Mark's Blog

Vista Point

I sit here in Marin County, looking back to the city. My back rubs against the cold cobbled stone that I'm leaning against, my car parked a short distance away. A brisk wind blows in from the Pacific Ocean, accenting the cool night air. I'm not particularly comfortable, and yet I find myself lost in my own thoughts and soon forget my discomfort.

The last week has been tough. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a bit of a homebody. I like my house, my neighborhood, the normalcy of regular day to day life. Sure, I love vacations as much as anybody, but I always enjoy the return back to normal reality at the end. This being the first time I've spent any significant time away from my wife and my family, has made the whole "being away" a thousand times worse.

San Francisco is a beautiful city. The hustle/bustle of the Financial District where I've been; the thousands of shops and eateries; the people (oh, the people!); the architecture; the hills everywhere that seem to define the very city itself. Between the class I was taking, the shopping, and all the walking I have done, I have certainly tried to keep myself busy.

Tonight was my last night here. I realized that I simply had three things I must do, since who knows when I'll be back here again? And off I went, darting through the city. Finding Lombard Street and driving down the crazy twisty/turny one block section as I descended Russian Hill was exciting, if not somewhat scary (mostly getting to the top before going down). Seeing Alcatraz Island with my own eyes. And finally, seeing and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.

It is dark. The Golden Gate Bridge is lit up beautifully, it is truly a sight to behold. And as I move my eyes away from the bridge across the bay, I see the city in all of its glory. The city seems so peaceful... the lights let you see the arcs of the hills. The skyscrapers rise from the lights all around, clearly showing their size and yet seeming to fit right into the landscape. The soft lights accent the Bay Bridge as it stretches off into the distance. I sit and admire the view, quiet in my own thoughts. I have no idea how long I've been there, but a tiny high pitched voice pulls me back.

"Say-see-naa! Say-see-naa!"

Just a short distance away, a little girl, no more than 3 or 4, is excitedly pointing at the same thing I'm seeing. Her parents are by her side, smiling and enjoying both the view and their daughter's excitement at the same time. I don't know the language they are speaking, but I don't need to know to understand. It is a family, sharing a moment together.

And it really strikes me what has been so hard about this whole week. I'm alone. In a city of hundreds of thousands, I'm really all by myself, without the people I truly love with me to share the experiences.

I feel my eyes water. I'd like to blame it on the cold wind blowing into my face.

But I know I really can't.

I'll be home soon.

Spammers, again

Some spamming scumbag has decided to use my personal domain as his "return" email, using randomly generated email addresses to make sorting near impossible.

What joy - I'm averaging ~10% legitimate messages in my inbox - everything else is bounces from various locations for spam that wasn't delivered.

What is even more fun is when I get an automated "nasty-gram" from a site telling me that I'm sending them spam. Here's a clue, dipshits - spammers never use legit return addresses, so turn that option off for everybody's sakes. I'm already pissed about dealing with the deluge of bounce messages - I don't need to be told off about sending somebody spam when I'm not.

One hell of a Christmas Present

1:47am on Christmas Morning brought our second child - a baby boy named "Declan". He was 7 pounds, 6 ounces, 20 inches long. Thinking that having a Christmas baby just wasn't quite unique enough, my wife "decided" to make the birth a bit more exciting by throwing a prolapsed cord into the mix - one emergency C-Section later, and our beautiful baby boy was born. Everybody is healthy and doing quite well.

Father (that would be me) is exhausted, and once I publish this, I'm going to bed. Little sleep in nearly 48 hours - with the all the excitement... and just for fun, throwing Christmas in the mix - has got me pretty much wiped out. :)

Bookmarks

As I sit here in my web browser, I just finished making another new "catch all" links folder for bookmarks I've created in the past couple of months. I now have six of these, and in them are all kinds of interesting sites that I've found/read about that were intriguing enough to want to not forget about.

How do other people handle this? I used to organize them all nice and neat, had a really good system for tracking everything, but I suppose I just got lazy since it always seemed like the site I was bookmarking was unique in some way. I have really important/regularly-used bookmarks on my "personal bookmarks" toolbar, categorized somewhat. It is starting to get to be a mess, and yet I find myself periodically thinking "What was the name of that neat site I found blah blah blah months ago?" and sifting through several hundred bookmarks across those (now 6) folders to find it.

Maybe I'm just overthinking this, and my system works fine. Hmm.

I have a problem

I admit it - I have a problem.

See, I'm a winter sports junkie. Bobsled, luge, skeleton, skiing (downhill and cross-country), speed skating - I eat that stuff up like a junkie in search of a fix. Winter is always a great time of year for this stuff, and I try to watch as much as I can.

So you can only imagine that these 2 weeks every 4 years are like a dream come true. Winter sports on, every day, hours and hours and hours on end. Every sport imaginable, even things for the wife like figure skating, and the "sport" of curling, which is entertaining as all heck to watch (if only because we can both say "we could do that!")

Problem is, there just aren't enough hours in the day. I can't take it all in. I want to, but even I have limits to how long I can sit on a couch and watch TV non-stop. I didn't know I had limits before, but the last few days have shown me I do, where my legs finally say "Hey, you, up there... wanna like, maybe get up or something? Because seriously, we are considering quitting and going to somebody who might actually use us? Okay?"

So far, no problem, right? Just an enthusiastic sports fan, soaking up all he can while the opportunity shines?

See, but I do have a problem. You only need to go into my downstairs room to see.

There, right above the TV we hardly ever use, I have not one, but two VCRs.

To the right of the two VCRs, there sits a big huge stack of blank VHS tapes.

And right on top of the TV, there sits a big huge sheaf of paper.

On them are the network schedule for every day of the Olympics. And 5 hand-written pages, outlining the current and future contents of thirty 8-hour videotapes... complete with written directions on when and which VCR to put tapes in, what schedules to setup on each VCR, the works.

You see, with the exception of Ice Hockey, I intend on recording every broadcast minute of the 2006 Winter Olympics. Every. Single. Minute.

Why? Even I can't answer that one. Like I said, I have a problem. This is a winter sport's dream, something that only comes every 4 years. I can't possibly absorb it all for the next 2 weeks, so the only way I can possibly see it all is to tape it and go back to it later on. Except the reality is, I doubt I'll ever get through a fraction of the tapes I'm making over the next 2 weeks. I'm taping ~225 hours of programming. Even FF through commercials, that is still a TON of content to watch.

There is something to be said about laying back on the couch and watching a downhill skiing competition though - especially when it's July and 90 degrees out. The irony is delicious, and the reality is I won't remember a thing about who wins what a few months from now, so it will all be new by the time I get back to them.

And in the meantime, when it is all done and the VCRs are put away, the tapes are labelled and put away, and life returns to normal - those tapes can gather dust on my shelves - right next to my complete 20-tape set of the 2002 Salt Lake Games.

It's price gouging, pure and simple

So Katrina makes landfall, and does a hell of a lot of damage to the gulf coast, including damaging a large number of oil rigs and refineries. Obviously everybody knows gas prices will be rising as the strict law of supply and demand kick in.

