Not so techie

I’ve shared before about how I’m not as tech savvy as most people think. The reality is that I’m just willing to spend a lot of time getting to the bottom of an issue, and so my savviness has more to do with patience than with prowess. That said, I’m getting very frustrated with the technology challenges that seem to be coming my way that I can’t solve. A couple days ago the WordPress App stopped working. I could no longer save anything on it and so I couldn’t write posts on my phone. I deleted and re-installed the app, I tried logging in with my back-up access account, and then I gave up and finally moved to the Jetpack App that I have been begrudgingly avoiding. I didn’t want to make the switch because it forces block editing, which I think is clunky and works against me, rather than helping me with my writing. Now that app won’t work with my blog either. Maybe that’s a good thing because I wanted to write on my laptop rather than phone, so this might be the push that I needed.

Still, this wasn’t my only technology challenge this week or today. My wife is with her parents and her dad can’t access his Shaw mail. It’s an issue on his computer because my wife can access it on her phone and I can access it on my computer, so it has to be an issue with his machine. But the account uses web-based access and I suggested updating Chrome, and then we tried Firefox and while he can log into the account, he can’t click on any of the items in his inbox to read them on either web browser. The fact that I’m trying to give support over Facetime doesn’t make it an easier. I have Teamviewer (to take over a computer remotely) on my mother-in-law’s computer, but not on my father-in-laws, and while I’ll set that up soon, I didn’t feel like doing that for what I thought was a minor issue, and with my wife there, the support itself went fast, even if we couldn’t figure out the issue.

So here is my little rant, why does it seem that there are a lot more things breaking rather than working these days? I have to manually share my blog posts on social media because the tools I try to use (and have even paid for) don’t seem to work consistently. My wife gets a new phone and I spend a week updating issues that come up that were not a problem with the old phone. I upload a new plugin (after the issue with the WordPress login – yes I thought about that being an issue already), and it takes an hour to move from the free version to the paid one. I get stuck on a technical issue and google searchers seem less helpful than they used to. I buy a new toaster oven and the extra features make it harder to use and less convenient than the old one. I can’t decide if I’m getting old and curmudgeonly, or if things are being made less convenient and harder to repair?

In any event, I’m not feeling so techie right now. I seem to be coming across issues that are too hard for me to fix, and my patience is thinning. Cue the memes about old people not understanding technology… I hope that’s not me despite my little rant.

Seizing Moments

Yesterday I had the opportunity to have lunch with my admin team. Now when I say that I’m talking about 3 ‘teammates’ that do not work in the same building as me. So when we can get together and enjoy a meal it’s a special moment. The moment was made that much more special because two of the three people I met are moving on… one to a new position, and the other one retiring. Then, after work, I connected with some other administrators for a wellness gathering. It was wonderful to spend that time connecting with colleagues that I don’t always see during my typical work week. And when I came home, my wife and I had a wonderful evening together. We both seem to have a little more energy than we usually do on a Friday night. It was a fun night of laughter and conversation.

This morning I did the Coquitlam crunch with my buddy, and while it was cold and early, and we were the only ones in the parking lot, it was a ‘seize the moment kind’ of opportunity. This was our 120th Crunch since we started 3 years ago in January 2020. My buddy suggested that the title of this post should be “Just Do It”, and that was the initial plan, but my thoughts go a little beyond that this afternoon.

After our walk and coffee shop social, I went home and said bye to my wife and helped her pack the car to head over to the island to visit her parents. Then my daughter called and asked for a ride because she spent an anniversary night out with her boyfriend and they were heading home from downtown. After dropping her boyfriend at his house, my daughter and I decided to go and enjoy a sushi lunch at a wonderful restaurant. I can’t express how wonderful it is to have grown-up kids who still look forward to a meal with their father (and yes, especially when he’s paying).

Now I am sitting in my hot tub, penning my ideas using voice to text, and even enjoying a little visit for my cat.

