Month: January 2009

Whoa, I didn’t know…

The upcoming film “Hotel for Dogs” was a book penned by none other than New Mexico’s own Lois Duncan. As a kid, I loved many of Ms. Duncan’s books.

I understand that the hype from the film has given new life to her writing career that went a bit off track after the brutal unsolved killing of her 20 year old daughter.

Back in the day, my mom used to take us kids swimming on a hot summer day to the Coronado Club on Kirtland Air Force base. Occasionally we’d see Ms. Duncan there (I believe her husband worked for Sandia Labs).

That was back in the days when mommies stayed at home and would take the kiddies to the pool and we would meet daddies after work for dinner. It may do my mom’s heart good to know that I have incredibly fond memories of those days.

And that fondness includes Lois Duncan. I’m happy to see her back in the show.

This was all brought to the front of my mind by a great article written by Joline Gutierrez Krueger for the ABQjournal:

“Real-Life Tragedy Almost Derails ‘Hotel for Dogs’ Author’s Career”

BeardWatch

Evidently…the beard is back.

On the public stage looking to have a big job = No Beard

Slinking back home to New Mexico in defeat = Beard

Or something like that.

That’s our Bill.

Source

They never promised life would be fair

Today was a particularly tough day for me to roll out of bed with the alarm and come to work.

I didn’t sleep well last night due mainly to the crazed feline. I have a friend who has a theory that occasionally the cat brain will release some hormone that is akin to kitty crack, which then is the reason for the dilated eyes and tendency to gallop around the house making crazed movements.

If that is true, then my personal feline got deep into the kitty crack at about 3:30 in the ayem, and is, today, my least favorite person in the world.

Sleepy eyed, I ventured out onto the highway to make my way into my place of employment. I was heartened to see the sun slanting over the hills with the promise of a really warm day. This never fails to cheer me.

But that smile turned into a snarl when I made the merge and found myself rolling behind this.

Click for full size if you can’t make it out. If you can make it out, what you see there is a Forerunner with two surfboards sticking out the back.

Dude driving and his long-haired blond lady in the passenger seat are headed, I assume, to Pacifica for a nice day of surfing.

While I drive to work to sit under florescent lights all day and literally watch my muscles lose their elasticity. In a building located in what is considered one of the most foggy and windy areas of the Bay Area.

And this is fair how?

The yawning generation gap

I remember as a kid, and especially a teenager, being really, really into music. I still am, but it was something most vital to me back then. An escape, a place to speak emotions and thoughts I didn’t have the words or maturity to say. It spoke to my soul.

And I remember my grandmother or mother or some adult making a comment about the music that mattered to me, and thinking, “they just don’t get it.”

I recall swearing to myself, SWEARING that I wouldn’t let there be that generation gap as I got older.

And I’ve fought it. Hard. I listen to current music. I do my best to stay up to date, so I’m at least conversant.

Yesterday, I was listening to my iPod on the way home from work, and the shuffle landed on a Rihanna song.

I like Rihanna. I like her a lot, actually. I think she’s not only stunningly beautiful, but she’s talented.

The song that came on is entitled “Unfaithful.”

In the song, the story goes that the woman is with a guy, and that it’s more than love, he is “The reason that the sky is blue.”

But gosh darn it all, she just can’t seem to stay true to him.

She cries out, “And I know that he knows I’m unfaithful/And it kills him inside/To know that I am happy with some other guy/I can see him dying.”

She then wraps up the chorus with, “I don’t wanna be…/A murderer.”

Ok, ok, this is all very emotional. Her cheating is “killing” him. He’s “dying inside” and she is the “murderer” for doing this to him.

And this is when the yawning chasm that is the generational gap became oh so apparent and the years of my experience in this thing called life kicked in.

I found myself, listening closely to the words, and then *yelling* at my stereo:

“THEN LEAVE HIM! IF THERE IS NO WAY YOU WON’T CHEAT AND IT PAINS YOU TO SEE HIM ‘DYING INSIDE’ THEN BE A GROWN UP AND WALK AWAY!!!”

Ahem.

Yeah.

Sure, I know that, “He’s a nice guy but I just can’t be true to him and so I did the mature thing and broke up with him so I could go sow my wild oats, knocking boots with everything that walks so that one day I can be a sad, bitter old hag wondering whatever happened to my life and why I never found a nice guy,” doesn’t really make for fun, emo deep pop songs.

And I’m fairly certain that the young twentysomethings that work for me would roll their eyes and think, “she just doesn’t get it.”

I think I just grew a new gray hair.

“Hey you kids, get off my lawn!!!”

That which is taboo

Yup, I’m in love again. Painful, lustful, forbidden love with a steely, powerful object.

My new employer is a lot behind the times when it comes to IT expertise, but they are hip as hip can be with the portable crowd.

When I started work, I was asked “Would you like a PC or a Mac?”

Why, the answer was simple. Mac, please!

In fact, that was one of the go-no go requirements of changing jobs. Having used nothing but a Mac for the past twelve years, I would say I was reluctant to slip back to the Windows based environment.

So, my previous employer provided Macs, but they were refurb and a step or two behind the technology curve.

Not so with fascinating new employer.

No, I got to work and was greeted with a sleek, sexy, top of the line MacBook Pro. The 15-inch variety, 2.53GHz. Four beefy GB of memory. A roomy 300GB hard drive.

Yum!

It has this utterly awe inspiring, new crystal clear glass screen, the cool backlit black keys, and the glass trackpad with NO button. Nope, it’s all in one. You can scroll on that bad boy, click anywhere and whoa does it work nice.

The unibody design is light and compact and feels solid and well built.

This thing beats the crap out of my last work machine, an old style MacBook pro, that poor dented aluminum thing.

Then yesterday, I had occasion to work from home, and as I sat on the couch, caressing the keys of this hot young MacBook Pro, I looked at my VERY old, personally owned 17″ PowerBook (it dates back to, I believe, 2004) and then at my new work speedster and yes…I fell in love.

I mentioned later to The Good Man that I was in love, and that I may have to save our pennies (a LOT of pennies) to buy one of these. This might ensure that my writing projects are no longer in peril of going to the great bit bucket in the sky when my PowerBook fails…and it will. Soon.

He couldn’t hear me. He was too busy caressing his own brand new MacBook Air (well, new to us…he bought it refurb on a smoking good deal).

The family that computes together (on the same platform) stays together.

We’ll call this: Still life with Macsexy Beast. Taken with my company provided 3G iPhone.

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Oh, a small bit of irony. My beautiful, glorious MacBook Pro machine……well my IT organization got a hold of it first to set it up. They also turned it over and used an old fashioned electric engraver to scratch the company name and identifying information into the unibody metal case in a shaky script.

I believe, when the tip of the engraver touched the silky nickel aluminum blend unibody, somewhere in Infinite Loop, Steve Jobs shuddered.

Who engraves stuff anymore? My *dad* used to do that!?!!?!?