In my old position there were 7 of use who rotated being on-call for a week.   You would think that wasn’t that bad.   Being on-call means you are pretty much tied to the house.  You can go out but the response time is supposed to be within 30 minutes so you can’t go far.    Many times I have just ordered dinner or breakfast and the phone rings.  I excuse myself and return the call.  Hopefully, I can resolve it on the phone quickly.  If not I have made contact with the user and tell them I will either be at the hospital or remote from home in the next 30 minutes.    This can kill dinner.  Even if I have solved the problem over the phone my meal is not as enjoyable.

So here I go again.   There are five of us on this schedule.  Which means it will feel like I am always on-call.  But I am going to take a positive attitude here.  Things are going to get better.  We are putting in a new system that should be up  and running by June. Hopefully, this new system will be less problems.   The hardware issues from babying a 10-year-old server/workstation will definitely go away.   It should become more of a system maintenance and user workflow issue.  These are much easier to resolve over dinner.

Still I wonder, If  I could get married would they offer to cover for me?  More importantly, would they bother to come to the wedding?  I will give you a hint.   NO!!   These people are rednecks in the truest sense of the word, truck driven, gun toten, bad mouthin, conservatives who drink too much.   As an example, we are supposed to have an employee engagement activity.  Guess what they picked.   We are going to a firing range and shoot clay pigeons.  I can hardly wait.   I suspect they may look like these!!

I am starting a weight management program.   This one is web-based.   I record a food and exercise journal,  writing down everything I eat and when as well as when I exercise and for how long or why I didn’t.   The program also offers menu suggestions and allows me to enter goals and track my progress.   It sends me an email reminder everyday.    I have tried different programs before, but this one gets my attention so maybe it will actually work.    I need to do something.   I will let you know my progress.

The program is through my works website or I would suggest it to you to follow.  Perhaps your work is offering a similar program.  It is part of an initiative to save on medical insurance by having healthy employees.   Last year they had a similar program which I sort of shined on.  I got point for having all the tests done, etc.  But I really didn’t get motivated to change my eating and activities.    So here we go again.  I hope I can do something this time.    I have a new job, a new car, an a new outlook on the future.  Now is the best time to make another change since I am already making so many others what’s a few more.   I also go a new TV, this might be a hinderance rather than a helper.  Maybe I can do my tracking on the TV, since it is Smart.  That might make it fun. 

Some of you may know what a life long struggle being fit is (and still others are naturally active and thin — I hate you!).   My new office mate is going to have surgery for his sleeping disorder and the doctor told him he would lose 20 pounds in the process.   Maybe I have that disorder too….hmmm.    I know what to do.  Wanting to do it is another matter.

I eat for enjoyment.  I eat out of stress.  I eat because it’s there……..bad behavior.      I need to find enjoyment in other things, preferably things that make me active.   Don’t go there, you can’t lose weight that way, I have tried.  It makes you hungry!

Anyway……I hope to be smaller and fitter (is that a word?) soon.

As most of you know I am an American Idol fan.   I don’t like all the pre-shows, the tryouts around the country.  But once they get down to business I enjoy the competition.  As is Idol tradition, any news is good for the show.  To that end we have seen pictures of Steven Tyler with “man boobs”.   Man boobs my ass those are sagging b cups, and he isn’t fat.   Those picture were scary.   Then he attempts to sing the National Anthem.    WTF.    I truly was never an Aerosmith fan but one would think that such a highly successful group would have a lead singer that could belt out the National Anthem.    I know he is old now, so maybe he should have turned the gig down.   Conan had the right idea.   He modified the performance by having Tyler hit by bombs dropped from a military plan into the stadium.   Here is the original performance, not Conan’s version.  See, and if you dare, hear for yourself.

You can visit  Conan’s site  for more fun with Steven.

Frankly, I am surprised they bothered to show up here in Republican land.  Las Vegas yes but Reno?   A few hours before Joe was here he was in S.F. making a fool of himself.   What else is new?  He predicted the Giants would go to the Super Bowl.  Hello, even I know that the Giants that play football are in New York, San Francisco is the 49ers.  As it turns out his prediction was correct, wrong city and all. 

By the time he got to Reno he was all fired up, literally.  We have a brush fire at the end of town. “Winds gusting up to 82 mph pushed a fast-moving brush fire through a valley south of Reno”…hmmm he looks like he could be 82 but I don’t think he is a fast mover.  Seriously, this was a major fire and several homes and at least one life was lost.

