So Busy.

We have a very big software migration project coming to fruition next weekend. The requirements have been all over the place, some of the testing team has been quite cranky, and the migration date has been pushed off a number of times. It looks like things are a “go” for next weekend. Of course they picked the weekend our friends Jeff and Mark in town for a visit.

I’ve been working many extra hours over the past few weeks, trying to keep up with all the demands of the job. I’m tired. And as I discovered when we first moved to Chicago, the business world in the United States is all about the Eastern Time Zone. Folks on the East Coast forget that a meeting at 8:30 AM there is a meeting at 5:30 AM here. Oh well, I guess.

I was playing around with a cheap webcam on my old Mac mini in my office and just took this photo. The workstation behind me in the photo is where I do all my day job work. I’m not particularly a fan of Windows 10 and there’s many times when I think, “I could do this much faster on a Mac”, but I don’t have that choice. My employer is in love with Microsoft.

It could be worse.

13 May 2022 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Escape.

I’ve been wanting to escape to our northeast for a week in pursuit of some severe storm chasing. My husband said he’s not really feeling the need to join me on this trip. With his blessing, I’m off for a week the first full week of June.

I’m really excited about this.

I think I’m going to fly to a destination and then rent a car to drive home, focusing on storms and back roads. My plan is to avoid freeways whenever possible.

I’ll be armed with a camera or two, some weather radios, some “real” maps, and a little more than a week of open calendar and open road.

I’ll be blogging about the experience when this takes place. Hopefully Mother Nature will be cooperative.

11 May 2022 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Flowers.

These flowers along our driveway always make me smile. I don’t need “signs of spring” to bring me out of a funk these days; the lack of snow from living in the desert achieves that for me naturally.

The previous owners of our home did quite well with the landscaping. We’ve had to make a couple of changes due to the intensity of last year’s monsoon but for the most part the landscaping company keeps our grounds looking lively and lovely.

10 May 2022 by Desert Life. 0

Retro.

Someone I follow on Mastodon posted this ad for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. The ad has some happy cats riding along on the train and this made me smile. I always enjoy these mid-century ads and other artwork, especially when shown in its original context. Memes are fun, but sometimes I the original more fun.

Plus, happy cats!

9 May 2022 by Geek 0

Ma.

My mother hates being called “Ma”. As kids we were always corrected to use “Mom” instead of “Ma”, usually through loudly executed dialog.

I talked to Mom this morning and wished her a Happy Mother’s Day. She was outside enjoying the Central New York spring weather with my nephew’s dog. As part of the CNY ritual, she was sitting in the garage with the door open watching the activities in the neighborhood. That’s what folks do up there.

Here’s a photo from 2019 that makes me smile. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

8 May 2022 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Calmer.

So for the past seven days I’ve reduced my Twitter usage by about 98%. I haven’t deleted my accounts or anything but my interaction time has waned. I miss some of the people I’ve developed a friendship with over the years; I need to find alternate ways of maintaining a connection.

The biggest change I’ve noticed from this new approach to Twitter is that I’m a lot less anxiety ridden about what’s going on in the world. As I’ve mentioned before, opinions and debate from all sides of the political spectrum can become quite shouty over on Twitter. I don’t know what Elon Musk is talking about when it comes to “limitations of free speech” because there’s a lot of free speech being bandied about over there and a good chunk of it is quite ugly.

I still firmly believe that technology has outpaced society’s ability to use it properly responsibly. There are too many people that lack the moral foundation of sharing truth, listening to others, and such and more concerned with the dopamine hit that results from screaming absurdities and getting the audience riled up.

We need to thrive on intelligent dialog and debate, not dopamine hits of this nature. Of course, the dopamine hit approach is egged on by algorithms designed by the social media companies to ramp up engagement so they can get richer. It’s a rather ugly situation but one that is not going to go away any time soon.

In the meantime, I decide to step away a lot. My sanity is much more important.

7 May 2022 by Ponderings and Musings 2

Caturday.

Things have settled down in the world of cats and puppies and Truman seems much more calm in his usual haunts. He does enjoy eating out of the dogs’ water bowl. He tried a couple pieces of dog chow and decided it was not for him.

Here’s a photo of him checking out the sunset, followed by the relaxation period after enjoying the sunset.

7 May 2022 by He's A Feline. 0

A Night Out.

We decided to go out to dinner this evening. It was a good time; even after 26+ years we still very much enjoy each other’s company

The service at the restaurant was a little uneven. This didn’t deter us from an enjoyable evening, but the awkwardness was noticeable. The server seemed to be struggling a little bit, for example, when he ran down the dessert list he mentioned “chocolate chip, pumpkin, strawberry shortcake, etc.” but didn’t tell us what the dessert actually was. To avoid making things more confusing, I passed on asking “chocolate chip, what?” and just went with strawberry shortcake, which turned out to be a cookie with a scoop of ice cream.

6 May 2022 by Fun and Games Dept 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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