Sent from your pretentiousness

It’s been with some shock and amazement that the computing community has been given the news that Steve Jobs won’t be giving the keynote address at MacWorld this year. For the uninitiated, MacWorld is the annual trip to Mecca (otherwise known as the Moscone Center in San Francisco) for the Mac faithful. On top of that, this is the last year Apple will be part of MacWorld, so Steve isn’t even coming to say goodbye.

*sniff*

Why on earth should anyone act surprised by this? Most people that don’t have an ego the size of a larger solar body would certainly want to give a last tip of the hat to the cultish followers that drive their company’s success. But Steve is not in the category of smaller-sized egos. He does things on his own terms. He strikes new paths. He blazes trails. Even Chuck Norris is scared of him.

And Steve makes sure everyone knows it and promotes it by infusing four little words into an ever-increasing number of people’s lives: "Sent from my iPhone".

Those four little words just bug the bat-crap out of me. I work with no fewer than three people now (it started with just one, like a Lay’s potato chip) who have iPhones. Sometimes they’ll fire off an e-missive…yes, that’s mine and you’ll have to pay to use it…using their little bundle of joy when they’re out and about. I don’t mind that part. But I mind that every e-missive comes with the four little words tacked on at the end.

Says Steve Jobs, "This guy just sent you something from this really cool phone I made, and I want you to know about it. I want you to feel inferior for not having one, and to go by one."

I say, "I have a phone I think is way, way more cool than your iPwn. And it lets me install anything I want on it. And when I send an e-missive from it, there’s no chance of something thinking I’m a pretentious iPwn user. Because there are no little words appended on my messages. For that matter, you won’t even know if I’m on the road, sitting at my desk, or sneaking up behind you to choke you with the cord to the crappy headphones that came with your iPwn."

Says Steve, "You can buy better headphones for your iPwn now. They’re from Apple, which means they’re great. And they’re only $99."

Says I, "Didn’t the crappy headphones come from Apple too?"

I believe in good marketing, design, etc. etc. but geez. Maybe now the cult will simmer down a bit that Steve won’t be giving people "one more thing" each January.

Pure as the driven snow

There are some things in life that just make you feel warm and fuzzy. Some of them particularly so if you’re a geek. I would be considered by some to be a geek (just ask my daughter!) and so I have a warm and fuzzy to share…

My blogging software finally works properly on my desktop PC.

Sure, that may not seem like a big deal. But it’s never worked right on this machine, so whenever I would blog it was always from my laptop. I have a very nice laptop, but it just isn’t as convenient as sitting down at my desk where my machine is always on and inviting with the ice-blue LED glow of power lights. As an aside, why does everyone think such a piercing, blinding color is appropriate to use anyway? I’ve actually disabled some of them on my machine because they were so overpowering. Anyway…

So, what the problem was I’ll never be sure. But I was having trouble getting Word to run lately, and if that isn’t going to work for me then it’s just time to get down to business. So I did something else that gives me warm fuzzies, and that I haven’t done in a long, long time. I completely reformatted and installed my machine again. It had been through a few upgrades to the operating system and various software, and somewhere along the line a hairball got stuck in its processing craw.

So at this time of year, when we’re all remembering the small things that make us thankful, remember me. A humble computer dork getting warm fuzzies over taking hours of time to re-install a computer to fully working order. Because then when you’re wishing you somehow had more to look forward to with your life, you can think "Wow, at least I’m not that guy".

I Felt a Little Bit of Barf in My Mouth Just Then

It’s been way too long since I’ve written. So a fast update: marriage is good. I recommend it to anyone, and highly discourage (heh…must have meant encourage it when married to my ex) divorce as much as possible.

So I’ve wanted to address some of this Presidential (and geez, with this field I should probably write that with a lower-case “p”) race. I’m watching the second debate between McCain and the media’s big “O” right now. And it’s such a complete crock of nonsense. It’s makes a little bit of my dinner come up in my mouth. Dinners and debates are alike in that neither one is all that great when regurgitated.

