Once a legitimate blog. Now just a collection of memes 'n menz.
This is the last view I have of the workroom/office I've occupied for the last two years. And in advance of our move to Denver, as of noon today, my employment with the healthcare company I've called home for the past seven years has come to an end.
The going-away lunch with my team was surprisingly bittersweet. I am leaving my facility in very capable hands however, and wish him all the luck patience in the world. He's going to need it.
Every day I drive 16th Street to and from work. About two years ago, the City of Phoenix tore up and resurfaced the one-mile stretch between Bethany Home Road and Camelback. I never thought that bit was in particularly bad condition, but whatever. Who am I to question their wisdom? The mile south of Camelback to Indian School Road, however, was horrific. I had assumed at the time that they'd redo that part as well.
Wrong.
And of course, over the next two years the surface has gotten much worse. Patches, potholes, cracks…the list is endless.
Six months ago I was joking with Ben that they'd probably get around to resurfacing that part of 16th Street just as we were leaving town.
And that's exactly what's happening.
Seriously.
Anthony Weiner's penis? Seriously?
The talking bobbleheads are all atwitter (no pun intended) about the fact that a married, elected Democratic official sent a photo of his penis to one or more women. Really?
While it is rather unusual for a Democrat to get caught up in a situation like this, let's all remember the incredible number of sex scandals Republicans have been involved in over the past decade. Larry Tap-Tap-Tap Craig and David Diaper-Boy Vitter are the top two who come to mind, but there are many, many others. And while they were not elected officials, let us not forget two other luminaries of the right, Ted Meth-and-Rent-Boy Haggard and George Lift-His-Luggage Rekers.
Where was the outrage from the talking heads when these men were caught with their pants down?
Seriously America, it's time to get off your faux moral high horse and GROW THE FUCK UP. As Lizz Winstead tweeted:
Exactly, Lizz. Exactly.
Ben says goodbye to Ugly Betty.
When You're Straight…
You get your name in the paper for getting married.
You get looks of admiration when you hold your partner's hand.
You get a tax break for being married.
You get to keep your kids no matter how bad a parent you are.
You get to stay in the military if you engage in non-consensual sex.
You get AIDS, and you're an "innocent victim."
You have a life.
You stand up for your rights and it makes you a "participatory citizen."
BUT…
When You're Lesbian or Gay…
You get your name in the paper for committing sodomy.
You get spat upon and jeered at when you hold your partner's hand.
You can't get married.
You get your kids taken away from you no matter how good a parent you are.
You get kicked out of the military if you engage in consensual sex.
You get AIDS, and you obviously "deserve it."
You have a "lifestyle." not a Life
You stand up for your rights and it makes you a "militant homosexual."
It's the hyprocrisy, stupid!
STOP THE HATRED.
Can you see me smiling?
If the original factory warranty has expired on your car and you don't have an extended warranty, run—do not walk—to your insurance company and get mechanical breakdown coverage if it's offered.
Seriously.
It turns out it wasn't a simple repair on the car. It wasn't a broken linkage and it wasn't a blown slave cylinder. It was the entire effing clutch. But thanks to Geico and a little foresight on my part, what would have been a $1300 expense cost me only $250. Granted, it's money I still didn't need to spend, but two fifty is a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
Inspection also uncovered a small leak in a power steering hose and that the front bushings need replacement. Both are also covered under the policy (albeit with a $250 deductible for each) and while they shouldn't be ignored, neither one was something that had to be repaired before moving to Denver. Of course the shop also came up with another list of routine maintenance items that total around $1500, but those can be done piecemeal as funds allow.
Interestingly (or not) enough, Anderson is actually driving much better. The amount of resistance I'm feeling in the pedal is about what it was when I first noticed the problem the other day, but it's definitely working now, and shifting is so much smoother than previously. In fact, the amount of force required to depress the pedal previously was not normal. Go figure.
The shop told me there was .9mm left on the clutch plate; 1.0mm being the spec for replacement. So yeah, I was overdue.
Now I know that with my particular driving style a MINI Cooper clutch will last approximately 60,000 miles.
When Ben and I were pulling out of the carport to go to lunch yesterday, I noticed that something was "off" with Anderson's clutch. At first I didn't realize what it was, but as we drove out of the apartment complex, I realized there was no resistance as I pushed the pedal down. It was very odd. And while I could still shift gears, it required more force than usual.
