Addendum... I love my wife.

Because you're near me..

Kudos to our televised overlords

Today, while cleaning my office, I watched two episodes of Scrubs on NBC.com. I had to watch commercials, didn't really pay attention to them or care.

Saved me the trouble of torrenting them. You see, I'm perfectly happy to let the evil corporation make a buck off me enjoying their media, if they give me the option. If they don't, I have trouble feeling guilty about doing otherwise.

It's as American as manifest destiny, which is to say it's okay to steal things as long as you believe you deserve them. I can't see myself applying this principle to say.. a shrink-wrapped dvd on a store shelf.. but a freely available electronic copy that doesn't actually deprive anyone of property by making it (and which WILL make me more likely to shell out for the DVD if I like it).. it's a grey area.

Not for me, but for a friend whose life is complicated in ways I hope to never experience.. Why did they change the locks?

Yule tide lyric break

Merry Christmas!

Season's beatings...

At this moment I find myself in an overheated home, mp3s in one ear, family in the other, it's late in the evening and we'll be up later to wait for baking to complete.

Holidays are the time when family gets together to bitch about one another... Good times.

Perhaps a full blog post on boxing day. Heehe I almost typed boozing day.. That's a holiday...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dciDcRZovP4

This machine can only swallow money.

As the yule tide weekend (4 days--sweet) approaches, I continue to feel the crunch of work, I have trouble taking even part of a lunch, and I need to go shopping after a long day at work, in the company of a young man whose sworn duty is to disrupt such outings... Oh well, maybe he will know what to get his mother for christmas.

Stay frosty, watch your six...

Testing......

This is my first omg mobile posting to my blog. Not because I am in some exotic locale, or I am too lazy to get out of bed and use a pc (well, that at least might be a factor), but because I just set it up today so I can.

No song lyrics today... Just hum something until I work out how to post a hyperlink from the phone.

on that day we stopped a little...

the last two weeks have been busy. went to the beach, got trapped there by inclement weather, lost a good friend i haven't seen in at least 6 years, lied about having written a long blog post, and realized that my job is going to be there every day whether or not I kill myself doing it.
Last night saw me in a bar not drinking to the memory of someone I had let go of too well, and got re-acquainted with others I hadn't remembered to let go of... people who I should have been a friend to and wasn't. Nothing like a loss to remind you that you've neglected the people in your life.

So this morning I showed up for work 20 minutes early, rather than 50, I planned to take a full lunch but there was a schedule conflict, a training I had forgotten about.. I'm going to go to my job and do it the best I can, and not beat myself up trying to be the hardest worker. I made myself sick once before, I think because I had been constantly stressed. I'm learning to let go of the stress, trying to keep the productivity. Becoming a better employee is something that will happen because I love to learn.

Christmas is coming too soon. My wife does such a fine job of shopping for all the people in our lives, I really should harness this somehow, get her to shop for her own gift (just kidding, dear). We're having two christmases, one with my family, one with hers.. Plenty of wrapping, plenty of preparation. How do I find time to write this entry? Procrastination and guilt. The great thing is that procrastinating on one project for something I feel guilty about generates plenty of guilt to drive me on the thing I neglected.

Wish you were here..

This is the greatest and best blog post ever's

tribute.

It was amazing. I can't even tell you. I wrote it in three acts, each more beautiful than the one before, and the first tied into the last with perfect rhythm.

Damn refresh button lost it. Could never produce that again.

Too darn sleepy right now.

Cue the happy music

Bad news first: I'm no longer eligible for overtime pay, and I'm going to continue working OT as much as possible until things cool down...

Good news.. my new job likes me so much that as of friday I am a regular employee, making 5/4 my previous pay, which was a pittance more than when I was babysitting crackberries and their owners. Now I'll be babysitting people who are supposed to know what they're doing. And usually they do. woot. WOOT!

Not much else to write about, really. We had a medical situation in the family which was not an emergency, not a surprise, more scary than it should have been, and absolutely necessary.

Me, I'm sporting a new (massively ancient) toy i need to setup, and because of it i need to make some hard decisions about my home network setup. Also need to decide what computer crap I'm keeping and what I'm getting rid of, as thursday i have to drive to seattle and will therefore be able to swing by a recycler. seems you can't legally throw away computers.. for good reason, really. Anyone want an EGA monitor?

the blood that lights your eyes

Did I say "week"??

I meant month...

Friday I had the first half of the day in training.. back when i was in a "call center" that would have been great.. No calls to take, maybe a bit of a queue to kill when i got back, but i still got breaks and time to relax.

No more... training was more intense than I ever had at the old place, and when I got back my customers all still needed to be helped... and my boss told me "Take care of the premium customers (they pay more for support), any anyone with a really long wait time, but mostly I need you to take as many new cases out of the level one queue as possible, and we'll deal with the fallout from this on Monday."

Joy of fricking joys.

I'm already up and gone..

A week of mondays

Gotta love it.

We're busy at work.. consequently, every day I will be rising at 5, out the door by 6, and back home at 6:15. Sadly, this is just to get in an extra hour each day of work.

