Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

Age.

Maude and walter 1973

Doing some quick math in my head earlier today I came to the realization that on my next birthday in July I will be 48 years old. 48. I’m not having an aging crisis because quite frankly, I don’t really feel like I’m 48 years old. People that are 48 years old are adults doing adult things, and honestly, I’m still a kid at heart.

When we are growing up we think that anyone in their mid to late 40s is ancient. I remember watching the old sitcom “Maude” and thinking they were old people. In reality, Maude and Walter were 47 and 49 during the first season the show. Conrad Bain, playing Arthur, was 48. I certainly don’t feel like I’m their age. I don’t even wear flowing caftan things over a pant suit. I currently do have a mustache like Bill Macy did when we played Walter and upon further examination of the show, I have more gray in my mustache that he had in his when he was depicting a 49 year old (in real life he was 50 at the time). I feel like I’ve accomplished many things in my life and am at a comfortable place, but I certainly don’t feel like I’ve “grown up”. Heck, my parents were my age when they met my husband! Where has the time gone?

I wonder if Bea Arthur and William Macy felt like kids at heart when they played their famous roles. In reality, I suppose that is what’s most important in the long run, how we feel on the inside. As long as I continue to be who I am, try to stay reasonably fit and enjoy life to the fullest, I suppose I’ll always be a kid at heart.

20 March 2016 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 1

Geek Weekend.

I’ve decided that I’m going to embrace my inner geek this weekend and enjoy myself with many things technological. I have already installed a new file server on our network. The file server of choice is a WD MyCloud Mirror. To get completely in the weeds, this is a RAID-1 setup, so all of our data stored in the file server is mirrored to a second hard drive. This helps keep our data extra secure.

After I’m done copying all of the relevant files to the new file server, I’m going to consolidate the various hard drives we have installed elsewhere on the home network and make them all available through this new file server.

There’s quite a few changes I need to make to the network to get it in top notch condition again, but I won’t bore you with the details of changing routers, reconfiguring the wifi hotspot and the like.

By the end of the weekend everything should be tuned for speed and backed up in a brilliant manner.

And I will be one happy geek.

19 March 2016 by J.P. Geek 0

Blue Apron.

Earl and I are a couple of busy guys. I like to think of us as a “Power Couple”, however, neither of us wear “Power Pearls”, which many of the women I worked with did back in the 1980s.

Even though I work from home, I don’t have a lot of time to devote to meal preparation. Earl is rarely in the mood to cook a gourmet meal after ten or so hours at the office. In the past, we’ve ended up eating a lot, which hit our budget quite hard and hit our waist lines even harder.

Enter Blue Apron. We subscribed to the service back in January and have been thoroughly pleased with the experience.

If you’re not familiar with Blue Apron, here’s how it works. Earl chooses three meals for a menu presented at each week. Blue Apron recommends the three meals based on our profile. Every Thursday morning we get a box with all the ingredients, pre-measured but not fully prepared, for the three meals we have selected. They include everything. If you need a tablespoon of sugar, there’s a little bag with a tablespoon of sugar.

Each meal is outlined on a recipe card, complete with projected preparation time, cooking time and the like. The recipes are wicked easy to follow and so far the results have been absolutely delicious. One of the best things about this arrangement is that the meals are between 500 and 800 calories per serving. That’s a heck of a lot less than what we would eat at a restaurant, but the portions are a hearty size and enjoyable.

One of the things that I have really enjoyed is the time Earl and I are spending together in the kitchen preparing the meals. It gives me a chance to improve my cooking skills, it is yet another opportunity for the two of us to spend time together and in the old American tradition, we are able to enjoy a nice little family supper at home with relative ease (though with Jamie in Chicago, the entire family isn’t here at the moment).

The meals feature things that we wouldn’t normally eat. Last night we had Triple Pork Mazemen, which was as fun to prepare and eat as it was to pronounce.

If you’re looking for a way to improve your home meal time experience, I highly suggest Blue Apron. The cost is reasonable (around $20 per meal for the two of us), the food is delicious and together time is always a good time.

17 March 2016 by J.P. Flickr Food. 0

Technological Foresight.

I’ve had this lingering memory of a lawyer-based television show set in the future. I remembered watching it once or twice and that one of the witnesses on the stand is asked the name of the current President of the United States. The answer? “Oprah Winfrey”. My other memory of the show was that while it took place in the future, it didn’t take place far in the future, maybe a decade or two.

