Monthly Archives: July 2023

City on the Edge of Forever

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I’ve been on a few hikes, but “City on the Edge of Forever” has to be one of my favourite hike trail names.

The views were spectacular and I connected with a friend whom I’ve mostly known online, in meetings, and at conferences. Yet every time we connect I feel like I’m with a lifelong friend. The one difference… each time we connect I learn something new about him.

We all have past experiences that are stories from another era in our lives. It’s easy to dismiss them as ancient, to share them as if they were ‘in a past life’. But these stories are the stories that made us. They are the stories that created the person we are today.

Sometimes people can get stuck on who they ‘used to be’ and I don’t think that’s healthy. But it’s also not healthy to reflect on those past experiences like they belong to someone else.

I’m no longer an athlete. Even when I was one, I was a hard working grunt, not a talented athlete… but I was still an athlete. I take care of myself now, but I’m no athlete, and honestly unlikely to be one ever again. But the skills I learned, the work ethic, the sportsmanship, the dedication to something I loved doing… those things I take with me to the edge of forever.

The scenery today was great, but learning more about my friend was even better.

The meaning of generosity

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Conversation with my wife:

“Have you written your blog post today?”

“No… What should I write about?”

“How about being generous?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Like doing something just to be nice and not wanting or needing anything in return.”

“That’s great, yes, I’ll use that.”

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It’s not truly generous if you want or expect something in return.

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Being someone who does the right thing because it’s the right thing… that’s an honourable life.

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The willingness to give for giving’s sake is the essence of true giving.

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It’s fine to receive kindness for being giving, but the moment you look for, or expect, gratitude or appreciation for what you are giving, the less authentic was the giving.

Oh, can’t complain

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Today on a stroll through a Saturday Farmer’s Market I passed an interesting character. He was on the obese side of heavy, in a motorized wheelchair, in loud checkered pants, and a colourful muscle shirt that revealed his diabetes monitor on his arm. Just as I was passing him, he bumped into someone he knew and I heard his response to her question, “Oh, can’t complain.”

I find it fascinating that people who suffer the most, and need the most, are often the most optimistic and generous. I worked in a school for very high needs students, many of whom came from very needy families, yet their parents were far more likely to donate their time to a shelter or volunteer kitchen than at any other school I’ve ever worked at.

My thought of the day, “Quit yer bitch’in.”

So many people have so much more to worry about and yet they live a life where they ‘can’t complain’… so really, what do we have to complain about?

Life is amazing, there is so much to appreciate, so much to value and cherish. Live, laugh, love, and for your sake more than anyone else’s… stop complaining.

Profits and wages

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It’s easy to see that capitalism is broken. Oil & gas, food, delivery, and online shopping companies have had record high profits shared with their shareholders in the past few years, while the workers in the same companies fight for a living wage. And the gaps get bigger. One thing not always recognized is that even when a ‘decent’ wage increase happens, it often benefits the wealthier employees more.

Here is a simple example of a company giving everyone a 7% wage increase. This is what it translates to:

  • A $25,000 a year employee gets an additional $1,750 before taxes.
  • A $40,000 a year employee gets an additional $2,800 before taxes.
  • A $75,000 a year employee gets an additional $5,250 before taxes.
  • A $150,000 a year employee gets an additional $10,500 before taxes.

The end result is that the gap gets bigger.

I believe that there is room in the world for social democracy. That we can lift the wages at the bottom without undermining a company. The only thing stopping this is the expectations of shareholders. Companies need to be beholden to their employees and customers first, and then shareholders.

I don’t see a workable way forward to fix the broken shareholder model, but it is undermining the balance between work and life in a free and democratic society. Surely the well-being of a company’s employees has to matter more than lining shareholder pockets… because it seems to be more and more of an either/or scenario, and the shareholders seem to be winning.

Superconductors and aliens

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What a crazy bit of news out the last couple days! Ambient temperature and pressure superconductors could change the world and so too could the admission that we are not alone in the universe. Both of these are things that deserve scrutiny and further evidence. That said, what an exciting time to be alive.

Room temperature superconductivity has been a physics Nobel Prize waiting to happen. So much of the energy we use is lost in transmission. Furthermore, this invention will make nuclear fusion containable, without significant cost and dangers of a breach because superconductors used for plasma containment won’t need to sustain unbelievably cold temperatures next to an extremely hot process. In other words, energy is about to get a lot easier to produce and share.

As for aliens, I think there is enough evidence to say that there are flying vehicles that do things human-made vehicles can’t. Whether aliens are in these vehicles or if they are run remotely (they pull some high g-force moves that would destroy a human), they are definitely not human made. So what are they, and who/what made them?

I’m mixing my enthusiasm with a dose of scepticism, but unlike most other news stories, these are two I’m going to be watching!

Fictional assassins

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I’m reading one of Mark Greaney’s Gray Man books, Sierra Six. It’s a spy novel with a rogue CIA agent fighting against evil terrorists. It brings to life how a handful of people can wreak havoc in the world.

It also makes me think about a few other things:

1. We like to support an underdog.

2. Vigilantes with a virtuous agenda make great underdogs.

3. Nefarious criminals have the upper hand in that most people don’t expect others to act in an evil way, and so bad scenarios are harder to defend against.

