Writing
Checking In, How Are You Holding Up?
It's early December. The sun is setting about as early as it ever does. I don't know about you, but it's very nearly dark by the time I get home from work. It's been about a month since an election that shocked and saddened many people. Politically, things are happening exactly like we knew they would when Trump won. The felon is nominating other criminals for jobs. So far, he's selected over a dozen current and former staffers from Fox News for government positions. There are less than 20 shopping days until Christmas, if you're into that. Hopefully, you aren't an employee of UPS or FedEx because December has to be the hell month of all hell months for those folks. One more year and we will be halfway through the 2020s. How in the hell is that even possible?
The people reading this are an eclectic bunch. One big group is my family. We are loyal, and also we like to know what's going on with each other. There are the folks I know in real life who see these links on social media and stop in from time to time. Then there are my Internet friends, many of them bloggers themselves. We have a sort of mutual support group where we read each other's blogs. Finally, there are a bunch of Internet strangers who know me through one of my many passions, but most likely through my witty political commentary or through my many posts about all things technical on the Mac side of the house.
If you are reading this, and we are strangers, feel free to introduce yourself. I take pride in answering every email I get. I follow most folks back on social media, too. Likewise, I may not always have the best in-person social skills, but I'm generally pretty nice on the Internet. I want to make sure that folks have someone to talk to during what are really some frightening times, and for many lonely ones to boot.
Please let me know how you are holding up after the election. Are you scared? I am. Are you mad? I am that too. Do you like the holiday season, or is it stressful for you? I'm on the side that likes it. I get a good long break from work. I like my family, and I am happy to spend extra time with them during the holidays. Even though Wonder Woman and I have a whole pile of kids and grandkids, we can afford to remember them all. It wasn't always like that. If you struggle with that part of the equation, I will understand.
Do you have any plans for the new year, any resolutions you are thinking about making? I want to be able to go on longer walks again myself. I'm hoping to take a fun trip with Wonder Woman in 2025, and I don't want to have to stay behind while she goes for runs or climbs mountains, not that I will be doing either of those things, but I would like to have some leisurely lakeside strolls. Not only that, but I am also contemplating retiring for good. I like the financial freedom working my post-career job brings, but there is more to give life meaning than one's occupation.
The universe is neutral. It doesn't hate you, but it certainly doesn't love you. The Internet can be a frightening morass of noise at times. There are people trying to cut through that. Personal independent bloggers offer little pieces of themselves all over the place. Some of them are quite funny. Others are strident but will give you real food for thought. If you take time to investigate this little slice of the online world, you're almost guaranteed to find someone who resonates with you. If you can't, please let me know and I will offer you some suggestions.
It's tempting sometimes to create an online persona, but it isn't worth the effort. Just be you. You have value, and you're special because you are unique. Don't try to model yourself on some plastic influencer. Live your life and share the parts you feel comfortable sharing. Start a blog. Get a pen pal. Find people who are interested in the things you like. We are all out here looking for one another. Get found. Don't forget to check in once in a while.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
Sandwich Origin Stories
During my time as a long distance hiker, I spent a lot of time fantasizing about food. I was constantly hungry, desperately trying to take in more calories than I was using making my way north through the Appalachian Mountains. More often than not, my go to order when I was lucky enough to find a diner or a deli while passing through the small mountain trail towns was the humble hamburger. There was a place in Hot Springs, NC that had a burger called the Hiker Special weighing in at 12 oz of ground beef. I ate two of them.
I still enjoy hamburgers and other sandwiches of all kinds. My favorite fast food-ish restaurant is Jersey Mike's Sub Shop where i get the #13 Italian fixed the traditional way plus banana peppers. They have gluten free bread for Wonder Woman who sticks with the lower calorie turkey and provolone.
Other than liverwurst, I've never met a sandwich I didn't like. They are best with good fresh bread and the toppings piled on, but I've eaten many, many plain bologna and cheese sandwiches on loaf bread in my day.
Here's the fascinating story behind some of the most popular sandwiches in America.
Who Really Invented the Reuben? | Saveur
Cuban Sandwich: The Complete History and Guide
The History of the Grilled Cheese | The Committed Pig | NJ
The Fried Bologna Sandwich Is A Southern Classic
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
What Passes for Justice
In September 1991, I was working first shift at the medium-sized prison that had employed me for the previous five years. My co-workers were a mixed group of white folks, African Americans, Native Americans and one officer from Puerto Rico. Most of us had served in the military. Almost none of us had any college. Our spouses worked in various places: the few remaining textile mills, a Converse shoe plant and various chicken and turkey processing facilities, including Imperial Foods, located in Hamlet, NC, about 30 miles away. We'd finished the inmates' breakfast meal and were in the process of getting the prison through its daily cleaning when the switchboard starting putting through calls to the officers wive's who worked at Imperial. Something bad had happened, a fire. Over 100 firefighters had been called in, and the news was grim. There were many, many people on route to the hospital, many missing and the first bodies were being brought out. We had to call in people from second shift to come in early, so the worried husbands could get to the site of the fire.
