Doooh Head

Have you ever known someone who is just a piece of 🐕💩? Let’s talk about dog shit.

Unless you have a dog, its shit is something you likely never have to worry about. Unfortunately our reality is that there are lots of lazy dog owners who don’t pick up after their dogs so there is always dog shit around. So you’re likely gonna be one of two kinds of people at this point, one who pays attention for and looks out for dog shit or one who is oblivious to it. If you’re “aware” you’re constantly on the look out for it, where ever you walk or goto. Scanning the ground for it so you don’t step on it, the concern about it, is real. The oblivious people don’t care and don’t pay attention for it. They aren’t burdened with the worry about it.

The fear. If you have ever stepped on dog shit whether because you were looking out for it and you missed it this time or because you weren’t paying attention at all, you’re struck with a dilemma. If you noticed you stepped on it you get frantic trying to wipe it off as you don’t want to cause more dog shit to be spread because of you and you divert all of your attention to cleaning it off. For the oblivious ones they likely won’t even notice and will spread that shit everywhere and likely cause others to also be impacted in the same way. They step on it unknowingly and spread it, etc.

This is where i start to equate people as being dog shit.
You go through life struggling to get by, you meet people and they come and go, some good, some not so good. You have to then learn how to identify the good ones from the not good ones, the “dog shit people”. So, you either have to be on the look out for these “dog shit people”
so as to avoid them or not as you don’t want your life impacted by them.

If you “step” on one, your life immediately changes as you try to  figure out how to get this shit off, how to distance your self from this person. You know immediately that this person is not good and you don’t want that to be part of your life. You gotta get rid of it.

If you’re the oblivious one then you likely find excuses for the fact that you’ve “stepped” on that shit (met a not good person) and even though you now have shit on your own shoes and are now spreading it everywhere just like that person, you aren’t aware or care. All of sudden, there are two “dog shit people”and this then propagates until everyone is the same.

Now what kind of a world is that to live in? Everyone being “dog shit people”. I don’t wanna be “dog shit people” and i don’t wanna be around them either. I’d rather be one who takes the additional burdon of worrying about not stepping on that 🐕💩

I was listening to a Work Life podcast and Adam Grant was talking about how he gets pitched ideas every day by strangers and acquaintances. He talked about the one person’s pitch and how he was intrigued enough to leave the person some feedback. He then went on to discuss pitches that failed and got rejected.

I remember what that feels like. I don’t consider myself someone who has ever had to pitch anything for any reason, really. But here I was soon to be out of work trying to create a new job for myself at the company. I researched who I needed to pitch to, took months writing and rewriting my pitch. Reading guides on how to do it well. When I finally got up the nerve to make my pitch and scheduled the meeting I was nervous. It was a video meeting with someone whom I had never met before. I made my pitch. He rejected it then as Adam of the work life podcast he took it upon himself to offer me some feedback on my pitch.

So as I’m listening to Adam talk about the feedback he was providing I became annoyed with the whole idea of it. Giving the feedback. I get the whole idea of not giving up. Trying again, finding the right person or time for your pitch. But who was he to think, like the person I pitched to, that I was in need of his feedback, or wanted it? It’s never been a desire of mine to become good at pitching, why would I care what his feedback was. I’m critical of myself enough, I don’t need someone else expressing that of me too.

Worse off, if after hearing a pitch the only thing the person can do is offer how you can improve your pitch, were they really listening to the point of your pitch? I think that’s what annoys me the most, they just stopped listening to the entire point of your pitch and started making mental notes to provide as feedback. Because a person is not a good speaker or may be nervous, the person being pitched to just stopped listening is very disrespectful and nobody deserves to be treated like that.

I cared very little for the feedback I was given. I was not going to be making it again, for me it was a one time shot hoping that the value of my proposal was what would be considered, not that I provided a fancy presentation. I had a skillset created by the company, I figured they would understand the benefit. To realize how shallow people’s perceptions are of each other is disappointing.

