Weekend Update
Tats – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
One of the good things about Winter is that people with tats, like most of the rest of us, dress warmly and cover up. That’s a very positive aspect of the cold, you know.
Before I get up on my soap box, I should qualify my views on tats. I can accept the small, sort of out of the way tats; you know the happy face or a flower or something along those lines. They do not upset my stomach or offend my sensibilities as much as the larger scale ones that cover entire body parts like an arm, leg, or chest.
Not liking a tattoo has nothing to do with whether or not I like the person whose body has been used for a large doodling pad. I can like the person and not like the tats.
I am not the only one who finds tattoos to be less than attractive.
Last week, a friend sent me an email with a collection of quotations that were attributed to the comedian George Carlin. I found the one on tattoos on women to be particularly on point.
Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above the crack of your ass. And it translates to "beef with broccoli." The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not spiritual. You're just high.
Carlin had another one that I liked as well, even better actually.
There's no such thing as flavored water. There's a whole aisle of this crap at the supermarket, water, but without that watery taste. Sorry, but flavored water is called a soft drink. You want flavored water? Pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. That's your flavored water.
That has always worked for me rather nicely, preferably with a single malt scotch whisky.
Thursday’s Dinner
My dinner on Thursday with the new young lady went very well.
We went to one of my favorite local restaurants, L. A. Food Show. It is also one of the Princess’s favorite places in Los Angeles. I have been going there for almost three years now and no one has ever had a bad meal there.
I suppose that some of you would like to have that brief summary analysis fleshed out just a tiny bit more. I think that is reasonable; we spent just under three hours at dinner. No, the service from James was attentive and efficient.
Obviously, we did talk a lot.
The new young lady had a strong and compelling need for an emotional dump based on a crummy job and poor leadership at work. I think she had been having a bad week at her job. I am a good listener. I can grunt and acknowledgement with the best of the world’s great listeners. I can certainly understand the need to release and then move on.
We talked all through our dinners. This was a nice way to slow the meal’s pace.
I suggested that we share an appetizer of an avocado and turkey stuffed egg roll. It does not sound all that interesting to start with. It was an excellent suggestion. We both consumed our portions is semi-silence.
I wished I had ordered another serving instead of the egg roll instead of having a small caesar salad. The new young lady had seafood bisque that was excellent. I slurped a tasting while she excused herself to the ladies’ room. James supplied a spare soup spoon for me.
The new young lady had grilled halibut for her dinner. She said it was excellent; I could tell by her empty plate that this was not idle chit chat to make me feel good about the dinner venue selection.
I had grilled Ahi tuna. I was going to consider the halibut but since I had that fish a week ago when the Brother was in town I felt I needed something else that was healthy.
We washed our meals down with a Sterling Vineyard 2004 Chardonnay. This is a light, crisp, white wine that did not overpower the food. I would definitely order this chardonnay again.
We blew away all thoughts for a healthy meal with our desserts. The new young lady is a chocolate lover sort of like your humble scribe. I am a part time chocolate ex-lover because of my diabetes. She had a chocolate bread pudding with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream and lots of chocolate sauce.
I had my usual hot fudge sundae; it comes with three scoops of vanilla ice cream and hot fudge. I had them add caramel sauce to the sundae. It was absolutely yummy.
Time Breakers
Time Breakers is the name of a children’s television show that is the basis for one of Doug’s term papers this semester. He is taking a class in children’s television.
Doug has to create and develop a children’s television show. The paper had an initial limit of three to five pages. I knew that he would blow past that limit; he tends to write in greater detail than many students and that takes more paper to complete the assignment.
My role in the term paper project is that of proof reader. I usually catch the sentence fragments and run-on sentences. I tend to clean things up a bit and provide better transitions as an editor. Sometimes, I will suggest minor changes to make the story better. Time Breakers involved time travel so I suggested that he include a destination location along with the date that his characters are going to visit. Without a destination, the time machine would remain stationary. He accepted my suggestion.
I think the paper exceeds what the professor was looking for and I feel that he should do well in the class. Doug expects the animation majors to do particularly well in the class since children are their primary audience.
Job Searching and Interviewing
I heard from the credit union that interviewed me over the telephone for their open president’s job. This was the one where I had to submit a personal action plan for the first ninety days. The intermediary said the board was reviewing the submissions and would make a decision shortly about who they want to interview in person. It was nice to know that I am still being considered.
On Friday, I received an email from one of the recruiters who found my resume on one of the job search engines. He wanted to know if I would be interested in a COO position in Orange County. I said that I would be; it would be a shorter drive and I would not have to relocate to work there.
