Category Archives: About Me - Page 27

Me And My Blog

Posted by on February 27, 2015 No comments

I just finished reading a blog post about blogging.  The main content of the post seemed geared to doing blogging as a profession and as a way to make money.  It got me wondering when things changed?

No, I’m not really that dumb.  I know blogging, once it became mainstream, was a critical marketing and sales tool.  I guess at this point, my thoughts are, why is it still considered the way to do things?  And, like many cases where I read something that insists I need to do something differently to do it correctly, I question myself.

I made a milestone post a while ago describing my relationship with my blog.  It’s a personal journal, like me just talking to myself or to no one in specific.  And just right there, I violated another recommendation.  I didn’t link to the post where I mentioned that.  I do internal links extremely infrequently, which is considered bad.  I actually do very few links of any kind.  Why?  Because I think a link encourages distraction.  Someone has probably done some study of the pros and cons of hyperlinks vs. footnotes.  One providing instant additional information but possibly containing other information that hasn’t been covered yet, and the other allowing you to absorb the entire document before seeking additional info.

So let me explain my relationship with my blog, contrasted with other social media options.  This is a journal, first and foremost.  I can use it to search and remember what life was like for me at that time.  This blog does have some pretty low points in its records.  Although I could accomplish the same thing in Facebook, there’s a significant difference.  On FB, if I’m bitching, gloating, bragging, or whining, I’m doing it in front of my chosen audience.  Likewise, people are doing it to me when I am in their chosen audience.  But in my blog, even if the reader knows who I am, the blog is not directly attributable to my name. 

Here’s another way to put it.  Making a post on FB is saying, “I want everyone who is friends with me to know I said this.”  Making a post on my blog is saying, “I want anyone who cares to know this.”  See the difference?  The blog doesn’t directly attribute a statement to me.  It’s the same reason I don’t watermark any photographs.  I may not get credit for cool stuff, but I won’t get flack for bad stuff either.

Welcome To The Jungle Gym

Posted by on February 18, 2015 No comments

I’ve had a very strong feeling that 2015 is going to be a good year.  And the proof just keeps mounting.  One of the things you have to always manage is a sense of gratitude for what you have.  You have to stay realistic and remember that not everyone is successful – for a multitude of reasons.

The reason for this post is that my girlfriend recently entered the white-collar world for the first time.  She got the job for two reasons, both of which are very important for seekers.  First, she made it a priority to know more than anyone else in her desired profession.  I encouraged professional certifications instead of a generic college degree.  Second, she networked heavily.  She volunteered when she could and offered assistance for whatever event she was available.  To tweak an oft-used bemoaning, it is both what you know and who you know.

I went through the same stuff many years ago, but at the time, I didn’t have the same perspective that I have now.  I am able to look at my girlfriend’s situation and see how crazy it is when you become a professional.  I mean, everything changes.  One day you’re wondering what days you’ll be working next week and then, bam, you have a solid work schedule.  You used to share a break room with all your co-workers, now, here’s your office.  You used to pore over offerings from ObamaCare trying to find one that was good enough for what you could afford, now, here’s your company health plan.  And here’s membership to a credit union, and here’s your vehicle you’ll use during work, and here’s enough money to live on.

It’s probably overwhelming for anyone that’s in that transition, and for an outside observer, it can be shocking to a degree as well.  What got me was that it was almost like winning a lottery.  Don’t get me wrong, there was no luck involved here.  It was earned through a lot of study and honest self-promotion.  My background thought was for all the others that haven’t gotten there yet.  Maybe they don’t know enough yet, maybe they don’t know or haven’t impressed the right people to fight on their behalf.  You just can’t show up and say, “I’ll take that job.”

So to everyone that is searching, know what you want, know it inside and out, and find the people who can get you there.

2014 In Spam

Posted by on January 27, 2015 No comments

It was in April of 2013 that I made a change to the way I use my email.  Unlike most people, I don’t just have an email address, I have an email domain.  And I use that entire domain namespace by creating a specific email address for every business I deal with.

