Facebook rants

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Ugh. I’m a troller. I guess that’s the first step of recovery, right? Admit what ails you and move on. I’ve gotten better over the past year at not wasting so much time engaging in debates with people who either don’t listen or don’t fight fair, but I’ve got a ways to go. This past week, I came across an image that sums it up pretty well. BouonGKCIAAjl5V.jpg-large

I have to admit, I do get some enjoyment of debating the far right, exposing some of the lunacy that I see and watching the opposition back-pedal. I’ve engaged some rather famous people on Twitter ( Grover Norquist and Greg Guttfeld are two that come to mind ), and gotten direct responses in the form of text messages. I pushed the conservative button and they didn’t like it. Mission accomplished.

So exposing hypocrisy is a favorite past-time of mine. To a point. I’ve recently decided that it’s the responsibility of the Facebook page moderator to referee a fair fight, and to keep debates from digressing into personal attacks. I had to do this myself recently. A good friend I have on Facebook, Duane, whom I disagree with strongly on most issues, was misunderstood on a post that intended sarcasm, and he was exposed to a personal attack by another Facebook friend, a raging alcoholic, who attacked Duane when he didn’t know what he was talking about. I ‘unfriended’ him immediately and apologized to Duane for the behavior of this other guy. I didn’t think twice about it. Good riddance, Tom. It was embarrassing and there’s no place for it.

I had this one Facebook friend, Mark, who is perhaps the most passionate debater I’ve ever run across. Mark and I go back to high school and even though we didn’t hang out much together during those years, I think we both got some enjoyment out of sparring online. Mark’s a Tea Partier, thus limited in his weaponry of material to make a logical argument that can’t be refuted by pointing out the irony and hypocrisy of his assertions. He was an easy fish to fry as they say. He probably felt the same way about me as well. He probably thought he was roasting a liberal every time we sparred online.

But last week Mark failed miserably at moderating his page and I checked out. Some of his other friends are also raging Tea Party loons who engage in personal attacks. I’m not a big fan of that. In the past I’ve just ignored their comments, but this time I was baited into joining the debate, and then attacked by some raging idiot who doesn’t know up from down, and Mark did nothing. I’m out.

So it’s not that I don’t care for Mark, I do. He’s a good guy at heart. Terribly misguided by the partisan ‘News’ channels he watches, but none-the-less, if you needed someone to step in and do what’s right in a confrontation, Mark would be your guy. A sports fanatic with a pretty decent resume as a player himself, he’s a veritable encyclopedia of information about college football and sports in general.

It’s with some sadness that I had to disengage from the online sparring with Mark. It wasn’t as much about him as it was his inability to referee a fair, above the belt fight. I’m sure not everyone agrees with me on this, but just the same, this is my new policy. Control your ‘friends’ or else I’m out.

But such is the nature of the state of politics in the USA today. It’s horribly partisan and not very constructive. The Tea Party in particular seems like they don’t stand for anything in particular other than, “We want whatever is the opposite of what Obama wants.” I doubt that is going to sell very well in the mid-terms or the next election cycle. I’m thankful that it appears the Tea Party has been exposed for the extreme organization of hypocritical loons that it is and has no chance in the next election cycle. Republicans, moderates, may still win the day, but the party won’t be dominated by the Ted Cruz / Sarah Palin / Duck Dynasty crowd anymore, because enough time has passed that the general population doesn’t want any part of it. Thank God for that.

And speaking of God, isn’t it ironic that the flag waving fundamentalists are the ones calling you “Fucking commies, fucking socialists, fucking Nazis” on one post, and then posting about their personal relationship with God a few minutes later. I find that amusing more than anything.

In the mean time, I’ll continue to follow the words of Krugman and Reich. Sure they may have a liberal bias, but they also have PhD’s. Which is more than I can say for the Get right with God Duck Dynasty / Climate change deniers / NRA fanatic crowd. Does being right count for anything?