Learning a ton, though. Starting to get the feel for phone conversations, even if I do feel like I have to actively conceal my ignorance on calls. This is what I signed up for, though. A chance to learn things I had never been exposed to before.

I shouldn't complain, though. Tonight I get to actually sleep next to my wife, and tomorrow, and for two more days after this. Also, and I know better than to say this is more exciting, tomorrow night I should theoretically be able to master a dungeon. Hain't done that in a damn month.

Aeria gloris

Treading water

And thinking of taking a swim..

The new job is starting to fit better. After 7 working days of doing my job, and a week and change before that of independent study, I had some regular training. Something seems a little out of order there.

Didn't stop me from actually talking to customers yesterday. I was a little shaky on one call where the customer needed a walkthrough, but I found ones where there was a tricky problem to solve were not that bad. One I was able to crack no problem, another one was super confusing. I told the customer I'd call him back with a fix within half an hour. 40 minutes of four more experienced people also scratching their head later, we found the problem. Turns out that if you take the configuration file from a machine in network A, put it in a machine doing the same job in network B, you can probably get by, until you expect those two networks to play together. "No, that's MY subnet! No, it's mine! MOM!!" called dude back, fixed it quick.

Another call I knew the answers, but it was going to be a lot easier to type up everything without the customer asking me eight thousand questions that weren't related to anything I support. So I let him go, researched one odd error message he'd asked about, typed up instructions on the fix to his original problem, and updated the case.

Good times.

You load sixteen tons an' what do you get?

Trying to be a bit less filtered...

And failing.

I love my wife.. not much else I'm going to say.

Celebrating my new handheld

With a look at things I do when not at work or home.


Which mostly covers my time on the train..
(seriously, is that an ampersand? If so, why?)

And on my lunch break.
(exterminate, exterminate)

I see some things on the way which engage my interest as a general nerd, which apparently includes "train nerd"
(I just need one more of these and a microphone.)

And wasting time with one of my electronic toys..
(not so much a gameboy with tetris, as an automated smackdown device)

My many electronic toys
(some might say, too many)

Oh, on the top right there? That's a 6800 from $carrier. It has it's foibles and idiosyncracies, which I am used to as a former support dork for similar time-wasters.

Which the awesome power of this pocket computer, I

1) listen to the radio (fm reception is crappy along the train's route) via the internet
2) ???

I've loaded a Sega Genesis emulator, but my game that I still play on the genesis doesn't emulate well on it. (some emulators can handle the code they used to display menus, some don't).. I've gotten my work email setup, which is great if you actually want to bring your work home.

I've had limited success with the web browser. I loaded opera mobile, which teased me by allowing me to think i was logged in and able to post on my blog, but crashed when I hit the submit button.

Now I've updated my blog, for those who have complained.

Maybe I'll launch a moblog, since I'm planning on doing some walking of the streets during my lunch breaks.

Gadget Envy

[edit: I love my wife. I really really really love my wife. We talked tonight, she said I can buy my new phone tomorrow. She hadn't even read this pathetic whining here. ]

It is a constant with public transportation that while it relieves you of the stresses of traffic and driving, it leaves you with a large amount of time to kill. I have this:
People near me have these...




Just sayin, is all... 'snif.

Ain't life a mystery?

Internal or External?

Recently I've been giving a lot of thought to a long lost friend. Two of three nights, another person who has drifted away from me was in my dreams. I can't help but wonder if this is my own sub-conscious trying to purge the buffer of unresolved issues, or a message from the Cosmic WhatIf that for my own spiritual growth I must deal with these matters.

Last night was very disturbing, in many ways. My nocturnal bride didn't come to bed until well after midnight, and I had conked out well before it. After I got back to sleep, in my mind it was a warm summer night, and a social to-do was going on. I was thinking heavily on the subject of the late hour, and that I had been awoken at the late hour, and I knew I needed to get myself back to sleep so that I could be refreshed for the next day of work. Instead I was caught up in meetings with the aforementioned fragments of my social circle, and I watched with great concern as time ticked away, and I had only the time to actually go to work from the party. I began walking away from the place, and as I got to the boundary of this dreamscape, prepared to step on the street outside it's boundaries, I collapsed to sleep, waking up to realize an entire day had passed, and I had missed work while asleep.

I think I woke up somewhere in the middle of the party, checked my alarm clock, found it was an hour before I needed to get up, and returned to the same dream. Strange when that happens, makes it hard to figure whether you actually woke up. I remember the physical feeling of my body resting on the bed, sore from sleeping on one side for so long, so I think it was real, but there is no real certainty in it.

Back to the recurring thoughts of those I've left behind. It's October. This month is considered by many cultures to be a time of death, or more to the point, of transition through renunciation. I find myself wondering if this is a sign that I should seek resolution, but not to reclaim these friendships, simply to let them go. In both cases, letting them go altogether is a painful thought. Neither has given me a reason to think that holding on would be valuable, or good, but I've never had any skill with ending things.

In other news....

The job is going well. I'm actually able to do my work now, which is a huge relief in many ways. Spinning my wheels was driving me crazy. I'm making mistakes, but I'm also having successes. And anything I do wrong is currently being caught by my boss, and can be regarded as an essential part of the learning experience. Later when I begin working over the phone, without that safety net, should be interesting.

