Friends..
Life is too short to pursue friendships with people who obviously aren’t interested.
Online it’s very easy to say to people, “Sure, if you’re ever in the area, stop by, we’ll hang out!” with all the enthusiasm in the world.
Don’t say it unless you mean it.
Flaking Out
Because disingenuous people suck, and when someone sends an email saying, “Hey, I’m going to be in town next week, let’s finally hang out!” well radio silence sucks ass.
If you’re going to be a friend, be a friend. If you’re going to be a flake, well you are what you are and there’s really not much to be done about it.
And thanks to the real friends. Both of you.
Home again home again…
My parents used to say this little rhyme whenever we’d go on any kind of a long trip:
“Home again, home again
Jiggedy, Jog.
Home again, home again
big fat hog.”
It’s a part of an old mother-goose rhyme. But as a child, somehow it made me feel better.
Tonight, in my semi-daily Skype call with the kids, I heard my wife reassuring the kids that I’ll be home tomorrow, if only for a weekend, using this same rhyme.
They smiled…
So did I…
Home again, home again…
Week 37 of 52.
I am not a PC…
So here it is. I bought a MacBook. After literally 10+ years of being a “Dell Guy”, well Dell finally ran out of laptops that I found interesting.
My last notebook, the Adamo13 was one of my favorites. Ultra slim, solid state just about everything. Could do a 5 hour plane-ride without issue.
But I needed something else. After flipping back and forth between Linux and Windows I realized I needed something that could go both ways. The more I thought about it, Apple seemed like the way to go. Apple runs on a BSD Linux kernel after all, has a linux command-line (if you know where to get to it) and pretty good compatibility.
So when I finally got it in my head to upgrade, well I went ahead and dropped the hammer on a 15″ macbook pro. (so to speak)
So far I’m pretty happy with my choice. But when the first person at work saw me on it and asked me the idiot question I got pissy.
“Are you a Mac now?”
No idiot, I’m a person. I’m *USING* a Mac.
Let me break it down. I have in my arsenal the following systems.
In my household and business I have:
3 Desktop PC’s running windows 7
3 Laptops running Windows 7
4 VMWare ESXi hosts containing the following:
11 Windows 2008 Servers
2 Windows 2003 Servers
10 CentOS 5 Servers
5 CentOS 6 Servers
2 SUSE Enterprise 11 Linux
1 Mac
This is the thing. I’m a technology pragmatist. I use what works best and does what I need it to. In the limited scope of a transportable computer, a Mac seems to do what I need nicely, and yes, it comes in an attractive and (so far) fairly durable package.
But I’m not a Mac. Nor am I a PC. I’m a person who uses a computer. (Several actually)
Religion has no place in technology. Leave it in the church.
Oh, and I’m still not buying a #$!@!? iPhone.
Manual Labor…
Just a quick note…
My kids are driving me nuts about school… Especially my 9 year old…
This weekend, I have a GREAT idea…
I have a pile of rocks in my back yard.. I’m going to ask him to move them from one side of the yard to the other.
When he’s done with that, maybe I’ll have him move them back.
When he asks why I’ll tell him -
People who don’t go to school have to do stupid-ass chores that people who did go to school ask them to.
It’s not child abuse is it?
On Christmas…
- Sparkles!
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt good about Christmas… Maybe I’m finally growing up, or not growing up. Finding the inner child that was slaughtered so many years ago.
Christmas was never a happy time growing up. Oh there were the usual trappings, trees, lights, presents, etc, as-nauseaum,
But it was never a happy time.
Not coming from a “religious” family Christmas was nothing but the commercial bullshit aspect of it, and even then, only carried about because it was what was expected. Mostly ended up being everyone buying presents for people they really didn’t like as much as they’re trying to pretend they did.
My family Christmas was always the same.
It started with my parents desperately trying to make sure I didn’t get up too early, because after all, mom and dad both VERY busily sleeping off Christmas Eve.
Hey. I’m six right? Telling a six-year-old not to wake up early on Christmas morning was like telling republicans not to fuck the middle class. They’ll look at you all innocent and tell you they’re not going to do it, then do it anyway and not understand why you’re pissed.
But I digress.
I’ve mentioned in (quite a few) past posts that dad was a drinker. Well add heavy drinking to “some assembly required” and it makes for some fairly creative Christmas presents. I remember specifically one year I got the bike I’d asked for…but of course he had to go over it and take it apart and put it back together because he’d read the assembly instructions through his scotch-glasses the night before.
