Listen.
I’m curious as to how many people started listening to satellite radio (Sirius/XM here in the states) this week because they received a new radio as a gift this past weekend. I know that Scott was very excited about his new satellite radio that he will be having installed in his Jeep. Tech toys are fun.
The folks on Sirius/XM 70s on 7 are saying that there are “thousands and thousands” of new satellite subscribers already. I find this interesting. I have satellite radio in my Jeep and I have to say that around 80% of the time it makes my radio listening on the commute better. There are times that satellite radio is really no different than cable television; a bunch of channels that are spewing out crap. A while back I was flipping around the dial when I landed on Martha Stewart’s channel. While the famed handiwoman wasn’t on her own station at the time, there was another woman who had one of the most annoying voices I have heard in a while going on and on about her private parts. I found this a little bit surprising because I didn’t think that a woman going on and on about her private parts and how they work really fit how I thought a Martha Stewart channel would sound like; I thought there’d be things like how to decorate cookies and grow plants and make a killing in the stock market. I don’t know who the woman was but she was very annoying.
If you listen to some of the music channels you’ll start to realize that they’re not really that different from the terrestrial counterparts, aside from the fact that they don’t have commercials (which is a really big plus). They like to play the same songs over and over again, though. The 80s on 8 channel is in love with Billy Joel. The 70s on 7 channel is torn between Billy Joel and Elton John. The Studio 54 channel plays 12-inch disco mixes of songs from the day in their entirety. I say you just can’t get enough marimba, even if you must listen to all 12 minutes and 32 seconds of France Joli’s “Come To Me”. As a former club DJ, I know that playing a 12-inch disco mix in it’s entirety is bad form and people in a club get cranky when the same song goes on for 12 minutes and 32 seconds.
So I’m curious as to how many people are actually avid satellite subscribers and enjoy it thoroughly. It seems to me that the services like Pandora, Spotify, Last.Fm and Rdio would be cutting into the satellite service revenue, but what do I know. I feel bad for terrestrial radio though, that’s just embarrassing these days.
I was approached a few months ago about designing and building a dance-based internet radio station. I met with the internet radio company and everything, but something didn’t feel quite right. I didn’t feel that I had the proper time and energy to spend on such a project, especially since it would be a side job type of thing until it made some serious cash. Truth of the matter is, I’m not really big on the latest and greatest in the way of current music. The use of auto-tune deprives the listener of any sort of heart, soul or feeling of a song. It’s reduced to a purely mechanical experience, one that is meant to generate revenue and nothing more. That’s one of the reasons I left radio in the first place; it became a bland, money hungry, computerized venture with no connection to the listener. Generic solutions to metrics and equations. I’m not going to put my blood, sweat and tears into something that gives no emotion back. A classic dance station would be a different story, something between the disco era and the auto-tune era. That might be interesting. Maybe someday.
Perhaps I could sell the concept to Sirius/XM for all their thousands and thousands of new subscribers. Let them bring the heart and soul and connection back via satellite.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Service.
So every holiday season Earl and I like to reward a server in a restaurant with a larger than normal tip. It’s our way of saying “thank you” to those that are squarely unappreciated by the public as a whole. The folks that strive to bring us a pleasant dining experience should be appreciated. We’ve seen too many well-intentioned folks get hollered at by surly customers, though on the flip side we’ve had a few that have rubbed us the wrong way but in even the worst of situations we’ve tried to keep it classy.
I think I’m digressing.
With the events and subsequent traveling that has taken place during the month of December, Earl and I have been eating out more than normal. I think it was when we were down in Bucks County, Pa. that I started asking him “Is this the one?”, referring to the server that we would reward with our holiday tip. I guess we weren’t feeling it because we kept our tipping at our standard approximately 20%, though we did give a slight bit extra to the lovely server that helped us out at that bistro that sits in the middle of Cherry Hill Mall in Cherry Hill, N.J.
Today Earl and I went shopping with the rest of the world, per our usual custom of buying ourselves something on the 26th of December, which is the anniversary of our original commitment ceremony. (Our wedding rings have been worn for 15 years as of today!) Since tomorrow is work day, I wanted to get home from the shopping excursion at a reasonable time, so we headed home from Albany around 4:30 p.m. Now I have mentioned a hundred or more times that I don’t really like driving the Thruway anymore, it’s wicked boring and since I could potentially drive the road everyday for work, I don’t really get my kicks on the toll road anymore. So I started heading home on Route 20. As we made our way to the outskirts of Albany, I asked Earl what he was in the mood for in the way of a meal on the way home. He said he didn’t care as long as he didn’t cook, and then he rattled off a few suggestions.
