I’m retired. I was tired yesterday and I’ll be retired today. I have all the time in the world to sleep and now I can’t pull it off like the good old days
I go to bed when I’m tired. Sleep can be a battle anyway when you get older. I get as much as I can so getting a head start is not unknown to me.
As far as waking up? I don’t have a real choice in that matter either. If the sun is up, I’m hosed. I just have to hope I have enough by then. I’m glad I don’t live in Northern Europe where the sun is up by 4:30.
Then there is the fun game that seasoned citizens play called get up to pee. There is no telling how many times that will happen. That can throw a spanner in the works of trying to get back to sleep. An all nighter for me would be not having to piss, but I can’t remember that happening in a decade.
What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?
Yes, it’s Introvert time again. I am more comfortable alone than I am among a lot of people. While it’s possible to be alone in a crowd (introvert strategy here), it still comes with stress.
I also hate deadlines and the stress that comes with making it. I try to get stuff done well in advance so I don’t have to deal with it at crunch time.
Oh, and avoid family reunions as much and as often as possible.
I’m sure others have much better strategies to increase their comfort, but here’s my .02.
I’ve been on vacations as a kid, with that family growing up. I was kind of a tag along and did what my parents decided mostly. We went to the beach a lot growing up in Florida. That meant I grew up next to Disney World. Heck, we didn’t even have Disney until 8th grade for me. My memories there are of playing alone next to the ocean in my own world.
Then came vacations with a different family, my wife and kids. We traveled around the world. They were good times that I’ll remember while taking one kid fishing everywhere and the other doing anything to keep her from being bored. There was no time to recover or recharge my social battery.
Later in life I did stuff like sailfishing in Costa Rica or going to F1 in Italy and again they were good, but stressful trying to catch planes and waiting in huge crowds. I still had to rush to catch planes and was a mule hauling luggage around the world.
As always though, my introvert self comes out. Vacations where you are always on the run and trying to make everyone happy wore my social battery out to the point that I’d need a vacation to recover from vacation.
Now, I just go to the mountains where there aren’t many people and I can relax without having people acting like tourists or waiting in line. I have my stuff in my place and I can do gardening and tree trimming out in field with no one telling me what to do.
Not having the next deadline or trying to catch the next plane is my favorite.
Again, this comes from Introvert Dear, a resource that helps me understand me. The link is at the end
The Curious Connection Between Introverts and Rewards
When writing my book, I spoke with Colin DeYoung, a psychology professor at the University of Minnesota who had recently published a paper on introversion. He explained that one reason introverts need alone time is related to how we respond to rewards.
No, I’m not referring to the gold foil stars you might have earned in grade school (though it could be argued that stickers are indeed a reward for kids). For adults, rewards can be things like money, social status, social connections, sex, and food. When you get promoted at work or convince an attractive stranger to give you their phone number, you’re receiving a reward. Hurray!
Of course, introverts also value things like money, relationships, and food. However, researchers believe that introverts are wired to respond differently to rewards than extroverts. Compared to our more outgoing counterparts, we “quiet ones” are simply less motivated and energized by these same rewards. It’s as if extroverts see big, juicy steaks everywhere, while introverts often see overcooked hamburgers.
In fact, as any introvert can confirm, sometimes those “rewards” aren’t just less appealing — they can actually be tiring and annoying, like a big party. This brings me to another reason why introverts need alone time: We react differently to stimulation.
An Extrovert and an Introvert Go to a Party
Take, for example, two friends at a house party — one an extrovert, the other an introvert. They’re crammed into a crowded room where loud music blares from huge speakers. Everyone is practically shouting to be heard over the din. There are a dozen conversations happening simultaneously, with just as many things demanding their attention.
For the extrovert, this level of stimulation might feel just right. He sees potential rewards everywhere — an attractive stranger across the room, opportunities to deepen old relationships, and the chance to make new friends. Most importantly, tonight offers a chance to boost his social status within his friend group, especially if he navigates the evening skillfully.
So, the extrovert feels energized and excited to be at the party. In fact, he’s so motivated that he stays late into the night. He’s exhausted the next day and needs time to recover — after all, partying is hard work. But to him, the energy spent was well worth it.
Now, back to our introvert. See him over there, hunkered down in the corner? For him, the environment feels overwhelming. It’s too loud, there are too many things happening at once, and the crowd creates a dizzying buzz of activity. Sure, he wants to make friends, fit in, and be liked, but these rewards just aren’t as tantalizing to him. It feels like he would have to expend a lot of energy for something he’s only mildly interested in to begin with.
So, the introvert heads home early to watch a movie with his roommate. In his own apartment, with just one other person, the level of stimulation feels just right. He exchanges some texts with a woman he met a few weeks ago in one of his classes. Like the extrovert, he too wants friends and a romantic partner. However, he finds it too tiring to deal with the noise and socializing at a big party to make those connections.
The Dopamine Difference
Chemically, there’s a good reason the introvert in the above scenario feels overwhelmed, and it relates to a neurotransmitter called dopamine. This chemical, found in the brain, is often referred to as the “feel good” chemical because it regulates our pleasure and reward centers.
One of its roles is to make us notice potential rewards and motivate us to pursue them. For example, dopamine alerts the extrovert to the attractive stranger at the party and fuels his motivation to come up with a cheesy pick-up line.
Another important function of dopamine is reducing our cost of effort. Socializing requires energy because it involves paying attention, listening, thinking, speaking, and moderating our emotional reactions. Technically, socializing is tiring for everyone, including extroverts. However, dopamine helps make it less exhausting for them.
According to DeYoung, extroverts have a more active dopamine reward system. As a result, they can better tolerate — and often push through — the tiredness that inevitably comes with socializing. Much of the time, they don’t experience the same level of mental and physical fatigue that introverts do, thanks to this dopamine boost.
It’s called the “introvert” hangover, not the “extrovert” hangover for a reason.
Introverts Are Sensitive to Dopamine
Dr. Marti Olsen Laney explains the difference between introverts and extroverts in her 2002 book, The Introvert Advantage. She states that introverts are more sensitive to the effects of dopamine, requiring less of it to feel its pleasant effects. Too much dopamine, she notes, can lead us “quiet ones” to feel overstimulated — another reason why introverts need alone time
Extroverts, in contrast, may have a low sensitivity to dopamine, meaning they need more of it to feel happy. Social activities and stimulating environments increase dopamine production, which helps explain why extroverts relish socializing and “being on the go” more than introverts.
Interestingly, Dr. Laney explains that introverts may prefer to use a different brain pathway, one activated by acetylcholine. This neurotransmitter is linked to long-term memory, perceptual learning, and the ability to stay calm and alert, among other functions.
Introverts might enjoy spending time alone partly because of acetylcholine. According to Laney, this neurotransmitter can produce a sense of happiness for introverts when they engage in inward-focused activities, such as quietly reflecting or enjoying hobbies.
Extroverts Place More Significance on People
Finally, a study found that extroverts might simply find humans more interesting than introverts do. This finding aligns with the idea that introverts are less motivated to seek social rewards.
In this study, researchers observed a diverse group of individuals and recorded their brain’s electrical activity using an EEG. As participants were shown pictures of both objects and people, the researchers measured their brains’ P300 activity. This activity happens quickly in response to sudden changes around us and gets its name because it occurs within 300 milliseconds.
Interestingly, researchers found that extroverts showed the P300 response primarily when viewing images of faces, whereas introverts only exhibited this response after viewing objects. Essentially, extroverts’ brains became more active when looking at people.
This doesn’t mean that introverts hate people (though, admittedly, the human race can get on my nerves occasionally). Researchers still don’t fully understand introversion. However, these findings suggest that extroverts might simply place more importance on social interactions than introverts do.
So, the next time an introvert in your life needs alone time, remember that it’s not personal. Introverts need alone time because their brains are wired that way. It isn’t necessarily a reflection of how they feel about you or your relationship.
As for me, you can find me at home tonight. Preferably with the whole place to myself, that is.
To Answer This, let’s not confuse being religious with being spiritual. A lot of religious people are doing time and hell when they thought they were doing good on earth.
Spirituality should be the center of your life. If you accept the postulate that your soul is eternal, then spirituality becomes the focus of your life by default.
Therefore, it is a very important aspect that is a part of all of the other decisions and directions in my life. It is important to know that I’m still able to take the wrong fork in the road despite this.
This comes from my writings in 2020. It’s unedited and I read it and say yep, that’s marriage. I have this conversation frequently. Just change out the subject to anything or anybody and it goes about the same.
Here is my day. (Wife or T) Which chicken should we get out? Me: get out the one in the package. T: but they are too big. Me: then get out the other one. T: but they won’t work will they? Me: use whatever you want. T: but which chicken should I get out? Me: whatever works, it’s chicken. T: what do you think I should use. Me: (to myself: whatever the fuck you want, you aren’t listening anyway) You asked me and I told you and you don’t want to do it so look in the freezer and get out some chicken. T: but you bought them and I thought you bought another one. Me: look in the freezer and find the right one (about to shoot myself).
I never knew which chicken we got out. I knew it didn’t matter.
I’m not Jewish, but when I lived in South Florida, the guys told me this one. Why do Jewish Husbands die first?
I knew in my 30s that I wanted to retire early. I enjoyed my work, but it was getting in the way of my life. I had stuff to do I still do.
So I had to prepare and live my life accordingly by these principles. Now I’m the king of retirement. I love waking up, knowing I don’t have meetings, email, texts, presentations or travel for business. Everything is paid off, and I can enjoy life more.
My mom told me she taught each of her kids financial independence, saving and spending. The rest of them are broke or died broke.
I respect people who love to work. I had a lot of other things to do in life also. I’m taking care of that now.
I will say this, when I’m passionate about something I go in Well more than 100%. It’s probably why I’ve burnt out on a lot of stuff.
Let’s see, there was the tennis phase followed by fishing and hunting, karate, competitive bike, racing and let’s not forget a bunch of mini stuff that happened between.
I did learn the lesson about passion when I was working. If you could find someone that was passionate about a subject, you didn’t need to motivate them. It was there all along.
Look, I grew up in Central Florida without air conditioning. It was summer 51 of the 52 weeks of the year.
One of the best things in life for me was getting out of that state. It may have a great political climate, growth, no state taxes and other positives, but dreading to go outside because it’s so hot isn’t worth it.
My go to page for this stuff is Introvert Dear. They nailed it on this one. Link below
An introvert hangover can leave you feeling physically and mentally exhausted, making you just want to be alone in a quiet place.
Does this sound familiar?
You’ve spent the whole day with your friends or family. You’ve had a great time eating, playing games, and catching up. But now, you’re so exhausted you can barely see straight, while everyone else seems as energetic as ever. In fact, they’re already setting up the next game as you’re wondering how you can slip out the door.
The next day, after the event is over, is no better. You might have a headache, and your body may feel sore and drained, almost like the onset of the flu. You’re tired — so very tired.
If this resonates with you, you might be experiencing something we call an “introvert hangover.”
“An introvert hangover is a pretty terrible thing to experience. It starts with an actual physical reaction to overstimulation. Your ears might ring, your eyes start to blur, and you feel like you’re going to hyperventilate. Maybe your palms sweat. And then your mind feels like it kind of shuts down, building barriers around itself as if you had been driving on a wide open road, and now you’re suddenly driving in a narrow tunnel. All you want is to be at home, alone, where it’s quiet.”
Yes, the introvert hangover is real. It’s a funny term that describes the serious social burnout many introverts experience, marked by significant mental and physical fatigue.
Here are 12 signs that you might have an introvert hangover, which I discuss in more detail in my book, The Secret Lives of Introverts. You don’t need to experience all these symptoms to have one, and your symptoms might vary.
I never understood this for the first more than 5 decades. I did know that I’d instinctively look for a place to be away from the group once the event was over. I connected better with pets than strangers. I get it now and protect myself with time alone, sometimes before the event to make sure my battery is full
I’m almost always happy being by myself. I like others and I’m even married. Still, if I have the chance to be alone, I make that choice almost every time.
