Zane's Think Tank

Having a Pregnant Wife

2012-01-10T16:43:00.001-05:00

Amanda: Ok, I think I'm just hungry. Salad sounds amazing too. I think i could eat a cow and then sleep for a week straight.
Me: sounds like a great weekend
Amanda: Except its tuesday, we have a two year old, and we are broke.
Me: and we don't have a cow
Amanda: Golden coral does.

Delete Delete Delete

2011-11-08T22:12:00.002-05:00

Delete, consolidate, delete... I was working on consolidating what had become some glaring discrepancies between my two portable hard drives, when I got into a delete frenzy and wiped out massive chunks of my last real digital stronghold. It seems like a waste of time, organizing information that I just wind up deleting later, but, as I've said before, it's a necessary process. I recognize that the time I'm spending holed up in a corner working on this little project are hours I'm not spending doing the things that are truly important to me. And perhaps it's really better just thrown out the window than salvaged. At the end of today, I have 28 gigs that I consider valuable, and a damaged hard drive.

It all comes down to a desire to be rid of all these... things. Is there such a thing as being the opposite of a hoarder? A compulsion to part with everything instead of saving it? Perhaps so.

Focus

2011-09-28T14:43:00.001-05:00

Warning: This is a rambling post of introspection.

It seems to me like the most effective way to excel at anything in life is to focus on a single thing and do that one thing extremely well. This is generally good advice in life. If you are exceptional at any one thing, then you will always be welcome to do that thing wherever the job is needed, it would seem. However, it doesn't always seem that cut and dry. I have talent for programming and for music, and yet, I am required to do so many additional things throughout the day. About half of my GIS job is non-programming work, which I have to do rather well to keep my job. Outside of work, I commute by bicycle to reduce my financial burden on the family, and to keep in shape. I also need to play with, discipline, and teach my child. On top of all that, I also have a current interest in science and photography, and am working on digitizing my entire photo collection and moving it into the cloud for safekeeping.

While this seems like a great deal of diversity, I am under the impression that mine is a fairly simple life compared to my peers! Is it really possible to be focused on a single task? I realize that my life on this planet is only useful where it crosses the paths of others, and I want to do what I can to maximize my benefit to the world. Rhonda Byrne said something like "all you have to do is feel good, and in the end, isn't that all you really want?" Maybe she's right, and my own opinion of what makes me feel good is to do something that benefits others. But it would seem like a reasonable statement that one is more beneficial as say, a spectacular musician, than as a good musiciand and good photographer. And certainly taking time away from those tasks to watch TV or listen to a podcast is detrimental... isn't it? But those daliances are what make us unique, I think. And if you take away too many of the side trips, you lose the true purpose of life, which isn't to necessarily be the best at something, but to have great skill and a unique approach. For the arts, at least. But even for programmers, many can do something correctly, but only a few can do it with great efficiency or speed or mass appeal, or with whatever unique little quirk is needed at the time.

I had a conversation the other day where I recounted the tale of the blackboard in the sky, upon which was written the true destiny of any one person, and how it likely doesn't exist. Sometimes I really wish it did. I wish someone would pull me aside any tell me what it is I should do, but really, that is just my follower's nature coming out. To some extent, I am meant to be a follower, to create for others, but I won't lose sight of the truth that I am to create something unique, even if it is for someone else. After all, if it is only for myself, what use does it have?

I end my thoughts in a greater state of confusion and uncertainty.

Diets and Bicycle Dollars

2011-07-21T08:01:00.001-05:00

So, I've been overweight for quite some time, and, yet again, I'm taking another shot at this problem. There are so many diet techniques, and many of them actually work, but it requires a great deal of discipline. It's frustrating that I consider myself to be well disciplined, but I have so much trouble dieting; is diet something special, or does one have to train discipline in multiple areas? Whatever the case, I'm sitting here drinking water instead of tea, wanting very much to eat, but out of snacks. My problem is that I have so many problems, you know? I have to work on cutting out the sweets, portion control, the long view, and healthy eating all at once. Of course, the long view technique may handle all the problems in one fell swoop, since the best thing for me to do right now is stop feeding myself, as I have plenty of fat stores :) Aaaanyway...

I'm also working on a concept that I like to call Bicycle Dollars. The ulterior motive for biking to work is to eliminate a vehicle, and the costs associated with it. There are many estimates for the approximate costs of owning a car, but my favorite is a general cost-per-mile. The cost of owning a sedan driven 20,000 miles a year is 35 cents a mile, so I am giving myself 25 cents for every commuter mile in Bicycle Dollars. Commuter miles are defined as miles spent traveling to any location that I would need a car to get to; this excludes joyriding, but includes pretty much everything else. With a 17 mile total commute every work day, I would be generating $4.25 per day in Bicycle Dollars. Assuming I travel a significant number of my days by bicycle, I would generate $1000 per year, which would justify the purchase of various pieces of essential gear for greater pursuits, such as winter riding, or a motor for long-distance trips. I imagine once I equip the motor, my range will be greatly increased, but that represents a substantial cost from what I've seen, and also greatly increases the risk of theft. I have a lot of decisions to make there, but if I only spend what I've "saved" from not driving a car, I shouldn't put any hardship on the family.

I am looking forward to my biking future, but not my food future :( I'm sure I'll adjust soon enough, but right now, I just want a sammich!

Excellent Progress

2011-07-19T12:21:00.001-05:00

Since my last post, I have reduced my possessions to am impressive (for me) 132! I still intend to get rid of the last 32 to reach the 100-item goal, but I am at the point where I am making noticeable difficulties for myself when I reduce (example: lugging one deodorant stick around instead of having it in two locations), and I think I need to take a little more time to settle with the changes I've made before I move forward with additional ones.

Now that I've reduced things to an even more managable level (than 220), I can attempt to categorize it all:

Biking - 5

Work - 14

Clothing - 60

Music - 12

Books - 3

Decorations - 6

Always with me - 5

Backpack - 10

Exercise - 1

Grooming - 4

Misc - 5

Most notable, of course, is that nearly half of my possessions file under "clothing", and this is after quite a bit of paring down and eliminating redundant items. Our family picked up an extra laundry day per week, which should help with this, but only time will tell if I can actually live without the extra clothes.

Replacement Bag

2011-07-13T09:53:00.001-05:00

I'm killing a little time while I wait for Mandy to pick me up today (I'm not feeling well, so I'm leaving work early). After spending an hour researching bicycle pannier bags on the internet, I decided that I am not willing to make a decision on them yet, as the ones I want represent a significant increase in cost. However, there was a slight bonus to this whole situation that I didn't realize. When I bought the new bag, I also had to upgrade the rear rack to something with support bars to handle the pannier. When I removed the damaged pannier, I discovered that I had plenty of leverage to bungie my backpack to the rear rack, eliminating the need for a special bag entirely. So I think I will deal without the pannier bag for now, and I just may upgrade to a nicer backpack instead, since it can serve as a backpack and bicycle bag all in one. If I can use the new bag as a carry-on luggage, then I really have a multipurpose product, which becomes more important in my 100 Things quest.

As a quick aside, I am down to 220 possessions now, without any real teeth-pulling. I just got rid of some more things that were really unnecessary, and consolidated things, like combining my three pairs of fingernail clippers into one pair that I carry with me.

Now it's time for me to pack up and get some rest.

Good Lord, it's hot!

2011-07-11T19:54:00.002-05:00

So I should be working on music for this week's service, but it's so impossibly hot, even inside, that I'm not going anywhere near the non-air-conditioned gym. Instead, I'm sitting upstairs letting my body slowly cool back to normal, and theoretically internet shopping, although so far I've just been talking with Mandy and writing this.

I decided to bike to the eye doctor today, which is only 10 miles from Moraine. I even accounted for the fact that it was going to be hotter than Hades. What I didn't account for, however, was the fact that Alex Bell starts to get hilly the closer to get to 675, and by hilly, I mean VERY hilly. So I arrived to my doctor's appointment five minutes late and completely covered in sweat, but slightly amused at my folly. My wife didn't even believe I made it that far; when I told her, she thought I was mistaken about where I was :)

So we packed up the bike and drove me home after that. Unfortunately, my brand new pannier bike seat ripped a hook after my first day with it, so I'm definitely refunding that purchase ASAP. A coworker mentioned one on Amazon that clips on and slides off the rear rack easily, so hopefully that doesn't cost too much, and I can go buy that now :)

On the 100 Things front, I tossed out a couple things at work, and am down to 239 now. I still intend to look into some obvious questions, like what Pyro mentioned, things like whether or not underwear counts as a possession :) The risk in exempting anything is allowing that thing to grow disproportionately large, like a CD collection or something.

So, now I'm off to shop for bluetooth headphones and pannier bags, and probably wind up buying nothing!

From 260 to...

2011-07-10T20:13:00.002-05:00

Today, I parted with:

My Representative DeMolay certificate and my framed ritual books. I have my RD pin and gavel to remember them by.
An original Star Wars record, framed. It's not worth much, and I've never been a huge fan of Star Wars anyway.
My Most Outstanding Musical Squad award for marching band. It was homemade by my squad leader anyway, and half the decorations had fallen off :)
One of my two Dayton Dragons hats; no point having two of those, and I never wear hats anyway. This brings my hat collection to one.
Two of my three bandanas. I never wear bandanas anymore anyway, so no loss there.
A Carnival Ship on a Stick, an award from winning a game on board. I wouldn't take the award back on the ship, so there's no point keeping it. And I also have a medal from a speed sliding competition that I will take back, so there is still something memorable to hang onto there.
One of my two glasses cleaning kits; I am moving away from glasses, so their use is limited now.
A cell phone case. Never use it.
One of my two swiss army knives. I got my nicer one as a gift from Grandpa Kruse, and I only use that in a real bind, so having a second one is rather silly.

These departures, and a few clerical errors (of which I am sure there will be more in the next couple weeks as I continue to correct bad numbers or things I have forgotten) bring my new total to 243. Significant progress, yet still far more to go.

Contentment / Complacency

2011-07-10T12:08:00.002-05:00

I scanned about 100 pictures into Picasa, dated them where possible, and sent them into the cloud for later categorization. I still have another couple hundred to go, it looks like, so I threw that into what has become my "working drawer" of the spare dresser in our gym. While I have many projects that I have been spending time with, among them reading several books, cleaning our shared space, and digitizing pictures, it is nice to NOT feel the rush of having to get everything done at once.

There is a level of comfort that I have not experienced in the past, which I suppose some may call complacency, and perhaps they are right. My friend referred to me yesterday as having "everything I want", which was both interesting and flattering, as I had never been mentioned in such a manner before. It reminds me of something that I have both read and thought on my own in the past: having everything and wanting nothing are very similar states of being. Unfortunately for the man who wants everything, something will always be denied him. When he finds one love, another will appear, more forbidden and equally as tempting. When he acquires some large possession, such as a house or a car, he will only see larger, more comfortable ones that do not belong to him. While a person who wants everything might surely be happy if he attains everything, that possibility is virtually impossible.

On the flip side, wanting nothing (or little) is much simpler than having everything (or much). There is less to manage, less to lose or destroy by some freak accident. One is much more mobile when every desire is in easy reach. I suppose I could walk along that train of thought for quite some time, but all the arguments are fairly obvious. I state again for the record: in all my experience of parting with possessions and unrealistic goals, I have not felt a lingering loss, aside from the temporary pain of having initially severed them from my life. I am "lighter", happier, and in generally better condition for having removed the physical and emotional baggage from my life. I am rather enjoying the ability to choose my direction each day without a pressing fear of the unknown future.

That said, I am losing my concentration as I notice Adelia stirring in her crib from the baby cam; time to wake her up and go play in the kiddie pool :)

100 Thing Challenge - It has begun!

2011-07-09T13:50:00.002-05:00

Ever since I first saw the 100 Thing Challenge years ago, I have wanted to give it a try, but when I first saw it, the concept was preposterous. I had over 100 things in the nearest box of mementos, of which I had five, not to mention the rest of my things strewn between my mother's house, my apartment, and the office. After several years of effort and a great deal of Freecycle listings and trips to Goodwill, I have finally been able to take the first official step -- I managed to inventory every single personal possession I own!

The keyword above is "personal", because when there is a family involved, the concept would quickly become murky if I had to count my wife's possessions and things that we shared. I personally think the challenge is simpler for someone like myself, since I don't have to count things like furniture or televisions, although my household is constantly in the process of paring our shared possessions as well.

But I digress. There are many rule variants out there, but here are mine:

Only my personal possessions count
I may declare anything a "set", to count as a single item, using discretion

So far I have made no real exemptions, but the usage of sets can always be murky, so I am trying to use the designation sparingly. So, my first tally, which will probably require some recategorization, is 260. This means, of course, that I will need to reduce another 61% of my already reduced possessions to reach the arbitrary goal. However, I do intend to consult with some of the other people who have been doing this for a while to see if some of my ideals are misguided. For example, I am counting each pair of socks and every pair of underwear as a single possession; those two alone, accounting for winter socks, adds up to 33 by themselves! I also have tried to be as diligent as possible with my accounts, but the next couple weeks will show if I missed anything obvious in my tallies. For example, while writing this post, I added two things that I keep in the car at all times and forgot about.

So, wish me luck! I have no deadline on when I would like to finish this project, but it begins NOW!

Birthday Presents!

2011-07-08T20:58:00.007-05:00

Here they are: all-weather pedals, a larger carry bag, and a more sturdy rack to put it on!

The before pictures:

And the after pictures:

All in all, a lovely set of things for my commuter bike; and I don't have to wear a backpack!!! I'm quite jazzed about that.

Blasé

2011-07-06T12:39:00.001-05:00

I was listening to Twilight (sue me), and I heard the word blasé, and I could not recall the meaning, so I looked it up. According to Merriam-Webster:

: apathetic to pleasure or excitement as a result of excessive indulgence or enjoyment : world-weary

And for world-weary:

: feeling or showing fatigue from or boredom with the life of the world and especially material pleasures

Since my mind has been dwelling on the Bible recently, my mind immediately shot to King Solomon, a man who claimed to have done everything worth doing. A man who was given spades of wisdom, and all the possessions he could ever crave, and he says things like "there is nothing new under the sun". The curse of the quest to have everything is that when you get there, it's still not enough. What you have really done is feed your own need for more things; like a bad diet, you have spoiled your own taste for moderation and have grown fat and unhealthy.

Not sure why that rings so clearly in my mind right now, but it is what it is.

Kansas Trip, Part 1

2011-07-05T09:31:00.001-05:00

Oh boy, so much to say, and it's going to be very disjointed, but deal with it.

I spent the weekend in Kansas; the trips to and from Kansas were difficult (if I had to pick one, the trip out was far worse), hands down because of Adelia, who really isn't enjoying the long rides at this point. That said, I had a great time there, better so than any other time I've ever been in Kansas. Whether I can attribute that to Grandma Kruse's determination that we would enjoy ourselves, or to my own decision to NOT bring my computer, I can't be sure, but I am going to give equal credit to both.

Leo would be proud: instead of my usual several changes of clothes, multiple pairs of shoes, laptop, Gameboy, two or three books, and a few other things I'm sure I forgot, I brought along two spare changes of clothes, some basic toiletries, and the Kindle. I spent most of my downtime reading Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ", which, due to the Kindle's data structure, can be read on the Kindle book or directly from my phone, a feature that came in handy when Mandy wanted to read also. I'm over halfway through the book at this point, and I really didn't have any moments of boredom at all. It is worth noting that the less I have around, the LESS bored I seem to be overall, which I thought would surely be the reverse. An interesting phenomenon, but too lengthy to discuss at this point.

So, the above summary isn't entirely true; I brought our bicycles, which definitely wouldn't fit into a carry-on luggage! Incidentally, I barely used mine, and Mandy didn't use hers at all, so it was technically a wasted effort, but I am still happy to have gotten the chance to experiment with a bike rack, just to know how to rig one up. So, things that I brought that I wound up not needing. Dress clothes, but that was only a technicality, since I was picked up directly from work, and couldn't NOT take them. And bicycles. I used everything else, which is a good track record for me.

I discovered that when I didn't need to bring all those things because I was no longer interested in them, I consequently didn't miss home. I was nearly as at-home in Kansas as I am at my actual house, which is a specific goal of mine. If I can pare my functional possessions down to what will fit in a luggage, then I can take my life anywhere with little fuss. That's essentially where I would like to be. There are always incidentals, things that a person needs to get by, but I still have plenty of room to pare it all down. And it's good practice for having another baby in the house :)

For my birthday, Grandma gave me some money to get myself something nice; I am on the fence about what I want specifically, but it's definitely either clothing or biking. There is a major upgrade of a rear bike rack which will keep me from misaligning my seat every time I accidentally kick the rack. Then the saddlebag attachment for said rack would allow me to ride backpack-free, yay! Also, there is a nice pair of North Face convertible pants that I noticed over the weekend; these could pass as work pants, and could be wearable everywhere. To be honest, this is the direction I would like to go with my entire wardrobe, so that I could wear anything anywhere, but that is a lofty principle. These pants, however, are a definite step in the right direction. There is also a nice pair of all-weather shoes that would pass for work, biking, and home, but they retailed $90, and that's too much for shoes, perhaps even if they were my ONLY pair. I'm just too cheap at this point. I'll keep my eyes on clearance :) So that's the gist of my birthday wishes; we'll see what I wind up choosing.

On another note, there was also a small ball at Dick's, where I was shopping. The shape of the "ball" was such that any contact with the ground would send it in a radom direction nearby, which makes it excellent for reaction training for baseball/softball players. It seems like something I may like to keep around for exercise, but again, I like to strongly consider and new things that I want to buy, since I am in the process of getting rid of things.

There are tons of other thoughts from the trip, but I will need to split it up a bit. Until next time!

Travel and Vision

2011-06-27T13:02:00.001-05:00

The internet can be brutally distracting at times. It's darn useful, but there is a tendency to cross reference, then you click a link on that site, then from that site, another link, and before you know it, you're learning tons, but completely off track from what you sat down to do in the first place. At work, surrounded by technology, this is always a risk, so I have to stay on my toes.

I was looking at travel gear and ideas, anything that makes travel lighter. I have been slowly whittling away at my extraneous possessions, getting to the important few things that I value and use on a regular basis. However, when it comes to biking, every tiny thing I pack is significant, since I have a very small payload, so I am always evaluating ways to take even what I need and pare it down to smaller doses.

I bought travel bottles recently for my soap and shampoo, which greatly cut down on weight and volume. I am also looking for some kind of multipurpose all-weather shoes so that I don't have to keep taking work shoes in my bag. Then I read today about a soap I'd like to try out; Dr. Bronner's all-purpose soap (or something like it). This ultra-concentrated soap can stretch out to less than an ounce per week of use, and it can do everything from laundry to cleaning your teeth. I'm vaguely curious what it can do for a denture, but let's not get TOO experimental :)

Of course, there are many other things, but I try to temper myself; after all, one may risk going right back into the consumer mindset, only running in a different direction.

In other news, I went back to contacts; today they haven't bothered my eyes much at all, so I think I'm already adjusted. It's amazing how much more quickly I adapted, compared to my first attempts in high school.

I am also travelling to Kansas over the weekend. I will leave Friday and return Monday, so the trip will be relatively short. Still, I would like to take my bike there, to take a shot at the lake trails. This has also piqued my interest in travel supplies, because I am trying to take everything I need in a carry-on sized bag. I'm going to attempt to have a reasonable bag for Adelia too, although her mother tends to take everything the child could ever need anyway :) I'm excited for the trip, and if I do have down time, I'm hoping to read a book I borrowed from church.

I'd say I'll update with things from the trip, but I never know when I will get back to blogging. Until next time!

Practical Minimalism

2011-06-24T13:39:00.001-05:00

I suppose that in actuality, there is no such thing as practical minimalism, or reasonable minimalism, or any other form of the ideal that weakens its resolve. Minimalism gets its power from the extremism it demands. It becomes more fascinating the more extreme one becomes. If there is any watered-down form of minimalism, it is definitely simplicity. Regardless, I still prefer to call myself a minimalist because simplicity has so many meanings.

I had Mandy pick me up some batteries today, and I was holding the pack in my hands and musing at how pleased I was to get a fresh pack of batteries, and I was distinctly reminded of the Bible scene where David is wishing for some water from his home well (while his home city is occupied by foreign forces). Of all the things he could wish for, he longs for some clean, familiar water from home. One of the many side effects of practiced minimalism is that it clarifies the utility/comfort/etc. of the basic things in life. Suddenly, batteries aren't something that you have 500 of in the basement in various brands. They are something you keep sparingly, and buy only when you need them, and they are noted and valued, like everything else you own.

I also cleaned my work desk today. One of my favorite things about this ritual is the way that I note every item that goes back onto my desk, and assess its usefulness or appeal. Eventually I will tire of something on my desk and be rid of it, or add something new, but every time I clean, I keep in mind that it is also a chance to eliminate the need to clean something ever again, if I really don't use it.

On another subject, I will be going to Kansas next weekend, and I will not be taking my laptop. To my knowledge, this is a first. I also will not be taking my gameboy, or any other prevalent piece of software, aside from my phone. On the flip side, I AM taking our bicycles, so it's not a truly space saving venture, but the implication still stands: I do not intend to waste idle time while I am out, not this time. I will go out and experience the area properly, ride the trails, take baby to the parks. Perhaps read, if I find something that I wish to learn about. Just no more wastfulness. My time is also something that needs to be simplified and concentrated.

Updates

2011-06-02T07:15:00.001-05:00

I had my first practice with the MCC band last night; that went very well. No one's winning a Grammy, but they all worked hard, and they sounded good. It's nice to be doing something with my talent. It does take some time, especially as I don't know any of the music yet, but I'm sure I will pick it up quickly enough.

My back reached the limit of pain yesterday morning, and not it's been slowly easing away. I think I'll be okay riding a bike again, but I have to wait for mine to get out of the shop first. Really hoping I don't lose any of this forward momentum I've had from the exercise.

Consumers

2011-05-31T07:54:00.002-05:00

To some extent, I suppose the consumer culture is unavoidable. I mean, I am looking around me, and I doubt there is a single thing within 100 feet that wasn't manufactured and bought. When you think about the old days our ancestors lived in, when cloth was made at home, and the homes themselves were built by hand, it really makes our modern world seem that much more alien. I don't know that I have ever made anything, really. But that is probably not the correct way to rebel against consumer culture, by buying nothing. After all, there were markets and consumers before we were all thought of as "just" consumers. It's the excess in which we buy, and our insistence on buying as the only thing worth really doing. We save up money to buy things, not to even necessarily use them, but just to have them. We buy pools and cars and bicycles and exercise equipment, and we have so many things that no one person could properly use all of it, and yet we are compelled to buy more, because there is no money to be made by convincing people that they already have enough, by pressing people to do their own gardening, to just go out in the sun and play with the toys they already have. No money to be made from driving consumers out of stores, and isn't that all we are, just consumers? It's frustrating. I would like to spend a lot less time consuming.

The Monster Gar Fish

2011-05-30T08:02:00.001-05:00

Day one, we finally got packed up and we're rolling out, and after resolving a few mechanical issues, we headed north to our first destination. I stopped to adjust the babies when I noticed splashing off to the left of the bike path. I pointed it out, and Dave, in Dave-like fashion, went down the hill to investigate. There were what looked like several light-colored fish splashing around in the flooded areas between the river and the bike path. The current consensus is that they were gar, but the pictures I looked up don't seem to match. Whatever they were, they were massive, and Dave was intent on catching one with his bare hands. I have to admit, it would have been quite impressive, but it was taking too long, so we gave up and moved on. It's an interesting goal to hang onto in case we ever wind up in shallow flood waters again.

Sunburns

2011-05-30T07:20:00.001-05:00

Sunburns. Parts of my back are apparently blistering, but I still have some shred of hope that this will go away soon. If I could run around the office shirtless, I would. Actually, as I am the only member of my department that appears to be here today, I could probably get away with it. The only people who would see me would be the security guards, who probably have neither the interest nor the authority to compel me to put my shirt back on. Still, I like our new director, and that would be a rather awkward meeting to discuss the company dress code.

