Monthly Archives: October 2012

Money well spent…

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Since I’ve gotten serious about converting my DVD collection over to an all digital format, I’ve been trying to limp along using the DVD player on my 2008 laptop to do the ripping and converting. Lets just say that it was not as efficient as one might like. Since Apple has decreed that no one using one of their Minis needs an optical drive, that pretty much left the option of picking up an external DVD/RW and doing the ripping and compression on the much more powerful Mini. In the space of a couple of hours this afternoon, I ripped and loaded into itunes five movies using the new drive… while at the same time ripping three TV episodes using the laptop. That’s not exactly a 1-to-1 speed comparison, but it’s a pretty good indicator that the external drive will prove to be money well spent.

If I can do one or two disks a day – usually one before I leave for work in the morning and another before I go to bed – I can have this done sometime in the early part of the new year, instead of sometime about a year from now using just the laptop. Sure, I could use the laptop to get the job done, but why put an otherwise reliable and perfectly serviceable machine through a year long stress test when I can use the faster option for $40? So far, I’ve converted hald a doze random movies, all four seasons of The Tudors, and the first three seasons of Buffy (Yeah, I know. Stop smirking out there.). When I get this little project finished, I promise I’ll envite everyone over for movie night. Based on early estimates, we should have about 200 days of interrupted viewing ready to stream to every TV in the house.

The stink…

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My home office is under assault by stink bugs. So far in the last 30 minutes I’ve sent seven of them to a watery grave, but there’s still one here… somewhere… stinking. It has to be somewhere in or on my desk, because it is truly overpowering and the only place in the room where I can smell it. He’s running covert and has so far resisted every effort to discover his hiding place. It’s truly awful. I’m surrendering my position and making a a break for an area that has breathable air… like right outside a smelter… or a slaughterhouse… or a septic tank.

Mini…

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So it seems that Apple is going to go ahead an announce the iPad Mini next week. Between now and then I’ll be doing my best to convince myself that trading in a six month old full sized iPad for a smaller version is a bad idea. I’m serious this time. Unless there are some pretty damned compelling features, I’m most likely going to be sitting this one out… although I won’t lie, it would be nice to have all my i-devices using a standard power source again. Keeping up with the old 30-pin docking cord and the new lightning cord has been a legitimate hassle, but I’m not sure it’s been enough of a hassle to justify switching devices in the middle of the product cycle. Even so, I’ll be watching next week’s media event with some serious interest.

Complicating matters even more, is the notion I’ve been kicking around of retiring my original Kindle keyboard e-reader in favor of the new Paperwhite model. I love reading on the Kindle. It does one thing and it does that one thing incredibly well. Even though Kindlem, to me, is a better reading exoerience, I default to the iPad for reading at night for the simple reason that it doesn’t require keeping a light on to do it. The front-lit Paperwhite appears to be the solution to needing either a backlit screen or an external light source at night. I’d really like to give it a test drive for a few nights and see how it handles. Sometimes I think it’s a real pity that there’s so much amazing tech on the market right now and so few hours in which to play with it all… but usually I just lump it into the category called “Awesome.”

Photograph…

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In one part of our building there’s a long hall with several dozen historic pictures that appear to be taken sometime between or shortly following the World Wars. I know they’re supposed to instill a sense of pride and speak to an enduring legacy, but that’s not what struck me about them today. Walking past those pictures this morning it suddenly hit me that they all have one thing in common – Those people staring back at us from the other side of archival quality print are all dead, deceased, gone to meet their maker, and singing with the choir invisible.

I’m sure that every one of them did great and wonderful things or were very important in some way, but I’d be willing to stake real money that not one person in a thousand could tell me who they were or what they did. Maybe that’s morbid, but it’s a pretty stark reminder, just when I needed it, that some future hardworking and dedicated employee isn’t going to have a clue who we were or why our picture is hanging on some wall looking back at them. Sure, everything we’re doing every day seems awfully important, but in 100 years, you’ll be a luck one if someone is even using your picture as an office decoration. I’m not so far gone down the path of fatalism that I’m willing to concede that nothing we do day-to-day really matters, but sometimes it’s healthy to let nameless faces from the past remind us not to take it all so damned seriously. Chalk that up to stupid lessons I wish I’d have learned years ago.

Ignorant bliss…

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If you stick around any place long enough, you’re going to see history repeat itself over… and over… and over. After almost a decade of professional service to the United States, I can honestly tell you that there’s not much left that really surprises me or makes me nervous. There is one thing, though, that to this day makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and fills me with the ominous feeling that something ridiculous is about to happen. It’s not a warning light that flashes “launch detected” or even the thought of getting handed my walking papers if Congress doesn’t get its act together. Those are realities you just sort of things you learn to live with along the way.

