One of THOSE days...

I've been having one of those days. Those days that make you realize that if you did, Diety forbid, run into a dragon today they would not only win but they would go on to win $10,000 dollars on some Funniest Videos type of show with the footage of your fight.

It would help if this morning had not actually started out yesterday. I spent most of the night working on an article, and I was deep in the toils. I looked up at one point and noticed it was 4:45am and said several unladylike words. I needed to get this done, but I should probably have not gotten quite that enthused about it. To add insult to injury, I had to get the girls up for school at 5:15 this morning. They were going in early for some project or other. I would have gotten annoyed with myself then, but at that point it didn't really matter. The difference between the two times is only half an hour.

May as well be hanged for a sheep, so I don't bother to go lay down. I make some coffee and burn four pancakes and the back of my right hand before I get the pan heated properly. The girls are wakened by the smoke detector three minutes early. They grumble their way into the bathroom while I stand there fanning the front door until the baensidhe embedded in the ceiling stops wailing. It wasn't too bad, so it only takes a few swings. Hopefully the neighbors just turned over and pulled their covers up over their heads for another hour.

The next pancake comes out just right and I settle into the flipping groove. I don't get to eat any of them, by the way. I'm fasting for some blood tests. I'd forgotten that, but one of the girls reminded me with a bite halfway to my mouth. I think back and realize that I'd accidentally followed the plan anyways by zoning out when I sat down to get some work done right after I got them off to bed the night before. I get them on their way, and then I hit the shower and head off to the doctor's appointment.

I had an asthma attack week before last and I've been fighting this cold that's going around ever since. My head's still really stuffy and the fever just won't stay gone. My doctor has gotten paranoid again so she asked me to come in and do some labs for her. It's one of those "we'll fit you in" type of appointments, though. I should have known better. Two and a half $*%)@* hours later, the nurse practitioner calls me in and we do the traditional measurements thing, and I hand her the lab request form the doctor gave me. She still makes me repeat everything I told the doctor last week and everything the doctor told me last week while she dutifully writes it all down again. She pokes me in the tongue and performs a couple other indignities and then she leads me off to the lab.

She waves as she leaves and I sit down in the Marquis de Sade school desk thing. It always makes me feel uneasy, and not just because they've basically parked me here to wait for the phlebotomist. That's just not a word anyone ever wants to deal with. Besides, the chair sits disturbingly close to the little door that I happen to know is a direct line into the men's restroom that's on the other side of the wall behind me. It's so the guys don't have to haul their samples down the hall and around the corner. I approve of it's purpose on principle, but it makes me uneasy. In all the years I've come here I've never had it happen, but I just don't know how I'd react to a hand reaching through the wall and setting a little cup half full down right next to me like that.

Three and a half fidgets and two uncomforable wriggles later, the lab worker comes in carrying a long box. I would ordinarily ask her what that was, but by that time I honestly didn't want to know. I just wanted the heck out. She leans it against the far side of her station, and starts pulling on a pair of gloves. Remember the box. It'll be back in a bit.

She starts her round of indignities while we discuss today's current events. Which I know nothing about because I've been trapped in their waiting room all morning. Seven different vials of blood later, she turns to get a roll of Coban to hold the cotton ball into the crook of my arm and she knocks the long box with her elbow.

This whole room is no bigger than a minute, and is lined with shelves full of odd glass and plastic things and small white paper boxes with strange words all over them. Whatever was in that box must have been somewhat heavy. It knocks into a shelf over us and we both sit in a shower of enigmatic medical stuff. Most of which is very light. It just sort of rolls across the floor until it looks like Hypocrates was playing Yahtze in there. It's the "most" part that gets us. On the shelf are two glass beakers full of the solution they use to test to see if you are anemic. You know, where they poke your finger and squeeze a drop into what looks like a glass of Romulan Ale? One of them hits the edge of the shelf below just right on it's way down and the cover comes off and the contents splash all over both of us.

Well, that stuff isn't particularly nice for you, even when it hasn't been used yet and is not full of sunken droplets of other people's blood. It's also not nice to the brand new shirt I just got for Christmas. Cue several minutes of Keystone Cops hysteria as they try to figure out if the stuff is still considered a biohazard if it hasn't been used yet and trying to make sure I don't have any of it left on my skin. I head home to change clothes in a t-shirt from my gym bag and stew in the scent of yesterday's workout and scorched ego through the traffic, which is moving at half the speed of smell. This was NOT in the schedule.

