Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

The Hard Way.

Verizon Wireless recently announced that they are going to start selling the iPad in their stores. The Apple device will be the Wi-Fi version only, since AT&T carries the 3G version of the product, however, Verizon is going to start bundling their Mi-Fi device with the wi-fi iPad (MiFi and WiFi get along pretty well) for the same price as the iPad with 3G, bringing the same functionality to the wi-fi version with just a little extra hardware and on the Verizon network instead of the AT&T network.

Did that make sense?

I already have a wi-fi iPad and I love it very much. I do much of my remote surfing on my iPad now and the experience is quite nice. There have been a few occasions, however, where I wish I had 3G network access instead of needing to find a wi-fi hot spot. Unfortunately, the same reason that I no longer have an iPhone holds true for why I bought the wi-fi iPad: AT&T’s 3G coverage in Central New York sucks. I checked with co-workers last week and confirmed that they do not get 3G network access on their phones in the general area around work. The 3G on my Verizon-connected Motorola Droid works brilliantly (hence why I’m on Verizon) but if I want to connect my iPad to the internet, I need to rely on the citywide wireless DSL that ironically costs more per month than the AT&T 3G plan that comes with the appropriate iPad.

Earl announced to me last week, in a very serious voice, that he was tired of carrying two cell phones around and no longer wanted his Droid. This is understandable and I agreed that it was probably cumbersome to carry around two phones. He wanted to terminate the contract on his Droid and just stick with his work issued Blackberry, and then probably get something else for connectivity when he is on the road. (I am going to set him up with a Google Voice account that he can use with his Mac or an upcoming iPad). The problem is, Verizon Wireless was poised to soak us with an early termination fee. We considered this when making this decision but in the back of our minds it seemed like we were throwing money at the wind.

So on Saturday I converted Earl’s personal cell number to a Verizon Mi-Fi device. I now can have up to five devices connected on a portable wi-fi hotspot using Verizon’s 3G service. Not only does this save us some money on a monthly basis (because it’s cheaper than the citywide WiFi when you consider the money we saved by removing Earl’s phone from the cell plan), but we can now also surf the internet wherever there is a Verizon 3G signal. It is quite nifty and I’m happy to say that this is seemingly faster than the citywide wifi, even as we type. In addition, should the RoadRunner connection at the house go down, we now have a back-up plan and can still maintain some sort of connectivity.

Astute readers of the blog may have noticed that I am blogging more again and that’s on purpose. The creative outlet is helping me psychologically and of course it’s something that I really enjoy doing. I’m also sharing more tech stuff on my iMachias twitter feed (see link at right). This new Verizon MiFi connection is helping with that immensely.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, if/when the Verizon iPhone comes out next year, I am absolutely going to get back onto the iPhone platform and sell my Droid. I like the Droid but I loved the iPhone. It was AT&T that messed that up for me.

It’s good to be a geek.

18 October 2010 by J.P. Geek 2

Learning.

So I just passed through the local Dunkin Donuts drive through as part of my daily lunch routine. I normally order a large, unsweetened iced tea with lemon and enjoy that throughout the afternoon, but today I decided to get a little crazy and order a chocolate chip cookie to go along with the iced tea. I have a meeting scheduled to start at 1500 and go until 1600 tomorrow, so I figured I would need the extra sugar. On the other hand, adding the cookie breaks my record of consistency with the ordering process. I strive to achieve what my mother did back in the day, she could call the local pizza place, just say “It’s Sandi” and hang up the phone and 30 minutes later a pizza cooked to perfection would arrive at the door. No directions, no topping notices, no haggling over the tip. Consistency got the pizza joint trained like so many cocker spaniels and it was good. I was hoping to achieve the same with Dunkin Donuts with the intent of them recognising the hum of the Acura but now it’s all crazy because of that chocolate chip cookie.

But I digress.

And I didn’t get the chocolate chip cookie.

Instead, I got the aforementioned iced tea with a toasted bagel smothered in pink goo. The goo was acting like a glue and holding the two halves of the bagel together. I figured one was suppose to eat it like a sandwich.

First of all, pink food of any nature just makes me nervous unless it’s a jam and then it should be much more red than pink. This pink was almost neon pink, kind of like something you would find on Cyndi Lauper’s hair back when she was telling us that She Bopped. Pink is not a natural food color. However, I was feeling adventurous and thought I was give this errant bagel a try, since it was toasted and all.

I’d rather eat shaving cream.

Wow, that pink goo had the strongest, foulest taste of strawberry substitution I had ever had in my life and that includes any attempts at downing a glass of Strawberry Quik. It was just plain awful. I chucked the bagel with goo into the bag and hastily grabbed the lemon out of my iced tea glass and licked the lemon, hoping to get the goo taste out of my mouth.

