Picking up where we left off

 Personal  5 Responses »
Sep 102011
 

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L-R: Bill, Robert, Jim, and Paul
It is really amazing, to me, how we can not see someone for a really long time, say about 30 years, and just pick right up where we left off. This weekend, I am in Akron, Ohio, doing my yearly visit. Thanks to Facebook, Jim saw my post about visiting and rallied the troops together so that we could have a small reunion.

I didn’t go to high school with these guys, but did work with all of them at York Steak House around 1981 – 1982, or so. I had seen Robert a couple of years ago during my visit, or was it last year? :) I hadn’t seen Bill or Jim since I left York Steak House in 1982, so 29 years ago.

We had a good conversation and shared fond memories of our fellow employees that we worked with at that time. All told we spent almost 2 hours chatting and having a good time. It was like, at least for me, like we had never parted ways. Of course, we all had families, kids, and an adult life, but it just felt so comfortable to be with them again.

We had a waitress-in-training. Her name was Amber. She was kind enough to take this photo of us after I loaned her my iPhone. The nice thing about having a youngster do it is that they probably know the technology better than you and so there is no training issue. She even knew that I could ‘turn the camera around’ at the press of a button. I told her that I knew that, but wanted her to take the photo. :)

Anyway, it was a good time and next year I promised to give more notice so that we might recruit a few more people from the days of York to join us!

 Posted by at 20:05  Tagged with: ,

The end of summer 2011

 Personal  7 Responses »
Sep 052011
 

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It’s the end of summer already. Here in the US, the summer season is usually demarcated by two holidays, one on either side of the summer. Memorial Day happens on the last Monday of May, and Labor Day, the first Monday in September. Rates go up for rental properties at the beach on Memorial Day and start their decline after Labor Day. Barbecue grills get cleaned off at the beginning of the season, and are cleaned and, for the most part, stowed away at the end.

I remember that, while I lived in Charleston, SC, the beaches became noticeably less crowded after Labor Day. That was a great time of the year because it was still warm, sometimes quite warm, and all of the tourist had gone home or, if they were planning a beach vacation, were thinking of Florida, not South Carolina.

When I was in elementary school, we’d start our school year after Labor Day and it was a tradition, seemingly, with most teachers that we’d have to share, aloud, with each other about what we did this summer. The usual talks would center around vacation and summer camps.
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As I look back on this summer, I can hardly believe that:

  • I went to Australia and back.
  • I saw my older son, Pedro, get married.
  • I took my younger son, Tony, to begin his life in college.
  • I made a couple of trips to the mountains to The Blue Ridge Parkway as well as to Dupont State Forest to see some waterfalls.
  • I saw my first ever double rainbow.
  • I got to see some live jellyfish for the first time. I’d seen live jellyfish in the aquarium and seen dead ones on the beach, but not live ones swimming in the water.
  • I introduced my friend, James, to Charleston, SC

This weekend, I finished off the summer season by taking my friend, James, for an overnight stay in Charleston. James is a huge history buff and was just quite pleased with all of the history to be found in Charleston, dating back to times before the Revolutionary War, prior to our gaining independence from England back in 1776. No, this is no history as old as European history, but it’s pretty far back for us. It was cool to see the look on his face as he got to touch canon from the civil war, see a church that George Washington visited, and walk the halls of a slave mart where our ancestors were sold into slavery. It was a pretty engaging visit. We even took time to do a bit of Tai Chi on the beach. :) While we were doing it, a lady walked by with her friends and said:

Alright fellas! Go ahead and get your Tai Chi on!

What a great way to end the summer. Today, Labor Day, it’s raining. A great day for reading.

Looking back, I can say that it has been one heck of a summer!

 Posted by at 07:43  Tagged with: ,

A nice reminder, for me

 Personal  14 Responses »
Sep 022011
 

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Sometimes you have to stand before the mirror and have a nice long look. I just came back from reading Tom’s blog post entitled: Focus. Tom, like me, does not have a television and he’s found life without it much more enjoyable, as have I. When I started reading his post, he talked about how he removed the Facebook application from his phone. Immediately, I thought of that too …

In the days before I had an iPhone, I had just a phone. It couldn’t access the web, or e-mail. It simply did calls and sent and received texts. Pretty low tech. In February of this year, when the iPhone came to Verizon, I bit. I got one, thinking that it might be pretty cool to have a good camera and a GPS, etc. I didn’t realize, at the time, how far down the rabbit hole one could go with the various applications.

When I first installed the FB application, I got all kinds of notifications. My phone would beep, buzz, and chirp incessantly. I figured out, quickly, how to reduce the number of notifications and keep it to a ‘reasonable’ level. That said, and this is the mirror looking part, I feel almost compelled to see who said what when I get a FB notification, even though they don’t come all that frequently, now. This is, to me, a particularly disturbing thought that I want to check even when I am having a conversation with someone. It’s almost a call and response reflex.

After I read the first sentence of his post and how he removed his FB application. I immediately went to my phone, removed FB, Twitter, and G+. Mind you, all of these are on my computer as well, but it was a nice reminder, reading his post, that these things can certainly wait until I get home, by myself. It’s much more important to be there, in the moment, with whomever you are with than to respond to a silly buzz on a phone. Sure. I could ignore, but it’s best not to be interrupted at all.

