So via my blog reader (Feedly) I’m looking at this post from a blog I only follow occasionally, but this particular post interested me when I saw it in the feed. Its author, a rock musician, is writing about posing nude for a rock magazine he’s often written for. Supposedly it was a turnabout is fair play issue, since the magazine often features lovely ladies wearing not very much if anything.

I was curious because throughout my life whenever the opportunity to get naked, at a clothing optional resort for example, I just could not, though I remember once skinny dipping with some friends. In retrospect I think I managed it by mostly staying in the water. That discomfort I have is the punchline in that first episode of A Coming Out Story. I actually had a conversation about this with a friend recently back from Burning Man where the celebrants wander around in various stages of undress if they want.

So I’m reading this blog post because after all these years I am still intensely curious to know how it is that people who can do this manage it. And I came to the following verbiage…

Having been on stage nude several times it was both a no-brainer to ask and a no-brainer that I would consent to doing so for their publication…But swanning around the room nude, very much in my element I had had a thought. Since nothing is quite as disappointing as the nude male…

Huh? Really? Really?? Okay…tell me you’re a heterosexual male without telling me you’re a heterosexual male.

I kinda skimmed the rest of that blog post, but I think I get a better sense of my own reticence now.

Some people journal. I Daytimer.

When I started getting actual W2 work as a contract software developer (as opposed to freelance work for pay I did initially for one of the GLIB admins) I began keeping a work diary on planner pages I initially bought at an office supply store. Those are the small three ring binders at the left. One of those is just a bunch of free form notes about my work on the BGE Home work measurement system.

Later I discovered DayTimer’s 24 hour two page per day planner and that worked for me LOTS better than the Franklin-Covey business day only Planner (because Highly Effective People only work business hours I reckon). A software engineer’s work is almost never just nine to five, and there were times while I was working on James Webb that I pulled some overnights.

(Sometime around then I started a New Yorker-ish cartoon I was going to submit to Christopher Street showing two guys on a first date sitting across the table from each other at an outdoor bistro, and one is saying to the other “I’m sorry hon, but it won’t work. You’re Franklin Planner and I’m DayTimer” But then Christopher Street went belly up…)

Then, just before I retired, DayTimer got bought out and the 24 hour two page per day desktop refills became lost in the mists of time and the new company’s business model. I was really PO’d, but eventually accepted an almost as good but only barely good enough substitute. I keep complaining about it on the new company’s website. They’re actually Still making the pocket size wirebound 24 hour two page per day planners but those don’t work for me.

Anyway…I keep my planners because I’m weird about things like that, and sometimes you need to have that paper time machine.

So I’m trying to tidy things up at Casa del Garrett (east) in anticipation of a very dear friend coming for a short visit, and I wanted to organize these a bit better. What you see in this photo compasses my entire working life as a (W2) software developer/engineer.

You can see where I was storing them on their sides under the bookshelves and dust accumulated. I’ll be tackling that with the Kirby later.

I was browsing through the old pre-Daytimer entries when I found the day in 1994 I put a deposit down on the last and best apartment I ever lived in, and a bunch of work I did for BGE Home when they were transitioning away from paper timesheets to a mobile data terminal system. There are repeated entries about a batch editor that I had to think about for a moment to remember what exactly it did (it processed the field tech’s digital timesheets to make them ready for ingest into the work measurement system). I see in there a problem I had to address when timesheets crossed day boundaries and the system wasn’t picking up on the fact that the tech was still on overtime after midnight.

One little corner of my life…

Okay…how about…

I didn’t notice the box was delivered to my office by mistake until I opened it and saw four glass quart bottles of liquid lithium inside.

Or…

Shortly after I drove off he took a can of soda out of his jacket and I realized we’d almost been shot.

And then there’s…

Scared the daylights out of mom when I told her my bedroom was full of wet black birds.

This is kinda fun…

It sounded like the voices of the old Navajo gods talking past me, having a conversation in the air around me, in a language I could not understand.

Anyone wanting to play along just click on the React! link below…

Okay…so yesterday was National Science Day but I was only reminded of that fact today, on National Feel Sorry For Kids Who Only Get Birthdays Every Four Years Day.

When I was a schoolkid, there were two subjects where I reliably got A’s every time…science class, and art class. Everywhere else it was C’s and D’s. Even English class. I was a voracious reader ever since I learned the trick, and where the other kids might fill one card of books they’d read I routinely had multiple cards filled. But I could be stubborn about reading books that bored me and so reading assignments often went undone and I’d get an F, or they’d get done half-assedly and I’d get a D. This is why I never even got close to the Honor Roll.

I was all about science well before I really understood what it was. Any TV show having anything to do with science, and that included the nature programs, I was always right there in front of the TV to watch when the time came. And even the kid shows, cartoons and such, that I favored had some sort of science-fiction flavor to them…Supercar…Space Angel…Astroboy…

Before there was Bill Nye, this is who I watched raptly every Saturday morning for my science hit. What was nice about this show was he showed kids experiments they could do themselves. That is, instead of just talking to us about science, he showed us how to do it. I probably tried a few of them myself. It gets you in the habit of experimenting and testing what you don’t know for sure is or isn’t true. And that prepares you for adult life in a world full of superstition, prejudices handed down for generations, lies, damn lies, and slickly crafted disinformation.

Mythbusters was another science show I came to love in my adult years. It was a lot of fun. But most of their experiments were not safe for around the house.