Can somebody, somewhere, explain to me exactly how this crisis effects the gas that is already sitting in the storage tanks in the ground at gas stations in the Northeast?

Some of the gas stations in the area are raising their prices already - and we're not talking about the normal slow raises that occur with Labor Day coming and everything. We're talking a 30 cents jump today. I expected the prices are going to go up dramatically over the next week or so, but only as new gas is being delivered to the service stations in the area.

There's supply and demand, and then there is price gouging.

The joys of owning a home

A couple of days after coming home from vacation, we realized that the well pump (a jet pump in our basement since our well was a shallow one) kept coming on every 15 minutes or so, even when we weren't using water. After going through the usual diagnosis (looking for leaking faucets, outside faucets left on, etc.), we killed all water to the house and watched with concern as the PSI slowly but inevitably decreased even though no water was being used. It would hit the cut-off point, the pump would turn on, recharge the water tank, turn off, and the process would begin anew.

Uh-oh.

Got a well-recommended plumber to the house, and told us something we really didn't want to hear - the most likely cause of what we were seeing was a failing foot valve. Sadly, one of the few parts of our water system not in our basement, but buried in the well itself.

Tricky thing is, we had no idea where the hell the well is.

A lot of phone calls later, we realized that none of the previous owners did either, and the only guy (who was still alive) who had any chance of knowing was the guy who originally drilled the well - in 1965. Didn't even bother pursuing that avenue, as I sincerely doubt he would remember. Got our plumbers to come out and use a deep metal detector to try to find the well casing. Got a hit quite close to the house, near where the piping came out. Great!, I think.

Proceed to spend a very sweaty 3 hours digging about 3 feet down, to find a very old, VERY rusty screwdriver. No well. Fuck me.

Plumber comes back out, and we spend a significantly longer time going over the whole yard. Mark out 2 spots, one with a very large feedback and another smaller one. Gather a few family members, and we dig down again, about 2 feet down or so.

To find a nice big fat metal casing, about a foot and a half long, just sitting buried horizontally there, leading to nowhere. No wonder the detector lit up like a Christmas tree. Whoever filled the front yard had a sick sense of humor. Bastard(s).

Daunted, but with the same problem still hanging over us, we said "f this" and rented an mini-excavator which my brother-in-law has become quite adept at using (he is building his house). It was starting to look more and more like the whole damn yard was going to have get dug up to find this damn well, and I'd be damned if I was going to be doing it shovelful by shovelful.

Insert wife going away on to a meeting for 3 days, so Dad is on his own with daughter.

Father-in-law and Brother-in-law come over this morning, as scheduled, to help. (Translation: I'm stuck in the house with 2 1/2 year old who can't be left alone, so my in-laws are doing the work while I sit inside. If you guys are reading this, I owe you BIG time!) Couple of quick holes later, we realize that this is going to need the systematic approach, and proceed to dig a nice 20 foot long trench in my front yard to find the damn piping.

Did I mention the big sharp teeth on the excavator yet? Oh yeah, nasty ones, designed to cut into the dirt.

And rubber piping too.

Got the pump turned off nice and quick, watched as all the water in my pressure tank spewed out into the big trench in my frontyard. Thankfully we only cut the pressure hose, not the suction (supply) hose, so the new pump we are installing should be alright. Dug the rest out, found the well cap (finally, after 2 weeks!), and finished up.

Father-in-law attempted to help re-prime the system, but I think the foot valve is totally blown at this point, so the water we are using to re-prime the system is just pouring out into the well below.

So, no water (at all, not even a trickle), with a dubious chance of getting it fixed tomorrow (it should qualify as an emergency, so we'll see what happens).

Oh yeah, I did mention that the wife is away, so this all has to happen around said earlier mentioned 2 1/2 year old.

Ah, the joys of owning a home.

Tip of the day

Drying a wet handkerchief in the microwave for 3 minutes - not a good idea.

Especially the fire thing.

A thank you goes out to...

... the person who has their computer at IP address 64.207.17.100.

I thank you for visiting my website or getting my email address on your computer somehow. I appreciate that you don't think you need a virus scanner on your system. I appreciate that even after you HAVE been infected by a virus (the W32/Mytob virus) for nearly a week, you still haven't bothered to try to fix the system. I appreciate the fact that in the last week alone, I have received over 275 virus-related emails - either directly from you, or as bounces when you are sending out the same virus to other people using my return address.

Thank you very much. It is greatly appreciated!

It makes ya think

Yesterday, one of my wife's colleagues at school died. 29-years old gym teacher, healthy. Dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of a run. He left behind his wife and 8-month old daughter.

You know, I don't take care of myself, I readily admit it. I eat the wrong kinds of food, I *never* exercise (I used to ever so slightly before Neve was born, I don't do anything at all now), I'm overweight, I stay up way too late far too often. Without coffee, I can't even get through most days - it is a rare night I get more than 6 hours of sleep.

It's strange - young people dying is always a tragedy, and I've always felt bad for the person whose life is cut so short. Yet it rarely has really bothered me beyond the normal human empathy that we all feel. But this, for some reason - this has really struck home. The human body is a marvelous machine, but you have to wonder how much it can really take. I want to live a good long life (partially to be a pain in the ass for my wife and daughter), and I'm not exactly going about that goal correctly.

Guess it's time to clean up my act.

Bugging people on IM

Me (after several hours of intermittent and relatively useless IMs): "Sorry I'm jabbering so much today.... hope I'm not messing up your productivity too bad."

Recipient: "Only trying to build a data-warehouse from scratch, nothing huge."

Whoops. :-)

On not having anything to blog about...

Ever go through one of those insanely long times when there is nothing to blog about? I've been in the middle of one of those droughts for the past few months.

Nothing has really irritated me significantly. Nothing I've run into has been at the level of "boy, isn't this a neat little tidbit or observation". I wouldn't say my life is boring, but beyond the pleasure of raising a 2 year old (which is truly, truly a joy that I can't translate with ease to text), there just isn't much on my mind.

So there you have it. Empty silence. Hopefully something will bug me soon, because I really miss having something to rant about. :-)

How *not* to design a shopping cart

I'm writing this entry on 12/15, although it won't be posted until after 12/25, since my wife also reads this blog.

In the middle of doing some online Christmas shopping for my wife, ordering some items from Coldwater Creek (one of her favorite catalogs/stores). I go to apparel, leaf through a few pages, see something I like, add it to my cart - and then realize that the only way I can get back to the page I was on before is to start the search all over again, and leaf through several pages to get back to where I was before.

Normally, this is not an issue, as I simply take advantage of Mozilla Firefox to open things in new tabs - so I just add the items to a cart by viewing details on the item in a separate tab and clicking "Add to Cart", then go back to my original tab to continue on shopping. Sadly, for some reason, they have decided to make viewing details on products completely dependent on a Javascript function, which breaks this ability completely.

Bad design guys, bad design. Don't punish your customers everytime they add something to their cart - or do you really only want them to buy one thing at a time?

Day @ Home - Sixth sense?

