Tag Archives: dailyprompt

Writing prompt III: There and back again by Coffee Commander..

Daily writing prompt
What’s the longest trip you’ve ever taken?
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The longest trip I’ve taken was the best and worst. I happened to take a flight where the airliner never got to the runway.. The plane spent over 3 hours on the tarmac and delayed getting to the next leg of the flight to Philadelphia. When I got to philly I missed my connection, this is where things go from aggravating to bad.

US airways redirected me from a direct flight to CDG airport in France. The problem was they could not find pilots for the flight. so after hours of delay they finally find some pilots. The pilots got on the plane after a delay and as we were taxiing the pilot announces that they are returning to the gate because they had too many flight hours. Back to the gate we go, Defeated and hungry.

I did not know US airways screwed up my itinerary while they did redirect me towards Europe they made a mistake on the computers, They had my paper routing set to Orlando rather than Arlanda somehow the US airways employee fat fingered my location. So if we review my flight plan, It was supposed to be BOS to PHI to ARN , Somehow US airways had me from BOS to PHI to CDG to MCO to ARN?

To this point I had spent 1.5 – 2 hours – Logan Airport ,5 hours – broken plane out of gate – philidelphia airport inside of plane, 45 minutes – 1 hour – attempt #2 at taking off Philadelphia airport illegal flight crew., 5 hours – inside gate 22(?) at airport finding new crew.

to this point we’d been past the gates, with most amenities closed, me starving and other passengers in the same state we had asked for food, the flight attendants gave us a lavish meal of a Soda and a package of pretzels to which I still have to this day.

After getting off the flight and entering paris airport. from all the delays from the start of the flight I tried to find any help possible for my next flight because the connection time was only less 15 minutes(or passed by 15 mins) or so to Stockholm , so finding that the plane leaves from gate 7(?) again across an entire airport.

While I headed across this airport I realized that the setup of the airport is a horrible horrible setup. The airport was very hard to navigate your way through to get to your next location . figuring that I am already 24 hours overdue to my receiving friends I figured that I should reach out to them, I grabbed my phone out of the carry on and Tried to dial *dead* tried again *dead*. I did not know at that the time but T-mobile messed up and set another phone on the account for international travel and my phone to receive international calls. I put the phone away and hoped i would catch the flight and figured worst case I would figure out what to do in Stockholm. I ran to the gate across the cavernous airport with the people mover treadmills and got to my gate and to my dismay the flight was not listed. I found an english speaking person and asked about the flight and it had left an hour beforehand.

Defeated, I decided to make my way to the US airways ticket booth.. and there I realised I won my next prize, they were closed and would not be open till monday a full 24 hours till the booth opened. I managed to spend all of my time in the airport with a few excursions into france because I was bored out of my mind. Given I had not slept, I knew if I sat down I would pass out and I was still analyzing the situation to figure out what to do . I did eventually sit down and my carry-on with on me but not attached to me. There is nothing like waking up with guns in your face asking about your luggage. Given I was scared, Lost, Exhausted I kept trying to do my best not to piss off another country. The problem was every time I fell asleep I would wake up with some very attentive military types. Given it was their third visit and me not having a cigarette in over 2 days I noticed one of them had a pack on them, I gave them a short explanation to my plight and they seemed to take compassion in it. They said hold on and actually brought me out a door that I was not supposed to be out and let me smoke one of their cigarettes.

The Charles De Gaulle Airport security guys were amped but actually very nice. I joked with them where I might end up next. Due to having my bag strapped to my shoulder so long it had actually caused it to bleed fairly bad and I was starting to look like Bruce Willis in die hard. The next twenty four hours had me in a haze. The next morning I was actually able to have the breakfast of champions which was two Heinekens and a basket of rolls .

My next discovery in the airport was the internet kiosk, after my breakfast of the gods, I had some euro coin and it was enough to get on the computer for 10 minutes and cost 15 euros. I loaded up every session possible of Connected messengers, and at the time offline messages were not a thing. And I watched the time count down in desperation for ANYONE to log in. As I watched the time remaining drop into the sub two minute range, A good friend logged in and my typing WPM was likely 400 because I typed an entire book to my friend which was something like “Hey I am at the wrong airport , my flights were diverted my phone doesnt work my card locked up when trying to get money , Call my mother tell her i am fine . tell my mother to call my father and tell him that i am stuck in CDG airport. Contact US embassy please help, US Airways trying to divert me to MCO ” at the 30 second mark my friend said “ok” and I watched my connection die.

