Category: NoJoMo

What has been the biggest disappointment in your life that turned out to be a blessing in disguise?

I’ve been pondering this today, interrupted by an interaction with someone from the past.

I was going to say the job that got me away from radio.  I threw myself into it, and came away with bills that I’d be paying for years.

What can I say?  Perhaps a part of me is a bit obsessive.

But I think writing about that does kind of fit the bill.  I absolutely gave every ounce of energy I had to making that whole thing go.  I wrote.  I engineered.  I traveled.  I spent my own meager funds, and I ended up with a better job.

In that better job, I did the same thing.

Did either end up being a “blessing in disguise?”  That’s tough to say, especially that better job.  The first one gave me the opportunity to meet, and fall in love with, my wife.  I have no idea where I’d be, or what I’d be doing had I not met her.

As I plod through this, I get distracted by things like, “why do I seem to be consistently mistyping ‘I”d,” instead of ‘I’d’?”

Maybe I should improve my retrospection.

There’s lots of people with whom I should be resentful, but I can’t bring myself to be.

Maybe that’s the “blessing in disguise” — that I am able to forgive?  My dad used often bring up the JFK quote, “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.”

I could spend a lot of time focusing on how I’ve been wronged, and who did it, but I haven’t the energy.

I’m content with who I am.  I may not be content with my lot in life, but I’m working on that.

Veterans’ Day.

I’ve been watching the services marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I on C-SPAN.

None of the cable news networks had anything on.  Somehow that’s fitting.  It also explains the stupidity I saw when I mistakenly looked at what was out on Facebook. The Marines didn’t want to fly in typically-poor late-fall European weather.

At some point, you have to leave the negativity behind.

So, WWI.  The C-SPAN coverage has been interesting.  One of the callers was talking about his grandfather on a ship out of Newport News.  I looked it up, and one of the photos shown was it sitting pierside at the Coal Piers in Newport News.

Hey!  I’ve worked there before.  On the USNS Red Cloud.

Of course, there’s also the Victory Arch in Newport News, which was built on West Avenue for the returning troops to walk underneath as they were getting off ships from France to get on trains home.

My great-grandfather was a young Army officer during the war.  He died before I was born, but my great-grandmother would tell the story about how, following Infantry Officer Basic, they let the new soldiers go home one last time before shipping out.  They were admonished not to go home, and get married.  All but one or two in my great-grandfather’s company, him included, returned as married men.

My dad turned down a Merchant Marine Academy appointment so he could go be an Army officer like his grandfather.

There’s so little known about all of this, and how it affected world history.

Off to watch Vice President Pence do the ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown.

Write about someone who is no longer a part of your life. Could be a love, a friend, a relative. Why aren’t they a part of your life anymore?

This might be one that’d be better for my wife to write about, considering all the drama that’s happened this week with her extended family.

I’ve made nods towards this recently.

There’s a group of people who don’t know how to deal with me because of my disease’s effects.  I’m not up to do the sorts of things I used to do.  Although not as fragile as it used to be, my financial standing doesn’t allow me to pick up the bill on almost everything.  Maybe that makes them “users.”  Maybe it means I was a sucker, spending money I shouldn’t have in exchange for attention/affection.  So those people have drifted away, but I can’t bring myself to really care.

There’s never been an instance when I really wished I could call up $name for advice on how to deal with a challenge.  Not that I really share things, even with those closest to me.  I do miss having my dad around for some of those things;  he was the one I went to on those.

Here’s where I refrain from writing about something that didn’t go well…..

So, there’s another group, those who’ve been taken with things I view negatively.  In a lot of ways, and maybe this makes me a bigot, it usually revolves around religious adoption.  Few, though, have actually adopted an internationally-recognized faith.  More often, they’ve adopted, with religious fervor, crazy ideologies.

Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Barack Obama, Paul Krugman, Dave Ramsey, Alex Jones, to name a few.

There’s no single way to live, and letting people choose different paths is not a bad thing.  

Don’t like someone doing x?  Okay, fine.  How long do you plan to lock them in cages for continuing to do that which you don’t like?

That question is never popular.  Even less popular when you dig down to the essence of a sanitized political argument.  So, you go on MSNBC, and say that someone is guilty of treason.  Translation:  You want to see that someone executed.  Proving an actual crime is less important than actually seeing someone with whom you disagree murdered.

So those folks steer away from me.  Maybe I should be concerned about that, but I can’t bring myself to care;  good riddance.

Is there an outfit, a meal, a drink, a style, a whatever, that you feel is the quintessential “you?”

I’m not at all sure why I picked this prompt.

What I wrote in 2012:

Maybe when I was younger. Notsomuch anymore. My wife is befuddled by my like of button-down shirts. I don’t know.

My normal outfit these days?  Jeans and a T-shirt.  Drink?  DHMO.  Style?  As if.  Whatever?  Exactly.

I’m very disturbed by the reports about this.  I’m not a TC fan, but ANTIFA is a terrorist organization.

Kinda forcing myself to write some during my lunch break today.  I’ve been sofa king busy with work the past few days.

I am tired, and need to force myself to step away from the humdrum.

But on to the prompt.

What is the most expensive thing you have ever bought for yourself?

