Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

Quotable (3 of 31/3 of 274)

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Upon discovering this month’s NaBloPoMo theme, I gathered a few of my favorite quotes, song lyrics and popular phrases for inspiration.

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” – General Eric Shinseki

Is that a great quote or what? It is very meaningful to me personally on a couple of points.

First, in my accidental career. I took a job as a typesetter right around the time that the printing industry was almost done switching over from hot type to cold type. If you didn’t make the effort to learn how to use the computerized cold type machines, you were in danger of becoming irrelevant. If you did, the old-timers still didn’t think you were a “real” typesetter. Better a fake typesetter than an irrelevant one.

Ten years later, we did it again, only this time the move was from dedicated typesetting computers to Apple Macintosh computers. Once again, change happened, and my company and I did not become irrelevant. If my blog lens was working properly, I’d be able to say that I’m typing this on my Mac iBook. But it wasn’t, so I’ll just have to miss out on that segue.

Truthfully, my prepress production company, and I personally, have been lucky to make it relatively unscathed through the last few change/irrelevance cycles in our industry. They seem to be coming more quickly now, but thankfully, we’re not irrelevant yet!

Back to the quote. It’s a quote from a Japanese-American from Hawaii. I can totally relate to that, because I am one, too.

Now I don’t really consider myself an Asian-American blogger. I do sometimes write about experiences where my ethnicity was a factor in some way, or more often, about traditions which are specific to my heritage. And I am often heard to say “Don’t belittle my people, you f*****” a la “South Park” upon hearing bad Asian jokes. But most of what I write isn’t about the “Asian-American experience,” whatever that is.

However. Despite that fact, and the fact that I still have lingering doubts about Barack Obama, I am more than a little bit pleased to see two Asian-Americans – General Shinseki as Secretary of Veteran Affairs and Nobel prize winner Dr. Steven Chu as Energy Secretary – named to positions in his administration.

I wonder though, if in my lifetime I will ever see an Asian-American elected to our highest office?

My brain just exploded

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My brain just exploded. Here is one of our felonious Illinois politicians (mail fraud, ghost payrollers), former U.S. Representative Dan Rostenkowski, talking about why we should not consider all Illinois politicians to be scumbags because of Blagojevich. Ooooooo-kay.

In Defense of Chicago Politics – The Daily Beast

I find myself wondering what the late Mike Royko would have said about the Illinois scandal du jour. When I was growing up in Hawaii, our local newspaper carried Mike Royko’s syndicated newspaper column. His topics often featured the quirks of Chicago politics. I thought he must surely be exaggerating about the things that went on in Chicago. It was not until I moved to the Chicago area as a journalism student that I saw for myself that there was little to no fiction in Royko’s columns.

Speaking of other Chicago columnists, or perhaps Chicago scumbags: as I poked around the ‘net today catching up on the news, I was shocked to see Bob Greene now writing for CNN.com. Apparently I totally missed anything he wrote during the election. He really dropped off the face of the earth after he was forced to resign from the Chicago Tribune in 2002. For those who didn’t follow that story, he was involved in a sexual relationship with a then-17-year-old girl some years before that. Totally ironic and screwed up since much of his public persona in his columns was that of a crusader for children and family.

It was a personal love-hate thing for me, and a huge disappointment. I was a big fan of his earlier writing (as in everything before “Good Morning, Merry Sunshine” which simply made me want to hurl). The long-ago days when I wanted to be a journalist were also the days of Woodward and Bernstein. Of course, everyone my age said they wanted to be the next great investigative journalist and bring down a president or at least a crooked businessman. When I was being honest with myself though, bringing down a powerful personage was not all that high on my personal list of goals. I’d rather do something more cool and fun, like Bob Greene or Cameron Crowe, and go on the road with a rock ‘n’ roll band and get paid to write about it, a la “Billion Dollar Baby” or “Almost Famous.” Hey, that was then, and all that.

Okay, bring it back home. I think I still have a copy of my favorite Bob Greene book, a collection of his early columns called “Johnny Deadline: Reporter.” In its introduction was a little description of what a “Chicago story” is. It’s a story that is so strange or gross or sick in some way, but can still make you choke out a little laugh and an “ohhhh Gawwwwwwwwd!” That is what this whole week has been here, every time I click to refresh Chicago Breaking News.

In other brain-exploding news, I also see the news that WordPress 2.7 is now out, and according to my blog Dashboard, it’s time to update. If this site disappears sometime after you see this, you’ll know my attempt at updating was not quite successful. But I will think positive, and say I’ll see you all back here in a day or so!

(small) Cl-cl-cl-cl-clarification

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It has been brought to my attention that perhaps I was a bit unclear in yesterday’s post.

I am still somewhat suspicious about the extent of President-elect Barack Obama’s connections with the dark side of Illinois and Chicago politics. I guess that could all come to light fairly soon, though.

I am not quite so concerned about one specific politician riding on his coattails to Washington, D.C. any longer, as if this plays out as it should, he will be in federal prison alongside another recent Illinois governor.