I jump into the shower. After I'm done, I make the discovery that my younger son has apparently gone into spring nesting mode or something and in his preparations to go to work has managed to use all five of the towels that were clean and folded on the back of the toilet and taken them into his room. I drip my way down the hall to the other bathroom to get a towel and then head to my room to change. Finding that I didn't have any work clothes clean to wear just made the moment all the more special. Punt with a vaguely suggestive game t-shirt I got at a convention and a sweatshirt that I have no intentions of taking off all day and head out the door yet-a-fargin'-gain.

I finally get into work at nearly 11 to be greeted with my favorite passive-aggressive customer service rep who has decided that I managed to cause this customer's problem via etheric transmutation or something and is pissed as all hell that I wasn't there to fix it immediately. After looking into it and showing her where she already had the solution to the PEBKAC in question if she'd bothered to read the technical support materials she's had sitting proudly on her desk for over two years, I go hit the kitchen for some coffee.

The pot's empty. While I'm making a new batch I stand at the counter trying to organize my To-Flail-At-To-No-Effect list into a To-Get-At-Least-This-Stuff-Done list, with the occaisional uncharitable thought about burlap bags and a deep pond nearby. I bag waiting on the coffee maker and make a cup of tea.

It's all for naught anyways. I get to my desk and open my email and find out that a group of people we used to offer a discount to we don't anymore effective last Friday but they forgot to tell us. Tee hee. That means I have to hand-hack every single one of their customer accounts so when their renewal notice comes out it won't break on them. Not complex, but there's just enough of them to be a total drag but not enough of them to bother with coding a tool to do it for me.

So instead of getting done what I was supposed to get done I'm getting dragged through the bowels of these accounts. That takes me until after six. All along I'm swilling tea and realizing that I forgot to eat lunch when I was at the house. I come up with several more festive variations on the whole burlap bag thing above. Then I get to start on what I should have been doing five hours ago for another project that was due last Friday.

I have no illusion the pint of blue mush serving as my brain today would pass current, but you would think the accumulation of caffiene would eventually spark some sort of chemical reaction in the gray matter that might aproximate functionality. So far no luck. I was just trying to eat a chocolate coin someone brought into the office as a treat for everyone, and I forgot to take off one side of the foil before putting it into my mouth and biting down. Eeeaauggghhh! You know how it feels when someone runs their fingernails across a chalk board? Imagine that feeling with your teeth.

On that note, I think I'm going to head out. The server I was using started getting really sluggish. That happens when you've got 200 GIGS (yes, I meant gigs) of Recycle Bin. Maybe Microsoft needs to make a new icon for "Take Cover, She's Going to Blow!" levels of full wastebasket on your desktop. It's been at it for fifteen minutes and the time estimate for how long it's going to take this poor neolithic creature to clear it's mind is still going up so I think I'll exit stage right.

I have to get home and feed the kids to something anyways. After the towel stunt, it's going to be something large and toothy.

Happy 2nd Day of Christmas....

I'm blearily blinking in the cold, hard flourescent light of my office trying to deal with life. The run up to the holidays was such a madhouse this year with work and everything I never really got the "Christmas spirit". Looking at the current schedule, I figure I'll get around to getting in the mood around 12th Night. ;)

Even with all the kerfubble the whole thing went very well, starting with the firing off of the Yule log in the fireplace right before we started opening presents and ending with watching the anime series box set brought by my eldest son.

Someone told me that teenagers don't do the crack-of-dawn present thing. When is that going to happen for me? My 19-year-old younger son was up every 20 minutes all @&$%)@ night, and the whole gang was up by 8am. No rest for the wicked - not even the extremely wicked.

Game-wise we opened up Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, NiGHTS, Need for Speed, and Mass Effect.

On top of the games, my eldest boy got some stuff he needed for deployment, a gift card for some other stuff I know he needs but I didn't know how to buy, and a book on how to be immature. It contains, among many other priceless gems of knowledge, detailed instructions for the making of armpit noises. This was tested out immediately upon opening. ;) I figured it might come in handy in case he starts to forget now that he's grown. My younger son got a new shirt and tie for work, some tools for his new mad scientist workbench, and a cushy new blanket for his bed he wanted.

The girls got these cool hematite magnetic necklace-thingys that you can wrap up into all sorts of bracelets and stuff and they stick together, the cushy new blankets they wanted, and books. A couple new series I know they were looking for and the paper collection of their new favorite webcomic. I was doing a quick check through my security logs after Thanksgiving I found they'd been hammering this poor guy's archive so I went and got them the books. To top them off, the main character wears this extravagant scarf, so I knitted them one to go with them. They were totally suprised. They cheered when they opened it.

The kids got me a Dilbert book and a special edition of "Real Genius". My monster-in-law got me pajamas and a Starbucks giftcard, my mom made me a whole new set of kitchen linens and fridge magnets. And she sent me seven quart jars of her best homemade jam (six of them made it - shipping heavy glass things from Alaska is a chancy business).