This got me to thinking, this chemically induced taste ‘sensation’ can not be good for us. If one peruses the interwebs in the right places you’ll find Public Service Ads for various things back in the day, and by that I mean back in the early 1950s. You know how many of us cringe now when we see Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethel smoking up a storm on every episode of “I Love Lucy” or when the Flintstones were smoking in their cave and the like? I’m sure more than one person has muttered to themselves, “What in the world were they thinking back then?” It’s like when we dumped chemicals into the river and killed Onondaga Lake or, and this one really gets me, when we covered models’ faces with radioactive dirt from Yucca Flats so a cleansing cream company could demonstrate how well it really worked. (They never show the part where their faces melt). Again, reading those sentences may make you think,”What were they thinking?”

Do you think in 20 or so years that we’ll be saying “What were we thinking?” when we think back to the all the artificial flavors and fake sweeteners and genetically modified food that we are eating today? I have told the story of when Frito Lay was doing a trial of their “Olean” product here in Upstate New York back in the mid 1990s. The stuff erupted my stomach in a way that hasn’t happened again and quite frankly to this day I still can not look at that tree just off Thruway Exit 24 without remembering how much I desperately needed toilet paper after a few munches of some sour cream and onion chips with that crap in it. Explosive bowels, my ass (no pun intended). Hiroshima had it good. Now do we run (no pun intended) around screaming that we want Olean (aka Olestra) in our food? Not so much. We know better.

One can’t escape High Fructose Corn Syrup these days unless you just make something yourself and now that it’s getting a bad rap they want it renamed to “corn sugar”. Why is it getting a bad rap? Because it’s probably bad for you and renaming HFCS as “corn sugar” is the same as renaming cancer sticks as “Kool”.

The bagel with the pink goo is now in a trash bucket where I have no doubt that it will survive 2012 and beyond. It’s much like that Happy Meal everyone has been chatting about this week, the one that was left in the garage for six months and it didn’t decompose, it looks the same as it did the day it was made. That’s freakin’ scary to me.

I think I’ll just start making an extra thermos of tea so that I don’t have another pink goo catastrophe.

Connection.

This is my second time writing this blog entry. I hope it’s as good as it was the first time around. The wordpress app on the iPad blows and has convinced me to find another way of blogging.

Over the past several months I have expressed a frustration with the social networks, especially Twitter and Facebook. Back in the day when these sites were fairly new, they had an on-going cocktail party feel to them, one could engage in banter of vary intensities and on a myriad of topics and feel like they were part of something. But like any good party, word got out on how much fun we were having and the casual cocktail parties morphed into a frat party, complete with loud obnoxious people spilling crap all over the place.

One of the more frustrating elements of these social networks is the limit of 140 characters to a message. While this adds to the whole cocktail party feel, this limitation lends itself to “barking” instead of “narrating”. For example, I could bark out that “Sarah Palin is a dumb bitch whore”. While this would fit into my colorful way of prose, it doesn’t really afford me the opportunity to really engage my audience in such a proclamation nor does it give me the chance to explain why I feel this way. Throwing out a statement like that is like a hit and run at the aforementioned party, bark out a fact and then drive away. Only if I look back will I know the response.

I like to write and generally I take pride in the way I write. Participating in the 140 characters crowd didn’t really make me feel proud of my words.* However, there smart men recently reminded me that Twitter and it’s brethren are what we make of them; they are just a tool in a room of toys we have at our disposal. Using these tools wisely is easily accomplished if you recognize that fact.

I despise the “self promotion” approach to Twitter. “Come see me teach a seminar on becoming a psychic! Only $495 for 15 minutes!”. Don’t waste my time. If you’re going to reach out to the masses then do something constructive with your reach. That’s what I try to do with this blog. I don’t need to have theme days or regurgitate 60 articles lifted from other sites. I am providing a resource, yes, but it’s a window on my life and the way I see the world. If you like what you see, stick around and enjoy the conversation. Have a Dorito or some popcorn with me and let’s talk about what we see or hear in as many characters as we want.

I am back on Twitter and Facebook full time again and if I’m barking I’m telling you why I’m barking and pointing you in the direction of my noise.

Thank you for sharing life with me.

13 October 2010 by J.P. Ponderings and Musings 1

WTF.

I have written this blog entry three times since the update to the WordPress app for the iPad/iPhone came out a little while ago and hopefully this version will make it to the site.

So far it’s crashed twice, my listing of posts have disappeared and other mayhem has ensued. Not quite there yet, Automattic.

