Gary's Writing Pad

Music is central in my life. I need good music to reflect my mood, or maybe influence it. Last week, I spent a week away from work and music played a huge role… maybe more than typical.

I must have music on long drives and the eight hour trip to and from Wisconsin is a perfect example of a day’s worth of good music. But it was on the return trip that I felt especially nostalgic and affected. I started out with some 70s and 80s tunes that triggered a lot of memories. By mid journey, the music had shifted to the rock of the 90s and 2000s. Late in the trip, I was feeling a bit fatigued and had some hard rock and modern metal playing.

However it was songs and bands that triggered memories that made this trip unique.

1970s pop/rock brought me back to memories of middle school and recording tapes on my portable cassette recorder from the radio (Fleetwood Mac, Kansas, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Chicago, Steely Dan, and the Eagles).

1980s triggered the most memories. Rush (Tom Sawyer) and Van Halen (Running with the Devil) was dominant at parties and good times with friends. They were among many bands vital in that teenage time! My first concert was Men at Work and it was really fun! Journey reminded me of my first love and very special times in high school with her (Open Arms), but also of deceit and loss as she dumped me for another guy (Faithfully). In fact we were supposed to see the Police in a concert on the night she told me it was off and I cannot listen to many songs by the Police to this day (Every Breath You Take).

Strangely enough, we ended up together and married, at least until we saw The Eagles in concert in Hawaii. My biggest memory was the guy about 5 seats down vomiting profusely for much of the concert (was it a sign?). It’s a memory I would rather not relive (Lyin’ Eyes). It was also the last music memory I have of my ex-wife since we divorced shortly after that.

A few years later, I met a fun and exciting woman I married even though I swore I would never marry again. Hootie and the Blowfish were big between us (I Only Wanna Be With You) and many of the bands you would hear on episodes of Friends or other TV shows of the time (Rembrandts, U2, Oasis, Vertical Horizon, Blessed Union of Souls, Collective Soul, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Third Eye Blind).

We shared an enjoyment of Creed that led me in to the world of Mark Tremonti and eventually Alter Bridge. My music tastes evolved into the 2000s a lot more than it had in the past and went through Rock (Disturbed, Three Doors Down, Red Hot Chili Peppers), and by the 2010s I was into a bit harder rock (System of a Down, Queens of the Stone Age, Deftones, Tool) and finally into some Metal around 2020 (Gojira, Spiritbox).

I guess what inspired this line of thought is that every genre of music, band, and even many songs, seem to trigger a place in my memory of the past. The soundtrack of my life is played out through my musical experiences and preferences. I can place so many events to bands or songs and if I was to write an autobiography, it would be sectioned by songs and bands.

Remember 2020? and 2021? and 2022? It seems like every year since COVID made it to the news, something happens that makes us think it couldn’t get any worse. And every year we get some new, fresh hell to prove us wrong. I am not a pessimist by nature, but maybe closer to a realist. There is always something happening in the world that seems impossible, or at least something we would never have considered on our BINGO card for the year.

Well it’s 2023 and we already have Russia continuing the war in Ukraine, moving to forward deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus. We have North Korea now fielding a nuclear torpedo that can create a coastal-destroying tsunami. China is deploying upwards of 150-200 new ballistic missile silos and threatening to retake Taiwan any day. And this is just the immediate war threats… never mind climate change, drinking water contamination, oppressive social media bans, extreme regressive political policies spreading across the US, and mass shooting reaching new highs. Are we tired of setting a new bar for “crazy year?” I am.

The thought experiment that we might be living in a simulation is fascinating. There are thousand questions and ideas that can come from exploring this topic, but I have just one right now: why?

I mean if we were created as software in a simulated universe or world, what is our purpose? Are we entertainment, like the Sims, or an experiment on society-building? Are we an experiment or a control group, or maybe just a testing ground? Is this SimCity (really SimPlanet) and the operators are throwing disasters and challenges at us on purpose? I’m really curious, although I am certain I won’t find out anything in my life on Earth.

Still, fascinating to consider the “what ifs?”

The Last of Us is probably my favorite show since The Expanse aired. I absolutely love the story and the actors, although I must admit I was a huge fan of the video games before the show. I watched the latest Episode Monday morning before I went to sleep. I usually enjoy fascinating dreams after an intense television show or movie and I enjoy the stimulation.

