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Full disclosure, I am not a quote/unquote Pittsburgher by residency.  I have been a lifelong fan of Pittsburgh teams.  I attended and graduated the University of Pittsburgh.  I currently work in the city.  To that end, I consider myself a Pittsburgher because I am very attached to the area in one way or another. And even if I wasn’t I would still have been affected as deeply by the events that took place in Squirrel Hill at the Tree of Life Synagogue last month.  And I’m here to say that it, along with the rest of the world won’t get better.

I say that as I try to raise a daughter to not look at the most horrible negative aspects of humanity.  I say that as she, too, has expressed that the world is a horrible place and everything sucks.  And quite frankly, I cannot disagree with her. But I can reassure her and I want to reassure any of you that think that just because we are living through unusually extraordinary times that it means the world is never going to not suck.

Let’s face it, we’re not getting out of her alive.  The moment we were born, we began to die.  And that’s OK.  After all, we are a living thing and like any plant or animal, our physical beings are only able to endure so much over so long a time.  And no matter how much we try to prevent or protect ourselves from disease or disaster, the end result is the same.  We will all die.  We are born and we die.  Those two points are fixed in their existence. The degree to which we exist within two points is flexible and therein lies the challenge.

Now, more than ever, we are bombarded with news and information about the world.  Now, more than ever, we are aware of things that are going on outside our doors.  Now, more than ever, is that information shaped to illicit a heightened reaction, physical and emotional.  And our children are not immune to it.  We can only guard them against technology for so long.  It’s everywhere.  News alerts, crawls, social media posts… It’s all out there and the more we try to wrap our children in a blanket of ignorance to protect their innocence, the harder reality tries to creep in.  There is no escaping the wolf that is already in the doorway.  Because of that I embrace the news and offer you a caveat in your digestion of it.

The world sucks right now.  People are dying from hate and violence more than just old age.  People are more divided now than they were at a time when we were actually divided by laws.  People are more willing to accept that everything will get worse before it gets better.  And they aren’t wrong.  I’m sorry, but this is the reality we live in. 

Everything we eat will kill us.  If we buy it, it’s got chemicals.  If we grow it, it comes into contact with chemicals.  If we synthesize it, it is a chemical.  The reason you like the way a certain food tastes is because they are designed that way. Natural foods have a real taste that isn’t as fun or zingy as processed.  But real food tastes good if you know how to prepare it.

Our leaders all serve someone else’s interests other than our own.  Oh, sure, they tell us they do.  They say they will remove the corruption and drive out the evil.  They dangle a small carrot to us while giving others huge bushels.  But if that’s what they’ve been telling us for decades, and we keep falling for it, then why has no one actually done it?

Death is everywhere.  As I said, your body is literally trying to kill you every day until it actually succeeds or loses that honor to another killer.  If you eat X, it will give you Y, which is bad. But if you try to avoid X, by eating A, B will happen.  If you take F it will cause you worse side effects than what G’s symptoms are.

So, there you go. It all sucks.  Our food will poison us. Our government won’t protect us.  And our medicine will make us sick. 

UNLESS

Instead of sitting there, making excuses for why it doesn’t matter what you do to your body or the environment, instead of crawling into a hole and waiting to die of old age, covered in bubble wrap with no sharp edges on anything so you don’t get a cut, or instead of simply deciding that maybe a long life isn’t worth it because what reason do you have to make it to 30 when you can just gorge on processed cheese and chocolate and accept death at an early age maybe you can do something to change it.

Stop being complacent that the world is horrible and make it better.  Come up with new solutions to old problems.  Shout YES louder than the loudest adult who shouts NO to changing the world.  Get off your ass, take a stand, and start making little changes that improve things.  Get help.  Organize.  Make a statement. 

Stop listening to what they’re telling you is wrong and start telling them what you can do to fix it.  We used to make things.  We used to solve problems.  Now all we do is make ways for us to be enslaved by the problems we’ve created.  We scare everyone into thinking the world is horrible and that it’s all coming to get you, so hide behind a shield of hate and lies and you’ll be safe from the truth. 

We have access to the greatest wealth of technology and information than we have ever had and it can be used for good.  All it takes is enough people to band together and use it that way.

So, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

Things I Don't Understand: A Rant

I am forever late to the party when it comes to what people are doing these days.  I chalk it up to my belief that, in a way, I was born too soon.   I grew up in the 80s and still think it was the last best decade we ever had.  I am solidifying that argument in my own mind after watching NatGeo’s The ‘80s, The ‘90s, and The 2000s documentaries on binge mode.  Maybe it’s generational.  Maybe my dislike or lack of understanding of today is congruent with my parents or other baby boomers lack of understanding of what it was like when I was growing up.  In any case, here’s what I still don’t get.

