Technology and why it matters to the Male Ego

As we age our bodies go through a lot of changes. Our metabolism starts to slow down, making it a bit more difficult to keep a thin physique. Eyesight diminishes so people end up in the supermarket holding food items at arm’s length trying to read the labels. We don’t have the stamina to walk or run as far, we turn up the heat a lot sooner in winter, and our short term memory seems to… what was I talking about?

Now, I can’t speak about the aging process for women, they have their own set of aging issues.  But for men there are things that happen that seem particular to men, like our hair falling off our heads and suddenly growing out our ears.

I’ll never forget the day I realized my hair was thinning.  I was in the Air Force and liked to keep my hair cut to perfect military specifications. To keep a clean cut I used a razor to swipe off the little hairs that grow on the back of my neck. Well, one day I decided to ensure my quick swipes were doing the job right, so I pulled out a small mirror.  Turning my back to the large bathroom mirror and gazing through the small one so I could get a good look at the back of my neck I suddenly saw the top of my head, and there it was. On the crown of my skull there was a bald spot.  A BALD SPOT!?!?!  I stood transfixed by the hairless hole on my head and screamed like I had just seen a spider.  What, I hate spiders.  They’re creepy.  Judge me.

Now, I’ve always thought it pretty heinous that so many women feel they have to slather themselves with makeup or shove big implants into their breasts or workout 80 hours a week to stay thin in order to look good for men. But as much as women think that’s what men want, men also think women want certain things in a man too.  Men believe women want tall, dark, handsome men with chiseled features who look like they could kill a Stegosaurus with their bare hands while singing like Justin Timberlake and saving a puppy from drowning. They like a full, thick head of hair and perfect features like they belong on the cover of GQ or in a Twilight movie. These guys exist, you know them, you try to talk to them and they say, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.” Unfortunately the rest of us have to work at it, and when a normal man starts to blow his feathers it’s traumatizing.

I spent a lot of years working on Air Force flight lines. The thing about military flight lines is they’re full of military planes. Big, noisy military planes. The first part of my career was spent on the island of Okinawa working around F-15 fighter jets. Unless you’ve experienced it, you can’t imagine the high-pitched scream these things make when they taxi out of their revetments. You feel like you’re at a concert standing right in front of a couple bagillionwatt speakers with Aerosmith, Motely Crew, KISS, Mötorhead, AC/DC, and Led Zepplin all playing at the same time with the volume on 1,000. It’s loud.

So after years of this my hearing started to diminish. Not catastrophically, just the higher frequency range. It happened slowly and I didn’t realize it until I went to the doctor at the behest of my wife who said I couldn’t ever hear her. I told the doc that I had problems hearing people right in front of me if I was in a restaurant or bar with a large crowd of people generating a lot of background noise. He tested my hearing and informed me that I needed hearing aids. HEARING AIDS!?!?! AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!  What, I saw a spider again.

So I was given a pair of hearing aids which were small and fit behind my ears. Practically invisible, right? But then my male ego kicked in and whispered in my ear “Pssst, what’s wrong with you?  You’re not 80, you’re 45!  You’re too young to be wearing hearing aids and people are going to laugh at you!” Well, that’s what he would have said if I could’ve heard him, but I didn’t because I need HEARING AIDS!!  AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!  Damn spiders.

So I never wore my hearing aids except when I knew I’d be in a loud environment. I’d decided I would rather take the chance of people seeing the hearing aids than sit there all night squinting at the person right in front me trying to read their lips.

But then something cool happened. I good friend brought his new girlfriend to a get-together one day and it turned out she is an Audiologist. I told her about my hearing aids, which I wasn’t wearing at the time, and she told me to make an appointment to see her. I did, and she gave me a thorough ear exam to confirm just how crappy my hearing was. She told me what the range of frequencies were that my hearing had lost and I responded “Funny, that’s the exact same range as my wife’s voice.”  Mystery solved.

Anyway, she ended up giving me new hearing aids. These aren’t just any hearing aids though, they’re magic hearing aids! They have cool technology that does cool stuff, like when I answer my iPhone the audio beams straight into both ears via a Bluetooth connection with my hearing aids! And when my wife goes to bed and tells me to turn down the TV, I simply mute the set and the audio streams directly into my ears in perfect stereo. And of course, it wouldn’t be modern technology without an app! So now as I walk into different sound environments I pull out my smartphone and adjust my hearing aids to suite the place I’m at, and I can also save the settings for where I’m at so when I return the app detects it and asks me if I would like for it to adjust the hearing aids to the settings I used the last time I was there.

