[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Happy 2016 Winter Solstice!
- To: robert-friends
- Subject: Happy 2016 Winter Solstice!
- From: http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (Robert)
- Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2016 08:08:08 -0800
Happy Winter Solstice!
Here is my latest contact information:
Robert
.
where-I-live
my-Oakland-voicemail-number (voicemail)
our-San-Jose-phone-number
our-Oakland-cell-phone-number (cell)
http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert
http://www.
My solstice update is below.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
News
Lifestyle
* Careers
* Not an apple turnover. The piece of the company that does
primarily software development was sold off this year. We're now
an independent company. A little scary, but at least the monkey
is no longer sitting on our backs. As long as there continue to
be cyber security breaches and compromises, we'll probably be fine.
* Heavy courting. An internship spot was available for my nephew
this year. In an effort to make the idea of joining after their
university education is completed, the company went out of their
way to provide stellar accomodations. They provided a luxury
apartment with access to a pool, a small gym, good access to
public transit, and very high speed internet. Due to above
situation with my company, it's doubtful that anything even
vaguely like this will be offered again.
* Home
* Personal insecurity. At 3am, I heard the backdoor open. I jumped
out of bed and ran to the door. I found a man who had come into
the house. We had managed to leave the door unlocked. He was
asking for his friend named Ricky and thought that he had entered
his house. I loudly told him to leave. Luckily, he didn't want
trouble and was happy to go back out the door. It was a very
unnerving experience. Since then, we've been much more vigilant
about locking doors.
* Transportation
* Bicycle
* Shifting around for noise reduction. Wind noise while commuting
on my bike was getting annoying. So, I found these things you
stick on your helmet in front of your ears called "Cat Ears" to
tone down the high-pitched whistling of air passing by. They
make me look very strange. But, luckily, around here, people
are expected to look weird.
* Travel
* A visit to a toasty alpine. We never got to see the clear blue
water of Lake Tahoe in previous trips because it was frozen over.
This year, we traveled to Tahoe during a summer visit and stayed
in a summer home close to the water. The views and scenes were
quite nice, and the food was good. Some pics can be found at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/albums/72157670168346465
* Living in a bubble and with bubbles. After many years of living
in the Bay Area, I finally got to see the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
We stayed over the weekend in Monterey for Noelle's birthday and
took the chance to see some fish and other fauna. Got lots of
pics, which can be found at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/albums/72157677314495146
* Food
* An upper crust to crusty vegans. In July, we stumbled upon a
cooking demonstration at our local vegetable farm, which included
vegetable pakoras and eggplant (!) chocolate cake. After the demo
was done, we discovered that the chef was offering a high-end
vegan dinner at a local hangout. We knew we had to participate
and immediately bought tickets. It was an interesting, fun, and
tasty time.
* Health
* Eyes
* Visual distortions. I had several more visits with my retina
specialist to look at my eyes. My retina has improved slightly,
so much so that I actually had my optometrist prescriptions
filled out. I can see better, but there is definitely room
for improvement in my eyesight.
* Psyche
* Sometimes, there is no reconciliation. Some people and beings
are liked by everybody, and, oddly, some people and beings like
everybody. I am in neither category. I have come to accept
that there are some people and beings that I must never
associate myself with for the rest of my life. I am very lucky
that I have the ability and freedom to do this since there are a
great number of people who cannot extricate themselves from
their situations.
* People
* The last of the really great bohemians. Our former neighbor and
friend, a ballerina and popular and loved ballet teacher, passed
away suddenly (a matter of weeks) over the summer. Her life was
quite expansive and interesting. The memorial service was
engaging, beautiful, and moving. http://www.liselacour.com/?page_id=2
* Missing persons. I continue to no longer have email addresses
for these people:
Clayton Glad
Louise Zivnuska
Bruce Moreland
Scott Fraize
If you're in contact with any of these people, please tell them that
I am missing their email addresses.
* Clothing
* A long slog. It took quite a bit of research, but I managed to
find some ergonomic leather- and animal-free water-resistant boots
for the rare occasions when we receive rain in Ca.
Entertainment
* Movies
* The end of an institution. The only large cinema in downtown San
had to close its doors. It's unclear what's going to happen
with the various where-I-live-based film festivals. Perhaps they'll
move to more inconvenient venues.
* Not so on-demanding. Per usual, you can see my DVD Netflix queue at
http://tinyurl.com/nosnetflixqueue . Neither my Netflix instant watch
queue nor my Movielens ratings can be shared.