There was a whole lot more here from the Grammas and in general. Between my mom, my monster-in-law, and my grandmonster-in-law the kids make a pretty good haul.

We topped off the day by staying up to a really ugly hour of the morning watching an anime series. But we were having fun, and "work tomorrow" has little weight against "they're all growing up way way too fast" at times like this.

We're still not done with the Christmas thing. My BIL and his girlfriend are coming over Saturday to finish off, and the kids are chasing down some of their friends who were gone that they didn't get their gifts to before they left. I've got three more boxes of stuff that has to be finished off and sent.

For the Record...

Today's XKCD

... I did NOT try this at my son's school.

A few happy thoughts...

Good news is few and far between here, but I can share a couple things.

--There is sun today in the greater Seattle area. I've probably jinxed it by mentioning it, but it is. It's not exactly swimmin' weather, but there are parts of the sky-dome with RGB color values with high numbers in the third pair, and low ones in the other two.

--That coupled with a low volumetric haze and almost no fog of war means I can see the heron down on the river getting his ass kicked by that pair of ducks again. You'd think he'd find someplace else to fish farther from their nest. He's perched on a snag across the way in a serious snit. Reminds me of those Peanuts cartoons when Snoopy's pretending to be a vulture.

--My daughter sent me these links a couple minutes ago: this and this. This is good because a) she got the jokes, b) she's trolling the Whiteboard archives from school so she must have finished her math final with time to spare. Well done, my Padawan.

Pet Woes...

We have a pet labrat. He's a portly old sucker so I let one of my daughter's friends bring her two pet labrats over to play with him so he'll get some exercise one afternoon. A bit later he started getting sick, and we couldn't figure out why. After a month of fooling around with allergy tests and etc it turned out he had caught a rat-specific sort of mite from the others. It doesn't affect humans at all, and the stuff that kills lice does nothing to it.

Not only is he miserable and his skin a wreck, it knocked down his immune system so we're fighting an infection in the bones of his head from a tooth abcess that killed part of the skin of his face and required the vet to shave some bone off his upper jaw that was dying. The worst part is he had to be awake for it because when she tried to sedate him his heart stopped for a little bit -- he's too old.

The last three weeks have been vet visit after vet visit for the injections to kill the mites and twice daily antibiotics. Have you ever tried to wrestle a medicine syringe into a rodent's mouth? He only took it gracefully that first time. That evening and every one since it's Splinter-time and I'm a Foot grunt.

He's doing much better now, and he seems to forgive me for the medicine with little trouble. He's just not going to take it lying down. It probably tastes like crap even with their attempt to flavor it. Needless to say he's on a strict diet, we're looking for other forms of exercise, I've sterilized everything in his cage and the rest of the house as I can just because I can't cope with the concept, and he's not having any more play dates. Hopefully this round of the anti-biotics kill the infection because if they don't she'll have to pull that tooth and that means I get to add clipping his teeth to our usual routine of clipping his claws.

I better get Shredder's armor if that happens.

Disproportionately Funny....

Sometimes people say things that strike you as funnier than they probably should. There's no rhyme or reason to it; you just find yourself randomly chuckling about it for a couple days afterwards.

I ran into this exchange between two anonymous slashdot users today who were discussing modifying game hardware, and I nearly snarfed chai on two computers at once.

>"If you can't install Linux on it or otherwise do with it as you
>please, it's not anywhere near as useful as it should be."

I apply the same litmus test to all decisions in my life, including my choice of girlfriends and pets. That's why I masturbate a lot and have a hamster that runs Ubuntu.

I'm not going anywhere near the first part, but I want a hamster than runs Unbuntu.

Something Old, Something New...

Well, this new voice recognition software is finally getting used for what it is designed for. I've got the new houseape in my arms and I'm writing away busily. Thank goodness the microphone did not pick up the huge working man's belch he just gave me. I've got all this brand new stuff, but so much is still just the same as it's always been.

It’s been two weeks, and the world is settling into its new grooves now that he's finally here. His mother and my son are in the other room talking about their relationship yet a-fargin’-gain, and I'm not sure where this is going to go. A lot of my incomprehension is that I'm very tired, but still. All this nonsense seems very juvenile to me. But it's not my relationship so who am I to say.

He's kind of fussy. We just changed him and I’m feeding him, but I’ve got the audacity to insist that he burp halfway through guzzling his meal. How rude! But I think we've worked it out. There's always a certain amount of learning about each other at the beginning of all of this. Each baby likes their own position, and their own lullabies. We’ll figure it out as we go. He's only been at this whole life-thing for two weeks, after all. He's not sure where his own limbs are much less what he likes.

