People who don’t work on computers or networks think it is magic sometimes. They look at me as if I am a wizard when I tell them its fixed. The reality is sometimes it is magic! A customers internet access was going down every few minutes called the internet provider they say everything is fine. Of course they always say everything is fine. I look at the network equipment, it all looks fine. So I reboot everything just to see if something will work. Sure enough, they comeback up. What was it that worked? I don’t know? I connect to each piece of the equipment, the server, the firewall, the network switch. Nothing tells me anything. So what do I tell the customer? Most of the time I have a suspect but how to prove it without replacing it is the trick. So usually I must have the same problem happen a few times so I can narrow it down to one or two likely candidates. This is where the magic is. Electronics don’t always fail 100% some times they just get buggy. So I have to play games with them to get to the issue. I guess that is why they are willing to pay us to do this for them.

Apple computers has a real love of two things. Aircraft aluminum and glass. they are fanatical about it with both the computers they make and the retail stores scattered about the country. Every one I have been in has an all glass front with big glass doors. they are pretty but I noticed something a while back. Every time I went to our local one at least one of the doors was always broken. I didn’t know if it was a problem with the door itself or a problem with the glass breaking.

Well a week ago someone decided the easy way to get what you want from the Mac store was to drive to it, literally! They took a stolen car and drove it right through the glass front grabbing a bunch of product and ran away. They obviously had a plan because they got into another car and drove away. I thought this was an original thinker until yesterday, when I learned this has happened at multiple Apple stores around the country. While glass makes for a cool looking store front I think it is proving to be a poor deterrent when it comes to theft. Apple may need to review the idea of glass and move the store fronts over to the other love, Aluminum. I would be a really expensive storefront but at least it would make some of the thieves think twice.

As a kid there was nothing better than summer! No school, running around the neighborhood with your friends. Turning on sprinklers when it got hot, and not wanting to go in until the sun was down. It was awesome! Now I am an adult and all summer means is the days are longer, hotter and my kids are bored! I want to run trough the sprinklers again. I don’t want to have to figure out how to lock my kids out of the house while I am at work. I want to get on my Big Wheel(Remember those?) ride to the end of my street and spin out! I don’t want to figure out how I am going to keep from sweating to death in a car without air-conditioning. I want to let off firecrackers in the street and catch bugs in a jar. ride to the A&W or 7/11 on my bicycle and pay for an Icy with a quarter. How about visiting relatives and going to get an Ice cream for a nickel at Thrifty Drugs! I want to wear my bathing suit for three months straight and only take it off when I had to go to church. Yes, I want my summer back or if I can’t get it back can I transfer it to my kids!

I saw a new commercial yesterday for men. It was a pad for those who have a leaking problem. The spokesman was Tony Siragusa a hall of fame football lineman. In the commercial  he tries to “man up” these things but let face it, adult diapers are never going to be something you are proud of! They are trying all kinds of things, putting actresses in them for charity, making them funny or manly or stylish. Come on, they are made for when you have a problem, not for causal wear around the house. If diapers are to become everyday fashion we would have to stop potty training our children. That way we wear them for life, we could then create teenage ones with messages on them, so when they wear their pants swung low you could read them. Or how about athletes with advertising on them as they compete. While I can remember a few times in life when I wish I did have one on, it was never for comfort or fashion. Even if the wood chairs in my dining room are hard to sit on for a long period of time, padding is low on my list of under garment requirements. I think the makers of these products should be happy with the fact they have a captive customer base, and not try to sell them to everyone else!

Do you know why grandparents and grandkids get alone so well? They have a common enemy! I can’t wait to have grandkids. I am lining up the things I am going to do with them and the things I am going to buy them. It is a list not so much as for them but for pay back. I have accumulated a short list.

1. Drums, oh yeah I am gonna love this. Get a loud set with cymbals.

2. Horns, gotta have a horn or two, or at least one of those toys that make really irritating sounds.

3. Anything with Barney. It has to play the song with Barney singing. Of course it also has to be one that is hard to shut off and has a button the kid can push over and over.

4. I am going to teach them saying like “Your Mom!” I am going to enjoy hearing that.

5. I am going to take them to the sugariest place in town load them up then return them to their parents. I will smile as I look in my rearview mirror as I drive away.

I know it is cruel, but hey I have to find something to enjoy my retirement with!