Today I launched into a Last of Us story-like dream with Ellie as the main character. Except Ellie had supernatural powers and everybody was hunting her. Ok, I have no idea why my dream took this direction but it was wild! Ellie was running from authorities who were trying to capture her in a rural town and she kept causing supernatural distractions and events that led the pursuers away.

Where it turned insane was when they had her cornered in a farmhouse and she had some alien or high-tech artifact in her hand. She concentrated on it and caused a huge earthquake that derailed a train and split the earth. Ok, I didn’t see that in the Last of Us!

Dreams are weird, but we knew that, right?

Disclaimer: I forecasted the weather in the USAF for 16 years and this is how I learned the trade.

The weather forecast is not binary: there is no will rain or will not rain, nor is there sunny or cloudy. Snow forecasts are not 0” or 5” of snow. In fact, it’s not fair to say forecasting provides a range without clarifying what that means.

Forecasting the weather provides a probability of something happening. Cloudy at 2PM? There is a percentage of that occurring at your location. Nothing is 100% or 0% but some probability in between. Even when something seems certain to a forecaster, it’s never really 100% likely, but some measure of value close to 100%, like 98% for example.

We see this all the time when we see precipitation forecasts. A 70% chance of rain at your location for a certain time is just that – a probability that rain should be falling at that time. It can also be applied to the amounts of forecasts, as we often see with snow forecasts.

Most forecasts predict a range of precipitation. These predictions are more accurate than specifying a very specific amount because the odds of that very specific amount verifying with the forecast are actually low. If I predicted 4.5” of snow, then technically a 4.0” snowfall is wrong. In reality though, is that the forecasted amounts can be predicted on a bell curve where the most likely outcome is at the peak of the curve and other possibilities are on either side.

In my previous example, I believe we should get about 4.5” of snow. In the example bell curve here, imagine the green zone © is 4” to 5” of snow received, and the next zones (yellow, D and blue, B) encompass the range of 3” to 6” of snow. That forecast encompasses an 86” likelihood of being correct and giving a reasonable range that one can expect based upon the current data.

Weather forecasting will never be perfectly accurate. We do not sample the atmosphere densely or often enough to get a complete picture of our environment. Also, computing rarely catches the unique perturbations that can occur among those unseen elements.

So give your weather forecaster a break and realize it’s a game of probabilities. That 20% chance of rain sounds like a remote chance, but you might be the one place that manages hitting the 20% jackpot. ;–)

It’s amazing to me that I ended up where I am. I mean when I reflect on all the crazy twists and turns in my life, I still can’t fathom how I got here.

I know, my story is probably an unknown to most of you, but I think the concept is universal. When I think about all the events and decisions I have made in life, I realize that everything could have turned out a thousand different ways. Whether it was a class I took in high school or a decision I made to retrain in the Air Force, every decision is a branch onto a path that could have turned out very differently.

I tried to mentally conceptualize a branching tree in which decisions result in a different life path, but I find it impossible to cover anything beyond the obvious major decisions. There are so many small decisions that combine and culminate into life choices that I find it incredible that I am where I am at today. I think about others I know, especially family members, and wonder how their decisions affected them. Sometimes others’ decisions affected us too and how we reacted is a decision in itself.

We cannot undo our decisions outright. We can adjust course and hope to change our destination if we realize a different choice might have been better, but it will always be impossible to go back and undo the original decision. Life is a journey filled with an impossible number of decisions and choices. We can plan but we really have no idea how our journey will turn out and where we will land. I guess this is reason to enjoy the journey we are on and keep looking forward.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, people worldwide seemed to be relieved that the threat of nuclear war was over. Everything that filled our fears and thoughts about possible nuclear exchange left our awareness and times were good. Gone were the fallout shelters and 3-5 minute steady attack tones on the civil defense systems.

It’s easy to forget that nuclear weapons did not go away and the world kept them for an uncertain future. Sure, we took bombers off routine alert and put the bombs back in bunkers, but the submarines and missile silos always stood ready.

But if you thought the threat couldn’t return, you would be sadly mistaken. The threat has always been there but has been diminished, and has not been on our minds in a while. We can skip over the last couple of decades because that’s all irrelevant now.