My email server processes the emails against a blacklist instead of a whitelist.  That means that I can create any email address I want, and it will get delivered to me unless I put it on a list to be blocked.  That reduces the amount of administrative headache I have.

The purpose of this is so that I can tell where my emails are being lost, stolen, or sold.  The instances of this in 2014 were pretty low.  Someone got my paypal email from someone I did business with, some political spammer used a public records request to get my electric company email, and one website’s user database got hacked (and they won’t admit to it).

What I was a little fearful of when creating this wildcard email account was that some automated script would hit my mail server and try a whole slew of predictable emails, like admin@, webmaster@, accounting@, president@, etc.  My wildcard account would catch these and I’d get inundated with mail.  However, this hasn’t happened yet.  I did get some spam by someone who guessed an email address using the firstname.lastname@ structure, so that email was then blocked.

My blacklist only has 6 entries, which I think is pretty good.  And to not have any spam is plenty wonderful.  I just did some checking and it seems my mail server software is rather old.  I think an upgrade will be in order sometime this year.

Ask No Questions, Get No Answers

Posted by on December 30, 2014 No comments

I performed a brief social experiment today that gave me some surprising, and yet unsurprising, results.

At work, our break room has a TV.  And during break time, invariably, someone wants the TV to be going.  Sometimes, it’s HGTV, or sometimes sports, and one time, it was Jerry Springer.  Since I’m not a fan of TV in general, I’m annoyed.

Today, with no one around, I changed the TV to a dead channel.  I thought that would annoy other people.  I speculated that someone would immediately grab the remote and change the channel.  Instead, people just assumed the cable was out and didn’t even try to change it.  Some people were mocking the cable company, some people speculated that it was the weather.  No one ever looked to see if any other channels worked.

I like this and may do it often in the future.

Hard Drives

Posted by on December 22, 2014 No comments

If there’s one thing that’s true about me it’s that I drive a lot.  I drive a lot. Like on the order of at least 30k miles a year.  So cars and driving have always been part of what I do.  I have no issue driving an hour to get some food.  Lately, I’ve been evaluating how much time a day I might be losing to driving, but that’s for a different post.

It was in May, 2010 that I got my roadster and it didn’t change my driving frequency at all.  I still drove all over the place; I just enjoyed it more.  But the car did open up a few different doors.  It introduced me to the social aspects of having a specialized car.

The first thing I got involved with was an enthusiast club.  People who all owned the same make of car and just got together to hang out and talk car stuff.  I’m not exactly a social person, but I tried for a few months.  I’m also not really a gearhead, so I couldn’t really get into the conversation topics they liked.  So eventually, I drifted off.

One of the things they did discuss at the club meetings was racing.  And those discussions introduced me to autocrossing, which is a timed solo race on a closed track.  Autocross is less about speed and more about technical precision.  So I got involved in that and performed averagely.  One of the biggest things it did for me is allow me to answer “yes” when someone asks me about my car and asks if I race it.  That usually isn’t what they expect to hear.  It also educated me on the limits of my car’s ability, which proved to be far above what I would have imagined.

While participating in Autocross, another idea was tossed around – the road rally.  And this weekend, I was finally able to participate in one.  The rally wasn’t like what you see glamorized through insane photos of cars in midair or bashing through the countryside; it was simply a scavenger hunt done through vehicles.  Now of course, having a nimble sports car will help you when you need to stop immediately or do a quick 180 to go back and get a required photo, which did happen.  But yes, it did also happen that at one point we were driving 68mph on a 2-lane back road and another that we were driving 87mph and got passed by another team who was behind on time.  In the end, it was a rollercoaster experience, thinking we were most likely going to finish last in points and ended up coming in first with a 100 point lead.

So now I can say “yes” with even more confidence when asked about racing.

Dream Log

Posted by on December 15, 2014 No comments

Had a weird dream a few nights ago.  So weird, I had to keep reminding myself about it so I wouldn’t forget it like most dreams.