12 October 2010 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

Late.

I have mentioned from time to time that I am not a morning person. I try really hard to be a morning person but try as I might, my body is just not wired to be the early bird. I have no desire to catch a worm. So having to be at work at 0800, with a solid hour of commuting time built in the gaiety, is a bit of a struggle for me. Don’t tell my boss but I’m not really awake until noon. They think I’m kidding when come back from lunch and say “good morning”, but in reality I just woke up.

My alarm is set for 0530. Usually.

This morning I was having a lovely dream about “The Love Boat” (I have no idea why that was the theme) when I awoke at what I figured was 0400 or so. I scolded myself for waking up early again and quite upset with the fact that I wouldn’t be able to resume my conversation with Julie McCoy when I went back to sleep. I rolled over to look at the alarm and discovered it wasn’t 0400 after all.

It was 0632.

I normally leave for work at 0635.

Hmmm.

Now one would think that this paragraph would contain descriptive, colorful words about e hysteria, panic and subsequent dread that set in as the covers flew off and the cat went flying, but no, I just muttered “Holy shit” and quickly followed it up with “I can do this.”

I flew through the shower in three minutes, cleaning only the important parts and opting not to make my head shine. I brushed my teeth whilst putting only underwear and i skipped the closet ritual of waiting for something to move me and went with just putting on the first clothes that looked reasonably unrumpled to me.

I flew down the stairs, fed the cat, grabbed some blueberries from the fridge, made a sandwich, patted the cat on the head, made sure I had enough coin to buy the orange juice at work and hit the road.

I was on the road by 0647 feeling remarkably calm and well rested.

I was in my cubicle by 0752, a few minutes later than usual but in plenty of time to grab the aforementioned OJ and then get on with my day in the usual fashion.

I’m quite proud of the fact that I accomplished that this morning without the usual hysterics. But as I type this at 1238, I am happy to wish you a good morning.

It’s going to be a lovely day.

12 October 2010 by J.P. Why. 3

Coming Out.

Today is National Coming Out day. For this occasion, I include two things. The first is a video I made recently for the “It Gets Better” project on YouTube. This has already been shared on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, but I thought today was the appropriate day to share it here.

The second is a repost of a blog entry from October 2004, when I first wrote “my story”.

Not only is today Columbus Day, (is it the real Columbus Day or is it just “observed”?), but it’s also another holiday of sorts – it’s National Coming Out Day. It’s on this day that gay men and women, regardless of age, strive to come out of the closet and announce to someone, be it the world, their family or even themselves, that they are gay. National Coming Out Day was designed as sort of a support mechanism, to let people know that they are not alone.

I don’t think National Coming Out Day was around when I “came out”. Well, I actually didn’t really come out, for the most part I didn’t really feel the need to. I guess people just assumed. After all, in high school, I ended the morning announcements with phrases like “Have a Wonderful Wednesday” or “Have a Fabulous Friday”. I mean, come on, all that was missing was the flashing pink neon light. When I lived in Massachusetts, my dear friend Donna told me that coming out was only a big deal because gay men and women made such a big deal about coming out. If it’s not a big deal to you, then it’s not a big deal to anyone else. I can sort of see the logic in that and it’s a theory that I subscribe to, though I don’t think it fits in every scenario. For example, I don’t think that a teenage boy living in the middle of the Bible belt is going to be able to drop a “That was a wonderful six hour sermon today. I really liked Maude’s punch at the church social afterwards. By the way, I’ve been sleeping with the farm hand, we both like boys, but it’s really no big deal” and not have the family get their panties in a knot. It would be wonderful is the Mother and Father then embraced the boy and welcomed the farm hand into the family, and the positive energy in me tells me that this has happened at least once in a great while, but I fear that there’s not enough of that type of support in the world.

So here it is, National Coming Out day, so I’m going to share my story. I knew my sexual orientation in my early teens. Actually, now that I think about it, I knew I liked other boys when I was in elementary school. Second grade to be exact. I always opted to be on the girls’ team when we played “shove the kids on the ground” on the playground because after all, the girls needed help (wink wink). I actually wanted to be pushed around by the boys and I wanted to wrestle them to the ground. But it wasn’t until my early teens that I knew what all this meant. I figured it was just something that all guys went through. God Bless my mother and father, they never talked to me about how these things worked so I had to figure it out myself. It wasn’t until my later teens that I figured that whatever “this” was was here to stay and I might as well just live with it. Even though I had a girlfriend at the time. Luckily, my girlfriend dumped me (guess I didn’t put out for the prom or something) and I was free to pursue my true feelings. I had a crush on a classmate named Dave, but he ended up going out with my sister. She always got the cute ones back then. Towards the end of high school I accepted the fact that I found some of my male schoolmates attractive, though I didn’t really do anything about it. When my parents dropped me off at college, I made a vow to myself. I was never going to hide who I was again and I would always allow my inner feelings to be. And boy, was I “out” in college. It’s all I ever talked about! Small wonder I failed out of school, I was too busy trying to be gay (even though I didn’t go on ANY dates!). Someone should have dumped a bucket of water on me because my pilot light was flarin’ WAY too high. So much for preconceived notions on how gay men should act. Luckily I was at a music school or else I would have been beat up a lot.

