10.21.2021 – I learned that no one

I learned that no one
was coming to rescue me
and that was OK

In my morning reading of the news of, about and from around the world I came across the article, “Life after loneliness” or was the title, “Life after loneliness: ‘I was a single, isolated workaholic – until I learned to love my own company‘”?

The article was written by someone named Saima Mir.

Not that the name meant anything to me but according to her website she is ” . . . a writer and journalist. Read all about my thoughts on life, love, and the world, as I navigate writing and raising boys.”

I was intrigued enough to read the story.

It was the usual story of someone dealing with a lot of issues and then coming to terms with those issues.

It was her conclusion that I found unusual.

When I read the lines:

What I learned was that no one was coming to rescue me – and that was OK.

I found acceptance, and even began to love my own company.

Offering an empathic ear to others also set me free.

I am all about solutions.

My life in online news was folks bringing me problems and me fixing those problems.

If life throws a problem at me I know there has to a fix, a solution to that problem.

There has to be.

There has to be, right?

Maybe not …

Maybe there is no fix.

Maybe there is no solution.

Maybe there is no fix or solution within my means.

Goodness knows my path through this world the last year should be evidence that I am not the one in charge.

My morning starts with reading.

My morning starts with reading and coffee.

My morning reading starts with The Bible.

My Bible reading starts with the Bible Gateway’s Verse of the day.

I try not to read too much into my reading.

That each verse is selected for me.

I was part of the team that created this online feature back in 1995.

We were given a text file of 365 Bible verses and then we created a script that presented one online every 24 hours on the Zondervan website.

So the concept that each day’s verse was selected personally for each person is a bit hard to accept.

But then we are talking about God things so maybe it isn’t that hard or shouldn’t be that hard to accept.

ANYWAY, the verse the other day was “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” (Psalm 27:14).

Wait for the Lord.

Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

I am OK with that.

See, I don’t need to be rescued.

I will be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

That is why no is coming to rescue me.

And I am OK with that as well.

Yeah, sure, easy to say but I am OK with that, too.

10.20.2021 – beach breeze breezily

beach breeze breezily
breezes across the beaches
breezy beachy days

I grew up in West Michigan.

The beaches of Lake Michigan were not far away and I was there often.

For as much time that I spent there, I cannot say that the pleasures of a warm breeze off the water happened often.

Warm water at the beaches of Lake Michigan at the height of summer meant water around 70 degrees.

Any further out, the water stayed around 60.

With a breeze off the water, you tried to lay as flat as you could on your beach towel to get out of the wind.

Now living in South Carolina coast, the warm breeze off the Atlantic Ocean is a wonder.

And this was in October.

Part of a series based on an afternoon spent at the beach on Hilton Head Island.

I wanted to see if I would be ‘inspired’ by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Some turned out okay.

Some were too forced.

Some were just bad.

Some did involve some or all of those feelings.

As far as it goes, I guess I was inspired by by what I saw, by what I heard, by what I smelled, by what I tasted, what I felt emotionally and what I felt tactilely.

Click here for more Haiku from the BEACH

10.19.2021 – where is humor bred

where is humor bred?
in the heart, in the head?
not on the google . . .

Whether you were aware of it or not, the Google has let it be known that the World has come to an end.

Maybe the World as I know it.

Maybe the World as I think it should be.

Maybe the World as I think that you should think that it should be.

Never the less, this World is ‘la fin’.

Let me explain.

I am the online guy for a company located in South Carolina.

Human Resources (just saying, that term always has me shaking my head … just what WAS wrong with personnel?) has never known what to call us web people.

We started out as Webmasters.

That is the term I prefer.

Back in the day it meant something.

It meant something to other webmasters.

It meant we did it all.

Coding, Server Admin, DNS, Images, Scripting, Hosting and Email and anything else that it took to create and manage a website.

I think today such a person is a Full Stack Developer.

But HR was never really comfortable with a job title with the word master in it.

As an aside, you want to freak out an HR rep, ask them for a job title that includes the word manager.