You would think that being a computer person I would be able to figure out a smart tv.   Well,  I figured it out alright.  I figured out that not only did I need a new TV I needed a new surround sound system as well.   It seems that newer TVs only have one type of connection for sound out, Optical Digital Audio.   Of course, when I bought my Sony surround sound 5 years ago, there was no such thing.  My Sony has a simple connection for the sound system, two RCA/Component jacks.    My old TV had the same and I was in business.    What is Optical Digital Audio?   You know those fiber optic Christmas lights?   It works something like that.    In fact,  you can see the sound/light in the cable and coming out the tip before you connect it.    What I really think it is?   A way for them to sell you a new sound system.

So my smart tv is not so smart right now.   The only sound I have on the internet comes out of the TV speakers which are marginal at best.    I am able to watch TV and Movies with my old sound system because the Direct TV box act as a go between.    My first thought was that I could buy an adapter.   I bought one a radio shack and it failed miserably.  Twenty dollars down the drain unless I can return it.   But I am expecting my new sound system to arrive from Sears today.  Soon I will be Twittering, Skypeing and watching porn er ah reading blogs on my new TV, and hearing it all in high-definition sound, whatever that is?

Enough about work!  

……..More

Stewie, a 7-year-old Maine coon, is reportedly not in pain.

“He is acting like his normal self. .. He is acting as if he isn’t sick at all.”

Stewie  works at the Regent Care Center of Reno.  He is a certified therapist.

“He visits with people at the care center and generally brightens their day …. He loves doing it. All he wants to do, at this point, is get back to work.”

The own, Robin Henderson, says they will know for sure today if it is a tumor or an abscess and whether or not an operation will be required. “ If it is a tumor, it will be a very aggressive surgery, and they don’t even know if they can remove it.”

I sincerely hope that this magnificent animal recovers quickly.

Michele Bachmann and her gay husband are through after Iowan’s caucused or something like that.  I hear that some of them caucused in people’s homes and brought casseroles and stuff to eat.  Weren’t the caucuses enough?  A meal on the bun or something like that.

Open wide!  Here comes the caucus…

This just makes me gag.  Poor Nicky has kidney problems.  The placement of the pillow makes him look pregnant and Mariah….please!  I wonder if the twins know he is using their sippy cup.

Cute couple gets divorce….

Cute guy plans to marry a girl….WTF

Preparing to start a new position, I find myself reminiscing about all the various jobs I have had over the years.  One in particular came to mind after reading Google News.   It seems they are making another movie about Linda Lovelace.  

What possible job could this remind me of you might ask?   Well,  once upon a time in a kingdom far far away (El Lay) I worked for a medical association.   This association published a magazine for which I provide IT support.  On the staff of this magazine was a women I will never forget,  Shelly Graham. (I borrowed the nick name for Los Angeles used above from her.)

What does she have to do with Lovelace?  Well, there were two iconic films from the 70′s  Golden Age of porn.   “Deep Throat” with Linda Lovelace was one.  The other one was “The Devil and Miss Jones”, starring Georgina Spelvin (Shelly Graham).

I won’t tell her story here.  You can go to her site, Georgina Spelvin.com  and read a brief biography or download her memoir, “The Devil Made Me Do It”,  to your Kindle.   What I want to share here is my experience with this incredible woman.

Her porn days were over when I encountered Shelly for the first time.   She was a graphic artist, and a very talented one too.  I was fascinated by her even before I knew her not so secret past. 

She is a good cook as I remember.   In fact, that is what she was originally hired to do on the set of  “The Devil and Miss Jones”, if you can believe Wikipedia.  We often had potlucks at the association and she would bring in her famous Jambalaya.

Food is my version of porn.  Shelly’s Jambalaya was even more delicious looking then the one above.

A personable lady, she invited me to her home after work one evening, ”underneath the Hollywood sign’.  No, it was not a mansion like Madonna’s which looms over her place from a higher perch.  It is a modest one bedroom house with a lovely garden/hillside backyard she shares with her long time companion and now husband, John Welsh.  At this point I knew who she was, with all the gossip at the association.  One co-worker had actually brought in her movie which we watched in the bosses office when no one was around.   The opening of this movie is very dramatic.   She commits suicide in the bath.  The rest of the film of her with the snake and everything else imaginable, I couldn’t watch.  Harry Reems was also her co-star.

I could watch him but this was all about the woman, not the man.  Anyway, back to my story.  I enjoyed a lovely meal at her place in the hills.    She and her husband shared stories from the past, about Hollywood and New York.  It was amazing and tragic at the same time to hear what she had go through.  But what I remember most was her up beat, no regrets, this it attitude, and of course she is very funny.

I recall one other outing to her 60th birthday party.  It was in an old house that belonged to an actor friend of hers in Echo Park.   She made a grand entrance down the staircase and did her best impression of Gloria Swanson from Sunset Boulevard.   It was hysterical.

 I am just one of many characters that past through her life.  I am sure she doesn’t remember me at all.  But Shelly,  thank you for being a part of my life.

Shelly Graham and her husband John Welsh

Photographer, Alex Forsey