But their world has flat backgrounds and little need to sleep but to dream

I am what is wrong with the internet.

In the last hour, I have added "teh", "gotta", and "zomg" to my MS Office dictionary.

Getting back into the swing of things, a fun weekend behind me, and entering my second week of training with (zomg!) actual training. Not that all the reading I did last week was time wasted, I can tell you I needed it, but it's nice to have something a bit more hands-on.

Lunch break is short and Herfy's was every bit as delicious as I had feared. Less dangerous to my checking account than my waistline, too.

If you find time in your life to sit down and play a board game, and you should make the sound decision to play RoboRally, I would recommend the following time-saving measures.
1)Play without the option cards, or with their use sharply limited (like 1-per player)
2)Limit the number of boards sharply. They can take longer than you plan.
3)Be prepared to change the "final goal" if your game goes long.

If you want a shorter game, I was recently introduced to Fluxx. It's much much easier to learn than it appears. It's amazingly fun.

Most anything that says "Catan" in the title is also good.

And here you have seen me drift topic for no apparent reason. Another reason that I am what is wrong with the internet. Now excuse me while I use company bandwidth to look at pictures of cats.

TGIF, or something

My hour zero appears to have been taken from me. It seems that the time I get up now, at least two days out of the week, is plenty to get myself and my son out the door in time for him to visit his mother at work and me to catch the train (last night he was insisting I would fall off the train, hasn't happened yet), but it doesn't give me time for dilly-dallying personal projects. I'll have to see how the train goes Monday.

In other news, there's a Herfy's almost directly adjacent to the new office building. They don't do shakes, sadly, but I may still find it impossible to resist "forgetting" to bring a lunch on Monday. "Oops! Shucky-darns..."

Finding a rhythm that works.

I have a little advice for anyone with a long commute. See if you can take a train. Did that this morning, it was comfy, it was stress-free.

If you're gonna take the train, plan on taking the one *before* the one you need, at least for the first few days. I discovered this morning that the train runs on time. I showed up 4 minutes after it was supposed to have been there, and there it wasn't.

If you're going to take a walk at noon to figure out your route to get the train home, don't wear a heavy leather jacket. It may be stylish but you'll be sweaty.

Taking the stairs everywhere (including up and down 5 stories) is healthful, but prepared to have an embarassing shortness of breath the first day you do it. Maybe the next day too. I'll let you know.
Back to work in a few. Thanks for reading!

First day of school!

Absolutely nothing to worry about. It's tomorrow morning, it's in Seattle (with the expected commute), and I'm plagued with self-doubt.

Yay!

Maybe more later when I get my break tomorrow. Peace OUT!

You thought I might make that longer post I hinted at?

This shows you weren't paying attention. Maybe I'll have time tonight. Depends on if I have a houseguest for any substantial time. I might be obligated to deliver pwnage and distract him from a close personal medical crisis.

I have to keep behaving.

For fear the new gig doesn't work out and I have to crawl back on my belly.

Over the weekend I was an absolute beast to everyone and everything around me.. fortunately my son was with his grandparents, unfortunately my wife had to put up with me throwing fits when such tremendous indignities as the headset cord for my mp3 player being slightly tangled, or my dropping the lid to a bottle of gatorade.

Then monday night i got an email, my fears (not having all seven years they wanted for the background search) were put to rest by the headhunter.

For now I'm still feeling like a short-timer. Having to figure out what I put in my farewell letter. Still dealing with stunned reactions from people who I had neglected to tell I was leaving before.
Stay tuned for a possibly longer post tomorrow. It's always a possibility.

Senioritis

When you know you're leaving a job, sometimes it can be hard to focus. I'm still working my job, but I can't stop thinking on every call that soon I won't be the friendly face of XYZ Cellphone Company. Or friendly voice, either. I'll be the nervous newbie that I haven't truly been for more than two years. I won't know everything about everything we do. I won't be the guy who everyone asks for help. It's a bit like moving from one school to another.

I really do regard my work as education as much as anything. I learn new things, and that is as much a reward as any other part. More than the money I make from the work, possibly more than the thrill of having someone say "I talked to ten of your co-workers and you fixed it in two minutes. What the hell is with that?" It's stopped. I don't feel I have a huge amount more to learn where I am.

The interview was not like any I've had before. It had two parts, the first was a Socratic challenge of my knowledge, a senior technician asking me questions, letting me know the answers I didn't have, working to draw out what I know and figure out what I'd need to be taught. He was impressed with my troubleshooting skills but told me afterwards that I needed to study like crazy before the next time I tried to apply for a job like this.

The second part was a somewhat more conventional interview-by-committee, except the three department heads with whom I met took complete turns with me, allowing me to stay engaged and looking at one person until they were done with me, rather than darting my eyes nervously about the table as I am randomly barraged with questions from all directions. The questions went from the first panelist, who kept asking me to talk about my weaknesses. The second and third seemed interested in ruminations on how I feel about technical work, how training was done at previous jobs, and an admission that they were hiring people at an insane rate and weren't entirely sure how to train them all.