See, I said I had big news. That adorable mite in the picture is my sort-of grandson, Christopher Myron. His mom and my younger son are engaged. There is a whole lot of complications involved, but when it all boils down to most of the stuff he's going to be my official grandson here soon so I figure why wait. So I stand in loco grandparentis. Or right this second, I stand to get urped on, but that's always a risk with babies.

The girls are in the room tittering about something at the top of their lungs. One of them was on the phone with her ex-boyfriend for quite some time and they’re probably rehashing the whole conversation looking for signs of meaning like priests sifting through the entrails. It's funny to me how much rune-casting and maneuvering is required for just a simple thing as a phone call or even talking in the halls. I guess it's just another symptom of how old I'm really getting.

Sometimes I begin to wonder how I’m going get through all this. I don't now how older parents do this. I'm 38 for crying out loud and I'm about ready to go Elven postal. (Believe it or not this crazy software actually has “Elven postal” as a selection under phrases) I can't imagine starting off with the baby and size of him right now and be staring down the barrel of the next 20 years like so many of my peers are doing. I know I could do it if I had to, but it seems foolish in the extreme.

It’s kind of peaceful, though. This situation, I mean. It certainly brings back a lot of memories. And it takes quite a few of the rough edges off today. I spend a lot of time fumbling around, but this squishy weight on my chest just sort of simplifies a whole lot of stuff right into insignificance. It just sort of boils all the priorities down to brass tacks. It’s starting to show with his mom and my son, too.

All that emo feeling and crap washing around that was so important to them just a couple weeks ago became Priority five. For Priority 1 and 2 you’ve got what he needs and what he wants. Then comes whatever it takes to get those things for him in third place. Then what the parents actually need comes in fourth. You don’t even get to wants and what have you until after all that. And most of the time you just don’t have a way to get that out of the amount of energy and time that there is in a given day. I told them, but it takes having that warm weight in your own arms before you can really understand it, I guess.

It doesn't last long though. They hash out whatever they’ve got their knickers knotted about and her mom has come to pick her and the baby up. The tide of giggling in the other room has risen again, and Mr. Fussy here is doing his damndest to kick off his blanket. That’s life for you.

Zen Influenza...

remember the green skirt girl...
and everywhere be tender of the grass

She looks up from the page and over her shoulder out the window at a noise. Not startled or alarmed. Just wondering. The blinds lid the weeping window's eye but the rain is over. Clear thin tracks and lowered gray brows beyond are all that remain. The girls are out with a flock of their friends under the carport tossing a hackey-sack and discussing lipgloss. The sound had been the particular grainy slap the beans inside make when it hits the steel uprights, and the teasing laughter that had followed that miss.

Turning back and shifting on the couch to ease the neck-crick, she looks down again. Where were we?

remember the green skirt girl...
and everywhere be tender of the grass

The guys thunder in the front door, soaked to the bone and dripping mud and bravado. They'd been out playing football with their buddies and somewhere there's a patch of lawn that is being beaten into this spring's battlefield. At her comment about the mess they're making they laugh and step back onto the doormat. Arrangements are made to go out again, and then back to the page for just a flicker.

It's not making any sense. The words lie on the page in their ordered ranks and come readily to her beck and call, but for some reason once they get to their destination they are blunted. Maybe they're just tired from the journey from page to eye, or maybe the caucaphony of complaints from the rest of the body are drowning out the sense. She closes her eyes. Maybe if she just thinks about a line at a time it'll work.

remember the green skirt girl...
and everywhere be tender of the grass

The girls chatter and squelch their way off to the basketball court, and now the computer fans chanting their one-note koans are the only sound. A sniffle and a sneeze curl the body momentarily, but then they are gone almost like they were tossed into the wastebasket with the tissue. The motions are automatic now from many repetitions. She hardly notices anymore.

There is work that should be done. The test scripts are done running - the excuse for lying idle is gone. The dryer is done and is waiting to have this mouthful of it's daily meal of jeans and socks taken out. It would be easy to just pull the covers up over the head and let them wait. A half-hearted negotiation with her sense of duty later she gets up and deals with the laundry.

The words still ring in her head. "Do the girls have a green skirt?" she wonders aloud as she chases that last fractious sock around in the dryer's drum.

The trouble with America is that there are far too many wide-open spaces surrounded by teeth. -- Charles Luckman

Sorry - that's just a thought to hold you for just a couple more days. Boy, do I have news for you!

Wednesday and Eric, sitting in a tree.... Kay - eye - summtin'- summtin'....

If you're an afficiando of Web Comics and their critique, you might have heard of Websnark and it's author Eric Burns. He also writes for a couple other webcomics publications.