One of the cool things about US Route 20 in the eastern part of the Empire State is that it’s rural. Really rural. Like, there’s nothing but farm land rural. When he began mentioning a few places like a diner, or a Panera or a locally owned family restaurant, I suddenly realized that the best I would be able to drum up on our way home was the McDonalds attached to a gas station in the small village of Richfield Springs.
I turned north and headed to my stomping grounds around work. I instantly knew where I wanted to go; an Italian bistro that is creatively named “Plaza’s Italian Bistro” in the small city of Gloversville.
Our server’s name was Isaiah. A young lad in his 20s or so, he was very courteous, very efficient and more importantly, very charismatic and friendly without forcing it or being obnoxious about it. We often compare the friendliness of the server to a woman named Linda who worked at a place named Jack Appleseed’s back in the day; she would put her head up in the lamp that hung over the table and say she was wearing a hat. Then she would snort with laughter, somewhat like Chrissy Snow on “Three’s Company”.
That wasn’t our thing.
Since Isaiah went out of our way to make our dining experience comfortable, pleasant and not too rushed or not too long, he was dubbed the “holiday recipient of the week” where we tipped him generously and added a happy face and a hearty, handwritten “Happy New Year”. We left the restaurant right after signing the bill. As we walked outside, I saw Earl look in one of the windows, where Isaiah was picking up the bill, saw the note and the tip and looked around (presumably for us) and then smiled.
We hope he had a great night. We certainly did.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Joy.
I haven’t been sleeping very well the last couple of nights. The stress of the holidays, the passing of our fathers, worrying about getting everything that is expected to get done for both personal and work stuff getting done, these things have been weighing heavily on my mind.
I sometimes forget that I have a history of needlessly worrying. It’s something that I leaned when I was a young boy. You think that after all these years I would know better.
I found joy in the day when I saw everyone’s eyes light up as they were opening their gifts this morning. Though my exercises in shopping were rather hurried this year, it seems that I still did something right, because the genuine pleasure displayed when folks opened their gifts warmed my heart. My mother had wanted tickets to see “Celtic Woman” when they came to town, but she didn’t know that I new that. She was very emotional when she found out that she had tickets to the show. Earl seemed to love the gifts that I got him. Scott and Jamie were excited about their gifts as well. Sharing happiness, that’s what the holiday are about. Spread some joy.
We made the trek to my Dad’s house where members of that side of the family were assembled. A mixture of tears, smiles and conversation. All good. Then we went to have dinner with my mom, where we shared more smiles, tears and conversation. Again, all good.
I was afraid that I wouldn’t find joy in the holiday this year, but again, I worried for no reason. For there was much joy to be found and much joy to be shared.
Insomnia.
It must have been the sound of reindeer hooves on the roof that woke me up just a few minutes ago.
A joyous Christmas to all!
Spirit.
The spirit of the holiday season is the most important element of this time of year for me. I like to think that I have moved beyond accumulating large-ticket items under the tree; tokens of love are much more appropriate for me. When asked what I want for Christmas, my response this year has been “nothing, I have all that I want.”
With the passing of both my father and my father-in-law this month, I have to admit that it’s been rather difficult for me to find the holiday spirit. I have found the mingling of sympathy cards with Christmas cards in the mail to be rather solemn, though the sentiments of all were very much appreciated. It was a struggle to find the time to put up the Christmas tree this year; when I looked at it this morning, I marveled in it’s beauty (though the new tree topper we bought a year or two ago seems to be shorting out and blinking erratically).
I have struggled to find that Christmas spirit, but it has slowly been coming around and I have found ways to pass it along and bring the smile back to my face. After all, it’s the little things that count, like shaking the hand of and wishing a co-worker a Merry Christmas before they leave for the day, just after having a rather intense meeting with them. Or giving the fine folks at Dunkin’ Donuts a generous tip to thank them for having an iced tea ready whenever my Jeep is rumored to be in the area. Perhaps it’s sending a text message to someone that needs an electronic hug or leaving a voicemail wishing happy holiday sentiments to someone that you’ve only exchanged email with. It’s these little things that make the difference to me and it’s these little things that are showing me that the holiday spirit is very much alive and well.
Life is good. Happy Solstice. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Food.
My body is craving food today. I eat a piece of fruit and I’m hungry within 30 minutes. I think I just need some rest.
And maybe a cookie.
Being Social.
So I haven’t been feeling very social lately, though you would never guess this by my online activity because it seems like yesterday I was checking in all over the place on Foursquare. Many find Foursquare mundane. To tell you the truth, I too find it mundane, for the most part, because whether I’m standing in the middle of a random Dunkin’ Donuts is really going to have no bearing on the big picture of the world, except that I’ll be standing next to a jelly donut or something on that big picture, but I must admit that I get a kick out of seeing others that I recognize from Foursquare checkins. That’s kind of cool to me.