What disturbs me…viscerally…is when politicians talk about “the American Dream”. I love the American Dream. I live and dream the American Dream. But not the bastardized version the political pimps are running around trying to whore out to the American people.

The American Dream is not about guaranteeing that everyone has a house, or health care, or a good job, or a high salary, or even the best food. It’s about guaranteeing that each of us has the opportunity to make those things happen for ourselves. That we have the freedom to take risks, rise to challenges, overcome obstacles, and live or die by our own decisions to do so.

I’m not a wealthy person. I do well, and have a good job. It wasn’t handed to me, and I didn’t have a rich set of parents to make it all happen. I grew up qualifying for free school lunches, but not taking advantage of them. I grew up learning how to work so I would have the skills to make my way through college, and paying the consequences for my own mistakes. I worked 45 hours a week while carrying a full-time college course load. That brought me to the point of having the qualifications to start on a good career path in which I have continued to work hard so that I can progress and rise in my field and sphere.

Also during my career I have known and heard people that didn’t want to work hard. Didn’t want to continue to learn and grow. Wanted to just coast through their careers, continue getting paid, and largely not have much expected of them. They didn’t think it was fair when they didn’t receive larger salaries because of an individual failing. They thought ill of those who were rewarded for their efforts.

I’ve worked to encourage and mentor several people in that second category. But it’s their choice, ultimately, whether or not to step up and take responsibility for their own success, failure, or mediocrity. And ultimately my own success is mine. We, as a country, need to come to a remembrance that the only thing that is supposed to be “fair” about our country is our ability to succeed or fail on our own.

This presidential race is only one to the bottom at this point. Thank goodness there’s at least a VP candidate that I think might actually believe in the real American Dream in the middle of a group of pandering, slavering idiots that only support the building of the whiniest society this country has ever known.

If I Were a Child Actor, I’d be Billy Mumy

Fortunately my long absence hasn’t been due to a deep-space screw-up by Dr. Smith. Of course I don’t have a robot sidekick to hang out with either, and goodness knows there isn’t a tech geek that wouldn’t love to have one of those.

So it probably goes without saying that I’ve been busy. Busy busy busy. But it’s been a good busy, and I’ve been having very positive things happen in my life. Let me recap what has been the best thing to happen to me in a while…

In Columbus we have this great thing called Skybus. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a discount airline that sells seats for as little as $10 each way. My mom and I had scored some of those really cheap seats to go visit my brother while he was doing an internship at Microsoft last year, and so when a new block of seats went on sale last September I determined that I would grab a cheap seat for a trip to Los Angeles. In January. Yep, I booked five months in advance for a trip out west just because it was exceedingly cheap.

So fast-forward to January and I nearly cancelled my trip because I didn’t have any real plans for anything to do out there, and since the ticket had been so cheap it didn’t really matter. But something just wouldn’t let me do it. A little something in me kept saying I should take the trip, and a family that used to live in our area found out I was headed their direction and invited me to stay with them. Free room and board, so I was set.

Meanwhile, around Christmas I had joined eHarmony. It was like a switch flipped in me and I was ready to journey into the world of experimental non-singleness again. Sure, I’d dipped my toe in the water a couple times over the past few years, but with only mixed success. I liked eHarmony though, and how it handled matches and so forth. Very much more a service, rather than feeling like I was hanging out in an online bar trying to attract people with pithy comments.

So yeah, I met someone on there. Several someones actually, but one of them in particular I was being a bit more chatty with. She lived in Las Vegas, but I really wasn’t minding because retty much everyone I was matching with was in and around the Utah area. Limiting yourself to “only Latter-Day Saints” seems to do that. Then a couple days before heading out to L.A. on my little excursion I got a lesson in west coast geography and learned that L.A. and Vegas really aren’t all that far apart. So I dropped a quick note about how I was flying out there in two days and if she was interested it might be fun to get together somewhere.

