Category: Kitchen Sink
Oh Canada!
I’m ashamed to admit I’m not sure if there’s customarily a comma in there, but I specifically left it comma free in this case.
Our neighbors north of the border have a birthday today. As my wife’s family might say, it’s Fête du Canada – Canada Day.
And I must say Canada, you hardly look a day over 140!
In the back rooms of Creationist Theory offices, it’s the 6231st day of the creation story, when God said the northernmost lands of the new lands should be considered one land, and it should be called “Canada,” and it was good.
Ah, but I kid the Creationists. We kid because we love.
History books outside of Texas tell us it’s the anniversary of Canada’s Constitution Act in 1867. This was when some British folks said the northernmost lands of the new lands should be considered one land, and it should be called “Canada.” I understand it was, at a minimum, ok on the creation scale.
Despite their conservative government’s best efforts in recent times, I hear it’s pretty good these days.
As I understand it, independence actually came later (early 1980s later), but who are we to tell our friends when they were born.
So to my friends to the north, and everyone of Canadian descent (re: my in-laws), Happy Canada Day!
Words make the soul feel good
I spend a lot of time writing about depression, cancer, sleep disorders, and generally unpleasant stuff.
Today I’m writing about a letter my boss received a little while ago. I was the subject.
In my line of work, or just about any line of work I suppose, a letter to your boss is usually not good. Letter writers tend to be motivated by anger, or some negative emotion, probably because it’s more likely to be well fed and grow strong. Folks rarely feel compelled to put their praise on paper, let alone get up the gumption to fold it, stuff it, stamp it, and mail it.
Now that I think about it, I could do a whole post about anger versus joy, but I don’t want to. So I’m not going to. Now I’m going to move on.
I didn’t take the news well. My boss led with the comment a copy sat in my personnel file already. Isn’t that great? I’ve managed to avoid a single official complaint for over 15 years of public service. I take pride in it, if you’ll allow me this small bit of vanity.
Well, it turns out the letter wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was pretty good.
It was from a recently retired Judge I used see regularly. It talked about my reliability, knowledge, character… most of the stuff you’d see in a glowing letter of recommendation. I won’t bore you with a recitation of the whole thing, but I’d like to share the last few sentences.
Serving for 30 years as a Marine Corps officer, I evaluated the performance of literally thousands of young men and women. John would rank in the top five percent of all of those evaluated.
(My employer) is fortunate to have John, a truly loyal and dedicated employee.
It’s not poetry. It wouldn’t make a great speech.
But it choked me up. I’m such a softy.
My job has its own rewards. I don’t stand around waiting for someone to heap praise on the agency hero. I know I’ve helped people, from the tone of their voice when we speak, to the numbers in a report.
I know I’ve disappointed people too. No one is perfect.
However, reports don’t do too much for me and the recent political climate increasingly paints me and my ilk as greedy, lazy, over-paid, and under-achieving. There’s apparently nothing we can do the private sector can’t do better – with a roster of trained quadrupeds.
Rumor has it we hate apple pie too.
OK, I’m done ranting and raving. I’ve wiped all the foam and spittle off my chin and keyboard. Raise your hand if you could have done without that visual. If you think that was whiney, you should have seen this post before I cut a few hundred words.
Anyway, all of this is a long way of saying it’s nice to know someone noticed I’m not as bad as the GOP would have you think, even if it was just words put to paper.
Friend request
You’ve heard me talk, countless times, about the posts in my growing pending pile. Many have never escaped. In fact, it takes a pretty strong post to dig itself free and find you here. Now imagine what I don’t post.
Well, as chance would have it I’ve been working on a post about nostalgia and the years I spent at UF.
Today, I received a Facebook friend request from an actual, pre-internet age… friend… from UF! It’s a rare, precious thing. It’s someone who went to my wedding no less!
The downside is you’re gonna have to wait for my essay on nostalgia. This little bit of emotional over-reaction will have to tide you over.
I know. I feel your pain.
Forward thinking
It would be a pain in the ass, but I think it just might save my sanity.
Imagine if you will: the twelve days of time change.
Everyone agrees leaping backward is a breeze. I’m a backwards kind of guy anyway, so I’d be willing to soar backwards. But forward? Losing an hour of sleep in one cruel cut? It’s insanity. Why don’t we walk forward instead, in twelve manageable chunks of five minutes a clip? Like I said, it would be a pain in the ass, but in the spirit of saving daylight, how about we save a little sleep too?
Plus, even if you do forget to set your clock forward for a day or two, you’re only throwing yourself off five or ten minutes instead of a day destroying hour. We could even make it into a celebration – a nearly two week holiday celebrating the proximity of spring, and the sun hanging out with us a little longer each day. Instead of the time changing in the middle of the night, we could do it in prime-time. Times Square could drop a ball twelve nights in a row when we all step back from nine o’clock to eight fifty-five. Liquor stores would make a killing. Productivity in every other industry would see a lull, but surely it takes time for the workers of America to recover from the trauma of losing an HOUR all at once. I know I’m usually in a funk until at least July.
