don’t make me the villain

It happens. You are sitting somewhere and a child near by starts to act up like they sometimes do. The parent admonishes the child by casting you as the villain–”please sweetie don’t anger the nice man there.” Wait! Perhaps I’m not angered? Perhaps I understand and take their fun child perspective with the avalanche of emotions they navigate as a child? Don’t use me as leverage. Did I ask to be the villain here? Perhaps, for a moment, consider that I like kids and don’t mind them running around throwing a book [ask me this question again when I have a kid--I might be less tolerant when it's my child]. If you, the parent, disapprove of their behavior then merely say that and don’t use me. But what can I say? You can’t chastise a parent for their parental skills, that’s rude.

Groovy Google Calendar, but multiple phones and scheduling to same calendar?

I’m helping out my friend Rob set up the computer aspects of his Chiropractic practice. One thing he wants is to view the client schedules for himself, his business partner Keith and the various other treatment rooms at his office. He doesn’t want to spend the money on an Outlook Server to allow OWA. So we’ve been exploring Google Calendar. It’s great in many ways but a few things I still haven’t figured out:

• How can one customize the event entries to contain more information? For his practice, Rob would also like to annotate appointments with copay amounts, whether the patient showed up and other pertinent information. It would be nice to not have to place this in the generic textbox field. Instead let me generate various templates for calendar events and specifically the fields that each different template contains.
• Both Keith and Rob would like to view and schedule events in the same calendar via their phones. OK I’d like this because it’s cool and could be useful. It’s clear that a phone can subscribe to multiple primary calendars, but can multiple phones subscribe to *one* calendar? A simpler example would be a husband and wife sharing a gmail account and the calendar. It might be sufficient for Keith and Rob to consider the primary calendar read-only but allow scheduling from their connections at home.
• Can an appointment scheduled via SMS be rejected via SMS if there is a conflicting appointment? I’ve tried to set “auto-accept invitations” to “Auto-accept invitations that do not conflict” but that option in the calendar settings is not available on the primary calendar. I would love it if I could change this setting but also specify that it should be confirmed if there is a conflict and the event is scheduld via SMS. If I’m scheduling directly from the Google interface, I’d like to configure it so I’m not asked to confirm if there is a conflict. You can see how these features would be particularly useful for Keith and Rob.
• If a single phone can subscribe to multiple calendars how can it pick a particular calendar to schedule an event on via SMS? Perhaps a discriminator to select a particular calendar that the SMS is targeting. For instance SMS to GVENT: “cal me tomorrow at 7:30 workout with trainer”. Let’s assume that I’m married, SMS to GVENT: “cal us Thursday 6pm dinner with Liam and Susan”. The notification feature for a calendar should allow multiple email addresses (or you have to create an alias).

Perhaps I’m blind and it’s out there.

Joy of God

The joy of God has been taken from me—replaced with a resentment of God. It all started with a neighbor whom I mowed lawns for as a kid. I’d go over every couple of weeks and cut her abnormally fast growing grass. It was a battle. Afterwards I’d go inside, she’d offer me a glass of water and she’d pay me. I never felt comfortable there, but that might be impressing future events on the moments of the past. Anyway, one time she spoke to me in very serious tones, “Have you taken Jesus as your personal savior?” I had not, and had no idea what she was talking about. She than began to tell me that if I did not take Jesus as my savior I was doomed—she used no weaker language. Doomed. I was an impressionable 11 year old often looking to adults for guidance, not unlike other children at that age. She was quite firm in her belief. So, out of a sense of incredible fear I tried to follow her instructions. I tried to follow her instructions on how to save my soul, while sitting on the corner of my brother’s water bed. As I grew older and began to understand religion’s place in the world, I began to resent her attempts to impress God, and by extension, religion upon me. So, sadly, even a Unitarian church service (I attended out of curiosity) where God is minimized still rubbed me the wrong way. It feels, all of it, false to me and I believe it’s due to the lingering resentment of one person’s misguided efforts. She thought she was doing good, I’m sure, but it backfired. Now I’m somewhat jealous of those people who do have faith and the community of their church, but I cannot be part of that (yet). Sure I’d love the comfort of believing in a benevolent God who cares for us (if anything I’m more a deus ex machina). But, I don’t feel comfortable there–I feel like I’m being shaped by an outside force and not a willing participant.

So the joy of God, faith, have been taken from me. My neighbor of childhood instilled exactly what she didn’t want to do. Faith can be taught, but it is more durable if achieved on one’s own terms.

Mac Products

So today I helped out my sister setup her wireless network at home and I must say, I’m impressed. A couple of years ago I setup a wireless network using a Linksys WMP54GS.  It was a pain in the butt (not to mention the subsequent tech support which was extremely difficult and uninformed).  In contrast the Airport extreme base station was extremely simple to install and setup. The configuration program wasn’t based on a clunky windows app nor a browser connected to some whacky URL. No. It was a smooth polished application that configured everything necessary in the base station.  I didn’t need to reconfigure my PC to a static address so I could contact the configure the router.

Similarly I have nothing but praise for my MacBook. I’ve had it for a little over two months and am extremely impressed. One choice that stands out to me–my desktop is not a billboard.  “Product X by Company Y needs your attention” is a pop-up you see often in windows. If your anti-virus expires your desktop is used as a nagging ground to get you to up some money to update but more importantly to get rid of the annoying messages. None of that with my Mac. No. My desktop is mine and not a battle ground for my attention.

Jerked Around Like A Dog On a Leash

I was in the gym on Christmas eve getting a last workout before the caloric bomb that is the family dinner and impending New Years parties. While there I had a reaction that has only occurred to me once. There was a woman a couple of machines down that made me want to club her on the head and drag her home by her hair–yes a neanderthal reaction. Ugg, me caveman you girl. This woman just created a reaction of utter physical lust far beyond the normal “oh she’s attractive/cute”. I remember getting home later (no I didn’t talk to her, I couldn’t conjugate near her) and shouting “damn! damn! hot! f!#k! f!#k! hot! HOT HOT! Damn!”. Such a primitive reaction while, I must admit, fun at times can be really annoying at others.

When visiting Hawaii a couple of years ago I was on Waikiki beach at 6am in the morning, I was still on East coast time. I was enjoying that the beach was living up to the expectations, as high as they were, that everyone set for it. Beautiful beach. Beautiful distant butte (mountain/hill). Gentle lapping waves of crystal blue waters. As blue as what the sky would become when the sun rose. But then across my field of vision from right to left, an attractive women jogged by in a halter top jerking my attention away from the beautiful scene. The honest truth is I resented that. Not the women who is just getting exercise, no. No, I resented mother nature’s hormones “jerking me around like a dog on a leash”, to quote my friend John. All I wanted was a quiet time on the beach enjoying what I’ve traveled so far to see. Sometimes the moment one is in is so singular that you don’t want to leave it. Clearly natural selection deemed the hormonal reaction more important than the cerebral.

Icey Tundra

Six degrees. Six lousy degrees. Yep. That’s what it read on the thermometer in my car this morning to the gym for my yoga class. wow.  After yoga, my yoga neighbors we commenting on the weather. One said, “Well, I’m off to the tundra.” Yes, she’s quite right–off to the icey tundra this morning. I like the image of  the frosty tundra. When I got to my car to drive home? Seven. Yup. Seven lousy degrees.