Get together we did, and had a nice time, if not slightly overwhelming. The other Mormon’s in the room will be the one’s to appreciate this, but because of a previously scheduled ward outing, I wound up being invited to join in a trip up to the Vegas temple. To do sealings. For a first date. Everyone assumed we were married, which was only slightly awkward (a lot) but we both had a good sense of humor about it. Then we had dinner with her one sister and brother-in-law that also live in Vegas, whose house I then crashed at for the night. In the morning her brother-in-law invited me to help with an Elder’s quorum move, so I went. Why not? It was just all kind of surreal, so I was just going with it.

And the weird thing was that, though it all caught me a bit off guard, I like it. Most guys in that situation would have found a door as quick as they could, never looked back, and never called again. And while I did eventually excuse myself back to L.A. later that day and got my head around what an over-the-top first date it all was, I was by no means wanting to pretend it never happened and close that chapter.

We’ve talked since then. A lot. Every day or two, for hours at a time. She’s visited out here since then. My kids love her, and so does my family. I’m headed out there in a couple weeks to meet more of hers. Probably in shifts since she’s one of sixteen kids, which is nearly impossible for me to fathom. The thought of one person having that many kids makes my uterus scream in anguish, and I’m a guy. Guys don’t have a uterus after all, and yet somehow I have one in phantom form that’s just screaming at the top of its lungs. Go figure. But from what I’ve gotten to know of her family so far it obvioulsy has worked very well for them.

So I seem to be on a good path here. Someone I really get that really gets me, shares the same values, probably has more experience raising kids than me given that she’s number five of the Family von Trapp, and isn’t a closeted lesbian. Like I said, we’ve been talking a lot, which accounts for me not being around here much. Hard to type up an entry when you’re on the phone until midnight since the other person is three hours behind.

All in all I’m feeling pretty good with things. There are some other things brewing too, but I can cover those later. No midnight calls tonight, but I do need to get some catching-up sleep from the others I’ve had recently.

Being Careful What You Wish For

My brother “gave” me my Christmas present this evening. Not a present really, other than that of time, but that’s good too.

He had told me on Christmas day that he wanted to watch something in particular with me. Something that we, as brothers, could bond over.

What he didn’t realize, and I couldn’t have forseen, was that he gifted me with my warm-down lap I was complaining about the other day.

“How so?” you might ask. Simple. He had located the Star Wars Holiday Special, in its unholy entirety, online. This show is a thing of myth. Legendary in its fecal prowess. The kind of thing that prisoners in Guantanamo are subjected to when waterboarding doesn’t prove to be successful.

In short, it’s a painful piece of dreck that George Lucas wishes had never been produced. And with good reason.

Feel free to watch the first few minutes (or the whole thing if you’re a masochist), and keep in mind that the breakneck pacing in the first 10 minutes is kept up throughout the whole of the show.

For those of you also requiring a holiday warm-down lap, enjoy!

Even The Wannabes Get A Warm-Down Lap

A couple weeks away from the blog again. It’s been the end run for Hallowchristmagiving, and it’s been busy. Work parties, making cheesecake to take to said parties, buying gifts, etc. etc. etc. All the good and great stuff we all love to do, but that really winds up meaning I don’t have much time in the evenings to sit and put thoughts up for public consumption.

And then, suddenly — abruptly even — it is all over.

I didn’t want it to be all over. I wasn’t ready for it to be over. I was enjoying it too much. I had a great time with my kids and my extended family. I kept to a good budget but still wound up being super-dad in the gifting department. I enjoyed everything about the season this year, the entire way through. And I wasn’t lonely, even when I was alone. This was my third Christmas as a single person, and it felt "normal".

So I was caught off guard when it ended so cleanly and surgically. I was at my parent’s with the kids, and stayed through the day after Christmas. Then I left the kids there to visit while I came back home to finish out the work week, and as I was pulling out of the driveway I turned on the radio to listen to Christmas music. And it wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere. Every station had stopped playing any music relating to the holiday season, and was back to a rotation that would have been considered lame thirty years ago.

