My goals when I travel have changed as I have gotten older. I remember when I was growing up looking forward to when my Dad would come home from his temporary duty assignments overseas. He would bring me something and it would be fun.
A couple of times he didn't bring anything back and that was okay, but it was just weird because my mother made a big deal about it and everybody was, oh, what'd you get? And when I started going on trips myself, I would make a point of buying something for my mother and my father and bringing it back.
And I always bought a physical souvenir because that's what I was taught. You collect things and you get a physical souvenir and that's a sign that you went somewhere.
We have four children, and so whenever we would go on trips with our four children, we would come back with lots of little things because everybody got something to bring back. And we taught them what we were taught, that you bring a souvenir back to show your love to whoever didn't get to go and to your parents. We even would bring back gifts for other people. And that was fun for a long time.
But I've reached an age to where I don't want any more stuff like that. And I don't want to spend my time in gift shops every time I go on a trip. And I don't want to figure out a new place to put something that I just got on a trip.
I like to send postcards and for a long time that was a priority because the only place I could get them was in the gift shop. I had to remember to bring stamps. Otherwise I had to figure out how to buy stamps and send myself a postcard and send others a postcard while we were on the road so that they could participate and I could share with them the joy of what we were doing.
I was always so eager to share with my parents and family.
Now with modern technology I can take a picture on my phone and use an app called TouchNote to send postcards to anybody both nationally and internationally. Because it works on the internet I usually make a calendar reminder when we're on a trip to send a postcard every night around 9 p.m.
I send myself and my wife a postcard just so we can remember what we did that day and be able to share it with others or look at it and talk about it. At the end of the trip, I try to send a postcard to family and share with them the joy that we just experienced.
But I don't really buy things when I'm traveling. I don't want to have to carry them and I don't want to have to put them in my luggage and hope they don't break.
Funny how things change.
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Wednesday, July 8, 2026
Saturday, July 4, 2026
Hit by partition ~
I remember having a partition fall on me at work.
I worked in a very large dark control room for many years of my career. One time I was working a position that was near the supervisor's desk in the middle of the aisle between our areas of specialization.
These desks had been put in the middle of the aisle in an effort to bring the supervisors of the shift closer to the action in the operation and make them more available. Once the desks were put into place, of course, things were modified and cubicle partitions were brought down and put partially around the desks to give the supervisors a little bit of privacy while working and especially when talking to trainees or discussing private matters with different employees.
An operational environment is challenging because you have to be in the middle of it but you also have all these administrative things that are outside of the bounds of the operation that still have to be done.
The partitions had been put into place by staff people, and they didn't have all the parts that they needed, and so they were being held up in different ways.
One partition was held up the way it was supposed to be. Another partition was taped together. Another partition was held together with a bunch of rubber bands. They didn't have any money to do what they did, and so they had gotten partitions from another building and brought them in.
One day while I was working a position it had been a particularly strenuous session where I had had to express myself clearly to people that were working other positions. That's a polite way to say that I probably made several people mad that day. So i was hunched over my position concentrating on what i was doing. All of a sudden I felt this weight hit my back with a lot of force. It hurt but I was working a live position and i couldn't just stop what i was doing. So I said "ow" and then I started hearing movement. The supervisor and several people came rushing down the aisle. They lifted this weight off of my back. All I thought was "Wow, I really must have made somebody mad that they came over and decided to pound on me!"
What had actually happened was one of those partitions had fallen from the supervisor desk and landed leaning against the back of my chair and hit me on my shoulders and back of my neck. The supervisor and the other managers were very very apologetic. They got me off the position and made sure I was okay. I had to fill out a couple of forms and life went on.
But it was so funny thinking that I had made somebody so mad that they had to come and take care of me.
What a life!
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I worked in a very large dark control room for many years of my career. One time I was working a position that was near the supervisor's desk in the middle of the aisle between our areas of specialization.
These desks had been put in the middle of the aisle in an effort to bring the supervisors of the shift closer to the action in the operation and make them more available. Once the desks were put into place, of course, things were modified and cubicle partitions were brought down and put partially around the desks to give the supervisors a little bit of privacy while working and especially when talking to trainees or discussing private matters with different employees.
An operational environment is challenging because you have to be in the middle of it but you also have all these administrative things that are outside of the bounds of the operation that still have to be done.