I have been doing some weeding and pruning of my various online social media accounts, trying to see what is going to fit right for what I want to do in the year 2012. I’m not a huge Facebook fan, though I am active on there because many family members, many friends and co-workers and a good chunk of my old high school buddies are on there. My rule of thumb for Facebook is that we have to know each other outside of the internet but if we don’t yet, we are going to meet somewhere, somehow within the next year. I’m not big on numbers, I couldn’t care less as to how many friends I have on Facebook; I’m content to have quality over quantity. My Facebook is, for the most part, intended for general audiences with a rating of PG-13 at the most. I do drop an occasional blue word on there, but not while I’m at the Dew Drop Inn. (And I don’t remember what show that is from, to my horror.)
Twitter is a bit of a different animal. I just honk out updates that are seemingly random. Well that’s because I think my brain acts randomly. I follow news makers, I follow actors, I follow geeks, I follow bears. I actually have a couple of Twitter accounts, including the one under my pr0n name, but it’s usually “TheTechBear” that gets the most activity. That particular account is not pr0n and you won’t see any shots of either my meat or my potatoes.
Since a lot of tech people who feel that they are important are on Google+, I try to maintain a presence on there but it feels like a desolated place. I have a couple of hundred people in my circles but there’s less than a dozen from that group that use that service with any sort of regularity. I keep hearing that Google+ is going to CRUSH Facebook and Twitter, spit them out and then laugh like a monster from Scooby-Doo (complete with bouncing jaw) but I have yet to see any sort of indication that this is what is really going on. I find the Google+ app on the iPhone to be rather annoying because it feels limited; on the iPad it’s just a mobile version of the web site and that’s buggy. In all actuality, I have been moving away from Google provided services over the last couple of weeks, the only thing, other than search and Google+, that I am using the service consistently for is Google Reader, which is maintaining my RSS feeds. They’ll probably get moved to Flipboard, now that Flipboard is available on both iPhone and iPad.
As I mentioned earlier in the post, I use Foursquare for location check-ins. Over the last couple of days I have started using Path 2, a social network designed for “family and close friends”. Path 2 is a gorgeous app and does everything in a timeline view. So far I have three connections on it, and these connections are people that I really like (based on internet interactions over the years) and that I have full intention in meeting very soon. I have yet to get the rest of my family on it, but someday that will happen. The thing I like about Path 2 is that I am able to forward selected information from Path 2 to Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare, so I am able to do things in one spot and then share at will. I like that.
I jumped on the Instagram bandwagon pretty early in the game and I love the service. You can see my Instagram photos in the left hand column of this blog thingee, here. Since I’ve been playing with Instagram I haven’t done much with my Flickr account, but one of my goals of 2012 is to take many, many more photos with my non-iPhone camera equipment, so I’ll probably revive the Flickr account soon. In fact, I have a model that has agreed to pose sometime in January for one of my ideas so I have to admit that I am rather excited about that.
Several weeks ago I completely stopped watching podcasts from the folks at TWiT and therefore I’m off of their IRC channels. I found myself unable to sit through an episode because everyone was trying to ham it up and I just wanted to hear what they had to say about tech and the like. When the producer started chiming in like an off-camera voice from god I decided that was enough and deleted them. Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m not interested in folks that are tipping the scales in favor of self-serving behavior. Maybe I’ve just grown tired and need a rest.
So despite all of these connections and networks that I am part of, I haven’t been really feeling that social. I have quite a bit of email to catch up on due to the things that have been going on in our lives over the past couple of weeks. Chatting in realtime is better anyway; though I’m not big on Facebook Messenger (there’s something that creeps me out about it but I couldn’t tell you what exactly), but I like using IM when I am on the computer, it just seems that folks are on differing systems (Skype, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, etc.) so I never know which one to sign into and I don’t want to be signed into a bunch at once. Unlike many of my gay brethren, I’m not looking for pseudo-sexual activity online when I’m logged into chat and I’m not going to go through the effort of getting myself pretty to start up the webcam and perform like a trained seal (I always tell people that I have plenty of benefits at home, thank you and no, Earl isn’t into trained seals).
So let’s recap, just in case I start feeling social again:
Twitter = TheTechBear
Facebook and Google+ = under my name, click the Facebook badge in the left hand column here on the blog
Foursquare = who knows, I think it’s tied to my phone number
Instagram = TheTechBear
Flickr = TheTechBear
Instant messengers = it could be anything. I need to find one service and create an account and go from there. Suggestions? Skype is iMachias.
Oh, and Google Voice (forgot I still use that until just now), in case you want to leave me a voicemail without actually reaching me: (315) 313-4579.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Spirit.