Have a good weekend.

Colwood National

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It seems fitting that the last day of play at Colwood National Golf Course would be on the anniversary of my father’s passing, six years ago to the day. Colwood was an easy course, nestled in the heart of Portland’s industrial area, catering mostly to casual players who wanted to get a round of golf in and not spend a fortune. It became the course of choice for Jim Toner and I, whenever I’d visit from Seattle. I always enjoyed my visits to Portland, especially the trip over to Colwood for a round with Dad. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t impressive. The holes were fairly short, but not to the point of being a joke. It had its challenging holes as well. Since Dad and I didn’t talk too often on a very deep level, Colwood always represented to me a chance to hang out with Dad. For that reason alone, I loved Colwood.

In the 1980’s I had joined a golf league through my employer in the Seattle area, Boeing. I probably played 6 or 7 years and improved steadily. In High School I played on the golf team at Centennial and played JV my freshman and sophomore years, Varsity Junior and Senior years. I wasn’t great by any stretch, but I could occasionally break 80 at Glendoveer, which I’m sure made Dad extremely proud. He broke 80 a few times there, but it wasn’t that often, so he had a lot of respect for guys who could do that.

In the midst of my golf league years at Boeing, I started to take it a little more seriously and tried hard to get my handicap down. If I recall correctly, I got down to a handicap of 9 at my lowest point. And I was competitive in the league for a few years. I ended up winning the men’s first flight 2 of the years, playing against some pretty decent golfers. To make sure that isn’t over-stated, everyone gets to use their handicap, so I may have been playing for the club championship with my 9 handicap against a guy with a scratch handicap, but he had to give me 9 strokes. Anyway, golf was my thing for while there and it was fun.

On a trip to Portland, in the midst of playing a lot of golf, Dad and I took our usual jaunt over to Colwood for a round of 9 holes. I always liked playing well with Dad and then not saying much about it because that seemed to work the best. If you don’t brag about it, then he does, and it just feels that much better. On this particular day I got the putter going. Colwood is fairly short which means I could reach the greens in regulation ( I struggle to reach on par 4’s in the 400 yd range ). So I was getting on in 2 and on 2 of the first 6 holes I drained a long putt and was sitting at 2 under. I walked up the 7th fairway like “I do this all the time” and tried to contain my excitement. But Dad couldn’t contain his. I know he was trying not to jinx me, but at the same time he knew, my son is 2 under par with 3 holes to go and he knew a pretty good story was unfolding.

Then I parred 7 and 8. Was I capable of shooting a 34? Oh man, that would be a family record of some sort. The 9th hole was a short 419 yd. par 5, slightly up hill at the end. I hit a decent drive up the right side and had about 220 yds to go. My second shot I didn’t quite hit on the screws as they say, but it was straight, and about 50 yards short of the green. Up and down for a 33? That was on my mind for sure. Dad would have done cart-wheels.

I pulled out the wedge and hit a high shot a little longer than I wanted and left myself a tough down-hill putt for my birdie. Crap. Not where I wanted to be. As I straddled over my putt, I kept thinking “I’m going for it. Never up, never in”, so I hit it a little harder than I should have to make sure it had a chance and it rolled about 10 feet by. Yikes! Not a 3 putt on the last hole! Damnit!

Sure enough, I missed left on may par putt and took a bogey on 9, but still ended up with 35 for the day. Rounds under par are pretty rare for me, but this one was special because it was with Dad and I can tell you many years later, he could practically play the whole round back to me because it was still fresh in his mind. He probably remembers it better than I do.

And today is the last day of Colwood National. Sad in a way, but fitting that it’s on the same day that Dad passed away 6 years ago.

