11
Jan
I have been thinking about a lot of things lately. One of them is why I don’t post more stuff here. I post links of FB so why don’t I write more articles here? This is easily answerable in a single word: overload. What I mean is that we, and by we I mean me, receive so much information constantly that taking the time to ponder anything is a rarity. With all of the information constantly delivered to us by every device around us, even screens in the elevator here at work, taking the time to sit and think is becoming more and more rare. This is a damn shame. So along with all the other things I will fail at this year I want to make a concerted effort to take the time to think about things. To reason some things out. To actually write about things that mean something to me.
Slowing down is never easy and usually by the time I am slowing down I need something like the damn TV to shut my brain off just so I can go to sleep. I think that getting back on my ADD meds will really help this. The meds haven’t been necessary for work, although it’s getting to that point again, but I do think they will help me with my other goals such as simplifying my life, which is still a work in progress. I am actually following through to completion these days without much of an effort. But the brain still works in overtime.
So as I try to take time for the things I want to do I also have to make sure to have time for the things I must do. This balance is something I have never been good at no matter what. I seem to do one or the other but have decided that it’s time to fix that little issue. This really isn’t a promise to post more here but rather that when I do it will be more of what it is. More thought put in to the writing, more logic applied, less ranting (not that a good rant isn’t cathartic or necessary once in a while) and in general hopefully easier to follow.
Have fun storming the castle…
10
Jan
Yeah I couldn’t come up with a catchier title so that’ll have to do for now.
So I had a little exchange with someone I have known for quite the long time and it didn’t go well. The guy is really quite out there and I have always known that but his, for lack of a better word, tolerance for opinions that differ from his has apparently found its limits. Mind you I wasn’t espousing anything crazy. In fact it was quite the opposite. I was mocking a website dedicated to chemtrails, the NWO, and air elementals (Sylphs). Yes you read that right: air elementals. Apparently I made the mistake of using the words “tin-foil hat” and that set old boy off. I tried to be cordial and non-confrontational but it was to no avail. I was unfriended (oh the horror) and told to “Fuck off”. Now I am not writing this post to bitch about the other person involved mostly because I am glad to rid of him and I’ll get to that in a minute. I am really writing this post because I am done with trying to reason with unreasonable people. No hard feelings but if you are a 9/11 truther, believe that the government is using commercial jets to spray the population with chemicals to help the NWO do population control, think that Zionists either control the world already or are trying to, that David Icke shouldn’t be locked up for his own good, believe that the federal reserve is part of a NWO plot, or hell believe that there’s a NWO to begin with and whole slew of other whacked out conspiracy theories then please don’t bring them up around me. I don’t want to lose any good friends over this but if you have allowed yourself to be deluded by the espousers of any of the above or anything resembling any one of them then you need clinical help. At some point I may expand this list to include folks who claim the Catholic church is the Whore of Babylon and other crazy religious beliefs but I think keeping it to politics is enough for now.
Yes I am being mildly offensive with saying that some people need clinical help but sometimes the truth is harsh. Plain and simple. I try to be a skeptic but I also try to be a logical and critical thinker. If you consider the odds of any given conspiracy theory being kept anything near secret then you really must suspend disbelief in order to believe in pretty much any of them. They fall so far out of the range of rational thought that it is just outrageous. Hell there are plenty of conspiracy theories that line up with my world view to a large degree but after you get past the first level they just become unreasonable and impossible to believe.
I have seen some folks I thought were intelligent people begin espousing some these theories recently and it has just made me sad. Now I am not asking you to change your beliefs. I respect your right to believe any insane thing you want to believe. But please don’t bring it up around me or try to prove any of these whacked out theories to me. After my little exchange on FB with the previously referenced old friend I have decided that my life will be much simpler if I just walk away at the first mention of any key buzzwords, for the record that includes Alex Jones and usually Michael Savage, and not bother trying to convince the folks drinking the kool-aid. I want to say I am sorry if this offends any of my friends but all I am asking you to do is keep the crazy to yourself.
So watch this and enjoy the rest of your day:
Maybe I should come up with an actual list of buzzwords and publish it here to help out other people…
20
Nov
This week, while productive, was boredom honed to its finest edge. I finished what I needed to are work and home. At work though half of my department was gone and well over half of our clients. I may have mentioned that our department is small as is our supported base. This makes weeks like this very boring. I cleaned up various databases, made my deadine on the one project I had, and managed to make good forward progress on another project. I don’t deal well with boredom and there was nothing to break the monotony this week. No developers running code and crashing nodes. No changes to the scheduler defaults. No storage upgrades. No outages. Almost a perfect week as far as support goes. Me, well, I wish I had my meds.
