Category: Theme Thursday

Thursday is the Right Day for SPAM

Over the course of the last week, my favorite Theme Thursday word of the week and creative idea fueling site was down.

They’d fallen victim to an especially tenacious comment spam-bot, so they shut ‘er down to get it sorted.

And so of course, with that in mind, this week’s theme is, you guessed it, SPAM.

SPAM, SPAM, SPAM…lovely spam! Wonderful SPAM!

Well…where can one go with SPAM? It’s either nuisance email or it’s shivering pink gelatinous goo in a square can. One I ignore and the other I fry up nice in a pan and gobble with a touch of mustard.

So I took to the waters of Google to find something different and was rewarded for my journey.

SPAM-ku. Like haiku, only SPAMmier.

Select bits from the MIT (yes, MIT) website:

This was filed under the “addiction” category…


Desire overwhelms.
“SPAM, I must have more of it!”
Freud would be enthralled.


and


Gave up cigarettes
No more drinking, and drug-free
Hidden stash of SPAM


Wow…such SPAM angst. I never knew one could have such delicious agony over luncheon meat.

Let’s see…what do we find under the “sex” category (cuz you knew it was going to go there)?


In regards to SPAM:
Sexual hangups aside,
It makes me feel strange.


or


Autoerotic!
Open can, insert member:
Wham, bam, thank you SPAM!


and then there is


Beneath the armpits

SPAM gives one a manly scent

Drives all women wild


Um…ok. : looks around nerviously : That’s just…odd.

And I like odd, but wow. There are literally pages and pages of SPAM-ku on that site. I believe they have over 5,000 bits of verse devoted to SPAM.

I’ve been known to take my OCD too far, but even I’m unsure about this.

But then I read a verse that speaks to me:


SPAM, too, needs a wife.
What consort for my Pork Prince?
Ah! The Velveeta!


Whoa. I do love the Velveeta and I’m not ashamed to own it. Maybe I am starting to understand these strange SPAM poets.

Then I read the SPAM verse that seems to sum it all up:


SPAM: the perfect food
For people who study Zen–
Meat, and yet not meat.

Ponder that for a while, why don’tcha?

Meanwhile, I think I’ll just have a salad and a walk for lunch. My cholesterol went up twenty points just reading about lovely, wiggly SPAM.





SPAM art found at Strategic Public Relations blog.


Stamp Out Business Speak

So when I wandered over the fun Theme Thursday page, I noted that this week’s theme word is: Cloud

Whenever I get the weekly word, I always take a moment to sit back and think about it. What are the first impressions that come to mind? What hits first?

So I did that this week. Cloud…cloud…what does that say to me….?

First thought: Freaking cloud! “In the Cloud” and “Cloud computing” and “it’s all about the cloud.”

RAAWWWWRAGH!

I haaaaaaate the ubiquitous use of the word “cloud” in today’s technical jargon.

This concept isn’t new. It isn’t bold. It’s the same old bullsheet that’s been tried several times with mixed results.

Once upon a time they called it hosted software. And then they called it application service provider or the more hip ASP. Back in the really golden old days they called it a Key Server. Even older than that was the not-very-PC term “dumb terminals”.

It’s all essentially the same.

I think “the cloud” is a dumb topic. Damnit, it’s not new and it’s not anywhere near as cool as the marketing would have you believe.

Here’s what those cloud providers want you to do….they want you to save nothing on your own local machine. They want you to put every single dingle bit of your information on their servers. All of it. All your letters to gramma. All of your negative balance bank statements. Your high school diploma. That email to your doctor about the funny bump on your rump. ALL OF IT.

And in return they promise, cross my heart and hope to die, that they’ll keep ALL of your data safe, tidy and secure.

Umm hmm.

Here’s where my skepticism comes in. I’ve worked in data centers. I’ve been a part of some of the most sophisticated and well regarded data centers in the world. And you know what? Sh%t happens.

Here’s a real world example: Very big data center in a very well regarded Fortune 50 company. My team had racked and stacked a large number of servers and storage devices. We were providing a for pay service to our customers with extraordinarily high expectations and high SLA’s.

Some of the best and brightest database admins, network managers, technical support, and engineering minds maintained this environment to very tiny tolerances.

One evening, the cleaning crew was doing their work in the data center and they plugged their vacuum into the power strip carrying the very, very delicate power balance for that entire row.

And they blew the circuit.

Now, we’d engineered the environment to fail over, and it did….but it was about a week to get all of those servers and storage devices brought back up, data restored and back to running in the production environment.

I suggested we put baby proof socket covers on the power strips, and my suggestion was immediately adopted.

Then there was the time the maintenance crew pushed a cart down the aisle and knocked the Ethernet cable out of every machine at about three feet high level. It took us a LONG time to sort out what happened there.

And then one New Year’s Eve, a new security guard opened a wrong door and set off the alarm. In his haste to shut off the alarm, he hit a button by the door. The button was marked EPO. So he pushed it hard.

EPO means “emergency power off” used in the case of something catastrophic. An alarmed door is not catastrophic. The entire data center went dark and knocked a several million dollar a day online store to go off the air.

Yeah.

My point? If you entrust the cloud, back up your data locally. There are a million yabos in the world who can mess things up, even in the best of circumstances.



Down with the cloud!


Photo by username joegus74 and used royalty free from stock.xchng.


She Did What?!? Ooooh Guuuuurl….

Here we are at Thursday again and that means it’s time for Theme Thursday fun.

This week’s theme is: Gossip

Or as a friend once said, “If you can’t say something nice, come sit by me.”

There are certain words that, for reasons I cannot explain, I just prefer to think of in Spanish. Chisme is just such a word. There is the relatively plain word “gossip” and then there is the inflection laden word “chisme.”

iDígame!

