Diary of a Network Geek

Frost

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Frost/Nixon Friday night.

It’s funny, really, because I almost didn’t see this movie at all. I’d just gotten some less than stellar news while driving with a friend to see the movie. In fact, I took the call on my cell in his car. Actually, that turned out to be a good thing because I was able to check with him afterward to see how I’d handled the news, since I tend to blank out when under that kind of stress. According to him, I did really well. Not over-reacting or saying anything stupid or inappropriate. (And, no, it wasn’t a job interview, but, as per usual, a girl.)

So, in any case, I was a little numb and disappointed and mildly depressed. And, since my friend is a kind soul, I had the offer to see something else, like, for instance, a comedy. But, frankly, none of the comedies still playing at this theater were appealing to me, so we went ahead and saw Frost/Nixon. I expected a rather slow documentary style of movie. I was pleasantly surprised to be quite wrong!
The story, of course, is that of the David Frost and Richard M. Nixon interviews which took place in 1977, after Nixon had left office in disgrace and been pardoned. Now, you may be asking yourself how a movie about a series of interviews between an Australian talkshow host and a disgraced former president could possibly be all that captivating. Certainly, that’s what I thought when I heard about the movie. So, I went in braced for being bored out of my mind. It seemed a marginally better time than going home alone, though, so I went anyway. I’m so, so glad I did! At first, I found myself identifying with David Frost who risked everything, his career and all of his personal funds, to make the interviews happen because he was betting that it would put him back on top after being relegated to work that he thought was beneath his career. I completely understood taking that kind of giant risk even though no one believed in him anymore because he knew, deep in his heart, that it was only by taking such a huge risk that he could reap the rewards he desired. As my friend reminded me, if there was nothing to lose, then there was no risk. But, oddly enough, by the end of the movie, I found myself feeling a little sorry for Nixon! By this time, he’d become a broken man. His entire life was based around his political career and when he got caught in the Watergate scandal which forced him to resign, it destroyed him. That’s the Nixon that Frank Langella recreates for the screen. And, I have to tell you, he does it amazingly well. I tend to think of Langella as the B-movie vampire actor, but at one point in this movie I was shocked to see Frank Langella on the screen and not Nixon. I had gotten so sucked into his performance that I’d forgotten he wasn’t Nixon! Remember, Langella looks nothing like Nixon at all, so this is quite an impressive feat.

There’s not much in the way of a complicated plot for this movie and it’s hardly worth going into here. Simply put, it’s about getting Nixon and Frost together, getting the interviews taped, getting them paid for by sponsors and then getting them on the air. But, the movie is also about getting Nixon to admit wrong-doing in the Watergate burglary and associated scandal. And, it’s about the two men and how they verbally wrestled with each other throughout the interviews. Finally, it’s about the two men individually, about how they fought their own inner demons, about the choices they made and how that worked out.

I have to say, I loved this movie. I know, partly it was due to me being in the place mentally, emotionally and spiritually that I was, but part of it was just how surprisingly good the film was! I mean, I really was not expecting anyone to be able to make something as boring as interviews interesting, but it was a totally engaging film that moved along so quickly it was a surprise that it was suddenly over.
Brilliant film and I highly recommend it!

No, I don’t have a dog that needs to be rescued.

In fact, my precious Hilda is rescue dog. Though, all I think I really rescued her from was being spoiled by someone else. She’s so sweet that I’m sure someone would have snatched her up if we hadn’t. But, there are lots of dogs who need to be adopted. Some are, however, more problematic than others. At H.O.P.E., the rescue where I’m a member, we have lots of foster dogs of all kinds. But, even we have special needs dogs, in particular breeds that have been systematically mistreated or that have particularly rough backgrounds and need extra care and attention. Still, the dedicated volunteers do find homes for them, even if they have to go to very special owners.

Some dogs, though, have even more special needs than that. Do you remember Michael Vick? He was that first-round draft pick from the NFL that started an illegal dog breeding and fighting camp. I hesitate to call it that, but I’m not sure what else to call a rough collection of shacks out in the woods where he abused dogs for his own amusement and the entertainment of his friends. He was, thankfully, convicted and sent to jail. He was also forced to pay restitution which went toward the care and rehabilitation of the dogs. Did you ever wonder what happened to those dogs? Well, Sports Illustrated has the story of what happened to Michael Vick’s dogs.

It’s a pretty powerful story, but it ends pretty well, I think.
Oh, and if you read this all the way through and aren’t moved in some way, aren’t touched by the results? Then, I think you have no soul and I cannot possibly love you or even fully trust you. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for the vast majority of my readers, but, well, I’m just saying.