A few random band axioms

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Twelve years I toiled in the D leagues of the Portland band scene. I may have gotten up to C level a time or two, but most of it was clearly in the D leagues. Farmers Markets, Private parties, and an occasional corporate event or business opening. I think the most I ever banked from a 3 hour gig was $100. Not bad by some standards. Money-wise that’s as good as some A-B league bands do. But clearly we were operating (intentionally) at the lower levels where mistakes are not a big deal. My goal was usually to get through the night with no quinker-dinkers and I got to the point where I could pull that off more often than not.

I was fortunate enough to ‘play up’ and got to work with some really good mentors who (thankfully) had patience. Along the way you learn some valuable lessons. Here are a few I thought I’d share, for whatever it’s worth.

The singer gets to pick the songs This may seem obvious, but I don’t think it’s often followed.

Travel light You can tell the smart guitar players because they aren’t packing around 500 lbs of shit to every gig. They keep it simple. I watched the best guitar player in Portland show up for a gig one time at Bridgeport Village with The Patrick Lamb Band. He was carrying about 3 things. His guitar on a shoulder strap, a small ( quality ) tube amp, and his pedal was in a bag along with a few cords. That’s it.

Myself, ability-wise about 15 steps down from him, had a habit of showing up for the Annual ZeeRocks corporate gig with my truck loaded to the brim with gear. Let me be the first to admit, the extra gear did not help. And it took an hour to assemble and I was exhausted when I was all done. Worse, I had to remember how to use it all during the gig…. to the point where I’d play the song wrong. You see that’s the point. If you can’t play the song right, then forget about all the other stuff. Priority 1 is learn the song and play it with no mistakes.

Keep the songs moving Some bands/duos do this exceptionally well. Nobody does it better than Tim Ellis and Jim Walker. They can string a medley of 20 songs together without ever stopping. It’s truly amazing. Too often I’ve run into a band member who see a microphone and seizes the opportunity to fulfill his lifelong dream of being a stand up comic. It usually goes over like a lead balloon. Dude, you’re not funny. Another band member couldn’t stop fucking around with the PA and it drove me nuts. It’s like the entire gig was this 3 hour sound check. That messed with my mojo, but you do what you have to to get along. The point is, the listener wants to hear the next song, not your jokes, or a continuation of the sound check, or anything else.

Coming unprepared to practice is rude When one former band member announced that, “Yeah, I gotta go home and woodshed that one” for the 3rd practice in a row, I was ready to SCREAM. By contrast, nothing is better than coming to practice and cruising through new songs and having them sound pretty good the first time. Enough said.

Keep the gear simple ( see also, Travel light ). The more pedals and extra stuff you have to tweak, the more than can go wrong technically and throw your song off. I know this from personal experience. One of the worst flaws I had as a player for most of the time I played was having to tweak my pedals in the middle of a gig. Cardinal sin. All that stuff should be dialed in and operating it should be second nature during a gig. You can observe the good players doing this.

Put your best material in the middle of the set list. I finally learned to do this after realizing it was fallacy to think that you’re going to play a Farmer’s Market and there will be some sort of ‘grand finale’ that you will go out on. Fact is, most people show up to these sorts of events somewhere in the middle, so that’s where you want to put your best stuff.

Don’t take breaks right when you have some momentum going The set list is a guide, not the Bible. Be flexible. If your band has the mojo going and people are getting into it, keep playing. Just because the set list says set 1 is over and it’s time for a break doesn’t mean it’s the law.

Don’t spend a bunch of time in practice re-writing the arrangement Agree to either ‘do it like the record’ so that everyone has the same reference point coming in, or else document the arrangement and give it to everyone beforehand.

Don’t play too loud Better to have people asking you to turn it up than turn it down.

Be flexible with your band mates’ goals It isn’t he 1960’s anymore. Playing with another band is not a form a cheating. The pay is low, so naturally musicians who need the money are going to try to get as many paying gigs as they can. Sometimes the customer wants a duo. Other times they want a full 5 piece. The best musicians I know play in several different configurations… whatever the gig calls for. Give your band mates some room to breath in the area and try not to get your undies in a bunch when a band mate gets an opportunity to play with other musicians.