Its nerd nirvana for the hearing impaired I tell you!

I was really blown away by how cool these things are, and now I wear them all the time just so I can show people how cool they are! I honestly don’t mind telling people I wear hearing aids now because I have “6 Million Dollar Man” ears and I want people to know about it.

It took technology to sooth my male ego, and that’s something that shouldn’t be overlooked. Technology changed me from an eye-squinting-because-I’m-trying-to-read-your-lips buffoon to a confident man who can hear the conversations around him.

Thank God for technology and what it’s doing for our lives, especially for men who are afraid their diminished capacities will undermine their inner Schwarzenegger, and they won’t be able to impress women by saving the planet from evil aliens.

So until my next post, good friends, the answer is yes… I can hear you now.

Let's Pray Real Quick

Prayer.  It’s a direct line to the All Mighty.  It’s used to petition and plead, as well as praise and thank God for His goodness towards us.  But so often it seems that Christians don’t give prayer the respect it deserves.  I sometimes see prayer treated as an annoyance, like it’s just something we have to get through so we can dig into our Bible study or other Christian event, so we begin by saying “Let’s pray real quick and we’ll get started.”
It’s a statement I hear often, and aside from being a grammatical tragedy it also leaves me wondering if the event may not go as well as it would if we had stopped and spent time truly communicating with God first.  What would our mindset be after 20 minutes of connecting with God instead of 20 seconds?

We have a model to follow in Jesus.  We find Him in the Bible withdrawing often to be alone and pray because that direct communication with His Father was vital to His wellbeing, and it should be treated the same way by all of us.

Prayer is powerful.  It not only revitalizes us, it’s a tool in our arsenal for fighting evil.  Mark shows this in his telling of a possessed boy.  Jesus commanded the evil spirit to come out, and afterward his disciples asked why they weren’t able to drive it out themselves.  Jesus’ reply was “This kind can come out only by prayer.” Mark 9:29.  Jesus is telling us that prayer is so powerful that it can drive out the most stubborn of evil spirits.

Peter urges us to be earnest and disciplined in our prayers. 1 Peter 4:7, and Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to pray ceaselessly. We’re reminded time after time in the Bible about the importance of prayer, so why do we sometimes give it such little notice.  Why do we sometimes treat it as a Christian checkbox just to say we did it before we start our Bible study, or VBS, or Life Group meeting, or even a worship band rehearsal? 

What would your event or meeting look like if prayer was the most important thing you did in it?

Let’s give prayer the respect it deserves and not be in such a hurry to begin our events. Don’t blow through a prayer just to get it out of the way.  Start your next event, whether it be a small gathering or a large group, with a time of truly connecting with God.  Spend time asking Him to join your event and let His Holy Spirit be felt by everyone there.  Prepare your event for God’s presence and see what happens.  Start your event by saying “Let’s ask Jesus to join us here,” instead of “Let’s pray real quick.”

God, thank you for the gift of prayer. Thanks for being a God that is available to us and for answering our prayers.  Help us to better use our prayers to prepare our daily lives for your presence in them. Amen.

5 Reasons the Republican Party is going to Fail (it's not what you think)

Sitting on the sidelines of politics is amusing, to me. Watching the two parties go at each other just continues to show how mean spirited Democrats and Republicans have become.  But one party is getting it right while the other flounders, and here are 5 reasons why the Republican Party is going to fail:

1. They don’t know our societies social pecking order -

Today’s culture is based on youth. Everywhere we turn we see how youth is valued more than experience. We see everything from commercials about the importance of youth, to hearing jokes about how old people are more of a burden than a treasure trove of information. Steve Jobs was 52 when the iPhone came out. His grasp of innovation was built on years of experience, not youth.

Republicans know that experience trumps vigor, but what they don’t get is that America doesn't care. Our society has been programmed to believe that old people are stupid and a burden on society, but the Right continues to prop up caricatures of this mindset as their leaders and they ignore the millions of 20/30 year old Republicans who are the savior of their Party. 

The Democrats spend a lot of time referencing youth with their party, and it’s working. Young people today think that if you’re going to be cool and socially relevant you have to be a Democrat. That’s what they hear and read on a daily basis. The Republicans don’t seem to get this and they’re losing the future voting base of America.

2. They apparently didn't pass high school history -

Republicans have a wealth of ammunition at their disposal when it comes to the history of the two parties. Most people today will tell you that Republicans are racist. Why? Because that’s what they've been told over and over, but the Republicans don’t fight back. 

