cheerfulmonk.com

I received an email from Verizon last week saying they were going to raise our bill by $15 a month. This was on top of the fact that even when Andy received my texts he couldn’t text back most of the time. So we phoned Verizon and talked to a fellow. He said, yes, Verizon was trying to get people to move to more expensive plans (we have unlimited text and talking, no data). And if we wanted more reliable service we should try a new iPhone 14, which he said would give us satellite service if needed. We didn’t listen to how much extra that would cost, because an iPhone wouldn’t fit neatly into Andy’s pocket, and we already had to replace his flip phone this winter when he lost the old one in the snow.

But… I did mention that our phone says we can use WiFi if our reception is poor. Would we be charged anything if we used that option? He said no. I had assumed as much, but I like to check my assumptions. So, I spent some time figuring out how to set that up on my phone down here, then Andy and I practiced what he would have to do to connect with Kaitlin and Torben’s Starlink up on the land. I couldn’t do it for him, because he had to be within range of the Starlink, but he tried it today and it worked! He phoned me and then I phoned him. So tomorrow when he gets up there he’ll phone and leave a message on the answering machine and I’ll text him to tell him I received the call. Fingers crossed it keeps working!

When the weather gets warm in a few months he will be taking walks out of the Starlink’s range, so he will then start practicing how to send text messages on the Garmin. He can already send pre-written texts, and of course Kaitlin and I can log on to the Garmin site and see where he is if he needs non-emergency help. For emergency help he will just press the SOS button and they will know where to find him.

Anyway, Verizon raising their price motivated us to learn about WiFi calling, and we’re happy and proud of ourselves.

January 21, 2025

Unearthed Comics

January 20, 2025

This is from a 2021 post:

Never lose the childlike wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what drives us.

I’m sorry I won’t be around to raise my kids. It makes me very sad but I can’t change that fact, so I did everything I could with the time I have and the time I had to help other people.

Someone’s going to push my family off a cliff pretty soon and I won’t be there to catch them and that breaks my heart. But I have some time to sew some nets to cushion the fall so that seems like the best and highest use of my time and I better get to work.
—Randy Pausch, October 23, 1960-July 25, 2008

Yesterday’s post reminded me of Randy, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2008. He said he was trying to keep a positive attitude, but couldn’t be sure about how he was doing. Then he received this e-mail:

… I happened to have been behind you for a few blocks as you were driving from campus last night (Monday). Before I recognized it was you, I found myself thinking, “Gee that guy is really enjoying the moment…..driving down the road on a warm, early spring evening, top down, wind blowing through his hair, with a smile on his face…..probably headed home to a wife and maybe a little one or two……that’s the way to live life.”. And then you turned left and I recognized it was you. I then found myself thinking, “It’s Randy! He looks so happy! And, in this most private of public moments (alone in his car, yet on the road for anyone to observe), I can’t imagine anyone who IS living life more. No one is more deserving!”. Thanks for sharing your happiness/your life so fully with so many of us…….on campus and in your car. You can never know how that glimpse of you tonight made my day, reminding me of what life really is all about…”

As Nightbirde said in yesterday’s video,

You can’t wait until life isn’t hard any more to decide to be happy.

Amen to that.

January 19, 2025

We can’t change it, and we just have to decide how we’re going to respond to that. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
–Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

I thought of Randy when I was hitting a couple of dead ends trying to get my site back up Wednesday. He said we’re bound to encounter brick walls, but we shouldn’t give up, we just have to find a way around them.

The transcript of his talk is here, and the video is below. It’s long, and if you don’t want to know how he was motivated by his childhood dreams, and achieved most of them, I strongly suggest you watch at least the first few minutes. He had been told a month before that his cancer was terminal and at that time he had about three to six months of good health left. He was a brilliant and inspiring speaker.

He gave the lecture on September 18, 2007 and passed away July 25, 2008.

January 18, 2025

gocomics.com/duncan

Yes, that’s me! That’s why when I go on a trip, even if it’s just a for the day, a few hours, I always bring things to play with. And that’s why before I left the ER with my broken hip I made sure I had my iPad and my Kindle with me. The Kindle was just in case I didn’t have internet, but mostly I used my iPad those 45 days I was away from home. My blog, friends, and connection with what was going on in the world, were in that little device.

