Category Archives: General

General

After Irma

Last time I posted, on September 7th, we were waiting for Hurricane Irma.  Today, September 12th, we’re done.

The hurricane, as of September 7th, looked like it might go to our east.  However, then the models changed and, if you’ve ever had to put up with that sort of things, you’re in a constant state of panic as the predictive “cone” starts to move.

In my case, the cone shifted toward us, and for a while there it looked like we might get a direct hit.  Luckily for us, and not so luckily for others, the cone kept shifting and soon the models were predicting it would go to our west rather than east.

And that’s what it did, hitting the lower keys before moving north towards Marco Island, Naples, and, eventually, Tampa Bay and parts even further north.

Though we weren’t hit by the eye wall, Irma was a big enough beast that we were within its northeast quadrant, the second deadliest section of a hurricane, and experienced many, many, many hours of hurricane gusts, though thankfully they weren’t sustained.

Notheless, when it was done, we were out of power (still are) and found considerable tree damage around us.

But in the end and without trying to sound overly dramatic, we’re alive.  We survived.  The power will eventually come back.  The remains of the broken trees will be cleared up and the streets will be passable.  We’ll be back to where we all were before and, with any luck, Irma (and, for that matter, Harvey) will be one of those once in a lifetime hurricanes no one alive today will ever have to face again.

General

Waiting for Irma…

It’s hard not to be scared.  Anyone in their right mind should be.

Irma is a monster storm and she will affect us, arriving in our area in the next 48 hours or so.

The only question is just how “bad” it is remains up in the air.

To everyone around these parts, good luck and keep safe.

To those who already faced her, my greatest sympathies and hopes for the future.

General

Food for thought…

Over at slate.com I found this absolutely fascinating article by Rachel Withers regarding Disneyland’s Tomorrowland and how this once proud icon of future thinking has become antiquated and even sold for its nostalgia rather than forward thinking, as originally envisioned by Walt Disney.

The article’s title is brief and apropo given the subject matter:

Yesterdayland

I know I’ve presented plenty of articles and their links before, but this is one truly worth checking out.

Even if you’re like me and not a huge fan of the Disney Parks (sorry, can’t handle the crowds, heat, and the considerable expense), this article offers an intriguing look at the thinking Walt Disney had behind Tomorrowland and, eventually, EPCOT, and how those visions have changed over time and following his passing in 1966.

At the risk of giving away too much, Ms. Withers’ thesis is a fascinating one, that it is impossible to have a park focused on forward technology.  She rightly notes that the “future” is not really all that far away, and what can be viewed as futuristic when set up in year X becomes antiquated or even hopelessly wrong by year Y.

What’s even more fascinating is Ms. Withers’ analysis of the public’s changing views of the future.  There was once an undeniable optimism regarding the future and the technologies to come.  Though she doesn’t make the connection, the New York World’s Fair of 1939 and 1940 were a big influence on Walt Disney and his generation.  Within that fair, which unfortunately had to be shut down because of the coming World War, the pavilions were odes to the fantastic… to the things that were to come and would make our lives so much better.

(An aside: I was never all that close to my wife’s Grandparents.  Don’t get me wrong, they were very nice people but by the time I got to know them they were quite old and there didn’t seem to be much a youngster like me and them could relate to other than polite and often superficial conversation.  The years passed, I married their granddaughter, and they got older and older.  Soon enough they both passed away.  Years afterwards, when her family had a get together, one of her cousins played a slideshow of photographs she created involving them.  As I watched the images pass, first of them as children and then growing up and then their wedding, I was floored when the following few images showed the then youthful grandparents standing near the famous 1939/40 New York World’s Fair Trylon and Perisphere!

Related image
Trylon and Perisphere picture presented in post cards sold or given away at the time.

There were perhaps three or four photographs of them at different parts of the park, including -if memory serves- one of them next to a futuristic looking train.  Until that moment I didn’t know they had spent their honeymoon at that World’s Fair and I was crushed by the fact that I could have gotten first hand accounts of something I consider one of the more fascinating things of the early 20th Century… that’s how much I love reading about the 1939/40 Worlds’ Fair!  A lesson to the wise: Talk to people.  Have conversations.  You may be surprised by what you learn.  And certainly do so before its too late)

Getting back to the Tomorrowland article and our current view of the future, Ms. Withers -correctly, I feel- argues that today we’re far more pessimistic regarding the future and view it in terms of dystopia rather than utopia and that, to some extent, may be why there is little interest in doing a more forward thinking Tomorrowland in line with what Mr. Disney had in mind.

