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Who am I? |
My 15 minutes of fame |
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My name is Eric Pence, and I am a husband, a father, and a web programmer. I could be described as a classic, aging, baby-boomer but I have tried to stay
current with the new things that have evolved in my lifetime (in my mind sometimes I am still 20-something), and my career reflects this attitude. Throughout
my life I have been fascinated by new and developing things. This influenced me to major in engineering when I went to college, and my active involvement in
performing music ultimately lead to contemporary jazz, the most experimental form of improvisational music. See my Music page for more on this. In the 1980s I became very interested in another "new" thing—computers—and took up programming. Like most
programmers at that time I started out working on a mainframe, but I soon realized that I wanted something more challenging, and my career ultimately
lead to web development. See my Programming page for more on this.
Having a website is the ultimate expression of many of my interests, and I enjoy it so much that working as a web programmer I feel like I get paid
to do something I would do for fun! You know what they say, |
My iReports
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Commuter boat to Boston – this was posted to the topic Show us your commute
My first car, a 1953 Buick Special – this was posted to the topic My first car
My YouTube videos
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Stanley Clarke - School Days – I made this from a DVD I own
Sunday Night Barbecue – my friend Jim's video of their garage fire
(set to music that at first YouTube disabled for copyright reasons, the re-enabled)
The Road To Perdition – my friend Jim's video of their dog Lucy being wrongly impounded when visiting their beach home in Clinton, CT
(same music disable/re-enable as above)
My Facebook profile
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My public listing – if you login you can see more
Some links...
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Special songs – I was telling someone about songs that were special to Patti and me and decided to put them on a webpage
Cars I've owned – I thought this was an amusing way to express my car history
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Times have certainly changed since I was a kid. For several years, my mother has been using email from her home in Boise, Idaho, to help stay in touch with her children and grandchildren, who all live thousands of miles from her. Alex also communicated with us from boarding school his freshman year of high school using another online method. He went to the Dialpad.com website on his PC in his dorm room, and using a headset he was able to place free (at that time) long-distance phone calls to our home phone number. Now he has a cellphone, which greatly helps us stay in touch with him. When Ben (who also has a cellphone) was away at camp one summer (French Woods) he used email with us (email at camp?) instead of the telephone or hand written letters. Ben also has a great website of his own. Family dynamics have changed a lot in my lifetime, and they are affected by much more than just new technology. Here is an article I saw in the Boston Globe, "Raising a Perfect Child", that presents an interesting view of parenting today. There are links to more parenting articles on the Articles page.
Walking
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The classic Big Potato postard I saw as a child.
Some Idaho links...
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Seattle |
Some Seattle links...
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Where I stand
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I was raised in a household similar to the one I have now, where my parents taught me values that I retain to this day (I will
always remember the impression that was made on me when my dad took us to see Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird,
Harper Lee's story of bravery and justice in small-town America) and I have hopefully passed these on to my sons—values
like integrity and charity, and a desire to participate in a kinder and gentler world.
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| Obama |
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| Adjust, don't conform |
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"Humaneness is one of the hallmarks of being a liberal." — Walter Cronkite |
My social and political views are very liberal, which is the essence of logical thinking and humanitarian concerns. During my formative years
in the 1960s I was mostly surrounded by people with the same values, but as I got older and moved away from the college setting I came to
realize that I had been living in a somewhat sheltered environment, and in order to co-exist with some of the others I met whose views were
very different from mine I would have to keep some of my opinions to myself (though I would not have to change my values). I thought this
philosophy was stated very well in the slogan at the progressive new england boarding school my wife Patti attended, the Windsor Mountain School in Lenox, Massachusetts:
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| Pacifism & resistance |
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"My pacifism is not based on any intellectual theory but on a deep antipathy to every form of cruelty and hatred." — Albert Einstein |
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I have always been a pacifist but my commitment to my beliefs was really put to the test in 1969 during the Vietnam War when I became a draft
resister. Like millions of other Americans I opposed the war for political and moral reasons and participated in many antiwar marches and
rallies. After a couple of years of college I took some time off which resulted in the loss of my student deferment, and when I received my
draft notice I responded in the spirit of what we used to chant—"Hell no, we won't go!"—I
refused induction into the army. Taking this stand put my personal freedom in jeopardy
for a period of time, but finally, after an anxious year involving lawyers and an FBI investigation, I was able to put that episode behind me
and move on with my life. I was far from alone in my war resistance—the Justice Department identified 570,000 men who
"violated" the draft laws.
When I was in high school in the mid-60s I subscribed to the Berkeley
Barb, an underground newspaper loosely associated with students at UC Berkeley. Something I learned in one issue was the history of
the Peace Symbol
This is somewhat esoteric knowledge and I presume if people have any association for the symbol they just know it stands for peace. Now I see it on clothing and other items as a "fashion" icon and realize that many very young people might not even know its meaning. Oh well, it will always symbolize an anti-war theme for me. |
| War is immoral |
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"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who
hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
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War is a hostile and barbaric action that is the result of a total failure of diplomacy (or as Isaac Asimov put it,
"Violence is the diplomacy of the incompetent."). I
strongly oppose war and I do not support our leaders who get us into wars when they cannot work out problems with
other nations using non-violent methods. I do support the men and women in the armed forces because they are honorably
putting their lives at risk for the security of our country, and they are not responsible for the failure of our
leaders' diplomatic efforts. We have a military to protect our freedoms if our country is ever threatened or attacked
by another nation (which is why we call it the Department of "Defense"), but when our troops are sent to
preemptively attack the citizens of another nation on their own soil as we did in Iraq, we are invading them,
and I say, "Bring our troops home!"
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Yay! Bush is Gone! |
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A monument has been erected in Iraq to honor the journalist who threw his shoes at Bush. This was created after I removed this section and I thought it deserved its place of honor here. |
| Liberties & rights |
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"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, that you can't even passively take part; and you've got to indicate to the people who run it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!" |
| It is everybody's right to live free of arbitrary, unnecessary rules, and we should all be able to openly express
our personal freedoms. Unfortunately, we do need laws to protect these freedoms because not everybody is respectful
of the rights of others, but if you want to engage in a non-harmful activity there should be no law restricting you.
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| Rants
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"People who think they know everything are annoying to those of us who do." — Isaac Asimov |
| So far I've said where I stand on some of the important issues of the day. Here are some things that may be less important, but they are still annoying. |
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| Disclaimer | |
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If I sound very opinionated it may be because I grew up in the 60s, the era of the Free Speech Movement, when it was considered pretty normal to express yourself openly. See my Articles page for more in support of my views, or on the lighter side, see Political satire. |
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Over the years I have stumbled upon a few tricks for doing things that I would like to pass on to my sons, now that they are grown and living
independently. I could have told them these things or jotted them down on paper, but that has 2 shortcomings—One, I would have to remember
the tips all at one time, and Two, they could forget what I say or misplace the paper on which they were written. Putting them on my website seemed to be a
good solution because I can add to the list as I recall things, and also it has a more permanent quality.
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| To protect myself from spamming I am not spelling out my complete email address contiguously anywhere on my website (for more on this, see Fight spam). However, if you want to email me you can assemble it yourself using my name (eric) and my domain (penceland.com) in the format 'myname@mydomain'. Patti's email address has the same domain, just substitute patti for eric. The boys' email appears to have been superseded by Instant Messenger. |