I didn’t really talk about my homosexuality with my family until Earl came along, save for my mother, my sister and my cousin Stephanie. I told my mother my first break home from college, with the usual dramatic flair, but she told me she knew all along and that she still loved me very much. I can still picture sitting in my parents’ living room having that discussion with my Mom back in 1986. My sister just knew. Perhaps it was the discussions years earlier about how cute Rick Springfield, Jack Wagner and the guys in Duran Duran were. And my cousin and I were very close and she always teased me about being gay so I finally just confirmed it. I finally calmed down a bit and ended up having one boyfriend in the year or two after college that I brought around once or twice, then a half hearted attempt at a relationship after that, but until my commitment ceremony with Earl it was just an unspoken assumption, I suppose. I just went out and did my thing and everyone worried about me. I think everyone breathed a sigh of relief when Earl and I began wearing our wedding bands after our commitment ceremony. Then it was like the closet doors just blew off their hinges, even though no words were spoken. I was in love and I was happy. And am even more so to this day.

I wish everyone had an easy path with their homosexuality, coming out and acceptance. I cringe when people say that being gay is a choice. It’s not. It’s part of who I am. Without the “gay”, I would not be the man I am today. It is just as inherent to us as eye color or left- or right-handedness.

So on this National Coming Out Day, whether you’re contemplating, talking or listening, know that there are others in similar situations. You are not alone.

11 October 2010 by J.P. Gayish. Why. 2

Lunch.

I am sitting in my car doing my daily lunch routine with a twist today. I took my lunch at 11:00 instead of 12:00. This is going to be part of my Monday routine from this point forward due to work responsibilities that begin at noon.

Eating lunch at 11:00 just seems wrong to me. It’s just too early. This is ironic to me because in high school, once you moved to the senior high level, lunch began at 11:04. Fifth period was divided up into three segments, 5E, 5M and 5L. Grades 9-12 ate at 11:34 (5E) and grades 7-8 at 11:48 (5L). In the six years I was in that school I never really figured out who ate during 5M or for that matter when 5M really took place. For some reason I figured it had to do with detention and special education. By the way, I could right now rattle off the entire bell schedule of my high school, even though it’s been 25 years, if I wanted to and I could do it with ease. And they say the things we learn as teens don’t last a lifetime. Oh, and the “bell” was actually an annoying chime that played over the intercom speaker. It was an A-flat above middle C. I could get the chorus to leave early by striking that same note on the piano if there was ambient noise in the room. Pavlovian response and all that.

So while it is technically my lunch break, I won’t actually be eating my lunch until I get back to the office because that’s the way things work. While the 11:00 a.m. lunch break is an old trick and I’m an old dog, I’m set in my ways of a proper lunch at noon and that’s the way it’s going to be.

11 October 2010 by J.P. Geek 1

Geek Alert.

Today we should learn the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. That answer is 42. And today is that day.

101010 = 42 in binary.

And not only is today the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, it is the release date of the latest version of Ubuntu Linux (10.10).

Relevent links are here:
Some random website I found with reference to 42.
What Ubuntu Linux is and what’s new in version 10.10.

10 October 2010 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept Geek 0

Exploration.

So yesterday Earl and I went for one of our long rides. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve piled in the Jeep with the necessary accoutrement and hit the open road, but the weather was beautiful, the leaves were at peak and as I said before, it’s just been too long.

Selecting a route is a little bit of a trick proposition for a couple of reasons: I drive due east everyday for work and Earl drives in every direction every day for work. So we agreed that we would drive the back roads and ignore the freeways unless we got to a boring part where we had to fast forward.

