Truman isn’t a particularly cuddly cat. He has his own way of ritualizing his expressions of appreciation: every morning when I come out of the bedroom to great him he stands on his back paws and leans his front paws against my waist, without claws, but as if I was a scratching post. When I walk from my home office to the kitchen he jumps out from behind something and plants both paws against my leg and then runs, as if to say, “c’mon Dad, let’s play!”
Once in a while he’ll have his moments where he’ll give me a boop or a nudge to let me know he cares.
But pick him up? Nah, that’ll be four treats for five seconds, please.
I’ve always been fascinated by power lines. It’s connected to my geeky interest of all things connected.
These lines march across Indiana a little bit north of Indianapolis. We traveled in all 50 states but I don’t think I’ve ever seen towers of this design before.
I’m not feeling all warm and fuzzy about the Presidential election coming up in 2020. The news media is going to milk this for every monotonous penny they can squeeze out of the event. How many debates and town hall meetings do we need to have, here 15 months out from the election?
In a bizarre act of god knows what that I’ll never understand, the Republicans don’t have the balls to admit that Trump is a freakin’ train wreck and run a sane, hell I’d take someone that just isn’t senile, candidate in place of Lord Orange Flauntimess. The Democrats are literally throwing anything and everything they can against the wall to see what sticks and what falls like limp spaghetti.
The American public is going to be so burnt out from the process I’d be surprised if anyone turned up at the polls for primaries, let alone the general election.
I just want a candidate that doesn’t care about my love life, encourages people to work hard and better themselves, and recognizes the separation of church and state. Is that too much to ask?
I’ve talked about my gripe with the new LED streetlights installed by the city of Chicago. They’re way too bright, the light is harsh, and there’s no cover over the bare bulbs. If you glance upward at one of these monstrosities you’ll sear a Retina and have a spot in your field of vision for hours afterward.
They’re a great intention but a horrible execution.
One of the other delights about these new lights is the light given off doesn’t “spread” very well. You’ll notice in the photo above that’s it’s nearly as bright as daylight directly under the light but walk a few feet into the shaded portion of the sidewalk and you’re in near darkness. I’m sure the folks in the adjacent condos like that, after all, they can sleep without constant light barreling into their rooms, but there’s a lot of shadows in there that defeat the purpose of the brighter light to begin with.
My naive thinking has always thought light is light and light is going where light wants to go. But it appears LED light doesn’t create a warm glow that spreads all over. There’s no warm and fuzzy under a streetlight in the City of Chicago.
The definitely a delineation between the light and the darkness. Could be a sign of the times.
So today was an interesting day to reactivate the Twitter account.
I’ve tried to give up Twitter and Facebook, but I felt very disconnected from online pilot friends, the shenanigans in the White House, and family back East.
I don’t like the fact that we’ve come to rely on these ridiculous social media companies, but they’ve become as ubiquitous as Direct Digit Dialing.
Earl and I are watching the premiere of the 654th season of “The Voice”. They’ve amped it up this season and now spin the chairs three times before someone throws a jacket at the performer and they decide to wear it. Blake Shelton is handing out hip waders.
If we are going to have family time watching “The Voice”, I have to admit that I only like the blind auditions. I actually enjoy Kelly Clarkson and Gwen Stefani very much, and as long Xtina (was that designation gay enough?) doesn’t make an appearance I’m content.
So far the male performer with Asperger’s (I didn’t catch his name) has wowed me a lot. The others are good. A few try too hard. I miss the days when emoting != screaming.
I have a lot of respect for this guy. I don’t know who he is, I don’t know what he’s working on, nor do I know where he is working. I do know that he’s using a Mac in a public space in a seemingly good spot to get some work done. I find that awesome.
I’ve always had dreams of being a Digital Nomad. I love the idea of working remotely and I’m quite fortunate to be a company-sanctioned telecommuter, but I have a habit of setting up shop in my home office and doing all my work from there, rather than taking advantage of the digital tools available to me and working where I need to.
I do find I get more things done when I change up the scenery a bit. I like the white noise of a coffee shop while I’m working. I can’t have headphones in; I’m more of the type to have music playing in the background, which adds to the general ambiance of a room. I have specific needs to not throw off my concentration, and I occasionally have a hard time finding that at home. Getting out of the office more often would definitely help my concentration.
A couple of years ago work gave me a Windows 10 Dell Laptop, saying I had to make the switch due to security concerns on the network. Frankly I never turned in the company assigned Mac equipment I was given when I joined the company back in 2015, so I still use it from time to time. The Retina display, and the entire experience for that matter, far outshines the Windows 10 experience I have on my Dell laptop. I don’t know how anyone, in this day and age, can think a display resolution of 1366×768 can lend itself to any sort of productive endeavor, especially since Microsoft tries to cram everything and the kitchen sink into ribbons and buttons and advertising in their latest incarnations of Office products.
I’m going to have to read up on the Bring-Your-Own-Device policy at work to see if I can get back to a company-sanctioned Mac platform again. I already structure my day so I have meetings in the morning and development time in the afternoon. If I can maintain these two constants, I might be working from a local coffee shop sooner than later.
I am making updates to the infrastructure of code that runs my installation of WordPress for this blog. Since this blog is self-hosted, I’m responsible for making sure it runs like it should after I patch updates and the like. Luckily I haven’t tricked out the software too much; updates generally go smoothly.
If you can read this, the test has been successful.
If you can still read this, the test continues to be successful.
OK, so the third upgrade I did didn’t work. You couldn’t read the third iteration of the sentence of “if you can still read this…”
For the technically minded, I’m moving to newer versions of PHP on the server. I didn’t get things to where I wanted to be, but things are where they need to be. It works for me.
So last night we went to the movies to see “Downton Abbey”. I’ve been excited to see this movie since it was announced; I’ve missed watching the show and escaping to Downton on a weekly basis.
I shan’t spoil the plot here but I will say I thoroughly enjoyed the film, I could easily watch it again, and I find the presentation to be absolutely beautiful. It was a comfortable escape. It was a beautiful gift to the fans.
As the final credits rolled I realized I was feeling glum about the experience. It had nothing to do with the movie, as I said, it was a gorgeous cinematic event for me. I was realizing I had last seen the Crawleys et. al in 2015 and I was contrasting where my head was then versus where it is today. Though this has nothing to do with the movie, I realized the U.S. political climate has put me in a clouded funk since the 2016 election. I’ve actually known this but watching entertainment I dearly loved before American society lost its mind completely and contrasting the same escape during these dark times (The Age of Chaos and Insanity) forced me to take stock of the effects this insanity has had on me.
Shame on me for allowing the Trump administration and all its stupidity and stupid supporters to affect my mood at this magnitude.
I’m ready to go back to the movies and again to watch Downton Abbey to drink in its magnificence and to allow my head to escape to better times.
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.