4. Assassins have amazing technology at their disposal, and I’m surprised more assassinations don’t happen.

On this last point, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to live a world where vigilantes and assassins take justice into their own hands, but I also don’t want criminals doing the same… and criminals doing this are far more likely than good people.

How long before we see a political figure being killed by a drone, or from a weapon more than a mile away? What kind of world would we live in where any political figure needs to constantly think about personal threats to themselves when out in public?

I know that books like this are about larger than life heroes, victims, and criminals, but the technology described in these books are usually real and/or possible. I know most people are smart enough to know that the vast majority of criminals get caught, and a life of crime doesn’t usually pay. But it only takes a few angry people to really disrupt the world we live in… and there are specific tragedies we can all think of that prove this.

Fictional assassins tend to have intelligence, physical strength, and top of the line high tech tools. Real assassins probably aren’t the full package that makes a storybook character, but they are probably getting access to similar weaponry. The threats they could pose are only getting worse. We shouldn’t need to live in fear, but we should never doubt the threat of people willing to do bad things for bad reasons. And maybe, just maybe, a vigilante do-good-er could come out of fictional imagination and into the real world to make the world a safer place.

Now back to my book!

Follow the Thread

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The first social media app that I fully engaged with was Twitter. Of course, back in 2007 it wasn’t an app, it was a website. And in the early days it would often crash. I was so enamoured that I wouldn’t miss a tweet in my timeline. I’d come home from work and scroll from my last read tweet forward until I was ‘caught up’. And along the way I’d click on links, and read blog posts my friends shared, and even go to their sites to comment. Sometimes I’d end up with 12-15 tabs open and the catching up would take me over an hour.

I’d go to conferences and meet people I only knew through Twitter and I’d feel like I was meeting old friends. My connections were down to earth and very real. I loved the richness of the conversation and learning that happened on Twitter.

Then it changed.

It went from friendships to engagement, from conversation to activity, from a tool I spent time on to a tool I transmit to.

Now Meta has come out with Threads. Maybe the conversation is coming back. Maybe. But my time investment won’t be there unless I’m pulled there by others. Sure, I created an account, and yes, I’m interested to see where it could go. But it would require others drawing me in to make it something I use regularly. I’m not investing the time to making it work for me.

I’m just that much more selfish with my time now. I don’t have time for angry posts and outrage. I don’t care about building a follow-ship. I am not interested in clicking a link to see an image or video on another platform… which ironically someone on social media needs to do to fully read my Daily-Ink. In short, I’m not willing to put the time and energy into yet another social media platform, unless I see an immediate and positive engagement… and that doesn’t happen until a spend time on the platform.

So, I’m more likely to watch the threads fray than I am to stitch together a profile that I’m willing to wear. Threads is probably headed to my laundry basket of apps I never put on.

95% off

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This isn’t about a discount, it’s about holidays. Today I had to order more licenses for our online language courses, and I also had to follow up on contacting an employee about making their position full time with me. Neither of these things took a long time. Neither of them are a problem, they both lead to positive outcomes. Neither of them could be done by someone else right now. They also both come to me while I’m at a campground on holidays.

[I stopped writing this earlier and was reminded to get back to it after a work related text message and subsequent email.]

It’s not a big deal, and yet it is. It’s me on 95% holidays and not 100%. It’s me not turning completely off, but rather having a slow drip that keeps my fingers wet from my work.

I am glad that I have the job that I do. I was a Starbucks manager before getting into education. I can’t imagine my life being happier if I stayed in positions like that. But sometimes I really wish my holidays gave me that last 5%. I sometimes really wish that when I got home after a work day that my job was 100% done until I arrived the next morning.

I’m enjoying myself. I won’t let the little things I dealt with disrupt the rest of my day. The holiday time is great and I’m making the most of it. It’s just some times I wish I got to have that last 5%.

wind and waves

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If you ask most people what causes waves they will tell you the gravitational pull of the moon. While that is the reason for the tides, the most common cause of waves is… wind. On my hike yesterday it was quite windy and I got to see the wind ‘playing’ on the surface of the water.

I also remember seeing dust devils, mini tornados, on my many adventures through the southern states with my dad. And I once saw a water spout off the coast of Jeju Island in Korea. 

It’s fascinating to see the power of the wind. Harnessed, it can generate power. It can also be devastatingly destructive.

But looking at the way wind travels along the surface of water, creating waves, is mesmerizing. I love to watch it dance and control the water, with the wind taking the lead and the water following along at the leader’s whim. But to say the water is ‘following’ the wind is a misnomer.

animation of people doing the stadium wave

animation of a longitudinal displacement wave pulse traveling through a tube filled with molecules

Like fans doing the wave in a stadium, the water itself does not travel with the wind, but rather as a disturbance traveling through the water. A beautiful disturbance. A dance of wind and waves. In a way, tides and waves are the dance of the sun and moon. The moon influences the tides and the sun unevenly heats the earth creating wind. So the dance of wind on water is a dance of sun and moon, of heat and gravity, of power and beauty.

View points

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The saying goes:

“There are many paths to the top of a mountain, but the view from the summit is the same.”

However in reality it’s the journey that matters. Everyone can see the same things from the peak, but what was the path there? How enjoyable was it?

How many view points did you stop at?

That’s a question from two points of view, each with a very different perspective.