| Things best forgotten? |
[Jun. 18th, 2007|09:59 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Back in the bunker | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  disappointed | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Radio Free Dwarfstar (http://hurricane.stormcenter.net:8000/rfd.ogg) | ] |
Father's day, like Mother's day, is one of those Hallmark Holidays. A holiday that exists, more or less, as an excuse to sell greeting cards. Another manufactured day of 'expressing love and appreciation' for people we should love and appreciate anyway. Usually, these kinds of holidays don't mean much to me. My mom's birthday os close to Mother's Day, so I tend to wish her a happy mother's day around the same time. My grandfather (who's recovering nicely, thank you - still weak and tired, but his mind's back now that he's off the pain meds) gets appreciation days pretty regularly, though not in a Hallmark Moment sort of way.
For the last few years, my daughter's made a point of at least calling and leaving a voice mail to say happy father's day. This year, though, nada. No email, no voice mail, no card. I'm not really surprised. She hasn't said more than about a sentence to me in months - and that to thank me for telling her my grandfather was out of the hospital. Not sure what I did, but I've got to admit that it's a little disappointing.
Ah well. She'll grow out of it and start talking to me again (if only to explain why she's not) or she won't. I can care, but I can't change her thought process. |
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| I hate mornings |
[Jun. 14th, 2007|05:35 am] |
Seriously. I hate mornings. I've never been one to be able to get up early, unless it was race day or something, and I needed to be at the track by 0730. Unfortunately, or maybe not, that seems to have been changing. Between the dogs who absolutely insist on waking us up at 0600 (if we're lucky) and my sleep cycles getting completely borked city-hopping for work, it seems that I'm being forced into becoming some kind of morning person.
Case in point: Monday morning, at the bank for work a little before 0730. No big deal, right? Wrong. I'm two time zones from home, and 0730 on the clock is 0530 for my brain. That's after getting up early enough to get in the full morning routine AND get down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.
At least this time I arrived at a sane hour - 1530 rather than the usual 2100 or worse I usually get. And it was a first class upgrade the whole way. As it will be on the way home. Have to love those frequent flier miles.
Doubt I'll bag one on the trip to New York in a couple weeks, but at least it'll be Economy+ at the worst.
And, in case anyone actually reads these things (My Son might. Don't think my Daughter has logged into LiveJournal in a while) my grandfather's surgery was a success and the pain he was feeling is almost completely gone. This rates a w00t at the very least, I'd think. |
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| Supporting the elders |
[Jun. 7th, 2007|01:20 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Under a bunker | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  anxious | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Radio Free Dwarfstar (http://hurricane.stormcenter.net:8000/rfd.ogg) | ] |
It sucks to get old. Not the "not a kid any more" old, but real old. Like, over 80 old. Once you're past breeding age, Evolution is pretty much done with you. Arguably, that's probably at the "not very old" stage. Women are becoming moms later and later, and men can father children until they're way too old to enjoy being a dad. But the point is the nearest thing to a "purpose" we have as humans is to create more humans. As biological life forms, we're in the game to pass our genes on to later generations. By some measures, biological success is determined by how many descendants you have over the next howevermany generations.
Ultimately, that sucks. A huge part of the world's problems can be traced to overpopulation. But I'm diverging from my original train of thought.
Elders have a place in society. If not from a purely biological standpoint (once they're not in the breeding game any more) then from a social standpoint - where their years of knowledge and wisdom can be passed on to later generations who can benefit from it. I'd hate to think of where I'd be if I hadn't absorbed so much knowledge and wisdom from my grandfather.
And now, with him going into surgery for a compression fracture (at the not so tender age of 93) I've got to wonder how much longer I'm going to have that wisdom and knowledge on tap. How much longer he's even going to want to be around. How I'm going to deal with it when his time finally comes and we have to say good bye one last time.
Feh. Depressing and my thoughts are jumbled.
