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Wednesday, December 22nd 2010
| I paid people to drill three holes into my head today.
I'm not a fan of doctors and dentists in particular. And after getting three cavities drilled and filled today my back is sore because I'd clenched every muscle during the entire operation.
Next month I go into get my gums 'scaled'. Wow, that doesn't sound fun.
Dentists need to hire marketers and come up with some new branding. They should call scaling, 'Good time joy gum massage with happy ending.'
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| Tuesday, November 30th 2010
For sometime now, a guy named "Steve Bell" has been calling in the evenings leaving messages on my home machine asking for "Linus Green". I'd have thought that my answering machine which clearly states, "Glen Green" would have been enough to educate Mr. Bell that he had the wrong number after the first couple of months. My faith was misplaced.
Tonight, I finally got tired of the messages so I called the number he left, "800-318-5064".
I was connected to him and told him that my name was Glen Green but that he'd been calling for some time now leaving messages for a "Linus Green". He started asking me questions and I asked, who he was with and he responded, "Viking" and started to ask me another question. I said, "Viking, what is that?" He said, 'Do you mean as a company?' I said, 'Yes. What do you do?" He responded, "I can't' say" and then asked if I knew where Linus Green was. This of course pissed me off even more. I told him that I didn't know who Linus Green was and to stop calling me.
Subsequently I googled the company 'Viking' and nothing tell-tale came up, so I searched the number and saw a few links about a guy named Steve who was calling other people. Others reported that Steve claimed to be from 'PNC", another stated, "PMC national city card". Nothing definitive beyond that. At least this post will add a bit more information to the great internet collective for the next poor soul who is electronically harassed.
There really needs to be a better mechanism for capturing and reporting those who harass by phone. It is such an invasion of my privacy. With today's technology we should be able to create white and black lists to enable and disable people from calling.
I also want to string up politicians who wrote themselves an escape clause to the national do not call registry. - Off with their heads!
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| Sunday, October 31st 2010
"Halloween.
Sly does it. Tiptoe catspaws. Slide and creep.
But why? What for? How? Who? When! Where did it all begin?
'You don't know, do you?' asks Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud climbing out
under the pile of leaves under the Halloween Tree. 'You don't really know!'"
- Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree
| | | Saturday, October 30th 2010
This Tuesday it appears that there is a good chance that many of the same people (or same type of people) who got us into the hole will likely be voted back into office. The tea baggers are just the same neo-conservatives rebranded by Faux News.
During the last election, I knew that the hole that had been dug by the last administration and congress was so big that it would require a fantastic effort to extricate ourselves. I knew it would take time: perhaps measured by generations. And there was a cynical part of me that thought: it would almost be entertaining to watch the Republicans have to try and solve the mess that they created. But that was a dark, passing, 'fiddle while Rome is burning' thought that I didn't entertain for long since I know we can do better.
There is so much more that could be said but the thought of more Bush era politics has me feeling deflated.
| | | Tuesday, September 28th 2010
On September 9th I ate at Cuzamil, a Mexican restaurant in on Liberty Avenue in down town Pittsburgh. My apologies to my friend who recommended the place, but I wasn't a fan. It took over an hour for them to serve three dishes to our table. After we'd finished eating, they made several apologies for the delay and I can understand that any restaurant can have a mishap or two but I was also bothered by the fact that the place wasn't very clean. The food wasn't bad but I didn't find my lunch exactly good either.
But all of that being said, I was amused by this painting which may make a visit worthwhile:
Since she doesn't have a hole in her chest, I'm guessing that this is before her heart is ripped out in sacrifice to the deities of good crops.
Sadly, in my youth I may have been tempted to draw something like that but instead of a native it would have been a monster and her heart would most certainly have been missing.
