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Blog Posts for October 2011
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I mentioned recently that the Tofino trip was in some ways life-changing. While a magical place, it wasn't Tofino per se. It was more the time with Tamara and the balance that was there. Anyone who knows me knows that I work pretty much seven days a week. The schedule fluctuates, but you're as likely to see me up working on something at 2 AM as 2 PM. It's just the way my head operates. I haven't had a normal sleep schedule for a hell of a long time. And I don't think that's a bug... I think that's a feature. I am driven and I get excited about what I'm working on. The change, which couples with our purchase of the new house, is a word I told Tamara while we were there: Focus. For the past few years, I've spent a lot of time rightfully dissing Obama for peeing all over capitalism and American business and success. My goal, in my small way, was to wake people up. I get a few hundred people a day coming to my Days Alive calculator. I get emails from a few of them, so I know that they see the content. I get hits from around the web, and I think I get about 2,000 unique visitors a day. I've had a small measure of influence, coupled with my Tea Party efforts and volunteered marketing / strategy assistance. Government should not be something we watch daily. In fact, that's why we have representatives in Washington - to represent us while we necessarily focus ourselves on our own business. But the representatives stopped representing and we had to stop outsourcing the oversight of protecting our freedoms. I think in the last week or two, Obama lost the 2012 election. Oh sure - plenty of things can happen between now and then. But he's toast, from my line of sight. And good riddance. Herman Cain's surge and his unapologetic and unwavering stand for capitalism is the game winner. Yep - it's early. But just to tout my prognostication skills, I picked Romney early in the primary season of 2008 and I said - long before she was known by anyone outside of Alaska - that Sarah Palin would be his VP choice. I was wrong about Romney, though he came close. Just as he will come close this time. But the architect of Obamacare won't win the GOP nomination. I was, however, right about Sarah. I worried about whether a pro-capitalism candidate would emerge. Sarah is very pro-capitalism, but isn't running. Romney and Perry are pro-corporate/business, but it's not the same as pro-capitalism. Cain is all for capitalism, advocates for it like few others do, and therefore I believe Cain will win the nomination. (Capitalism is about a free market, and freedom ultimately wins the hearts and minds of the audience.) While I'm sure I'll write about politics on occasion, it won't be the near-monocular object of my site any longer. My fight is done - at least here. I'm gonna get back to being multi-faceted me. I'll go from BeatPoliticians.com (in effect) to beatcanvas.com. For the record, I'm tired of watching the government. I'm tired of politicians reaching too far into our lives. I want freedom, just as any reasonable and sane person does. I'll be helping in other ways, but beatcanvas.com can return to its more personal nature. |
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I'm a big Peter Gabriel fan, and panned his last effort at covering other people's songs with orchestration. Three songs into listening to his new album, New Blood, there's an obvious smear on the album. It lacks soul. And it does so, I think, because Peter is being directed rather than directing. Or maybe it's because he's simply played these songs over and over through the years. I don't know, but it's stark and right out there. Take The Rhythm of the Heat, the incredibly soulful first cut from his Security album. This new version lacks passion. It sounds rushed and disjointed. And Peter doesn't have the voice he had in his younger days. It may be that I like the first version and am simply used to that. But that gets into another issue... Artists get into dangerous territory when they take a perfect song and mess with it much. There are some songs you just don't cover because if you can't improve upon it, whatever you do looks pale against the original. The only person I've heard who covered their own songs with orchestration and did it brilliantly is Joni Mitchell. She managed to actually increase the feeling in the remake. But not so here. It kinda feels like Peter found a new toy and wanted to show off with it. I'm listening to In Your Eyes, and while the lead-in to the chorus is interesting musically, the verses are drained of the life in them. Put it this way: John Cusack wouldn't have held this song above his head trying to win Ione Skye's heart. I came to like a couple of the songs from Scratch My Back, such as The Book of Love. I'm sure that I'll find a couple that I like here, but c'mon... some of this feels like a bad Glee impersonation. I'm not accustomed to Peter being pedestrian. It's jarring. |
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I've been reading about the Occupy Wall Street / San Francisco / Baltimore thing, and while the exercise of free speech is fine, why in the world would anybody think that it's okay to sit around unproductively for days and weeks on end? And worse, to have it recorded for the world to see? When I've been unemployed, and in fact even when I was homeless, I still worked at looking for work 8 to 10 hours a day. Have a rally for an afternoon to capture attention for your cause, but if you're complaining that you don't share in the success that others enjoy, maybe the reason is that you don't mind being unproductive for extended lengths of time. |
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A Long Time Coming, But... |
I know now why starting a painting always scares the crap out of me. I'm aiming for something I imagine in my head, not something I'm feeling in my heart. I might rarely strike the mental target I have, but I can always honestly express myself. That took me a long enough to figure out... it just never occurred to me that I can't be disappointed for being honest. It changes the whole dynamic. Of everything. |