One last thing. Be safe tonight, ringing in the new year. Be careful and watch out for all those people who won’t be. If you haven’t come up with a New Year’s Resolution yet, there’s still time to hit my New Year’s Resolution Generator and let it do the picking for you.
Hope your new year starts off safe and wonderful!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"It's better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and resolve all doubt."
   --Abraham Lincoln

Surely, you didn’t think I’d actually pass up the opportunity to be philosophical on Christmas Day?

I’m sure some of my more secular readers will wince a little, but, well, it’s the celebration of the birth of Jesus and light into the world, so… So, I think about God and the nature of the universe on religious holidays like this. And, as commercial a holiday as this has become, it is still a religious holiday. At church last night they told us about how God loved the world so much that He gave us His son, who was destined to die for our sins, that we might be forgiven and find redemption. I’ll tell you true, sin I understand all too well. The other stuff, though, well, I struggle with it. It’s not that I came from a bad home or a rough neighborhood or anything like that. In fact, quite the opposite is true. I have a good, relatively tight-knit family and I grew up in a relatively affluent neighborhood. But, somewhere between junior high and my divorce I found more than my fair share of sin. I found it in spite of knowing better. I found it because I went looking for it, to see what I was missing, I guess.

I guess I found more than my fair share of redemption, too. It’s a strange thing, really, since I mostly did what I could to hide from it. But, then, God’s plan for all that, sin and redemption both, is a mystery to me. That mystery is what I’ve been thinking about today. I’ve been thinking about it a lot the past week, really, as we got closer to Christmas. God’s plan baffles me. I suppose it should, really. Who can know the mind of God?
I envy people who think they know God’s will for them. I envy those proud souls who think they know what the Scriptures all mean and how to sort everyone and what we should all do. I wish I had that kind of knowledge, that kind of confidence. Me, well, I’m not so sure. God surprises me still. Ha! God surprises me constantly!
But, I know people who believe they know God’s will. Hell, I have friends who believe they know God’s will, or at least some part of it. When I express a certain amount of despair over my ignorance, my sense of being lost in the wake of that. I struggle with seeking His will for me. I struggle to know if it’s His will or my own that I hear when I seek for what to do. There are times when I feel like God is telling me to do somethings that I don’t want to do. You see, that’s why I have a hard time believing those people who claim to know God’s will. He never seems to tell them to do things that are difficult. Have you noticed that?

It’s only in the Bible that people are told to do the difficult things. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who claims to know God’s will that thinks He’s telling them to do something that they’d rather not. But, you see, that’s my problem. I think God is telling me something. Something I’d rather not be true. I think He’s telling me that I’m meant to be alone. No kids, no wife. Alone. I have friends that disagree, but there are signs and portents. Moving half-way across the country to marry someone only to have that relationship end in divorce and her leaving the state seems a fairly clear sign to me that marriage is not in the cards. Oh, sure, perhaps that means I’m not meant for her, but maybe for someone else. Sure, sure. Except the last person I was dating has left the state, too. I mean, those two things sure seem to point toward me being alone. But, then, I have a friend who tells me that he sees me with someone. Who, he cannot say, but someone. Of course, he sees me as a father, too, but it seems to have been in God’s plan to sterilize me when I took chemotherapy. I’m willing to accept that it was in His plan to keep me alive, but it’s hard to see how I might still have all that other stuff after cheating death, too. I know there’s a lesson there, somewhere, because I do believe that God teaches me through these things, these trials, these conflicts. I have to believe that, or what would be the point?

But, God does surprise me.
Yesterday, I was prepared for a lonely, morose day today, filled with time and distractions from the emptiness. That’s not how today went at all. I was reminded by many friends today that I am far from alone. I may not have that one special, intimate relationship that I so crave, but I am certainly not alone. I was surprised by calls and text messages from friends new and old. And, don’t misunderstand me, there were plenty of people I expected to talk to or hear from today, but some of them took me quite by surprise indeed.
I also had a surprising amount of laughter and joy today.
Perhaps it sounds corny, or quaint, or, perhaps, even a little naive, but I felt something. Call it the presence of God. Call it peace on Earth. Call it what you will, I felt it today. Maybe it was even a bit of that redemption they keep promising in church. Just a hope that maybe my worst fears are wrong. It was no burning bush, but maybe just a hint that my future is filled with possibilities that I cannot know. Just the hope that God has a few surprises for me still.
And, that, dear readers, is what Christmas is about for me, at the best of times. That sense of hope, of second chances, of rebirth, of light that has not yet been overcome by darkness.