He proposed to his long-time co-writer Wednesday White here with the help of a few friends.

(And she said yes. Well, first she said, "Duh!", but then she amended to the more formal "Yes.")

Congratulations to you both. May you live as long as you love and love as long as you live!

Between Week...

No, I haven't had a time warp. This one got caught in the fun Blogger's been having putting out their new service, and even though that was last week today feels a lot the same so I decided to just hang it out there.

New news at 11. Or something like that.

I sort of slump here in my chair. It's a Wednesday, which is in the middle, of a week that is perpetually in the middle. That week between Christmas and New Year's.

It's a between time. Things don't really work right. The whole world just waiting to get to that seventh day so things can starting going back to normal. And if you're one of those who are charged with keeping things on an even keel while you're waiting it can seem very hard.

A lot of lucky people are still out there on vacation visiting family and friends (or unlucky, depending on their level of family-of-origin fun). Every morning you do this sort of Left Behind perp-walk past all the closed doors and empty chairs on the way to your desk. We'll call it the Greenbar Mile. It adds just that little bit of insult to the injury of those who do have to come in.

In some cases it's nice because you know they're not going to be bothering you. But sometimes you need these people. Nothing says "Happy Holidays!" like a pissed off customer you can't help because the accounting rep is out until next week and she's the only one in the entire world who can perform the particular function that customer needs.

Everything else has ground to a halt, too. Heaven forfend the company who does your hardware support be staffed with more than a skeleton crew of cardboard Captain Picard cutouts with company polo shirts pulled on over their paper shoulders. How they get those headsets to stay on is a mystery. This motherboard problem we're having makes my current Christmas wish a guy with a really thick accent from Bangalore. I'll promise to leave him alone during the next Dewali if he gives me this obscure undocumented jumper setting we need to get this frelling server online now.

Me and the gal who is also stuck here are doing "team development" today on this little application that updates one of our remote installations. It's supposed to be a really efficient way to work, according to all those shiny best practices magazines. In real life, what that means is she codes something, and I sit there and try it out. It barfs. Then I tell her it barfed. And then she tells me her code is perfect and it's the fault of the patch we're trying to code to. We go back and forth until she comes over here to look at the error code herself since apparantly Terminal Services is lying to her or I am. Then I tell her exactly what I did again. And she complains for several minutes about it while re-doing the same bloody steps and chasing through the logs to confirm that I in fact did the right thing while badgering me to confirm each and every step. Then she decides it was something else so I have to tell her exactly what I saw again. Then she blames my computer and we have to go through the testing steps again on another box. I go through the same thing again. And then she looks at her code and complains for several more minutes cursing whatever has suddenly decided not to send her code back the proper return code. Then she sees what's wrong in her code. She fixes something. She drops the new files. I have to reset the box to the baseline so we can test again which involves uninstalling several things and rebooting the box three times. Lather, rinse, and repeat for 11 hours now.

Home isn't over-fun either right now. The kids are in the throes of acute School Break Social Life Disorder. With my eldest's best buddy who joined the Navy on leave and back in town, and everyone else off school I've got huge drifts of sneakers and coats all over my house. There are clattering herds of house-apes stretching as far as the eye can see like bison on the prarie. If I shield my eyes carefully I can see a dim orange light on the horizon that gives me hope - school starts up again next week and the friend has to head back to Norfolk. And then all these persons from Porlock will shuffle off to their normal lives again and only hold a mock UN meeting on my front porch on Saturdays.

Power back on, Christmas Accomplished...

We're back up now and much happier for it. I've still got a bunch of stuff to deal with, but now I have the tools to do it at least.

Christmas has come and gone in a blur. Thanks to the power outage and all it's accoutrements, I had a little less than two days to get ready and it was hard to do. We did it, though. The kids helped out a lot and we cut corners in all directions but we kept the important stuff.

So I hope you all had a Happy Holiday, and I'll see you in the New Year!

Power Outage Still Going...

They still have major transformer stations down all over. About half the areas have partial power. New estimate is that my street will be out until at least Saturday, and early next week is a better bet. We're right off the major distribution lines and the one at the entrance to our place got a 2 foot thick fir tree through it which then took out the fire plug across the street. Since this feeds a bunch of other stuff they can't bring it up until they get the four major transformers downrange working right or they'll blow that up. The fireplug is already fixed, though.

So we may not have power for Christmas. Not to mention no real Christmas for something like 400 power company repair crews and a lot of other folk doing double shifts to get us through this.

Some people are being really dumb. There was this stupid bint on TV today going on about how people burning wood was messing up the air quality. WelllDUUHHHHH! However, if they had any choice that isn't what they'd be doing and besides, the rain we're supposed to start getting tomorrow or the next day will wash things clean. And have the nice side-effect of warming things up about 20 degrees and we really need that.

