Contingency Planning

When you are planning your future, even at my late stage in the game, It is important to have a fall back plan in case things go wrong. What is my strategy? Simple, if things at Gigantic Concrete don't work out, and several thousand people perish unexpectedly, then I'm President. Planning is good.

Get your position here

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain!

Your Hidden Talent

You have the natural talent of rocking the boat, thwarting the system. And while this may not seem big, it can be. It's people like you who serve as the catalysts to major cultural changes. You're just a bit behind the scenes, so no one really notices.

What's Your Hidden Talent?

Animal Crackers

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On this day in 1930, the Marx Brothers' movie Animal Crackers opened in New York City. The farce, the brothers' second film, was directed by Victor Heerman and starred Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Groucho, this time playing an African explorer who manages, among other feats, to shoot an elephant while wearing pajamas. He also performs the comic aria "Hooray for Captain Spaulding," in honor of himself. Margaret Dumont plays her familiar role as the long-suffering socialite, this time called Mrs. Rittenhouse.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

A Little From Column A, A Little From Column B

How You Live Your Life

You seem to be straight forward, but you keep a lot inside. You're laid back and chill, but sometimes you care too much about what others think. You prefer a variety of friends and tend to change friends quickly. You tend to dream big, but you worry that your dreams aren't attainable.

How Do You Live Your Life?

It's Not the Fall, It's the Sudden Stop

Today is believed to be the date when the Roman Empire fell in 474 A.D., when the Emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by a barbarian. What they called barbarians, we might call Germans or Swedes. One tribe, the Goths, had originated in Sweden, migrated to the Black Sea, and split into two groups, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. They were driven out of their own homeland by the Huns who had been advancing across Asia from the east. And so 200,000 Visigoths migrated across the Danube into the Roman Empire in 374 A.D. and were tolerated there by the Romans. But then the Romans tried to disarm them, and there was a rebellion. The emperor sent Roman troops into battle at Adrianople, and the Visigoths won and destroyed two-thirds of the Roman army. Their victory was thanks in part to the fact that the Visigoths had developed a horse's saddle with stirrups, which made the horses much more maneuverable.

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Other Germanic tribes then began to move into the Roman Empire, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Angles, and the Saxons. Rome was sacked by the Goths in 410 and again by Vandals in 455. The Roman Empire was in shambles, and the emperor was deposed on this day in 474 A.D.

Edward Gibbon put forward a theory about the fall of Rome, arguing that the Christian Church was to blame, that after Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, the best and the brightest became leaders of the church rather than going into the military or into the government.

Another theory says that the aqueducts, which carried the water supply, were lined with lead, and so the Romans slowly went crazy. One of the more recent theories is that the Roman army had been infiltrated by the barbarians themselves, and so when the army was ordered to attack the barbarians, they, of course, refused.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

This Must Be Rigged!

Your IQ Is 140

Your Logical Intelligence is Genius Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Genius

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

Separation of Church and Camp

Today was child retrieval day. That is to say it was the last day of Summer Camp and NOS (Number One Son) needed to be picked up. In the past NOS had attended the camp of the United Church of Canada, a liberal bunch of theologians who provided shuttle bus service to and from their northern retreat. This year, he attended the Presbyterian (Read: Church of Scotland in Canada) Camp, and being Scottish, they skimped on some of the basic necessities to save money. Necessities like shuttle bus service.

Of course this meant that I had to take the drive to go get him. The drive north. The long, lingering trek from home to summer camp in the automobile whose only air conditioning system is all the windows open while travelling 100 kilometers per hour. Oh joy.

My journey began at eight in the morning and was uneventful. No car issues, no road kill, no coffee. NOS was retrieved and insisted that we stop at the Restaurant of the Scottish Clown on the way home. After all he'd been cut off from civilization for a week. No video games! No TV! He needed an infusion of Western Pop Culture stat! It was over the faux burgers that the metaphysics question and answer period started.

“Dad, If God made us and loves us, why does he send some of us to Hell?”

This is the point where I nearly spit my root beer out my nose. My seemingly non religious son was enquiring on points of theology after only one week's exposure. Isn't there supposed to be some kind of constitutional separation of Church and Summer camp? I never would have gotten a question like this had those cheap Presbyterians sprang for the bus ride home. He never asked those questions after a bus ride home from the United Church Camp. But OK, time to come up with an answer.... hmmm..... think, think, think...

