Thursday, September 6th 2018… Vacation?… What Vacation?…

Ah, I had my semi annual vacation trip to Saugatuck Michigan.  We go to a “Resort” there – a quaint little place overlooking the lake.  Very peaceful, with next to no cell coverage.  The kind of place you can somewhat hide in.  It’s nice now that we are 1 hour closer.  It’s now only a 2 hour drive there.  It beats driving 5 hours (now 6) to Door County.  Similar vibe, less travel.  Although, its starting to get crowded – it’s been in enough “Chic Midwest Travel” magazines now that its loosing it’s small town, out of the way, special feel.  It’s now on the “Naperville” map.  Everyone now gets that “special” contrived vibe.  The vibe that’s phony enough for the me, me, me, crowd and their enabled kids.  Wow, I sound like a cynic.  I guess I am. 

Cynic:  a person who believes that people are motivated purely by self-interest rather than acting for honorable or unselfish reasons.

I was born into that crowd and moved away after years of therapy, self examination and became somewhat enlightened.  I think its time to find that next Saugatuck.  Tonight is my last guitar lesson I think – at least that’s how I am approaching it, for a while – to the start of November.  I am taking a drawing class at Elmhurst Art Museum, and only really have time for 1 class per week.  I can’t wait…

-Rat

Wednesday, August 1st 2018… Welcome to August…

I had to laugh, it was the hottest place on Earth last month – says the Internet – “Death Valley”.  It was an experience that if I ever have the chance again – ill pass, thanks.  First of all, the road to there is desolate and dangerous – devoid of water.  Lots of switchbacks, no gas stations except the one in Stovepipe Wells, also no water – except at the gas station there.  There is/was a gas station, a post office, a crappy restaurant, that’s about it.  Minimal cell coverage.  At least the last time I went (1999), there was no cell coverage.  I’m sure times have changed.  I drove 6 hours from L.A., 6 hours back.  What a waste of time. I don’t know what I was expecting.  It was hot as hell. 

– Rat

Tuesday, July 31st 2018 … Go Live 2018…

Well, we went live this last Monday in spite of ourselves.  Like I always say about this company:  “We never let a bad decision keep us from moving forward”.  Gee, testing?  What?  Documentation, what?  A plan we stick to, what?  Communication, what?  We’ve done 50 programming fixes already since the start of go-live.  Program stability, what?  Code freeze, what?  I’m sure these doofus’ will get a bonus for this.  It will be a wonder if we are still in business in 5 years.  If we are, it will be because of the loyalty of  our customers, god bless them.  Or, someone else bought us in spite of our deficiencies.  One other thingy I want to mention.  A shout out to my brother from another mother.  We have been biking madmen.  My wife got me a Trek DS3 for my birthday (thanks Hon!) and have been riding it weather permitting before sunrise every chance I get.   Sunrise tomorrow – 5:46am

– Rat

 

Monday, July 9th 2018… So much to do, so little time…

Lets see, where do I begin?  A lot has happened in the last 2 months.  There was Fathers day, 2 vacations, an entry door installation, crazy busy at work, some crazy biking experiences, a guitar purchase, some more Qigong training, morning brain fights, and a surreal capital experience (health issue). 