The workplace looks awesome. I can see a major sports stadium from the window there. They have a shower, leaving open the possibility of taking a nice healthy run or engaging in competitive sports in my lunch break, options available to me at my current work but something I wouldn't consider for fear of spending the balance of the day sweating and stinking at my co-workers. The desks I saw resembled cubicles, an upgrade from my current booth-style desk. The interviewers projected an aura of friendly familiarity, and any of them I would love to have as my boss in the near future. I don't actually know what team I'll be on, it appears that I'm up for two of them, a level one position where you take open cases and try to fix them or punt them to level two, and a open line team which takes the incoming calls from customers and either fixing them quickly or opening cases for one of the other teams.

Bless all of my readers, who easily number in the several, and I'll try to update a little more often.

If there is any work for me..

New headset?

Been locked out of posting at work and haven't had time at home for this blog...

This might change with MY NEW JOB! WHEUEUEUEUE!!!

I'm terrified. A little more money, lot more growth potential, I've got a ton of stuff to learn, and I've gotta commute to the middle of Seattle.

toddler is my co-pilot

i write this now with one hand, my freshly woken son on my lap and held by my other hand.

We are preparing for an early morning voyage. First on a medical errand (no-one is at risk, but not all is good), secondly to the distant mountains for the "great big garage sale" to which my wife's family is inextricably linked. I won't have a headset strapped to my face until tuesday, a fact which dampens my general sense of weariness at the sleep deprivation and poor hygiene I will be enduring over the weekend.

Got a smidgen more done with the flash authoring tool. I've decided that I should create a single object for the walls on my game. i even created a test with a ball and map layout created, and was totally unsuccessful at getting the collision detection to work. I suspect it's a scope resolution issue, because the code is contained within the ball object and I asked it whether it was colliding with the map object without actually telling it to look at it's parent, the _root. Akin to saying "are you currently touching the smurf?" to someone who doesn't have a clue what a smurf is or where to look for it.

At what point does a toddler become a little boy? Is there an age cut-off? Or does it have to do with a growing vocabulary, comfort with walking, ability to manipulate the world around him (such as the parents)?

That's all I can say for now. It's theoretically possible I'll be able to post before tuesday, but no guarantees.

Let's check the excuse file..

"Too busy"? Nah.. no-one would buy that. "Forced to construct plastic railway by 3-year-old at 5 am"? Too cutesy. "Busy preparing for flea market"? What's to prepare? All the stuff is up there. "T-virus outbreak"? Too epic.. "Blocking software at work"? That could do...

Howdy all you out there in blogger land.. Forgive my lack of updates, my work is now preventing me from posting to this blog from the office computer. Blogger.com has gone on the blocked list, while the blogspot domain is no yet iPrisoned.. I mean imprisoned. This means that from my desk I may look but not touch this site.

Friday morning I got up early, fully into the hour zero vibe, only to discover that I didn't actually remember how to operate the flash authoring tool. I've been giving myself some refreshers, and am feeling semi-ready to proceed. Tomorrow morning I should be able to do a bit, provided my son doesn't wake up when I get out of bed. He doesn't go to sleep with me at night, but he's very often laying on top of me in the morning.

And to my wife, who also reads but doesn't post here, happy anniversary. If I had it all to do over again, I'm sure I'd still sucker myself into it. Remember, the greatest gift you can give me for this special day..

No.. that's not it. I'm sure you'll figure something out. Much love. You don't need to wake me up for the eclipse, dear. I'll believe you.

iPhone unlocked, please run for your lives.

Sorry to go all web 2.0 on you, but this is a major thing to me.

Engadget confirms iPhone unlocking tool works

Within the next week I should expect to get calls asking to setup the iPhone to connect to the data service for my client. Hopefully this part here is accurate.

The General -> Network menu now has an EDGE network settings area where you can input your carrier's APN and username / password. We put in our T-Mobile info, and were immediately online. (Apparently these hidden menus were added in the 1.0.1 update, they tell us. How convenient!)

Nothing to do with anything else I usually talk about, I know. This is relevant to my job and it excites the hell out of me. Same way a rabbit is excited about large dogs chasing it.

Hour ZERO!

I'm trying something a little new.

Hour zero. I figure my day goes about like this.

Hour 1, i get up, head to work.
Hours 2-10, I work.
Hours 11-whenever, play with my son, watch the tube, do housework, go to bed.

.. So I need another hour. Or at least, I'm going to give myself another hour and see if it helps me.

Yesterday morning I got up an hour early. Got my computer on, downloaded the latest version of adobe's flash software. Don't work on 2k. 40 minutes done with.. Did some web surfing, then went and got ready for work.

This morning, I also got up an hour early. Got the 2004 edition. Installed it. Opened it up, and realized I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with it. Gonna do some design thinking today, try again tomorrow. Ofc, tomorrow the Hour Zero lasts until my son wakes up, since I'm not working. I might get lured to bed by a lady needing a backrub (sadly, probably just that), but I should find some time to get productive on it.

Currently I'm thinking that "tower defense" games are a hot genre that don't seem to require a lot of thought, so I'm going to over complicate the hell out of it just to make sure I properly sabotage myself. Version 0.1 should probably just be vanilla TD, right? Then add other stuff?

We'll see what I do.

