Ponderings and Musings

I just finished watching this interview from 1973 of Katharine Hepburn on The Dick Cavett Show. I found Ms. Hepburn absolutely fascinating. I really enjoy her practical approach to life.

I woke up with the sniffles on Sunday morning. The sniffles and a raging headache. I figured I had one too many glasses of wine on Saturday night (drinking at home during the pandemic is so much fun, he types sarcastically) and my body was mad at me for doing this, so I had a hangover and the sniffles. I took a couple of Advil and made my way through it.

Sunday night I couldn’t sleep. I went to bed early because I was exhausted and I could just not sleep. I was hot, I was cold, I was hot, I was sweaty, the bed was soaked, and the headache was back. I took my temperature, 98.3ºF which is actually a little high for me. Historically my temperature hovers around 96ºF. I found my way to Monday morning.

The headache persisted. I felt a little bit of a cough. It didn’t feel like the flu. My mind was telling me, “this is unlike any cold you’ve had before. It just doesn’t feel like anything we’ve experienced”. I’d feel warm then cold then warm then cold. And the headache was centered on my forehead over my left eye.

Trying to sleep Monday night was a repeat performance of Sunday night. The same headache, sweats or lack thereof, no temperature above normal human levels, a bit of a cough.

Yesterday the headache continued. I decided to use one of the free COVID-19 test kits that had arrived courtesy of the U.S. Government. In fact, everyone in the house took a COVID-19 test.

I alone turned up positive. So yes, the cold that felt completely different than anything I’ve felt before is COVID.

I am vaccinated. We were vaccinated as soon as we were eligible to be vaccinated and we got our second shot right on schedule and six months and two days after that I got my booster shot. As I had to report to work after finding out I was testing positive for COVID-19, I am vaccinated x3.

I have isolated myself from everyone in the house since discovering my COVID-19 status. I shuttle between the upstairs bedroom suite and my office, wearing a mask during transit and staying out of the common areas of the kitchen, family room, and breakfast nook as much as possible. My husband insists on still sleeping with me.

Because of the vaccine my body has a road map to handling this foreign invader. I’ve worn my mask and kept my distance from others at Target, Starbucks, and the Safeway. To the chagrin of my husband, I have been purposely and completely unsocial in the world. I have done my best to maintain safe COVID practices and I’m hopeful that I haven’t spread COVID to anyone else during this time. I would feel awful about that.

The vaccine is doing its job and as of right now I’m starting to feel a little better. It comes and goes in waves. Still no fever. I feel a little winded walking up and down the stairs, but that’s probably because I’m wearing a mask while doing it. I’m sleeping when I need to sleep, I’m eating when I’m hungry and I’m drinking a heck of a lot of water.

Most importantly I want to keep my family safe by doing everything I can to not pass COVID-19 on to them. Everyone here is vaccinated x3, all right on schedule.

I will survive this, unlike too many others in the country, and I owe that all to the miracles of modern science and getting vaccinated. If you’re reading this and you’re not vaccinated, please get vaccinated.

No one deserves to die of this dreadful virus.

I dreamed about The Doomsday Clock the other night. If you’re unfamiliar with The Doomsday Clock, it is a metaphor for how close humans currently are to extinction or annihilation. The clock is currently at “100 seconds to midnight”, midnight representing doomsday. This is the closest mankind has ever been to midnight. The clock is adjusted once a year based on a number of factors; it’s been at 100 seconds to midnight since January 2020. The clock has been moved forward or backward 16 times since 1947.

There are many factors considered when scientists and scholars set the Doomsday Clock. The website has a lot of information on how this all works. The most concerning aspect is think tank types theorize human kind is the closest we’ve ever been to extinction.

That’s unsettling.

Back to my dream. I dreamed that I had input on the setting of The Doomsday Clock but didn’t know why it was being moved even closer to midnight. I then had visions of horrible effects from climate change (goodbye to Florida and the Gulf Coast) and wars being fought over Climate Change.

Luckily, being somewhat of a lucid dreamer, I was able to wake myself up from this dream without delving into the subject further. When I awoke I found myself on my way to the picture window we have in the front half of our bedroom.

I calmed myself down by looking at the darkness over the Sonoran Desert and the beauty of the Moon.

