Category Archives: Paul

September 12, 2023 · 23:34

Functional With Assistance

“Assistance” in this case being ibuprofen.

Two thoughts:

  1. Getting old sort of sucks, but (I assume) it’s better than the primary option, i.e., being dead.
  2. “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got, till it’s gone” – Joni Mitchell

Something simple, like getting up from my desk or chair and walking to the bathroom or kitchen, is one of those simple things in life right up to the point where you can’t do it without being in enough pain that you want to scream and/or pass out. When you get enough “assistance” to be able to do it again at about 75% functionality, even that’s just a joy.

I’ll be fine. It’s just a muscle sprain of some sort. They ran tests to make sure it wasn’t something more serious. Having done that, it’s a RICE routine, “assistance,” come back if any of these horrible things happen, and give us a call if it’s not better in a week or two.

Okey dokey!

I hope that your week is going better than mine. “Adventure” is good, but if I’m going to be in that much pain I want to have done something exciting, stupid, forbidden, evil, sinful, ill advised, or all of the above to remember and savor in return for the punishment and consequences. The fact that it was a day ending in “y” is not sufficient!

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Filed under Health, Paul

August 24, 2023 · 22:39

Art – August 24th

Balance. I think about it a lot.

On the one hand I can get really, really focused. Which can be good, it gets things done.

On the other hand, being that focused means that you can miss other problems, other threats, other things that need to be taken care of and might be just as important. Which can be bad, it leads to mistakes.

I sometimes get to where I was an hour or so ago and I have nothing for my daily post and I don’t want to take the time. I’m focused. I have no thoughts to share. I’ve used up all of my current pictures. I’m not going to get into the politics or news of the day because that’s a bottomless well of toxic sludge. I just want to stay focused and get things done and off of my plate!

Then I remember. College. Physics major in addition to working full time plus to make ends meet. Focused. Laser focused. I had to take a breadth class and the only thing I could find at 08:00 AM, when I got off work from the graveyard shift, was an Art 101 class. UC Irvine was legendary for “performance art.” (I’m pretty sure I’ve ranted at length about this elsewhere on this site, so search for it. If I haven’t, someone let me know, it’s a fantastic story. For now, just the summary version.) I was skeptical. To say the least. I wanted instructions to follow. I wanted to learn to draw or paint or sculpt or whatever. Get my “easy A” and get out.

As Coach Corso says, “Not so fast, my friend!”

The short version is that I learned to think. I learned to look at problems differently. I learned a skill that I can occasionally click on in my brain, to see things differently, to “think outside the box,” so to speak. And like the old joke about the guy who tells his guru that he’s too busy to meditate for an hour and gets told instead to meditate for two hours, the fact that I didn’t think I could afford the time to play around and come up with something to post tonight meant that I HAD to stop and make that time anyway.

So I did.

Nothing fancy, taking a bit of a generic photo from earlier in the week, transforming it, twisting it, transmorphing it, playing around for a while with this and that, listening to some weird ass music (Erasure, John Michel Jarre, and Enigma primarily) until I got to something that looked cool.

Balance.

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August 23, 2023 · 23:16

A Special Level Of Hell

There truly should be a special level of Hell reserved for software executives who make major upgrades to perfectly functional software with zero warning.

I’m looking at you, Adobe Acrobat.

A program that I use dozens and dozens and dozens of times a day. If I’m churning out reports, easily 100+ files a day. I’ve used it for years, it’s all muscle memory for 99% of what I do, and for that other 1% I’ve got a pretty good grip on how Acrobat is organized so it doesn’t take long to figure out where to go to get something new done.

Until it’s…not.

Until I get a bunch of windows telling me how *new* and *wonderful* and *user friendly* the new version is and how it will make my work so much faster!

Maybe. Maybe once I put a few hundred hours into using it. Maybe once I sit down with some tutorials or “play” with it to first learn how to do the same tasks I already need to do a thousand times a day, then figure out what the *new* and *wonderful* version has that will let me do things so much more efficiently. Design my own menus? Great! (Later!) Set up custom commands and macros? Fantastic! (Later!) Design my own pages! Amazing! (Later!)

Right this second? I need to get my work done and I’m already under enough time pressure so I could swallow a lump of coal and shit out a diamond. So when tasks that normally take 3-4 minute now take 8-10 (or more) minutes, I’m not happy. When I have to stop and think and hunt and learn with almost every keystroke to do even the most fundamental tasks all freakin’ day long, I’m less than impressed.

