Ponderings and Musings

This shop in our neighborhood is keeping their message simple, clear, and concise. It’s brilliant marketing. I wonder how many potential customers take a self inventory before walking into the place. How many get worked up into a huff and take their business elsewhere? I’m sure the owners of this location don’t want the latter in there anyway.

Too often I see folks sharing images of receipts with tips of minimal amounts because the server wore a mask or they wanted their waiter or waitress to go back where they came from. I find it difficult to wrap my head around this concept. I didn’t pay close attention in Sunday school but I know there’s something about “Do unto others…”. Perhaps the cranky folks that leave bad tips with hateful messages think they’re above the commandments. They’re certainly not acting Christian.

So many false prophets here in these “United States”.

I’m occasionally amused by science fiction/alien arrival movies that assume visitors from another planet would start their visit here on Earth in the United States. We don’t have a particular large land mass. We barely qualify for “world leader” unless you want to talk about deaths during pandemics. I should think aliens would be more interested in smart cities, bullet trains, and societies that have universal health care. So many American movies have depicted aliens arriving to this planet as hostile. Years ago, back in the LiveJournal days, someone mentioned there would be no other reason for a race to cross the vastness of space for any other reason than hostile military reasons. It’s like crossing the ocean from Europe to a new land in the west.

I’d like to think everyone should just be kind to their neighbors.

I took a ride through rural northwest Illinois yesterday. My journey took me almost to St. Louis, following mostly backroads, until I decided to turn around and head back to Chicago. It was a mostly relaxing experience. I find it interesting to drive through the small towns in the Land of Lincoln.

Once outside of Chicago, a common theme in lawn signs is “Pritzker Sucks”. These reference Governor Pritzker, who in my opinion, has done a very good job in leading efforts to keep the pandemic at bay. The lockdown and subsequent measures have been unfortunate, especially for the economy, but if I had to choose, a business can be rebuilt or replaced, a human being can not.

Not even human beings that don’t seem interested in gaining or sharing intelligence.

The big installation shown in the photo is found along Interstate 72, somewhere between Quincy and Jacksonville. I’m not surprised at the size of it, when you don’t have much you make prideful displays of something. But I couldn’t help think how much more valuable the funds used to build that sign could be to someone that couldn’t afford a meal or the neighbors that couldn’t afford their medicine. For many, compassion has been replaced by idiocy and ignorance. This makes me sad.

Of course, the makers of that Trump sign have every right to build and display their political allegiances in such an egregious manner, just as I have every right to write this blog entry.

I’ve been trying really hard not to complain about the pandemic, or Trump, or the riots, or the idiots that are cheering on Nazi-like activity from our Department of Homeland Security.

My mood jumps up and down, a lot. These swings are much more frequent than they used to be. I can’t comprehend how people can still be “on the fence” about who to vote for. I can’t comprehend how people can still support the worst president in the history of the United States. Children in cages, mayors of major cities being tear gassed, a non-existent response to a global pandemic. And these idiots still think Trump was sent by God.

It’s hard to continue to maintain this blog but I continue to do it. It will soon be 19 years old. I’ve been blathering on about life for 19 years!

Who’s the crazy one?

I told Earl I should write my autobiography just to do it. While the main title would be “Trip The Moment Fantastic”, it’d have a subtitle that says, “You Really Have No Reason To Buy This Book”. As the Abba song goes, “I’m nothing special, in fact, I’m a bit of a bore”. But here I am still writing in a blog for 19 years.

Eccentric? Yes.

I won an award at work today. I was one of three recipients of a Quarterly Leadership Award. The announcement was made during an All-Hands Call today. I had no idea my name would be included on the PowerPoint presented through the Zoom interface.

I am only as strong as the team I lead. I thanked my team for their support in accomplishing our goals together. I have a great team with hard workers and a lot of brains.

Today was a good day.

I always loved this scene from “View From The Top”.

Living in a condominium building in the third largest city in the United States has really been an education in the nature of my fellow Americans. Couple this experience with the response to the COVID-19 and it’s easy to see why my sister would always say she was Canadian when living and traveling abroad.

In 2020, the United States and its citizens do not garner a favorable opinion across the rest of the planet.

Sharing a building with other property owners is interesting. It’s disheartening to see how many people don’t care about the “common areas” of our building. Occasionally we find beer cans left in the stairwells, or someone will punch the elevator call buttons in the lobby hard enough to knock the entire assembly off the wall. Dog walkers love to put bags of poop in the mail recycling bin (under the large sign that begs people not to put bags of poop in the mail recycling bin). Folks throw cigarette butts off their balcony.

It’s not all bad. We have a good share of pleasant and responsible neighbors, but there are a few that seem to go out of their way to ruin it for everyone else. It’s kind of like the people that voted for Trump. They’re unhappy so they want everyone to be unhappy.

Walking the streets of Chicago I have seen some of the kindest, heartwarming acts of humanity and I’ve seen some of the most jaw-dropping acts of entitlement I’ve witnessed in my nearly 52 years on this planet. I’m encouraged by the number of people that hand a dollar to the homeless person asking for money on the expressway off-ramp. I’m discouraged by the number of people that just walk by the homeless person sitting on the sidewalk on “The Magnificent Mile”.

Public social media posts give us insight to just how awful Americans can be, all in the name of “freedom”. As a Chicagoan it’s concerning to see how many things we see in our daily business that could end up as one of those awful public social media posts. Naturally, these acts are not confined to The Windy City, but with the size and diversity of our population, we have more opportunities to see it.

