Category Archives: Family

True Colors

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve got a series of shirts that I wear frequently and these shirts are the ones that I’m trying to pair with various bow ties. I prefer more bluish colors and always vertical stripes if they have them. What I need help with here is matching three bow ties that will work best with the most number of shirts. There are many ties in my list, but I want to start small.

I would really appreciate a list of shirts and ties that you all think go well together. I’m looking for ties that can be used with multiple shirts if possible. Any input at all is welcome. Thanks in advance!

Shirts:

Ties:

PAD 2/9/2013 – Childhood Revisited

Posted on by
Reply

Sure, you turned out pretty good, but is there anything you wish had been different about your childhood? If you have kids, is there anything you wish were different for them?

Every time I think about this kind of question it brings up the tangled web of the consequences of living. Would you do anything over again? How could anyone answer this question honestly? Could you be anything other than what you are? I think, at least for me, the answer is no. Looking back on everything that I experienced, the good things, and the bad things, that all the things were needful. I love who I am and I don’t need someone outside of myself to remind me of that fact. I get a lot of flak for being who and what I am but I’m very fond of, and repeat to myself regularly one of the best quotes from Dr. Seuss. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” and I try to live with this great piece of wisdom every day of my life. It’s a figurative life preserver that keeps me afloat when I’m beset by banal trolls who would rather I just be flat, plain, and featureless.

So, back to childhood. Everything that happened in your past all gets added up and results in what you are now. What kind of life would it be if I doubted myself now? It would be fake, and it would do a disservice to all the things that have come before. It would shame all the good things and it would render meaningless all the suffering that I endured. I refuse to accept either of those conditions so in a way, through my own convoluted logic I am who I am and I can’t be anything else. As if anyone could go back in time and change things, which you can’t, so it’s academic. This sort of thing, musing about changing your past is the height of uselessness. Pondering the impossible – and I would say changing your past is impossible, is a waste of effort, time, and thinking. For all the good that happened, I am happy for it. For all the bad that happened, I am happy for that as well. It’s only in enduring suffering and outlasting it that you defeat it and that singular win, defeating suffering, makes the rewards that much sweeter. So live in the now, bless and release the past, and try to do your best – because:

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

 

 

Bow Ties Are Cool

Posted on by
Reply

The Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith, singlehandedly changed fashion by suggesting that many of the things the Doctor wears are cool. Fezes are cool, Tweed is cool, but most specifically, bow ties are cool.

So for Christmas I got a bow tie, along with a few other Doctor Who related gifts and they were all perfect. Then I discovered that I really liked wearing the ties and was in desperate need for a guide to see how to tie a bow tie properly. It isn’t difficult and this video really helped:

So now, when I can put aside a little bit of money my next little shopping trip is to get some more bow ties. The one I have is great with either a white or black shirt, but I have other shirts which I think bow ties could really compliment and I’d like to wear more of them. I think I look good in them, the Eleventh Doctor supports me, and I love confusing people and being all obstinately anachronistic.

PAD 1/30/13 – Burning Down The House

Posted on by
Reply

“Your home is on fire. Grab five items (assume all people and animals are safe). What did you grab?”

I would rescue these items from my house:

  • Important Documents Folder
  • Backpack of Data
  • Messenger Bag
  • Antiques
  • Family Photos

These are things that I cannot easily replace. Everything else would be a matter of homeowners insurance. While much of the things I would rescue, such as the Important Documents Folder may not be exactly irreplaceable it does hold some things that I have an emotional connection to, the real physical things that I have earned – like my High School Diploma and my Bachelors Diploma. I am sure I could get reproductions of both, but these are originals and they are important to me. Antiques may surprise people, that I have some which I do, and that they are on my list. Some things, even if they aren’t worth very much have an irrational value because they are physical threads leading backwards through time to people I never knew but revere because without them I would not exist. I list them as “antiques” because I do not want to cover what they are. They are important to me, and that’s good enough for me. I’ve taken the concepts of readiness that I did for my professional life at work and extended them to my home. There are some habits that I have like placing certain things in bags, like a backpack where all the hard drives are kept and my trusty Messenger Bag which stores the lightweight but vitally important objects in my life, like my Nook HD, my iPad, my Laptop, that sort of thing. Photos of family would be rescued as well. Again, almost everything can be reproduced but I am guilty of ascribing extended properties to physical objects in an irrational capacity. Photos are just chemical marks on paper, but these are of my loved ones, my family, and so they are more than the sum of their chemical marks, in many ways they carry a piece of that family member with the photograph. Looking at my family in photos brings their memories back and help me return a part of their existence to my life through the blessings of memory. Very much like how the Prophets discussed the flow of time to Benjamin Sisko on Deep Space Nine – “You exist here. Why?” and I like the idea of memory in this way, that the past, present, and future all exist at the same time. Our consciousness and bodies move forward in time, but parts of us exist in other times and we can access those by the act of remembering. That the sheer act of remembering in a way helps us to return to when our loved ones existed with us and so, they can again, in a fashion.