My mom was a trip when it came to holidays too. She didn’t know her kids. (There were six of us mind you) And when I say she didn’t know us, I mean didn’t know us as in “was completely incapable of naming one thing any of us liked.”
Six kids, six presents. My mom’s solution? Find something that looked “fun” and order it. Qty. = 6.
Nevermind that the difference in age between us is almost 40 years and we span at least two sexes…. Do you really think the same present is appropriate for all six of us?
Christmas was always an afterthought in my household growing up…and it took me a while before I realized that for me it was becoming the same…a time of year to get through…even having kids of my own I had difficulty with the whole “getting into” part of the spirit.
And then there’s my wife. For whom Christmas is a HUGE deal. All of our ornaments are glass/porcelain, Lenox collectables. We have about 50,000 lights for the outside of the house but STILL manage to keep it tasteful; she’s *THAT* kind of into Christmas.
It’s always driven her nuts that I wasn’t more into it. That I couldn’t seem to get behind it…
So this year, this year I decided something important. If it brings such light and warmth to my wife….how can I continue to “bah humbug” myself? To quote Sheryl Crow: “If it makes you happy, then it can’t be that bad.” Right?
So I’m embracing Christmas this year. Again, not the religious aspect of it, we’re both kind of beyond that. So I’ve hung Christmas lights in my hotel/apartment window in Seattle, and I’m avidly shopping for Christmas presents based on what *I* know about my kids… (Which, contrary to popular belief, does NOT necessarily mean what they ask for. 
)
And maybe it would do for me to not be quite the cynic for once in my life. 
Sort of a self-gift.
Thanksgiving…
Now that it’s over, I can post about it.
I’m thankful for my family… without them I can’t even begin to picture what my life would be like.
I’m thankful for my health… Though I need to start taking a more active role in protecting it.
I’m thankful for my job… While it’s not ideal in many ways (location? Hello?) I’m still employed while millions are not.
We had a good week. I got to spend the week at home, thanks to the generosity of my current customer who elected to pay me for work done remotely… I’m not in a position to take time off without pay right now, CATBytes is still costing me more to operate than I make in a month by a factor of three, though the gap is narrowing slightly.
My latest home project, the honey-do from hell, went nicely and I honestly lost a lot less blood than I expected to on it… (Post on that later when I’m not struggling to get ready for work.)
In all, 2011, while not ideal, is shaping up to end on a good note.
Week 26…
Thank gods it’s halfway over. Thank god I still have six months to go.
As illogical as it seems, there are reasons behind this seemingly conflicting statement.
This week I’m closing out week #26 of this consulting gig. The one that has me flying across country, the one that keeps me from my kids.
Originally it was a six month engagement, so originally I’d be packing to go home right about now.
I’m a technology consultant. I’ve been doing high-tech for quite some time, one might even say decades. I’m good at what I do, I’m usually booked at least 6 months in advance and there is never a “shortage” of work nationwide, though regionally shortages do happen.
One thing I’ve learned in 10+ years of consulting, is that November/December is the WORST time to be looking for new gigs.
So when the opportunity to extend this contract, which expired on November 15th, through next May, I jumped at it. May is not a great time to be looking for work either, but it’s better than November… (Honestly, January/February seems to be the best because it coincides with many company’s end of fiscal year, and the first part of the following year is when all of the equipment they bought with end-of-year money has to be installed.)
But I’m away. I’m away from my kids for WAY too much of the time.
And that sucks.
A history lesson seems to be needed….
I think the people of Oakland has their collective stuff together.
Dont’ believe me? The last general strike in the US was in OAKLAND.
In 1946, after the Oakland Police attempted to break up the garment-worker’s strike so that the businesses could bus in replacement workers across the strike lines. The whole city shut down in response.
Apparently…the idiots calling the shots in Oakland don’t understand the phrase “Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
Remember, remember….
The end of November in 1946… women at department stores in Oakland, two department stores, Khan’s and Hastings, had been on strike for a month. The city elite decided to break the strike. They brought in 400 police who escorted a professional strike-breaking company on December 1, 1946, and they ran through the city. The cops cleared the streets, beat people off the streets, bullied them and broke the strike, but in breaking the strike they catalyzed.
