OMG! Did I Really Just…?

Posted on August 15, 2011 by SusanG

Yeah, I did. Holy cow.

My Mother teaches at a college and periodically she and I have discussed the attitudes and often apathy she sees in some of her students or even in society in general. We have discussed the possible reasons for it and tried to figure out what “went wrong” and how did we get to t this point. And we discuss how it seems like a lot of people and groups just don’t want to do the work. They want it handed to them.

I recently found that I had fallen into that same mind set, trap, behavior, all of it. I was embarrassed and appalled.

I am taking an on-line boot-camp sort of course at work. It covers pretty much the same topic for two different releases of the application. For one release the on-line labs actually have the code written out, if you know where to look, and so you can copy and paste it and then run it without having to figure out how to do it yourself. The labs for the other version don’t have the code written out.

I was working on the module for the version with no code when I came to the lab. I remember thinking about the fact that the code wasn’t already written out so I was going to have to think harder to get the lab done and how I didn’t wan to do that. What!? Wait a minute. Did I really just…? No. Yes, I did. Oh My God. How awful. When did I get so lazy.

Ok. So I’m not even going to try to figure out how I got to this point. I’m not sure it matters and there are way too many things that could have caused it or contributed to it. So I’m moving on to…How the devil do I fix this!?

I think it probably starts with staying focused and disciplined and making a point of doing those sorts of things anyway. Even if I don’t want to. Making a point of doing the things that seem hard. Though I’m still reeling from the shock, I can’t believe I really thought that. Holy cow. I will be fixing that! Now.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on OMG! Did I Really Just…?

Throwing Myself Off

Posted on August 12, 2011 by SusanG

As I’ve said before, I have played guitar off and on for many years. I was in a lull with regards playing until about February or March of this year at which time I got real heavy into playing again.

I was practicing every night and learning new songs, some of which I had wanted to learn for a long time. I was going great guns, even through my move. I was insistent that I take at least one guitar in the car with me, and the day after I got here I went down and bought one, ok two, of the guitars I had been wanting.

Through the course of several events I got invited to a blues jam. I was excited to go and had a great time. At that event I got invited to another jam the next week at a different location. This second jam turned out to be a weekly thing.

I figured out quickly that I needed to learn some of the songs they knew so I would have something I could play with them and so they would be willing to play with me. It’s not that I’m a poor musician or a bad guitar player, I just play different stuff. I walked into the first jam and the sum of my knowledge of being able to play any blues songs was a basic 12-barre blues and my pentatonic scales in A minor.

I play rhythm guitar mostly so I really only had to learn the chords to the songs and for some of them that turned out to be pretty easy. So I learned some songs and finally got to play some of the good stuff with the guys. I felt like I knew what I was doing since I wasn’t learning the song on the spot.

I even learned a couple of songs I could sing since there weren’t a lot of singers showing up. Thing is, I’ve got a soft voice with a limited range so singing in public is always disappointing to me. And, as it turns out, it takes away from my enjoyment of the guitar playing. Which then makes for a very dissatisfying experience all around.

So I was going to these jams weekly for 6 or 7 weeks and I was working hard in between to learn more songs I could play at the jams. And I was starting to get resentful of going and I was getting frustrated and irritated. I didn’t realize it at first. Then, when I looked at the whole picture and tried to figure out why, I was able to see it. It was because I was trying so hard to fit in with these jam people by learning all the stuff they know that I was no longer getting the excitement out of learning the stuff I want to play. I kind of hit a point of burn out and threw myself off kilter.

It’s really my own fault. I think I made two mistakes. I’m not sure what order to put them in because I think they might have happened at the same time. One mistake was giving in to singing. Singing is not my first love musically, it is the guitar. I sing to accompany the guitar, I do not play guitar to accompany my singing.

The other mistake was not pacing myself better, both in going to the jams every week and in learning the songs they all know. I would have been better off to go to the first jam which is monthly and then go to the weekly jam every other week or so. And to choose one, maybe two songs a week to work on to build my repertoire of blues songs while I continued to learn the songs I want to learn.

