A Better Therapy

As far as my wife and I are concerned, 2010 was not a very good year. We had hoped it would be great, but life threw us more than one curve ball, and then the economy tanked, which made our jobs more stressful, etc, etc, etc.

By the end of the year, we both just needed to get away. So in late October I started looking for a year end get-a-way. Someplace we could go to forget about the maelstrom that swirled around us at home. The logical place is a small Mexican seaside town about 5 hours south of us on the Sea of Cortez. It is called Puerto Penasco on the map, but most folks around here refer to it as Rocky Point.

It is one of the better bargains in the area, since you can rent a rather large, custom home on the beach for the price of a round-trip airline ticket across the country. So last October, I booked 4 nights in a 2 bedroom, 2 bath house, that depending on the level of the tide, was usually only 50 feet from the ocean. We would be there from December 23rd through December 27th. Just me, the wife, and one of our dogs. Well, that changed, to two of our dogs.......and at the last minute we added a cat.

From Best Therapy

Two people, two dogs and a cat took off for Rocky Point on Thursday afternoon. By the time we finally made it to the outskirts of the big city, we were exhausted from the packing and the driving. We drove down to Mexico in silence as we each reflected on the year that we had just been through.

There are a lot of things going on in Mexico right now. Mostly, this whole drug war / drug cartel thing with all the murders and violence. This is more hype than anything else, with most of the violence centered around a few small border towns. But hype is hype, and along with the bad economy, the little seaside town of Rocky Point was really hurting. They depend on a lot of tourist dollars there and there aren’t many tourists these days. Those that don’t have jobs can’t go and those that do have jobs are afraid of roaming drug lords.

From Best Therapy

This all made for a very smooth and quick drive down to Mexico. Heavily traveled roads were deserted this time around and we made it to Rocky Point in under 5 hours.

We picked up the key to the house from the rental agency. The house is called Casa Zillori and it didn’t take us long to find it, since this wasn’t our first trip down to the Sea of Cortez. The two dogs we brought with us were our 8 year old 125lb Great Dane, Chella, and our 2 year old, 55lb terrier / beagle / boxer / retriever mix, named Maximus (Max for short). Chella had been down to Rocky Point on many occasions, but Max had never seen the ocean. We knew he liked water, but had no idea what he would think of endless sea and sand.

From Best Therapy

We unpacked the truck and took the dogs down to the beach. It was high tide and the surf was moderate. There was no one else on the beach for as far as the eye could see, so we let Max off leash to see what he would do.

To no one’s surprise he leaped forward and starting running down the shore as fast as he could, and we both assumed that would be the last we saw of him, possibly forever. But a funny thing happened. After running through the surf at full gallop, he stopped after about 100 yards and dove into the ocean. He then swam back to shore and ran back toward us at full speed, passed us, and continued running for another 100 yards in the opposite direction. All the while he was leaping through the surf and diving head first into the waves that dared to cross his path.

From Best Therapy

Max continued up and down the 200 yards of beach for about 20 minutes, non-stop. Max was in Heaven. It was a child’s first trip to Disneyland, your first solo car ride and first time making love all rolled into one. Sue and I just stood there with Chella as Max did his best to wear out that beach. The look of sheer joy on his face was mesmerizing.

So much so, that we forgot. We forgot all about our lives back in Phoenix, Arizona. We forgot all about 2010. The look on Max’s face as he plowed through the surf was more than worth the house rental, and the gas and the time to drive down to the ocean.

From Best Therapy

Most folks that are depressed, find comfort in a bottle, or at a therapist’s office or in a pharmasutical. But let me tell you. The best therapy ever devised is a dog on an empty beach. Max made us realize more than anything else.....life is short, dive in.

For more of my thoughts on what Max has taught us, click here.

(All pictures taken in Puerto Penasco, Mexico with a Panasonic Lumix Digital Camera, 12/23/2010 - 12/27/2010)

Cruising Altitude

Peace and Quiet at 20,000 Feet


It seems that I do one of these ever year around this time. I suppose it is some sort of year end therapy. At least it feels like it.