Angry street car drivers coming through on December 1, 1946, had seen the strike being broken and refused to go though the picket lines that the cops had assembled around the department stores and really sparked off the general strike. They were joined by other transit operators, bus drivers, and soon the whole city was alive with people just flooding downtown, filling the streets and joining together as what they called a “work holiday.”
Overall 130,000 people in Oakland stopped work. They went out in solidarity and shut the city down to say that they stood together with the department store clerks at Khan’s and Hastings. This is 130,000 people during a time when that was a HUGE percentage of the population.
All they were asking was that the rights of the workers at Khan’s and Hastings be honored. That they’d be able to have a stable work life which meant a union contract, better wages, and a work situation where they had the rights that had been fought for really in the ’30s.
It was a continuation of the organizing drives saying that people won’t put up with the kind of wages which were non-livable. It was at the time when prices were rising. Things like food was going up 28%; wages were static and people were saying, “We need to kind of fight together to make a better life.”
The ruling elite that really ran Oakland were the Nolans. They shut down their tribune. Hearst ran the newspaper called the Post Enquirer; they set up a picket line and shut it down. They went to Alameda to shut down the Times Star. They went to Berkeley; they shut down the Daily Gazette. They just said that no media except the ones created by the strikers would be allowed on the streets, and that included the solidarity of teamsters who refused to bring the San Francisco daily papers across the bridge into Oakland. And it was a way to say, “We won’t allow the media to demonize and undermine our strike.”
Remember indeed….
They’re not allowed to grow up…
A little lesson in Before & After….
If you wonder why he’s called “Chaos” maybe this will explain things a little…
Yes, he’s been drinking coffee since he was two… That’s my boy.
This is Chaos 4 short years later. Such a big kid, and I have no idea *WHERE* all the time went. He’s a little bruiser now… Of course being the youngest of three, he’s had his two older brothers to teach him every bad habit in the world.
Lesson #2… This is Panic at 2 (On his second birthday actually.) Doing his favorite “Tah-Dah” pose.
And look at him now. So grown up, so mature. I remember every day of it, yet I feel like I’ve only blinked and it’s slipped by me.
And last, but certainly not least… My big monster at age 4…Feeding the ducks…. I remember so fondly the first time they scared the crap out of him and he scaled me like a ladder trying to get away from them…
Now I look UP at him… Literally.
So how the hell does this happen? Suddenly He’s 3 years from college.. Chaos is playing soccer, Panic is a year away from being a full fledged boy-scout…
I guess my point is this. Don’t screw around and miss the time with your kids. It’s golden, and once it’s gone it’s gone.
The needs of the many….
“The needs of the many, outweigh, the needs of the few, or the one. ”
–Spock
In this day and age, we find this lesson to be a poignant and oddly relevant one.
It’s become obvious over past years that in America, the needs of the few have come to outweigh the needs of the many. Namely, the needs of the top 1% wealthiest people in our economy.
They do. And everything they do they do for themselves.
This is where they’re stupid. Our economy only works when the bottom 99% are spending money.
Trickle-down economics is complete bullshit.. The idea that giving the top 1% massive tax cuts will somehow make it’s way down to you and I.
Tell me something. Do you think the billionaire who gets to keep an extra million runs right out and spends it? Does he say “I have all this extra money floating around, I think I’ll hire a couple of dozen people.”
No.
I run a business. Tax cuts are meaningless to me without increased income. If I get to keep an extra 2% of my income I’m still not hiring anyone. Now if BUSINESS improves by an extra 2% then I might find a reason to hire an admin. Do millionaires and billionaires buy my service? No. People do. People who (usually) make less than $40,000 a year.
And my situation is *NOT* unique.
So if you give a billionaire a tax break and you increase their bank balance. What motivation would they have to spend more?
You give a lowly working class person a tax break, that money gets spent. *WE* are the ones who take our check straight to Target.
There are three engines to our economy. People, Business, and Government. The economy works best when all three work together. But when we get into a situation like the one we’re in today, all hell breaks loose.
The people don’t have money to spend.
The businesses that have the money aren’t spending it. They’re sitting on TRILLIONS in off-shore cash reserves “Just In Case”
That leaves government. The government whose hands the tea-party want to tie.
Last point:
The “great depression” of 1929 was caused when the distribution of wealth became too lopsided. The rich had all the money, the poor had none. Commerce stops at that point and a reset is needed.
Years of economic depression are usually what follow. The republicans don’t really care about redistribution of wealth the way they whine and cry about… They only care when the wealth isn’t being redistributed in their direction.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
My Pictures