The one and only saving grace, and thank god I glimpsed something about it and I remembered seeing it so I had a chance of hunting for it and finding where it was hidden, was a command something like “Turn off new version.” Hit that, pray for the best, and suddenly my fingers don’t feel broken and useless and misguided anymore.

So today went better, at least on that front. And then when I was working through something this evening my screen was hijacked and Adobe wanted to know if pretty please, wouldn’t I like to take a short survey to tell them *WHY* I was foolish and blind enough to roll back their interface, why I was so much of a Luddite that I would abandon the spectacular, new, and wonderful benefits of the new version? This was critical! They needed to know!

Boy, did I tell them!

They had limits on how much text I could put into the response boxes, so they didn’t get ALL of the comments above. Just the highlights. Maybe a little more swearing.

Do I want to leave them my phone number and email address so they can contact me if they have any follow up questions? Sure.

I’m praying they have follow up questions!

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Filed under Computers, Freakin' Idiots!, Paul

August 22, 2023 · 23:38

No Context For You – August 22nd

When attacking a problem it’s important to be able to judge when you’re in way over your head and need to call for help.

It’s a skill that I’m working on. I tend to wait way too long. Maybe this will help me learn.

Calling for help was almost an accident today, triggered by me doing something stupid that made me think the problem had suddenly gotten much, MUCH worse. It hadn’t and I soon realized that, but I also realized that I had run out of ideas on the original problem. Since help had been called for by that time, so be it. Let the experts do their work and hope that they didn’t find it was something simple that I had completely overlooked.

It wasn’t. Instead they found a Sarlacc living under the house.

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August 10, 2023 · 23:58

Doing Its Best

When I was out watching and filming the Falcon 9 launch the other night, I also had my DSLR with the big lens, just in case the opportunity came up to use it. I tried to take one picture but it was immediately obvious that it wasn’t going to work. Because it was so dark the camera automatically tried to take about a 60-second exposure, I didn’t have a tripod, the handheld shot was going to be blurred and useless, so I just let the camera go and hang by the neck strap for the final fifty or so seconds.

It turned out remarkably interesting and even borderline beautiful!

The brave little robot camera, having been given an order by me, its mentor, boldly went forward to do its very best to comply and produce what it had been asked to.

In the upper left corner, I believe that’s the Falcon 9 rocket. And all of the arcs and lines? I have no clue. Probably street lights, maybe a plane overhead, maybe lights on nearby houses as the camera swung. Who knows?

But all together? Sublime.

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Filed under Art, Paul, Photography, Space

August 6, 2023 · 23:39

Thank You Sirius XM & Pandora

It’s been a long weekend with considerable room for improvement. Deadlines loom, time is short, my butt is starting to drag. Headphones on, listening to my “Erasure” Pandora Station channel on Sirius XM. It’s fine, I’m hanging in there, but I could really use…

(Image: Siriux XM app)

YEAH! That’s the ticket!

Later I stumbled across a channel that I hadn’t seen before. It might be only on the app, not on the car radio, and it might be temporary, but if yu can get it, look for the “Classic Rock Top 1000 Countdown.” I like a really, REALLY eclectic playlist and their definition of “Classic Rock” here seems to come from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, so it’s pretty eclectic. It’s not perfect since I’m not a huge fan of every group in the R&RHoF, but the last few songs have been Led Zepplin, Edgar Winter, Paul Simon, AC/DC, The Who, Jackson Brown, Prince, and Steely Dan.

Music, FTW!!

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Filed under Music, Paul

August 5, 2023 · 23:47

Dear Apple iPhone Design Team

The odds of anyone from the Applie iPhone 16 or 17 design teams reading this site are low – but they’re not zero! So just in case, here’s a request.

Can we please get a stylus we can use on the iPhone? At least on the Max Pro models with the big screens?

Some of us are getting older and not quite as dexterous as we used to be, and some of us have fat fingers to boot. It’s so much easier to use a nice, pointy, pen-like stylus than stab at virtual keyboards with the aforementioned fat fingers.

Even better if it’s the same stylus I already have for my iPad! I use the CRAP out of that wonderful device, it makes life so much easier!

Maybe the option of something like I used to use on an early something or the other – it might have been a Blackberry? It looked like a normal, retractable ballpoint pen, but when you clicked on it you got a stylus instead. Make that a stylus that will work on both the iPhone and the iPad? SOLD!!