Unfortunately, what throwing myself off has wrought is that I have picked up my guitar only twice in the last 10 days. That’s a bit frustrating and depressing in some ways. I was so excited about all of it, playing, learning new songs, getting to play with other people, discovering some of the songs that sound really complicated aren’t really. And I was excited about the growth and progress I could hear in my own playing.

As I seem to have, at least temporarily, lost most of that, I think it might be time for a mental reset to get some of it back. I don’t watch much TV and I’m running out of things to do in the evening.

Posted in Music | Comments Off on Throwing Myself Off

The Year of End of Eras

Posted on August 10, 2011 by SusanG

We’re just over half way through the year and already it seems like the dominate theme for this year is “the end of an era”. From people who have died, to people who have been caught, to long time government programs ending, companies closing, and movie franchises coming to a close, it seems a lot of things are coming to an end.

Some of the endings we have seen this year include Elizabeth Taylor passing. The woman was an icon of Hollywood of a different time who seemed to never stay entirely out of the limelight, at least not for very long.

Osama Bin Laden being located and killed. So maybe 10 years is a short era, unless of course you are one of the many school children who have grown up being taught how bad and “evil” this man was. What do they do now? Who do they fear now? There is great danger here. These people are now ripe for the picking by any fear monger with an agenda and a plausible enough argument.

The Harry Potter movie franchise coming to a close. Yes, the book series was already complete well before the last movie and that was an ending of an era all it’s own. What an amazing thing those books have done, creating a whole new generation of readers and enticing adults back as well. The movies though have allowed a generation to grow up along with the story’s characters. And in a way that, in spite of it’s “magical” setting, demonstrates that some things are just a normal part of growing up. The books and movies have set and broken all kinds of records even making an Author one of the richest people in the world. Now Harry and all his friends have grown up. It seems the one bit of magic it couldn’t get to work was on the retail side of the publishing industry.

Yes, after 40 years Borders Books and Music is going out of business. Not just the large number of stores closing. They are going away completely. There are lots of reasons it is coming to this and they all essentially come down to several poor business decisions. That doesn’t make it any less an end of an era. Remember when you could go out to dinner, a movie, and then to Borders and close the place down? Ok, so maybe only my family did that. With chairs all over the place and the cafe and sometimes live music, it was a great place to hang out. And no one seemed to care if you spent five minutes or five hours or if you sat there the whole time and read a book. People would have book club meetings, chess club meetings, study groups, writer groups, all sorts of things like that, so now where do they go? This ending is depressing because I’m not sure it had to happen. Borders’ direct competitor adapted along the way, sometimes a bit faster than Borders and they stand to gain the most from the ending of this era.

Then there is the most tragic of the endings of eras, the end of the Shuttle Program. Although the plan is to turn manned space flight over to the private sector and NASA will continue to launch rockets and probes and work on a long distance vehicle with the hopes of going to Mars, for many people the end of the Shuttle Program is the end of the U.S. Space Program. The Space Race is over and the U.S. forfeited.

There are many who say that it was expensive and a waste of money especially with the current economic situation. Expensive, I will grant you and there are/were probably things that could have been done to mitigate that. A waste of money? Not at all. The social capital, the bragging rites, the cool factor of Americans going into space several times a year and Americans launching the vehicles that would take them there; that alone is worth the price. It is something a country can get behind and get excited about and be Proud of. And let’s face it we haven’t had a lot to be proud of lately. Oh, we elected a “mixed race” President. Ok, and that was a positive and upbeat thing for about a month before the negativity and bashing became prevalent. No, the manned Space Program along with the continued launching of shuttles and Astronauts from U.S. soil created pride, excitement, and fueled the imagination in a way that crossed generations, socio-economic lines, ethnic lines, gender, and education level. And the economic situation the country and the world are in is the perfect time for such a program to continue. It brings hope, pride, and something to shoot for.