Yesterday during a lull at work I execute some cleverly worded Google searches and found the show in question: “Century City”.

“Century City” was a mid-season replacement for CBS in 2004. Only nine episodes were made; I believe the original run was for eight episodes. From what I’ve found online, this short series is available on Hulu. I’ve been watching it on YouTube. This morning I was watched the pilot episode. The main cast is comprised of all familiar faces, before watching it this morning I hadn’t remembered the Viola Davis was on the show. She’s pretty much playing a tamed down version of Annalise Keating (“How To Get Away With Murder”) without the flash-forwards and intensity of being involved in several murders.

I digress.

The show is set in the year 2030. The pilot contained several current day topics including the ethics of cloning, plastic surgery and the use of steroids. Court proceedings can take place via hologram. The plot of the pilot was good but it didn’t blow me away. I look forward to watching the rest of the series as time permits.

The one thing that fascinated me about the show is how the writers and production staff saw the future. Since the show was produced in 2004, before smartphones and tablets became mainstream devices, their view of the future is a little more desktop computer based than I expected it to be. The desktop computers look futuristic with their translucent displays and tiny bases supporting them. The storylines seem to indicate that Microsoft continues its monopoly and grew in ways from what we’ve seen in real life (apparently in a later episode it is mentioned that Microsoft put the first colony on the Moon.) Everyone is tied to their desktop, no one is walking around with a tablet, heck, no one is even walking around with a Star Trek Tricorder.

Other advancements in this Century City future are quite interesting: pitless cherries, seedless grapes, high speed bullet trains in Los Angeles (much like the Hyperloop that Elon Musk is working on), holograms everywhere and PowerPoint presentations via 3D displays. This stuff was quite nifty.

One thing that I enjoyed was the tackling of the philosophical challenges of their future: the ethics behind cloning, the purposeful manipulation of DNA to create designer babies and Mick Jagger still performing at a Boston concert at 87 years old, thanks to age defying steroids and plastic surgery (he’s not on the show, a “boy band” of 70 year old men mentions his name when defending their genetic manipulation).

And most interestingly, the idea that Oprah Winfrey became President at age 76.

The future wasn’t all rosy in “Century City” but I think it was believable in 2004. It’s a shame this show didn’t do better. It’s a nice cross between a legal procedural and science fiction. I look forward to watching the handful episodes of the show.

And maybe I’ll write Oprah’s name in come November.

15 March 2016 by J.P. Geek 0

Time.

I don’t like zombies. I don’t like television shows about zombies. I don’t like movies about zombies. I even turn off any Scooby-Doo episodes that have a zombie. Those meddling kids.

After the time change this weekend I feel like a zombie. Not even a dancing “Thriller” zombie. I spoke with some other folks that feel the same way about Daylight Saving Time. I’m going to have a drink with the others trapped in constant jet lag until the end of DST in November.

Nostrovia.

14 March 2016 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Pretend Time.

I just tweeted about the beginning of “Daylight Saving Time” here in the United States. Our clocks around the house are now in sync with the annual lie of the government telling the populace that they’ll get an extra hour of sunlight if they just set their clocks forward an hour. We’ve all heard the benefits: energy savings (false), the farmers want it (really false), people are more productive (still false).

When Indiana started using Daylight Saving Time in 2005, energy use went up.

The farmers don’t really enjoy Daylight Saving Time because they’d rather be milking Bessie in the morning daylight, not in the lingering darkness of the preceding night.

The thing is, time is an erred human application to nature. Before 1883, noon represented when the sun was at its highest point in the sky on a particular day. That measurement is a pretty close representation to what our bodies are trying achieve – stay in sync with the natural rhythm of the planet and the solar system. But humans, American humans in particular, are hell bent on bending nature to their whims and trying very hard to fight the system all in the name of having “more” sunlight. There isn’t more sunlight. We are going to get the same amount of sunlight whether we state that solar noon is 11 a.m., 12 noon or 6 p.m. It’s how we use our time that matters. Perhaps if we all just slowed down a little bit, didn’t try to cram 30 hours of activities into 24 hours and stopped dinking around with the clocks, we’d be less hostile and cranky.