Oh what the hell, I may not have time to whip up a monster but I'm not that old that I can't still enjoy a little human sacrifice.
| | | Thursday, August 26th 2010
Although I like many aspects of seeing movies in the theater in principle, from the experience of encountering too many talking or otherwise ignorant people I've stopped going to the movie theater except for select movies that warrant the risk. I saw Toy Story 3 in the theater on Tuesday because PIXAR is alway worth the risk. (And of course I'd waited several weeks into the release in the hopes of weeding out most of the masses.) I was pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in an empty theater when we arrived. About two or three other couples meandered in over time and finally a man and a boy sat two rows behind us which prompted me to move further away since I'm particularly wary of children in theaters. However, I have to admit that during the movie the kid didn't make any sounds that I could hear except for at one moment for which I can neither complain nor blame him. The movie is intense in a number of places and includes a creepy baby doll. There is a scene in the movie where the baby is sitting alone and stock still at night on an empty playground, one eye broken and askew staring into the moon light when it suddenly spins its head around 180 degrees. The kid in the theater made a strained noise of despair - uhhhooo. There are some moments in life when the stuff of nightmares set down roots in the hollows of our minds. This was one of those moments for this kid. As for the movie: best picture of the year in my book as PIXAR once again nails everything: story, character, art direction, animation and heart. - Lots of heart.
| | | Saturday, July 31st 2010
Traveling makes me crave greater wealth - often for selfish reasons: so that I can travel and explore the world to my heart's content but also for philanthropic reasons when I'm witness to the all too common hardships lived by the majority of people.
| | | Wednesday, June 30th 2010
Abby Sunderland is a 16 year old girl who attempted to sail around the world. In mid June she encountered three-story-hgih waves that snapped the mast of her boat, "Wild Eyes". About 40 hours later she was discovered and rescued by a French fishing vehicle.
Critics were very quick to criticize her parents for letting such a young person undertake such a dangerous, ambitious adventure alone.
Sunderland was an experienced sailor outfitted with the top notch equipment. And although it is sometimes hard to imagine a 16 year old as experienced in anything, it is possible for a mature person of such a young age to train for excellence.
So I find it sad that parents who almost certainly let their own kids drive vehicles 60 mph solo down a highway take issue with parents who let their experienced 16 year old undertake an amazing adventure. I think that we've lowered our expectations for what our young people are capable of when challenged. It seems to my mind that we should foster informed passion for life in our children.
In a story that seems related to me, I've seen in the TV news and read articles about the tragic death of a baby who was killed by a tree branch that feel some 30 to 40 feet and stuck and injured a mother and killer the baby that she was holding. Before it broke, the branch appeared healthy.
In the national TV news report I saw an interview with another woman bystander who expressed her new found worry about falling branches that might kill her kids. Other news stories reported that this is the third time in less than a year that somebody was harmed or killed by a falling tree branch in Central Park.
Some people have tried to find fault with the park or government for the accident.
Two things occur to me:
1) As tragic as this accident is to the family and friends, and as much as my heart can bleed for their loss, it probably shouldn't qualify as national news.
2) People need to learn that, given a long enough measure of time - life is 100% fatal. There are so very, very many human preventable tragedies in this world but sometimes nature takes it's toll and there is nothing that we can do. - There is no bubble big enough to keep us safe from all of the calamities of the universe.
Naturally, most of us with any survival instinct make reasonable precautions in our lives. But there is a line that many people seem eager to cross. - A line where we don't allow room for individual responsibility. - A line where we don't allow for nature and the inevitable call of mortality; where the word 'accident' has no meaning. - A line we cross where we give up living for the sake of being alive.
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| Sunday, May 30th 2010
This weekend has included grilled cheeseburgers; a nap in a dark, air-conditioned bedroom; a stop at a roadside ice-cream stand and the joy of watching the purple twilight of a perfect late spring evening as I drove home from a lazy, sweet day with my family. There are so many dead, fallen to war, who forfeited their own sweet summer dreams and I have no words sufficient to honor them on this Memorial Day.
