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I’m such a prick!

I’m an asshole.
I admit it, sometimes I’ll start a fight over the stupidest things.
Here’s the deal, I’m in bed, I’ve just gotten two 80 pound dogs settled and am trying to drift off. Problem is, the lights and noise from the rest of the house. The TV is on in the living room and the canned laugh track is becoming more annoying by the second.
So I ask my much better half to just close the bedroom door for me. I think, no big deal right?
WRONG! “I’m coming to bed in just a few minutes, I just need to finish this little thing.”
The deal is that quite often when I ask for what I think is a simple thing, instead of getting a simple yes OR no I get endless excuses and explanations none of which are adding anything to the conversation, or in this case, going to allow me to freaking go to sleep.
In fact the longer the explanation the more of my brain that gets spun back up to process the incoming information. Which more often than not just pisses me off. Even in daily interactions I hate people telling me how to BUILD a clock when all I wanted was to know the time.
My reactions to these situations don’t help.
The following is not meant as an excuse otherwise I’d be guilty of the shit that I’m bitching about. It’s just a little background.
I’ve been feeling squeezed/compressed lately. There’s a lot of issues, mostly mine, but one of the things that’s bugging me is that I don’t feel like I have a place to work or spread my stuff out in the house that’s not in the living room or across the dining table. I HATE having shit out in the entertaining areas, If someone drops by, I always feel like the place is a pig sty, even if it’ not really that much of a mess. 
I know what some parts of the problem is, the house is too small, we have too much shit, and I’m worried about finding work.
I let this stupid “Baggage” combine and my mouth ran away from my common sense.
I said out loud “I miss my piece of shit one bedroom apartment and living alone.” 
As the words came out of my mouth, I thought FUCK!!!!! Where the hell did that come from?  While that is sometimes a true statement it’s not always the case. Regardless though it’s something I should never have said. Especially not to someone that has my best interests at heart even if I don’t always see it.
I’ve hurt feelings, You can’t take stuff like that back, and Yep! I’m a real asshole.
Now what do I say or do to apologize? Moreover, how many times can I apologize for being in general an Ass before I come home to an empty house?
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Unusual weather for So Cal

It’s cold and wet here.

We’ve been having really strange cold fronts wandering down from the north. It’s rained here for the past two days and there is snow in the upper elevations.

Snow in May, not completely unheard of here but rare.

I’m guessing that the ski resorts in the local area are pretty happy about it since they get to stay open a little longer.

There are those that say this is a result of climate change and OMG it’s all the Humans fault.
Maybe, but I tend to think that while we should be responsible and do all we can AS we can to minimize our impact on the planet. I’m also not convinced that the changes we’re seeing are anything other than part of a normal cycle.

After all much of human history has existed between ice ages. We know that the world has been much colder and also much warmer than it is currently.

I’d bet that if you were to ask a geologist he wouldn’t be able to tell you if we were going into another ice age or if we were going into another warming phase. Which is why no doubt the terms changed of the past several years.

Think about it, less than 10 years ago all we heard about was global warming, and how the world was going to be a desert. Now it’s Climate Change, because no-one can say for sure which direction we’re heading in.

For my part, I’m going to just try to enjoy the weather, I get so bored with “Its another perfect day in Southern California”…

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Working from a Netbook

Decided to get a Netbook. I’m planning on doing some traveling & camping so I didn’t want to have to worry about carrying my MacBook Pro or my iPad.

I figure that since for the price of the iPad alone I could buy 4 of these machines it just makes more sense in the event that the machine was to be stolen.

This is a pretty slick little machine, not sure if I like Windows 7 Starter. It seems that Microsoft crippled the OS in some really annoying ways just so they could TRY and I mean TRY to get someone to pay $119 for the ability to play DVDs or change the desktop background.

Uh hello? the shareware market is amazing and Microsoft really hasn’t done anything but slow me down for about 4 minutes! NEXT!

This little thing is not all that fast but it sure as heck is serviceable.

It should allow me to do a little editing on photos that I may want to take. I can keep up the blog, get my email, and do some writing.

Not sure that I’ll ever completely give up my Macbook Pro, but for an inexpensive traveling computer this is a pretty good deal.

 

 

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I’m in a strange place

It’s a place I’ve been in for a number of years, if not most of my life. But right here and now I have an opportunity to choose a different direction.

I just don’t fit.

Since I’ve been off work for a couple weeks now, I’ve been considering what to do next, and where to go from this point in my life. (I suppose this is part of the normal decompression process.)

Trouble is that I’ve always been a bit of an individual and frankly feel uncomfortable in most of the places that I’d traditionally be pigeonholed.

For example I’ve got this really conservative bent. But I’m just not conservative ENOUGH to feel comfortable in the Republican party and I suspect that the Tea Party may be pretty much the same. (I’m still checking…on that one.)

