12/26/24: Nearing the End of the Year

It's now at the time of the year where some of us get to slow down some after a frantic four weeks or so, relax, reflect, and recharge, and yes, I'm in that boat.  There's a lot to catch up on so I may as well get started.

Work has been treating me very well.  The schedule of performance reviews was accelerated to early this month as opposed to the usual February, and I did very well this past year.  To be honest, that was the best performance review I've ever had in my career.  It helps in that my boss and I have known each other for a long time, having worked together at Paragon Space Development here in Tucson.  I was really jazzed up about that review; I had been banking some comp time that day and I went home early so that I could reflect on that.  It was one of those moments where I had to invoke one of my recent sayings:  savor, but don't gloat.  I suppose I ought to expand on that some.

When I was offered a job at another company in early 1996, I was glad to get out of the company that I worked for, and into something really neat that I could do.  One of my co-workers who had also left said something that I've never forgotten:  savor the moment.

Now we fast forward to where I'm older, and hopefully wiser.  My mindset towards things when things are going good has changed somewhat.  It's trying to remember to thank God for the fortune, but it's also to not get caught up on gloating.  Perhaps you have seen some end zone celebrations while watching a football game.  Players can't help but celebrate a touchdown.  It's human nature.  Yet the Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry told his players not to celebrate.  He told them "act like you've been there before".  In other words, have some class about it, and don't rub it into your opponent's face.

I can see where Tom Landry was coming from on that.  Excessive celebration will have the effect of motivating your opponent to fighting harder to win, and some of us, when we want to do something badly enough we will figure out a way to get it done.  If you gloat, that can come back and bite you.  That's one reason.

The other reason, is something I read in the Sermon on the Mount.  There Christ warns people about celebrating your good deeds.  I take that more as a warning against virtue signaling, and virtue signaling is one thing the world could use a severe shortage of right now.  Now can you celebrate inwardly?  I say you can.  Savor, but don't gloat.  

But what about celebration?  And is there a time to gloat?  Here is where what I'm about to say reflects my personal opinion.

If you land a new job, yes, take your wife and family out, and celebrate with a nice dinner.  If you reach a marriage milestone like I'm about to, yes, celebrate (and on that one you had better if you want to stay married...........!!!!!)  And if you want to jump up and down in the privacy of your own living room when something good happens, go for it.  You're not putting on a show for anyone.  

But when is it time to gloat?

Again, my personal opinion is coming into play here.

If you're a ham radio operator and you get someone on Pitcairn Island, then you can gloat.  And there are two reasons.  One, over 99% of the rest of the population won't care about that, so it's not like you're rubbing into anyone's face.  Two, the other ham radio operators will congratulate you and say "good job!", and then ask you how you pulled it off.

Anyway...........we are nearing the end of another year.  One of my former employers is trying to get me to come back.  I haven't told them no, but I haven't told them yes either.  My next job is retirement, and that next job starts sometime between tomorrow and one year from tomorrow.  I'm not ready to announce the intended date, which is subject to change.  Let's say that I'm not close enough to it to where I feel the need to let my management know about it.  

I have also been busy enjoying my time off, mainly in the pursuit of hobbies and simple pleasures.  Yeah, there are some things around the house I need to do, and I've worked on it here and there.

That's it.  

My Mother Has Passed

Five days ago my mother has passed.  I knew some four weeks ago she was slowing down.  She got COVID some three weeks ago, which she recovered from, but she did not recover from the two falls that she got shortly after that.  Falls in that age bracket are sometimes the beginning of the end, which was true in her case.  She was given two weeks to two months, the next day it was one to two weeks, the next day after that she was given one week, and then it was a few days.

My brother and sister were able to make it down here in time.  It was a hard week for all of us.  As I am writing this, I am still dealing with arrangements and other matters related to this.  I have been off of work for these past two weeks, with the exception of yesterday since there wasn't anything to do on the home front (and I felt the need to start working on getting back to the status quo ante). 

We take comfort in knowing that she is with the Lord.  

I regret that due to her dementia, I was not able to have "deep" conversations with her like I was able to many years ago.  To be honest, she was very difficult to deal with this past year.  We were able to get her into assisted living last January, and that was not easy.  