A 2 minute 30 secont Terragen Raytracing created on my office computer over the Christmas Holiday. Comprised of 4,000 sepeate images, they were sequenced using Quicktime 7 and edited in iMove, with the soundtrack added from GarageBand.

Worst Phishing Ever

From BLOGS_IMAGES

I got this in my e-mail last weekend. While I have to assume that most internet users are savy enough to realize that this is utter bullshit, I am sure that there are some folks that will fall for it. Even though it has no logos or graphics, or even good grammer.

I am still waiting for the 3.5 million dollars from the Nigerian bank account that I sent my social security number to.......so I sort of doubt that 'Google' is telling the truth here. (my comments in blue)

-----------------------

Dear Google Mail User,

We hereby want to let you know that your Google Mail Account needs Verification.

Due to the recent problems encountered by our Google Mailing system.

Google Team will be deleting some in active accounts so as to reduce the number of registered Account on the New Affiliated Google Web Browser. (WTF does this mean?) Please Provide the following affiliation process (what the hell is 'affiliation process?) by filling out the details below so as to make a correspondence (their command of the English language is astounding) with the saved data on our system.

mail:
Password:
Present Country:

Warning !!!Failure to fill in the details above,we will believe your account is not active anymore and it will be deleted within 48hours and shutdown. (are you threatening me? ? ?)
Gmail Registration Services®.

-----------------------

Evidently, anyone that is actually fooled by this e-mail needs to have their internet access taken away.

Droid Dump

From BLOGS_IMAGES

I take a lot of pictures that most folks never see. If a black & white negative comes out a little to over-exposed, or the first attempt at a digital sunset isn't right, it gets filed away on some disk for future generations.

Recently, a lot of friends and co-workers have lost cellphones, or forgot to back up their digital cameras and lost EVERYTHING. So I am going to 'try' and start backing up stuff.

Since the concept of storage has moved 'way' beyond floppy disks and CD-ROMs, I have scavenged all the old digital media I have and posted it to a safe keeping place on the web. Specifically, my Apple Mobile.Me account. Most of these pictures are not great images, however, some of them aren't bad and have made it onto the pages of Flickr and this blog. Keep in mind, that all of this is 'digital' media. Which means it is NOT film. That is reserved for Flickr or specific blog posts. I mean, after all....I have to have some content standards.

Many of these images are from my Droid Smartphone, but some of them go back as far as my Zire 100 Palm Pilot and my LG5600 cellphone.

I will be updating the contents a few times a year as I dump memory cards and hard drives into it. So if you want to look through my shoe box of recent photos, click on the blog title above or just click "here" and you can browse them at your leisure.

Multi-Tasking

From BLOGS_IMAGES

I find myself frustrated a lot these days.

Frustration isn’t a good feeling. It leads to health problems, irritability, lack of sleep and a host of other bad things.

It appears that the majority of my frustration comes about due to the fact that I can’t get a lot of things done. It is an inability to complete a task, or at the very least, the task takes much more time to complete than it should.

Now I realize that I am partly to blame for this. I give myself more things to do than I can probably realistically get done. Every year or so, the wife and I have to ‘clean house’. Which is another way of saying, we go through our home and throw away all the old projects that we realize aren’t going to ever be completed or that have just fallen off the radar.

However, there are some tasks that we just can’t do this with. They are usually the tasks forced on us by others. Usually our employers or our families.

There are two primary frustration creators in this vein. One is the expectation that others will do things for you and our refusal or inability to tell these people ‘No’. By being charitable and helping others, we, in effect, enable them to fail and they return to us over and over again seeking help, support, advice or problem solving skills.

The other primary source of outside frustration is lack of resources. This is another way of saying that you are spreading the workers too thin. The catch phrase back in the 1990s was ‘multi-tasking’. This came from the use of computers, which could do more than one thing at a time. Such as, you could work on a spreadsheet AND print out a Word document. You didn’t need to wait for one process to end before you started the next one. Pretty cool, when you talk about computer....not so cool when you talk about people.

