your butt out of the school in an orderly fashion. The same goes with the Emergency Broadcast System. If the old-style two-tone alarm wasn’t proceeded by “This is a test…”, then you figured that the local nuclear plant was melting down and you got under your desk and covered your neck to ride it out. People made sure that these alarms didn’t ring for no reason. False alarms were avoided. It’s not until we upgraded to the latest and greatest technology that we started to tolerate false alarms. Because we put up with bugs in our computer programs and crappy, tinny sounding phone calls over a our cell phones, we expect mediocrity from the devices that are designed to save our lives because they “cry wolf” more than anything else.
Now I know that I’m somewhat contradicting myself in this post. I praise Brian Williams for keeping his cool and continuing on while the fire alarm blared and I make fun of the people that say he should have evacuated immediately while on the other hand I scold folks for not leaving when the mall fire alarm went off. This is all a product of our conditioning. We are being conditioned to stock up on milk and bread and flail our hands in the air when an alarm is needlessly fired off to warn us of a “winter storm” (when much less than a foot of snow is expected) and on the other hand, we hear so many false fire alarms in public spaces today due to poorly manufactured and executed equipment that we just ignore the damn things. How do we turn this around? No clue. I’m hoping that the fabled reboot of civilization at the end of next year will give us some answers.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Memory.
So I have this habit of coming up with some brilliant topic that gets me all fired up and knowing how I’m going to express this brilliance in the blog. These flashes of inspiration usually occur in the early morning hours when I am getting ready for work. I try to remember to write down what I am thinking so that I can formulate them into a coherent dialog when I write my blog. I use electronic gadgets to keep track of all of this for me; I usually jot something down in Evernote or OmniFocus, since I use both software packages for personal and business needs. I tend to use Evernote as a bucket to catch whatever is falling out of my head.
This morning I neglected to do this. And now all I can remember is that I had two things I could have written about. I can’t tell you what they are, though. They’ll probably manifest themselves as a blog entry later in the week and I won’t even make the connection. I’ll be too busy engaging my ADD elsewhere.
Even though I can’t remember what I wanted to blog about this morning, I can tell you that I remember thinking that I am starting to become a bit of a morning person. I think this is why I have these blogging ideas in these early hours; it’s because I am turning into one of those older people that goes to bed at 9:00 p.m. and wakes up in time to see the sunrise. I used to be one of those guys that stayed up all night and went to sleep with the sunrise, but this is definitely changing. I must be getting old.
I can also tell you what I dreamed about last night, but it would make everyone involved blush. I know the dream took place in my old stomping grounds of Jamestown, New York, but the rest of it needs to be filed away in the dream journal and out of sight. I have always had this small fear of people figuring out what really goes on inside my head and sometimes dreams are just too revealing. So instead I show little bits and pieces here, well within the censorship range I have arbitrarily set.
I’d be such a hoot on an analyst’s couch.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
