What’s Important.

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.

11 January 2022 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Smarter.

15 years ago today Steve Jobs spoke at the Macworld 2007 keynote and introduced the world to the iPhone. It’s safe to say technology shifted that day and our world is much different because of that keynote presentation.

Steve Jobs was the master of presentation. I could watch him lead a presentation all day long and not complain about it.

10 January 2022 by Apple. Geek 0

Sunning.

I’ve been writing about Truman a little more than usual. He’s taken up standing on the cat tree behind my office desk every morning to watch the world out my big that overlooks the front of the house. He seems to be happy and this makes me happy. I occasionally pause to give him so soft scritches behind the ears and tell him he’s a good cat and that I love him.

10 January 2022 by He's A Feline. 0

A.

Today we did a little hiking on Sentinel Peak here in Tucson. It was our first time up the mountain and there are some decent trails up for short hikes. The park was quite busy on this warm winter day. It’s fun wearing shorts and the like during the first weeks of January.

Sentinel Peak is also called “A Mountain”, because of the big A that’s been up there for over a century. That’s the white bit you see in some of the photos below. It’s much too warm for snow (though there’s still a trace of snow up on Mount Lemmon).

Look close and you can see Earl waving to me.
9 January 2022 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Late Night Selfie.

It’s 12:37 AM Mountain Time and I’m still in front of the computer tweaking things in my little Realm of Geekdom. I’ve had a couple of beers, I’ve been working on an old gaming PC, and I have an episode of “Maude” playing in the background.

This activity is giving my brain the reset it needs.

The vibe started this morning when I started cleaning up my work home office. Every weekday I work in what our blueprints call “The Library”. It’s a nice little space, with plenty of sunshine, super high ceilings, and ample room for me to have a comfortable work area, some nice shelves, and the aforementioned space for Truman to stretch out on the floor. The Library is much larger than my old home office in Chicago.

I’ve never felt fully settled in the home office space. Cords are not neat, my desk has a little too much stuff on it (mainly monitors and cords) and it just felt slightly to the left of chaos, at least to me. I like a clean desk. I don’t like cords. So I ordered a couple of inexpensive monitor arms for the two monitors on my desk and some cable wraps and the like. They arrive tomorrow.

I also have the flight simulator and gaming computer up in what the blueprints deem “The Observatory”. The room was originally designed to have a big telescope mounted in the middle of the room, in fact, there’s a cement in the workshop underneath the observatory that was meant to support the telescope. The room was never finished for this purpose as the original owner and designer of the house passed away about a year into the project, his wife ultimately finished the house before selling it to the owner we bought it from. If you look over my right shoulder in the selfie photo you’ll see counter height electrical plugs and wall plates for data cables, speaker cables, and the like. This room is also rather fortified with cement block walls. If we ever have a tornado in the Sonoran Desert, this is where we’ll be. Directly under the room is the workshop, where Chris and Mike do woodworking and Chris has his 3D printing set up for his graphic design business.

Speaking of wood working, Chris and Mike finished the table they designed and built for the living room today. I’m very impressed with their craftsmanship. My dad’s side of the family all had craftmanship like skills that I never inherited. I’m lucky to have others in the family that can build furniture like this for our home.

9 January 2022 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Caturday.

I’ve mentioned before that Truman isn’t a cuddler. He doesn’t want to be on me and he doesn’t want to snuggle under the blankets with me. He loves me as long as I continue to fill the food dishes on commands (cat glares can be scary) and as a reward he will occasionally jump up on the bed in the morning and sleep near my feet.

In actuality, he wants to be near me, just not on me. He wants to keep me within eyeshot and know my whereabouts and I find that endearing.

Earlier this week he decided it was time to start stretching out across my home office floor and enjoy the ample sunshine we have here in The Grand Canyon State.

I was honored to have him purring in the sun as he napped and I earned money to keep his kibble supply at expectations.

8 January 2022 by He's A Feline. 0

Mix.

One of Grandma Country’s older sisters, my great aunt Rena, had her own way about the kitchen. She was widowed at a relatively young age and had been an elementary school teacher for many decades. In fact, she taught my Dad and his siblings, and the parents of many of classmates over the years and apparently had enough of kids through these avenues and never had kids of her own. She would join us at family gatherings on holidays and we would visit her on Halloween out in the middle of nowhere. She gave out full sized candy bars and offered them up on an ornate metal tray. Her demeanor somewhat reminded me of Aunt Clara on Bewitched and I found her pleasant.