If any of my friends not from Illinois are following the drama, one thing I didn’t realize when I posted yesterday (I hadn’t yet finished reading the vast quantities of words produced yesterday on the subject) is that one of the issues involves shady dealings with the Chicago Tribune and thus was not fully reported upon in that paper. Surprise, surprise. Chicago Sun-Times should have the rest of the story. Or not. You just never know what the Chicago media is covering up.

Man, does my state totally suck on the ethics front or what.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

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And to think I believed the biggest change in my world in December 2008 would be the closing of Maurice Lenell Cookies in Norridge. This is still a big change, although one that I have been resigned to since the bankruptcy organization and subsequent sale of the bakery to an Ohio company earlier this year. Thankfully, the company store is still open for this year’s holiday season, and thus my annual trip to get cookies for the office and my husband’s firehouses went as planned. And the cookies still taste the same as I remember from every single holiday that I’ve lived in northern Illinois. No wonderful bakery smells when I drove up to the store though and that was truly sad for me.

But enough about the cookies.

Remember I wrote back here about corrupt sleazebag Illinois politicians? Well, this morning I wake up to the news that Governor Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff have been arrested on federal charges, including alleged attempts to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. The sad thing is that no one I’ve talked to about it is surprised. Or if they are surprised, it’s only at something like the timing, or at the specific charges being emphasized by the media.

One of my other earlier concerns, that of Obama bringing Illinois machine politics and corruption to Washinton, might not be so big now, though. Here is a quote from one of the news releases:

In a conversation with (chief of staff John) Harris on November 11, the charges state, Blagojevich said he knew that the President-elect wanted Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Expletive] them.”

Lots of stuff to read on the whole sorry mess at the Chicago Tribune site.

Speaking of the Trib, there’s another big change. They filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday. Again, not a really huge surprise in light of trends in the newspaper industry all across the country for some years now. Sad to me as a former journalism student, even though working for the Tribune has not been part of my personal dream for decades now.

And one last change, another one that’s obviously been coming for a while, but something I didn’t really think would happen just so soon: no more Polaroid instant film. I’m not one of those “loyal and passionate” Polaroid followers described in the CNN article. I didn’t have a Polaroid camera as a child, although I remember whining for a Polaroid Swinger (and now the commercial jingle is stuck in my head, beware the YouTube link within the Wikipedia link!) and getting a Kodak Instamatic instead, and actually being okay with that.

I do have a Polaroid OneStep camera still in good working condition. I bought it a long time ago – early ’90s, maybe? – to take pictures of our few “nice things” for insurance purposes. I like to take pictures but I’m not a great, or even good, photographer. Hence, the Minolta Maxxum instead of a Nikon or Canon film camera, and on the digital side, old and new Nikon Coolpix point and shoot cameras instead of a digital SLR.

But as usual, I digress. Back to Polaroid in my life. Every so often I go back to take classes at DePaul University’s School for New Learning with the idea of eventually finishing the B.A. I started umm… a very, very, very long time ago and for which, in my defense, I have not yet had a need for. I had some arts requirements that needed to be fulfilled, and in Winter Quarter 2005-2006, one of the classes offered was “Artistic Issues in Instant Image Photography.” This was one of the most enjoyable classes I’ve ever taken, despite having to go out in the dead of winter to take pictures, and as anyone who has ever owned any vintage of Polaroid camera, cold and instant photography do not mix well.

The syllabus for the class is online in case you’d like to see:

http://www.snl.depaul.edu/WebMedia/People/AI_333.pdf

And so are my 10 photos for the final assignment, Landscapes (Urban/Rural):

http://www.flickr.com/gp/89937445@N00/D3Zk4c

I really should put those in Polaroid style frames, and maybe I will, but not just this moment.

Less than three days to go! (5 of 30)

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Less than three days to go until we leave on our annual fall trip to Honolulu, that is! Due to some unfortunate schedule conflicts, we had to drop the dogs off at the boarding kennel today instead of Friday. It is very quiet without the pitter-patter, or should that be rumble-thunder-whomp, of giant Rottweiler paws through the house.

For those that didn’t “know” me before NaBloPoMo, I was born in Honolulu and lived there until I went away to college (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL). I didn’t graduate, but I did stay in Chicago since it was a great place to make a decent living at the time. The reason the trip to Honolulu is an annual one is because the rest of my family is way smarter than I am, and stayed there or returned there after their time away.

And in regards to an earlier post where I stated I was unwilling to fully support either presidential candidiate, I’m sure some of you are now wondering how it is that I couldn’t support someone whose life took the same geographic path that mine did. For the record: I’m 3 years older than Barack Obama. I also went to Punahou, but only until the third grade (I graduated from a public high school, McKinley). If you saw the photos from Obama’s trip to Honolulu to visit his grandmother, her apartment is a block from the Buddhist temple my grandmother belonged to, and the dormitory where my mother worked for a few years. One of my own jobs during high school was in that neighborhood as well. My life in Chicago has been almost completely apolitical though, except for belonging to ABATE (motorcyclists rights group) and making my phone calls or writing my letters against any type of breed-specific legislation.

I might come back to that later, or not. Not tonight though. I also think I’ll save any Honolulu-related thoughts for when I’m actually there, and when I can post photos to go along with my thoughts.

Back to the Rottweilers for a moment though. I miss them already. Soooooo quiet here!