We need to stop pretending (thank you Séan for calling it what it is, Pretend Time).

13 March 2016 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 0

Perspective.

I am currently at the local casino. Earl and I are trying our luck this evening and he is having better luck than I am. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just the way it is.

There are a lot of drunk people here. Many are dressed in green and screeching about St. Patrick’s Day, which isn’t until the 17th but the celebratory parade in town took place today and people have been falling down drunk since 10 am or so. As a man with a lot of Irish blood in my veins (as well as the appropriate complexion, hair color and temperament), I kind of get offended by all these people running around coloring anything and everything green, getting stupid drunk and screaming that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. It bothers me. I quipped to Earl that people would be offended if I got drunk and screamed “everyone is black on MLK Jr’s birthday!” I might have mentioned something about black face too but I don’t want to come across as overly insensitive.

Honestly, I want to drink one beer this evening. A Guinness. Nothing more, nothing less. All the “Irish” folks are drinking chilled piss such as Michelob Ultra or Corona, because nothing scream about the old sod like a bottle of Corona.

Perhaps when I find Guinness in this place I’ll be less disagreeable.

12 March 2016 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Sizzle.

I went for my first bike ride of the year yesterday. The weather was rainy, the temperature was in the mid 50s and I hadn’t really planned on going for a ride until the last minute, but I felt determined and energized so I decided to go.

The rode for a little under 45 minutes, clocking in almost 8 miles in that time. It was not my fastest ride by any stretch of the imagination, but it was one of my earliest rides in any given year and despite being soaking wet when I got home, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

We live in what is roughly the geographic center of New York State. Many years ago this “hub” location was chosen by the New York State Power Authority to bring many of the high voltage wires strung across the Empire State together. A couple of miles up the road from us is a big switching station, with guards and helicopters zooming in and out and large sets of power lines going off in all directions to the various corners of the state, neighboring states and Canada and the like. One set of wires headed to Niagara Falls passes about a third of a mile behind the house. Several times a year I watch helicopter pilots navigate along the wires as others on board do inspections of the towers, the wires and the surrounding landing. A couple of times I’ve seen guys in impressive safety suits walking on the wires.

Riding up the wires yesterday I couldn’t help but notice the loudness of the “sizzle” I could hear coming from the wires. The spacers within the lines held the lines in place or the insulators that mount the lines to the tower were making a very audible “sizzling” sound, undoubtedly from the rain and the moisture in the air.

If you look really closely in the picture above, you’ll notice a neighbor’s play area in their backyard directly under the far right leg of the circuit crossing their land. I wondered about the safety of this, as well as the sizzling sound, so I spoke with a friend of mine who used to work up at the Power Authority.

The sizzling sound is not uncommon but is harmless. There have been a lot of studies of the effects of the electric fields generated by these types of lines but none of them specifically attributed any adverse health effects to the electric fields themselves. There may be a link between the creosote used in the wooden poles and health effects. I found this to be quite interesting. Another point of interest was that these two sets of wires that pass through our neighborhood are not the highest voltage of the wires in the area, that honor belonged to the wires that had due north to the Canadian border and Hydro Québec.

I’m tempted to take some fluorescent lights out to the field again like I did a few years ago to see if I can get to light up in my hand. I find electricity to be so fascinating, even when it’s making a sizzling sound.

11 March 2016 by J.P. Geek 0

That’s The Spirit.

A fight broke out on Spirit Airlines flight 141 from Baltimore to Los Angeles yesterday morning. Two women, reported to be intoxicated, brought a “boom box” onto the flight and were playing their music loudly. When a group of other women complained, they turned up the tunes and waved their boombox in the air. Apparently this went on for nearly the duration of the flight and a fight broke out between the two women. Screaming, punching, hair pulling, the works. One of the flight attendants was punched in the face. Several onlookers recorded the fight on their iPhones so that they could share on the Internet and get likes and ad dollars and whatnot.

Here’s a report from the Los Angeles Times (link).

Being a somewhat opinionated individual, I have several thoughts on this story.

Spirit Airlines flight 141 from Baltimore to Los Angeles left BWI at 0824 ET, arriving at LAX at 1034 PT. That’s might early to be intoxicated.

