life behind the mini-mart

New address for blog

2007-04-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've moved my blog to a new place and with a new template. You can now view the blog at and can be subscribed to via http://jonreily.com/?feed=atom.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Lisa, Bright and Dark

2005-02-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

It's funny the way your mind works. The human mind is the greatest cross-referencing database ever created. I have some long standing theories about that which I'll save for another time, but I wanted to share a little example with you.

This morning I was sitting here at the desk, drinking my tea, watching the birds outside and just generally enjoying my Saturday when Here Comes the Rain Again by Eurythmics came on. Instantly, and I mean Instantly, I remembered a book that I read when I was in school, 8th grade or so I'd guess which puts it at well more than 20 years ago, called Lisa Bright and Dark.

The story is about a 16 year old girl that is slowly descending into madness and no one but her friends seem to notice. I don't remember a lot more about it other than that and the fact I liked it, pehaps I should read it again, but I do remember that it made a real impact on me then. Appearently also I associated the afore mentioned Eurythmics song with it as well. I'll check it out and let you know what I think.

The mind is a funny thing...

Wow, I've had a lot of cars...

2007-03-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

Talking with my boss (and friend) Tina last night the topic somehow landed on cars we'd owned over the years. I've had a lot of cars in my life, but never really sat down to count them. So, just for fun, I did:

1980 Honda Accord 1983-1986 Sold
1978 Audi 5000 1986-1987 Sold
1969 Volkswagen Beetle 1987-1989 Traded in for Saab (BIG mistake, thank you, Kim!)
1982 Saab 900 1989 Lemoned
1971 Volkswagen Beetle 1989 Wrecked
1970 Datsun 510 1990 Scrapped
1975 Saab 99 1990 Sold
1984 Honda Accord 1990-1992 Sold
1985 Toyota MR2 1992-1998 Given away for peanuts to help a friend who later screwed me over
1979 Mazda RX7 1992-1997 Sold
1988 Isuzu Impulse 1995 Sold
1975 Volvo Wagon 1995-1996 Sold
1988 Nissan Pickup 1997 Traded in
1995 Ford Contour 1997-2000 Lemoned
1987 Subaru GL Wagon 1999-2001 Sold
1985 Toyota MR2 2000-Present
1992 Honda Accord 2002-2006 Traded in
2005 Ford Taurus 2006-Present

Wow!

Quote of the day

2006-12-18T08:40:00.000-07:00

"There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness."
- Josh Billings (1818 - 1885)

Thoughts on conference calls...

2007-01-29T09:08:00.000-07:00

I have a theory that people do conference calls on speaker phone (on full blast with their office door open) not for the convenience of it, but rather because it's an ego thing, as if to say, "I'm so important that not only am I on a conference call and you're not, I'm too busy to hold the freekin' phone to my head for it and will subject any poor hapless soul within earshot to the dribble that is my professional life.

Please, close the door!

The Purel Problem

2007-01-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

While at the store today following my wife around, like I frequently do as I have very little to do in stores that don't sell books or electronics, I found myself in the cleansers aisle. She was on a quest for the exact correct kind of dish soap and had dotted out of my sight while I was distracted by a fabric softener that claimed to have the scent of "vanilla and wild orchids". In reality it smelled like what I suspect a 9 year old girl's newly clean room would smell like, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

After the rather disappointing foray into fabric softener scents my gaze drifted and landed on five shelves, which were well more than a dozen feet long, containing "anti-bacterial" items. There were creams, gels, soaps, hand soaps, dish soaps, floor soaps, counter sprays, bathroom sprays; I could go on for several paragraphs, but I'll save us both. The point is, if there was something there that was meant to clean you, your kids, your house, your dog or anything else, there was an anti-bacterial version of it here.

I'm sure that you've read all of the recent news coverage of the "super-bugs" that are coming into being because of our over use of anti-biotic drugs (which, for those of you not near the Google button on your browser, are the medical equivalent of anti-bacterial soap). These drug resistant strains of bacteria (not to be confused with viruses, or virii, I just like to say that and don't get much of a chance to, which would be the flu, etc.) are getting so used to their daily barrage of penicillin that they are developing the bacterial version of Kevlar and just move on by, no matter how much crap we throw at it. That's scary stuff, as sooner or later, which varies depending on which doc you're talking to, some bug will come along that will be able to whip all of our asses and make bird flu look like a runny nose.

But, as usual, I digress...

Back to the store. So I'm roaming around this newly found section (which of course was always there but I just didn't notice because I spend far too much time in my addled mind thinking about whether or not the speed of light is constant and where my keys are) and I see that not only are there a lot of these anti-bacterial products, but I was hard pressed to find one that wasn't.