“Son.... God doesn't send us to hell. If there is such a place, we send ourselves. We are completely responsible for where we end up in life.” He thought about it for a while. Took a bite of his burger and thought about it some more.

“That makes sense,” he said finally.

Good. Theology lesson over. God gets off the hook for sending us to hell, and next year a camp with a bus.

Happy Birthday Hegel

It's the birthday of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, born in Stuuttgart (1770). He started out as a theologian, particularly interested in how Christianity is a religion based on opposites: sin and salvation, earth and heaven, finite and infinite. He believed that Jesus had emphasized love as the chief virtue because love can bring about the marriage of opposites.

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Hegel eventually went beyond theology and began to argue that the subject of philosophy is reality, and he hoped to describe how and why human beings create communities and governments, make war, destroy each other's societies, and then build themselves up to do it all over again.

He came up with the concept of Dialectic, the idea that all human progress is driven by the conflict between opposites, that each political movement is imperfect and so gives rise to a counter movement which takes control—which is also imperfect—and gives rise to yet another counter movement, and so on to infinity.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM

Major kudos to Scott over on Acting Up for pointing out Word Verification for comments on Blogger. Good bye-SPAM-bots!!

At least, that is, until the next advance in the Spam Wars and they find a way to fool that system too.

This new feature of Blogger came at just the right time, I was running out of dogs, and would probably of had to go after Tim's cats.

Those Daring Young Men in Their Flying Machines

It's the birthday of the inventor Joseph Montgolfier, born in Annonay, France (1740). He and his brother Etienne were in the paper manufacturing business. And one night watching the fire in his fireplace, Joseph wondered what caused the sparks to rise. He made a bag out of silk and lit a fire under the opening and watched it rise. He thought it was smoke that lifted it. He didn't know it was simply heated air.

...the first human beings to take flight...

So the Montgolfier brothers decided to build a contraption for flight. At that time the only creatures who had ever flown were birds and insects. But in 1783, they made a huge bag out of cloth and paper, held the opening over a fire, and inflated the bag to a height of 110 feet. When it was full, they released it, and it rose more than 3,000 feet into the air. Then they sent up a balloon with a sheep, a duck, and a rooster in a basket under the balloon, with the king and queen of France watching. The balloon landed, and the animals were okay.

So on November 21, 1783, the Montgolfier brothers sent up the first human beings to take flight. Deciding not to do it themselves, they sent up two volunteers, one of whom was a major in the French army. A half a million people came to watch in Paris.

One of the people watching was Benjamin Franklin, and when someone asked him what practical purpose this contraption might have, Benjamin Franklin said, “What use is a newborn baby?”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Free Men in Paris

It was on this day in 1944 that Paris was liberated from four years of Nazi rule. So many of the major cities in Europe were destroyed by bombing during the war, but Paris remained relatively unscathed, in part because the Nazis had marched into the city unchallenged, and the French, at least the French in Paris, had not put up much resistance. Many Parisians tried to be as accommodating as possible to the Germans. Most of the theaters and music halls, restaurants and cafés were open for Nazi soldiers and officers.

...but the idea of a curfew deeply offended them...

After D-Day, many people hoped the Allies would liberate Paris, but Eisenhower made a decision to go around the city. He didn't want to get bogged down there. And then, as the Allies got closer, the Germans ordered a 9:00 p.m. curfew on the city. The Parisians had not revolted against the German occupation, but the idea of a curfew deeply offended them, and the Paris police began collaborating with the French resistance. Fighting broke out in the streets. Hitler ordered the city be destroyed, but the German commander refused the order, and a division of French troops entered the city on this day in 1944.

Among the war correspondents was Ernest Hemingway, who said on this day, “I had a funny choke in my throat and I had to clean my glasses because now, below us, gray and always beautiful, was spread the city I love best in the world.”

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Stop or the Dog Gets It!

You know who you are. The blood will be on your hands, you sorry bastards.

Down to the Sea in Ships

“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep.” And what works we saw.

...rhyming the ancient mariner are we...

My buddy Murray and I are completely insane. We push the boundaries of our physical limits and when we surpass them, we chase those gremlins even farther out. No we are not doing a remake of “The Right Stuff”, but rather we are undertaking one of those pastimes of human antiquity. We are become sailors; rhyming the ancient mariner are we.