January 17, 2024

I was surprised to see an article with this title. It talks about these eight ideas:

1. Break your problems into manageable parts
2. Experiment and observe
3. Leverage uncertainty
4. Use data and evidence to make informed decisions
5. Test your assumptions, beliefs and mental models
6. Think long-term
7. Focus on continuous improvement
8. Be curious, like a beginner

For the most part that describes my approach to life. I wouldn’t say “leverage” uncertainty, I mostly do my best to feel comfortable with it so it doesn’t keep me from focusing on what I need to do. The article says,

Despite our best efforts to plan and control our circumstances, there will always be unknown factors and unexpected events that arise.

Uncertainty can be challenging and uncomfortable, but it can also provide opportunities for growth and learning. When faced with uncertainty, we can practice resilience, adaptability, and problem-solving skills. We can also learn to be more patient and accept situations beyond our control.

That sounds sensible to me. For instance, Monday I received an email from the Sucuri, the company that backups my website. It says it was reminding me that they were changing the platform they were using and I hadn’t made the changes necessary for my backups to work (don’t bother reading the details):

Our testing has confirmed that backups for one or more sites in your account will partially or completely fail once the migration is completed, unless the actions mentioned in our earlier message are taken prior to migration.

You can view this in your support ticket dashboard here: https://support.sucuri.net/support/?product

Please reply to this ticket to let us know when the required steps have been taken so that we can confirm that your backups will continue to work as expected once the migration is complete.

I don’t remember ever having been warned before, so I poked around to check to make sure it wasn’t a scam (it’s impossible to talk to a person) and apparently they were right, they had a record of saying:

Hello,

We will be transitioning the Sucuri Backup service to a new platform soon which will run on different servers.

In order to ensure a smooth transition with as little disruption in the backup process as possible, we ask that you allow the following backup server IP addresses within the hosting server on ports 21 or 22 for FTP and SFTP connection, respectively:

What are ManageWP IPs so I can allow them in my firewall settings?

It would be best to consult with your developer or host on the best way to allow these IPs.

If no action is taken, the backups will fail once the migration takes place.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

We thank you for your cooperation.

Groan! I didn’t know what they were talking about and I didn’t want to learn, so I phoned Hostmonster, my hosting company, and managed to find someone who was capable of dealing with the problem. He let me email him what Sucuri wanted, so it was out of my hands. I received an email Tuesday saying they had made the changes, so I passed that on to Sucuri. Sucuri wanted them to make sure some other parameters were set correctly, so there was some more passing back and forth, but it sounded as if everything was done by Tuesday night. Everything was working fine by the time I went to bed.

Then I received an email from Myra (thanks, Myra!) yesterday saying she couldn’t access my site. Sure enough, I couldn’t either, so I spent some time trying to get some technical support from Hostmonster again. Phoning and trying chat didn’t work as easily as before and I decided I was being dumb and went back to the support ticket and told them. By the time the chat fellow got back to me the problem was solved, with an explanation, and cheerfulmonk was working fine again.

Sorry about the gritty details, but they do illustrate the value of not wasting energy getting frustrated, instead focusing on keeping an alert mind in a relaxed body and on figuring out how to get the problem solved. It takes a lot of practice, but I personally think it’s worth the effort.

I’m still amused by that article.

January 16, 2025

Here’s the video. It does have an ad in the middle that needs to be skipped.

January 15, 2024

I like them because they remind us that we always have choices, even if we don’t like what’s going on in the world.

Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.
–— Wayne Dyer

Life is not the way it’s supposed to be, it’s the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.
—Virginia Satir

Happy people expect problems.
—Alex Mather

I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion — and where it isn’t, that’s where my work lies.
—– Ram Dass

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
––Victor Frankl

We’re not helpless.

January 14, 2025

Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.
—Isaak Dinesen

I love this quote and for me it’s not just about writing, it’s about living our values even though there’s no guarantee things will turn out the way we want. Patience, perseverance, and courage can be powerful when hope is in short supply.

January 13, 2025

gomicscom/9to5

The boss in the cartoon says you can fool some of the people some of the time.

Abraham Lincoln’s quote was,

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

And Bret Maverick, in the 1957-1962 TV series Maverick, added,

And my pappy says those are very good odds!

That’s too true, but it made me laugh and I still remember it.

January 12, 2025