If people are safe, and my pets are safe, and these objects are safe then the rest can burn. I think that over time this list will get smaller as some of these objects are stored in places where disaster cannot strike like safety deposit boxes and the like. More and more of life, I think, will end up being digital and stored on the cloud – so much of the material that is digital becomes proofed against loss, against burning, against flooding, against everything.

PAD 1/15/2013 – Arguments

Posted on by
Reply

“It’s never a good idea to discuss religion or politics with people you don’t really know.” Agree or disagree?

 Without a doubt this is the one piece of advice that has taken me the longest time to learn and I had to learn it all by myself, which of course is the most difficult way but what you learn is honestly yours. I used to engage in arguments with my family over religion and politics and those arguments just upset me, or irritated me, and the central thing that really got to me was that nobody was really listening. They weren’t listening to me and I wasn’t listening to them. It was easy for me to not listen to them because in both situations they were preaching from their comfort zone and since they were family I knew for years and years the extents of those arguments. Nothing they said impressed me or had value to change my mind. Either the arguments were self-referential and circular, as in the religious arguments – not discussing how things might be but rather arguing over the shape and form of scripture that was already established. I was questioning everything from the beginning and the family member I was arguing with never questioned those parts but started all their arguments from what was written down and starting from there. Honestly I think we could never actually have a good conversation on religion because I had dismissed the pretext of their entire religious argument. With politics it’s quite the same, instead of scripture it was a political playbook which was constantly being spooled against me. Thinking really wasn’t a part of the argument as it was mostly scripted shorthand being flung at me and blanket protestations that anything but the way that my family member saw the world was the correct way.

Politics, Religion, Climate – these are the toxic pillars that people really shouldn’t discuss. That’s why faith, at least in America is a very private thing and I am fine with people practicing whatever faith they have as long as they keep it out of the public space. Months ago, during the Christmas season we went to the local mall and a church group was leading a Christmas sing-a-long in the public space of the mall. The violation of that space, a public pluralistic space which suddenly was filled with singing with lyrics that included “Fall on your knees” and references to Christ abounded. I don’t have any problems if those things are sung in church or private homes or even in public spaces when I see that I am walking into that situation. What I walked into was a passionate christian sing-a-long powered by a flashmob. I started to get jumpy and uncomfortable, it was awkward and embarrassing and irritating. Politics is only slightly less upsetting in public spaces, in this vein. Working in a public institution of higher learning you have to accept that sometimes you’ll run into political or religious crazies on campus with a bullhorn trying to convert or accuse students of impure living or wrong political thinking. Even where I work the space is different, it doesn’t upset me because you sort of “expect the unexpected” in a college or university setting. Even in that space it’s more of a sideshow entertainment than a space for actual discourse. I don’t think that discourse is possible, so these topics really should be a matter of personal self-contemplation and secret ballot. You should vote secretly and you should seek out spaces where your religious pursuits match those of those around you as close as possible. Anything else invites disaster.

To other people considering this very question I would tell you that you should just skip it. Don’t engage in the battle. People aren’t really interested in modifying their positions when it comes to religion or politics so it’s best to remain silent and nudge any incoming arguments that touch on these topics to other less upsetting subjects. In many ways, much like the Golden Retriever in Disney’s “UP” movie, sometimes the best response to a political or religious argument is “Squirrel!”

PAD 2/5/13 – Call Me, Maybe, Maybe Not.

Posted on by
1

“Describe your relationship with your phone. Is it your lifeline, a buzzing nuisance, or something in between?”

I’ve never understood why people exclaim that their mobile phone is some sort of yoke or control collar that was tied to them. You don’t have to attend to it, even if your company pays for the device. Then there are people who think of mobile phones as possible risks to their privacy. For those who are that paranoid I often get to laughing, “You really think that anything you are fretting about is a risk?” You can’t conduct business without leaving a huge paper trail behind you. Instead of fearing all of that, I say that people should revel in it, nay, wallow in it. What are you protecting?