Visits with colleagues, chats with my wife, walks with friends, meals with family, and hot tubs on a cold winter day, these are all small little moments individually… But weave them together, and they make for an absolutely wonderful life.

We sometimes go headlong into work, and bury ourselves in busyness, not realizing that we don’t have to put everything on hold until our next vacation, or gathering with family or friends. Tiny moments, planned, and unplanned, are the moments we need to seek and enjoy.

Standstill

The snow came later than expected. The temperature drop was expected, but the timing was perfect to create chaos in a city with limited snow removal capability.

I live on a hill, and last night my wife and I couldn’t get home. She spent hours stuck in traffic. I was at work quite late and when I left I made 3 attempts to get up the hill. The first and third attempts were blocked by firefighters, redirecting traffic away from the hill. The second attempt involved watching cars slide down two different hills that I was forced to avoid, finally finding my way back down to the main road my school is on.

I did a u-turn at the last attempt and ended up going to a Pho restaurant a block from my school for a warm, slow dinner. Then the main hill that I use going directly up from my school was open and I had an uneventful drive home. That’s not nearly as bad an experience as my wife being in the car for over 3 hours, mostly standing still and waiting, and finally having to go several kilometres out of her way to approach our house from the opposite end.

Still, we were more lucky than the cars that slid uncontrollably into each other on some of the hills we couldn’t get up. (That’s the hill that would have been my 4th attempt to go up, had I not u-turned and headed back to my school).

Our neighbourhood is very hilly, and we end up having events like this once or twice a year. What brings our city to a standstill though is not snow, it’s ice. It’s conditions where the snow comes, it gets compacted by cars, and then the temperature fluctuates above then below zero to liquify and then refreeze the compacted snow into sheets of ice. Hills, ice, and traffic don’t play well together.

This morning I won’t be trying to drive down the hill I came up last night. I’ll drive over to the main road that I know will be cleared since it is a major artery for traffic… (even though that’s the hill that had the most havoc last night). I’ll get to work earlier than usual and make sure the parking lot is safe. But I’m lucky that my school is on the bottom of the hill, closer to the river, and likely not as icy and snow-covered as some of our schools that get much more snow than us. Hopefully the chaos of last night is over.

A quiet mind

While we don’t sit in silence very often (yesterday’s post and one from 2022), we also don’t sit with a quiet mind. Our ‘To Do’ list, obligations, and plans fill our mind with things in the future rather than the present.

The idea of stillness eludes us even when it’s quiet. The notion that we are fully present escapes us. A happy experience? Let’s take a photo to remember it. A pretty sky? Let’s take a video. A beautiful walk? Let’s plan our next meal. We seldom stay in the moment.

Maybe it’s just me and my monkey brain. My brain that tries to meditate and spends its time wandering. I want to wonder but I wander. I want to be quiet and still but I fidget internally as well as externally.

I want the gift, the present, of being present. I seek the now and not the future… Not the thoughts of what’s next, what I must still do, and what I should or should not say to someone not currently with me. Imagining future conversations, or worse, past conversations and how they could have been better.

A quiet mind is not an empty mind, it’s a mind focused and aware of the now. It is not in the past or the future, it is in the presence of the present. I will meditate after writing this. Meditation must come after writing or I’m even less present as I think of what I’m going to write. Even then, my mind will drift, I will accept it and understand that refocusing is part of the process, it actually is the process. But I long for the quiet, the stillness, the moments where I’m fully present.

Perhaps it’s that very longing that prevents me from getting there. The desire to be more present is a desire and want of something not in the the present and thus something I can not seek without being less present. It’s the paradox of letting go: the more you try to let go, the more you are holding on to something… the less still your mind is.

Sitting in silence

We almost never sit in silence anymore. Music, podcasts, tv, social media, and even humming or singing to ourselves, we fill the silent void.

