Author Archives: bluedepth

And we're shoveling, shoveling…

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True Temper Snow Boss Shovel

This is without a doubt the best snow shovel I have ever used. The entire thing is incredibly sturdy and the way it’s constructed allows me to plow, shovel, and dig. The two interior handles let me change my leverage on the shovel itself making lifting and tossing snow much more comfortable than it otherwise would have been with a standard straight shovel. It has more power than my ergonomic shovel and for that I am very grateful.

I was able to clear out my entire driveway in half an hour. The front parking area took about as long only because of the drifts built up by the township plows. All in all I didn’t overexert myself, I got an hour of cardio + circuit exercise in, so I don’t need to go to the gym today and I was even able to plow a strip across the properties for the mailman and the energy company guy to come and deliver mail and take meter readings if they have to.

I was able to get this awesome shovel at Meijers, on sale for about $30. I’ve seen them also at Lowes. Amazon has them as well, but the price is about $45. If you live where it snows and you have to deal with snow removal, and you want a good workout too, I can’t recommend this shovel enough. I was going to buy a little snowblower this year, but with this shovel and my interest in getting in shape, what’s the point now? I’ve got what I need, might as well use it and not burn more gasoline that I don’t have to.

And we're shuffling, shuffling…

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It’s breathtaking to see how quickly fifty to sixty people can all agree and get together to trounce a huge project. Here at work our VP made some employee location moves which require picking up all the hardware, office supplies, and assorted bric-a-brac and move various people into new physical locations in the office.

Most of the people were already buzzing along by the time I slowly made my way to work. I got in and got settled and it was nice seeing people moving about, all chipping in and helping others move couches, computers, printers, credenzas, and boxes of assorted office supplies throughout our office. I dived in about 9am and had a management approved list, in order, of who was supposed to move where. We all chugged along until about 11:30 and then things started to wind down. There is still a lot to move, but that’s mostly each cubicle-dwellers taste and choice to put this there and that over there.

TPTB arranged a pizza lunch to thank us all for our hard work, and that was a wonderful gesture. Pizza is after all it’s own food group. 🙂 It’s times like these, with people all active and moving about, and funny things being said and people reacting in surprising ways that makes the office feel more alive and vibrant. Not that we should be engaged in musical chairs every day, but this shakeup does make things feel fresher. Of course, the curse will be to try to re-establish a mental map of where everyone is now, as the old mental map has to be forgotten. I’m fine with it if the reward is all this camaraderie.

Winter Driving

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Winter has finally arrived in Southwest Michigan. We received a really good few inches of snow last night and finally the world appears now as it always should have. There are of course some issues which I would like to share, mostly as a matter of public education, but also to honor St. Whinge’s Day which was yesterday1.

First, Good Morning Michigan! I hope you rested well and are ready to take on the challenges of WINTER DRIVING because from what I can see, you aren’t. The most important rule that you have all collectively forgotten is PROPER FOLLOWING DISTANCE. Remember, for each multiple of 10 miles per hour of your speed you should put that car length distance between you and the car in front of you. So if you are going 10, you put 1 car length in front of you, 20 – 2, 30 – 3, and so forth. When it snows? Double that number! So at 10 you put 2 car lengths in front of you, 20 – 4, 30 – 6. See? It isn’t that hard to do! Now why oh why would you put so much space in front of your car? I’ll tell you. Not only is the ground you are traversing now lack any traction at all, but snow changes how your tires and transmission move your vehicle! Not only can’t you start properly but you can’t stop! Oh and something else, you or I might accidentally slide backwards so keep your front bumper in mind, okay?

Second, and this comes down to not risking your stupid worthless lives, but DO NOT MAKE RIGHT ON REDS IN FRONT OF ONCOMING TRAFFIC! Yes, it seems safe, there may be room for your vehicle to fit in the flow and you might think it’s safe, but what if someone is coming downhill and hits ice? Their brakes will be meaningless and your impatience will be rewarded with a T-bone collision! Just don’t do it! Cities in the north ought to pass new traffic laws outlawing the “Right on Red” maneuver when ground traction is compromised.