It became a boastful statement when workers would state that they could ‘multi-task’. Unfortunately, there is a downside to this. Not everyone can do it and not everyone should do it. It depends on the tasks.

As resources have been cut back over the years (i.e. less staff to do the work), management has seen multi-tasking as a way of keeping the same production level with fewer workers. You, as a worker, no longer have a JOB, you now have several JOBS, depending on who calls in sick or who gets laid off or who is on vacation.

I often explain it this way. If you are an accountant and you are hired by Ford Motor Company to create financial spreadsheets, you are hoping to really flex your muscle with Excel and create some killer workbooks. But what if after 3 months on the job, your supervisor comes to you and says, “Hey Bob, production just called, and they are really short staffed on the Pinto production line today, could hop on down there and install windshields for a few hours? It would REALLY help us out.”

Since Bob wants to be seen as a ‘team’ player he agrees. But the danger here is, once Bob knows how to work on the production line, Bob is going to be seen as a production line ‘resource’. So the next time half the Pinto builders all call in sick because Ford cuts back on their coffee breaks, who do you think they are going to call? Thats right...Bob.

The end result is obvious. Splitting Bob’s resources between creating Excel spreadsheets and building Ford Pintos means you won’t get good spreadsheets and you won’t get good Pintos. And Bob is going to get a little ….. frustrated, because this isn’t what he signed up for, nor is it what he wants to do. He didn't go to accounting school to learn how to build long lasting highway safety flares.

You wouldn’t want your heart surgeon splitting his time between operating room prep and working in the hospital pharmacy now would you? Some would say that being a surgeon is much to important and skilled a job to multi-task, but you would be wrong. Almost ANY job in the United States these days is extremely complex.

I work in an office where I have to track in excess of 10,000 children, there welfare and their well being, but I am also tasked with answering the phones for my division several times a month. In essence, I am their statistician and their front desk receptionist. So, in addition to worrying about missing 500 children that have medical needs that aren’t being addressed on a multipule sheet Excel workbook, I also have to worry about placing multiple people on hold and losing them when I try and transfer them.

But such is the way of the Western World today. With professionals from India and China willing to work for minimum wage, for 60 hours a week, it is either multi-task or or stand in line at the soup kitchen.

As I have stated before, I hope to be able to make it to retirement, where I can focus on ONE task at a time, until they are all done. However, I think I am in for a whole boatload of frustration between now and then.

The End Is Near

From BLOGS_IMAGES

What follows is an excerpt from an e-mail that I got recently. It is all true. But I am a little concerned about the tone of it all. As if most of this were a 'bad' thing. See below, with my comments attached, and leave me any of your musings in the comments section.

-----------------

CHANGES ARE COMING


WAKE UP CALL


There is nothing political about this email. It simply points out very probable changes that are in our future.

CHANGES ARE COMING ----

Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come

1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

All I get is junk mail and bills.....so I really won't miss this that much

2. The Check. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.

Every time I am in the checkout line (espeically the express one) and some moron tries to pay with a check, I am so glad that I don't have a hand gun with me to blow their brains out.

3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

I read the newspaper ever morning on my Sony eReader (like a Kindle). It is delivered automatically to the device via 3G networking and saves them all for me. Imagine trying to carry around 25 Wall Street Journals, I do. And they are all indexed with no advertising....pretty sweet.

4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.

(See my comment on #3 above)

5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.

We have these in our home, but they are more of a curiosity for our grand kids, sort of like having a Model-T for in the garage....they are cool.

6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."

Music is changing. It is global and free to anyone that wants to post it. The only value in music anymore is its live performance, which is sort of the way it should be in my opinion.

7. Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.

This is all true. See my last post on "The Future Of Television" to see my comments on this.

8. The "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.

In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.