It’s odd that Republicans don’t simply open a history book and show people that in fact it’s the Democratic Party that was born of racism and continues to be covertly racist through less noticeable means, such as government handouts.

Republicans are doing a terrible job of showing the country their minority base, which makes it simpler for Democrats to shed their racist past on to them. 

I wrote an article on how Democrats have changed history so people don’t know simple facts, like they started the KKK. You can read it here.

3. They don’t point out that Democrats are rich - 

Democrats have spent a lot of time railing against the “rich white Republicans” and have convinced America that they’re out of touch with our society. This is mostly done by actors and singers who people seem to bow down to and believe what they say is gospel. I don’t understand why Republicans don’t point out to everyone that the very people they think are telling them the truth are actually the real rich people in this country. 

Seriously, the richest segment of this country is Hollywood. Actors, singers, producers, directors… all of them make millions of dollars a year, but have somehow convinced the public that they’re just regular Joe’s who are standing beside them fighting against “the man.” People don’t see that they’re actually standing on a $2 million yacht. 

People like Bill Maher sit on their TV programs and say completely unrealistic things about Republicans but he does it in the form of a joke so his audience laughs and thinks it must be true because it made them feel good. Democrats push these witty people to the forefront a lot, and it’s a great tactic because it makes the Republicans look foolish, when in fact their statements have no real substance or proof.  It’s sad that a smart-ass gets more credibility than a scholar bearing facts.

But believe me folks, you will never get invited to a single party thrown by any of the people you idolize in the entertainment industry because they don’t want to get your minimum wage earning dirt in their $30 million mansion.  They really don’t give a rat’s rump about you, they just know how to manipulate the masses, it’s their job. 

4. They don’t use the media -

It’s true that whoever owns the media will own the people. TV, movies, blogs, newspapers… no one can argue that it’s mostly owned by liberals, and their stories are slanted in that direction. It’s a smart move though, grab the minds of the people and you get your way. 

It never fails that as I read articles I’ll hit a section that skewers the Right with a subtle zinger. But add up 10 million zingers a year and suddenly you have traction in the minds of the masses. 

Sometimes it’s subliminally placed in media. A good example is the picture I chose for this post.  Notice that success points to the “left,” while failure points to the “right.” It doesn’t seem like much but it’s subliminally putting out a message, and you’ll find this kind of stuff in a lot of articles.  

The Left says that Republicans are all rich, and if that’s true why haven’t they taken over the media? Hollywood has become as much political as it is entertaining. Why aren’t Republicans setting up their own studios with their apparent riches and hiring conservative actors they can make famous so they can convince people that conservatism is good? Instead of having people like Rush Limbaugh spouting unhelpful spooge that just incites anger, they should build an industry like the liberals in which they can influence people.  

5. They can’t count -

Elections are tough, and Republicans seem to rely on grabbing the most votes, but as we’ve seen in several elections getting the popular vote won’t get you elected because of the Electoral College. It takes winning key states which garner the most electoral votes to win an election. 

Democrats have spent years building a suitable base in key states to draw liberals to them. It’s a simple strategy, create liberal havens to attract your voter base to move where their votes can have the most impact. It’ll be interesting to see if Republicans can win a presidential election in coming years. I have a feeling they won’t get the electoral votes.

Republicans don’t seem to have a clue about any of this. They have a road-map for success laid out right in front of them by Democrats, but they seem too stupid to replicate it, and for that their party is doomed to failure.

Forget Priorities... Blame Someone!

So recently the Affordable Healthcare Act went into effect and people can now go to HealthCare.gov (link) to create an account and find healthcare resources.  Well, it didn’t go so well.  The site has been plagued with problems, everything from not being able to sign in to incorrect pricing for insurance plans, and now it’s a daily headline about the company that created the site being substandard (link), or programmers complaining about unrealistic deadlines (link), or whether or not the president knew the site was faulty before it went live (link).

Wow, seriously?  A website that doesn’t work as advertised?  When has that ever happened?  Ummm, like every day! 

Back in 2000 I was part of a corporation that built and hosted websites, so I have a little background in this stuff.  I can tell you that building an ecommerce site can be a very delicate thing, especially with today’s programming technologies.  There are a lot of web browsers that have to be taken into consideration from Internet Explorer, FireFox, Chrome, and many others (link) which all have their own intricacies of handling code.  Programming a website the size of HealthCare.org is a really big project.  I looked at the source code for the site, and there are over 1,600 lines of visible code just to make the very first page render on your screen.