Call your representatives in congress fellow Americans! It’s time for change!
Sweet sweats
The last few days were the coldest this fall, here in the (brighter than tolerable) Sunshine State.
That means one thing: warm sweatpants.
Warm sweatpants means one thing: a pair I bought in college my freshman year. The beginning of my freshman year. Twenty-one years ago.
My wife warns me she’ll deny any relation to me if I go outside wearing them.
“Hey, isn’t that your husband?”
“No, he was killed last year.”
“Oh my gosh! I’m so sorry! How did it happen? He was so young.”
“Well, he was hit by a Target truck carrying new sweatpants stock.”
Man, that’s harsh.
What’s not to love about a pair of twenty year old sweatpants? I was pretty skinny in college so they are a little tight… in spots. If I may be so bold, they show off my spectacular, nearly 40 year old ass, well – spectacularly. They’re skin tight down just past my knees, showcasing my most prominent feature (not counting my unusually large head on my unusually narrow shoulders) – my unusually large knee-caps. Them babies knife out like they want to hurt someone. Unfortunately it’s usually me, when they bump into something. You know how it feels when something hits you in that spot between the knee joint and the patella, and it feels like it’s gonna sheer off? Well, that’s the price I pay for a great pair of knees.
The other cool feature is the inseam. Even with the waistband pulled up to my navel (on a man that’s normally a recipe for a great deal of discomfort), the inseam comes up to about mid-thigh. It makes it a little hard to do splits (HAH! FOOLED YOU! I can’t really do splits.) and things like walking are a little more difficult, but I’m willing to pay that price for comfort.
From Windows with love
I come to you today from Windows 7.
Before I go on, let’s get one thing clear. This is NOT a plug for Microsoft, Windows, or any of the Jolly Redmond Giant’s products. The statement above is just a statement of fact. If Freud could make it sound lewd, he might say, “sometimes a fact is just a fact.”
I’ve defiled my otherwise lovely, de-fertilizing, aluminum uni-body MacBook with a copy of Windows, but this is not news. I’ve told you this before, and lots of people have done the same thing. Living in a Windows world with a good computer isn’t always easy, but Boot Camp makes it a little bit easier. Today was a Boot Camp kind of day.
Since I was trapped in Windows when the will to write struck, Windows Live Writer almost opened itself, begging for it’s chance to shine.
What’s my impression? Well, if software were judged by the number of places you can click in a single window, Windows Live Writer would clobber poor MarsEdit on my Mac. Holy two button mice Batman, there are options everywhere! It’s enough to give someone with attention deficit disorder a seizure.
I bet you think I’m kidding.
MarsEdit looks like a toy, while Live Writer looks like it could pilot the Space Shuttle back to Earth from orbit.
In case you’re wondering, I don’t say this to talk up Live Writer’s virtues. It feels like I’ve been thrust into a world where designers never say no – a place where there’s no such thing as too many options.
I’m looking forward to getting back to MarsEdit (and my bestest buddy, TextWrangler).
The simple post
I collect text editors on my iPhone like some collect coins. This latest app is the simplest yet – and may turn out to be my favorite.
The last one was my favorite until it crashed and took an entire post with it. I was so pissed I had to put myself in time out – sans iPhone.
The damn thing is too expensive, and more importantly – probably too fragile – to be tossing it around like a catharsis frisbee.
So on we go. Another text app for John. It syncs with Dropbox. It better be stable. It also better have a persistent state when it’s interrupted by little things – like a phone call.
Sometimes we forget. The iPhone does that too.
Easy come, easy go
I often come up with (what I think are) great blog posts driving to or from work. The fifteen to twenty minutes I spend in the car, radio off, windows open, countless strip malls a blur as I speed by on US 19, are some of those rare moments that are undisputedly “my time.”
I always think to myself, “there’s no way I’ll forget this one.”
But I always do.
Feeling at home
I live in a relatively small town in Florida’s most densely populated county.
Dunedin comes from the Gaelic name: Dùn Èideann, thus named by its Scottish settlers. It’s the Gaelic name for Edinburgh, their hometown in Scotland. It’s commonly mispronounced as a two syllable word: Dune-din (the first like the dunes of a beach, the second like the first syllable of the word dinner – or the din of battle.) It’s correctly pronounced with three syllables: Dun (rhymes with run) – E (like saying the letter) – din (again like the din of battle).
The video above is just one of the ways Dunedin embraces its heritage. It’s not a very good video, taken in bad light on my phone, but it gives you an idea. Both the middle and high schools feature a version of the Dunedin Highlander Band, both with pipes a plenty.
High school was not a good time for me, but one of the highlights was the band. Don’t laugh. Yes, the band. The video is of a couple members of the middle school band fund raising outside a local drugstore (can’t imagine why I’d be at a drugstore). They were playing a tune the high school band used as their march. They played it proudly as they entered the stadium and left (for football games). They played it at the end of half-time as they left the field.
And every time they played it I got goose bumps, cementing my status as a nerd. It was a thrill to catch them playing last night.