Tom, thanks for the reminder!

 Posted by at 11:57  Tagged with:

Farewell, Cedric

 Personal  3 Responses »
Aug 242011
 

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Farewell, my friend

Though a few days behind, I was rather surprised, as I was getting caught up with my fellow bloggers, to find that Cedric, author of Plop, said that he was exiting the blogging game.

I’m not really sure when I came upon Cedric’s blog, but I was sure glad that I did. There was something valuable there. Often times, I would read one of his post, attempt to absorb it, fail, have to come back, read again, and then make a comment, or not. Sometimes, there was just nothing left to say. He’d covered the point in its entirety, leaving me with nothing to add. There was value there.

Perhaps there was value, also, in his paucity. His blog was not a noisy blog. He is one of those people who, at least from the nature of his blog, only says something when he has something of quality to say. He most certainly doesn’t prattle on, like some folks, myself in particular. :) I wanted to see for myself when I went to Australia, but alas, the planets didn’t align correctly and we didn’t get to meet.

I, for one, will miss his blog. Thankfully he’s on Twitter and G+, so we’ll see where that goes. I suppose that at some point, everyone gets tired of blogging or perhaps has nothing left to say. I’m not there yet, but can admit to wondering what it would be like to not have a blog. I think that I do it more for the writing than the photography.

Well, farewell my friend, I’ll see you around.

 Posted by at 11:48  Tagged with:

G+: Future blog?

 Personal, Photography  24 Responses »
Aug 222011
 

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I have Facebook, Twitter, and a blog. I don’t have a Flickr account, but just keeping up with these things takes a lot of time. Recently, I accepted an invitation from someone to join Google Plus, or G+. I’ve been looking at it for several days, trying to get a handle on who it works. I finally think that I have the beginnings of an idea of how it works.

With FB (Facebook), everyone is a ‘friend’. If you have more than a few friends, things can get messy in a hurry. There is no way to filter content. You get lots of content that you’re not interested in, especially if you have some people who post lots of content. The only way to reduce that is to hide the content or un-friend them. G+ has mitigated this issue with circles that allow you to put different people into different circles and view the content that you want.

If you combine this ability with the ability to ‘follow’ certain people, you get a Twitter-like experience, but with much more than 140 characters. This seems like the blog of the future. I’m following Thomas Hawk, just to see how I like the experience.

There’s also a Flickr-like experience, allowing you to share your albums as well.

After just having a short look, I’m wondering if this is the wave of the future for blogging, marketing, etc. I know that a few of you are on there: Ove, Cedric, Andreas, Robert, etc. Anyone else who is using it and what do you think?

 Posted by at 16:25  Tagged with:

Tricky Spammers

 Personal  7 Responses »
Jul 312011
 

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Lately, I’ve been besieged by comment spam such as:

Smack-dab what I was looinkg for-ty!

Or

If you’re lokiong to buy these articles make it way easier.

All of them have the same callback URI, www.yahoo.com. All of them have different, fake e-mail addresses. All of them use a different fake name like: John, Barbi, or Geralyn, to name a few.

I guess that as filters get better, so do spammers. The interesting thing is that there is no link back to any particular site selling anything. It just seems to be spam for the hell of it!

Anyone else getting hit by this? It’s getting through Spam Karma 2 and Akismet.

 Posted by at 10:34  Tagged with:

Blogging from McDonalds

 Photography  5 Responses »
Jul 102011
 

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Another iPhone shot. straight out of the camera

I’m a guy, OK. And, like a guy, I prepare for things almost at the last minute. Well, since I’m going to Australia, I figured that I’d start last minute + 3 days. So, I’m packing my suitcase, making sure that I at least have enough changes of clean underwear, checked out the forecast for Sydney for the next 10 days and it looks like my kind of weather, basically between 50 and 65 degrees F and clear and dry.

In preparation for departure, I purchased a calling card from the US to Australia. I get 700 minutes for about $20. Not bad. I remember, back in the day, when I called Australia to talk to my pen pal, it was $3.00/minute! Now, it’s less than 10% of that. Advances are wonderful. Why US to AUS? Well, my friend James will be keeping Hobbs for me so I wanted to make sure that he had a way to contact me if necessary. On with the story.

To make sure that all was cool, I called the hotel and asked if they had WiFi. The call rang through, a very pleasant desk clerk, with a slight Australian accent, answered the call. I asked my question and was told that they do indeed have WiFi, but it’s not free. It’s only available on the ‘executive level’ floors, 14 – 18 and those are an upgrade of $30/night. Further, if you want WiFi, that’s an additional $20 per 24 hour period.

So … let me see if I got this right … $50/night for WiFi. I think not! I asked if there were any WiFi spots around town. She said that most bars offer free WiFi and that there was a McDonalds about a 10 minute walk from the hotel that had free WiFi. I’m trying to do Sydney in the least expensive way that I can and still have a great time.

I guess that I won’t be surfing in my room, which is cool. I had plan to spend only sleeping hours there, anyway.

So, I’ll be blogging from McDonalds, Sydney, Australia! :) It’s American enough, but at least it’s not Walmart! LOL

 Posted by at 07:49  Tagged with: ,
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