Probably not.   But I haven’t been blogging as often as I have previously and it’s because I’m not sitting in front of a computer nearly as much.  As I said previously, I’m finding I get a lot more done around the house when I’m not sitting down at my computer.  But something else is happening.  Something I was sort-of hoping would happen, though I hadn’t taken into account what it might mean for my blogging patterns.  Slowly, but inevitably, my iPhone is becoming my all purpose communication – entertainment – information widget. 

When it first hit the streets, the iPhone was lacking a couple of really important items in my personal information management toolkit: a sync-able notepad and ToDo tracker.  But I have really great third party iPhone apps now that fill those slots.  And as I get more comfortable with using them, I use Mowgli, my main household computer, less and less. 

Last weekend, I had Mowgli off almost the entire time.  I ran Bagheera, the art room Mac, to finish a couple of photography projects that I’d left on my plate for far too long.  But Mowgli is slowly being relegated to finances and work related projects.  I am keeping in touch with the world, and with my daily life, more and more with just the iPhone now.   

And…there is this:  My little patch of the good earth is on the cusp of spring, and I don’t want to be angry all the time.  I read the news, in particular the continuing culture war on gay people, and I get angry.  So I am avoiding the news.

This Saturday, I’m going to Disney World again, for a week.  Mostly to just spend some more time in a place where it’s a small world after all, there’s a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day, and dreams really do come true.  Better there, then driving across the mid-west and listening to hate radio the whole way.  My brother said they still have their YES ON 8 campaign signs planted in their front yards of houses all over Oceano, Pismo Beach and Arroyo Grande.

I’ve just added the list of categories and tags at the ends of my posts…finally.  I’ve been meaning to make them visible at the end of the posts ever since I moved the blog to WordPress. This makes it easier for me, and presumably all of you, to sort through stuff here by the groupings I’ve been assigning stuff.  Hopefully, you’ll just be able to click on a tag to see a list of other posts I’ve given the same tag to.  I want to create a menu of categories later.

This is mostly for my own ability to organize and sort through stuff here.  The blog has mutated over the years from being a simple life blog into a place where I vent about politics and gay rights and where I tell people about current art projects.  Making the categories and tags visible allows me, and you, to filter what’s displayed if I (or you) are searching for something.

This is all "under development" at the moment, so some things may or may not work at any given moment, or I may remove or re-arrange things from time to time until I’m satisfied.   You’ll notice a lot of the posts are in the "Uncategorized" category.  That’s because of my initial unfamiliarity with difference between tags and categories as they’re usually used in blogs.  I think I have a better grasp of the concepts now, and I’m going to be re-arranging some of the categories and tags on my posts over the next few weeks.  Stay tuned…

Steve Gilliard that is.  I was just thinking now how sad it is he didn’t get to see this day.  Jim Capozzola too.  Jim I think would have loved that someone with a brain who likes to read was finally in the White House.  But Steve especially.   Steve should have lived to see this.

Okay…  I discover now that Brad DeLong’s Egregious Moderation is still up and running…just at a different address.  Serves me right for not visiting it more often.  So it’s re-linked…

I’ve added and subtracted pretty much what I had in mind to do.  If you think I’ve overlooked something good, or removed your link by mistake, please let me know.  Some of the new links should be familiar to my regular readers since I cite them often.  SLOG in particular. 

I’ve re-linked Andrew Sullivan because he seems to have wised up regarding Bush and Iraq.  He’s somewhat conservative and that’s fine.  But if you read my archives you know I was blistering in my criticism of him during the Excellent Iraq Adventure.  But unlike the other nutcases in the Bush peanut gallery he kept his eyes open and finally, Finally, could not deny what they were telling him.  I respect him for that.  He’s become as fierce a critic as anyone on the left regarding Bush and Cheney, and in particular about their regime of torture, which my poor country will be generations living down.  And he’s always been on the right side of the same-sex marriage issue.  I find myself reading him more these days and not feeling bad about it afterwards.  So he’s back on my blog roll.

Flight Level 390 is a blog by an airline pilot that is really fascinating.  If you’ve ever flown, and wondered about the people whose job it is to fly those beautiful, magnificent winged machines day in and day out, take a read.  Here’s a sample…

The Guadalajara approach controller clears us for the instrument approach to runway 28; the visibility is about four miles with haze. We can see the runway, barely, but it is getting darker and there is high terrain in all quadrants. Fi-Fi is heavy, barely below maximum landing weight, as we pass over the center of the airport in our descent. I can hear the lead flight attendant hurrying in the forward galley, latching carts and closing aluminum galley doors. The center and aft flight attendants are doing the same plus talking on the PA; the never ending before landing drill.