During the next few days, the survivors began to tell the story of the rapidly spreading fire that was fueled by an ad hoc repair to a hydraulic line that burst right next to a sizzling hot fryer for cooking chicken. Few people knew that although the plant had two previous fires within the last decade, it had never had a state safety inspection. As the workers fled, they encountered locked and chained fire exits, closed at the order of the company's owner, who was worried about people stealing food from his company. Only one group of employees managed to kick open a door. That door, covered in sooty boot prints, is on display today at the museum of American History in Washington, DC. It bears testament to one of the deadliest industrial disasters in state history. Of the 90 people inside Imperial Foods when the fire broke out, 25 died and 54 were injured, many of them suffering lifelong ill effects from smoke and chemical inhalation.
Eventually, the owner of the plant, Emmet Roe was charged with 25 counts of manslaughter, He pled guilty and was sentenced to 20 years, of which he served only four. He was also fined the equivalent of $1.8 million. The plant was permanently closed. Based in part on public outrage, Jim Martin, only the state's second Republican governor in 100 years, nearly doubled the number of industrial inspectors to make workplace inspections more common.
The Hamlet fire is remarkable because it actually resulted in some accountability and change. For years, American companies scoffed at toothless safety laws and the relative impotence of inspectors. Paying fines was easier than paying for safe working conditions. There is an ongoing and concerted effort currently under way to cut through the so-called red tape of government regulations that supposedly make it too difficult to do business. Many of the regulations are ones created for worker safety. The state of Texas repealed a regulation that mandated water breaks for outdoor workers in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave of 100+ degree days. It interfered with worker productivity.
Even before the US elected a 34x convicted felon to be its president, most people were already aware of the two tiered justice system under which this country operates. We saw Bill Cosby released from prison despite evidence of dozens of sexual assaults. We saw Trump pardon crony after crony. Even in the local news in my hometown, there have long been reports of the wives of generals from the nearby Army base, Ft. Liberty (nรฉe Bragg) getting traffic tickets fixed, of the sons of prominent businessmen getting caught with drugs and guns at a public school and getting away scott free. The owner of a local car dealership not only bought his way out of charges for sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy, the judge would not allow the records of the court proceedings to be made public in violation of state open records laws. It's an old story and one that gets repeated frequently.
When I see a rich and powerful person get real justice and pay a tangible price for decisions that have had horrible effects on working-class people, I really don't care whether the punishment was extrajudicial or not. The system we have is designed not to punish the powerful, but to keep the poor in line. Eat the rich doesn't have to be an idle threat.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
Health Insurance Companies Are Evil
It's common knowledge that the for-profit medical industrial complex in the United States is broken and has been so for a long time. Bills are inscrutable. Insurance companies provide little help when trying to determine the cost of care patients are considering, if they have that luxury. There may be occasional bright spots, but almost everyone who deals with the system has a personal horror story. For-profit companies are beholden to their stockholders, not patients, you knowโsick people. Even non-profits have dubious decision-making skills. I am in long-term (16-year) recovery from substance abuse. I have a mood disorder that requires me to take medication daily. It's no big deal. I was diagnosed in the '80s, so I've dealt with it almost all my adult life. I once got a letter from my insurance company that explained they noticed how expensive my medication was. They suggested I ask the doctor to prescribe Valium instead, a highly addictive and often abused drug. They suggested that to me, a recovering addict.
I dealt with bone-on-bone arthritis for years. The only relief was a shot that I could get every six months. The red tape, delays, and stalling by my insurance company (I was a state employee in NC) would often result in delays of two to three months, stretching the time between shots up to nine months. Arthritis is a painful and debilitating condition that doesn't just get better. The policies of a company trying to save money resulted in my being denied coverage I was promised as part of my employment. I lived in pain and grew depressed when I met so many stone walls. This went on for years.
I am sorry that the CEO of United Healthcare was murdered in the street outside of a meeting for investors in that company. I am not surprised, though. If I thought some exorbitantly paid executive was responsible for the pain, suffering, and death of someone I loved because his company was trying to provide maximum value to shareholders, I might just consider violence myself.
Health insurance CEOs rake in millions: Here's the top 10 list
How Insurance Companies Get You to Pay Higher Costs for Less Coverage
Whistleblower Exposes Health Insurers' Most Evil Scheme
Health insurance horror stories
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
What Do You Miss?
I am not one of those people who longs for the good old days. For big groups of people, the progress made in gender equity, civil rights, LGBT rights and other areas was much too hard fought to ever consider going back. I am very fond of progress, technology and medical advances. I'm happy to live in a time when HIV is no longer a death sentence. Likewise, I resent the hell out of the empty-headed RFK's of the world who poison people's minds with their anti-vax rhetoric. Having said all of that, I will admit to missing little pieces of the past.
I miss affordable prices a lot. Getting any beverage in a restaurant costs several dollars. I saw an app today that does one simple thing for Mac users. It toggles a feature (the FN key) on and off. The developer was asking a modest twenty-five dollars for the privilege of using it. As someone who has owned several thousand-dollar cars and who currently drives a 2005 Camry, I am outraged at the people who think a $30K car is cheap. The margin on simple things like shoes and eyeglass frames is robbery by another name. Going to the movies, a concert or a ball game is outrageous. I know, I know. Get off my lawn.
