Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

The Magic Spreadsheet and Other Plans

Random Thoughts, Site News, Writing

I noticed the other day that in 2015 I had only written one blog entry. Normally I would have an excuse that I had been writing elsewhere, but I haven’t. Most of my writing projects have puttered out.

First and foremost, I stopped doing reviews for Shakefire. The main reason I stopped was because of the garbage I was being given to review. I don’t blame the guy running the site, he has things that need to be reviewed, and since I have a regular day job I can’t go see movie screenings in the middle of the day, so instead I get mailed a pile of DVDs and CDs. While the music was of varying quality, and I even discovered a new band or two, the movies were almost all terrible. The lowest budget of horror films. It is depressing to always review garbage. So I quit.

Next, for “reasons”, the Man vs Wife series of game reviews I was doing petered out.

I also tried writing some fitness blog type stuff. But I’m not very fit (yet) and what I wrote was trash.

There are various projects I have by noodling with, but I’ve been down on fiction writing ever since I pushed myself to “win” NaNoWriMo a couple years ago. Winning involved me just puking out the most insipid drivel I’ve ever written and soured me on the novel and on writing.

All that leads me to my new effort to get back into writing. This new writing will include blogs and other things, but all of it will result in a daily word total that I will put up on The Magic Spreadsheet.

What is The Magic Spreadsheet? Well, it’s this. That’s a link to a Facebook group where you can find the link to the latest spreadsheet. Basically, it is a tool to try to encourage writing every day. To join, you just open the spreadsheet (it is a Google Doc) and find a free line on the appropriate page (the first sheet includes instructions on how to find the right page) and put your name on it. Then you write, and you come back and put your totals in. You earn points, both for how much you writer and for how long your unbroken chain of daily writing is. When you have enough points you can level up, which allows you to get more points for writing more. At the lowest level you need only to write 250 words a day. That’s just a couple paragraphs. I mean, this blog post is over 700 words. As of this writing, I am on my 3rd day. Hopefully I can stick with this.

In addition to the Magic Spreadsheet, I’m also trying to put together a schedule for some other projects I have, things I need to do on a regular or semi-regular basis, most of which involve writing, but some of which involve drawing, and some involve speaking, and some involve music, and some involve exercise.

Oh, exercise. I’m back on the 5BX bandwagon. If you are reading this and it intrigues you and you are a woman, there is XBX for you. I have finished the first chart and moved to the second. The full push-ups of the second chart are proving to be more difficult, so my progress has slowed.

With exercise goes “diet”, and by that I don’t mean “doing some fad binge thing to try to lose weight fast and then gain it all back when I quit”. What I mean is making small changes to my diet to include better foods. More vegetables, less junk. More water, less soda.

And both the exercise and diet are being spurred on by the fact that I’m going on a cruise the first week of July, and I would like to be in much better shape by then.

All of this comes on the heels of recently reading Surprisingly…Unstuck. I’ve read a few self help / motivation books before, but this one has to be one of the cleanest presentations of simple information that is bound to work for everyone. Most of it is exceedingly simple, but also the sort of things you might not think about on your own until someone points them out. In fact, it’s so simple that the book gets a bit repetitive at the end. Still very worth reading.

So, that’s it for now. I’m going to try to be back here more often, if for no other reason that to keep a log of things I’m doing for myself and to point the five people who might be reading my blog to other projects of mine as I work on them.

Quiet, men are gawking.

Random Thoughts

The Latest Metal Gear Solid game is out and it features a bad ass female sniper named Quiet … who the developers decided would work best if she spent the entire game in a bikini. The fu..?

Oh, it gets better. See, her being nearly topless while being a stealthy assassin would be fully justified by the story, they said. Yeah, well, turns out that the “story” is that she has superpowers and absorbs oxygen, sunlight and water through her skin, and it allows her to do stuff like, I think, disappear into smoke or something. Fact is, I don’t really know, because my desire to play the game vanished when they released the action figure of her with squeezable titties.

