As you all may have noticed, this journal doesn’t really get updated anymore. Keeping a Wordpress blog was a nice experiment, but really, I just couldn’t keep the interest up for it. News stories that get me riled up enough to passionately write about them are few and far between, and the perceived need to keep my blog updated distracted me from the original purpose of this, which was to encourage myself to update my actual website more often.

So, consider this blog dead. In its place, I’m implementing a proper CMS for my website, which will hopefully allow me to keep its content more frequently updated and easier to manage. Individual files for each article is a nice idea, but it’s rather daunting to try to manage, and there are some limitations to that approach even for a programming nerd like me. I’ll even add an RSS feed to the site if people want one.

I greatly appreciate everyone who’s been following my blog over the last year or so, and I hope you’ll all continue to keep an eye on my site. I have a lot of changes planned, including a much-needed revamping of the site’s content and focus, and some reorganization. Lupinia has been using the same basic structure for over five years now, and my hobbies have shifted several times since then, so it’s time for a change.

As part of the reorganization effort, I’ll be dismantling my Wordpress blog entirely. Content will continue to be available here through the end of the year; after that, the entire /journal/ directory will be gone. I’d keep it if I could, but simply maintaining this blog on top of all my other projects is more than I can keep up with right now.

Due to the amount of travelling I do, and the fact that I don’t have a quick, easy way to look up weather conditions in a half-dozen different locations, I added a page to this site to do it for me. The new weather page shows conditions for five different cities, with links to full forecasts. Handy!

The locations are:

• Harrisonburg, VA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Seneca Rocks, WV
• Breezewood, PA
• Washington, DC

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, and I’m also sorry to report that the lack of blog content will continue for a short while. I need to focus on other things in my life, and this is taking up a lot of my time.

I’m not sure when posts will resume, so check back later.

Sorry this didn’t get posted yesterday, like it was supposed to; I looked at my calendar wrong when I was setting up my queue for this week, and set this to be posted next Wednesday.

Despite the fact that really don’t like teaching, I find myself doing a surprising amount of it. Usually, it’s in the form of helping older/less tech-savvy people learn how to use new (to them) technology. Most recently, I had to help my grandma figure out how to use a cellphone.

Now, my grandma is a pretty smart lady, and very active, but she’s also rather set in her ways. But, the basic phonecall functionality of cellphones isn’t overly complicated, so I didn’t think it’d be a big deal. I thought wrong.

Things started out rocky when the first thing I had to show her was how to unlock the keypad, since it’s not a flip-phone. This is a very simple concept; to keep keys from accidently being pressed, the phone locks itself after 30 seconds, and to unlock it, you have to press two specific keys in sequence. Not exactly rocket science. Yet, she spent the bulk of our conversation confused about this aspect of the phone. The display even says “Keypad Locked” when it’s locked, and displays exactly which keys to press to unlock it.

Speaking of reading the screen, another aspect that she had extreme difficulty with were the softkeys. Nearly every cellphone has these, they’re the unmarked buttons next to the screen that do whatever the screen labels them with. It’s a very handy concept used in all sorts of electronic devices now, and most people don’t even think about it. Grandma simply could not wrap her head around this. I swear she asked me a dozen times “What do those two buttons do?”, and I had to keep telling her “The screen shows you what they do”. Now, I can understand her difficulty with this a little better than the keypad lock, because I don’t think she owns anything else with softkeys, except her cordless phone. But still, is it really so difficult to understand? Especially for someone who spent the last 30-some years working with computers?

After awhile, she started taking notes. Notes. On the usage of a device that is easier to operate than the business desktop phone she’s been using for longer than I can remember.

Throughout this whole process, I noticed a common theme. From the start, when we first mentioned the word “cellphone”, she was absolutely, 100% convinced that it was a complicated, mysterious device that would take an semester of classes to learn how to use. And every time she actually did comprehend something (like, the power button), her reaction would be a very surprised “Oh, that was easy”.