For me my iPhone is an indispensable intellectual swiss army knife. I use it for many things, work, personal, pleasure, business, you name it. It’s my camera, the loom of my social network and the device where I play Letterpress. I am addicted to it, and I am perfectly fine with the notion of being addicted to a device. I’m addicted to alcohol so what the hell am I protecting? Some image of myself that never existed? What I can’t understand is why more people don’t see the value as I do.

My iPhone is still a phone, and that I suppose will always be true but the device has become much more than just a plain old telephone. Voice is full of noise, errors… problems. English demands so much and then the immediacy and interruptibility of vocal communications just add to the pile of unpleasantness. When you get a call it’s a moment transfixed and pinned to the ground. Someone is imposing their will upon yours, taking up your time, ignoring your flow and your tasks and imposing theirs on top as if the previous did not matter. This isn’t so much a problem with an iPhone as it is a gripe I’ve harbored for a very long time about the more general telephone technology that we all use. Telephones are a lot like walk-up service at work. Knocking on my door, ringing my phone, either of those demands that I entertain a very expensive intellectual interrupt so that I can put whatever it is that I’m working on into a wait-state so that I can switch mental contexts and engage in either a face to face conversation or a telephone conversation.

Just the presence of this technology alone is bothersome, but the language brings even more awkwardness. There is no chance to plan and consider what you are about to write, no opportunities, really, to proofread and revise before sending. The pressure of speech, body language, and freudian (jungian?) slips abound. English, and the culture that surrounds it like a cloud demands a proper greeting, a discussion with turns, and a proper closing. That’s how you are supposed to conduct yourself without seeming rude, insolent, or impertinent. All of this would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that normal human beings are fleshy water-filled bags of error just waiting to pounce. Modern discourse doesn’t value listening so people tend to talk at each other instead of talking to each other. You can’t get a word in edgewise and because you value the other person you are talking to, you let them just trample on. This creates a self-reinforcing reward for future verbal tramplings. After a few conversations it’s not really pleasurable any longer, it’s a battle. Then there is the proper closings. You don’t want to seem cold or rude so you attempt to close the conversation with some sort of closure marker like “thank you” and sometimes these events don’t actually take and you end up sending multiple passes of closure invitations to the other side. You go from feeling bad about being curt and rude to feeling bad about appearing to be mentally defective.

I have said in the past, and I will say time and time again that text beats voice all the time. Especially for technologically-tied workers like myself. When I am at work, or engaged in any activity really, I often times find myself within a flow. It’s texting and iMessage and IM’ing and email where you can strike a new playing field. Text is planned and groomed, opening and closing control symbols are cliché and common as dirt, so they aren’t a problem, and the way these messages are propagated does not necessarily break flow. In many ways, these technologies are more polite forms of communication. “I need your attention, but it isn’t life-or-death and so, since I value your time, energy, and flow I will send a queue’able message that you may defer until you are ready to accept it.” and I have said time and time again that text communication is much more respectful and gentile than face to face communications or telephone communications.

What about family calls? Yes, this is a point at which all of my arguments fly right out the window. Nothing, not even flow is more important than your family, so for that there will always be a need for telephone technology in the world. I would argue that actually FaceTime technology, which is video-augmented telephone calls are superior to plain-old-telephone-calls because there is so much more there. You see the other person, something that usually takes airfare or a long car ride to accomplish. The level of information in a FaceTime conversation I would argue is far higher than in a basic telephone conversation – you can see body language, facial expressions, so much more than can be carried by voice alone.

At least for me, my family can FaceTime call me, or call me on the phone. Everyone else really should use some text infrastructure. The only part where any of this is flexible is who you consider family? Friends and family? I draw the line at coworkers and professional contacts. If you aren’t my friend outside of work, keep your phone calls – send me an email or a text.

A Good Addiction

Posted on by
Reply

url
There is an iOS game that I’ve heard before and didn’t think anything of until I downloaded it and started to play. The game is called Letterpress and it’s incredibly addicting. Each game is composed of 25 english letters in a 5×5 grid and the person who starts the game with another player is the first to go. You can select words from these 25 characters, one letter at a time and as you play the letters they are marked with your color. Your color is blue and your opponents color is red. When you use a letter the colors start out faint, but as you use letters and surround other claimed letters, the letters that are surrounded get a bolder color of whomever claimed them. All letters can be used over and over again and you get points for claiming a letter and stealing letters with weak colors from your opponent. Letters that are in strong colors can still be used but they don’t give you any points. The game ends when all letters have been claimed with a color and the person with the higher score wins.