Third, please for the love of all that is holy, if you are driving on bald tires please have them replaced! I understand that times are hard and money is tight, but when water comes out of the sky in a solid and stays that way, your tires, especially your driving tires really have to have tread on them! If you have non-driving tires that have tread but your driving ones do not, go and have your tires rotated properly. It costs very little and is an acceptable compromise. If you have four bald tires, at least buy two new ones with really kickass tread on them. Think of climbing the hills. If you have bald tires and you are on the roads, we will mock you!

I’m sure there will be more to whinge about as the season progresses. The one thing you can always count on is human stupidity and impatience. What’s the most meaningful proverb of the season? Haste makes waste.

  1. St. Whinge’s Day is a fictional holiday for whinging, or complaining in a whiney fashion. It was coined as far as I know by David Malki at Wondermark.  ↩

Lazy Days

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Snowy pines

Lazy days are a mixed bag. It is a chance to rest up of course, just lazing around unless it's either a dark winters night or a rainy spring afternoon is really wasteful and unproductive. Usually during the lazier days I'll try to catch up on some reading or maybe watch and empty out some of the tv programs on the DVR.

The only exceptions to that are the aforementioned dark winters night and rainy spring afternoons. For those particular days it's best to brew up some hot chocolate or tea and indeed just laze about watching the weather unfold. Sometimes I think it would be wonderful to curl up with poetry, but I have no idea even where to start with that, so I tend to nap. 🙂

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Asana

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My office is in the mood for a task management suite online to help manage, well, teams and tasks. The tool we’re looking into is called Asana. Personally I use Toodledo to manage my tasks on my own but Asana seems pleasant enough to use.

After the great unveiling during our latest meeting I wept a little private tear for our dearly beloved old email system, Groupwise. It was all of this all secured and centrally managed. Alas, it was a Novell product and much like the Elves themselves, Novell has gone west. I spent a little time caught up in a mental reverie surrounding Groupwise during that meeting, thinking about all the ways we could have made things simpler and easier and work better for all of us. Then I was awoken out of my reverie (alas it only lasted three seconds) and so smiled a nice private smile that just as I had predicted all those months and months ago, that people would have to construct their own ways to cope with us moving away from what could have been a really great system. Now we are moving towards a new system and actually, upon reflection it is better than the situation we would have been in had the-powers-that-be spent a moment to listen to this raving crazy maniac. Everything is bending towards SaaS and Cloud Services, and I actively support this migration so in the end, it’s best for everybody.

One thing I really am looking forward to is to watch these cloud services blossom. Then we’ll be on to Web 3.0 where the semantic web meets cloud accumulations. That’s going to be cool.

Eight Ball

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I’ve about had it with gasoline companies. The prices change daily and nobody is very clear as to why that has to be. I suspect it has more to do with price fixing, gouging, and generally being nasty to the public than it has with supply and demand.

When prices are this variable, to say nothing of being this high, I start to think about ways I can manage my money when it comes to buying fuel. I often times will drive on an empty tank using the range metric from the cars computer as a gauge to determine when I should buy fuel or not. Last night while driving home from the gym it struck me. I allocate $40 a week to gasoline in my budget and I can make it from week to week quite well on that money. Instead of buying fuel in one $40 transaction which today would only really get me three quarters of a full tank from empty I have decided that I am going to buy gasoline in $8 increments. That gives me five opportunities to fuel until I hit my budget cap. So, the last time I fueled, which was last night, I bought $8 worth of gasoline. That won me about 100 miles in the range metric, but since I refuel around 30 miles on that metric it’s actually about 70 miles. Of course the metric is based on a LOT of highway driving so the minute I go back to city driving the MPG will drop through the floor and this mythical 70 miles worth of gasoline per stop will actually turn out to be around 30-40 miles.

With this plan, I don’t have to feel like I got gypped by the variability in gasoline prices. I don’t care about credit card transaction fees on small purchases hurting the vendor. I lack sympathy for the devil.

Up Up and Away!