I miss the time when our society wasn't polarized about politics the way it is today. Sorry, Obama, there definitely is a red America and a blue America. I can't even.
I miss the time when people could live off a single income earned by a high school graduate. I supported my wife and son in the 80s by framing houses and serving in the National Guard. Twenty-five years later, my youngest daughter and her husband both worked full-time and had a lower standard of living than we did back in the day.ย
Oddly enough, in my own experience, racial self-segregation was less pronounced in the 80s than it is now. At my high school, the sports teams, student government and clubs were all diverse. Over the past forty years, I've watched the younger generation choose to have white and black clubs and white and black activities. Other POC just try to get in where they fit in. By the time my kids got to high school, the football team was almost all POC, while the cheerleading squad was lily-white.
I miss the days when security wasn't the overarching, ever present concern in tech. The impediment to efficiency at work because of security is huge. We can't put local admin accounts with static passwords on workstations to facilitate getting access to them. They have to use a server generated rotating password that I have to look up whenever I need to do something. I can't even use an admin account to log in on my own computer (on the PC side). I have to elevate privileges using my super-extra long admin password to each app I need. Two-factor authentication is neat, as long as it works. The aggravation of dealing with people who get new phones or have other hardware issues is just another wrinkle. Passkeys seem neat until you try to use them when you work on multiple devices.
Like I said initially, I don't want to go back. I don't think life was better 40 years ago, but that doesn't mean every change has been positive.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
The Resistance to the Nazis - Lessons from the Past
For some reason, resisting fascism and the historical lessons from courageous Germans in World War Two has been on my mind lately. Having been involved with social movements and protests over the last quarter of a century, I'm aware of the conservative attitude towards any group of people who don't wrap themselves in the flag. Modern police forces are terrified of ANTIFA and anarchists while they simultaneously ignore or tacitly support right-wing groups. Republican led legislatures across the country have passed laws designed to crack down on protests and those laws are always enforced selectively against POC, the poor, young people and anyone who opposes the power structure. Some states have made it legal for drivers to run over protesters who block traffic, essentially creating a de facto death penalty. Such is the morality of the "all lives matter" crowd.
For information about role models from the past, see these links.
German resistance to Nazism - Wikipedia
German Resistance to Hitler | Holocaust Encyclopedia
A Brief History of Anti-Fascism | Smithsonian
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
This Is What I Believeย - December IndieWeb Carnival
This month's IndieWeb Carnival is hosted by Zinzy and the topic is belief.
This is what I believe:
The Universe is Neutral. It Neither Loves Nor Hates You - I am all for the power of positive thinking. I tend to act as if things are going to turn out my way most of the time. Pessimistic people, and you surely know a Debbie Downer or two, are a drag to be around, and they grate on my nerves after a while. I am not a Pollyanna, though. I do not believe that "everything will be all right" because I am fully aware that I could be in a car accident on the way home or that my house could burn down tonight. Bad things happen to good people every day. What I believe, based on evidence, is my absolute ability to deal with whatever happens. I have a proven track record of living through everything that has ever happened to me. Everything can be overcome. If you don't believe that, read Mans Search for Meaning about how concentration camp inmates survived.
People Are the Most Powerful When They Are Organized - Most of the rights and privileges we enjoy today, our freedoms, if you will, were not won on the battlefield. They were won on picket lines and in mass movements against the entrenched power structure. The rights of women, people of color, children, workers and the 99% were won by organized groups of people who strategized, struggled and fought and sometimes died to demand rights we take for granted today. The powerful know this and do their best to keep us divided along racial, cultural and class lines so that we won't do it again.
It Is Possible to Overcome Nature and Nurture - We are not locked into an immutable set of values instilled in us by our genetics or our environment. Free will is a hell of a drug, to paraphrase Rick James. I am a son of the South. I have been surrounded by conservative Christianity, institutional white supremacy, patriarchal behavior patterns and unquestioning nationalism my entire life, but I am not an adherent to any of it. The easier and softer way is to go with the flow. Don't make waves. Accept the status quo. Countless people can't even define their belief system because they are too damned busy getting ready for the next MCU movie or the coming weekend's football games. I'm sure there are areas where I need to increase my awareness too, but I try as best I can to be a part of the solution to society's problems. I am not neutral about much.
Curiosity and Sense of Humor are The Most Attractive Human Traits - I'm not an education major. I haven't studied learning styles, but I know there are plenty of ways to add to one's personal knowledge base. Whether it's reading books, surfing the Internet, interrogating the people in your life, or something else, there are an infinite number of things to learn. People who have a sense of wonder and a thirst for knowledge are my favorites. When that is coupled with the ability to laugh, to see the absurd, and to enjoy little moments of serendipity, it's hard for me not to be drawn towards a person.