Bad time to journal... |
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| To ramble, or not to ramble... |
[May. 24th, 2007|11:34 am] |
There are days when I wonder what, if anything, I could possibly write about. There's a lot of things, actually, I've got on my mind, but not all of them are fit for public consumption. Some of them are unfit because, well, they just are. There's times when thoughts should remain private because they're just a little too far out into left field. - Or is it Right field these days? Left. Right. Who knows any more. - Other things you just choose not to say because you're taking someone else's feelings into account.
Sometimes I think that's the worst part. You can't talk to certain people about certain issues. You can't even hint at them. (And if you think you're one of the people I'm talking about - chances are you're actually not.) Not because you don't want to, no. You don't because you're honestly worried they are going to either mis-interpret what you're saying, or they know what you're saying and actively don't want to hear it. In either case, if you say anything, you end up hurting them, which is exactly what you don't want.
So what does one do? At the moment, it seems, one posts to their journal that no one reads in a weak effort to get it out of their system.
This, of course, never actually works . . . |
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| LiveJournal gets Jabber |
[May. 14th, 2007|02:32 pm] |
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Well this is cool. Not that we need another IM client, but it's nice to see the Jabber protocol taking off. And with all the cool plugins for Gaim (Now called Pidgin) it's even better. Too bad our IRC network's almost dead . . . |
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| Technical toys |
[May. 14th, 2007|01:45 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Back in my bunker | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  lethargic | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | RFD (http://hurricane.stormcenter.net:8000/rfd.ogg) | ] |
Once again, a long delay between journal posts. Not that anyone actually reads my posts. Most of the time, I don't even read them. Another "blogger" (gods I hate that term) amongst the millions already on the net. The vast majority of blogs are just a waste of space. Bits stored on someone elses server. Taking up space. A tribute to someone or another's ego. It's not that most of what bloggers write is crap, no. It's that most of what's written anywhere is crap - and blogging has made it trivially easy for everyone and their brother to try and carve out their own little slice of the Net's collective attention.
This, of course, isn't about ranting against bloggers or bemoaning the fact that no one reads mine. It's about the new tech toys I mentioned in the last post - a replacement for my damaged Rio Karma and the new DirecTV system.
First, the Karma replacement: A Coby MPC951.I looked around a lot before I picked this thing out. I didn't want an iPod. I'm not really an iPerson, and the pod doesn't play .ogg vorbis files, which is what a lot of my collection is in. A Diamond Zen or Atheros portable would have been sweet, but they also omit ogg support. Ultimately, it came down to the Coby, which has ogg support, acts like a USB hard drive, can display text files and QCIF format AVI's, and can act as a usb storage host. Pretty slick, actually. The software that comes with it is limited, but it's all open source and includes the sources. In my book, that's a good thing. Only downsides are less than stellar battery life and it being really slow to boot up. It's also a little large for its capacity, but that's not an issue since tiny size wasn't a major issue for me.
The other big deal was finally replacing cable (which, in our neighborhood, frankly sucked) with a satellite system. Took DirecTV over Dish Network because it was less expensive and had a better channel lineup. They finally got out of the backlog with the HD Tuner / DVR combos, so we were able to get it all set up in a single hit. HD is simply awesome. I've been getting the Planet Earth series from Discovery HD and it's incredible. Saving it for my daughter in case she ever comes back down to visit. My Son might like it too, so there's reason to keep it. We've caught some fun concerts (Styx, Sammy Hagar and the Wabaritas), some movies, shows we couldn't normally watch because of the time, and skipped through several hours of commercials. That alone is worth it. I hate commercials. "Smilin' Bob" needs to be shot. Several times. In the nads. Hopefully with the "I'm theeeenking of a number" guy catching the backscatter. But I digress.
I understand why SatTV has taken off so much. So far, it's proven less expensive and more reliable than cable. The down side is that you need the separate tuner (same as digital cable) which renders Picture in Picture kind of useless on TV's that support it. Read, most TV's over 25" built in the last 8 years.