Just a suggstion, if anyone’s listening. (You can send my royalties and free equipment thank you gifts to me here care of the site!)

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August 3, 2023 · 22:58

I Hate Plumbing

My father grew up on a farm and it was sort of the job description to be “handy,” able to do lots of different mechanical and handiman jobs. Everything from woodworking, plumbing, electrical, painting, engine repair and body work on the car – it had to be quite the significant or highly specialized task before he would just pay someone else to do it. Needless to say, I got tutored on all of these things, and while some of it stuck, the results varied. While we visited my grandfather’s farm for a couple of weeks here and there over the summer, I did *NOT* grow up on a farm.

One lesson I remember very distinctly, something I heard him say every time we were elbow deep in some array of pipes and drains and fixtures – “I hate plumbing!” That one I learned pretty well.

One guiding principle in my approach to plumbing repairs comes from astronaut Chris Hadfield. I don’t remember the exact quote, but the gist of it is, “First, don’t make it worse.” Meaning, I’m sure I could hire a plumber to fix this for $500 to $700 (hopefully not too much more) but if I had the correct $5 part I think I could probably fix it myself, but in the process of disassembling and attempting to repair and attempting to reassemble, don’t turn it into a $2,000 repair.

So far, I think I’m still good. But I haven’t been able to find that $5 part, and there are a zillion of these valves and they’re all different manufacturers and sizes and models and they’re all 1000% NON-interchangeable and the best way to get what I need is to shut off the water to the house, pull this sucker out, take it to the plumbing supply place, and let them ID it and sell me the $60 full replacement that includes the $5 part that I need, then go home and reverse the entire process.

It seems straightforward but there are so many places in there where I’m wandering further and further into “WTF am I doing?” and “I have no idea what to do next, but now the water’s off” and then I’m calling that plumber on a weekend and *POOF!*, $2,000 is gone!

I hate plumbing.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Paul, Photography

July 27, 2023 · 23:56

No Context For You – July 27th

How does one tell the difference between having long-COVID brain fog and just being tired, exhausted, overwhelmed, and confused?

I’m one of the lucky (or obsessive paranoid) ones who has never yet (as far as I know) had COVID. I’ve never tested positive, I’ve never had any of the bad symptoms, just the odd cold once or twice a year like normal. I’ve never had the fever, breathing problems, or any of the other major symptoms of COVID. I mask pretty religously out in public, still. On all of the flights to Winnipeg and back I was usually one of the only three or four folks on the entire plane who was masked. I’m vaxxed, with a full set of boosters.

So I’m guessing it’s just still that “burning the candle at both ends” habit. Although I’ve always said that for me it’s more like just sticking that sucker into an industrial strength microwave and melting it down from every direction.

I guess in theory one could get some rest, catch up on sleep, figure out how to eliminate (or ignore) the stress and deadlines, and see if it goes away – but we all know that’s not ever going to happen.

So – little steps. Try to get a bit more sleep. Try to take a few more breaks and maybe use some of those meditation apps. Some more exercise, eating better, and losing a few pounds from that vacation wouldn’t hurt.

Can’t hurt!

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Filed under CoronaVirus, Health, Paul, Photography

July 25, 2023 · 23:08

New Canadian Friend

Yesterday we knew that we would be in the Winnipeg airport for something on the order of four hours. With the delays caused by mechanical issues in the aircraft coming from Minneapolis St. Paul to pick us up, it ended up being way over seven hours.

I get bored easily.

I’m easily amused.

I don’t get embarrassed easily.

This is a bad combination.

I went looking for new friends. The good folks who designed the “holding pen” (I think that was actually their term) which is two or three gates at the Winnipeg airport for flights going to the US, where they can isolate the folks who had already cleared US customs) knew there would be people like me. So they put a friend there to find.

And what does one do with new friends? TAKE SELFIES!

Suffice it to say, the BEST part of this was watching the faces of many of the other travelers waiting in “the holding pen”. Particularly the ones who were likely from other cultural backgrounds, where a certain amount of decorum and cooth is expected, especially in public. There were people who were openly horrified to think that they were getting on the same plane as I was and then being locked in with me. Others were snickering and trying not to get caught pointing because that would be “rude,” but it was a losing battle.

My work was done – I had helped ease their boredom for a tiny bit of those seven-plus hours. “Ooh, look at that lunatice American!”

Yep!

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Filed under Paul, Photography, Travel