When You Live a Fearful Life, You're Living Like All the Bad Things Have Already Happened to You - I am firmly in the camp with those who believe that asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission. I do not have on ongoing CYA strategy at work or in my private life. There is something inauthentic and sad about people who constantly self-censor or wait for others to make decisions for them. Granted, I am not rich nor am I a CIO. What I am is generally happy and productive, with plenty of room in my mind for things that I enjoy. I believe in acting in good faith. My experience has shown me that doing so is what works for me, more so than endless plotting to get ahead and avoid ruffling feathers. I feel confident that I can defend most of what I do to anyone who questions it.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
Police Misconduct and The Promised Immunity
After the Ohio State vs. Michigan football game this past weekend, the players (ages 18-22) got into a scuffle on the field when Michigan players attempted to plant their team flag in on the Ohio State logo at midfield after winning. Within moments there was a massive police presence on the field. The police tried to separate the players, and when they didn't immediately comply, some of the officers deployed pepper spray - against student-athletes on national television. It wasn't a good look.
I've never been a police officer, but I worked within the criminal justice system for seven years as a correctional officer, spending eight hours a day with convicted criminals so I have some understanding of the stress of the job. Not everyone is cut out to be a cop. If you are easily frightened, angered or slow to make important decisions, being a police officer is probably not the job for you. There is no shame in that. Unfortunately, the US court system is set up in a way that allows police to assert that they fear for the safety to justify just about any action up to murdering children holding play toys.
Nationwide there is an issue with sub-standard police officers moving from one agency to another as they get fired for incompetence or misconduct. President Trump has promised to give police blanket immunity for crimes they commit, regardless of the circumstances. Under his policies, police will be free to choke people to death whenever they feel like it without ever facing justice. The evidence proves that they will do exactly that.
National Police Misconduct Database - Center for Justice Research
10 Outrageous Police Misconduct: A Compilation of Videos - YouTube
"The Wandering Officer" by Ben Grunwald and John Rappaport
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
The Worst Thing You've Ever Done, Grace and Forgiveness
A few years ago, a man in his 60s here in NC, an amateur cyclist of some renown, won a race against a field of mostly younger riders. He was selected for a random drug test, which he failed. In his quest to remain competitive, the man, who was already legendary in the local racing community, a mentor to many and a man held in high esteem, resorted to cheating to increase his chances of winning a relatively meaningless bicycle race. In the process, he made the news, was banned from racing and severely damaged a hard-earned reputation. When I heard about it, I was livid. I didn't know the man. I knew of him. Some of my friends frequently made the one-hour trip to his hometown to train with him. Everyone called him The Old Man. My attempt to carry on a lifelong love affair with sports was already severely damaged by the steroid era in baseball. I adopted pro cycling as my new favorite, only to discover that almost every famous racer of the era was a cheat. It deeply affected me then and now.
I took to social media to vent, as one does. I guy who knows me and The Old Man asked me a question that stuck with me about the whole situation. Is it fair to judge someone solely for the worst thing they have ever done? Is it? Society does it routinely in criminal justice cases. Sure, they take some mitigating circumstances into account, but if you mess up bad enough, you are going to prison despite your otherwise saintly life. I knew more than one person serving a life sentence when I worked in the correctional system who had but a single yet horrible conviction.
In the army, a well-worn but true statement is that one โoh shitโ wipes out one hundred โattaboys.โ People remember Bill Buckner a lot more for making an error in the World Series than they do for his otherwise illustrious career. In my own tiny little personal Internet, one developer's failure to adequately address a mistake is still reverberating in our community months after the fact.
I suspect that in moments of absolute honesty, most of us could make a confession that could potentially turn large swaths of our acquaintances against us. Maybe we bullied someone or we were needlessly unkind when we didn't have to be. Perhaps as ignorant and uninformed youngsters, we indulged in behavior that we are ashamed of now, like listening to Rush Limbaugh or voting for Reagan.
I believe in extending grace to my fellow humans these days to the extent that I am able. I believe, as I said, that everyone has that one worst thing, and I try not to define people by that. If they are serial assholes, I let them go on their way, but in most cases, people aren't that way. I learned in 12-Step recovery that resentments against other people are the number one offenders in a person's life who is trying to stay sober. I was a miserable person with a whole pile of grievances 16 years ago. In the intervening time, I've worked hard to become forgiving, not for anyone's sake but my own. It's liberating and a heartily recommend it. You aren't letting your ex off the hook when you stop centering on your grievances, You are letting yourself off.
I'm not one who preaches against being judgmental. Frankly, I think using your judgment is a survival skill, and it is impossible not to exercise it. You can't stick with the winners if you don't decide who they are. So judge away, but be careful what you do with your decisions. Don't write people off as a matter of course. Offer them a silent chance at redemption if you can. Put yourself in their shoes and treat them like you would want to be treated. In the long run, you will benefit. They will benefit, and we will be one step closer to a better world.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
Everyone but You Sucks, and I Hate Them
One of the least fun parts of having bipolar disorder is unexplainable irritability. Sometimes there are a few identifiable causes, but I know that on better days, they would not bother me. Today I woke up to find that a carefully curated collection of newsletters and online subscriptions was somehow decimated by technical snafus beyond my understanding. As I went through my habitual morning reading on my favorite websites, I could tell it was going to be one of those days.ย
The people of Reddit are engaged in the usual paranoia and security theater they indulge in regularly over app privacy policies. Two of the most hated apps by the little uninformed Russian trolls over there happen to be two I like just fine, Bartender and Clean My Mac. Someone called me disrespectful for not agreeing with them.
