Now, there are credible rumors that the North Pole CIO has been covering up a years-long, systemic problem with Santa losing mobile devices. According to unidentified sources, the list of allegations includes:
Lack of priority for safeguarding key data, especially through mobile systems. Recent refits for the sled have focused on tracking transponders for “greater publicity”, but no corresponding upgrades to mobile IT systems. These systems are specifically characterized as “obsolete 286 systems running DOS and home-brew Paradox applications written by some dentist in his spare time.”
Habitual problems with smartphones. In order to ensure inexpensive world-wide access, Santa’s system includes the use of multiple handsets from strategically selected regional carriers. “In the last several years, Santa has yet to come back from his Christmas Eve run without having lost at least three of his devices,” one insider claims, “and of course we don’t have remote wipe capabilities. That would require him spending money.”
Lax information and network practices, including no formal security policies or processes. Remote accesses aren’t even protected via SSL, according to sources, since “anyone who’s so cheap they haven’t updated stock PR footage of elves making wooden toys isn’t likely to shell out for a respected SSL certificate or PKI infrastructure.”
It will take time to gather confirmation of these claims, but if they are true, it shows a shocking disregard for basic security best practices at the North Pole.
Edit 11/11/09 to remove the embedded video and replace it with a link. It was messing up the layout and I need to do more research to figure out how to embed videos inline.
I was a Boy Scout for close to three years. I started as a Boy Scout; I missed Cub Scouts, including Webelos Scout. When I was in Scouting, we had to go door-to-door to do our fundraisers, or spend a lot of time with our relatives over the phone. I hated doing it, for reasons that didn’t become clear until much later in life when I began grappling with autism and Asperger’s. However, I have a lot of good memories of Scouting; it did a lot for me and it was a valuable part of my childhood.
Steph and I wanted Alaric to experience Scouting. Even though the modern BSA has some characteristics that I don’t agree with, I’ve come to the decision that first and foremost, Scouting is about the boys. Scouting needs intelligent, reasonable adults of all persuasions to help drive the program. By being part of Scouting, Alaric will learn and do things Steph and I can’t give him on our own; by having us there with him, Alaric will learn how to deal with people from differing backgrounds in a diplomatic and productive manner.
Over the summer, Alaric has really seen what a good thing Scouting is. He even got me to go to Scout Camp with him for four days in July, and I must admit I even had fun. It was a great experience for both of us, including facing down and conquering some challenges.
Unlike many Scout packs and troops, Alaric’s pack works on the schedule of the school year. As a result, they do their major fundraising push at the beginning of the school year with a number of activities. Alaric’s already helped out pulling Hire-A-Scout wagons at the local auto swap meet and had a great time. However, the major source of operating funds is the traditional Trail’s End popcorn fundraiser. Trail’s End, if you don’t know, has been the go-to-source for Scout fundraising for a long time, and they offer some of the best popcorn on the planet.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been rather hectic and busy and haven’t really had time to coach Alaric on his first door-to-door sales campaign. (Poor guy seems to have the same issues I did when I was his age, so it was pretty painful.) This last week, I came up with what is I hope a brainstorm: harness the power of the Internet to get Alaric’s sales pitch out there. So, you get to enjoy the results: the following video where Alaric and I pitch popcorn to YOU, the faithful reader. And because this is the future, Trail’s End even got with the program: they now allow you to purchase online, supporting a specific Scout, and have the product shipped directly to your door!
Over the next few days, I’ll be adding a large number of posts (just over 250!!!) to the archives of this blog. For a number of congruent reasons, 3Sharp is closing down the Platform Services Group (which focused on Exchange, OCS, Windows Server, Windows Mobile, and DPM) and my last day will be this Friday, October 16 after over six and half years with them. With 3Sharp’s gracious permission and blessing, I’ll be duplicating all of the content I’ve posted on the 3Sharp blog server over to here. If you have a link or bookmark for my work blog or are following it via RSS, please take a moment to update your settings. Yes, that means there’s going to be more geeky technical Exchange stuff going forward, but hey, with a single blog to focus on, maybe I’ll be more prolific overall!
