Chris: As mentioned elsewhere (again and again), Shel is from Texas. The Panhandle, to be precise (or as I like to call it, "real" Texas). I'm from Chicago. South Side. As in "Irish". To say the least, we do things...differently. For instance, I was taught that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
Shel: Well, I'll grant you that the Texas Panhandle is about as "real" as it comes. But then again, so is the South Side of Chicago! As for "if you can't say anything nice...." my raising had a codicil to that. It went something like, "...but if saying nothing at all is going to hurt worse than saying anything, make up something nice to say!" My mother was a big believer in not rocking the family boat. And if that meant the Southern version of lying (aka saying something that sounds nice even if you don't mean it), then so be it. My mom never was big on the truth anyway, it was a family legend that she couldn't tell the truth between Halloween and New Year's (the Christmas lies took a while to wear off, I guess).
Chris: We believed in not rocking the family boat. Problem is, my family boat is the Titanic. Notice we still live 100 miles from any of them?
Shel: So you say. I haven't been around any of them long enough at any one time to figure out exactly what's going on, what went on, what might go on.... so I just do what I do best. Be my sweet Southern self and let the rest take care of itself.
Chris: Yeah, me too. So anyway, we have the different upbringings. Of course our parents both taught us in their own way to be good people. Your mom succeeded, in spite of what must have been really confusing holidays.
Shel: You're sure not kidding about that! One of my mother's favorite stories was about this grocery store she used to go to when I was a baby. Remember now, this was in the '60's, when people still trusted people. Anyway, there was this bagger who apparently thought I was the cutest thing EVER, and from all accounts, Mom would just hand me over to him and he'd carry me around while she did her shopping. (Try that today and see how fast CPS knocks on your door...but anyway, I digress). Sometime around December, he asked her what she was doing for my first Christmas. Her answer is a family classic: "Oh, we're just going to dump ketchup on the snow and tell her the cats ate Santa Claus!" The poor bagger was traumatized. I mentioned Mom was a liar. I forgot to mention that she was also damned GOOD at it.
Chris: I...think my mom would actually do something like that, had she thought of it. Anyway, another difference is actually pretty basic: I'm used to locking everything, everywhere, and you say for a long time you never had a need for a key.
Shel: Not only did we not have a need for a key, we probably didn't even know where the darn thing was! I realize this is a completely foreign concept to someone from Chicago, but until recently, locking doors where I grew up was something you only did if you happened to be heading out of town on an extended vacation. And sometimes not then, either, if you had someone coming by to pick up mail and feed pets. I say "until recently", because today I read a Facebook update from a Stinnett friend who had a brand new Olympus camera stolen off her kitchen table, still in the bag from the store, before she ever got to use it! That's some brazen thievery, there. Even living in Stinnett now, I think I'd be locking everything down. Of course, it IS still Texas. Shotguns are a great substitute for door locks. Once Mom thought she had prowlers. She promptly borrowed a shotgun from her older brother, my Uncle Everett. Uncle Everett was the police chief at the time. He told her, "Mary, now you know you can't shoot them unless they are actually in the house, right?" Her reply? "If they're not in the house when I shoot them, they damn sure will be by the time you get here!" I think he gave up after that. As far as I know, she never had cause to use the shotgun, though.
Chris: Whereas in Chicago you read about half a dozen shootings a day, and that's with most firearms being illegal there. Another difference is in driving habits. You're polite, and the rest of the state isn't.
Shel: I drive like I am. Sweet and Southern. Unfortunately, Illinois drivers don't recognize either of those traits when behind a wheel of a car. Which is why you drive whenever we're together, and I don't go much farther on my own than Sterling!
Chris: I'll admit it: Illinois drivers suck. We have left-lane squatters, texters, bumper-surfers, and of course illiterates. And that's just in this town. Then again, look who we have making our traffic laws. When I say I'm better than most drivers in this state, I'm not being conceited; it's kind of like saying I can beat a 5th grader in chess.
