Ponderings and Musings

Music.

On Saturday night Earl and I went to see Reveille, the gay men’s chorus here in Tucson. It was our first time seeing the group. They were celebrating their 30th anniversary. The show was appropriately called XXX.

Roman numerals do their thing.

Prior to the festivities, Mayor Regina Romero gave a speech and presented the chorus with an official proclamation celebrating the anniversary. It was the first time I had seen the mayor in person. She is well spoken and seemed genuinely interested in the contributions of music from the group.

Overall the show was very good. My (aging) musician ears appreciated the melodies and harmonies, and even though the chorus advertises “any singing skill level as a requirement”, I would say they all sounded quite good. The chorus was joined in the second act by the Arizona Women’s Choir, who was also quite good.

I look forward to their fall shows later this year.

Creative Space.

As mentioned in my previous post, I am trying out a new (to me) camera in preparation for my storm chasing road trip coming up in May. I took this photo of the area just to the left of my main desktop monitor. I think it captures my vibe pretty well.

“The Daily Stoic” and the accompanying “The Daily Stoic Journal” are both parts of my morning routine. The wire bound journal is also part of the same routine.

And c’mon, everyone that knows Janeway knows she would be an excellent president. There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Janeway.

Clear Start.

Every morning before work I go for a 30 minute walk to get the day started. As the sun rises it illuminates the mountains to our west. I find it a beautiful sight as most of the time the air is clear.

I took this photo this morning. As I look to the west each morning I see Kitt Peak Observatorh reflecting the rising sun. Seeing this site makes me smile. The stars are so cool and the work at Kitt Peak is part of our understanding of the universe.

Kitt Peak is 52 miles from our home, yet there it is, clear as day. Photo taken with my iPhone 16 Pro at maximum zoom. That’s Davis Monthan AFB in the foreground.

Focus.

I have always struggled with maintaining focus on a project. With all the thoughts churning through this aging brain at any given moment and the availability to look anything up at any given time, it takes a great deal of willpower for me to get stuff done.

And this can be exhausting.

My second grade teacher, probably the only one to truly ‘get me’ during my elementary school years, would have me turn my desk 90º to face the adjacent wall. She’d tell me, “you’re not in trouble, it’ll just help you tune out the noise in the room”. I’d be obsessed with the clock clicking once a minute except at the top of the hour when it clicked twice but didn’t do anything (it was correcting itself) or what someone was humming two rows away, or what was going on out the window. I gazed out the window a lot. After turning my desk she’d say, “we’re watching a movie later and you can run the projector”.

That was my reward.

In these modern times headphones playing non-lyrical music helps me when I’m at work, but when I’m editing a video or photos or something, I can easily be distracted away from what I intend to accomplish. I have a few of my own tricks to help with that as well and they’re moderately successful.

This video from Ryan Holiday helps me keep a lot of things in perspective and I’ve watched it twice since it was released earlier this week.

Sniffles.

You can’t tell in this photos, but I had a lot going on in the way of sniffles today.

I’ve been trying to get two walks of two miles each in every morning before 10:00 a.m., when the sun generally becomes just a little too much for me. The fresh air always does me some good.

I don’t know where the sniffles came from, but other than that I don’t really feel bad or anything. It’s not the best way to start a Monday but for the most part the week is off to a good start.

I was planning on recording an in-studio video for the YouTube channel tonight, but I’m going to put that plan on hold a couple of days until I feel just a little bit better.

Basic.

It’s simple but controversial: Computers were more fun when they weren’t for everyone. There, I said it.

I stumbled upon this quote in a blog I follow, Welcome To BASIC, the specific post being Honest and Elitist Thoughts on Why Computers Were More Fun Before. That post leads to another detailed post, and like the author of Welcome To BASIC, I find myself nodding my head in agreement as I read through the post.

I have said this before and at times I feel bad about feeling this way, but I still hold the quote at the top of this entry to be quite true. Computers were much more interesting, and much less dangerous, when folks had to have a good understanding of how their computer actually worked. This approach made it easier for users to identify scams and viruses, and it conversely made it MUCH harder for ads and the like to infest our computing experience.

Yesterday we were expecting a package from UPS. At the end of the expected delivery window I received an email: we tried but there was no answer, see you on Monday. Since this was an important package that we needed yesterday I was torqued. I went to the UPS site and confirmed the status after punching in my tracking number. I needed to speak to a representative to find out what was going on.

The UPS website makes it really hard to find a phone number to reach a customer service representative. I kept getting pestered by some AI driven chat bot. After asking it a dozen times to just give me the customer service number, it finally acquiesced and I made the phone call.