But let’s get down to brass tacks – why are we having congressional hearings about a website that doesn’t work correctly?  Really, why?!  We’re literally paying expensive congressional mouth pieces to root out the evil that caused this ginormous website to malfunction like it’s an anomaly or something.

Think about the technologies you have, has it always worked correctly?  Isn’t the fact that iOS 7.0.3 was released so soon after iOS 7 hit the streets enough evidence to prove that technologies sometimes don’t work correctly?  We’re not having congressional hearings about that, are we?  Why is it so important to find someone to blame with the HealthCare.org website?

Politics.

I’d love to see how much of our tax dollars are wasted every year on politics, I think it would be staggering.

But I’m not going start on the politics of this issue or I’ll be writing for the next week.  There are serious problems in this country that need the attention of our government.  Investigating a website issue seems like a huge waste of time when over 14 million children in this country have to rely on food banks for subsistence. (link)

Let’s get real about what our priorities should be, because I guarantee there will be another website malfunction tomorrow.

“God, please open our eyes to the priorities of your gospel: to feed the hungry, to house the homeless, and to serve the underserved.  Amen.”

Keep the Change

I have a wrist watch that’s been sitting in a basket on my kitchen counter needing repair for some time.  One of the pins that holds the band to the watch broke and I’ve been meaning to get it replaced for several months, it just hasn’t been a priority because let’s face it, most people don’t need a time piece on their wrist any longer since we have a very precise clock in our smartphones.

However, it’s a nice watch and I decided I would take some time over the weekend to find a repair shop and get the pin replaced, so after doing a search on watch repair I decided to visit the L. E. Estrada Watch and Jewelry Repair shop.  It’s a very small business in a very small strip center in an out-of-the-way part of town.

When I got there the door was locked with a hand written note on the door instructing me to knock.  I didn’t find this odd because most jewelry places keep their doors locked because the bad guys like to target places like this.

After a minute I heard the door unlock and little old man opened the door.  I went in and I could tell it was a family owned business and the gentleman who opened the door was Mr. Estrada himself.  There were two other people in the shop already so after locking the door again Mr. Estrada went back to his task of servicing his customers. 

The shop was very small with lots of interesting clocks on the walls that reminded me of my childhood and our cuckoo clock from which a bird would spring out every hour and loudly cuckoo the number of times that matched the hour it was announcing.

After a bit Mr. Estrada came to me and I showed him my watch.  In broken English he said he could fix it, and after a few minutes he returned with my watch fully repaired.  I asked how much and was told $1.50.  Of course I don’t carry cash, because it’s not 1998, so I pulled my card out only to be told “cash only.”

I told him to hang on to the watch and I’d go find an ATM, but instead he handed it to me and kindly said “you pay me later.”  I could tell from his smile that he was basically telling me that it was only a buck and a half so don’t worry about it and just take the watch.

I appreciate people who are gracious, and I could tell Mr. Estrada was the type to give people a break, even if it cost him money.  So I left and immediately pulled out my iPhone and asked Siri to find an ATM.  I’m a grace filled person too, and I was going to ensure Mr. Estrada was paid for his work. 

So I followed Siri’s directions to the nearest bank which turned out to be completely wrong.  She led me into a residential neighborhood and then as I sat at a stop sign surrounded by nothing but houses she announced that I had arrived at the bank.  “Siri you suck at directions!” I said to her and she replied “Now now, I’m only trying to help.”

Feeling a little ashamed that I just berated a non-existent person I did a manual search for an ATM and a mile later I was at my destination.  It took a few seconds to recall my pin number because it’d been a long time since I needed cash, and as I stepped through the menus to extract my money it came to a screen that said I would be charged $2.50 because we’re the bank and we can do whatever we want.  Sucka!

I stood for a few seconds looking at the screen and thinking that I was about to spend $2.50 to get $1.50 to give to someone who told me he didn’t need it.  What was I doing!?  But that answer was easy, I was doing the right thing even if it cost me. 

I got the money and bought something small so I could break up the $20 bill and returned to the shop.  The surprise when Mr. Estrada opened the door to find me holding two $1 bills was worth the effort.  I handed him the money and said “keep the change,” and he just stood there with a confused look on his face as I told him to have a great day and walked back to my car.

It’s the simple things that can mean the most to people, and although my watch repair probably ended up costing me almost $5 in gas, time and the ATM fee, it was really worth it to know that I made someone happy that day.

“God, thanks for putting Mr. Estrada in my path, and for the opportunity to test my grace.  But most of all thanks for instilling in me the desire to go the extra mile to do the best, right thing.”