Life is full of surprises and God’s plan, seen only, perhaps, in the rear-view mirror, is just one of them, for me.
He surprised me, again, this year. I hope that He will continue to surprise me with the rebirth of light through the rest of this religious year. I hope that you, too, my friends, will have that same experience.

Merry Christmas.

That’s it.

Yeah, so no real post today, or tomorrow probably, but something fun on Friday. Be good. Have a merry Christmas and remember why we celebrate.

Tonight, hope will be born again into the world. On this day, I’m more like a Pagan than a Christian, in that I celebrate the rebirth of light into the world.
My your light be rekindled tonight, too.
Amen

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"It's better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and resolve all doubt."
   --Abraham Lincoln

No, not Google Maps.

In this case, it’s a free, trial version of MapPoint North America 2009 and a free, trial version of Streets and Trips 2009. Not sure how long they’ll be free, though. Also, not sure what GPS units, if any, these are compatible with, but it’s implied that MapPoint is with at least one, based on some of the information I’ve read.

So, quick, try them out while you still can!

I almost didn’t make it to celebrate this year.

In the past, my birthday hasn’t been a very big deal. I mean, as an adult, celebrating birthdays just never seemed like the thing to do in our family. In fact, I recall hearing about how one of my sisters threatened to walk out of a restaurant when her co-workers were going to bring out a cake and sing Happy Birthday to her. And, I, myself, once threatened a Joe’s Crab Shack waiter with a broken arm if he tried to get me to stand up and sing on my birthday. It’s just how I roll.

But, I’m forty.
Four decades of life. Forty laps around the Sun.
And, this year, I’m going to do things differently. I’ve take the day off, for instance. If, as an adult, I ever managed to not be working on my actual birthday, it was pure chance. But, today, I’ve deliberately taken the day off. Last night two friends, who happen to be married to each other, took me out to dinner. They took me a day early because, as with most people, they have other obligations tonight. In fact, I think that may be one of the reasons I just found it easier to not celebrate my birthday. Often, coming as it does in the middle of the holiday season, there are just too many things going on to be bothered to remember. Hell, last year, I forgot that it was my birthday at all!

But, this year is different.
This year that I never thought I’d live to see. This year, I’m choosing to celebrate life, because that almost wasn’t an option. I have a lot of ideas about who I’m supposed to be and how I supposed to live. And, I have a lot of ideas what people think about that. The thing is, I tend to live in such a way as to be unobtrusive. I guess I was in the way a lot as a kid or something. And, I have some issues about my own worth, my intrinsic value, as a person and a friend. When I really get going on myself, I’m sure that no one would really miss me for very long if I were to just disappear.
But, I know that’s not really true.

After last year, it’d be hard for me to deny that my life has had an effect on a lot of people. People who would miss me if the cancer had taken me. And, not just because of what I can do for them, which is the other lie I tend to tell myself. That I only have value for what I can do for other people. But, really, I’m not quite that useful that the people who surround me and care about me are only in it for the free computer advice and network support. Granted, that’s a nice perk for them, I’m sure, but, honestly, there are other people who do that just as well or better than I.
So, today, I’ll do something different. Today, I’m meeting some friends for lunch. Later, after running a few errands, I’ll be meeting some other friends for dinner and a movie. No idea what movie and I’m not sure where we’ll end up eating, but that’s not the point. And, really, these folks may not even all know that it’s my birthday and that I’m quietly celebrating in my own way. None of that is why I want to go do these things. No, the point is just to not be alone, closed up, closed off, and hidden on my birthday. For a change, I’m going to do something different on my birthday and celebrate.

I’ll also be starting Flickr365 later today. For those of you not familiar with it, the idea behind Flickr365 is to take a creative self-portrait every day for a year and post it to Flickr, the photo sharing website. My intention is to use that to both get myself taking pictures regularly and to get past hating to have my picture taken. Also, it might be interesting to look back and see what a year of changes look like, a year of different shades of me.
In any case, toward that end, I’ll be buying a wireless remote for my camera today, sometime, too. To make it easier to take those self portraits.

And, of course, my birthday wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention all the other famous people who had the good luck to be born on this particular day. Famous people like Frank “Chairman of the Board” Sinatra, Bob Barker, Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, Edvard Munch, and Wells Fargo founder, Henry Wells. Not to mention, Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues, Tim Hauser of Manhattan Transfer, Dickey Betts of the Allman Bros, jazz musician Grover Washington Jr, and former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch.
All heady company to be sure, but for whatever reason, it tickles me the most that I share a birthday with Frank Sinatra. I guess it’s because he was such a unique and original character who really fought against and beat some long odds to become an amazingly famous, generally well thought of character. I can only hope to do the same, one day.