Let’s not get all idealistic here

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Keeping a band together can be a real challenge. Especially for us working stiffs who know good and well we need to keep our day jobs and try to do this as a semi-serious hobby or else risk starvation.

There’s the chore of finding others with similar musical tastes, ability, age proximity, and commitment levels. There’s dealing with personality types and communication styles that are different than yours. There’s aligning work and weekend schedules for practice and gigs and commuting distances. The bigger the band, the more of a challenge it becomes. A lot can go wrong on the road to becoming a paid band member, even if it’s just beer money.

But every now and then the planets align and you find a group of people where it comes together pretty well. Keeping that going however, is also hard work. Even if it looks good initially, the opportunity for a band-ending kerfuffle is right around every corner.

Let’s say you work up a couple of sets with a new group, it sounds pretty good and you think you might be about ready to take your show out to the local watering hole. You soon realize you need some demo tracks for potential customers. It’s nearly impossible to get a paying gig without giving a customer who is not familiar with your work something to listen to. The group gets together and decides the solution is to do some recording, put tracks up on Reverb Nation or SoundCloud and link to them from your band’s new Facebook page. How does one go about that?

Studio time is great but bring your wallet. Recording live in your garage probably isn’t going to yield a quality level you’ll be comfortable giving to a customer. The recording process takes time, patience, skill, technology, and smarts.

It’s the last one that eludes a lot of prospective bands in this writer’s opinion. It’s easy to become impatient and post a low quality recording because everyone just got burned out on the recording process and wants to move on. But smart bands know the quickest route to getting those tracks up is to record one instrument / voice at a time and mix until you’ve got what you want. Forget the live recording idea. Someone might go to jail before you reach consensus on enough tracks to release. It’s the story of the tortoise and the hare all over again, with different players.

The last band I was in had the debate about recording live vs. laying down tracks. This turned out to be a real fork in the road. I knew it was a huge mistake at the time but couldn’t convince my peers to layer and mix. One band member in particular was on this idealistic “No False Advertising” campaign and wouldn’t consider mixing tracks because “Then our customers will think they are going to hear one thing when they listen to mixed tracks, but will then be disappointed when they hear us live.” To that I say bullshit. If you can get pretty close, you’re golden and the customer won’t give a damn. They aren’t that stupid as to not know the difference between live sound and a recording.

I do sympathize with the position however if what we’re talking about is mixing in extra effects that we can’t reproduce, or screwing with the features of Pro Tools, or Garage Band (pick your tool) to where you are essentially in the role of song manufacturer vs. recording your musical abilities. That part I get and agree with. I think sometimes band members get so caught up in the bells and whistles of the tools that they forget to play the song.

Anyway, having said all of that, real fork in the road. There were only 3 of us, but the probability that we were all going to play (6) 3-4 minute songs from start to finish with no mistakes, with the right mix of voices to instruments and to the quality level that we wanted to release was next to zero. Take after take after take we struggled to keep our patience with each other and find some half ways decent. It damn near killed the band right then and there. We played the songs so many times we now hated the songs and didn’t want to play them again for 6 months.

Laying down tracks could have been done separately, in the comfort of our homes without the pressure of screwing up and having to start over when everyone else’s part was perfect. And it could have been done in one-third of the time and without the battle scars of trying to record live.

Next time someone says “Let’s record our demo tracks live”, don’t listen to them.

Careful what you wish for, Karl

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It’s a bit ironic that Karl Rove, one of the most vocal backers of Citizens United when it suited American Crossroads, is now whining about the running start the Hillary money machine is getting through Super PAC “Priorities USA Action” while the GOP has to take 2 more years to pick a candidate.  What goes around comes around I guess. Hey Karl, pound sand.

