14 March, 2006

Random thoughts on a spring drive

Drove from sanatorium sanctum in mendoland down to so-cal Santa Barbara, a pleasant 7 hour spring drive - hey, limited phone, can listen to what I want and no one bothering me? And all I’ve got to do is keep it between the dotted lines? - and I get paid?

My first day at new job.

O.K. I’ll admit it, I’m prejudiced and opinionated, having traveled and worked over a fair portion of this rock (mostly covered with water – there is lots of water, some of it is hard), I like NorCal (to be fair, I like major portions of real estate west of the Rockies and north of the Tehachapi’s) I suppose a major factor is my family has been in the area for a few generations. While the land may not be part of ones DNA, for me the sights, sounds and smells of childhood invoke powerful memories.

Growing up in mendoland in the late 60’s was, um, ‘interesting’ is accurate but not nearly inclusive enough, suffice it to say I could not wait to get out of the area and due to various factors and choices spent the next 20 years ‘elsewhere’ before moving my family to Mendoland 15 years ago.

I realized long ago that for me, there would always be a portion of my work that would have a location requirement of ‘elsewhere’ and indeed there has been a lot of elsewhere over the years. I was always one to push the edge and realizing that with laptop and connectivity, location requirements become relevant only for face time and hands on time, my personal epiphany came a decade ago when I was controlling two TV stations in Baltimore before the FCC and congress from my hotel room in Singapore.

Recently, I’ve configured a 200 channel IPTV Headend from my living room sofa - and if you had been to the Headend, a environmental enclosure in a cornfield in very rural Kansas, closest ‘accommodations’ were 20 miles away with culinary choices limited to Sonic after 2000 and the best choice before was the Chinese buffet (that’s 8 pee emm for those who went ‘unh?’) you would want to be just about anywhere else anyway. On the other hand, I had a recent client in Atlanta who would not grant me remote access and paid full rate for two full days, air, car, hotel and meals for 40 minutes and one button push onsite – sold those stocks as soon as I could…

Random, I tell yee, random!

The tricks for me are finding the balance and leveraging chances to take my family

I’ve avoided commenting on politics, for much the same reason as I avoid comments on religion, if forced to, I’ll admit to being an rational anarchist, small l Libertarian and will attempt to confound any attempts to pigeon hole me.

My favorite uncle (great) was described as ‘a gregarious hermit who lived alone on a mountain, a tattooed pillar of the community, a gun toting long haired redneck organic sheepherder/rancher/farmer (who had been confined to a wheel chair for the last 20years of his life, the name of the award the local Business and Professional woman bestow each year is named in the honor of his wife – who died a decade before) for the last 40 years of his life they raised cherries, there are generations of folks who visited the ranch, feed the Emu’s and picked cherries and were only charged on what they had in the bags after an afternoon of climbing trees on a sunny summer afternoon.

I said random

Women have the rights to control their bodies
Abortion is the termination of a potential person – this is a decision I can only face as a male and as such I don’t have much to say, I have been the shoulder cried upon.

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