Evan, 10 years old: "Dad, I need you to do me a favor?"
Me: "Okay."
Evan: "My friends want you to draw one of those pictures on my lunch bag for the field trip tomorrow."
Our spaceship
I imagine our ancestors’ conversations went something like this:
Scientist 1: “We should explore the universe.”
Engineer 1: “How? It’s so large it would like multiple hundreds of lifetimes.”
Engineer 2: “We’d need a space ship. That could hold a lot of water. I mean like 71% water.”
Scientist 1: “Ok. What about food?”
Engineer 1: “The space ship needs to hold lots of food. Generations of food. Means that we cannot package it. Has to be renewable. That means soil, fertilizer, a lot that water. Oh, and animals. The animals are a food source as well as fertilizer generators.”
Engineer 1: “Damn this is going to require a lot of energy.”
Engineer 2: “That’s easy. Fusion!”
Engineer 1: “That would have the side affect of killing all the people, animals, and plants and contaminating or evaporating all the water.”
Engineer 2: “Not if the Fusion happens off of the space ship.”
Engineer 1: “Off the space ship? That would have to be like 92.96 million miles OFF the space ship!”
Scientist 2: “This sounds great but wouldn’t astroids pose a treat to our space ship?”
Engineer 1 and 2 in unison: “We’d build shielding of course.”
Engineer 1: “Is the Jupiter project still being researched?”
Engineer 2: “It’s ready for production.”
Scientist 1: “Jupiter project?”
Engineer 2: “Basically you take hydrogen gas and package it in an oblong sphere that is approximately 88,846 miles in diameter and gravity will pull all the nearby astroids into the gas cloud obliterating the treat to our space ship.”
Scientist 1: “How do we move the space ship?”
Engineer 1: “We predetermine a course. You will get one relatively straight line so chose wisely. This ship is going to have so much mass that changing direction will be implausible. We will use the fusion energy source as the engine to move the spaceship along.”
Scientist 2: “The energy source that is 92 million miles from the space ship?”
Engineer 2: “92.96 million miles. Yes. That energy source is so massive that its gravity will pull the space ship and the shielding along with it. All we have to do is start with a large explosion, a big bang, to move the energy source along our predetermined path.”
Scientist 1: “Can we have two space ships?”
Engineer 1: “Sure! Tell you what. We can configure them slightly different. And call one Earth.”
Engineer 2: “And the other Mars! That way if one fails, our species continues to explore.”
Scientist 2: “Will the supplies last?
Engineer 1: “Just in case, let’s throw in 11 more supply ships. Each one can be responsible for a raw material that the primary two space ships may need for subsistence. Let’s call them Mercury. Venus. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Neptune. Pluto, Hercules, Apollo, Zelus, and Priapus.”
Scientist 2: “Make it so number one.”
My head throbs
My head throbs because it is raining outside and I want to be putting down lye and grass seed. My head throbs because I want to go back to yesterday morning and do yesterday completely different. My head throbs because I need to be working on my client’s work but I want to be writing. My head throbs because I have not yet had coffee. My head throbs because I want to be cleaning my house and making repairs. My head throbs because I have dreams I cannot, will not ever fill. My head throbs because I want to be doing my taxes. My head throbs because I am thinking about anything except what I am doing.
May the children and their children be so much better than me
At some point, I just need to accept that I’m a horrible person and hope that perhaps my children can rise above and not be anything like me.
The great destructor of all happy
I fell…
From the mouths of babes
Me to wife: "You’ve made me old with snapchat."
Disembodied 10 year old voice from the back of the house: "Yeah, you are old" "hahaha!" "Get wrecked." "W-r-e-k-e-d"
I play the lottery for fun
Sometimes I see a little fantasy in purchasing a lottery ticket. When I do play, usually I buy a Powerball or Megamillions since the numbers are huge and the dreams match in scale. I rarely buy scratch offs. This week I purchased a $5 scratch off ticket. I enjoyed revealing the numbers needed to be matched and then uncovering the individual numbers. This ticket won $25! Great return on investment. Did I keep the money? An extra $20 in my pocket? NO! $5 was the cost of admission. I purchased a $25 scratch off. Who does that?! $25! I proceed to scratch off the numbers needed to match. Then I under cover each of the potential matching numbers. Sure enough one hits. I uncover the prize to reveal $10. But I’m confused. A friend once told me a winning ticket will never be less than the value of the ticket. Ah, a 2nd number matched! Another $10. Still less than the $25 cost of the ticket. And then a third hit. This $25 ticket turned into a $30 winner. $5 bonus. Wait, my initial investment was $5 so I’m $25 ahead! Do I quit? Of course not. I paid my $5 for this ride. So I turn the ticket in for a $30 scratch off. Alas, my luck ran out and no numbers matched. Was I disappointed? Initially but then I remembered I paid only $5 and received far more than that in the pleasure of playing the game. I walked away $5 poorer rather than $25 richer but I had fun and that is why I occasionally play the lottery.