As a Buddhist I am against killing of anything, bacteria included...but, I also live in the real world and realize that there are some things that I can not only do nothing about, but should do nothing about. I know that people need salmonella free kitchens and staph free bathrooms. However, don't you think that we're talking this a little too far?

When I was a kid, there was another kid who was allergic to something, I don't remember what, just that we were always stuffing whatever it was into his hapless face and he'd run to some authority figure and I'd spend yet another day in the principals office (and I'm not kidding, I couldn't tell you the name of one of my middle school teachers, but I sure do remember the same of the principal and his secretary). But, and here's my point, he was the only kid.

Now, it seems like very kid is allergic to something and a lot of adults are too. Peanuts come to mind first of course. I'm sure that there were people allergic to peanuts before the 1990s, but I sure as hell didn't hear about it. Today, there are so many of them that some airlines are not serving them and passengers who are allergic can, and I'm totally not kidding here, request that no peanuts be served within a 5-row radius of their seat. (But stewardess, I requested the peanut section!)

Why all of a sudden has this happened, I hear you ask. Well, of course, I have an opinion, or at least a hypothesis. Anti-bacterial products.

I feel like we're getting to the point where we sanitize and clean ourselves and our houses to within an inch of their, or our, lives. This can't be good. Aren't we killing all of the little bugs that aren't really that harmful, and that we really need to have an immunity built up for? How long before we have cleaned the collective country to the point where none of us or our children will have any immunity to anything? We'll be like the Native Americans dropping dead from the pox brought from the Europeans.

We will get to the point where in order for our enemies to wipe us out they will not need atomic weapons or dirty bombs. They'll just need a sniffly third grader to come over and sneeze on a few doorknobs, and that'll be it.

So, I think I'll just have my slice of pizza sans the Purel, thank you. I'll take my chances.

Wanderlust

2007-01-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

I've just spent the better part of 30 minutes looking at NormalRoom.com. It's a site where people upload pictures of their homes from all over the world. With the exception of the 30 pictures of someone's boring house in Boise, I've been enthralled. I want to live in a log house in Norway, or in a tiny studio in Japan, or perhaps a flat in Rome, or maybe an old house in the highlands of Scotland. I want to travel, to see new things, to experience it all, to be one with the world...

I want to walk down five hundred year old cobblestone streets with a loaf of bread under one arm and a bottle of wine in the other to my small, but quaint flat in Paris that looks over the rooftops of a thousand other apartments just like it...

I want to hear a million alien insects and birds chirping after a rainstorm on the porch of my ranch house in Queensland while sipping a beer after a long day...

I want to smell the jasmine bloom in the park down the street when I open the windows to my courtyard in San Jose and hear the cathedral bells tolling for a wedding or a funeral...

However, now I must finish cleaning out the coffee maker and go to the Safeway.

Which, perhaps to someone in Japan, Rome or maybe even Boise, would seem exciting. To me though, it's Dullsville.

(sigh)

Quote for the day

2006-11-17T05:29:00.000-07:00

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
- Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)

Quote for the day

2006-11-10T01:13:00.000-07:00

"Half the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for President -The same half?"
- Gore Vidal (1925-)

I'd like to think that is true, but each election I fear it is not all the more.

Quote for the day...

2006-11-06T05:25:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940), Tender is the Night

Irritating game...Which uses 100% of your brain

2006-11-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

This game is absolutely as advertised. I got 30 seconds, what can you do?

Quote for the day...

2006-11-03T05:23:00.000-07:00

"Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language."
- Henry James (1843 - 1916)

Unless you live in Phoenix. :)

Indian Food

2006-11-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

Ahh...how I love Indian food.

Just found a new place with the GD crew. Little hole in the wall place where the 10 of us made up 90% of the customers. Once we walked in they changed the station on the TV to the Indian equivalent of MTV, which while fascinating in its own right, was just plain cute too.

So now as I leave with a stifled burp I know I'll spend the rest of the day with my stomach bubbling like a beaker in a mad scientist's lab...

and I couldn't be happier.

-----------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld

Quote for the Day

2006-10-30T05:23:00.000-07:00

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."
- Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)

If only we all had that problem. :)

Scary "Geek Halloween" Foxtrot

2006-10-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

Every Halloween the fantastic author of the Foxtrot comic strip, Bill Amend, creates a Geek Halloween episode, where Jason (whom I share a LOT in common with, thank GOD there were not computers of any use beyond our own house when I was 10 years old) has some costume that all geeks, myself included, will think funny. One year he was an iMac (or iFruit as they are called in the strip, Apple get over yourselves, it's just a cartoon) and he was saying in a scary tone "I have no floppy drive, I have no floppy drive!".