Shel: I have to admit, it is still an adjustment and a matter of slightly wounded pride to me to admit I don't know every back road around here, after living here nearly seven years! In Texas, I could get you anywhere in the area I lived in (in Texas this means about a 30 mile radius) that you wanted to go, probably about six different ways, and in some of those ways you wouldn't see pavement! I still have to ask where certain small towns are around here, and that is such a foreign concept to me. I knew every back road in the county I lived in like the back of my hand. In the Panhandle, I also knew the oil lease roads and the ranch roads, who they belonged to, and who had shotguns if you trespassed!
Chris: Surprisingly, you can fit a lot into Illinois. Probably more than we need, now that I think about it.
Shel: Yeah, things are a bit - shall we say - more densely populated here....
Chris: Zing!!
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Technological showdowns
Chris: I mentioned in another post or something about how I was all set to host our blog locally, since I have the server space and the IP addresses to spare. Shel preferred going the Blogger route, and in retrospect (read: After trying it her way) I decided she was right. It's indicative of a number of discussions/debates/whatever that we have about technology and what we as individuals feel about its applications (or lack thereof). I'm an IT geek. I have degrees and certifications and I'm convinced that most of the world's problems could be solved by a series of neatly-written shell scripts or a well-tuned database. I try not to be the kid in Goonies whose dad was an inventor, concocting a Rube Goldberg mousetrap solution for everything, but if I can make it easier and thorough, well that's just tons better than just being easier.
Shel: Take our ongoing debate (all in good fun) about Chris's Droid X vs. my iPhone. Chris's phone will do everything except the dishes, and he could probably program it to do those, and probably do them from 40 miles away, if only the hardware was waterproof. On my side, I don't necessarily want my phone to be a miniature version of my computer. I want it to just be a phone with benefits. When I was trying to explain why I wanted to trade my own Droid X in for an iPhone, the only explanation I came up with that actually made sense to Chris's mind was that of, "But the Droid does too much! " This neatly sums up our views on technology. As long as it does what I want it to do and what it was designed to do, I'm usually pretty happy with it. Chris, on the other hand, expects his technology to push the limits of what it was designed to do and be happy about it.
Chris: It does come down to needs. I just shoot for the value-added thing. Both phones cost the same when new, I would expect them to have comparable abilities. When I first got my last Blackberry (a Tour, which I thought was a great if technologically outclassed phone, contrary to a lot of other people apparently) I had every expectation that it would SSH into my home machine, possibly do VNC, be my mobile media player, etc. It was a bleepin' Blackberry, for cryin' out loud...they were supposed to be all that, as far as I'm concerned. I just believe in the Power-Tool Rule: Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it™.
Shel: Another instance of us agreeing, (gee, who woulda thunk?) It really does come down to what an individual needs the technology to do. For me, the iPhone meets my needs in the manner I want them met. I don't have to dig around in the depths of the operating system to make it do it, I don't have to worry about remembering how to get to stuff, it's all right there. Yeah I can see the whole objection to Apple's "walled garden", but since everything I want is in there with me, I don't let it bother me too much. I don't drink the Apple kool-aid, and I don't think of myself as an Apple fangirl. I can definitely see where more technologically (and independent) minded people would find Apple's idea of protecting their users from themselves highly objectionable. It just doesn't happen to apply to me because that device meets this user's needs better than anything else currently on the market.
Chris: Linux is just put together differently. So are the people who use it. It's not exactly "digging around in the depths of the operating system". You don't have to be a genius to use something Linux-based; the genius lies in understanding its simplicity. I on the other hand don't find it objectionable that Apple would "[protect] their users from themselves"...have you seen some of those people? So anyway, we have a mostly live-and-let-live approach about it with each other. I came up with the idea of getting an iPad, and now Shel's selling it. I set up a Mac for her to use, and she went back to Windows. So when she says she's not a fangirl, it's not exactly denial.