Fathers day was cool, I spent it with my kids at the local gun range shooting the assorted rifles and handgun.  No injuries (thank you).  Last time I went with my neighbor, I got my skin caught in the loading mechanism and sliced my fingers open.  That sucked.  But no issues this time.  We went out to lunch at our local “Five-Guys” for burgers.  Last month, my wife and I  went up to the “Rapids” for a week away and helped my bro-in-law install a pre-hung entry/screen door for his back door.  It went a whole lot better than replacing my front door, that’s for sure.  The other bro-in-law rented a house for the week on Castle Rock lake.  That was nice, it was good to hang with the fam.  A couple of weeks ago, I went with the guys from work on a 25mi bike ride along the I&M rail trail.  That ride really shown a spotlight on a couple of things – first, my bike is woefully inadequate for a long ride.  My front sprocket gears are stuck, my seat sucks, my tires are too small.  My Schwinn bike has served me faithfully.  It’s time to retire it.   Yesterday, my wife almost croaked when she actually looked at bike prices – lol.  She always undervalues things when she first looks at them.  Last weekend we went to Madison and hit the farmers market around the “Capital Square” and the Olbrich Botanical Gardens.  It was a nice, short get away.  A couple of weeks ago, I snagged a used guitar on eBay.  I always wanted a “Blueberry” quilt top.  So, I bid on one and got it.  It’s not a Gibson Les Paul, but an Epiphone Les Paul standard.  It came in yesterday, so I dropped it off at the local music store last night to get it set up – very nice.  Two weeks ago, I went trail riding with my neighbor.  That was an experience.  I borrowed his Trek mountain bike since he didn’t feel that mine was up to the task.  It was very different from road riding.  We did “Cemetery Hill”, “Pipe-Line”,  part of “Hickory Smoked”, and went to both the “M” and base for the first atomic burial sites from the original Argonne Labs.  The workout was very different from the road workout.  This workout was muscle/cardio intensive – short intense bursts with cardio during rest periods.  Where the road run was a long, cardio ride with minimal muscle use.  My ass still hurt from both rides.  I think I need a new seat.  Just another reason for a new bike.  I am listening to a new audio book about Qigong but still need to get up earlier to accomplish it before I go to work.  However, I am constantly fighting with my sleep needs.   So, while I was at the farmers market around the Capital square in Madison, I started getting dizzy.  It really came out of the blue.  I was walking through the throng of people one minute, and the next I feel like I am drunk – without any of the pleasant ramp up.  Just raging drunk with the inability to focus and lacking equilibrium.  Luckily I was carrying my wife’s forearm crutches or I would have fallen.  I was able to make it to a bench to sit.  My wife went looking for water for me.  I was speaking to some folks sitting next to me, about the lack of water.  I see my wife across the street buying water.  Since I was feeling a bit more collected, I walked across the street, drank the water, bought a “Seven-Up” – drank it, and sat down.  By then, I was starting to feel like my old self again.  We then went and found an air-conditioned place to have lunch.  After that, we left the square.  Very surreal!  It’s hell getting old.

-Rat

– As a side note, I went to the doctors and was told I had a bout of Vertigo.  I wouldn’t wish that on anyone!

Thursday, May 15th 2018…Sleep is good…

Been burning the candle at both ends. Got a full nights sleep last night – hooray for me! Now I need about 3 more nights in a row and I’ll be back to 100%. We officially cut the cord yesterday and I dropped off the Comcast paraphernalia at UPS. Now I just need to lay back and reap the financial benefits. I officially hate DirectTVNow and Apple TV. I don’t like the fact that we get blackouts on local TV events. This never happened before on non-sporting events. WTF? On the plus side, I got rid of some cardboard from the basement in the recycle bin this morning. I really need to cut the grass, trim the edges, spray the weeds, and de-weed the beds. Oh, and also trim the bushes.

-Rat

Thursday, April 19th 2018… Boy, now I really miss vacation…

So we got home safely last Tuesday night and its been a friggin’ work marathon. It’s like every day is longer than the last. Update – our last night in Santa Fe, was interesting. We went out for dinner at “La Plazula” at “La Fonda on the Plaza”. I had the most awesome filet mignon – probably the best that I’ve had in the last 3 or 4 years. That’s saying something since I’ve dined in Vegas, Hawaii, upscale restaurants in Chicago. The last steak that could compare was at Caio Bella Ristorante in Shererville, IN. Since then, I’ve been to Gibson’s, Morton’s, Harry Carry’s and Ditka’s and these steaks were no comparison. Now that’s leaving Santa Fe on a high note, plus we were serenaded while watching the sunset over the mountains by a guitar wielding, eccentric, physicist.

-Rat

Monday, April 9th 2018… I made the proverbial left turn at Albuquerque…

It’s my last full day in Santa Fe, NM. Kinda sad that we are leaving tomorrow. I’ll really miss scrambled eggs with green chili salsa for breakfast. Making a fire in the kiva at night, taking photos, and maid service. I think one of the coolest memories I’ll have is going to this little church for a Sunday mass out in the middle of nowhere. The church was built in 1616 and has no stained glass but wood panels that go from floor to ceiling and are hand painted with saints and situations. The place is real adobe with rafters, a stone floor, about 45 pews, and a wood and hand painted alter – all hand carved. The second coolest memory I’ll have is at Bandolier Monument, climbing around the rocks. I think from a culinary perspective the best meal was simple, very well executed and came from an unlikely place – The Indian Art and Cultural center. It was a simple salad with steak which was perfectly cooked to medium rare, a lime dressing (fresh limes), and sliced jalapeños (fresh sliced). Yummy. The museum was very cool also. One thing that I got to do, that I never thought I’d experience was to go to Los Alamos and experience the town. I even did selfies with both atom bombs. Yea, I’m a science nerd. E = mc^2. I know I’m missing the gamma, so sue me.