The partitions had been put into place by staff people, and they didn't have all the parts that they needed, and so they were being held up in different ways.
One partition was held up the way it was supposed to be. Another partition was taped together. Another partition was held together with a bunch of rubber bands. They didn't have any money to do what they did, and so they had gotten partitions from another building and brought them in.
One day while I was working a position it had been a particularly strenuous session where I had had to express myself clearly to people that were working other positions. That's a polite way to say that I probably made several people mad that day. So i was hunched over my position concentrating on what i was doing. All of a sudden I felt this weight hit my back with a lot of force. It hurt but I was working a live position and i couldn't just stop what i was doing. So I said "ow" and then I started hearing movement. The supervisor and several people came rushing down the aisle. They lifted this weight off of my back. All I thought was "Wow, I really must have made somebody mad that they came over and decided to pound on me!"
What had actually happened was one of those partitions had fallen from the supervisor desk and landed leaning against the back of my chair and hit me on my shoulders and back of my neck. The supervisor and the other managers were very very apologetic. They got me off the position and made sure I was okay. I had to fill out a couple of forms and life went on.
But it was so funny thinking that I had made somebody so mad that they had to come and take care of me.
What a life!
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Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Fun museum visit ~
Recently, my wife and I went to a museum in a town in Pennsylvania. The museum had a lot of cool static displays showing the way things were in the past and different things that had been used in the city as it developed.
They had examples of Victorian bedrooms and 1800s general stores and that sort of thing. In one of the rooms in the museum, they had some electronics equipment that was very fascinating. They had an old telephone switchboard that had the little headphone-looking jacks so that the wire could be swapped from one connection to another when somebody called and said connect me to BR549.
It was funny because the one from the 1940s was very simple with very few lines. Then they had an operator's console from the 1950s and it had a lot of plugs on it. What caught my eye though was the cheat sheets on the console in front of the places where the wires got plugged in to connect people to other people.
The cheat sheets were cut down pieces of notebook paper or typing paper and they had lists of names and numbers. Some names were people and some were businesses and they were laid out in 2x2 grids so that somebody could easily look up a name listed in the alphabetic list.
The reason it caught my attention was this was like what I used when I was working in air traffic control. At each position we had lots of telephone lines that we had access to When we needed to talk to another facility or a position in another facility We had hot buttons that we could press that would connect us to them we had Numbers that we could dial to talk to different positions in our control room There were so many Connections that we could make that we had cheat sheets on the consoles Beside the keypad and in front of the buttons that connected us to them a Lot like that old-timey telephone operators console Thank you.
I thought it was funny that in our modern age we're still using the things that people came up with in the 1940s and 1950s. Sure they take a different format, but it's still the same stuff.
On a side note, it was neat to see a manual typewriter and to share with my daughter that my father had been able to type 80 words a minute on one of those manual typewriters when he was young.
Fun museum visit.
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They had examples of Victorian bedrooms and 1800s general stores and that sort of thing. In one of the rooms in the museum, they had some electronics equipment that was very fascinating. They had an old telephone switchboard that had the little headphone-looking jacks so that the wire could be swapped from one connection to another when somebody called and said connect me to BR549.
It was funny because the one from the 1940s was very simple with very few lines. Then they had an operator's console from the 1950s and it had a lot of plugs on it. What caught my eye though was the cheat sheets on the console in front of the places where the wires got plugged in to connect people to other people.
The cheat sheets were cut down pieces of notebook paper or typing paper and they had lists of names and numbers. Some names were people and some were businesses and they were laid out in 2x2 grids so that somebody could easily look up a name listed in the alphabetic list.
The reason it caught my attention was this was like what I used when I was working in air traffic control. At each position we had lots of telephone lines that we had access to When we needed to talk to another facility or a position in another facility We had hot buttons that we could press that would connect us to them we had Numbers that we could dial to talk to different positions in our control room There were so many Connections that we could make that we had cheat sheets on the consoles Beside the keypad and in front of the buttons that connected us to them a Lot like that old-timey telephone operators console Thank you.
I thought it was funny that in our modern age we're still using the things that people came up with in the 1940s and 1950s. Sure they take a different format, but it's still the same stuff.