The sunburns are from my weekend bicycle camping trip around Dayton. It's interesting how small the world becomes when you aren't in a car; it was like being in another state, and yet, I would keep seeing names that rung a bell from my college days. There are so many places nearby that I have never seen, and spending three days roaming the parks and trails of my nearby communities reminded me of that.

I haven't shaved any time off my daily trip the work, but I suppose I'm still tired from hauling that trailer around. The kids didn't have as much fun as we did, but they came back perfectly fine. Adelia also has a new appreciation for Strawberry Shortcake, after going without her favorite show for a weekend :)

There is tons to tell, but it will have to wait.

Progress...

2011-05-26T07:24:00.001-05:00

Working out is so interesting when you're out of shape, because you get all kinds of interesting injuries and quirks. Biking isn't nearly as aerobic as running, which is evident when I acknowledge that not once have I felt switches in my side from biking. Of course, if I were biking with the same intensity that I run, I might very well experience that.

My injuries are funky muscle pulls in the lower leg, and I'm treating them with good old Icy Hot. Certainly feels better right now! I am also having muscle spasms in my right pectoral for no good reason; probably because my upper body hasn't had to support more than a baby and the occasional fork for the last few years :)

I am trying to adopt a system for purchasing new things that will require all my luxury purchases to go through a "due process" requirement. Firstly, I must note ten instances where said item would have been useful, how inconvenient it was to not have it, and the nature of the inconvenience. After I have racked up ten occurrences, I can lobby the Council (being myself and possibly my wife) to purchase the item, and logically I will have plenty of good reason by then.

That said, consider this occurrence one for bike fenders / wet weather clothes and shoes :) That weather last night was rough! My mother had the siding torn off her house and some minor damage was done to the attic. Yay home insurance! We were more lucky; a city employee was on the bike path this morning pulling branches to the side or loading them into the truck for disposal. It's good to see some dedication to the cycling community.

Pain and Pleasure

2011-05-24T07:04:00.001-05:00

Pain is interesting. You hear about teenagers, or anyone new to emotional pain, causing physical pain to divert from the emotional pain. In reality, it makes a lot of sense. Pain is one of the few exceptions to human memory. To remember pain would be to actually feel it, and that would cause us a great deal of trauma, so we are incapable of "remembering" pain, strictly speaking. And so with its unique nature, pain also has a "greatest pain wins" nature, where a broken leg outdoes a bruised arm. And so the human mind is really only able to comprehend the worst of the body's pain at any one time. Having eaten light this morning, and not being well trained in the self discipline of dieting, I was quite hungry, but my feet hurt like crazy, so I don't really notice.

I should probably mention WHY my feet hurt; I went to the doctor this morning to have my planter's warts "treated", which involved burning them with a laser and freezing them off with liquid nitrogen. Not pleasant, but the doctor my feet should be healed in three weeks, yay!

I miss running, even though I realize it is going to kind of suck, building myself up again. I haven't truly been a runner in years, and I'm older, obviously, so we shall see how I handle it. But running is a real pain in the rear when you have so much weight to carry around with you, so anything I can do to cut the bulk down is probably a good thing.

In the meantime, perhaps I can sort of get into the Buddhist "embodying the pain" thing, and really appreciate that pain is the opposite of pleasure, and that without both, we would not truly understand what pleasure was.

An Assessment of my Vendor's Impatience

2011-05-23T08:10:00.001-05:00

I organize. A lot. I'm not sure if it's a manifestation of my dissatisfaction with my lot, or simply a desire to get rid of things that do not serve me, but I become more and more obsessed with eliminating my physical surroundings to the absolute necessities.

I am organizing one of my work drawers this morning and notice that I have several CDs which comprise a deliverable from one of my vendors. Said deliverable is now superceded, and thus, so are the CDs. So I go to throw them out. But I do have some odd quirks; I pull the CDs out of the paper cases so that I can re-use the paper envelopes if I need to transport a disk to some other office without shoving the exposed CD into my portfolio. As I'm pulling out the disks, I notice the plastic covers to several of the disks have a blue residue from the permanent marker used to identify the disks. What this actually means is that the vendor was in too much of a hurry to let the ink dry properly before shoving the disks into the sleeves and send them off. It's a minor observation, but it's a mark of impatience. These tiny things do get noticed. Anyway, back to work.

Functional decoration

2011-05-20T08:22:00.001-05:00

I've been aspiring toward minimalism, which becomes more useful as my baby gets older and requires some space of her own in our medium-sized home. Even at the office, it is quite useful to have more desk space as I gradually cut down on the decorations.

The newest discovery, however, is how nice it is to have decor lying around that actually DOES things. Being able to walk in from my bike ride to work and set my helmet down on the desk is pretty cool, and let's face it, bicycle helmets are pretty sweet, when they're not sitting on a person's head :)

I also have a dragon drummer decoration that my brother gave me ages ago, and I actually use that when I'm unfolding tightly-rolled maps, to keep them from rolling themselves shut, alongside Grandpa Kruse's memorial eagle, which sits next to my GISP (that's one of the things on my desk that serves no purpose, but that's largely because I don't, and probably never will, have an actual wall in this department).

At home, My basses sit on wall hangers, where they liven up the room until I take them down to use them. I really like this idea of functional decoration, and hopefully I will continue to get rid of the decor that just looks pretty, to be replaced with decor that looks pretty and also does things :)

On another note, I've started biking to work again, in an effort to get back into shape. I've already improved my time (only slightly), and hopefully this will move us toward being able to get rid of one vehicle. The less I have to rely on oil and extra money, the better.

Pathetic?

2011-05-04T12:44:00.001-05:00

It's been a good while since I've blogged. Baby is growing and being normal for her age, and she makes everybody happy, unless she's done with dinner and we aren't :) Mandy went to Kansas for a week, which went as I expected: the first couple days it was wonderful, then I missed her, and by the end, I was sooo ready for her to be home! I also got burned out on WoW, much to her delight, so I've been trying to get back in shape, and that's not going well at all. I pulled several muscles in both legs and feet, and combined with the planter's wart on my right heel, walking is altogether annoying right now.

Of course, it's not entirely exercise that is messing with my stride; the scale at work says that I am now 243 lbs. with clothes on, which means I am dangerously close to being too heavy to even USE my DDR equipment. That contributes heavily to the strain on my joints and feet, so I shouldn't be shocked that some light exercise did so much damage. I suppose I have an entire gym available to me, so I should take advantage of it. I am definitely looking forward to being able to truly DDR though, and it looks like I need to lose nearly 70 pounds at this point. Oh well, when you get to this point, you have to approach exercise with more care.

Honestly, one big reason I'm trying to lose the weight is because I'm playing on stage again, in front of more than twenty people :) I am in the audition process for a local church, and the material is rather difficult! I would like to NOT be the fat guy on the stage, so I had better work on my image.

What is most frustrating about the whole thing is that I can't just go all out on my workouts, because I wouldn't be able to handle it at this point. So I have to slooooowly build back up to a normal lifestyle, then increase the workouts. Blah.

Anyway, not a lot else to say right now. Hopefully some good things happen!

This iz tru

2011-04-26T13:33:00.001-05:00

I iz fat. I eatz too much. I needz to lose wait. I needz run across yard with doggy chasingz me.

The Woes of Software Development

2011-03-18T08:28:00.001-05:00

Everyone has aspects of their job that they find difficult; here are some of mine.

1: It either works, or it doesn't. I you're making a sandwich and you skip the tomato, it's still a sandwich and serves some purpose. In applications programming, you throw leave out one statement and the entire program is useless.

2: There is a constant dichotomy between what users ask for, and what they actually need. A user may ask you for an entire new application when the problem could be solved with a small tweak to their existing software.

3: Programmers are hard to work with. I suppose it's a lot like songwriting; someone pours their heart and soul into some software, then I come along and start critiquing and optimizing, and many programmers take it as a personal insult.

I'm sure there are more, but my test package just finished. Back to work.

End of COH?

2011-03-17T07:22:00.001-05:00

I put in my two weeks' notice last Sunday, so to speak. Actually, it was more like a one week's notice. Stephan said she will fight for me, of course, and I do feel somewhat guilty about abandoning them after two years of searching for a bass player, but in the end, it IS my choice, and I can't stick around for other people; I have to do it for myself. She wants me to give it another 90 days to let our new pastor's three-month plan work out, but I've already given it six months, and nothing has really happened. At the end of the day, it seems as though we are performing music as a continuing service, like a standard job, no end goal, just a plan to continue doing what we're already doing, and get through the day, then go home. I guess that's not enough for me, and I can't rely on the promise that things are suddenly going to change. That said, I haven't given her an answer, so I still have time to change my mind.

Weekend Report

2011-03-14T07:12:00.001-05:00

I played with the baby all weekend long, and it was so much fun! We took her on a bike ride and we put her and Lucie into a baby swing together. Lucie LOVED it; I'm not sure I've ever seen her smile so big. And Adelia went down the slides, of course. We had a really good time; that's twice in a week we've went out on our bikes, I think, and it's not even warm yet. I'm hoping to do a lot more of that.

Work has been exceptionally busy, and it probably won't ease up for a while, so I am beginning to redefine my work style and attitude. Now, I have NEVER been out of work here, but I often have had only one or two business critical tasks to take care of at once. At the moment, I am stretched so thin that I have to neglect business tasks that really need to get done, simply because I am only one person. Mandy said I can work late if I need to, and I will do it if I feel it is prudent for my job/career, but at the moment, it's just crazy busy, and we'll have to work with that :)

I gave the band my notice, so to speak; Stephan asked me to play one more week, and said she's going to fight for me, but I think if sparks would have flown, they would have done so in the months since I've started playing there. It's time to move on, and either find a new band or abandon the instrument. But sticking around isn't really an option at this point, not with the current environment. We're not ready for each other.

I've been neglecting the house projects and my volunteer work, so I had better hop to it before it gets out of hand. My grade for the week: A!

Housework

2011-03-11T08:55:00.001-05:00

I got the bedroom TV up on the wall last night; Mandy also found the second soundbar mount, which I had assumed lost, so I'm rather pleased about that. I got the upstairs soundbar up as well, so all that's left with the "new stuff" fiasco is to mount the downstairs soundbar, address the loose cords, and put the sleeper sofa back together.

...all that's left, I say, as though taking care of those wires is going to be a simple task. I either need to do a wall-colored wire casing running down the wall, or do a pass through the wall itself, running the wires through some kind of tube into the electronics below. Admittedly, we'll want our electronics to be in a more permanent location if we want to try THAT.

The "out of sight" project of moving the satellite/DVR box downstairs was a total failure, due to antenna reception, so Mandy probably isn't too keen on attempting to move something else at this point; however, since our TV controls the Bluray player through the HDMI connection itself, we could probably put it anywhere in the house and still use it. Another interesting observation is that the bottom TV is probably right below the top TV, making it possible to do a TV pass through to truly watch the same thing on both screens, not just the Dish channels.

Let's see, other pipe dreams, while I'm dreaming... Dish is in a tussle with one of our local TV channels, so it's been unavailable, and it's bothering Mandy quite a bit, so I'm thinking I may attempt to do the antenna on our Dish box. Problem is, I'm not sure A) how to tune into said channels from the box, or B) whether it can handle digital broadcast, since that wasn't national standard when we got the machine. So many things to iron out before we're remotely ready to cancel our regular TV.

Priorities

2011-03-09T08:32:00.001-05:00

No matter how together I think I have it, inevitably there comes a battle of priorities, to do what I like to do and take care of the things that need to be done, and to bring the two together as much as possible. I was convinced that I wouldn't be as tardy as my predecessor, who admittedly was too busy for the job, but indeed I have been letting things sit in my email for several days before responding, and that needs to end. I have band practice tonight, and I'm still unsure if I want to stick with the band, but in the end, it is my choice, and I can hold no one else accountable. Either I'm happy or I'm not :)

Work is also full of priorities; our new software launch has eclipsed other responsibilities, and I have found the priority list piling up with things that are very important, and that I simply can't get to. Even in the home life, there are several new purchases that require additional work to finish: a half-moved sleeper sofa in the spare room, an unmounted TV in the bedroom... and I still haven't done enough research to make a smart purchase of my next laptop. But in the end, it's all about having fun, so if I'm not enjoying it, I'm doing something wrong!

Adelia is exceptionally cute lately; she has a white and pink outfit that I especially like, but Manddy says she's almost grown out of it :( She just got her year-old pictures, and I am looking forward to seeing those for myself.

That said, I don't mean for this post to have a negative tone; I'm just exploring the realities of all the different pressures I'm feeling, and perhaps it's time to simplify once more to ease that pressure.

Lovely Weekend

2011-02-28T08:35:00.000-05:00

It feels like I haven't been at my desk in a long time; I was away Friday for an all day leadership training seminar, and there is so much to do here, that I'm sure I will spend the majority of the day just catching up on email and support calls. However, the training was eye opening, and I got to sit at the table with our directory and talk about some of the leadership objectives I had, and that was well worth a day away from the desk.

I still haven't heard anything about my annual review, and they are running out of time to do something. I'm mildly concerned at this point that they are going to do nothing, and simply keep me employed at my current rate without so much as an acknowledgement of all the things I've accomplished in a year. Of course, that's just the paranoia talking, after four years of being brushed aside at the last company.

We had tons of fun with Adelia, as usual; she played at the mall and got to see Stef, and we went to Red Robin, where she helped us break a glass full of water and chase a binkie around the floor constantly. You know, all in a day's work!

It rained like crazy last night, after snowing on Friday, so I have no idea what the weather really wants to do. I'm ready for spring though, so the family can get out of the house. I'm in need of some serious fresh air.

Busy Times

2011-02-16T09:14:00.001-05:00

Work has been crazy busy; I spend the whole day just getting through the inbox, handling support and upcoming changes. No complaints, I like being busy. Been spending my free time playing WoW and watching Merlin with Mandy. Adelia is having so much fun being herself, it makes me very happy :)

Oh, and I don't think I actually mentioned this, I passed my ESRI certification test! I am now an ESRI Certified ArcGIS Desktop Professional, which doesn't really have an acronym, but it adds a nice little picture on my email signature, and a line on my resume. This is a big deal for future and current employment; at least, I hope my company values it. Again, I have no reason to doubt my company, but I am always on my guard when it comes to raise/promition time. We can only hope for the best!

I'm not sure where I'll go next with the professional development; I am still managing the GIS Corps project, and will continue to do so for quite some time, it seems, but I need to keep pushing myself toward GISP recertification and making myself more employable, so I'm sure I will tackle more ESRI certifications. As hard as this cert was, I think the rest will be far more difficult, so I have my studying cut out for me.

That's all for now; Adelia has a doctor appointment today, so I will likely have some news about her growth and mental skills soon. Until next time!

Adelia's post-birthday

2011-02-14T08:29:00.000-05:00

We went to the museum yesterday, and while I wasn't exactly thrilled at the prospect of running around a museum with a one-year-old, we wound up downstairs at the children's museum, and Adelia had a great time; she ran back and forth across a bridge for at least a half hour straight, and she chased tennis balls around, and played with other kids, and she just had a lovely time. I enjoyed watching her play, and I realized abruptly that I needed a backpack for these kinds of trips, especially when I left the baby bag in a locker, and found myself running around the whole time with a Bjorn that I wasn't using, a juice bottle hanging off my belt loop, diapers and wipes in my back pocket, and a couple shoes jammed in my front. Either that, or I at least need to bring my cargo pants next time :)

I'm happy to have a one-year-old, and everybody loves her and thinks we're doing a great job. I'm having a pretty good life at the moment.

We also went to Microstation, where Mandy, while expressing interest in the Mac, sat down for five minutes at the main screen and couldn't figure out how to open a web browser; this amused me to no end, since the Mac is supposed to be sooooo user-friendly. Me, I spent some time comparing the cost of laptop parts to desktop parts, and while there are still numerous advantages to the laptop, I'm not convinced I'll replace it with another one. I may come up with some kind of poor man's portable machine, simply because it's that much cheaper, and easier to upgrade. I do realize after looking around for a few minutes that I am completely out of touch with desktop computing (or any hardware, for that matter), and I need to do some serious research before I consider my next machine.

In other news, Mandy gave me a 60-day pass for WoW, and bought an upgrade she didn't think I had (hey, I was dying to try Archaeology). Stranger was the news that Mindy helped her buy it, and she knew what version of the game I had, which completely stumps me. I was moved by the show of support, considering Mandy's general opinion of video games. We had a little talk about our perspective, and how TV and games aren't really all that different, just a matter of preference. We're in pretty good shape, Mandy and I :)

Early Morning

2011-02-13T06:17:00.002-05:00

I am instituting a personal policy regarding sleep hours; a general maximum of eight hours, unless I really need to make some up (yes, doctors seem to think there is no way to make up sleep, but it darn sure feels like it). Therefore, I am awake at 6 AM in a hotel room, with my wife sleeping in the bed, and Adelia off in the Pack and Play in the corner, after her early morning snack, dozed off again. My eyes are having some trouble adjusting to the bright monitor light, a stark contrast from the me of ten years ago, and I'm drinking warm Mountain Dew because I don't want to open the door and bathe the baby in fluorescent hotel hallway light.

Looking back at the last 24 hours, I have a lot to be happy about. Didi had a brilliant birthday party, although she won't actually be one year old until Valentine's Day. She smiled so much in one day that it must hurt :) I feel a little situational sympathy for Mary, who brought her one child by herself, as opposed to Adelia, who had her mother, father, papaw, grandpa, and uncle, not to mention all the other guests, doting on her, freeing us all at one point or another to do our own things. Once we realized this was what she was upset about, however, we took some steps to make it easier for her, and the rest of the day was more enjoyable. I suppose that's to be expected at a child's birthday party, since if she had brought along her entire family, that would have been a little strange :)

Anyway, the party was at Coco Key resort in Cincinnati, which has an arcade and giant water park. Adelia seems to understand the general concepts of swimming, and kicks her feet and flaps her arms when we lay her into the water. She really seemed to enjoy it, but she gets cold quickly, and then we have to get her out of her floaty and warm her back up. Her hair gets some solid curls when it is wet, which reminds me of pictures of Mandy when she was that age; I'm thinking she has definitely gotten her mother's pretty curls. Although to be honest, I have some decent wave to my hair as well when I let it grow out.

We got a good deal on a hotel room, so we had the cake in there, and had a place to let the kids rest/eat, and a place for us to sleep, since tomorrow we're having our first day as SPIES (aka secret shoppers)! More details later, but you know, can't clue in the businesses on who we are and where we're going. Normally I'm less than thrilled at the prospect of hotels, and I would certainly rather be home, but I'm rather looking forward to breakfast. Amusingly, I have no clue what their breakfast is going to be like, but I'm having some combination of deja vu and nostalgia from my experience at Kalihari, which had a lovely buffet. Admittedly, the buffet was one of I think three restaurants that operated that morning, due to the sheer size of the place, so this could wind up being a continental breakfast fiasco, but there's still hope! And frankly, if the continental breakfast involves gravy, I couldn't care less.

We almost bought another television on Friday, but the deals weren't compelling enough, and we are far from needing it, which is a good place to be in when you're negotiating. It's the same advantage we have with the car. Honestly, if I lost my car tomorrow, we would just use hers while we continued to look for her new car, and I would take mass transit, and I probably wouldn't even bother replacing it. A) It's not worth the money for a commuter vehicle, B) I already got a sweet bike from my mother for my last birthday, C) I could use a good excuse to stop eating fast food for lunch, and D) mass transit already runs nearly from my front door to the front door of my workplace. Actually, the bus literally stops right in front of my work building, and the downtown Miamisburg stop is two blocks from my house. So really, I have no reason either to complain, or really, to even be using my car for regular transportation at this point. Other than the fact that a bus must take longer to get where it's going, and honestly, I'm not really sure if that's the case, at least not to an extreme.

Boo boo's rousing behind me, little punk; I have never been at a hotel with her that I can recall, and it's a unique problem when you know your child isn't really ready to get up, but it you let her cry it out, you'll annoy the other twenty hotel guests in earshot. Well hey, if the beds are less comfortable and the showers are less comfortable, the lifestyle should follow suit :-P

Until next time!

Back to WoW

2011-02-11T10:35:00.001-05:00

Just a note that I'm playing WoW again, and I'm continuing my journal at zanemcfatewow.blogspot.com . Hope you check it out!

Very Busy

2011-02-04T09:50:00.001-05:00

What's going on in my life... So much! Firstly, the wife and I had a talk, and I think our relationship has really turned around. It's amazing how much good can come out of an hour of pure honesty. I have starting to stay up later with her, and she has let me have my time to do my volunteer work and have fun. I have also been playing with Adelia and having a blast!

My GIS Corps project has been going slowly as usual, but this morning I accepted the position of Manager of the North Team, which is another promotion in a very short time; I will be taking over all staff assignment and QC for the entire north region, which will probably take up a lot of time, but again, it's a great resume builder and a genuine chance to use my GIS skills in a volunteer capacity.

My professional development is going well, obviously, but I still have heard nothing from ESRI on the status of my certification exam. I'm getting rather nervous! I know I still have many things to accomplish before I can relax a bit, but I do hope it is worth the trouble.

In the realm of hobbies, I finished all the available episodes of most of the shows I've been watching, and now I just finished season 2 of Merlin; however, we just realized that there may be tons of special features on the DVDs, so I think we'll be going back and watching all the commentaries if they exist on each disc; thank you british television!

So, since my TV is wrapping up, I picked up World of Warcraft again, electing to start a new character on a new PvP server, since all my old friends are in totally different places. Unfortunately, since my friends are all gone, I'll have to rise on my own merit, but I doubt I'll get much raiding time in anyway, not the way I play :)

That's all for now; busy doing tons of things, and enjoying it very much.

The Technology!

2011-01-29T07:30:00.002-05:00

It amazes me sometimes how much technology we have, even compared to a decade ago. I'm marveling at how my phone alarm goes off, my other phone rings, I make a comment about work on Twitter, copy/paste my thought to Facebook, then blog about it on Blogger, all of which happens in under a minute, and could all technically done by my phone, a device that, when I was in high school, only made phone calls. And the comedy is, I'm not sure I would call myself a heavy user! I try to keep things as simple as possible, not too many friends, not too many networks, so that I don't drive myself crazy :)

Wife and I have had a rough time lately, and it looks like we are on the road to patching things up. It's not easy maintaining a marriage and a child, when you both feel used and overworked. For now, I'm up by myself, as the boss called with a problem during the weekend changes, but I'm sure Adelia will follow shortly. I'm using the idle time to try and get some headway on the GIS Corps work. It's a much tougher assignment, being a project manager, and I'm learning that management isn't all the glory that it appears to be. I had to run a meeting myself yesterday, and even among people who I know trust me, I was aware of all the departmental and political situations, and how I had to represent our department the best I possibly could. I never thought that my boss had it easy, per se, but I certainly respect his job more when I have to fill in for him. That's not to say I still don't want to be in management eventually. However, if this vesting and pension is what I think it is, I may be at my company for a good, long time. However, I am still going to continue to work on my credentials, for my own good.

Well, I'd better get back to this last QC panel to see if I can bust it out before the family wakes up.

Life

2011-01-25T22:01:00.003-05:00

Life is busy, and difficult at times. Well, not really all that difficult, just busy. I have a sick wife upstairs, and I'm down here working on volunteer work. This is important to my career, but sometimes I do wish that I could spend some time doing things that weren't about my work and my family. I even have employer-sponsored college funding, and I can't stand the strain of losing sleep to read and study and take college classes. Life is not easy :)

I have my career, and a career isn't the same as a job. A job is something you do 20-40 hours a week, and put up when you leave for the day. A career is something that you are constantly planning, making strategic moves to protect and enhance, working after hours to improve. And I enjoy my career, and my family, and my music, but again, I find myself at a crossroads, where I wonder if I could manage to do something more with my time, or if I'm spending my time doing what I really want to do. I'm sure it's just the strain of an impending exam, and this volunteer work causing some discomfort with the family life, and I find myself frustrated at the end of the day, wondering if *I* am in here somewhere, between the diet and the diaper changing and the exams. I miss Diablo, and WoW, and NHB, and late nights talking with my brother and staring at the bats at night. Life is a strange and complex thing; only, I never realized that to have the things I didn't have back then, I would have to give up all the things I then had.