To head off some of the obvious questions:
This is not a horrible thing. 3Sharp and I are parting ways peacefully because it’s the right decision for all of us; they need to focus on SharePoint, and I’m so not a SharePoint person. They’ve done fantastic things for my career and I cherish my time with them, but part of being an adult is knowing when to move on. We’re all agreed that time has come.
I’m not quite sure where I’m going to end up yet. I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire and I have high hopes for them, but it’s not time to talk about them. I am going to have at least a week or two of time off, which is good; there are several projects at home in dire need of sustained attention (unburying my home office, for one; fixing a balky Exchange account for another).
I’m not going to be a complete shut-in. I’ve got a couple of appointments for the following week, including a Microsoft focus group and a presentation on PowerPoint for Treanna’s English class. I’m open to doing some short-term independent consulting or contracting work as well, so contact me if you know someone who needs some Exchange help.
Thank you to 3Sharp and the best damn co-workers I could ever hope to work with over the years – and a huge thank you to all of my readers, regardless of which blog you’ve been following. The last several years have been a wild ride, and I look forward to continuing the journey with many of you, even if I’m not sure yet where it will take me.
These past 14 months that I’ve been a karate student have given me a number of deeply satisfying moments, including the joy of sharing an activity with my daughter. Last Tuesday, however, proved to be an especially fruitful class for both of us.
Starting in September, the YMCA agreed to try out dropping class fees for YMCA members, and as you might imagine, we immediately saw a small but steady wave of new sign-ups for class. As a result, for the first time in a while, we have a good number of new students – white belts. As a result, we spend a large chunk of class time going back over many of the basic techniques in more detail than we’ve gotten used to. Those of us who are higher belts get to work with the white belts one-on-one during many of these exercises. This proves beneficial to everyone – they get a personal workout, and we get a mirror to more clearly see how well we’ve mastered the basics (or not, as it usually happens).
The first blessing was working with a gentleman who has been in class somewhere around a month. He and I were working through one-step exercises: one person performs a basic punch attack while the other defends, then we switch roles. We do this with seven defenses. As you work through the ranks, the defense techniques get more complicated, but for white belt one-steps, it’s pretty simple. Or so it seems now after a year; they were quite challenging when I first started and I got to re-experience that working with this gentleman. During our practice, he had one of those epiphany moments and what had been a struggle suddenly turned into AHA! with a clarity we both felt. It was an honor to be working with him in that moment.
The second blessing came about indirectly because of some misbehavior. You see, our protocol and customs direct us to pay attention and not engage in side conversations or monkey business when sensei is teaching. (Turns out there are no exceptions for “if you think you already know this” or “if you’re bored.” I checked. Who knew?) Well, several of us – including me and Treanna – weren’t quite paying attention to that one, and the senior student got called on it. I later told Treanna that he’d taken one for the team; we all were equally guilty of inattention. As class was drawing to an end, though, Treanna engaged in another breach of protocol that earned her some gentle ribbing. (She might read this, so I won’t tell you what she did. This time.)
Being a vigilant father and role model, I immediately realized we had what the experts call “a teachable moment” here. So we cracked open our karate notebooks and made a date to come back tonight after dinner, both having read the protocols, and discuss what we’d found:
There are three basic sets of protocol in our notebook: white belt (people who’ve just joined), blue belt (9th kyu, or your first belt), and orange belt (7th kyu, or your third belt). After reading them, we decided that they all have the common themes of respect, safety, and responsibility.
We think that white belt protocol focuses mainly on the what habits I need to become a student (discipline). That is, all of the guidance seems to be directed more at helping the newcomer gain the structures he will need to effectively learn karate.
We think that blue belt protocol focuses mainly on how I become a member of the community (identity). This comes after the first belt (typically earned after several months) and the guidance is more focused on becoming aware of and fitting into the dojo structure.
Finally, we think that orange belt protocol focuses mainly on how I give back to the community (service). This comes after three belts and around a year of study – a good foundation from which to be able to start learning to progress by helping others.