 

 

 

Honorable mention on the Fox Top 10 Ass-wipes list

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I admit it. I baited him. I started it. But man, I was disappointed at the level of vitriol from Fox’s @greggutfeld Greg Gutfeld. For a guy who tries to be funny, he certainly is not.

So consequently we have a new honorable mention on https://pdx-i.net/2013/02/23/top-10-ass-wipes-of-fox-news/

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The quiet revolution

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Just after pope Benedict resigned from the papacy, I blogged here in agreement with E. J. Dionne in order to do any real good, the church needed to think outside the box and elect a woman to the papacy, arguing that nothing short of turning the organization upside down would effect any real change.  I also blogged here that  early results from Pope Francis were great.

Times’ “Man of the Year” appears well deserving, not for anything in particular that he’s gotten accomplished on the world stage, but for the attitude he brings to the job.  He sees himself as a servant, not as royalty.  He’s anxious to let go of the trappings of the papacy and apply real reform to institutions that need it ( see Vatican Bank ).  And at great risk to himself I would add.  Any time you start talking reform and the result is that corrupt individuals are no longer going to be benefiting, you’re messing with fate.  Just ask Ethel Kennedy.

Most importantly, his focus is right.  He hasn’t significantly brought about reform of any kind yet … but he has softened the church stance somewhat on gays and Christianity ( “who am I to judge? ” ), and he rightfully reminds people when it comes to birth control, abstinence, celibacy for priests “We don’t need to talk about these things all the time.”

That is an incredibly powerful message.  This is the point I was trying to make in my earlier post about Francis.  No, he hasn’t changed his mind on the ‘official’ laws on something yet, but we have more pressing things to worry about right now than to be talking about contraception all day long.  Yeah, it’s on my list but it’s 79th.

It’s easy to over-simplify these things, but in my mind there are two basic camps of Christians in the catholic church.  You have your group led by Bill Donohue of the Catholic League who run around using fear tactics to justify every archaic rule that’s ever been invented by man… and then you have your second group which is more focused on social justice issues like income equality, housing for the poor, feeding the poor, health care for all, etc.  There are quite a few Catholics who get this and roll up sleeves and get to work on behalf of the poor and have been ignoring Rome for decades.  Now they don’t have to anymore because they have a friend in Rome who has the same mind-set as they do.

I believe this is a quiet revolution that, if given some time, has the potential to turn the Catholic church into something that many people will come to admire.  Prior to Francis, the only news from the church was bad news.  More child molestation charges and more instances of the pontiff in chief making sure that the rules of the church didn’t change on his watch.

But you really need no more proof than watching Rush Limbaugh go off on a rant calling Francis a Marxist.  The rule of thumb that I go by is, anything that pisses off Rush Limbaugh is a good thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seeing the forest for the trees

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I don’t often procrastinate, but there are a few exceptions. Going to the doctor is one of them. I think it might help if they’d skip that first step of having to step on the scale with all my clothes on and get weighed, but that’s a topic for another post.

There’s very little that I enjoy about the experience. The front end people treat everyone as if they are incapable of knowing anything, and requests to forward information to at least the Dr.’s nurse are summarily denied because ‘they know better’ and the request was somehow non-standard.

The nurse shows up and takes the vitals and maybe asks a few questions, which get written down. Then the Doctor shows up ( yay, finally ), and he knows nothing about any previous conversations or documentation that was written down. Glad you’re here to save the day, doc. Sure, I’ll start over, why not?

If the problem is outside needing some codeine cough medicine, I get referred to a specialist ( great, another appointment, but I have to go through this clown to see anyone else ). No thought goes into the questions asked, so not much is revealed. He looks in my ears, taps on my sinus areas, feels my feet for swelling ( same shit he did for the last 50 patients ), and then sends me on my way to the pharmacist with possibly a referral to go see someone who really knows what he’s talking about.

One time I tried to be proactive about bringing up weight management as I find that is getting more difficult in my old age. Nothing. Watch your quantities. Really? Is it that simple? Just go on the “Eat Less Food Diet?” Why didn’t I think of that? When can I come back for more advice?