For most people in my industry (software) the idea of working from home has always been possible what with the advent of laptops & VPN’s, so when we had to work at home to help tide the COVID onslaught most people were more than happy to comply. All of us nerds & geeks who always looked at ourselves as nocturnal shut-ins who had to have all of the overhead lighting shut off at the office were more than happy to sit in our dark basements to work.

Unless you were already a remote software engineer working at home, when COVID hit, everyone liked the idea. But here we are, two years in and all of a sudden people has had to learn how to work from home and somehow be happy about that. All of a sudden people started to realize that they were able to do more than whatever their career actually was, they thrived being shut-ins and explored new avenues that made them happy. Inspiring others, motivating people. They were able to capitalize on the fact that through this pandemic, working at home, people now needed additional motivation. Everyone had to learn how to be happy with themselves and some people showed up teaching us all how to feel good about ourselves and each other. If you were down, someone somewhere would have all sorts of inspiring words to share with you, to help you cope.

Social networking is wraught with people who want to help you. Every post meant to inspire and promote wellness and to make us all feel better. Well, I’m starting to feel better about myself but not because of all these wellness-wishers. I think I’ve been living in my head for so long and only now realizing that maybe I don’t need the constant wellness wishing social onslaught anymore. Oh it’s fine to see it or hear it every once in awhile but I see the end of this COVID-tunnel and my apparent reliance on all of the wellness-wishers is diminishing. I feel the need to be living less in my head, to stop worrying about me all the time. It’s time to get back out there. Interacting with other humans again. Finding out who we were once again. Humans are social animals. We need interactions with others. Meeting with people online is fine for awhile but maybe shouldn’t be for any extended periods of time without also being able to meet in person.

At my previous job my team was a combination of people that were remotely located and people who were local. Several times a year I made it a point of visiting remote locations, bringing the entire team together when possible so that we could meet each other, we knew each other. We worked well together as a result.

At my current job I meet with my team everyday so far but have yet met any of them. We are geographically dispersed both in different locations within Canada and other countries. It’s been fine so far but I want to meet the team in person. Being in other countries makes it challenging but I’m hopeful one day it will happen. It’s hard work maintaining relationships with people whom you haven’t met. I’m finding i need to get outta my head, not being shut-in with myself. I need to get out and be around people again. I’d like COVID to be done with but I don’t want a hasty false end either. I’m patient, I will wait.

I had a quick thought while driving my car today.

New recent cars come with features that mine doesn’t, which I like, so far.  One of the new features in question in my thoughts today was the feature that ensures the vehicle stays between the lines of the road.

Since the onboard computer knows when to enable this feature while you are driving and give you a warning it must also know when you are changing lanes.  I think this could be a way to eliminate all of those lazy-ass people who do not use their signals when changing lanes or turning that everyone else gets so frustrated with, driving behind. 

Since additionally, lots of new cars are “connected” to the internet, why couldn’t there be a simple audible statement made indicating that because they didn’t use their signal, thus making an illegal lane change, that the alotted demerit points have been acrued.

In the movie The 5th Element, we see Bruce Willis driving his flying Taxi and when Leeloo falls in to his cab, the voice assistent in the cab automatically informs him that he has “XX amount of demerit points left…” after losing a few more for an aparent accident. LOL

This movie is science fiction but people, this could be a reality here!!!  Now!!

Imagine if you will, Shit-ass driver Bill is driving down the road, and as has been seen by most of us i’m sure, Bill just kinda drifts across a few lanes to eventually end up in the left-turn lane, without any hint of a signal being put on.  The automatic assistent in his vehicle would simply detect that this happened (changing lanes, signal switch is on or off) and if their signal was NOT on, simply contact the local DMV, remove a few demerit points from his drivers license for this infraction and of course inform him of this.

To expand on to the next logical step in this whole process, when Bill runs out of demerit points as most drivers like him will, the Police are contacted and again the car relays exact GPS location information to the Police so that he can be arrested for driving with an invalid license.  His car impounded and i’m sure a very expensive fine levied against him.

I think this sounds perfect for getting those kind of jackasses off the road.  All the pieces are available now, there just needs to be a way to put all of the necessary pieces together. Come on everyone, we can do this!