Went to get my daughter up this morning - and realized that the minor cold she was battling the last couple of days just wasn't getting any better - and she was due to go to the babysitter this morning (where she got the cold to begin with). I listened to her breathing, wiped up her nose, comforted her a bit when she coughed, and realized she was quite tired and feeling run down (kind of clingy). Made the command decision that sending her to the babysitter wasn't going to help her get better, and she needed a quiet day home to help her recover (we don't want her sick for the Holidays!) A quiet day without any running, without any noisy kids (her birthday party was this weekend) - just some Dad and daughter time, and a chance to sleep in a quiet house and get the medicine she needed.

So, let the babysitter know, called in to work, screwing up a few other people's days in the process, but my kid will always come first.

You know how sometimes you just have a sixth sense? I just felt in my gut that this was something she really needed - that sending her to the babysitter wasn't going to help her get any better today. So, 6pm tonight, I get a phone call from the babysitter - warning me that she just got back from the doctor, and her eldest daughter was sick - had pink eye and some other thing, both highly contagious, and that we would probably want to skip Wednesday (it is highly contagious for 24-48 hours). If Neve had gone today, she definitely would not be feeling better, and probably would be getting quite a bit worse.

Kind of freaks me out. Boy, am I ever glad I made that decision this morning.

You know you've had a rough weekend...

...when you are looking forward to going into work on Monday morning.

Memo to all family and friends

To: All family members and friends.
Re: Plans, going out, doing stuff.

- As you all well know, we have a very young toddler at home.
- Our toddler is a happy, well-adjusted kid.
- One of our secrets is she is on a very solid schedule, taking 2 naps a day (currently).

So:
- We aren't being rude if we don't see you during the week at night. Her nap schedule and normal routine makes it difficult to go out of the house and still stick to her sleep schedule.
- Don't be surprised if we don't go out as often as we used to - we love going out and seeing everyone, but dragging a pile of baby gear and the baby herself is a daunting task, especially if you are a long distance away.
- We don't mind going out singly (leaving the other home with baby), but we try not to stick the other person with too many of those days.
- Family get-togethers are fun, but are also usually exhausting, both for us and for her - she gets pretty wired in new environments, and usually crashes at some point (after we leave, of course!)
- If we decline an invite, it usually just means we think it will impact her schedule too much - maybe it is too long of a day, or maybe there isn't a place for her to take a nap while she is there.
- Declining an invite could also mean it will be impacting something else, like bath night, that is important (who wants a stinky baby?)
- When she misses a nap, she is a bear. Period. So, we avoid missing naps like the plague. Remember - you don't have to deal with her later - we do! ;-)

Older game strategy guides?

I'm a PC gamer, and I've been a member of the Game Trading Zone (username: moneal) for over 4 1/2 years now. Being a member of that community has helped me build a fairly formidable backlog of older games to play - all in the process of getting rid of other games that I had already played and no longer wanted.

I've come into a rather odd situation lately, though. For some games (RPGs, primarily), I'm finding I would prefer to have the printed "official" strategy guides for helping me through the process. (I have a 15-month old daughter - I don't have time to spend 90 hours playing through a game anymore!) So I have been online, trying to pick up some of the strategy guides for these older games (anywhere from a year old to 5 years old). Imagine my shock when I realize that the "used game strategy guide" market is basically overrun by high-end book merchants who are selling guides that sold new for $15 to $20 in the average neighborhood of $50 -- well out of any reasonable price range that I would even consider spending for what is really a luxury to begin with.

Is there anybody who even consider dropping that kind of cash on something like that? It isn't exactly a collectible that I could see appreciating in value over the course of years. I understand the theory of supply/demand, but it just seems insane to me. Who the hell would spend that kind of money on a book - particularly on a book that I could only see would lose value over time?

Strange request

*boggle* Is this guy plain delusional, or am I just a rotten bastard at heart for not wanting to do what he asks?

John Smith wrote:
Well... i have books and i send it to nice people who ask. If you want something from me (books), ill be happy to share!.. :)

Mark O'Neal wrote:
On 10 Mar 2004 at 18:27, John Smith wrote:
> Can u send me the D&D 3rd ed. or AD&D players handbook and dm's guide?
> pls pls pls....

On 11 Mar 2004 at 2:31, John Smith wrote:
> Dragonlance Chronicles vol 1-4 by weis and hickman?

They are readily available through quite a few online vendors (Amazon.com, etc.), as well as many regular retail stores. Frankly, I hope you don't take this personally, but why would I send you $80 - $90 worth of books for nothing? I don't even know who you are!

(Note: Obviously, the name of the other person was changed - although I'm seriously reconsidering that decision.)

Of course, this might help me get out of my other current predictment with a certain wrecked book I need to replace....

It's over...

...at least, for my beloved Windows 98 installation. 2 long years since the last time I did a reload, everything has run more or less without a hitch - a record for my system (I load and unload a lot of software - a hazard with the kind of work I do). Last night I was tweaking a hardware driver, and the house of cards came tumbling down - lock, reboot, lock, reboot, lock, lock on 6 successive startups. Got through it, found a corrupted registry and only about half the files in WINDOWS that are supposed to be there.

*sigh* Back to the reload sequence - in the past I'd done it so often I had a perfected written routine, and I hate having to dust off those papers.

I can't rant - writer's block?

I can't rant to save my ass lately. I have literally had 6 to 8 rants that I've started over the past week - and I've thrown every single one of them away when I was done writing them. For some odd reason, by the time I'm done writing them, they have become long-winded and ridiculous. This has happened in the past - I probably throw away 2/5 of what I write for this blog because when I proofread it something isn't working - but this is unusual in that it is happening over and over again, without one decent post out of it.

Very aggravating.

Catching up

I just realized this morning that it has been over a month since I made an entry here. Eek.

Christmas, and the holidays in general, were a blur for me. Our daughter turned one, and the day before her birthday we had a big birthday party for her at our house. Then the next day, we celebrated again, this time with her great-grandmother from Florida, who flew up for the holidays, and was actually born on her birthday as well. (How cool is that? My grandfather and I shared a birthday as well - so it seems like a family tradition. Our daughter actually shares a birthday with a cousin of mine, and the wife of one of my other cousins. Popular birthday!)

3 days after that, we had Christmas at our house - big family gathering, lots of fun, but crazy and hectic at the same time. Totally wearing after several weeks of planning and work to get ready for it. It was nice having a few days afterwards to just crash and recover from everything. As much as it is nice to stay home on Christmas and have everyone come to you, I'm glad we aren't doing it again next year - I want to really enjoy my holidays, and it is more enjoyable without the work. :-)

Beyond that? Nothing much - have had plenty of things to rant about, but haven't had the desire to write them down at 10 at night -- too tired to get worked up.

Time-Warner DVR, part 4

I've reported previously about our experiences with our new Time-Warner DVR box. It has now been nearly a month and a half since we picked up one, and I thought it was time for an update.