As stated before, I am still working on arrangements.  I am taking today off of work in an effort to get them finalized.  

No comment at this time on the election results.  

And Now Pete Rose is Gone

This afternoon I learned that Pete Rose passed away.  I remember seeing him in person at Candlestick Park with the Big Red Machine.  Baseball was great in those days.  The Reds were great.  I rooted for them in the 1975 World Series and when I saw them play the Giants at Candlestick.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my interest in baseball.  It started coming back when I was in my early 30s, and that was after Pete Rose accepted a lifetime ban from Major League Baseball for gambling.  And when the players went on strike in 1994, that was it for me.  They came off the strike the next year and I went on strike as a fan and have been on strike since.  (This is coming from someone who still refuses to rent from Hertz, due to their previous association with OJ Simpson.  And I have no idea why people say I'm stubborn.)  But let's get this back to Pete Rose.

There is no doubt he was one of the greatest baseball players of all time.  I remember him running to first base when he drew a walk.  From what I have read he adopted a derisive nickname and made it his own.  There was never a Charlie Hustle before and there will never be another one.  

When the gambling allegations surfaced, I'm thinking..........say it ain't so, Pete.  The investigation went on for many months, and I read that Rule 21, prohibiting gambling from the players, was conspicuously posted on the door of every clubhouse.  In other words, Pete Rose had no excuse.  Gambling problem?  Yeah, we learned he had one.  But it went deeper than that.  There was tax evasion and shady behavior on his part.  The man who I saw run to first base upon drawing a walk was doing a different kind of hustling off the field.  I was disappointed, and I agreed with the ban.

For some time, I thought MLB was going to cave, and reinstate him.  To their credit, they haven't.  In my opinion MLB isn't exactly an honest enterprise and a large part of that is due to continued fan support, which I've touched upon in a few posts from many years back.

Anyway........someone who became as controversial as OJ Simpson, but in a different way, is no longer with us.  

I hope that anyone he was ever a role model to will restrict their emulation to passionate execution in what they do for a living, and not in what Rose did off the field.

Some Genealogical Musings

Most of the updates here have been on the Parker family, which has its own page.  I am thinking of creating a "Genealogy Main" page as the first stop for anyone who stumbles here looking for information on my research.  There is the intention of creating pages for Pierson, Pilkington, and Bonsall family histories.  There are some families on my mother's side I want to research as well.  I sometimes wonder if I'm opening a can of worms here on my Parker research, as that I am learning that it just wasn't my third great grandfather's family who migrated to Indiana and then Kansas.  One of his brothers' families migrated as well, along with his younger sister's.  And earlier I learned today that some of his cousins came too.

A year or so ago I started tracing downwards as many known descendants of William Riley Parker, mainly to learn where they went after settling in Kansas.  I may have to reach back even farther and go back to his grandfather.  That will shed a lot more light on the migrations of this family, along with the Hodges who migrated with them.  

If the information gets big enough it will justify its own website, as if I really want to be taking on other projects in addition to what I have going now.  This blog started out mainly as a chronicle of my random thoughts and life experiences, and now side pages are popping up.  I'd like to do a side page of my foreign banknote collection, alongside the "Ugly Money" page, which also needs updating.  

I probably shouldn't be doing this until I retire, and the problem with retirement right now is that I'm having so much fun in my job to where I don't want to give it up.  I am nearing the end of my career, I am in my groove as a Senior Product Test Engineer, and it's giving me plenty of satisfaction.  Yes, I sometimes miss being a satellite engineer, where I learned a great deal about orbiting satellites, and got to go to Japan three times and Italy once in that capacity.  

As for retirement, I have picked out a date, but am not making it public.  I may delay it a few months.  I can see pulling it ahead if the company re-organizes into a structure that I don't like.  Management changes at the very top of the corporate structure have taken place, and some have taken place at lower levels.  I am concerned with business units becoming too big to manage unless they are broken down into more manageable segments, which defeats the purpose of consolidating them into larger units which they say we need in order to meet our corporate goals.

OK, I just looked at the clock, and I've decided that I should shut up and call it a night.  This transmission is now officially coming to an end.  

8/10/24: Checking In, Some Catching Up.