Last week I had a very unusual medical event take place during work hours. I was working from home as I usually do and trying to hold a conversation with my boss on the phone. In the middle of talking to him I lost vision in my right eye. “Hold on”, I said. “I think I might have a medical issue here.”

I proceeded to get up and walk around and a couple of minutes later my vision returned, but I was spooked by the event just the same. The first concern I had was stroke, but I didn’t want to over-react. In talking to my relatives who are in the medical field in the Seattle area, I decided to make the appointment and not risk it. Better safe than sorry.

So I call the Dr.’s office and make an appointment. He’s off today. Really? It’s Thursday. Okay, what do you have on Friday? I can come in on Friday at 1:30. Okay, should be fun.

By Friday I’ve also contracted a really nasty flu virus ( quite coincidentally ), and am in need of some cough syrup and whatever else helps a person get through the flu. So I go in the doctor and I get weighed ( screw it, I’m leaving my shoes on, I don’t care what it says this time, I’m not here to talk about that ), and go through the usual routine with the nurse.

The good doctor finally shows up and sets me down in the corner chair opposite where he is sitting, noisy keyboard and terminal in front of him. “So are you here to get your blood pressure checked again?”

“Well, no I.. CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK had this awful thing happen with my CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK right eye.” You see last Thursday CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK … At that point I realized that I wasn’t having a conversation with anyone. I was talking to a wall and some idiot was trying to type in my words and make some sense of it all before sending me off with my cough medicine. 20 minutes later I leave pissed off with a prescription for cough meds + 2 referrals, one to an eye doctor ( I don’t need his referral to see him ) and another to the hospital to get someone to do an ultrasound of my neck. It’s Friday at 5pm by the time I get home. I don’t have time to deal with this shit now and besides, nobody is open for any of these appointments over the weekend. I’ll deal with it on Monday.

Sunday rolls around and the flu is an order of magnitude worse. I mean my head hurts, big time, and I’m coughing up a lung. It had been a long night so I planned to just get up and see what I could salvage from my day. I got downstairs and started doing some basic kitchen duty and then I felt kind of dizzy. Then really dizzy. And then I hit the floor. THUD. For the first couple of minutes on the floor the room above me was moving all around, spinning out of control. I knew something bad had just happened but there wasn’t anything I could do. I yelled for my wife but she was upstairs in bed, unable to hear me. I rolled over to my stomach and then the crazy dizziness slowed down some and I was able to crawl over to my cell phone. I called her and thankfully she picked up and came down to help me. We crawled over to the couch and I worked my way up to a sitting position on the cough pretty shaken about what had just happened.

I had two thoughts. The first was stroke. The second was vertigo, somehow related to this flu I was having. Since I was at the peak of my flu experience, I was hoping for the latter. Nevertheless I resolved to get back to my brilliant doctor to gain his incredible insight into this situation — only this time I was bring my wife with me. Of course it’s Sunday and he doesn’t work on Sunday’s either. Sure, I’ll wait.

At this point I”m feeling one step above doggy dung and I looked the part. I couldn’t sit straight.
I could barely talk. The flu is a nasty, nasty flu and it was causing me discomfort in so many ways and yet I had these other problems too that I needed checked out.

Lucky for me they were able to get me in at 1:30 on Monday for yet another appointment with Dr. Brilliance. His first observation? I haven’t gained any weight since last Friday. Really? Is that what we’re here to talk about doc?

So I take the position of honor over in the corner and go through the ask a question try to give a response for a period of time before I takes another look in my ear, puts the stethoscope to my back, checks my feet for swelling and sends me on my way with another prescription and a few more referrals. On the way out he closes with me, reminding me that my blood pressure and weight were pretty much the same as last time, which was last Friday. Thank you!