First stop was in the City of Oneida, about a half hour west of us. I wanted to stop in Oneida to snap a photo of this…

I don’t know who Rob and Molly Healy are but I wish nothing but the best for them as they began their journey yesterday. Actually, the reason I wanted to snap a photo of this theatre is because in my hometown of Pulaski, New York there is another Kallet Theatre that is about the same age as this one. (Pulaski’s was built in 1935, this one was built in 1937) Kallet Theatres had a modern presence in this neck of the woods back in the day and it’s good to see this one restored to it’s former glory. The Kallet Theatre in Pulaski closed in 1982, was restored once in the late 80s and then was sold to an auto parts store where it became an auto parts store! Such a shame. I shudder to think what the inside of the theatre looks like today. Rumor has it that someone is going to buy it and restore it. If I had the money, I’d do it myself.

I found this old picture of the Pulaski Kallet Theatre on the tubes.

We then made our way across Central and Western New York on NY Route 31, which roughly follows the Erie Canal across the state. Our next stop was the B’ville Diner in Baldwinsville, New York, which is really close to some family we didn’t see because we were on a mission. I was going to take a picture of the diner but to good a good shot you have to stand in the middle of the street.

We continued the trek west until we got to the outskirts of Rochester, where we made a necessary stop at the Eastview Mall. They have lovely bathrooms and more importantly, an Apple store. The MacBook Pro needed a new battery and the iPad needed a better case so in we went, where we posted for a photo on one of the display 13-inch MacBook Pros.

Photo on 2010-10-09 at 14.51.jpg

The MacBook Pro works much better when it has a viable battery, by the way.

We tried to follow NY Route 31 all the way across Rochester, but there are signs missing in the downtown area and we got off the path a little bit, but it was quickly realised and we were back on track and heading west. Our next stop was Medina. We wanted to see this little canal village for various reasons. The downtown is trying to make a comeback and it looks like they’re making good strides. The center of downtown Medina is 43.2 miles from Downtown Buffalo and 43.1 miles from Downtown Rochester, in case you were wondering.

While on the outskirts of Medina we decided we wanted to do a little more shopping.

Unfortunately Ames closed in 2002 and there is plenty of evidence that it is missed in Upstate New York, because there are closed Ames stores (or Ameses as Grandma City called it) in many small towns up here. Usually the closed Ames is the anchor to a shopping center that is completely closed as well. So sad. Wal*mart came in and couldn’t be bothered to use up existing land, they needed to move further out and disrupt more of the countryside. Bleh.

From Medina we continued on Route 31 to Lockport where we finally made our way into Buffalo. We met up with Jamie and friends for a few moments (he’s in Buffalo for the weekend) and then did some exploring around the waterfront and downtown areas. It was getting dark so I wasn’t able to take any quality shots, but it’s amazing what Buffalo is trying to do by taking some of the abandoned warehouse buildings and turning them into lofts. There are also some good attempts and making the waterfront more attractive to people and less industrial like and I think that’s a great thing.

From Buffalo we drove through Lackawanna and down towards the small village of Springville before heading back across NY Route 39, which is my second-favorite route to drive next to NY Route 177, simply because it goes through open meadows, relatively flat land and lots of farm land before bringing us back into the Finger Lakes. By now it was 9:00 p.m. and our gut decided one more meal wouldn’t be a bad thing, so it was a quick stop at the Denny’s in Canandaigua before heading home across 5 & 20 to Syracuse and then to The Manor.

All in all it was a great day. Earl and I have had an adventure like this in a long while and it’s a grand feeling to know that the two of us after all these years enjoy each others company, laugh about silly things, discuss our bright future together and still find comfort in each others presence.

10 October 2010 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 1

Ease.

I always have dreams of writing a blog entry at lunchtime now that i am equipped with an iPad but it doesn’t work out. I was ready to jump into something breathtakingly amazing just 30 minutes ago but the WordPress software on the iPad, which was recently updated, doesn’t want me to do that and would prefer to be as vague as possible in it’s messages to me so i can feel like a dumb shit.

This dumb shit feel has been exacerbated by the fact that since I have since fixed the software glitch (screaming at the iPad doesn’t work, one must throw it), i have completely forgotten what I was going to write about. My delusions of grandeur with a riveting entry were obviously heavy on the ‘delusion’ and light on the ‘grandeur’. So instead im going to watch a rerun of the Hollywood Squares where Charles Nelson Reilly and Brett Somers shared the lower right hand square when they were still alive. It’s a shame it’s so taboo to be so outwardly drunk on stage these days. I know that the American public would rather just see some crass naked humor, but I miss the days when a martini or four made the afternoon go by quickly. Perhaps a martini would help me understand these cryptic software messages more easily.

“Samantha, make it a double.”

8 October 2010 by J.P. Fun and Games Dept 0

The Hard Way.

Learning.

Connection.

WTF.

Late.

Coming Out.

Lunch.

Geek Alert.

Exploration.

Ease.

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