The music has to stop at some point, I know. But consider when it started. I began driving my oldest daughter nuts a few days before Thanksgiving by listening to Christmas music. I loved it. Sure I’ve mocked the commercialism of the fourth-quarter retail money-grab for the past couple months. But I love all the rest of how this time of year makes me feel. The build-up was great! The subtle infiltration of holiday cheer and spirit into the nooks and crannies of my day-to-day life felt fantastic, and the big day itself was thoroughly enjoyable.

So being dropped like a rock is a bit of a stunner for me this year. And it doesn’t really help that nobody…and I mean nobody…in any stake or congregation in this area seems to have any plans for a New Year’s get together of any type. That’s when the official end of the season is supposed to be as far as I’m concerned, and instead it’s been cut off at the knees. Though I can admit to having some moderately high standards for New Year’s, as my all-time favorite was going to Time’s Square and meandering around Manhattan.

Sidebar: For some perspective on just how fun New Year’s in Manhattan is to do, consider this. I did that with my ex before we were divorced, but after she had started living the gay life and leaving me panicked and wondering why things were in such shambles. So it was so good that, even when life sucked and I felt like absolute hell, I still had a good time. Everyone should go do it sometime, and I fully intend to do it again someday, though preferably as part of the all-evening party in Bubba Gump’s Shrimp.

So I don’t feel like I’ve been allowed my cool-down lap after Christmas. Somebody flipped a switch somewhere and palpably turned everything off, and I’m just not reconciled with it yet.

As General Waverly in "White Christmas" would say, "Don’t just leave me standing here. How do I get off this stage?"

How Can She Be Saying Hello When She’s Showing Ta-Ta?

I keep saying I’m going to do this more than once a week, and yet here it is a week later. Again. Good thing I’m not trying to generate any ad revenue. Google would probably have me owing them money if I were. Not that they aren’t already selling my soul online one small piece at a time.

Side thought: If Google if mining me for information, should I feel guilty enough to talk to my bishop? I should probably just feel guilty for seeing innuendo in things like that. (heh)

Anywho…speaking of innuendo, this post’s title is loaded with it. I’ve had it in mind for a while now as I’ve held back this story for a bit. So the story goes something like this:

My oldest (the Model) has a cell phone on my dime. It makes it handy to get in touch with the kids since their mom doesn’t see fit to (a) have a home phone number and (b) ever answer her own cell phone when called. After a surprise bill one month thanks to the fine folks at "Joke-A-Day" though I disabled instant messaging and so forth on her phone. She knows not the vastness of her own power to inadvertently cost me $45 in a month without hardly trying.

At least, I thought I had completely disabled instant messaging on her phone. Perhaps I have. It’s kind of hard to say really. Because one evening she received a picture message from her mom, although because of the block she couldn’t see it. Instead she received a blurb telling her that she had one and needed to go to a web site from my carrier to view it.

When she received the notice I was on the main computer (yes, as in there are multiple) at home, so she asked if I could open the web site for her to see the message. I was happy to since I wanted a distraction from the side-project I was working on. So I type in the web address, punch in the code to access the message, and get…

A tight shot of a big-chested woman wearing a t-shirt that says "I (heart) You". And almost before I can realize it’s an animated image, and definitely before I can finish thinking "This won’t end well" off comes the shirt and a second of bouncing commences.

So there it is. My oldest daughter receives a booby-shot message from her mother. Her very overtly, "you need to love me no matter who I am", gay mother.

As fast as my fingers would move, I closed the web browser. But it was too late. It had been seen, and the damage was done. Reflexes, as those of us old enough to remember from WKRP, have their limits. And those limits can only be exceeded when alcohol is provided to Dr. Johnny Fever. I neither drink, nor am I Dr. Johnny Fever. So there it is.

Brakeback did tell me later that the message must have somehow sent by accident from her phone. It was definitely her message though, as a "friend" had sent it to her. My oldest immediately knew which friend that must be, who I shall simply refer to as "The Flake". That didn’t help her feel any better about it.

So the moral of the story is this: if you have friends that send you phone porn, make sure you keep your keypad locked so it doesn’t accidentally forward to your kids, or your boss, or someone else important that might form a negative opinion about you.