All of this interest in me got me to thinking over the weekend; actually, it was Saturday while I was out on the balcony reading and smoking.
What happens if I get a job offer from one company while another and more interesting company is still considering me?
Do I take the job offer on hand and not worry about what might happen to me? Or, do I take the offered job with the shaded thought of bailing out if the more interesting job offer comes to pass?
My best instinct tells me that I should take what comes along. It also tells me that I should act honorably and not leave the first company in the lurch. Besides, one does not want to create a negative image.
Negative images are generally harsh on a career unless you are a photographer.
Backups
I have become very consistent about backing up my hard drive now. I am now backing up the complete drive on a monthly basis. I am backing up the critical material on an as created basis so that I backup my dissertation every time I work on it.
When I made the April backup, I was able to shed around 300 MB worth of unread and unnecessary files from the hard drive. This will modestly improve performance I think.
Microsoft Calculator Plus
This is one Microsoft program that I can honestly say that I love. It is a small, simple to use, free, always a compelling price, program. I use the program when I chat with people who live outside of the United States.
The United States has not yet joined the metric world. We still use the old English Imperial measurements even though we passed a law decades ago that said we would convert to the metric system.
I guess this is one of the benefits of being a superpower.
As many of you know, I have a number of chat partners who live in China. The program makes it easy for me to convert my measurements, like temperature and distance, into something that is meaningful for them.
The Dissertation
I finished Chapter One yesterday.
The term “finished” needs to be qualified just a bit.
I finished my writing of the chapter. I plan to have someone else proof read the chapter; this should lead to some changes in the text. Then, my Committee Chair will read and require a whole lot more changes. After I make all of his changes, he will then submit it to the other members for their comments and changes.
Once all of the changes are made, it will be considered an acceptable chapter. I am making progress and I feel very good about that.
Reading and Smoking
This was an excellent weekend for reading and smoking for me. It was warmish [65F / 17C] out on the balcony. There was very little in the way of a breeze. That was just about perfect reading conditions.
It was also prefect for smoking too.
I am still plodding along with my biography of Thomas Jackson. It was written in the later 1800s so the grammar and sentence structure is labored. It is a slow read compared to most modern works.
I think in another week or so it will be time to break out the shorts and short sleeved shirts and enjoy Summer.
As U Lyk It
I saw an updated version of the Shakespeare classic last night.
I had read the play before but in the original version so this was a sometimes bizarre version for me and confusing at times. My difficulty was compounded by the play’s flip flop of grammar; some lines were the original version and some were more modern day English. For the most part, the play did seem to follow the original fairly closely. The cast was energetic and very capable.
There seemed to be a change in the direction the play took. There was an increased emphasis on what some would call alternative life styles and same sex relationships. I don’t recall this as being part of the Bard’s original play concept. I believe this emphasis probably resulted in bad word of mouth and poor ticket sales. I think about half of the regular theater goers stayed home last night.
The play was in its world premiere presentation. I will let others decide if it was a good idea or not.
That is not a way to make money at the box office.
I sort of question the decision to stage the play in a conservative local community theater. It is not likely to engender high renewal sales for the next season. I saw this happen once before at another venue. The theater took three or four years to recover the lost season ticket sales.
On the plus side, I did see some substantial seat location improvement so I may be benefiting next year, assuming that I renew the tickets.
In the end, I think I enjoyed myself. I am not certain if I would want to see the play performed again anytime soon.
Internet Service Provider
I use Earthlink as my internet service provider and have since I went online in 1995.
Lately, I have been running into trouble with the service. I am getting more dropped connections and otherwise poor service. I can connect to the internet and receive my email and chat but I have trouble surfing the web. It is extremely frustrating to have to power cycle the modem, restart the connection, and reboot the laptop several times just be able to achieve a reasonable, high speed download capacity.
Earthlink is a high cost service provider also.
I had some time to think about the service while I was out on the balcony smoking this afternoon. It seems to me that I can drop back on Earthlink to a dial-up connection speed and sign up for DSL service with the local phone company and have more money left over at the end of the month.
I figure that I would need close to a year to convert everyone I email and those that send me material to a new email address. That doesn’t seem like a very long period and I could probably do it faster with a minimal degree of effort on my part. I will contact the phone company tomorrow and see what the cost is and how soon I can get connected.
That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope you spent your weekend well. I also want to wish all of the readers a joyful Easter or Passover.