Murray is the owner of a sixteen foot Hobie Cat. A Catamaran. A vessel offering passage to fun, excitement, and verification that two post 40 year old males are insane. The weather was gray, overcast, threatening thunder and lightning, but did this deter us? No not at all. We boldly went, and pit ourselves against the elements. The wind blew, the spray whipped our faces and the thunder clapped. This latter bit was a little daunting since we sat at the bottom of a twenty foot aluminium mast heavily conductive of airborne electricity known as lightning. But sail we did. We sailed for hours into the sunset, until our arms ached, until our legs could hold us up no longer.

The next day, of course, our post four decade bodies reminded us that we were not as nimble as we once were, but the memory of elemental wind and waves more than made up for the minor bruises and pains we suffered. Mind you, the aspirin and rum helped too.

On the Road

This week I am either Bob Hope, or Bing Crosby. I'm not sure which one, but I'm “On the Road” - I just don't know which one. “I'm in a road movie to Berlin, can't drive out the way I came in”.

I've been travelling to many of Gigantic Concrete's sites bringing the technology of high speed network access. There are times I feel like a later day missionary spreading the light of broadband among the heathens clinging to the darkness of Frame-Relay. It comes at a price however, myself and my car are covered thick in cement dust; my feet ache from heavy safety boots; My body yearns for the sleep that one craves after a hard days work.

Oh ya, one more thing - little or no time to write

Tomorrow will be much better. Tomorrow I'm on the road again, but it will involve sailing and drinking at the final destination. Sometimes the road is worth it.

Contemplating Defeat

The boys of summer are in full swing. The girls of summer are swinging too. This is Little League, and even Canadians play in the field of dreams of America's pastime. At this level it is a 2 hour practise on the weekend and one or two games a week that run a couple of hours as well.

...It is a round robin merry-go-round of athletic prowess, delivering victory and defeat...

The kids enjoy it. The coaches enjoy it. The parents enjoy it. Some of the parents “really”enjoy it, if you can gauge such things by cheering and other, sometimes inappropriate, verbal participation. Everyone it seems has a good time. This will end in a few short weeks. This will end in the fury that is playoffs.

Playoffs occur at the end of every season. The ritual of performance and reward. Games are won, trophies are given. Yet, there is a darker side of playoffs; playoffs as a forced march endurance test. You see, these games take place over a single weekend. From nine in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, game after game is played in the blazing sun of late summer. It is a round robin merry-go-round of athletic prowess, delivering victory and defeat. Those who loose are down and out. Those that win must continue the cycle. The defeated go home, the victors rest 30 minutes and charge once more into the breach.

The day drags on, the heat builds, the sun beats down on the dusty field. After three or four games only the most dedicated still hope for victory. After three of four games players, coaches and parents silently hope for blessed defeat and the chance to see home once again. Home. Air conditioned sanctuary from this Little League endurance test in the Sahara.

After two days, if final victory comes, the aftermath is crankiness and sunburns for all. Glory has a price, and in Little League that price is heat exhaustion.

My Postmodernism is Showing

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 88% Cultural Creative 69% Materialist 56% Idealist 50% Existentialist 38% Romanticist 31% Modernist 25% Fundamentalist 13% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Found on outside the box

What's Your Summer Ride?

Your Summer Ride is a Jeep

For you, summer is all about having no responsibilities. You prefer to hang with old friends - and make some new ones.

What's Your Summer Ride?

Japan Surrenders

Today is the 60th anniversary of the day on which President Harry Truman announced that the Second World War had come to an end. You might argue that more human beings were happy on this day in 1945 than on any other day in history.

...It was the worst war in history...

It was the worst war in history. An estimated 60 million people died; about two-thirds of them were civilians. In the United States, the war had been going on for three years and eight months. About one in every eight Americans served in the war—more than 16 million American soldiers. Virtually every American family had at least one member overseas. With 400,000 Americans killed, most families knew somebody who had died in the war, and the most American casualties had come in the last year of the war.

Most Americans had believed that the war was far from over. The first few battles on Japanese islands had been some of the bloodiest battles of the war. Military analysts were projecting horrific losses, casualty estimates in the hundreds of thousands. But after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese suddenly accepted terms of complete surrender. And the announcement was made on this day at about 7:00 p.m. The newswires carried the headline, “Japan Surrenders.”