Shel: I have a live-and-yet-live attitude about most things, actually. If you're surgically attached to your BlackBerry, who am I to tell you you should hate it instead? If you've used a Mac and loved it for 20 years and don't ever see yourself using another brand of computer, who am I to tell you that a machine running Windows or Linux or anything else would be SO MUCH better? It's all about the personal preference, and respecting other people's preferences. However, there's a flip side to that attitude of mine, and that is that I expect my own personal preferences to be respected as well.
Chris: That's not to be confused with wondering "why", is it?
Shel: No, but there is a line there. I can look at a system and the user and wonder why they chose that path, and I might even ask them about it. But if they seem devoted to whatever that system is, I mostly just leave it alone. They probably have their own reasons, even if they can't articulate them to me. This also applies to just about any other thing people have preferences about. I might wonder how anyone can eat sushi, for example, but I'm not going to criticize someone because they love it.
Chris: Erm, well, I was thinking more like someone asking you why. It took me months of asking why you wanted a Jesus-phone before you could articulate it. Normally that's not a problem for you, so you can see why I had a hard time with it? With me I boil almost everything down to logic and reason, so everything comes with its own pros-and-cons list.
Shel: Yes, but you'd make a hell of a good trial attorney.... *grin*.
Shel: Take our ongoing debate (all in good fun) about Chris's Droid X vs. my iPhone. Chris's phone will do everything except the dishes, and he could probably program it to do those, and probably do them from 40 miles away, if only the hardware was waterproof. On my side, I don't necessarily want my phone to be a miniature version of my computer. I want it to just be a phone with benefits. When I was trying to explain why I wanted to trade my own Droid X in for an iPhone, the only explanation I came up with that actually made sense to Chris's mind was that of, "But the Droid does too much! " This neatly sums up our views on technology. As long as it does what I want it to do and what it was designed to do, I'm usually pretty happy with it. Chris, on the other hand, expects his technology to push the limits of what it was designed to do and be happy about it.
Chris: It does come down to needs. I just shoot for the value-added thing. Both phones cost the same when new, I would expect them to have comparable abilities. When I first got my last Blackberry (a Tour, which I thought was a great if technologically outclassed phone, contrary to a lot of other people apparently) I had every expectation that it would SSH into my home machine, possibly do VNC, be my mobile media player, etc. It was a bleepin' Blackberry, for cryin' out loud...they were supposed to be all that, as far as I'm concerned. I just believe in the Power-Tool Rule: Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it™.
Shel: Another instance of us agreeing, (gee, who woulda thunk?) It really does come down to what an individual needs the technology to do. For me, the iPhone meets my needs in the manner I want them met. I don't have to dig around in the depths of the operating system to make it do it, I don't have to worry about remembering how to get to stuff, it's all right there. Yeah I can see the whole objection to Apple's "walled garden", but since everything I want is in there with me, I don't let it bother me too much. I don't drink the Apple kool-aid, and I don't think of myself as an Apple fangirl. I can definitely see where more technologically (and independent) minded people would find Apple's idea of protecting their users from themselves highly objectionable. It just doesn't happen to apply to me because that device meets this user's needs better than anything else currently on the market.
Chris: Linux is just put together differently. So are the people who use it. It's not exactly "digging around in the depths of the operating system". You don't have to be a genius to use something Linux-based; the genius lies in understanding its simplicity. I on the other hand don't find it objectionable that Apple would "[protect] their users from themselves"...have you seen some of those people? So anyway, we have a mostly live-and-let-live approach about it with each other. I came up with the idea of getting an iPad, and now Shel's selling it. I set up a Mac for her to use, and she went back to Windows. So when she says she's not a fangirl, it's not exactly denial.
Shel: I have a live-and-yet-live attitude about most things, actually. If you're surgically attached to your BlackBerry, who am I to tell you you should hate it instead? If you've used a Mac and loved it for 20 years and don't ever see yourself using another brand of computer, who am I to tell you that a machine running Windows or Linux or anything else would be SO MUCH better? It's all about the personal preference, and respecting other people's preferences. However, there's a flip side to that attitude of mine, and that is that I expect my own personal preferences to be respected as well.