When I told my wife about this plan, her thought was that it sounded more like "time to screw around on the computer" than actually getting stuff done. I can't really argue against that point unless I actually prove otherwise.

MP3-tastic!

Compact, charges from your pc, long battery life. Brilliantly awesome FM tuner. requires extremely evil proprietary software to load MP3s, and I never actually got it to work.

Compact, somewhat more clumsy controls, good audio quality and hassle-free mp3 file transfers, fm tuner is underpowered, or mine is. I need to compare it with my wife's.

The second one costs less than 30 bucks, and came with 2 gigs. The first cost more than a hundred when it was bought, and was only 512k. Bit of a time difference, you'll understand. The gigabyte sony is now 99 bucks. Paying for the name, i guess.

Sometimes I pray for rain...

Which you wouldn't think necessary in this state.

I've been feeling the need for change, lately. I might end up moving to a small town, building a new life, but that won't be happening for awhile. For now I'm looking at finding something different where I am. Been sitting down for 8 hours with a headset strapped to my face for more than 2 years now.. it's become automatic, do the work, take the calls, go home, do other stuff. I don't dread going to work, but it's hard to get excited about it.

Most recently I had to make the difficult decision of asking my boss for a transfer. I've been on a contract for the last nine months in which I have to deal with some very frustrating things. calls where I can't hear the customer very well are commonplace. We get a ton of cold transfers, often transferred to us by the very department which should be taking the call. It's miserable. And I think the part that offends me the most is that the client pretends to care. They have an elaborate system for reporting misdeeds.. And I've heard, once, that I did something naughty. We can look up and see how many times particular individuals have been reported. Sometimes it is dozens. It feels like they just don't care.

I don't want to go into further particulars on this.. I'm not doing anything rash, I love my boss, I love the company I work for. Just sick of the client. They'll tell you this happens everywhere, but I did another thing for a year and a half. Got bored, but never this angry.

It's been hot and muggy.. Got steamcleaned the other night when my wife and I had friends over. Good night, though. We played two games of cranium, then i suckered everyone into The Great Dalmuti. Teh awesome. Too damn hot, though.

Made some vague pretense at forward progress. Got myself re-acquainted with my library account (got my 17 year old membership with king county library system, same card they first gave me), got some stuff on software testing. Now I only have to read it when it actually gets to me. software testing pays at least as well as I'm getting now, looks interesting, and gets this headset off my face, so i'm finding it tempting.

To plagiarize a friend

Tri-weekly to try weekly to try weakly....

So much stuff to catch up on.

Picked a terrible day to go to wild waves, had a good time despite.

Felt old the other day at the store. Heard a lady about 10 years my senior trying to explain to one ten years my younger the premise of the movie "Gremlins."

My head is foggy, I'll try to pick this up later. My brain seems to shut down over 70 degrees. Global warming can't be good for me.

On visitation

Currently i'm at work, and i'm very tired, and i'm feeling weird.

Why am I at work? Because they wouldn't pay me otherwise.

Why am I very tired? I have family in town. This is a happy thing. I don't see these elements of my family often. They're staying with us. This is also happy. I enjoy having them around. No doubt. It also means that I never really relax. I'm busy feeding people, or busy watching shows with them, or out seeing sights. Don't really get to veg out and do my own thing.

Why am I feeling weird? I lent out my cellphone. it's like a bodily appendage, sometimes. Not the sort of thing you freely pass on. I had to let them use it, though. Wouldn't be right to leave them without a lifeline to home.

The last few weeks of my life.. in pictures.

We had some water on the carpet.

The carpet padding was pulled up.

The maintenance lady had a laugh at the tile-work done by the original contractors.

They removed large piles of soaking wet padding materials.
(left-- carpet padding.. right-- noisy blue monster)
We had to box up and move.

While we moved out, we did the best to entertain our boy.
Including going out to the railway museum.



Where they had the "Day Out with Thomas"

I saw some cool pieces of history.
And experienced LEGO ENVY.

And to a lesser extent, HO Scale envy.

And uh.. well, we've got the blue plastic tracks, not the wooden one. We do have some of that style train. Some of these (including one we owned) were recently recalled for lead based paint. I hate China right now. And been finishing up the move since then.

Have not forgotten this

Just been crazy busy, haven't gotten around to it.

I've got a backlog of pictures to post.

With any luck

I'll have a decent internet connection to post some pics tonight. I might be a little busy.

Saturday night and sunday all day we packed EVERYTHING.

We're both a little tired.

The internet: wasting your time more every day.

Urbandead.com, for example.



or whatever memecat site floats your boat



Or even just stop by a friend's site.

My computer needs rabbit ears..

I'm currently sitting in the kitchen of my new apartment. It seems that the best solution was to move us about 200 yards into an identical ground floor apartment with no water in the padding and less available parking.

As I type this I hope desperately that the wifi connection which I have been "borrowing" will start to work once more, or I will not be able to post this, or upload the image which I had intended to go with it.