Certainly the program had its deficiencies but that doesn’t mean it should have been ended completely, and in this manner, at this time. The Suttle Program has fallen pray to the same ax of all the other “every man” programs our government has supported. The end of the Shuttle Program turns out to not just be the end of the era of manned Space Flight in this country it is also the end of the era where we have a government that is “for the People”.

Usually, as the saying goes, “when one door closes another opens”. Perhaps, with so many doors closing, and the ending of so much, that means there are some amazing things to come.

Posted in General Commentary | Comments Off on The Year of End of Eras

Twitter Tweaks or Tweaks for Twitter…

Posted on August 8, 2011 by SusanG

I have added a plugin that posts a notice on Twitter when I post an article. It’s a cool feature and saves me some time in that I don’t have to post the article here and then go send a tweet.

Except.

I normally write my posts and schedule them to post a little later.

The plugin I am using apparently doesn’t recognize that a posting an article and so it doesn’t send out a tweet when a scheduled article is then posted. It only sends out a tweet when I write something and then post it right then or if I update previously scheduled article after it has been published.

I’m going to have to work on that and see if I can fix it or if there is another plugin that does the same thing.

Oh, while we are on the topic. It is my intention to put a follow me button for Twitter on the front page. I just haven’t found one I like yet. I thought I had downloaded one and it turns out not. So stay tuned for that one.

Posted in Site Related Stuff | Comments Off on Twitter Tweaks or Tweaks for Twitter…

Time to Change the Phone

Posted on August 8, 2011 by SusanG

I like gadgets like a lot of people. And I like to stay relatively current and relevant. There are some really cool gadgets out there that do really cool things, or they have the potential to. There are also a lot of gadget people out there that will rush right out to get the latest and greatest gadget as soon as it’s available. I am not one of these people in general. And even if my budget would allow for it, I don’t think I would be then either.

I tend to wait a while and think about if I really need it or what I would use it for, and practical stuff like that. Boring. I know. That’s just the how I am about these sort of things. There comes a point though when I can no longer accept the limitations or irritations of my current gadgets and I acknowledge their out-dated-ness and move forward. Sounds good doesn’t it?

This time it is not entirely the case that my gadget is out dated. In that it is only 3G capable, perhaps. It is however, a smart phone and only about 2 years old. I moved recently. Where I moved to, my service provider doesn’t have very good coverage or service. My current contract with my provider ends at the end of this month. You can see where this is going right?

It’s time to upgrade.

The last upgrade had me moving to the smart phone, an iPhone to be exact. This time the upgrade process will have me moving to a new service provider and an Android phone. And probably a tablet.

I suspect my choice to go from an iPhone to an Android phone is probably fodder for a debate as to if it is truly and upgrade or not. I think it is going to be, if for no other reason that perceived freedom. I am just enough of an independent minded geek with a little rebel DNA that I have lately found myself quite vehemently railing against the required conformity and constraints associated with using the Apple devices, in particular, the iPhone and by extension, the iPad.

I recognize that the freedom I perceive to exist with regards to Android devices may just be an illusion. It has the potential to be a danger in that the possibilities of them being infected with malware appears to be greater than for the iPhone and iPad. And yes, I know there are a lot more apps already written for Apple. I get it.

I also get that Apple has decided you can no longer use the app to purchase media, even free media. You must go through iTunes or the Web. Wow. How arrogant and domineering, and a few other things including rude. That’s on top of the fact they refuse to support Flash on their devices, reasons aside. It amounts to them telling me how I can use the technology. Um…I don’t think so.

As I understand it, with Android I have a few locations from which to choose apps. I also have the option of purchasing items, such as books, from within the application. I can view Flash sites if I choose.  Oh, and if I want to make my own app I can put it on my device without first having it cleared through the corporate machine or jail-breaking my device.

Do I currently have plans to write my own app? No. That’s not the point. I want the option to, if I choose. That’s the reason I consider going to an Android phone from Apple an upgrade.

Now I just have to spend the money. Ouch.

As to why I’m adding a tablet to the mix? I’ll save that for another post.

Posted in Simplifying and Consolidating | Comments Off on Time to Change the Phone