Obviously, my Mustang.  I really probably shouldn’t have bought it, but it was a lot of fun for awhile when I had it.

Frivolities are kind of an afterthought these days.  I say that just as I’d confirmed yet another MRI.

Tube Cruise?

Party!

(The “tube cruise” bit is sarcastic.  I do take Valium to stop twitching, so I could seem stoned AF….)

I was hoping that I could pluck off another prompt from one of the OD folks, but there’s nothing there.

So, what else am I remotely excited about today.

Andrew Heaton coming to The Blaze with a podcast.  He had a couple of funny bits in the announcement this morning.

• Oklahoma is Texas’s Canada
• Alex Jones reading NPR stories

I am sort of going to root for the Steelers tonight.  Yes, it’s because I want a Panthers’ loss to help the Saints.  But what can you say.

I’m wondering whether I should write tomorrow’s entry tonight because I’ll likely be out of it this time tomorrow.  Hmm.

What is your favorite kind of weather? Why?

This is kind of coming towards the end of my favorite part of the year.  If I went outside more often, maybe I’d have more comments.

I like feeling it get cold outside.

That said, I really don’t like being cold too much.

I look forward to seeing the snow covering everything from inside where it’s warm.

 

Another of the things I’m doing is digging through my drafts, and finding things I wanted to write about.

This has been floating around lately.
How can you purport to support “Net Neutrality” while supporting this sort of editing?

Yes, the link still works, which is a relief.

But it does speak to the start of my self-imposed isolation from big tech.

This shit isn’t good for anybody.

I really dislike bigots.  I probably wouldn’t knowingly sell them my products or services (excepting, of course, things covered as public accommodations under the Civil Rights Act.)

If you sell a Nazi a domain name or hosting space, whatever.  I don’t look down on you and your company because of it.

Are they not allowed to have their names on their mailboxes outside their houses?  How about a listing in a phone book?

No, you, with your illiberal beliefs, want to see them dead.  

Kind of ties back to yesterday.  I voted against Tim Kaine, someone I’ve met, and for whom I’ve voted in the past.  I was okay with him winning, and hoped that it’d still be with a mere plurality.  With him in the Senate, maybe he won’t raise another ANTIFA terrorist.

Update:  As of 7:05 this morning, the network seems to be back in the office.  

Anger is an interesting emotion.  Especially when it needs to be contained at work.  So yeah, that’s what’s going on today.  Seems my boss might be about double standards and well, I’m not okay with that. 

He made me come in the office today for a meeting and then told me that I could take off early to go vote.  Today he changes the meeting so that I can’t leave early.  On top of that, he added a conference line, even though he told me that it is easier to have this meeting if everyone is present.  So what am I supposed to think about this now?  I guess I am somehow a lesser part of the team.  Well if that’s the case, if/when something interesting comes along, I will feel no allegiance here.  

Did make it home in time to vote though.

Until tomorrow…

So today was a day of unexpected events. 

Someone in my family showed a side that they don’t normally show, to someone who everyone else in the family believes is undeserving of that kind of reaction, myself included.  I find it hard to have a soft spot for someone who I could easily say is pure evil. 

On top of that, the workday did not go as planned.  About 2 hours into my shift, the phones and the network went down.  We tried to set up a hotspot on a phone and that worked okay, but around the middle of the day, we were told to go home and telework.  When a coworker tried to video chat with me, we discovered that my laptop camera doesn’t work.  So that’s another thing I will have to take care of I guess.  I think my coworkers may try to help me figure that out, which hopefully they can and I don’t have to go through IT because I know that will not be a quick process. 

I am also wondering if the trip into work in the morning will be pointless or not.  Hopefully they have restored service and we can all get back on a normal schedule. 

And people wonder why I don’t like surprises.  

Until tomorrow…

Election Day

Yes, I voted.  My wife and I voted for opposing members of the House, the same for the Senate, and split on two of the ballot initiatives.

On many things, I tend to agree with KMW, but not here.  I think you do get better people, overall, with indirect democracy.  That said, the Senate was never supposed to be directly-elected (mark me down as being against the Seventeenth Amendment), and I think the House should be made proportional again.  If they’ve gotta hold session in the Kennedy Center, so be it.

Chances are everyone I voted for will lose.

But how many candidates did I really vote for;  was I just voting against certain people?  Perhaps.

What are some qualities of bad bosses? What would you not do if you were supervising others? 

I missed part of this prompt, somewhere.  Oh well.  It happens.

After a very long day working, today, though, I guess a key would be communication.  There’s a difference between Lumbergh-style micromanagement, and leaving people on islands with zero feedback.

If you thought that I’m seeking feedback this evening, you’d be correct.

Yes, I’m adept at what they’ve got me doing.  Still, it is beyond tedious work.  My eyes are not happy that I’ve been staring at a poorly-constructed Java monstrosity pretty much all day.

But it does pay the bills, and the Saints beat the Rams yesterday afternoon.

I kind of have a working theory of football that was once again proved correct — if you serve up the fortyburger, you lose.  Even if you managed to come back and tie it up, if you served it up, you end up losing the game.

 

I’m very much in the “no” coalition on this one.  Things happen, but the background circumstances are rarely the same.  Maybe the outcome is the same, but…..

Apologies to the non-existent readers for the curt entry;  I’m tired.