New Emotions

Is there a one-word emotion that describes the feeling one gets when one has gotten all geared up to do battle with some business, and then they just do the right thing without being battled? It’s mostly satisfaction, but with a little tinge of disappointment and all this stored up energy that one (OK, I) didn’t get to unleash.

To make matters even better (worse), this was Staples, and when the person at the counter tried to staple my new excellent negative-amount “return” receipt to my original receipt, there were no STAPLES in her stapler. So I said something like “Oh, the grand irony…” and instead of the expected drone response (“Uh…yah…”) she said something like “My god, the times in which we live…” or something equally wry. I guess this recession is propelling clever people into sales jobs at Staples. Which brings us full circle, with me needing another modern emotion to encompass both my pleasure at finding this unexpected clever person, and my hope that she’ll soon be doing something else.

Guys, please help me out

I’ve come to the conclusion that my Bah Humbug attitude toward (and attendant resistance to adopting) smart phones has gone on too long. Not that I think I have a compelling need for a smart phone for my own personal use, but rather because as someone who develops websites professionally, I’m convinced that my skill set is careening toward obsolescence (if it hasn’t already arrived there and set up a lawn chair). Obviously this shouldn’t come as a surprise. We’ve been moving to a mobile world for a while now. The fact that no cell carrier offers decent service in my neighborhood isn’t a sufficient excuse anymore. Duh.

If I’m going to develop for one or more mobile platforms, I need to be a user. So I need to get a smart phone. Proposed Step One in this process is to acquire a Verizon Network Extender, so that a smart phone might actually be smart while it’s in my Epicenter.

Question #1: Do you have experience with the Verizon Network Extender? Good/bad/other? Got a clever way to get one? I was thinking eBay, but if there’s some way to compel Verizon to just give me a new one, that would be groovy.

The next issue is which phone to get. It’s either iPhone or an Android handset. Right? Is there some version of one or the other that is particularly worthwhile?

Question #2: If you have experience with or expert knowledge of both jasminelive platforms, which way should I go? Is there a particular version to get or wait for? Please note that I’m not asking whether you like your phone. Everyone likes their phone. I’m asking how to choose what to buy.

Finally, and perhaps more complicatedly (not to mention grammatically awkwardly), I’m concerned that my current setup for email, contacts, and calendaring is oh so 20th century. I run everything from Outlook on my PC, syncing to the web and my dumb phone with Airset. Is that awful? Should the phone be the master device? Is SMTP email an irrelevant saurian artifact?

Question #3: What’s the best way to manage email, contacts, and calendar? Gmail? Something else?

Any guidance you can offer on any of these questions will be much appreciated.

OBL

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit that when I first heard the news, on the way out of the 30 Seconds to Mars show with the girlies, the first words out of my mouth were Hell Yeah. It’s been interesting to see all my friends, real and virtual, reacting to news of the death of Osama Bin Laden, and also to see coverage of the celebrations that have followed in the US. It’s not quite right to say that I’m personally ambivalent. I feel strongly about this in at least two ways. On one hand, I grew up Quaker and now I’m UU, so I’ve got the whole “that-of-God-in /slash/ worth-and-dignity-of every person” thing reminding me that killing isn’t good. On the other hand, Fuck Yeah, Motherfucker. You fucked with the wrong superpower, and you got what you had coming to you. So I’m elated, and feel a little karmically guilty for being elated. Typical.

Thinking about this, one thing that keeps coming back to me is an experience from a few years ago. We went to a rodeo in Cody, Wyoming. Prior to starting the show, they did the typical sporting event patriotism stuff. A local girl rode into the arena carrying a big US flag. We sang the national anthem. And then we had a moment of silence for US service people deployed in the Middle East. I was initially all coastally jaded, yeah yeah OK…and then I noticed two things. First of all, that moment of silence lasted about three full minutes, not the 20 seconds you’d get at Fenway. And then I noticed that there were people crying, all over the little stadium. Not just jasminlive friends and spouses of servicepeople. All kinds. Elderly people, grownups, friends, the whole gamut. Dozens and dozens of people. Not just in the crowd. There were cowboys down on the field, a couple of minutes away from riding some pissed-off, mortally-dangerous 2,000 pound animal…hat in hand, weeping. Lots of them. This wasn’t the Superbowl, or even the Superbowl of Rodeo (no idea if such a thing exists.) This was just the little nightly rodeo the folks in Cody put on for themselves and whoever’s in town. Which means they’re probably having this amazing moment EVERY NIGHT.