Happy I had made a hello world from the wrong part of the world gave me a bit of reserve. I went back to my area I was sitting and listening and hoping someone would find me. Not realizing the whole time over the PA they were calling my name and I was not paying attention to local dialect. My name is pronounced differently in france and suddenly my gun toting friends found me in the airport and they brought me to US airways booth. Now that part of things I had people I had hope and the first thing that the US airways desk agent says is “do you realize that you have a flight to MCO Orlando, at that point I said why on earth would I come to france and divert to orlando when my destination was Arlanda !” The desk agent made a call and what I could see in his hurried voice over the phone turning to abject terror realizing what exactly was happening.

The Desk agent suddenly was a flurry of calls, they routed a call to the US to my parents to say I was alive. My mother was freaking out, I told them to call my father instead, I gave him the story and he said he’d call back. They gave him the number to the desk. after a short bit Mr Gate agent’s phone rang, I knew he was talking about me and looking at me. Little did I realize that US officials got involved, I was shifted to the Pilots lounge. I had a celebratory rum and coke and just marvelled how fucked up US airways was. My Cell phone rang, it was my father saying he straightened things out and had help from US gov. Sipping away at my rum and coke and finally relaxing, Mr Gate agent comes in and says I cant stay in the lounge, I finish my Rum and coke and they finally have me routed to ARN through germany, I tested my debit card on mcdonalds and to say the least it was a completely different experience than USA. When they called me on the plane , they set me up in first class, which is an experience in itself.

The flight attendants treated me like royalty and honestly at the point I did not care, because I was getting closer to my destination. After another switch and window seats to which I love I saw my first glimpse of Sweden and realized the beginning of the beginning of my Journey was nearing its end.

Landing in ARN Stockholm.. getting off the plane and going to the belt to get my luggage I watched everyone’s luggage go around the belt. Ten pieces turned into 8 pieces that drew down to nothing left on the belt. I left the belt area to go to the US airways booth to be told my luggage was not there so I was left with a month to go no clothing to go through my trip , my stuff in my luggage was somewhere else. The irony here, My luggage took a different journey, BOS -PHI- CDG- NYC – MCO – PHI – ARN it came three weeks into my trip to which point I welcomed my luggage like an old friend and laughed that someone from ARN drove 3 hours to bring it to me.

Honestly, The trip was the best in my life, I had Friends, food , Surströmming(yes that one, No it was not bad, It was prepared by a chef), Beer, Swedish Culture, Walking around sweden give you an idea of how big and small the world is all at the same time and how Sweden’s Culture of Lagom is something to aspire to..

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Daily writing prompt
Share a hobby you’ve picked up recently — what got you into it?
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While not recent, But, recent enough, I would have to say archery. I picked this hobby up by accident. I tried it one day and I thought to myself that I kind of liked it. The first times I did archery however not accurate was therapeutic in the matter of there is always room to improve. After that day it was trials and tribulations of finding equipment and learning about archery.

After a trip to Dicks sporting goods, I had picked up a bow (it was terrible) and I learned a fast lesson in archery, Don’t buy the first thing you see, I had picked up a cheaper 1 piece bow. While it had worked I had my wrist slapped by the string worse than a nun with a ruler and the bruises to show.

I knew I was out of my element and I knew something was wrong and no matter the amount of youtube or web instructions you find with a bow its not an exact fix. I decided to find my Yoda of archery, I went to a dedicated archery store and the owner looked at my bow and laughed, I said to him I thought so, He offered me a Greatree bow at a fair deal and set me up with a lesson and the bow. Al the owner(bow yoda) looked at my form and complimented me that I had the form but not the bow, with the Greatree bow I did not slap my wrist and I was elated that I had missed and not felt like someone slapped me with a whip. Al corrected my form and I hit the target, the more I did archery the more I realized that archery in itself is an incredibly meditative state where all your problems slip away and the target becomes your problem.

Between dealing with day to day life and the sometimes insanity of things, I found archery to be a stress releaser. When I had issues where I could not fix something I was working on, I could go outside to with my target and use my bow and focus on the art of archery. I felt confidence with my bow, I also felt drawing my bow with the strength I had gained from doing archery I was outgrowing the bow I had. I started looking at better equipment and realized that it was going to get expensive fast..

The archery place I frequented had a customer appreciation day, Went there with no theory in mind other than seeing if arrows were on sale, they had a drawing for archery equipment. I put in my three tickets that they gave me at the door in a drawing thinking to myself I’ll never win anything. Little did I know that day I would walk out of the place with the top prize. I walked away with a Martin Jaguar Takedown bow! This took my new found hobby to the next level as is it introduced me to ILF limbs.