Regarding my mystery email, for those who have not heard the story I will let you know that it was a paternity scare. Not an accusation, more a family member of an ex violating her privacy by going behind her back and asking old boyfriends if they were responsible for her five year old daughter. I'm happy to say that my memory has sharpened to the point of being able to clear me of involvement, but I don't believe I'll ever be able to lose the shadow of a doubt which lingers in the back of my mind. I'm also not going to pursue this matter any further unless the people directly involved ask me to, as opposed to busybodies acting on their behalf.

That bit of vitriol cleared now, I continue to sit in a sweltering hot apartment, my heir apparent watching Little Einsteins on his dvd player, and hopefully glance at the little yellow dot bouncing underneath the wireless network icon in the system tray.

Events like this (the thing with my ex) make you spend time confronting things from the past. In my case, this includes re-reading journals written more than 5 years ago, reading with embarrassment my terrible writing, and cursing loudly that entries like "went over there just to see her dark orbs glow" don't include a date-stamp. Never mind that "dark orbs glow" is a frightening piece of language in any context.

Things like this also make you confront the old ghosts from the past, give you an inability to drink coffee til you've put them in your closet, and other song references... There is obviously something wrong with my brain, firstly I'm not self-censoring this painful stream of thought, and secondly.. well, that's about it. I would always write nonsense like this if I allowed it. Too darn hot. And there's no internet connection.

I would love to post some pictures of the night the washer flooded, but even if my internet connection was solid enough to do that, I can't find the camera I was using. Our old apartment is a shambles, and our new apartment is a much more empty shambles.

Hooray, after several careful adjustments, I'm now connected to pepper! I don't mind the sands of time and all that.

broke into the old apartment..

[edit] thanks mush, i hadn't tested the link after posting.[/edit]

Critical memory failure.

You ever try to remember whether something 6 years ago happened in january or february? One of my friends claims he does, which could get me clear of a big hunk of trouble.

Unfortunately, we have one piece of evidence, combined with an old check register, which seems to contradict this. Of course, the check register is only meaningful if the memories are valid.

So I'm going with one person's memory over another. Mine is swiss cheese when it comes to things that far back.

So I have gotten no-where fast.

SURF'S UP!

Enough of disturbing email..

For the third time this year, my washing machine flooded. It means I get a free visit from our apartment's cleanup people with shop-vacs and blowers and other free fun.

I really hope this doesn't mean a carpet replacement. We have considerable knick-knacks and such which would not be happily moved.

Pictures to come. This is a mess. I'll be up for awhile.

From the depths of the past...

Imagine if you will, it's the year 1994




(images chosen from google image results for "1994" and "grunge 1994")

A younger me is experiencing, against all likelihood, having a girlfriend. We spent considerable time engaged in forays through the first three bases, mostly at her home. I occasionally would have chances to speak to her mother, who seemed to tolerate my presence in a matronly way.

Her father, somewhat shorter than my 16-year-old self, seemed to avoid being anywhere near me. I never had the opportunity to develop any impressions of the man, let alone anything resembling an acquaintance.

Fast forward to a few years later, as the song goes. This former girlfriend of mine comes into my orbit once again (and I into hers).. we spend several months together, at times thinking of becoming very serious about where we were going. For reasons I shall not discuss, things ended.

We came together, came apart, some unkind things were said and done. I was going crazy when we were together, going crazy when we were apart. I finally decided to lose contact with her. Let her know that she didn't need to keep contact with me for my own sake (sometimes i wonder if this hurt her feelings), and went about exorcising her from my contact lists, deleting emails which could make it possible for me to track her back down again.

Fast forward to a few more years later, or something to that effect. I am married to another gal, have a three year old son. I get an email from the old girlfriend's father.

subject "is this still a current address"
this is from [name withheld]'s dad

WHAT THE HELL?

I confirmed that it was, and have been checking my email at 20 minute intervals to see if he will respond with some sort of explanation as to why he should need contact with me.

Today I obsessively searched for information on the man. By his name, by his email address. Not much to go on. Three years ago he is listed as a cemetery salesman in Louisiana. Today google has an address for someone by his name in that state. Creepifyingly, I can look at satellite images of his home. I already compulsively searched for her online a few months ago, when struck by a whim. You see, I do everything compulsively unless it's a good idea.

Really, I can see only a few possible reasons for him to be contacting me. I won't even attempt to assign an order of most to least distressing, but none of them are really happy.

1) She's suffering from some sort of physical or emotional malaise, and wishes that I make contact. (You see, if she were happy and wanted to contact me, she could do so herself.)
2) She has let slip her mortal coil, and my email address was found written down in some sort of journal or found in her email address. (Or worse yet, i'm on an apology list in a suicide note. I would have trouble absolving myself completely of guilt if this were the case. I'd still be narcissistic enough to make it about me, and not the person who died.)
3) She is missing, and he is desperately attempting to contact any of her known friends in hope that someone might be able to help find him.
4) (Suggested by my wife) This might have something to do with her daughter. You see, the last time i heard from her, I learned she had a child, who she assured me could not possibly be mine. The possibility exists that she was shading the truth or her math was bad, and she is now putting my name forward as the father. (If this was just about confession, she could contact me herself. Otherwise it's legal action, or #4 is combined with #1 or #2).

Excuse me while I go check my email again.

Right. The man has a few more days to email me again, or I start making phone calls.