– Rat

Wednesday, March 28th 2018 … I’m Musing about Go-Live…

So yesterday, I was lamenting the demise of my 3rd favorite program. From a creative perspective, this sucks. About 10 years ago, Adobe put a collective boot up the ass of its users by getting rid of “Go-Live”. It was a Web GUI coders dream. It wasn’t the easiest program to learn, but it was way powerful. In my college career, I learned to program in HTML which at the time was ok but there were GUI tools that could do hundreds of lines of complex code easily. This realization is what drove me to Go-Live. Instead of being flummoxed and confused with complex code, I began using GUI drag and drop tools that programmed behind the scenes and made my wildest dreams come true. It was a programmer’s nightmare or an artists dream. No more crappy rules to remember, structures to mess with, no syntax worries. WYSIWYG drag and drop – that codes. Sweet. But as my grandfather said: “All good things must come to an end…” And GoLive was discontinued in 2007 and replaced by it’s dumbed down cousin – MUSE. MUSE was not nearly as powerful as GoLive, but it came with fairly decent templates that a slightly technical type could use. It still had some of the cool power that GoLive used to have, but it was now neutered and only a fraction of what it once was – I’ll use the metaphor of a “Eunuch”. Now, alas Adobe has euthanized even the Eunuch – MUSE – and gave us “Spark”. Where the hell is Adobe going with this? It’s so basic that that the proverbial “Monkey with a hammer” could use it. Do I want Dreamweaver? Hell no – it’s so complex I feel that I could theoretically send a man to the moon before I could finish a web page. What is the driving force behind this? Lazy Millennial’s with their cell phones and social media??? Lazier technophobic, baby-boomers who are still think that the web is a passing fancy? Gen-X’ers who never really learned the fundamentals of either lay-out or coding, that put no stock in tools to help build websites at home and are willing to just offshore their intellectual property and are solely money driven? Or just bad leadership decisions within Adobe? In any event, I’m just pissed.

-Rat

Tuesday, March 20th 2018… Evening post…

So, here I am working this evening and F4211 is giving me fits as usual. Flipping Planner environment and C code. So, I finally figured out my RatsNest basement dilemma. The issue is that the old Airport utility that manages the apple products no longer works as advertised. With one of the iOS releases, you can now manage Apple routers, much to my chagrin. So, now that’s fixed. I ran the cable for the AppleTV POC and the wife likes it. I ordered DirectTV Now with the free AppleTV for a steal. It really feels like petty larceny, but who am I to argue with a 10B LargeCap Company? So, I finally get to cut the cable TV cord with Comcast – yeah! Now I get honors to also cut the VOIP cord. Heh, heh. I’m going to MagicJack and porting my number. I even get to give back the router for 10$/month and the extra box for 5$/month since I have a Cable modem that supports DOCSIS 3.0. Just need to somehow get 2 more AppleTVs. I guess I can just order another DTV service. I made kind of an interesting email move today going with proton mail. They are a service that encrypts their content and you can get a service with VPN to block the cable provider and keep them from spying on your content. Facebook should learn something.

-Rat

Covered bridge
Covered bridge in Sleeping Bear dunes Michigan

Wow! I just learned how to put a picture in my post. Very cool.

Wednesday, March 7th 2018… “Beware the Ides of March”…nevermind, that’s next week…

So, I have been wrestling with my Apple infrastructure in my basement. It was stable with one Apple router, I added a second and it was just crazy unstable. The whole reason behind this was to create a wifi network/infrastructure in the basement that rivaled my upstairs. Which when actually examining it, it wouldn’t be that difficult due to the lack of signal strength. I am trying to connect the AppleTV in the front room, what a pain. Tonight I need to reset the Apple routers again for the third time. Hopefully, it will work for me. I think I’m just going to order from DirectTV and go with the DirectTVNow on the Apple TV and be done with it. However, I need to some longer cables. Maybe 2 50ft CAT 6 cables. Also been looking at a Gigabit Ethernet Switch – 16 port and manageable. My Router is only 4 ports and is could easily need 4 more. Maybe just look at the Asus ROG Tri-band 5300 instead. That would give me 4 extra ports on the 1st floor by the cable modem. Move the current 5300 to the office via wire to extend the wifi footprint out to the backyard. I actually could use both.

-Rat