Sometimes Systems Fail

Posted on 08/12/2022 by Grumpa Joe

Do you ever wonder how a writer gets to be famous? I do. When I read a so called best seller I wonder why it became popular? Most times it is obvious even to me that it is popular because it was a damned good, and well told story. Today, I completed a reading of James Patterson’s first book The Thomas Berryman Number. The library has several shelves of Patterson stories, and most I agree are good. The Thomas Berryman Number is not one of them, it is average at best.

To test an author’s credibility I will read his first work. Years ago, I was hooked on author James Michener. The first of his works I read was Poland. It was a great history of the country dating back to the time God created planet Earth. I learned, by reading thirteen of his works, that all of his novels began the same way, the first three chapters deal with creation, and evolution. The history and detail in his historical tomes take an average of a thousand pages of regular print. They are not books you can read in a weekend. I still remember reading Poland. It was a Memorial Day weekend, and once I got into the story I couldn’t put it down. After three days of non-stop reading I was half way finished at 500 pages. I put the book down down on an end table, and there is stayed for twelve months. After a year had passed without touching the book, I decided it was time to return it to the owner, but I had to finish it first. After another marathon reading session I finally finished

Then one day, I looked at Michener’s book list to see what I was missing. I never read his first stories. I ordered his very first one from the library and immediately immersed myself into Tales of the South Pacific published in 1947. Surprise, surprise, I knew the story from beginning to end. Rogers and Hammerstein used this book to produce the musical play titled South Pacific. The play followed the original exactly, and played on Broadway for 1,954 performances, and then was followed up with a movie.. The only exception was the book went into far more detail about the war in the South Pacific. I still rate this book at five stars, and it was a lot shorter than a thousand pages.

I used this same principal to decide if Patterson’s first work would turn me on as much as Michener’s did. Patterson’s first work disappointed me, yet he has written dozens of mystery stories which are all hits. I guess I’ll have to revise my system.

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Reading vs Watching

Posted on 04/12/2022 by Grumpa Joe

Between watching movies on Netflix and reading books, time is limited. My goal is to read one book every week during the year. That means I must find something I like, and then read it within a week. I am a slow reader and my comprehension is lousy. Often times, I must take a rest and not even touch a book for a week or two. The worst thing is when I start reading a book that is too philosophical, or too wordy, and it takes me too long to finish. Most likely because I really don’t want to finish, but my tendency is to read each book from cover to cover, even if I think it is horse crap. My theory is that even those books which I rate poorly have been published because someone else thought it was good. Publisher’s don’t like to invest in books that don’t make money.

My kind of movie: The story is plausible, but I’m sure some of the scenes are contrived for effect, and not believable.

DOG

  • Stars: Channing Tatum.
  • Directed by: Reid Carolin, Channing Tatum.
  • Release date: Feb. 18.

Dog is a comedy road trip movie coming to theatres starring Channing Tatum as Army Ranger Briggs who is given the seemingly impossible task of transporting Lulu, an unruly Belgian Shepherd, down the Pacific Coast to attend its owner’s funeral. 

Watching movies is another matter. After supper every evening I look for an interesting movie to watch. There are days, when I spend thirty minutes scrolling through the movie menus trying to decipher whether I should waste my time watching, or not. One thing I like about Netflix is it’s ability to screen what I like to watch. The one thing I hate about Netflix is that it narrows the field of movies that interest me to a commonality that makes them all the same.

Netflix has targeted me with foreign films and they are the ones I watch most often because they tend to have better story lines. American films are too comic-book, crime related, shoot-em-up oriented, which turn me off. I love good stories, I even love bad stories. How often have you witnessed shootings and murder in your lifetime? Some of the films expect us to believe the impossible odds of the good guy escaping harm after being shot at by a dozen armor clothed goons spraying bullets with machine guns. Even more unbelievable is the good guy shooting his way out with one pistol and one clip of bullets. This is not realistic. That many bullets resembles war, but good guys get killed in wars. I’ll stick to the stories that involve real people and real life situations. Of course on the other side of the picture there is the Hallmark channel that shows only love stories with happy endings.