I took some vacation between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but at this very moment in the time continuum, I feel as if I never left the flight deck. Funny how that happens…

I ask the co-pilot for some flaps and slats as we begin our turn back toward the airport and the radio beam that will lead us to the runway. Looking over my left shoulder, I can see the main hydraulics forcing the leading edge slats into the slip stream. That is so cool! As we turn final approach, the control tower clears us to land. The controller sounds like a young, female newbie and we have to ask her to repeat the clearance. Her ATC english is still a little thick for the Americano pilots. On the second attempt, though, we understand. Cleared to land runway 28, wind 240 at 9.

And this…

She is an old bird with small engines. I have flown her hundreds of hours over the years and have a sweet spot in my heart for her. The company did not update her software to the latest and greatest ones and zeros. Her time flying the Line is coming to an end. She will be replaced with a factory new A321 with big engines and fast computers. I can remember at least three paint schemes on this bird. I wonder what will happen to her…

And this…

Position: West of KSAN; San Diego, feet wet

Altitude: 5,000 feet

True Airspeed: 230 mph (200 kts)

Passengers on board: 138

We were so close, so very close to the hotel van after eight flight hours, three airports, two oceans and thousands of miles. But it was not to be; an aircraft under tow was on the runway and failed to understand their instructions to vacate the runway. The end result was that we had to go around on short final. I could not believe it! It was like a simulator exercise. We are dog tired and this is the last thing we need.

The good news is:

1. We are tankering fuel, i.e., we have plenty of fuel to prevent the morning crew from buying high dollar California kerosene.

2. The co-pilot is one of the best at the airline, a young Canadian female whom I have flown with several times.

3. The weather is pretty good… A little bit of patchy ground fog.

Immediately past the infamous parking garage, the tower gave the "go around" command. The co-pilot raised the nose to 20 degrees and shoved the throttles to the forward stops. The engines, already spooled to 35%, responded immediately and with extreme vigor in the cool, sea level air. Struggling against the thrust, I reached over and raised the flaps to half. I glanced at the vertical speed indicator before I raised the gear… More than 4,000 feet per minute. I would say that is a positive rate.

The tower asked us if we could do a "tight right downwind for another try." I do not think that is a good idea. It is getting dark, we are tired, and this is a big airplane with a big noise footprint. I decline the offer. A few seconds later, at thrust reduction altitude, the co-pilot pushes the nose over and brings the thrust levers back to climb power. I raise the flaps/slats and contact departure control. We head out over the water on a vector to gain altitude and line up our quacking, flapping ducks for another try.

The co-pilot is an aggressive, intelligent pilot at the top of her game. Fi-Fi must obey her at all times. Even so, I ask if I can do anything for her. She asks for help with the nav computers. I go heads down and start pushing buttons on my Multi-purpose Control Display Unit, a high dollar word for a small keyboard and computer screen. In a few moments I have given Fi-Fi’s electronic brain an idea or two about how to get back to the final approach fix. After a couple of checklists read and completed, I tell ATC that we are ready to return. They give us a heading that will merge with the downwind leg north of the runway. I take a few moments to do some administrative chores, as in emailing Mother and explaining why we are burning extra jet fuel. Also, on the PA, I give the folks a little pep talk. Abeam the airport, approach control clears us for the visual approach and to "Please keep it in tight for following traffic."

Fog is rolling in, but we will beat it. The co-pilot calls for landing gear, flaps and slats while still on the downwind. We are still at 4,000 feet. I tell her, "The controllers are taking bets whether or not you will make it down." Fi-Fi has very good vertical capabilities, especially descending, if the pilot knows how to use them. This young lady understands completely.

She makes two tight right banking turns merging with the final approach inside the final approach fix, stows the spoilers and calls for full flaps. Over the parking garage one more time, the runway lights are getting smudgy. The visibility is going down with the arrival of the fog. The Electric Jet settles onto the main gear tires at the thousand foot marker; reverse thrust cascade vanes open and we get with the stopping program. This has been a low stress go around because we were fat on fuel. Actually, it was kind of fun.

Clearing the runway in the fog and before we switched to ground control, the tower controller apologized for the go around. I replied with, "No problem." Behind and over us we hear the roar of jet engines climbing away. The airliner behind us missed the approach because of the fog. The co-pilot and I look at each other with huge grins. We made it in the proverbial nick.

Life on the Line continues…

This kind of thing is what blogs were made for!  I love this technology…absolutely love it…because it brings me this.

