Some Fine Cheese to go with this Whine

Bloggity, Blah, Blah, Blah.

I know I had rambled on without much eloquence on my writing work. I have been taking courses and such. All good. 

But damn, it sometimes seems more than my addled brain and soul can take. I hate learning curves!

So, I'm working my way through the Money-Making Websites Course (MMW) It's not expected that you pick your topic right away, but I am still floundering. I've been making notes, and re-writing stuff, and polling various friends and colleagues about what they think is my best direction. 

And -- I'm not much further ahead. But today I decided to try mind-mapping. I downloaded X-Mind (free, open source) and I guess it could be a bit fun.


I don't know where this will all end up. But I do know that I have to keep trying. Good stuff can come out of a lot of false starts.

But I do need to complain and gripe about things as I go. This makes me wonder, if I was working in an office environment, or anywhere really with a few co-workers, would I still be blogging out the moments like this? Or would I just vent with Sally and Steve* and let it go.




*My brand new make-believe office mates! I just love them!

It's Exhausting!

Droid Incredible Phone

There's some dialogue from the movie, He's Just Not that Into You that has always resonated with me. Drew Barrymore's character (whose name is Mary, ironically) is tying to explain her confusing and frustrating love life,especially the pattern of communicating to schedule a meetup - and also scheduling the actual communicating - that her and and some guy have fallen into.

"I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work so I called him at home and then he e-mailed me to my Blackberry and so I texted to his cell and then he e-mailed me to my home account and the whole thing just got out of control. And I miss the days when you had one phone number and one answering machine and that one answering machine has one cassette tape and that one cassette tape either had a message from a guy or it didn't. And now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It's exhausting."

My iPad

For real, this IS exhausting and not far from the truth!

I've written about this before. I have thought about it a LOT. There is an incredible, bizarre, and addictive attachment to technology that is so pervasive in everything we do. And the constant interfacing - the relentless updating - and the fucking over-saturation of information - it's just a fuckload of wild. 

But I love some of this stuff. I love that I can update my laptop's calendar, which automatically pushes to my iPad, and my phone, which are all different platforms and O/Ss, and manufacturers and colors, and I think - Hell yeah, that makes things nice. Hell. Yeah.

Tom with part of the 343 Team, being shown concept art for Halo 4

Of course, having a mobile phone is de rigueur - is it so pathetic that I feel lost without it? But it can be quite a distraction. Not always crazy about sitting with a bunch of friends and everyone is silent - texting, surfing, emailing --- oyyy.


Speaking of lost, there's my GPS, Beatrice. She's gotten me out of a jam or two. 

And there's more good tech like online banking. And shopping. Recipes. Research. Writing.

Some day we'll have these guys in our homes?

But it sure gets wonky at times. Scary - this wonderful crutch.


So, despite our repeated exposure to the EMP, the data dump, and the dancing kittens, WoW, being pwned,  the braying politicos, traffic cams, internet trolls, the unfortunate disposed royalty of [insert African Country here], and the Epic Adventure in 3-Fucking-D...



We gotta make the best of it - and try to find the way to the simple heart of things - at all times.

Things that Piss Me Off - or - Haven't People Got a Clue?

As I always say, the world would be better if everyone were like me. Alas, they are not - so every so often I see fit to rant on what is just - plain - wrong.

Well, that can't last very long - the imperious/smug act, I mean. I actually am more humble, or try to be, than I let on. I work on empathy, and I have little tolerance for those who have little tolerance.

Still, things piss me off - such as this:

Couple mornings ago, dude in large pickup pulls up in front of my house, honks the horn and looks at the house expectantly. I was still had not had enough morning Joe to make sense of it for a moment. My first thought was that he was picking up a child from a sleepover, but then I realized that 1) did not recognize the vehicle, 2) there were no kids at my house but my own.

I am now a little pissed. I've never been a big fan of honking outside someone's house, but it's not a deal breaker necessarily. But, it appeared that this dude was a stranger, and that's just wrong. I briskly walked to the front door and stuck my head out. I'm not sure who spoke first, but I think the first thing I said was..."why are you honking outside my house?" And his oh-so-[important/validating] reply was, "I got some extra asphalt, you need some?" He then pointed to the end of the driveway that meets the street. There were the average cracks and dimples and messed up bits that I figured everyone has, everyone who has not newly re-surfaced in the last bunch of years. Nothing too bad. No sink holes, nothing deep enough for a punji stick. (pity, one way to get rid of solicitors)

Still, didn't need his leftovers. And if I did? Is this a way to go about business? It's one thing if you're cruising down a street and you see a neighbor out - you could ask. But to stop outside a stranger's house and just honk your flippin' horn?

