Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

It was about a year ago that I seriously decided that I needed to Think Different. It’s been about 23 years since I first started messing around with computers, not counting the countless calculators and adding machines I played with before jumping onto the computing bandwagon on an Apple ][+ at school and my very own computer, my Commodore VIC-20 (which I still have somewhere). I’ve survived countless incarnations of Windows, from Windows/286 (that’s Windows version 2.0) all the way up to Windows 2003 Advanced Server. I’ve danced with the Unix shell. I’ve flirted with the VAX/VMS DCL dollar sign. I’ve commanded the DOS command prompt. I’ve clicked. I’ve double clicked.

But nothing has rocked my computing world like my Mac. As they say in the ads, it just works.

I’ve become one of those Mac-obsessed people, pooh pooh-ing others still struggling with Windows. Praising the OS X gospel. “Life is just easier with a Mac”. “It’s a more secure operating system.” “Viruses? Hah!” Yes, I can be annoying.

Yesterday was the big “keynote speech” by Steve Jobs at Macworld Expo. Like many other Mac users and technology buffs, I frequented the Macworld Expo site (until it crashed, it’s running on Microsoft Server 2003), refreshing and refreshing again, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new Apple products as soon as they were announced. Would the rumors be true? Would there be a more affordable yet powerful Mac, primed for any household? Would there be another incarnation of the iPod?

And the answers are an unqualified yes.

There is now the Mini Mac. Starting at $499, this puppy can be plopped in place of any PC, use the existing keyboard, mouse and monitor, and spread it’s Mac goodness with its owner. When a family member now asks my recommendation for a “start up” computer, I can point them to the Mini Mac. I also think it would be a nice addition to the little music studio I’m thinking of building, but we’ll save that for another blog entry.

Then there’s the iPod Shuffle. Clocking in at $99, this guy can play a good number of songs from a very small device. And its affordable!

And that’s just the beginning.

Why am I saying all this? Because I’m impressed. My PowerBook impresses me. I can’t believe how easy it is to get stuff done on my computer now. If I want to be a tech head, I can mess around with Unix. If I just want to goof off, I still have Unix, with Panther sitting on top.

As I said before, it just works. I’m not dinking around with device drivers, security issues, activation codes and a secret operating system.

I think I’ll record one of those testimonials and send it to Apple. Don’t be surprised if you see me on their “switch” page.

Today I continued along the chain of medical referrals. I mentioned that I had to visit my primary physician a while back. Well today was the referral to the urologist. Or at least, his assistant.

I’d been to the same urologist back in 2000 for a consultation. At that visit, he graphically informed me of the things he wanted to do to my more treasured body parts. I politely declined and decided to just live with my ailment. Whoops, a few steps back. The reason for all this is because sometimes I have difficulty urinating. It has to do with scar tissue and it’s something that I’ve had all my life, having two surgeries in my teens for the same problem. My first surgery was when I was 13. I shared a hospital room with another kid about my age. I was in 8th grade, he was in 7th. I just *knew* there was something special about him, and sure enough, we ended up hooking up one night about 10 years later. “Where did you meet? In the hospital, he was having his tonsils out and I was getting a roto-rooter up my wa-wa.” Sexy.

Back to present day. So I went to the urologist’s satellite office, with a waiting room about the size of a broom closet. There’s a friendly enough receptionist who likes to bark out things to patients. “Here’s your viagara”. “Don’t forget to shoot into the cup.” “Save enough pee for your next visit so we don’t have to squeeze it out of you.”

Lovely.

For some reason, walking in I expected the waiting room to smell like pee. I don’t know why, but I thought it would add to the ambiance. There were older people all about, save for one four or five year old with his mother. Every once in a while, an older gentleman would come out. One wild looking gentleman came bursting through the door with a huge grin and a bunch of pill samples.

Viagara. Mrs. Wild is going to have an interesting evening.

So anyways, my turn came up and they beckoned me in. I had to do the usual deal – weight, height, blood pressure. Everything appeared to be normal. I sat in the examining room for a bit. There were pictures of dissected body parts all over the walls. It was kind of interesting, as I had never really paid attention during high school biology. Come to think of it, I don’t remember much of biology at all. The only thing I remember was the teacher, Mr. Oliver, asking me “Mr. Wing, do you know what a homosexual is?” Wasn’t he funny. The rest of the class went “oooh.” I should have had a snappy comeback like “Homosexual. Homosexual. Like your boyfriend?” but of course I didn’t.

Anyways, the nurse practicioner comes in and asks me a bunch of questions. I fill her in with my history and everything. She seems pleasant enough. But then she wants to do a prostate test.

Why does every doctor want to check my prostate? Is my ass that cute that they go “Ooooh, look at that tight ass, let me touch!”?