If you had to change your name, what would your new name be?
Since I’m in the real world, I’m happy with who I am.
But since the question was asked when I could be the guy that saves the world or the universe, there you go. If you can be a superhero at it, that’s just icing on the cake.
Now, if you’re an introvert like me, you might hate the small talk ritual. Jon Baker, a business coach for introverts, found that 74 percent of introverts said they dislike small talk, as opposed to only 23 percent of extroverts who said they dislike it.
Why do the majority of introverts hate small talk?
By definition, introverts are people who feel drained by socializing and recharge their energy by spending time alone. Because small talk is neither emotionally nor intellectually stimulating, it can feel like an inefficient use of their limited social energy. In other words, if introverts are going to use up their energy, they want to spend it in ways that really count.
Also introverts tend to enjoy delving deep into topics and exploring ideas on a meaningful level. It’s more energizing to talk about things that feel important and relevant to them. Small talk, by its very nature, remains at a surface level.
But those aren’t the real reasons introverts might hate small talk.
As my friend Dr. Laurie Helgoe points out in her fascinating book,Introvert Power, “Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people. We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people.”
Small talk doesn’t bring people closer. Quite the opposite — it can create a barrier that prevents the kind of genuine, intimate connections we all crave.
Think about it. When two people get stuck in small-talk mode, discussing only “safe” and polite topics like the weather, they don’t really learn anything new about each other. They don’t get to know the other person or understand who they are. They miss discovering that their conversation partner, for example, wakes up early to go birdwatching, hates the color yellow, or grew up on a family farm.
As a result, the relationship doesn’t grow in a satisfying way. In general, introverts are interested in understanding people’s thoughts, feelings, life lessons, and experiences, which isn’t usually achieved through small talk.
I don’t mean the Batman and Robin type of a friend and loyalty. I just want somebody that I know I can trust, and not betray me. It’s like your girlfriend or wife not sleeping around behind your back.
What I ask is not too much and I don’t think it’s that hard to do. I know I give that to those that are really my friends. Being an introvert, I only let a very few people to the innermost part of my life. That’s a lot for a person like me to do so respecting that isn’t too much to ask in return.
I’ve donated over 5 gallons until I wasn’t eligible anymore. I don’t even want blood from someone who got jabbed. Along with the HIV, you can keep the Spike Protein also.
After letters to my senators and an American Thinker article, Why is the FDA Contaminating America’s Blood Supply? it is the United Kingdom that finally comes clean:
Britain’s ‘day of shame’ as full scale of infected blood scandal revealed
‘The result of this inquiry should shake our nation to its core. This should have been avoided. It was known these treatments were contaminated; warnings were ignored repeatedly.
‘Time and again people in positions of power and trust had the chance to stop the transmission of those infections. Time and again they failed to do so.’
Patients “died or suffered miserably” as a result of being given contaminated blood products between 1970 and 1998 because medics and successive governments “did not put patient safety first.” When the scandal was exposed, “the response of those in authority served to compound people’s suffering.”
You see, the UK has their very own “deep state.”
How did this happen?
Medicines for hemophiliacs, including one called Factor VIII, were imported from the US in the 1970s and 1980s [emphasis added] and prescribed by the NHS. However, the treatments were made from blood plasma donations which often came from groups at high risk for HIV and hepatitis C such as gay men, sex workers and prisoners and were often contaminated.
Yes, memories lots of them. I write down as much as I can remember about my life and then if something pops up, I’ll insert where appropriate.
Sure, I have stuff on the wall, pictures on the phone and even photo albums that remind me of times that I’ve spent. It’s the words that I write down though which create the more vivid image in my mind, and experience the emotion of when it happened.
I knew this was the answer 25 years before it happened. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the work that I did, but it was only a couple of stairs in Life and there were more stairs before and after.
At the end work was getting in the way of my life. I had so much going on at the time and still have so much to do.
There may be bigger Trekkie or Star Wars fans than me, but they are at conferences and cos-play. I have been disappointed in TPTB who made both woke. Read below and weep for those of us who have been shit on by the movies and TV shows that have been put out lately.
For those who do not follow science fiction, Star Wars and Star Trek have been on the decline since 2005, at the very least.
Things did not come to the forefront until George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney in 2012 and Kathleen Kennedy took over as head of Lucasfilm. Kennedy loudly announced “The Force is Female” while Disney executives while Disney executives proudly proclaimed their “Not so secret gay agenda.”
Although Trump-supporter Manny Coto was the showrunner for the last season of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005, the series as been on the decline ever since the Berman/Braga Era. This was after Gene Roddenberry, the coke-addicted alcoholic who abused the staff of Star Trek: The Next Generation through his attorney, Leonard Maizlish, was forced out in 1989.
Alex Kurtzman took over after the 2009 Star Trek film, and things went downhill from there. Star Trek: Discovery is one of the most widely-mocked shows in history, and Star Trek: Picard was an overall terrible production. Star Trek: New Worlds even had January 6 as a “major event.”
The government, the media, the Pharmaceutical companies, China, Fauci, Gates, FDA, WHO, CDC…all of them either lied or refused to tell us the truth.
#2 On March 24, 2020, the CDC altered how death certificates were recorded *EXCLUSIVELY* for COVID-19.
"COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death." pic.twitter.com/ZTzLKwuuQg
Key takeaways from Dr. Fauci’s transcribed interview earlier this year, provided by The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic :
Dr. Fauci claimed that the “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation promoted by federal health officials was likely not based on scientific data. He testified that the guidance “sort of just appeared” out of nowhere.
Dr. Fauci “did not recall” Covid-19 information and conversations relevant to the Select Subcommittee’s investigations more than 100 times.
Dr. Fauci testified that he signed off on every foreign and domestic NIAID grant without personally reviewing the proposals.
Dr. Fauci acknowledged that the lab leak hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory.
This comes nearly four years after he “prompted” the publication of the now infamous “Proximal Origin” paper that attempted to “disprove” the lab leak hypothesis.
Dr. Fauci admitted that America’s vaccine mandates — which he promoted from his position of power at the White House — could increase vaccine hesitancy in the future.
Not a lie
You might have come here from Knuckledraggin My Life Away. I was clued into it about the same time Ken started posting the following stuff, very early on.
This was hidden the whole time, the lie was they refused to tell us because there was money to be made on the jab and an election to fix.
For the sheep
This is me and I hope it’s some of you.
Here’s an early lie they told circa 2021
Keep saying no to anything mRNA, and don’t be a maskhole.
Back to elections….
I know a lot of you did this.
And the Coup De Grace, look who got it right and defied everyone, especially the government!
It could be one of the most important lessons learned for the next pandemic. And it should make international headlines.
But it seems like those who made the mistakes during Covid aren’t very interested.
The Amish population that largely rejected public health recommendations fared no worse in terms of health impact than the rest of the country that masked, isolated, and vaccinated. That’s according to available data and a federally-funded study that attempted to evaluate the Amish approach.
These findings imply the US could have avoided experimental vaccines that have serious side effects; and circumvented costly shutdowns that devastated the economy, travel, businesses, mental health, and education at the expense of trillions of US tax dollars.
They learned that there is such a thing as natural immunity and never bothered using it as a cure, because every one of them was getting paid off to push the jab.
Michelle Solis, 46, pled no contest after being accused of raping a 14-year-old student on the child’s eighth grade graduation day in 2021.
A press release from District Attorney Mike Ramsey indicated that Solis, who was a 20-year veteran educator, raped the 14-year-old inside a locked classroom on graduation day, Daily Mail reported. Solis also allegedly sent explicit photos to the boy which “made their way back to local parents,” facilitating the investigation by police.
Solis, who was the boy’s teacher at the middle school, “friended” him on Instagram a few weeks prior to his graduation. Records indicate that was the start of her inappropriate relationship in which she allegedly sent him four inappropriate images. Then, on the day of his graduation from Sycamore Junior High School in northern California, she raped him.”
Not once did a teacher ever try this in any school that I knew of. Hell, I had a crush on my German teacher. Why didn’t she try it? She was about 25 at the time. I wouldn’t have fought back
Most people are temporary because it takes a long time to get to know someone and it’s hard to find the traits that are important. Loyalty is usually the final demarcation line for me. If they cross it and are disloyal, it’s over for me.
Take my college girlfriend who turned out to be a traveling slut (stewardess). Even though I didn’t find out until afterwards that she was sharing herself with others, that eliminated her from the permanent people pool. I didn’t have to feel the hurt and pain during the relationship, but the dishonesty got me out the door early.
I had acquaintances all throughout my life, but it’s hard to call them friends. The extroverts in my life meet and talk to someone for more than 5 minutes and it’s their new friend. Those are just temporary people for me. It takes a long time and a lot of things in common before they make permanent status. Very few make it.
You have to build a relationship and that is hard enough for me (and I’m guessing other introverts). We’d have to share something in common long enough to see if there is anything there. It still takes a long time for the walls to come down. Then there is the trust tests. I don’t dream them up, but they present themselves in life. I’m usually forced into a situation, but you can tell if a person is going to stick with you or stick it to you.
Even my siblings were temporary. They are around, but don’t count for me as permanent people for the loyalty reason. One can only take so much screwing over growing up and then the walls come up.
There’s your thought for the day.
A much deeper dive can be found here. It is by Introvert Dear who I’ve linked to on the home page describing why introverts don’t consider everyone their friend. It is a special to us and this article tells you why a lot better than I do.
Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
It’s more than one time, but it’s the same thing. I got asked to do something, go somewhere or be with some people that I shouldn’t have.
It was about setting boundaries. I remember the feeling or not wanting to be there, we’re doing whatever we were doing, saying the things I said or being with the people I was with.
If I had learned to say no, instead of going with the crowd, a lot of things would’ve turned out differently. I would have gotten in a lot less trouble, not done as many stupid things and would have not been in situations I didn’t want to be in.
I learned the hard way to protect myself from these instances and people, and as a result of gotten in to a lot less trouble.
Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.
This is counterintuitive, but a sibling leaving was the most positive thing for me. Growing up, I had a sister that fought with my parents and caused all kinds of consternation in the house.
Fortunately, she got married early and when she left the house got quieter and all of our lives got better.
The leaving it would be my favorite thing. I instinctively knew that my best days were ahead and that those who were stellar in high school had reached their peak. They were the Al Bundy’s who would re-live high school the rest of their lives.
I’d been stuck with these losers since kindergarten and getting away from them and the town was my introvert dream.
One of my favorite things in life is closing a chapter and never going back. It started with high school.
Describe one positive change you have made in your life.
When starting out in the business world I learned to see opportunities and I decided to walk through the right door.
I also ended a bad relationship from college freeing me up to get ahead. After finding out that she was cheating afterwards it confirmed that I was making the right decisions
Being an introvert, I tend to notice a lot of details about people. I’m at the gym a few times a week and thanks to my health plan, I belong to multiple gyms. These observations are the same though.
CLOTHES AND DRESSING
No matter what the media tries to tell us about gender identity, males are distinctly different than females (no shit Sherlock). It’s a fashion show for the girls. They dress up in multiple layers, wear makeup and are far more concerned about their looks than the guys.
Sure, I occasionally catch a meathead trying to see how big his biceps are in the mirror, but they check out their form. Girls are looking at their hair, asses, outfits and other girls who might be the competition for best dressed, prettiest or some other bauble more desirable than what they are wearing.
Speaking of clothes, I can tell just how far a girl is into her workout by the state of her clothes. They mostly start with some form of sweats covering up everything. It is still somewhat suggestive as a shoulder is showing or the top is cut to the midriff, but mostly it is discreet to start.