On a side note, it was neat to see a manual typewriter and to share with my daughter that my father had been able to type 80 words a minute on one of those manual typewriters when he was young.
Fun museum visit.
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Friday, June 26, 2026
In the moment ~
It's fascinating how so many people are encouraging everyone around them to live in the moment. Live right now. Don't think ahead. Don't fall behind. Don't look back and be stuck in the past. Right now is the only time that you have.
It's in meditation apps and videos and recordings. It's in blog posts and books and self-help guides. It's taught in big companies and everything else. Marketers use all of this teaching to get people to go ahead and spend money on something they really shouldn't buy.
But since you're living in the moment, you should have your best life right now and have this right now. Spend your money on my thing.
As a Christian, I read the Bible. I love to read the book of Proverbs each month. And I'll pick a few Psalms and run through the New Testament. I don't really enjoy the prophets because it's just depressing. And I'll do the whole history books whenever we're going through them at church. Just so I can be reminded of all the great stories that the Bible tells about our God and his people.
But this living in the moment thing is a struggle for me. I meditate and I use a couple of apps to do it. They are not Christian-based meditations. And so they are beating hard on that drum that you should live for right now. Breathe in, breathe out. And that's all there is.
I struggle with that teaching because that's not what I was taught. I was taught to plan ahead and be prepared. And I struggle with that.
In the Bible, Psalm 49 seems to talk about this. Psalm 49 talks about plain spoken wisdom being set before you, how the writer doesn't fear the bad times. In The Message version of Psalm 49 it even says, "there is no such thing as self-rescue, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The cost of rescue is beyond our means, and even then it doesn't guarantee life forever or insurance against the black hole."
Further down in Psalm 49, it says, "we aren't immortal. We don't last long. Like our dogs, we age and weaken and die. This is what happens to those who live for the moment, who only look out for themselves. Death herds them like sheep straight to hell. They disappear down the gullet of the grave. They waste away to nothing, nothing left but a marker in a cemetery." And then the writer says, "but me, God snatches me from the clutch of death. He reaches down and grabs me."
It's interesting to think about that psalm in light of things being taught.
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Monday, June 22, 2026
Resurrect radio greats ~
With the rapid development and advent of artificial intelligence and all its myriad uses that are happening right now, there's one use that I would love to see. It would be great if someone would use it to resurrect some of the legends of radio for today.
Like Wolfman Jack. It would be great to have him doing late night radio podcasts and weaving in today's news like Gemini AI does and its briefings and that sort of thing. And I think it would be awesome if an AI Dick Clark, could be like that weird video thing back in the 80s and 90s and have him run via video AI in a box on New Year's Eve and counting down.
Give him eyes and ears and let him go at it. Here I'm celebrating the new year from the great beyond. Red Skelton would be another one. Bring back some of that comedy and make it modernized for today but in his way.
And of course, one of my favorites, Rush Limbaugh. Love him or hate him, he was one of the biggest radio raconteurs ever. And it would be fun to resurrect him via AI and turn him loose on liberals today and just the world in general today.
There's so much to make fun of and talk about and comment on. It would be amazing!
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Like Wolfman Jack. It would be great to have him doing late night radio podcasts and weaving in today's news like Gemini AI does and its briefings and that sort of thing. And I think it would be awesome if an AI Dick Clark, could be like that weird video thing back in the 80s and 90s and have him run via video AI in a box on New Year's Eve and counting down.
Give him eyes and ears and let him go at it. Here I'm celebrating the new year from the great beyond. Red Skelton would be another one. Bring back some of that comedy and make it modernized for today but in his way.
And of course, one of my favorites, Rush Limbaugh. Love him or hate him, he was one of the biggest radio raconteurs ever. And it would be fun to resurrect him via AI and turn him loose on liberals today and just the world in general today.
There's so much to make fun of and talk about and comment on. It would be amazing!
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Thursday, June 18, 2026
Healing takes time ~
One of the recent insights that I gained into the book of Job and the Bible is that healing and restoration takes time.
I've heard the book of Job and the story of Job preached on and told about and complained about for years. The awful things that were done to him and to his family, his time of mourning and questioning and seeking, the friends that came to supposedly comfort him but actually didn't quite do that. The wife who told him curse God and die and he didn't do that either.