I learned long ago, that there are only TWO things that are worth keeping. Photographs and written correspondence. Because those are memories. Everything else will end up in a landfill someday. Who needs it?

9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

I wrote a web log on this ages ago. It is all coming true. Which just goes to show that I am way ahead of my time.

It is going to be a brave new world......get ready for it. Pay attention to mother nature......change is inevitable.

Future Channels

From BLOGS_IMAGES

I Can Hardly Wait

As I have stated numerous times before. The wife and I don't watch broadcast television anymore. We don’t' see the commercials or the political ads or know what the current malady / pharmaceutical the health care industry is pushing. We don't have to be at a certain place at a certain time to be force fed content that is marketed as entertainment. I am soooo happy I don't have a clue about Bristol Palin and Dancing with the Stars.

Yet, there are times when we can't avoid it. The last one was Thanksgiving Dinner at a relatives house. As we shovelled turkey and stuffing into our mouths, the HDTV was on in the background with some football game, interspersed with commercials and retired football has-beens talking about their glory days.

If you haven't seen television for along time, it is a strange beast to behold once again. Almost alien.

Which got me thinking about the types of content that we are eventually headed for. I mean it is obvious. Look at the time line:

Milton Berle
Ozzie & Harriet
Pettycoat Junction
Gilligan's Island
The Huntley / Brinkley Report
The Love Boat
Charlies Angels
Saturday Night Live
The Bachelor / Bachelorette
The Apprentice / Celebrity Apprentice
Dancing with the Stars
American Idol.............................

Projecting these trends into the future, I come up with:


The Future Channels

The Anxiety Channel
(nothing but stories about death and disease)
The Voyeur Channel
(watching other people do things you wish you could do, i.e.-reality television)
The Low Self Esteem Channel
(nothing but infomercials for exercise equipment)
The Bitch Channel
(newscasters and pundents griping about how badly people do things)
The Happy Channel
(Disney and TV Land, I wish they would show old commericals as well)
The Statistics Channel
(nothing but numbers...I wish this would come true)
The Shopping Channel
(background noise for women's coffee clicks)
The Big Story Channel
(the current anxiety story of the week, Swine Flu, Pirates, Earthquakes, Oil Spills)
The Stupid Foreigner Channel
(bitching about how other countries don't play fair and are doing better than us)
The Future Channel
(Guessing at how strange and warped our society will be down the road)
The Man Channel
(nothing but war documentaries and shows about machines)
The Romance Channel
(where lonely woman can have their dreams crushed even more)
The Video Game Channel
(where geeks talk about their on-line fantasy lives and trade hacks and secrets) (this actually already exists, it is called G4)

This is sort of why I collect LaserDiscs. Eventually, when I retire, I want to be 'entertained' by good television, not be brainwashed by media saturation

30 Days Of Correspondence - Wrap-up

From 30 Days

Thirty Days of Letters:

Well, this exercise is over and it was a little harder than I thought it would be. Some of the themes were a bit perplexing, but the joy in it was finding some way to interpret it in a letter format.

Thanks for all that read and commented and my apologies for not reading and commenting on the stuff that you have been writing about. I will have a lot of reading to catch up on during the first few weeks of December.

For those that are curious, this is the list of themes that each of the letters is based on. Some were fictional and others were not.

If anyone else wants to try this, I would be curious to see what sort of correspondence you can come up with.

The Topics:
Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you badly.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

30 Days Of Correspondence - Wrap-up

From 30 Days

Thirty Days of Letters:

Well, this exercise is over and it was a little harder than I thought it would be. Some of the themes were a bit perplexing, but the joy in it was finding some way to interpret it in a letter format.

Thanks for all that read and commented and my apologies for not reading and commenting on the stuff that you have been writing about. I will have a lot of reading to catch up on during the first few weeks of December.

For those that are curious, this is the list of themes that each of the letters is based on. Some were fictional and others were not.

If anyone else wants to try this, I would be curious to see what sort of correspondence you can come up with.

The Topics:
Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you badly.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself