Those old travelin' shoes

I am getting ready to pile all of my worldly possessions into the buckboard and set off on another trip to the northlands.

Thanks to some super clients, the week was the best in a long time and I leave in a very mellow and good mood. Nice not to have a lot of pressure for a change.

Last night the Mac book pro got a case of the dreaded blue screen with the flashing question mark. I hope that I still have a hard drive  but don't have time to deal with it until I return. Might be fried. In any case, I am fairly well  backed up so I will deal with whatever comes down the pike.

I will probably not be posting much unless I get a wild hair and bug a friend for access to their computer or post off Leslie's ipad, which frankly is a pain in the ass for publishing or at least posting photos.

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I had a couple interesting conversations with my friend Ken over beers at the pub this week.

Ken is an ex army photographer, a pilot who gave up his wings when he retired last year, and the former flight operations manager for a large commercial aviation company. He has the laconic nature of his native Kansas, but has a great sense of humor and is a really smart dude.

Ken mentioned to me that when they were interviewing pilots to work for the company they contracted with a company to do psychological evaluations on the prospective hires and come up with what is called a predictive index. A predictive index measures four personality factors, assertiveness, extro or introversion, patience and attention to detail. We are made up of varying quantities of these four traits. I love tests like this and asked him if I could get one but he said that the test is not only proprietary but exceedingly expensive and that the trick is in the analysis portion.

I bet that I am a highly assertive extrovert with little patience and middling to good attention to detail.

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It made me think of some of the times in my life when I managed people. When I had my development company I didn't always have the best relationship with my secretaries,  having little tolerance for mistakes and errors. I was an occasional wall puncher and pushed people maybe a little too much.

Later I managed a financial research company with about twenty employees. I found that no matter how nice and win win I tried to make it with my subordinates,  some of them decided to hate me anyway. Because I was the man. Being nice didn't pay off and some of these people and I don't speak to this day.

Ken says this is why the military has rules against fraternization. You can fraternize with one rank higher and one rank lower than you are but that is it.  He says that it is a very sensible rule and keeps  the military from situations where things can get exploited by unequal relationships e.g. an officer or command authority getting into a romantic relationship with a low level recruit who then can exert undue influence on a given situation. I had never thought of that and want to explore the rule and concept when I have time to research it.

He also said that out of all the branches of military service the Coast Guard had far and away the greatest code of professionalism and training in that regard and in developing leadership skills. Something else I want to look into. Might be a little late to join.

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I was listening to  the Grateful Dead channel on Sirius XM this morning when I heard a familiar concert from Winterland 10/22/78. I was at the show with three thousand of my closest friends and it was epic. The section I heard today was the nubian oud master Hamza el Din and his merry band coming out of drums when the audience started  an asymmetric, polyrhythmic group clap that went on for many minutes and which I was a part of. It was the most complicated beat ever and it came out of nowhere and everybody was so spot on and rightly proud of their selves.

I can only listen to so much dead these days in the car without screaming but this was great.

I jettisoned Sirius in the old van when the portable unit kept breaking but this one is free for a year and the service has gotten better. I like Deep Tracks the best, the playlist and dj's are superb and I get a lot of links to cool old chestnuts.

Other stations that I find interesting are Garage, 60's on 6 and classic vinyl. I try to listen to the 40's station but get a little fatigued listening to big band.  On long roadies I will sometimes listen to the radio classics. Leslie likes First Wave.  Still not enough blues on the service.

Traditional radio really has to step up its game these days with the advent of satellite radio.

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I think that my cronies in my photo group have been doing some good work of late. Check the Fallbrook Shutter site out.

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That's it cheers!