Bluesky is full of people taking sides in the PC vs, Mac wars like we are all living in 2001 again. It seems like the only people not participating are the Linux people who could solve all our problems if we would just install Arch/Mint/Ubuntu/Gnome etc.
On top of the technology drama, I also had to leave home, not something I always enjoy, accompanying Wonder Woman to the supermarket. To top it all off, instead of feeling grateful for a paid five-day break from work, I'm mad because I have to go back tomorrow.
I needed some advice, so I did some research.
What to Do When Youโre Super Cranky and Hate Everyone | SELF
5 Scientific Reasons (and Solutions) for Your Crankiness
How to Be Grumpy: A Guide to Managing Grumpiness Well
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
On Collecting Quotes
In an early morning fog, I posted this to the wrong blog today. I am reposting it here for the people who follow Linkage via RSS so they will have today's links.
More than a decade ago, a discovered a fun little app called Quotebook the app was deprecated within a couple of years of my discovery. By some miracle, it has continued to work. I have transferred from phone to phone and continued to use it for its intended purpose, collecting quotes from news stories, books and memes. As a backup, I also use individual text files named after the speaker/writer. Once that folder contained over 500 individuals. I created a GitHub repository to make it easy to share with others. Available as a ZIP archive or as single files you can find it here.
I prefer finding my quotes organically rather than harvesting tons of them at a time, but I will occasionally go looking for a quote on a specific topic. A good place to do that is here -
If you use IFTTT, you can get quotes emailed to you daily. I've been doing it for years. The day's choice goes out shortly after midnight, so it's always waiting for me when I wake up. You can get the same service with a free account.
Email me a famous quote every day - IFTTT
There are a few other quotes collecting apps available for iOS and Mac. I've tried them all.
The Old Technology Debate
I don't want to stir up any trouble. I really don't. I am here to be as helpful as possible for people who are trying to make purchasing decisions about the technology they are going to acquire during this holiday season. Not only that, but I was perusing social media during lunch and lo and behold, I saw the decades old debate about the suitability of Apple computers and computers running Windows, raging on the same as ever. I thought folks were over this, but evidently, they are not.
I started using personal computers in 1993. My first computer was an IBM 486 with Windows 3.1 installed. Over the next six years, I went from a novice to someone working in the support industry. The first time I received a call from a person who owned a Macintosh computer and wanted my assistance, I was incredulous. I couldn't believe that someone spent their money on something so expensive and so incompatible with everything with which I was familiar. In 2000, I was hired by a local school system, issued an Apple laptop, and immediately put to work servicing thousands of Apple computers across 21 schools. Within six months, my ability to configure and maintain Macs surpassed what I had learned in six years as a Windows user. Because I had to support both platforms, my knowledge of Windows and how to maintain it has never faltered. Although I haven't purchased a Windows machine for personal use in over a quarter of a century, I have been issued a few at work and touched literally thousands of them in my job.
For a while, purchasing a Mac was a considerable investment when compared to obtaining an entry-level PC. I will admit to buying inexpensive Dell laptops for my daughters when they were in college. My mother, on the other hand, who is more financially secure, is the one person I recommended buying a Mac. The Dell PC she previously had during the early part of the 21st century was repeatedly infected with different forms of malware and hard for her to maintain. Since she entered the Apple ecosystem with an iPhone, an iMac, and an iPad, she's had very little problems, and like many users, has actually moved away from a desktop machine to using only handheld devices. Some tech snobs think that Apple locks you into their ecosystem by tying the devices together, but I can assure you that most regular people appreciate rather than resent that feature.
These days, you can get an entry-level MacBook Air or a Mac Mini for under a thousand dollars, and the days of them being prohibitively expensive are over. Most people find that an entry-level PC purchased at Best Buy or Walmart will disintegrate within three or four years, whereas most Macs last up to a decade before they need to be replaced. Sometimes people that have never used anything but Windows will accuse Max of not being user-friendly, but the problem there lies with the user and not with the device. For 20 years, I watched five-year-old kindergarteners sit down at iMacs in a computer lab and begin to do things immediately. One little known fact is that low-end computers purchased in big box stores do not have the same components that other computers made by the same manufacturer enjoy. Period. There is definitely a trend towards awarding parts contracts to the lowest bidders, and certainly not to the ones who provide the most quality outside the gaming machines that some PC users purchase. Apple computers, on the other hand, enjoy the same quality components regardless of where they are sold.
There are still people who believe that Macs are only good for graphic designers and creators. These same people believe that you must purchase a Windows machine to get real work done. I have news for them. I work at a small private university in the IT department. My job consists primarily of supporting Windows users and maintaining the computers on the university network. I use various Microsoft tools to do this. All of my IT related work is done on an iMac. If I need to use Windows, I simply log in via a virtual machine on the network to get access to the tools I need. The big graphics companies like Adobe have long made versions of their software for both Mac and PCs. Most of the time, outside specialized enterprise applications, users can get their work done regardless of the platform that they are on. Our university requires every student to purchase a computer, but we do not specify whether they must buy a Microsoft product or an Apple product.