Long story short, my prostate is in good shape. She informs me that I can look forward to that round of fun every year for the next 10 to 15 years, because after all, I’m at the fun male age.

So now I have to do a couple of lab tests (I’ll spare you the details, use your imagination) and then go in for another exam on February where I get to go the bathroom in a computerized toilet.

I’m so excited about the whole thing I could pee my pants.

So I’m home enjoying a homemade lunch and blogging at the same time. I’m eating lunch during the noon hour. It’s a murky January day, overcast but not overly cold, in the mid 30s. Weather man says it could hit 55 degrees on Thursday, but I sometimes think they say these things just to make you feel good.

After my sprint through last week, being on call for work for the first time, life has settled back down to the normal routine. Earl is out of town on business, but only for a couple of days. Tom is happy that I cleaned his litter box. I’m feeling relatively well rested so life is good.

Normally at this time of year I fall into a holiday slump, where I’m depressed that the holidays are over and spring isn’t ready to peek out yet. I bitch about how bitter life is. Sunlight is at a premium. But I’m happy to say that I’m not feeling the holiday slump this year. Maybe its because my life choices have made a happier path for me to walk. I really don’t have a lot to be cranky about. Even though Earl and I just took down the Christmas Tree this past Saturday, I feel like the holiday season is long gone. Is it me or did the ringing in of the New Year seem rather anti-climatic this year? Perhaps it was because Regis dropped the ball instead of Dick Clark. He was so melancholy about the whole affair.

Tonight I’m going to plan out our February vacation to celebrate Earl’s birthday. We’ve bagged the Las Vegas idea. We’re going to be kids again. We’re going to remember the magic at DisneyWorld. I can’t wait.

I’ve decided to embark on a project. Inspired by listening to real performers perform real music, and enjoying the Sour Citrus Society at a recent S U basketball game, I’ve decided that it’s time for the alumni marching band at my high school to make an appearance.

Now, mind you, I didn’t participate in the last alumni band performance back in 1996. I had last minute work conflicts pop up, and I was unable to get to the practices, so I didn’t get in step with the whole thing. I’ve been tossing the idea around for the past couple of years and this morning I woke up and said to myself, “why don’t I just go ahead and do it?” So I’m going to do it.

I have connections with the alumni society, so I can get the word out to other alumni. I’m going to take an ad out in the local newspaper as well. I’ve asked a fellow classmate (and band nerd) to help out if he wants, so maybe this is something that can actually come together. I mean, how difficult can it be? We borrow a couple of instruments from the school, we learn two songs and we go to it. Seems simple to me.

Of course, I’ll play tuba again. I haven’t played tuba since, oh, 1987 but it’s got to be like learning how to ride a bicycle. Once you do it, you can always do it. I think I’m going to look around on ebay for a tuba.

There’s one song that I would really like the alumni band to play – it’s called “España!” by Jay Bocook. I think it came out around 1979 or 1980. I borrowed it from my high school band director back when I was in college for a conducting class project. The band director then passed away, so I never had the opportunity to return it and now I have no idea where it is. I think I’m going to buy the school a new copy, if I can find it somewhere. (If you’re reading this and you know where I can find España by Jay Bocook, please contact me.) Even if the alumni marching band doesn’t come together, I can still replace the music that I never returned 18 years ago.

So if you’ve come across this blog entry by googling your old alma mater, Pulaski Junior Senior High School / Pulaski Academy and Central School / Pulaski High School in Pulaski, New York, and you’d like to be in the alumni marching band in August 2005, please contact me.

This morning I was kicking back and messing around with iTunes. Searching for “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” by Yes (one of my favorite songs from the 80s), I came across another version of the track. Curious, I hit the audition button on iTunes and was absolutely astounded. The version I was listening to was from an album entitled “BOCA 2001: The Best Of College A cappella 2001”.

For those unfamiliar with the term ‘a cappella’, let me explain. A cappella music is performed with absolutely no instrumentation. The only instrument used is the human voice. There’s no percussion. No piano. No guitar. Just the vocal instrumentation of the performers. Tight harmonies. Everyone singing their own unique part, their contribution lending to the construction of the whole. I sang in many a cappella performances in both high school and college, the majority being the classic barbershop quartet music. A female version would be something like the Sweet Adeleines.

What I heard today blew me utterly and completely out of the water. I never knew that these a cappella groups existed in colleges all across the country, and I went to a music school! Perhaps I should have paid better attention.