Flippin' tacky is what it is.


Next up - I get a phone call the other night. Did not recognize the caller ID.
Me: Hello
Them: (Spoken with very poor elocution, and with higher volume than decorum allows, basically poor manners)   Yeah, this is (a three letter alphabet company name, which I forget, I will just refer to them as ABC), I want to come drop off (or was it pick up? I really forget) the check.
Me: Who?
Them: ABC, the transportation company, I want to do pickup/drop off the check.


- I think, wait, is this the limo company that did the airport transport for the Make-A-Wish trip? No, the name sounds wrong, the ride was already paid for, and besides, they'd be a hell of a lot more professional and pleasant.


Me: I'm sorry, I'm confused, who are you looking for?
Them: Wait - (longish pause) ...
--Click--

Me: Hello? Hello? He hung up...I wonder why he hung up. -( no wait, that's Pink Floyd.) But he did hang up abruptly, and without a gracious goodbye or a "sorry my bad" or nothing.


Still - I was gobsmacked. What just happened? OK obviously it was a wrong number situation. Hey, no biggie, it happens to all of us. But wait, this was different. You don't call, and keep saying the same thing, when the person on the other end obviously does not know who you are or what your business is. You change your tactic, you explain things in a different way, you don't breath through your mouth, you don't get all nearly shouty. You enunciate, dear man.


And then when you realize your faux pas, you don't just hang up on a person, as if you'll get cooties!


You know, I called that number back. I really did. It went to voice mail. But boy, had I got my loud boorish ABC guy on the phone, I would have gone all Emily Post on his ass.


Oh, and then there's the walking medical dictionary with no filter at Starbucks. Let me explain. I got my latte and cookie and sat down to kill some time and start in on a new book, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir, by Cornel West. I don't know a lot about Dr. West, but he's intrigued me for a while - so it was on sale, yaddah, yaddah.

So, I'm sitting there, and there are two women at the table right next to me, chatting and there was also a small girl who belonged to one of them. Because of the proximity, I could over hear a lot of what they were saying, but I was able to tune it out, and it wasn't anything that was too loud or two weird.


But that changed in a little while. Evidently a woman who was two tables away from my neighbors overheard their convo, and started asking questions of the one of the woman, the one with apparently a multitude of health issues, including a poorly working social filter, or internal editor. 


Deal Lady - you don't go yakking about such things as your procedures and your hysterectomy and your hormones and your this and your that, to a person two tables away, in a mixed company setting, that is NOT a doctors office, or a support group.


A brief blurbie is fine. Oh yes, you tried that med? Me too, it worked/it failed - etc. Done.


But this convo went on, and on, and on, and ohDearGod, just move to sit next to your audience and lower your voices, for Pete's sake!

Who raises these people?


So - these are the things that trouble me. The thing is, sometimes life is so difficult, I need to focus on these other things that in the long run, don't matter one fucking way or another. Well, they do. I wish people had better manners, but still - I think the need to just ramble and vent about dumb things as well as the important things is crucial.


And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Speed of Thought

I used to go to libraries pretty frequently. Some of the time the motives were purely social, but I also used the resources there for lots of school work.

Then I used to work in one. A library, that is. It was a bit heady to have all those resources, the reference listings, the microfilm, the Mil-Specs, and all the ACM and IEEE goodness any person with an IQ of 155 could possibly want, all that...information really, really close by. You want the GNP of Algeria? CIA World Fact Book is ready with your info. How about the President's secretary's phone number? Exectutive Yellow Book -- here ya go. The ABCs and 123s of a Russian SCUD missle? Please - step this way.

Those were the easy requests. The harder ones sometimes involved me leaving the comfort of my carpeted cubicle (when I wasn't taking my shift at the Reference Desk), and hoofing it to Kendall Square, Cambridge - to one of MIT's fine libraries. Granted that only happened a few times, and no - I didn't actually "hoof" it. I drove to the subway station and then rode the line to Cambridge. But still, a bit of an unwieldy way to retrieve documents. And as you might have guessed, I worked in a tech library. No story time or quilter's corner here.