Be well and stay happy.
One of the good things about Winter is that people with tats, like most of the rest of us, dress warmly and cover up. That’s a very positive aspect of the cold, you know.
Before I get up on my soap box, I should qualify my views on tats. I can accept the small, sort of out of the way tats; you know the happy face or a flower or something along those lines. They do not upset my stomach or offend my sensibilities as much as the larger scale ones that cover entire body parts like an arm, leg, or chest.
Not liking a tattoo has nothing to do with whether or not I like the person whose body has been used for a large doodling pad. I can like the person and not like the tats.
I am not the only one who finds tattoos to be less than attractive.
Last week, a friend sent me an email with a collection of quotations that were attributed to the comedian George Carlin. I found the one on tattoos on women to be particularly on point.
Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above the crack of your ass. And it translates to "beef with broccoli." The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not spiritual. You're just high.
Carlin had another one that I liked as well, even better actually.
There's no such thing as flavored water. There's a whole aisle of this crap at the supermarket, water, but without that watery taste. Sorry, but flavored water is called a soft drink. You want flavored water? Pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. That's your flavored water.
That has always worked for me rather nicely, preferably with a single malt scotch whisky.
Thursday’s Dinner
My dinner on Thursday with the new young lady went very well.
We went to one of my favorite local restaurants, L. A. Food Show. It is also one of the Princess’s favorite places in Los Angeles. I have been going there for almost three years now and no one has ever had a bad meal there.
I suppose that some of you would like to have that brief summary analysis fleshed out just a tiny bit more. I think that is reasonable; we spent just under three hours at dinner. No, the service from James was attentive and efficient.
Obviously, we did talk a lot.
The new young lady had a strong and compelling need for an emotional dump based on a crummy job and poor leadership at work. I think she had been having a bad week at her job. I am a good listener. I can grunt and acknowledgement with the best of the world’s great listeners. I can certainly understand the need to release and then move on.
We talked all through our dinners. This was a nice way to slow the meal’s pace.
I suggested that we share an appetizer of an avocado and turkey stuffed egg roll. It does not sound all that interesting to start with. It was an excellent suggestion. We both consumed our portions is semi-silence.
I wished I had ordered another serving instead of the egg roll instead of having a small caesar salad. The new young lady had seafood bisque that was excellent. I slurped a tasting while she excused herself to the ladies’ room. James supplied a spare soup spoon for me.
The new young lady had grilled halibut for her dinner. She said it was excellent; I could tell by her empty plate that this was not idle chit chat to make me feel good about the dinner venue selection.
I had grilled Ahi tuna. I was going to consider the halibut but since I had that fish a week ago when the Brother was in town I felt I needed something else that was healthy.
We washed our meals down with a Sterling Vineyard 2004 Chardonnay. This is a light, crisp, white wine that did not overpower the food. I would definitely order this chardonnay again.
We blew away all thoughts for a healthy meal with our desserts. The new young lady is a chocolate lover sort of like your humble scribe. I am a part time chocolate ex-lover because of my diabetes. She had a chocolate bread pudding with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream and lots of chocolate sauce.
I had my usual hot fudge sundae; it comes with three scoops of vanilla ice cream and hot fudge. I had them add caramel sauce to the sundae. It was absolutely yummy.
Time Breakers
Time Breakers is the name of a children’s television show that is the basis for one of Doug’s term papers this semester. He is taking a class in children’s television.
Doug has to create and develop a children’s television show. The paper had an initial limit of three to five pages. I knew that he would blow past that limit; he tends to write in greater detail than many students and that takes more paper to complete the assignment.
My role in the term paper project is that of proof reader. I usually catch the sentence fragments and run-on sentences. I tend to clean things up a bit and provide better transitions as an editor. Sometimes, I will suggest minor changes to make the story better. Time Breakers involved time travel so I suggested that he include a destination location along with the date that his characters are going to visit. Without a destination, the time machine would remain stationary. He accepted my suggestion.
I think the paper exceeds what the professor was looking for and I feel that he should do well in the class. Doug expects the animation majors to do particularly well in the class since children are their primary audience.
Job Searching and Interviewing
I heard from the credit union that interviewed me over the telephone for their open president’s job. This was the one where I had to submit a personal action plan for the first ninety days. The intermediary said the board was reviewing the submissions and would make a decision shortly about who they want to interview in person. It was nice to know that I am still being considered.
On Friday, I received an email from one of the recruiters who found my resume on one of the job search engines. He wanted to know if I would be interested in a COO position in Orange County. I said that I would be; it would be a shorter drive and I would not have to relocate to work there.