* Music
* Tearing down the wall with metal. Noelle was nice enough to take
me to a concert for my birthday this year. The band we saw was
Metalachi. They play heavy metal favorites using only mariachi
instruments and with a latino bent. It was funny, great, and
awesome, especially the violinist playing blazingly fast notes.
* Not a topping or a spread. Zepperella is a Led Zeppelin cover
band made up entirely of women. Founded by the Bonham-inspired
drummer, all the musicians are excellent. We saw 'em in August.
Some pics can be found at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/28490913983/ ,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/29004736812/ ,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/28821442680/ ,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/29108130355/ , and
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/28821447250/ .
* A bit of give and take. After all the years of living here, we
finally gave in and went to the where-I-live Jazz Festival. Although
we saw the drummer-percussionist Allison Miller, the big draw for
us was to see the Ukrainian band Dakhabrakha. "Jazz" is not how I
would describe them; definitely avant-garde and different, with
lots of vocal ensembles. Very good. Some pics can be seen at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/29003113632/ ,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/29108146425/ , and
https://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/28486795884/ .
* The not-so-well received receiver. We have this problem with our
stereo receiver circa turn-of-the-century where one of the
channels will just poop out. It is very annoying and we brought
it into the repair shop. After 5 weeks of trying to reproduce the
problem, I gave up and told them to just return it. It still has
the problem. I'm hoping that the receiver will just completely
die so that the problem will be obvious.
* Books
* Solid state power. I got to read two graphic biographies by Ted
Rall this year: Snowden and Trump. Each was so riveting, I read
each in a single sitting. I'm not certain that these will prepare
me for what's to come or not. It's doubtful that anything will.
* Avoiding idiocracy. Although I really only know him from his
books about shyness and his famous prison experiment, Phillip
Zimbardo was trying to relay a deeper message: a new lost
generation of boys due to technology and changing societal norms.
Not sure if I entirely agree with all of his conclusions, but
certainly an interesting hypothesis.
* The proper slaughtering of vegetables. Each vegetable has its own
nature, and needs to be treated individually. This is especially
true when it comes to their preparation, cooking, and placement in
an entree. In July, associated with the Cara Mangini's book,
there was a presentation of how to properly cut vegetables for
their ultimate consumption.
* Television
* Still not smart. We finally moved up to a 24" television from our
old 17" television, giving up the need for several converters and
adapters needed for compatibility with recent standards. However,
it's certainly not the cutting edge "smart" technology -- we're
still floating around about a 2013 technology at this point.
* Outdoors
* All Ohlone in Fremont. We traveled up to Fremont in October to
attend the annual gathering of the Ohlone, people native to this
area. Learned a lot and did a lot of walking.
Politics/Society
* Ecology/Environment
* Rain, rain, didn't go away. Emergency water regulations in
Ca have been scaled back. It did certainly rain quite a
lot in the spring and in the fall of this year. Because it was
out of the ordinary, my usual yard clean-up routines had to change
quite a bit over this year. That's quite apart from the hellish
Bermuda grass which has returned with a vengeance this year,
invading every square inch of ground.
* Voting/Elections
* Democrat for a day. I went through the hassle of changing my
voter registration just so that I could vote for Bernie Sanders in
the primary in Ca because it might have been the only
chance to change the wrongly-headed direction of the Democratic
Party. Because the party decided that it was in no mood to change
and to disappoint me, I reverted back to my usual third party
status.
* The greater of two evils. As with most people, I was shocked that
Donald Trump won the presidency, given the poll results.
Obviously, traditional polling does not work. Perhaps latent
statistical analysis of social media, internet searches, and some
apps will be more accurate. Who knows?
Technology
* Computers
* Slinking into the digital age. Our cassette tape deck was
sitting broken for months. While trying to deal with our stereo,
we also wanted to get the tape deck fixed. Turns out, it was as
expensive to get it repaired as it would be to just buy a
replacement. So, we opted for a replacement. As part of this
process, I realized that the days are numbered for being able to
play all these cassette tapes we have. We have started tediously
digitizing these tapes by connecting it up to a USB audio adapter
and using audacity to "record" to FLAC files.
* Internet
* Email
* A trip to the breach. The Yahoo mail hack was a bit of a pain,
'tho probably a good wake-up call for me. I systematically went
through all my passwords and secret questions to ensure there
was no possible overlap, and changed stuff.