That’s right. The figure is made of a soft plastic that allows you to mush her boobs together to enhance her already ample cleavage.

But I didn’t write this post for that. No, no. I wrote this because there are apparently a couple of really terrible cut scenes in the game that actually make her depiction worse. And to fully illustrate how dumb and sexist it is to use Quiet in this way, an Internet genius did a model swap and put the character of Ocelot into Quiet’s place. So here, enjoy these scenes with Ocelot and keep in mind that in the actual game the part is played by a bikini clad woman.

Anxiety and Phone Calls

Random Thoughts

I don’t like talking on the phone. There are two reasons for this, I’ll get one out of the way quickly because it is less important than the other.

A key component for me when conversing with people is being able to see them. When you consider that I am posting this to a blog and I’m fairly active online (and have been since the late 80s in some form or another) it seems counter-intuitive. But, in my brain, this is writing, which is different from talking. I can write, and people write back, and if I get a particularly heated or spiky response from someone, I’m not on the spot to immediately reply. I can take my time and consider the position and give a thoughtful rebuttal if it is warranted. When I talk to people, how they react, in their face and body, to the things being said supply great information for keeping from kicking over too many hornet’s nests, and also to encourage conversation if the response is positive. But when on the phone, all that drops away, and I can’t see a person rolling their eyes or gritting their teeth or fidgeting with their fingers. They might be doing those things, but I can’t see them. I don’t like this.

But the larger reason why I don’t like to talk on the phone is almost a post traumatic stress response. For years, for more than two decades, I have worked in some form or another in a customer service related position. These days I do much more programming than support, but being at a smaller company I still have to occasionally answer the phone. Because my jobs have almost always leaned toward support instead of service the people I talk to usually are having a problem and not just asking a question. And more often than not they are angry about the problem. I can do my best to try to defuse their anger, but it doesn’t always work. So the bulk of my experience using phones is to have someone yell at me.

These days, when I need to make a phone call, I pick up the phone and before I start dialing I can feel my heart speed up. My foot will start to tap or my leg start to twitch. I might even feel my face flush with heat and break into a little sweat. I know, I know, that the majority of the people I speak to on the phone these days are not going to yell at me, but I’ve been conditioned. I cannot stop my physiological and psychological response.

It’s a terrible thing that I should probably talk to someone about so I can get past it, but healthcare in this country… I won’t go there, it makes me angrier than having to talk on the phone. Anyway, so that’s why, if you need me, you should email me, or text me, or catch me on Facebook, or just drop by the house and we’ll play some board games. All of these options are better than calling me on the phone.

Kids Today

Random Thoughts

This post probably isn’t going to go the way you think…

I’m at the gym. I’ve just spent 30 solid minutes swimming. I’m tired. As I’m at the locker getting ready to shower, two gentlemen in the same aisle are having a conversation.

Gentleman 1: I just don’t get it.
Gentleman 2: Me either.
G1: They just want to sit at home and stare at screens.
G2: Yep.
G1: When I was their age, sure I had an Atari, we even had a computer, and TV, but I still went out riding bikes and playing with other kids, and sports and camping and all that.
G2: The kids today have changed. It makes it hard on us parents.
G1: It was never this hard for my parents.

This was the point where I stepped in.

Me: You mind if I jump in?
G1: Your kids spend too much time inside too?
Me: Oh, it’s not that. Let’s me ask. You have kids, right?
G1: Yeah.
Me: And they have bikes?
G1: Yeah.
Me: And when they ride them, do you make them wear safety helmets?
G1: Of course!
Me: When you were their age, you had a bike?
G1: Indeed.
Me: And your parents, did they make you wear a helmet when you rode it?
G1: No, but things were different then.
Me: How?
G1: It was more safe.
Me: No, it wasn’t. Riding a bike today is exactly as dangerous as it was when you were a kid. The only thing that has changed is that science now understands injuries better, and studies have shown that kids on bikes can survive bruises and scrapes, but a head injury can be traumatic and lasting. Wearing a helmet significantly reduces the chance of sustaining a head or brain injury.
G1: So?
Me: That was true back in the 70s and 80s too, we just didn’t know it yet. You should have been wearing a helmet back then. Your parents were terrible parents.
G1: They didn’t know any better!
Me: Right! And if they had told you to wear a helmet, you probably would have thought it was dorky. And if they said you couldn’t ride the bike without the helmet then you probably would have ridden the bike less and played more Atari.
G1: What are you saying?
Me: Kids today have changed, but not entirely on their own. Kids today are sometimes reacting to how parents have changed.
G2: What’s wrong with parents changing?
Me: Nothing. Just stop blaming the kids for it.

