Author: mel

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I don’t follow mainstream news sources

I hardly ever make much attempt to follow the news, or at least news from the mainstream sources. I don’t watch national or regional TV news shows. I don’t read national or international newspapers. I read my local paper maybe 2 or 3 times a week. I surf to news web sites a scan headlines maybe once or twice a month.

Does that make me out of touch? Am I being irresponsible with my civic duties? I don’t know, maybe. I don’t believe it does though. Being responsible also includes critical thought, counterpoint opinions, and actual action on your part. Eating a staple diet of headlines doesn’t do that and some will argue it prevents it, but I don’t want to go down that rat hole today. Suffice it to say that many major news outlets no longer do much real journalism anymore. The 5th estate is a watered down thing.

This morning I fired up one of my favorite aggregation tools Flipboard and looked through the News category. Grim. Below I have listed the story counts by subject and tone. I went until I started to see repeating subjects, in today’s case the zoo that killed the healthy young giraffe and fed it to the carnivores at the zoo. I ended up scanning through 37 articles.

Subject – count of stories
Immigration/xenophobia – 3
Nuke fear/drum beating – 5
Bad economy – 2
Terror attack – 5
State sanctioned violence – 4
Bad politicians – 2
Articles about anything in my country – 0

Today is also day 3 of the Sochi Olympics. The first Olympic story ran in 36th place. The first positive story ran in position 27. The total number of positive stories was 2 out of 37.

This list of stories is advertised as a hand curated list of the biggest stories in the world. Sorry, but medical marijuana in Alabama, a lack of action in the US Congress, and the scrapping of an old US aircraft carrier seriously can’t be the biggest stories in the world.

I like Flipboard, and will continue to use it. I guess I need to tweak the News feeds. Obviously their curators and I have a different opinion about what’s news. Besides, I would prefer to encourage positive change by celebrating the successes rather than more handwringing over the failures.

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Friday Afternoon

It’s late on Friday afternoon and attention spans are getting shorter by the minute.  My inbox and chat windows have degenerated into a flurry of internet discoveries and bad jokes.  One coworker started it all out with a link to Cassini photos of Saturn and by the end of the thread not only has this image been created

Death Star

but I have also submitted an actual order for a set of these

674x501_809659_772259_1358974510

 

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Movie night

33 below zero today.  Ouch.  It’s a good day for the Die Hard marathon on Movietime.  Sitting in my favorite chair with a tasty beverage.  The big dog is curled up on the couch, one minute sound asleep like a puppy, the next twitching away in some dream.

We are heading off to warmer climates tomorrow.  Earlier today we stopped by Costco to pick up groceries for the house/dog sitter.  Frick, I could not believe how busy Costco was late Sunday afternoon on a super cold day.  Maybe it is just everybody doing their last minute Christmas shopping.  We seriously need a second Costco here.

The F35 in the movie just crashed.  Why is it the action movies directors seem to have such a hate for elevated freeways?  Whole graduating classes of CGI artists must be employed creating concrete overpasses and on ramps for destruction.  Live Free or Die Hard, True Lies, Battle Los Angeles.  They’re all hard on the roadways.

 

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Yeah, whatever, buddy

I know I guy who thinks his poop doesn’t stink.  You know the type, the kind that cultivates an entourage to help maintain the illusion.  Who’s every project has a superlative adjective; the first, the biggest, the most complex, the most strategic.  I’m not saying that he does bad work.  Quite the contrary.

It’s just that he, like most people of this ilk, is highly competitive.  To him it is a zero sum game. In order for him to advance someone must fall.  The most common target for people like this are the ones they consider to be the biggest competition.  One of the favorite weapons I see used are campaigns to undermine the credibility of others.  Anything from innuendo to out right lies to actively undoing other peoples work.  Claiming undue credit is another very common tact. Restricting access to information or distributing misinformation is also common.

I recently got a message from someone looking for help to bail out a project in trouble.  Seems some promises were made and not kept, some deadlines missed.  Guess who’s project?  Yup, Mr. Perfect’s. As tempting as it may be to rub his face in it like he would do and has done I can’t do that.  It’ s just not who I am.

I am a strong believer that everything comes around.  The past will eventually catch up to these people even if I may not be there to see it.  I consider my reaction taking the high rode.  Other people may call me a fool, and that’s ok by me too.  I carry my own ruler and by my ruler I measure up just fine thank you.

 

 

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Ups and Downs

It has been an up and down few days.