On the smaller scale, people are grouchy and some are just plain being idiots. Gal at the grocery store tonight was going off at the manager because they didn't have her special whatever. The power was off for long enough that they had to throw away everything in the freezers and coolers on Saturday and they're still re-stocking. But her power hadn't even gone out at all and she just couldn't understand what the problem was. Somehow it was this poor guy's personal fault they didn't have her specific special meal. It's almost like they figure if it didn't happen to them, it didn't happen.

To offset the idiocy, we had a very nice man drive by us chopping wood yesterday afternoon who stopped and got out his chainsaw and made quick work of a day's worth of firewood for us.

His help freed us up to go after some big stuff and I got about half a cord in 8' lengths back to the patio for us to saw up and then split ourselves. We've been going to a brushpile left by a road project down the street year before last and it's gorgeous seasoned pine and poplar. Almost a shame to burn some of it.

My boss told us today that we can basically use the office facilities and do whatever we need to do. Our pet rat is going to be moving into my office for the duration. Tomorrow is going to be interesting because there's a couple real winners here who are raising a fuss about him and one of the other guy's dog. Another case of idiocy. I don't know what her problem is; Scooter lives in a cage and besides he's litter trained. Maggie is the sweetest old poodle-mix. It's not like she's a puppy piddling all over the place or jumping around or something.

I finally got paid - the power outage disrupted payday last Friday, and it's been an interesting weekend. We got our servers back up Saturday and we thought we were okay. Once they got under load this morning it turns out we've got three of them with damaged motherboards. We're running on backups and a cobbled together collection of my test and dev servers.

We're up, but it's like keeping a house of cards together when someone is walking around with a fan. A few too many people show up or someone searches on "court" in the entire Eastern District of New York and fwooosh! down we go again. True one from today. It's not the first time I've seen customers do a search like that; what the HECK do they think that is going to get them!!?? If we could figure that out, I'd find some way of getting them what they want that doesn't do this to my machines. Or at least find them a good scenic route on their way to the Alternate Destination before they submit it. It's taking two people to keep us up. Tonight it's me and the guy with the dog.

Poor Scooter has caught a cold and is utterly miserable. He started sneezing this morning. Vet saw him today says it's bacterial so nothing to do but keep him quiet and settled and wait it out just like everyone else has to and make sure he eats well and takes his vitamins. But I can't make him chicken soup like I do for them. He's not in any danger or anything as long as we stop this now. I feel awful because I should have seen this coming and done something sooner but the vet said it could be much worse - at least he's not a reptile of any sort or tropical fish or bird. It's been really bad for them.

One of the local laundromats is up and running and doing a VERY brisk business. I'll be there tomorrow.

I don't know what we're going to do about Christmas. We can get some of the decorating and stuff done without power and I can fake some of rest. But dinner is going to be tricky. And needless to say my Christmas cards and etc are going to be late. This really has me upset because this is going to be Johnathan's last Christmas home and I really did want to make it a good one. I can't think about that too hard or I just start crying.

Anyhow, I promised the kids they could go see Eregon so we're going to head out and do that now. I'll be back once I get them in the door. I should go but I really don't have the heart for it. I can use the two hours knowing they're safe and warm to get some things done for later.

Power Still Out....

We're still out, but they got the downtown Redmond area back on at least so the grocery stores and stuff can work. Now it's hard to get gasoline and propane. There are lines down the street at the stations that have it. I'll be joining one as soon as I'm done here. Then we're off to cut more firewood.

We're all still fine. I was worried about our pet rat because while the fireplace will keep things okay for a human in a sweater, it definately wasn't in the comfort zone. He cuddled with us for most of the night but he had to get back into his cage to eat and sleep. Turned out fine - he just burrowed right into his bed and has hung in like a trooper.

No snow yet, but they're threatening it every time I turn on the car radio. It did freeze. Not what I would call a hard frost but hard enough for around here. There's ice on the puddles and these single-pane windows just breathe the cold.

My server room is still a mess, but my boss got a fan in here and we're heating the rest of the office quite nicely trying to keep it cool in there. It hasn't gotten any worse, and we got the rest of the machines up and in the right order so everything talks to each other again and everything works.

The kids are officially bored with poker and Munchkin, so I ended up reading 10 chapters of Howl's Moving Castle to them by candlelight last night. My voice is shot.