I’m not comfortable as a liberal although I do have some liberal leanings.

However in general being around a high percentage of liberals will eventually irritate me until I’m just PISSED off.

For example, bin Ladens’ death, For me it was like OOOORRRAAAHHH! Leave scorched Earth behind. For my liberal friends it was like Oh now why did the kill him and what about the other people in the compound? Should the children and wives have been exposed to that kind of violence?

GRRRRRRRRRR!!!

I’ve not ever been comfortable in religion. For someone that thinks like I do, religion is at minimum mildly confusing and at maximum downright OPPRESSIVE.

I just can’t consolidate ME with the fire and brimstone I was raised around in the South. Even the much more moderate religious leanings of the Episcopal and United Church of Christ leave me feeling vaguely unsettled.

It’s not that I don’t believe in a creator, it’s how Man interprets that creator and then attempts to impose that interpretation on others.

Why you may ask am I thinking about all this?

Well, the company that I was working for, I joined because I naively believed I could contribute to the good in the world.

Yes it was a defense contractor, but what I was working on was something that would protect our troops, not necessarily kill our enemies. (not that I particularly have a problem killing our enemies)

Ok, maybe that’s hair splitting but I wasn’t creating particle beam weapons or figuring out how to bombard specific targets on the planet with asteroids.

The point is I wanted to and still do want to do good with my knowledge and skills. If I have to work for somebody, then I’d really like to contribute something back to society.

So I’d been thinking about working in the public service sector. But That’s when I run up against the not fitting problem. It seems that many of these jobs are heavily, (Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Tea Party, ACLU, Non-Profit, etc.) I’m not terribly sure how or if its possible to break into one of these areas.

I’m concerned about wasting another block of time working in a situation that is inherently not compatible with who I am.

I’ve thought about working in the gay community, but then I REALLY don’t fit. (I have a lot to say about the Many, Many, Many, ways that I don’t fit there, but that’s a posting for another time.)

For those of you that have Sirius-XM, there’s a radio station called Out-Q. Lets just say… I’m 180 degrees and several THOUSAND lightyears from what those people are, or what they think is important.

So as I said, where to from here?

I’ve been working on a list of possibilities

Artist – Many people seem to think I have something special when it comes to photography.

Writer – I do have a fertile imagination and am working on a book now.

Computer Geek – Been doing that most of my adult life.

Bar Tender – I think I’d like it. Have little idea about what’s involved.

Escort – I’m probably well past my “Sell By date”

I also just read a posting on a friends blog about being authentic in our lives. His posting resonated with me. I really need to do something that is more about who I really am and find joy in that. Of course the question is … can I get paid for being who I really am??

Then I read the edgy husband post here and thought yeah, I get what he’s saying too. Made me ask, have I been unavailable to myself in my life? Hummmm, Maybe I should pay attention this could be a message.

Before I get all wrapped around the existential axle, I’m heading out to run the weed whacker and then work out.

Like most men, accomplishments make me feel better and clear my head.

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I HATE Adobe FLASH!

I have hated Flash since the time it was MacroMedia Flash.

As it became more and more ubiquitous I began to hate it passionately.

My reason for hating Flash is simple. I’m impatient by nature.

If I’m navigating to a corporate web site and I just want to look up some little tiny bit of information I absolutely fucking HATE being stalled out because I have to update my version of Flash to get to the site.

In general I don’t want to see what your web designer, or marketeers think are cool, cute, or interesting movies in preparation to me actually GETTING the data from your site.

For years I  refused to have Flash on any of my computers (work or personal). And during that time I simply wouldn’t purchase products from sites that forced me to have Flash installed to view their products.

Unfortunately as time went by and more sites incorporated Flash, I relented. After a while you just need to get to an operators manual for a product that you own. So you bite the bullet and download the crap so that you can get on with your life.

I brought up my Windows machine this morning. In addition to all the normal Microsoft security patches. I got a message from Adobe Flash saying that YET AGAIN I was down level and needed to update.

FINE! I click on the install button and then was presented with the “Do you accept the EULA?” which I thought “I dunno, I don’t know if I’ve ever read it”.

Thank you Matt Stone and Trey Parker for your Southpark episode lampooning Apple and their EULA! I will probably Never be able to update iTunes again!

I clicked on the link and was taken to a listing on the Adobe site of every EULA they have. After Finding the one for Flash, which by the way DOES NOT include the version they were trying to update me to, I click on the link.

Then a 260 page Combined, international PDF starts downloading. While downloading it hangs, and screws up Firefox so badly I had to do a 3 finger on the machine.

When the machine came up again, I tried this procedure again (I’m a Software QA guy right to the bone!) And again got the hang, again requiring a 3 finger.

So when the machine came up again, I told Adobe Flash NO I don’t want to update. What I’d really like to do is read that damn EULA. I mean, what do they have to hide??