As the workout progresses, various layers of clothes come off. I get that you work up a sweat, but the truth is that most of them are looking at their phone or talking more than working out (except on the cardio machines). Not a one of them has a bead of sweat on them and the a/c is close to meat locker in there. It is part of the show. So full sweats, just starting. Just the sweat top, mid workout. If they are down to their matching top and bottom, accessorized with matching socks, shoes, phone, scrunchie, earphones and other, it’s near the end or over 30 minutes into their routine.
Let me say that there is no way they don’t know they are putting on a show. They look at themselves far too much for it not to be. Frequently, the outfits are so small and revealing that constant adjustment must be made to not let something slip out. Their clothes aren’t hiding anything anymore anyway.
The guys are likely to come in wearing anything. It’s in levels of fashion spanning decades of styles with matching unkempt hair. They do rival the girls for most tattoo’s though. Looking their best is not at the top of the list of most of the guys I notice.
I’m in a college town and these girls are in the prime of their lives. Their bodies are in shape just for waking up. Time will take it’s toll on them like it does with everyone, but this is the best they are going to be.
LEARNING HOW TO USE YOUR BODY, EXPERIENCE IS EVERYTHING
It’s a shame that life is the way it is. You haven’t explored your abilities or learned enough about what you can do to make the most of yourself. Take sex for example. Just because you have one set of equipment or the other doesn’t mean you know how to use it yet. It takes practice and discovery to really be good at it. Very few who look their best are good in the sack. Conversely, when you figure most things out about you and how to take care of the other person, you’ve used up the years where you were in your prime without knowing it. I digress.
I listen to some of the conversations (because I can’t drown it out with my noise cancelling earbuds) and the discussion is benign and childish. It’s the same thing with your sex equipment. Just because you look great and have what guys want certainly doesn’t make you smart or interesting. I wonder to myself if I was stuck with one of these girls, what the hell would I even be able to talk about. I can’t listen to their droning on about their inexperienced and uneducated lives. The depth of their knowledge wouldn’t cover your feet in the pool of life. It hasn’t happened enough to them in life to really know about much yet. Once they learn, the prime of their physical life is over.
I’m not giving a lot of the guys a pass either, but they don’t talk much so it’s mostly about what set they are on and what body part they are working on. It gives no indication of their education or ability to be interesting conversationally.
The other thing I like to notice is who people remind me of. Nearly every time I’m there, I see someone who reminds me of a person I’ve met in life. I give them names in my head of that person. It also makes me think of how they will look when life takes it’s toll on their bodies and looks. Who is going to get an expanding back porch. Who is getting a gut. Who’s hair is falling out and what other ailment is going to happen when they get older.
People are interesting. I’d rather look at them than talk to them it seems. The gym is certainly the place for people watching. If I was busy talking, I’d never stop to notice or think about these things, but that is the introvert life.
When I say hell, of course I mean Portland. It’s a shithole now. Oregon is beautiful, but for some reason all the shit not in California or Washington is in Portland. It’s the required trip to the family.
All I hear or read is about problems with Boeing jets, DEI in Air Traffic Control and parts falling off of jets because maintenance workers require diversity. I don’t want to get on a plane, but there is no way out. I figured the statistics are with me and if some shit does go down, my rare flights should exempt me.
When I get there, I’ll get to deal with a city rampaged by Antifa, BLM and many other miscreants. Other than SF, it is the homeless capital of the world, not to mention walking on the streets to the freak show and shit on the sidewalks.
I’ve scheduled some posts and meme’s to enjoy, including stories and observations of mine. It’s a look into my head when I put these out. I’ll cover introverts, the gym fashion show, sibling hell, lots of meme dumps and other stuff.
I may get a post in about my adventures while there, but no promises. Maybe I’ll keep some readers, like Ellie K, a new subscriber. With all the shit I post, I’m surprised she’s still there, but there you go.
When I first started working, the PC hadn’t been invented yet. I saw it as an opportunity knocking, and I ran through that door. Being in that industry allowed me to retire early and be on the cutting edge of most of technology.
The irony is, the head of the data processing department at the company I work for said there wasn’t any future in personal computers. I disagreed.
How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?
I’ve only learned later in life to prioritize myself for my mental sanity. A lot of my life growing up was not saying no enough it was a price I paid while growing up.
The goal I think of here is trying to set boundaries. If I’d have done it earlier in life, a lot of crap I deal with now wouldn’t be still bothering me.
What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?
I have spatial awareness and can see how things fit together. Also, as an introvert, I can read people through their body language I’ve had these all my life, but became cutely aware of them as I grew older.
What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?
It’s too permanent for me. I need a change of scenery. My thoughts and likes change too much for one. I’m not a fan of helter skelter tats either. If you’re going to do it, think it out in advance.
Let’s see, over the years it’s been fishing, hunting, karate, racing, tennis, Biking, and then there was kids and Life, and other stuff, and the next thing I knew I’ve lived in seven decades. I mostly do introvert stuff now so I get lost in my mind a lot.
What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?
Animal House, Caddyshack, Richard Pryor – Live in Concert, The entire Star Trek TOS, Captain America – The Winter Soldier, Star Trek – The Wrath of Khan, Star Wars – The Empire Strikes Back, Le Mans, Avengers, Captain America – The First Avenger, Star Trek, Best of Both Worlds
After graduating from high school, a group of us decided to play in an organized softball league. Our choice at that time was down to church league softball. While we played and did OK, which I’ll talk about later, the extracurricular activities were more interesting. It’s later on in the post.
Our team was part of of the same group who lost almost every game in church league basketball, mostly because we were a bunch of white guys thinking we could play. There were some people who resembled athletes on this team. My roommate George and I both played tennis for our colleges, but that didn’t qualify us as good softball players. We had a couple of players who were little league stars, but as a group we weren’t that good.
Before I get started, this is a good lead in to the story.
We didn’t have a fistfight, at least on our team, but it did happen, between two other teams, both of which we played. A lot of other growing up stuff did happen though.
We were in that stage of just being out of high school, but growing up late and were starting to experiment with life. We also weren’t the star players on the baseball team either.
I guess we started out serious. We had just enough people for a team, All Saints Episcopal (we would be anything but Saints). I don’t remember if we had a team name, but it wouldn’t have been the Yankees. Misfit’s would have been more accurate. If anyone bailed, we’d have to forfeit. It was close some days whether enough guys would show up, but we managed to play the season. Of the nine guys, I think we had 4 that who actually played organized baseball. They put up with the lack of skills by the rest of us.
We picked positions and somehow I got 3rd base, far too close to home and a position I’d never played before. I’m pretty sure I was the kid in right field in my one year foray in little league at 7 years old. After a few practices, we thought we were ready to play and tear up the league. I think we believed the same thing in the basketball failure a few years earlier when we won 1 game all season.
In the first game, damn near the first batter of the year, a hard grounder was hit right to me. I was as shocked as anyone when I fielded it. I turned and fired a throw to the first baseman about 5 feet above his head. Since this was over 40 years ago now, I can’t remember whether we won or not. I’m pretty sure we lost as we did a lot of that.
In a subsequent game, another batter hit a line shot and I stuck my glove up and actually caught it. I was as surprised as anyone on the field, but had the sense of awareness to look like I meant to do it.
What saved us in a lot of games was enough singles by us to get batters on, but count on our big sticks, Pat and Mark Greene, Chris Patterson and an occasional lucky hit by others to score enough runs to overcome the errors in the field. Occasionally, we’d actually pull off a great play like a throw from deep left to home to get the runner out. Since the catcher never played before, it was a crap shoot whether he’d catch it or not and that we got the out surprised everyone on the field. He was a Dad who was a good sport to put up with us. He had no idea what we did off the field and was as (in)capable as the rest of us on the field (barely).
We’d go on to be about a .500 team. Being a church league, we were fortunate to face groups of people without any little league players who were actually worse than us, or a forfeit.
In the last game of the season against St Margaret Mary, my parents finally came to see me play. They had Ryan Sanderson on the other side, who was a starter at the University of Florida. Ryan also starred at our high school and it would be like playing pick up basketball with Michael Jordan on the other team. Ever at bat went over the fence.
I hit my only homer of the season in that game, in front of my Dad. It was a perfect ending to my only year of somewhat organized softball. Our team went on to hit 16 homers in that game and lost. The other team hit over 20. I’m sure Ryan had at least 5, or how ever many times he got up to bat. Hitting one out in front of my parents overshadowed the loss. Plus, the following made us forget everything.
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
On the field, we’d try stupid stuff like our first foray’s into chewing tobacco thinking we would be like the big leagues. I remember putting a wad of Red Man into my mouth and heading out to third. By mid inning, I was spitting everything I could and dying for the inning to end so that I could get that shit out of my mouth without embarrassing myself in front of my friends. We routinely had macho contests to prove our masculinity and I couldn’t fail at this in public.
Here’s Robert Earl Keen on dipping snuff, funny song
Fortunately, it was a quick inning and I escaped embarrassment as well as losing my dinner.
After it became clear that we weren’t going to the world series, our other adventures in life crept in. We decided that it would be a good idea to get high before the games and see if we could play. Mark Imhoof who was a regular user provided the goods and the bong. He was the kid who got high in High School, had long hair and a van. He was a good player and the friend of someone else on the team, but he never went to our church. Come to think of it, most of the rest of us had stopped going to church by then also. Since I was high, I’m sure we didn’t play our best, but by then we didn’t really care as much. We came out of that van like Cheech and Chong, trailing smoke.
My roommate George and I lived in his parents house. It was my first home away from home. His parents were missionaries in Guatemala at the time. When the cat’s away, we were the mice. It was the place our friends from the team came to to do stuff they couldn’t do when they were in town and at their parents, meaning drinking and getting high. Many of us lost our virginity there, to the same girl on different nights in different rooms in the house.
AFTER THE GAME
Being a church league team, we celebrated after the game spiritually by going to wherever the pitchers of beer were the cheapest. I recall one dive called the Copper Top. We also went to the Steak Out where you got free Sangria with an order of a steak tough enough to wear as a desert boot. I’m sure they lost money on us given what we drank and we’d go out afterwards for more. We finally got kicked out and got banned from coming back.
There was always beat the clock at Big Daddy’s. If you know the game, the price goes up after a certain time, so you drink as fast as you can at first to keep the price down. We were in college working for minimum wage at the time ($2.00). The beginning price was a nickel a beer and it doubled every half hour. I was hammered by the first tick of the clock as were the rest of the team.
On the off chance that we played on Wednesday, it was also nickle beer night at Rosie O’Grady’s in downtown Orlando.
Nevertheless, a healthy activity sponsored by a religious organization turned into a night of us getting fucked up. I don’t think I had early classes, but I missed them if I did.
That of course led to…
LATE NIGHT GREASE TO SOAK UP THE ALCOHOL
We hit a number of places. Back then, the Grand Slam was $1.99, affordable and enough food to soak up some of the beer before bed.
The other place was Krystal’s. I think the burgers were a nickle there also. It became a dick measuring contest to see how many you could eat. I topped out at 11, but Marc Greene regularly at 25 and went over 30 on some nights. I was in awe of him being an eating machine.
In the end, we only lasted that one season. We were kind of done when we started getting high before the games.
I lost track of most of the players. George and I wound up being best men at each other’s weddings and today are still friends. He transferred out of state to another college and I moved on campus at mine. We never went back to that church again, except for my parents funerals.
Growing up comes in many flavors. This was just the start of my fucking up in life. I had many adventures to come that made this tame.
Small talk is one of the more tiring things for introverts,. I avoid that situation at every chance. I love a deep conversation, but once someone starts in on how their day went in minute detail, I can’t help but turn into my own world and wish the conversation to be over as quickly as possible.
The other is ice breakers. Tell us something about yourself. Um, I don’t like to talk about myself, how’s that?