Anyway, this is just for me, publishing my thoughts, not sure what it all means.

End Diet

2011-01-25T09:28:00.001-05:00

The crash diet has been over for a couple days now, and I'm definitely feeling better. I have gained a pound since stopping the first diet, but that may have been because Mandy dragged me out to eat at Lone Star, and I had some nasty processed chicken; never again! I am back to a more reasonable diet, and I am going to try very hard to control the new foods that are coming into the home, to get rid of the stuff with low nutrient density. Anyway, very busy day, so I'd better get back to work.

Day 10, 2:31 PM

2011-01-21T14:47:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure if it's the cold weather or the diet, but I'm extremely restless. I just took a little walk inside the building just to get away from my desk. I think about food a lot, especially when I'm hungry; no surprises there. I'm at 213 lbs. now, a 16 lb. loss in 10 days. I have to commit to staying on the diet plan as long as I'm losing a pound a day, whether I like it or not. And right now, I am tempted to leave the diet. I think the word "leave" there is a fundamental distinction, as I'm not really tempted to "cheat", which implies eating things that aren't on the diet, then returning to the diet. If I abandon the diet, I will leave it altogether.

Unlike other diets, however, I wouldn't quit the diet because it's not working; it is incredibly effective, but again, it is brutal! Honestly, this is probably the first diet I've actually followed protocol on, and the first one that forbade exercise. What I really want from the diet is to enable me to do body weight exercises again. I can't even do a single pull up, and when you have weak arms and 60 lbs. of dead weight hanging onto your body, it's no surprise.

I tried Vitamin Water Zero today, and it's lousy. I'm just not into Stevia, and these other zero-calorie sweeteners. Perhaps over time, I'll adjust, but I do need to find something other than water, or just keep shoving water down my throat until I DO appreciate it.

Day 9, 4:11 PM

2011-01-20T16:11:00.001-05:00

Craving popcorn, and peanut butter, and more than 100 calories of fruit, and cream cheese. Le sigh. At least I'm still losing tons of weight. I had no loss yesterday, but I lost two pounds again today, so I haven't given up on the diet yet. Once the gains slow, I'll transition to Phase 3, and try to stabilize myself. Although I do hope I can get under 200 lbs. before that happens.

Day 7, 11:41 AM

2011-01-18T11:41:00.001-05:00

Another meal. Full, but unsatisfied. I had my first preservatives since starting this diet, just by coincidence; the diet tends to move you toward all natural foods, and the detox effect should come through during this journey. Craving some falafel right now.

Day 7, 7:44 AM

2011-01-18T07:44:00.002-05:00

Good morning! I'm home from work one more day with pink eye, but it's not bothering me as much at the moment. I'm STILL suffering from caffeine withdrawal symptoms, but they are light enough that I don't need pain medication any more. Now without the acetaminophen in my system, I can begin the real detox :) I'm not sure if I'm still withdrawing from sugar, or if my body is just exhausted from the diet; fatigue is a normal symptom from a drastic diet change, as the body is accustomed to receiving instant energy, and not having to extract it carefully from natural foods.

Weight: 216 lbs., which means I've lost 13 lbs. in six days; I do realize that at his rate, I will only have to do this diet for a month, but I'm not sure I want to rough it that long, because it's still torture :) If only I could find one thing that I could truly enjoy... but I'm hoping my taste buds adjust.

Day 6, 8:51 AM

2011-01-17T08:57:00.001-05:00

Current weight: 178 lbs. That's an eleven pound loss in a very short time. It's still torture, but it's clearly effective. If only I hadn't let it go this far, I wouldn't be looking at two months of dieting. But hopefully I will have learned my lesson, and this won't happen again.

I'm sporting in the parking lot waiting to get into urgent care, as I believe I have pink eye, joy! I assume I got it from the children, but who knows. Highly contagious, don't want to spread it at work.

Day 5, 4:06 PM

2011-01-16T16:06:00.002-05:00

We have reached day five, which in reality is day three, because the first two days were binge days. Frankly, the binges were painful in their own way, but now that I am thinking wistfully back to all the tasty things I was eating before, these days are certainly worse :)

The diet is extremely strict, and I spend a lot of time hungry, but not all the time. Worse than the diet itself has been the detox from all the things I normally consumed. I'm still suffering from the effects of caffeine withdrawal, but acetaminophen seems to be helping somewhat. Once all the withdrawal symptoms are gone, hopefully I won't have to withdraw from that! Sugar detox is its own monster. Spending an entire day in a sugar low has definitely screwed with my senses, and I do spend a lot of my time wishing I were done with this diet; however, I tried the slow way, and clearly I couldn't handle that.

Cravings... I craved Reese's peanut butter cups, and this morning, I craved yogurt covered pretzels. I have a lot of nightmares, and I dream about food as well. We've been eating chicken, and tuna, and fruits and vegetables, and I'm convinced that my stomach has already shrinked a bit, although feeling full once isn't much of an indication. Shrunken stomach or not, I'm hungry now, and my allotment for dinner isn't much.

Oh, but the most important point: weight! I have lost six pounds so far, which is admirable, and depressing, considering how many pounds I have left to go. My primary goal is to get through this without letting it negatively impact the job and the baby. Didi doesn't seem to mind so far, as she's running around the living room right now, chewing on a pen.

Starting weight: 229 lbs.; current weight: 223 lbs. Somebody shoot me.

Day 2, 9:40 PM

2011-01-13T21:40:00.002-05:00

231 lbs. Thought I was getting the flu; I'm not entirely convinced I don't have something, but I am taking some Tylenol PM and passing out for the evening. I decided to stick with the diet after all; to be honest, I will likely miss all the sweets, especially my beloved tea that I drink all day long. I'm not sure if I'll switch to unsweetened tea in the end, but I think I may try to kick the caffeine at first. Tomorrow, the real diet ensues, and I'll probably spend a few days detoxing. Hopefully I don't damage any work or personal relationships with my crabby mood, but I should be in a better place by the beginning of next week.

Day 1, 12:39 PM

2011-01-12T12:54:00.001-05:00

229 lbs. as of this morning. These first two days are intended to make plenty of fat stores; in other words, I am to eat as much as possible. I had a Jimmy Dean sausage, egg, and cheese croissant for breakfast, as well as a piece of german chocolate cake. By the time lunch rolled around, I was still full, but I ate anyway, per instructions. My system completely rejected the Chipotle, however, and I'm beginning to think this chemical is giving me the Clockwork Orange. As long as it stops when the eating slows down, I think I'll be okay. Ugh. Not feeling well at this exact moment.

Rethinking Priorities

2010-12-30T14:49:00.001-05:00

Reflecting on the year that has almost gone, I recognize that I have had a very productive year of effort in "The Great Purge". I have achieved some substantial results, and I am moving very close to having a specific set of priorities in life which I can focus on exclusively. And that's the key word, exclusively. The key to identifying what your priorities are is to observe and report, unbiased, what you are really doing with your life. I say that I don't care much for TV, but when I look at how much time I spend watching TV, perhaps that's not true at all. My approximate distribution of time amounts to something like this, in order:

Work

TV/Movies

Family

Music (Bass/Vocals)

Music (Listening)

Games

Exercise

The fact that I spend more time watching TV than interacting with my family is troublesome, especially considering I would really like to toss the TV altogether. How would I like to change this in the next year? Work is fine; I don't spend a lot of time at work beyond normal working hours, and I come straight home. I could spend a great deal less time watching TV, and that would free up more time for music and exercise. So, here is where I would like it to lay out in the next year:

Work

Family

Exercise

Music (Bass/Vocals)

Music (Listening)

TV/Movies

Games

Ideally, I would like to incorporate some of these elements together, such as only watching TV if it's with family or while I'm exercising, or refusing to play any games alone. Life is about having fun, certainly, but it's also about refining oneself and having the discipline to do the things that truly make you happy, not just the things that are convenient at the moment.

Christmas Gifts recap

2010-12-28T09:46:00.001-05:00

***My Christmas***

Christmas, Christmas... I am going to attempt to chronicle my entire list of Christmas gifts for posterity :)

From Grandma Kruse, two pairs of shoes: black leather Dockers dress shoes, which I have subsequently worn to work every single day, and white New Balance running shoes, which feel like I'm wearing socks (whether it's 80 degrees or -10).

From Frank and Becky, an extremely warm winter hat, which I'm sure will come in handy for long-distance winter hiking (some day I will get a chance to do that).

From Curt and Lisa, a $50 Visa, which I still intend to spend on music gear, but at the moment, my musical future is unstable :)

From I cannot recall who: A gift certificate to Guitar Center, which I will certainly use on music gear.

From Mary and Dave, a leather bass strap without the breakable stiching, woot! I'm finished with low-quality bass straps. Took about an hour to get the strap locks switched, but it was totally worth it.

From Mandy, a second leather bass strap, so both my instruments are safe now. Much love!

From Mandy, a Peavey practice amp, which allows me to leave my large amp at church; my new smaller amp can be stored on a shelf, bringing the gym one step closer to being a true multipurpose room.

From Mandy, a custom engraved globe, reading: "Chris Storer, GISP, Husband, Father, Friend"; it is a small-scale globe which spins on a solar-powered base, and it is now sitting next to my certification on my work desk. Quite pleased with that one :)

It's a lot of things moving into my life, and I am glad that I moved so many things out over the year to prepare. I am surrounded by gifts and love, yay!

***Baby's Christmas***

My child is absolutely spoiled, and she absolutely loves it! She got tons of toys, of course, but so far, the ones that take the cake are:

A hand-crafted doll from my grandma's friend; the eyelashes are on the bottom of the eyes, and it reminds me of a creepy blonde Raggedy Ann, but my daughter seems quite taken with it. She will pick it up and drag it around the living room like My Buddy or something. So hey, if she likes it, it's cool with me!

A yellow Singamajig, from my grandma. When you squeeze it, it sings, and Adelia loves anything that makes music. It is also small enough that she can easily carry it with her. She has managed to hug it tightly enough to make the sounds go off, which means she must love it :)

A toy guitar, from my mother. Pushing any of the colored fret buttons makes it play a preset song, and plucking the strings or hitting the whammy bar make custom sounds that are in tune with the music. She has been known to pick it up, hit a song, and boogie boogie until the songs ends, then the process starts all over again.

Speaking of boogie, it looks like she is realizing that what we are doing is music as well; I walked into her room humming yesterday, and she stopped what she was doing and started dancing! I loves her.

***BounceU***

For eight dollars, we got to take our kiddo to a wonderland of inflatable toys, and while she was rather intimidated by it at first, I think she will come around. We had lots of fun, and she most enjoyed the slide, which gave me a nice rug burn. What I most enjoyed about the experience is that it was a nice workout, and it cost a lot less than eating out, which is what we are used to doing with our money. If we stopped dining out and did these things instead, how much more fun would we have? Hopefully I will find out.

Mid-Day Thoughts

2010-12-22T12:29:00.001-05:00

I'm rather enjoying these leather work shoes that Grandma Kruse got me for Christmas. The truth is, there are things that I say I want, but it's the things I use most often that I remember, and most of the time, those are things that I need, not want. Even so, she also got me a pair of running shoes that was certainly not a need, and I got my first chance to use those yesterday; they are EXTREMELY breathable, almost feels like running in socks. I'm quite happy :)

Anyway, I've been feeling idle, so I went outside to do a little walking, and I'm not sure if it's the shoes or the temperature, but my feet didn't feel cold at all! I've really tried to keep them polished, but the bad weather makes it very difficult to keep them from getting scuffed or getting water spots. Anyway, that's just my obsession with polished shoes. Maybe I should take that to work to do on break, that would be therapeutic...

So I was out walking, enjoying the peace, when I realized that I really miss hiking. Just walking outside alone, not even necessarily hiking, but just being away from all the forces that seek to press into our minds. Being an IT professional, that pressure is endless at work. I am surrounded by monitors, constantly telling me what hasn't been started, what needs attention, when new tickets appear, project deadlines. Organization and simplicity are SO important for me to keep my cool, and I realize that I didn't even know this a couple years ago. That does explain the high stress levels at the old job :)

So my desk is clear, and my mind is as clear as possible, and sometimes it still isn't enough. I feel that ever growing compulsion to get rid of things, pare my life down to the bare essentials... in effect, I think I'm trying to make myself identifiable again, instead of being identifiable by my things.

The thought that has been bothering me today is this: am I a product of myself, or simply the end result of a thousand business models seeking to use me to make money? I'm not saying that business is bad, but I am realizing that I am making life decisions as much because of compelling marketing as because of my own desires. We are looking to spend $15,000 on a car when we have two working vehicles and only one person needs to travel to an off-site job. I am asking for a wireless microphone system when I don't even have batteries for the wireless systems I DO have.

I read a lot of Leo Babauta, and I admit, he tends to attack lifestyles that are unlike his own, but I find myself getting angry like he does at times. I realize that I spend time doing things that aren't important to my job or my family or myself even, and don't make anyone happy, and yet, I don't even question the necessity of doing it. It's like doing a hobby that you don't love any more because you have materials that would go to waste otherwise.

I know I'm rambling; my thoughts are in a strange place today. I guess I'm still in that line of thought that things are STILL not simple enough, not with the baby. I'm out of shape and I'm no longer happy with it; my music doesn't challenge me and that bothers me. Work is great, that's something :) And the baby is doing wonderfully, I'm pleased about that. I just want to be in that place where the opportunities abound, where I'm not busy trying to dig myself out of a hole, but rather, just ready for what happens next.

My lunch hour is over, I'd better get back to work.

Expirations Please!

2010-12-15T16:29:00.001-05:00

I don't like a lot about Microsoft products, but you know what I do like? There is a feature in Microsoft Outlook called message expiration, which allows you to mark an expiration date on a piece of email, then when the date hits, scripts will catch the expired email and dispose of it. I wish that my entire life has optional expiration tags. I could bring something into the house, knowing that it would dissipate in a year, and I wouldn't have to worry about haplessly storing something I really didn't need for too long. Alas, I can wish all day and it won't happen, so I have to perform regular sorting and cleaning to make sure I don't have too much stuff in the house. Anyway, just thought I'd share that.

By the light of a candle... and my giant laptop screen

2010-12-07T21:00:00.003-05:00

I have the light turned off this evening, and I lit a taper candle, which is giving off a fine ambience of light. Candle light is one of the things that is lost on my generation; even now, it is dwarfed by the blaring light of my over large laptop screen. I'm not saying I regret the laptop purchase, but sometimes it does seem like a mammoth. It's a tough battle between the convenience of extra screen room and the convenience of having a laptop you can actually buy a laptop bag for.

But I digress. I generally stick with jar candles, namely the ones we made for my wedding, which resulted in so many extra candles that we haven't had to buy candles for the two years we've been married. That's not to say we haven't bought any though; our house is decorated with a menagerie of candles of all shapes and sizes, but I would very much like one of those candles that can burn for a month straight without wearing out, but I imagine those are both heavy and expensive :) So I will enjoy my smaller ones. Candles are inexpensive, compared to the other things we regularly enjoy. I will have to buy more, if I ever run out of the ones I have!

Mandy is in the living room with Kaleena watching Glee, and I am in the back room, writing this and enjoying the candlelight. I don't know if it's better to think about Bobbie Joe or forget, but it's really affected me in ways that I think, nay, hope, will never reverse. Most people, by the time they have reached my age, have encountered the passing of a friend or family member that really revealed to them the fragility of life, and this is the one for me. Unexpected, shocking, saddening, it left me without a rock in my life. Bobbie Joe was one of those people who I could rely on, a foundation upon which I could balance myself, lean against. When he left the world, my entire center of gravity shifted, and I find myself struggling to figure out which way is up.

To him, though, it's not the same story at all. He had a firm belief that when he left the world, it would have been his time, and he wouldn't go until his purpose on earth had been achieved. So perhaps if you are a believer in fate (which I am not), this was his time. Christians don't quite mourn like everyone else, and in a sense, the whole situation is easier. If you believe that the parted are going to a better place, and that you will join them, you're only really mourning your own loss. As the preachers like to say, the mourning of a fellow's death is really the selfish part, lamenting their absence from your mortal life. Even at its worst, this is a short-lived thing, and it transitions back into adjusting to a life without them. I'm not sure what I believe in the end, but I do believe that this life isn't all there is to it. That is a comfort.

Again, the whole situation has me moving further in the direction of parting with worldly things, although I can't say it's all for spiritual reasons. I do feel a peace with less things, and the space I'm freeing up is really making a huge difference in my mental presence. My theory is something Brian Tracy mentions in many of his seminars, and strangely enough, one I just heard today. The basic premise is that if you narrow your life to the few things that you do exceptionally well, you will be so much more productive in those areas that you will be far more valuable than if you tried doing so many more things, and did them all in a mediocre manner.

This is compounded by several other observations that I have seen firsthand. As more things leave your life, you spend less time and money organizing them, maintaining them, and trying to find them when you've lost them! The things that you have are easy to find, since the junk is no longer in the way. They are easy to access and use, since you don't have junk clogging up the usable areas in your house. You tend to use them more often, since they are easily accessible, and therefore in your field of view more often. This white workout machine next to me sees months without proper attention, and I really think my health would improve significantly if I were to use it regularly. It's easy to solve that problem; I just need to eliminate all the other things that take up my time.

I'm still not entirely sure where this emotional change from recent events will end, but I do know that the purge continues. I tossed what seemed like about one hundred discs over the last week, along with the game systems and gear I mentioned before; I am really excited to see where it all takes me, but I am already enjoying some of the rewards. Perhaps it's a father thing, perhaps just an age thing, but I enjoy plain old silence at times, when no one is influencing me, nothing is pressing at my attention. Just a few minutes of uninterrupted time. And I think that in those moments of time, some real gems of wisdom are going to hit me.

Back in Business

2010-12-02T20:16:00.004-05:00

I have been of the school of thought lately that if I eliminated the things which were truly distracting me, I could have the time to focus on the things that I truly valued. This is, of course, the entire spirit behind my "Great Purge" that I have been working on what seems like a couple years now, on and off. Things spur me to move on, and then things distract me from the continued effort. Something very sad has gotten my attention this time.

It is with much regret (not that I really could have done anything) that my pastor, Bobbie Joe, died this week of an unexpected heart attack in his sleep. This is the first friend I have ever lost, save an NHB listener a few years back, and it has affected me deeply. Not only am I good friends and musical partners with his son and daughter, one a singer and the other a musician, but I am also a long-time friend of Bobbie Joe himself, back to my first days at AHOP. I remember my grandmother saying that she had seen him on TV last weekend; I was rather confused until my mother pointed out that he looked an awful lot like Jim Belushi :) He was on stage singing "Takin' it to the Streets", and that was a part of the rather strange first church service I ever attended since my childhood. Bobbie Joe was a very real part of the first day of the rest of my life, as people like to put it. That church service started a movement inside my heart and mind, and led to me turning to God, becoming a church musician, and meeting many of the wonderful friends I still know today.

Losing Bobbie Joe has affected me in ways I could not have predicted. Many people talk about wake up calls, and I don't think that I have been doing anything particularly bad or wrong, but it did remind me that we only have so much time on this earth, and it would be wise to spend that time efficiently. And so I spent the last couple days at work staring at the screen, thinking about how much I'll miss him, and thinking about how much I hate the things that distract me from my purposes, the clutter that gets into my mind and into my space. I think at this point it's almost a nervous compulsion, but things have also piqued the "instinct", if you will. Christmas, namely.

Christmas is a wonderful holiday when all the people you know and love get you all kinds of things, and if you don't move some things out of your collection before the new things move in, you may find yourself without anywhere to put it all! I was up in the gym closet this evening, and I managed to line up several things for disposal: My Gamecube (system only, the controllers and games work with the Wii, but tossing that will free up some space), a few games with it, a Gameboy player attachment for said Cube, and several Gameboy games. What else, let's see... My entire Super Nintendo collection, which pains me, but they are all replaceable on newer systems these days. I almost tossed my X-Arcade, but I changed my mind at the last minute, watching Adelia mess with the buttons. She was adorable; I posted a picture on my Picasa.... aaaand I so just closed the Blogger window and I thought I lost everything. Wow, thank you Google for instant save! I didn't lost a single space; it caught my typing right up to the period. Anyway, let's see... I was going to post the link from Picasa, but apparently, it hasn't been fully posted yet. Blah.

What else... a couple old sets of Christmas lights that aren't worth the time it would take to fix them, a camcorder bag (since our current camcorder with all the gear takes 20% of the area of the case), and a portable air compressor, since A) my current car starter box has a built-in air compressor, and B) I actually own an air compressor now :) And I also threw out several computer cables. So, that's a lot of stuff I've parted with. I suppose that's an even trade for...

I got two new pairs of shoes from Mandy's grandma over Thanksgiving (we celebrate both holidays there, since she lives in Kansas). One is a new pair of New Balance running shoes, which will definitely come in handy if I can ever get away from work and family to actually run! I also got a new pair of Dockers work shoes, black, of course, since my old black shoes finally gave out. I have worn them almost ever day this week, and they are suiting me wonderfully. I loves them!

I got a wicked cool hat from aunt Becky which reminds me of the hat my brother used to wear. It is heavily padded and comes with extra ear padding for those extra windy days. I wear it to and from the work building now, and although I get some strange looks, I am enjoying it very much. I got two gift cards which I intend to use for music gear, but my wife is intent on my not spending it until after Christmas, in case I actually get something from my music wish list, fat chance :) But hey, my wish list is more of a standing list that I can use to show I've wanted something for a really long time and haven't changed my mind. There are certainly more things, but they elude me at the moment. Unfortunately, we picked up a lot of things Black Friday shopping that we couldn't exactly put on a wish list, because it would be too late! We acquired a balance board with Wii Fit and Super Monkey Ball: Step and Roll, and while I am absolutely abysmal at Monkey Ball, I'm rather adept at some of the Wii Fit games.

That's all I'm writing for now; Mandy is out with Kaleena, and I'm enjoying the alone time to do things I rarely get to do, like sort through my stuff and post to my blog. Until next time!

Stressful Week

2010-10-12T15:33:00.002-05:00

It is Tuesday; I got a call from Mandy Sunday afternoon as I was leaving church, saying that we would miss our flight to Kansas. Apparently, Grandpa had taken a turn for the worse, and we needed to get on a plane right away. Luckily, everything seems okay now, so we are getting ready to take a plane back to Ohio so that I can return to work. Thank you to everyone who helped me out and thank you for all the prayers and good wishes.

Mandy just threw things into the luggage, as I was not present to pack, but aside from child gear, we still left with only one planeside luggage. I do not feel deprived in the slightest here, and it is revealing to me that I really don't need all the things that I previously thought I needed. It is one thing to implement the theories that I have read, but another thing entirely to see my work finally getting some results. I eventually want to get my possessions down so much that I can virtually take everything that is valuable to me in my car, just to be able to say that I can.

I have plenty more to say, but frankly, all the emotion and tension distracts me, so I haven't been able to do much. Hopefully I will post again soon, when I can focus.

Not Quite Ready

2010-09-18T04:17:00.002-05:00

I woke up this morning for the purpose of moving forward with the plethora of schoolwork I have available, and continuing my GIS Corps project, but I would up thinking about the DDR board that's sitting up against my wall, woefully unloved. I went to Freecycle and wrote up the full post to give it away, went through my collection of DDR-style games and pulled them all out, and added them to the post. As I was looking at the board, I recalled all the wonderful memories, and remembered StepMania and all the other add-ons that I experimented with in the older days. I decided to keep it all for now; I'm just not ready to part with it.

I do realize that having something so large keeps my minimalism at bay, but I have realized that perhaps I'm not quite a minimalist after all. I was reading Leo Babauta's blogs on minimalism and simplicity, and so far I have found them both to be quite the same. It's only as I approach the reality of minimalism (after having parted with tons of possessions) that I truly see the distinction between minimalism and simplicity, and realize that I'm more interested in simplicity.

Minimalism is the practice of reducing your living components to the absolute simplest they can be, to intentionally break down and eliminate anything you possibly can to free up mental and physical space. This is a very Buddhist concept, as the most extreme Buddhist would have nothing at all; even the clothes he wears are property of the temple. Obviously "most extreme" plays an important role in that statement, but the point is made anyway.

