One of my digital friends, Bernie, wrote this blog post featuring Maria Popova, a writer I admire greatly. In the article, Popova writes about the grief feels upon the passing of her beloved friend Emily Levine. She explores how poetry impacted that journey, and how it can help us all manage the finitude of our lives. I love her line “[N]ow that Emily has returned her stardust to the universe…” as a descriptor of death. Makes me think of Carl Sagan’s line that we’re all made of “star stuff”. There’s infinity within our finite nature. So very Zen, I guess.
Anyway, I highly recommend Maria’s post, and all of her work.
gazing to the west
petals dancing in the breeze
as the sunlight fades
It’s been a hot minute since I last posted a haiku, so here’s one for you today. This photo is from my walk along the Edmonds Waterfront. It was a lovely day; started sunny and slowly clouds drifted in. It stayed dry, fortunately for me.
I adore writing haiku, though I’ve been trying to write about my explorations into tech. More professional, I guess. I’ve been told to focus on your brand with your social media. But, what is my brand? I mean, I’ve written tons of haiku, and they’re some of my most popular content. But, they don’t bring in the money, do they? Maybe I need to work to monetize them. Oooohhh…I can be an influencer?
Anyway, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do with myself next. I’ve been focused on IT, web design, and other technology “things” for the past few years. With that, though, I’ve received constant feedback that I should look at Project Management. Instructors, supervisors, family…constant stuff. And by the same people who then ping me to fix their printers.
I guess I’m still trying to “find my way”. Maybe my way is to take pictures and write haiku? Not gonna get rich at that, but it’s fun. Who knows?
Let me know what you think! Anyway, talk to you soon.
Ah, OS/2! In the early 90s, I worked on a project for a Seattle stock brokerage, where we were digitizing key records. And, to be clearer, scanning them. This project’s systems needed OS/2, and it was my first introduction to this operating system.
It wasn’t well known at the point, but I was aware of it’s existence. I was intrigued and interested in exploring it. As I think back, my main takeaway: the system was quite stable. I spent very little time dealing with issues, blue screens, or other bugs. It seemed, in retrospect, to be a solid OS.
I have no recollection of using it anywhere else, even though I spent the 90s working myriad projects with many Seattle area companies. Odd, looking back. Odd.
YouTube’s algorithm served this video up today: “The Fall of OS/2”.
It provides lots of insights into how the product failed. And, the story doesn’t paint IBM of the 90s in a good light. It seems the main factors are marketing and leadership incompetence, exacerbated by some petty internal politics. These seem to have been larger factors that Microsoft’s efforts.
I haven’t thought about OS/2 in years. After watching this video, I lament its loss. What would the modern OS environment look like if we’d had a viable non-Microsoft OS on x86 systems? Sadly, we’ll never know.
My first thought was “do people STILL do this”? Does any company want the liability considering how people have been shot going to the wrong house? I mean, look at this list (3 of 495,000,000 results from Google).
So, no…NO I’m not going door-knocking…even here in Seattle. Even forgoing the tales of violence, I’m an introvert. The thought of knocking on stranger’s doors is pretty close to my vision of the deepest pits of hell.
Stepping back a bit, I also wonder about the efficacy of this as a marketing strategy. What sort of conversion rate do you see with this work? I doubt it’s out of the single digits. Perhaps it’s not actually “sales” but political doorbelling (tis the season, after all). But that should be clearly disclosed.
Anyway, I’m lucky that all I need to do in this situation is spend a few minutes puzzling, then move along. I’m OPEN to new opportunities, but do not NEED a new job at the moment. And, with that, it’s time for me to move along.
Ok, my headline here is a bit clickbaity, but stick with me. So, I just got back from a family trip to the delightful town of Manzanita on the Oregon coast. It was a lovely time, which I’ll try to explore more in depth shortly. But there was a recurring element that was…weird: Cougars. Not as in WSU grads, but in the American Mountain Lion kind.
When we got in to town, we started exploring things we wanted to do. One of them was hike Nehalem Bay State Park. When I Googled the park the first thing to come up was this news article:
It was mildly alarming, but the State Parks folks closed off a few trails, and we put off that endeavor for a few days to let our furry friend move on to other locales.
But this wasn’t the end of cougars. Another place we wanted to explore was the famous Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach. While there, Haystack Rock was blocked off by parks folks, the police, and emergency personnel. Turns out, yep, a cougar.
Ok, cool enough. But it gets better still. Once I got home, I logged into Instagram. A photographer I follow had the following images at the TOP of my feed.
For me, what was particularly wild about Andy Woo’s post, beside the wild timing, was the synchronicity of us being that close, as Mr. Woo is a globally travelled photographer. Lastly, he did get some really cool photos of the cougar while there, though he was after puffins. But we take what we can get.
So, that’s it for cougars at this point. Maybe there’s some greater, mystical significance. If so, I’ll need to discover it. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of fun coincidences.
Sidenote: the cougar in the “featured image” is a random photo from Pexels, not related to the Cannon Beach kitty.
For today’s quote, I opted for this one by Thomas Merton. His writings have had a profound impact on my life. It seems quite fitting to share something from him.
“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.“
my fears whisper just below the birdsong through gritted teeth
A poetic meditation from this morning. I’m up earlier than I’d planned, with a racing mind. Seeking to make world practical and free of risks. A boring life that would be methinks.