For holiday dinners she would bring a tossed salad decorated with radishes cut into flowers. I always enjoyed this little display of artistry. For Christmas she would also bring a big bowl of “Mix” as she called it; it was homemade Chex Mix that always seemed to have a little something extra. I could eat my weight through one of her bowls of “Mix” and then I had to learn to share with my cousins.

I’m the anecdotal one of the family here in our desert home and over the holidays I mentioned Aunt Rena and her “mix” and said I found the commercial versions of Chex Mix to be missing something, but I didn’t know what it was. I can’t describe it, I can’t even write about here in the blog, it just lacked “something”. Now some might get all sentimental and say that it missed my aunt’s love, which the commercial version probably does, but that side of the family wasn’t generally known as being particularly warm. Loving, yes, but in a rigid sort of way. It was just a given, no need to discuss it.

So Chris and Mike decided to mess around with some Chex Mix recipes and made a big batch of the stuff for our holiday festivities. They captured it. Whatever is missing from the commercial version is not missing from the version they put together and I probably ate my weight through the stuff on New Year’s Eve. There were no cousins around to share with so I was happy about that.

Perhaps the missing ingredient was love after all.

7 January 2022 by Poke Me In The Tummy. 0

It’s Magic.

One of my earliest memories is playing around with my Uncle Gary on Grandma and Grandpa City’s living room floor (in front of the Davenport) and the Bewitched credits rolling by on the big RCA television that sat at one end of the room. The little Samantha-the-witch graphic turned into a “Kodak” logo while the credits played and then it was bed time. It’s funny, I hadn’t thought about that in a few decades but tonight I was thinking about the show and that flashed into my head.

As a kid “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie” were on in the afternoon on WSYR-TV 3 and Grandma Country would let me have a couple of homemade cookies and milk and stop her housework and watch the shows with me. They came on after “The Edge of Night”. I enjoyed this time very much and it’s among my fondest memories; I’m lucky that we were close to both sides of the family.

As I grew older I grew more interested in “Bewitched” and to this day it’s my favorite show of all time, especially the first, third, and fourth seasons. For years, local television stations, as well as WTBS in Atlanta, would only show the color episodes (seasons three through eight) but then in the very late 1980s Nick at Nite started showing the first two seasons and I instantly remembered them. The original Louise Tate played by Irene Vernon. Serena being sultry instead of kooky. Samantha and Darrin as newlyweds, long before Tabatha (later Tabitha).

The first season of “Bewitched” is my very favorite because it had so many more adult themes. Larry Tate had a wandering eye, Louise Tate was a little more icy than Kasey Rogers’ interpretation, and Elizabeth Montgomery had a bit more of a sultry, newlywed look about her. Alice Pearce as the original Gladys Kravitz was hysterical and Endora was more into an up-do than her wild bouffants in the later seasons. The show was focused on the trials and tribulations of newlyweds with a bit of magic thrown in, instead of crazy farcical scenarios of warlocks turned into the Lochness Monster or Mother Goose popping in.

I always include the third and fourth season among my favorites as well, because the third season had a new producer and Samantha and Darrin had some pretty impressive argument scenes during that run, and the fourth season introduced the new batch of sound effects for the choreography of witchcraft and I always found that intriguing. By the time Dick Sargent as Darrin came around in season six the show felt a bit more “designed by committee” and while there are some stand out performances, it got a little too silly for my tastes. But not nearly as silly as “I Dream of Jeannie”.

Not finding anything modern to watch on television tonight, I made my husband sit through two episodes from the first season, including “It’s Magic”, an episode about Samantha, as hospital fundraising committee chairman, finding The Great Zeno, a drunk of a magician saddled with an assistant played by an actress that chewed the scenery of every moment and every show on adjacent soundstages. There’s some, by 1960s standard, risque dialog about small costumes and the love of vodka. The other episode we watched was when a bored Samantha popped over to Paris with Endora for dinner while Darrin was at work and runs into Larry and Louise. Again, Irene Vernon’s Louise is slightly icier and seems more inline with the wife of a guy with a wandering eye, and I just enjoyed the slightly more adult tilt to the vibe of the episode.

Endora riding on the back of a 747 and declaring, “it’s the only way to fly”, notwithstanding. By the way, “it’s the only way to fly” is the motto of Western Airlines back in the day.

Image courtesy of Harpies Bizarre.
6 January 2022 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Pictures.

“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.

5 January 2022 by Ponderings and Musings 0

About J.P.

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.

Weird? Eccentric!

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