Anyway, I've rambled enough for no one to read. |
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| Happy fraggin birthday to me |
[Apr. 16th, 2007|12:01 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | lazy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Radio Free Dwarfstar (http://hurricane.stormcenter.net:8000/rfd.ogg) | ] |
So here I am at the office. It's Monday, and I haven't had enough coffee. For the first time in years, my mom didn't call at 0730 to sing Happy Birthday to me (and here I was actually awake for once) and me beloved daughter - who hasn't returned my calls or emails for about 6 months - hasn't called or emailed. It's technically still "morning" so there's hope yet I suppose.
Kind of odd this year though. For the last few years, birthdays haven't really mattered much to me. They're just marking time. Too young to retire, too old to start a new career. Kind of in the middle and feeling it. What's odd, of course, is that I'm quite happy with most of where I am now. Work's good. Home's decent. Family's good - except for the aforementioned lack of comms back from me dear daughter, and my grandfather (93, bless his aging heart.) recovering from an "almost fractured" hip.
So what is there to complain about? Well, now that I think of it, nothing.
Satellite TV should go in Wednesday. New karma replacement should arrive Thursday. And we'll be at the Strictly Sail Expo on Friday.
Damn . . . maybe life really is good after all. |
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| It's all about the weather |
[Mar. 12th, 2007|04:21 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Beneath the Vault | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Cooling Fan Symphony in D Flat | ] |
So here I am, back from a week working at an East Coast office of the "small financial institution" with which I'm gainfully employed, marveling at the weather. It's not that the Bay Area weather is so much better than anywhere else. It's not, actually. It's just that last Monday I'm walking back to the hotel into a 25 knot headwind in 20 degree weather (to be followed by a couple inches of Snow on Wednesday, which stayed on the ground for the rest of the week) and this Monday I'm riding my bike to work in The City and the thermometer in the fairing shows 72 degrees.
The day before, I've got my boat out on the bay for a couple hours, and it's jeans and t-shirt weather.
Yeah, this IS the ticket.
It's all about the weather. . . |
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| Where the hell did the time go? |
[Feb. 12th, 2007|03:39 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Comms Bunker 1 | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Talking Heads: Psycho Killer (On the Karma) | ] |
So here I am, once again, reviewing my journal here and finding that, somehow, there hasn't been an entry posted since October. Ok, I know I'm not into the LJ thing as much as I could be, or even as much as I was into posting to OpenDiary back in the day. But damn! I could have sworn there were at least two entries since that one in October!
Ah well, I suppose there are two facets to not posting much to this. One: I don't have that much I want to share with the world. And Two: no one reads this anyway. Not even my kids. My kids (bless 'em both - biologically mine and not) don't even seem to be posting much here any more themselves. My Son, I understand. College and life are taking a big chunk of his time. My daughter . . . what to say? I know she's going through a rough time in her life. Hell, I remember that stage myself and it was hell. A different sort of hell for me, but I can empathize with her. Just wish there was something I could actually do to help, but it's hard from two states away.
I'll be here for her - if she ever comes looking for help.
Otherwise, just the occassinal reminder that I am still here for her and the quiet hope that she'll remember that.
Anyway, I suppose I'll get back to the grind. Track down a rogue IP. Break someone's software. Drop a large object from orbit onto a random (but deserving) spammer... |
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| airports only suck a little |
[Oct. 15th, 2006|07:49 pm] |
So, here I am at san francisco international typing an lj entry with my thumbs on a blackberry. I'm not sure whether this cool from a raw technology standpoint, or painfully lame for the fact that I'm using technology that was pure scifi a generation ago to do it.
I'm leaning towards lame. But oddly, the concept is bringing me face to face with the fact that I'm rapidly becoming that aforementioned "generation ago.". While I may be able to keep up with rapidly advancing tech, am I doomed to be lost to a rapidly evolving (some might say DEvolving) culture?
Who knows.
Right now, my thumbs hurt. |
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