The Peaceful Gnome

For the last several days I've been managing to avoid things like Facebook, especially the political posts there.  I've also ignored the "news" for the most part.  I also noticed that I've not been following any sports for the last week or two. The roller coaster ride of identifying with a baseball or football team can really be stressful, even when they are winning.  Staying away from all of this has contributed to a sense of calmness and peace in my mind.  What all of these things have in common are the fact that they represent things over which I have no actual control, while at the same time I tend to feel strongly about them.  So, when the team I like wins, or the political idea I approve of gains some ground, I'm "happy" about that, and when they are on the opposite end of the scale then I'm "unhappy."  But either way my watching them go by has not influenced the outcome in the least!  But more important than what I've av...

Just now we were standing around in the dining room talking, Lora, JD and I.  Max was at our feet playing with the dog.  I looked down and the dog and Max had both begun to turn black.  Max had discovered a container of mascara that Lora left on the counter.  Right at our feet, as we thought we were watching him, Max was decorating his body and the dog's back.  This boy is beyond fast.  :-)

I've been mostly ignoring Facebook today.  Only when family or close friends post do I see a notification and most of those don't require that I actually go to FB to know it's not anything I really need to bother looking at.  No offense but I think I've seen my fill of lame jokes, political slams and cute kittens for now.  :-)  This post is primarily being written to test my auto feed to Twitter.  If you are not on Twitter you should be, if only to ensure that you don't miss any of my scintillating blog posts!  It won't be too long before I disconnect completely from that evil pit that is Facebook, so think about getting a Twitter account and looking for me there.  I'm @LDevich once you are on.    You may have noticed that yesterday I mentioned in my Thankfulness post that I was going to my friend Jean's house after work.  This is a very cool thing that has developed.  My friend Jean, whom I've known over 20 years, when I was ...

I said that I was planning on closing down my Facebook account in about a week.  Of course I've said that a number of times in the past and changed my mind later on.  The trouble with leaving Facebook, as evil as it really is, is that many people in my family depend on it to stay in touch.  I doubt very much that I could convince all of them to leave that platform for another.  I've played around with Twitter a bit, but I don't care for the idea of restricting myself to short "tweets" and sending out links.  As a matter of fact that is one of the things about Facebook that I don't like, the constant "sharing" of other people's writing.  I am guilty of this like everyone else of course, original words on Facebook are pretty rare.  Google + doesn't appeal to me much either.  That leaves such things as Pinterest and Flickr.  Flickr is great for posting photos but I don't have any idea why I would ever go to Pinterest . So w...

Tonight on my way home to my friend Jean's house I walked by a very sad little pile of rags on the sidewalk.  It was obviously the remnants of a homeless persons possessions.  There was a pen and a tattered notebook with pictures scrawled on the pages.  It was a very sad thing to imagine the person who had been there huddled under rags as the drizzle came down early today.  I felt profound gratitude for all of the blessings God has given me. Family, friends and a job I can handle even with my various difficulties :-) I always am full, never hungry or cold. I have a nice cozy blanket in a warm room here in the city and when I'm at home. Really, life is good.  Thank you Lord and thank you family and friends. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

It is time to get off of Facebook for good I think.  There has recently been quite a kerfuffle over Zuckerberg insisting that every one use their "real" name on their profile.  While this may seem like a good idea there are many different reasons a person might not want to have their name out there. Some could be using an alias for safety reasons. I actually know some people who would like to express their own opinions but could not safely do it using their real name. Zuckerberg has also been abusing the data Facebook gathers for research and just to make ever larger piles of money. I suppose posting here on my blog will be the way for me to go.  I plan to shut down my Facebook account in about a week.  More later when I'm not stuck writing on my phone.

It has been a long time since I posted regularly to this blog.  I have decided that I do need a  place to post my thoughts in a longer form than really works on Facebook.  So now the Angry Gnome is about to be resurrected.  For me Facebook is mostly trivia and kitten pictures and "I hate politician X" cartoons.  So those are the things that I'm not going to be posting here.  Instead I'll be focusing on such things as autism (aspergers), faith and science, and the way all these things interact and impact my life.    Yeah, right Larry sure you are going to go ahead and post on a regular basis about such things.  Well I might!  I'm sure there is a version of me in some one of the infinite universes that make up the multi-verse, who actually consistently follows through with his plans, but that certainly is not me.  On the other hand I'm much improved over the way I was a few years ago, so there may be some hope for this blog after a...

Lora's Birthday 2013 , a set on Flickr. A few shots of Lora's 32nd Birthday party with the Cagle Crew.

Yuba River 2013 , a set on Flickr. Had a great time at the river, as usual.

Plans and preparations continue apace for our giant moving day on the morrow.  Most everything is in order already, things have been boxed and packed and even a little bit of "minimizing" has taken place, though not to the extent I think it should!  I hate moving, so does Yoda, and Mom and Lora.  Hey, only Max has not said "I hate moving," and that's probably because he only says "good-bye" and a couple of other words anyway ;-)  Earlier today mom and I went over to Tracy where she got her satellite TV hooked up and I managed to get the WiFi going.  Mom and I struggled with and finally managed to put up the pool fence so we are confident that Max can safely be in the back yard with supervision, that is a good thing.  It is going to be great once we have moved, but for now it really sucks.  Our new house is closer to the Bay Area, is larger and more logically laid out and has a pool and RV parking.  So, it's a good thing over all.  Wish us lu...