The customer service representative answered the phone, “Hello?”

I barked, “is this UPS?”. I was not pleased.

I was assured it was UPS and after a long conversation, I got the representative to tell me the driver would be back that day to try again.

Where does modern technology fit into this?

  1. UPS insisted I use the app instead of calling them and even when I called them I had to spew nonsense into the AI software to finally give it a meltdown and route me to a customer service rep
  2. The reason we missed the UPS attempt is because the UPS man did hit the Ring doorbell button but then technology failed us. The dinger didn’t ding, it didn’t alert our smart speakers, and it didn’t send notifications to our devices. It just acknowledged a door bell button press into the log but it did absolutely nothing about it. The Ring device didn’t ring.
  3. I had to sign for the package on the website instead of a piece of paper when the delivery finally occurred.
  4. My fighting and screaming with the AI would have been enough to blow a human’s relay

So yes, it does make me sound like an old guy yelling at the clouds, but no, I don’t believe all of this modern technology has made things any easier for us and honestly, the horrid belief that these Large Language Models (AI) being shoved into everything is going to make things better is naive at best.

Especially since no one really knows how LLMs really work at all.

Maybe the little bit of glumness I’ve been feeling lately (have you see the state of the United States?) is impairing my thoughts on this subject, but I do miss a world where we used green screens and our interactions on the Internet were mostly text based.

I encourage folks to have a basic understanding on how all this works. It will make your technological life safer, more secure, and hopefully less stressful.

I’m going to go back to yelling at the clouds.

Easter.

Earl and I are sitting in our local Starbucks on this Easter afternoon. Yesterday was Jamie’s birthday and so we had a big meal with plenty o’ food last night. We’ve had leftover for breakfast and lunch today, so no yearly Easter picnic for us this year. The sun is bright, the air is cool, and we’re sitting in Starbucks.

I’m OK with that.

Many of the retail establishments in these parts are closed today, in recognition of the Easter holiday. For some reason this feels like something new, as in retail hasn’t done this in the past 30 years or so. The United States is changing. I don’t have anything against establishments being closed on Sunday, in fact, I think it’s a good idea. Society needs to slow down.

Yet, here we are, sitting in Starbucks.

While reading past blog entries about Easter I stumbled across this photo from 20 years ago. We had just gotten our first digital camera and I was doing a photo shoot to test out the timer and other functionality.

I miss technology being nifty.

Spring, and Easter in particular, has always represented renewal for me. I’m trying to find that spirit today as I type away on my laptop in this Starbucks. I want to bust out of the “same old, same old” and find the excitement of hope again.

I know it’s out there waiting for me.

Repetitive.

I just realized my previous two entries were about sitting outside, enjoying the back patio and Mother Nature in general, and more specifically about my love of the wind.

It was not my intention to be repetitive.

However, the recurring theme in these two blog entries give insight as to how my brain works.

  • I have a fleeting thought
  • I write about the fleeting thought
  • I publish my fleeting thought
  • I forget the fleeting thought

My brain is wired to completely forget something when I consider it done, unless there’s something remarkable about it, whether it be a large or small detail. I’m thinking most human brains work this way. Perhaps this is just a habit of mine, but if I’m making small talk or something and a response to a question doesn’t have something remarkable in it for me to latch onto, I’ll probably forget it.

This drive my husband insane. And, it’s something that is becoming more prevalent as I get older.

It still drives him insane.

For example, we’ll be eating lunch and I’ll casually ask how he enjoyed his workout that morning. He’ll usually throw a few numbers that are impressive at me, and tell me it was a “good workout”. There is no mention of men shaving in their underwear in the locker room or anything. My brain, processing a few hundred things at any given time (the freezer is making a noise, the washer is on the spin cycle, Truman is sitting in the middle of the floor, Jinx is looking at Truman, Lucky is looking at Jinx, I wonder what kind of cash registers they’re using at the one remaining Kmart, etc), doesn’t find anything to latch onto in the response so it doesn’t go into the memory Rolodex. At all. Five minutes later, I’ll ask him how his workout went this morning.

“You already asked me and I told you it was good”.

I used to be feel bad for asking repetitive questions, but now that he reminds me I’m repeating myself all the time I just tell him, “thank you for maintaining such an accurate timeline”. Then I’ll look just to the left of an imaginary camera, hold the pause, and then think about how my comedic timing must be pretty close to Bea Arthur’s abilities in the same arena.

We then continue the lunch.

It is not my intention to be repetitive. Ever. That’s so repetitive and worse yet, it’s boring as hell.

I just can’t help that my brain is wired that way.