Mon, 26 Jul 2010

Summer, Great for boys and geese . . .

Summer is a great time to be a kid . . . or a goose. But it seems that summer for kids is a lot shorter than when I was that age. I took this picture in the evening at a lake. Both my boys and the goose seem to be enjoying just being part of summer. Summer for my kids--now all in highschool--runs from the end of May to the middle of August. Middle of August! I don't ever remember going back to school until after Labor Day (the first Monday in September here in the US). What happened to those days when you could just be a kid?

Seems like a shame to me. So much summer wasted by being at school.

posted 09:29 [/Thoughts] permanent link

Sat, 17 Jul 2010

I don't like . . . sounds that play on entry

to a site . . .

I generally try to be a positive individual, but, there are some things that I don't like. One of them is sites that play music the minute you enter the site. I may be in a place, like the library, where this is very annoying. Don't do it. Give the user the choice of listening to sounds or not before blasting something at them. Especially annoying is background music which is just there like the elevator!

posted 17:05 [/Thoughts] permanent link

Sun, 10 Jan 2010

Cosmeticize . . .

. . . to make (something unpleasant or ugly) superficially attractive

[source]

This word describes what we tend to do a lot. People tend to want to make something look good rather than fixing the underlying problem which makes it "unpleasant or ugly". This applies to all sorts of activities from programming to politics. I say, let's get under the skin and fix the real problems in all sorts of things.

posted 09:29 [/Thoughts] permanent link

Fri, 13 Nov 2009

A Meditation on Death

My mother-in-law recently passed. At the memorial, the priest presented this brief meditation . . .

I am standing on a seashore; a ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.  She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until she stands like a speck, just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.  Then someone at my side says, "There she is done."  Done where?  Done from my side that is all.  She is just as large in mast and hull as she was when she left my side.  And just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination.  Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There she is done."  There are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes."  And that is dying. (Author unknown to me)

posted 08:31 [/Thoughts] permanent link

Sun, 27 Sep 2009

Cookie Cutter People

As I came out of a coffee shop, I was struck by two ladies in their workout clothes sitting on the patio. It wasn't so much that they were good looking or anything. It was the fact that they fit a type. Here they were in their work out look, looking like every other young woman who had just come from the gym or was going to the gym, or just wanted to look like they went to the gym on a regular basis. You get the idea, the point is that they looked the same, down to their body types, hair styles, accessories, even their movements and the way that they sat.

Our consumer society has created cookie cutter people. Because we see the same television shows, read the same magazines, follow the same celebrities, we tend to fall into looks. The girls with the gym look, the boys with their pants down around their knees, the business people with their suits and ties . . . As much as we try to be unique, we are following the herd in our choices. It's probably driven by the mass marketing of our society. Some may be driven by those successful people we see on the Internet, television, mass media magazines. "Hey, they are successful with that look! I want to be successful. Maybe if I adopt that look, I, too, can be rich and famous."

Marketers are driving us to their products. After all, a good portion of the U.S. economy is dependent on consumerism. Look at some trends like paying celebrities to appear at your event. See the numbers of reality TV shows which follow people just because they are rich. Check out product placement in everything from movies to TV shows, to . . . We look like, act like, and, so hope the marketers, purchase like these cookie cutters, in the hopes that we, too will become famous and, by extension, rich. We are stamped out to become one of the mass of whatever group we find appealing.

Break the mold, become one of the hand-made people. Make your choices not because someone else does it, but because it's who you are. You'll still have to work with the basic ingredients that the media and marketers give us. After all, unless you make your own clothes, cars, homes, it's all you have. But become hand-made by blending and forming the ingredients into something uniquely you.

posted 09:02 [/Thoughts] permanent link

Sat, 12 Sep 2009

Waking Up . . .

Do you ever just wake up? OK, we all wake up unless we're in a coma. I mean wake up when you don't really have to -- like on a weekend? Just wake up like you've slept all you need to and are wide awake, sometimes at the oddest hours? Why is that? Is it some perverse attempt by your body to get back at you for something? Is there some outside influence -- maybe aliens or ghosts or gremlins -- which just can't stand to see you relaxing?

Sometimes, I can see it happening because you are worried or excited about something and your mind just wakes you up like an excited puppy at supper time. After all, I'm the type of person whose alarm never goes off during the week because I wake up before it and turn it off. But the weekend? I'm ready to snooze for a bit, sleep in, enjoy the two days off and -- wang! -- I'm wide awake at 5:30 AM. It's not the week day habit. Most weekends, I quite happily snooze for a couple more hours before waking. It doesn't seem to correlate with the time that I go to bed the night before. I just don't know.

posted 08:16 [/Thoughts] permanent link

Fri, 11 Sep 2009

9/11

Eight years . . . the impact of that event has cost more than the lives lost on that day. We are still involved in two wars. The costs in lives and billions of dollars has had an effect on all of us over time. I can still vividly remember pulling into a parking lot while hearing the news of the tragedy. I spent that period at a conference where many of the people from the east coast were directly affected by the event. It changed much in the way Americans thought, worked and played. It affected many both directly and indirectly. Like much of history, we need to grieve for it, learn from it and grow better because of it.

posted 07:40 [/Thoughts] permanent link

Sat, 18 Jul 2009

In the News . . . Social Networks

Another celebrity death in the news, Walter Cronkite, probably the best news anchor ever. Not as much chatter about him. I suppose it's because he was last active in the 80's and didn't produce music videos! And speaking of chatter . . . I saw an article about movie producers using the social networking sphere to promote their pictures. It seems that the instant nature of environments like twitter, mean that impressions of initial viewings of films are spread instantly. I suppose, given cell phones, that impressions can make the tweets while the picture is on. It appears that these have a major impact on the picture's success. Nothing more powerful than word of mouth (or rather word of click, I suppose). To see how this works, you only need to search for Harry Potter on Twitter. 27 messages arrive while the page was loading! I wonder how this marketing will take place? Will there be planted tweeters who flood the social network sites with fake posts extolling the movie? Will competing films dis the competitors. Sheesh! Seems like more to watch out for in the net!

posted 08:17 [/Thoughts] permanent link

Sun, 28 Jun 2009

A Week of Loss

We lost a number of personalities over the last few ways -- Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays. But, when you look at these people making news, you wonder just where we place our importance. It's tragic for their friends and family, don't get me wrong. But, they are entertainers. How may people died this week with little or no notice who really made a difference? How many policemen, firemen, statesmen, religious and those helping the poor and needy. How many people died needlessly in wars, because of starvation or conflict? How many people died because they fought for rights for their people? How many people die needlessly and without fanfair each day?

posted 11:52 [/Thoughts] permanent link

Thu, 18 Jun 2009

Three Teens

Today my boys turn 13. This officially makes them teenagers. My daughter, currently 14, completes the trio. They are great kids, so I'm not worried about them in the least. But, now we have to deal with all the teen stuff with all three of them. Wish us luck.

posted 08:42 [/Thoughts] permanent link