I’d hold it before I’d go just to not talk to not be here. This is at a Dr.’s office though. I see the door where you pass the piss sample in the cup
If I say call me, it’s because I’m betting you won’t. I’m tossing over the fence for you to make the move. I wouldn’t call either way. A cryptic text at best that doesn’t leave much of a window to respond.
In adulthood, men score about 2-4 IQ points higher than women. Selection bias might account for around 1-point of that.
This gap may be said to not reflect underlying intelligence differences, but something specific about the tests. Yet that conclusion is based on complex methods that depend on assumptions made by the researcher and have questionable real world application. I’m not an expert in these methods, but I’m skeptical of them.
All of this is despite the exclusion of spatial ability from IQ tests, where the male advantage is particularly large. There are some female favored traits excluded from IQ tests, but as far as I can tell none are as g loaded and therefore theoretically as likely to influence true g, to the extent we are comfortable thinking about the concept in this way.
The debate about true g might matter to psychometricians, but there seems to be no reason it should to normal people using the common sense definition of “intelligence.” Men are better at problem solving and know more things, so can be said to be more intelligent in the collective understanding of the term even if women are just as smart in some sense that doesn’t predict performance in the real world.
The definition of “intelligence” does not come from nature. Scientists have constructed various tests designed to measure what people commonly mean when they use the term. The idea that intelligence exists in a meaningful sense comes from the finding that how well individuals do on all kinds of mental ability examinations are correlated with one another. Psychometricians therefore talk about the g factor, which is a mathematical construct that refers to the underlying ability to think abstractly and solve problems.
The most common intelligence test for adults is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (for those 6-16 years old, there is the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)). It traditionally has had two main sections: Verbal and Performance, or non-verbal.
So in conclusion, yes.
Despite what many hereditarians believe, the idea that men and women are of equal intelligence appears unlikely to be true. That doesn’t hurt my feelings, because I love truth, believe in liberty, think individuals should do whatever they want, and that society should be completely indifferent to disparate outcomes between groups. When arguing with social engineers, however, higher male IQ serves as one more thing to beat them over the head with.
I know that the spacial ability part is true. I can look at a group of items and know exactly how to pack them. The same with a dishwasher. I get it in the dishes in the unit with a pattern that fits more and cleans better. I can look at a parking space and know to the inch how to get in. The females in my family can’t park, brake too late and pack the dishwasher like a kindergartner, despite multiple tries at doing it.
In playing a trivia game with the question what trait did you inherit, the thing I got from my dad was spacial awareness. The rest of the family readily admitted that they don’t have it and don’t see how things fit in a coordinated manner.
It’s why I see patterns in life also, like not taking the jab because the evidence of fraud were there all along and that the election was rigged, as was January 6th.
The best man at my wedding George has the best sphincter control of anybody I’ve known. He drove across the United Stated (horizontally) and didn’t unload the whole way. He also made me paranoid about having to drop a deuce on a public toilet.
I’m a germaphobe to begin with. I don’t trust a hotel room, knowing what I’ve done in them and listening to other peoples stories also. When George was a motel manager, he’d wait until the maid cleaned the rooms and put a clean paper ribbon over the toilet seat. He took the master key and slid off the ribbon, took a shit and then put it back on.
So I’m in the gym today. It’s bad enough already as you are trying to work out and I live in a college town. That means the girls come in to work out in the fuck me shorts all decked out in nips and lips, prancing about. They show off the goods and preen in front of the mirror wearing a ponytail holder on their wrist. God forbid if one of the guys looks, then the whole gym creep thing comes out. I won’t stare because that is what they want. One girl came by this day in the see through lime green sherbet outfit 2 sizes too small and I had to do a double take to see if she was black or white. She’d spent so much time on the tanning bed she could have been either, but that makes her white. Please.
The opposite is also true. There are some that need to be at the gym because they need to lose weight and get in shape. I applaud them for doing something about it, but I am trying not to look at them either. It’s because they are trying to wear the same thing the hot girls wear and it’s not working for covering that much mass. I looked up and almost had my face in a cottage cheese barrel.
It used to be that the gym was just guys in sweat clothes would be there. Then, Jane Fonda let in all the girls and taught them take more and more off. At first,the A/C would make it nippy, but now they wearing body paint skin suits that don’t cover a thing. You know by looking whether you are ordering a #3 roast beef combo or a peach fuzz smoothy without trying. They then proceed to push their cookie up in the air like they were doing upside down doggie and we have to act like we don’t notice. They entice you to look and then get mad if you do.
Anyway, why I wrote this.
I was doing legs today. I work out in the afternoon when the traffic is light so you don’t have to wait for a machine you want to use. I do all my sports page reading business first thing in the morning so it never crossed my mind that I’d have to take a dump. It never happens past mid-morning. I felt a rumbling in my stomach and thought it couldn’t be. I was hoping for a fart and it would pass.
So I’m listening to music during hamstring curls thinking that I could move around some air and the crisis would pass. Wouldn’t you know that the song that played was Should I stay or should I go by the Clash.
I’m in a complete dilemma now as I’d just gotten there and didn’t want to leave, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. I let it go one too many leg curls until I knew I was in trouble.
Having to go on a public toilet is as much a torture thought for me as dropping the soap in the shower in jail. I didn’t have time to be able leave to find the most expensive store nearby as they usually have the cleanest bathrooms according to George.
I realized it was going to happen and I couldn’t stop it. The train was leaving the station. I grabbed the disinfecting wipes for the gym equipment and made my way to the locker room. I’m in there 4 times a week and every time I see legs in the stall with some guy laying rope. I think how disgusting that is using a public can. A bunch of sweaty MF all shitting on the same toilet. I don’t know how girls do it.
I usually go for the cripple stool as is it is less used than the regular stall. It was out of order, so I have to go on one that has been destroyed since midnight as this is a 24 hour gym.
Well, I scrubbed down the seat, then papered it like the second coming of the Mummy and all hell broke loose. You’d think I’d taken the colonoscopy medicine.
I don’t even like going on a can that others use at home and have my own bathroom I call home base. It has a bidet built in so that if I don’t get a clean break, I can get the old Japanese wash and blow dry from my seat.
My fear at the gym was that I’d have to use the whisper thin paper that doubles as a cheese grader that this was going to happen.
I didn’t even run out of toilet paper during Covid because I use the bidet seat so my bung hole has gone back to virginity. TP wiping is something I don’t do anymore.
There was someone in the bathrooms while this was going on, but I didn’t care as your rarely see the same people. It turned out to be Fred the maintenance man. Fred is there every time I’m at the gym. He is kind of like a rain man about cleaning and walked in as soon as I walked out. It was a WWIII destruction zone and I’m going to see Fred again the next time I’m there. I’ll bet he wishes he wasn’t there.
It was a terrible experience, having to open the Bombay doors somewhere other than on home base. I came home and showered, but felt violated that I had to sacrifice my standards because my stomach wouldn’t give me fair warning before I left.
Like some of my other stories, there is sex, cougars and booze in case you don’t want to read about it.
About the middle of my career, I worked for a disk drive reseller, CORE International. The owner claimed they were a manufacturer, but Control Data made the drives. He lied a lot. See the artificial reef and the Time Tunnel to find out more about CORE.
We went to all of the trade shows, and in the 80’s, Comdex (Computer Dealer Expo) was king. It was in Atlanta and Vegas, but for me it was time for me to escape South Florida and explore the industry. Since I was in charge of the marketing department, it included the trade shows for CORE.
I went prior to the show and set up the booth for a week of displaying our wares to the public, going to the parties and putting up with the wieners and asswipes I worked with.
I always arrived first to set up the booth, then brought out someone from engineering or tech support to set up all the computers. There were a lot of things that have to come together before the show starts.
When I say weenies, most of the engineers couldn’t get a date if it was paid for. For this Vegas trip though, Bob the tech was married to his high school sweetheart. He was well settled down in life while I was still chasing ass. He was a good mid west salt of the earth guy, pretty much the opposite of me when it came to the opposite sex.
It was a time of life that I was at the top of my dating game. Because it was still my party days, decisions on my moral choices were more relaxed than now.
BOOTH SET UP, BRIBERY AND THE MAFIA
During set up, you had to work with the show contractors who supplied mechanical, electrical and moving your booth in and out. If you know the history of Las Vegas, it was built and probably still is run by the mafia. That means you didn’t do anything without them or they would fuck up your booth at night to teach you a lesson. I’ve seen them drive a fork lift right through a crate that held a vendor’s booth worth thousands, destroying it “by accident”. This was after a vendor yelled at them for not getting their booth delivered on time.
You could always get better service with a little green under the table. You would say you were from the Franklin company ($100 bill exchanged hands) and got in line ahead of others when I needed service. Everything ran through the mafia though and that is how it got done.
Sometimes, you had to wait your turn for service. Big companies paid bigger bribes and my company was small potatoes. The CORE owner was cheap. That meant going through their hoops to order what they had left in stock, then waiting for the supplies and manpower to get your job done. It cost me days sometimes in set up time. If he’d had let me play by the mob’s rules, I could have saved thousands on travel, hotel and food, but that’s another story.
I got accused of leaving earlier each time by one of the software engineers who my art director nicknamed needle dick. Since he was a nerd, I didn’t respect much of what he said so I went when it was right. Needle dick couldn’t scare up any gash if his life depended on it. He got adopted by a cougar at work 20 years his senior (and she had lost what little SMV she had – look that up). She got nicknamed Canyon Cooter. This difference in age was compounded by him being smart, close to the autism scale and she was one of the dumbest females I’d ever met. It made for one the biggest mismatches you’d ever see. More about them later, but suffice it to say she was going to teach him how to get a date because in his late 20’s he couldn’t get one, but wound jumping his bones.
YOU BITCH
Back to the story. I was setting up with Bob and needed some extra electrical at the booth. I didn’t have money left to bribe them so I was about 5 deep waiting in line. I watched the forms administrator girl at the desk give everyone an attitude. They knew everyone had to go through them and sort of lorded it over the exhibitors as they were the only game in town. Plus, I’m sure they could have sent Guido or Carlo to fuck up our booth if we didn’t play nice. So, I waited in line.
I looked at her name badge and it said Mary. She was the one at the counter giving the guy in front of me a really hard time. At one point, he looked back at me it was so bad that I held my hands up and shrugged. I sort of thought it might be her time of the month, or she didn’t sleep well or hated her job. It pissed me off and I felt bad for the guy taking such a beating. He was a beta male who didn’t do anything as Mary snapped at him while I watched.
I was tired from days of set up by then and knew I was going to have to deal with another time delay and an attitude when I walked up for my turn to order. Age wise, I’m well practiced at the art of pick up and had an Alpha male game going when talking to girls. I’d learned to dish it out with the best of them.
For this reason, I decided I wasn’t going to take the shit she gave the guy before me. I walked up and my opening line to Mary was, “Are you this big of a bitch to everyone?” Needless to say, it caught her off guard. She changed her attitude and minded her manners. We chatted and I caught a sly smile from her as I went back to my booth. I brushed it off and thought little of it.
I tried to explain this alpha male/female transaction to one of my in-laws, who I’ve nicknamed flounder. He reminds me of Kent Dorfman from Animal House, fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son.
Sometimes, girls like the man who takes control and put them in their place. Flounder never understood as he only had one girlfriend in life. Mary got it though.
This time of life found me dating a girlfriend back home so I wasn’t looking for ass, but Mary was hot-ish in her own way. I kind of liked that she was feisty unlike my girlfriend who was a milk toast and was a nag right before this trip. In my head, I’d kind of broken up with her and did shortly thereafter. That’s another story
We went back to working on set up and I told Bob I’d called her a bitch. It meant that it could be a while before we got any service, so we did what we could until the help arrived. The electricians came way early so we were both surprised. (Electricians meaning they got paid $100 an hour to bring you extension cords, lay them out and plug them in, a total racket but…Mafia). Mary bumped me to the top of the list for calling her a bitch.