As I had reported in part 3, our viewing habits have certainly changed dramatically. I actually just tonight wanted to see a show, and actually watched it live - and found myself chafing through the commercials, anxious to move on to the next segment of the story. Never thought it would get like this so quickly, but it certainly has. We have also found ourselves "paring down" the show list that we were recording - we were simply recording too much, and it felt like a constant struggle just to watch everything it recorded - silly, since we don't have to, and yet the desire was very strong in both of us.

A downside that we never considered also came up recently. Before this box, we often would watch DVDs - collections of TV shows, movies, whatever. We realize now that with the box, we just simply aren't watching DVDs that much anymore. Coupling Season 2 came out - a show my wife loves - and she has only watched the first 4 episodes on the discs. The DVR simply has too much "TV goodness" for her to feel the need to look for something else to watch. It has hit me in the same way, with DVDs sitting and waiting to be watched for weeks at a time. It isn't a big deal, but feels almost like a drawback in some strange way.

I'm sure we will get the balance eventually.

Simple Pleasures

- A good book on a rainy day.
- A cup of hot chocolate after being outside in the snow.
- A walk on a crisp autumn day.
- Your baby falling asleep in your arms.

Retail sucks

So, I go out to get the newest Barenaked Ladies album today (Everything to Everybody), around lunchtime, fully expecting to buy the Special Edition of the release (which includes a DVD disc with some extras - a bit more expensive, but I like the band). Only problem is - nobody has the disc. And I don't mean just the Special Edition - I mean nobody has it...in any form (normal, limited, special)... period. I end up scouring the mall for over 35 minutes, asking one clueless clerk after another, until I finally find somebody who has it - only it is the Limited Edition, with just a few extra tracks. At this point I've had it, and just buy it out of defeat.

I've had it - if I'm planning on buying it when it comes out, I'm just preordering it on Amazon. I like the feel of having something in my hand and buying it directly, but enough is enough.

Time-Warner DVR - part 3

Well, I have been meaning to write this entry for several days, but have been holding off as I gathered some of my thoughts about the unit. This is a long entry, so read on if you're interested...

We have now had the unit for approximately 2 weeks. It is truly a mixed bag. As for the whole "DVR/Tivo" thing, I couldn't possibly be happier. This thing is a breeze to work with, and to say that our TV viewing habits have changed would be an understatement. We simply won't watch anything live anymore - we wait for the DVR to catch it and watch it later. Just last week, I waited 1/2 hour into a show just so I could watch it without commercials. In some respects, my wife and I feel like snobs - "who would want to watch TV *live*? Yuck!"

The other thing that we find interesting and great is that we are finally getting a chance to sample shows that we never really watched before. We see an advertisement that catches our eye, we talk to somebody who mentions a really good show - *bang* we add it to the record list, and give it a chance. Already we've found a couple of good shows (Playmakers on ESPN, Joan of Arcadia on CBS) that we would have never watched before. The opportunity to simply say "that might be good - record it and I'll see" has made such a seismic shift in our TV viewing habits that it is truly hard to describe - and yet, for anyone who has a similar device, they all know exactly what I'm talking about.

The downsides? The interface, to put it mildly, sucks. Actually finding something to watch isn't that big of a deal - the guide for shows works just like our old digital cable box, so it is easy and quite familiar to work with. The problem comes when you know *what* you want to record, but not *when* it is on. Finding a show by title is nigh impossible - you select the first letter of the show, then have to scroll through literally hundreds of shows to find what you want. It doesn't even collapse shows with multiple runtimes into a single entry - with some shows, you can flip through a dozen pages of the same show, all at different airtimes. Quite annoying.

The list of already recorded items is a pain to work with as well. It shows all the shows in reverse chronological order (oldest at the bottom), and has absolutely no method for sorting, even temporarily. We often find ourselves having to flip through several screens trying to find a show that we know it recorded. You can move shows around on the list if they are set to "Save until space is needed", but then you are changing the order at which items will be deleted as space runs out. Not exactly ideal. I also wish it would sort permanently saved recordings ("Save until Manually erased") to the bottom, as you can watch them as you find time. The idea, of course, is that anything that isn't marked that way is fair game for removal (non-important shows), but we still find this to be awkward at times.

There is absolutely no way to know how much space is left on the hard drive, or when it will have to start deleting shows. The list of recorded shows will tell you on "Save until space is needed" recordings the amount of time that a show should stay on the DVR, but it is an approximate value only - "About 2 days", "Less than a day" - that sort of thing. Not particularly helpful.

The scheduling software is not as bad as some people have made it out to be on the Internet. Series recordings (Season Pass in Tivo parlance) can be configured a number of different ways, recording any instance of that show or any number of limiting factors (only one channel or all channels; only one time or all times; any combination of different days of the week; first-run or all shows). "First run" seems to be a bit buggy, so we haven't used it (it refused to recognize a new "CSI" as first run). The limitations work fairly well, but we end up catching a ton of repeats which is annoying (esp. on channels like FoodTV or TLC, which often air the same show 3 times in one day - and since they don't run the same show at the same time each day...) The scheduler conflict for series recordings works okay, handling priorities fairly decently. We do have a problem right now with Tuesday night's schedule - we have a 9pm show set to run one minute overtime, which conflicted with 2 shows to be recorded at the 10pm - 11pm slot. we fixed the overtime issue by telling it to end on time, but the box still hasn't figured out that there isn't a conflict anymore. I think we can work around that, but it shows the relatively immature software being used.

The scheduler also does get "behind" - as we delete shows, or even remove shows from the scheduled recording lists, it often takes as long as 15 minutes for it to update the length of time before stuff will be deleted in the main list.

Absolutely no "suggestions" or other cool Tivo features - a definite bummer, as I think I would enjoy it finding new things for me.

So, my overall feeling? It is a decent starter box, but I am definitely looking forward to seeing the new Tivo boxes that are (supposedly) coming out. I'm desperately hoping they include 2 tuners in these new boxes - I'm not sure that I could live without 2 tuners at this point, no matter how much I think Tivo's software is better. Even if I would be limited to only being able to record one digital channel (as it would require a digital cable converter box and an IR blaster) and one analog channel (or 2 analog channels), I could manage.

I would still recommend this box to somebody who just wants to get a feel for how it works - no hardware purchase, just a monthly fee makes it a bargain for somebody getting into this to see if they like it.

Sleep

I'm having a problem - I can't get a decent night of sleep anymore.

For the past couple of months, I've been having difficulties with my pillow(s). I can't seem to find that magical combination that feels comfortable, yet supportive of my head and neck. I've tried one pillow, two pillows, hard pillows, soft pillows. Nothing seems to be working. I'm waking up feeling lousy, or my neck and shoulder muscles are massively cramped from sleeping "wrong". I've actually hit the point where I dread going to sleep - even though I need it - because it just ends up being such a painful and uncomfortable experience.

I have got to get this fixed soon - I feel like a zombie, and it isn't my daughter's fault anymore!

Time-Warner DVR, day 2

I'll have more to add as the week progresses, but a quick update on life in our house with our new DVR.

The picture quality issue that I talked about yesterday was actually a channel issue, which I wasn't aware of at the time. Watching the channel later last night, I realized the colors were soft and kind of screwy watching live TV, so (of course) the recorded show wasn't any better. Having watched several shows that it recorded last night and earlier today, the picture quality is quite good - on most things, I really didn't see any different from live TV.

