A Day in the Life of Chaos

I am convinced Americans essentially fall into three categories.  The first are those that have no idea a world outside of America exits.  If asked, they can't find anything on a map.  They might aimlessly drag their finger over the various colored shapes but when asked to identify Japan they will point toward the Middle East.  These are the folks that despite tens of thousands of American war dead don't have a clue where Iraq and Afghanistan are.  They live simple lives migrating between home and work.  I don't know if their simplicity should be abhorred or admired. There is most certainly always comfort in ignorance.  I guess it wouldn't make a difference if they were not given equal power to make decisions over all of our lives through one man one vote.  They tend to be single issue voters.  The one thing most important in their lives is their gun and based on that all decisions are made.  I don't hate these people but I don't understand them either.  They f

Every day I seem to discover that I am falling further and further behind.  The thing is I wasn't always this way.  I used to be the guy that was always on the cutting edge.  People came to me for tech advice.  Patrick, what should I buy?  How do I fix this, what do I do about that?  Somewhere along the wandering path our existence the modern world passed me by.  It is difficult to put my finger on the exact moment but I suspect it occurred somewhere around the advent of cell phones.  I was okay when they were simple bricks but as the networks and functions became more complex my mind started to let go.  It is hard to understand why.  I mean function has actually become more simple.  I was the guy who sat with my DOS PC trying to reconfigure the RAM to allow me to play some game that had unique requirements.  I confronted the scary  DOS prompt and at times won and mostly failed.  People still come to me from time to time to solve a computer issue but I usually try to feign ign

  One of my favorite films is a forgotten movie called Sneakers with Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley.  It is a bit of a guilty pleasure but Kingsley plays a man bent on changing the world so that all government secrets are revealed.  He planned to accomplish his devious act utilizing a piece of hardware Kingsley developed through his company Setec Astronomy which is an anagram for "too many secrets."  The plan was amazingly prescient considering the notorious Julius Assange of Wikileaks who has been obtaining classified government documents and leaking them to the press and general public.  It seems like with computers dominating our lives almost nothing is private anymore.  We lay a digital trail everywhere we go.  For myself I have just come to grips with the fact that I will never run for Congress.  On second thought knowing what I do about many of those in Congress perhaps I should. The other day while dining on Mexican food I lent my son my cellular telepho

Malgosia... A long lost friend returns I have spent a lot of time and effort in my life looking for traces of my past lost in the fog of passing years.  I don't know why I do it, most people are just content to let it go.  Still, I suppose my personal philosophy that we are the compendium of our experiences has had something to do with it.  I think that every challenge, sadness and joy that life has thrown at us makes us who we are as a person.  I think in some ways I am constantly undergoing a state of personal re-evaluation as I look back and trace the scattered lines of my mind in an attempt to find sense and consistency that likely doesn't exist.  While this may be true, it doesn't stop me from trying. I think I also harbor the hope that in some ways those that have been formative or developmental in some way have felt the same about me.  That the feeling was mutual.  Sometimes I have peered behind the curtain of the past simply to say goodbye in a way I never di

Over the holidays as my father and I worked diligently to rewire a number of things in my son's 1973 Karmann Ghia and during the process I became intimately acquainted with the most disturbing example of wiring I have yet to witness.  Wires that go nowhere and some that vanish into hollow cavities like snakes disappearing into the black of night left me with nightmares of smoke and acrid burnt electrical smell.  Fuses popped with disturbing regularity as I followed each wire like a prospector seeking a vein of gold.  Somewhere within the tangled jumble of dubious connections and occasional curse words I started to assume a philosophical approach and wonder if in fact the tangled mess before me was in reality a metaphor for life. I love the metaphor.  It is an art most cultures of the world understand but in our own it is sorely misunderstood and sadly underutilized.  I think I came to appreciate the metaphor the most when I was a college student and engaged in the study of Easte

As a modern Renaissance man I like to equate my life to the Renaissance.   My forties are not just growing older, they are a re-awakening.  An attempt to accomplish things I failed at earlier in life.  This can include languages like Spanish, French and German.  A certifiable attempt to discover artistic ability of which I have little.  Yet each of these is intellectually cerebral.  I also count among my failings mechanical ability.  Mechanical ability is much more than just dirty hands, it is the ability to problem solve. The other day my son watched me repair something and he told me he was afraid.  "Why are you afraid?"  I asked.  I half expected him to recount some occurrence involving a bully or a deeply introspective fear. "How will I know how to do these things?"  He asked, perplexed. I smiled and explained that as we grow into life we have two options.  The first is to pay people to do things for us.  That reality will either leave us bankrupt or at