I am long past considering the type of computer one uses as criteria for evaluating their worthiness as a human being. It's just a machine. People who are fighting religious wars over computing platforms need to get a life. They are stuck in another decade. Having said that, I don't see a compelling reason to use Windows outside the specialty enterprise applications I mentioned earlier or just because one is familiar with the platform. I think a legitimate argument can be made for the superiority of Apple's operating systems and the apps that run on them by most knowledgeable people.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
On Collecting Quotes
More than a decade ago, a discovered a fun little app called Quotebook the app was deprecated within a couple of years of my discovery. By some miracle, it has continued to work. I have transferred from phone to phone and continued to use it for its intended purpose, collecting quotes from news stories, books and memes. As a backup, I also use individual text files named after the speaker/writer. Once that folder contained over 500 individuals. I created a GitHub repository to make it easy to share with others. Available as a ZIP archive or as single files you can find it here.
I prefer finding my quotes organically rather than harvesting tons of them at a time, but I will occasionally go looking for a quote on a specific topic. A good place to do that is here -
If you use IFTTT, you can get quotes emailed to you daily. I've been doing it for years. The day's choice goes out shortly after midnight, so it's always waiting for me when I wake up. You can get the same service with a free account.
Email me a famous quote every day - IFTTT
There are a few other quotes collecting apps available for iOS and Mac. I've tried them all.
Are There Ethics to Blogging?
When I began to publish my writing online a year ago, I had no idea whether I would make it a habit or whether people would read anything I wrote. I hoped they would, but I had very little idea however all of this works. Blogging challenges were a mystery to me. My knowledge about how the whole community of personal bloggers from various platforms coalesces within social media circles was scant. The more I wrote and the more consistently I shared, the more learned about the unwritten expectations I would begin to place on myself. I also saw the constraints other people operated under, by choice, and how they differed from mine. Instinctively, I understood that being true to myself was the most important rule to follow. The other unwritten rules of blogging are just things I intuited along the way.
To my delight, I learned that writing my own version of someone else's idea is totally fine, as long as I give them a shout-out for the inspiration. Having someone do the reverse for me is high praise. Any time I've written something and then been able to read someone else's experiences in the same set of circumstances, it's been enjoyable. I end up feeling a particular closeness to the writer. I like it best when there are other significant differences in our lives, so I can see that my feelings of being unique aren't particularly valid. People tend to be more alike than they are different, in my experience. I wrote a post on what it was like to attend 13 schools over a 12-year period, only to read accounts from an English-Canadian woman a couple of years older than me who had done something similar. I also discovered a fellow who lives a continent away who is similar to me in many other ways besides our schooling history. Taking inspiration from others writing is a way of relating in a more deep and connected way than social media could ever offer.
Another ethical issue I and others have to deal with is the prevalence of AI writing tools and easily accessible they are. Things like grammar and spell checkers have been around for decades, but tools that can create an entire post from a mere prompt are new. I don't see myself letting some company's plagiarism machine create something that I would stick my name to. I don't have a problem having my spelling, grammar and punctuation checked by a computer because I'm used to that. Using a service that significantly changes my words, the tone and the structure just seems dishonest. There is a place for that in business, that being a cold and heartless environment. Blogging should have a soul. It should have a heart, and it should have an ethical code that the text you put under your byline is real and created by a human.
On the honesty scale, I'd say I come in around 90% to 95% honest. Sometimes one has to stretch the truth a bit to protect the innocent or make a story worth telling. My style of writing is autobiographical. There are times when I just can't remember the exact order of events, where I was living or who I was married to (just kidding). I do the best I can. I aim to be entertaining and interesting, not to please a professional fact-checker. Of course, there are some things about which I always try to be scrupulously honest. When I write about sobriety and recovery, you can take it to the bank. If I convey a particularly funny story about something that happened while I was in the army, there may be a detail or two where I take a literary license. Most of military life is dull and boring, so if something sounds interesting, it's probably just in the way I'm writing it.
I also tend to stick to just the facts when I write tech related posts. I want nothing more than to help someone find a real solution to a software issue. I'd feel horrible if I misled them about an app's suitability for a task, or if I wasn't diligent about pointing out a show stopping flaw. To the regular people in the world, a detailed explanation of menus, buttons, submenus and other user interface trivia is pure textual sleeping pills. For my fellow nerds and software geeks, it's vital information.
At some point, my goal is to have more time to write more polished and detailed work, to spend more time fine-tuning what I put out there for folks to read. I want to work through more than one draft, like what I envision a real writer does, Meanwhile, I will continue to be a happy hack making stuff that's good enough to share even if it won't win any rewards.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
Black Friday - Alternatives to Shopping
Any shopping I do on Black Friday will be of the online variety. There aren't enough bargains in the world to get me into a store with crazed bargain hunters today. I've seen the videos of shoppers being trampled so someone could save $50 on a big screen T. I plan to spend the day in the company ot my kids, grandkids and my Mom. We will hang out, telling stories and snacking. Our one trip away from home is a planned excursion for lunch to get some pho from the very appropriately named Vietnamese Restaurant. That's its name. The even funnier part is that all the people who work there are Korean.