My wife is enjoying it as well - helps enormously that watching live TV is a no brainer, as it works just like the old does. I'm fairly sure that some of the more esoteric functions of the box will take a bit for her to get used to, but I would expect that.

As I stated before, I got a chance today to watch a couple of shows that I normally never get to see because of my work schedule - a couple of episodes of "Judge Judy" and an episode of "Good Eats". Guilty pleasures to be sure, but the ability to watch shows like these over dinner instead of "whatever was on" was nice.

Already ran into one interesting dilemna - what to do with shows that have been recorded when you have two TV watchers in the house? Some of the shows that we have asked it to record are fairly easy - only she or I watch them, so we can delete them when we are done with them. Others (like "Good Eats") we both enjoy watching - how do you handle when they get erased, particularly if you aren't watching the shows at the same time? Interesting problem, one I hope to figure out soon (before we both get paralyzed and never delete anything).

Time-Warner DVR first impressions

Well, I did it. I signed up and got the Time-Warner DVR box today, as I had talked about earlier. I figured I would blog a bit about my experiences with the unit.

The actual physical cable box is a Scientific American Model 8000, which is your tuner box and DVR all rolled into one. I believe (from reading on the web) that it has an 80 gigabyte hard drive, and it is capable of recording two channels simultaneously (including the ability to switch between them at will), or record one channel and watch another. (One thing that I know Tivo doesn't have unless you have DirectTV - understandable, since Time-Warner has the distinct advantage of being able to directly control the tuner itself.) Setup was really easy, I literally transferred the wires from the old Pioneer digital cable box to this one with practically no effort at all. It also has a new remote control, incorporating all of the DVR functions that are new.

Firing up didn't feel much different from the old Pioneer box. The menus look a bit cleaner (it uses a slightly different graphic and color scheme, which I like), but most of it seems to work identically (a plus, as it makes it easier for my wife to use). Recording is as simple as clicking the red record button on the remote control, where you set a few options (this show only, whole series, etc.). You can also start recording a show while watching it, and it does capture previously watched material, but I'm not sure how far back it goes yet.

The list function showing what shows have been recorded works fairly well. The series programming (kind of, but not really, similar to the Season Pass function on the Tivo) is quite a bit more complete than most of the information I read on the web. You can set it to record only first-run, all channels or only a single channel, all times or only a set time, as well as options for how long to save recordings and starting early/late. Additionally, you can prioritize recordings, so if three (or more) shows conflict, it can determine which two are the most important. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

Watching a recorded show definitely shows a degredation in quality, although I haven't had a chance to play with it much yet. "Live shows", even time shifted (if you hit the rewind button to see something you missed), seem to be a better quality. I can't tell if I'm being super-sensitive to it, though, as I am really looking at the quality very closely.

The unit is whisper-quiet, allaying my fear that it would be obnoxiously loud because of the hard drive in it. I didn't even realize that it had actually powered up after I plugged in the power cord until I heard a couple of faint clicks from the hard drive. Very nice.

All-in-all, not too bad. Not having direct personal experience with the Tivo itself, I'm not sure how they compare, but I don't have much to complain about at the moment. I'll post additional entries as my usage of the unit continues - we'll see how I feel as the week progresses.

Do-not-call list on hold.... again

I didn't blog about this the other day, since it had been covered adequately elsewhere, and although I was pissed about it, I could vent on other people's comments. However, tonight's news just blew me away.

So, a legal technicality gave the first judge reason to put the national do-not-call list on hold. I think the judge was obviously biased, having listened to too many arguments from these groups representing telemarkers, and I question his judgement, but whatever. A simple issue - FTC doesn't have the proper authority? Congress steps in, rapidly passes the requisite bill through granting them the authority. Bush signs tomorrow, case closed, right?

Wrong.

Now, some new asshole judge in Denver has decided to stick his head up his ass and side with the telemarketing industry, citing "free speech issues". His claim is that the do-not-call list isn't (in essence) fair, that it is simply squelching speech without showing any real benefit of stopping any particular type of abuse. And unlike the earlier ruling, this is not something easily "fixed", but will most likely will have to go through a nice long protracted legal fight.

So, once again we have a bunch of idiots/morons, using "free speech" not in the way it was intended, but as a weapon to wield indiscriminately wherever it fits their agenda. (And we wonder why "free speech" almost seems a cliche anymore?) Your right to "free speech" ends when it interferes with my basic right to live my life as I see fit. As Derek so well put it, "Free speech guarantees you the right to say something, it does not guarantee you the means to say something."

I'm sorry, I pay good money every single month to have a phone in my house - a phone to keep in touch with my family and friends. I don't pay that money every month so I can have strange companies I have never heard from calling me and trying to sell me things, things I don't want or need, and things that I would NEVER buy over the phone. EVER. I don't pay good money so I can have my every evening interrupted, maybe 2 or 3 times a night - I don't ask for your calls, I don't want your calls, I never asked for the constant intrusions into my life. And there are a ton of people just like me in this country - a ton of people who have vowed never to buy ONE SINGLE THING from telemarketers.

And yet I'm amazed. I hear the telemarketing industry screaming bloody murder about this - how many thousands/millions (depending on who is talking) will be out of work, blah blah blah. What I can't grasp is that the people signed up for this list are doing you a HUGE favor!!!! You no longer have to waste countless millions calling households who have no interest in purchasing any products from you, and in most cases despise you. So you have weeded them out, saving all that time for people much more likely to buy something from you, and for the owners of these operations, saving overhead costs and increasing your profits (a win-win, right?). So what the hell are you complaining about?

Presents

One of those weird thoughts popped into my head last night, had to put it down somewhere.

My wife and I have similar tastes in some things. There are a few movies and shows that we have both loved a ton. So my question is, how do you handle something like that when it comes to giving gifts? Last Christmas we ended up giving each other the same movie, which was hilarious at the time, but was something neither of us anticipated. Would items that both spouses want be considered "off-limit", for fear that it would seem like the item would be as much a gift for you as for them?

Just seems like a strange situation.

Decent NNTP feed?

I've had it with Roadrunner.

For several weeks (4 to 6) over the summer, they shifted their news system to retain no more than 2 days of material, where it had formerly been about 10. (This is normal relatively low-volume groups, not the binaries groups which I expect to be low.) I complained, they said they were working on it. About 3 weeks ago, everything was back to normal, and I was able to read my groups like before. (I download them about once a week - easy enough to read and keep up with, since I don't contribute as much to them.)

Tonight, I did my weekly download - we're back to 2 days again. Freakin incompetent engineers and/or management.

Anyone know somebody who does a decent NNTP feed? Most of the ones I've looked at tonight are easily $10/month, which is completely asinine for what I need. I'm looking at low volume - I only follow about 6 groups actively.

To Tivo, or not to Tivo?

Okay, maybe the title is misleading.