I think part of my concern is because the pandemic has confined us for so many months and we’re fed such terrible things when we peruse social media. I remember the days when we had just three or four channels, with an evening newscast and a once, maybe twice, daily newspaper delivery. The constant electronic connection, coupled with the ever present 24 hour “news” channels have not fared well for our country. The sad part is I don’t know if there’s ever a way for us to go back to a less bombarded state. I try from time to time, and it’s a good feeling when I’m successful.

Ultimately we find what we seek and it’s taking a very focused, concerted effort these days for me to find the positivity in the population.

I hope I don’t run out of the necessary bandwidth before the election in November.

I was reading old blog entries the other day and I had to laugh. In 2008 I was writing about how I was never going to buy another iPhone, at least one on AT&T, because iPhone OS 2 was killing my wifi, my battery life, and was generally acting poorly. Of course, this was the first update to my original iPhone. We were still working with whatever came before 3G with cell signal. I forget what it was called.

My how things change yet how they stay the same.

I’m typing this blog entry on my iPad Pro. My iPad Pro works brilliantly, albeit the way Apple wants it to work, because I refuse to jailbreak anything. I have never jail broken my phone before. I don’t really see the need to do this. I even skipping the whole “run the beta!” game on both my iPhone and my iPad Pro because I don’t want to get all depressed when things are acting wonky and I know it’ll be months before the proper release of the software currently being tested comes out.

I’ve been tinkering with Linux a lot. I ran Ubuntu Linux on my MacBook Pro for the month of June and it worked well for what it is, but it has nowhere near the polish that Apple is known for. After living in the Apple ecosystem for many years it’s hard to break out; especially since things feel like they’re lacking a cohesion when you’re off of Apple products. I like the cohesion. I actually rely on the cohesion. I am at my my focused when things are cohesive. Work’s edict of having to use a Windows 10 laptop really threw me for a loop and I haven’t quite recovered. I often break the rules and run my work stuff on my own Mac Mini, but then I get a message from the regional desktop systems manager asking why I haven’t used my laptop in a while and then I get back in line.

But having a Windows 10 laptop in my Apple world really disrupts my cohesive approach to productivity.

Even though we have to use a Windows 10 laptop at work I spend all of my day working on Linux servers. We build and run our applications on Linux because it saves the company money. It’s a good thing Linux is so versatile.

I’m not as versatile as Linux.

It’s odd that I enjoy so much cohesion in my technology experience because I’ve always been fascinated by dissimilar technology doing the same task. When I was very young we would go to a local department store called North Country. The decently sized department store of its time, much like McCrory’s or Woolworths, had four checkouts up front. Two of the checkouts had Victor mechanical cash registers and the other two had Sweda mechanical cash registers. I was fascinated by this. Two different makes of cash register, with different receipt formats and different buttons and different sounds, doing the same thing. I stopped in an old Zellers Department Store in Canada years ago and some of the checkouts had NCR computerized cash registers while others had IBM registers, but they all did the same thing and were apparently running the same software. That was kind of cool to me.

So this makes me wonder why I have to run Microsoft Outlook on a Windows 10 laptop when it runs perfectly fine on my Mac Mini.

As I get older I’m finding I have less and less bandwidth, or perhaps it’s interest, in trying to fit into expectations. Maybe this is what they mean when they say older people get set in their ways.

I just know I want my way to be a certain way.

The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, was enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law.

Wikipedia

Imagine our country today without the expressways, freeways, and tollways that make up the Interstate system. We’d still be getting our kicks on Route 66. We’d be driving through crowded city streets trying to make our way across town. The eastern half of the country would rarely know more than a speed limit higher than 55 MPH.

Without the Interstates there’s a good chance that Main Street of small towns would be thriving. Would the large department store chains be prevalent? Would we have malls?

Someone famous once quipped the Interstate highway system allowed an average American to drive from New York to Los Angeles in record time and not see a thing along the way.

As a certified “road geek” and one that went to school for Civil Engineering specifically to contribute to better roads in the United States, the Interstate highway system has always fascinated me. Some of the expressway I knew as a kid in Syracuse, New York predated the Interstate system. These expressways “grew up” with me; the older, early 1950s designs gave way to modern alignments, more lanes, and faster traffic. Signs became more reflective and more plentiful. Decisions were made as how to standardize the way interchanges were numbered, and restaurants and fuel stops were purposely left off the federally funded Interstate highways to encourage motorists to go into town to grab something to eat and fuel up the car. Of course, capitalism decided to abandon the nearby town center and instead build a truck stop alongside the interchange.

The Interstate system made the country more accessible for us all and it encouraged those with the means to abandon the city centers and develop the suburbs. We drove 55 MPH on roadways designed for 85 MPH in the name of energy conservation. We eschewed riding the rails in favor of the independence associated with owning an automobile. We’re able to get our deliveries in Prime Time, and we’re able to drive from coast to coast in record time.

Follow the Red, White, and Blue Interstate route marker to freedom.

As nifty as the Interstate system is, as I get older I want to take the back roads. Earl and I will be driving along a two-lane road on the Illinois Prairie and I’ll see a small green sign that says “Business District —>”. I say, “let’s go see what’s left in this town”. And we’ll drive off the beaten path and see a bank, a Masonic Lodge, a few small shops, and maybe a laundromat.

Americana at its best.

Yes, you can see the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet at a record pace courtesy of the Interstate system. I’m happy it’s there.

But I’ll pull over, stop, and take a look around once in a while.