Today a great man died
My father-in-law passed away today. This note will serve to hold this spot until I can wrangle the whirlwind of thoughts speeding through my mind and put them to words.
29 days in February! Let the mass unfollowings end.
2016 is a Leap Year meaning there are 29 days in February and mass unfollowing of friends occur as United States politics flood the social media networks.
As a reminder, citizenship is not passive. We have a civic duty to participate in politics to shape our nations. That includes voicing dissenting opinions among our peers. An informed citizenry can better shape its respective nation. When the citizenry, particularly the proletariat, can be convinced to not be bothered, corporations and politicians can more easily control the people.
If we decry political discussions on Facebook or other social media as a reason to block people or unfriend others, we are doing nothing less than putting our fingers in our ears and chanting nah nah nah nah nah.
We make progress by listening to ideas foreign to our own. A business meeting where everyone walks into a room and nods heads in agreement and pats each other on the back is a waste of meeting space and salaries. An echo chamber where everyone else says the same thing we already think does not further a cause. Both cases are nothing more than pep rallies and bandwagons.
A diverse population will never be in complete agreement. John Lydgate said, “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” If the Left implemented all of their philosophies with blatant disregard for the Right, you would have a significant portion of the population displeased and vice versa. Politics is about finding a happy medium where the Right and the Left find a middle ground which somewhat pleases both extremes. Our politician’s job is to seek this middle ground!
An elected official is supposed to represent the people; not just the people who agree with that politician’s ideals. A Congressman is a professional and should be willing to approach a vote with a Yea to represent its constituents’ wishes even when that Congressman’s personal beliefs say Nay. Consider your representatives’ histories as you go into the voting booths.
Regarding the political arena and social media, I implore you to resist the urge to take a dislike to someone you follow or even go so far as to block or unfollow them over their political posts. Instead, engage them. I did not say “insult them” or “fight with them” or “troll them.” Engage them. Be inquisitive. Try to understand their position even if they are unwilling to give you the same courtesy. Let’s make politics civil again.
From the mouths of babes
We asked the 10.5 year old to watch something other than Futurama or Simpsons. He begins his breakdown as I try to find Animaniacs or Pinky and the Brain.
Me: "Do you want to play some cards with me?"
Evan: "No"
Me: "Do you want to play a board game with me?"
Evan: "No"
Me: "Do you want to be in the same room with me?"
Evan: "I’m going to go take a bath."
Gotta geek
Took some time to myself today to finally get my laptop to begin serving SSL with a self-signed certificate. That was good!
And now drones are putting censors who put the black bars on videos out of work. What is this world coming to?!
(If you click play, you are going to see some naked backsides.)
You really should watch until the end.
A sample of my tech life
I use tools in my life that just feel like breathing to me. Thought it might be interesting to list the tools I use in a typical day. Tools include hardware and software. Today I used:
- Amazon Echo to turn off lights, check the weather, and check the time.
- I used Siri to send text messages while I was driving.
- I used Siri to find information on the web.
- I used Dreamweaver for coding as well as Notepad++
- I used Microsoft SQL Server Management Console
- Visual Studio 2013 and Crystal Reports
- I wrote code in Adobe’s Coldfusion, PHP, and ASP.NET’s c#.
- I wrote stored procedures in MS SQL and data manipulations in MySQL.
- I used Terminal to change ownership and permissions on files.
- I used multiple email clients.
- I chaired a change advisory board using a watered down version of Robert’s Rules of Order.
- I used Zoom for video conferencing and screen sharing in two different meetings.
- I configured a WordPress installation including customizations of plugins and writing my own functions for a child theme of the Advanced Newspaper theme.
- I used Coin (a single credit card which consolidates my other credits cards into one) for payment
- I used the Narrative camera for life logging with photographs
- I used Github Desktop for version control on one machine and Subversion for version control on another.
- I explored automating parts of my life with Alfred App’s workflows and Automator as well as Jenkins and Selenium.
- I used YNAB for budgeting and Hootesuite, Skype, Facebook Messenger, iOS Messenger, and Twitter for communications.
There was more but I am tired.
Just once
I’d really like to get through one day without uttering the words, "Goddamn dog."
Of Grasshoppers
Student: Ten years ago I asked you my first question.
Master: And you continue to talk to yourself!