I have been saving money up for a Tivo unit, after realizing how much I believe I would enjoy watching shows on my schedule, and not the networks. However, as is often the case, by the time I saved enough money (which I have), I've been made aware that new units are coming out in Dec/Jan, and it would probably be wise to wait until then to either (a) buy the new unit or (b) buy the old units at a (most likely) lower rate. So I've been (impatiently) biding my time.

Then I learned that Time Warner Cable has a DVR (digital video recording) option for their customers. $6.95/month (cheaper than the monthly service for Tivo), and it supports not one channel but two recording channels, including Digital channels (I believe they use the Scientific American 8000 box). I've been reading up on them, and I'll grant you that the recording system menu is more complicated, and it doesn't have some of the fancier features like the Tivo does (Season Pass, for instance), but since I haven't yet been spoiled by the Tivo itself, I figure "what will I know?" The software is getting better from what I've been reading, and the worst I figure is that I can toss it if it really sucks.

Makes me wonder how Tivo can survive if this becomes a common option in the future, particularly if the software gets better over time. Why buy a 3rd-party product that may stop working some day (if Tivo goes out of business), when I can get a similar service from my cable company, for a significantly lower monthly cost, and if it becomes antiquated, they will replace it for me at no cost?

Don't do this at home

The setup: one candle burning for approximately 4 hours in a small glass jar - all of the wax has liquified. One can of compressed air.

One very stupid person (that's me).

Combine the ingrediants? One eruption of flame (2' high!), a hellacious amount of wax everywhere (I mean it - everywhere!), and one stupid guy (again, me) with a bit less knuckle hair than when he started.

Don't try this at home.

Random Play

As a programmer, I learned many things in my studying for my degree and extracurricular reading. One thing I did learn is that truly "random" functions cannot exist in a computer generated environment, only pseudo-random (the appearance to the outside world is random, even if the next result is predictable by virtue of the function being used to generate the "random" number can be extrapolated). I also learned that about less "random" algorithms, often used to simulate randomness of a less "random" nature - things like the random play function on a CD player.

I have a stock radio/CD player in my car. As with all CD players, it has a "random" function. Unfortunately, the engineer who designed this CD player took "random" a bit too seriously - this player's TRULY has a random play function. My drive time home tonight consisted of the following track numbers (on a 12 track CD):

1, 7, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5

On most random play functions, it is rare to hear two tracks in consecutive order, and I have *never* heard the same track repeated - the "random" function is skewed a bit toward jumping around the CD more (let's face it - if we engage the random function, we don't want to hear consecutive order). In other words, the random play function on most CD players is not really random, but designed to not play tracks in consecutive order, which is what you are usually looking for.

Seriously, who wants to hear the *same* track 3 times in a row? Or am I just missing something?

Bored, yet can't stop

This has happened to me before, but I always find it a strange sensation. I've been playing (for the last several months) Icewind Dale on the PC (having a kid usually means that playing any game on the computer is a long drawn-out affair). I finished the main storyline in July, and have been working my way through the subsequent storylines in the expansion pack (Heart of Winter) since then.

It's strange - I've really had enough of the game. Playing it for so long, I'm anxious to move onto something new. (Don't get me wrong - it's a great game, and I wholeheartdly recommend it._ Yet I feel strangely compelled to keep playing, just to say "I finished it". It is almost an obsession to complete a game entirely, just so I never have a reason to want to go back and play it again.

Odd, what the human mind will do to someone. I'd say I need help, but it seems pretty obvious.

Confused schedule

Last night, our wonderful daughter Neve decided that she no longer liked her now normal schedule of two naps a day and a nice long sleep straight through the night until 6 - 7 am in the morning. More "boring" baby stuff below, if you care to read it:

At approx. 2am, she starts getting talkative and begins to get frustrated (her voice starts raising, etc. - fairly normal). As is normal for these situations, I go into her room to settle her down and put on her ocean sounds to soothe her to sleep. Am I ever surprised when I see her sitting up, staring right at me, with that "Time to get up!" face! She gets her pacifier, I turn on the ocean sounds, and step out of the room.

Within minutes, major crying jag begins. She is not happy at all with this turn of events - she is ready to get up now. My wife and I are thinking "like hell", and proceed to spend the next hour and a half getting her back to sleep (finally culminating in letting her cry for nearly 20 minutes (starting a little before 3am) once we've changed her diaper, made sure she is feeling alright, etc.).

You know, after a few months, you start to expect those straight through the night sleeping habits - we put our time in being up all hours of the night, damnit. She owes us! *grin*

"Book of the Month" Clubs, infant style

Most people are aware of the "Book of the Month" clubs that are out there. Basically, you sign up for a type of book you are interested in, and they automatically send you a selection (or two) every single month, which you can send back if you don't like.

When our daughter was born, my wife signed her up for the baby book of the month club. I'm amazed at what a waste of money this is - we have a daughter who is probably two years away from having even the slightest semblance of reading ability (realistically, probably longer), and yet every 3 weeks like clockwork we get a little box in the mail, with somewhere between one and three books in it, ranging from a $17 to $20 bill each time. These are supposedly geared to the child's age level - which of course makes me laugh - what infant can read?

My wife has a great time showing the books to our daughter, exclaiming "how cute!", etc. I can't help but roll my eyes everytime - coupled with the periodic retail purchases of baby books, we have a pile of books for a 6-month old. The entirety of her desire for the books is something to chew on as she teethes. (Most of these books, for the record, are thick cloth covered pages and covers, not a typical book as you would envision it.)

These clubs aren't being marketed to/for kids at all - but to/for their parents. I have come to the conclusion that it makes my wife happy, so I keep (happily?) paying the bill each time they come. What else can you do?

Family functions

Yesterday we got to go over to one of my wife's relatives houses for the "annual" summer party. So we got to spend the afternoon:

- Being friendly with a PILE of people I don't know (these parties seem to attract between 60 and 200 people, the vast majority of them people I've never met before). The roster of people, with the exception of a small core element, seems to change every year.
- Wishing that there were more than one couple our age to talk to.
- Dealing with a baby all afternoon while people were staring, poking, and saying "what is her name again?", and having to explain what the name meant again.
- Having it start raining, HARD, as soon as the food is ready to eat - forcing this large group of people to crowd into two spots where there was cover, and making eating a chore rather than a joy.
- Having to go home early and miss the fireworks (the usual highlight of the evening).

It was just one mostly miserable day. All I want to know is - can I PLEASE skip next year?

Spammers

This isn't your usual entry on spammers and the crap they dump into your mailbox. I'd rather save that kind of rant for a more "angry" day, and besides, most of you know the problem anyway (like it hasn't been complained about before!). Moving on...

So today I get an email from someone I have never met before in my mailbox, dumped there because I have all non-addressable email for my domain being dumped into a special box for my review. It is addressed to "dan", something about looking forward to more pics, etc. It is kind of personal, and yet strangely generic at the same time.

I find it incredibly sad - it feels like somebody truly just misaddressed this email, and yet I am unwilling to respond back (like a good person would) and tell him his mistake. Why? Because I have become so paranoid about spammers and their tactics for gathering "live" email addresses, that I wouldn't put it past them to create some sort of generic email like this, with the hopes of getting people to respond back and say "nope, you sent this to the wrong person", confirming live addresses (or in my case, getting a personal reply-to address).

