Memories...

On a local BBS someone started a "nostalgia" topic and it got me strolling down the lane. This is probably more than you'd like to see but once you open the flood gates...

I remember...
...looking up at my mom as she collapsed in tears at the hospital desk when told that my father had died
...being intimidated in the first grade by Sister Wilhemena at St. Mel's (yeah, a saint named "Mel". Go figure!)
...hanging out with my friends in the tunnels dug in the field down the street in Fair Oaks
...trying to think of sins bad enough for confession
...swinging at the various "anatomically correct" pinatas at my godparent's house every Easter since before I was born
...looking out my window to see if I could spot Neil Armstrong on the moon
...wearing a funky metal bar brace to bed that kept my feet splayed outward to correct my "pidgeon toe"
...riding my red, Schwinn Stingray (with a white banana seat) all over the neighborhood and in the park
...swinging wildly at my big brother while he held me off with his hand on my head, his arm extened until he grew bored and just shoved me to the ground
...seeing a dog frozen to death at the bottom of the bell tower at St. Philomene's
...riding my bike home from school and getting the front tire hit by a car, knocking me to the ground but that was about it
...watching helplessly as my sixth grade big brother was beaten up by eighth graders
...playing crack the whip out in the grassy area of the school when the fog settled in and obscured us from the teachers
...arguing with my brother to watch Star Trek reruns rather than the boring old Watergate hearings
...always being one of the last picked for any sport
...putting a fishhook throug my finger when my godfather tried to show me how to fish on a camping trip up in Markelyville
...the traditional week in Sly Park for sixth graders where after one particularly long hike, the bus broke down to take us back and we had to hike even more, almost missing lunch but they scraped together some chili for us and it was the best meal I had ever had
...my first crushes on Kim Ehrhardt and Carolanne Maxham
...starting to tell dirty jokes in middle school
...feeling special because I made it into Jazz Band
...seeing Count Basie and later Dizzie Gilespie in concert
...giving up the trumpet because there's no way I could tolerate marching band
...my first play: learning how to do an Irish accent from a priest, sitting offstage right with all the girls in the play while the rest of the boys were by themselves off stage left which lead to my first real girlfriend
...the softness of her lips for that first kiss and that strange dizzying buzzing in my head for about an hour or two afterward
...my second play where I got a lead I thought I didn't deserve and the awful feeling of impending embarrassment on opening night knowing that people would be watching me and how that nervousness completely melted away after I said my second line and I was hooked forever
...riding my bike down the American River Trail countless times, eating wild blackberries and sucking on anise
...coming out of a rehearsal for a dictatorial director in college and learning that John Lennon had been shot
...hearing a friend come out of the closet and learning that gay people are all around me and experience all the same things and feel all the same things and are really no different from me
...skipping a philosophy class because my friends and I deduced that it would be far more educational to continue our discussion in the pub

And my earliest, most precious memory is a single image of my father as I looked back over my shoulder after coming down the hallway. He was laying on his side on the couch in a white tank top. He looked up and smiled at me.
That is my only memory of him. He died when I was barely four years old.

Mom's 70th

Well my big bro and I pulled it off. We finally did something for our mother, just us for her. Usually, because her birtday falls in a month with other (step-) family birthdays, they all get celebrated together. But his was her 70th and my brother and I thought something extra was needed. I came up with the idea and BigBro did the initial leg work. I have an old picture of the three of us from when I was about 1-1/2 and brother was about five. I proposed we copy and crop out our face pix from that and put them in a locket. Bro checked out the jewelry and picked one out. I checked it out the next day and okay'ed the order. Two days later I picked it up and had it engraved.
Unfortunately, the photo work didn't go as planned. I got the pix copied okay and editted/sized them just so on my home 'puter using PhotoShop Elements. But when I went back to Kinko's (with only 15 minutes before I had to leave for the restaurant we were meeting my mom at) their Sony photo machine was not working. At the last minute, actually about ten minutes after the last minute, I just printed up a couple of bad, inkjet versions of the pix to use a placeholders in the locket.

Word came via my brother earlier that day that mom said that since we were taking her out to dinner we were not to get her anything else. Like we ever listened to her before. The dinner went well; the gift was very appreciated. I think we did okay. Granted, we really didn't have that high of standards to meet. Still, I glad we were finally able to do something nice for her, just her, on her birthday.

Pedophile vows to start new life in Wash.

Pedophile vows to start new life in Wash.: "'I have no idea why God has allowed me to live. It must be grace, because it's undeserved, unearned. All I can do is give back and be as unobtrusive as possible.'"

Well, he seems to understand grace. And he seems to be fully "recovered". But for such vile crimes....can it be said that he is not the same person who commited those crimes? Like someone who suffered a mental illness, perhaps a tumor, which drove them to crime. Once cured, can they be trusted? Are they in effect a different person?

