Category: General

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Ok I’m a total geek

When it rains on a Sunday, most people watch a game, or a movie, or lounge in bed with their loved one reading the paper or loving their loved one.

When I was very young, I remember piling into my parents bed on rainy Sundays. Dad & I would fight over the funnies, Mom would make us calm down while she finished the Home and Garden section of the paper.

Eventually, there would be pancakes, followed by more tickling and “fighting” over sections of the Sunday paper. Since all this was in the deep south, by noon or one ‘o’clock the sun would be poking through the clouds and we’d go find something to do outside.

Southerners have a tacit agreement with God. Most Sundays it rains only while we’re in church and stops about the time the minister is wrapping up. Every once in a while though God gives us a break, (probably from an especially boring sermon) by making it rain all morning. If it’s raining when we’re supposed to be getting ready for church we don’t go. After all, the rain messes up mom’s hat and our sunday go to meeting clothes would be damp and musty all through church.

It’s all very civilized and Southerners understand that God has to deep soak the plants sometimes. God doesn’t seem to mind us staying inside and reading the paper either.

Now days, on a rainy Sunday, it’s me sitting up in bed listening to the rain on the roof, with coffee and a computer. These are the days I upgrade software.

Not nearly as much fun as other pursuits but necessary. Or as in this case optional but ultimately useful.

I’m upgrading my Windows 7 workhorse to Windows 10. I love VMWare for it’s ability to copy containers that contain opertating systems and all the files in that OS.

If this upgrade goes off the rails, all I have to do is trash this container and copy a backup to my system and everything is reset. It makes me a lot more comfortable experimenting like this.

I’m getting the impression that I’m going to be watching a lot more rain than learning Windows 10 today. Wow this process is crawling along.

Ah well, the sound of rain on the roof is a welcome change.

Have a good Sunday however you’re spending yours.

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This is totally weird

It’s in the 50s

Some of my plants are budding as though they think it’s spring.

A couple of weeks ago we had almost a foot of snow. Now I’m wandering around barefoot, in jeans & in a T-Shirt.

We’re just barely making it below freezing at night.

This time of year it should be pretty much freezing all the time, with ocassional highs in the 40s.

God NO!

Global warming is going to drive the riff raff up into the mountains!

Alright, I demand that we quadrupal the carbon taxes! Start spray painting everything white so we can reflect all the heat back out into space.

We need an ice age!

I’ll do anything to avoid having to deal with Riff Raff on a daily basis.

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Yeah today I phoned it in…

I was cleaning out my clippings file and found today’s article. I was going to write something additional, or build a larger blog post around it.

Then I reread the piece and figured there was little of value I could add.

Dunno about you, but I tend to give the wacky hair crowd a wide berth. And YES! That’s profiling.

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Meh. It could be worse

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The other half came home with some serious junk food.

They are tasty and the other half justified the purchase by pointing out that these taste very good with berry flavored tea.

But the classic statement was;

“Besides, they were on sale.”

Which apparently justifies the purchase of four packages.

I was reminded about a friend of mine.

His other half loved bargains. Shoes, Jewelry, you name it, if something was on sale it was in their house shortly there after.

Everything was pretty much fine until…

Luxman d 08

What has since become known within the US Government and NATO as;

The Luxman Incident.

I vaguely recall waking up, the day after Thanksgiving at my friends home.  I staggered to the kitchen following the smell of awesome coffee.

Ahhhhhh Coffee!

Then I smelled that distinct smell that comes only from New Electronics. The unmistakable smell of rosin, and board cleaning solvent. Then I heard the rustling of styrofoam, and plastic bags.

There, in the living room, was my friend looking like a kid at Christmas in the middle of cables and packing materials.

It was 9 am.

My friend had showered, shaved, gotten dressed, left the house, driven to Van Nuys, made a purchase, driven home, re-entered the house without disturbing the dog or anyone else and was in the process of having a geek orgasm induced by a new electronic toy.

My friend didn’t roll around in the packing… His control was remarkable, (which is not to say he hadn’t done this prior to my entering the room.)

Alien by buchemi

Enjoying my coffee, I was looking forward to watching Alien on this brand new LaserDisc player, later in the afternoon. (It’s a Thanksgiving or day after Thanksgiving tradition, leave it at that.)

At which point… His other half came in and frankly lost it.

At the time, I wondered if I was watching Alien live!

I headed for another cup of coffee. I was not wanting to be drawn into this under any circumstances. Best to not be present.  My friends other half looked at me “Did YOU know he was going to buy this?”