Turns out I could do two of the referral appointments on Tuesday ( Christmas Eve ) at 4pm and 5:30 respectively. The first was for an ultrasound of my neck. I guess they were looking for occlusion or any other reason that blood may not be flowing to my brain. I asked the technician how it went after a fairly lengthy test and he thought the doctor would be fairly happy with the result, but couldn’t guarantee anything. Off to do an MRI.

So I get all hooked up to go into the Iron Lung and nobody bothered to communicate with me about how long I’d be in there. 1 minute? 10? 20? All I knew is that if I coughed ( and I sure needed to ), the test might have to start over. I was in there for a long, long time. 20 minutes seemed like 4 hours to me, especially when I needed to cough, but finally I get out. Whew, I can go home now. I’m tired, hungry, and I got all of these necessary pain the ass procedures out the way so I can relax now.

As I headed out of the room a new doctor who I ‘d never met, greets me in the hallway and starts asking how long I’d been having a hard time. “Do I know you?” “You’ve had a stroke”, he said. “I what?”

Now I’m in disbelief. He further counsels me to go straight to the ER and get admitted. I was wondering how bad it was, what was next, surgery? I’m not sure I’ve even come to grips with it yet, 24 hours later.
I felt fine. My vertigo symptoms had pretty much disappeared from Sunday. I was walking on my own. No other symptoms. I could talk fine. No paralysis. What was this guy talking about?

Once in the ER waiting room I get hooked to all of the instrumentation ( I’m still finding sticky patches to pull off my body ) and an diagnosed with hypertension. Blood pressure is 210/110. Can’t go home until that’s fixed. 4 hours later, they decide to do an XRAY because my cough doesn’t sound too good. Too much wheezing. They suspect pneumonia and that is confirmed by the XRAY.

So for all my trouble of going to see Dr. Brilliance, he got nothing right. This is not surprising. You can’t tell how bad of shape your patient is in if you’re looking at your keyboard and screen.

I have a suggestion for a new flow-chart, doc. LOOK at your patient. If he looks like SHIT, then something is wrong.

Syrian Diplomacy and O’Reilly’s Manhood #Syria

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This guy Obama can’t win for losing. Had he attacked Syrian chemical weapons depots without consulting Congress, he would have been castigated for that. If he checks with Congress, he’s a wimp and a poor strategist, giving away too much information to the enemy.

While Fox News anchors Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are keen on projecting Obama as the foreign policy equivalent of Jimmy Carter. We’re getting shoved around here on this Syria deal! Nobody tells America what to do! Where’s Bush and Cheney, they wouldn’t have put up with this shit!

Week after week they strut GOP has-beens across the stage questioning every motive, and criticizing every decision. If there’s a chance to make a mountain out of a mole-hill, they are all over it.

In the end, if Obama is able to take the Russians up on the chemical weapons offer (which Syria has now agreed to), and not a single missile is fired from afar and nobody is killed, you can bet that Fox News will find a way to call that defeat.

With this particular middle east conflict, it seems like a powder-keg with potential to set off a serious chain of events involving several countries dropping bombs on each other. It’s not far-fetched to imagine World War III breaking out as a result of getting in the middle of the Syrian civil war with Israel, Iran, Russia, Al Qaeda, indeed the entire middle east.

My question is, with so much at stake, why is O’Reilly so anxious to get to fisticuffs before exploring other options on the table? The answer: It’s because he’s got a small dick.

Working From Home – #WFH

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At age 52, the Great Recession forced my hand into a job change. I count myself as one of the lucky ones. I had a job I used to enjoy a great deal and I ended up in one that like even better. I don’t take that for granted.

A big part of what made Xerox tolerable post Ursula Burns being anointed as CEO was the human interactions. While the Sr. Execs demonstrated daily that they could care less about the employees, at least I had my local peeps. They were smart, funny, and a true pleasure to work with. There was never a shortage of people I could learn from and I valued that a great deal. My hope is, after 18 years that perhaps I may have imparted some words of wisdom on a few souls myself.