I was on this trip or tour or excursion with a bunch of people to a massive art project.  It was in a huge, multi-story building and the project was by David Byrne of Talking Heads fame.  The building was probably 12 stories high, but for whatever reason, we were going to start at level 9.  The idea was to work your way down to the bottom while taking in the sights.

The sights, as designed by the artist, were simply rooms presenting a different scene.  These scenes represented the gamut of emotional responses, from boring, to humorous, to shocking, to familiar, and on and on.  Very much something David Byrne would come up with.

The thing about the exhibit is that it was such a massive building, you couldn’t see all the scenes in one visit and that was how it was designed.  You would be on a guided tour and maybe the guide was showing you scenes in a particular order to create the expected emotional responses, not unlike how a song evokes emotions, or in longer form, a concert.  Still, very Byrne-esqe.

One of the ridiculous, obviously-a-dream details is that because there was no defined path through the building and you couldn’t tell your way around from room to room, a path was created with mud that had the consistency of chocolate pudding.  You would just walk through the muddy path, following the guide.

Well, another tourist and I decided that we didn’t want to miss out on any of the rooms in the exhibit, so we were going to break from the pack and see as much as we could.  It was understood that this behavior wasn’t discouraged, so we did it.  After seeing a couple of other rooms, we wondered how we were going to keep track of which rooms we’d seen already.  I had the idea of smearing some of the guide path mud on the door so we could identify which we’d seen already.  It was a good idea and we continued, eventually lagging behind and losing our group.

Now alone, I started to get a little concerned about being in this huge building where the rooms connected without any sense and some looked very similar to others so you couldn’t exactly make your way through it with memory.  Then I noticed that the group’s muddy trail was drying up and disappearing…

As that fear was building in me, I turned to my companion and asked if the desk we were at was the same one we had seen just a little bit ago.  I looked closely at it but couldn’t tell if I had smeared some mud on it or not.  And it this point, I kind of knew we were lost.

I woke up shortly after that.  As I kept reminding myself of some of the details, I started coming up with more things that could have happened, but I think those were probably influenced memories.

Encroachment

Posted by on December 8, 2014 No comments

‘Tis the season to be homeless, or so it seems.  I’ll start by saying I’m ambivalent about homeless people.  I really don’t think there is a solution to it, much less a solution to those that actually desire to be homeless and live off of charity.  My reaction to homelessness would be, in D&D terms, chaotic neutral.  but anyway, the stories…

Case 1: The GF and I are out driving and stop at an intersection.  There is a woman wearing the standard-issue safety vest for panhandlers.  Joking around, I commented, “nice butt,”  the GF commented, “nice phone in the back pocket.”  But joking aside, the GF is a lot more generous and tolerant of panhandlers than I.  She will regularly offer a drink or a snack if she has one available.  I infrequently do that.

Anyway, to get to the point, the woman turned around and it was a person that my GF knew from her job.  Knew pretty well, in fact.  That changed a lot and not in the way it might sound.  This woman would show up nearly every day totally drunk and just be belligerent all day.  This is not someone you want to give money to, because it goes to one thing.

Case 2: I’m pulling in to a restaurant for lunch and a vagrant is in the lot.  I leave the car running and pretend to be busy with something inside.  Undeterred, he comes over and is happily gesturing at my car.  Yeah it’s a nice car.  I give him a thumbs up through the window hoping he’ll continue on.  Nope.  He continues gesturing and finally I roll down my window.

The guy is deaf, for real or not.  Signing some stuff, pointing and making noises.  I have no idea what he wants.  He eventually hands me a piece of paper with his pitch pre-written on it.  He’s deaf; he can’t hear or understand what I say; he wants money for McDonalds.  Sigh.  I give him $5 and tell him to enjoy his meal.  He seems extremely grateful.

Case 3: I’m leaving a restaurant and a guy is in the lot with a bike.  “What kind of car is that?”  “It’s a Miata.”  “A what?”  “A Miata.”  “Hold on I can’t hear you.”  He comes closer as I realize what I’ve gotten myself into.  “A what?”  “A Mee Ahh TA”.  “Oh!  That’s a beautiful car.  Must be very expensive.  Never seen one like that before.”

