Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

Wetzel.

In Onondaga County in Upstate New York is a county road named Wetzel Road. It’s a fairly prominent road in the area as I believe there’s an elementary school or something educational along it.

Back in the mid 1990s when I encountered my first Wetzel’s Pretzels store, probably at Disney World, I erroneously associated the chain with the roadway and got it in my head that Wetzel’s Pretzels was founded in Upstate New York. It wasn’t. It was founded in California in 1994 or so but every time I see a Wetzel’s Pretzels I think of Wetzel Road in Onondaga County. The road is in the Town of Clay, to be exact.

Now that I think about it, there may have been a Wetzel’s Pretzels at one time in Carousel Center, the huge mall that turned into Destiny USA in the mid to late 2000s. Perhaps that was actually an Orange Julius which has nothing to do with Wetzel’s Pretzels, nor educational adventures on Wetzel Road in the Town of Clay.

Enjoy your pretzel, Shelby.

27 July 2022 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Leaks.

As the monsoon season continues here in the desert southwest, we are still seeing leaks in some key locations in our home. We still haven’t settled with the insurance company from last year’s monsoon damage and that has been an incredibly frustrating journey in frustration. Hopefully we’ll see some action on our claim next week when we return from vacation.

Unfortunately, some of the work we had done after last year’s monsoon needs to be redone this year. Good times. It’s not often wet in the desert, but when it is, we know too much about it.

26 July 2022 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Stuff.

Work has been incredibly busy again and I’ve been absolutely drained of energy at the end of the workday. Luckily, we have a mini-vacation coming up for the latter half of this week.

25 July 2022 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Ear Bug.

This song has been going through my head a lot lately. It’s one of those songs I associate with being a kid and riding with the rest of the family in Dad’s ’71 Chevrolet Heavy Chevy, usually headed north on Interstate 81 on a summer evening. He always listened to 62 WHEN.

From 1973, here’s Albert Hammond with his only top 20 hit, “It Never Rains In Southern California”. Interestingly, while Albert Hammond had only one hit on the Billboard charts, he wrote plenty of songs for lots of well known acts.

I’m digging his sideburns.

24 July 2022 by J.P. DJ 0

Caturday.

Last week at work was very hectic. There’s a lot of moving pieces in the foundation of technology at work, and trying to build software to run on a moving foundation can be an interesting adventure. As the project manager likes to say on the daily stand up calls, we have “lots of opportunity”.

Truman’s occasional visits to my 10-12 hour days in my office keep me sane, grounded, and happy. He enjoys sitting on his cat tree and looking out the window at all that’s going on in the world. He seems something moving in the palm trees on either side of the window but to this day I’ve never figured out what’s catching his attention. There’s probably a lizard or gecko or bird or something that’s blending in with the colors of the plants.

23 July 2022 by J.P. He's A Feline. 0

Attention Span.

I know plenty of folk that enjoy the Tik-tok. It’s a great outlet for creative types and those that want snippets of entertainment. I get the appeal, but it’s not my thing. I’m very concerned about the security around the app and the company, and the quick hits tamper with the way my brain works. I just prefer longer videos. As much as I don’t trust Google, I pay for the ad free version of YouTube. I know paying for the service doesn’t exempt me from the privacy invasion but at least I don’t have to watch ads.

I’ve noticed many other social media services have been trying to do the Tik-tok thing; Instagram now favors short videos instead of photos in my stream. This agitates me to the point of avoiding Instagram for days at a time now. This week I noticed YouTube is now putting a decent helping of “YouTube Shorts” in my search results and suggested videos streams.

WHY?

With social media reducing communication down to 280 characters, I know society is losing it’s ability to read anything longer than a paragraph. But just as a paragraph can’t tell the whole story, I feel like a 30 second video can’t tell a whole story either.

Back in the early days of “The Web” I never imagined a world where things would become so erratic and mind boggling. And don’t even get me started on the deception and dishonesty with too many nuggets of information on the Internet.

I guess my vision of the future was short sighted.

22 July 2022 by J.P. Why. 1

Patterns.

Last night’s flight in the Cessna 172. In case you’re wondering, you’re looking at one takeoff on Runway 33, followed by three instrument approaches to runway 6R, with a circle to land to a “full stop” on runway 24L. It was windy but I didn’t break anything.

21 July 2022 by J.P. Pilot. 0

Golden Hour.

On the way back from the airport this evening, my husband and I stopped at a local restaurant for a bite to eat. This is part of our typical Wednesday night, because Wednesday is the night I fly.

The sky was beautiful after supper. We call it the “Golden Hour”.

20 July 2022 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Update.

My work computer was forced to update to the latest corporate sanctioned version of Windows 10 last night. I have a love-hate relationship with my work computer; it’s alright for the most part but Windows 10 gets in my way a lot when I’m trying to be productive under pressure. In some ways it’s amazing to me that Windows 10 is the mandatory operating system at work, because of the “big three” (Mac, Windows, Linux), I found Windows to be the least productive environment to work in. There’s too much friction in accomplishing tasks and too much attention paid to keeping paradigms established 40 years ago. The whole “shuffle things around on a desktop” is so outdated.

And in their whimsical ways, Windows 10 now let’s you know it’s updating through a modified “blue screen of death”.

It’s a hoot and a half.

19 July 2022 by J.P. Geek 0

Early Morning.

In the desert it often gets too hot or stormy in the afternoon at this time of year for any sort of productive general aviation in a Cessna 172 or a Piper Cherokee. I like checking in to FlightRadar from time to time to see what I’m missing out on as I do my day job. All the smaller airplanes flying in the area at 6:00 AM (when I started my first meeting at work) are likely students getting their flights in before the desert heat makes things too bumpy.

18 July 2022 by J.P. Pilot. 0

Wetzel.

Leaks.

Stuff.

Ear Bug.

Caturday.

Attention Span.

Patterns.

Golden Hour.

Update.

Early Morning.

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