When I was starting my life, married young (22), my wife and I were given an opportunity to expand our horizons. To get a bigger picture of our world. Opportunity came knocking and we jumped.

With my wife, who was and still is a strong independent person, we packed up our short life together and literally moved across the country. We put the contents of our meager 2 bedroom apartment in the biggest truck we could rent. After getting gifts of furniture from our parents and grand parents that filled the truck from floor to ceiling we put my daughter and our budgie bird into the truck and off we went.

We had no ideas of what the future might hold for us but we just did it, together. Upon reflecting on that time years ago with what is quickly becoming that helpful sentiment that everyone seems to be posting about these days living through covid. That positivity, those life enforcing ideas.

I feel grateful that we did this and try not to dwell on all of the things we missed out on with regards to family but I don’t think I would ever want to do it any differently if I was to do it all over.

So, knowing what it takes to do something like this, I sit here reflecting on it all and am in awe of my son. Just prior to COVID my son decided to embark on a similar journey across this huge country of Canada to revisit his place of birth and start a new life.  To me this is amazingly powerful and brave of him to do as he did it alone. When I did it, my wife and I had each other. Together we could do anything. My son is truly the mixture of the both of us, her strong will to do something, to change and my ability to overcome adversity and persevere. He is doing it all!

I always thought that it was a parents job to be the one who inspires their children but I’m finding a lot of reasons to be inspired by my son’s actions. Ever since his open heart surgery at one year old I have felt inspired by him. He endured the surgery and was out of the hospital in a week sitting on my Dad’s lap. He was the one that pushed me to do a half marathon before I hit 50. We did it. It was an accomplishment for the both of us. Here he is now following in my foot steps.

Oh he’s had his struggles since he’s been out there aside from the whole COVID thing. He loaded up his car with everything important to him and using Google maps slowly made his way across the country. As a parent I wanted to do it with him and be there for him but I knew he had to do this himself. He did, dammit. He gave me regular text updates as he progressed across the country, taking routes I’ve never explored before, expressing very little of his experiences, just being more concerned about getting there and being ready for work as soon as he gets there. He arranged for a place to stay with an old friend that was living out there.

When we did all this, we had a huge support system, family lived out there that we didn’t even know yet. He knows a few friends and some people he was close with at the age of 4 who are now all grown up but of course is not close with. He’s had to do all of the regular things you need to do to make a life for yourself, things he hasn’t done for himself before. He’s now finalizing the start of a new career, of his own making. I have a sense of great pride for what he has become. He’s done some crazy shit in his life and has had struggles as a result but he’s figuring it out. He’s persevering.  I think that’s what I see that most impresses me about his actions. He seems to have a goal that he wants to accomplish and he is just making it happen. It was something we never had. We just took the opportunities as they were presented and did something positive with them. He has an idea of what he wants and a lifestyle he wants to endure.

As proud as I am of what my son is becoming I can’t help but also be concerned with him following in my foot steps. As I mentioned in a previous musical post one of my most heart felt songs that I have is ‘cats in the cradle’. The lyrics express how I feel my relationship transpired with my father so I thought I would be different with my son. Now it looks like he will have “grown up to be just like me”.

I miss my son.

As is with everyone I am sure, I have been listening to music since I was a kid and that is a long time ago. A lot of music for me conjures up long lost memories of days gone by. I find it amazing that a song can be heard and a memory pops in to your head of a certain person, of a memorable activity (good or bad) or a location or a situation.

As one who has participated in the use of all of the different mediums that have been used to distribute music over the years my favorite is still the LP vinyl records. My copy of Supertramp Crime of the Century had a permanent glitch in the song Rudy that even to this day I still listen for but never hear. Vinyl records were great to listen to compared to the music of today. When you put on a record you were there to listen to that side of the record. Not a single song, but the whole thing. And while you were listening you had an album cover and a record sleeve to look at and possibly follow along with the lyrics as the songs played. You got immersed in to the music. If you had some good headphones on you got totally lost in the music being played with only your younger sister interrupting to ask why the sky was blue lol. I find it very difficult these days to replicate that all-encompassing sensation.