I’ve added a few new links to the cartoons section and the news sections.  One link in particular I want to note in the new ‘Fun’ section is HMK Mystery Streams.  It’s a music web cast that is…unique.  I often sit at my drafting table with it going in the background.  Each program runs about an hour or so.  I hate this word because it’s so mis-used, but HMK really is an eclectic mix of this and that from now and my childhood yesterday.  It’s fun…it’s strange…it’s…well…let them describe themselves…

Captured from the continual mystery stream discovered in the fall of 1961, our mission is to post 60 minute fragments, as frequently or infrequently as possible, from this not too distant satellite of unknown origion located on the dark side of the moon. Here’s what you can expect: Hazy overcast explorations, episodes of vaguely familiar audio clues to the past, and overheard comments via an experimental format known as iF: Irregular Frequency. Relax. For the next hour, consider this your official in-flight entertainment. Moving in stereo, in our continuing attempt to gain a more clear and better understanding of the infinite concept of space, time and the atmospheric vibrations and soundscapes known as The HMK Mystery Stream, we can only listen, dream, imagine and repeat whenever possible. The captain has turned on the Fresh Coffee sign. Prepare for lift off… Roger that… Go with bottle up… Your comments are always welcome and appreciated.

This is my kinda radio station!  You should tune in.

Over the next few days I’ll see if I can make some banner links for some of these.  That usually involves capturing the banner off the site and scaling it down to an icon of sorts for the blog roll.  Which is time consuming so I don’t often do it.  If I’ve linked to any of your blogs and you have a blog icon you’d like me to use in the blog roll send it to me.

I’m in the process of tidying up the left sidebar blog roll.  There are some dead links there, and some that are not dead, but not at all well.  As in, the blogs seem to be abandoned.  So I’m going to move some stuff around a bit, try to clear out the dead wood, and add a few new things that I’ve been hitting on a lot lately, but I just haven’t gotten around to putting on the blog roll.

If I remove a link of yours it’s probably because I think you aren’t blogging anymore, so if you still are let me know and I’ll put it back.  And if you have a different link you’d rather I put up in its place give it to me please.  I’ve found several myself that should be pointing to different places now.

I’m going to add several new sections to the blog roll.  One for the two bloggers on my list, Steve Gilliard and James Capozzola who have both passed away.  I need to move the link to Steve’s blog back to the old blogger site, since it’s still there.  The link currently goes to his later News Blog site which only has his memorial up on it now alas.  I wish they’d have left his posts there up too.  His words should remain with us.  But at least the stuff he posted on blogger is still there. 

I need a section for the various international news sites I visit, and one just for German news and culture sites alone, since my interest in that little corner of the world has taken an uptick.  I want to add a section for all the fun mental health stop sites…like Fark.Com for example.  And I have some more links for cartoon sites and regular blogs that I visit regularly now, like SLOG, that I want to put up.  SLOG is neither fish nor fowl when it comes to blogs.  It’s part of The Stranger news site, but the blog is as sociable as it is newsy, so I’m not putting it in the news section.  It’s a blog.  A news (and commentary) blog is just that.  But it’s not a sharp distinct line either. 

You may find it surprising that I don’t have a Space News section here, seeing as how I work for the Space Telescope Science Institute.  It’s not that I don’t visit certain sites regularly, like Space.Com for instance.  But I’m trying to keep the Institute and my work there separate from my web site and blog for what I think are obvious reasons.  This is not a sharp distinction I draw in life, as anyone who has ever paid a visit to Casa del Garrett knows (The SM-4 throw that’s currently covering one of my cedar chests being but one new example…).  I don’t even have a link to the Institute web site up here.  But in case you’re wondering it’s: www.stsci.edu.  hubblesite.org, the public outreach site, is also a great place to go for Hubble news and views.  I’d put those links up here, but I want to be completely free to speak my mind on my own web site so I don’t want there to be any doubt that my site is not in any way related to the Institute, other then that I happen to work there.  I’m a gay man and I don’t speak for the Militant Homosexual Conspiracy either.

Atrios (Duncan Black), pouts…

And, uh, New Yorker? How about some credit for the "Friedman Unit." It’s mine, damnit, mine!

It is.  And hilarious it was too…in a laugh to keep yourself from crying kind-of way…

If you tried to read the blog this morning you may have noticed a somewhat cryptic message that read, Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here…  That started appearing after I upgraded my copy of WordPress, and the upgrade process assured me that it all went swimmingly.

I won’t geek out on you with the details…just this moment.  It’s nice outside here in Baltimore today and I want to go out and enjoy some of it.  But the problem was apparently that one of the WordPress plug-ins I was using was incompatable with the new database structure.  Everything’s fine now and I rather like the look and feel of the new Admin screens.  But I’m not going to fool with it anymore today.  I have some posts I want to put up, but I’ll do that later.