As a final note, we saw that there was no specific protocol for further belts. We speculate that’s because the student in green and brown belts is expected to do the same things she is already doing, just to a greater degree. And once she gets to black belt – that’s a watershed mark, and sensei will teach us what is expected of us on that day at the proper time.
If you’re not in a martial art, that’s probably boring and generic. To Treanna and I, though, it seemed pretty profound, and I think we’ll walk back into class tomorrow with a new-found sense of focus and commitment.
This weekend, I finally finished getting our desktop computers replaced. They’re older system that have been running Windows XP for a long time. I’d gotten newer hardware and had started building new systems, intending to put Vista Ultimate SP1 on them (so we could take advantage of domain memberships and Windows Media Center goodness with our Xboxes), but one thing led to another and they’ve been sitting forlornly on a shelf.
I must confess – I’m not a Vista fan. I grudgingly used it as the main OS on my work MacBook Pro for a while, but I never really warmed up to it. SP1, in my opinion, made it barely useable. There were some features about it I grew to like, but those were offset by a continued annoyance at how many clicks useful features had gotten buried behind.
So when I finally got busy getting these systems ready – thanks to Steph’s system suddenly forgetting how to talk to USB devices – I decided to use Windows 7 RC instead. What I’d seen of Windows 7 already made me believe that we’d have a much happier time with it. So far, I’d have to say that’s correct. Steph’s new machine was slightly tricky to install – the built-in network interface on the motherboard wasn’t recognized so I had to bootstrap with XP drivers – but otherwise, the whole experience has been flawless.
One of my favorite experiences was migrating our files and settings from the old machines. Windows 7, like Vista and Server 2008 before it, includes the Easy Transfer Wizard. This wizard is the offspring of XP’s Files and Settings Transfer Wizard but has a lot more smarts built in. As a result, I was able to quickly and easily get all our files and settings moved over without a hitch. With the exception of a laptop, we’re now XP free in my house.
Today, I ran across this blog post detailing Seven Windows 7 Tips. There were a couple of them I had already figured out (2, 4, and partial 3), but I’ll be trying out the rest this evening!
Okay, okay…so updating my blog server took longer than I’d anticipated. Getting the old material out of Community Server into BlogML format turned out to be a lot easier than I’d thought and finding the time to get it all imported into WordPress wasn’t much harder. What tripped me up was getting all of the redirection for the old, legacy URLs working.
Community Server and WordPress store their content in very different ways, and so they generate the URLs for blog posts using different algorithms. I know there are a fairish number of links out there in blog land to various posts I’ve done, and for vanity sake, I’d rather not orphan those links to the dreaded 404 not found error. The solution was to find the time to buy the lastest edition of O’Reilly’s Apache Cookbook and bone up on the Apache web server directives.
So, I think all the relevant old URLs should now automatically redirect to their proper new places — there’s not much point in keeping all the old posts if you don’t do this. The nice thing, for those of you who are web geeks, is that I’m issuing permanent redirections so Google and other search engines will update their links as they re-trawl my web site, thus pointing to the new URLs. For those of you who are humans, you might want to take a minute to check your bookmarks and make sure they’re updated to the new links.
One note: some commenter data didn’t make the import successfully. I could probably dig into it and find out why, but frankly, at this point, it’s more important to get the site (and Steph’s blog) back up and running. So, sorry — if you were one of those commenters, I apologize. Future comments should be preserved properly, and I really don’t see moving away from WordPress anytime soon.
If you’re reading this, then the necessary DNS updates have finished rolling out and we’re back live to the world. Thanks for your patience!
Nine months ago I stepped outside of my comfort zone and started a month of karate at the local YMCA. I didn’t expect to renew for a second month. It turns out that I love it. I’ve gotten to the point that I start dreaming about the things I’m doing, which is scary on one level and very cool on others. At any rate, I’ve had a lot of thoughts that need more time to flesh out and probably will only interest my fellow students, but I do want to share a few correspondences I’ve noticed lately between karate and the number nine.
