With another heavy rainfall warning in effect, it’s hard to believe it was mere weeks ago that the whole province was kindling waiting to explode. But here we are, complaining again as The Rains resume.
And now, a haiku:
Rain, rain and more rain Contemplating ark building Umbrellas for life
I went out late this afternoon to close my rings and get some fresh air. The weather threatened rain, so I actually wore pants (well, sweatpants). Plus it was only 12C.
I was nearing the path leading to the stairs down into Lower Hume Park when I heard from the other side of the pool building the distinct crunch of two vehicles smushing themselves together. I paused my walk, went around the building and saw two cars by the crosswalk, the one that was directly behind the other featuring a new buckled hood.
The crosswalk here on east Columbia is one that features pedestrian-controlled flashing lights, but I did not notice them flashing at the time (though I wouldn’t swear they weren’t). The drivers of the vehicles were out and no doubt exchanging information and going through the usual fender bender rituals.
What I noticed next was a guy with a dog on the crosswalk. He looked hesitant. I am guessing this is what happened:
Here is the guy wearing a very bright red hoodie.
I at least give him kudos for making himself highly visible. He should have at least talked to the guys in the cars, though. But he had a dog, and that means he (and by proxy) his dog can do anything they want, including ignoring accidents they have just watched happen directly in front of them.
I may have an issue with dog owners.
The season, not like falling down the stairs or something.
The days get shorter And the trees explode with color Then everything dies
On the one hand, the last line is rather bleak. On the other, fall ends on December 20th and by then the sun sets at something like 3 p.m., it’s always cold and almost always raining, the trees are stripped naked and vegetation is all withered, dead or gone.
But lawns still look really lush and green.
All right, then.
The days get shorter And the trees explode with color It sucks after that
More accurate now. But fine, here’s a “happy” version:
The days get shorter And the trees explode with color Hot cocoa and gloves
This CBC story explains how putting a colorful collar on a cat can help warn off birds they might prey on, as birds have good color perception.
I just like how fabulous it makes the cats look.
I consider this progress in my quest to eat healthier and better (no offense to McDonald’s, which does have healthy choices on its menu).
But now that I think about it, I could really go for a Sausage and Egg McMuffin. I love those things.
I have now used internet technology to find the closest McDonald’s, and it’s apparently a 29-minute walk from my place, or five Starbucks away. How is this even possible? What sort of world do we live in that I need to walk for almost an entire half hour just to get a McChicken? This is way beyond impulse purchase territory for me.
Which is for the best, really. But still.
I say this for two reasons:
Be nice to others Don't taunt someone with a bomb Walk away intact
Read and learn from my logical error.
Many years ago I thought about what sort of career I’d like to have, instead of just bouncing from job to job and/or relying on networking to essentially do the same.
I thought about what I liked to do and what I was good at and where they might intersect, taking the approach as a self-designed “What color is my parachute?” thing.
What did I like? Tech! I’ve always had a geeky interest in tech, whether it was video games, digital watches (hey, back in the olden times they really did seem cool) or other gadgets.
What was I good at? I was always into making things, so I was pretty much a creative person. My childhood and teen years are filled with sketches, comics, short stories and an incomplete balsa wood roller coaster. Being creative wasn’t just something I enjoyed, it pretty much defined who I was.
But I ignored this.
Instead, I came up with the answer of “I enjoy helping or teaching others.” This is true enough, and it seemed a more practical thing to try to turn into a career. By combining these two things I was set!
=
The problem is tech support doesn’t require being creative at all. Sure, someone may tell you that you need to be creative to find solutions, but that’s just playing semantics. The actual skills required aren’t anything close to what you use for drawing or writing or acting. It’s all about research, organization and puzzle-solving. While I enjoy those things, they aren’t the same, but I went ahead into tech support anyway, because logically it just had to work!
And it did, in a way, for a while. But the reality is that tier 1 or even tier 2 tech support is pretty basic stuff. Depending on how well-designed the systems you work with are, you can find yourself doing a lot of very repetitive stuff, like resetting passwords, re-enabling 2FA access or things like that. These are menial tasks, and ultimately they came to bore me. And then I burnt out. I felt very much like the guy in the motivational poster in Futurama:
I faced the horror of having most of my job experience being in tech support, and how was I supposed to get out from that? It turned out that the best way was to make a clean break entirely, at least for now. I had to accept that I had made a critical error in assuming that enjoying tech + helping people = a great career.
I’ll never work as a tier1/2 tech support person again. I’ve done that enough to have wrung out everything I can get from it. And after realizing my fatal flaw in combining what I liked with what I felt I was good at, I’m now asking myself, “What do I enjoy doing and how can I build a career around that?”
Matt black looks amazing.
Matt black yes plz
Matt black color option? YESSS!
(Quotes from the discussion of a possible matte black color option for iPhone 13 on MacRumors. Sometimes I am easily annoyed. Or amused. Or both.)
It’s actually more modest than great.
The plan is, starting tomorrow, to not drink any soda for the next week and see what happens. What will I drink instead? Here’s a list:
No, wait, that’s the list of what I won’t be drinking. Here’s the actual list:
I am curious to see if anything at all noticeable happens. And if I can resist the siren song of that delicious1For relative values of “delicious” diet soda.
I will report back in one week with the results, possibly presented in chart form or as some kind of multimedia extravaganza.
There, I just gave you the secret advice recipe of probably a billion people on the internet, which is:
So you get things like:
Thank you and subscribe to my newsletter.
–James, Clear
I don’t know, but I am, and I’m not sorry!
I recently grabbed their third album, Talk Show, which I never got back on its original release in 1984. Sorry, Go-Go’s, I’m one of those people who helped contribute to the album’s relative unpopularity. I enjoyed the (hit) single “Head Over Heels” but for whatever reason the album as a whole didn’t appeal to me. I think the cover actually was a negative. Not only is it incredibly 80s (which offers a certain amount of kitsch value now), but it demonstrates a serious lack of imagination–unlike the album, which is actually their most sophisticated. Let’s compare covers:
There’s only one more studio album to go, 2001’s God Bless The Go-Go’s, which is allegedly a fine but not outstanding addition to their sun-dappled oeuvre. This means I’ll soon probably put these albums aside for a while. For now, though, I got the beat.