Then I went and showered.

I admit, I don’t understand a lot of things that kids do these days. But I’m pretty sure my parents didn’t understand what I did all the time either. And so, when I see a kid do something that I don’t get, rather than lament “Kids today!! Ugh!!” I try to understand why they’re doing it instead.

 

Time Keeps On Slippin’

Random Thoughts

I felt like I needed to say something before I got to being absent from my blog for four months. I’m about 15 days shy of that, so anyway, here I am.

Things have been…

In 1996 I got my first real official job in the IT field. Before then I’d been kicking around retail while pursuing my degree, but in 1996 I signed up for a work-study program with the college and got placed into a gig fixing computers and doing network stuff for a healthcare company. For the next 5 years I would climb upward in the systems administration side of the IT world, and then through a confluence of events of which I am only partly responsible, I had to switch silos and started climbing the software developer side of the IT world.

18 years I’ve been working in IT. For a brief moment I had an office of my own, something that I didn’t think I would ever get. Then I had to give that up in order to get help. So I don’t have an office any more, but I’m a department head. Sure, I’ve only got one guy working beneath me, but it is more than zero. The last time I had people working for me I was managing the video department in a Kroger.

I’m knee deep in RESTful APIs and mobile app development. It is frustrating as all hell, but I’m learning on the run again, which is one of the things I do well.

And I’m sitting again. By that I mean that the great standing desk experiment has ended. Did it work? Maybe. As I’ve told people, after standing all day it felt good to come home and relax. I was less restless the past year. But, I’ve embarked on a new venture – going to the gym – which is going to necessitate that I don’t spend all day standing. A convertible desk would be ideal, but also expensive and in some ways annoying. You can’t win ’em all.

Anyway… I’d spent a little time today looking at WordPress themes, for the main site, but ended up setting up a new one here, which led to me renaming the blog and making other changes, and realizing that I hadn’t written in a while. So here, I’ve written.

Tomorrow…

A Sequence of Events

Random Thoughts

My father passed away on November 28th in 2013. In 2014 the 28th was Thanksgiving and I was worried that I would have trouble with the day. And while others in my family seemed to struggle, even if they hide it fairly well, I found myself no worse off than I had been on Thanksgiving the year prior, where we had a good time but missed the presence of my father who was in a nursing facility recovering from surgery as he had been for some time.

That night, a year prior, we got in our cars and went to visit him, taking him a plate of the Thanksgiving feast. He was very happy that we had come, as he’d been very upset that he would be unable to attend. I was glad we’d gotten everyone to come.

The next day I came to visit him, because I needed him to sign some checks. A few for bills and a couple for Christmas gifts for out of town family, his children from his previous marriage. I didn’t stay long. Then on Saturday I was sick, and being sick I couldn’t go see him, so I called him and told him I couldn’t come by and probably wouldn’t be by on Sunday either. I told him that I loved him, and he said he loved me too. These weren’t things we said often, he and I, and I couldn’t tell you why I said it that day, but I did. I suppose that’s about the best last words to have with someone.