In fact, any time I have to explain new technology to someone who’s not very tech-savvy, they usually approach the subject with the same perception of extreme, impenetrable complexity. They go into the subject already convinced that they’ll never be able to understand it. And, while some people (usually these same people) will insist that it doesn’t affect one’s ability to learn, I think the opposite. No one can force themselves to learn something, you have to want to learn it on some level. Hence why the average school student can’t find the city they live in on a map, but can tell you the entire cast, premise, and plot recap of their favourite TV show.

My experiences since high school have given me a unique perspective on this, in my opinion. After high school, I took one semester of classes at the local community college, barely pased them, and haven’t taken a real college class since. Certainly not a history I’m proud of, and something I struggle with on a constant basis in my search for employment, but in the years since, I’ve long since learned from my mistake. I’ve since started taking a new approach to new information, technology, and skills; for me, anything can be learned and understood. Whether it’s a new programming language, a new spoken language, or how to fix something on my car, I never let myself think that I can’t learn it. All I need is the interest. This approach has been instrumental in my web design career, and my training leading up to it, and while I have a natural skill for programming, that alone is not enough to build a career on. One must also have the ability to learn and evolve along with the industry.

They say that age affects one’s ability to learn, and while I agree that it can be a factor, it’s not a major one. My mom, who’s in her 40s, takes a similar approach to learning new things that I do, and she rarely has trouble picking up new skills. There are things she struggles with from time to time (like her new DVR), but in all such cases, her difficulty seems to stem from a preconceived idea that what she’s about to learn will be difficult and complicated, and she gets over it very quickly.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet found a way to convince those who think that can’t learn that they can, in fact, learn new things. I guess if I figure that one out, I’ll have a new career in adult education.

When I was a kid, one of my favourite movies was Twister. When I first saw it, it was utterly terrifying, and created an intense fear of tornados whenever we had a thunderstorm. The fact that I lived in the mountains where tornadoes never, ever occur didn’t sink in for a few years, and losing my tent to a microburst while camping didn’t help.

After I got over my fear of tornadoes, I started to really enjoy this movie, and watched it a bunch of times. I even seriously wanted to get into storm chasing (again, not something readily pursue-able in the mountains) after watching it.

My interest in the film faded for awhile, and the next time I saw it, I thought the movie was patently ridiculous. It had gone from terrifying horror film, to exciting thriller, to pathetic comedy in the span of about eight years.

So, this evening, I was browsing The Nostalgia Critic videos. I don’t normally watch his reviews, because they’re really long, and usually about movies/TV shows I don’t remember. His review of Fern Gully, one of my all-time favourite movies, really rubbed me the wrong way, so I don’t really watch his reviews of anything I remember fondly. But, I saw that he reviewed Twister, and couldn’t resist. This is quite possibly the most hilarious video this guy’s ever done, in my opinion

I found this on a friend’s blog, and thought it was really cool to watch (and well-made!). Simply put, it’s a futuristic/sci-fi retelling of David and Goliath. Well-worth watching!

A larger version is available on the film’s main page.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve wished I could do something like this. Especially when people do it in a crowded parking lot.

Alternatively, I’ve had many occasions where I’ve wanted to put the brute force of my truck to good use and fix someone’s shoddy parking job by pushing them sideways until they’re properly aligned in the spot.

A graphic protest took place Monday at a Charlottesville fast food restaurant.

A member of the animal rights group PETA dressed as Ronald McDonald. He hung up-side down at the McDonald’s restaurant with his throat cut by a giant chicken under a banner reading McDonald’s cuts live animals’ throats.

McDonald’s says it slaughters all of its chickens in as humane a manner as possible.

PETA says it is protesting against the suffering McDonald’s inflicts on the birds.

PETA Protester Ashley Byrne says, “PETA’s chicken is getting her revenge today against Ronald McDonald for representing a company that tortures chickens in ways that would warrant felony cruelty charges if dogs or cats were the victims.”

PETA representatives called police when a man protested their protest by eating a chicken sandwich he just bought from McDonald’s. He left before police arrived.