I immediately pulled back into the complex and returned to my carport. Low clutch fluid? I thought the MINI had a hydraulic clutch, but I didn't remember ever seeing a reservoir mentioned in the car's documentation or seeing one anywhere in the engine compartment. Just to be sure, I popped the hood and looked around. Nope. Only the brake reservoir, and the fluid level in that was fine. (It turns out it's a shared reservoir system.)
I waited as Ben went back inside to get his keys since he'd be the one driving us to lunch, and all sorts of horrible things started running through my head. While it was hopefully something as simple as a broken linkage (or perhaps a leaking slave cylinder), what if it was something much, much worse? Anderson's factory warranty ran out about 5,000 miles ago and visions of dumping all the money I'd put aside for the move to Denver into a very expensive car repair kept flashing before my eyes. So much for it being a happy birthday. Of course, on top of everything it was a holiday weekend, so I couldn't even call the shop to make an appointment to bring it in.
When we got home I went online, and started searching for "MINI clutch pedal no resistance." It didn't help my anxiety level one bit. There were two schools of thought: one said bad slave cylinder (apparently they're all plastic) or broken linkage (both relatively inexpensive to repair) and the other said complete clutch replacement (white knuckle panic attack).
I pulled up my auto insurance policy to verify that I at least had towing covered, so that wouldn't be an out-of-pocket expense, and—praise be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster—discovered I had completely forgotten I was also carrying "mechanical breakdown" coverage. I had added it to the policy a little over a year ago when I realized that Anderson's factory warranty would be running out in short order and there was no way I was going to pay the outrageous amount quoted for an extended warranty.
I spoke with the insurance company today and I think can relax a bit. Supposedly no matter how bad it is, the most I will have to come up with is the $250 deductible. They said all I had to do was inform the shop I had the coverage, provide them with my insurance policy number and the direct phone line to claims and they'd take care of the rest.
So first thing tomorrow I'm calling for a tow and taking poor ol' Anderson in to be looked over.
And in the overall scheme of things, it's better that it happened now and not in two weeks, or—gods forbid—on the way to Denver.
50mm, f1.7, ISO 400, 1/6 sec
Nothing planned, other than the weekly grocery shopping and a bit more packing. I hope to get Dad's photo albums scanned so I can return them before we leave for Denver.
Ben and I agreed that because of the move, this year there will be no gifts, although he is insisting on taking me to lunch or dinner…if I can decide where I'd like to go.
Very atmospheric. Courtesy the Phoenix Public Library.
This is what approximately $2000 worth of stereo equipment looked like:
Sure, it doesn't look like much now, but at the time (with the exception of the speakers) it was state-of-the-art stuff.
The only items I still have are—amazingly—the speakers (woofers refoamed and cabinets resurfaced several years ago), although I did pick up another 1300Mk2 off eBay about a decade ago and still use it to spin my vinyl. I've also had several sets of the Micro Series components over the years, but always end up selling them because their general lack of inputs and outputs make them impractical for use as a main setup in this age of DVRs, DVDs, and the multitude of other tech that you might want to attach to your stereo.
Besides the iconic Bohemian Rhapsody, my other favorite cuts on this album are Prophet's Song and '39—which seems to be about a group of volunteers leaving earth on a mission to discover a new world, only to return and discover that while they've aged only a year, a century has passed on earth:
In the year of thirty-nine
Assembled here the volunteers
In the days when lands were few
Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn
The sweetest sight ever seen
And the night followed day
And the story tellers say
That the score brave souls inside
For many a lonely day
Sailed across the milky seas
Ne'er looked back never feared never cried
Don't you hear my call
Though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I'll take your hand
In the land that our grand-children knew
In the year of thirty-nine
Came a ship in from the blue
The volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news
Of a world so newly born
Though their hearts so heavily weigh
For the earth is old and grey
Little darlin' well away
But my love this cannot be
Oh so many years have gone
Though I'm older but a year
Your mother's eyes from your eyes cry to me
Don't you hear my call
Though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I'll take your hand
In the land that our grand-children knew
Don't you hear my call
Though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
All your letters in the sand
Cannot heal me like your hand
For my life's still ahead, pity me.