From her article and excuse me for giving away it’s punchline:

Tech doesn’t exactly wow us like it used to—after all, it’s now in our homes, in our cars, even in our pockets. Touristing in a technological wonderland would probably feel underwhelming, considering we’re basically already in one. And why would anyone want to immerse themselves in the future? Popular imagination holds that today’s future will be a dystopia, not a utopia. In this age of climate-change doom and job-killing automation, of “unplugging” and “logging off,” perhaps the future is no longer a place we want to go, no longer the land of exciting promise, of “hopes and dreams.” In the 1950s, the future was an inviting fantasy, something to gaze towards, to marvel at, to reach for. Now Walt’s tomorrow is here … and well, we’re drowning in it.

Let me repeat that last, very sad line:

Now Walt’s tomorrow is here … and well, we’re drowning in it.

A grim but, sadly, sanguine argument, IMHO.

General

Here we go again…

At one point in time I wanted to write a novel set in Miami.  It was meant to be a first person… well… I won’t get into the plot because, frankly, there wasn’t much of one, though I was inclined to go towards it being a detective/mystery/thriller-type thing.

This was going to be the first line of the book:

I hate Miami in the summer.

Nothing earth-shattering, just a common complaint I have of being in Miami and having to live through its brutal summers.

First, you deal with the twin body slams of heat and humidity.  It is awful to go outside. It’s awful to drive in your car even with your AC on full.  Inevitably, I leave the car with my back all wet from sweat.

And then there’s hurricane season.

While people are very understandably concerned about what happened in Texas with Hurricane Harvey, we around these parts are keeping a weary eye on the next named storm, Irma, which is already very strong and projected to get far stronger.

At this moment, when you head over to the National Hurricane Center’s website, its projected path takes it right to South Florida’s footstep by very late in this coming week.

But here’s the thing: The projections beyond three days are very much up in the air, something nervous people like myself have to repeat to ourselves constantly.  After all, when watching the regular weather predictions, anything beyond two days from the current date, its been my experience, is a crap shoot (or, to put it another way, I recall many times seeing/hearing that in two/three days we would have plenty of rain and the day comes and its sunny and hot?!  Hell, there have been predictions for the next day which have proven almost comically wrong).

Anyway, so too it is with Hurricane predictions, though clearly one needs to pay far more attention to them as they represent a threat not only to property, but also to one’s life.  Nonetheless, the early models took the storm north and then east, potentially threatening the Carolinas or, best case scenario, nobody at all.

This was only two days ago.

Now, these same predictions are taking the storm, potentially, over Cuba before making a northwardly turn which will either take it straight up Florida’s center, perhaps a little to the west (hugging the coast) and maybe even a little to the east.

Again, that’s this moment’s view.

Only tonight will Florida fall into the far ends of the -as we sardonically call it- “cone of death”.  By then, the track might be even more southern/westernly, which seems to be the way the track has been adjusting itself over the past couple of days.

And who knows, the track might turn again, heading more north and to the east and we might well be in the target.

It’s maddening.  It’s heart-stopping.

And there’s nothing anyone living here can do about it.

I hate Miami in the summer.

General

Man, was I tired last night…

…how tired?

Not nearly as tired as the many fine people in Texas helping out all those affected by Hurricane Harvey.

Seriously, your life can be frustrating and exhausting.  You can work incredibly hard for so little pay and/or recognition.  Hell, you can spit venom at the TV at whatever latest awful thing our “President” has done…

But to then see all the misery going on in Texas thanks to Hurricane Harvey followed by images of the many, many fine folks out there helping their neighbors and strangers who are stranded or flooded out…

My heart goes out to them.

I hope that Hurricane lifts quickly and the waters recede just as quickly and we can fix what nature destroyed.

I’ve been through more Hurricanes than I care to think about, including the infamous Andrew and Katrina, the later of which thankfully hit our area when it was still a relatively small Category 1 storm.  But Katrina’s ultimate destruction sure looks a lot like what Harvey’s doing now.

So keep safe out there.

Please.

General

Saturday past…

A few days ago I posted a lovely (IMHO!) picture of Humphrey Bogart (here it is) and wrote how I made it despite it being a very high pressure day.

Well, more like stressful.  Very much so.

It went like this…

We headed out early-ish (around 9 am) to go look for some tile for the front of our house.  As we were looking around, my wife receives a phone call from her mother.  Busy as we were at that moment, she considered ignoring the call while we were talking with the sales clerk but, ultimately, decided to take the call.

She started talking and walked away while I dealt with the sales clerk.  She was gone the whole time I looked around and, after a while, received a strange text from my daughter saying she was just exiting the gym and was not in… prison?!

What the hell?

I got together with my wife, who looked considerably more animated, as she concluded what turned out to be one of several calls with her mother.