There is no room for boredom, no space for quiet contemplation, no moments of solitude. Only noise, distractions, and attention to external inputs. What can we fill this quiet space with? What can we pay attention to? And what else now?

Sit in silence for a while. Sit with your own thoughts. Let them linger, let them settle. Let them get past the sensation that you should be doing something, anything but this. And breathe.

Sit in silence for a while.

Sensing our world

I’m going to need glasses and hearing aids in the next few years. I already use small magnification readers when text is small or my eyes are fatigued, and I know that my hearing has diminished. One example of my hearing issue is that when we shut down our gas fireplace it beeps, but I don’t hear the beep. That sound is no longer in the range that I can hear. I only know it’s there because my wife and daughter mentioned it.

It’s only in relatively recent history that we’ve had access to technologies that allow us to enhance our senses when they fall below ‘normal’ capabilities. Before that we just lived less vivid lives as our senses worsened.

Having my family ask me ‘Can’t you hear that?’ and listening to nothing but their voices, knowing full well that I’m missing something is a little disconcerting. How are they getting to experience a sound that is outside the range of my capability? But the reality is that there are sounds they too can’t hear, which dogs and other animals can.

This makes me wonder what our world really looks and sounds like? What are we incapable of sensing and hearing, and how does that alter our reality? And for that matter, how do we perceive the world differently not just from other species but from each other? We can agree that certain colours on a spectrum are red, green, and blue, but is my experience of blue the same as yours? If it was, wouldn’t we all have the same favourite colour?

A few years back I had an eye condition that affected my vision at the focal point of my left eye. Later, I accidentally discovered that this eye doesn’t distinguish the difference between some blues and greens, but only at the focal point. I learned this playing a silly bubble bursting game on my phone. Without playing this game I might not have realized the limitations of my vision, and would have been ignorantly blind to my limited vision.

That’s the thought of of the day for me, how are we ignorantly blind to the limitations of our senses? What are we missing that our world tries to share with us? How will technology aid us in seeing what can’t be seen? Hearing what we can’t usually hear? That is to say, that we haven’t already accomplished in detecting? Our houses have carbon monoxide detectors, and we have sensors for radiation that are used in different occupations. We have sensors that detect infrared light, and accurately measure temperature and humidity. This kind of sense enhancing technology isn’t new.

Still, while we have sensors and tools to detect these things for us, we can’t fully experience aspects of our world that are present but undetectable by our senses. It makes me wonder just how much of our world we don’t experience? We are blessed with amazing senses and we have some incredible tools to help us observe the world in greater detail, but what are we missing? What are we ignorantly (or should I say blissfully) unaware of?

Nature-centric design

I came across this company, Oxman.com, and it defines Nature-centric design as:

Nature-centric design views every design construct as a whole system, intrinsically connected to its environment through heterogeneous and complex interrelations that may be mediated through design. It embodies a shift from consuming Nature as a geological resource to nurturing her as a biological one.
Bringing together top-down form generation with bottom-up biological growth, designers are empowered to dream up new, dynamic design possibilities, where products and structures can grow, heal, and adapt.

Here is a video, Nature x Humanity (OXMAN), that shows how this company is using glass, biopolymers, fibres, pigments, and robotics for large scale digital manufacturing, to rethink architecture to be more in tune with nature and less of an imposition on our natural world.

Nature x Humanity (OXMAN) from OXMAN on Vimeo.

This kind of thinking, design, and innovation excites me. It makes me think of Antoni Gaudi styled architecture except with the added bonus of using materials and designs that are less about just the aesthetic and more about the symbiotic and naturally infused use of materials that help us share our world with other living organisms, rather than our constructions imposing a cancer-like imposition on our world, scarring and damaging the very environment that sustains our life.

Imagine living in a building that allows more natural air flow, is cheaper to heat and cool, and has a positive emissions footprint, while also being a place that makes you feel like you are in a natural rather than concrete environment. Less corners, less uniformity, and ultimately less institutional homes, schools, and office buildings, which are more inviting, more naturally lit, and more comfortable to be in.