The day rolled on, so we finished work and were ready to call it by going to dinner and crashing at the hotel. I wasn’t a big gambler and knew we had a lot to do tomorrow so we headed out past the contractor tables kind of thinking about tomorrow.
Because the owner of the company was the biggest tightwad I’d ever met in a millionaire, I had to share a hotel room with Bob. I’d get my own room only if there was an odd count of people and I’d take the single because I was trade show manager. I also didn’t want to share a room with any of the tech wieners ever.
As we passed by, Mary was still sitting there and I wasn’t looking my best. I’d been sweating while busting ass all day in jeans and a T-shirt. They had the doors to the convention hall open as they hauled in equipment all day long. It’s hot in Vegas so I was scruffy looking in the Han Solo sort of way. Mary on the other hand had to dress appropriately as that was her job, attitude and all.
While walking by, I threw out a trial balloon to attitudy-Judy and said, Bob and I are going to dinner, I’ll buy you one if you want to come. I guessed that I’d get a laugh and figured she heard it at every show she worked. So I was preparing for the brush off when she said why not……game on.
I was finally making it in life and could afford better clothes, so I cleaned up and put on my Don Johnson Miami Vice outfit (t-shirt and white jacket with nice slacks and loafers, just like on TV). Bob was in his causal married look and wasn’t sure what to expect now that I’d invited a stray to dinner. He also knew we were sharing a room and any copulation calisthenics would have been awkward.
THE TRANSFORMATION
When I called her a bitch, I was speaking to a hair up in the bun, glasses wearing school marm girl. I could tell though that she had a tight body and had potential. Needless to say, Mary had gone home and dolled up into a strapless dress that complimented her good looks. The dark hair came down and the glasses were gone and she went from librarian to a keeper. Even Bob was shocked at the transformation. She was both hot and hopefully hot to trot.
It’s hard to believe knowing the person that I am now was able to be that entertaining then, but I chatted her up over cocktails and a bottle of wine. Bob is enjoying an upgraded dinner and we both thought that would be it. It turned out that Mary was a very smart girl. We had an intellectually stimulating conversation both ways. I learned a lot about the machinations of how things got done as well as life in Vegas. She had a brain to go with the rest of the package. Maybe that is why she gave others a hard time.
I was the only one at CORE authorized to people out to dinner above the expense rate other than the el cheapo boss, but only if I was taking out important people or reporters. Bob didn’t say anything because he got a way more than the expense approved dinner, and I invited what was now a hottie to dinner. I’m sure I filed that expense report to the head accountant Tony (sounds Mafia also) that might have not been exactly accurate.
At the end of dinner, Bob excused himself to go to the bathroom before leaving and I figured what the hell. The odds were against anything else really happening between Mary and I, and I really didn’t care. We were on our way to being drunk and I’ll never see her again, plus I have to deal with sharing a room with Bob. I made the first base move anyway. The next thing I knew, Bob came out of the bathroom to see Mary and me tongue deep in the middle of the restaurant.
I now have the dilemma of the where to go logistics. I’m sure Bob’s wife didn’t want to hear about Mary and me slobbering on each other all night long and I’ve got the stingy accountants hanging over my head about spending money for extra rooms in Vegas.
I knew that once everyone came into town in a couple of days, that I’d be moving into the single room. I’d pre-arraigned to have the prerequisite odd count of people enabling me to have the single, but expense policies required us to save the penny pinching company owner money prior to that.
My judgement is now sufficiently impaired by alcohol and my hormones were raging by, so I said fuck it. Next thing I knew, I had Mary in tow and stood in line at the hotel lobby and charged a single room to the company credit card. President Hal and VP Robert A were going to shit when they saw my expense report already as I’m down a dinner way over the per diem by 3 or 4 times. I now add a room that I wasn’t supposed to be charged for 2 more days. Those two dicked around the employees so I wasn’t motivated to help them in any way. I was thinking with the little head by then, so the night progressed and we said goodbye to Bob.
I wonder what Mary was thinking. Her day started with a boring job of grilling show people about filling out the forms for electricity. She’s now out to dinner with a charming stranger and about to go back to a hotel room with someone she’s known for a couple of hours who called her a bitch.
In my head, I’m playing We’ve Got Tonight By Bob Seger. It was the part that goes:
I know it’s late I know you’re weary I know your plans don’t include me Still here we are Both of us lonely Longing for shelter from all that we see Why should we worry? No one will care girl Look at the stars so far away We’ve got tonight Who needs tomorrow? We’ve got tonight babe Why don’t you stay?
As I mentioned, I’d been around the dating block by now and knew how to game girls. I’d been pulling ass for a long time and it wasn’t like I was trying to lose my virginity. We checked into the hotel and had another heavy make out session when Mary excused herself to go to the bathroom.
The night is ticking away, I’m drunk and realize I have another long day tomorrow. I knew Mary had to show up at the contractors desk early. I decided right then that I wasn’t going to try hard because if was going to happen, fine…if not, also fine.
While she’s in the bathroom, I’m thinking of how I’m going to say goodbye and I had a nice time after getting told no, then catching some shut eye. I’d had about as much fun as I figured I was going to have and didn’t have a lot of patience to wait all night for nothing. I’d done enough of that growing up and rejection was going to be as good as success. The outcomes were equal to me.
Just about that time, Mary comes out of the bathroom wearing only a towel. As I started back to kissing her, it fell down and she said, we’ve got to get you out of these clothes.
One thing led to another and we did what grownups do in the prime of your life, for a long time, all over the hotel room. She enjoyed it immensely, which I found out later. I did my best John Holmes impression to make it worth her while. She said she visited the big O hall of fame multiple times. It was our first night so we hadn’t been together long enough for her to lie about it yet. I had put so much effort into it that night to make her happy that I’d passed out and she went home.
When I woke up the next morning, on the mirror I found a post it note to call for round 2 as she wanted more. Comdex hadn’t even started and my trip has already been eventful.
I glided by the contractor table the next morning and the attitude was much nicer. It turns out that all she needed was a good time and to get laid. It was on for us now.
I didn’t say anything to Bob. He’d seen me sucking face and I didn’t come home last night.
I enjoyed the week with Mary. She didn’t have to work during the show, unlike the 12 hour days on my feet. She was a good sport about showing up to see me at the end of the day. It was nice to share time together and got me the hell away from the CORE douchebags. One of the days when I was coming back from the show, I met her in the lobby and we immediately dumped the rest and headed up to my room. I’d walked back to the hotel with Bill Quinn, a serious stiff who knew I was his only key to after show entertainment. He was lost without me getting him or the others into the show parties. He kept asking what happened as he saw me meet and leave with a girl in the elevator. He wouldn’t see me again until the next morning. He told me he wanted details, but I gave up nothing.
TECH WEENIES TRYING TO ACT HIP
I refused to hang with most of the CORE people I had to work with as they were too lame to be around. Case in point, one of the nights there, I had to invite them to a computer magazine party, because the owner Hal was there. I picked the one that was the shortest to end my pain with them. I was going to the real party after that. I must have had that night off from Mary. Duty calls.
The DJ played the song Shout (Otis Day and The Nights for Animal House Fans). These losers called it the CORE song and went to the dance floor to look like fools. This included needle dick, canyon cooter and Sondra Arken (who got nicknamed Barkin as she was an ugly feminist with an ugly attitude who refused to shave her legs and pits). Also acting the fool were some people I’d come over to CORE with when General Micro Computer went chapter 11 like Trish Brainard, Holly H., Susan (Suzy Q, the JAP with the huge ta ta’s). They were such idiots that everyone from GMC except me got fired shortly after this for being incompetent. I pretended to go up with them as we left for the dance floor, but diverted to the men’s room to hide as I refused to be seen with them. I don’t think it was lost on them.
Here’s the deal. I was the president of my fraternity when Animal House came out. We’d already done everything in the movie other than kill a horse. We’d had a real toga party when listening to Shout. The CORE pussies were nursing a light beer. When I was in college, we were drinking grain alcohol punch dressed in sheets. There is a difference. They were embarrassing as they were trying to act hip, but at best pulled off a broken hip. There were a lot of losers in the computer industry and some of them worked with me.
I dumped them after that and went either to see Mary or to the real after party. They never knew.
THE GEEKS LOSE THEIR VIRGINITY
So I’m being very discrete about my encounter with Mary. Even when seen, no one knew what I was really doing. Bob the tech didn’t tell everyone there about the night prior to the show…….As opposed to this next part.
In the background, Canyon Cooter has made her move on needle dick who’s never seen a boob in his life, much less hold one. They now show up to the booth in matching outfits. She was getting divorced was old enough to be his mom. They dressed like sherbet Ice cream in their matching lime green and orange suits. When you fuck around at work, at least don’t advertise it by making a fool of yourselves. He never had a chance as she pretty much adopted him. They looked like a kid and his mom in a gag worthy moment. It was the only pussy he would ever had in life at and that statement is pretty sad. He wanted her to show him how to talk to a girl at work he couldn’t get a date with, and the next thing you know they are bumping uglies.
When you score your first touchdown, act like you’ve been there. He was a trained puppy on a leash from then on following her around. They were saying nothing was happening, but were so bad at hiding it we couldn’t avoid the obvious. It was as bad as having to hear about your parents having sex, freaking disgusting for all of us.
I on the other hand am having a grand time with a hot girl and giving her the ride of her life while telling no one. Here’s how I know. When I left Vegas after the show was over, she looked me up in Florida to try and find me for more (no internet back then so it was a big effort). It turns out that I am a namesake and she wound up calling my parents in another town, also in Florida. I thought it was a nice gesture and Mom had to know what was going on. She wasn’t born yesterday.
All good things come to an end and it was time to leave Vegas and go home. I have no need to go back to that town other than for computer shows so I knew it this was ever only going to be a week. I hate Vegas despite the time with Mary. I never promised anything to her other than when I was there. I never led her on. It was what it was. She had the next show rolling into town the following week (the Car Show). It just didn’t have a future written on it.
I recall our last moment together. She finished on top and I was staring at her right boob. I thought to myself, I need to remember this moment for when I was in a dry spell.
Life goes on. Needle dick wound up marrying canyon cooter. Ben Greene told us all that the bill would come due when she turned 80. He’s probably changing diapers now. I saw the disappointment on his father’s face at the wedding. He married his mother, a washed up flabby old lady. At least they didn’t reproduce. The world is better for it.
Bob left CORE and went to Novell, then the Networking leader. Hal sold the company to Sony after lying about the contract he had with IBM. Robert came out of the closet and was queer as a 3 dollar bill, but he was a prick to everyone anyway. I filed the expense report and I think I went over by so much that El Capo, Tony wouldn’t approve all of it. I made it all back on the next expense report. CORE went out of their way to screw over the employees. The per deim wasn’t enough for one meal, let alone 3 per day in Vegas. I never tried to come out ahead, but they wound up paying for everything on the next trip. We ended up even.
I still had to work with the other wieners who rarely got any girl action. Despite the stories that got told about my escapades, I would never admit it because I didn’t need to spike the ball. I never told them this story either, until now. Bob told them enough when we got back that I got the stink eye from the engineering and tech support departments. Most of them were still 0 for life in girls when I left.
Mary and I never spoke again. By the time I found out from Mom that she’d called, months had already passed. I hope she remembers it fondly. I guess I’m the one that got away. I would have picked her over my milk toast girlfriend. She was better in every way.
Life moved on, but times like this are burned into my memory bank. A version of this story would happen to me again at future computer shows, more than once and different countries.
I have fun memories of that week, it’s just that we lived on opposite sides of the country and what happened in Vegas like most times, stayed there.
This post has sex and booze in it, read it later in the post.
Since I graduated with both Accounting and Marketing degree’s, I tried to find a job in one of those fields. I finished college before they had the internet, so you couldn’t look up jobs on LinkedIn or on online. We did actual networking back then.