Simplicity, on the other hand, is not about eliminating anything at all; simplicity aims to eliminate things which are not used or not necessary; for instance, if an instrument is sitting on the wall, one that is never used and takes up space, it should be eliminated. If you have five hundred games, but you only ever have time to play ten, keep the ten and toss the 490. The result of this method is (hopefully) that you reach the other side not having lost a single thing that you actually wanted to use, but instead may do all the things you did before, but now with more space and efficiency.

In practice, it probably does not work this way; I imagine that many people who are interested in either discipline land somewhere between the two methods. I have certainly gotten rid of things that I thought I may use, but the operative word there is "thought". Will I have ever used them if I kept them? I suppose I will never know, but I believe it was worth the effort. Even as I sit here thinking about the chances that I will ever have the time to play DDR, I realize I am probably better off giving the DDR pad to a loving home while anyone still values it, but again, as with a few other things in this project room of mine, I'm not quite ready for that. And I suppose that is okay. After all, this is a shift, not only in my possessions, but also in my very way of thinking.

In other news, I shaved my head Thursday night; or rather, I helped my wife shave my head. I had already buzzed it very short after a haircut snafu, and I really like the exposed scalp, as it helps to get it clean and manageable. I may grow my hair back out after I get my scalp in pristine condition, but for the moment, I'm having fun with the shaved head. I should post pictures, but as it always seems with me, I just don't feel like investing my energy in pictures. I wonder if that is simply a behavior that I developed based on my opinion of the important of photographs, or if it is some convoluted outcropping of my mother's tendency to avoid pictures, leaving me with far less pictures of my youth than most people would have, and I simply continued the behavior out of habit. The world may never know :)

The bathroom is improving; we still have a number of smaller tasks to complete, but we are getting ever closer to finishing the entire project, and I would like to say that will be a close, but as I well know, this is a journey, not a destination, and the projects will continue for a long, long time, so I had better learn to find enjoyment in it somewhere; it's like work, really, although I do get a lot of natural enjoyment out of that.

Speaking of work, I was contacted by a headhunter looking to hire a GIS developer at over $100k a year; I'm sure it's an ambitious post, but I would be a fool not to try for it! I need to remember to send him my resume.

That's all for now. Until next time!

Entertainment

2010-09-05T20:48:00.002-05:00

I read an amazing article on mnmlist about entertainment that really got me thinking about entertainment and what it means, and how it should be used. The relevance is that I am in Kansas at the moment visiting Mandy's family, and I often have had some disagreements with her about how much baggage I take with me. Not that our disagreeing is even the chief issue, as many airlines are now charing per bag, including the first one! Of course, the exceptions to this rule are the carry-on luggages, so we wanted to see if we could get everything into the carry ons. Aside from Adelia's necessary gear (stroller, car seat, diaper bag), we took on carry on luggage with all the things we needed, and I also brought my laptop case, containing only my laptop and essential peripherals. The difference was dramatic, most notably the lack of waiting around at baggage claim and no risk of losing cargo. It was less stressful, less heavy, and it honestly feels better to have less with me. And to be honest, I have my computer with me, which gives me access to the web, and there is very little else I would need anyway.

I almost pondered not bringing the computer with me, and I could certainly have gotten away with it, but I edited a ringtone for Lisa while I was out here, and I also worked on my refactoring project as well, both of which required my machine. But back to the point of my saying all this. The reason I always took too many things in the past, aside from packing redundant clothing, is that I also brought entirely too many sources of entertainment, because my chief fear in Kansas was not having anything to do. The last few times, I brought multiple thick books, my Game Boy, my computer, several computer games, extra pairs of shoes for specific activities, etc. This time, I brought one extra pair of clothes, no extra shoes, no toiletries (we had them waiting for us at our destination), and just the computer. And that's pretty much it.

I recall previous trips to Kansas, and one thing that I distinctly remember was boredom. Boredom, even with all the junk I brought! This time, I had so much fun playing with baby and hanging out with family that I am having a better time with less entertainment. This resonates with the article I read mainly because the point the author made was that entertainment is often used as a distraction from boredom, and it really ought to be used as a supplement to allow you to do the things which truly make you happy. Rather than play the Gameboy this time around, I spent some time learning ArcGIS 10 software development and refactoring methods, and I am smarter, more well-rounded, and happier than I would have been otherwise.

That's not to say I didn't use some good entertainment along the way. I finally downloaded a Sudoku app for my Android phone, which marks the first time I have actually played the game, although I have played some variants inspired by the original. I found that the games took nearly 15 minutes, even for an easy puzzle, but I quickly gained skill and halved my speed. I may try more difficult puzzles once I've gotten the hang, but for now, I am happy to have played it, and to understand what it's all about. Definitely up my alley.

That's all for now; not sure if I'll post more while I'm out here, but I'll be heading back home Tuesday afternoon. Until next time!

Weekend Thoughts

2010-08-28T03:41:00.002-05:00

I'm slowly warming up for another day of working in the bathroom. I need to continue building the walls; that will surely take all my time, but hopefully I make a lot of progress. The CD ripping project continues, but I am fairly close to finishing, with around 20 CDs to go. After that is all finished, I will have my entire collection in one portable case, not including the movies, which include a lot of Mandy's stuff :)

I brought home my scales to give away; for those of you who don't know, engineering scales are the length of a ruler, except thicker and have three lines coming from the center instead of just being a flat line. The result is a star-looking ruler that has six readable sides to measure virtually anything. I have three of them, and haven't used them since leaving the engineering firm (and consequently the drafting portions of my job), so it's time to say goodbye to them. I also brought home my industrial stapler a few days ago, and I think I'll wind up selling that one, as much as it's worth. What I am realizing about office supplies is that the majority of our office equipment is completely redundant. We have a printing station that has an industrial stapler twice as powerful as even my own, not to mention a regular stapler, and yet I had both at my desk, when I really don't need either. I'm sure I can find more redundancy if I continue to look, which I am bound to do.

I popped in Gradius V a couple times over the week when I had a free moment, and I'm rather enjoying that. I forgot how much I loved the speed and dodging of that game, and the overall speed of the game is convenient when I don't have large, unbroken slots of time like I used to. I should probably evaluate my games from that point of view the next time I downsize them.

We will be heading to my mother's "temporary" house to enjoy the pool for the last time before swimming season is over; that will be on Sunday. I may get a chance to go out to see Stephan's church in Beavercreek, or perhaps we'll stay local, not sure. And that's my weekend, I assume.

That said, I have the morning to wrap up before everyone wakes up and I can get started on the wall, so I think I will poke around with SharpDevelop and see if it corrupts the solution files or anything dangerous like that.

The Move to Open Source

2010-08-25T05:04:00.002-05:00

For the last couple years, I have slowly gained an interest in open-source software; obviously, I enjoy the freedom of it, but I also notice a marked stability and reliability with open-source software. I never have to worry about malware, and I always know that the intent is the greater good of the users. It's like being a member of a software co-op.

If the problem with proprietary software is secrecy and sloth, then the problem with open-source software is the absolutely dire need for numbers to survive. Obviously, a proprietary software with no users wouldn't stay in the business model long, but it is possible for a piece of proprietary software to be built and maintained with relatively few users if the business wishes. It is virtually impossible for a piece of open-source software to exist and flourish without users, because the users are the creators. Users provide the essential bug reports that make the software stronger.

What happens when the user base leaves a piece of open-source software is rather depressing. The proprietary software gets more attention, gets more users, and as the users abandon the open-source software, the bug reports stop pouring in. The developers trickle and vanish, and the software dies. Eventually, the open source software becomes laughably inferior. Conversely, if a piece of open source software shows enough promise, users will pour in to help even if the software doesn't work properly. User interest increases, bug reports increase, new developers are recruited, and the software begins to improve. If this is done quickly enough, the open source software will rise to a level of high efficiency and productivity.

That said, I have found it extremely difficult to effectively practice the open-source lifestyle that interests me. I work in the GIS field, and ESRI dominates. ESRI dominates so much, in fact, that I have been hard pressed to find an open-source GIS solution that even works, much less does what I would like it to do. Now, I have to be fair, it could very well be that it's my operating system; I am running Windows 7, which is still at the end of the "young" stage of operating systems. If you compare it to strongholds like Linux, which continue to evolve, as opposed to releasing major versions which are virtually incompatible, Windows becomes much, much younger by comparison.

I keep digressing. I have allowed my dependence on proprietary GIS software and proprietary operating systems to hamper my efforts to at least run what other programs I can in open-source. And now that I have realized that fact, I am beginning to remedy the situation. The number one reason to do this is that it GREATLY eases the transition to another operating system, assuming you are sticking with both open-source and cross-platform. I realize that I have already begun this by grabbing TortoiseSVN for my workplace experiments with source control (my business has not adopted source control company-wide yet, and I would like to at least know what I'm talking about when the time comes), and my adoption of Google Chrome as my preferred web browser at home.

So, I have identified a couple programs I could begin to move away from. First is Winamp; a small-company project with a ridiculous amount of user support which was bought by AOL, if I recall correctly, many many years ago at this point. I picked up VLC media player, which seems limited at the moment, but we'll see how much I can do with it after a couple weeks of use. I think I will also start using SharpDevelop to replace Visual Studio at home; with my source control in place, I should be able to switch between the two fairly easily, even if the programs have a tendency to morph files a bit (not that I've noticed anything of the sort, but I've yet to compile anything with it).

So, that's two major steps. To give myself some credit, looking through my programs, I use a lot of open source software I didn't really consider; I am using OpenOffice for general document editing, and cdex for CD ripping, so I'm in decent shape, but there are definitely areas where I could still experiment. On top of my continuing project to rip all my CDs to digital media, this will keep me occupied :)

Toss Toss Toss

2010-08-23T03:57:00.002-05:00

It's been another busy weekend; didn't get much done in the bathroom, but it's still progress. I have to cut out a few more small panels and mud them all together, then we'll have most of the wall rebuilt, pending the paint and tiles, which I'll admit is time-consuming, but it will be nice to not be looking at beams any more. The closer I get to finishing that project, the sooner we'll be able to work on other fixes in the house. I knew baby's fan was shorting out, but Mandy figured out that it was a loose wire in the closet that was triggering it, so I have something substantial to go on, thankfully.

Between that project and my reorganization, I've been well occupied. I went through my games again, and this time, I made more substantial progress. I tossed almost half my PS1 collection after forcing myself to admit I would never play those games for the simple reason that I had better games sitting in my collection. I think this is where Habib has been for over a decade, but I'm just figuring it out. What was a real struggle for me was getting rid of certain "sets", like the entire Final Fantasy collection, or the entire Metroid collection, which of course are deprecated at this point, because I haven't bought the newest ones, but I still wanted to keep them because I associate a lot of enjoyment with the series, but really, I only enjoy, and intend to enjoy, certain installments, for instance, FF4, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 10-2. There's really not much point keeping the others, so they are gone now. I got rid of a small number of PS2 games as well, and after all the effort, I can finally fit my entire game collection (CDs, at any rate) into a single 200-CD case, which is substantial progress. I think that this may be the achievable equilibrium I try to maintain; I am not committing myself to further downsizing, but it's always an option if I continue down this road.

During this process, I also brought up some SNES/NES games that I intended to put into a collage and wall mount, but I had to finally admit that it was low enough on my priority list as to be unachievable; the theory being that if you have a list of 100 things that need to be done, by the time you get to the bottom of the list, more priorities will have popped up that supercede the bottom items on the list. Once you realize this, you can effectively remove certain items from your priority list, realizing that you will never do them. That said, I did keep something like ten of them, because at least for now, I still do own the system, and these are some of my favorites of all time, like Yoshi's Island and Tetris Attack. I'm sure the emulators are satisfactory by now, but the last time I explored digital options, the performance was still inferior; they hadn't figured out proper layering and internal chips, things like that. I'll have to look into it again.

I also got into my old movies and cleared out some bargain bin purchases which I honestly will never watch. Some gems like, oh, ancient John Wayne westerns, Zorro Rides Again, Laserhawk... just random stuff. I have a wife who is ten times more dominant than I am when it comes to visual media, so the likelihood that I will ever sit down to watch a movie that isn't even that high on my priority list is... not much.

And that's what this latest turn of this downsizing effort really comes down to; not a matter of the entertainment value of the media in an objective sense (although some of them certainly contain little of even that), but the value relative to the hundreds of other options I have for my leisure time. I have read and do realize that the most effective way to do this is to declare effective bankruptcy, relinquishing everything you have, then reclaiming only what you need, and eventually discarding all the things you didn't bother to reclaim. But everyone has their quirks, and mine seems to be that I have to think everything through to the point of excess. Hence these incessant ramblings on my blog. I'm hesitant to even call it a blog at this point; it's more of a public journal, which some would argue is the definition of a blog in the first place, but I've always seen them as having a certain level of globally informative or entertaining value. Mine is more personal, but still, as I've said before, it's mine, and I certainly don't hold it against anyone for skipping over the long ones :) This is meant as a record and as an outlet.

I am pleased with the progress around here, but it is definitely one of those cases of "make a mess to clean a mess". It is a zoo in here! Not only because of all the drywall dust and scraps from the renovation project, but also the neverending pile of things that have slowly walked their way out of the nooks and crannies of the house, and are now sitting out in the open, waiting to be addressed. Admittedly, I don't even have a plan for some of these, like Mandy's band videos. I need to find someone who is even capable of doing this, much less willing, because I'm not going to pay for the professional service, not for six videos. I can't imagine that being affordable. Of course, I've found devices for $60 that can do it, but that also defeats the purpose of downsizing, because I would then be forced to admit that immediately after converting the videos, I would have no use for the converter, and would thus have to toss it :)

...and my thought pattern was derailed when I read a reference to Randy Johnson's infamous fastball which exploded a bird on impact, and had to go find the video to watch it again. Worth the trouble though; I LOVE that clip!

I am reminded, when observing myself, of the alternate definition of fanaticism: "Redoubling your efforts when you aim has been forgotten". I have to keep this in mind as I aim to continue downsizing my life, trying to recall what it is I was downsizing for in the first place. I suppose mental clarity, and freedom to pursue anything I wish without feeling mentally congested by all these distractions. It could be a distraction, really, just biding my time until class starts again. As I tend to say when I'm on these kicks though, I do hope I stick with it; the changes seem to be helping.

Real Progress

2010-08-21T03:29:00.003-05:00

Even after having cleared up Facebook significantly, I still find it too heavyweight for my taste; I think it may be a tool I use at specific times, as opposed to Twitter, which I update in real time. The great thing about Twitter is that it is light enough to run on any phone, and even if the software is too much or not available, it runs effectively through text messages as well, which is how I used to do it.

So, I made some significant progress toward my GISP yesterday; I have finally completed EVERY requirement! Now I am in the process of assembling the pile of paperwork required, obtaining my letters of support, and arranging proof that I've done all the things I claim to have done :) What makes this process ten times easier is that I've been preparing for this process for the last three years, so the only things that I wasn't prepared for were a couple details that slipped the cracks during my less detailed reads through the documentation. I have one letter on its way through the mail, and I need to get my boss to write the other, and then I will do the final read through and submit! After that, the only thing that could hamper my process is if they challenge my education, but I think it will all be relevant. I'm not going to get myself too excited, because A) it is not approved yet, and B) it may take some time for the panel to even get around to the approval, I'm not sure.

Either way, it is good news, and will likely be followed by more good news in the future. This is a true example of the results of hard work and single-mindedness, as this is an effort seven years in the making; whew!

There is always work to do, but it is nice to see things slowly coming together; I intend to get the walls up in the bathroom today, which will allow Mandy to start working with the stones. I really ought to be doing some off-hours Production corrections at work, but the wife took my keys, which have my token on them, and I'm not sure where she put them when she got home :) Let's see, what else this weekend? Stephan said she's going to call me about playing for her brother at a church in Beavercreek (her church, incidentally; their family has ridiculous musical talent, and her father is the pastor there), and Mandy has already given her blanket approval for me to play periodically, so that could be a nice outlet. I'm sure there was something else, but I can't recall at the moment. I should probably post Mandy's purse on Ebay, and list some of these other bags behind me on Freecycle, but the downside of Freecycle is that it is a hassle to manage. You post something, you get ten responses, you pick one, then you spend the next THREE DAYS recieving emails around the clock about the item, even after posting a big, obvious TAKEN on the item. But hey, it's for a good cause.

As I take a moment to examine this office / gym that I call my home in the mornings, it really is obvious that I've been working in here; it just takes a lot more time and effort at this point to organize and minimize, since the easy things have already been taken care of. I wish I could focus, but I've got music playing in the background... okay, paused. I have a real problem with distraction; I will find something that interests me, like music, then I will take it with my everywhere I go, and it will slow down and complicate everything I do, because I slowly lose focus as I gain interest in the distraction. Music, Twitter, Facebook, RSS readers, books, it's all the same to me. I am the kind of person who focuses really strongly on one thing at a time. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Back to the topic at hand, I am looking down at this pile of CDs that I'm really making good progress on; next to it, there is a small stack of VHS tapes that my wife wants to keep; they are the kind of videos that no one ever watches, but no one ever wants to get rid of, like marching band recordings. As a matter of fact, they might all be just that, let's see... band, news broadcasts, band, band, band, band. Close enough! I am pondering the simplest way to address these; if I still had a desktop, I would be able to digitize the videos straight from a VCR to the computer, compress the video, then toss the tapes, but I don't think that's a realistic option at this point, unless I can find someone with a good enough capture card. There are some other options, but it may take some time to think about. I have a firewire input on this laptop, and I own a camcorder, so if I could feed into the camcorder with the video feed, then copy the digital video to the computer, that would work. It's a hassle, but worth the effort to keep something that Mandy really wants to preserve. That's my current aim, it seems, now that I look back at the 20,000 foot view. I have CDs, pictures, and videos that I am trying to dispose of, and doing so will save me a lot of space and clutter. The journey, however, is a slow one. As long as I keep working at it, I'll have this done in a couple months, probably.

Anyway, enough wandering thought; time to continue working on the GIS Corps project, as I have quite a chunk of work waiting for me. Until next time!

Time and Choice

2010-08-18T04:41:00.003-05:00

Ultimately, what we do with our time is a matter of personal choice, and we have to live with it. I hesitate to call anything at all meaningful or important; the longer I live, the more meaningless and pointless it all appears to me. I don't think I'm losing my mind, so much as I'm experiencing another paradigm shift. Out of sheer curiosity, I searched the term "paradigm shift", as it is a popular phrase of mine, and it looks like I haven't officially used the term since 2006. Perhaps it really has been four years since I have experienced one.

Looking at the definition though, it seems to be misused, to some extent. Not that I couldn't categorize these are paradigms, but it seems to be used more to represent an encapsulating idea that, after being accepted, cannot be refuted by the person holding the idea. This seems like the ideas held by what I like to call the "zealots", meaning simply, people who hold an idea so strongly in their minds that they can't even consider the possibility of being wrong. This has the advantage that they can generally be thrown into the wolf pack and have enough unwavering faith to hold their ground and not be swayed by others. At the same time, this strength is also their greatest weakness, because if the idea proves to have holes or mistakes, or no longer serves them, they often will continue far beyond the usefulness of the theory, supporting an idea that is actually harming them, sometimes even to the grave.

Zealotry is often associated with religion, and its polar opposite would probably be open-mindedness. This is, of course, the ability to quickly and fully adopt new ideas when they appear, either from introspection / retrospection or from the outside world. This has the distinct advantage of requiring little to no transition time from a failing previous idea to a new one which is more efficient and effective. My friend Yoshi is a perfect example of open-mindedness, with all its benefits, and all its flaws. The flaws, of course, being that open-mindedness has a tendency to weaken the mental barriers to bad ideas, thoughts that are harmful and unproductive. An idea will appear to the you, and without really even considering it, you will find yourself unconsciously shedding previous ideas and trying this one on, just to test it out. If the idea rings true at the surface level, it is easy to completely adopt it, without carefully considering the larger implications of the idea.

Heavy thoughts for 6 AM, but I find that I think best during these early morning hours.

...crap, forgot I was supposed to be to work early, ACK! Outta here!

Lightening the Coins

2010-08-17T05:59:00.003-05:00

The audio CD ripping continues, and likely will for... I'm estimating a month of morning processing to get these all finished. In the meantime, I have moved on to other things in this office that is my home for the first hours of every morning. Today, I found my coin collection, which I have already lightened a couple years ago, and again a few months ago. Now, I have considerably reduced the collection, hoping that I will be able to frame the remaining coins so that I can enjoy them properly. I have parted with the following:

12 pre-1950 nickels

19 pre-1950 pennies

8 Susan B. Anthony dollars

4 John F. Kennedy half dollars

10 bicentennial quarters

4 pre-1950 obscure foreign coins

~100 1950-1959 pennies and other coins

~200 pre-1950 pennies

I am keeping the following:

9 unique arcade tokens, if you can even call them coins; arcades were an important part of my DDR days, and I still enjoy them when I get a chance to visit.
Two of these new gold dollars with various historic presidents on them. These I like; I really should contribute to the circulation by using them, but I had never seen them when I received these two, so I kept them both.
One Sacagawea dollar, 2000.
One Commonwealth of the Bahamas penny, 2006. This is one of a few tokens of my oceanic vacations, and one that I particularly like.
One Susan B. Anthony dollar, 1979.
One John F. Kennedy half dollar, 1971.
One Truman bicentennial dollar, 1976.
One bicentennial quarter, 1976.
One nickel, 1940.
One penny, 1939.
One buffalo nickel, unknown year. What is interesting about these nickels is that the mint made the mistake of placing the year at a very high point on the coin, making the date of production the first thing to erode. Finding a buffalo nickel with the year still on it is a rarity.
One red quarter. This isn't actually a special type of quarter, but a relic of the jukebox days, when the bar would taint quarters with nail polish, then use them to prime the jukebox when it was being ignored, so that they could easily count the profit and return the priming quarters to the bar.

And that's it. That's over a 90% purge rate on that project, good stuff! I was reading something about being able to account for and appraise all of your possessions, and perhaps that will be possible, once I've gotten my possessions trimmed down enough.

I am still adjusting to the idea of having a child around, and having to gear my activities toward what the child can enjoy, as opposed to what I enjoy; however, I discovered something yesterday that we both enjoyed very much. I was whining to Mandy about how we are house-centric, and we never really go out except to eat or to buy things, and that in reality, we are free people and can go wherever we please, really. She took it to heart, and we went up to the mall just to look around and to let Adelia play at the Dayton Daily News playland. What a trip! She was much younger than the kids there, but they loved her, and several of them knelt down to play with her. One little girl even gave her a big hug, and Adelia loved it! She just stared for the first half of her stay, watching all the children playing, then she started crawling out to interact with them. There were a few close calls, with children running wildly about, but I am of the opinion that A) the baby will be fine sustaining a few bumps and bruises, and indeed, the body adapts to that sort of thing, just like crawling and walking, and B) it does the other children some good to be around a baby and to learn to be careful with them and how to play with them. We had a very good time, and I will certainly be back there again. Bonus: it was all free! We stepped into Gymboree and Gamestop, looked at the new toys, then went on our way, and I didn't feel deprived for not spending anything. Of course, we did drop $30+ on Olive Garden before going to the mall, but that's another area that I need to improve upon, and deserves its own merits and penalties.

I'm wrapping up to head to the office for another productive day of work; wife will be away visiting her friend in Columbus, and taking the baby with her, so I will have the house to myself for one day. I believe I will be cleaning for most of it, because this house definitely needs some deep down scrubby goodness.

No More Discs

2010-08-16T03:27:00.002-05:00

I am working on ripping all my audio CDs into .mp3 with cdex; being a proponent of open source, I was tempted to go .ogg, but most portable media players still won't accept the format, unfortunately, and I'm pretty sure my car player is included in that group. Truthfully, the best method is to use a "high paranoia" scan that makes absolutely sure that the highest quality audio is captured, but the side effect is that it takes for darn ever to scan a disk. But hey, I have nothing but time to figure out this process.

As I'm ripping the CDs in the background, I am listening to some new music I got, mostly Jonathan Coulton, who is supposed to be funny, but he writes some really pretty music despite that fact. I rather like the music and melodies for "I Crush Everything", and "Mr. Fancy Pants" has some pretty clever rhyme work for a non-rapper.