I don’t get the appeal of today’s music.  Ariana Grande might be a talented singer, but for the life of me, her words are indecipherable and all run together.  Now, that may be because I’ve developed hearing issues over the years.  I know people that can listen to the same song as myself, at the same time, and can pick apart the lyrics while I’m still stuck on the fact that I thought Elton John was singing, “Hold me closer, Tony Danza.”    I could concede that with Grande, but Googling the thought pointed out that a host of other people can’t understand what she’s saying either.  Iggy Azalea?  No clue what she’s about, either.    What’s the issue with her and the public?  I’m still stuck on the fact that I though K-E-Dollar Sign-HA had a career.   I still like music from people who’ve been dead for years… except for Kurt Cobain.  I didn’t care for him in the 90s, and that hasn’t changed in 20 years.  Any kid that comes up to me today and says, “Kurt Cobain is my greatest influence” immediately has a “Get off my lawn” coming to them.   And I don’t like it when someone takes something from the era I like and tries to make it something of their own, today.  Blurred Lines was cool for about a minute before I realized it was a pretty creepy thing and ripped off Marvin Gaye.  However, I do like Postmodern Jukebox and stuff like David Garrett covering a bunch of rock tunes with a cello.  That is kind of cool.  What Kid Rock did with Lynyrd Skynyrd/Warren Zevon a few years ago was not.

I don’t understand that niche of social media like tumblr, reddit, and even Instagram, though I have an account.   How do these things work and how do people get sucked into tumblr?  How does one tumbl...r?  Maybe I should learn so that I can incorporate it into my YouTube or design stuff.  Then again, I get on Tumblr and my head just grinds like a shot clutch in a Ford.  I opened a tumblr account and I just don’t know what to do with it.  Isn’t that what I was doing here?  I’d say I need a teenager to help me figure stuff out but that sounds a little too creepy to openly announce on the Internet.  

What exactly is reddit?   And don’t get me started on subreddits.  Am I even spelling that right?  I know a few YouTube producers who get a lot of conversation going and ideas from reddit, but I don’t know what the hell reddit does.  I know it was partially responsible for hosting all of those leaked photos last year.   I know celebrities go on and do “Ask my anything” posts but seems like a lot of noise and craziness.  And then people vote up or down.  I just don’t get it.  They even have hateful groups like /r/rapingwomen and such.   WTF?!?!

Instagram?  People take pictures, apply some snazzy filters, and voila, they’re… photographers?  Do you mean to tell me we are going to hoist some kid with an iPhone onto the same mantle as Ansel Adams or Annie Leibowitz?  Oh, I just took a photo of a plate of spaghetti… slapped Inkwell filter on it, adjusted the contrast, and BAM, I’m Henri Cartier-Bresson!  And people can make money selling their photos?!?!?  How does that work?  Who would buy an Instagram photo?  Hell, some guy named Richard Prince took people’s Instagram photos and hung them in a gallery and claimed it was transformative and therefore fair use.  Do businesses pay you for taking pictures of their stuff?

I don’t understand SEO.  I don’t understand how it affects websites and why people are always looking to hire people.  Isn’t it just tagging?  And how is that a marketable skill that people rave about on job boards?  I spend a lot of time refining tags on videos and shirt designs and I do not see any difference in the amount of traffic I get from before and after.  And furthermore, the old adage of making money on a blog is crap… I’ve had this blog for almost seven years and have yet to make a dime from just posting content.  Have any posts directed people towards buying something of mine from a shirt site?  Yes.   But the whole point was delivering content, people clicking, profit!   That hasn’t happened and I do not understand how that works.  

The one thing I do understand is the idea of how to get rich and I can share it with you for only five dollars.  :)

How To Remove Unwanted U2 Downloads From iTunes

 

There, I fixed that for you.

So, there was this thing where Apple automatically downloaded an entire album onto your iTunes.

To be fair, during the Apple event they stated, “We’re giving every user a free album.”  However, what they didn’t say was that they were going to go ahead and just push it into your iTunes account.

The much longer, full event is here.

Yup, they did it.  They didn’t sugarcoat it.  They didn’t say, “Available for download.”  They just gave it to you whether you had the space or not.  They pushed it to you whether you were roaming or not.  (AT&T has a $19.95 per megabyte download charge if you’re roaming and download it.) 

Now, is it your fault?  Yes and no.  Did you have your settings set to allow this to happen?  Maybe.  But does that matter?  No.   

