Mother Nature has decided she wants to park a high pressure ridge over the plains for much of next week. This is pretty much going to quash the chance for tornadoes where they can best be spotted. Seasoned storm chasers sometimes refer to this as the “Death Ridge”, not because it causes death, but rather because it kills the chance for tornadoes to chase.
Of course my storm chasing trip of the year starts tomorrow evening after work.
There is still a potential for severe storms, albeit a lower chance, in the likes of Texas and farther east than I would normally go. Is all of this disappointing? Somewhat, but my yearly storm chasing trip isn’t just about storm chasing. It’s also my way of enjoying a retreat, where I spend hours exploring small towns I’ve never been to, seeing sights I’ve never seen, and enjoying the vibe of a part of the country I’ve never lived in.
Yes, I’ll be heading for every little red blip that might pop up on the weather radar and I’ll always plan my destinations around the Storm Prediction Center’s forecast map, but if I only get lightning shots or rain shots or even beautiful shots of sunlit skies, I’m good. It’s a week away from the norm, and while my norm is pretty great, getting away from the norm for any reason can be great too.
Earl helped me pick out my new glasses at my last eye appointment. My prescription had changed slightly. These glasses have progressive lenses and I wanted frames big enough to make the progression worthwhile. The selection at Target Optical was a bit limited, but I’m happy with these RayBans.
Today I learned that 50% of the 10,500 employees at work are full time, remote workers. I’m happy to work for a company with such a strong Work From Home infrastructure. During the pandemic lockdowns, senior leadership discovered the company didn’t miss a beat; productivity actually improved a bit when folks were working from home.
There are plenty of roles in any company that must be accomplished in an office, but there are also many roles that can be worked from home. I have worked from home for over a decade and my career has grown in ways I didn’t think was possible. All of the people that report to me work from home. Our team earns accolades for our results.
Work From Home fears aren’t productivity based, they’re people and management based.
Fast food chain Wendy’s is working with Google to develop an AI chat bot that will replace a human taking your order at a drive-thru window. They plan on beginning their testing in Ohio this coming June. Here’s the article on The Verge with the details.
This is intriguing to me, though a fair sized part of me doesn’t like seeing humans lose their employment to computerized automation.
In the automation arena, I expect my job of writing code will be replaced by AI in my lifetime. One of my greatest skills as a developer is being able to use search engines like DuckDuckGo and Google to my advantage. Now that chatbots are able to write entire applications (mostly by stealing from work shared on the Internet by real developers), it’s only a matter of time before those of us that don’t write the chatbots are going to be replaced by the chatbots.
Smile to the human handing you your biggie meal. They might not be there much longer.
This is how you do marketing for Father’s Day. Even though it’s been 11 1/2 years since my Dad’s passing, I think about him every day. There’s so much I want to tell him of my successes in life, and the constant barrage of Father’s Day marketing messages makes me feel a little glum.
Hats off to Harry’s for showing a little compassion.
After writing about my fondness for the GE logo last week, I decided to see if there were any vintage polo shirts with the GE logo available online. I found a shirt from the early 2000s that fit the bill and it arrived a few days later.
Today, I shall model it for you. I really like vintage golf and polo shirts these days. Even though I work from home, I tend to still dress a “loose” version of business casual.
A random photo I found on the Internet. I enjoy its “Bliss” like qualities.
I wonder if I’m going to see a “post-social media” world in my lifetime. Society has become so obsessed with social media over the past decade, it’s hard for me to figure out if this is a long, drawn out fad, or if society has made some sort of dependent shift on social media.
One of my reasons for my musings on the subject is because of me leaving Twitter a few months ago, moving to Mastodon, and now seeing Mastodon use wane a little bit. There are several folks I enjoyed following on Mastodon a few months ago but they’ve become quiet, their timelines not showing any updates for several weeks. I didn’t know some of these people outside of Mastodon and for a brief moment I was compelled to write them an email asking, “Are you okay?”, but then I thought their only response might have been “Who is this loon?”
So I didn’t send an email.
