My mother used to tell this story a lot. I have a vague memory of it happening, but it might be partly due to her telling me about it rather than a genuine memory, you know? I’m not sure how old I was when this happened, but let’s just say I was five and go with it.
I had my eyes checked at an eye doctor’s office. I don’t remember why. It was years before I would need reading glasses. I was really impressed with all of the equipment. It led to me being a little fascinated with eye doctors. I was also a little kid so I was fascinated with the usual little kid stuff. For whatever reason I blurted out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Was I asked about it? Did I just come out with it on my own? No idea. Whatever it was, I told my mother that I wanted to be an eye doctor during the week, but then drive a garbage truck on the weekends for extra money.
You know, like you do.
At other times I wanted to be an astronaut, a fireman, a policeman, a long haul trucker, a Jedi Knight. You know, the usual stuff. No plan was better than an eye doctor and a garbage truck driver on the side though. That plan was aces.
Something that no one understands… besides Three dimensional Calculus? Physics? Astronomy? Stuff like that?
About half of the people in the United States don’t seem to understand that fascism is both a thing (a bad thing at that) and un-American. I don’t understand how people don’t seem to get that, but they don’t. Fascism is idiotic and yet trump won the presidency in 2016 and got about half of the votes in 2020 and got the nomination for the nazi, umm I mean republican party just this month. What the ever loving fuck?
People don’t understand that weaving between lanes on the highway makes the traffic jams worse. Yeah, I just got to work after an hour and 40 minutes in gridlock. Morons changing lane for no benefit or no reason just make the stupid situation worse.
What else can I put here… I’m sure I can come up with something… I don’t know. I guess the anti-nazi one is enough for today.
This is a hard question to answer because technology sort of is my job. Mostly. Kind of.
I work for a software company. We make information systems for hospitals (mostly). I won’t say that we’re on the cutting edge, but we try to stay up to date with the latest and the greatest. Sometimes it takes a while to get there, but we get there.
There have been plenty of technological advancements over the course of my almost 20 years here. Most of them have been internal as most of our systems are proprietary. As new ideas in the industry come along we try them on for size. Sometimes we make use of them, sometimes we give them a miss. It all depends on what those new ideas can do for our customers and our systems.
So I would say that changes in technology change the way we do things here, but nothing really turns things upside down on us. We are a tech company. Changes in tech are what we do.
Sorry I couldn’t give you a more exciting answer, but what can you do, right?
No is a hard word to say. I should learn to say it once in a while.
I’m not what you’d call a people person. I rarely get where they are coming from. I still want to be helpful though. I still want to make things easier for these weird people that I don’t understand. That makes saying no to them tough to do.
It is so tough to do that I rarely bring myself to do it. At work, in personal life situation. I’m rarely able to just say no. That doesn’t mean I don’t do it because sometimes I do. That is when the guilt takes over. I say no to someone about something and then I feel terrible about it for ages.
Saying no sucks, even when it is clearly the right thing to do.
I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.
Liam Neeson in the movie Taken
Skills that I have, or wish I had. That’s two questions in one right there. I’ll take a crack at both.
We are talking about super powers here, right? Well, I am at least. I don’t know what you kind folks are focusing on, but this i smy post so it is super powers. Spoiler alert.
In Star Trek: The Next Generation, everyone in the fandom (mostly) hated the character Wesley Crusher. He was in the original cast but after a few seasons he was gone. Then in the final season they brought him back for an episode to wrap up his story. In that final episode they gave him a sort of super power that I have always been very jealous of. It was kinda neat. Sure, things like invisibility and flying and super strength are cool, but Wesley Crusher could pull himself out of time. Essentially he could stop time’s forward progress for everyone around him but not for him. The universe would freeze in place but he could still move around and interact with everything. How cool is that? Imagine you’re about to get in a car accident. You hit pause on the universe, move out of the way, and then hit play. Accident avoided. Say you needed another few minutes to prepare for a meeting or something. Just hit pause, do what you need to do, hit play and give a killer performance. If I could have a super power, that might be what I would want. That’s a pretty cool skill.
What about a skill that I already have? Well, there is one thing. One super power-esque thing. Based on the name of this little blog site, you already know what it is. I have red hair. I was born that way and at 52 years old I am still a red head*. This gives me a hidden super power. No, really. It does. I have the power to affect the universe around me in positive ways. Most people don’t know this, but there is a type of positive energy called “red head vibes” that only people with red hair can control. My sister and I used to send out these magical red head vibes to people we knew who needed a little positivity boost. Anyone can send happy thoughts, or positivity, but only red heads can send the super powerful red head vibes.
I expect that the Illuminati’s council of red heads will be very upset with me for sharing this information with the universe, but call me a rebel because I am about to hit publish and let you all know what’s what.
*I am 52 years old and I still have red hair, but my days are very much numbered. I see more white in my hair every day. I’ve held on for a lot longer than most people manage to, much longer than my big sister did, but the end is in sight. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts though.
Remember the Jedi Knight I used to do? I had to go to a new AI image generator, but the Jedi’s are back… for today at least.
generate an image of a jedi knight with red hair using the force
That’s not a Jedi though, that’s a Sith. The red lightsaber is fitting though.
The title of this post says it all. There is only one answer to this question. All other answers are invalid.