The outsourcing movement changed everything. The trendy thing for Vice Presidents to do was to use the words “Software” and “India” in the same sentence as if that was the magic bullet that would catch everyone’s attention. With about 10 years to go, instead of looking to finish my career at the place I was most comfortable I found myself not just disgruntled. It was much deeper than that. I was insulted. Pissed off. I felt genuine contempt the Sr. Management team on a daily basis and found other things to do when they came calling to spread their message. Every time they opened their stupid mouths, morale went down the toilet. When I was managing a team of Tools Engineers, it was impossible for me to get on board and act like a part of the management ‘team’. Instead, I was right there with the employees thinking – you guys are flaming idiots that have no idea what you’re talking about. I worked a couple of years there beyond what was healthy for me. I didn’t want to have regrets by making a major career move ‘in haste’, but in the end, the way I felt about it I was either going to have to leave myself or I knew I’d eventually say something that would get me fired. I simply — couldn’t stand it anymore.

Coming to terms with leaving after 18 years was hard. Having recently gone through a divorce after 27+ years, I would say the experience is somewhat similar. Humans don’t deal with uncertainty very well and I’m no exception. I like to know where my next paycheck is coming from.

But after you make that break, it sets you free and that felt good.

My job search was much shorter than I expected. I applied at my wife’s company and didn’t hear anything for a few weeks. I figured my resume was buried under the pile, especially in this economy. Most companies still weren’t hiring but Cambia, being front and center in the Affordable Health Care Act, was hiring like crazy. One day my wife Donna asked if I had heard anything about my resume submittal. “Nope”. Oddly enough, about an hour later I got a call and it turned out that position was a pretty good fit for me.

One of the features of the new job was that everyone in my group worked from home. As a team we are spread out over Oregon and Washington with my manager living in Bellingham. I’d see him about 3-4 times a year, maybe. This was a new concept to me and I wasn’t sure how well I’d do with working from home.

It’s been just a tad over a year and I can tell you, I LOVE working from home. I didn’t have much of a commute in the first place but now it’s zero, zilch, nada.

I can be 2x productive from home — at least. The simple reason? Interruptions. Nobody can come over and camp outside my cube.

Working from home I can get into deep thought. This was more rare when I had to go into the office. There are some programming tasks that require deep, uninterrupted thought. Figuring out how to deal with a complex data structure is one. When I was on-site, I could get half way through the thought process and then get interrupted and have to start over. The ramp up time is significant and sometimes a barrier to getting back into it.

I’ve learned so much technically over the past year because I’ve had the type of environment that supports deep thought and productivity.

Another aspect of acquiring more technical knowledge over the past year is likely that I’ve had to go and figure some things out for myself. I didn’t have anyone to lean on. It’s sort of sink or swim. I find that I’ve gotten better at using my available resources in looking things up myself.

One of the things that makes working from home and also being a part of a team possible is a tool from Microsoft called Lync. With Lync, your teammates are never far away. One might think that working from home would present challenges in terms of being distracted by other things taking place at home, but I’ve found that not to be the case. With Lync, you’re really on kind of a short leash. The expectations are that if someone needs to talk to you and it’s working hours, you’ll respond to an IM fairly quickly. This both good and bad. There ARE interruptions, just less so and you never have that guy who camps out at your cube and doesn’t know when to leave. You’re just as much in control of the conversation as the next guy.

I set up shop in an office that used to be one of my children’s bedrooms. If I get hungry or thirsty I don’t need to find a vending machine I just go down to the fridge and pick out what I want. There’s a nice bathroom across the hall and I have to say, don’t underestimate the benefit of having your own private bathroom. The cans at Xerox were sub-standard. ‘Nough said.

I now put about 4k miles on my truck every year. Mostly it just sits there which is fine with me with gas at $3.79 a gallon.

Put this one in the category of ‘highly recommend’