What makes this type of a cappella music intriguing to me is that the tracks are reproductions of popular Top 40 songs, and they sound absolutely amazing. Titles like “Ray Of Light”, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Owner of a Lonely Heart”. It’s sounds fantastic over my PowerBook speakers. I put on my iPod headphones and couldn’t believe what I was listening to. I must admit that I was trembling with excitement when I decided to dig out my pro radio headphones and bask in the audio experience. So I plugged them in and discovered two things. The sound threw me into sonic nirvana. My iPod headphones are pretty damn good, as they sound much better than my $150.00 Sony headphones from my radio career.

If you appreciate really good music, take a listen to this album. I’ve included the link to Amazon which provides samples.

I think I’m going to be singing in the shower more. And I think I’m going to end up trashing my iTunes allowance.

I find the concept of time somewhat amazing. It’s really nothing more than a human perception. We feel comforted by the tick-tock of the clock, or the passing movement of the minute and hour hand. “What lies ahead?” “Were almost there!” “Is it time to eat yet?”

When you think about it, time really serves no purpose. It’s simply a marker to tell us where we are in life. “I’m getting old.” “It’s time to sleep.” “It’s time to brush my teeth.” “I’ll be 37 on my next birthday.”

I’ve always been obsessed with time. I have a collection of school clocks, each clock perfectly synchronized to the master clock, which is in turn synchronized to the atomic clock. Those clocks that aren’t in the collection are still calibrated to change with the school clock collection. There is no flashing “12:00” on my VCR.

When I worked for ARC (Association for Retarded Citizens) back in the late 80s and early 90s, I worked a shift that started on Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. and ended on Thursday at 3:00 p.m. Time was very important to me. In the back of my mind, I knew precisely how much time I had left before I was home again. Before I was free.

Last night was a particularly rough night of “on call” for my current job. Now that I think about it, was I making it harder on myself because at that time, I should have been asleep? Did my body suffer because I didn’t sleep at the proper time? Granted, my ass is dragging a little bit today because I slept for a total of four hours in ragged increments. Would I feel so lethargic today if I didn’t obsess about time? Is my sleepiness because of my brain telling me I didn’t sleep the right amount of time or because my body didn’t get a chance to build up the proper amount of energy and do it’s housecleaning?

Honestly, I think it’s a combination of both.

I’m going to try to live in the “now”. No worrying about what lies ahead or what’s left behind. I haven’t got the time for it.

I take a certain wicked delight when I see these fabricated and egomaniacal pop stars crash and burn in public. The latest spectacle belongs to Ashlee Simpson. I guess she was going to prove that she can sing after all, after being snagged on Saturday Night Live as a lip syncher with a track problem. So she appeared on the Orange Bowl half time show and sang live, without backing vocals. I watched as much of the performance as I could (damn you broadband!). This girl has no business singing in the shower, let alone in public. She was not in time with the band, she was singing in various non-existent keys and she was gyrating like someone had set her pants on fire. The crowd was not too pleased – they booed her at the end of her set.

If you like to see a fabricated “entertainer” crash and burn, here’s a clip in Windows Media Player format. I know, I know, how non-Mac of me, but it’s the only clip I could find and easily steal off a website.

For more Ashlee Simpson fun, follow the link mentioned at the beginning of the clip.

And yes, I know it’s not fun to pick on other people when they’re down, no I couldn’t do any better (actually I could) and yes I’m smart enough to know my limits.

I’ve mentioned one or one hundred times over the past couple of weeks that I am trying to eat healthy again and get back on the whole exercise, fit and trim bandwagon. I don’t really know why I’m obsessing over this, and I am obsessing, but I think it’s because I know there’s a pair of jeans in the back of my closet that is one size smaller than what I am currently wearing. Never mind that there are also jeans in my closet that are two sizes bigger than what I am currently wearing, and forget the fact that I could probably get those smaller jeans on if I lept across the room with Earl holding my jeans open so I could squeeze into them.

So I’ve gone from the cheeseburger and fries for appetizer, prime rib for supper set to the typical salad saga. I’m carefully measuring out one cup of Cheerios for breakfast, lest one extra Cheerio invade my cereal bowl and throw off my calorie count. I’m faithfully eating salad, salad and more salad with fat free dressing for lunch and supper. I’m balancing my protein intake with a “smart-pak” of crackers with peanut butter. For supper it’s, what else, more salad and a sandwich with some baked, low fat, low taste tortilla chips on the side.

God damn it I want a Big Mac. Or a big juicy Double Whopper with cheese and bacon.

I think my brain is my biggest enemy. Because I’m not really eating what I want to eat, but rather what I think I should eat, I’m constantly thinking about how good an afternoon at Chick-Fil-A would be. I want to park one of those mall tables with attached chairs right in front of the restaurant counter, leaving room for someone to join me in the other molded chair and I want the counter person to just bring on the food. It doesn’t even have to be a Chick-Fil-A. I’d settle for any diner, anywhere in the world right now. Then I start thinking about how selfish I am. Memories of “there’s starving children in Africa” from my childhood rear they’re ugly head when I used to yell “But Ma, I’m starving!!” I think about all those hundreds of thousands of people suffering in the aftermath of the tsunamis. They’d probably like to graze through an A&W with me too.