This was about 15 years ago, maybe more.

In a way, what I saw, what I dealt with, was cutting edge. Back then, the average consumer did not have or even understand what HDTV was, nor GPS, nor PDA. But these were terms I saw pretty frequently in the research that I pulled together for our staff of scientists and engineers. Much of the jargon and the nuts and bolts technologywas over my head. I didn't know an array from an alogorithm. (well OK I kinda did), but I understood the basic concepts of what HD and the rest meant.

So like, that's all cool and stuff. Right?

But our methods of getting the info, though sophisticated for our time, in retrospect seems so - so --

slow?





Yes, slow, that's the word.

Today, anyone with a computer and a decent connection can get nearly the same information all by themselves - if they know were to look. Of course, tons of erroneous stuff comes up as well, it takes a seasoned surfer to discern the difference. Yeah, like I'm all that.

My mother would have loved this stuff.

Over Saturation on a Thursday Night

ER, last quarter hour or so. Simon has had a major freak-down and punched out a patient. Went to town on the man. The patient was nearly blinded. It was a mess of out-of-control bone on bone bloodletting.

And the staff seems to be less concerned about that, and more concerned that later he throws around some equipment. Well, sure now they have to be sterilized -- but --

OK, the thing is, he punched out the smoke inhalation guy. (The man who was an accused of and later found innocent of pedophilia). Wild stuff.

Then when the ER quiets down, Archie talks to Simon about the repercussions of his actions. And slowly, Simon starts to tell his story.

"I was ten, the first time."

Wrenching. Simon is crying, Morris tears up as he listens. The story is nauseating.

And then when we've really had enough, a scene is being played out in a recovery room down the hall. A young girl comforts an older man. They hug. He tells her, "We'll be special friends. Don't tell anyone."




And then the news...

It is NOT a damn party!

You know, I understand that TV execs, from network, or cable, to local branches are concerned about viewership. Especially the news, because it's all so available right here - on the Internet. So, viewers drift away from conventional news sources.

Got it. They want to bring viewers back; they want to keep viewers after the previous drama or comedy just ended. So, they do the following:

1) The anchors jump right in before the commercial break with a relentless couple of minutes of 'headlines.' These promo bits grab the viewer, who is probably a bit comatose from either the late hour, or the previous show (in my case, a riveting ER).

2) The female anchors and reporters dress like they are at a party. Shiny clothes, sparkly accessories, low cut tops, lots of leg. Sure they look pretty, but to me, it's pretty tacky. Big freakin' whoop that they are on TV. It's fucking NEWS, not a cocktail party. Even if every story ended in rainbows and kittens, the attire is totally inappropriate.

3) The men look a little too shiny as well. It's not a funeral, but it's not a party either. I mean shit, they might as well be hoisting martini shakers and clinking glasses.

4) A little too much glee when reporting stories. Some joker from News 7 Night Team was launching into a breaking news story last night, and the dude looked a little too happy.

Yeah, I know this trend has been around for a long time. "Dirty Laundry", written by Don Henley was released in 1982.

It's just getting worse.

I make my living off the evening news
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry

Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I dont have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry

Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down
Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down
Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down
Kick em when theyre up
Kick em all around

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
Comes on at five
She can tell you bout the plane crash with a gleam
In her eye
Its interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry

Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a
Running bet
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry

You dont really need to find out whats going on
You dont really want to know just how far its gone
Just leave well enough alone
Eat your dirty laundry

Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down
Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down

Kick em when theyre up
Kick em when theyre down
Kick em when theyre stiff
Kick em all around

Dirty little secrets
Dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers in everybodys pie
We love to cut you down to size
We love dirty laundry

We can do the innuendo
We can dance and sing
When its said and done we havent told you a thing
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!

Some Interesting Shit

Seriously --

There's an organization that investigates consumer services - and they take the complaints, and whittle them down NCAA style with brackets and seeding - and they decide on a coveted (not-so-much) award called The Golden Poo. Read More.

The Times had an interesting piece on consumer friendly people and the sites they run. Check that out too.