Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Stoopid. With two ‘O’s.

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In working on the job submission tool I’m involved with at my job, it keeps amazing me just how many complaints and/or comments we’re getting from customers that they wouldn’t have if they would read the information on the page. But they don’t, and they whine, which forces us to attempt to dumb it down even further. I’m convinced that the lowest common denominator is sinking minute by minute.

Then I realize that I’m working in a place where there are signs posted on all the soda machines — which are free, and marked as such — explaining in four steps how to get your free soda from the machine.

  • Select and push button of desired soda.
  • Allow soda to drop.
  • Remove soda from cooler.
  • Please remove only one soda at a time.

As my dad once told me, “you will never lose betting on human stupidity.”

My most humble apologies!

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Erk…as horrid as a thing this is to admit, I goofed up.

Yesterday (the 15th) was my dad’s birthday, and in the midst of my usual weekend duties, I completely forgot to call. Or write an e-mail. Or post a note here.

Or anything. Sigh. I generally try to be better about this.

I’ll be calling tomorrow morning — if I’m lucky, before he gets up and checks this website…but if not…happy (late) birthday, dad! You’ll be hearing from me soon!

Dance, Spider-Man, dance!

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I think this has been going around on the ‘net for a while, but I just stumbled across it again. I don’t know who made it or where it’s from…but it amuses me.

Dance, Spider-Man, dance!

I don’t ‘forward’!

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I get a lot of things sent to me by the people I know, and that have my e-mail address. Some (many) annoy me, but at times I get sent stuff that I actually like, or find amusing, or some such.

Going through and cleaning up my hard drive after upgrading my system, I figured that a blog would be good way to keep all these things around in a central place…so, that’s what I’ve done! There’s only a couple things up there now (and they’re both pretty long), but more will appear as I keep digging through all the stuff I’ve got scattered around my drives.

So without further ado — I don’t ‘forward’!

Even cops get to play sometimes

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Every morning on my way to work, I walk out my door and head about five blocks down 8th avenue to my usual bus stop. Once a week, when I need to pick up my paycheck, I cut through the Freeway Park next to the Convention Center and head into downtown to the Today’s offices.

Since I had a paycheck waiting for me today, that was my route. Once I turned into the park entrance, though, I was a little concerned, as there was a small group of five police officers, all on their patrol bikes, grouped around the top of the staircase I normally head down. It didn’t look like anything was really happening, though, so I just kept going on my merry little way. Just before I got to the top of the stairs, one of the officers turned his bike around, carefully took aim — and started to attempt to ride his bike down the staircase, egged on by the other four officers he’d just been talking with, and another officer already at the bottom of the staircase.

He paused at the first landing long enough for me to walk by, then started working his way down again, only to take a tumble off his bike about halfway down. Fortunately, the next officer, already starting to ride down the stairs on his bike, managed to both avoid the one who’d just fallen off his bike and was laughing and trying to disentangle himself from the spokes, and keep going down without taking a spill. “It’s not as easy as it looks!” said the officer waiting at the bottom of the stairs, as we watched a couple more start to bump their way down.

Must’ve been a slow morning.

Man I wish I’d had my camera with me.

So it’s been a year

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I’d like to come up with something amazingly deep and profound to say, but for one reason or another, it’s just not in me. Besides, plenty of other people have worthwhile things to say.

I think part of my little bout of writer’s block is just that the entire situation is frustrating. One year ago, something huge and immensely terrifying happened. In the year since then, however, a multitude of other, smaller, less immediately noticeable things have happened (usually in the name of ‘patriotism’), that added up scare me as much as (and quite possibly more than) the attacks themselves. It’s a different kind of scare, but it’s a scare, nothenless. Awareness of this side of things does seem to be growing, though, which is good.

I guess, most of what I’d really want to say I’ve said already, either in some of my rants over the past year or in the links I’ve chosen to highlight in this blog (the majority of which, unfortunately, still reside in limbo).

I dunno. I’m rambling. Caught between wanting to say something, and not really having anything of real import to say.

What kind of God…?

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Thinking about the upcoming one year anniversary of Sept. 11th, Dave had this to say:

A common theme — what kind of God lets this happen. I answer that with another question. What kind of a country is so selfish that it doesn’t see that 9-11 was [the] tiniest big tragedy viewed from a global perspective. What about famine in Africa? What about AIDS? They wonder at the spiritual vision of a person who jumps from the World Trade Center to certain death, but don’t wonder about the millions of people who do the same thing with tobacco? It’s out of balance. We’re out of balance. 9-11 was, IMHO, a small upheaval in getting to some kind of equilibrium in how the U.S. participates in the world, both from the U.S. perspective, and the world’s perspective. That we got so much sympathy says how big the human heart is. That there wasn’t more celebrating in the streets of world capitals says that they forgive us for our selfish attitude, which is back in force as if 9-11 never happened.

So what was the lesson of 9-11 that the U.S. has failed to learn? I think it’s that God doesn’t think we’re as important as we do. The concept of national security is obsolete. We can’t close our borders. We live on this planet with everyone else. Global warming, AIDS, terrorism, all penetrate all borders. New York is a world city. The last gasps of isolationism will be snuffed out by more humiliation, until we get the truth, we aren’t above the rest of the world, but we are part of it.

Amen.

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Don’t hold back!

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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the Universe. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do…we were born to make manifest the Universe that is within us. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

— Marianne Williamson, Return to Love (via Unamerican)