The Northward Contrail

On solitude

Found while looking for something else a couple days ago: an essay that really resonated. As an introvert - partly because of circumstance, partly because of it just being the way I am - it really helped.

On days that start getting longer again, eventually

We're back from our trip, and done with Christmas for another year (and I hope to have more to say about both in coming days; the trip ended up being better than I anticipated, while Christmas Day itself, while not exactly like the one I wrote about yesterday, wasn't bad either). I've always thought it a little sad that there's such a buildup to Christmas, and then it's gone. The handful of days between Christmas and New Year's Day are always a time I enjoy, because you're just playing out the string before hanging up a new calendar and everything begins anew.

It's in that spirit I offer this essay about my favorite Christmas-themed television special, courtesy the folks at the AV Club. For me, the really moving part came with these words in the closing, which resonated with thoughts I've had about life's melancholies and minor keys, and the glimmers of light in life's darknesses:

A story doesn’t have to have actually happened to be true. Every word of the Christmas story doesn’t need to be literally accurate for its underlying sentiments—peace and hope and joy—to still speak to us, just as no one would ever argue A Charlie Brown Christmas is non-fiction, but it touches something deep and true in many of us. The great old Christmas carols—“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” or “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” or “What Child Is This?”—are all in minor keys, because they express the world’s longing for something better. Yet life will never be perfect. Even when that something better comes along, the minor key never really goes away, just as the melancholy never quite seeps out of A Charlie Brown Christmas, even during the sing-along at the end. But where those songs and the Bible verses that inspired them look to the heavens for the miracle that will lead us forward, A Charlie Brown Christmas invites us to look to each other, to gather together during the darkest nights of the year and create our own kinds of light. The days will start getting longer again eventually. We just have to wait.

Today's link

I grew up with Mad magazine as an influence, and to this day I benefit from the delightfully demented way it warped my mind and changed my view of the world. Among the great artists who put pictures to the Madness was Jack Davis, who's featured in this great interview piece at the AV Club today. Go read it.

The original fourth television network

While I'm at the store today getting a new supply of words for future posts, spend your time exploring the world of the oft-forgotten DuMont television network through this engrossing site. Guaranteed, you'll learn something new.

Filmed in Supercinevisionscope

Old movies fascinate me on many levels: not only as a way of telling stories, but also because they're stories in themselves, and of course to a nerd they're intriguing because all the equipment used to make and exhibit them is storied too. Today's link has to do with that last. Go here and luxuriate in the widescreen splendor of yesteryear. Nothing they come out with these days captures my imagination like the widescreen epics from way back when (and seeing Lawrence of Arabia projected in its widescreen glory on a real honest-to-goodness big screen is on my bucket list).

Beyond that, look at the graphic design from those days: the posters, the title sequences (and the genius of Saul Bass on display in so many of them), you name it. Oh, and in several places the curator indulges his completely justified thing for the film goddesses of yesteryear, too. Nothing wrong with that at all, except they're a reminder that, once again, they sure don't make 'em like they used to.

Caught up

It was busy yesterday, but worthwhile, for a lot got done. After work let out I gathered up a lot of paperwork that needed to be done and took it with me. Gas station, then post office, then store. The task that was the biggest grind - a bunch of student projects that had to be marked up - got done after lunch.

Just as that got finished, it was time to put the older cat in the car and take him to the vet. I'm trying a different vet this time, one who specializes in cat issues. The older cat is starting to have a minor dental issue that was causing some concern, and I wanted the input of someone who knows feline dental issues. As it happens, what's happening to him is a common midlife phenomenon in cats, and his mouth is otherwise in good shape. While I was at it, I asked the vet about a couple issues with our newer cat, and she can fix both. So next week I get to take the young guy in, and with some luck these issues will no longer be issues, much to the relief of us all.

After the stress of taking the cat to the vet (and I do mean stress, for our older cat gets distressed when he's out of his comfortable little bubble, and he spent the entire trip to the vet voicing his concern) it was a relief to get back home. Where, of course, another task awaited: a collection of several forms that needed to be completed for a collateral task for work. The tediousness of this chore was offset by the fact that I could use my Selectric III to fill all these forms out. An hour later, it was all done.