This guy seems legitimately remorseful. But then, wouldn't he say the same things if he weren't but wanted to get out? Only time will tell.

But I'm curious about his observation...why has God allowed him to live?

There she is...Our Commodity

CNN.com - Less talent, more skin at pageant - Sep 17, 2004

I grant you that the Miss America contestants been an increasingly competitive with regard to the talent portion and have come from far more educated background than their predecessors. However, we're still just setting them up as this year's hot commodity, "...and just look at the new packaging! Va-va-va-VOOM!"

Hey, Koko loves looking at the pretty ladies, don't get me wrong. But when paraded around as if at a marketplace... not so much. It's like seeing all the new corvettes on the dealer's lot compared to catching a glimpse of one pulling up to a fine restaurant or tooling down a country road. Beauty, and the intangible charm that is held by all women, can only be truly savored "in the wild". Staged marketing leaves a taste like beer from a can rather than the keg. (Have I used enough metaphors yet?)

But the pageant people know what side their bread is buttered on. "McMaster said the swimsuit competition demonstrates physical fitness and accounts for just 10 percent of a contestant's final score." Physical fitness? Yeah, right. Just like the Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit edition sells so much because of it's tribute to athleticism.

Early retirement? I wish

So, last Friday I get called into the principal's office--I mean my manager's office--and get a formal warning?...reprimand?...talking-to about my (earned, paid, and approved) absences over the last eight months or so. Sure, there's been some hardships what with the one car struggling for survival (which it eventually lost just last month) and that little problem with my daughter facing potential brain surgery. But through it all, I've done my work (programming) and met my deadlines and even received a little emailed pat on the back for helping another programmer with a client on a system I knew little about. But what's this? I'm not in the office enough? And I get the impression that it's not really my manager that's all that put out about it--except for when I come in late which is almost always due to the fact that I depend upon a not-totally-reliable bus & light rail system--but that she is responding to the complaints of others. My co-workers? My manager's boss? I don't know so now I must suspect everybody.

My morale was not all that high anyway as budget cuts and departmental re-orgs have shifted me into working on mainframe programs (f-ing COBOL) in a 30-year old language that I haven't touched in over a decade rather than on web apps and or Visual Basic programming. But now...I was quite close--I could feel the words rising in my throat before I choked them back--to simply saying "Fine. I'll just quit then. And as I am, or was, the ONLY person you have working on the PL system, I guess your target dates are going slip way beyond the legal mandates. That's too bad, isn't it?" I am paid to be a programmer not a chair warmer. As long as I am indeed programming and meeting/exceeding my milestones, does it really matter how happy I keep the clock watchers?

Gamer Grrlz

This is where my oldest (15) daughter is headed. Her dream job is to be a "character designer" for Nintendo. I'm hoping she can parlay her female-ness into a scholarship as she graduates high school (if all goes as planned) in three years. I don't imagine male/female parity being achieved in the gaming world in the intevening years. I pushing her to write to Mary-Margaret and WomenGamers to get a sense of what she will need and what she will be up against. I'd also like to see her start a website or blog in order to build a portfolio of her reviews as well as her character ideas.

But what am I saying? like she doesn't spend enough time on the computer?! It's hard not to be worried about the time she spends on the 'net. We monitor it somewhat but can't be there over her shoulder all the time. She's a good kid...bright but naive in some ways, completely not either in others. The thing us 21st century parents have got to realize is that the computer is a communication device, the new telephone. The stereotype of the teen girl used to be with the pink princess phone pressed to her ear while she lay across her bed with her head hanging upside-down. It's time to update that and put the "typical teen girl" at her desktop with about a half dozen different IM's going.

But whatever the device, too much time wasted will impact school work and that's where the parental rubber meets the road.

Below; Zell High

What Kerry actually said (in his nomination acceptance speech): "I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security."

What "democrat" Zell Miller says he heard: "Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations".

Lies! Lies and misrepresentations and misleading exaggerations and on and on it goes. "But they all do it. Kerry's done it, too, hasn't he?" Well, there have been a few cases of misrepresentations of the Bush administration. This is true. But for every one of the Dems overstatements, we are barraged with 20 outright lies from the right. Go to the Annenberg FactCheck site and see for yourselves.

Hello?

Okay, file this under "It's probably nothing, but just in case..."

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, our Terran efforts to look beyond ourselves, using millions of personal computers as a huge multiprocessor may, that's may have caught a signal from the Great Out There. I wouldn't say they've got anything definitive and I certainly would not rule out some clever hacker jacking the data, however, just in case this turns out to be something... Well, remember you read it here, folks.

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ref.:
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Odd signal from a galaxy far, far away