[edit] Not that many calls, really. Dude emailed me from Louisiana. He's the only one of his first and last name listed in the state.

[update] Update, I got an answer.. I'm afraid I can't discuss it at this time. Apparently she's alive and well. [/update]

Signs of the apocalypse

No, seriously, I saw a sign of the coming apocalypse. My little cable tv guide told me that Resident Evil:Apocalypse was coming on at 8 pm tonight.

Well, Apocalyptic in one sense, anyways.

Why am I telling you this?

It was coming on the Oxygen Network. Apparently it fit in nicely with their daily regimen of
1) Oprah
2) Movies about men who beat their wives.
3) Movies about children who have cancer.
4) Oprah talking to men who gave their children cancer by beating their wives.
5) Incredibly stupid but entertaining zombie movies.

Not really in the spirit of this blog, but it stuck out to me as unusual.

Went to the gym tonight. The last couple nights I've been busy with a) playing genesis games on my computer and b) taking care of my sick wife and son.

I installed flash on this computer, plan to do something about that soon.

To my two readers I bid a fond good night. I have a little boy demanding i turn off the computer. It's not like it was when he was little and just hit the keys randomly. Now he taps the power button saying "Take pooter off daddy lap!"

addendum-- google adsense will now appear on my site. hooray for capitalism..

Good habits are hard to start.

The last few days I've had an excellent excuse not to go to the gym. A painful blister appeared between the 3rd and 4th toe on my left foot, making walking around rather uncomfortable. Over the past few days I've been lancing it as much as possible, and last night i removed a dime-sized piece of dead skin from my foot. This left me with a foot that felt much better, but another excuse not to go to the gym. I can't use the shower, pool, or hot tub, as I am not so much wanting to acquire any new and interesting diseases.

Well, tonight I went anyways. Got dressed at home in gym clothes, went there, worked out, came home in my sweat.

Been a few days since i updated this blog, because I haven't really accomplished much in my grand plan. got the tv stuff mostly put back together, got some speaker cable which needs cut, stripped at the end, and attached to the speakers and my tuner.

Experienced a strange happening on my way to the gym tonight. I found myself at one point sitting on a left turn, waiting as a long row of cars went past. When the light turned yellow, I defied convention (and possibly traffic laws) by accelerating through the intersection to make my turn. As I neared the gym, I approached an intersection with a light turning yellow. Ahead of my a car raced through, having only been able to move when I stopped for the yellow light.

So he did what I did, which made it hard for me to hold that against him. But then I got to thinking. There wasn't a car behind me. If I hadn't been in that place at that time, he would have had a free shot at turning left on that green light. It was only my act which made his act necessary. Am I then in some way responsible for not one, but two infractions of the traffic laws?

Going to try to update a bit more often, I've got some thoughts percolating and we may see some materials posted here relating to this. Hey mushroom, is there an easy way to upload other sorts of media on this blogspot thingy? I plan to insert some flash movies. I can hack the html if it won't automagically embed them for me, uploading will be a challenge. I'd rather not have to host them anywhere else.

What you win in vegas...

Stays in Vegas.

We were up, we came down, we had some drinks, we're packing to go home.

Didn't play any D&D, but somehow this is OK. Blackjack is amusing.

Tomorrow I get to launder the smoke and booze and desperation out of all the clothes we brought with, even those that were never worn. Living as I do in a state where smoking is prohibited, it feels odd to be sitting in a restaraunt with someone smoking at the next table. The smell doesn't generally bother me, but it gives my bride fits.

Til I speak again, I leave you with the one thing I've learned on this trip. Split your eights. Sixteen sucks, you might as well die in style.

What I loved today

Loved the directions I got.. "Not the first walmart as you go through town, but the second."

Loved hearing a rousing early morning cheer by the walmart drones. I can only presume that their job security depends on the appearance of sincerity. That or lead in the employee lounge's water cooler.

Loved, and hated myself for loving, the sight of a girl standing on the side of the road in a sweater and long pants, drenched by the pouring rain, advising us that her softball team was having a car wash. Good luck with that, sweetie. Loving sitting here in my empty apartment, a laptop on one side, a genesis controller on the other, and not having a damn thing to do or anyone depending on me. I miss my son already, no joke.

Leaving on a jet plane..

Preparing my escape today. We left early this morning to deposit our son with his grandparents, and I now have the rest of the day to play warsong clean and pack. One of our projects this last couple weeks, and by "our" I mean "my wife's" has been a complete reorganization of our living room.

One task remaining is the entertainment cabinet. We're ditching our old glassfront, and will be using a low wooden stand which currently has a fishtank on it, as it will fit under the windows next to the TV.

I took a moment to take a family photo.

When I got sick last week, I stopped keeping my little work log. I'm mostly better, but I suspect that the best time to resume doing it is "later." Later is a great time to do things. Everything I plan on doing will be done later, so later I will be very productive.

ADDENDUM//

We're starting our periodic shift shuffle at work right now. I submitted mine before leaving, and don't expect to be stuck anywhere really unpleasant. My employer's blogging policy prevents me from relating any opinions regarding our scheduling department.