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The flight from Albany to Chicago went exceptionally well, despite the carrier being United Airlines. The flight boarded on time, took off on time, and we arrived about ten minutes early. The only issues with the flight was the heating system was stuck at 80 degrees making the aft section uncomfortably warm. I commented that we were actually in steerage class and a few passengers around us chuckled at that. Titanic jokes never go out of style.

Getting from our gate to Parking Lot E was more of a challenge. O’Hare’s signage for the economy parking lots leaves a LOT to be desired, eventually we got to where we needed to be but we took the scenic path too far, which tested everyones sense of patience. We got to the car, it was right where we left it, and $154 dollars later (parking is ass-pensive!) we left O’Hare.

Our next stop was to get to Joy’s Noodle Company which is in boystown, one block from Lakeshore Drive. After some ranging about looking for parking (a challenge in the Santa Fe) we eventually found a spot and had a wonderful dinner with our friends Jeffery and Sean. After that we got back to the Santa Fe, got to I-90, then went from Chicago, via the Skyway, along the highway and just after we entered Michigan I felt my nemesis crowding around my consciousness.

My driving nemesis is night driving along dull interstate roads. I tend to get worn out quickly with these straight stretches of nothing, no conversations, nothing to do but drive and listen to whatever was on the radio and interminably wait for us to reach our destination. I am renowned for dozing at the wheel, and so far the rumble strips and terrified passengers are enough to keep me going – but what really scares me, even more than the dozing is trance driving. It’s different than simply being narcoleptic, my eyes are open but nobody is home. I’m conscious but wholly unaware. It’s a huge source of concern for me because I can so easily imagine myself dying at my own hands because I was in one of these situations.

A few months ago I made a pre-new-years-resolution that I would have my car always stocked with a number of “5 Hour Energy” shots. I’ve tried other chemicals before, sugar, caffeine, sugar bound with caffeine, food, brisk walks around the car, jogs, you name it. They all help temporarily but I almost always fall into the same trap I always do. The sugar gives me a huge lift and then I crash even harder when my system burns through it. The caffeine eventually starts to hurt my stomach (caffeine pills), and when I try to bind the two together, like in soda pop I find myself okay for a time but need to use the facilities a LOT, as caffeine keeps me awake and then acts as a diuretic. Sugar, Water, Caffeine, and damn it all to hell, I have to pee again.

I can’t express how happy I am with the 5 hour energy shots. They are loaded with massive quantities of B Vitamins, some caffeine and very little sugar. It’s the magic brew that keeps me up and at ‘em for as long as I need to be running a motor vehicle. So when I drive, like I did tonight, and I start to yawn a lot and feel the power start to fade and my eyes start to get heavy I peel the security plastic off a 5-hour, unscrew the cap and down the entire shot. I’m sure there is a placebo effect also at play here, if I believe that the shot will help then it will, even if the chemicals in the shot cannot make their way into my system within say 10 seconds of taking the shot. My brain, in anticipation of what the shot does for me must give me a wee boost right up front, so it hits me pretty much right after my last swallow is complete.

That feeling of having heavy eyelids, the tiredness in my neck, and my yawning cease almost instantly. I am awake, I am alert, and so far I’ve never sensed an instance of trance driving while hopped up on a 5-hour. So this is my solution. These little shots are the way I can cope with my body telling me that at 10pm after a whole day of flying around creation that it’s time to sleep and SLEEP NOW. I can take a shot and subvert it, at least temporarily.

So now I have a new rule. I cannot operate a motor vehicle without at least one available 5-hour energy shot somewhere in the car with me. I almost never need it, but for those times when I’m driving along and I feel that droopy feeling coming on out it comes. If I don’t have a shot handy, then it’s time to stop at a rest area or a gas station to tend to the supply problem.

I think that every state, in rest areas should have a 5-hour-energy vending machine in operation. Set it to $2 a shot and impress upon motorists the dangers of accidental unconsciousness and what these 5-hours can do for them. A life saved by not passing out at the wheel is worth a measly $2.

