In my continuing efforts to improve mental health, I was referred to a mindfulness clinic at the VA. At this point in my life, I’m willing to try just about anything — even things that I can’t apply a rational basis to. In this case, mindfulness has a reasonably robust basis, supposedly supported by research (for what that’s worth… most published “research” is fundamentally flawed and total crap). I know people who have benefited greatly from the practice (a much stronger argument). And, it costs me nothing but my time, so I agreed and signed up for the online class. … Read the rest

Today: an angry rant. Read no more if you know what’s’ good for you. If I heeded what I knew was good for me, I’d not write this. Today, I don’t care.

I have always striven to take people for who they are, and generally judge them only when I have to — and even then, only based on the outcomes of their actions. I couldn’t care less where, when, to whom, how, or what you were born. Unless you are a surgeon about to cut me open, or in a similarly specialized field, I don’t care how much education … Read the rest

Blick ins spiegel – was siehst du da?

weis ganz nichts.

es sieht allgemein aus

und recht bekannt

aber kann nicht sagen das ich ihn kenne

was will er?

was ist er?

wer ist er?

ich glaubte, ich konnte es raus puzzeln

ich glaubte falsch.

I wish I knew how it came to be
That various bits and parts of me
Creak and grind incessantly
as if I were full ninety-three

I’ve spent most of the last few months working with a customer to define a project. They came to us knowing that the scope and requirements weren’t well defined, and asking for our expert opinion to help them simultaneously develop the experiment they wanted to carry out and the hardware to conduct it on. And, do all of this on a very short time-frame. We signed up to the challenge, believing they believed in us and that we would be successful in overcoming the current shortfalls.

As the last several months have dragged painfully on, we have made almost no … Read the rest

A little while ago, I came across a picture on the internet that showed a garage where the door had been opened to reveal a wall of snow completely filling the opening, and a snow blower sitting in the garage. On the wall of snow there were three letters in spray paint — FML. Shorthand for the rather crude phrase, “Fu*k My Life.” At the time I chuckled. All of us have that thought from time to time, I expect. Most people don’t actually believe it.

Unfortunately, much of the time I think that thought and mean it. At the … Read the rest

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything outside of my day job. Life has been too busy and challenging to spend much time on anything other than getting from point A to point B. I expect I’ll write more on that later, when the terms of my probation/conditional release/whatever are actually expired and I am free to fully speak my mind. In the meantime, I’m saving a few thoughts for later.

As I write this, the world is deeply immersed in the mass-panic that is COVID-19. In the last week or so, politicians too scared to accept the risk … Read the rest

Driving drunk is dangerous. Writing or saying anything while angry sometimes rises to that same level.