Musings of a once sane mind.

scream…

Sometimes all I want to do is scream.

It’s 10:30am and I’m sitting at my desk. I use the term sitting loosely because the reality is, the chair is simply propping me up.

Wait, I have to back up. Not for you - but i’m trying to figure out how I got here. I have the cold sweats, my mouth is wearing the peety sweater of last night’s scotch, 

and from what my memory tells me - this should be friday morning.

Let’s back up.

Take a deep breath.

You’ll get through this.

I don’t know where to start. I’ve never been what most people would call “normal”. Until I was about 14 I didn’t know there was such a thing. 

My fellow classmates that year let me know there was, and that I of all people, certainly did not meet the criteria to join such a prestegious organization.

Most of them are now either dead, in jail, or working some dead end job to support 3 kids. Maybe I’m not normal, but I perhaps that’s not so bad?

I have a hard time focusing sometimes. My brain jumps all over the place. Which brings me back to Tuesday (or is it friday?) morning. The last thing I remember was company happy hour and telling the

head my department he was an asshole and nobody liked him. Sometimes I feel like the class clown, like that night. I’m the novelty, not normal, the amusement people look at and get a rise out of momentarily

before moving on. I’m 17 for that happy hour, at a bar in downtown New York - where it’s 21+ at the door. My coworkers have mostly all been out of college for at least a year or two, and here I am

a highschool dropout. Talk about pressure. Talk about insecurity. All your highschool nerves and self consciousness rolled up into a ball - now throw it into corporate america 10 years early.

Anyways. It’s Monday morning, the day of my 33rd birthday. I’ve been looking back on my life a lot lately. Not in a sad mid-life-crisis sort of way, but, just in the way people do sometimes when they realize

they’re not 17 anymore. For someone with very few regrets in life, I can’t figure out what this nagging pull is at the back of my mind.

I missed something. I blew past an obvious fork in the road where I should have made a left at Albuquerque  Maybe I was looking at the map, or maybe I was trying to figure out if it was tuesday or friday.

All I know is I have the uneasy feeling that something was left undone. Even if I could go back and finish it, which I can’t - I don’t even know what “it” is.

Deep breath.

In, out.

I have a meeting in 5 minutes. I have to explain to a client how we’re going to utilize mobile technology to enhance their position in the market, which will bring in more data which we can mine

for their marketing campaign. Thus allowing us to more accurately target potential customers and….

fuck.

I think I just threw up.

I don’t know if it’s Monday, or Tuesday, or Friday - and frankly I don’t much care anymore. 

The sun is shining through my windows and all I can help but do is take a deep breath, and just be glad I made it this far.

No matter how much longer it lasts, that in it’s self is a miracle. 

and now that I think about it, it’s Monday…

I dream

I know I’ll never have wings.

I dream of standing on top of the world.

Cold, naked, scared. Screaming at the top of my lungs. 

That the world might glance, breath held.

A leap of faith is all it takes. 

I know i’ll never have wings, but some day I will fly.

How to prevent keyboard from popping on iPad

I’ve asked I don’t know how many people now - “how can i prevent the built-in keyboard from sliding out when you activate a text field on the iPad?”.

The short answer is “you can’t”.

That answer however is only half right. There is a workaround. While it’s true that when an input field takes focus - the keyboard will slide out. But - what if the input never takes focus?

Consider the following code:

<div onclick=”someJSFunction();”><input type=”text” onfocus=”javascript:this.blur();”/></div>

Essentially what happens, is the containing div layer will fire it’s call to “someJSFunction()”, then the input will attempt to focus - but immediately be blurred. As long as you handle some sort of input mechanism in the javascript call of the containing div layer - you’re fine. 

Generally what I do is grab the object reference to the child input of the container, and update it’s value (normally with jquery $(targetObj).val(‘blah’); )

I’m sure there’s also a way to stop the click/tap event from propagating down from div -> input - but this way is super simple, and doesn’t require hardly any coding or event handling at all. Just a single onclick event. 

What if lanza was “al hussein”?

Trying to quiet down on the subject, but there is one thing I find interesting.

If this Lanza guy’s last name was “al hussein” and he had brown skin - we’d be calling this terrorism. There would be swat teams posted at every school in the country. We would be discussing how we can improve security at our schools and what  we can do as citizens to stop these things from happening. Rather than talking about banning guns, we would be talking about how the terrorists are here at our shores, and parents around the country would be considering picking up a handgun or rifle to protect their family.

Since it’s an average white guy - it’s a social injustice. It’s about guns, not security, not the will of evil people to do evil things or how to deal with it. It’s guns, and crazy people, and just ban ‘em all - lock ‘em all up - and move on. Nothing to see here.

But - think about that for a minute. Think about the bigger implications. What if somebody of brown skin and a funny last name decided they did want to kill lots of people? Seems like they’ve got a pretty good model for it, and we’re largely doing nothing to keep it from happening. They don’t need to strap a bomb to their chest or devise some nuclear weapon. These things DO happen in other countries - all the time, and we label it terrorism. Is that not what this is? Is the act of terrorism not the targeting of unarmed civilians and women and children - simply to cause as much pain and suffering as possible? Isn’t that what happened? 

So why do we treat one case differently than the other? 

Dear Mr President.

Dear Mr President,

There were two moments during the 2012 election cycle that made me realize how far you’ve come as a leader, and that you deserve the opportunity to lead for a second term.

The first came during a debate on economics with Mitt Romney. When you said very directly that one of the most important things you need to do as a leader, is say no to your own party. To have the fights that need to fought. 

The second came during the last debate. When asked about gun control - you responded in a way no politician has in all the years of gun control debate I’ve suffered through. You spoke to the heart of the problem. Addressing not just the gun - but the social, economic, educational, and cultural problems that lead one to pick up a gun in the first place. It was honesty I have not heard on the subject in a long time, and it was one of the things that made me think you deserved another chance in the White House. That your goal sincerely was about changing politics and changing the way we approach problems.

It is said the test of one’s principles is how long you will stand by them in a crisis. Clearly we are in a crisis in this country. It is one we have faced for many years. One that the old guard of the democratic party - the Feinstein’s and Pelosi’s and Lautenberg’s and Schumer’s and Rangel’s and McCarthy’s have tried and failed to address through the latter part of the 20th century. While they may represent the best thinking of their time, their time has passed. Their policies have been tried, and failed. Their best thinking has left us in the situation we face today.

I urge you to stand by the principles and ideas that you campaigned on during this last election. To look beyond the best thinking of yesterday, beyond the boilerplate magazine bans and beyond generic “assault weapons ban” legislation that will inevitably surface. To show leadership and say no to the failed ideas and policies that quite frankly lead to this cultural disaster in the first place. They fail to address the problem, and are just another example of Washington’s desire to “kick the can down the road” or “just do something” rather than face issues head on.

I urge you to stand up and face the problems that those same voices lacked the courage to face over the course of the last 30 years. To stand up and and address the systemic cultural plagues that lead to violence and crime - regardless of access to firearms. 

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. These are your words. These are your ideas. The test is whether you will show leadership and stand by them, or cower to the failures of our past. 

Sincerely,

Nearly 100,000,000 firearm owners in the United States.