Black Friday Alternatives: Things To Do Instead of Shopping - Parade
What To Do On Black Friday Instead Of Shopping
12 Things To Do On Black Friday Besides Shopping - It's My Favorite Day
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
Thanksgiving 2024
This year's Thanksgiving has a special flavor. My son, who lives far away in Austin, Texas, is here for a visit. I still live in the house where he grew up, and he enjoys these nostalgic returns. After we got home from the airport yesterday, he went for a run. He came home to report that he'd passed the homes of old friends, the middle school he attended, and various spots where he's committed various teenage sins in his wayward youth.
A little later, we went to the train station to pick up his daughter, our granddaughter, who was traveling to meet us from Virginia, where she attends school. We all went out for a sushi feast before coming home to hang out, telling stories, and making each other laugh.
I get up early, and as I sit here writing, I have that wonderful protective parental feeling that reminds me of my younger days when I'd wait for the kids to get up so I could make them breakfast and start the day. Later on, we will all be traveling across town to attend the annual family gathering at the remnants of my uncle's farm, where I lived during my high school years. My daughter and two of our other grandchildren will be there, along with other relatives ranging in age from nearly 80 down to a six-year-old.
Luckily, no one will talk politics in mixed company. If the coast is clear, the progressive wing of the family may console each other under our breaths, but no one will be wearing a MAGA hat or thanking the Good Lord for the election of Donald Trump. We will be asked to give reports on anyone who is missing. One of the best parts of these rare family conclaves is the chance to catch up on family news.
Wonder Woman is sitting across from me, already beginning our holiday shopping. With five children and 13 grandchildren, she has a lot of gifts to buy. I send her ideas and give her feedback, but all the real work, including wrapping the gifts when they get here, falls to her. My Black Friday shopping is relegated to taking advantage of software sales, a relatively selfish pursuit that I thoroughly enjoy. I probably won't be getting many new apps this year because, quite frankly, I have so many already that it's hard to even find things on sale that I don't already have installed!
I make a gratitude list every day as part of my journaling practice. It helps me stay in tune with how fortunate I am in so many ways. Since last Thanksgiving, a lot has happened that has given me new reasons to be thankful. After a long pause, I started blogging again, giving myself a creative outlet that is enjoyable and therapeutic. I've enjoyed a marked resurgence in my interest in technology and married that to my writing to produce content that's been viewed over 400,000 times by people all around the world.
If you are reading this, know that I appreciate you. Thanks for being interested in my world. Feel free to leave a comment or to reach out on social media. Have a happy Thanksgiving, whether you live in the US or not. Let's make a better world in the year ahead.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
Weird Thanksgiving Traditions
Here in the United States we traditionally celebrate Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November to celebrate the supposed feast celebrated by New England Pilgrims and Native Americans in 1621. President Lincoln created the holiday in 1863 in the midst of the American Civil War.
My family's traditions are pretty normal. Wonder Woman and I alternate each year between her family and mine. Both families have all the expected Thanksgiving foods, turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce and various vegetables and deserts. No one person has to cook it all. We do it potluck style, where everyone attending brings a dish or two. The only slightly out of the ordinary offering is the occasional bushel of oysters we may have on hand, since we all live relatively close to the Atlantic coast.
Doing a little research, I discovered there are some definitely strange customs followed by different people in the US. Here are a few for you to peruse.
Weird Thanksgiving Traditions: Turduckens, Cap'n Crunch Stuffing & More
These Are The Weirdest Thanksgiving Traditions Ever
These Unusual Thanksgiving Traditions Are Common in the U.S. - Immihelp
Whatโs your โunusualโ Thanksgiving tradition? : r/thanksgiving
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
AMA - Balancing Act
AMA - Finding comfort in the familiar things in life and having new adventures - which way do you lean?
Growing up as I did, where my family moved frequently and I was always changing schools, left me with a craving for stability and, well, sameness as an adult. I get a good deal of comfort out of living in the same house for decades now. I was glad to keep the same job in the same building for 20 years before retiring. On the other hand, traveling and seeing new things is a special treat. My favorite part of my months-long honeymoon was sleeping in a different place every night. I like both things.
In my job, most people are very unenthusiastic about having their computer updated, or god forbid, being issued a new one. When it comes to technology, the average person definitely prefers the familiar and comfortable over anything else. Not me. I'm always ready for new features, bug fixes, and extra security. Of course, since it's my profession, I'm more confident that I can fix any problems that pop up. Most of my career has been spent in education, where you would think people would be all about learning something new and expanding their horizons. You would be wrong if you thought that. Our ongoing controversy at work is around asking users to change the wireless network they use. That's it. Just select a different one from the list of what is available, type in your user name and password, and move on. Do I need to tell you how many meetings and conversations have already happened around this?