Late Spring, early Summer. 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit. Clear, sunny sky. Low humidity. Warm enough to inspire us to want to jump into a swimming pool or a lake or the ocean or something, but not hot enough to be uncomfortable. Plants growing, everything around us alive and green. Yeah, that last one is more seasonal than actual weather but it helps paint the picture.
So basically the opposite of what Northeastern Massachusetts is seeing right now. It’s cold and snowing right now. Oh good. It’s probably more like a mix of snow and rain, and the forecast is calling for the snow to be replaced by down-pouring rain. Oh yippee.
So there you have it, the best type of weather is my favorite type of weather. Basically… beautiful. That’s the best. That’s the only acceptable answer*. You all agree, I am sure.
*In my humble opinion, right? It’s my blog though so from the blog’s point of view it’s the only opinion. Heh heh heh.
Just yesterday my friend Larry sent me a text asking if I remembered the names of any of our high school teachers. My first thought was of course I do. My second thought was me trying to remember them and exactly one came to me. My senior year English teacher. Was she influential? She was brutal. Easily one of the toughest teachers I ever had. She kicked our academic asses on a daily basis and I was able to rise to the occasion. My grades in that class were very good. Unfortunately she was the only name I could remember off the top of my head. Mrs Acone.
Larry was specifically asking about our ninth grade Earth Science teacher. Somehow, magically, I was able to come up with it. Now, the very next morning, we get this question? Are the internets reading my mind again? Is this some X-Files level shit here?
Most influential teacher… okay… Mrs Acone is on the short list. Mrs Adams is too. I was in third grade. I was in the second highest reading group in the class. Mrs Adams, for some reason I am not aware of, bumped me up to the highest level reading group. A little bit of faith in a little tiny me and next thing we know I am an A student all the way into my high school career. Well… in every class except math. My math skills went south at some point, but other than that I was at the start of a very good public education career.
One other candidate for most influential requires me to fast forward all the way to my last time around in college. Dr Canning was my Computing I professor. He asked me for my resume one day. At the time it included a mention of attending Northeast Broadcasting School. He jumped on that and offered me a job in a lab he ran. I wouldn’t be doing anything code based in that lab. Instead he wanted me to start a Computer Science department focused talk show on the campus radio station. I took the job. The result was not only a radio show that ran for the next three years or so, it was that I had a peer group in school that I could study with, and a private, locked door lab space where we could meet to study. It was the key to me finishing my Bachelors Degree with some really excellent grades.
So there are a few influential teachers from my very distant past. There are probably a few more I could add but, as implied by the start of this post, I might not remember any of their names.
There are a lot of things I wish I could do more of every day. There will be no surprises here. It will be all things that I write about here all the time.
Spend more time with my wife
Spend time with my step kids. We’re empty nesters, so spending any time at all on a daily basis would be an increase
Music. Playing it, writing it, recording it, listening to it, breaking it down and analyzing it in such a way that I know a single piece inside and out and backwards and forwards. You know, the usual stuff
Taking pictures. Using the word, “photography” just feels so above my skill level. I’m not a photographer, I am a nerd who takes pictures. I see a clear difference between the two things
Watching good TV and movies
Reading good books… or bad books if they are fun
Sleeping… ah, yes
Enjoying the outdoors. That’s a little sarcastic given that the weather in my neck of the woods comes in two flavors these days: Bitterly, painfully cold and soaking, drowning wet.
Spending time with family and friends. Two things I barely ever get to do these days that I would like to do again someday
Spoiler alert, I am probably going to swear a lot in this post. You’ve been warned.
I hate tattoos. I really hate them. I really fucking hate them. My wife has one, but she got it before we met and I immediately taught myself to not be bothered by it. It wasn’t hard for me to do because she’s amazing and I am crazy about her. Crazy enough to barely even see her tattoo. Her tattoo is okay by me. Every other tattoo….
I fucking loathe tattoos. I can’t state that strongly enough. I hate tattoos as much as I hate fascists. I hate tattoos as much as I hate the maga cult. I hate tattoos almost as much as I hate the New York Yankees. That’s a lot of hate.
I mean I really… fucking… hate… tattoos. I really fucking hate tattoos. Are you picking up what I am putting down? I hate them… a lot.
So no, I don’t want a fucking tattoo. No, I am not planning on getting a fucking tattoo. I am not going to scar my skin with a permanent mark that looks like mud that will never, ever wash off. No. Fuck tattoos. I am never getting a fucking tattoo.
My wife’s tattoo is okay by me. Every other tattoo? No fucking way.
One word to describe me? Can a single word describe anyone? I don’t think so. We are too complicated. Even the least complex personality is too detailed to boil down to a single word. Even a farcical, one dimensional tool bag like donald trump is too involved for a single word. You could try to sum him up with nazi but that isn’t enough. You also need words like idiot. Idiot nazi. You need words like orange. Idiot orange nazi. You need words like incompetent. Idiot orange incompetent nazi. And so on and so forth.
I’ll try though. Here’s a list of possibilities…
tall
red
altered
butchered
redesigned
bypassed
underachieving
husband
step father (yeah, that’s two words. Shoot me)
mediocre
meh
All of those words seem to fit on one level or another.
Inside the Red Head's Head 