The games themselves are tiny and quick and really fun. It’s like speed-yahtzee and it exercises your vocabulary as you try to construct words with or without really helpful bits like e’s and “ing”‘s. The app is freemium and so it’s free to play a few games but you can upgrade and play an unlimited number of games for $1.99. It’s the best iOS game I’ve ever played. It’s fair, it’s nicely balanced, and the quick game play is great fun. My win/loss is 50/50 and I don’t really care to win that much, but boy, do I love playing. The game is designed with touch, so it has pleasing sounds when you select and move letter tiles to make words and to remove old dead games you can swipe across the display and tap the Remove button and the game makes a really satisfying exploding noise and it actually explodes off the display. Another added extra is that Letterpress is a universal app, it works on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad equally well and your upgrade works for your Apple ID and then applies to all the different devices you have associated with that Apple ID. All in all I love it and I’m trying to get to word out to friends and family so they can start playing along.

TIL In Action

Posted on by
Reply

This evening we sat down and were about to enjoy New Years Dinner and a nice bottle of Chenin Blanc. The wine-puller accidentally ruined the cork halfway and so half of the wine cork was in fragmented bits and the other half was in the neck of the bottle. I looked for ways we could enjoy the wine and without any tools handy I decided to use a skill I picked up years ago. How to uncork wine when you don’t have any cork-pulling tools.

You can eject a cork by placing the bottom of the wine bottle in your shoe and then smashing your shoe against a sturdy vertical surface. I took the bottle and one of my shoes and went to the garage. The exposed concrete footer was perfect. A good few solid whacks and the cork was ejected smoothly with only a few drops of lost wine. No cork in the bottle, no straining out cork, and no need for tools we didn’t have.

The next time you have a bottle of wine and no tools, look no further than your shoes and some sturdy vertical surface that can take some abuse. Wham! Wine!

Post-a-Day January 1st 2013

Posted on by
Reply

Post-a-Day 1/1/13: Where were you last night when 2012 turned into 2013? Is that where you’d wanted to be?

On New Years Eve I was with my partners family enjoying the ball-drop festivities in NYC. It’s always very entertaining seeing how Eastern Time is the most ‘official’ time zone the is, or at least it seems to be. There is an inside joke about how important New Years is for Central Time Zone people.

So with a new year comes the new year resoutionistas. Which means that the Anytime Fitness in Kalamaoo, when I get back will be mobbed to the rafters by these people. It’s not too bad that they come in, but what is bad is they don’t keep it going any longer than they do.

Nuts.com

Posted on by
1

My love affair with dates actually only started when I ordered as part of a tapas brunch one of the plates being “bacon-wrapped dates” which was wonderful when I tried it. This event was being held at a work function far away, one of our spring get-togethers for a database system I manage for Western. After we all returned from the event that exposure to dates stayed with me and I went looking for them locally. I found that Sams Club, of all places was selling the “Bard Valley” brand of Medjool Dates. I started buying the bins of them and enjoying the dates as snacks during my breaks at work. When I got them from Sams, they were listed as a “Seasonal Buy” which in my mind meant that Sams wasn’t going to permanently carry them, that they could sell out and not be restocked and I’d be left high-and-dry without any way to procure my favorite treat. I’ve written about this before, especially the prices for these treats in another older blog post, Sticker Shock. I knew that Sams would eventually stop carrying them and I’d have to find another vendor so I went online and found Nuts.com. They sell sample size bags, and then pound and multiple-pound bags of everything they have for sale and their prices are just as competitive as anywhere else except for Sams. While Nuts.com can’t compete for price with Sams, they can over quality. There is something about the dates from Nuts.com that make them far better than the ones from Bard Valley. They seem fresher, fuller somehow, better.

When I put these Medjool dates on my Amazon wishlist one of my beloved family members sent me a gift box of them from Nuts.com. Of course, Nuts.com has more than just dates – I can also highly recommend their Turkish Figs. The figs and dates are a great combination together. The dates have pits, so you must be careful eating them, you just can’t chomp away on a unpitted date unless you hate your teeth, but the figs are almost all edible, except sometimes for the stem which is a little too hard to chew sometimes. The prices are quite excellent at Nuts.com, but where everything gets in trouble with them is shipping and there is no way around it. I think if a bunch of people ganged up in one big order from Nuts.com you’d be able to defray the cost of shipping that way, otherwise it’s only meant for a treat when you can afford the cost of the produce plus the extra shipping charges.

If you have a sweet tooth and like Fig Newtons like I do, you can save yourself a lot of needless calories and enjoy a healthy wholesome snack by going to Nuts.com. Your local Sams, or even a health-food-store might carry Dates, but the prices will blow your head off.