It's kind of odd. I grew up in a harsh climate and in conditions that make this look like a vacation. We've been able to take care of ourselves and help our neighbors. I have the tools (because I'm a weirdo who considers a properly maintained axe an integral part of setting up a household). I know what to do. I'm glad. But when I was growing up, there was a part of it I was missing. The constant worry. Can I take care of the kids? Can I get us what we need? When the stakes are personal, it's one thing. When the kids get into it, it's another. It really makes me think about my Mom and what she went through raising us kids. She did this with nine kids ranging from 9 on down to newborn and she did it with no running water in the house and no neighbors closer than 60 miles.

Wind Storm in Seattle - power out all over the place...

Seattle is a beautiful place. It's green all over. The problem with all this great greenery is when Mother Nature decides to throw some wind at it, it all falls down. On top of power lines.

Between that and the rain this place is a mess. I've been out of power for two days now. Everything's pretty higgeldy piggeldy around here. They expect it to take a few more days to get things back on track.

They got the power back on in my office and that's where I'm at right now. I brought the kids in and we're hanging out until things are charged and then we head home. They brought the poker set and they're playing Texas Hold'em in the conference room. At least I can charge up my cel phone and stuff. In an ironic note, the only warm place in the building is my server room, which is about 80 degrees because the air conditioning's been off in there with all those computers blowing heat since the power came back on in here this morning. The HVAC still hasn't gotten it's ducks back in a row and I don't expect it to until next week sometime.

It looks it's trying to snow on top of all this. We're back in the freezing range and with no power that means no heat for a lot of people around here. We have a fireplace in my apartment and stuff so we're good, but it's been interesting. I haven't chopped firewood in a LOONNNGGG time and boy does my back know it.

Needless to say, this was not in the schedule for getting Christmas ready or anything else.

We're all okay. I'll be in and out as time/power permits. For the usual over-wrought news portrayals, you can go to http://www.king5.com

Forums as Writer's Training Wheels....

We should have some sort of organization for writers who cut their writing teeth on forum posting. Maybe a banner ad?

I always wrote before, but it was mostly fanfic that will NEVER see the light of day or pen-and-paper RPG stuff. I didn't ever think anyone would ever want to see anything but my code until I got sucked into a couple BBS boards back in the early 90's. I really went ape when they dogfooded Slate back in 1999 or so and my boss decided to use it as a precursor to IM because we were all spread all over creation. Then it hit the fan.

Just for kicks and giggles, I sat down here and tried to list out all the places I regularly contribute writing. And by writing I mean words in a row that are less than a third code. There were fourteen of them!

That's not counting places I read and don't actively contribute. I also have four other book-length pieces going, and some random other writing projects (usually articles on various topics for various sources). There are several other things I should be doing much more frequently than I am.

I can't say I've made a big splash. Definately nothing I need to quit my day-job over yet. But I would never have even gotten this far without the structure and lure of forum posting.

Mars Rover Beginning to Hate Mars...

See Full Text Here...

A couple choice samples:

Callas said. "Last week, however, we received three straight days of images of the same rock with the message 'HAPPY NOW?'"

or ...

"Hopefully these malfunctions will straighten themselves out," Callas said. "In the meantime, we'll simply have to try to glean what usable data we can from 'OVERPRICED SPACE-ROOMBA AWAITING MORE BULLS--- ORDERS.'"

This whole article is hysterically funny. And to add another layer of funny, CNN has started syndicating the Onion and their attempts to make sure no one mistakes this for real news are laughably over-the-top.

Squelch! Squish! Splat!

I tried to log into Slate to answer Marylb's wonderful post about being who we are on the BOTF and I got a security certificate error and it still refuses to log me in. The system makes a sort of electronic splattery blert when it pops up an error dialog. And that's just perfect for this day.

Meeting at my son's school yet-a-frelling-gain so I get stuck in four times as much traffic as usual. And I guess just because I have to use the route, they've decided they need to install a hyperspace bypass or something so there's orange cones and reflective vested shoulder-angels lining the whole route gesturing at you to slow down. WTHeck!? I roll down the window and point out that this is stop-and-go. If I slow down any farther I'd back into the guy behind me. He laughs and shrugs and goes back to making calming gestures at cars.

The weather is a very typical Fall sort of day. It's like God decided we need to soak like beans or something and put a dismal gray lid all over everything. Back to the house for something I forgot. As I get out of the car, the carport drops half a cup of drizzle about half a degree above sleet down the back of my neck. Lovely.

When I came out, the little girl across the way is waiting for her bus. She's in kindergarden this year. She's so cute standing there in her cute little purple raincoat and her backpack. But she's staring at the drips off the front of her hood. The look on her face says that she's just done with the entire proceeding. I know that feeling. Her bus gets there. As she squelches her way across a puddle to get on she notices me and we share a big wave and a smile. Hopefully her day goes a little better. Except now I'm stuck behind her bus all the frelling way down the arterial.