Lots of decisions come down to something familiar vs. something new. Take going out to eat, for instance. Wonder Woman and I have a handful of tried-and-true locally owned restaurants which we frequent. When I see a new place featured in the newspaper, I immediately think of checking it out if it looks like something we'd fancy. We like international cuisine and we need gluten-free options. Yet, when it's the end of a long work day and we've decided that cooking is too much of a hassle, we almost always head to one of the places where we've been 100 times before. It's not called comfort food for nothing.
I drive a 2005 Toyota Camry. It is a twenty-year-old hand-me-down from my mother, who literally drove it to church on Sundays. It has well over 200,000 miles. The paint is stained from being parked under an oak tree, and there are various scrapes and dents on every side of it. I've put exactly zero thought into getting a replacement for it. I haven't had a car payment since the Bush administration, and that thought horrifies me. I only drive it a couple of times a week to work and back anyway. Wonder Woman has a new Subaru Outback with all the bells and whistles, Apple Car Play, heated steering wheel, automatically adjusting mirrors and seats, a backup camera, the whole deal. I love to drive it and do so every chance I get. It is indeed a balancing act.
There are a few areas where I lean one way or another. I'm not much on rewatching movies or TV shows if I have already seen them, but I will re-read a book without hesitation. On my computer, I've used some of the same apps for many, many years, such as PathFinder (20 years), Evernote(15 years), and Launchbar(17 years) - all of which I ditched last year for replacements that I am now quite happy with. For other things, like email, I'm still using the same thing, the Gmail web interface that I have used since 2005.
They say that without newness, memories don't get created, and life just sort of blends into a big blob. I believe that, so I do seek out new adventures. But I also relish in the comfort of the familiar. I expect most people are the same in that regard.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
The Fascinating History of Swearing in Movies
Left to my own devices, my language is quite profane. I temper myself in public and on the Internet, mostly because my Mom reads my blogs and I care about offending her. But, when I am working on a troublesome computer or dealing with carrying my groceries across a rainy parking lot, swearing is in order. It's all kind of silly of course, deciding that one sound is OK but another sound is bad. I know a certain Kindergarten aged boy whose take home behavior chart recently had a big red X on it and a notation that he "Said the F Word!!" He probably won't do that again, not worth it I'm sure.
As for movies, well society seems to have moved from not letting Lucy and Ricky Ricardo sleep in the same bed to an anything goes situation. In the first season of The Wire on HBO (AKA, the greatest TV show ever made), there is a scene that is just shy of four minutes long during which the F-Bomb is dropped 38 times by two actors. What a great play on words!
One fact I learned while looking for links for this post - the director of Gone with the Wind paid a fine equivalent to $100,000 today just so Clark Gable could say, "Frankly me dear, I don't give a damn." That is a commitment to art right there!
The First Onscreen Curse Word Was in This Classic Movie
Well, I swear: A brief f---ing history of profanity in the movies
The top 10 movies with the most swear words
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐
Don't Burn Bridges
Some of the best advice I ever received was an admonition against burning bridges. An old co-worker told me that when I was getting ready to leave a job at which I was unhappy. The immature side of me wanted to leave in a blaze of glory, letting everyone know what I thought of them and the place that employed them. Somehow I'd convinced myself that my opinion was important and that all those people needed my approval to be happy - none of which was actually true. You may have seen someone do exactly what I contemplated. It's always icky and transparent and never looks good.
Sometimes people start burning their bridges when they are getting ready to leave a group as a way of self-protection. They don't want the separation to hurt so they begin to withdraw and cut off relationships. That's understandable. But I try to avoid doing it as best I can. Sometimes in our lives a certain group dynamic only exists for a short while under a certain set of circumstances that can never be recaptured - political campaigns, social movements, even some educational opportunities are like that. Just because the magic of the moment is gone doesn't mean that the people involved in it are no longer valuable, not because of what they can do for you, but just because people and relationships have an intangible worth that we honor when we continue to respect them.
In the current political environment in the US, I am very much of the mind to avoid people who like and support the president-elect. Their values and mine are obviously tremendously different. At a fundamental level, I just don't understand what makes them tick, nor do I have a desire to. But, I'm not seeking out every conservative I know to let them know that Lou Plummer thinks they are a bad person. There are ways to avoid people without purposefully alienating them. This in no way means that I'll silently nod my head when someone begins to spout off about how wonderful DT is, it just means that I don't feel the need to tell anyone off preemptively.
When someone decides that ending a relationship with me on a negative note is the thing to do, it makes me wonder what they hope to gain. It doesn't happen very often, and usually when it does, it's part of a mass casualty event when a disgruntled co-worker exits, but occasionally it's personal. It reeks of immaturity and poor judgement. I do the best I can not to take it personally. Some people are just built that way, I suppose. In reality, telling someone off, getting the last word, and making a dramatic exit only kind of feel good and only in the moment. That action is usually followed by a big let down and moments of self-doubt.
It's like my Mama (and probably yours too) used to say. If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything. Itโs not trite. It's true in most contexts. Exceptions can be made for calling out injustice and bigotry.
Enjoyed it? Please upvote ๐