I really ought to be reading, because professional development was the point of getting up this early in the first place, but I've gotten preoccupied with the minimalist thing. I shouldn't be surprised, I have a common habit of getting too carried away with the process that I forget about the point, but I would actually put up an argument that the process is the point for most things. I mean, what truly is the point of putting my next eight years into education if all I want is what happens after the eight years? Shouldn't I be enjoying the next eight years too? And the answer, of course, is yes. The trick is finding how to enjoy the journey, which is 50% general advice and 50% individualistic. And of course, life is full of little journeys, and in reality, life itself is a journey. I mean, if Buddha taught anyone anything, it is annica, or impermanence. That in itself is worth a long, long meditation, not that I meditate. Probably a good idea though.

So, that said, classes start on September 9th, then I will have two communications classes to take care of in the morning, in addition to my volunteer work for the GIS Corps. What is somewhat comical is that even though I continue to take on new responsibility for the project, they still can't find enough work to keep me busy; the organization seems to be seriously bottlenecked at the administration level, which has several solutions, but I think the largest problem is the insistence on sequential processing, meaning that every individual item should be followed through to completion before beginning the next. In a realistic production environment (read: one where there is an actual contract and people are being paid, which seems to cause a little more motivation), the drafters, being at the lowest level, would finish a panel and move on to the next panel immediately. While they are working on other panels, the first (and subsequent) panel would be "graded", which in my field is called the QAQC process, which is realize is redundant, but hey, once enough people grasp onto the idea, there's not much the logical people can do to correct them. It's this insistence of management to use jargon where they don't really understand the process behind the term. Anyway, that's a whole other topic. The current process is to place each drafter on hold while the data is being reviewed, which can (and often does) take weeks, during which the volunteer has to twiddle his or her thumbs until corrections come back. I suppose my professional career is long enough that I now grow tired of anything that isn't run like a professional organization.

I should append to all this whining that I do love the project, and I love the group, I just sometimes need an outlet for my frustrations. I suppose everyone would like to improve things around them. I believe it was Gandhi who said "Be the change you want to see in the world", but people don't seem to take that advice in a microcosmic sense. Be the change you want to see in your city, in your job, in your household, your neighborhood. It's up to you!

Looks like the ripping speed has improved slightly; I am now moving at about 2 speed :) That means I'll wrap this up in about two years! It is slightly less rewarding to iterate through something like CDs for disposal or digitization, simply because of their size. Tossing out cassettes, or better yet, video cassettes, is great fun! Still, it is something that needs doing, because I never listen to CDs any more, since I installed the mp3-reading stereo in my car last year.

I think I could pretty well enjoy the fruits of my labor at this point, but I'm having fun with the journey of downsizing. There is a systems analysis book sitting out because I brought it home from the office. The reason it amuses me so much is that this was a course requirement in college, and I abysmally failed the class; in my opinion, it was a terrible professor, but everyone is accountable for their own results. Actually, I withdrew from the class early on, because I quickly realized the professor wasn't remotely interested in actually teaching the class. I don't know why; he did run a graduate program, so perhaps he resented teaching lower-level students. I've heard stories of very prestigious schools working like that; if you are a very skilled and talented student, the teacher will take you under his wing, but otherwise, you are left completely alone, and you are better off learning on your own.

Anyway, after stating that I never completed a systems analysis class, I find myself as a professional systems analyst, and a pretty good one, I'd say... accepting for the rookie mistakes I am sure most newbies make. Still, I think I ought to read the book, just to pick up on any major points I missed by not taking the class. I need to start reading anything, as I've tossed out a good chunk of technical magazines, recognizing that I simply am not going to get around to reading them. I don't want to get out of the habit. Of course, I love a good audio book, but the local library is small, so I need to start ordering materials from the branch, instead of just showing up and grabbing what I see.

Okay, my content is drifting into nothingness; think I'll go do some of those productive things I've been talking about :)

Emptying the Gym

2010-08-15T04:29:00.002-05:00

Purging is kind of mentally exhausting. I have been doing this on and off for at least the last two years, looking back at my previous blog posts, and I have to say, it really doesn't get any easier, I don't think. As a full-fledged packrat, everything is painful to part with, but once you skim the top layer and get used to it, then the next layer is harder, and so feels just as difficult. Flash forward to now, I only know that I have parted with bags and bags and bags of stuff, but yet, I still am looking in the corner at enough contents to fill two or three trashbags, and all of it is being posted on Freecycle. To be honest, most of it won't even be missed. I did enjoy playing drums on Rock Band, and the Donkey Konga, but the other things, like the N64, are never even used, so it is truly a waste to keep them around. Mandy and I both talk about possibly moving to a larger city to be near the heart of our industries, and I wouldn't say that I am planning for that, but it will certainly be easier if I have mentally broken the ties to the piles and piles of things I used to own, and could practically put everything that I value into a car and go somewhere, and not miss the things I'm leaving behind. Am I obsessed? Yes. But I suppose the real progress is made by people who persist into a line of thought much farther than an ordinary person would. My friend Habib knows all about this. It's the strong desire to make things happen that drives a person to really get their crap together and enable themselves to do it.

I do wonder sometimes if I am even capable of sitting back and enjoying any of the results though. Living in a consumer culture, it requires constant vigilance to keep new objects from piling into the empty spaces you have just created. And of course, when you aren't single, there really is only a certain element of the equation that you even have the power to control. Not that my wife is a packrat by any measure; she is the one that spurred me onto this line of thought in the first place. Mandy has the convenience of being interested in things that are household staples in the first place; television, cooking, things like that. Her possessions are sitting in cabinets and on furniture where no one even things about it taking up space or getting in the way. Even I, who have never been overly fond of televisions, can't recall thinking "if only I could get the damn television out of this living room, we could do so much more with it!"

I am not quite so lucky. I started with interests in computer building, electric bass, console gaming; things that create stacks and stacks of baggage if not managed properly. But I do think that is the crux of the problem, really: not the size of the hobby, but the mismanagement of resources. Again, I cite Habib, who is more of a packrat of negligence than of deliberate choice. He is the first to say "oh, I don't use that any more, take it." I've said it before, I find it fascinating the way my friends have certain talents that I, considered so talented by my peers, have great struggles with. It just goes to show, community is really the best policy, because when we all team together, we pool our resources and can do some pretty amazing things. I can literally feel myself turning into a communist; I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Productive Weekend

2010-08-14T19:22:00.002-05:00

I've been very busy today; sometimes it's good to actually write down the things that you've accomplished in a day, so that you don't get the sense that you've gotten nothing done. Today, I have:

Destroyed the frame for the old medicine cabinet
Built a frame for the new medicine cabinet
Installed the under-counter TV in the bathroom (still need to run the final electric and A/V)
Vacuumed out the cobwebs from the shed, threw away some unnecessary junk in there
Moved the bicycles and pump to the shed
Downsized my electronics box to 30% of the original volume
Earmarked several items for Freecycle/sale
Finished my first QAQC panel for GIS Corps
Played with baby

Yep, that certainly puts it all in perspective! It didn't seem like much while it was all happening. Items of note definitely include my first QAQC panel, and it looks like I have quite the flair for error finding. I shouldn't be surprised, as I was the go to guy for testing and debugging in college. Another significant achievement is choosing some more things to go out of my life, to allow me to enjoy my other possessions. I decided to part with Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and Donkey Konga, in favor of playing my actual music instruments, and maybe even joining up with a band again. I am also parting with my Time Crisis games and my two Guncons. I am not, however, ready or willing to part with DDR yet, even though the same concept of "you could do it in real life" applies. I suppose that would be one the last things to go, but my sincere hope is that I will be able to really embrace it and have fun with it, without having the other gear to get in my way.

Hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow; there is a family reunion, but I'm not sure I'm interested in driving that distance unless I have some pretty solid guarantees of meeting multiple family members that I truly want to see. Okay, I'm off to enjoy the newly-installed bathtub and try out the TV, woot! It's a freakin' swimming pool, I kid you not. Not looking forward to next month's water bill.

Brain Noise

2010-08-13T04:08:00.003-05:00

Brain noise... certainly not the most sophisticated term, but that's what I'm feeling: a lot of brain noise. I feel like everything around me is noisy and irritating and invasive, and I want everything to be quiet. Funny that in the middle of trying to reduce the clutter and simplify life, I feel the pressing nonsense and uselessness more than ever. I suppose there could be a few causes for this.

Firstly, as the saying goes, the more you learn, the more you learn how much you have to learn. In the same way, perhaps removing the first huge layers of garbage from your life reveals a layer beneath that is injured and yearning to breathe, and so you feel the pain more than you ought. It's not worse, it just feels worse.

Another theory, the one I am currently holding to, is that the attention drawn to the process of cleaning causes the situation to seem magnified, the same way that staring at an injured leg causes it to hurt more. Actually paying attention to and blogging about things makes them more prominent in my mind.

And of course, there is the parallel that a cluttered garage doesn't really cause you that much trouble until you need to use it, so going out of your way to clean out the garage that isn't doing you good or bad may be bringing discomfort into your life when you really don't need it. I disagree, but only slightly. I believe that the problem must be dealt with eventually, and I would better serve myself to address it now, while I have conscious choice, and not later, when I'm in a hurry or have need.

I still have trouble locating things at times, which means that I have too many possessions. I will repeat in the interest of not insulting anyone that I do NOT believe that ALL people should clear out their things the way I've been doing. I only state that one cannot realistically manage that which they cannot keep track of. So if you know where your things are and can get to them with a minimum of fuss, by all means. And even if you can't, this isn't an advice column; this is the documentation of my personal journeys in life. You may feel inspired or annoyed, it's your prerogative. I state again, however, that I appreciate your taking the trouble to even read it. As I write this, I am painfully aware that the human attention span is getting shorter and shorter, and that people generally don't read long posts the entire way through anyway, but I'm no rock star any more; the days of two hundred readers are long gone, and I'm lucky to have three :)

But I digress, from what, I have no idea. Cleaning, yes. I purged my CD collection, which is a rather vague term for me, as there are a great deal of things on CD. I went through my collection of burned CDs and got rid of all but two of them, for a total of 51, woot! I also went through my audio CDs and computer software and games, and tossed 42 of them. And for the finale, I *gasp* actually got rid of a Playstation game, which is a big step for me. I can't say it's the first set of games that I ever parted with, as I finally did throw out most of my NES and SNES games, keeping only the ones I truly treasure, but I have never gotten rid of a PS1 or PS2 game, no matter how terrible it was. This is a small first step, but I only got rid of games I knew I would never ever play; to be truthful, there are probably other games that fit into that category, but the first step is always the hardest. My four giant portie-cases are now down to three, and that's significant.

Another large project will be scanning the last of my physical pictures into digital form and tossing the originals, and doing likewise with my CDs. I realize the RIAA wouldn't be happy with that move, and I do wish that there was some way of permanently recording my right to own a disc so that I could get rid of the physically CD legally, and just keep the mp3. Perhaps some day I will be more comfortable with disposing of my personal music collection entirely, but let's not be too hasty; that stuff is very important to me :)

I think that the most important thing to remember when doing something like this is that you can quickly lose sight of other things that must be maintained as well when you have such great focus. I think they call that "not seeing the forest for the trees", but intelligent as I am, I've never quite grasped the true usage of that saying. What I mean to say is that if you are busy clearing out some CDs, but then you go to the store and buy a giant panda bear statue, you are bringing things into your life at a faster rate than you are clearing them out, and you are not really improving. So really, the first defense must always be at the borders of your mind and your house and your hard drive, blocking new things that you really don't need and won't benefit from. As long as you always maintain order at the border, you will be able to be patient and clean through your life slowly, knowing that you are always improving it.

Of course, that is operating on two assumptions: firstly, that less is better, and secondly, that you still need to downside in the first place. Eventually, I suppose I will be at some destination where I am pleased with the balance of income and outgo in terms of physical and mental things, but I have been told that destination never really arrives, and that minimalism is a practice, not a constant place. Say that to Ghandi though; now THERE was a guy who didn't give a crap about what other people thought of his lifestyle.

Anyway, I've spent an hour trying to revive my Facebook account and a half hour writing this, and I still need to QC a panel for the GIS Corps project (yes, I have been promoted to QC now, woot!), so this post will end here. Be good, everyone!

Weekend Fun

2010-08-08T17:47:00.006-05:00

Note: This was supposed to be posted Sunday night, but it is amazing how long things take when you get busy!

Despite working my booty off all weekend, I've done a lot of things aside from the bathroom renovation. When my phone's OS was upgraded, it came with Pandora, which is not working beautifully, so I gave it a shot, and I am as amazed as before with how much music is there, and how it fits my music tastes so quickly and accurately. I've been into nerdcore lately, so I plugged in MC Frontalot, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a massive amount of music in that category. I had previously explored the genre, only to find collections of really terrible music, and I am quite happy to discover that there are many very talented people doing nerdcore, and of course, Pandora's similar artists. My favorite newly-discovered artists at the moment are Captain Dan, a rapping pirate, Danger Doom, an eclectic old school rapper, and Jonathan Coulton, a man who could easily succeed in mainstream music, but chose to sing tales of robot overlords and code monkeys instead. I see myself spending a good chunk of time perusing new Pandora music in the next couple weeks.

It's taken me several attempts to even get this far, with baby and all the work I've been doing, but I figure I'll complete this, even if I have to do it one line at a time! The bathroom renovation has been moving along noticeably, albeit slowly. No pictures of the progress so far, although that's a good idea; instead, you get this picture of me in an ad-hoc face mask. Yeah, I didn't realize that cement board kicked up so much dust while being cut, or I would have... prepared accordingly. Not really sure what I could have done to prepare, but as it stands, my entire basement and parts of my first floor are completely covered in cement board dust, and it's going to be a real challenge for the wife to get the surfaces and floors back to normal. I have now completed all demo, built the bathtub shell, and installed the new floor. I still need to install the cement board top and front to the shell, then Mandy is going to decorate it all with small tiles, which is ten times harder than it sounds. [child screaming, pause for two days]

Okay, where were we? Talked about music, talked about bathroom demo... oh, I'm meeting this evening with the the honors director at Urbana to talk about alternative degree programs, should be fruitful. Plus, it's at El Meson, which I've never been to, so that's exciting. The best part is that I'm happy and fulfilled already, so it things work out, great, and if not, no loss! The upside to my current plan is that I can do it all online; the downside is that it may take much longer (assuming Urbana takes all my credits from UD).

More minimalism stuff; I tripped across a website I used to read called ZenHabits.net, and there was an article about living in the cloud which really interested me. For those of you who are out of the most recent technology loop, cloud computing simplified is the idea that the applications you access are not stored on your local machine. What this is really referring to are company-based or worldwide servers hosting web apps and file services so that you can essentially do your job from anywhere, any time. My wife's job is in the cloud, so as long as she can has web access, she can work from the park if she pleases. I am inspired by this idea, even though I have a great deal of files stored locally, so I am working slowly to get as much of my life in the cloud as possible. I am posting my pictures to Picasa and deleting them, taking any of my "sync" folders (very important files that I tend to use on multiple machines, and so need to be synced occasionally) and turning them into online editable docs, and my first goal is to have everything important off this machine, and either into the cloud or on the hard drive. From there, if I find it liberating, I will continue the effort with my larger storage, purging where necessary, but first things first. The bottom line, as the writer states, is how YOU feel about it. If it feels constricting and stressful, it's probably not a good idea to do it. If it frees you from worrying about hardware failure and file access, then go for it! I will keep you posted.

Oh, the plumber is coming on Wednesday! I am of course excited to have the bathtub installed and set up, which will allow me to continue my work at a more reasonable pace without having the wife all stressed out. I hope I've done a good job building the shell...

Tired!

2010-08-06T05:16:00.003-05:00

Up at 4 again for the third day in a row, after almost a week of sleeping in. I don't think getting up early is nearly as difficult as getting up at a different time, and that's the real key. If I keep waking up at the same time, no matter how early, my body will adjust. Some experts disagree with my theory, saying that a person needs 8-10 hours of sleep to be fully operative, but these are the same experts who say that a person needs to dedicate so many hours to professional development, so I, like many people, am hearing what I wish and ignoring what I do not :)

Just wrapped up QC on a couple panels for my GIS Corps project; it's rather embarassing that after almost three months of this project being underway, I have only been permitted to complete two panels. I understand that they are trying to work out operations, but the sort of fixes and improvements they are adding should have been completed during the pilot, not during the first HALF of the expected project run time. Yeah, 400 panels, and at project midpoint, 4 are marked complete. That's right, four. But I should be fair and admit that this is the largest project they have ever undergone; I am just shocked at the lack of proper project planning. I am still very much chomping at the bit to keep moving on this project, but I am consistently met with delays and subversion when it comes to being assigned additional work. Again, to be fair, I chalk it up to their needing to heavily revise their QC process and being unwilling to let any more work out when they know they are just going to have to run it through corrections again. I feel like the kid in the back yelling "let me help!"

My GISP is three parts out of four complete now, since my grades came back favorable from my summer class; that leaves only my volunteer credit (see above remarks) before I can submit my application, woot! Still hoping that comes sooner than later.

Mandy's second birthday party is tonight, so my mother is picking up Adelia for the evening, and Mandy is NOT taking it well. She has been crying about it, which is rather awkward, since I don't feel the slightest emotion at all about the situation. I suppose it's a mother thing; it's not like I don't love my kid, but I know she is in good hands, and that she will be back very soon. The two of us and Dave and Mary will be going out to Carver's on their tab, which is quite handy, since I am being a huge scrooge lately, trying to recover from our recent financial blunders. But hey, we did need the new bathtub, and the bathroom remodel just fits in at the moment.

On a related note, I'm not sure our finances are going to be a problem for too much longer, as wifey got promoted again; she has now been accepted to two additional travel writing posts, and is getting her by-lines on everything she does now, I believe; that is a big deal for career security (read: long-term employability, regardless of the status of her current employer). We believe she now has the potential to make what she did in her full-time job if she commits the time and effort, so hopefully we will be able to return to my ideal of being able to pay all the bills myself, and to let her money buy the "fun stuff". That would definitely make me feel better.

Baby is thriving, of course; she is crawling now, so she has discovered all sorts of fun, tasty things, like my shoes, mommy's laptop cord, and the occasional cat. Keeping track of her location is going to quickly escalate into a task of its own, but I welcome the challenge, as it means she may be spending less time wanting to be constantly held.

I hesitate to say that work is winding down from the fiasco of the last three weeks, but I am certainly managing it better. I have committed to do all that I can, but not at the expense of my own sanity, and that does seem to be improving the quality of the work tremendously. I still have a good ways to go making sure that all the side effects and impacts from the already implemented and not-yet-implemented changes are handled and accounted for, so I still expect another month of solid work trying to get this system ready for the field inventory, but the expectation is that once this latest schema is sent to our client, the schema will be on lockdown, and I will be able to focus on documentation and innovation, something that we are definitely in need of. In the current climate where jobs are dwindling and people should be grateful for having employment in the first place, I ought to feel selfish for wanting a pay raise in the new year, but I am very good at what I do, so I think I definitely deserve it. We shall see!

I'm still working on the reorganization of my time and energy resources, of course. I am still weeding out unnecessary activities to allow time to pursue the things that are truly important, and I believe that has made all the difference. I do notice that I can wax a bit obsessive about the simplistic lifestyle and efficiency at times, and I have to remind myself that simplicity for simplicity's sake is probably putting the cart before the horse. As Brian Tracy says, "if you don't know where you're going, you don't want to get there faster". I still look around my house and see things that I haven't used in over a year, and yet I still find it difficult to part with them. For instance, my DDR pad is still sitting against a wall in the gym/office where I'm sitting right now, and while it is probably wise to part with it, I still keep it because of all the fond memories, and the hope that I will some day get some use out of it again.

It's the same situation with my Guncons for the PS2; I haven't pulled out any of my gun games in months. To be fair, I've barely pulled out any games in months, with school and kiddo and work and the renovation project. The reality is, as I have said many times in the past, if the current reality persists, I could probably go my entire life without ever buying a new game, and still be entertained, as I have so much material that I either haven't touched or love so much that I would do it again. And even among the things that I have, there are likely things that I won't ever find the time for, and I should probably deal with that reality. But you know human nature, we often find ourselves pleasantly ignoring these truths, or staring at them for a good, long time before actually acting on them.

It's the same thing with the intangible possessions too. Things like internet accounts, software, files, personal contacts. You keep them around because you think, "I might call them some day, or they might hit me up on Facebook." Let's face it, they probably think the same thing about you! That or they are one of those people who adds everyone they ever knew, until the Facebook timelines get completely unnavigable.

To say it another way: imagine that you have a room filled with 400 things; you have to spend to much time dusting them that you can't appreciate them. The things that you don't have room to put out are sitting in boxes, and you have to step over boxes to get anywhere in the house. You can't bear to part with any of it, but none of it is serving you. Rhonda Byrne said something once that I love to repeat to myself: "That which does not serve me, I release". Or maybe it was Napoleon Hill, I can't recall.

So you have this room full of things that aren't serving you. You start ranking your things on a giant list, and only keep the top, say, ten. I realize that 10 out of 400 is staggeringly small, but I'm just making a point. You throw out the 390 other things, and suddenly, you have room to display your things. You notice and appreciate them. You use your things instead of constantly managing and storing them. You would get more use out of 10 things that you can manage then 400 things you cannot. To finalize, I believe that you should never have more in your life than you can reasonably manage. That does make the reality flexible, because if you can truly manage 400 things, through other staff of simply being that efficient with your time, then by all means, have them all and enjoy them, but don't let the things in your life, tangible and otherwise, smother you by sheer volume. Cut the fat, live lean. You will enjoy what you have ten times more, I promise you. And yes, I am partially preaching to myself.

I can summarize this little rant into a few simple ideas:

If it does nothing (or you will never use it), then put it on display. If you cannot or will not put it on display, then be rid of it; it does not serve you.
If it is usable, keep it in a manner that it can be used with minimal effort. Don't keep it in a box unless it takes minimal time to get it out and set it up. Be able to use all the things that you have. If you do not deem it worthy of frequent use, then be rid of it; it does not serve you.
Do not have a place for miscellaneous anything. Have well-defined places for everything that you deem worth keeping, even if the definition is only in your mind. If you don't know where things are, that is the first sign that you have more things than you can comfortably manage.

I'm sure I will come up with more, as I am developing this philosophy still. Thank you for allowing me to think out loud. Alrighty, it's off to the last day of [paid] work for the week!

Morning Musings

2010-08-03T05:17:00.003-05:00

So I was having a conversation with my brother which reminded me that if I don't like partisan news, that doesn't mean I have to give up completely; there are other alternatives, like NPR. So I was reading the NPR feed and cross referencing this morning when I came across an article talking about how eating meat made us smarter. Of course, it is one thing to read the article, but another thing entirely to hear the rebuttal. On the internet, this must be watched as carefully as it must in the offline world, as opinions are completely unmetered, and often as unchecked as the authors of the article themselves. Still, it serves as dissenting opinion, so I read it.

There was a comment that caught my eye in a way totally unrelated to the article: "Prey often develop intellect in order to outsmart predators. Prey without predators lose their intellect." One could argue that life is very much a battle, in the same way that one could argue that Sun Tzu's The Art of War applies to all things. Regardless of the reality of life as a battle, the analogy sticks. Prey is only prey because of the predator. Predators are only predators because of the prey. Some people very much wish to be out of the shadow of the predator, not realizing it is the predator itself that gives them the bulk of their power, in terms of raw motivation. An interesting thought.

I haven't been up early for the last few workdays; the only reason I got up early today is because my body refused to go back to sleep, so my laziness finally proved ineffective. Of course, the ideal is to get up naturally every day in the first place, so this is probably the best method. I need to get started on my independent study again, as well as register for classes and take care of some administrivia (I have officially found an actual word that Google does not recognize, yay me!) before the fall quarter. I am also expecting a follow up phone call from the director of the honors program at Urbana; we're going out to dinner to discuss some nontraditional study, and I'm not sure what else, but it seems like my last professor put in a good word for me.