Ugh

A buddy of mine did me a favor on his way back from NJ, and picked me up a case (30) of White Castle hamburgers (he literally drives right by one on his way back from there). Oh, my, had I ever forgotten just how tasty those things really are. Since there really aren't any in our region, it was a nice treat.

But oh my, are these things sitting h-e-a-v-y. Guess I should have listened to myself when I kept going from one to the next to the next to the next....

White Castle hamburgers. Delicious. Yet evil.

27 hours of freedom

Last weekend my wife and I had 27 hours of freedom.

For the first time since our baby was born (5 1/2 months ago), my wife and I went away last weekend. Wow - it was nice. It was sort of strange to be out and about without our baby in tow, to sleep overnight somewhere with no baby monitor, no getting up in the middle of the night to check up on her, not having to get up between 5:30am and 7am.

We shopped, ate, saw a nice movie, relaxed in a nice Jacuzzi tub, and slept seriously in - until 8:30!! We missed her though - my wife was having a hard time, particularly in the beginning. Didn't help that everywhere we looked was another baby - driving us both nuts!

We left her with my parents, who were thrilled at the chance to spend time with her (even if she did wake up a few times overnight - different surroundings and all). She was really good for them too (we have a wonderful baby, but she does have her bad days, like we all do) - she buttered them up, so we may get a chance to do this again!

My parents always said that it is good to go away, leave the kids with the grandparents (or somebody else), to get a chance to be with your spouse, get to spend time with just her. I believed them before, but I definitely believe them now!

Drivers cutting you off

Okay, this pissed me off severely, so I have to bitch about it. I'm on my way to work today, sailing down the Thruway, not a car in sight except for this one car that comes up behind me and decides he needs to pass me. So he goes by me and then IMMEDIATELY pulls in right in front of me - at 70mph, less than 4 feet of space was between our cars. If he so much as sneezed I would have ran into him.

It wasn't like there wasn't a ton of space for him to drive in - why do people have to be such asses when they drive? Is it willful ignorance? Or just flat-out stupidity?

Wow

Holy crap. Just got off the phone, got some HUGE news from someone I know, something that will change their life massively. Damn, certainly wasn't expecting that when I picked up the phone. Talk about having life get turned upside down - I'm still reeling from it.

(Apologies for the lack of details at this moment, but I will get into more details when it is appropriate. I just had to write this down somewhere, even if it was vague.)

No regret

At work today, I was doing my usual complaining about my daughter, her crying jags, about how I have less of a social life than I did before (which is saying something, because before I had her it was practically non-existent), the time that you just spend caring for a baby and the resultant "hit" that nearly every other aspect of your life (hobbies, etc.) takes. Since my wife and I are both experiencing the same things, it is helpful to talk to people outside, just to vent. And the question came - "Do you regret having her?"

You know, for all the complaining I may do (at work, here, to my friends), all the bitching about lack of sleep, the inability to do things that I did before - I don't regret it. Not one bit. If somebody offered me the opportunity to go back, consequence free, and change the decision to have a kid, I wouldn't in a heartbeat. Everytime I hold her in my arms, look at her smiling face, and realize that I'm holding my own flesh and blood, I keep realizing just how lucky I truly am. I couldn't imagine a more wonderful thing, and I wouldn't change a thing.

I still reserve the right to complain from time to time, though. I am human, after all.

Baby magazines

My wife and I subscribe to a huge pile of different baby magazines - my wife signed us up for one magazine after another when she was pregnant, and they dutifully continue to come in the mail every month.

Now, my wife reads them, perhaps not thoroughly like she did before we had the baby (when everything is new, and you HAVE TO BE PREPARED - any first time parent can attest to that feeling), but she still grabs a few minutes here and there to read a few of the articles that look interesting to her. (I have to ask the stupid question - what parent actually REALLY has time to read these behemoths cover to cover, month after month? Hell, I've got a pile of magazines 8 inches thick that I haven't had any time to read AT ALL since my daughter was born!)

Beyond the funny story or essay that periodically appears, my wife also shares a few of the articles with me. I personally find myself feeling very ambivalent about these magazines. The covers proclaim this wonderful information - "What Makes a Great Dad?", "Peekaboo! How games help your little one learn", "18 Toys all Babies Love", "Why selling your child on the black market ISN'T right for you" - and this is just a sample from one magazine cover. How could you not want to learn this great information? (Not even getting into the constantly contradictory information that seems to come from one "expert" after another.)

My parents have told me how lucky we are, that when I was a baby they didn't have this kind of access to information, that you just did things by the seat of your pants and with their parent's help. Funny, I don't think I turned out too bad, nor do I think my wife turned out bad. I guess that's my whole problem, the whole reason I'm so ambivalent about reading these magazines. I actually value my ignorance in some strange way - successive generations of human beings have grown up with nothing more than a mother's advice and a bit of common sense, and we've managed (for the most part) to be pretty decent overall.

So when I get these magazines with these "must read" articles, I keep finding myself asking "how did we manage before these magazines were published?" How did my parents manage? And I realize that for the most part, showing your baby love and affection, playing with him or her everyday, taking care of his or her basic needs, and teaching them things and responsibility as they get older - that's what being a parent is all about. Don't fill your head with a thousand different fads, a hundred different new theories of child rearing - as far as I'm concerned, they just keep changing. Just use a little common sense, be consistent and fair, and be there for your kid.

I'm sorry Neve

I'm sorry Neve - your parents are bad parents. We keep meaning to take pictures of you, take videos of you, but we just keep forgetting. Over and over again. Once we finished taking the 20th shot of one of us feeding you, we wanted to get some different poses, and we just don't seem to think of the cameras when we are with you. We're trying to be better, but we hope you will forgive us if there are a few gaps (especially the video camera - we're really bad about using that). We promise to try harder.

Oh, and happy birthday. A whole 5 months old!

Jellybeans

A little background information - my wife and I both enjoy jellybeans, and buy a large bag of JellyBelly-type jellybeans at our local warehouse store periodically. We have a decent-sized dish we keep in the kitchen with the jellybeans in them for a quick grab when we are in the mood. Of course, just like any mix, there are some flavors we like more than others, but we make a habit of just grabbing a handful and eating them as-is, and that spreads out the "good" ones and the "okay" ones pretty well.

My MIL also enjoys jellybeans, and will eat them at our house when she is here. She was here today, as a matter of fact, to help my wife watch the baby while she was doing some things around the house. So I come home from work today, to find our dish of jellybeans (practically full when I left for work this morning) really picked through - quite literally every "good" flavor is gone, just the few crappy ones are left. This isn't the first time she has done this either - she even acknowledges to my wife that it will drive me crazy. She's right!

I'm going to have to start hiding the jellybean dish from her when she comes over. Or, alternatively, build up a nice dish of the "reject" flavors she won't eat, and substitute in that dish when she comes over, just to see her reaction.