There are nine belts, or kyus, between rank beginner and black belt in my school of karate (which is part of the All-Okinawan Shorin-Ryu Matsumura Karate and Kobudo Federation, or OSMKKF). As of tonight, I have passed three of them. That makes me 7th kyu — what you might call orange belt, except that we don’t actually use the orange belt (or even stripes on the belts); we just have three blue belt kyus, three green, and three brown. I like this because it helps minimize rivalry between students.
The blue belt kyus use the same basic kata, with what look to be minor differences for each kyu — mostly in the blocking techniques you demonstrate. The footwork, though, is the same, and it requires you to face the nine cardinal points of the compass (the normal eight plus the center position for the beginning and end of the kata). All too often we learn the specific steps of the kata and don’t stop to think about how the overall pattern looks or rhythm flows. That’s the kind of stuff I’ve started dreaming about, and man, it is cool!
I have learned to examine the first kata at a whole new level with each additional kyu, and I have been told that this will continue. So the very first kata they teach us unpacks to at least nine separate layers! No wonder it takes years to really master this stuff! Some students make the mistake of thinking they’ve learned everything they need to know from the earlier levels; I’ve already had at least case of figuring out how a current technique I was mastering applied to an earlier technique, making both of them stronger as a result.
In a typical Tuesday evening workout, I will practice various katas an average of nine times. This typically includes polishing the kata I will next be testing for and learning the basics of the next kata. There are days this does not feel like it is enough — and that would be right. So we practice at home too; in fact, there are certain parts that I find myself practicing at work as I walk back and forth from my office to the kitchen or to co-workers’ offices. (Apparently I look really funny walking through the lobby practicing punches.)
For my next kyu, I start to fold in weapons work (which is the kobudo part; karate is technically only bare-hand work). I will first work with the bo staff, which is six feet or 72 inches tall — nine times eight. I’m tremendously excited to be working with the bo; somewhere in my head, the iconic definition or avatar of martial arts got associated with being a bad-ass with the staff, so now I feel like I’m finally stepping into the heart of what it means to be a martial artist. Intellectually, I realize this is silly, but it still feels true.
Don’t worry; I’m not trying to seriously assert that the number nine somehow has some sort of mystic foothold in karate (that would be number ten, which in Japanese is ju, and controls our workouts). I just noticed these and was amused. What’s been more awe-inspiring has been noticing the changes in the last nine months:
I’ve continued to lose weight. Granted, I’ve not experienced the same dramatic pace as I did in the first month, but it’s still a slow and steady drop. This is really cool given some of the interruptions and stressors I’ve had during these nine months that have wreaked havoc with my karate attendance.
My overall muscle tone has improved. You probably wouldn’t notice the difference, but I certainly do. Certain actions are a lot less effort than they used to be, and there is visible muscle definition amongst the remaining layers of pudge.
My endurance has increased. Right now I’m at that point where if I miss a week and a half of karate, I definitely feel it, but if I attend regularly I can make it through the workouts and not feel completely beat up. More importantly, I’m better able to keep up as the speed of some of the workouts increases; if I slow down it’s to perfect technique, not because I can’t do it.
My reflexes have improved. This has been the startling one for me, because as long as I can remember my reflexes have sucked. I’m still no Chuck Norris or Bruce Lee, but the other day I knocked a glass tumbler off the counter and caught it without looking directly at it. Whoa!
By some counts, these last nine months have gotten me a third of the way to black belt. I don’t feel that way; I feel that they’ve set my feet on a path that I’ll still be walking for years to come. I’m not worried about belts or kyus; that’s sensei’s job to track, not mine. I just have to get through each workout, each kata, each set of one-steps, each class having given my best and learned everything I can. The rest will take care of itself. I’d never have caught that glass if I’d been trying to learn it as a trick, but by focusing on each step while I’m at it, I’ve gotten my body — as out of shape as it still is — to a point where I can do things I’ve never been able to do before. And that, friends, is magic.
Over on my Facebook profile, I got tagged by about five people with this whole “25 Things About Me” meme. I finally decided to respond. Am I glad I did — I’ve been having a great amount of fun with the ensuing comment thread. In fact, it’s so much fun, I figured I’d repost it here. (If you read this and my Facebook profile, you’ve already seen this; feel free to skip it.)