The whole story is just hard to swallow. Preachers will speak on it and talk about how the devil does this and that and he pays attention to you and God is watching you all the time and so many sermons about Job.
One of the messages that I don't remember ever hearing and the insight that I got was that healing and restoration takes time. Job had a wonderful life and prospered with lots of children and grandchildren and lots of flocks. And in a short amount of time it was all taken away from him by the devil after he and God conversed about it.
Job was blessed and prospered again. But kids take time to have and to raise. Kids take time to get grandchildren and get to raising them. Flocks don't instantaneously appear, they usually are grown through work and management of a herd. But the book of Job ends talking about how Job is prospered and continued on with the lord.
But that second lifetime took just that, a lifetime. And that was my insight. As i go through a couple of things in my own life that hurt deeply i'm learning that most people think that forgiveness and healing are instantaneous. We're Americans, everything is supposed to be instantaneous. But it's not.
Healing from a an emotional wound takes time just like healing from a physical wound does. Sometimes more so. There's not a solution. There's not something that can just be fixed and you're all better. Tere's not an instant release. In my case it just takes time to work through it and accept it. Accept that it happened, move forward from where you're at instead of constantly looking behind.
And i'm doing that on multiple things. It just takes time
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I've heard the book of Job and the story of Job preached on and told about and complained about for years. The awful things that were done to him and to his family, his time of mourning and questioning and seeking, the friends that came to supposedly comfort him but actually didn't quite do that. The wife who told him curse God and die and he didn't do that either.
The whole story is just hard to swallow. Preachers will speak on it and talk about how the devil does this and that and he pays attention to you and God is watching you all the time and so many sermons about Job.
One of the messages that I don't remember ever hearing and the insight that I got was that healing and restoration takes time. Job had a wonderful life and prospered with lots of children and grandchildren and lots of flocks. And in a short amount of time it was all taken away from him by the devil after he and God conversed about it.
Job was blessed and prospered again. But kids take time to have and to raise. Kids take time to get grandchildren and get to raising them. Flocks don't instantaneously appear, they usually are grown through work and management of a herd. But the book of Job ends talking about how Job is prospered and continued on with the lord.
But that second lifetime took just that, a lifetime. And that was my insight. As i go through a couple of things in my own life that hurt deeply i'm learning that most people think that forgiveness and healing are instantaneous. We're Americans, everything is supposed to be instantaneous. But it's not.
Healing from a an emotional wound takes time just like healing from a physical wound does. Sometimes more so. There's not a solution. There's not something that can just be fixed and you're all better. Tere's not an instant release. In my case it just takes time to work through it and accept it. Accept that it happened, move forward from where you're at instead of constantly looking behind.
And i'm doing that on multiple things. It just takes time
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Sunday, June 14, 2026
Holly bush leaves ~
My last name is Holly. I've read several articles on how Holly bushes adapt to their environments. The traditional Holly leaf with its spiky points and distinctive shape is actually a response to their environment.
When a Holly bush senses that it's being nibbled on by deer and other animals, it signals and has leaves grow with spikes. And if you'll notice on tall Holly bushes and trees, often the leaves that are down low are spiky and pointy and the leaves that are up high are smooth and not spiky and pointy at all.
It's an interesting adaptation and I think it applies in my life too. For many years my environment has always been confrontational and filled with conflict. Time constraints and artificial deadlines and interplay between people and entities that created stress and turmoil made me spiky sometimes and pointy oftentimes because that's what I had to do to survive.
But now that I'm away from a lot of that and free from so many artificial deadlines and time horizons, I'm smoothing out. It's a good feeling.
I like this adaptive response to less stress.
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When a Holly bush senses that it's being nibbled on by deer and other animals, it signals and has leaves grow with spikes. And if you'll notice on tall Holly bushes and trees, often the leaves that are down low are spiky and pointy and the leaves that are up high are smooth and not spiky and pointy at all.
It's an interesting adaptation and I think it applies in my life too. For many years my environment has always been confrontational and filled with conflict. Time constraints and artificial deadlines and interplay between people and entities that created stress and turmoil made me spiky sometimes and pointy oftentimes because that's what I had to do to survive.
But now that I'm away from a lot of that and free from so many artificial deadlines and time horizons, I'm smoothing out. It's a good feeling.
I like this adaptive response to less stress.
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