Or, better yet, just avoid phone porn altogether I guess.

First Life…Second Life…As Long As I Have One

Many, many days since last writing. Kanye went quiet after his mom’s unexpected death, so no new lyrics (though reportedly there will be a new batch for the impending second trimester celebration). Without that extra bump of energy, how can I be expected to keep up here when there’s been so much going on?

The biggest part of my free time has been taken up with Single Adults. Yes, I seem to have finally caught some kind of vision for the program. My vision is that what we have right now really does suck as bad as I’ve always said. But beyond that I also caught a vision for how it only sucks as long as I, and the other singles that could benefit from it, stay away.

Here’s a quick story. I am the SA rep in my ward pretty much for one reason: everybody else had already been asked and turned down the calling. Very "Night Court" really. So I’d be like Harry, except that I’m bald, which would be like Bull, but I’m not that tall and imposing. So at least I’m not Roz.

By the way, if you didn’t just get that whole reference then you’re probably too young for me. (Drattit)

So of course once you have a vision for something, you need to start acting on it. So I did. Lots of putting together mailers and e-mails. Lots of organizing contact information. And all culminating in helping put together a last-minute Thanksgiving dinner for any single adult in the area that wanted to come. We had about thirty people show up, so for something executed in five days we all felt pretty good about it.

The weekend continued to be good from there. Good college football (home team wins, beating the big-time rival), time with some friends, and some of my kids asking to go to church even while at their mom’s. Life has been good.

So why haven’t I been around here lately? I mean, besides being busy of course? Like all things, computer parts have a defect rate, and that rate caught up with me. Now, after paying for and installing a new motherboard things are better than ever.

So now both the first and second lives of Señor Monkey are right and good. Sweetness!

Sympathy for the Devil

Actually, the Stones song in Guitar Hero III is “Paint it Black”. I finally picked up an X-Box 360 the other day along with GH3. I’m giving it to the family (i.e. me and the kids) at Thanksgiving so everyone can play along with all the extended family. I had to break it all out and test it while the kids weren’t here though. Of course. Had to make sure everything was in working order and all. Good thing too, because the wireless guitar controller I originally got didn’t work, which was disappointing.

GH3 is an excellent game, with perhaps one exception. There’s a bit of a cartoony story line, and the rockers wind up on the wrong side of the devil. Typical rocker theme, for sure. Except the devil isn’t usually portayed as a fatter, sunglasses-wearing Wolverine wannabe. He just wasn’t an imposing devil figure.

But then what is the nature of the devil anyway? Or the origin of evil for that matter? I was driving to work last week and through some odd chain of thought or another my mind wound up on this track, along with one of those insights where a person has a bit of a smack-the-forehead “well of course that’s it” moment.

Another primer for the non-Mormons in the room. The Book of Mormon is a book of scripture we read in companionship with the Bible. Both are sacred scripture to us. And in one of the first books in the Book of Mormon, known as Second Nephi, is this bit of knowledge:

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh ; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life , through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.

Eternal life to us means much more than just living forever. It’s about living forever in the presence of God, with our families. Family is an intrinsic part  of salvation from our perspective. For me, an eternity without my children would really…well…suck. My “aha” moment started to come with a clarity on an emotional as well as cognitive level of just how badly my former mother-in-law had blown that all to hell for Brokeback’s entire family. That entire family turned away from the gospel and from God in general. They all determined that if God didn’t agree with their choices, then He must be wrong.

That brought about the second half of my “aha”, and an understanding of the nature of Satan that I hadn’t had before. The last part of that scripture reference says “might be miserable like unto himself”, and is something that I’d heard innumerable times since I was a kid. But the meaning of it finally hit home completely. Brokeback’s mom couldn’t admit that any of her kids were doing anything wrong. And what’s the one way to make yourself feel better about your position when you can’t admit that you’re wrong about it? Why, get others to agree with you, of course. If you have numbers on your side, then of course you must be right.