I've been wanting to get a USB hub to use with my Mac while I'm at work. It's not something I absolutely needed, but between my cell modem, external hard drive, various thumb drives, and printer, I often ran out of available ports. About six weeks ago while trawling the interwebs I ran across this and had to get one. I got my order in the day before Apple sicced its lawyers on the manufacturer and since I never received a confirmation email I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to receive it. So imagine my surprise when it showed up in my mailbox last Friday.
It's understandable while Apple went after the company. It looks (right down to the packaging) like something Apple would make—if they made stuff like this. But despite the superficial resemblance to a genuine Apple product, once I got it out of the box it was obvious this was not made by Cupertino.
The fit and finish was a bit off. The small USB cable that came with it had bits of excess plastic still attached, and the light-up logo (while cute) was not evenly illuminated (even though it appears that way in photos) as you'd expect from a genuine Apple product. On the whole, kind of cheesy. But then, what do you expect from a company that produced not one, but two Steve Jobs action figures?
I was even more disappointed when I actually plugged it in and attempted to use my peripherals. Maybe it's a problem endemic to non-externally powered USB hubs, but my modem wouldn't work. It would show up on the Mac, but would stay stuck at "initializing." My external hard drive wasn't recognized. Hell, even the printer kept telling me it was offline. And it wasn't like I tried to plug everything into it at once; this behavior was exhibited when only a single item was attached to it.
To its credit, It did work fine with thumb drives, however, as well as powering and syncing my iPhone, so I guess it wasn't a total loss. And I'm sure I could easily double what I spent for it by putting it up on eBay…
A few years ago, while still working at the hospital, the subject of classic rock came up in discussion with a dear friend. I was telling her how shocked my mother was when I brought home my first Bob Dylan record.
"That's nothing," she said. "You should have seen how shocked my mother was when I brought home Bob Dylan."
True story.
While it is true that I've been wanting to refresh this blog for several months, it's not entirely true that it was done just because we're moving to Colorado. It's because I did something very stupid (proving I am not immune). I sent off emails to a couple headhunters I'd been working with in Denver that had a link to this blog embedded in the signature line.
Oh shit.
While I'm not ashamed of anything I've posted here over the years, much of it was definitely NSFW and considering the amount of ranting I've done about work lately it probably wouldn't make the best impression on someone trying to present me as a potential employee to one of their clients.
That led to the knee-jerk reaction of blasting away all my previous posts.
But as we all know, anything posted on the internet lives forever. And anyone with the slightest bit of curiosity and know-how can find it. Some rather snarky comments I left on a discussion board nearly a decade ago about people stealing images for use in their eBay postings from a long-gone hi-fi website I used to run are still available just by Googling my name. Scary.
This made me realize that—for better or worse—Voenix Rising has become my brand and merely deleting a few years worth of blog posts is not going erase my presence from cyberspace. Not even close to it.
And you know, that's okay.
If someone doesn't want to represent me to a prospective employer because of my sexual orientation, political views, or the fact that I (like every other working person on the planet) occasionally bitch about my job, it's better to know it up front. Because for every headhunter out there who takes issue with these things, there will be another who will not.
I am reminded of an interview I had about a dozen years ago with a placement firm in Palo Alto for a position the company had been having trouble filling. The headhunter really liked me and thought with my experience I'd be a great fit, but she had an issue with my pierced ear. She said that the company she wanted to send me to was extremely conservative and I would be advised to remove the stud before the interview. I looked at her and said, "Seriously? This is 1997, the Bay Area and you're asking me to take out an earring? If they're that uptight, why would I want to work there?"
Honesty—something decidedly lacking in public discourse these days—is always best.
And the blog really did need to be cleaned out…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=i5FWusjctuc
I've thought about growing mine back out, but I fear it would be more ironic than iconic…
One of the things I wanted to do before leaving Phoenix was visit and get a photo of each of the local Apple Stores.
Yes, I am an Über Geek.
SanTan Village
Arrowhead Town Center
Biltmore Fashion Park
Scottsdale Quarter
Chandler Fashion Center—where photography is not permitted!
In honor of our impending move to Denver, I thought it might be a good time to wipe everything away and start fresh.