I’ve never flown on Spirit Airlines because, well, they don’t have a reputation for being a classy outfit and I tend to steer away from those types of experiences, especially when it involves being sealed up in an aluminum tube at 35,000 feet for several hours with a bunch of strangers. I have the impression that Spirit Airlines is basically a Wal*mart checkout line with wings.

While I don’t think this was a 1980s boombox, complete with cassette deck and the like, it’s rude to play your music without headphones in a public space, period, end of story, full stop. Earl and I had to endure a woman in a diner over the holidays that kept playing Christmas music off her iPhone and dancing around her booth as she waited for her double portion of Pork Roll. To this day I still can’t wipe out the horrible fidelity of the music nor the ugly Christmas sweater from my memory.

Who gets into a fist fight on an airplane? Who has the energy to get into a fist fight at 10:30 in the morning? Why did the TSA allow a boombox on the airplane in the first place? (Quick side note – the bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland was concealed in a boombox). Why did the flight attendants address the issue before the situation escalated into a fight between passengers? Why didn’t the passengers recording the fight on their mobile devices step in and try to stop it?

If I had been the pilot I would have introduced the passengers to a maneuver called a “steep turn”. That would have shut them up. There’s a reason I don’t fly for the airlines.

Back to the intoxication. Why were they allowed on the flight? In my years of airline travel I’ve seen a few passengers pulled from a flight for being too drunk. The airline put them up in a hotel so they could sober up and fly safely the next day. Why were these intoxicated women allowed on the flight?

This is yet another example of the dwindling of any sort of manners, dignity or socially acceptable behavior in public. As trash continues to be glorified by the media people think they can do whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want.

It’s just another example of The New Spirit of America.

10 March 2016 by J.P. Why. 0

Health.

As a middle-aged American private pilot I am required by the FAA to have a physical every two years. This physical has to be completed by an FAA Aviation Medical Examiner. Luckily, there are several in the area so finding an AME in these parts isn’t a difficult thing to do. The physical is a thorough assessment of eye sight, color perception, reflexes, blood pressure and the like, overall physical well being and a review of medications and medical history. There are many disqualifying medications, luckily I’m not taking any of them. Yesterday I was deemed fit enough to fly for another two years. To celebrate I went on a solo flight last night and practiced some night landings to maintain my night currency. I have to have three full-stop landings within 90 days to take passengers up with me at night.

One of the things that we talked about during my flight physical was my weight gain since my physical two years ago. My weight has always been akin to a yo-yo. I’m not the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life but I’m currently in the upper 2/3rds of my average weight swings and I’d like to shed a few pounds, primarily to lower my blood pressure naturally and to feel physically better about myself.

That’s where smart choices come in.

Unfortunately, out in the wild there’s a lot of false information out there when it comes to making healthy choices. For example, the convenience store on the corner sells fountain drinks in small, medium and large sizes: 24, 32 and 44 ounce cups. To combat any guilt of one consuming that much sugar, they offer two types of ice: Low Carb and Diet Ice.

Honestly, I don’t know what the difference between Low Carb and Diet Ice is, because ice should be frozen water, which shouldn’t have any calories nor carbs. I mean, water is water. I asked the clerk and she said it was plain water, there was nothing special about it other than it was Low Carb and good for diets.

Every once in a while I treat myself to a diet pop, which I know isn’t good for me. I’ve cut back on diet pop consumption considerably, having such a drink only once or twice a week. I’ve lost a couple of pounds since making this adjustment, and every little bit helps. I’m also focusing on salads; Earl and I just enjoyed a wonderful salad for lunch this afternoon. Another thing that we are doing is eating at home more and saving eating out for when we travel.

The most important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle is moving, and this is something that I am trying to do on a daily basis. When you make your living sitting at a desk staring at a computer all day, it’s important to get up and move at least once an hour. I also go for two 20-minute walks during my workday, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Now that spring is here I plan on riding the bike before work, for the past couple of weeks I’ve been braving the traffic in the neighborhood and walking on the shoulder of our busy road. Every step counts.

I have a goal of losing a privately-determined amount of weight by my birthday in July. It’ll take a lot of small steps to get there, but every step counts.

9 March 2016 by J.P. Fitness. 0

Age.

Geek Weekend.

Blue Apron.

Technological Foresight.

Time.

Pretend Time.

Perspective.

Sizzle.

That’s The Spirit.

Health.

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