We should be aware of the message of the Doomsday Clock and everything it represents. Before it’s too late.

Since its creation, I’ve spent too much time on Twitter. A couple of years ago I deleted my original Twitter account and created a couple of new ones with the intent of honing and rebuilding friends lists and dividing the focus of each account to specific topics. It did not improve my experience. In the short term things were better, but then Twitter’s algorithms figured out who I was and started throwing things into my feed to try to up my engagement. I switched to one of the third party apps to get rid of notifications and suggestions and the like. Still no good. Aside from a few folks I enjoy spending time with online, I don’t really care about Twitter that much these days.

At the first of the year I removed Instagram from my phone. My time on the app was mostly spent on weeding out requests for friendship from bots and I just got tired of it.

At the beginning of the week I removed Twitter (and its third party apps) from my phone. Banal content aside, I don’t need the distraction in my pocket and it was the next step to removing apps from my phone that provided “infinite scrolling”. If I can never get to the bottom of an app I don’t need it on my phone. This includes Instagram, Twitter, Apple News, Google News… anything that encourages mindless scrolling or even worse, doom scrolling. There’s plenty of doom in the world. I don’t need to dwell on it.

I’ve been removing data mining oriented apps for a while. I had replaced Twitter with Tweetbot, simply because it didn’t mine my data from my habits on my phone. In mid December I gave up on MyFitnessPal and went with Lose It! because MyFitnessPal was sharing its information with too many data extraction agencies (including Facebook for some reason) and while Lose It is far from perfect in that area, it’s a heck of a lot better than MyFitnessPal.

So what am I doing instead? I listen to two podcasts, “A Bit of Optimism” by Simon Sinek and “Your Undivided Attention” by Tristan Harris. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to podcasts, since we lived in Chicago in fact, simply because I was enjoying the desert beauty while out on my walks. I still enjoy that beauty, but I listen to these podcasts for an interesting perspective on the world and on life. It’s nice to step out of the chaos.

The other change I made was in my news consumption. I am now consuming news via the AllSides website. This website offers the news from different sources and viewpoints. It’s good to get out of the echo chamber of Fox News or MSNBC and see what other sources have to say. There’s a little “blue-purple-red” meter under each story and it helps one find a more balanced approach to the reporting of what’s happening in the world. I need that.

I don’t know if this is part of my ongoing personal mid-life crisis but I feel like we’re on the precipice of something big happening in the world. Maybe it’s pandemic fatigue. But I feel like I’m at a point of my life where I need to spend less time worrying about what’s appearing on my iPhone and pay more attention to the real problems of the world (climate change, political unrest, rampant idiocy being the top three concerns).

I don’t know what I can do to help make the world a better place. I hope I figure it out soon.

“How do you get your laundry so clean, Mr. Lee”?

“Ancient Chinese Secret”.

“My husband, some hot shot, here’s his Ancient Chinese Secret, Calgon”.

The reason I can remember this commercial is easy. I run the commercial in my head, focusing on the images. The young woman stands in front of a General Electric washing machine with the top removed, the lint filter missing, the recycling pump turned off, and pours a healthy chunk of powdered Calgon into the running washing machine. Why a commercial venture run by an Asian couple is using the washing machine typically found in the back of a mobile home with half its part missing is beyond me. It was the 1970s.

“How do you remember things like this”? I’ve been asked this more than once in my 53 years and it’s because I remember things visually. I think in pictures. I see the colors and the frame of the memory and the layout of the content and I tune in on small details that just imprint themselves into my memory. That’s the only explanation I have. I don’t remember words. I don’t remember stories. I remember things visually. If I can associate written content to the visuals, I’m good. Otherwise, I’m lost. It’s one of the reasons I’ve never tested well.

Back when I was 11 years old we were driving through the village and I said to my mom, “why are all the street corner signs gone”? It was 1979 and I was riding in the front seat next to my mom in our 1978 Chevy Impala. The sun was out. The car still smelled a little new. She hadn’t noticed the missing signs, but I instantly noticed the cast iron signs denoting the corner of Broad Street and Park Street or North Jefferson Street and Hubble Street were all missing. The change in scenery had struck me hard as soon as we had entered the area and I found it very disconcerting. A disturbance in the force, if you will. All the traffic lights and stop signs and guide signs to Interstate 81 were in place, just the signs denoting the street names were gone. My mother hadn’t noticed, asked why I noticed it and I couldn’t really tell her. I just noticed it. A few weeks later they were back, all repainted, by hand, in glorious black and white.