The flu or cold or whatever I had hit me hard, and I was down for the next few days, taking time off work to get well. Then on Wednesday morning my brother called and told me dad had been taken to the hospital. Or maybe he called to tell me about the first incident of dad passing out. I honestly don’t recall the phone calls of that morning. We went to the hospital, my wife and I, both sick and wearing masks to hopefully limit our possible contagion. He was in the ER when we arrived. He’d coded four times, once in the ambulance and three times in the ER, or at least that’s what I recall, and then we was taken to the ICU. He was alive, but dependent on machines. He’d had, they believed, a blood clot, and we waited on a doctor to come assess his brain function, to let us know the chance of recovery.

Later that morning, we had them turn off the machines and allowed my father, whom the doctors gave no chance of recovery, to pass.

So, as I said, Thanksgiving, on the anniversary of his passing, went much more smoothly than expected. By the weekend I was sick again, another flu, and Saturday morning I broke down as I recalled our last conversation. Then on Wednesday after Thanksgiving, I broke again. The date, it seems, doesn’t matter as much as the repeating of a sequence of events. I suspect in the coming years that the Saturday and Wednesday after Thanksgiving will continue to be rough for me, especially if I get the flu.

Over three years ago, someone who had been my best friend for a decade died on Christmas Day. Every year I expect the day to be difficult, and while I have a moment or two of sadness, I’ve never broken down. In 2010, when it happened, we heard about it while driving home from Christmas with the family, and it had snowed, and was still snowing. My wife wishes for a white Christmas every year, and if we every get one I wonder what it will do to me.

2014, or the Year Fink Beats the Stomach

Random Thoughts

2014Resolutions

A tradition since 2002, here are my resolutions for the year…

  1. Fitness: this is the big one. I’m going to be 40 in October, and I want to be able to take one of those “this is what 40 looks like” photos that make people jealous. I’ve got a spare tire around my gut that I’m weary of carrying. To that end, I resolve to…
    • walk/jog/run the neighborhood, every street, 3 times a week
    • go to the gym at least 1 time a week, I get up at 6am every weekday but don’t go to work until at least 8, so I figure I should be able to fit a gym visit in there somewhere, especially since I’m already paying for it, and when I don’t go to the gym I will be doing the 5BX, I bought the book last year and figure it is time to do it, I’d like to make it a habit
    • do 10 pushups, 10 situps and 10 squats for every TV show I watch, either I will watch less TV or exercise more, so it’s win-win
    • do random exercises while working, I already stand for 8 hours a day, so throwing in the occasional set of squats or dropping down for a few pushups should be easy to incorporate
    • eat better … I loath nebulous goals like this, it just isn’t S.M.A.R.T. but after a bout of buying veggies from the farmer’s market, I know it is something that can be done but can also waste a lot, so I need to spend some time educating myself on diet and figure out how best to change in a way that doesn’t result in so much compost
  2. Writing: I think I resolve this every year, but I don’t actually follow my own advice and make a plan that is capable of being followed, so this year I resolve to…
    • write in the mornings, I get up at 6am every weekday but don’t go to work until at least 8, so I figure on days that I don’t go to the gym I should be able to fit some writing time in there
    • blog about the fitness stuff, this is a good excuse to write, so as I walk and hit the gym and eat better I will write here about it, something I should be doing anyway
    • start using my phone, or buy a special device, to record things I think about in terms of writing, lots of times I have ideas when I am not in a position to write it down, and I need to solve that

I think that’s a good set of things to resolve to do. I wanted to include something about publishing a piece of writing, but I really need to just get down the habit of writing first. Perhaps at the mid-year 4th of July update on my progress and course correction I will feel like adding it in.

Memorial Park

Random Thoughts

I had an idea. I’m pretty sure it is crazy. I’m also pretty sure that’s why I like it.

A Memorial Park.

Imagine a place, a decently sized green space. With flowers and trees, open grass spaces, maybe some picnic tables, a bit of playground equipment perhaps, and all surrounded by a wall.

Now imagine this place is a cemetery.

Not filled with tombstones with coffins buried beneath them. The only people interred here are ones who have been cremated, and their ashes mixed in with the soil. When you brought a loved one to be laid to rest here, you would bring the container of ashes, you’d be allowed to inter a small portion of it yourself at a ceremony at the location of your choosing. The rest would be interred later by the staff, spread out all over the park. Your loved one would get an engraving in a brick on the wall, or in a sidewalk or path.