I have been Web Guy, Web Guru, Podfather, Digital Specialist and other things.

They have their language and I have mine.

As the company web guy one of my tasks is to keep up on what the Google is doing and make sure that the company website and web polices are not in any way working against Google.

This would be a lot easier if the Google themselves knew what they were doing.

You do what you can.

Some of the changes that affect everyone who uses the Google is how the SERP is put together.

You all use SERP’s everyday and I bet you didn’t know it.

SERP is the search engine results page or the page you land on once you enter a search term into the Google,

You may or may not have noticed the way the Google is changing their SERP.

Where there used to be a list of search results you now have paid ad position results, rich snippets, knowledge graphs and knowledge panels, the three pack and the image pack and a whole lot of other links.

These are all bits of information that the Google has decided may be helpful to you in your search for some piece of information online.

The Google wants to help.

Honest.

That is why the Google also added the SERP block titled, PEOPLE ALSO ASK.

The Google is all about what other people clicked on when duplicating your search.

The Google wants to help you by suggesting other possible searches if the results for your original search are not what you were searching for.

This is what brings me to todays haiku.

where is humor bred?
in the heart, in the head?
not on the google . . .

Recently I had reason to search the EXACT title of the Monty Python Movie, The Search for the Holy Grail.

The news of late has not been great has it?

Drought, Fire, Famine, Crime, Politics, Pestilence and Harry and Meghan all brings on the feeling that the World is rolling fast downhill.

As Minister Jim Hacker once said, “When things are going downhill we need someone to get in the drivers seat and step on the gas.”

Despite all the headlines of despair, it was my search for the EXACT title of the Monty Python Movie, The Search for the Holy Grail that shook my core to the core.

The apocalypse isn’t coming.

The apocalypse is here.

Let me show you why.

I typed in Monty Python and auto complete added ‘and the holy grail’ which I was comfortable with and I hit enter.

I got my SERP.

I looked at my SERP.

I looked again at my SERP.

I stared at my SERP.

I stared in horror, that cold-water-in-the-bath realization coming over me.

Did it really say that?

Did it really really say that.

I had just used the Google to search Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Simple enough.

The Google wanted to help.

The Google asked itself why I or anyone today might search Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Like I said, the Google wanted to help.

To help me and the world, anyone who might search Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Google suggested searches BASED ON THE GOOGLE’S recorded global experiences of what other people were searching for.

Understand?

The Google TAILORS its search results based on what other people clicked on who entered the same search terms.

In other words, the Google, wants to be helpful, and the Google is saying, “Good Morning Searcher, we saw your search and we thought that these search terms might help in your search for knowledge on this subject.”

Notice I said KNOWLEDGE, not WISDOM.

The Google read my search and from that, the Google let me know what the other top questions were by searchers who had made the same search, which are listed for me under, PEOPLE ALSO ASK.

My search was Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The three most asked questions by searches who also searched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, according to the Google are:

What is Monty Python and the Holy Grail making fun of?

Is Monty Python and the Holy Grail funny?

What is the point of Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

Yep.

Folks, friends and neighbors, forget about the World rolling downhill.

It has crashed into the ice berg.

There is no longer time for the lifeboats.

When the Google Search world at large asks, HAS TO ASK, “Is Monty Python and the Holy Grail funny?” it is all over.

The fat lady has sung.

Turn out the lights.

The party is over.

I don’t care if you know the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow or not, we are in trouble here and no kidding.

10.18.2021 – Once we start to look

Once we start to look
find no shortage of suggestions
forms in our kettles

Adapted from the book, The Architecture of Happiness (2009, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

Once we start to look, we will find no shortage of suggestions of living forms in the furniture and houses around us. There are penguins in our water jugs and stout and self-important personages in our kettles, graceful deer in our desks and oxen in our dining-room tables.

According the The New York Review of Books, this is “A perceptive, thoughtful, original, and richly illustrated exercise in the dramatic personification of buildings of all sorts.”

What I find irrestible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, I would.

10.17.2021 – call works beautiful

call works beautiful
when they succeed in evoking
the significant