8-Tracks were a curious medium that didn’t really last all that long, they were huge. I remember my friend Andrew, in his first car had an 8-track player. At the time, it was amazing, being able to take music with you on the road. I also remember this huge wooden box he had in the trunk containing all of his 8-tracks lol

Cassette tapes were my second favorite medium. I got to explore putting different songs together in a sort of stream. The fun of it was digging through your vinyl records for that one right song to go next then recording it. I still have a suite case full of my cassette mixtapes that we listened to in the car. I remember always being at my friend Dave’s house, sitting with him, recording music. He was a DJ at the time (and still is!) to had huge amounts of records everywhere and of everything. If I wanted something different on a mixtape, that was of music I didn’t own, I went to see Dave and recorded it. I used to spend all my money buying cassettes and only Maxell’s could do. lol

I think by the time CD’s came around, I was starting to feel disconnected to the music. With the advent of MP3’s and being able to rip music from CD’s on to your computer, then making your own “mix tape” on a CD was fun at first but lost it lustre very quickly at least for me. Oh I did it, creating my own CD labels with my printer but it was fun to do the actual work of creating them but it was less fun listening to them. Music to me then, just became the background noise to all of the activities I then took in and is still like this for me now. Oh I still have gigabytes of MP3 music on my phone, all songs that I like and have listened to many times over the years but I just never immerse myself in music anymore. Its difficult. Its hard to spare the time, there’s too many other activities that want to occupy my awareness

My top 5 favourite Albums

• SuperTramp – Crime of the Century
• Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon
• Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell
• Rush – 2112
• Queen – A Night At the Opera

My top movie albums

• Heavy Metal Soundtrack
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show Soundtrack
• Reservoir Dogs Soundtrack
• The Big Chill Soundtrack
• Pulp Fiction Soundtrack

Here are some songs that illicite physical response in me in some form or another whether it be a chill up the spine, or a memory of a person.

This song is one I don’t listen to very often and isn’t necessarily one of my favorites but whenever I hear it, I get a cool chill up my spine. Dusty Springfield – Son of a preacher man

This song makes me want to bob & weave and pretend to dance and the only artist I LIKE to hear play this song is the Commitments, Mustang Sally

This next song reminds me of a childhood, puppy-love breakup that to this day still reminds me of a girl. Loverboy – Turn me loose

This song, if I am in the car alone I will put on and is always my first choice when I decide to listen to the music I have on a thumb drive almost permanently connected to my car, Sheryl Crow – Steve McQueen. I have to listen to it as loud as I can tolerate.

This song almost always brings a tear to my eyes thinking of my Dad and has in a lot of ways shaped my life and how I want to be with my son. The song is all about life and how busy it can be and about not having enough time for your father/son. I guess this affects me so much because I believe my father and I ended up like that. I moved away and started my life, only occasionally hearing from my Dad and missing all of the times together. I never wanted that for my son and up until recently I thought we were going to be different. We were close, we have done lots of things together like I did with my Dad but now he has moved away to start his life. Even though with the technology of today, I literally hear his voice, or read his texts every day, I miss him. Harry Chapin – Cats in the Cradle.

I watched a small portion of this TED Talk (I will watch all of if later). It has encouraged me to share how I agree with her sentiments:

Shortly after we moved in to our current house I began to take advantage of its most prized features. A neighbourhood where we could walk, and swim and cycle. I took my grand child, lets call her Hope to the playground. It became clear to me that the way I wanted to be with my grand kids was one who did things with them. That’s the way I was with my kids, grand kids deserve the same. Around the corner was a school yard with several playgrounds around it. I used to take Hope there. There were slides and monkey bars and various other playground equipment. I had to encourage her to climb up the different paths through the structure as there were some that seemed to challenge her safety. As is described in that TED talk, I was encouraging her to do it herself (like a boy??). Where I could I would show her, but most of the time I was getting her to discover her own bravery, to do something herself. Not depend on someone to do it for her. And she did. She never did acrobatics off the structure or anything like that but she became fearless over it. This translated to a later endeavor that my son took her on, wall climbing. As was with the playground she was hesitant at first but once she remembered how she conquered the climber at the school, she conquered the climbing wall, and loved it! As I see her grow into a young woman I still see in her that bit of fearlessness. This, by sheer copying, translated well to her younger sister, along with, maybe my encouraging. Whatever Hope did, her sister had to do as well and I made sure they had the opportunities. Both girls did brave things, together and individually. Swimming that they never did before. Climbing things, like they never did before, exploring, doing. Being together, having fun.