Last year I kept track of the movies I watched with my ratings. People were always asking me for the title of films that I thought were good. So, to accommodate them I noted each film on my phone. Unfortunately, I lost the file of over 500 film titles, and was really pissed for a few weeks. Now, I just watch the movies and don’t even try to remember the titles.

Filed under: Biography, Education, family | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

WordPress Sucks

Posted on 02/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

I’ve been with WordPress and this BLOG for over twelve years, but I have to proclaim that WordPress can use some help. Two days ago I wrote what I believed was a pretty eloquent post covering a number of issues blended into a movie review. I was in the process of adding images and media to enhance the words. I hit the publish button and nothing happened. I realized that the post was frozen. Nothing I did would make it move in any direction. I saw a proclamation that read something to the effect that I had a more current back up. Without thinking about it, my bad, I hit the button for the backup. I got about in fourth of the piece from the backup.WTF? That is not my idea of a back up. A back up means you get your most recent post back in its entirety. I tried multiple ways to recover, but realized too late that I was fucked. I lost a great post. I’ve been stewing about for two days, but it won’t change a thing. WordPress is continuously trying to improve the experience but only succeeds in messing things up. I would be very happy using the original program of ten years ago. After all it’ s only a bit of trying and repetition that makes it happen.

I have never tried any other blogging program, but now I am open to exploring what else is out in the world. Every time WP tries something new it is to please the younger crowd that thinks from their seat. Of course the younger crowd has been kept from the world of logic and common sense. They all think like their phones, and therefore, so must the rest of us cater to the whims of Apple and Samsung. The result is a bunch of change that fails often, and causes an old guy like me to have apoplexy about it.

I have patiently endured the many changes WP has made and have tried their new editors, but I find that I like the old systems best. Once learned they make sense and when something makes sense it become easy to use. God forbid the younger set learn anything about making sense.

WP has made some things easier and more intuitive to use, such as the method for adding media into a blog post. Their latest systems are immensely easier to use, and I like them. What I don’t like is the tendency of the post to freeze and require shutting down in the middle of things to get things rolling again. That is not a normal thing, and it is a bug that must be corrected. Every time I been trouble shooting a problem like this I learn that I am not the only one having the issue. That is a problem for Word
Press.

Recently, I detected a problem with my video streaming service (Comcast) and lost hours trying to make the damned program work. All the time thinking is was me in my old age not understanding how to do these new fangled things. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it is not me it is the vendor of the service. That pisses me off. I spent a good part of my life fixing products that were expected to work but didn’t. I know how frustrating that can be for the developer, but dam it, that is not an excuse. Get off you asses and fix the problem. I finally extracted a fix-it commitment from Comcast on the issue of their lousy streaming service. They have passed the date they predicted, and I am still having issues. Less than before, but the problem is still lurking in their software and comes up often. My fix is to pull the plug and do a hard reset. Usually that fixes the problem for awhile. Funny, I never read that in the owners manual that I should pull the plug and reboot to fix a problem three times a night.

The problem with all of these companies providing all these wonderful services is that they are so successful that they write off the few customers who have problems. If my boss had ever caught me writing off a problem because it was too small to worry about, I would have been applying for unemployment. Eventually, companies will begin losing money to their competition and wake up to the fact that it is their fault that it is happening. In the meantime, poor Joe the customer wastes his precious minutes of remaining life trying to resolve an issue that cannot be resolved. Joe has to learn how to click the “off” button to fix the problem and substitute reading books instead.

Reading Books, the Same as Streaming

Filed under: Aging, family, Seniors, Technology | Tagged: , , , | 12 Comments »

Boredom Yields Grief

Posted on 20/02/2020 by Grumpa Joe

A few days ago I completed a project that took me several months to execute. Begun in March of 2019, and then set aside in May of 2019 to spend time with my wife. I restarted again in January 2020 a full six months after Peggy died. During the time I worked on this animal, my life was never lonely. This week, I found myself with a couple of hours of free time that I didn’t know what to do with.  I missed going to my shop to cut and grind, sand, and finish wood pieces. I found myself getting lonely and wishing Peggy was still alive, what a terrible feeling. Not that I didn’t want her to be with me, but that I wanted her to be with me so badly.