Protest at VA Fast Food Restaurant on WHSV

Not much to say about this, except that people in this area have a great sense of humour about PETA. Anything they do is just a big joke, and locals always seem to invent fun ways to get back at them. I’m only sorry I missed this, I would’ve joined that guy in having a chicken sandwich.

I don’t doubt that residents of other areas have the same knack for making PETA protests look about as credible as a college frat party, but I hear about it the most whenever they come around here.

As any vehicle owner knows, an integral part of owning a vehicle is getting hit with a steady stream of fees and taxes just for the privilege of having personal transportation. And, fortunately, most of these expenses make at least some sense. But, here in Harrisonburg, VA, there’s one mandatory fee that really bothers me: city tax stickers.

First, a bit of introduction to Virginia taxes, for those who don’t live here. In Virginia, the tax code allows cities, counties, and some towns to collect a personal property tax on motor vehicles, trailers, boats, and other assorted vehicles. And, since it’s an easy revenue stream, the vast majority of counties and independant cities in the state collect this tax (whether or not it’s fair is debatable, but Virginia is one of the cheapest states to own a vehicle in without figuring this tax into the equation). So, since this is handled separately from any other vehicle-related fees, localities need an easy way to see which vehicles have been paid for. The traditional method of doing this is with city stickers.

Now, logically, one would assume that when the tax is paid, the taxpayer receives a sticker to replace their old one. And, indeed, this is how most localities that use city stickers implement them. However, Harrisonburg does things differently, running the city stickers almost like their own vehicle registration system. Paying the personal property tax is typically done in November or December, but the city stickers aren’t replaced until March. And, the part that really irritates me is that in addition to the personal property tax, the city charges almost thirty dollars just for the sticker! That’s almost as much as license plates/registration in this state. The only reason for the sticker is to avoid getting pulled over/ticketted for not having one within the city. That’s it! It’s completely arbitrary, and the fee keeps going up (used to be $15, and it may have even been less before that). Considering how many people live in this city, I find it impossible to believe that the stickers themselves and the administration overhead to sell them costs anywhere close to that.

Unfortunately, without state-level legislation to ban this ridiculous practice, it’s unlikely to change. It’s a per-vehicle fee that’s completely arbitrary, and nearly impossible to avoid if you have a vehicle registered in this city, so they have no real incentive to stop doing it. Virginia’s DMV already has provisions in place to link local personal property tax databases to the state registration system, so a person can’t renew their license plates without paying personal property tax, and they no longer have to sell/distribute and enforce the stickers. Many areas have taken advantage of this, but unless Virginia makes this the standard practice state-wide (which I would readily support), I guarantee that Harrisonburg will one of the last cities to switch to it, if they ever do.

Ever since I started this blog, posts related to local news stories and events have always been prominently featured here. Since I currently live in Harrisonburg, VA, my local-interest posts have focused on the Shenandoah Valley.

However, a large portion of you don’t live here, and while I try to make my posts as universally interesting as possible, there’s a limit to how much one can really care about news that doesn’t happen where they live. Since I have a lot of friends (and at least a few readers) in/near Pittsburgh, PA, and I spend a lot of time there (a long weekend at least once a month), it’s the next logical choice to look for material.

I didn’t really have any local readers in Harrisonburg until very recently (thanks Harrisonburg Blogs), and in light of some responses I’ve received to local posts, I’m a little curious as to where my readers are. So, I made a poll, asking which location(s) you’re interested in seeing local-interest posts from. I appreciate any and all votes, even if they’re for “Neither”, and you don’t even have to login to vote.

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Whatever the outcome of this poll, I’m not going to stop writing about Harrisonburg news (unless I move), or stop writing about Pittsburgh news (unless interesting things stop happening there), this is for my own curiousity. If anything, this will help me decide what sort of priority to put on each city’s news sources when looking for material. And, local news posts are never going to make up the majority of my posts here, that’s just boring, and doesn’t really suit the original purpose of this blog.