The thing that strikes fear into my very heart is the sound of a phone ringing at 3:55 on a Friday afternoon. Nothing, absolutely nothing, good happens at 3:55 on Friday afternoons. Like a call in the middle of the night, it is never, ever good news. More often than not it’s someone who has made a bad decision somewhere along the line and is flailing desperately in an effort to find someone else to share their misery. Make no mistake, if you’re foolish enough to pick up that ringing phone, you’re going to become the someone in question. And your life is going to get very stupid, very quickly.

Sure, I know everyone is a selfless and dedicated employee who doesn’t mind having the first moments of their weekend spent trying to unravel someone else’s problem, but look, take it from me, the best thing you can do when you hear the phone ring at 3:55 on a Friday afternoon is just hum a happy tune and walk away. By the time you know what the problem really is, whoever you need to talk to in order to get it fixed will have gone home for the weekend anyway. Rest assured, whatever was stupid and broken on Friday afternoon will be waiting for you on Monday morning. It will still be broken and stupid, but at least you’ve bought yourself a full weekend of ignorant bliss.

Three week update…

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Sitting here after scarfing up entirely too much dinner, I remembered that I promised an update on how Winston is making out in his third week post-surgery. The short version: after three weeks and three days, you wouldn’t know that he just had his leg broken in two places and a respectable size chunk of steel jammed in there. He’s not limping, and has once again started pulling hard when we’re out on the leash. So far he’s tolerated his old puppy pen set up in the middle of the living room, but judging from the amount of snorting and general malcontentery, it’s only a matter of time before he puts his shoulder into it and drags the whole pen to whatever part of the room he wants to be in at any given time. I’m not sure exactly how we’re going to address that when the time comes.

As of right now, the way ahead looks alot like the past three weeks: Strict confinement for the next nine weeks at a minimum, no steps, no running, no playing, no time off leash, and three to four 15 minute walks every day to keep up as mush muscle mass as possible. He’s due back at the surgeon’s office at the end of the month for his six week checkup and x-rays, but unless something blows up between now and then, I’m expecting a good report. So far, everything has been good news, but because every cloud has a lead lining, I’m going to spend the rest of his natural life worrying myself sick that he’s going to blow out the other one or do something to undo what’s already been fixed.

Being a single father of two is damned hard work.

Talking to the past…

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As is the normal way of things on a Sunday morning, I’ve posted five more archived posts from my defunct MySpace blog. There’s some general “what’s going on in the world” kind of nonsense, but there’s also one or two more interesting bits. I don’t remember it particularly clearly, but August 2006 must have been interesting times. Enjoy!

Sleep…

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I know some people revel in spending as much time in bed as possible. Listening to them talk about a good night’s sleep is like listening to someone describe their deeply held religious convictions. I have a slightly more utilitarian relationship with my bed; it’s a necessary evil that occupies one room on the house and I try to limit my interaction with it as much as possible. I’ve said it before, but I can’t quite shake the idea that sleep is just a enormous time suck that’s trying to eat up a third of the day… and there are always things I’d rather be doing that, you know, just laying around.

I do have to admit, though, that sleep does have one thing going for it; even though it takes up five or six hours, the time goes by fast. By that I mean there’s no sense that time is really passing. You fall asleep and bam, you’re waking up. Even when eight or more hours intervene between Point A and Point B, it feels almost instantaneous.

A good point of comparison is long haul flying, since even on red eye flights, I’ve never been able to get comfortable enough to actually fall asleep… Getting from the East Coast to LA or to London feels like it takes something just short of forever, even though it’s really only five or six hours (which conveniently for this thought exercise is about the amount of time I sleep most nights). Whether I’m flying across the pond or sleeping at home, the same amount of time passes, but one feels much shorter than the other. That’s for the best, of course, because if every night felt like it lasted as long as trans-continental flight, you’d never convince me that going to sleep was a good idea.

There’s not really a “so what” to this post other than time, our perception of it, and what it all means are topics that I currently find fascinating… and since I’m the proprietor of this establishment, it’s what everyone gets to read about today.

Water under the bridge…

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Apparently I missed summer this year. I know I stayed busy and got plenty of things done, but I can’t quite put my finger on where the last four months went. The last thing I remember clearly is having birthday dinner and then suddenly waking up in September. And somehow I managed to let the time sail by without making it to the beach yet this year… which is made all the more ridiculous because it’s only an hour from the house. Sadly, that makes getting my toes in the sand just another victim of the list of things I had good intentions of getting done this summer but just didn’t get around to actually doing.

I like to think I spent the summer being highly productive, but it’s a bit of a stretch since I can’t point at anything concrete and say “Look what I did” while the warm weather got away from me. Maybe I should go ahead and start taking weekly pictures of cleaned rooms and a well turned out lawn. At least then I wouldn’t be so surprised when ninety or a hundred days blow by without even the common courtesy of a heads up.

As I’m sitting here writing this on Friday afternoon, I know it’s going to be Monday before I know it. I’ll do my best to cram as much into these two days as possible, but if someone has any tips on how to slow this ride down before it’s all water under the bridge, you’ve got my undivided attention.