Trapped, I am.  “I just want to fuckin’ say something.  I want to fuckin’ thank you for acknowledging my existence.  All these other people just fuckin’ fly away.  They don’t even say anything.”  And it goes on like that.  It’s cold and drizzling outside and I’m not a fan of that situation either.  So to end the conversation, I say “you know, you really need to find shelter.”  And at that moment, I thought, “God damn it.  Why did I have to say that.”  I get more story, about his mom, who loves him.  I see him trying to figure out how to use whatever I’ve said to work in some kind of pitch, a pitch that will be full of profanity, certainly.   He points at an overpass and says how he has slept there for 5 days. (That’s his shelter, he says). 

I figure, ok, we’re going to do this, huh?  So I asked, “why do you do that?”  He was caught off guard. I said, “I know there’s shelter here in town.  Why don’t you go there?”  Well, he had to think quickly for that. “eeehhhhh, those shelters…. they’re not… nice.  They have bed bugs.  It’s not good.”  And I was getting ready to tell him it had to be better than a bridge when he commented, “he’s eyeing me up.”  I asked, huh? and he said “the cop over there.”  Then I hear behind my car, “Excuse me, would you mind coming over here and talking with me?”

The vagrant walks over and I shut my car.  I’m going to take my opportunity to get out of this.  I look in my mirror and no I’m not.  I’m blocked in by the police.  And… another car shows up.  I catch little bits of their conversation: “You from around here?”  “You have any weapons on you?”  “You said some things that worry me.  Are you going to get violent with me?” Oh boy.

So, the officers don’t find any reason to detain him and let him go.  So I’m going to just finish this up and get home.  I do the nice, dumb thing.  As he walks by the car to get his bike, I offer him a can of Coke.  I want that to be the end and I’ll go.  Nope.

More conversation ensues.  I finally tell him that he needs to clean up his presentation, stop swearing so much, and better things will happen to him.  I have to put the car in gear and start moving for him to get the hint.  I think he stroked the hood of my car as I backed away.

So there’s three recent interactions with the homeless and vagrant within a couple of weeks.  Where it goes from here, I can’t be sure.

What A Baby

Posted by on December 1, 2014 No comments

This is rather an oddball post for me, but whatever.  Mid-life, end-of-year, retrospective, introspective bullshit.

I want to think that the old saying, “real men don’t cry” is pretty much obsolete now.  So I feel ok with making a top 5 list of songs that get me choked up.  Sometimes, you just need an emotional release, with all the crap that goes on in our hectic lives.

I can say that I kind of need to be “in the mood” to cry.  Lots of times, I can power through these songs or just not actively listen to the song, or just not think about the meanings I get from it.  There’s plenty of times I hear the song and don’t even register any emotion, but sometimes, it just hits me – as the kids say nowadays – “in the feels”.

So without further adieu:

#5: Steve Morse Band – The Oz.  This one doesn’t exactly make me tear up, but the guitar solo is one that really gets to me.  Not as much anymore, but I remember a time when it was really something powerful for me.

#4: Kansas – Lonely Wind.  This one gets me with the “choir-y” arrangements.  It kind of brings me back to my grandfather’s funeral when I was very young.  Didn’t feel anything throughout the whole funeral until the end, when the choir started singing, then it was over.

#3: Flying Colors – Peaceful Harbor.  Another with choir arrangements and a message about “weathering the storm.” I’m not really sure why the nautical imagery affects me so much.

#2: Rush – Time Stand Still.  A song about getting older and how time seems to speed up.  How we don’t seem to realize how quickly things come and go.  How you should always live in the present and appreciate the current moment.

#1: Indigo Girls – Cedar Tree.  The worst: losing the love of your life.  And worse than Rush’s song, realizing in hindsight that it was “the best you ever had.” But then, it’s too late to appreciate it for what it is, because it’s over.

Cleaning Up

Posted by on October 30, 2014 No comments

At this point, I’m solidly in phase 2 of my music enhancements.  Phase 1 was ripping my CDs to a lossless format (with a .1 of acquiring a specific label’s full catalog).  Phase 2 is scanning the album covers in high quality.

