It’s been a while since I’ve travelled. It’s been even longer since I’ve stayed at altitude, and I’m currently 8000 feet above sea level.

I’m feeling it. Every bit of it.

For every step forward, there is a step back. The trick is keeping a reasonable perspective on things.

There are no good or bad things. Just things. They are what you perceive them to be.

So. I’m walking earlier with my messenger bag slung across my back. It catches on a 10 foot 1x4 trim board leaning against the garage wall. I hear and feel it catch, turn to see what’s up in time to receive said board directly in the face.

I now have a steadily blackening eye.

Guy in the next office - speaking to no one (he’s an Air Force Lt Col BTW)

I’m going to make my hot dog now. I’ve got my hot dog kit and I’m hungry. No one cares, but I am. I eat a lot of kids food, I recognize this, but I’m hungry, and I will do what I have to do to survive.

Congratulations to Tampa Bay.

2 Cups in 2 years.

We should be so lucky as to win one here in Texas (in the modern era anyway) with the Stars.

Oh well.

Instagram Alienates?

THIS is a large part of why I have been reorganizing my online presence to move away from IG and to micro.blog and Wordpress. In a nutshell, Instagram says they are not focused on their original founding principles anymore and have moved to a position that will focus on video and messaging, thus allowing them to compete with rivals like TikTok.

Understanding their reasons, and ultimately it is their company, this means it’s less interesting to me as a platform. I don’t intend to stop using it outright, it’s still valuable to me to stay in touch with my circles there, but it does mean I have a more compelling reason to focus on a “publish here, syndicate there” model than before.

In the end, we are all subject to the whims of the CEOs and the shareholders to whom they are in turn subject to. If they choose to change their focus, we either change with them, or get off at the next stop. I’ll change for now, at least in the way I use the platform, and it comes at an interesting time, as I’ve been making some changes for different reasons that turned out to be serendipitous.

Over the last few years I’ve made a determination as to what my online presence will look like, independent of the options presented to me by social media. It’s part of my personal movement to make more deliberate choices and exert agency over my life. I choose what I want to share, and I find an outlet to do so, rather than taking what is offered.

I don’t have any heartache at this point with these companies using “my data”, though I am careful to not include much in the way of truly original creation in the things that they own. That being, I am not a professional photographer, so I don’t really care what they use the snapshots I post for, but since I do consider myself something of a writer, I don’t share original compositions on platforms I don’t retain some degree of control over. I understand why photographers are pissed about recent changes, and many of them have moved over to twitter, but seriously, that’s no guarantee of a better an outcome. Twitter has struggled to find it’s place in the new landscape, and they are never more than a board meeting away from a similar shift.

Ultimately all these social media companies are looking for a way to make a profit for their shareholders, it’s the whole reason they exist, regardless of what their carefully drafted marketing materials say about “bringing the world closer together” etc, etc. In some cases this means extracting more information from the user base to resell, in others its harvesting data about trends and movements in the marketplace. The market being the users. It doesn’t really matter in the end.

This will always be the case, and the playing field requires constant review to stay abreast of, but we don’t own it, and we cant control it, so we do the best we can.

Mark Cavendish

What else is there to say?

33 and counting…

(Photo from Getty)

My Office Setup

My current setup in the office is -

IPad Pro 11 (2021 M1, 1TB, 5G)

  • Satechi IPad Pro Dock
  • Satechi X1 Bluetooth Keyboard
  • Samsung SSD (1TB)

iPhone 12 Pro Max

  • Anker Wireless Charging Stand

Music

  • Apple AirPods Pro
  • Anker Wireless Charging Pad
  • Klipsch Groove Bluetooth Speaker

Caffeine

  • Yeti 12OZ Coffee Cup ☕️ (essential)
  • aero press in the cabinet for refills as needed 😉

I use the Ipad for 90% of my production work, there are a few apps I need my issued laptop for, however if its in any way composition of information, it happens on the Ipad, and then gets transferred to the work box. I also use it for school, and personal work. On occasion I hook it up to the 24” monitor (the Satechi Dock supports HDMI out) though I find that for most of the composition work I do, the 11” screen is fine.

I read last night that we’ve had as much rain in the last two days as we normally get in the entire month of July here in Austin.

Currently there is a driving, soaking rain falling outside again, so heavy I can barely see the street out front.

thoughts > quotes

“Never give your critical faculties away to people in power, regardless of how admirable they seem to be”

  • F Herbert

Phases and Stages

writing > thoughts > imports

I’m reorganizing this space to import my non motorsports posts from my old wordpress blog. There are over 1700 entries there, as I’ve had that space for a very long time. I dont intend to bring them all here, just a subset. so far the importer seems to be doing rather well.

Sunday Morning

thoughts > home > music

Good Morning. Im beginning my day with some Miles Davis courtesy of KUTX and Sunday Morning Jazz, which I enjoy to no end.

Summer has arrived here in Texas. I walked Miss Betty this morning at about 830, and it was already 84 degrees. We’re no where near as hot as it usually is this time of year, and we’ve been thankful for the cooler weather so far, but I can’t help but think Mother Nature is saving up to give it all to us at once.

This weather is always a catalyst for discussion about where we would like to live outside of the blast furnace we call home now, and this year it takes a little more seriousness, as I’m not too far from retirement. Close enough indeed that it’s time to start some serious thinking on the subject.

We are traveling to California next month for a week, and I know that will spur some ideas of moving there. Im not against it, thanks to the popularity of Austin, most of the reason real estate there was so insane has actually moved here. For what this house will sell for we can buy an ocean front lot up the coast from Los Angeles with money to spare. There are of course, plusses and minuses to everything.

I hope you all have a fine day.

thoughts > quotes

“Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”

  • Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

The result was a fine cup of Alfred’s Blend 👍🏼

I had a coffee pot misfire this morning. I pulled the pot out for my expected delicious cup only to find it full of grounds and water still. I salvaged the day with a careful cleanup and hot water added to the very strong brew, americano style.

Knowing Someone

thoughts > family

Silly statement, there have been literally endless pages written about the impossibility of truly knowing someone, regardless of how relatively close they were to us in our lives. I’ve been thinking lately though about how little I truly knew about my mother after her passing this last November. Today this was put in my mind by a memory of something she found amusing. There is a scene in the movie Jumping Jack Flash with Whoopi Goldberg, where she is being pulled behind a car inside a phone booth. She is panicking, justifiably so, and she’s on the phone with someone saying “I’m a little black woman in a big silver box!!”. My mother thought this scene was hilarious. She would laugh and laugh anytime it was on, and would even reference it at other times. I’ve never even seen the whole movie, and have no idea what it’s about overall.

To this day, I have no idea why she thought it was funny. I don’t find it amusing, and I’m not a fan of Whoopi Goldberg in general. My mom loved everything she did. I’ve often thought about this over the years, even before she died, though it never seems to have occurred to me to ask her about it. We talked a good bit when I was younger, I mean most times we were the other’s only companion during regular days. Though we conversed, she didn’t often discuss philosophical things with me. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of times our conversations weren’t practical or pragmatic in nature. How to do this or that thing, or something similar. It’s different for me and my kids, I do have practical conversations with them, but far more often it’s philosophical in nature. We talk about the why of things more than the what. I feel like if they know the why, the what becomes clear on its most often. I think it just reiterates my original statement that we can never really know someone, though I hope my kids are not thinking of why I might have said something once I’m gone.