It’s a simple school-yard mentality really. If I can get enough people, especially key people, to agree with my position regadless of how cockamamy it may be, then I must be right. Everybody in Brokeback’s family bought into it, and I keep vigil with my kids to do my best to help keep them from being sucked in. But in the bigger perspective, that’s all Satan really is too. God kicked him out, and he just couldn’t admit he was wrong. It’s not that Satan spends him time saying “I’m going to go get people to commit some evil today, because evil is cool!” He’s just stewing over being wrong. Knowing deep down that he’s wrong. But being way, way too prideful to admit it to himself. And so instead he tries to get people to agree with him. Or at the very least to disagree with God’s position. Because then that, of course, would prove that he’s right.

Then again, he might pull some evil sometimes just because it’s fun. I just finished watching Dancing With The Stars, and one of the couples did a routine to The Cure’s “Why Can’t I Be You”. Sung by the house band. And an evil joke is the only explanation I can imagine to explain what I heard.

Hunting Sasquatch Without a Gun

It’s been ten days, and a do have a few stories to tell about. I was going to write a post exclusively about how cute and awesome all my kids were for the last day of the first trimester of Hallochristmagiving. But that is so last week now (literally). So suffice to say that they were all awesome, and it was hysterical to watch a whole crowd of kids streaming across someone’s half-acre front yard in costume. Looked like something out of one of my favorite movies, only less gruesome. So now that I’m out of my candy-induced coma, it’s time to get a little more current.

Time for another quick primer to bring those non-Mormons in the crowd. Our church is divided up similarly to other churches, but with slightly different names. Our congregations are called Wards, or in the case of small congregations Branches. A collection of Branches and Wards is called a Stake. Multiple Stakes comprise a region. All the regions together are the Church at large. Twice a year, each congregation has a special set of meetings called a conference. Same at the Stake and Church levels too. Got it? Good.

So today was Stake Conference in my area. Well, last night too, counting the Saturday evening session. At the Saturday evening session I wasn’t sure where I was going to sit. I walked in looking around for anyone I might know so I wouldn’t feel like a complete dork sitting by myself. This morning, no big deal. Walked in and there was a good friend with his wife and kids and an extra spot. But last night there were plenty of open spaces next to lots of people I just flat-out didn’t know. And then I spotted one with some members from the Single Adult committee. Saved, if not at least a bit uncomfortably so. One of the sisters on the committee might be referred to as “awkward”, “different”, or “at least mildly off-balance”.

Once I was settled in, it was a little easier to relax and just look around to see who else was there. And what I realized was that there were lots of single people. Though most were below the minimum threshhold set for me by my oldest daughter. I’m not allowed to date anyone younger than 30 by her rules, since anyone younger would be too uncomfortably young to think of in a motherly capacity. I don’t have the heart (or the nerve) to point out that even someone at 30 would only have been 15 at the time she was conceived. If I ever did mention it, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to date anyone under 50. Not that it really matters as I haven’t been on a date since March. But I digress.

So I notice that there are lots of single people around at least in their twenties. And I’m pretty sure that there were others there in the “acceptable dating age” range. But with all the icky married people there, sitting with the single people they’ve taken under their wings, it was impossible to tell them apart. They were utterly, socially camouflaged. Conference in itself was enjoyable enough, sure. But knowing that Sasquatch were out there, hiding and likely not even knowing they were so completely invisible, was a frustrating experience.

In an effort to bring the Sasquatch out of hiding, I’ve stepped up my efforts to fill my calling in the Single Adult committee. I’ve volunteered to take on the responsibility of compiling the list of activities for all the surrounding stakes and circulate them so that everyone will know what’s going on. We’re really, really terrible in two areas when it comes to Single Adult activities: (a) having them and (b) letting people know when we’re having them. I’ve just grown tired of there not being any good way to socially meet people in general, and seeing that there are single people sitting in the same chapel and not getting together to have a good time just tears it.

I just don’t want to get fooled like the guy that took this picture though. He thought he might have found a Sasquatch, but the experts have said it’s just a bear with mange. I don’t need another one of those though. Brokeback was enough of that. She even tried to take my picnic basket when she left to be with another mangy bear.