Russia is taking an aggressor role in the world’s stage, North Korea is rapidly expanding their arsenal, and now China possibly has a larger missile force than the USA as they surpass US in number of ICBM launchers. I think it’s safe to say that no country’s leader wants a nuclear war, but we have seen how aggressive leaders are willing to risk escalation and threaten other nations.

Prepare for the worst and hope for the best… it’s all we can do.

I try to not get too optimistic or pessimistic about anything, centering on what I think is a realistic centric view of reality. I guess I’ve found myself on the wrong side of predictions before and realize that nothing is a given. Combined with my experience in both meteorology and military operations, I understand everything is probabilities. To predict anything happening in the future, you must realize that nothing is certain or impossible. Sure, something are likely or improbable but those are like the low ends of a Bell Curve.

But lately, I’m finding myself more pessimistic about the future. Not just my future, but for everyone’s. Just today I read the article: “UN chief fears world headed for 'wider war' over Ukraine-Russia.” This short article reflects what I’ve been thinking about Russia for a year now, and probably much longer. It seems the odds continue to grow that Russia drags the world into a much larger war, and possibly a world war. It’s tough to say how that turn out, but it’s certainly not good.

Add in resource exhaustion, climate change, disease/health challenges, animal extinctions, natural destruction, power grid failure, and technological fragility, then it starts to tip the scale more towards a future with poor outcomes. I’m not thinking about future generations either. I am worried about the next couple of years and then the decade following that. There is unrest among people and climate migration is already beginning as drought and floods are displacing people around the world. War keeps showing us that peace everywhere will probably not happen during our lifetimes.

I am not going to become a “prepper,” but I find myself making more precautions for things that could happen. I have a box of essentials packed up and am putting together a better “go bag” in case evacuation becomes necessary. I am starting to put together a better supply of emergency food and water supplies too. Recommendations were for a three day supply but I think a week is a better start.

I guess I’m just feeling safer with a little more preparedness. Who knows what tomorrow brings and whether we can ever really prepare. I doubt a week’s supplies would make a huge difference in any true emergency, but I feel better doing it than nothing at all.

It’s only been three episodes but I have to throw my opinion into the ring of worthless opinions on The Last of Us (HBO TV). I’ve played the video games and was looking forward to this show for a long time. I am not disappointed! However, I’ve seen a variety of opinions in the wild that have surprised me.

For the most part, the reviews have been positive with many writers remarking that this is how a video game should be made into a show. Of course, those reviewers likely had early access to the entire series. So far, there are some notable changes in the show but I have fully supported what I’ve seen. The story is compelling and interesting, absolutely capturing my attention through three episodes.

Some of the negative reviews I have seen remarked that this is just another “apocalyptic  zombie show” in a genre that should have burned out by now. I can understand that people who have watched “The Walking Dead” and it’s spinoffs have grown tired of the same stories playing out in a world full of zombies. I had! However, I feel like The Last of Us offers something a little different.

This story follows a couple of main characters as they venture through the apocalypse, on a mission that we don’t fully understand yet (as of episode 3). Other characters come and go, and their stories are important to framing the world this takes place in, but this will go on a new path. We have the usual antagonists: the infected, the lawless, and the government (FEDRA) and they all seem to be on a collision course with our main characters.

The story however continues to focus on Joel and Ellie, two very different people stuck together in a mission that seems to keep growing longer and further away. They seem like two people that couldn’t possibly get along for long, Joel living in the pain of his past life, and Ellie who is just beginning a life of adventure in a maddingly dangerous world. This is the story to watch. Things take on so many twists and turns that shape the relationship between thest two that you won’t believe how it ends. If you’ve played the video games, you may have a good idea. However, they way the show has been tweaked for TV may throw us all some great surprises!

If I had more time, I would love to write. In fact, I have an idea for a science fiction novel that I am toying with the idea of writing. I think the idea is a bit unique and would make a fascinating story, but my problem is time. I don’t know how much time and effort I can devote to this and will I stick with the project until the end. I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t want to leak the idea in case I go forward with it.

I have written short stories, mostly for myself, family, and college, but this is different. I’m not quite sure how to proceed. What I envision is to flush out the plot, break it into story elements, develop some characters and their stories, and then start writing. I’ve never written anything of this size though so it’s a little intimidating right now.

Toying with the idea anyway….