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| Tuesday, April 27th 2010
Yesterday this site underwent the biggest change it's had in about 8 years and you wouldn't even know it to look at it. - What's more: the fact that you won't notice is the best thing about the change.
I've finally dumped ReadyHosting where the site resided for the vast majority of its existence and moved it to BlueHost.
I'd been burned by ReadyHosting severely a few years ago when they managed to lose ALL of my email. - And they didn't lose just mine, they lost a vast number of their clients' email. (Perhaps everybody's email but I can't honestly say for sure.)
I'm not sure what happened to their claims of data backup but they were unable to restore years of emails after their calamity.
I've suffered from that screw up for years - plagued by the need for those vanished emails many times but I procrastinated dumping ReadyHosting because of the hassle of switching hosts. However, recently my web based email became very erratic for weeks at a time: presenting various errors even though I'd not changed my browser or made any other system or network changes. (Indeed: I encountered the problem on multiple machines and multiple networks.)
As added incentive, my yearly dues were up so now was the ideal window to switch this year.
So I finally dug in and made the change. - And with a little bit of preparation, it wasn't much of a challenge to move. I've also recently switched my email client to IMAP so I've not got local backups of my emails - a lesson I had to learn the hard way.
Now, I haven't done a proper smoke test of the site but with the exception of the Contact form (which leveraged a different technology than what is supported by BlueHost), I believe that everything should be working as well as before.
As for the Contact form: I'm kicking around some options and it may be down for a bit which isn't much of a problem since the majority of emails I got through it were spam anyway.
I'm sure that it's another sign that I'm a geek, but I'm actually excited about the change which sets the foundation for some radical changes that I hope to get to in the not too distant future.
Hopefully BlueHost will serve me better going forward.
PS. Dig my new Favicon G-Squared logo (you'll note it in the address bar and bookmarks of your browser). Here is a bigger view:
| | | Wednesday, March 31st 2010
It's the end of March and I find myself panicked as I struggle to think of something to write about in my continuing goal to post something at least once a month to each of the major sections of this site. I was in a similar bind last month (as I think is evident from the very short February post.) I'm also aware that writing about writers block is a bad form but that's what is on my mind and I've got to get the juices going by typing something.
The thing is: I'm constantly thinking of things that I want to write about, it's just never when I have the time or the means. One of the issues that I have with this old site is that it's home grown HTML and updating the site requires the right tools and files. I can't just login from any browser and update the site. It is for this reason that I've been thinking of switching to a different platform and why I've been doing research for many, many months. However, I've not done the switch in large part because of security concerns and because of the hassle of migrating data.
I've also been wrestling with the question of what I want to share on the web. When I started this site years ago, most people didn't have much of a personal web presence, but that's changed thanks to sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many others.
So I'm aware that there is a higher possibility that somebody may search for me personally and that somebody may be a professional contact.
With this site, I have some strong opinions in the public forum. Opinions that will certainly offend some. So, I'm torn between projecting a more politically neutral face and a feeling that my life and thoughts should not all be filtered through the prism of work.
Ah well. None of that will be solved now. So here is a photo of Halle Berry from James Bond because: 1) She's smoking hot and to reduce the chance that you leave here unsatisfied and 2) I sincerely believe that there aren't enough photos of Halle Berry on the web.
- If that offends you, well, I probably wouldn't want to work with you anyway.
Halle Berry in (James Bond) Die Another Day (2002)
| Sunday, February 28th 2010
This February equaled snow and I was just fine with that.
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| Sunday, January 31st 2010
As much as I'm a fan of Obama, I'm very disappointed to hear of this news:
Obama abandons bid to return to Moon for budget cuts.
I appreciate that we're in a finacial crisis but this is short sighted. The future of our country and even humanity as a whole is reliant on scientific progress and exploration. If we don't continue to push to the moon and the space beyond, we might as well not have left the trees. We need the some audacity here Mr. Obama.
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