To make a long story short(er): Someone hacked my daugher’s phone, perhaps after she used the wi-fi at a Starbucks the day before but, honestly, who knows.  Whoever did it got a hold of her phone numbers, found the entry marked “Grandma” and called that number.

There were at least two scammers involved in the call, one of whom was a female.  Once the call was answered, the female scammer was hysterically tearful, appropriate because the scammers didn’t want the Grandparents to realize it wasn’t her they were talking to.  The second scammer, a man, claimed to be a lawyer, told the Grandparents that my daughter was in an accident and was in jail because of it and that he needed credit card numbers so that he could pay for her release.

The scammers knew what they were doing, applying high pressure tactics and, frankly, scaring the living shit out of her Grandparents to get those credit card numbers.  Cleverly, the tearful woman claiming to be my daughter begged them not to tell her parents (us) about this.

On the other hand, they were also quite inept.  At one point the “lawyer” was asked by the Grandparents where my supposed daughter was incarcerated.  He said he didn’t know.  A laughable answer, considering he was supposedly right next to her at that moment.

Thing is, they did just enough to almost get what they wanted which was a credit card number.

Luckily, despite the hysteria the scammers created the Grandparents nonetheless made that call to my wife and in that moment, everything unraveled for the scammers and they made no more calls.

The next day, perhaps not coincidentally, I received a very official looking email supposedly from Apple which stated I had purchased an “unknown add on” app for $99.  It was followed by a second email also supposedly from Apple, also looking exactly like official Apple emails, stating I had changed my password and if I didn’t do this to click on the convenient link provided in the email to fix everything.

Yeah, sure.

I didn’t click any of the links in the email and instead went directly into my Apple account.  There was no such charge and there was no such purchase.

The phone call scam provided both my wife and her parents several moments of sheer terror, and its that terror that the scammers were hoping to exploit to get credit card numbers.  Its a nasty business and we’ve since found, in talking to other friends/relatives, that this type of scam isn’t a new thing.

So for those who’ve read this and aren’t familiar with the scam, there it is.

Be wary.

Watch out with the use of wi-fi in restaurants or public places.  Also, its helpful to keep your phone numbers listed impersonally.  Instead of listing someone as “Dad” or “Mom” or “Grandma” or “Grandpa”, list them by name.

And always be weary of any phone callers who call you for any reason -however stressful it may be- and ultimately want your credit card numbers.

Please, please don’t let the emotion get you as it almost did my daughter’s Grandparents.

General

Total eclipse of the…

…well, around these parts not quite so total.

Still, we had a fair amount of the sun blocked by the moon.  I’d say at least 3/4ths of it was blocked.  Here’s a photo I took of a sheet of paper (I didn’t have any fancy $2.00 sunglasses to gamble my eyesight on and therefore used the famous pinprick method of “seeing” the eclipse):

Not the most dynamic picture ever, I grant you, but at least I wasn’t doing this…

Image result for trump looking at the sun images

On instagram my daughter found this image of an obvious MENSA candidate that, if one believes the post, decided to stare at the eclipse a little too long without any eye protection.  This was the end result…

Image result for looked at eclipse too long

Enjoy your future blindness, my cerebral friend.

General, Movies, TV

Jerry Lewis & Dick Gregory…

Two people who have been in my life one way or another have passed.

Jerry Lewis was 91 years old and, toward the end of his life, was rather notorious in his later years as a (let’s put it kindly) a crank.  His style of comedy, I must admit, wasn’t to my taste but it is undeniable he left behind a large legacy and plenty of comedians who were guided/inspired by him.

My greatest memories of him is for the muscular dystrophy telethons, which took over the TV back in the 1970’s and into the 1980’s and lasted for a solid 24 hours.  Mr. Lewis, toward the end of these telethons, was sometimes barely coherent but given the good he did during these events, one can’t help but admire him for that.

Dick Gregory also passed away.  He was 84 and also leaves behind a large legacy though, like Mr. Lewis, his biggest contributions to culture came a little before my time.  An African American comedian who was one of the very first to be able to perform in front of white audiences.  He was a civil rights activist and, occasionally, actor.

While neither individual personally touched me as they did so many others of the generation(s) before mine, its nonetheless worth given them their due.

Rest in Peace.

General, TV

Tina Fey is magnificent

Ok, getting political again… last night I happened to catch the SNL Weekend Update Special (I didn’t know they were doing these at all and just happened to luck into seeing it!).

Toward the show’s end, we were treated to the always delightful Tina Fey and this:

Wow just, wow.

Tina Fey, you’re incredible.

General

Driving home yesterday…

…I heard most of Donald Trump’s presser….

And my reaction…

Image result for stunned gifs

Never thought I’d witness that much crazy by someone in a position of that much power.