August 17th, 2017
Jó reggelt (kívánok) (“Good Morning” in Hungry)
Weehaa!! The whole San Diego Gang is back together again. Tippy has returned from her long stay in Miami. We all worked like little Energizer Bunnies getting the house and assortment of stuff we had planned to be done with across the finish line – Paintings were framed; Benches were refinished; Plants were repotted; Backyard re-sodded; And of course we all lost weight and look young an vibrant again or maybe not that last one. Tippy has been gone awhile and we missed her.
San Diego is over its deep green this year. All of the hillsides are now in their full beige/brown mode but they look furrier in the distance because of all the growth before it dried out. The weather is perfect 65-77 degrees with the humidity usually below 50% and sunny but I cannot longer remember the last time it rained.
This week I learned some stuff:
• I learned about glazier tips. I bought mail order frame for a painting I had done. It came sized perfectly for a canvas mounted painting. So I had either put an inch of cardboard spacers in the frame behind the painting or figure something else out. The something else was these ingenious little bits of metal that Glaziers (I should have put this on the Vocal Quiz because I am not sure if it is a common term or not) use to hold the glass to the window frame and putty over or Glaze the window 🙂 Anyway worked great and painting got framed in otherwise perfect frame.
• I am impressed with the new Grill Mat. I worked as advertised. I haven’t figured out the whole clean up routine to a precision instrument yet but it will happen. Cooks good, no flare ups and using direct heat instead of indirect makes grilling faster.
• I found out about these free coding schools that they have online. Did you know you can attend free programming classes at MIT? I didn’t. Actually, its just not coding classes. There are a number of free online classes or MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) that you can take for free or a small donation. I started taking freecodingcamp.com classes for JavaScript, HTML and CSS, Node, Express, MongoDB, jQuery and D3. It is well organized and challenging so far.
Website Update:
• A long while back, one of the trusty UJT Radio Listeners requested that I create a way to just listen to all the songs posted as a stream or playlist. Well it took some doing but if you check out the page today, you can listen to all the songs as a stream or select just the one you want or go back or forwards or pause anywhere you like.
• Week 2 of the New Vocabulary Quiz!!! Woohoo!!!
• This week I also added the lyrics for “Don’t Think Twice, Its All Right” from Bob Dylan for your sing-a-long pleasure. Enjoy!
• I am continuing to update the site with information from the old site and utilizing the new tool set. For example, all of the recipes have images with them so you can see what it should look like. I also have added images to all of the Interesting Humans pages. I updated the VOL Page to reflect the latest version from San Diego, County. I also posted a Vial of Life Sign that you can download, print and cut out to put in your window near the frond door.
• This week’s “Interesting Human” is Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter (They are kind of joined at the hip). Jimmy and Rosalynn’s story is truly an American Dream. Jimmy was an unknown almost failed peanut farmer from Georgia who became our 39th President during a very critical period of history. He had a Democrats heart and a Republican fiscal mind. He stood for middle class and poor Americans and implemented some very effective conservative fiscal policy to address the recession and inflation he inherited and that made his successor look like a champion out of the gate. But when he left office loosing in a virtual landslide to a failed movie star with a soft voice and a nice smile, Jimmy went off to change the world. He founded the Carter Center and began making a difference in millions of lives – disease control and eradication, Habitat for Humanity, interceding. moderating and monitoring conflicts and elections throughout the world. He is the only President to win the Nobel Peace Prize after he left office.
• You remember hearing that song on UJT but you cannot remember who sang it or what album it was on. Well, our new search function can help. I use to make sure I am not posting a song I just played for you in April. The keyword search is really helpful. Give it a shot.
Writing and Painting Update:
• Worked on another swindle remedy painting (actually, very same painting that stifled me the first time I attempted it:)
• I worked on Artifacts a little bit more this week and still felt really guilty about not getting Grandpa Stories republished yet but evidently not enough to actually do something about it.
Weird-Stuff-O-Meter:
• A long time ago I had just met some colleagues that I would be working with for several years. We were part of a small cadre of technical people who knew what a massive amount of work it was going to take to update most of the computer programs in production so they would not be affected by the turn of the century. We would spend hours trying to come up with model that EDS could implement on behalf of its customers. As it turns out, EDS was fairly well positioned to do so because of the matrixed programming organization that they had put in place called the SE Center system. We were afraid that there simply weren’t enough COBOL and ALC programmers available through normal channels and we discussed a model where we would set up a site and advertise the work and programmers would take on assignments and get paid by the job. I discovered that this model we discussed in 1997 is alive and well and for me is still an interesting model for leveraging low cost, high skilled work managed on a demand basis and paid for when needed. I have actually had more than one of these “crazy” ideas become reality over the years. It is a very strange feeling, in a good way.
• I had a dream where I drowned. I do not recall ever dreaming about my own death before. It was about as strange as it could get especially since I didn’t wake up. I just sunk to the bottom. It was cold and dark. In the plus column, drowning is not nearly as horrible as I had imagined nor did it take as long to die.
• To be brutally honest, I have no idea why I do this whole UJT website and weekly newsletter thing. As a writer, you want to keep writing every day to improve and grow those skills. As an active driven type A sort, I always was leaning forward to the next thing and tracking the current thing so others could take advantage of what I was doing. Maybe I do it to still feel connected or contributing something to “the cause”. Sometimes people will just respond with the sweetest impromptu commentary and encouragement and so far, no one has asked to be removed from the distribution list. But if truth be told, I couldn’t tell you why it is important to me to put this site up and keep writing these little love notes to the universe each week. All I know for sure is that when the tools went “End of Life” and I was forced to adapt and adjust and take on a huge amount of work to get it all ported over, it never once crossed my mind not to do it. And I am glad I did. I think the new UJT is mo’ betta’. I think it looks better and I think it is easier to use for you folks. Again, if you can think of some way I could improve what we have, fill out a Please Tell Us form and I will get on it. How weird is that ??!!
Music Update:
Click here for week’s UJT Radio program:
• Lucius — Dusty Trails — This Inde group out of Brooklyn and their utterly saintly harmonies just took my breath away. The sparse instrumentation emphasis the giant sound of their singing.
• Tommy Emmanuel — Angelina — This one comes from his “Endless Road” album and is just sooooo good!
• Tommy Bolin — Lotus — This version is from the Teaser Deluxe album and this song was extended from a 3minute to a over 8 minute. The initial vocals are unfathomable due to the heavy reverb over the top but when they finally stop singing and let Tommy play … well … just … Oh My!
• Taylor Swift — Red — This is the title cut from her album released in 2012. This lady demonstrated she has character, again, this week when she won a civil suit for $1. She was molested by this DJ who got pissed when she complained to his management who decided to fire him. She was going to let it go at that. He chose to sue and lost and she chose to counter sue and won. Sweet!!! Looking for a victim, dickhead ..keep walking! Good for you girl!!!
• Pink Floyd — Have a Cigar — From the Vinyl !!!! From their, Wish You Were Here album, this deep cut is an old time favorite of mine!!
• Little Feat — Texas Twister — Yum !!! This is just fine ass music, played fast and tight!!! Enjoy!!
• Sting — Desert Rose — This one is a truly beautiful song from his, “Brand New Day” album release in 1999. Sting was experimenting with a multitude of sounds and cultures.
• Kansas — Dust in the Wind — Just a pretty song when the boys in Kansas proved that they were more than just pretty faces. The strings make this piece the classic that is it is.
That’s it… Do the best you can; Laugh every chance you get; And always remember … The best is yet to come!
As always, thank you for being my friend!
James
Under the Jacaranda Tree URL: http://www.jfmccann.com