This year, it's funny, and scary...it's about electronic voting machines. Check it out. ...(link).

From the mouths of babes...or in this case, 10 year olds.

(PS Please don't sue me for posting the pic. I acknowledge your full rights to it and I don't make a dime off this site, let alone off of your picture. Thank you.)

You know you're playing too much WoW when...

2006-09-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

You look at mountians in the distance and think "I wonder what level that valley is".

You find yourself sizing up people at the grocery store and wondering whether you can take them even with your current bout of resurrection sickness.

You could give directions from Sentinel Hill to Darkshore via Ironforge without using a Gryphon.

You understand what that previous sentence means.

To be continued.

New Job

2006-10-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

Well, now that I've been there a few weeks I can announce my new job.

I left my former position at Prudential (those of you who know me know how wonderfully happy I was there) and have taken a position at GoDaddy.com as their Advanced Hosting Technical Writer. I'll be writing help systems, user guides and other assorted pieces having to do with their Advanced Hosting products (by the way...The views expressed in this Blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of GoDaddy Software, Inc.).

So far, it is a great gig. It is so super to be back in the "tech" game again (at Pru I was mostly doing internal proprietary stuff), I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it. I worked for a dot com back in the mid-90's and as a tech columnist for many years as well, this is giving me just the same amount of "geek rush". Getting paid to play with Linux all day, now that's cool.

More to report later.

Quote for the Day...

2006-10-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

"Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything."
- Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist 1623 - 1662

Two brothers...

2006-07-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

I was standing at the sink, thinking that I needed to call Mike, and thought that we only seemed to talk when someone was either dying or dead. We're so far apart, 21 years, that we have so little in common, but family.

Two years ago our brother Dave died. I remember Mike and I sitting in the sitting room at Anderson House, drinking burbon, first out of glasses, finally out of the bottle, until it was gone. The years melted away until we were both the same, just two brothers, mourning for a third.

I called, and spoke with my niece Susannah for a few minutes before she put him on the phone.

We talked for a few minutes. Me, telling him how sorry I was, which was of course obvious; him thanking me for my call and telling me that they haven't decided what to do yet, which was also obvious.

We had a silence, I could hear the phone crackling.

"You know, we only seem to talk when someone is either dead or dying." He said.

"Yeah, I know. I was just thinking that myself."

"I sent you a Christmas card but it came back, I asked Dad about it...but you know, life happens."

"Yeah, I know. It's okay. I've meant to call you several times but..."

"We have an odd relationship, Jonathan. We have for a long time. I'm sorry."

"It's okay, it's right now, and that's all that matters. I'm sorry too."

And we both cried.

Goodbye James

2006-07-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

James Michael Reily
1977 - 2006

I'll miss you, James. You were, and always will be, loved.

Quote for the Day

2006-07-24T05:11:00.000-07:00

"Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you, and be silent."
Epictetus (55 AD - 135 AD)

Ponderings about time...

2006-07-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

I remember, barely, when I was in high school. Those four years were literally a lifetime to me, punctuated into seasons of winter, spring, summer and autumn.

Time seemed to stretch forever in those days. Reading my journals from that period I am amazed not only about how naive I was, but how things seemed so compressed into such a short period of time. Girlfriends, while few and far between, seemed weathered after just weeks, or in one or two cases months. Now, I've been meaning to fix the gutters for longer than that and think, 'it hasn't been that long'.

I see this in my father as well. Approaching 82 he is not as quick as he once was, his once razor sharp mind now misnaming my wife's mother. His view of time is the exact opposite. Things that happened years ago seem fresh, things that happened weeks ago seem current and something that happened last week is so recent he tells me about it twice.

It's an interesting comment to the passage of time as one grows older, and begs asking what will happen if we as a race to manage to stretch our lifespan out beyond 200 years as has been predicted. How quickly the years between 150 and 200 will appear to pass.

So enjoy this moment, this very one, and the next, because they are fleeting and shall never return. Go, get out, stop reading this, and enjoy your life.

Here, take my keys...

Quote for the day

2006-07-10T18:46:00.000-07:00

"Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success."
-Brian Adams

View from the road...

2006-06-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

I have activated the email function of my blog, so now I will be able to post from anywhere via my blackberry about whatever is on my mind at any given moment, if anything.

Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, I will leave to you. :)

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Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld

Believe Nothing

2006-06-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

"Believe nothing,
no matter where you read it
or who has said it,
not even if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason
and your own common sense."
-Buddha