The color is leeched out of everything. Even the maples look drab. The leaves don't drift down in elegant swirls. As I'm walking across the parking lot a big clump of three or four of them splat onto the blacktop next to me close enough to splatter my shoes. One of them's a really pretty red one the girls would probably like for their collection but my hands are full so I can't pick it up.

I get in, put my stuff down, and I'm greeted with this morning's Charlie Foxtrot and a cup of coffee. A sip tells me whose turn it is to keep the kitchen up this week. I know it's him because he makes what may possibly be the most average worst pot of coffee in the world. It's just bad enough you make that squinchy face when you take a swig, but not so bad you won't go ahead and finish it off just for the caffiene's sake while planning a run to the coffee stand over your lunch hour.

Reading through email, I find the project slipped a day thanks to the accounting system vendor's shenanigans, I've got a customer with a spyware problem who is certain it's all my fault, and Live's logon server just sat and sputtered until it got in the way of my work and I shut it off. So I can't answer Maryl.

I doubt I had anything that would be real helpful to say. Mostly it was a anecdotal "me too". But it would have felt nice to talk to her again.

There is no 11....

New Rule - do NOT listen to the new RvB episode while at work when there's a huge client meeting going on in the conference room right behind me.

Because then I laugh out loud. And then they come and see. And then they make me show it to them, too. The receptionist snarfed Rockstar out both nostrils and down my back with the "I will kill you..." part. And I have four suits giggling behind me. Only two of which have any idea what they just saw. And then I have to explain RedvsBlue to said clients.

Good news is, we still got the contract.
Bad news, now I have to code what's in the contract.

Anyone know anything about the court system organization in Israel?

Rainy Day Election Musings...

Somebody flipped the Winter Switch here in Seattle sometime last week. We went from a long string of golden days baking the tattered tan end of summer into the dust to three days of rain marching back and forth across the sky and hitting the pavement like the heels of polished jackboots.

I stood at the bus stop this morning with the maple tree dripping water and wet brown helicopters into my hair. The invisible residue summer's travels left on the road sparkles on the puddles and runs down the gutters in oily rainbows. That'll be gone soon and flat gray will be all that remains. What a perfect day for the serious business of pondering an election.

I'm not sure where this going to go. I'm doing my part working on the issues that matter to me, and in November we'll see where this all ends up. I see it as a mechanical system in need of some work, and the metaphor carries through this whole process.

You don't get too far tightening a bolt if you are putzing around with that hose clamp off to the left. People spent a lot of time blowing smoke about "election fraud" this last couple years, when an obvious culprit is the stupid ways partisan regulations have crept into the election system that lock people into voting specific ways. It never says it in so many words, but if you stack all the stupid rules together you effectively can't vote for anyone who isn't Republican if you declare yourself a Republican in the state of Washington. Or even better is the rules/traditions that allow an incumbent to run without opposition from his own party and to actually avoid a real primary election in many cases. If you're a member of that same party you're effectively disenfranchised. Where this really bites is where it applies to many federal elections like Senators, Representatives, and the President. I know this affected my voting patterns and I believe it's a huge factor in these close presidential elections where in order to vote for the candidate of the opposite party you literally have to not be able to vote for anyone in your current party anywhere else on the ticket. What say we stop going on about chads and supposed weakness in voting machines and fix the concrete and demonstrated problems in the election rules.

The whole system is connected so you have to be careful how your change is going to affect the rest of it. Trying to get an ordinance passed about jobs for people in low-income housing while slashing the funding for the bus system in that area and cutting funding for subsidized child care isn't going to have the effect you're hoping for. Unless all you're trying to do is shut up some vocal group and not do anything really effective.

If you don't use the right tools you can't turn it. The best you're going to get is hand-tight. And that's just not good enough for most applications. My favorite one is the people who try to tell you that there's a right to privacy in the Constitution. Or a right to education. Or any number of other indicators that they don't know what their problem is so they can't bring to bear the right effort to fix it. I have an acquaintance who is all up in arms about some of the content in the "health" book her child brought home. So she wrote a letter to her Congressman. Real helpful. You want to fix local education issues, try talking to your local school board and get on the Curiculum Committee.

If you don't even know which way to turn the wrench then you're really up a crick. I've run into a bunch of those. A bunch of absentee ballots here in my state are going to be invalidated because people didn't indicate their party affiliation on it (see that section up there with the hose clamp and the partisan election regulations). This is plainly marked on the page but they didn't follow the directions. It's not just their fault - it's hard to wade through the verbiage. I don't know how it's going to affect some races

I'm not a fatalist about it. I just know that to make real change in a system involves acting on the system itself and doing it intelligently.