My Facebook account continues to exist merely for a couple of groups I follow and for the occasional update as to what’s going on at our home for folks back east. It’s a lazy approach to staying in touch with the goings-on with the family, but Facebook traffic seems to be down as well. Perhaps the algorithms have figured I hop on there maybe once a day and are subsequently shunning me accordingly.
Looking back at Mastodon, I went a week without doing much with my account, posted a few updates over this past weekend, and then am quickly losing interest again. Many Mastodon folks like to chat about what’s going on with Twitter. By the way, the fire continues to burn at Twitter. Over the weekend some of the Mastodon chatter had shifted to the shiny, latest thing and that’s BlueSky, which is an invite only Twitter clone by one of the Twitter founders Jack Dorsey. I have no interest in that.
Instagram gets an occasional flight photo or selfie of the husband and me, but that doesn’t really bring much in the way of blowing up my skirt.
I have been thinking of things to write about here on this blog and on my more “professional” blog I’m starting to put together. Long form writing is starting to feel appealing to me again. Reading actual books is also becoming appealing to me again. I don’t like reading books on my iPad that much anymore, holding an actual book that isn’t illuminated by blue LED light is just what the doctor ordered on my eyes.
I’ve also been seeking out other blogs to follow again and have been enjoying that very much. It’s very reminiscent of 2009 and I like that. Maybe I can get to my 2009 weight again, though that was 14 years ago and my weight has nothing to do with reading or writing blogs.
Maybe it’s my interest in social media in general that’s waning versus social media itself waning. When I go on my storm chasing trip in a couple of weeks perhaps I’ll use that opportunity to move away from the platforms and just stick to blogging.
It’d been a while since Earl and I had gone a day trip. Some of our best memories together have been on these impromptu little trips, so yesterday we decided to set out and have some fun.
Our first leg was through the Green Valley Pecan groves between Sahuarita and Continental. This area always amazes me because of all of the greenness surrounded by the desert. From there we made our way to the top of Madera Canyon in Coronado National Forest.
We stopped at the gift shop at one of the little lodges and had some unsweet tea and a cookie. We also watched the hummingbirds do their thing. They move too fast for photo opportunities.
From there we made our way along Interstate 19 to the border at Nogales and drove along the wall. Interstate 19 will remain signed in metric units, a hold over the planned conversion back in 1980. New signs are going up, replacing the old signs from the late 90s. Though this old sign from back then is still in great shape.
From Nogales we made our way up through Patagonia to Sonoita, where we participated in an impromptu wine tasting. Marilyn was our hostess at Desert Ride Winery. We had oyster crackers between each wine taste and we ended up buying four bottles of wine. The view from the front porch, where we were tasting our wine, was pleasant. I like that area and it’s nice to see Southeast Arizona’ wineries starting to get some traction. Marilyn was very pleasant and I left her a 5-star Yelp review.
We then made our way over to Tombstone and then down to Bisbee, where we had dinner at Bisbee Taste. We had been there once before when we first moved to the area, and our experience was quite enjoyable.
After a lovely meal we may our way down the mountain and across the open desert under the night sky to make our way back home in Tucson. One more peek at the lights in the historic district in Bisbee.
Overall it was a very pleasant day and just what the doctor ordered for our mental health.
Earlier this month my husband and I went to a local furniture store looking for a new couch for our TV room. The couch we bought when we moved to Chicago in 2017 has not held up as well as we had hoped it would and the furniture store was having a sale so we thought we’d take a moment to browse.
As usual I went off on my own looking at various odds and ends through the store, and since the location is large, I called Earl up and asked him where he was located so we could meet up and settle on a couch.
“I’m on the other side of the wall”. This is what I was looking at when he gave me this vague description.
It turns out he was on the other side of the larger wall, over in the bargain bin area of the store. When he asked me “what other wall is there?”, I showed him this photo.
Our marriage works because in many, many ways we have two different thought processes. I tend to be the more literal one of the two of us. I have always thought literally. As I get older I find my brain is headed further in that direction.
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.