I think in pictures and I think in patterns. I think (that’s three ‘thinks’ in less than a dozen words) I’m really good at my job as a programmer and troubleshooter because I can instantly identify breaks in patterns. When an application or a server or something at work goes off the rails, I can see the pattern, or lack there of, as bright as day in front of me. The solution may still be off in another direction, but the break in the pattern usually leads me somewhere towards the solution. It’s an asset.

When we were in elementary school we learned about autonomous actions of the body. For example, we didn’t have to concentrate to lift our arm, we just knew to lift our arm and we did. I remember Miss Kania (my first grade teacher) saying, “now tell yourself to lift your arm”. When I did that I pictured my arm moving up. I didn’t think, “lift my arm”. I remember asking a classmate named Martin, “did you think the words”? He thought I was crazy as he said “yes”. I didn’t think the words. I saw my arm lifting. This made me think I was doing it wrong.

Thinking and remembering visually, or in pictures, probably lends to what others say is my uncanny memory. I don’t know what it’s like to not remember what I had for lunch on a Friday in second grade in elementary school (square cheese pizza, green beans, a small dixie cup of unsalted peanuts, and apple crisp, arranged on my tray with the pizza in the middle, green beans on the upper left, apple crisp on the upper right, a half pint of Byrne Dairy white milk in a red and white carton under the green beans, and the unsalted peanuts under the apple crisp, all on a light brown tray because I thumbed through the older dark trays to get one of the newer lighter ones). The cashier, Mrs. Stevens, wore a white sweater like a shawl over her shoulders that day. I can’t tell you the date, but I can tell you what it looked like as easily as I can describe what our cat Truman looks like right now. (He’s cranky that he hasn’t had a treat in two hours).

I know I’m a little off the beam. I know my bubble isn’t in the center and there’s probably test scores floating around in too many places that proves this out. I know my numbers. I learned long ago how to fade into the background a little bit and not draw too much attention to myself by barking out “hey you shaved off your mustache!”¹ when I ran into my high school art teacher out in public during summer break.

I wouldn’t change a thing about how I think or how or what I remember from my days past. It’s just part of me being me.

¹ He responded, “you are the only person that noticed!”. I’ve heard that a lot in 53 1/2 years.

In 1998 or so I was working for a radio station that was owned by an advertising agency. They were actually two separate businesses owned by the same husband and wife (who could fight like no couple I’ve ever met in my life) but I ended up working on both sides of that fence and it was interesting. I’ve never had an interest in advertising. I find advertising annoying. But for a small chunk of my adult life I made a living by, among many other things in the jack-of-all-trades position that involved maintaining computer networks, being on the Top 40 radio station, and working on FM transmitters, writing ad copy for a smattering of businesses across Upstate New York. Hell, I voiced more than one commercial that played on all the radio stations in the five boroughs of New York City.

As a solidly Gen X individual I know life both in the analog world and the digital world. I can easily remember before everything was computerized. I know the joy of receiving cards in the mail, I revel in the memories of dialing into to retrieve email long before the days of America Online, and I can remember what the very early stages of the World Wide Web was like. I was “raised” in a certain tech culture; before my days at the radio station/advertising agency I worked for the second largest computer company in the world. All 120K employees of Digital Equipment Corporation had a terminal on their desk at the time, and in glorious (you pick green/white/amber) text we could email, “surf” our internal pre-web text pages, and chat with one another through forums called VAXnotes and chat programs called VAXchat.

At no time did the “monetization” of the Internet cross my mind. Like many others, I thought of “the web” as a wonderfully mammoth collaborative living encyclopedia, where we would exchange ideas, talk with one another, and make each other think, communicate, and debate on various topics.

At no time did I throw advertising into that equation.

Back to the advertising agency. One of the clients of the agency was the NYS Department of Transportation, and they were looking to improve their image by running commercials about the wonders of roundabouts, the importance of expressways in our small city, and the safety of following stop signs and speed limits. Somehow the subject of my very first web site, a cacophony of information about the roads of Upstate New York, came to the forefront and I ended up showing my website to the owners of the business.