I would like to say I’m above all this chisme business. That I never sit in the passenger seat of a pickup with my best friend, Sonic sodas in hand, and cuss and discuss the world around us. I’d like to say I’m not like that, but I’d be lying.

I’m an eternal Nosy Nellie. I don’t like to get mean…I just like to know what’s going on. Call it insecurity. Call it envy. Call me irresponsible…just don’t call me late for dinner.

And let’s be honest, hasn’t Facebook just upped the ante on chisme? I mean, you can see what so-in-so is saying on their wall and then there’s the inevitable “did you SEE what she said?” or “did you SEE that picture?”

It used to be the biddies would pick up the party line and listen in on their neighbors (guilty as charged) but now it’s all out there on the interwebs.

I think it’s interesting, I looked up the etymology of the word gossip. Here’s what it said:

“The word is from Old English godsibb, from god and sibb, the term for godparents, i.e. a child’s godfather or godmother.”

Um, ok. I’m a godmother times three…so doesn’t that give me permission to cluck like a hen with all my girlfriends?

“The verb to gossip, meaning “to be a gossip”, first appears in Shakespeare.”

And I’m all literary and stuff, too!

Now…come on over….tell me, what’s the latest? You got any chisme for me?




“Don’t chat! Chatting leads to treason”


1941 Soviet era poster, used under Fair Use and found on Wikipedia


Theme Thursday: Television

Ah but she was a beauty. With a light gray case, she sat upon a wobbly stand, gold tone painted spindly legs that ended in little plastic wheels. The early definition of “portable.”

The dial to change the channels was made of actual metal. It had saw tooth ridges on it. All the better for gripping and turning, I suppose.

The on-off button was also the volume knob. Tug that knob, and give ‘er a few minutes while the tube warmed up.

Soon a clear bright black and white picture emerged from a small dot in the middle of the screen. All three channels plus PBS!

“Karen! Change the channel!” Click, click, click. Turning the channel knob was a tactile experience.

That black and white Zenith was a purchase from the early years of my parent’s marriage. We’re talking 1950’s here. As a child in the seventies, it became a fixture in our living room.

One of my very, very early memories is from being toddler age. I would stand right in front of that television and grip its gray plastic bezel for balance. I didn’t grip too hard, because it would slide off, but just tight enough to keep gravity from winning.

I remember Walter Cronkite. He was giving a news update and showed a fairly clear film clip of soldiers carrying guns. This wasn’t a movie, it was the news.

I didn’t know what it was then, but it seemed bad. Walter’s face was serious. I stared at those men with guns rather intently. This image is still fresh in my memory. It took until adulthood to think back on it, on the timeframe that this must have occurred, to realize it was a news update on the war in Vietnam. I would have been three or so.

That Zenith with the stylized logo, the Z like a lightening flash, electricity zooming through the letters bring pictures to my screen, was where I stood too close to the screen and watched Dick Knipfing present the news of Albuquerque and New Mexico.

It was where I watched Sesame Street and soap operas and the Not Ready For Primetime Players on the first seasons of Saturday Night Live.

In the early 1980’s, my mom made a bold decision. It was time to invest in a color TV. This was long after most of our friends and neighbors had long since brought color screens into their lives.

Mom shopped and compared and finally she and Dad decided on a model from Sears. It had this fancy way of changing channels, you simply touched this little metal nub by the number of the channel you wanted! No turning a knob, simply a quick touch.

It was splendiferous!

And with the incoming color TV, the old Zenith black and white had to find a new home. So we carted it to our “Lake House,” really a single-wide trailer on a permanent concrete pad on a patch of land in Logan, New Mexico.

Logan is on the east side of the state, so the antenna on top of that trailer picked up the stations out of Amarillo. The Zenith black and white now reported ranch stock futures and the market price for pork and sides of beef. It entertained us after a day out swimming in the lake.

In fact, when my folks sold the place in Logan, that Zenith TV went with it. It still worked, by the way, though it took a heck of a long time for that tube to warm up.

They sure don’t make ’em like they used to.





Today’s Theme Thursday is: Television

Variety is the Spice of Life

The origins of the phrase is a William Cowper poem called “The Task” (1785):

“Variety is the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavor.”

And I think the original expression of this idea by Cowper was lovely. The lyrical thoughts of adding flavor and spice to one’s own life through change, through keeping it interesting and staying on your toes.

It would seem that Ralph Waldo Emerson agreed with Cowper. In his essay titled Self-Reliance, Emerson says:

“…consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds… With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.”

Hmph.

It would seem that some of the most notable minds agree that keeping it all mixed up and different is recommended.

So does this mean that my life is notably unspicy because I actually like a little reliability in my days?

I mean, I do like changing things up now and again…but I also thrive on setting a rhythm to my world and sticking with it. I find that by having “the little things” working like clockwork, my mind can take on the bigger things, the beautiful things, the creative things.

By knowing where my nest is, I am able to stretch my wings and fly.

Does that make me boring, sedate and tedious? Maybe, but I don’t think so.

When my world changes too much or too fast, I become lost, overwhelmed and fearful. I start to worry over the day to day tasks and The Muse that wants to soar is forced to sit quietly and wait while I sort out the details. That seems dreary to me.

Perhaps it isn’t variety that lends spice to my life, but my own discipline that allows me to add a pinch of this and a shake of that to create something savory and fulfilling and quite fantastic.

So for me, I need both. A little variety, sure, but a little consistency too. It’s a balancing act.

Or, to paraphrase a cartoon I found….if variety is the spice of life, then my own comforting patterns and routines are the meat and potatoes.

Add it all together and I devour a creative feast!





Today’s Theme Thursday is: spice


Image found here.