The renovation has been going slowly, but surely; the destruction is complete, and now I am working on the electrical project on the kitchen-side wall. There is a whole laundry list of miscellaneous work that needs to be done in the bathroom, but we are still hoping to get through it as quickly as we reasonably can, while maintaining the highest quality of work possible, and keeping Adelia entertained :)

Work is still very busy, but my philosophy has changed from one of unnecessary stress to uncalled for joy. Sometimes in my haste to improve my life, I forget the most fundamental lessons I have studied along the way. The lesson I forgot, of course, was the power of positive thinking to truly transform your life. I arrived at work in a fabulous mood, worked through the day in a mostly positive frame of mind, and everything worked out for me. I will still have a few more weeks of very hard, deadline-driven work ahead of me before things level out and I can return to my innovations, so it is important that I continue to remain positive while performing all my life duties. And, of course, it never hurts to have a few diversions along the way, which is why I am loading up my memory stick with Kylie Minogue for the day!

Enough of this blog; until the next!

Another Long Weekend

2010-07-31T07:24:00.003-05:00

Mandy's birthday party is today, so we're going out to Jamestown. Separately, but I'm still pleased, because I was supposed to be working beforehand, but the change was cancelled due to last minute problems. This is exactly why I don't like to schedule an implementation date until after all testing is completed. It really irks me to have to rush to a deadline, then not be able to implement, because let's face it, I'm not going to implement a faulty product, no matter what the rush is. Personal integrity.

I just tossed out yet another bag of debris from the bathroom remodeling project, but this one sang to me, as it was filled with the remnants of Mandy's destroyed snowglobe collection. Yeah, that old adage about covering up nearby glass and ceramic objects when you're smashing your bathtub into pieces with a sledgehammer? Worth heeding. Mandy is not upset, which works in my favor, as she was pondering getting rid of the entire collection, and I just made her decision for her! Minimalism, enforced. I haven't been doing too shabby myself; I just parted with a whole mess of desktop parts and spare video game stuff, combining two tupperware containers into one. But I digress. I'm almost finished with the teardown part in the bathroom, then I'll be able to start the rebuild! I would say I'll post pictures, but I never do. Here's hoping...

Long Weekend

2010-07-25T20:19:00.002-05:00

As I said before, I am in the midst of a very tough three weeks at work, maybe more if development hits any more snags. I also got a call from Mandy on Friday saying that the cold water on the bathtub could not be shut off, so I had to come home early to take care of that. As a result of the deteriorating status of our bathroom, we decided to move forward with the bathroom renovation, despite our tough financial standing at the moment. The truth is, we were going to get that done soon enough anyway. Now that we have decided to go ahead with it, I was given the go ahead to start demolition. In a way, it was fun to destroy all the tile; in reality it is also very tiring, and will take a good chunk of time to complete the bathroom project. Buuuut I still don't care, because when we're finished, we are going to have quite the impressive bathtub!

So, to stop rambling, I have big plans for the reconstruction. We are going to tear down all the wallboard on the bathroom side of the wall facing the kitchen, which gives me full access to the electrical system. I'm going to upgrade the kitchen electric outlets to 25 amp so that we can run the microwave and deep fryer at the same time without blowing the circuit. I'm going to swap out the breaker switch for the bathroom electric to a GFCI breaker, as I discovered that an older electric wire is running to the bathroom fan via the wall directly next to the bathtub! Then I'll need to carve out a niche in the same wall so the bathtub can fit properly inside the bathroom. Not really sure what I'm going to do about making the wall look... normal at that point. But I'll figure it out! Then we just throw some 2x4 against the brick walls and drop the tub in, but the plumber's going to do that. This is of course after we plaster up the damage we did to the walls from all this tile destruction. I suppose that's it really, save redesigning the medicine cabinet location, because the plumber is moving all the pipes for us.

I got a letter than my mother forgot to tell me about... come to think of it, she forgot to bring it to me today when she visited. It's from a previous job, payout from a class action lawsuit. That's the good news; bad news is, it's only $15 or so, but hey, this counts as the second class action lawsuit that has personally affected me. I got a repaired video camera out of the last deal, so I think that one was better.

I suppose it's time to get to sleep; I have another long week ahead of me. Until next time!

Morning Work

2010-07-21T06:14:00.002-05:00

Gotta make this a quick one; I have a major assignment at work that I've been given three weeks to accomplish, and it doesn't look promising, but I'm going to keep cracking at it! It doesn't help that I'm trying to hit a moving target, e.g. the written paper of the changes I need to make keeps evolving as I'm writing the code, so I have to keep going back and revising the code to accommodate the new changes. Add to that the fact that I'm supposed to have all the code double-tested in two environments by 1 PM today, and, well, it's highly unlikely. That said, I'm certainly going to busy my booty to get as close to that marker as I can, since I'll be riding two changes right behind it, and the farther behind I am on this one, the worse off I'll be on the others. Tough work, but I have said before and I will stand behind my statement: I ALWAYS prefer a backlog of work to an absence of work.

School didn't quite go the way I intended for the fall quarter; it didn't occur to me that I have never completed a collegiate math course, and therefore the school has no idea where to place me in math. Therefore, I could not register for the accounting course I had intended, so I took two communications requirements instead. One English, actually, but they are both about communication in reality. In the meantime, I have committed to brush up on my math, which appears to have some serious holes. I have forgotten simple things such as x-intercepts, the area of circles and triangles, and other various equations, so I am trying to step through sample math tests to identify these gaps and re-learn all that knowledge. It is clearly faster the second time around, but I would be misleading myself if I said I would need any less than an entire quarter of self-study to get back up to calculus level. With my new coursework and the GIS Corps project, it looks like my morning hours are pretty well booked for the fall.

I've been seeing some really pretty sights at the river on my evening walks with the kiddo; I'll be sure to take my camera and attach pictures if I get the time. Time to get out of here if I want to make it to work on time; I'll be in touch!

I Have a Blog!

2010-07-17T06:01:00.003-05:00

Yeah, kind of forgot this exists. C'est la vie. Life has been very very busy, of course; baby Adelia is so pretty, and she's growing very fast. That doesn't stop people from asking if she's a primi, or expressing disbelief when we state her age. Shoot, the other day she was out with little Lucie, and someone thought they were twins. Not that I care too much; I like having a supermodel baby :) I've been told that Lucie has really formed into the cute little baby over the last few days; redness out of the skin and all that. That's definitely a fun part of watching a baby grow, but my personal favorite is the first time mine smiled at me. Now I come home from work, run over to the baby, and she immediately recognizes me and gives me a big gummy smile. Good stuff!

The wife and I have been having some hard times, but I suppose that's all in perspective. Compared to most of the world, we're probably little angels! The problem is all centered around our perspectives of what we ought to be doing with our time. One of my favorite ideas (I have a lot of favorites) is that we only feel happy and fulfilled to the degree that we feel we are in control of our own lives. So if a person is unhappy with their lot, I generally advise them to look around at their life situation and identify areas where they feel they have no power, and try to work on that.

So, without diving off into that pool of thought, our problem was proper separation of time. I need my own blocks of time to focus on my education and professional development efforts, away from the family, the TV, and all the other distractions. I felt like any time I fought to get away, it was just that: a fight. She felt like the moment I got home, I was constantly struggling to get away from them, and she was absolutely right. So, I created a compromise. I have a concrete bedtime of 10 PM that cannot be argued. I will do everything I can to leave work on time at 5, and when I come home, my time belongs to the family. I can get up in the morning whenever I want, and that time belongs to me. I can go into work early if I please, and that is my prerogative. We have been doing this for a week, and I feel like it's been working out really well. I've been getting up at 4 and working on the GIS Corps project or school, and then heading out to work an hour early and working through lunch trying to make up for the lost hours I've been spending at Sinclair. Not that I ever make it under 40, but this is the closest I've gotten in a long time, something like 40.5 hours; that reminds me, I forgot to submit my timesheet :)

School. I'm enjoying the class I signed up for, even though it covered rudimentary GIS techniques, because I have gotten the opportunity to show the new functionality of ArcGIS to my professor, and I actually did learn one thing in the class so far. I had no idea you could build data thumbnails by previewing them in ArcCatalog; amazing what going through those level 1 textbooks can show you. Aside from that, I've been serving in more of a real-world advisory capacity, since I have been using ESRI software for seven years, and with the professor being a Ph. D. in Geography, she understood a lot more about why the system does what it does and what the purpose of it all is, so it was a valuable experience for all. I even got to teach last Wednesday, which was really fun! I spent seven hours creating a presentation that ran... less than seven hours, that's for darn sure, but I got to answer a lot of questions, and people seemed to enjoy it. The professor was also quite impressed with the Bluetooth mouse that my brother got me for Christmas; that's just one more argument supporting the whole combined gift thing, random lot drawing for gifts. Cheaper for all, and people remember what they got!

Work. I love my job, even though it continues to get more and more difficult as time passed. I should clarify that although the demands of the job have risen to some extent, with the new software I have written and now need to support, the true difficulty of the job has expanded with my own understanding of how all my systems interrelate, including other systems that my colleagues maintain, and all the assorted changes and preparation that needs to be made to do something as simple as create a new annotation layer, or change the syntax of a field. Add to that my latest assignment, and you've got a major challenge!

...although I'm definite up for it. My first month at the company, I was given the task of implementing a stack of model changes for a vendor who had been chomping at the bit to get them done, but there was no one at the company skilled enough (or with enough time) to do them all. That was my first lesson on the change management process, the whole multiple test systems and multiple testers situation, tons of documentation, and even then, I made many mistakes over the last eight months, but that is always part of the investment in a new employee. I was always a great GIS Analyst, but being a true Systems Analyst is a big upgrade in title. I used to be irritated at the title, but now I like it, now that I understand how different it truly is from just managing a GIS without any of the major system impacts involved. I would still love to have the title Programmer Analyst, which is interpreter as someone who designs a software system AND maintains its functionality in a working environment, which is precisely what I do... but I realize the company is probably shying away from the term "Programmer", because it indicates a level of expertise that isn't easily outsourced.

Regardless, software development is a significant part of what I do, and ignoring it would be foolish. I want to take some time to document my job very well, to make it easier on the person who replaces me, should I go, or better yet, find myself promoted. I have aspirations of our systems being related to much more important and business-critical applications, and when that happens, I really see my subdepartment being elevated to the arena where all the outage management guys work, and THAT is my ultimate goal here: to be closer to the 40-screen super matrix of HD monitors that run 24/7 and lure me with their giantness. Makes my little 25" screen look quite paltry :)

So, we've covered the basics: school, work, family. I suppose an offshoot of the school would be my GISP certification, which is doing quite nicely these days; I completed my work experience years ago, but those points have been contributing to my overall point minimum, which I obtained a month or so ago. Monday will be my final for the one class I took to wrap up the educational requirement, then we'll be down to the last category, Contributions to the Profession, which I already have a plan for. The only question is when I will hit the hours necessary to ask for an official letter from the project leader, and then I will have to start preparing my former employers and get my letter of recommendation for the paperwork. Hoping to get it all done by the end of the year so I have something nice to bring to the table at my yearly performance review, yay!

Okay, enough talking; I could go on forever about history, but there isn't enough time in the day. I'm sure my family will be up soon, so I need to check on my servers at machines before my attention will be needed elsewhere. Until next time!

Blah.

2010-04-16T20:08:00.002-05:00

Twelve days since my last post, yet it seems like much longer. I'm watching an episode of House about a blogger, so I was thinking about my own. It's really a hodge podge, because I'm not a consistent person, but I'm not sure a consistent blog would be any more entertaining.

I have reasoned mentally that I need to lose 60 pounds to get back to my prime weight, but I haven't reasoned it emotionally, and in reality, reality doesn't have much to do with it. Life has a lot less to do with your actual situation than it does your perception of the actual situation. That said, I still have to convince myself that it's worth spending the time and effort to lose the weight. Sometimes it seems like an uphill struggle, and THAT is where perception has dominated reality. Eventually, I'll figure out how to accomplish it all, right about the time I'll be out of time, because school will have started, assuming I get registered in time. UD has ignored my contacts, so it looks like I will have to speak with them personally. Anyway...

Work is going excellently; I am working on a minor software upgrade to prepare for the next major software upgrade, ArcGIS 10, to be released some time this summer; some time soon, I believe. I was really losing hope that the paperwork would get back to me in a timely manner, but suddenly, and for no apparent reason, the people who constitute the bureaucracy of my job suddenly started moving, and paperwork came back to my lap in droves. I am quite pleased :) At this rate, I will be done with the backlog I was hired into and ready to upgrade to ArcGIS 10 by fall, woot!

Speaking of software, my own ArcReader app is out and running on 120 machines, with another ten or so to be added next week. I find it mildly amusing that I am finally getting this software out and into production in time for the rewrite to version 10. I don't know how much effort will be involved in the upgrade, but I am sure it will be well worth the effort.

Baby Adelia is doing well; we took her for her first shots today, and she has been grumpy. Mother came by to watch the kiddo while Mandy went for a massage, which she seems to have enjoyed quite a bit. Baby's eyes are so blue, and her eyelashes are very long and pretty for her age; she'll be a supermodel for sure :)

Don't have much else to say for now; fatherhood and a demanding job really do take it out of me.

The Evolution of Man x 1

2010-04-04T08:01:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted in about 300 years, so I don't know where to begin. At the moment, I'm in Kansas visiting Mandy's grandma, and no one is awake yet. Baby Adelia is snoozing in the guest bedroom along with mama, and Dave and Mary are here as well. My mother and Scott are nearby at a motel, as we are all here for the baby's blessing. It should have been a baptism, but grandpa was adamant that she be baptized at her home church, as if we have one of those. I suppose technically there is St. Jacob, but I haven't had a real home since AHOP, and I'm not sure I ever will. The pastor at St. Jacob is nice enough though, and he lives just down the street from us; "your neighbor on Pearl", he calls himself.

Baby was born on Valentine's Day, and we named her Adelia Paige Storer, which has turned out to be a lovely name for her. Adelia Paige means "young and noble servant", which I am quite pleased with; however, Storer, in essence, means one who runs a storehouse, or in other words, a pack rat, which I would like to steer her away from :) She is a good girl, and I am taking great care of her.

Back to Kansas. Dave and I flew out here Thursday morning, and I have done more in Kansas in the last three days than I have done in all my other trips combined. I don't know if it is because I have friends and family here, so I have more reasons to get out and see the world and don't necessarily have to leave Mandy alone at the house, or if I'm just asserting myself more in my marriage after the first year, but I am having a pleasant time. Turns out, the lake just across the street from grandma's house has 12.5 miles of walking/biking trails on it, and the water, combined with the absurd wind they get in Kansas, generates prime conditions for kite flying or wind surfing. I intend to do both at some point, if I can get the gear for cheap.

That's the essence of everything I seem to do these days; I want to do things and have fun, but I don't want to break the bank. There are plenty of things I can do that don't cost a great deal of money. The nice thing about sport gear is, in essence, it's a one-time cost. You purchase a kayak, you can keep it, and use it over and over without having to pay any fees. Mandy is more if a gym person, and in reality, that is the most efficient way to burn the calories and lose the weight, but we are not happy with the locations and packages available. I would be more than happy to pay the $70 a month for a full family package with childcare that seems to be offered at one of the gyms in the Dayton area, but it appears to be too far of a drive (I need to verify that). The reality is, most toning and exercise can be done without any equipment at all, but it does require a certain amount of motivation to go out running in the cold or the rain, and we can't realistically go out together with a child. Mandy has told me that she is okay with me taking the time to get back in shape, but I know she would like the opportunity as well, and for her, the streets of Miamisburg just aren't an option; she likes weights, not running, and weights I do not have (or have room for, do be honest with myself).

But I digress, from what, I don't know. Oh yes, back to Kansas! The lake has lots of fishing opportunities (not that I care), camping spots, tons of trails and water for boating, open field areas for goofing off and sporting, and even a frisbee golf course, which I definitely intend to try out the next time I'm in Kansas.

Aside from that, there is a fun center of sorts in Topeka, which has driving ranges, batting cages, bumper cars, and separate mini golf courses for children and adults. I don't know that I have ever used a batting cage, but I seriously considered getting a ball tosser after last night; that was impressive! Given, I was doing slow pitch softball, but I probably haven't connected with the ball that often in my entire life, so it was a confidence booster. Add the fact that Stef wants to get my little girl into softball (and she was a mean pitcher herself in college), and there is a bit of motivation for me to take an interest in the sport myself. Anyway, the whole fun center is managed by a relative of grandma's, so some more family came out to see the baby when we were finished, and the baby and I enjoyed the attention very much.

Zoe, it turns out, is a decent soccer player. Dave and I went outside, and I started trying to get Zoe's attention with the soccer ball; I was almost convinced she had completely lost interest when she suddenly animated and began dancing for the ball. Dave and I tossed the ball between us, and Zoe would occasionally get ahold of the ball and dribble it with her nose. Every once in a while, she would simply pick up the ball with her teeth and run off with it, which we realized she could not do with a fresh ball, so we switched. Apparently, she was quite an interest when she used to live in Fairborn, as I can imagine; soccer playing dogs are probably a small handful in the grand parade of Boston Terriers.

I have finally decided that it is time to drop the weight; I stepped on a scale this weekend and realized that I have attained a whopping 225 pounds! I remember saying that I would never allow myself to go beyond 200, and I have reached and passed it without incident, so I am way overdue to start losing the weight. My first order of business is to just wear myself out whenever I get the chance. I am also playing a little game of what I like to call, "Do This, Not That", a simple rule of substitution which realizes that if you continually sub out any activity for another activity which uses up more energy, your calorie load will continue to rise. This is easy for me, with my recent habits of TV, computer, and games :)

I hear Mary and mama rousing now, so I will go say hello. Until next time!

Preparing for Baby

2010-01-12T20:26:00.002-05:00

I'm siting on the couch, celebrating my hard-earned victory over the kitchen sink. I've fought the sink before, and Draino saved me, but the second time, I thought all was lost. I did everything I could without getting out the augur, and my efforts paid off, but only for a couple weeks. The comeback was much, much worse. I tried and tried and eventually broke the manual augur I had, so I went to the store and bought a drill-powered augur, which was a much better deal than the $200 one I saw at the store. Mind you, I realized within a minute of using a drill-powered augur why they MAKE the big expensive ones, but I'm not about to complain, because I fixed the drain! After washing thoroughly (twice) and putting everything back together, I'm not really in the mood to take care of the excess of dishes, but I think I will settle for taking care of them all if I can convince my dear, loving wife that a garbage disposal is not for dumping leftovers out of the fridge and grinding into a nice, heavy pulp in my drain; yes, they make rinsing easier because you don't have to clean out the trap all the time, but they have limits! This is the second time we have managed to clog a sink to this degree, so I'm sensing a pattern here. Hopefully I'll figure out what it is!

On the baby front, we attended a 12-hour training class to prepare for the birth. Yes... 12... HOURS. Indeed, we sat in a training session talking about childbirth for arguably longer than we'll actually be GOING through it, but if our training helps, then it's all worth it! We talked about breathing and about all the things I'll have to forgive Mandy for, and that I have to stay near her all the time, so it will be helpful to have a tag team partner available for when I want to shower or eat or nap or something, although we are both hoping very much for a quick labor and a healthy little one.

Bets are still on! I believe the mother-in-law is out of the running already, but my date is coming up quickly, next Monday, January 18th! The actual expected due date is a month later, February 18th, so it's a daring wager, but there's definitely a chance.

Work has been very fruitful, of course. I am making strides on my software development, and I conducted a demonstration of one of my newest pieces. I've been in and out of meetings regularly, and it's been quite the battle to keep pushing all my agendas at once without disappointing anyone. In fact, I have a piece that I had left behind quite some time ago that just got out of the first round of user testing, so I need to get started right away in the morning reading the results and preparing for round two! I do wish I could talk about it in more detail, but c'est la vie.

My colleagues have been very helpful as I branch into all their domains and come into my own. Boss man is making the introductions, and I am asking tons of questions. They take a lot of pride in their roots; people run around wearing their old jackets and swag from when they were meter readers. My coworker in the GIS department actually started as a meter reader, and so did one of the department heads who I've been working with lately. They're helping me launch several new machines in remote offices in the next week or so, which is a fun new experience, and now that I have a whole gaggle of testers out there, people are slowly going to learn my name!

With that, I think I'll close up this post, because my brother has started a new website, and I want to go check it out. Till next time!

The Gist

2009-12-23T17:57:00.003-05:00

So...... I have soooo much to talk about that I'm sure I will forget a good chunk of it. My wife just mentioned to me that I don't write in my blog any more, and sure enough, my last post was over a month ago! The reality is, I love my new job so much that I am trying to be a model employee, and that means no personal use of the business internet whatsoever. As I am in a high-security department, they regularly audit the activities of all employees, but that isn't my motivation; I genuinely want to make a great example to the department. I arrive early and leave late, trying to cover 50 hours weekly, but that also is not so much a concentrated effort as it is the combination of a well-started habit, a large stack of things which need to be accomplished in a short time frame, and a general love for my job. I am having so much fun there, even though I have a tendency to come home frustrated when I can't solve a problem. I am quickly learning, however, that the learning curve is so incredible for me that by the time I go back to an old piece of code, I have already learned so much that I could completely rewrite it. That's the kind of progress I like!

So, that's about the extent of what I am allowed to talk about on the side of work, and as it's taken up a great deal of my time, there hasn't been a great deal to talk about otherwise. I have been up to a certain amount of mischief otherwise. I took a trip out to Kansas for Thanksgiving, and Mandy's side of the family did their gift exchange. We got all kinds of fun things for the baby, which is what I really wanted, and I also walked away with some swag for myself. I got a new dress shirt and matching tie clip and cuff links; boss man makes fun of my ties when I wear them (more accurately, he attempts to accost me with an old-fashioned pair of scissors), but I wear them occasionally regardless.

I also got a replacement for my portable hard drive, which is an equally large hard drive, but it does have over three times the storage capacity; that's a huge plus. While I have been doing a great deal of studying, I haven't been generating a great deal of data along the way, so the hard drive hasn't been put to heavy use, but I do intend to do some large-scale transport of work data in the long run; I hope that proves to be fairly simple. The downside is, I accidentally left my old hard drive in Kansas, and it's taken quite a while on its trip home. I believe it's sitting out with Mandy's aunt somewhere, and that's where all my music and code backups live. Twill be nice to reunite and get all that on the new hard drive, and update my music drive in the car; Mandy's about fed up with Namie Amuro!

Aside from gifts and Thanksgiving food, Kansas is still as boring as it ever was; I got a new Batman movie and watched that, and we spent a lot of time telling stories with various parts of Mandy's family. I may wind up doing a ruck march down O road while Dave and I are out there in April, we'll see.

Speaking of the April flight, Mandy has spent hours trying to redeem her voucher for Midwest Airlines, a voucher, I might add, which was granted to us after being delayed for over 36 hours during the return trip LAST Christmas, and they are so unorganized that I had to physically show up at an airport to get the ticket for a flight that is happening later. So yes, I trudged through Christmas traffic and paid for parking to get into the airport and NOT fly anywhere. And even THAT took a certain amount of time, as the attendants were ever so expectedly clueless. They literally looked at us and asked us what they were supposed to do. That's not a good starting point for customer service. Now admittedly, they were serving as a liason for Midwest out of our "local" international airport, so as I've become accustomed to, they had to actually call someone to look up a flight, inform us that, of course, our flight was not booked, which basically means a customer support rep lied to Mandy, then after losing an additional day off work be scheduling an earlier flight, we finally got out of their with out tickets and a reasonable portion of our sanity.

Unfortunately, snippets of my not-so-recent past tend to fly away, so I can't update on the last month too closely; this is why I blog in the first place, so retain some sort of memoir. I'm planning to return to college in the summer if I can help it, but it may wait until the fall. I haven't gotten a lot of response from UD, so I may have to take a more proactive approach after the new year if I want to stand a chance at getting enrolled by then. There's always Sinclair to take some transferable courses in the meantime, but I would love to stick with my alma mater if I can help it. The plan is to continue my education until I can become an adjunct, then I will take up a part time teaching post to contribute to the next generation. The wife has thoughts of going back as well; she ponders the utility in attaining her Master's when she wishes to stay at home, but she could teach at the University as well, and it would be lovely to serve as such an outstanding example to our children. Not that the institutions of higher learning are a great financial investment these days, but I am confident that times will change, and hopefully I will be able to contribute to that through teaching of my own.