This truly is architectural design of the future, and it has already started… I can’t wait to see how these kinds of innovations shape the world we live in!

Mixed emotions

It’s the last day of the winter break. Tomorrow everyone heads back to school. I always find the last couple days before heading back a bit of a reset. The rush of the holidays is over, and my willingness to start something new is extremely low. In the last couple days I’ve watched more television with my wife than I have the rest of the 2 weeks of the break.

That said, I’m not begrudging the return to work. I’m excited about starting up again. I’m looking forward to seeing students in the building and hearing about their holidays. I’m already thinking about things I want to accomplish this term.

Part of me would love to have another week off, and part of me can’t wait to get back to a regular schedule. It’s a mixed feeling and one that sits heaviest on me on the day before I head back. I don’t always know how to balance the different emotions I feel on this day. I kind of just drift through the day, wondering if I should spend time catching up on things like email, or doing something… anything… that says ‘you are still on holidays – enjoy!’

Inevitably, I end up doing ‘not enough’ of either. In actuality, that’s not true, but that’s the emotional rollercoaster I go through every last day of an extended break.

Lifelong friends

I got a ‘Happy New Year’ text from a high school friend yesterday. We connected recently and went to a concert, and while we don’t see much of each other, I consider him a good friend. We met in Grade 10. By the end of Grade 12 and all through Grade 13 (a mandatory step before university in Ontario in the 80’s) he and I used fake ID and would go try different beers in pubs downtown. We also went to the occasional concerts together. He’s European and his parents would were quite relaxed about us drinking. They would buy us alcohol for gatherings at his house, and they’d only ever check in with us once a night, just to make sure no one was drinking and driving. Now we both live out west, but he’s on Vancouver Island and I really don’t see him much.

Getting the text today made me reflect on an interesting insight. I have some pretty awesome friends that I don’t see very often. Geography is the main reason, but it’s not the only reason. I’m also not great at reaching out. That said, every connection, every phone conversation, every coffee, every walk, every meal, every social gathering where I connect with these lifelong friends is a treasure.

Like family, lifelong friends can always be relied on, loyal, and loving… without expectation and with full hearts. But they should not be taken for granted. I’ve come to realize that I need to share just how much I value them as people I love, appreciate, and admire. We don’t do enough of this… I don’t do enough of this. It’s much easier to count on someone silently than to outwardly take the time to share how much you value them.

Now I just need to follow through and share my appreciation.

The digital wall

What is it about the internet that gives people permission to be awful and mean to others? I follow an astrophysicist on social media. She’s brilliant, and makes great content. She also posted a rant about all the misogynistic comments she gets from men commenting on her rather than her content. I’m not sharing any more details because it looks like she took the video down.

This is just one of many examples of people behaving badly from the safety of behind their keyboards. Many don’t even hide behind an anonymous profile, no they are just openly rude, mean, and/or sexist. I don’t understand the desire to do this? I don’t understand how a digital profile somehow creates the permissions to do this?

Would these people say the same things if they were physically in a crowded room with the person they are actively being inappropriate with? In most cases I would guess not. But somehow their keyboard acts as a digital wall separating them from their bad deeds.

I wonder what these people would think if someone was saying the same rude things they are saying online to one of their family members? Would that be enough to stop them? Would they think it was ok if a person spoke like them to their daughter? What would it take to make them realize what jerks they are being?

I’m pretty sure Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t face the sexism the female astrophysicist I mentioned above does. I bet the internet is a very different place for these two people with similar jobs. The inequity is magnified on the digital, social media front. The blatantly sexist and rude comments of yesterday-year are still alive and well on the internet.

I’m not the one getting the worst of it, so I don’t see it that much. Yet it still bothers me. I’d hope to see a change for the better soon, but I’m not terribly optimistic. In fact, I think it will likely get worse before it gets better. I hope not, but I think so.