I think this post is going to be more of checking in than catching up.  A lot of the work done here on this blog has been on the genealogy pages that have been created, as I dig up family history when time permits.  Time doesn't permit as often as I would like.  I am catching up on some projects around the house and yard, as that I am trying to keep the "To Do" list from exceeding twenty items.  Today's dragon was finally getting this new computer commissioned, and getting some files transferred over from the old computer.  

We have been in the middle of a good monsoon season here.  I have not been on the air as often as I would like as that it's never wise to operate during a thunderstorm.  It's wiser yet to have the antenna down, the feedline disconnected, and the rig unplugged.  I know a few folks who have taken some direct lightning strikes.  Lightning is going to go where it wants to go, but there's no need to invite it, so my antennas are lowered.  

I could comment on the current political landscape, but I don't feel like it.  

I think that will be it for now.

Trump Dodged a Bullet. Literally

Yesterday afternoon news broke of a "security incident" at a Trump rally in Butler, PA.  Then it was Trump being shielded and evacuated because shots were fired.  Some time after that, it became an "apparent assassination attempt".  With confirmed reports of a dead shooter some 130 yards away, then it became "assassination attempt".  And later on, we were stunned with how close this assassination attempt came to succeeding.  Former President Donald Trump literally dodged a bullet.

As with any event of this nature, we are seeing everything from conspiracy theories to blame to speculation and the cold hard facts, as best as we can know them right now, are leaving more questions than answers.

I can see where the conspiracy theorists are going to be hard to disagree with on some things.  Just how was it that the shooter got to within 130 yards of the former President?  Just how was it that he knew that this would be outside the security perimeter?  There seem to be credible witness statements that the gunman was seen some sixty seconds before the first shot was fired, with some trying to draw attention to the situation from law enforcement.......so why wasn't the shooter taken out before he fired the first shot?

These are legitimate questions.  As to whether or not they will be answered to satisfaction is another matter.  

All of that aside........I am angry that this happened.  

May God save our nation.

The Squirrel is Shorting out the Transformer

I was one of the millions who watched (most of) the debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.  I had meant to watch the whole thing but was sidetracked.  Approximately thirty minutes into it I realized it was on.  I tuned in on an online audio stream and couldn't believe it.

Is that Joe Biden murmuring?  Is that really him?  Holy smokes, he isn't sounding good!  I then went to an online video stream to watch the rest of it.  And I still couldn't believe it.  Biden's movements and facial expressions reminded me of an old Star Trek episode.  The Corbomite Maneuver.  Captain Kirk and crew are facing off what they think is a malevolent alien.  The movements of Biden and his facial expressions reminded me of Balok..........or rather..........that puppet who was purported to be Balok.  That blank look.  That scowl.  Only capable of side to side movements.  Blank, vacuous eyes, staring straight out into nowhere.  

Trump, on the other hand, kept his cool.  Biden kept trying to bait him.   Trump wouldn't take the bait.  Biden made some ridiculous claims, one of which that he has created "thousands of millions of jobs".  (That's billions, for those of you who are in Rio Linda.)  He made some other claims, which he was called out for.  And then it was finished.

Organized Media went into meltdown within a New  York minute.  Most debates I have watched in the past, in my opinion, had no real clear-cut winner, but this one?  To put it mildly, Trump cleaned Biden's clock.  This wasn't a good night for Biden.  The whole nation got to see the real Joe Biden, and it wasn't pretty.

Since then there has been a war erupting within the Democratic Party.  Some of the donors and some of the power brokers in elected office want Joe Biden out of the race.  I wasn't sure if this were a passing hissy fit or not, but as I write this over one week later, the momentum for that doesn't seem to be diminishing.

Now some of us have been telling you for four plus years that Biden isn't mentally fit for the office.  Organized Media told us otherwise.  They spent these past four years not covering the mental state of the President, nor even questioning it.  "We know what's best for you, so shut up!  Nothing to see here!"  And now there are cracks in the dam, and it's anybody's guess as to whether or not Joe Biden will step down from the ticket or even be forced out of office.

The situation is amongst the most bizarre I've ever remembered seeing in my life.  My longtime friend Birdman has a great analogy that applies here.  It's like watching a squirrel short out a transformer.  As grotesque as it is, you can't help but watch it in morbid fascination.