Thankfully with this prize it was a boon, I was accidently overpowering my bow I knew I had to step up my game. The step up in draw weight was a painful but fulfilling hill to climb. This started me down the road of proficiency with archery that even clubs were asking if I wanted to join. I could likely write a small book of my archery adventures.. the factors of what got me into this was the mindset and a bit of luck thankfully. But, I must say in the end archery has much prominence in my life and has helped me through the best and worst of times.

The greatest lesson archery can impart on you is – It’s not hitting a target, nor is it getting a bullseye, it is the pure action of trying and doing the best you can with a bit of humility and perseverance.

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Daily writing prompt
If you could erase one event from history, what would it be?
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For this prompt the erase from history button here is ambiguous so I don’t know if this is an everyone has or just me, I will assume everyone.

Honestly, I do not think I would erase any event, because as much as erasing that one event would help in the moment you never know what you would unleash by it. If I were stop say some event, Say hitler from being born, what is to say that by doing that the people that influenced hitler would influence someone else and make a super hitler.

I live by the mantra of it is what it is. The idea that one event being erased just does not have appeal to me because I while I cant wonder how much worse of better it would be, It has the same appeal of “bad genie” wishes. Even the show family guy touches on this when Brian stops 9/11 and things turn out much worse. What is to say by stopping one event that you are making another event better, in the philosophical context if one stopped the Titanic from sinking what is to say you save the ship but, but someone from that ship becomes an event 10x worse than the original event. Say by stopping the Titanic sinking, one of the survivors drives Alexander Fleming on a different career route – that alone would make a tragedy that makes the original incident minor in comparison. I feel like if we all had a delete button for the one moment of hindsight for a personal thing vs the history eraser that is limited to short term the implications would be much more limited.

But if I were forced to change a singular event, I guess that would be a card I would hold on to for a singular moment. The prompt is not particular to anything and history is what we make it. I mean my end point still has all the danger of the original theory , but here’s the thing if we had a short term eraser , Even if i hit delete on an event someone could countermend me. Ironically, with the prompt the way it is, Everything would just happen the way it was meant to happen. Schrodinger’s cat would still be alive and dead in the box, and the scientist trying to figure out quantum supposition is still trying to figure it out. Funnier is the factor something like this would confirm the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics.

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Daily writing prompt
Are you a lifelong learner?
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So I was looking at the dashboard and saw this… I’ll bite..

I can’t say if I am a lifelong learner or a lifelong experiencer. When a problem comes up I view at as a problem and a learning experience. But, in a way I guess it would make me a lifelong learner, I view life and look for its patterns or how something works. To understand how something works gives me a greater understanding of that around me.

When I’ve made my post criticising AI, I view AI as machine that knows all the words and guesses how to use it. I look at things and want to know how they work. We look at the world around us and pretty much guess that magic makes the world work. Unfortunately it can be much darker than that. Things we’ve taken for granted makes being a lifelong learner a curse to see the word being broken down into small parts and financially sold off.

We base out culture on companies that take away the learning as an art and they present it as a convenience. We can not avoid having a personal learning experience removed from us by Cognitively offloaded to some AI and make some dramatic post that in the end we learn nothing from.

I’d rather learn something every day, some days we don’t, Some days we do. But otherwise the convenience of offloading everything we do into the magic black portal of a screen or a delve into doom-scrolling is a loss. We are losing our creativity day by day , we can type into a prompt and say “make me a beautiful song with violins and kazoos” and some stupid AI prompt spits out a file. Rather than take the route of figuring out how music works. You can start simple, On screen keyboard, piano done simply by the 1 through = keys on your keyboard. than Move up to a small keyboard from alesis or like keyboard.

Even with picking up the basics of a keyboard you will still fail at first but through repetition you learn. Even in the end if your output sounds like banging the side of a trashcan for 10 minutes you have accomplished something. But with the corporate end of things they want you to just spit that file out and pass it on. You have cognitivally learned nothing.

So in the end am I saying offloading is bad? … No… but, you have to use it to learn. Use it to see why something was made the way it was. Find out how it came together and try it yourself, If you don’t nothing is learned nothing is gained.

The Price of Convenience can be the death of lifelong learning or it can be a branch of new life long experiences you otherwise would not of thought of… use the tools to learn not make the tool learn for you.