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I read this, which is a bunch of whining from Hollywood execs about the dismal box office. It's pretty simple, really. You have your Occupy Wall Street crowd, which Hollywood aligns itself with, and those folks are more apt to stream a pirated movie from the Internet or try to get money from their parents (or some other personal philanthropist) to see the movie. And then you have those of us with money, who've been dissed openly and repeatedly by those in Hollywood. We ought to support you with our patronage because why? There are actors and actresses I simply won't see, I don't care if it's the performance of their life. Sean Penn tops that list, for his support of anti-freedom dictators who silence and murder their citizens. But there are others as well, and actually the list is getting longer because you can't pee on your audience continually. Sam Jackson and Morgan Freeman have certainly sucked my enthusiasm for their art with their uninformed comments. I don't have any pity for Hollywood the abysmal box office, though I don't think they'll figure it out any time soon. |
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 Two of my sons, Aaron and Tate, just returned from New York City and brought with them a Guggenheim book. In it was "Man with Crossed Arms" by Cezanne, which I like very much. I also noticed that the book had a lot of Kadinsky in it, whom my friend, Annette, admires. |
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Earlier today, I decided to update my iOS to 5 on my iPad. So I went through the steps that it prompted me to do, and then it announced that it couldn't pull in the backup that it created prior to updating iOS. Lost are all of my documents created with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. Gone are all of my videos and pictures that I took in Tofino with the iPad. Gone are most of my apps. For those who tout Apple as a great company with great products, this was a major epic fail. And I'm not the only one... |
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One of my clients is hip-deep in the HVAC industry. For two and a half years, I have worked on their site, a good part of that with the world's greatest technologist, Jonathan. My favorite anyway... Got word today that southern California has adopted their model and is using our platform that we created. A lot of other big players vied for this lucrative space, and our platform was chosen for its accuracy and flexibility. If the pilot goes well, and we'll ensure that it will, then as goes California in this niched market, so goes the nation. :) |
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Long ago, I heard someone say, "When you have a child, your heart walks outside of your body for the rest of your life." True. What makes it harder is when you have to watch mistakes that your adult child makes. It's hard to know when to jump in to coach and when to sit back and let life do the coaching. Most of what we learn in life comes through our own experience - through trial and error. Skinning our knees is a natural - and necessary - experience. Sometimes, the most loving thing you can do is let them skin their knees, because they won't learn what they need to learn any other way. Tough act sometimes, parenting... |
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 People are starting to use 247Toolset as their personal web site, as you see above. The economics of it makes sense: it's less than $300 for a year, and they get to use the entire backend, with all of its people management and email capabilities. Very interesting... |
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 No cue cards, no teleprompter, and a firm grasp of the facts - Scott Walker was very impressive in his speech in West Des Moines last night. I have friends of mine who wonder whether the massive government incursion into the private sector can be rolled back to return our country to freedom. Scott Walker did in 5 weeks more to make Wisconsin favorable to jobs and the economy than most governors know how to do in 5 years. And it worked. When he took office, only 10% of business owners in Wisconsin found the climate favorable to jobs and the economy. Today? 88%. More teachers' jobs have been saved through his efforts. No government employees were laid off, despite a threatening debt burden on the state. This in contrast to Illinois, where earlier this year Gov. Quinn boasted that he wasn't going to take the steps that Gov. Walker did - but it wasn't Gov. Quinn who got the pink slip. It was Illinois teachers. But not in Wisconsin, where the budget is balanced and school districts are starting to enjoy a surplus. The protesters who greeted me as I pulled into the Sheraton's parking lot - maybe 100 of them - don't know these facts. They're oblivious. They get their talking points from a union official, who of course hates what Scott Walker did because he curtailed the power of the union by not forcing Wisconsin's government employees to be represented by a union and by not forcing them to give dues to the union. It's now the employee's choice. You know - freedom. Unions hate freedom. Through freedom, Scott Walker saved worker jobs. On the other hand, the unions in Illinois are killing jobs because Gov. Quinn won't promote freedom. The protesters last night, they don't know these facts. They're ignorant, and it's sad. But here's what's really disturbing... in 20 minutes, Scott Walker outlined the principles and the steps he knew that he had to take, in the face of massive protests in Madison. Other than Steve King, I don't know of a politician in Iowa who would have done what he did - sticking to his guns in the preservation of liberty for the people. He endured a media onslaught, physical threats to his family, and simply did what he knew he had to do and he did the right thing. What a man... We could sure use one of these in Iowa. And in the office of the president. |
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