Let's see, how am I actually doing on more of a transcendental note? I need to identify my priorities and focus on them. The cause of anything not getting accomplished comes down to a lack of focus and a lack of practical application. The reason people sit in a karate class and never become good fighters is because they spend all day learning theory, and never get into an actual combat scenario and apply their training. This, of course, is an example of lack of practical application. In my work, I am rapidly learning technologies which have eluded me for years, not due to a lack of availability (at least 80% of the technology has been available for my for at least the last couple years), but instead, a lack of proper motivation. Now that I am in a position where it is an absolute must for me to accomplish certain high-level tasks quickly and effectively, I am forced to pick up these technologies and struggle through the difficult parts, learning in a matter of six weeks concepts that I have been wanting to understand for my entire career. The personal ability did not change; the absolute necessity of accomplishing the task, combined with a clear definition of what the goals are, allowed me to succeed where idle skill did not.

Bringing this in a slight circle, this is what structured education has that personal studying does not: defined goals and forced methods. You must use this technique to accomplish this task, and these are the parameters. These are important facets of a healthy education, and while these can be incorporated into personal study, at its very finest, you lose the motivation of necessity to accomplish the task, or risk a bad grade or a workplace failure.

Now, that said, personal motivation can drive an individual, and this is where good, solid motivation comes in. I suppose a person can be motivated by any means he chooses, and as long as the task is being accomplished, he is a success in my opinion. I am motivated foremost by my child. I must maintain a consistent job with good benefits, and I need the career security to be able to confidently say to my wife, "Don't worry about work, honey, I'll always be able to provide for you." I never had that motivation six years ago, and the difference is profound. Some might say that this is an unfair advantage or that I am really not motivated at all, that I was just forced into my decision by outside forces, but I like to think that I let the outside forces drive me in a positive direction, so in effect, I am using them as much as they are using me.

Anyway, that's enough philosophical ranting for a day. With Christmas upon us, I have four days to enjoy, for the most part, as I please, and I am still not yet sure how I will spend all the time, aside from a Christmas fun day with my side of the family. Do I need to start working out again? Absolutely. Do I want to keep playing FFX-2? Yeppers. Do I want to spend time with the wife? Certainly. I suppose the answer, as it always seems to be with me, is simplicity and balance. Be simple enough to exclude the things that are not necessary in your life, and be balanced enough to support all the things that are necessary, without neglecting a single facet of your existence. This is my hope for all of you, and for myself. Until next time!

Week Two!

2009-11-20T21:09:00.002-05:00

I have successfully closed out week two on the job; I'm confident that I have what it takes to do the job and do it well. I find that I am doing a great deal of software development and design, even now, and I also have discovered that I am doing a great deal more talking than I ever have at work. I am in meetings all day long, and unlike my previous work, I have discovered that they are necessary, and I am learning from each one of them. This job really is impressively suited to me, and I hope that it continues to do what it's doing for me :)

This weekend, I'm going backpacking with Dave for two days. I haven't backpacked before, but Dave is definitely the guy to hang out with when it comes to light travel and survival. I'm looking forward to doing a lot more backpacking because it's nature-based and CHEAP!

As far as leisure goes, I've been doing a lot more relaxing after work these couple weeks, so I've started playing Quake Live, a free service hosted by ID, or maybe it's id, I don't know. Anywho, it's great fun, and if you want to track me down, the name's ZaneMcFate, so come on in and stomp me, I'm not very good ;)

Reflections on the New Job

2009-11-14T18:14:00.002-05:00

There are two conflicting ideas which pertain to blogging. One idea states that people have a tendency to write more often when there is less going on in their lives, as a sort of mental filler material to give them the sensation that their life has more meaning in the moment as it actually does. The second conflicting idea states that a life worth living is a life worth writing about. That said, I do have a history of writing more often when I have more time available, and this is an attempt to move past that habit.

I am quite busy lately with the new job and all the business of bringing in a new child and preparing the new home, but I have found time to enjoy my friends and family, which are once again much closer than they used to be. I still miss my oldest friend Habib the most, but as we still have conflicting work schedules, there isn't a great deal I can do about that. He is one of the many reasons that I write a blog in the first place; since I cannot see everyone all the time, this serves as a standing bulletin of how my life is going. It even contains a handy dandy RSS feed so that you don't even have to remember to check the website on a regular basis; it simply rolls into the rest of the media that is automatically crawled for our own benefit.

I know I use RSS quite a bit myself; with major national news, events in GIS, the personal lives of the people I care about, and a few assorted bits of minutiae, I would find it virtually impossible to keep up do date without a machine to process it all for me. This is just another example of how machines have really come to play a part in our lives, yea, even in the lives of people who have an interest in stepping back a bit from the machines. I have come to the conclusion that this isn't really a hatred of machines, merely an attempt to remind myself of who really runs my life. When you start to simply let the machines guide you around all day, you have lost the cognizant control.

But that is a completely different discussion. I had a wonderful goodbye party at Stantec, and I got relatively drunk, which was a novelty to my coworkers, but they seemed to enjoy it. I have tried to keep in touch with the old coworkers, but you never know how that sort of thing will work until you are in the reality of the situation. It sounds mean, but I haven't really had the time to miss them yet. I do wish I could have my old coworkers with me, but in the grand scheme of the world, it's just a more expansive version of being transferred to another department. Even if I were transferred within my old company into a position of the magnitude of the one I am serving in now, I would not have a great deal of time to talk with the old group, as I am quite buried in the new regime. But once again, I am moving away from the desired direction of this post.

I realize as I am typing this that one of the reported failures of the keyboard on this nice laptop is showing up for me as well; that being, the original keyboard driver has a tendency to not be able to pick up exremely fast typing, so I am having to slow down quite noticeably so that the keyboard can pick up all the keystrokes, and I am no secretary!

There are many aspects of the new job which I cannot talk about, but suffice it to say that I am very engaged, there is a great deal of security and a great deal of responsibility, so I am happy. I get my first taste of change management in a SOX compliance form next week, so wish me luck!

20 more hours of work!

2009-11-04T10:04:00.003-05:00

Today marks my last three days with my current firm; I trained Troy on the work I am currently doing, and I hope to work out any kinks over the next three days before I leave. Got a lunch at Red Robin and a Happy Hour at Blue Goose tomorrow to commemorate my last week and give me a formal goodbye.

I finally got out to buy some more suits for work; $52 bought me a blazer, four suits, five ties (one of which Mandy despises, but one out of five isn't bad), and a toboggan, so I think I'm in good shape! I need to get on the ball losing the extra weight so I can get a nice suit that fits properly, but these will tide me over for the first couple months, I hope.

Mandy has been very proactive with the painting, and I have so many other things that need to get done, but I absolutely insist on enjoying life in the meantime, even if it means some projects will be tabled for a little while. I'm hoping to disuade her from starting any new projects once the kitchen and nursery have been put back together, but I imagine she will do the bedroom anyway. I imagine I won't be willing or able to participate in these painting parties once the new job starts, and I also don't want her near those fumes for days on end while she's carrying a baby. Yes, I realize I'm not leaving any options that actually allow the painting to be done, but in time, I am certain I will settle down again, get the house back in order, and be ready to start in on another project. It occurs to me that I'm turning into the impossible husband, the guy who doesn't want you doing something, and doesn't want you to pay to get it done, and won't do it himself. Just a side effect of being too busy, I think.

Anyway, enough of that. My office is packed up, and I am just living out the last few days trying to make as much headway as I can in this project before I pass it on.

Holy Internet!

2009-10-28T07:25:00.003-05:00

I came home yesterday and took another good look at the DSL configuration to see if I wasn't missing something obvious. After delving all the way into the lineman's config tools (meant for installation techs), I found a setting that let me bridge the PPPoE connection, effectively allowing the router to do its job. Thank goodness! As of now, it's working well from the basement; the router still sucks and has to be reset almost every day, but that's what I'm going to have to deal with until I pay off all this house-related debt.

Speaking of needing things, Christmas is on the way! I never am good at coming up with wish lists, and I am increasingly aware of the meaninglessness of the bulk of my possessions, so I'm trying to keep within a circle of things that I know I will make use of. Right now, I need suits, ties, dress shoes, and sport coats; I think I have the rest handled, alhough a couple nice dress shirts never go unnoticed, as long as they don't choke my neck :) I also could use a laptop hard drive I've been eyeing from Newegg that will give me enough data room to use my portable drive as a legitimate backup solution. And then, of course, there's the router I need to replace with a Linksys B/G/N if I can wing it; I made a mistake in giving up that Linksys, even if it WAS just a wireless B. Other than that, I don't think there's really anything I want or need; I'm happy with my computer, and I think as far as exercise goes, I'll spend my time outdoors running instead of building up weight equipment at the house.

Senioritis is definitely sinking in; I struggle to finish the two weeks of pure technician work they have laid out for me before it's my time to go. It does serve as a solid reminder, however, that I will be gaining a great deal more experience with the new job when I have technicians under me to do this drudgery. Boy, do I sound like a yuppie right now! TRIVIA: the term "yuppie" actually came from the acronym "Young Urban Professional", and was not originally intended to be an insult. Just thought you would like to know.

Busy Day

2009-10-27T10:02:00.002-05:00

I intended to spend a little time goofing off yesterday, but I never did get around to it, as the DSL tech got there right on time at 4, in fact, before I had barely managed to get my tie off, so we poked around the house and fixed the problem. Now we have internet at the modem in the basement, but I am still working on why I can't get the router to work. I'm familiar with PPPoE, been there, done that, but the familiar drills aren't succeeding. I'm mildly suspicious that my router is just a pile of garbage, but I have a bias against it, so I'm trusting that it is indeed doing what it claims to be doing. We will solve the problem eventually.

I spent plenty of time in the basement troubleshooting the router problem, didn't fix it, then we left immediately for dinner, something Mandy had arranged. We met Dave and Mary at Bullwinkle's for cheap burger Mondays, then went back to the house, where the girls went upstairs to get started on the yellow paint for the nursery, and Dave and I worked on removing the wallpaper. UGH! It turned out far easier than my previous experience with the task at my mother's house; we sprayed a few times with water (not even hot water), and the first layer came right off by hand. We sprayed again, went to Dave's house to pick up a scraper, came back, sprayed a couple more times, and the bottom layer came off with little effort. So the kitchen is now wallpaper free; all we need to do is primer the upper layer a bit to remove any scratch marks I made in the corner, and we'll be ready for painting there!

Well, I was hoping my evening would end there, but Dave wanted to go running, and threatened me with bodily harm if I didn't go (what are friends for), so we went running for 35 minutes or so. Luckily, this time we didn't run straight up a hill the entire trip; we took the bike path. After doing a little map research, we believe the bike path will run almost directly into my workplace, so I intend to test that trip out some time this week if I can manage it. However, I am very much looking forward to relaxing a bit, something that continually seems to keep being put off.

Weekend Update

2009-10-26T07:22:00.002-05:00

Mandy persuaded me to go to Tennessee this weekend with promises that she would allow me to do my reading on Saturday, as well as sufficient doses of fear about her driving a damaged vehicle through the mountains alone with a bad phone (thanks Blackberry for sending a faulty update before it was thoroughly tested). As it turned out, I did finish the last issue of ArcNews, as well as the current issue, only days after it was released, so I'm happy about that. I also got started on the latest URISA Journal, and the Journal of Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Epidemiology, which had a fascinating opening paper, History and Critique of U.S. Mortality Maps. I learned a great deal about a great many things, so it was a good weekend.

We got home in the afternoon, and I spent most of the day working around the house, getting the porch relatively cleared, vacuuming, taking care of laundry (once again, I must cite how wonderful home life is when I can do an entire week of laundry in a couple hours), and helping Mandy with her primering in the nursery. Spent about an hour playing Armored Core 2 again; I've worked my way up the Arena to Wolfhound, who is notoriously annoying, but I'm slowly gaining an edge on him. Took out a couple missions, got some money, just generally building up my AC. I've swapped out my standard legs for a sort of high-speed tank track that has increased standard speed on the ground, but any speed boosting results in my AC flying upwards instead of propelling me quickly along the ground. I'm not sure how much I like that yet, but I'm sure I'll do a lot of experimenting before I have a solid machine that I work well with. I'm rather fond of the flamethrower, which raises enemy heat levels to the point of failure, but they turned out not to be the best idea in one-on-one combat, as moving into such a close range also puts me in the range of their point-blank blade weapons, which tend to hurt a great deal more than flamethrowers. Still have to resolve that problem, but I've found that using a standard set of legs and moving backwards constantly while spraying fire forward tends to do the trick. But enough about that.

Ten work days left at the current job, and I'm already mostly packed up; can you tell I'm anxious to get moving? I'm somewhat nervous about the new job, but I know I'm a smart cookie, so I shouldn't sufficient trouble to red flag anyone. Besides, my superior said he's written me off for the first month in the name of simply getting to know all the ropes; it really is a fantastic array of software that I will be in charge of.

Oh well, time to go meet with HQ and let them know what I can and can't accomplish in two weeks.

Reading too slowly

2009-10-22T14:39:00.002-05:00

You know you're not getting through your reading in a timely fashion when you're a quarter of the way through a quarterly newsletter, and the secretary brings by the next edition. Okay! That means it's time for me to sit down and burn through all this material. I've been hindered by my recent habit of reading more news than I usually do (and the massive amount of personal life that's been going on), so now I have a shrink-wrapped copy of the latest URISA journal, a summary of ArcGIS Server administration, two copies of the quarterly ArcNews, and a fabulous, brand new journal that I'm sampling called Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology, which is a peer-reviewed scientific journal which blends the GIS and medical fields. 100 pages are publicly available on their website for perusal, and frankly, I don't think I have enough vested interest to front $100 for a yearly subscription, but perhaps the Dayton library will subscribe to it once word gets out.

Running and Mechs and DP&L

2009-10-22T08:02:00.002-05:00

So, last couple days, haven't gotten a lot done in the house, but we've been celebrating things with friends, and Dave took me for a run, and I've relaxed a bit.
The run was impressive, and I'm still not quite sure what Dave was thinking, dragging me along for two miles of literally uphill jogging to a freakin' burial mound, considering I haven't done any running in a good year or more, and I'm sorely out of shape, but it is what it is, and it will help me progress. I'm STILL sore from that!

Before this whole house hunt / job hunt business started, I bought an old PS2 game that Habib and I used to play, Armored Core 2; I finally got that out last night for an hour. I spent most of the time playing in the arena, but I haven't done any missions yet. Controlling a mechwarrior is KIND of like flying an airplane; it's not entirely intuitive, because there are things the machine does that we as humans can't do. Aside from simple moving forward/backward, turning, and strafing (that being, moving directly to the left or right without turning at all), which are all inherent human actions, there is also the element of jet propulsion on the ground, which allows you to move with more speed and turn faster than a human could, and of course, jet propulsion in the air, which incorporates elements of gravity and altitude into the already complicated jet movements. Then, of course, you have to accept that other mechs are shooting at you at all times, and if someone were to "air-juggle" you (that being, hitting you so lightly and frequently that you are virtually unable to react, locking you in place for further attacks), your machine can overheat, causing critical failure if not quickly remedied.

But enough about ACs :) I finally got the offer from DP&L, and I accepted today! I put in my resignation, and I'm mailing off the formal letter later today. I will miss everyone, but I know this is the best thing for me. I'm kind of waiting to see if a mini pandemonium sets in, as they realize how much of my unique work needs to be taught to someone else or documented, but I'm likely giving myself too much credit.

Well, back to work; while I'm still here, I'm still going to be a hard-working employee, and I've got a new stack of markups to get through.

Weekend Recap

2009-10-19T09:23:00.001-05:00

It was an action-packed weekend! I do still wish I had internet at home, but it looks like I'll be connected on Wednesday if my sources are correct.

TV: I helped Mandy with her TV last night, and in doing so, I realized that I will likely want to sit down with that manual, because it has a pretty wide array of possibilities! She has been having issues with recording shows on one TV, then being unable to watch anything while that TV is recording, so she has to go to the other room (we have a dual satellite reciever). So I popped open the book and figured out how to unify both screens and combine the DVR features, since it's generally just the two of us at home, and I have little interest in TV. So now if we want to retire to the bedroom, we can take the current live TV show (and the pause/rewind features of the previous hour of cache) along with us to the other room. And of course, we can switch back to two independent screens when we have guests over at night.

Job Hunt: Still haven't heard from job 1, 2, or 3, so hopefully I'll get news very soon. I think I'm going to call some people if I don't hear by today; I know I've got to get an offer from at least one of these guys, I'm good enough, it just bothers me to have to wait so long to find out who. I just want to know what's holding them up.

Housework: over the weekend, we finished unpacking most of the upstairs; the only thing left is a box of scrapbooking gear and another box of miscellaneous foof (candle holders, ornaments, things I have little interest in), and I need Mandy's participation to get either of those things sorted. Down in the basement, however, I have completely finished! I have a small cache of empty boxes that I need to carry out to the shed, but other than that, the basement is fully operational. We installed a dehumidifier, and I have to say, I'm impressed with the sheer amount of water that thing can clear from a room in 24 hours' time. Of course, it claims something ridiculous like 60 pints, but it seems to be closer to 20, which, interestingly enough, was the actual number I was trying to hit when I asked Mandy to buy one, so it works out. I am still using the manual bucket, but I intend to hook up and old hose to it and throw that into the sump pump chop chop, assuming, of course, that the sump pump is still working; if it does not, then we have an entirely different situation on our hands.

Cars: Both our vehicles needed an oil change, and at some point Sunday, a warning light came on in my vehicle which bothered me greatly, so I took it home and looked into it. Thank goodness, it didn't mean my brakes were out, only that my brake LIGHTS were out. So I hopped over to the parts store and replaced that. Then I changed my oil, but when I got over to Mandy's side of the work, I couldn't get the drain plug off! Mandy definitely remembers me changing her oil last, and I don't know what on earth I was thinking, tightening that thing so bad. I've managed to cause some stripping, so I elected to leave it alone, since she's visiting Uncle Frank this coming weekend; perhaps he'll be able to wrench the thing off, and we can replace it with a good one. As I said when I came in, angry and covered with dirt and oil, "you can be frustrated, and you can be exhausted, but try not to be exhausted AND frustrated". My mood was questionable :)

Music: I went back to AHOP to play over the weekend; three Sunday morning services and then Fusion that night. It was great seeing some old friends. Jared and Natalie were there, of course, and most of the old band. I got a bit of an ego boost when one of the Kirk family told me that I was sitting on a real treasure, that I should be making money with my skill. He also made one comment that to me is one of the best musical compliments I can recieve: something to the effect of "you play like I think; the music comes out like an extension of my mind."

I ran into three of the teens I used to work with; at least, they used to be teens! Let's see, Kaitlyn's grown up; still has braces, and still definitely recognizeable. Katie Chrisman, Nathan's little sister, all grown up and in college now, doesn't look different at all. Tyler, waaaaaay taller, and the only reason I knew him was because he had the same haircut. Ashley, on the other hand, still had the same uncanny sense of fasion, and cuter glasses, and still as sweet as ever. Even remembered my wife and asked me to tell her hello! She's got to be 17 by now, but she looks much older. My kids are all grown up! *sniff* Just in time for me to have an actual kid of my own. I also ran into Mandy Delaney, and bless her, she's a kind woman, but she still has that distorted sense of personal space and touching people who don't like to be touched, which always seems to end with me being pinned against a wall with her a foot away from me, making uncomfortable allusions to my married life. Oh well, people come in all varieties!

Of course, Fusion was way more energetic, as the college scene tends to be. Jared (the drummer Jared) pointed out the sweat mark I had, nowhere on my back but just along the line where my strap sat :) We did a flash back to the early days of Fusion, given that another of the founding members -- ME -- was there: we had a lights-out moment, where there was no worry about showboating for an audience, no concern about what your neighbor was doing, we just worshipped in our own way. Unfortunately, my own style of worship is pretty energetic even when people are watching, so during our lights-out moment, I was jumping and yelling and celebrating when suddenly, I was carrying the full weight of my instrument. I peered through the dimly lit darkness at my instrument, and saw that my strap locks were still firmly connected. Then I felt at the right clip, and realized that the only thing hanging onto the strap lock was the leather endpiece of the strap; the stiching had come completely undone, and the entirety of my strap was laying on the ground by the left side. This presented two challenges. Firstly, I was still playing music, and moving your hand across the neck of an instrument while your other hand is picking the strings, you need something else to support the weight of the instrument; that's basically why straps were invented. Secondly, my wireless transmitter was clipped onto the strap that was moments from falling to the floor, which would have severed my signal and made the bass disappear from the music entirely. So I did the most intelligent thing I could think of at the time: I snapped off the transmitter from the strap, stuck it in my back pocket, unlocked the broken strap (all while playing a very enthusiastic Hallelujah at 100 decibels), then swung my bass down into traditional double bass mode; that being the position with the strings pointing straight up, and the weight of the instrument being supported by the ground, or in this case, some part of my belt buckle that I had hooked with the loose end of the strap lock port. So, still playing in this awkward position, I lunged all the way to the other side of the stage and down the stairs to where my gear bag was hiding, just as the song ended, and I quickly rummaged for my emergency guitar straps. Thankfully, I did find one in a short amount of time, and I was geared up and ready by the next song. An entertaining turn of events, and, come to think of it, the first time in eight years of playing that I managed to break a strap on stage. Good run!

So after saying that, boy am I sore! Mostly in my legs, because I tend to bounce when I play, but particularly my left foot. It took me a little while to figure out why it was only my left foot, but then I remembered that when I'm working dynamics on stage, I tend to nurse my volume pedal, which requires me to stand on one foot, sometime for the majority of a song. So yeah, I'll recover, but I'm actually happy when I feel sore, because it means I'm growing and getting back into shape. John says in so many words that he still has a place for me, but I'm not ready to accept the responsibility. I do think I may fill in for Jake Kirk, the current bass player, as he battles with a bad infection that keeps him from being able to play. Get well soon Jake.

Upstairs Attacks!

2009-10-15T06:57:00.002-05:00

Again, I didn't get to any of the things I actually intended to, but I'm making plenty of progress! I finished washing and drying all our backlog of laundry in a single day, which is pretty impressive; it was definitely worth getting the 4 cubit foot washer. And having a dryer that actually dries on round 1 instead of half drying on round 3 actually makes it possible to wash everything we own in a day and a half :)

I went upstairs last night, took the window AC unit down to the basement, unpacked and put up all my games and gear, made room for my bass rig, set up the motionless exercise machine, and started to set up the desk. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it's definite progress!

I'll be rehearsing in Xenia tonight for a weekend gig with John-Marc and the Formerly Fabulous Fusion Band (to be honest, I don't know who will be there, but as none of the original nine of us are still playing in Xenia, it's always a mixed group), and then I should be playing Sunday night, although I haven't confirmed that. The punk neighbor across the street sits on the porch and plays his acoustic guitar; I suppose he'll be pleased to see another musician on Pearl.

My poor, sick bathroom

2009-10-14T13:15:00.002-05:00

I really wish I could just take my bathroom out back and shoot it. It's an ugly, broken, miserable thing, and truly the most benevolent thing I could do for it would be to set off a well-placed grenade in there.

So, the details and problems of my bathroom. Firstly, it is the only bathroom in the house, which eliminates the realistic probability that I can gut the entire room and slowly rebuild it. There are plenty of shelves that I like, but Mandy isn't fond of the door style or color. The tiles are a salmony pink, which no one one the planet likes, I would imagine. The grout is wearing out and water is leaking into the walls, and there are tons of cracks in the flooring and walls due to age and shoddy bathroom construction. Of course, plaster can handle a ridiculous amount of water, so I'm not terribly worried about that; however, the plumbing beneath the bathtub must be leaking, because every time someone takes a shower, the floor leaks into the basement. I still haven't researched whether it is the supply, drain, or perhaps the actual cracks in the floor, but that needs to be done.