When I was a child, I once typed out over 3/4 of my favorite book so I could have my own copy to read. I couldn’t afford to buy one at the time.
I learned to read when I was four; we moved to a new house and couldn’t get TV reception, so my parents got rid of our TV. The next year, I figured out people got paid to write books. I’ve wanted to be a published writer ever since.
I enjoy karate, now that I’m taking it. I know that martial arts the world over teach a variety of armed and unarmed techniques, but I’ve always secretly thought of the bo staff when I think of martial arts. Now that I get to work with the staff, I *feel* like a martial artist.
I love peppermint ice cream, caramel, and Girl Scout thin mint cookies. However, my favorite dessert is chocolate chip cookies. My wife makes a killer variant: orange chocolate chip cookies. YUM!
I’m a sucker for all things feline, except for some pure-bred Persians and Siamese that are too stupid to breathe. When I was a kid, I got to play with a white tiger cub; white tigers are my favorite cat. I like some breeds of dogs, but not the small yappy ones.
I think that forgiveness isn’t a “get out of jail free card.” It’s a process designed to help victims divest themselves of the continuing karmic damage they inflict upon themselves and let go of any claims of vengeance or retaliation. True forgiveness does not absolve the offender of consequences, but it does open the door to mercy and breaks the cycle of anger and revenge.
I hated high school. I’d home schooled for five years, then moved to a new town and started public high school. So much wasted time and energy, especially on social hierarchy games! I wonder if I would feel the same if I’d been one of the popular kids…but we’ll never know.
After my son was born and my daughter was a toddler, we found out that my family has a history of autism. If you ever wondered why I was so weird, you can thank Asperger’s Syndrome. However, that only gets 65% of the blame; the rest is all me.
My first trip outside North America was a speaking gig at a roadshow in Lisbon, Portugal. I’ve always wanted to visit Portugal; they were the home of some of history’s greatest navigators and explorers.
I have discovered that I enjoy speaking in public; the bigger audience, the better. However, I typically dread question and answer sessions, even though I’ve been told I do them well.
The first time I saw Steph I knew I would marry her, even before we were introduced. The universe gave an audible and tactile “click” that was impossible for me to miss! This is why I was able to not get all nervous around her.
As I have gotten older, I have become more concerned with uncovering the structures and principles that events work on, and less concerned with arguing the particular details of a given situation. Getting axle-wrapped about details is a great way to keep anything from being resolved. Boring!
My favorite food? The Cheescake Factory’s Spicy Cashew Chicken. Screw dessert — I gorge myself on the chicken. Yum! If we’re talking homemade, then it’s the pizza that my wife makes, based on a modification of my mother’s recipe.
When format allows, I always leave blank lines between paragraphs. I also insist on serial commas in lists unless the style guide says otherwise. (Real writers can do whatever the style guide says, or rewrite to avoid the points they disagree with.) The sentence “I’d like to thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand” gives me all the justification I need.
My daily work involves Microsoft Windows and Exchange, and I’ve just been recognized for my third year as a Microsoft Exchange MVP. If you’d told me ten years ago I’d not still be working with Unix, Sendmail, and Postfix, I’d have laughed at you.
I don’t like kids, mainly because I hated being one. Adults always talked down to me and condescended in other ways. As a result, I try to never talk down to kids myself. I find they are better listeners than most adults and respond well to more advanced instructions that most adults would believe.
Before the Internet got popular, I used to run an electronic BBS. I had no games and the only files I had for download were basic utilities; I specialized in message forums no one else in my area would touch. My BBS was always busy, and over 80% of my callers came from out of state.
To me, the difference between a “friend” and an “acquaintance” is how much work is put into the relationship. You can’t really be a friend if both sides don’t work to make it happen.
I’ve been sporting a shaved head since college, when my best friend’s dad talked me into it. Although I occasionally grow my hair out, I’m resigned to shaving my head for the rest of my life. Nothing else really works well.
I have a simple philosophy about shopping: do your research and buy an well-made item that will last (even if it’s expensive) instead of buying for price and having to replace it multiple times. Your time is worth more than your money.