If Have Posts?  Yes dammit, you have posts…

I’m still running a very old version of the WordPress blog software here at The Story So Far so an upgrade is long overdue.  I’m going to work on that this weekend, as weekends seem to be when my traffic here is at its lowest ebb.  Presumably that’s because most of you have work to do around the house on the weekend like I do, and not because blog prime time happens to be during normal work hours when the boss isn’t looking. 

I’ll start the process sometime this weekend.  Saturday or Sunday morning depending on how my other household chores go.  Hopefully the upgrade will be reasonably painless.  There’s a WordPress upgrade plugin I’m going to try first.  If that doesn’t work then I’ll have to to it manually.  Obviously I’m backing everything up first, so unless the backups fail nothing here should be lost.  But the blog may be unavailable for a time.  Please Stand By…

Scanning through my server logs this morning, I noticed that someone had found my blog using the following Google search string:

Robbie Benson Cut Offs

…and got one of my many riffs on Harry and Son.  Heheheh.  Whoever you are, I know Exactly where you’re coming from.  Here’s one for you…

Ah…yes.  Life is good… 

One big reason I turned the comments off in those previous few posts here where I’m letting my heart bleed all over this blog, is that I didn’t want my friends and regular readers getting into it with the assholes I just knew those posts would attract.  Like the one that sent me a longish missive last night about how he didn’t give a damn and didn’t see why anyone else should either, because having read my life story here, he could see so clearly that I’d brought all my problems on myself.  And since I’d turned off the comments to the posts he was referring to, and he just couldn’t bear to send it to me in email like I’d asked, because then nobody else would have seen how profound his thinking on the subject was, he tried putting it on one of my other posts here with the comments still turned on.  Let’s hear it for spam filters.

Actually nitwit, you Do give a damn…otherwise you wouldn’t have written that long, rambling, misspelled, babbling, incoherent message.  Someone who really didn’t give a damn wouldn’t have bothered.  They’d have just…you know…not given a damn. I’d never have heard from them.

But I heard from you.  And in the spirit of cheap barstool psychoanalyzing someone you only know from a few words on a computer screen, methinks you protesteth too much.  What I wrote got under your skin didn’t it?  Seems to me like there’s probably someone in Your past, with a wound on Their heart with Your name on it, and you’ve been spending the rest of your life ever since you put it there trying to convince yourself that it wasn’t your fault and you don’t have to give a shit.

Fine.  We all have our coping mechanisms.  And they say a lot about who we are inside.  I appreciate the "tough love" stuff and all guy, but you know, there are fates sadder then the one I was contemplating back there.  I’d rather care too much and bleed myself to death then stop giving a damn and end my life as an asswipe whose companionship is like drinking turpentine. 

If my bleeding heart emotionalism really really irritates you…good.  That means there’s still something human left inside of you.  Try to find it someday.

Oh…and you were wondering if the people I write about know that I’m writing about them?  Duh…it’s a blog…  Everyone can read it.  If they don’t know, it’s because they don’t give a damn, which is what you said they were supposed to do.

And writing about my past is the least of what’s been going on around here… 

I’m taking a holiday break with my new car, and we’re driving south, hopefully to enjoy a warm beach somewhere before winter really sets in here in Baltimore.  So posting will be lite and random, but may include some photos.

Enjoy your holidays.  Have fun…eat recklessly…make the ones you love smile…

This from Brad DeLong…

Scott Eric Kaufman writes:

Acephalous: Google’s Images, Searched for Me: A reader who attended a function I’d planned to (but, due to illness, could not) attend suggested I spend a few minutes skimming the results of a Google Image Search for my name.  (He wanted to be sure he could spot me in the crowd.) Intrigued, I took him up on his offer.  The results are … interesting. A search for my full name, bookended by quotation marks, returns: a photo of Eric Lott on the beach; Scott McLemee’s Simpson’s self; some books McLemee bought for Kotsko in Canada a few years in; the header of the Iranian Supreme Leader’s blog…. Chard Orzel; Salma Hayek; an angry duck; Salma Hayek; Brad DeLong; Salma Hayek… Salma Hayek… Salma Hayek…. Something must’ve gone horribly wrong with Google.  I don’t even like Salma Hayek, much less—what do you mean "Page Rank"?  This post will do what? Seriously?…

At least it is not Friedrich Hayek.

And "Chard" Orzel?

Enjoy the holidays.  Have fun.  Eat recklessly.

I’ll not be posting much here over the weekend as I’ve got Thanksgiving dinner to go to with friends in D.C., and then my high school class reunion on Friday.  Saturday I’ll be busy trying to get the next episode of A Coming Out Story posted (you guys still remember that one?).  So unless something comes up that I just Have to vent about here, I’ll be pretty quiet until next week.