I had friends who got me interviews where they worked, and I accepted a job in the finance trainee program at Burdines Department Stores. Here is the building I worked at in downtown Miami. Count 4 floors up and that would be me.
The program was 4 six month shifts in different departments (where they needed a slave to hump some work it seemed).
I have no idea why or what I was doing in finance. I really majored in Animal House activities and going to the Beach instead of class. I knew debit was on the left, but even I wouldn’t have trusted me at the time with balancing a checkbook.
Anyway…..
My 2nd rotation in the Statistical department was working on the Departmental Operating Statement (DOS). It was a financial statement that reported on the profit and loss of every department in every store, so 256 departments x 26 stores x 18 expense categories. It was as dreary as that sentence sounds
While not a published financial statement, it was how the department managers in each store got rated. That is far too much responsibility for someone who drank and got high often enough to fail any drug test, at work.
The DOS was a manual masturbation exercise that had to balance to the expenses for the year and show the profitability (or loss) of each department and store. This will be key in the story that follows.
While working on this, we were automating it to an IBM System 34 (now the System P), again pre-PC days. It even had 8 inch floppy diskettes for storage.
Burdines was owned by Federated Department Stores, who also owned Bloomingdales, Filene’s, Foley’s, A & S, and a number of other stores. This part is important. Never once was the DOS turned in on time by Burdines to Federated. The other divisions were on time and it was a sore spot for the finance guys.
Statistical made sure the DOS balanced to the penny manually. It also meant it would never be on time. During this period, I found that I had an affinity for computers. I was one of the few that understood how they worked and mainly focused on that. When you can run something others are afraid of, and it is vital to getting the job done, it’s like playing cards with a stacked deck. I got that concept right away. The computer would crank out a report in about 30 minutes in those days which would have taken weeks to do manually.
We worked days and nights to get it finished. While the computer was calculating, we were writing programs (in RPG II). We also fucked off and messed with the other employees desk’s who were a pain (Art Goldstein, still in Expense Control). We were putting cigarette ashes under his desk pad, all kinds of shit in his desk and unrolling his calculator (no PC’s) and printing a lot of gibberish on it, then rolling the tape back up for him to find days later. He’d have to redo the tabulation as you had to attach a tape to your work. It cost him hours at work. No one said a thing the next day when he lost it. We just shrugged. Everyone knew it was us that worked late. We also ordered in pizza and beers and left drunk many nights. There was worse stuff we did with the pizza’s, but that’s another story.
I thought accountants were stiffs, but these guys could put a way scotch until they were pickled. It was like working with John Hamm, only at night.
Since these were the Madmen days when you could drink at work, we got beers and take out food from the Cuban restaurants since it was in downtown Miami. You could also fuck around at work without the #metoo bullshit that has ruined a lot of good office sex.
Needless to say, we got it finished, but not on time to Federated during my trainee rotation. I wasn’t a full employee yet, so I didn’t care. I had fun messing around and seeing how things worked. They balanced it as it was done at the same time manually, so it had to tie out. That little detail cost weeks of work to be that exact. I learned everything I could about the computer and started to see it as my ticket to life.
NOW, MY FIRST JOB
I was moved on to the Credit department for my 3rd rotation, where I thought I was going to die from boredom until they got my ass out of there early. I was questioning my career decision at this point. The most I learned there was about mopering (you’re going to have to ask a NY cop what this is).
Since I’d made the System 34 sing and dance, they promoted me back to Statistical (I called it sta-testicle) in charge of the DOS this time and told me I had to have it in on time (or pretty much be fired). I didn’t have an option to decline it having already done one round of this financial statement. Hell, it was a promotion and doing something I saw as a career was way better than wanting to shoot myself while I did pretty much jack shit in Credit.
This is where the fun begins.
I was now responsible for people and the ratings of thousands of people. All the other employees who worked on it from before had only done the manual version. I was the only one who could work the System 34. While it was a mystery to them on the computer, the sharp eyed finance people could make any financial statement balance with paper, pencil and calculator. These (mostly) girls would sit at their desk and crank out calculations all day, and only leave to go to break (this will be important later).
One of them, my 2nd in command, Carmen Gomez had huge boobs. I’d love to sit with her while we she figured out numbers as she’d plant those babies on my arms at the desk for minutes at a time. I couldn’t have cared less about balancing the numbers. That was her problem. This is the only time I’d sit still for more than 10 minutes. There is no way she didn’t know she was doing this and I was a walking hormone at 22. I didn’t move until she finished as they were the biggest tits I’d been near my whole life.
During my first stint on the DOS, I heard someone say as a joke that you could spread any expense overages like peanut butter over all the departments and no one would notice. It was like when I heard that you could kill a hangover with the hair of the dog. I tucked that nugget away and it would serve me well later.
Here’s where I skip the boring parts where I worked 6 days a week from 8 in the morning to sometimes 11 at night. The only part that matters is that I was alone at night this time.
What is important is that I’m in charge of the computer as I’m the only one who can make it work. I’m alone at night when the computer is crunching and I can see the reports first. They had stopped the manual version so there was no number detail that I had to balance to, just the final expense per category.
Besides drinking, here’s the other Madmen stuff. I now have finance trainee’s working for me doing what I did. In this case they were also girls. There was no hanky panky during the work day, but stay tuned, there will be.
My desk wasn’t in the computer room, so I’d have to run back and forth between the two (me not sitting still, except at Carmen’s desk). I’d pass by the controller’s office. I found out later he was worried about what I was doing because I was never at my desk hammering the calculator like the rest of the robots. His name was Bob Dillon and was about 5’6″, so we nicknamed him shorty. Even Carmen, who was a stiff would come to laugh at that one. His pants were never wrinkled, so we wondered if he took them off to sit down.
When the day workers went home, I put my magic to work. I understood real clear the part about getting it done on time. I also understood the peanut butter reference. I couldn’t balance this thing with scales from NASA, so I gave in quickly to spreading any leftover money to everyone. They each took a few dollars hit and wouldn’t know anyway so what did I care? Since we were fully automated now, they didn’t have a manual version to compare it with, so I was the only one who understood this little secret. They just knew that I was on time and delivered reports every morning.
SOME MORE MADMEN STUFF
As I mentioned, it was my turn to have trainee’s working on the statement. Burdines hired college students by the busload, mostly girls on the marketing side to buy and promote mostly high end merchandise. I got used to the assistant buyers lasting about 6 months and being recycled for new grads. It was like feeding time at the crocodile pit at the zoo when they brought the trainees in. I went out with a million of them, all with bad intentions. This was the Miami Vice time of life so being single in Miami was a time you could live like the Playboy Mansion, and we did. We’d have new stories every week and the girls were in on it too at this time. No one reported anyone to HR for hanky panky with the co-workers or playing grab ass in the hallways. The girls thought it was great and grabbed back. I got picked up one time by the fragrance girl who would spray you with cologne as you went down the escalator. This was before the Karen’s who ruin everything were born.
My trainee on the DOS though was Terri. A 6 foot girl with an attitude that said I could drink with any of you and still get to work. I was busy with the assistant buyers while she worked for me, so I kept it professional during the intense DOS time.
Remember, I had to have it on time and I knew it’s integrity wasn’t going to get in my way.
I missed a lot of life over those months, and a lot of beach time on Saturday. No one could question my commitment to getting it done, although my work ethics might have been somewhat iffy.
After busting ass over many months with many working parts, I sat alone those many nights running programs and printing thousands of pages of reports. They balanced every time because because I forced it. I was about getting it finished on time and not letting shorty know what was going on.
SHENANIGANS
Needless to say, I got it done. It was the first time Burdines was ever on time with the DOS to Federated headquarters. I knew that it was close enough to being mostly representative of what went on (and exact in some places like payroll because Carmen did that one) so I met my personal challenges and my goals at my review. I was a star in the minds of the big shots. Even shorty was happy, although he never knew the shortcuts I took.
On the day we finished, we decided to celebrate by going out to Joe’s Stone Crabs for dinner. The whole crew went (not Carmen, fortunately). The professional drinkers were on display and I was recently out of college in an Animal House fraternity, so I was more than 10 Heineken’s down by the end of dinner.
I told Terri that I was ready to go after a while and I think she wanted me to drive her home. My original intentions weren’t lascivious, but as we drove by Miami International Airport on 836, I decided to throw a trial balloon. I said how about a version of the submarine races? This involved watching planes taking off, with me taking off as much of her clothes as fast as I could.
As I said, she was a good sport. She acted like one of the guys, and no one hit on her during the DOS, so I figured she was ready for action (and many beers down herself). As for looks, I was the best she could hope for and I’d been pulling ass from assistant buyers well out of her league (and she knew it). I was on a recent breakup and ready for a rebound that was meaningless, but hopefully meaningful memory wise.
I also knew she was done in statistical and was moving to her next assignment, so what the hell. She didn’t work for me anymore.
I found what I thought was a private place and parked. I made my move quickly as I figured we were drunk and if I got any push back, I’d just go home. I wasn’t going to try that hard. Well, she was in on the plan and probably hadn’t gotten any since college so her shirt was unbuttoned in no time. I’d had a steady college girlfriend who had the same bra that unsnapped in the front. I had it undone faster than Fonzie from Happy Days, to which her surprised response was wow, you did that well. I said I’d done it before, so she knew she was going to have a ride that night. Let the rodeo begin.
One thing led to another and an hour later we were still going at it. She had a big boat of Mercury with a huge bench seat in the front, so there was plenty of room for her tallness. We were at it from every way you could in a car. The windows in the car were fogged by now.
I thought I’d found a nice sequestered place, but in my drunkenness, I’d parked under a window at the 94th Aero Squadron restaurant. That is the chain at airports that has big windows for watching planes take off and land. They got the show of the century. No one watched the planes that night. Here’s an actual picture of the view at that restaurant. We were right parked right below this.
When we were done, we went home to my apartment for another round. The next morning, I woke up with morning wood and her hand stroking my Johnson. We still had to work (on a Saturday) to clean up records and get it published. Both of us acted like it was just another day, but later I heard she spread the word that I was an animal that night, so it garnered interest from a number of young unsuspecting trainee’s that I wouldn’t otherwise have had a shot at. After we’d both moved on, I’d call her up for beers and sex with no commitment and were friends with benefits.
She even signed my going away card with a reference to watching the planes take off.
Needless to say, the DOS was done on time. I asked and received a transfer to Data Processing to start the PC program, which would start me on my real career in all things personal computing, cloud, networking, PR and AR.
I still got high at work with the internal auditors and did a great job, but moved on from Burdines with an education in how to prioritize things to get the job done, in many aspects of life.
Those were the good days before HR and woke busybodies ruined all the fun. I’d have been fired for any of that stuff today. It’s a damn good thing I retired.
I’ve had multiple dogs over the years. They have all had different personalities and I loved them all, in different ways.
Barney was my first dog when I was a kid. I don’t have a picture, but he was part Boxer/part mutt. We got him from a friend of my Dad’s when he was going off to seminary and had to give him up. As far as I was concerned, he was always ours. He went to the beach with us on vacation and was part of the family.
Those were the pre-leash law days so he roamed the neighborhood on his own. He left his mark on the street with many little Barney’s and some pissed off neighbors. Dogs will be dogs. He was a car chaser and got hit. He recovered, but as Mom said, it took the spirit out of him.
When I got my S*** together in life, we got Conan. He was a rambunctious Golden. Through a breeding mistake, he got hip displaysia and only lasted 10 years. He was happy and had a good life. I learned how to train dogs and we bonded. As with all our dogs, I understood what he needed and took care of all his medical needs.
Bandit was my day pal. We picked her up from a breeder. I’ll be honest, we got a boxer because we wanted a smaller dog than Conan and a female, but we got a bundle of energy that was more than 3 Conan’s. As I think back, we got her because of Barney. They were the same color and size. She was fearless and friendly and loved everyone.
We named her Bandit from the dog in the Jonny Quest comics that I watched faithfully.