“You should charge people for this information. At the very least, you should show ads and collect some money”.

This had never crossed my mind. What eventually became UpstateNYroads.com was never a source of revenue for me; my focus on the site was to contribute to that big, living encyclopedia I envisioned and I was doing my part to contribute to the greater good. There was no money involved.

Can you imagine an Internet experience today where money is not involved? It’s so incredibly sad.

The monetization of the Internet has destroyed the original purpose of the vehicle. We now have “influencers” that try to make a legitimate living by sharing the beauty of products and places, all the while being paid for it.

Gross.

I’ve never had ads on any of my sites. I’ve never charged for content. I’ve never tried to monetize the videos I’ve shared and I throw out any resume that mentions an applicant has tried to live their life as an influencer.

I still believe the Internet can make us better, but only if approached the right way. Unfortunately, with the lies, and the deception, and the anger, and the rabidness, and the screaming, and the yelling, and the charging, and the flashy ads, and the data mining, I don’t think the Internet is going to make us better. I want to believe we’ll come around, but we’ll probably destroy ourselves before that happens.

I’m so happy I stepped away from a life of writing and voicing ads.

I started the workday by shaving off my mustache this morning. It’s a signifier of the New Year to me and the exercise complimented my mood. I’ll probably grow another mustache someday.

I have a few resolutions on my docket for 2022. I don’t start my resolutions on the first of the year, as typically I’m going to start trying to eat healthier again but that never happens on the first of January. Why set yourself up for failure? By starting any health resolutions on the 3rd, I have a chance of making it until at least the 5th. Goals are important.

I’ve been reading old posts from the beginning of various years and I really haven’t changed much in the 20+ years I have been churning away at this blog. I hope I’m a little wiser and a little calmer about things. I don’t feel the need to drop f-bombs as much as I did yesterday. I now even try to stop swearing at people when I drive. That’s an accomplishment. I probably need a fidget spinner to keep in my right hand when I’m driving. Are fidget spinners still a thing? It’s better than playing with a smartphone, which many seem to do while traveling at 75 MPH on the 10 outside of Tucson.

My husband has started taking down the holiday decorations; it’s something to be done after the first of the year is part of history. When I was a youngster I used to find taking down the Christmas tree to be very depressing, especially when the (formerly) live tree would be leaned up against the side of the house or something. We don’t have live trees here in the desert as we figure they’d dry out and go up in flames within a day or two. I really liked our new artificial trees and they brought me joy.

My biggest resolution of the year is to reduce that which does not spark joy in my life, or at the very least, reduce that which does not lead to sparking joy in my life. I mean, I enjoy my job and there are elements that spark joy, but I don’t consider the workday an entirely joyful experience. But the results of my work leads to things that can spark joy, so there’s that. I quipped to my mom not too long ago, ”I probably don’t need to figure out what I’ll be when I grow up”.

I shared an idea on social media yesterday. Since Betty White was such an animal lover, let’s start 2022 on a positive note and keep her love of animals alive by making a donation or volunteering with a local animal shelter. When this thought occurred to me, I did some quick searching on the Internet and discovered Pima Animal Care Center, here in Pima County. There are organizations like this all over and I’m sure there’s one in your neighborhood.

Too many of our furry friends need our help or need a home. Make a contribution in memory of Betty White, and let’s keep her love for animals alive.

I think I startled the family a little bit when I mentioned that while I love our home, I don’t find it super cozy yet. I meant no discontent or disrespect by sharing this with the others as I enjoy our home very much. There’s just a coziness or cuddliness of it that I have found yet.

I think this feeling might be a result of living in the desert. Up until the past couple of days I was still wearing shorts on a regular basis. There are no chestnuts roasting on an open fire or mugs of hot cocoa or vats of chili cooking on the counter. It’d be quite warm if we had a fire in the fireplace (though that appears to be changing later this week).

As a northern boy I’m missing key markers in the year to let me know when it’s time to feel warm and snuggly and cuddly. I’m not complaining mind you, I’m just commenting on the change of atmosphere and how I haven’t quite adapted to it yet.

The forecast for the upcoming weekend mentions snow in the mountains and possibly freezing temperatures here. Perhaps that will make the “cuddly” more recognizable.