And the park would be open to the public, for picnics and play.

Would you want to bury your loved ones there? Would you want to be buried there?

There are, I think, some beautiful cemeteries in the world, filled with gorgeous statues and crypts. But most cemeteries are lines of bland headstones, markers on a patch of earth beneath which a coffin, often expensive, rests holding the remains of a person. They are, by and large, generically depressing places, devoid of life, and I just don’t think that it how I would want to spend my eternity.

I want to build my Memorial Park, but I have no idea how to go about it or if it would be worth it. Is it even legal to have an area where cremation ash is interred into the soil and people are allowed to play there? Is it sanitary?

These are questions I suppose I should look into, though at least on some level is has to be okay because 6 years ago there were people interring ash beneath trees.

The Standing Desk – Month Eight

Random Thoughts

It has been a long time since I checked in on the desk…

Our office moved, and I used that as an excuse to build a new standing desk. Still out of IKEA pieces, but this time without that pesky other desk below it.

20130820_134302

It is much nicer, and I don’t feel quite so ghetto. Also, I have my own office, so I’m not surrounded by sitting people.

But how has it been?

On the 4th of July, I ran the Peachtree Road Race. It’s an annual 10K in Atlanta. I’ve done it a few years now, but one thing I noticed this year is that I didn’t get the usual aches and pains in my legs that night or the next few days. I’m going to give credit for that to the fact that I had been standing for 8 hours a day for nearly 6 months at that point.

I haven’t noticed any major weightloss, but I have noticed more energy during the day and in the evening, when I go home, I’m less restless. I actually want to sit down and relax to end my day, whereas before I would get home after sitting all day and feel antsy.

All in all, I feel the standing desk has been a win. I’ll be sticking with it.

Knowing and Seeking

Random Thoughts

I love knowing things. It is one of my favorite things. Knowing stuff is totally awesome, especially when people ask questions and you have the answers. Knowing is, as they say, half the battle. The other half is seeking, or curiosity.

Too many people stop after knowing.

A while ago, I spouted this on Facebook and Twitter:

I love telling other people how to do their job. I hate that I have to tell other people how to do their job.

And it is a truth I have long lived with. Because I love knowing things, quite often when I interact with someone on a professional level I know a lot of things about their job, and since I also love sharing my knowledge, when the knowledge I have can fill in a gap or point out a flaw, I feel awesome. I also don’t mind when people point out something I didn’t know or missed, because I know I would have done it to them given the chance.

When I don’t know a thing, I like to learn that thing – assuming there is some advantage to doing so. I mean, I don’t know how to ballet dance, but I’m also not in a hurry to learn to ballet dance as I don’t see an immediate benefit to it. This attitude tends to lead me to acting like a detective. If something is broken, I immediately start trying to devise a way to figure out how it is broken and how I might discover a solution.

When this is my job, when it is an item under my purview, this is what I do. And when I say that I hate that I have to tell other people how to do their job, what I really mean is I hate when I have to do the detective work for an item that isn’t in my purview.

Example. I have a customer. That customer uses my service in conjunction with the service provided by another company. The customer has a problem and it appears that both services are not working. I examine my side and determine that my service is working, and only appears to be failing because the other service is not working as expected. The person working at the other company says their service is working and my service is failing. I give the customer a list of simple tests to perform to illustrate the problem. These tests are not being done on my service but on the other service, and the results illustrate that the other service is broken, returning improper results that is leading to the failure of my service. These tests are very simple, take less than a minute to perform, and prove conclusively where the problem is and even point to the solution. So why didn’t the guy at the other company suggest it?

Because it’s easier to point the finger at someone else than it is to solve the problem.

Meanwhile, now that I’ve caused the problem to be fixed, the customer likes me, doesn’t like them, and is open to listening when I suggest that they should switch to another provider for that other service.

If you don’t take care of your customers, someone else will.