I was working at home by now. Being an introvert, I was happier being with her than people and she was by my side. We were together almost 15 years. It was almost like ET and Elliot. I knew what she needed intuitively. Where I went, she went. I took care of all her needs and she was my dog more than anyone in the family because of her.
Bandit
I got her ashes, but couldn’t bear to bury them until I processed my feelings. I planted a dwarf Japanese Maple and she rests now forever there.
Bandit’s Tree
After taking a year off when Bandit finally left us, we decided to venture into the dog game again. I decided on a rescue and took my son to adopt another dog. He was with me when we got Bandit, but being so young, I picked Bandit from the litter to try and get the right one.
He helped me with picking out Boone. He noticed that out of all the dogs we looked at, he was the most gentile. While he looks lie a black lab, we later found out that he was part Boxer, so I guess that is a the theme in my life. He doesn’t have the energy that Bandit did, but neither do I anymore.
He is a great dog. Again he and I bonded more than anyone else in the family, even though he loves everyone and every other dog. Cats and deer, not so much.
My son was attached to Bandit and to Boone. When he went on his own, he got his own dog Raider. She is also colored like Bandit, but is a mix of a lot of breeds, a mutt. She is a great dog, but with a lot of energy. She is less friendly with other dogs, but loves Boone.
Without trying, I bonded with her also. She knows I’m an alpha and that I am the lead dog in the pack.
I know what they all have needed and what they like, it’s almost a sixth sense. I’m not a dog whisperer, rather through observation and empathy, we know we are together.
I love my dogs and they love me. When I have people problems, the dogs have always been there. I’ve been fortunate that they have all been good dogs.
Sometimes when life goes to shit, they are the only friends I have, at least it feels that way. They always by my side, without any pretension other than wanting to be with me.
Covid has changed our lives for good, and possibly/probably not for the better. Let’s take it by activity.
Travel
Here is some history. Flying used to be fun, economical and had good service. We used to like going on an airplane until some jag-off decided to try and light his shoe bomb on a plane. Then another tried to blow up his underwear. We now have to queue in a long line and I’m not all that sure that it’s stopped anyone other than the average Joe traveler. It hasn’t stopped the TSA from copping a feel on strangers. The food sucks now and isn’t free anymore. Flying is more like the line for enlistment (including your prostate exam by the TSA) than to get on a plane.
With Covid, we can now add a temperature check, face masks and the the fear of catching anything from being in a tube for hours with little to no service. The airports are petri dishes for bacteria.
Given the losses on travel companies and equipment manufacturers, it doesn’t bode well for the travel industry or the travelers.
Going to the office to work.
The requirement to be in person at work not as necessary as thought.
Before remote working, we had to be in the office or no one could be fully sure that you were earning your pay. Travel and working remotely eased that but there still are some bosses who didn’t trust their employees. I had one piss-ant manager named R. Gorman when I worked at Thinkpad who didn’t trust anyone. He sent a memo called rules of the road where you had to be in the office. All that got him was no trust or loyalty from the team. We were technologically equipped to work from anywhere and always did on business travel, but there still was some requirement to be in the office otherwise.
Employees want to be empowered to succeed. When that happens, they find ways to be creative and accomplish their goals. Conversely, when you treat them like school children, many will act that way. Just like with Ray, our productivity went down and the Ray jokes went up.
Now, no one can go in to work while we are socially distancing, and most jobs (non-manufacturing) are still getting done. It’s easy to reach anyone at anytime (too easy and too intrusive) but the oversight of said taskmasters is not needed. In a way, the people are now empowered and they still get the work done. This one could be a benefit of Covid.
The downside is that a lot of empty buildings will lose their real estate value as there is no need to be in the office with the exception of essential workers.
How it affects the home
For us introverts, I thought it would be a time that we could cancel and/or avoid engagements until Zoom invaded our lives. Now even virtual happy hours are like a meeting. I’ve noticed that it’s hard to get privacy when kids and dogs are in the room or yelling in the background. Spouses or parents have been caught parading nude in front of the camera by accident.
When you meet in person, it’s easier to read body language and have someones attention. I tend to drift during Zoom meetings and have multiple devices that I often look at. I’ve noticed that I’m not alone.
Trouble for Introverts
Normally, we would be in pig heaven not to have to go to the office. In addition to the invasiveness of Zoom/Skype, we are stuck in the house with extroverts who won’t leave us alone. It’s like being trapped in hell. You want the quiet and the peace you got when the extrovert was in the office, instead your personal space is invaded and you can’t escape the dreaded small talk. The place that used to be your refuge has been invaded and there is no escape. It’s a fucking nightmare. It’s the people in your house that you can’t get away from.
How are you supposed to recharge your social battery when an extrovert is constantly draining it all day? Please, leave me alone and talk to your girlfriends.
Schools
The school model is now exposed, especially at college level. No more extortion for dorms when you can do 90% online. College professors are no longer as essential. Recorded classes, especially at the 100 and 200 level are adequate. Online testing and submitting required homework is routinely done online even well before this virus.
It turns out that colleges are a Breathtakingly overpriced product.
According to Mike Rowe: “They’re gonna’ find big thinkers with easily accessible ideas who are exponentially more interesting than professors, and soon, I hope, our obscene love affair with credentialing is going to stop, and we’re going to pause in every imaginable way, and look at what is essential – not just in workers or in work, but in education, in food, in fun. Everything is going to be forced through a different filter,” he said.
Colleges will also be exposed on their sports programs. Sports are a bank fund that pays for a lot of other school expenses and is a recruiting tool for enrollment. The schools will now have to rely on actual academics as a draw for students instead of March Madness or Bowl season. Maybe the students will now get an education instead of an indoctrination to Marxism.
Conversely, this is a big positive as the cost of education has the opportunity to go down (but so far the colleges are still extorting the same ransom from parents). Room and board are a large part of the cost of an education. Combine that with the lack of a requirement for many classrooms and there is the road to cutting costs.
It is not in the best interest of the Major institutions to charge less, but the cat is out of the bag that you can get almost as much done online. I hope that the masses will overcome and help this opportunity for cost cutting.
For elementary, middle and high school, I think it will hurt our youth. There is a need for hands on in basic learning and kids have the attention span of gnats. Sometimes you need to snatch their asses back to attention when it’s learning time.
New paradigm for getting essential needs like groceries.
Essential services like cancer, emergency rooms are same, but will change. Non-essential Dr. visits are now handled over the phone or via video. Dr.’s can now dedicate more of their time to real emergencies or necessary in-person visits. A person using the Emergency Room for healthcare because they don’t have insurance is going to go way down.
There is no downtime for paperwork and other overhead that comes with any job, but that got handled off-line mostly anyway.
Rely on technology more, but the risk is that you can take down a society like the virus did. Beware of hackers though, where there is opportunity, there will be bad guys looking to make your day worse.
Shopping
Groceries have taken a turn for the better/worse/something different. Now that we went through the great toilet paper shortage and people have enough to wipe their asses for the next 5 years. They can realize that a little planning can condense 5 shopping trips into one, or one delivery or pickup.
A lot converts have been made for grocery delivery. There are a few kinks that need to be worked out though. I’ve gotten stuff I didn’t order, but mostly I rarely get everything I wanted, even if I put in what the substitute would be product. There is no shopping for the store brand that is a whole lot cheaper.
We have gotten used to queuing a lot more now. It used to be the end of the world for some people who had to wait for more than one person to checkout. Now, we’re standing on X’s taped to the floor like kindergartners waiting to go potty.
As is the trend, online shopping has picked up and the downside is retail stores are less needed. Again, this is a loss in real estate value and will leave a lot of square footage available.
So all in all, some of this is good, but a lot of it was unnecessary. If it wasn’t an election year or if there were different political leaders, a whole lot of people wouldn’t be losing there freaking minds over every little thing that they look for to be offended by. HCQ would be over the counter like it is in a lot of countries and we wouldn’t be held hostage for masks as no one really seems to know whether it truly helps or hurts us yet.
I’ll remain optimistic that society will adapt. I’m pessimistic that this is a political power opportunity to control the masses and we should beware.
This story actually began with the unplanned running aground of the Mercedes I in Palm Beach. It desecrated the private holy grounds of the hoity toity for over a hundred days in late 1984. They eventually towed it away and made an artificial reef making almost everyone happy.
About the same time IBM introduced the PC-AT, billed as the most powerful personal computer ever built. It had one problem though as internally sat a 20 MB disk drive made by CMI. It was based on stepper motor technology and it both failed at alarming rates and was as slow as cold honey. It was that flaw which helped give birth to the drive aftermarket in the PC industry and caused one of the biggest black eye’s to the PC’s reputation.
CORE INTERNATIONAL TO THE RESCUE
A small storage company in Boca Raton – the home of the IBM PC saw the obvious problem and created a marketing campaign which recalled the IBM drive. It then sold you a 40 MB drive made by Control Data Corporation and rebadged as CORE product for $2,595, gave you a $1000 rebate and ran an ad claiming it was going to build an artificial reef out of the CMI drives (you can buy gigabytes now for less that $100). CORE was making over 100% profit so the perception of value is greater than reality. The users still paid one of the highest cost per byte of storage possible.
Here is a portion of the ad which created a sensation in the print media, as both IBM and the PC had been infallible up to this point.
PC MAGAZINE CATCHES ON
At this point Paul Sommerson, Bill Machrone, Bill Howard and other writers contacted CORE and asked for pictures of the reef being built. The company owner confided in me that he had a contract to send the drives back to CMI for a rebate and to not lose too many, we staged the entire event. We took his boat, the MEGABYTE out of Jupiter (not Boca) and made it look like we were really dumping the drives into the water. I’m sure the Nanny state EPA would have been all over us had we really done it, but the rest of the story is that we only dumped the drives in the picture (note the false bottom). We tried hard to drop a drive on a string while posing with the box in the picture, but all that produced were lame results. I finally convinced him that we needed to actually throw some drives overboard and that one shot is now etched into PC history. It was the last picture on the roll of film (if you remember film). We tried fishing for sharks after the shoot to put a drive in one of their mouths for the table of contents. We had one on, but it bit through the line and we ran out of time.
The film was immediately Fed-ex’d to NY as they were on deadline for what is known as the Fire Ax issue. The title was “Is Your PC Safe”, but there was a fire ax coming down on a PC-AT and the picture was in both the table of contents and the article.
It should be noted that neither CORE nor PC Magazine was trying to attack IBM products. The owner at CORE was excellent at marketing and had big balls to do this stunt. It paid off handsomely both in dollars and visibility. PC Magazine was at the height of their prowess as journalistic leader of the PC industry. Kudos should be given to Bill Machrone for approving a story that would never have a chance at seeing the light of day in this day and age. He was a visionary at the publication. IBM did themselves in by releasing a defective product and not being nimble enough to deal with the issues.
Both parties were able to take advantage of the arrogance (some say ignorance) on IBM’s part for not ensuring quality control of their product and suppliers. Further, the moribund IBM PR machine, having used their death grip to the throat of PC journalism to direct results they wanted (because they were the 800 lb. elephant in the room) didn’t know that the journalists were ripe for this. They never saw this coming and were ill-equipped to deal with it. The result was that both the reputation of the PC and IBM PR was tarnished.
It should be noted that the Wilmott’s were related to the Ziff’s, who owned PC Magazine. It took me 30 years to make that connection,
THE AFTERMATH
As I mentioned earlier, the boom of peripherals was starting and this poured gasoline on that fire. CMI went out of business after losing their contract with IBM and CORE shipped hundreds of drives while becoming famous.
I personally conducted many interviews discussing drive technology and the stunt (if I recall, the story became far better than the actual event) and the owner had to move his boat. He had rented a slip from an IBM’er in Boca, but due to the kerfuffle he was asked to find another docking space.