Phase 2 is a MUCH more labor-intensive process.  The scanning part is easy, the cleaning up of the scans is tedious as hell.  I’ve been doing this for four days and in those days I managed to complete 21 covers: 5 the first day, 2 the second day, then 6, then 9.  It takes about 15-30 minutes per cover.  I’m getting better and learning more time-saving tricks as I go, but still, 750 covers is going to be ~250 hours of work.  Being able to put in only a couple of hours each night, 5 days a week, I’m looking at almost 6 months of this work.  That’s pretty insane.

Sometimes, I think I should only focus on the covers that are unavailable online or are rare or out-of-print.  Other times, I think I need to represent my entire collection.  Sometimes I think I need to focus on the MCA Master Series, so I can move on to phase 3 – framing.

So, what is my process?  I scan the cover at 1200 dpi, which gives me a 10mb, 5700×5700 jpg.  I take that into Photoshop and run a descreen filter on it.  This blends the “dots” into a more-or-less solid color.  Then I do cleanup of the stains, dust, and scratches.  Sometimes this is easy, sometimes it is extremely difficult.  Then I add an adjustment layer for Levels, in case I want to tweak the black point or contrast.  I save this to a PSD file, which ends up being 80-180mb in size.  This will be my “master” from which I will do further refinements and resizing.  When all is said and done, I’ll probably have near 100GB of cover images.

Looking at my post history, this conquest has been going two months so far.  All I can hope is that another unexpected obsession doesn’t appear in the next six months.

In Time For Thanksgiving

Posted by on October 28, 2014 No comments

I’m starting to make some steps forward with phase two of my CD collection plan – scanning the artwork.  I did a couple trial runs on an old scanner at the house and it was way too much of a headache.  So yay, I get to buy more stuff.  A new scanner, but not such a big expense.  $65.  I can’t believe how cheap that tech has gotten.

While preparing for that effort, I researched communities that I could benefit with my efforts.  I found one that was appealing, if just a touch elitist.  When I went to sign up, I took the time to read their terms of service.  I didn’t like what I read.

In summary, when you upload to their site, they become the owners of the content.  Further, they insist that they will be the only source for that content.  You can’t post your artwork anywhere else.

First off, let’s just make it clear that it’s very odd to be discussing who “owns” owns a replica of a copyrighted work.  But, ignoring that for a moment and moving to a secondary “IP market”, let’s think about what this ToS means.  I “created” the work with my effort of scanning and cleaning and when I upload it, I effectively lose ownership of that work.

Yeah, yeah, it might be standardized language.  But there’s other standardized language that is more lenient.  Something like: By uploading, I am granting an unlimited license for the site to use my work however they want.  In that case, I retain the original rights (yeah, of a copyrighted work; just ignore that…).

So my problem with the site is that they are taking my work and making it their own.  It’s Christopher Columbus on the Internet.  Why should I be outraged?  Tons of websites have a similar model.  Or do they?  The first thing I’m thinking of is Huffpost, that site that pays people in “exposure”.  But even there, after reading their ToS, you grant them rights to use your submission any way they want, even through derivative works.  And, you still own your stuff.

That thinking and research made me start questioning the entire publishing for exposure model.  If you create something awesome and it gets posted on HuffPost, and gets scooped up by multiple news outlets (licensed? paid-for? maybe.), what do you get out of it?  Your name is attached to it, but does that really help you?  There’s just so much happening.  You would have to repeat that success over and over to get recognized as consistent talent.

I’m much more agreeable to the “toss it to the ether and let other do what they want with it” ideal.  So, my choice is not to affiliate with any artwork website, but to use Flickr.  Hypocritical?  All I’m doing is providing great content to a huge corporation.  Yes, but, all I want from them is hosting space.  If someone wants to use my cd scan for an ebay auction, great!  I would encourage that.  See, it’s not about just making your world better – which I’d already have done for my own cd collection – it’s about making everyone’s world better.