To ward off the loneliness, I dressed for winter and took a long walk. Exercise helps ward off grief. My shoes are beginning to show signs of wear because I am walking so much. Somedays, I will walk several times. If I need a book, I’ll walk to the library, if my hair needs cutting, I’ll walk to the barber shop. If i am meeting friends for a drink I’ll walk to the bar. Today, I’ll walk to a noon meeting with my men’s group for lunch. (KETO for sure.)

Loneliness is an emotion that causes me to be depressed. Therefore, I must avoid it with a passion. Instead I find more powerful activities to fight depression. I pray when I walk, I watch movies that absorb, I read books with stories that engulf my mind, the last thing I will do is nothing, because then the mind begins feeding me bullshit about how tough I have it when the exact opposite is true. My blessings far out number my adversities, and I thank God for having blessed me so much.

Yesterday, a friend texted me with a link to a Lions event which is in September. I texted back that I have not been able to think that far in advance. Then immediately, I signed up for the event, a three day training session called the USA/Canada Leadership Forum held in Louisville, Kentucky this year. I thought, what the hell. there is nothing holding me back but me. I have looked at this event for three years always thinking that when I am free again I will go. I am going.

While on the Forum website I was reminded of a newer Lions educational program. One can earn a Bachelor’s, Master’s and a Phd in Lionism online from Lions University. I signed up for it while Peggy was still alive and I was President of my club, but put it aside. I clicked the button and completed the first of ten sessions required for my Bachelor’s Degree. I want to receive the degree at the forum in September. Why not? I can be a widower who sits and watches grass grow, or I can be a widower who attends Webinars to get a degree.

Activity, activity, activity, is the key to trudging through grief, along with writing about it.

 

Filed under: Biography, family, grief, Lions Club, Motivation | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Which Kind of Uncle Tom Are You?

Posted on 23/06/2014 by Grumpa Joe

After years of hearing blacks make derogatory remarks about fellow blacks calling them “Uncle Toms,” I decided to learn just who Uncle Tom really is. I can’t believe it took me so long to read a classic like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Ms Stowe is white, yet she did a very skilful job of describing the lives of slaves. Her use of slave dialect is the hardest part of the book. Let’s face it, if one did not talk daily with a slave, understanding their speech is difficult. I made it through those chapters by phonetically sounding out the words spoken by the slave characters, and even that is hard to understand what they said. It just reinforced for me that learning a new language in a foreign country is not easy if you don’t get any help other than a whip.

uncle tom's cabin

I concluded that anyone who uses the term Uncle Tom as a derogatory term is either 1. Stupid, 2. Never read the book, or 3. professes the Black Power movement. Ms Stowe’s character is not a sellout to his race. He is the exact opposite, but his method ingratiated him with his owners. Uncle Tom believed in doing what his master asked of him and in doing it well. The result was he found favor with his owners until bought by one Simon Legree. Tom also believed in God and his faith kept him strong. He had a positive attitude which also cheered the people around him.

When Legree bought Tom at the New Orléans Slave Market he learned of Tom’s easy-going way and trustworthiness. Legree vowed to break him and have Tom bowing before him. Legree ordered Tom to whip a fellow slave. Tom refused to inflict punishment upon his fellow slave or anyone for that matter. Legree had him brutally whipped. Tom held out, believing being whipped to death would reward him with Heaven.

Eventually, Legree punishes Tom to the point of death, and still Tom holds on to his faith. Legree does not understand, nor does he care to.

In my opinion, blacks who try to degrade others by calling them Uncle Tom’s are ignorant of the true story behind Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Instead they choose to believe one of the distortions invented by various authors who rewrote the story for political, or racist reasons. The distorted definition of Uncle Tom became a black who will do anything to stay in the good of a white, including betray a fellow black. In 1852 when Stowe wrote the story, there were no copyright laws to protect content, and many authors and playwrights plagiarized the work rewriting sections to please audiences. The result is that Uncle Tom, as created by author Stowe is the exact opposite of the distortions.  The real Uncle Tom did not do things to stay in the good of whites, he did them because he believed in doing the best he could no matter what. As far as betrayal, he lived the opposite having died protecting his fellow slaves.

Harriet-Beecher-Stowe

 

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