Down

Last weekend I updated a website and took it from dev to prod and in the process trashed the MX records.  Three days later I get the call asking “where are my emails?”  Damn.  Stupid rookie  screw up.  Easy fix but jeepers what a dumb thing to do.

Up

Had probably one of the best client meetings of my life today.  We have the program manager, the purchasing officer, the IT manager, and the BA all in the room.  Everyone is on the same page.  Everyone wants to start with business level requirements and not jump to technology.  Hallelujah!  A rare client indeed.

Down

My aunt is in town for heart surgery.

Up

I was playing with my two year old grand daughter the other day. We had some marbles I found in the yard when we did the landscaping this summer.  One was blue cats eye and it was her favourite.  She took it home.  Later she kept asking her parents where it was and they didn’t really understand what she was asking for.  Then I get this picture.

IMG_0738

Down

I took my truck into the shop to find the source of a squeal.  One new engine fan, thermostat housing, engine seal and three visits later I am out a few hundred dollars and still have a squeal.  Yeah, the other things were needed but come on already.

 

 

 

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Late Season Garage Sale

Kelly and I drove to Craik today to attend a garage sale at the town hall. Pretty unusual, since I don’t go to a lot of garage sales let alone drive 90 miles to attend one! We went to see Helen and her collection of WMF glass holders. Love Helen. She was a blast, right from the start when she jumped out of her skin after I walked up behind her and said hello to when she had me mind the store while she ran home to find the mercury glass Christmas decorations Kelly was interested in. She gave me strict instructions to “sell something while I am gone”.

Craik runs a farmers market / garage sale out of their old town hall each week, selling donated items to raise funds to restore and maintain the building. Today Helen was running the sale while piggybacking her own sale. We met a couple of the other locals including one who I tried repeatedly to sell a bag of garland to for her wreath making hobby (I failed, but Helen succeeded).

It was a great trip. Lots of laughs, nice drive, and came home with some great purchases.

Addendum

We spent tonight polishing our purchases and this $3 bowl turns out to be a piece from the Royal York Hotel in Toronto!

 

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Help Desk Weekend

My role as local family desktop support guy has been pretty easy over the last few months.  No virus trouble, no goofy unexplainable computer behaviours.  I was beginning to think that I could retire that hat.

Then, two weeks ago my mother in-law locked herself out of the tablet.  Tonight I fixed the same problem with my wife’s phone.  Saturday I get to find out why my mom’s laptop is running so hot she’s scared to turn it on.   This weekend I think I may be rebuilding my daughter’s Windows 8 laptop because the office IT guy can’t figure out why it won’t browse reliably.

Also on the list this weekend will be OSX Maverick upgrades on three machines and  IOS 7.0.3 upgrades on another 3 devices.

Only the Windows 8 rebuild should take much work.  All the Apple devices are backed up and restores usually go great.  Hopefully after this weekend I will get another 6 months of easy sailing.

 

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On The Road…please keep driving…away.

My wife and I watched On The Road the other night. This is the Walter Salles rendition of the Jack Kerouac book of the same name. At the end of the movie we both had the exact same opinion; the movie had the exact same feel as the book and neither of us cared.

I am not saying the movie is completely faithful to the book. There is no way I could say that because after three attempts to actually finish the book I finally gave up. Reading On The Road is like reading a 1000 page technical specification. Each page tells you something and the story advances but there is no point to it. There is no compelling reason to turn the page.

The movie is the same. Each new scene is a consistent extension of the movie, but who cares? I have no more interest in the characters and their situation than I do the day to day office life of my neighbor three doors down. I don’t blame the director, or the actors, or the script. I think they probably did an commendable job bringing the book to the screen. The problem is the book, the story itself.

The movie (and the 100 or so pages of the book that I managed to read) unfold like a diary of a day in the life of the average guy. Sure, they did unusual not so average things. Not everyone runs off to Mexican whorehouses on a whim and gets dysentery. Not everyone drives across the USA living on shoplifted food and amphetamines. But who cares? There is no tension. We don’t care about the people. We are not interested in their next exploit.

Maybe it’s generational and I just don’t relate. The Beat Generation is before my time. I don’t appreciation Johnny Knoxville either. Is On The Road simply the Jackass of it’s time? A bunch of 20 somethings off doing immature and irresponsible party tricks to the amusement of only themselves and their friends?

A book that rates being labeled a classic and called a “defining work of the post-war generation”? Maybe. Entertainment? No way.