“Uh Nope… where’s the coffee? I’m going to put on another pot,” continuing to the relative safety of the kitchen.

At which point I don’t remember too much. I do recall the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard for about 30 minutes then it got quiet.

A few moments of silence and the opening sound effects of the score of Alien could be heard from the living room.

I looked around the corner. That now infamous opening line appeared on the screen.

In space, no-one can hear you scream.

Clearly a vacuum had opened somewhere between the front of the house and the rear of the house. I knew no-one had been “spaced” but there was some serious space in that house for the next day or so. I don’t think they spoke the rest of the weekend.

It wasn’t funny then.

Many years have passed, and I think it’s funnier than hell now. My friend may not think so but I hope he takes it good-naturedly.

Of course this is the same friend that gave me the single most EPIC ass chewing I’ve ever received. I deserved every word of it. I was an asshole!

I’m hoping that I’m not cruising for another EPIC ass chewing with this post.

It’s strange how memories are linked in our heads.

My other half saying “They were on sale,” as I was trying to rearrange the pantry to accept a 3 cubic foot block of cookies, put a smile on my face and allowed me to relive that “Black Friday”.

My friend has a much lovelier person as his wife now. She’s awesome, I genuinely like and respect her. She brings out the best in him, and the imp in me.

(I love trying to shock her and watching her reboot for just an instant when she processes that I really did say what she thought, but never imagined, I’d say. In truth because she’s made my friend happy and truly loves him, well don’t tell her, but I’d do anything in my power for her.)

I’ll throw myself on her mercy if he’s really mad at me.

I should point out that I’ll buy her mercy if necessary with tales of a blue Mustang, a green Monza and a certain church parking lot!

It pays to be a very old friend to someone, you know literally ALL their dirt.

Ahhh Chooo!

What was I saying? What Mustang, I’m not a church going person, what’s a Monza? I’m so old my memory fails at the most inopportune moments.

Cookies or over priced bedazzled sweat shirts.

I’ll take the cookies and funny memories.

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Strange Tears

I’m a mean hard bastard.

I’ve been that way all my life. Which is why I find myself in this very strange place.

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I feel like my world is slipping away.

It was David Bowie’s passing that popped the bubble for me. Or maybe it was a combination of seeing Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek Into Darkness and Bowie’s passing that managed to pound through my defenses.

Th 1These entertainers are people I’ve never met, so it shouldn’t be personal.  But they are touchstones in my life. Their loss is a sign of unrelenting change.

I heard the strains of Space Oddity on the radio this morning and was suddenly singing along & crying. It was weird.

Unintentionally, I started tallying the losses in my personal life.

I’ve seen my share of death. In the ‘80s and ‘90s the tally increased weekly. After a while I stopped going to funerals. It wasn’t because I didn’t care about or want to remember those folks. It was that I couldn’t bear any more losses.

61260414Time is catching up with me.

I know in the not too distant future I’m going to have to bear more losses. The numbers are probably going to increase faster too.

Folks in my family are getting up there in years. I have friends who aren’t in the best of health and while I love them, time and distance have made us into very different people.

You see, time takes its toll on relationships too.

Why am I crying? Even hard assed warriors cry. I’m not ashamed of my tears.

The catalyst of music or movie is one thing, that’s the trigger.  What is the underlying cause of my tears right now?

Is it that I’m not as good as surfing the winds of change as I once was? Is it sadness that some days I feel like a dinosaur watching the last sunset? Is it fear of being left all alone?

I know these feelings aren’t unique.

There are books and plays, movies and TV shows that have explored these feelings.

Dracula, Dr. Who, and at least one book by Heinlein pop into my head instantly. These stories ask the question:

If you could be immortal would you?

Could you bear the mounting losses while continuing to walk endlessly into the future?

How long before the transient nature of life made you a monster, disconnected from all the things that make us human? Would you, after a few hundred years, stop being human because you can no longer keep count of those you’ve loved and lost.

How long until the voices, faces and lives become background noise, and your interaction with them is limited to nothing more than furthering your agenda? You agenda would likely become an agenda, the normal lived couldn’t see and one in which their life or death is but a drip from a leaky faucet.

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Perhaps it’s normal to think of these things at points in your life. We know we’re mortal, we know we’ll end.

Maybe the lesson is to just cry.

Maybe from time to time, we should let it all out, not hold anything back, and don’t dwell on it.

When our tears have finished, then we’re supposed to pick up the less brittle pieces of ourselves and move on with grace earned by our successes, failures, and even our tallied losses from years of living.

Like everyone else, I’m clueless. I can tell you this;

Time keeps moving on and so probably should we.