Chris: That's not to be confused with wondering "why", is it?
Shel: No, but there is a line there. I can look at a system and the user and wonder why they chose that path, and I might even ask them about it. But if they seem devoted to whatever that system is, I mostly just leave it alone. They probably have their own reasons, even if they can't articulate them to me. This also applies to just about any other thing people have preferences about. I might wonder how anyone can eat sushi, for example, but I'm not going to criticize someone because they love it.
Chris: Erm, well, I was thinking more like someone asking you why. It took me months of asking why you wanted a Jesus-phone before you could articulate it. Normally that's not a problem for you, so you can see why I had a hard time with it? With me I boil almost everything down to logic and reason, so everything comes with its own pros-and-cons list.
Shel: Yes, but you'd make a hell of a good trial attorney.... *grin*.
Monday, December 5, 2011
The Cat Is Snoring
Shel: I'm sitting here in the quiet office, contemplating my freshly polished thumbnail and deciding if I want to do the rest of them or not, the only sound that of Chris's keyboard as he types when I hear something that doesn't fit. After a few seconds I identify it as the sound of Sinatra the Siamese, who is curled up in the cat bed on top of the kitty condo behind me - snoring. It sounds like the cat version of the old man who fell asleep in his chair in front of the TV. When I mentioned it, Buddy, the orange longhair who can't stand to be left out of anything came in to investigate. And now y'all are hereby introduced to the other two full-time occupants of our home: The Felines.
Chris: I submit that our office is hardly quiet. There are 3 servers, a workstation, a desktop, and 2 printers. Why is this relevant? Because I'm the one who can't hear worth a damn. That said, Sinatra can saw a pretty mean log. Good thing he hates going outside; the whole natural-enemies thing would be really inconvenient for him.
Shel: And then there's Buddy. He's the original slacker kitty. If he was human, he'd be an old hippie. If there's lovin' going on anywhere in his vicinity, he wants right in the big middle of it. This means our kisses are usually accompanied by cat "mmrrooowwrrs" as Bud nudges us, saying in Cat-Speak "Me too, me too!"
Chris: It's really cool, they talk. Not with actual words, but they have a (very limited) vocabulary. if they both lived another 35 or 40 years they would probably learn a few words of English. They really do try to get basic points across. And contrary to what some people will tell you, cats do have at least basic emotions; they just don't analyze the hell out of them. Or talk about them on Facebook.
Shel: Don't forget personalities (or should I go all cutesy and say "purrsonalities"? No, let's not). It is really interesting how different the two are. Buddy will play like a normal cat, biting too hard (unintentionally) and all. When you dangle a string for him, he chases it. Sinatra, on the other hand, will sometimes get carried away enough when playing (if we can even get him to play at all) and barely clamp down with his teeth - and then act like he did something wrong and lick us to apologize. He also won't chase much - if you dangle a string for him he will try to pick it up and negotiate with it. He really acts like he wants opposable thumbs.
Chris: And yet, who turns out to be the Alpha-cat? Slacker-boy.
Chris: I submit that our office is hardly quiet. There are 3 servers, a workstation, a desktop, and 2 printers. Why is this relevant? Because I'm the one who can't hear worth a damn. That said, Sinatra can saw a pretty mean log. Good thing he hates going outside; the whole natural-enemies thing would be really inconvenient for him.
Shel: And then there's Buddy. He's the original slacker kitty. If he was human, he'd be an old hippie. If there's lovin' going on anywhere in his vicinity, he wants right in the big middle of it. This means our kisses are usually accompanied by cat "mmrrooowwrrs" as Bud nudges us, saying in Cat-Speak "Me too, me too!"
Chris: It's really cool, they talk. Not with actual words, but they have a (very limited) vocabulary. if they both lived another 35 or 40 years they would probably learn a few words of English. They really do try to get basic points across. And contrary to what some people will tell you, cats do have at least basic emotions; they just don't analyze the hell out of them. Or talk about them on Facebook.