When my other grand child came around, lets call her Emily, she was different but very much needing the same encouragements. She never had the opportunities of playgrounds or having someone to do things with. I took her to the playground at the school. She too was afraid and needed some encouragements. We bought her a bike, and took her to the school yard. I biked with her, around and around that school yard for two hours before she finally collapsed out of shear exhaustion. Years before she had had a severe bicycling accident and had almost severed her tongue. I encouraged her to not even think about her accident and showed her the possibilities of just doing it. She did, and has been amazing for it ever since. As she grows in to a young teenager I see that she has taken my encouragements to a different level. Through the years I have tried to instill a “at least try it first” attitude before ever saying she can’t or doesn’t want to, do something. Oh I have had to live that one, often showing them that I would try something first before ever saying I don’t want to. I used this to introduce them to new or different foods. To try different activities, to even try different paths through whatever climbing structures we ever encountered. The results I can already see in her are that she finds her own way. She does things the way she wants to and is not afraid to try something new. When she says she doesn’t like a food or a sauce, i know that it is because she has tried it and has determined herself that she doesn’t like it. You can almost see the independant thoughts happening with her. That’s what I like to see. In every girl, boy or grand child. To learn self confidence. To be brave, to try something new. That’s the way my grand kids are, brave!

I have one of those leaf blowers/mulching machines that stopped working. Of course it’s now Fall and I want to use it again. It has a three way power switch but it just stopped working.

I took it apart. Was a very simple easy device to dismantle. Wiring was pretty simple. It had a circuit breaker of some kind, the motor and the switch along with the power cord. Using my ohm meter I started checking the wires themselves, from connection to connection. All seemed good. I then noticed there was some kind of diode between two of the three connections on the switch and one end had become disconnected. The metal it was supposed to be connected to was pretty thick, so it took a long time with several attempts to actually solder it correctly. Thinking that was the problem, I put the cover on and tried it. Still didn’t work, so I kept looking around. I noticed that one of the brushes of the motor had become disconnected! I took it out and soldered the wire back to it. It was a very basic design for a motor. There was a spring that put pressure against the brush to the rotor. Of course when I tried to put the spring back into place, it sprung backwards and broke 😐

I had to unravel one coil of the spring, reshape it to fit back into the tiny slot then wind it up to provide tension and put it back in to place. Finally when I tried it, it worked! I immediately put it all back together and took it outside for a field test. It worked, but not well. The tension of the spring on the brush was obviously compromised and this wasn’t working well at all. The motor would run for a bit then just stop. I’d bang my hand against the case and it would work again, for a bit.

Lessons learned:

It was fun and interesting to know I can do such things if I really have to. Obviously I am no electrical technician but I do have some electrical knowledge of motors and circuits. Based on what I have seen in my little world, there are so many young people these days that don’t have the basic knowledge of anything anymore. The knowledge of putting on a new door handle for example cannot be taken for granted that everyone knows how to do it. My fricken son in law can’t even close a dresser drawer let alone repair one.

That feeling of accomplishment was needed. I’ve been out of work for well over a year (mostly) and have been feeling pretty low having accomplished nothing in that time except what has been necessary to maintain things around the house. Doing this made me feel good today. I needed that!

That it was a complete waste of time because if I had just gone to Home Depot and bought a new one, I’d be finished what I wanted to accomplish, now it’s going to have to wait.

Live and learn. Everything you do or don’t do is a life lesson.