So to all the folks posting MLK quotes in their Facebook statuses, threatening to take a break from the internet until this OBL thing blows over, first of all, you’re right. Well, half right. A human being died by another human’s hand, and that’s problematic. But I’ll also ask you to consider what it means to lots of other people, including the folks who’ve been crying at the rodeo every night for the last ten years.

7 Random Facts

Jody at The Big Dumptruck tagged me for this silly meme, and I shall participate, if only because I haven't been posting much here.

Here are the rules of this thing:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog; some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their chaturbate blog.

So here goes:

My friends are away at sleep away camp for the first time. I thought that it would be a huge emotional scene at the dropoff, but they were basically "get out." I suspect I'm more friendsick than they are homesick. What the hell am I going to do when they figure out that I'm a dork and they don't want to hang with me anymore? I may have to buy some more friends.

I've had a bit of a realization about my spirituality, such as it is. A post over at Andrew Sullivan's referenced "boring atheism," and that's what I think I am: a boring atheist. I don't have any supernatural world-views, but I don't really think that fact is particularly interesting. I don't feel much need to convince anyone that my non-supernaturalism is correct. I've got bigger and more interesting fish to fry.

I'm going to paintball camp next week. I will probably be the oldest person there, including staff. I bought a bunch of crap so I can play better, faster, and shootier. Yes, I realize how goofy that is. No, I don't care. If you can't have fun running around shooting teenagers, get your pulse checked.

You know, almost dying has an interesting effect on your decision making.

Speaking of almost dying, I'm glad it happened. Would I choose to have a pulmonary embolism again? Uh, no. Am I now healthier than I've been in years? You betcha. Weight is down, BP is down, echocardiogram shows normal heart size and function. Would any of that be the case if I hadn't thrown the clot? I leave this question for the reader.

Exercise is a really good thing. This realization did not come easily to me.

DID I MENTION THAT I MISS MY friends???

I'm tagging Craig because I always tag Craig, Jen, Suzanne, Sally, Rob, and Griffin. Yes, that's only six. Screw it.

Overheard

On the way out of Shaw's supermarket.

Boy, about nine: "How much would all of this cost at Whole Foods?"

Mother: "Whole Foods is very expensive. A lot more."

Boy: "Yeah, they should call that place Whole Wallet."

Again

I know I've written about this previously, but I've got steam coming out of my ears, so I need to do it again. NPR reported just now that 2.5 million homeowners are going to lose their homes this year "because of the mortgage crisis." Please don't misunderstand what I'm about to say. It's a tragedy that so many people are losing their homes. But they're not losing them because of the "mortgage crisis." They're losing them because they can't afford to make payments on loans they took out. It might sound like I'm splitting hairs here, but I guess I'm still clinging to some tenuous thread of belief that people have free will and are responsible for themselves. Is the sub-prime lending industry rife with scumbags? Yes. Did the federal government sit around with their thumbs up their butts while a whole lot of sketchy mortgage paper got written? Absolutely. Hell, Freddie and/or Fannie underwrote a lot of them. But still. At bottom, fundamentally, essentially, and any other words like that, people signed their names to loans that they never should have taken on, and even an elementary school facility with math should have pointed that out for most of them. Sure, people lose their jobs, they get sick and have big medical bills...all kinds of stuff happens. But a significant percentage of these loans should have never been written, not necessarily because they're illegal or immoral, but because you'd have to be a frigging idiot to take them on. So don't be a frigging idiot. Please.

The Funniest Person I Know

(With apologies to my UU brothers and sisters.)

Me: Hey honey, did you see that General Assembly voted to approve [vague, well-intentioned social justice proposal that we think is goofy but someone reading this might sincerely care about, so I'm not going to name it.]

She: Just keep staring at your navels and leave me alone, people.

Me: Feels kind of like when the popular friends find out you play D&D...

She: Oh no, it's worse than that.

See, I'm pretty much 100% schtick 100% of the time. She will wait weeks or even months and then drop one of these things and it just slays me.




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