All of this interest in me got me to thinking over the weekend; actually, it was Saturday while I was out on the balcony reading and smoking.
What happens if I get a job offer from one company while another and more interesting company is still considering me?
Do I take the job offer on hand and not worry about what might happen to me? Or, do I take the offered job with the shaded thought of bailing out if the more interesting job offer comes to pass?
My best instinct tells me that I should take what comes along. It also tells me that I should act honorably and not leave the first company in the lurch. Besides, one does not want to create a negative image.
Negative images are generally harsh on a career unless you are a photographer.
Backups
I have become very consistent about backing up my hard drive now. I am now backing up the complete drive on a monthly basis. I am backing up the critical material on an as created basis so that I backup my dissertation every time I work on it.
When I made the April backup, I was able to shed around 300 MB worth of unread and unnecessary files from the hard drive. This will modestly improve performance I think.
Microsoft Calculator Plus
This is one Microsoft program that I can honestly say that I love. It is a small, simple to use, free, always a compelling price, program. I use the program when I chat with people who live outside of the United States.
The United States has not yet joined the metric world. We still use the old English Imperial measurements even though we passed a law decades ago that said we would convert to the metric system.
I guess this is one of the benefits of being a superpower.
As many of you know, I have a number of chat partners who live in China. The program makes it easy for me to convert my measurements, like temperature and distance, into something that is meaningful for them.
The Dissertation
I finished Chapter One yesterday.
The term “finished” needs to be qualified just a bit.
I finished my writing of the chapter. I plan to have someone else proof read the chapter; this should lead to some changes in the text. Then, my Committee Chair will read and require a whole lot more changes. After I make all of his changes, he will then submit it to the other members for their comments and changes.
Once all of the changes are made, it will be considered an acceptable chapter. I am making progress and I feel very good about that.
Reading and Smoking
This was an excellent weekend for reading and smoking for me. It was warmish [65F / 17C] out on the balcony. There was very little in the way of a breeze. That was just about perfect reading conditions.
It was also prefect for smoking too.
I am still plodding along with my biography of Thomas Jackson. It was written in the later 1800s so the grammar and sentence structure is labored. It is a slow read compared to most modern works.
I think in another week or so it will be time to break out the shorts and short sleeved shirts and enjoy Summer.
As U Lyk It
I saw an updated version of the Shakespeare classic last night.
I had read the play before but in the original version so this was a sometimes bizarre version for me and confusing at times. My difficulty was compounded by the play’s flip flop of grammar; some lines were the original version and some were more modern day English. For the most part, the play did seem to follow the original fairly closely. The cast was energetic and very capable.
There seemed to be a change in the direction the play took. There was an increased emphasis on what some would call alternative life styles and same sex relationships. I don’t recall this as being part of the Bard’s original play concept. I believe this emphasis probably resulted in bad word of mouth and poor ticket sales. I think about half of the regular theater goers stayed home last night.
The play was in its world premiere presentation. I will let others decide if it was a good idea or not.
That is not a way to make money at the box office.
I sort of question the decision to stage the play in a conservative local community theater. It is not likely to engender high renewal sales for the next season. I saw this happen once before at another venue. The theater took three or four years to recover the lost season ticket sales.
On the plus side, I did see some substantial seat location improvement so I may be benefiting next year, assuming that I renew the tickets.
In the end, I think I enjoyed myself. I am not certain if I would want to see the play performed again anytime soon.
Internet Service Provider
I use Earthlink as my internet service provider and have since I went online in 1995.
Lately, I have been running into trouble with the service. I am getting more dropped connections and otherwise poor service. I can connect to the internet and receive my email and chat but I have trouble surfing the web. It is extremely frustrating to have to power cycle the modem, restart the connection, and reboot the laptop several times just be able to achieve a reasonable, high speed download capacity.
Earthlink is a high cost service provider also.
I had some time to think about the service while I was out on the balcony smoking this afternoon. It seems to me that I can drop back on Earthlink to a dial-up connection speed and sign up for DSL service with the local phone company and have more money left over at the end of the month.
I figure that I would need close to a year to convert everyone I email and those that send me material to a new email address. That doesn’t seem like a very long period and I could probably do it faster with a minimal degree of effort on my part. I will contact the phone company tomorrow and see what the cost is and how soon I can get connected.
That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope you spent your weekend well. I also want to wish all of the readers a joyful Easter or Passover.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 7:49 PM
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