So recently the head of Starbucks decided that he would offend christians and anyone who didn’t agree with him. He said that if we didn’t agree with him on the matter of marriage we should take our business elsewhere. I have on more than one occasion written about coffee, and my love of it. I drink coffee all day long, not the Moco-cheesmo, or Capa-whatever, just black coffee. I at least once a week find myself in a Starbucks for a meeting or just to get work done. They have created an entire culture of coffee drinking professionals who spend hours in their shops. I have never sat in a Starbucks and looked over the people or staff checking if they meet the standards I have set for myself. I do not ask before they serve me what their stance on politics or religion is before I order. As a Christian, I have made the choice to follow Christ and If they were to ask me about the hope that I have, I would gladly share what Christ has done for me. I would not stand outside with a sign saying to repent. Those of us who frequent their establishments have had an understanding that we like the coffee and convenience and would agree to disagree on the other things. That is until they made me choose!

I think of it as very similar to actors in movies. I can enjoy the movies they are in until they force me to listen to their politics. If they go on the news or some talk show and try to tell me what I believe is wrong, based on the one year of community college they attended or the millions of dollars they make, I cringe. At that point I have a choice to make. Listen to them and continue to pay them to insult me or choose to spend my money and time on something else. I watch movies with actors I believe do not agree with me, but I also believe they have not come out and insulted my faith and beliefs. I know many of my Christian friends would say I should pay more attention to these things even before they say anything, but lets face it I am lazy and just don’t have the time.

But Starbucks has forced me to make a choice, and it couldn’t be clearer from my perspective! The only choice I have is whether to use the free drink I just earned or not!

FYI: Written in a local coffee shop. I think it will be my new spot!

I always believed you couldn’t make a bad pizza. Even the worst pizza was still good. I could eat just about any pizza as long as it didn’t have fish on it! Apparently I was wrong. Someone has come out with pizza in a jar. It is a mason jar with sauce, cheese and bread crammed together. You take all the ingredients I love stick them in a jar until they are soggy. Why not just call is a pizza smoothie? They could sell those at the local Jamba Juice. What a way to destroy one of my favorite things! Why do people keep trying to change the food I love into some monstrosity? Stop messing with my food! I don’t want mango’s in my salsa, nor do I like fish in my tacos! If I wanted meatloaf with garbanzo beans in it I would ask for it, and if you slip me a veggie burger someone is going to get hurt! Stop messing with my food, I am not eating as much of it as I use to so I want it to be what I remember not some yuppy creation.

I am sometimes amazed at the use of technology in industries you wouldn’t think of. Working for years in non-profits you don’t think about how others may need to use a computer or other things like wi-fi or mobile apps? Last week a mortuary needed us to put networking into a crematorium. Yes that is a machine in which they cremate people. Turns out their new machine has the ability to monitor the process with a iPhone app. Of course we began to wildly speculate on the options. Could you watch your loved one remotely being cremated? Could you record it like an ultrasound for later viewing? If it was a notorious person could you sell tickets for the online viewing. Does the app make a toaster popping up sound when it is done? Or maybe Siri could come up and tell you Mr. Smith is done! Of course it is less dramatic than that, it really lets you monitor the device and verify that the process is complete but it is fun to speculate! And who knows one day that might be true. It definitely helps them do their job, but to those of us who find the whole business a little creepy couldn’t help being a little weirded out by it.

I saw a story about the fact that Apple is keeping everyone’s Siri requests for two years. In other words, every time you ask for the closest cup of coffee, Apple stores it on a server. The person writing this story seemed outraged by this, but I don’t understand their disdain? Have you ever used Siri or any other voice command software? They all have one thing in common, they are all far from perfect. I asked it to call my mechanic Black Forest Auto, and instead it tried to find a recipe for Black Forest cake. They have gotten better, but they still can’t pick up subtle sounds and inflections in our voices and if your car has a lot of background noise it will struggle to hear you. So how will they make them better? They will continue to study what results are returned and figure out how to improve those results. That means they really care less that you asked for the adult book store, just that if you really didn’t ask for the inappropriate book store it doesn’t give that as results. So I am not worried about them keeping my requests I just want to get the closet cup of coffee when I ask for it.

Do you ever have those times when you feel like Job from the Bible? Ok, so my house didn’t collapse and my family is ok, but I feel like life’s punching bag! I turn around and pow! another punch to the face. It isn’t like it has always been like that, I was on a nice role for a while. Things were good, my job was easy, and nothing seemed to out of kilter, then bang! Cars break down, pets get sick, expenses start building up. What changed? Other than time and a few job changes not much is different, yet the life feels like a wheel-shaped like an egg. I was going along on the smooth rounded end and now I am coming up to the more pointed part. Life has always seemed like a wheel to me with parts seeming to fly by smoothly and others like a flat tire. It has also always seem to come back around to the opposite of the part you are in now. Times of struggle and time of ease they don’t last for ever and many times they disguise themselves as the other. It really isn’t until we get through them that we can evaluate which one they were. I know in my life times of trouble have often been my greatest time when looked at years down the road. It is just hard to have that perspective when the glove is blocking your view!