Shel: Don't forget personalities (or should I go all cutesy and say "purrsonalities"? No, let's not). It is really interesting how different the two are. Buddy will play like a normal cat, biting too hard (unintentionally) and all. When you dangle a string for him, he chases it. Sinatra, on the other hand, will sometimes get carried away enough when playing (if we can even get him to play at all) and barely clamp down with his teeth - and then act like he did something wrong and lick us to apologize. He also won't chase much - if you dangle a string for him he will try to pick it up and negotiate with it. He really acts like he wants opposable thumbs.
Chris: And yet, who turns out to be the Alpha-cat? Slacker-boy.
The easiest blog in the world
Chris: So Shel comes in to show me her latest shade of nail-polish--or rather, what it looks like when it's actually on her nails, since I was with her when she bought it--while I'm working on my site, and she says, "we should start our own blog, like a 'he-said-she-said' thing." I said it was a great idea...one that I thought of several years ago, and she didn't think would work.
Shel: Well, when he thought of it, I really didn't think it would work! However, the time seems to be right.
Chris: Courtesy of Shel's e-publishing business and my IT maven-ness, we had an IP address free to host it on. She's a big fan of Blogger and wanted to put it here instead. Meh, whichever. Static IPs are $20 a month, I just wanted to maximize the investment. Anyway, we went about looking for a template which I thought fo' sho' we would have a difference of opinion on. We didn't. Holy crap, we totally didn't!!
Shel: We agreed on a template the first time out. This.Never.Happens. I told you we really like each other that much! By the way, this particular brand of nail polish sucks!
Chris: Well, yeah, the shade of the one I picked out was nice, but it basically fell off if you looked at it wrong.
Shel: I'll just have to find a comparable color in a better brand. More nail-polish goodness. I win! It's a shame though, because this color is really pretty. Dark green with teal iridescent sparklies. Very seasonal. And it was cheap.
Chris: ANYway, so we set it all up and...um, it would have pretty much scared anyone who didn't know us. The blog post started writing itself; that is, we were having the very conversation that would become the next blog post, kinda like the comic books in Heroes. Only, y'know, not psychic. Except with each other. Sometimes.
Shel: Most of the time.
Chris: It's where the title of the blog came from.
Shel: And I thought of it. I'm so proud.
Chris: Yup. So we're going to ape Click and Clack's gimmick, only for computers, technology, books, politics (maybe), jobs, people...aaaaaaannd, nail polish!
Shel: Well, when he thought of it, I really didn't think it would work! However, the time seems to be right.
Chris: Courtesy of Shel's e-publishing business and my IT maven-ness, we had an IP address free to host it on. She's a big fan of Blogger and wanted to put it here instead. Meh, whichever. Static IPs are $20 a month, I just wanted to maximize the investment. Anyway, we went about looking for a template which I thought fo' sho' we would have a difference of opinion on. We didn't. Holy crap, we totally didn't!!
Shel: We agreed on a template the first time out. This.Never.Happens. I told you we really like each other that much! By the way, this particular brand of nail polish sucks!
Chris: Well, yeah, the shade of the one I picked out was nice, but it basically fell off if you looked at it wrong.
Shel: I'll just have to find a comparable color in a better brand. More nail-polish goodness. I win! It's a shame though, because this color is really pretty. Dark green with teal iridescent sparklies. Very seasonal. And it was cheap.
Chris: ANYway, so we set it all up and...um, it would have pretty much scared anyone who didn't know us. The blog post started writing itself; that is, we were having the very conversation that would become the next blog post, kinda like the comic books in Heroes. Only, y'know, not psychic. Except with each other. Sometimes.
Shel: Most of the time.
Chris: It's where the title of the blog came from.
Shel: And I thought of it. I'm so proud.
Chris: Yup. So we're going to ape Click and Clack's gimmick, only for computers, technology, books, politics (maybe), jobs, people...aaaaaaannd, nail polish!
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