So here I am, still a little lit-up from my 5-hour shot, writing a blog post and cradling a very needy cat. Thankfully he has forgiven me for being away so long, it can be challenging to blog while your cat is trying to brace himself against your hand with his paw. Life is hard. 🙂

Flitting Away

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Here I sit at Albany International Airport, Gate A5 waiting for my flight. I went through the TSA security checkpoint. It appears as though Albany has elected to only use the backscatter scanners to secure passengers. After requesting to pass through the magnetometer, a passive scanner that I am comfortable with, and then being denied that, I elected to pursue “Enhanced Patdown” which was a Code 22 in the TSA. I had to wait only a very short while and a man approached me, took me over to a staging area and proceeded with the enhanced patdown.

I don’t really see how that is upsetting to anyone at all unless you are violently touch-sensitive. It was very tame and wholly not-upsetting. I have a longstanding issue with the backscatter scanners, cutting to the chase, I don’t trust that technology. It wasn’t cleared by the FDA, there aren’t thousands of studies that tell me it’s safe, so I assume it’s hazardous to my health. It’s important to understand that I have a special sensitivity to being exposed to ionizing radiation. I have a huge risk factor for prostate cancer and the last thing I want is to expose a prostate cell to any radiation that I don’t actually have to endure. It’s the difference between a cell that lives and dies naturally and a cell that gets damaged, goes on a bloody rampage and kills me with prostate cancer. Would a backscatter scanner do that? Chances are 99 out of 100 that it would not and that I’m simply acting beyond rationality in regards to this. But if I can elect to follow a path that doesn’t require me to walk into a machine I don’t know and don’t trust and do something else, a simple act that allows me to skip the risk altogether, why not? I can sleep at night knowing I didn’t consciously expose myself to something harmful and I don’t have to live with the weaksauce spectre of the headline that might be “Backscatter Scanners Cause Cancer” which may or may not be a New York Times headline. I just skip it altogether.

The enhanced patdown was actually quite a non-event. Perhaps it’s the fact that I have a rather loose sense of propriety, in a way that I’m just a big old slut that means that being touched, all the way to what amounts to a kind of non-sexual petting. It’s really not that thrilling at all. The TSA has stopped exploring all the parts of a mans body, so you don’t actually have to worry anymore about junk-handling. I was half looking forward to some junk-handling personally. The fact that the procedures changed makes a whatever event into a complete non-issue. Oh well. At least the fellow doing the enhanced patdown wasn’t attractive otherwise I’d have lots more to write about. “Do you have anything in a 6’6” blond otter?” If only you could select the TSA rep who gave you the pat-down, that could be a pseudo-non-sexual Top 10 TSA award. 🙂 Yeah yeah yeah, I’m a big old slut. Yeah yeah yeah.

The TSA apparently doesn’t think that my 1L stainless steel Hydroflask is worth commenting on or asking to see the inside of. They missed it in O’Hare, and they missed it in Albany. I think they’ll always miss it. What’s in my Hydroflask? Nothing. I threw out the water before I left for the airport, but what if I didn’t?

This only reinforces my original precepts that the TSA is performing security theater to make us feel better. That there really isn’t any security actually being secured, but actually just people from the federal government who are there to give the impression that we are safe. Either way, they catch some things, and they miss a few others. As for the enhanced pat-down, whatever it was supposed to detect is quite silly. It’s just a procedure to impress upon me how safe my flight is going to be.

Whatever.

My Must-See TV

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Old broken TV

Over time the one thing I've learned pretty reliably is that there are no must-see TV shows. Television is crap. It can certainly fill up idle time and it can provide background noise while you are doing other things, like eating and such, but on the whole, television hasn't contributed to the quality of my life for a very long while.

That isn't to say that television doesn't have anything entertaining in it, just that if I don't have a television, I don't feel it's absence in my life. The entertainment and reward I get from reading a book or sharing stories with others I like or love is far more rewarding to me than anything on television. If I have a choice between reading a book or TV, the book wins. If I have a choice between talking with friends or TV, the friends win. Television is what is on when you don't mind it's mindless chatter.

So, no, I have no must-see TV shows.

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