As I try to find the Christmas spirit this year, I can safely say that the exercise of shopping in the mall is not going to help me in this endeavor. Several elements of today’s day off did help though, including wishing each service person I had contact with a genuine Happy Holidays combined with a sincere smile. Most were quite pleasant. This was nice.
I had lunch with our friend Mike. We have known him for several years, he is the one that first approached me as we walked through a mall several years ago and he recognized me from the mall. Having a friendship result from this is quite cool. We are only a month apart in age and we share several similar interests, so the conversation at lunch today was effortless and incredibly overdue. We are looking forward to getting together again after the holidays.
I can say that I have about 98% of my shopping done. I am looking forward to reaching that definite 100%. Once that is done I will be able to truly enjoy the holiday spirit.
Until then, I’ll just do my best.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Smile.
I have mentioned before that my commute to work takes place on back roads for the majority of the ride. I pass by many farms and through many fields along the way to work and quite frankly I like this for a couple of reasons; it reminds me of the area where I grew up and where Earl and I had our first home and more importantly I don’t feel as rushed to get to work. Driving the Thruway to work is like a battleground lately as I opt to drive right around the speed limit while others run up to the back of the Jeep and then swoosh around me in a flurry of hyperactivity as they urgently dash off to where they need to be at 20 miles per hour over the posted speed limit, usually while gabbing on the phone or sending an urgent text message while driving in the left lane for as long as possible. A year ago I would have been among their number, but a lot has changed for me in a year.
Right near the county line along the open hilltops is a rather large farm. There is a large, two-story red brick house that looks like it was built around 1900 or so. The house is flanked by a couple of barns, a small, fenced off cemetery area and a scattering of farm equipment. Behind the house is a drop off down into the Mohawk Valley, across the street is a small mobile home situated on a lot in the middle of a field. More farm equipment flanks the mobile home and there is usually a one ton pickup truck with dual wheels on the back sitting in the driveway. At least one day per week a farmer is walking from the mobile home to the main farm across the street when I pass by the property. I say he’s a farmer because he has a farm machinery company hat on (he’s a John Deere guy by the looks of it), he wears a Carhartt when the weather calls for it or else he is wearing a pair of work jeans that are being held up by suspenders. He just has that farmer ‘look’ to him.
Now I’m going to admit that I noticed this farmer the first time I saw him waiting to cross the street after I passed because he’s bearish. Unlike a good majority of the gay population, I’m not attracted to those that spend an inordinate amount of time trying to look a certain way and go out of their way to defy their natural age and the resulting evolution of their body as they age. I like to hug or be hugged by a guy that’s going to give or reciprocate with a big ol’ bear hug. While others may mock those that aren’t physically fit or muscular as manicured by spending way too much time at the gym, I dig guys that find their fitness naturally, in their own way and have a comfortable feeling to them. “Farmer Bear”, as I have dubbed him in my head though I have no inclination as to whether he would even know what a bear is, is a guy that just looks like a hard working guy in his late 40s or early 50s. The thing I instantly noticed about him is that he is almost always smiling. If I pass him on my way to work, usually around 7 a.m., he is smiling. It’s not a crazy, wild man smile, but just a pleasant grin that’s surrounded by ample beard. If I pass him on my way home, he’s smiling then too as he heads in the other direction.
Now some would wonder what he’s smiling about because he works on a farm, probably smells a little bit like manure or some other fertilizer and he lives in a small mobile home (quick guess would be that it’s probably a 12’x55′ from the 70s) on an open lot that has little in the way of vegetation surrounding it. The farm is in the middle of nowhere, the closest town being at least 10 miles away. Since I drive by this place almost every day, I have ascertained that he doesn’t have satellite or cable television since there’s no evidence of either being connected to the small mobile home; all that I see is a television antenna mounted to the side of the trailer. The big house across the street has been lit up every night since the transition back to Standard Time in November, occasionally others from the farm will be walking in the direction of the main house. I like to think that this family, whether biologically related or just through the camaraderie that results from working a farm together, dines at around 6:00 p.m., much like many of the farmers I’ve known over the years do every night after the chores are completed.
I think I know why Farmer Bear is smiling. He’s obviously happy and while others may decree that his life is simple, what with working a farm, driving a tractor, living in a small mobile home and the like, he’s apparently found what he wants in life. When we do this, we smile without even thinking about it. And hopefully, that smile becomes contagious and others are prompted to smile, either involuntarily or through thinking about what would make them smile and the finding the reason to do so.
Farmer Bear will probably never know that he’s made me smile when I see his smile and that I admire the little life he apparently has going there on his little plot of land, all based my assumptions from passing by repeatedly at 55 MPH. But whatever his life circumstance is, I hope he continues to find a reason to smile everyday.
His smile has given me the drive to continue to find a reason to smile myself.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