The problem we, as consumers, face is we buy something because we want it or think we need it, but do we really have control of it?  It doesn’t matter if we pray at that house of Jobs or go with the other devices, your account is a shared ownership.   You bought or acquired the device.  They provided you with the content.  Who owns what?   Most corporations will tell you that you only license the product, you don’t it, much like people found out from Sony when they wanted to keep Linux on a PS3.   You don’t own your games.  You don’t own your music.  These are the arguments that go on infinitely among nerds and anarchists.  Present company included. 

But, we buy into the hype.  We have to have the new thing.  And because we buy these things or get them or sell our souls to have them, we need to take ownership and really find out what it means to have them in our lives…. EVERY SINGLE FACET OF OUR LIVES.  I know I found that out when I couldn’t carry the games I purchased for $10 on my old LG EnV2  and the couldn’t be transferred over to my LG Cosmos thus rendering my phone into a handheld gaming device.  So, if you are concerned about the reach Google has into your browsing or Facebook has into your private lives or Apple has into your pictures on their cloud… do a little research before you just shut up and give them your money.

By the way, if you want to remove that album… here you go.

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Two Week Smart Phone-less Challenge

  My adventures in smartphone user hit a huge snag last month.   Back in December I upgraded my failing, yet still more reliable, LG Cosmos to an LG G2.  Yes, the buttons were beginning to stop working.  Yes, the screen was scratched up horribly.  Yes, it had little Internet capability.  Yes, the battery would only last about 2 days at best.  However, it never failed me.  But, because of work demands I had to upgrade to a smartphone that had locking capability and ability to view email. 

   I didn’t pay for the phone but am still baffled how Verizon can justify their upgrade fee of $35.  The argument at the time was that if I added a new line of service, I didn’t have to pay the $35 upgrade fee.  If I just got a new smart phone I did, because it was an UPGRADE fee.  Yet, if I replaced my phone with the exact same one, it was still an UPGRADE fee.    Yeah, try and wrap your nugget around that idea.   Basically, money.   End of story.

   So, I’ve had this phone for about 7months, added all these apps, been all over the Internet, and become a zombie like everyone else.  However, I love the fact that I don’t have to pay for a Garmin, Tom Tom, or pay the $10 a month for VZ Navigator because Google does the work for you, though there are issues sometimes with the GPS getting lost.  I also love that I can handle the mundane tasks of checking email, deleting junk, scheduling appts, and banking without having to be at a computer or even in my home.  I can do it while standing in line at places, eating, or sitting in traffic (within reason).

  Yet, about six months into my contract I had issues with the phone overall.   Because I am a bit of a clutz with banana hands, I bought a $20 Body Glove rubber case for my phone which fits a little.  I say that because sometimes the corners of the phone can hang out or it doesn’t sit well inside the casing.   But, what I began to notice was that I would double tap on the phone to turn it on and that wouldn’t work.  It never registered my touch.  After a two minute ordeal, I decided to just push the button on the back.  The phone would light up and immediately shut off.  This would go on for an indefinite amount of time.  I don’t know if it’s because of the case, smudges on the screen, or defective equipment.   

  Three weeks ago, had tried to call my voice mail but couldn’t put in my password because the screen was blank.  Now, I like that the screen goes dark when you have the phone up to your ear so that your face doesn’t press any buttons, but when you return the phone to a horizontal position, the screen should detect it not being near your face and light up.   Well, along with the intermittent on/off issue, this was now a standard problem.   I pulled the phone out of the case, because it sometimes helped to take any pressure off the phone.   I noticed that I could see illumination along the edge of the screen which made me feel as if the screen was beginning to peel or detach from the phone.   I put the phone back into the case and pushed the corner in, settling the phone into the casing.  That’s when I heard it.  CRACK!!!   The glass spider webbed and cracks ran down from the top corner through to the bottom.  WTF?!?!?

  My first mistake was not immediately disabling the password.   The phone was somewhat still usable at that point though the keys were glitch.   My second mistake was letting the phone go dark.   Because now I could not shut the phone down or do anything else because the crack ran through the top of my dialpad rendering the 1, 2, and 3 buttons useless.   Most of my password used those keys.  Texts and messages came through with no way for me to respond.  I even informed my closest friends and my family of the issue and yet they continued to send me more messages even though I said, “I CANNOT RESPOND” before the screen went dark from being idle. 

  I took the phone to the Verizon store and they were less than helpful.   “You didn’t take the insurance, so you can’t get it fixed.  Even though you had this issue we don’t know if the phone was doing it before the screen cracked.  Warranty doesn’t cover this.”  Basically, I had a piece of crap on my hands.   And they peddled my ass to third party vendors to repair the screen… which was pointless because the one they suggested didn’t handle LG phones. 