So, here we go. I’ve survived one more lap around the sun, one more year, and I’ve beaten some long odds to do so. But, that year is done, now it’s time to start the next one and make it better than the last.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones."
   --Phillips Brooks

MedicineBall

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

Or, how the Network Geek plans to look good naked.

It may not always seem like it, but I’m a goal oriented guy. Anything I’ve ever done that’s been worth doing has been to accomplish a goal, some goal, any goal. So, what keeps me motivated to keep working out? What else? Sex. I want to look good, naked. Not just okay. Not just better than unappetizing. I want to look good.
Like most men, my problem is my gut. I’ll never look like a Men’s Health cover model and I may never have a tight “six-pack” like they do, but I sure as hell can look better than I do right now. Sure, I’ve lost twenty-five pounds in the past several months, but I also gained several back eating Thanksgiving left-overs. But, I’m not so old yet that I can’t improve myself physically. At least, I’d like to think, even as I get ready to turn forty in just a few short days, that I might still not send someone running from the bedroom screaming in terror.

Right, now if that image hasn’t scarred you for life, read on for an update on my exercise plan. I’ve been hitting the heavy bag for a bit now. After someone who’s in such amazing shape it makes me embarrassed to even admit to them that I’m working out at all asked how things were going with that, I added a three minute round before my brisk, just-under-two-mile walk, in addition to the three minute round I’d box with my inanimate opponent.
Saturday, I bought a nine pound medicine ball. There were a surprising number of choices and weights. Twelve was the heaviest they had, but I went with the leather clad nine pounder from Everlast. It looked good and felt good and it reminded me of old boxing movies. Movies with training sequences set in dark, dank, gray, old gyms filled with torn canvas bags patched with rolls of cloth tape and, yes, worn, leather medicine balls that the boxers threw to and at each other.

Medicine balls put me in mind of Hemingway and his rough-and-tumble heroes, who became mine. They remind me of the fitness craze that swept the Thirties, before we all started using giant weights and steroids or more legal supplements like creatine. But, the funny thing is, the fitness gurus and rediscovering the humble medicine ball. Men’s Health, for instance, has been running work outs that include medicine balls for quite some time. In fact, it seems to me that quite a few of their abdominal workouts in the past several months have either included or centered around the simple, relatively inexpensive, medicine ball. In particular, there’s the The Ultimate Medicine Ball Workout, as developed and used by the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. Go look at it. It looks easy, doesn’t it? Trust me, it’s not.

It takes work to get and keep in shape. I’m not willing to make it a full-time job just yet, but I am willing to put a little more into it than I have been. There is a reason they call it “working out”, I suppose, and if I want the result then I’ve got to do the work. Modern exercise science hasn’t changed that, either.
Good thing I have a goal to reach for, I guess.

Lately, I’ve been very concerned with my own discipline and how that relates to creative output.

It seems to me that I have increasingly lost the ability to focus on creative tasks for long periods of time, which, of course, is somewhat detrimental to actually producing a finished product. In short, my skills of concentration have gotten soft. It may be due, in part, to the nature of my work, which often draws me in several directions at once. Or, it may simply be a part of my nature that I used to have under better control. Regardless, concentration is, I think, the key.

So, with that in mind, I invite you to read “How To Concentrate“, originally published in 1930, but still relevant today.  Certainly, it is for me, especially this week, or month, or, hell, this year.  Now, all I need to do is clear a little space on my calendar…

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The person who WILL NOT read is no better off than the person who CAN NOT read."

MarkFloodPublicity

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I had lunch with my very-soon-to-be-very-famous artist friend Mark Flood today.

This month was National Novel Writing Month, but you notice that this is the first I’ve mentioned it. Notice, too, that I haven’t mentioned even a thought of participating this year. There’s a reason. Actually, there are a number of reasons, but most of them don’t matter much. Two, really, pushed me toward not bothering to try, though. First, November is the worst possible month to try and write a large volume of text on any subject, really. I mean, even if I hadn’t hosting Thanksgiving, I’d still have a lot of social obligations, not to mention the fact that I usually get snowed under with work in November, too. But, also, really, it’s been so long since I’ve written fiction regularly that going from zero to fifty in a month, well, let’s just say that fifty thousand words takes some working up to.

