Armen Chakmakjian's Blog, page 2
February 20, 2017
Interesting quotes by or about Presidents
“It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples.” – Theodore Roosevelt from a transcription of Roosevelt’s speech at the opening of the Minnesota State Fair, as it appeared in the Minneapolis Tribune 3 September 1901 “Don’t worry, I’ll just confuse them” – Dwight D. […]
February 18, 2017
On excellent expression…
As the 35th anniversary of my high school graduation approaches I look back fondly on those years. I attended what at the time was called “Fairfield College Preparatory School” or “Prep” for short and at the at time Fairfield College had for many years been referred to as Fairfield University. The University teams were called […]
October 21, 2016
There is no choice…
Stop. Stop telling me that your candidate is the last hope, or doing it for the right things, or is less bad than the other person, or is the change we need…yadayadayada. First, Trump is completely, and uniquely unqualified by temperament and knowledge of the political and diplomatic system to be the president. He is […]
September 20, 2016
The Last Lecture
This book has sat on my nightstand for a few years. Not sure who bought it for me, either one of the boys, or my wife. I thought it would be interesting, but over that time, I kept putting it off because the concept was so morose. Anyway, over the last 8 months I’ve plowed […]
September 13, 2016
Quick Update on all the Apple “OS” updates today
So I’ve been running the iOS 10 and MacOS Sierra beta’s for a while, so those features were no longer a mystery to me. Having Siri on my desktop is somewhat useful. I can have it actuate Chrome by just saying “Chrome”. I can ask “What year was George Washington born?” and I get back […]
April 2, 2016
Escalation in Karabagh…why now?
So with a nuclear summit happening, Azerbaijan launches a concerted series of attacks on the Nagorno-Karabagh region. This action escalates an already thorny issue in the area. Oddly, all the interested parties including the leadership of the EU, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan are all in washington sitting across the table from each other. Another interesting […]
April 1, 2016
It’s time…
Mr President, when you were a candidate you said the word “genocide” in reference to what happened to my ancestors. A year ago in April 2015, 100 years after the genocide, the Pope reiterated that charge in his homily with the Armenian Catholicoi at his side. It was the first Genocide of the 20th century. […]
March 5, 2016
Statesmen?
Where are the statesmen? What happened to leadership? Do you think that the current crop of characters on both sides could do anything but reduce the sum of human knowledge whenever they open their mouths? Could you see any of them move the public discourse by delivering something akin the following examples in a speech? “Gentlemen, you will permit me […]
February 5, 2016
A week with my new MacBook
I bought a gold 12″ MacBook last week to replace my 4-year-old MacBook Air. The purchase itself was strange because I bought it, and for whatever reason, instead of just leaving the store with it in its box I agreed to power it up and get iCloud and whatnot all set up. Well, that was […]
January 25, 2016
Apple Watch Connectivity
For those of you who are on the fence about the Apple Watch, you might want to wait for the next-gen, rumored to be coming out in April. On the other hand, it works pretty good now, so I’m going to recount my morning and tell you how it works even when you don’t have […]