Anyway, I digress; that bathroom renovations are way down on my list of priorities, unfortunately. Yesterday, I finished trimming the trees off the house, and I took the trash to the alley pickup for the first time. I also tore down about a third of the foreboding vines which have been creeping up our western wall for years. I'm convinced that I will lose a gutter during this venture, but it needs to be done, hopefully before winter sets in, so the walls can be pressure washed and the paint reapplied. I didn't get much else done, because the Lowe's installation guys came by to install the washer and dryer. It took them the better part of two hours to get the units into the basement and installed, and these were professionals! All in all, I was pleased with the service, and the new units are sooooooooooooooo quiet. I'm not sure I put enough o's in that word. They are so impossibly quiet that I am convinced the cycles aren't working at all, but they certainly seem to be. I haven't tested the first load out of the dryer yet, but I can assume that all items are drying satisfactorily.

Today, on my list of things that ought to be done: more vine wrangling, unpacking some of the upper floor, caulking the bathroom (still), and maybe some technical reading for work, as I have located my laptop now.

House cleaning and job hunting

2009-10-13T06:38:00.001-05:00

Last night I got up to get myself a glass of water, headed to the kitchen, put my glass in the ice dispenser, and the dormant security system violently awoke! It turned out to be a fire alarm triggered at that exact moment by the steam coming from the bath water I had abandoned previously. It took me a good while to figure out how to disable the system, and even then, I only succeeded in shutting the alarm up; I believe it's still silently ringing down there. Thank you Brinks! Some day I'll have to search for an old manual and see if I can do something with that system.

Making slow progress on the house. I still need to come up with the list of essential repairs before I can really justify sitting around, but in reality, I have the freedom to chill if I want to, and that's nice. I think I annoyed the wife last night when she invited friends over for dinner. I thought it was nice, but I didn't stick around and watch TV with them, and of course she doesn't approve of my having an independent will :) It's a wife thing, she'll grow out of it.

So, items accomplished: I trimmed overgrown plant life from the yard and some of the rooftop, I replaced the bolt and latch on the back door, and I continued the electrical survey. I managed to identify a particularly nasty electric outlet after nearly blowing myself up with the circuit tester, and I found many more that need immediate rewiring, so after I pair all the breakers, I believe I'll be fixing those. Presently, I have every outlet, light, and switch identified, and most switches paired to their lights and outlets. There are numerous switches in the house that seem to lead to nothing at all, which is highly confusing. Hopefully I'll get to the bottom of that as well.

Goals for today: install washer and dryer, do a few loads, replace the front door latch that wifey didn't install when she installed the door handle (don't ask, the explanation makes even less sense), finish trimming trees off the rooftop, and emergency caulk the bathroom until I can afford major renovations.

Jobs! Just so we have all this straight, I'll label them again:

Job one is the job I want the most. I have interviewed three times to date, and my references have now been called twice. I know I am in the top two. They expect to make their decision early this week.

Job two is a better job than the one I have, but not as exciting as job one. I have interviewed twice with this job, and the results of my second interview will be relayed to the panel by Wednesday. I know I am also in the top two for this job. I do not know when they will make their decision.

Job three is actually my current employer, who after getting clued in that I was very close to recieving an offer, decided to hurry up their long-delayed hiring process for me, and are currently preparing me an offer. I know the offer is coming; I do not know if I will accept.

Forced Hand

2009-10-12T07:23:00.000-05:00

Both closings ended successfully, although both were in relative mayhem up to the hour of closing, so I'm very thankful that it all went through. We now live in downtown Miamisburg! I enjoy getting up early in the morning and seeing people walking past the house; I also enjoy the trains and clock towers and sirens and everything that typifies city life. We walked to Lee's, which is in eyesight of my house, and we also walked to Bullwinkle's, as well as Dave and Mary's house many times. I plan to get a bicycle soon so I won't have to drive everywhere.

Both unpacking and repairs on the new house have a lot of work ahead, but even so, tons of progress has been made. I got two of the three old locks changed, and we've replaced around half of the blinds. I have a massive list of repairs, but I'm currently working on the first half of the electrical survey: checking for bad plugs and identifying every light, switch, and plug. The second half, mapping everything to its switch and breaker, will be a massive chore in this house, even with the new breaker box, but I'm up to it! Gotta call and get the last repairs on the ventilation system done before winter sets in, and I definitely need to patch the bathroom and trim the plantlife outside ASAP. It's mildly overwhelming, how much needs to be done, but compared to the house closings and multiple job hunts, this is nothing!

Speaking of job hunts, I am in the middle of two, and the job I'm more interested in finally called my references, one of which is my supervisor at my current employer. Unbeknownst to me, a few people here have been conspiring to hire me, and it has moved very slowly, so my job hunt has forced their hand, and now I have been informed that a job offer is on the way! Mandy always told me that was what I had to do, and she was right. So in addition to the two jobs I'm looking for, I know I have another offer coming down the pipe, and it's right where I'm comfortable. I am quite pleased :)

A couple months of housework await me, but I intend to pepper it with visits to Xenia if I can help it. Gonna be there this Friday, as a matter of fact!

Aboard the Carnival Valor

2009-10-06T11:15:00.002-05:00

Oooooookay, I don't have a lot of time because this week is absolutely crazy, what with job hunting and house closings, so I'm going to give the best vacation summary I can while the memories are still fresh.

We headed out on Sunday on the Carnival Valor for a seven-day cruise to Grand Cayman, Isla Roatan in Honduras, Belize, and Cozumel, Mexico. On the ship, I spent a lot of time at the pools and hot tubs, and I dabbled a bit at the casino (I'm not half bad). There was an arcade that was pretty lousy. Speaking of lousy, I discovered I'm pretty lousy at Ms. Pac-Man. No DDR at the arcade :)

There were plenty of small entertainment venues that I ventured to, and many of the artists travelled between one place and another on the ship. There was karaoke, which I avoided, but there was a great japanese cover artists who played with a female singer who had a lovely voice, and I always found myself stopping to listen to them. There was an intimate piano bar where you could sit right next to a piano player and do requests, sometimes reasonable, sometimes insane, but he usually managed to play whatever it was you were thinking. The stage shows were fantastic. Far From Over, an 80s music celebration, was the best by far, but the comedy acts were pretty good as well.

*** The Entertainment Staff, and Assorted Prizes ***

The entertainment staff were responsible for the most fun moments I had on the ship. There were many, but three were most memorable. First was Geo from Mexico, who was one of the three leads of the entertainment staff. He had a very thick accent, but he took himself lightly and had a lot of fun. Geo was definitely the funniest of my favorite three. He did a lot of the trivia games that I went to. I've never been great at trivia when compared to my peers; at least, when there are several thousand people on a cruise ship, and thirty show up for trivia, I'm not in the winner's circle, I'll say that much :)

There was Allison, or Allie, from New Jersey, who was one of the three leads; she was always full of energy and seemed to know who was going to be the most interesting person in a room. In between two shows, there was a contest where three people in the audience were chosen, and I got up and danced to the interim music, so she picked me, and I certainly delivered! It happened to be a dance demonstration, where each of the three heads of the entertainment staff would pick someone from the audience and show them a dance, then we would all repeat it. Mine was "the lawnmower", and I can't remember the second one, but the third was "washing the dog". And right as they are starting to teach how to do the routine, Allie whispers in my ear, "okay, now we're going to play a trick on that guy. We're going to have everyone turn to the side so he can't see us, then when they tell everyone to dance, no one's going to do it." Sure enough, he started washing the dog, and everyone stood there and watched him, and pretty much everyone was laughing at him; good times :) I won a bottle of champagne, and everyone said I had the most enthusiasm; no surprises there. You all know how much I love the spotlight!

Then there was Lisa from New Zealand, who also did trivia games. The sweetest of the three, Lisa was always friendly and I just wanted to take her home as a pet and feed her vegemite or something :) Anyhow, among the many trivia games I played with Lisa, there was a battle of the sexes where the men were outnumbered something like 20 to 3. Unfortunately for them, we were a well-rounded three, and we won out, so I acquired my second prize, a Carnival medal, wooha!

I was pleased with my prizes and my press coverage, but there was still one thing missing: the coveted "ship on a stick". As Geo always said, "made of 100% 24-carat gold plastic", this was the meaningless prize that the entire ship was trying to get their hands on. Now, some of the better trivia players won a few, but I was no trivia champ, so I knew I had to do something else. Lucky me, that opportunity emerged: Allie was conducting a speed slide competition! Dave had already showed me how to increase speed on the waterslides by reducing friction, so I figured I had a good chance. The fifteen contestants decided that I should go down first, and I managed a blazing eight seconds down the two-story monstrosity. Unfortunately for me, so did another contestant about halfway through, so it was a tie, and she made us do a tie breaker. The second time around, I kept with my eight seconds and the other guy did ten, so I won the ship on a stick, yay!

So now I have my spoils of war: a $1 casino chip, a Carnival Valor Ship on a Stick, and a Carnival medal. They are all sitting happily on my bookshelf at work, looking pretty.

*** ***

I found myself going to the dance club a couple times on the ship. In my regular life, I never seem to find the time to actually go to a dance club, so this was a wonderful opportunity to bone up on my moves and get some well-needed exercise. I met Allie there, and wow, can she move! Wish Mandy was there to show her up, but Mandy feels like she has "outgrown" dance clubs; therefore, I go it alone. I had a blast, and I got a few people pointing to me, some good, some bad, I'm sure, but all in all, it was a great experience.

We ate a lot of good food at dinner; our headwaiter was Martin from Peru. His term was eight months long on the ship, and he has a wife and children at home! But they understand that this is his job. Martin was very good, and I hope that he continues to prosper.

*** One-Liners and Amusing Moments ***

Okay, so now on to the one-liners:

I can't remember what it was I was doing, but Mandy and Mary were trying to stop me, and pointed to the window in our room. Mind you, we were out to sea at the time. So I look at them shiftily and said "Nobody's gonna SEE me..."

So I'm doing a striptease to music on the TV, again in our room, and Dave and Mary are laughing at me, and Mandy's right in front of me. I get my shirt about halfway unbuttoned, and Mandy yells "Don't rip one!!" Unfortunately, she was referring to the buttons and I thought she was trying to encourage me not to fart, so that ended the moment of fun right there :)

We got back from a show and were getting ready for dinner. Mary ran to the bathroom, and Dave called out behind her, "Make it quick Mary, I just farted over the rocks." Think about that one for a while if the meaning didn't set in...

Mary was throwing a temper tantrum because Dave wouldn't get up to take out the room service tray at that exact moment. She began her tirade, and I was idly watching her and tuning out the invididual words as she angrily grabbed up the tray and went towards the door: "Mehmehmehmehmehmehmehmeh--CLICK!" She had inadvertently locked herself out while complaining about us, which was a classic comedic moment, IMHO.

We were at dinner, and Martin was going over the dessert selections with us. He mentioned a diet ice cream dish. I had tried the diet cheesecake a couple days prior and thought it was terrible, so I said "I tried diet last time and it didn't work out so well."

Throughout the entire cruise, when Mary would get exceptionally angry at Dave for something, he would just calmly say to her "You're purty Peg."

I was looking for a roomy bathroom to change into my swim trunks. Mind you, a roomy bathroom on a cruise ship is hard to find. So I went around the diner and found a handicap-accessible bathroom: perfect! I opened the door, went inside, grabbed the handle, and pulled it 90% shut when the door jammed. I pulled again, and the door pulled back. I let go, and a man opened the door behind me, and came in. Keep in mind, this is a one-room, one-toilet, accessible bathroom. I thought perhaps I showed up at just the right time for a scheduled male-friendly liason or something, so I very uncomforably and very quickly made my exit, with a look of shock and mild disgust on my face.

*** ***

I will continue with the off-ship details later, as I simply don't have any more time. Until next time!

Fun Tuesday

2009-10-06T10:18:00.002-05:00

Mandy's being a real pushover for someone who claims to be a fighter :) She's been threatening to give up every step of the way on this house closing, and it's going to be a nightmare if it doesn't go through, so I'm being tough on her, telling her to suck it up and do this, because there are some steps that I can't do for her. But admittedly, she's dealing with the IRS, so it's no cakewalk.

On a happier note, we're about 24 hours out from selling our current home, yay! We can stay in the house until Friday morning, then we've got to be out. We're planning to pick up a van on Thursday and load everything up, then it's off to the new house and the second closing!

Dream Log Excerpt

2009-09-25T11:14:00.001-05:00

Christopher Storer (Cincinnati Office) says:
So, that's the status report. Lots of weird dreams last night, but other than that, you have the news

mercedesbode@yahoo.com says:
what's the dreams?

Christopher Storer (Cincinnati Office) says:
I dreamed that one of our senior engineers was chosen to head up a project on the Ohio River that involved constructing a brand new bridge made entirely of Hershey bars

mercedesbode@yahoo.com says:
yeah?

Christopher Storer (Cincinnati Office) says:
I went on-site to inspect, and tore off a piece. It was delicious, as expected

mercedesbode@yahoo.com says:
yes

mercedesbode@yahoo.com says:
as should be expected

Christopher Storer (Cincinnati Office) says:
The other dream, I was at my old house and my previous boss, Chris Niven, was mowing. There was a thin layer of grass on the ground everywhere, and it shimmered, then a snake popped out

Christopher Storer (Cincinnati Office) says:
I was pleased, because I like snakes, at a distance, anyway

Christopher Storer (Cincinnati Office) says:
Then I noticed another shimmer, and a smaller snake popped out. I stepped back a bit, then realized that everywhere I could see, hundreds upon hundreds of snakes were coming out of the grass

Christopher Storer (Cincinnati Office) says:
I panicked and was running, then Mandy woke me up because I was whimpering and screaming "no!"

mercedesbode@yahoo.com says:
wow

Christopher Storer (Cincinnati Office) says:
Yeah, those two dreams back to back, go figure

A Bizarre Letter

2009-09-22T07:20:00.003-05:00

I recieved a letter a couple weeks ago. I never check my own mail, so my wife usually goes through my mail for me; apparently, even my personal mail :) This letter contained a folded-up newspaper article and a simple post-it note which read "Check this out. -J" So of course, she calls me demanding to know who "J" is, and I'm clueless. I didn't think much of the incident; I put the letter in my briefcase and forgot about it.

This morning, however, I took it out and read it myself. My wife hadn't read the letter closely enough, it seems. The entire front page was an article about Matt Castrucci (an auto dealer) -- the entire page. No newspaper publishes a full page article about an automotive sale. Not unless they're paid to, anyway.

In small print at the end of the article, it said Copyright G&A Marketing. I looked them up; they're a specialty mass marketing firm. They make things like newspaper inserts so you can mail them to people.

Plus, the back of the paper was supposedly an opinion article. No name of any paper anywhere, and the only advertisement was for Hannah's Vintage Everything. There is no Hannah's Vintage Everything in Milford, or anywhere else, for that matter; no phone number or address listed, and Google's never heard of them.

So in conclusion, Matt Castrucci, your advertisement didn't quite work on me since I took too long to actually read it, but thanks for putting a miniscule wedge in my marriage for five minutes :)

Catsup

2009-09-18T13:22:00.002-05:00

...or Ketchup... or Catch Up, perhaps. Actually, we shall call this segment Cat Soup, because it sounds both fuzzy and tasty.

We didn't get the offer on the first house we tried, but we did strike a deal on the second house we tried. We are nitpicking about repairs now, and we hope to close on the sale of the current house as well as the purchase of the new house on October 9th. There are tons of repairs to make, and that will likely keep me busy for a good long time, unfortunately. On the positive side, we are that much farther along on our SellAHouse/BuyAHouse/FindAJob cavalcade.

Speaking of jobs, I will be interviewing with two places next week; in fact, I managed to swing both interviews on the same day, so hopefully both of those go well and I hear two offers, yay! The jobs are very different, but I am equally qualified (and in one case, overqualified) for both of them. You'll hear the news when it's news.

Purpose In Meaninglessness

2009-09-08T08:24:00.001-05:00

People love to talk about the purpose of meaning, and their purpose in a world filled with hidden meaning. But suppose it's all meaningless, which tends to be my own belief. Then what's the point of anything. Sometimes I find myself inspired when I listen to particularly good music, or read impressive writing. It makes me want to go do some of it myself. But sometimes I find myself in this vicious circle of realizing that my glittery future hopes are mostly buried in financial realities now. That's not to say that I am wallowing in debt, but my future capital is fairly well nested in raising a family at this point, so if there is something I want to cultivate, it's going to be without a great deal of lessons, equipment, or promotion. Do I want fame? It depends on your definition. I enjoyed low-scale fame very much. As Mandy would say, I'm not usually content to be a spectator for long; I want to help run the show. She is only truly happy when she's running the show completely, but that's the difference between the two of us. I am very good at, and very happy in, a supporting role. I don't have to be the one that gets all the credit, but I do like to be on the bus of the people who are getting things done.

Now backtrack to meaninglessness. What is the point of doing, or "helping doing" as it were, if nothing we "do" is really worth doing in the first place? If the only thing that matters is being happy and enjoying the ride, then I suppose accomplishing something doesn't have its own meaning; the meaning is entirely assigned. So that puts people into two categories: people who do something they do not enjoy because they are clinging to the hope that the meaning of what they are doing is worth the suffering, and people who do something they do enjoy regardless of the impact (or lack thereof) on any larger scheme.

But even those two designations are not entirely fair. There are some who don't enjoy the journey so much, but absolutely love the final destination, and so to them, it's not an issue of greater meaning at all; there WAS something in it for them, only it lies at the end of the tunnel, not in the tunnel itself. It's like "progression raiding" in MMOs. People spend hours and hours with no reward, then finally, when they solve the puzzle, master the art, discover the trick, they get TONS of rewards, and so the "toil" of something they do not enjoy results in final products which they enjoy immensely. Then you have the flip side, people who enjoy what they do, but upon reflecting that it has no ultimate meaning (even disregarding my assertion that life itself has no meaning; I am only referring to temporary earthly meaning at the moment), they are disconcerted, so that at times, they are happy, but ultimately they are sad about their "waste of time". So I suppose the best combination would be someone who does work that they enjoy, and whose final product is something beneficial in their eyes.

...but we are who we are, and those things don't appeal to everyone :) I think my band was a good example of something I enjoyed and whose final product was something immensely beneficial to many people. My WoW guild was a fine example of something that I didn't enjoy and whose final product I THOUGHT was good, but ultimately was pointless. I could go on about this forever, but all these things that I think are "better" than the others because they have positive results, what if we assume that life means nothing? Then isn't it better always to do what you enjoy in the present? I could be wrong, and I welcome contrary opinions. It's troubling.

Lazyish Day

2009-09-02T08:55:00.002-05:00

Notes from work yesterday:

Oh, this is nice. I have had this display finalized for over a week, and now I'm being informed with hours to spare that the size limit was incorrectly listed to me as 20mb (which I am riding on the edge of); in reality, the size limit is HALF that. Time to get to work fixing that snag quickly!

I have reached what I believe to be the end of the three month project to which I have been assigned; it will be interesting to be back on TEMA FEMA, and hopefully I don't bore, but to be honest, I'm bored of what I'm doing NOW :) While I am no hotshot programmer, I do enjoy the uniqueness of every challenge. I am usually not taxing my brain to find something interesting to listen to or think about to pass the time while I am programming, that's for sure.

The aforementioned display turned out fine after some resampling, and the project has been continued, details of which have not been given to me yet. I went home a little early yesterday, finished packing the lobby, took care of some of the master bathroom, then spent the rest of the night cooking fried foods really badly (I miss going out to eat already) and playing Dragon Warrior. Got my guy up to level 17, I think (there are only 30 levels in the original Dragon Warrior if I recall correctly), and I have the best armor and shield in the game. I'm woefully behind on my weapon though, so I need to get down to buy the second best, then I can take a stroll into the Dragonlord's castle (I hate the new names they used in the GBC remake, so I stick to Erdrick and Dragonlord) for the final sword.

House offers and bottomless pasta bowls

2009-09-01T07:10:00.003-05:00

I know that I have a tendency to complain too much about never being home, because to be honest, some of the things that Mandy drags me out to do are necessary. We did need to go sign a formal offer on a home yesterday. We didn't need to go shopping for pools and have a nice dinner at Olive Garden :) So the trip that should have seen me home at 6:30 wound up having me home at 9:30, and thus, no packing was done, and neither was there any relaxing on my part. But nevermind me, I'm just a little stressed.

Backing up a bit, we decided to place a lowball offer on a nice home across the river in Miamisburg, and I suspect we have a 50/50 chance of getting it. We fill find out by 5 PM if they accepted or not, and then we will move along in our search.

Kim informed us that the sellers need to push back the closing date, which is frustrating, since we just sent out an offer on a home with our original closing date in mind, but I'm not about to cancel the sale over a slight delay. It merely means that the sale won't be finalized until after the vacation; a darn shame, as that means we'll be on the phones and messing with paperwork right as we head off the ship. On the positive side, it means I have a few extra days to finalize packing and scheduling our moving equipment.

After writing our offer, we went to Watson's to look at pools, kind of future thinking, and we were impressed with the end-of-season deals we could get. Perhaps in another couple years, we will be able to get a pool for the back yard; that would make Mandy quite happy.

We closed the evening with dinner at Olive Garden; I do love the neverending pasta bowls, but I rarely get through the second bowl anyway. Penne and alfredo make me happy!

While getting up to date on my content last night, I saw a video of someone walking up a fascinatingly dangerous set of old stairs and rocks around a mountain. I would love to know where this is and try it for myself some day: http://bit.ly/10yVbW

Account Cancellation

2009-08-31T09:30:00.003-05:00

A summary of Myspace's cancellation process:

"I want to quit Myspace."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"What is your reason?"
"I'm bored."
"Well here are several reasons why we think you're wrong, and that boredom really isn't a valid reason to quit Myspace. Would you like to reconsider?"
"No, not really. Cancel my account please."
"Okay. Remember that email address you have on record? The one you have to enter into our login screen and provide a password for? Well, that's not enough security, so we're going to send you an email that you need to click to come back here to finish the process."
"Whatever, send the email."
*find the email, click the redirect*
"We know you just cancelled, but we're going to list all the reasons why we think you're wrong one more time. Would you like to reconsider?"
"Not particularly, just cancel my account."
"Oh, phooey. Okay, your account is cancelled."

And with that, I am no longer a member of Myspace. Shouldn't really be climactic for me, as I've barely used it over the last year, but for some reason, it is. I don't really use much of the new social networking, but it seems like if I cancel those accounts, I'll have to tangle with the reality that I am as isolated from my old friends as I really am. So perhaps now I'll actually do some REAL networking, as opposed to the electronic discompassionate kind of social networking.

Game and Work Weekend

2009-08-31T08:32:00.002-05:00

Dave and Mary bailed on us at the last minute, so we brought Bridget and Mike along instead. The reds had a great third inning, but wound up losing anyway in the end. Alas, I am not surprised. Either way, it was unlimited food and good times with friends, so no complaints.

I spent the rest of the weekend boxing up our belongings. It is remarkable how much of our house isn't essential to daily living. I have finished with the third bedroom and second bedroom completely, and I have cleared out the nonessentials from the second bathroom and am working on the lobby presently. I still need to clear out the bulk of the master bath, master bedroom and closet, lobby, living room, kitchen, utility room, and shed before I can pronounce phase one of the move complete. Realizing how many hours I've put into the effort and how much still remains, I am glad I got started early. Three weeks and some days until closing!

My mother came down to visit, and dropped off some pants for Mandy; over an hour drive to drop off a new pair of pants. Those Goldwingers are silly :) But I'm glad she came either way. Mandy wanted Red Lobster very much after that, so I took her out, and that killed two hours or so... maybe I really DIDN'T spend that much time packing, but it sure seemed like I did. Well, if I was up for 16 hours, that does mean I spent around 8 hours packing, that seems fair, if that number is accurate.

I pulled out old school Dragon Warrior yesterday; actually, it was a port called Dragon Warrior I and II for the Gameboy Color, and I'm not positive, but I think some of the caves may have been slightly modified. They changed the name of the ancient warrior's gear, which annoys me, because I distinctly remember it all being Erdrick's, not Loto's. But hey, old folks are always like that. Fun stuff, not a brilliantly long game, even if you're interested in completing everything. Still, I estimate that I spent five hours playing it yesterday. Just proof that it is possible to enjoy your leisure time thoroughly and still get things done.