There were spontaneous celebrations and parades in every major city in America. In New York City, more than a million people filled the street, overflowing Times Square, the crowd stretching from 40th all the way up to 52nd streets. Factories blew their whistles. Air raid sirens went off. Ships and trains and cars honked their horns. Churches tolled their bells.

Americans had been living under strict food and gas rationing, and once the news arrived, people went to the gas stations, filled up their cars and went riding around for the fun of it. Throughout the war, people had tried to keep their lights off after dark to save energy, but on this night, people turned on their lights and left them on all night. Some children who'd grown up during the war saw the streets lit up with lights for the first time.

And one thing that commentators noticed at the time was that nobody shouted, “We've won the war!” or anything about triumph. They simply shouted, “The war is over!”

The most famous photograph of that day in 1945 showed a sailor in Times Square kissing a nurse in a white uniform. The nurse's name was Edith Shain. She later said, “When I was kissed, I closed my eyes. I didn't look at him. It was a startling thing. But I thought, this man had fought the war for all of us.” The photograph of the sailor and the nurse was the cover of LIFE magazine that next week and that photo has been reprinted thousands of times.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

I Want a Smoke

There's a time and a place for everything, at least that's what the Byrds tell us and by extension the holy writ the song was based on. “A time to live, a time to die; a time to smoke a time not to smoke.” I'm in the later of these two and the not smoking part of it too. My problem is that I want to be firmly on the smoking side of the bell curve.

I'm not, however, a smoker or at least not a “real” one. I don't smoke cigarettes and I never have. I am, rather, a pipe smoker and a cigar puffer - reformed. I don't do it any more for health reasons, but man do I miss it. I miss the way it feels, I miss the way the smoke curls out of the end of my pipe, I miss blowing smoke rings and I miss the smell of Black Cavendish wafting through my nostrils.

On a philosophical level, I suppose I'd miss my family even more after I'd have passed away early from complications due to lung cancer. So I stopped. But there are days the craving is overpowering.

Read a Good Caxton Lately?

...people in England called printed books Caxtons...

It's the birthday of the first man ever to print a book in English, William Caxton, born in Kent, England (1422). He was a wealthy merchant, living in Cologne, Germany. The printing press had been invented about 25 years earlier and Caxton had just translated a book about the history of Troy. He realized that printing was the thing for his book, and so he printed it in 1475, Historyes of Troye.

He went back to England and established the first printing press there. In 1478, he came out with an edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. For a long time, people in England called printed books Caxtons.

From the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor
Available by e-mail daily.

Something Has Got To Give

Yes, I am on the verge of a decision. Decisions often float around in the gray matter of our mind unformed and unrealized. Decisions like should I ask the really cute girl from my english class to the dance, but I digress (and engage in time travel by about twenty odd years too).

...IT got lean, IT got mean...

This decision has been forming for a while; building on the foundation of earlier, less consequential choices. This decision is not about where to do what I do, but it is rather more about what to do. Period.

I have spent the last seventeen years working in the IT industry. Some of this work has been fun, some has been exciting even, but something changed at the end of the last century. IT got lean, IT got mean, IT started thinking of it's workers as indentured servants rather than as actual people. I'm told that this is common of most industries in North America, but I am familiar only with IT. As is the usual case, familiarity breeds contempt.

The contempt stems, I suppose, from the many long hours I have spent toiling over networks and servers at the expense of friends, family, and self. We work until we drop; we work to define ourselves. We seldom, however, work at just being happy. A decision is gathering on the horizon of my mind; swirling in the eddies of my thoughts; percolating into perception. I'm tired. I'm cranky. And Something has got to give.

Ending The Tale

It has been a while since those heady days at International Greed Enablement Corp under the misdirection of the Beloved One. Well friends it is now in it's final chapter. WAN Guy #1 has tendered his resignation and is actually coming to work for Gigantic Concrete. The Beloved One has cycled through 100% of his department in a year and a half, and the current crop of replacements are just as disgruntled as the original alumni.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Back to the Grind

I've just come back from vacation. Well it's not so much a vacation as a temporary respite from work. Work that didn't stop; that piled high in my absence; that waited for my return to pounce on me unawares.

Now I'm back at work [sigh], and I am again questioning the wisdom of rising early, because all I get are worms.