This constant counting of calories in my brain has got to stop. “If I eat this tic tac, I’ve added 10 calories, that means an extra 35 seconds on the exercise bike tonight.” I think my caloric intake has fallen from around 2500 calories a day to just shy of 1000. I think my body is mad at me. It’s yelling various things, like “You stopped feeding me.” “Why are you doing this?” “You’re exercising twice as much with half the amount of food.” “You’re an ass.”

I think tonight I’m going to splurge and cook something rather than just slap some fake-turkey and fake-cheese with a smattering of mustard between two airy pieces of bread.

If you want to IM me afterwards, I’ll be on the exercise bike.

Today I had to go to a dermotologist. At my last doctor’s appointment, he noticed a mole on my back and said that I should have it looked at, so off we went to the specialist today. I can’t imagine a more exciting way to spend a lunch hour.

The dermotologist looked at my back, told me how horribly sun damaged my skin is and that there is no need to worry about the mole on my back. However, she did look at my arms and noticed a bump that might lead to something down the road so we should just freeze the little thing right off. She scowled at a couple of other marks on my arms, and one newly exposed (from shaving my beard off) mark on my chin, which she said was probably an ingrown hair, and told me to grow my beard back to protect my face. She did all this in around 55 seconds, leaving with a curt “Get dressed”. I guess my sun damaged body was suffering more damage from the flourescent lights. Either that or my clean shaven face repulsed her.

A few minutes later the freezer queen, for lack of a better title, came in to the examining room. She was carrying a styrofoam coffee cup of liquid nitrogen. It was emitting a dry-ice type mist and making various hissing noises. The coffee cup was marked “do not discard this cup!” Apparently the coffee cup budget is very low for 2005 as this cup was rather beat up looking. I found her humorous looking as she had black hair that zinged all over the place. She looked a little crazy. I guess I would look crazy too if I was walking around with liquid nitrogen hissing in a styrofoam coffee cup. Most people mark their cups with their name. “Betty” “Vera” Not her though, her’s just said “Do not discard this cup.” Crazy.

So she read a prescription for the liquid cold stuff, “apply no more than 8 seconds”, which she promptly did. I hardly noticed. The little mark on my arm didn’t stand a chance, it promptly turned white (a la Mr Freeze) and then blistered up. I’m not suppose to do anything to it for 48 hours. I don’t really find that last directive fair, as the dermotologist circled the spot with a heavy black ball point pen. Sort of like “X” marks the spot. “You are here”.

I managed to wash the black ink off without touching the spot on my arm that is now twice the size it used to be. I’m told it will fall off soon.

I hope I don’t look like a crazy person with skin falling off my arm.

So tonight is my first night as a real employee of my new company. It’s my first night of “on call”. Dial tone crisis? Call SUPERTECH! In the back of my mind, I’m hoping that this is some sort of vicious hazing exercise, but in all truth I know it isn’t. I’ve already put in an hour of overtime this evening and I’ve only been home for 3 hours and 56 minutes as I type this. I have to admit that the geek in me is completely reveling in this new found geekdom; coordinating and dispatching and taking care of things. Am I going to be enjoying this at three in the morning? Probably not, but when I get feeling cranky, I can take a look at this blog entry and remember how excited I was to be a full member of the Network Operations Center team.

Speaking of calling Dr. Bombay, I read in one of the entertainment magazines that the Bewitched movie wrapped filming shortly before Christmas and is now in post production for an early July release date. Being the rabid Bewitched fan that I am, I am mostly excited about this movie. I think Nicole Kidman can pull it off nicely. The premise of the movie is a little bit different, in that it’s a movie about a witch who is part of a remake of the television show Bewitched, but I’m thinking that the spirit of the original series is going to shine through. If you haven’t seen the teaser, please take a moment to do so if you’re so inclined. I’m delighted to see the original twitch noise has been preserved. And I think Shirley MacLaine is going to be absolutely fabulous as Endora!

And speaking of all things witchly, I’ve been doing some more reading on Paganism and Wicca. Very, very fascinating. I’m not going to be levitating or freezing time or anything other “charming” things, but I find the whole nature based belief system resonates well with my soul. When other religions are preaching that you can’t do this or you can’t be that and there’s only one path that you can follow, it’s nice to read about a belief that accentuates the positive in each and every person and accepts others for who and what they are.

Tinka tinka tee!