• My options were, shit can the phone and spring for a new one at $500. 
• Get a used replacement phone for around $200 which would not have any of my stuff on it save the back up of files, videos, pictures, and contacts.  
• Buy the replacement parts and do the work myself for around $90 plus time and effort.  
• Find a place that does the work, which I finally did for $200.  
• Go without.

  Since I needed my phone for work, I couldn’t go without.  I remembered a time about 10 years ago when I resisted getting a cell phone.  “Why do I need one?  I have a home phone.  If someone needs to get a hold of me, they can call me at home and I can call them back when I am available.”   Of course, being able to find out what brand of whatever I am buying from the store, because I forgot in the time it took to drive there, is nice.  Being able to announce that I will be later, early, or nope is nice.   Still, I think we’ve become too reliant on this technology.  I know I have, because I spent the next two weeks without a cell phone.

  Could you do it?  Could you put your cell phone down for two weeks and not use it.  I don’t mean your work phone.  I mean your personal phone.   The one you use to text friends and family.   The one you use to play games and check out Facebook and troll through Tinder and Match.com.  The one you might be using to send inappropriate messages, or *gasp* pictures to that girl or guy you’ve been trying to date.   Whatever you use a phone for these days, could you do without it for two weeks.

  I called a place named ubreakifix, which was appropriately named.  They could get the parts and do the work for $199.  It comes with a 90 day warranty against repairs.  I had to wait a week for the parts to come in but they could do the work in about an hour and were open until 7pm which was convenient.  Yes, I could have bought the parts myself for around $90, and even though the videos I watched were around 20 minutes long, the amount of crap socked into a phone that is a half inch thick that needs to be unscrewed, unhooked, and unsnapped made me cringe.  I have all the dexterity of an oven mitt, so there is a lot that could go wrong that would be worth an extra $100 to keep me from doing it twice.

  After the parts came in, I ventured over to Bloomfield, EVENTUALLY finding a place to park which was a little lot with those newfangled parking meters.  Actually, at $0.25 an hour, it was worth it.  I walked in and less than an hour later, walked out with my screen fixed.   Worth it.  Of course, the phone still has the issue it had before which means I am going back to Verizon to give them hell.

  But, through all this I learned to deal with not having a phone 24/7.   Yes, it sucked when I picked up my car from being fixed and found out it was still screwed up and I could not call to bitch or complain, let alone call for help if it broke down.   I also learned to just listen and not multitask in a conversation while clicking away.   There are times when the cell phone is useful, but we rely on it for everything.  

  We have replaced the idea of wonder and discovery with instantaneous information and gratification.    With a smart phone you won’t get lost, or you won’t plot out a course, at least.   Having my phone back and plugging in a destination was nice, but when I got out into the middle of nowhere, beyond the route I knew, the GPS decided to say, “Well, I’m done.  You’re on your own.”   So, I had to rely on my sense of direction and visual abilities to find my way around.    But even still, with GPS support fully enabled and unwavering, you miss out on what’s around you.   You don’t discover new ways and take time to look around.

  We have this problem with living life as it is.  We manipulate the odds and outcomes.  We fill the gaps in our quiet with noise from technology.  We are in constant fear of boredom.   We need instant gratification and constant contact.  We are trying to cram so much into the empty spaces of our lives that we aren’t living it, we’re scanning it, skimming it, noting it, and moving on to the next thing.    How long do you stare at your phone after sending a message, expecting a quick response?  How many times do you look at your phone, wondering if you missed it?  How many conversations have you had going at one time?  How focused are you on any given one?  How well do you manage your time with others when you have the outlet for multiple interactions at once?   It’s all maddening.   

  So, if you can, and I suggest you try, detach.  Put the phone down for two weeks.   I don’t mean detach from technology altogether.   But there is a time and place that can be allocated for it, in a location conducive to it.    But while you are out, rely on what is around you to navigate your way.  Make decisions based on experience and given circumstances, not reports and statistics and search results at your fingertips.  Live life in real time, out in the open, and not in the palm of your hand.    

  In the last week that I’ve had my phone back, I have found that I am not as attached to it.   I walk away from it sometimes.  I forget to bring it with me from one room to the next or *shudder* almost walk off without it.  I keep the mobile data setting off for most of the time.   I don’t feel the need to constantly have it in my hand and on while I am sitting somewhere, like traffic.  I mean, I still find times to use it, but I am learning when those times are, now. 

  Can you?   

  Can you do it voluntarily?   

  Maybe we need to start shifting back into a world that doesn’t need to be connected all the time.