Anyone who knows me really well will understand how happy this music makes me. :-) http://feeds.wnyc.org/~r/radiolab/~3/qJ4n2ZC5FfE/

I ride BART to work, the ride covers 28 miles as the crow flies and takes about 40 minutes.   On most days it's pretty uneventful and even rather pleasant, sitting in comfort and reading or napping on the way to and from work. On other days the ride can be downright weird.  Today was weird. It being a holiday, Labor Day, the trains were on a limited schedule.  When I arrived at the Dublin BART station there was train at the platform with about a quarter of it's doors open.  Inside were a number of "homeless" people, most of them very pungent.  I walked along the platform seeking a car with an open door and lacking fragrant crack-heads.  As I was passing about the third car with, a half dozen of the seedier denizens of the Bay Area sleeping in the seats in each car, I passed one in which one of these fine upstanding citizens and honored BART passengers was sitting spread eagled in the seat with an extremely explicit large format color pr0n magazine and his h...

Well, I went back on Facebook a few days ago and it turns out it just makes me even crazier than I am without looking at it.  I'm not going to be specific about why because I don't want to insult anyone, even those friends who really really annoy me.  :-)  So, for my own mental health, and that of those who inadvertently read my posts, I'm quitting again.   Yes, I'm a quitter, so slap me.  I'm also going to try my best to go back to not posting about politics here.  No guarantees on that though, sometimes the behavior and proclamations of our masters just calls out for response and rebuttal.  

How an Insular Beltway Elite Makes Wars of Choice More Likely - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic Do you wonder where all of this "pressure to act" that the Emperor is supposedly under comes from?  This story from the Atlantic explains it pretty well.

  Parliament Revolts, Brits to Stay Out of Syria -- News from Antiwar.com Seems to me that if Emperor Obama refuses to consult with congress before attacking Syria the military should REFUSE to launch what will CLEARLY be an unconstitutional, illegal and immoral attack.  Of course they won't do that because they are just as useless when it comes to honoring their OATHS to uphold and defend the constitution as are the spineless and gutless cowards in congress.  It's humiliating when even the British Parliament has more backbone than the American Congress. 

Even Jimmy Carter recognizes that the old Republic is dead! I stumbled upon this story today, somehow it barely got mentioned in the Imperial Press Service coverage of "News" last month. I give you this so those who think I exaggerate the death of the Republic can have a more moderate voice to consult, Jimmy Carter: Soe Zeya Tun | Reuters  Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter gestures before delivering a speech at a hotel in Yangon on April 5, 2013. By Peter Taber, Special to the BDN Posted  July 31, 2013,  at  1:16 p.m. Anyone is naive who thinks the commonly available sources for news in the U.S. are effectively superior to the Soviet news organization Pravda, whose Orwellian name is a hybrid noun meaning both “truth” and “justice.” There seems to be little difference between the dominant news organ of the old U.S.S.R. and U.S. corporate media, which might just as well have a single outlet perhaps titled “Fairalanced” (an English hybrid noun I...

Turns out I cannot NOT talk about the obscenity that is the American Empire.  The fact that there is a constant stream of talk about Emperor Obama ordering an attack on yet another Middle Eastern state makes me want to vomit and go buy one of those nasty red white and blue bits of cloth with stripes and stars to clean it up... maybe burn it on the trash pile after it dries. First of all I am old enough to recall the days when this Empire still at least pretended to be a Republic, and when the press questioned Imperial Pronouncements and sought independent verification of what they said and called them on it when it turned out to be lies.  This is no longer the the way things are in the American Empire.  Today we have an all powerful Emperor who does not even pretend to consult the impotent cowards of the Senate and the House before unleashing the Imperial Legions on the women and children of far away lands, raining down death and destruction to enforce the will of the Emp...

Oh my, looking at current events in the Middle East I really do regret my irrevocable vow not to pollute this blog with politics.  Please Pray for peace and justice in the Middle East.  It will not come from the United States shoving it's big nose in places it doesn't belong, that is for sure.   So, see, this post was really about PRAYER :-)  I won't go in to a long rant about... the US and it's myriad little wars... no... I won't do it!  Arrrrgh!  :-p~

What Mary may have been thinking at the end her life, awesome. http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/issuesetc.org/podcast/sbotwweedon08-23-13.mp3

It has now been 15 days since I deactivated my Facebook and Twitter accounts  as an experiment to see if I could reduce the amount of time and energy I wasted online.  After a fortnight of no Facebook I find that I have returned to my older habits of reading books and writing.  It turns out that Facebook had been stealing so much of my time that I read little else.  Before Facebook I used to read a couple of books per week.  During the now-ended Facebook phase of my life my book reading ground to a near stop, I was lucky to get through one book a month!  I must say that I do not miss anything about Facebook.  Not the announcements of glorious victory in various games, not the incessant "cute" cat pictures, not the bombastic political posts from left and right wings both, and yes, I'm guilty of those myself, I vow not to pollute this blog with them in the future. I don't miss the lame jokes, the myriad "blessings from God" posts nor the "new age"...