But, there are other things, too.
I’ve always wanted to be an artist. I have no talent drawing or painting, so, you know, art, at that point, becomes a bit of a challenge. That was probably about when I got interested in photography. I guess it seemed like an easier way to make something beautiful. Well, and there were more likely to be gorgeous women involved, too. Naturally, that’s always been right up there in importance with art. Women and art, almost the same to me, really. But, women are almost as much of a mystery as darkroom technique, so photography fell by the wayside, too. Not so much women, though, I probably should have chosen to do things in the other order based on how things worked out later. Hindsight is 20-20, right?
In any case, along the way, there was always writing. I always had writing. Until, one fine day, I grew up. I embraced the fact that I was a professional network plumber. I owned the idea that what I was really good at was making networks and servers run, talk to each other and do tricks. In short, as the title says, I am a network geek. And, that particularly lucrative pursuit slowly replaced my writing time.

Now, I’m not crying, okay? I mean, it paid the bills and it paid a lot of bills toward a pretty comfortable lifestyle, so I’m not knocking it. But, I do miss that dream of being an artist, or writer, or at least a photographer. Well, the more time I spend with Mark, soaking up the bits and pieces of his artist’s life, the more I hunger for that old dream, that time before I was a network geek when I was just a guy trying to pay the bills while I wrote. In a way, I’ve come full circle. Back to art and women. Well, full circle in that I desire both, but have neither. And, yeah, it seems like there’s a story in there somewhere.
Part of my problem with writing is that I’ve got it in my head that I should be writing science-fiction or fantasy, but when it comes out it comes out something entirely different. I’ve never set a story in the far future, or even the near future. Only once or twice, a couple truly horrible attempts, did I set something in the past, or a fantasy past where the rules were significantly different from now. I’m not sure what that all means, except, of course, my choices of subject matter seem to limit my output. I suppose the obvious answer is to write a different kind of story, but, then, obvious answers have never been my forte. I suppose that explains a lot of my problems with women, too.

I was thinking about all this after lunch with Mark today, because of a tribute article I read about Bob Carlos Clarke. He was a photographer and he took a lot of provocative photos, but he also had a number of famous friends, most that he met through his photography, many of whom he used as subjects for his work. Of course, he also took a lot of pictures of very attractive women, which has been, naturally, a dream of mine since, well, since about the beginning of puberty. So, yeah, portraits and black-and-white pictures and lights and lenses and art and famous friends and women and all that has been swirling in my head. Somehow, the photography is easier for me than the writing right now, so I pursue that.
I have no illusions about “making it big” or ever even selling my work, to be honest, but when I watch Mark, I see the obsession with getting the message right, with having to produce his work and I recognize that with my own obsessiveness around photos. I can only imagine what I must seem like to an observer while I’m setting a shot. And, of course, when I show someone a shot, there are almost always at least a dozen more that are slightly different that I discard.

Look, I don’t know what it all means. In the words of some poor slob in some movie that I can’t remember, we’re all just delivering pizzas. Or in my case, I’m just unclogging network plumbing. I love art, but I’m just doing a job like everyone else.
And, some days, that’s just not good enough anymore.

I’m so behind, I think I’m catching up to myself!

Thanksgiving fast approaches and my house is mostly clean. Now, by “mostly clean” I think it’s important to understand what I mean. I mean that I’ve vacuumed for the first time in two years. I mean, my bathroom is so clean that a woman might actually feel safe using it! Hey, what do you want from me? It’s been two years since I’ve been in a relationship and half that time I was in the hospital slow dancing with death, so, there really hasn’t been any point in having the place clean. Now, there is, so, well, it is. Well, mostly. My office still needs work and the bedroom can always use more cleaning and the upstairs… Well, the less said about the upstairs, the better right now.

The important thing, though, is that my kitchen is clean. And, just barely in time to start baking pies tonight. Yes, pies, as in plural. With so many people coming over after their main Thanksgiving plans, I figured a few extra pies can’t hurt. I might try to get to bed early, too. If the pies don’t take too long. See, I’ve been up until the wee hours for the past several nights in a row getting ready. So, I’m getting a little short on sleep. And, I still need to whip up a playlist for background music. After all, all the running around I did Sunday to get it and rip it won’t do me any good if I can’t get it playing!
Of course, I’ll probably end up staying up late again tonight then trying to catch a nap after I start the turkey in the morning. It just seems like I’ve totally under-estimated my time on just about everything this year. It’s just taken so much longer than I expected to get everything done. Witness the fact that this post is popping up here so late! I normally have Wednesday’s post queued up Tuesday evening before I go to bed, so this is amazingly late for me. It’s also why this post probably seems a little disjointed. Of course, that may be the lack of time and sleep, too.

Oh, and for those of you who love “food porn”, know that I’ll be taking pictures of people and food tomorrow. Naturally, I’ll post the pictures to my Flickr account, so keep an eye out if you’re interested. But, if you are going to be making your own “food porn” this holiday, here is a link to some Food Photography Tips and Techniques. Enjoy and have a happy and safe Thanksgiving!