In between everything else (and spurred in part by the James Fallows piece I linked you to yesterday), I spent moments here and there doing online security stuff and changing passwords for my accounts across the Internets. It's a pain to have to keep track of so many new passwords (and it's easy to forget just how many accounts you accumulate!), and it can be a challenge to come up with so many different passwords that balance "is it a strong password?" with "can I remember it?", but I did feel a lot better once I'd done it.

And the day closed with something for me: some time to work on another little airplane, which is coming along like gangbusters, and I'm happy.

This morning I'll be going to work feeling as if a weight's been lifted off me. Sure, it's a busy time with Spring registration going on, and that will make the day interesting as I handle a hundred tiny crises, but at least I know I'm caught up on all that other paperwork. Which is nice.

This is why

At work there's this move for us to embrace all the new technologies for data, and we have people who speak of "the cloud" as if it's the greatest thing since sliced bread and urge us to move our data there. I can't embrace it, because I know what can happen, and because I know there are some evil people out there. Sometimes I get looked at as if I'm straight from the 1800s, but I know what I'm doing, and there are reasons for my mistrust. This article illustrates some of my fears, explains why I refuse to give up my old-fashioned practices for handling the data I control, and goes into my mistrust of today's "miracle" technologies.

What truly scares me? The knowledge that even as hard as I try, I can only do so much, for there's a frightening amount of personal data out there about us all that we don't control...and little to nothing we can do about it.

Halfway

Today is, for all intents and purposes, the halfway point of the semester; we have the next two days off.  For me, it's not a moment too soon, for some things are starting to grind and grate, and I could sure use the extended weekend. I have some ideas of things I'd like to do, but if they get done or not, I don't know.  If the next few days were like yesterday -- overcast, rainy, a little cool, reminding me a lot of that Saturday in Fairbanks a couple months back -- I'd have no problem with it.  No matter what it does, I'm still ready for it, and ready to get my head back together for the last half of the term.

:: With this post the little blog here reaches four digits in post count.  I started this as a cheap, easy way to display my collection of oddities, and I chose a blog because I can't code HTML to save my life.  Somewhere along the way it went from a personal museum to an online journal of obsessions, amusements, gripes, confessions, adventures, diversions, and tomfoolery.  Despite my best efforts to get it back to its original mission, it continues to be all these things, and I'm not sure if that's a thing to lament or celebrate.

I'm not sure what's ahead for me, or the blog.  I've started to wonder if making myself post each day is diluting the quality, such as it is, of what goes up; that gets countered with "you're a writer, and the best way to stay in practice is to write."  So I'm not sure what's ahead.  There's so much I have yet to write about, and it will get written about, somehow, as soon as I find the time to do it "rite."

But, just as with the semester, this is a moment to stop, realize how far you've come, and catch your breath before you push forward.

Today's linkage

A Wiki-Walk last night led me to this fascinating site, which is worth a few moments of your time.  (Though it's all good, I found this article especially compelling.)  Anyhow, check it out.

Visionary

I never really knew how I felt about Steve Jobs.  There were times when I wondered how much was style for its own sake, how much was steak and how much was just a lot of uber-cool sizzle for fun and profit.  But it was one of his products that first taught me how to use a computer, when way back in elementary school I first used an Apple II.  And for more than a decade, an Apple laptop of one stripe or another has been my faithful companion, including the computer on which I'm writing this.  My iPod has provided so many hours of entertainment on so many trips, and these days an iPhone tags along everywhere I go.  No two ways about it, the man touched my life, and I'm grateful for his work.

The news last night was not surprising; conventional wisdom was that it was only a matter of when.  And even though I realize I'm only about the 17,670,002nd person to link to it today, now's as good a time as any to re-read this.  A passage that's especially meaningful to me, one I'd love to have as my own legacy:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

:: And this obit from overnight does about as good and as sensitive a job as can be done of assessing the life and legacy of this brilliant, complex man.