Returning to normal

Which for me, isn't all that impressive. My arms still ache a little, off and on, but I believe I'm well enough to try the gym tonight. Need to make sure i don't overdo things.

Probably tomorrow I'll have to get started on preparations for sunday. We're taking a flight to vegas, where I will be required to relax. And not do anything. This is actually kinda hard for me.

No, seriously, it's very hard for me. I have a ton of energy, I do a lot of things. My challenge is going to be having those things be productive and/or useful.

oddly enough

I'm working today on sunday.

Have accomplished very little at home the other day, beyond basic care of my child and pet. Not even done those very well.

Friday I went to the gym, and put in three minutes and 25 seconds on the elliptical before my back-muscles told me it was time to quit. Spent some time in the hot tub, spent some time lounging (and lunging) in the pool, and when trying to get dressed, could not successfully put on my socks because it hurt too much to pinch or close my left hand.

Saturday I drank a fair amount of water, took some varied cold remedies, busted out my genesis (the savegame function works just fine, odd considering the batteries aren't supposed to last more than 5 years), and discovered that it has an annoying flicker on my projection screen. Will have to try on a regular tv screen, but it was greatly entertaining to be playing those games with a controller rather than a keyboard.

I'm currently sitting in an 80-degree office waiting for my lunch to conclude on a sunday. I agreed to work night shift today and tomorrow because my corporate overlords found it amusing (and I'm a team player, like the mouse who agrees to beta test mousetraps).

Using too many parens. Another sign that I've gotten lazy as a writer. I'd blame it on the heat, but that's just making excuses. Erm... My arms hurt too much to avoid them. This is a much better excuse. It implies that the problem is due to whatever mysterious ailment has caused my body to feel like one big pulled muscle the last few days. Can't be my fault, right?

I hate this illness, i really do. I sat by helplessly the last few days as the home I intended to clean became progressively messier, and then could only watch as my wife cleaned last night, rather than us actually spending some time together. I like doing stuff. I like taking care of things. We were out of milk this morning, and really low on it last night. Normally I would have dressed myself and my boy and walked down to the store. I was fairly sure attempting to carry a gallon of milk would introduce me to a new world of pain and suffering. And though he would try gallantly, my heir apparent would have trouble lugging one all the way home. He has carried such weight before, but usually decides to stop after ten or so feet.

With any luck I'll accomplish some things tomorrow before work. My car needed it's oil changed a month ago, probably still does. Tonight I would like to accomplish some video gameplay, but I've heard it's hazardous to forsake one's spouse for sega.

Addendum: How I waste my time.

Seriously, I spend waaay too much time playing dicewars.

not even a saturday..

Yesterday was a wash. I was sore in my entire body yesterday. I did get the kids out for a walk, but aside from that I just lazed around the house. Meh. My corpse is not responding right now.

"It'd take a month of sundays."

I've been running that phrase around my head a lot lately. The implication is that if you had enough days where you didn't have anything else to do, you could finish XYZ project.

I find myself now without that month of sundays. I'm nearly 30, and have a marraige, a young child, and a full time job. I have trouble even keeping up on maintenance of my home and finding time for friends.

The problem is, there was a time, not too long ago, when I was semi-employed, not married, not even dating, and I never found time for the big projects.

I've started thinking that I probably have time to accomplish my projects this summer, if I use my time better. To this end, I started (yesterday) keeping an insanely dull listing of the things I do after getting home from work, how much time i spend doing them. I'm not being super precise, i just say things like 6-6:30- took dog and boy for walk. I really have no idea how recording what I do will impact my productivity, but I figure it's worth a try.

There are several things I'd like to accomplish. First priority is personal maintenance. We had our home clean a month or so ago. We got everything done, and it just all went to hell. Last weekend was the town-sized yard sale up where my wife's folks live, and we came back to deposit a huge mess of packed bags and assorted detritus in the living room. Got much of this cleaned up last night, but there's still a ton to do. I need to make sure my dog and my son get enough attention, and I need to get myself some exercise.

I'm debating whether to go to the gym tonight. One of my arms was sore last night, but somehow this has changed to major muscle soreness in my back, both arms, and my legs. Going to the gym might result in some good training, and maybe help with the soreness with the hot tub and sauna, but it also means I won't be able to accomplish anything else tonight.

Second priority this summer is going to be projects. I haven't decided what exactly I'm doing, but I'd like to do a piece of material construction such as a working wagon or toy chest for my son. I'd also like to build a game in flash. I'll document my efforts if I decide to maintain this blog that long. Currently I'm riding the wave of motivation that inevitably comes when you've hatched a scheme to get your life on track, the trick as always will be keeping the momentum going.

Third priority, but something I'll work on keeping up with, is personal enjoyment. No self-improvement plan will work if it doesn't make allowance for satisfying one's emotional needs. Every other week I run a D&D game, I have probably too much fascination with television, and I recently found treasure in the form of a sega genesis and a few games I was very fond of in my youth. Amazingly, these things were sold to me for $30, when their combined value is at least twice, and possibly three times this.

I make no promises of daily updates, and I hope no-one will be reading this as a study in how to properly write a bloggish story. My words are likely to be chain of thought, poorly organised, probably mispelled, and rarely entertaining.