On top of all of that I played with ROMs for my phone, read a dozen comic books, finished two and a half novels (around 500 pages each) and worked on a personal project in python involving RSS, NNTP, and a specific type of media collection. I did all that from work and still accomplished everything I was supposed to and more. The problem with this is that my mind was scattered beyond belief. Every night when I got home I was brain dead and couldn’t think. I just wanted to watch TV and let my brain run out of my ears. Boredom makes my brain shut off and not in a good way. On the surface I appear to be functioning normally but inside I am screaming for something to challenge me. This is not like wanting to do nothing in a weekend. That’s my choice. That’s different. Forced boredom is something that makes me completely insane.
Now that’s over. Capped off by a good weekend the week of boredom is behind me. At least one would think. The rest of the year is likely to be a repeat of the same. It is vacation time and it will be a ghost town at work. So if I seem a little insane this holiday season it is not for the normal reasons. I am actually looking forward to the holiday season this year. At least the outside of work part.
I have a phobia. Not one that is normal. You see I have a fear of medical personnel. I have panic attacks even visiting people in the hospital. You can’t imagine what it is like to go see a doctor when it is something wrong with me. The problem is that over the last couple of years I have been getting sick a lot. Not deathly ill but lots minor illnesses that come complete with fever and all the rest of the nastiness. These things range from colds to flu-like symptoms. They put me down for a day or two and then are gone. But it is not normal as they crop up once or twice a month. So long story short I have to go see a doctor. I have to bite the bullet and go. I have to know if something is wrong other than just me getting every virus that waltzes in the door.
For most people this wouldn’t even be a question but for me it feels like a life or death decision. If I were to be perfectly honest I wouldn’t even be thinking about going if it weren’t for my family. I mean missing a day or work here and there wouldn’t bother me but it affects our financial situation. My boss isn’t bothered by it. So on that front there aren’t any issues. In the past I would just carry on with the status quo but these days it seems to be complicated. I don’t need this complication.
In my search to simplify my life these things seem to keep popping up. Things that used to seem normal jump up and demand to be corrected. This is one of them. My health is important in ways I never realized and now I am thinking about them.
So now I have to figure out how exactly I am going to make myself go to the doctor. Wish me luck…
6
Nov
As I was driving to the park and ride the other day this song came to mind:
Minor Threat – Minor Threat
We’re not the first, I hope we’re not the last
‘Cause I know we’re all heading for that adult crash
The time is so little, the time belongs to us
Why is everybody in such a fucking rush?
Make do with what you have
Take what you can get
Pay no mind to us
We’re just a minor threat
WE’RE JUST A MINOR THREAT
Early to finish, I was late to start
I might be an adult, but I’m a minor at heart
Go to college, be a man, what’s the fucking deal?
It’s not how old I am, it’s how old I feel
Take your time
Try not to forget
We never will
We’re just a minor threat
WE’RE JUST A MINOR THREAT
I think one of the problems with life today is that everyone is in a hurry all of the time. Sometimes I take a two lane road to work. It is fairly narrrow and there are four ninety degree turns in about a half mile stretch. The speed limit for a good portion of this road is thirty MPH. I tend to drive the speed limit most of the time as I really hate getting tickets and it just seems like it’s easier than watching for the cops everywhere I go. Topping that off on this particular road the curves are sharp and there is more than one neighborhood so I drive the speed limit. In return for this I am rewarded with angry drivers flashing their lights, flipping me the bird and passing me in a no passing zone. Normally I just shrug all that rot off but when someone gets so pissed they pass the four cars behind me and me almost causing a head on collision with a truck in the other lane and narrowly avoiding my truck swerving back in to the lane I take notice.
If you cannot manage to get out of your house in enough time to drive the speed limit on your way to wherever you are going it is not your right to very nearly cause injury to other people in your hurry. If you dont have enough patience to drive within the laws, regardless of your agreement with them, then maybe you shouldn’t drive. There are times when people are in a rush for legitimate reasons but every single morning and evening at almost the same time isn’t likely. Your impatience gets all over my nice and relaxing drive. Thankfully I have a bus ride from my driving destination to get over your arrogant selfish driving habits.
Yes this time I let someone get to me and I shouldn’t have. I try very hard to rush anything these days. I have a fairly stress free life. I cannot imagine being the type of person that feels like they have to rush everywhere. That cannot be a happy life. Only the miserable must feel like they are always behind or late. I am thankful that I rarely feel rushed in anything. My job is one where my boss is anti-pressure as in actively tries to make sure we haven’t taken on too much. My family doesn’t rush anything, maybe even when we should. But all in all I have an easygoing life. I truly feel sorry for those under so much pressure that they will put the lives of others at risk just to make it to the stop light only to find that the guy they almost ran off the road is at the same light, right behind you, waiting for it to turn green.
I feel better having ranted a little bit. I am not some hippie that thinks anger is always wrong. I do get angry but in this case I think I feel more sorry for these people than I do anger towards them. Have someone spew talking points at me and you can see me really go off. So don’t take this as me being any less aggressive although I probably should learn to be.