I may also be taking the blog in a different…direction. Stay tuned.
When I read about Sarah Palin's response to the Tucson shootings this morning, I was at first infuriated. Then I realized that Sarah Palin was simply being Sarah Palin, doing what right wing media whores always do: twisting logic into a pretzel and playing the victim. Quelle suprise. The sun rises in the east. Dogs bark. The sky is blue.
I almost had to stifle a yawn after that.
And then while I was showering, an aspect of a nearly-forgotten personal philosophy came to me: Sarah Palin (and Beck and Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing noise machine) is nothing more than a jar of paprika in the kitchen. I'm busy making a sweet tasty pie (my life) and paprika is just something that's not called for in this recipe. So while it may be physically present in the kitchen (the universe), there's no need for it in my pie, and therefore no reason to focus on it, much less get angry at it.
When I realized that, I suddenly felt even better.
The other day Ben suggested we go on a hike. Nothing too crazy, just as far up North Mountain as we could.
As I tweeted at the time, "Hiking North Mountain with @tallbubba. I think he's trying to kill me, but the joke's on him cuz he's not on my insurance yet."
Yeah, I'm out of shape, regardless of my health history of the past seven years. In another lifetime I was more than a little bit of a mountain goat, bounding half-naked (or more than half) over boulders at Reddington Pass or hiking up and down the oceanside trails at Black Sand and Golden Gate Bridge beaches. But it was obvious from our little outing earlier this week those days are long gone.
Between my out of shape 50 year old body and Ben's mangled 27 year old knees, we didn't make it all that far. But this was the view we got…
(click to embiggen)
Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?
Absolutely. And not only do I believe it exists, but I believe the universe is teeming with it. I would even go so far as to say that life is not only a by-product of the universe, but even moreso a requirement of it. Do I believe we've been visited by extraterrestrials? As much as I'd like to say yes, now I have to say probably not.
I love a good UFO/alien abduction tale as much as the next guy, but while it's not impossible, considering the distances involved and the technology required for interstellar flight it's all very, very unlikely. And on top of that, after spending the last 50 or so years observing humanity on this planet, I have come to the conclusion that if extraterrestrials are anything like us, as soon as they start taking their first tentative steps out of the nest, 99.9% of them either self-destruct over cultural differences and god-myths, or are wiped out by natural forces beyond their control. The threat posed by rogue asteroids, comets, gamma ray bursts, catastrophic climatic change, super volcanoes and tectonic shifts certainly are not unique to the Earth, but ultimately I believe the risk of them wreaking planet-wide destruction is miniscule compared to the amount of havoc that can be unleashed by a civilization upon itself, either intentionally or through blind stupidity.
And what of the 0.1% of technological civilizations that do survive and achieve interstellar spaceflight? I think they would be so different from us as to be virtually unrecognizable, and totally uninterested in Homo sapiens in any capacity, having seen the path we're heading down play itself out thousands of times before.
I don't care who anybody sleeps with. If a couple has been together all that time—and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones—I think it's fine if they want to get married. I don't know how people can get so anti-something. Mind your own business, take care of your affairs, and don't worry about other people so much." ~ Bette White, in an interview with Parade Magazine.
I have a little—and let me stress a little—new Mac envy right now. Like many other people, the new MacBook Air has captured my imagination.
I went over to the local Apple Store today and played with the 13-inch model (the 11-inch is just too friggin' small as far as I'm concerned). My initial list of the two things that need to change before I would buy one remain: more storage and a backlit keyboard, but damn…it is still one sexy beast. And despite its older processor, it's fast! Applications opened almost instantaneously—or at least notably faster than on my MBP.
I've only had my MBP for a year and still love it to death, so I'm obviously not in the market for a new laptop right now, but when it comes time to retire The Precious (and assuming the two items on my Airbook wish list have been put into production) I'll definitely be looking at the Air line when the time comes.
While I was there, I had the opportunity to check out Office 2011 as well. I was not impressed; at least not impressed enough to want to upgrade. One of the biggest hurdles I had to get over when switching from Windows to Mac was the loss of Outlook, and while I was glad to hear that Microsoft was bringing it back in this release, I don't even need it any more, having happily moved on to Postbox.