IBM had a PR nightmare on its hands now. I’m told that Lou Gerstner’s personal speech writer was called in to clean up the mess. CORE (meaning me as I handled all of PR by this point) got years of mileage from this event. I developed relationships with the leaders in PC journalism as they were happy to have a person to talk to rather than an army of IBM suits that outdid the White House press corps in obfuscation. We even took a drive to trade shows and put it into a fish tank with fish. Everyone in the industry knew about it and we even had hats made up saying things like:
My drive won’t stay up, I built the PC that IBM didn’t, My Drive is bigger than your drive and others.
We gave away thousands. In fact I think we invented the show hat give away in the mid 80’s (one time while leaving the show, we saw a drunk bum outside a convention center at with a CORE hat on).
The owner made show participants suffer through a sales pitch they didn’t care about, but the rest of us just gave them away.
EPITAPH
It is funny to me that I was hired by IBM to do PR for them 14 years later, and even did a stint in the PC division. I wonder if they had known it was me that helped cause one of the great PR nightmares for them, would I have gotten the job?
IBM had dropped to 6th place in PC’s by then and the PC PR department was led by two nincompoops when I got there (Mike Corrado and Ray Gorman). I always chuckled when the story came up at IBM and enjoyed the looks on their faces as they found out my part in this event. I was never involved with anything this creative while doing PR at IBM (see the moribund part), although I used some tactics from this event to be successful, so long as I didn’t tell IBM communications “leaders” about it until after the fact.
Now, did anyone read to here and notice that for a while I misspelled artificial in the title? It was a PR project for you.
Disclaimer: I think you should work hard and earn what you are paid. Nevertheless, I like to see the levity in things. I collected the lot of this on the internet.
George Costanza’s 10 Commandments For ‘Working Hard’
1 – Never walk without a document in your hands.
People with documents in their hands look like hardworking employees heading for important meetings. People with nothing in their hands look like they’re heading for the cafeteria. People with a newspaper in their hand look like they’re heading for the toilet. Above all, make sure you carry loads of stuff home with you at night, thus generating the false impression that you work longer hours than you do.
2 – Use computers to look busy.
Any time you use a computer, it looks like “work” to the casual observer. You can send and receive personal e-mail, chat, and generally have a blast without doing anything remotely related to work. These aren’t exactly the societal benefits that the proponents of the computer revolution would like to talk about but they’re not bad either. When you get caught by your boss — and you will get caught — your best defense is to claim you’re teaching yourself to use new software, thus saving valuable training dollars.
3 – Keep a messy desk.
Top management can get away with a clean desk. For the rest of us, it looks like we’re not working hard enough. Build huge piles of documents around your workspace. To the observer, last year’s work looks the same as today’s work; it’s volume that counts. Pile them high and wide. If you know somebody is coming to your cubicle, bury the document you’ll need halfway down in an existing stack and rummage for it when he/she arrives.
4 – Use voice mail.
Never answer your phone if you have voice mail. People don’t call you just because they want to give you something for nothing — they call because they want you to do work for them. That’s no way to live. Screen all your calls through voice mail. If somebody leaves a voice-mail message for you and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour when you know they’re not there — it looks like you’re hardworking and conscientious even though you’re being a devious weasel.
5 – Look impatient & annoyed.
One should also always try to look impatient and annoyed to give your bosses the impression that you are always busy.
6 – Leave the office late.
Always leave the office late, especially when the boss is still around. You could read magazines and story books that you always wanted to read but have no time until late before leaving. Make sure you walk past the boss’ room on your way out. Send important e-mail at unearthly hours (e.g. 9:35 p.m., 7:05 a.m., etc.) and during public holidays.
7 – Use sighing for effect.
Sigh loudly when there are many people around, giving the impression that you are under extreme pressure.
8 – Opt for the stacking strategy.
It is not enough to pile lots of documents on the table. Put lots of books on the floor etc. (thick computer manuals are the best).
9 – Build your vocabulary.
Read up on some computer magazines and pick out all the jargon and new products. Use the phrases freely when in conversation with bosses. Remember; they don’t have to understand what you say, but you sure sound impressive.
10 – Don’t get caught.
MOST IMPORTANT: Don’t forward this page’s URL to your boss by mistake!
OTHER HELPFUL HINTS:
Never smile when I’m on phone talking with someone at work and it isn’t about business. If you smile, then people won’t think that it is work-related.
Hold a pen in your hand at all times in between keyboarding tasks… keep it in your hand even while on the phone… have your writing pad there as well and occasionally jot something down… you’ll look as if at all times contemplating something really intelligent and ready to write it down.
Keep a really complex spreadsheet or lengthy document file (or both) open on your desktop.
Use an extended monitor with your laptop.Run a regression suite or that long build on your monitor and continue to do whatever you are doing on your laptop.
Keep your office communicator/jabber connected even when you are home.Gives a notion to your colleagues that you are really working Do it even the weekends.
Send one email a day to the team.if you don’t have anything just make up.
File bugs in your own name and keep solving them.
Go into a technical discussion and just listen even if you are not remotely interested in it.
Keep your white board messed up. Change the text everyday.
Add your manager on Facebook and show no activity when you are working.
Updating any open ticket that is being monitored by a manager on an irregular but time bound basis. Ie they love updates so give them updates. The more the better.
Narrate facts at meetings that the manager can use with his own manager. Depending on the stupidity of your manager, you’ll have to coat these nuggets with verbal accordance – ie., you’ll have to spell out exactly what you mean and then obtusely mention that your manager’s manager might find that interesting.
Sick days – well everyone knows that.
Really understanding how your boss thinks.
If you can really figure out how your boss thinks, you can focus on those activities except at deadline time. Even if you don’t hit the deadline your boss is usually confused enough between what he sees and your results to give you 1 more chance till the next review. so this method gives you 2 review cycles worth of time to phone it in.
Use the Outlook email scheduler to send out emails at 4 am. Note: for important emails only, don’t send out “FYI”-type emails about interesting work articles you’ve come across, no one believes you’re browsing Bloomberg for work at 4 am.
And the most popular time strangler, go to a meeting. It’s a place where idea’s get stranded in a cul-de-sac.
Looking busy has a bad rap. Sometimes you have to look busy so you can actually work on the things that matter. Here’s how to trick others into believing you’ve got a full plate so you’ll get the breathing room to actually get things done.
The point of looking busy is to remind your boss and your coworker that your time is valuable, that there are only so many things you can work on at once, and to give you some breathing room so you can actually think. In short, looking busy reminds everyone that you are busy, and gives you some freedom at the same time. Whether you use that freedom for valuable brainstorming or wasting time on your favorite tech blog is a choice we leave to you.
In this post, we’ll walk through some way to make sure everyone you talk to—whether it’s your boss or a distracting coworker—knows that you’re busy without you beating them over the head with the fact. Some of this is just good sense when it comes to productivity, but a few of these tips may seem counterproductive, but stick with us, we’ll explain why it all works. Let’s get started….
Shaving five minutes from the start and end of your day can only do so much. If you really want to slack like a pro, you’re going to need to figure out how to appear occupied even if you’re not. First off, read this most illustrious guide from Lifehacker on how to look busy. It’s packed with helpful hints and tips on how to keep your boss satisfied with your workflow even when it’s more of a “work trickle”. That’s not to say you should be doing zero work—unless your endgame is unemployment—but this guide explains how to keep your boss from piling a bunch of busy work on your desk.
Once you’ve memorized the Lifehacker guide, you’re ready to take your slacking game to the next level. We’re not talking about standing around with a clipboard or staring intently at your computer screen whilst wearing headphones; those techniques are as played out as licking your palms to fake clammy hands and get out of school. No, what you need are a legion of unknowing allies, namely, your co-workers.
In short, be a Chatty Cathy. Roam the halls of your office building, stopping by any open door, break room, or cubicle stall to “synergize” and “collaborate” with any co-worker that is even halfway willing to listen. Be sure to ask about their kids, people love talking about their kids and will do so at length—allowing you to not only “build rapport” with your co-worker but also shave valuable hunks of time off your work day. Just keep them talking.
You can try a similar technique with your supervisor. At my old office, we’d routinely receive memos from management so laden with industry buzzwords and random acronyms that could only be deciphered with a Cracker Jack decoder ring. While some see this as just one more office-place hassle, you can easily spin it to your advantage. Take the memo to your supervisor and ask for a detailed explanation of what on earth it’s talking about. You’ll be shocked how often Hey, I don’t really understand how we’re supposed to collate the GRE reports with the ACTA file turns into a 30 minute discussion of proper sorting and stapling methodology.
The best part of this technique is that it doesn’t even need to be done face-to-face. With a little practice, you can turn any email chain into an eye-glazing morass of replies, corrections, and clarifications. Just be sure not to overdo it; you want to be just persistent enough to keep stringing people along, not so obtuse that they get fed up with your endless line of questioning.
And while we’re on the subject of emails, you should strive to craft the perfect email. Every. Single. Time. Don’t say in five words what can be said in five paragraphs. Don’t assume that your reader has a single clue about the topic at hand (even if they’re the ones that started the thread); explain every single detail in as much detail as possible. If it takes less than 45 minutes to craft a response to “where are you going for lunch today?” then you’re doing it wrong.
But sitting at your desk, staring at an email client can get lonely, so be sure to break up the monotony by taking as many meetings as possible. Even if you aren’t directly involved in the project, sit in on the meeting. Slink in just right and nobody will notice you’re there until the house lights come up. Just remember to have a feasible excuse for sitting in ready before-hand in case someone calls you on it.
It can be hard work not doing any, but with a little practice, you can get away with just about anything—or doing just about nothing—on any given weekday.
Disclaimer: I would like to say that I worked my hardest when left alone and be managed like an adult. My last good boss, Mike Bizovi did just that, and our team responded by delivering staggering results and awards. We were self motivated to work hard and the though of goofing off never entered my mind. Prior to that, Ray Gorman routinely tried to backstab me because I made too much money (read more than him). What was great was that his peer managers thought he was an asshole and he never could get me. I saved myself from being fired by not punching him at a conference years later, but it was tough.
It is now a year later and my dog is 12 today. The average lifespan of Boxer according to my vet is “around” 8-10 years, so I’m living on borrowed time.
Since I’ve worked at home the whole time we’ve had her, she has been my day pal. Now that my son has gone off to college, she is definitely my dog and I’m very attached to her.
Recently, I watched Marley and Me and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. Fortunately, she is still full of energy and looks like she’ll be around for a while.
I’ve posted about her over the years, some of them being the most read entries I’ve written.
After the story of Shoep and Johnhere is the link I am especially sensitive to her longevity and day to day life. She has had cancer surgery and still has the energy to love my family, although she is especially attached to me. It is mutual.
I work at home, and I have a dog. She’s pretty much a lump most of the day, except of course when an analyst calls, at which point phantom bad guys appear outside of the door. This happens like clockwork destroying any sense of professionalism I try to have when speaking on the phone. She then loses her mind and barks like someone is trying to steal our house.
Top of the list in terms of barking veracity are the Fed-Ex/UPS delivery guys. She can hear these trucks leaving the loading dock 100 miles away, and knows when they are going to drive on our street. Next are sirens, which is funny as she stands on her hind legs and howls like a wolf, I still chuckle. Then there are the “garbage stealers” who come once a week and take our valuable discards along with the neighbor’s trash. Finally, the kids come home from school happy as clams about mid afternoon and yell and scream. This is good for a maintenance bark or two, nothing like UPS.
How do animals have this kind of timing? I dunno, it’s like kids who can embarrass you at the most inappropriate times with the things the can say.
I’ve had pets all my life….dogs, cats, fish, frogs and some other gross/slimey creatures I found on the way home from school. I love my dog, even if she doesn’t have the best sense of timing. I have an aquarium full of fish, they don’t make as much noise when I get phone calls, but then they don’t love me back or lick my face as much as my dog.
Delusions of Adequacy 