Change

You ever have that feeling that life has become very static? That you go through your daily life like a zombie, just doing the same things you did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that? It becomes comfortable, abliet boring as all get out sometimes. Not that you are unhappy with how things are, but you wonder about how life could be. What it would be like if your daily routine, your habits, were turned on their head?

Change is a good thing - something came up today that made me remember that.

I have tasted freedom, and I want it back

Last week my wife and I entered a glorious state - our nearly 5-month old daughter slept through the night for not one night, but 3 nights in a row. (Our definition of "sleeping through the night" is bed by 10pm or sooner, awake at approx 6am or so - in other words, a normal adult's night sleep. Anyone who tells me that "sleeping through the night" is sleeping 6 hours straight regardless of awakening times, like the "experts" say, can shove it - YOU get up at 3am and say "hey she slept through the night" because she went to bed at 9pm. "Experts" my ass.)

Friday night she slipped a little - woke up at 4am, but she had fallen asleep very early (8pm), so we figured it was just an anamoly. Saturday night was back to business.

Then last night came.

Fussed like a son of a gun half the evening. Finally went to sleep at 8:30 or so. Wife and I went to bed, and she woke up when? 12:30am. Fed her, sat with her while she literally stayed up until past 2am. Finally put her down and spent another 1/2 hour getting up and down from bed to sooth her to sleep. I'm wasted today - nowhere near enough sleep to function.

For months my wife and I have been virtual zombies, and last week was our first true taste of freedom, of getting a decent night sleep on a semi-regular basis. And I want that freedom back!

Loaning Stuff

Don't you hate when you loan stuff out to people, and you end up having to ask for it back? I loaned something out to somebody quite a long time ago, and I still haven't gotten it back. I know they know they have it (not a case of "crap, I forgot I borrowed that from you!"), but they still haven't returned it, and now I have the task of having to ask for it back. I don't know why, makes me feel like a heel or something.

Bad time to have a "senior moment"

So today I drop by my office to grab a couple of things that I need. I unlock the door, walk in, and turn to face the alarm console to put in my code.

And I draw a complete and utter blank. Not a clue.

Well, I type and type and type, code after code, realizing quickly that I'm screwed - nothing is working. Then the outside alarm goes off, lots of noise. Eventually the code pops into my head (thanks brain - way to wait a minute too long!). The cops show up (rather quick actually - was pretty impressed). Fun ensues, but everything gets straightened out.

Mind you, I've typed that code in quite literally thousands of time. This is not some oddball thing. I've come to the conclusion that I am usually so brain-dead in the morning that I must do it by muscle memory, and if I try to go in later in the day (like I did today), then I'm actually thinking about what to type, and I screwed myself.

Double Parking

Why do so many people insist on double parking? I get to a client's office this afternoon, and they have a fairly small parking lot to start with (9 spots). So I get there, and there are 8 cars, except for this fancy blue sports car - which just happens to be parked dead center between two other cars, taking up 2 full spots. It wasn't even one of those "slightly off center" things where you could say that they were just a little sloppy - it was painfully obviously done on purpose.

Just one of those pet peeves of mine - had to park on the grass, and get my feet nice and wet in the process. Grr.

Telemarketing Script

Over at Jeremey Zawondy's blog, a comment in response to one of his articles about telemarketing caught my eye. Sander van Zoest posts a link to an interesting script to use when telemarketers call.

Thank goodness that I live in NY state, and they have a fantastic "do not call" list that actually works. It sure would be fun to use that script though, just to turn the tables a little. :-)

Memory

One of the things that they don't tell you (amongst other things) when you have a kid - your memory goes. I have never been more forgetful in my entire life than the last few months.

So, as I'm leaving the house today to go to my friends's house, my wife reminds me about something that I was supposed to do last week. I had completely forgotten, as usual. As I'm driving, I think that this would be a good blog entry. I make a note ("blog") on the sheet next to me to remember to put this entry in later.

How right I was.

I get to where I'm going, look at the note, and say "blog"? What was I supposed to write? I actually racked my brain for 5 minutes until I finally realized what I had meant to write into the blog - that my memory was going since I had my daughter.

How ironic.

My daughter has it in for me

As mentioned in a previous entry, I have a 4-month old daughter at home. For the last 2 months, my wife and I had a deal to handle middle of the night feedings - if she woke up before 3am, I got up, after 3am, she got up. It worked well for the first week, then I slowly started realizing I was getting severely shafted, as my daughter's sleep schedule shifted to normally 1am - 2am wakings for a quick bottle. My wife was, for the most part, getting a solid 7 - 8 hours of sleep straight through.

2 months later, and 3 nights ago, my wife actually feels guilty and says "since she is only waking up once a night, we'll trade off nights. I'll take Tuesday, you take Wednesday, etc." Great, I think - every other night I get to go to stay up a little bit later, catch up, still get a good night sleep, and my wife can share in the joys of the 2am feedings again.

Tuesday night (wife's night) - she fusses from 10:30pm until 11:55pm, waking up every 10 minutes or so, since I'm up anyway I deal with her. Finally can't comfort her anymore (she is hungry), I end up feeding her. (Figured I'm already up, not going to be a prick and make my wife get up - just seems wrong.) Wife gets solid 7 1/2 hours of sleep.

Wednesday night (my night) - Wakes up at 1:30am, lucky me I get to get up. :) Wife gets solid 7 1/2 hours of sleep.

Thursday (tonight - wife's night) - Wakes up at 11:30pm, I'm finishing an entry here before I go to bed, try to comfort her. I fail after a few attempts. Guess who fed her? Guess who is going to be getting (most likely) a solid 8 hours of sleep tonight? Grrr.

Already my daughter has it in for me, and she hasn't even obtained rational thought yet. I'm in serious trouble.

I need a new keyboard

Have come to the conclusion I need a new keyboard - I have a beautiful 101-key IBM keyboard, circa '92, that I have used forever and love. The tactile response is fantastic. However, the damn thing is LOUD. When I really get typing, my wife says its sounds like a machine gun. Never a problem before, but now I have a 4-month old daughter in the house who doesn't sleep quite as soundly as my wife does.

What was I thinking, putting her in the room across the hall from my office?

Netflix-like service for Books?

Why hasn't somebody done something similar to Netflix, but for books instead? I am an avid reader, and enjoy reading a variety of different things, but hate wasting money buying a book that I'm most likely going to read once and never again. The local library is merely "okay" with its selection - it is easy to quickly exhaust what they have available, and they rarely have those more unusual titles that I'm interested in reading. I am more than willing to buy sci-fi novels and the like - it is items like biographies, true-life stories, current event topics, etc. that I really don't like paying $20 - $25 for a hardcover book (they rarely come out in paperback) that I'm likely to read once (or try to read - not all of them are good) and then toss into a box forever.

I would love to have a service where I could pay $x per month and have a list of books that they would just send me as I finished another - I could very quickly compile a huge list of books that I'd love to read, ones that I hear about and then pass over because I can't justify the price for something I only have a passing interest in. The only hangup is they would probably need to have a selection (of newer books) on par with Amazon - just a few "best sellers" wouldn't cut it for me.