I can’t stand thrift stores, second-hand shopping, or even most garage sales. There’s a psychic residue to most of the items there that is very unpalatable. I’ve had to learn to let Steph do her bargain-hunting thing, but she knows how to find the good items.
I was never a Cub Scout, but once I got into Boy Scouts, I was a den chief to both a Cub Scout den and a Webelos Scout den. My favorite part of Boy Scouts, though, was being on the ceremonial Native American dance team for our Order of the Arrow lodge.
I’ve really enjoyed the Halo universe, both video games and novels. In fact, I’d like to build a set of Mjolnir armor, and one of my friends and I are planning to build a working Warthog. Geek!
I often have insomnia. Part of it is that I resent the time I lose to sleep. It feels like dying a little bit, especially because it can be a struggle to wake up again in the morning.
I want my wife to be a ninja. I mean, who wouldn’t
If you’re reading this for the first time, consider yourself tagged. Your turn! Post a link to your blog (or wherever you post your “25 Things” list) in the comments so I can go read it too.
Warning: the following post may not make much sense. If it does, it may sound bitter and arrogant. I apologize in advance; that’s not my goal here.
I finally got a critical mass of people dragging me into Facebook, so I’ve ben doing it over the last couple of months. I entered into it with a simple rule: as long as I knew someone or could figure out what context we shared, I’d accept friend requests. I only send friend requests to people I want to be in contact with, but if someone wants to keep up with me, I’ll happily approve the request. (Remember, Asperger’s Syndrome; I may be able to fake looking like I’m socially adjusted, but underneath, I’m not.)
This resolve has been sorely tested by a number of requests I’ve gotten from people from my high school days. I am not one of those people who thinks that high school was the best time of my life. Far from it, actually. Now that I understand about Asperger’s, I have been able to go back and identify what I was doing to contribute to my misery during those years — and boy was I — but I also know that there were a bunch of people who were happy to help. I was happy to leave that town, happy to never go back, and happy — for the most part — to not try to get back into some mythical BFF state with these people that I never shared in the first place. There are some exceptions; you should know who you are. If you aren’t sure and want to know, send me a private message and ask. Don’t ask, though, unless you’re ready to be told that you’re not.
Does this mean I want people to stop requesting? No. We’re adults. (At least, we should be.) Life moves on. I’m not that same person, and I’m willing to bet you’re not either. Let’s try to get to know one another as we are now, without presuming some deeper level of friendship than really exists. It’ll be a lot easier for everyone that way, and probably a lot more fun.
Observation The First: only paying a touch over $2/gallon for gas feels positively sinful.
Observation The Second: one way to survive Seattle winters is to occasionally say “screw it”, roll the window down in the car, and let the cold wet air in while pretending it’s an 80-degree summer day with blue skies.
Observation The Third: If you’re cutting back on caffeine intake and you’re down to approximately two bottles/cans of Coke a day, one should really not have one’s morning bottle of Coke during the morning commute and the thoughtlessly purchase and drink a 20oz. mocha latte (one of the approximately two a year I have) during the latter portion of that same commute. Hot damn, I can levitate right now.
Confession The First: I really like Katy Perry’s Hot N Cold. Sure, the song is pop glitter, but it’s fun pop glitter, and it makes me squee like a little girl every time I turn it on.
Confession The Second: When I say that I don’t dance, what I really mean is that I don’t dance standing up. I’ll dance at my car or desk, but I’ll do it in a way that’s deliberately bad and frightening, because I like to mess with people. You’d be amazed how well a properly timed desk dance can clear out your office of annoying project managers and co-workers.
Apology*: For the residents and fellow commuters along Avondale road between 8:20 and 8:23am who heard and saw a red Ford Focus (with a Decepticon icon on the hood) blasting Hot N Cold out the driver’s window at high volumes, I plead guilty. That was me in my overcaffeinated, car-dancing bliss. Same to the folks along 124th, especially at the 124th/Woodinville-Redmond Road intersection, who were treated to the same, only with Cyndi Lauper’s Into the Nightlife, from 8:31 to 8:34am.
* I don’t know if this is a real apology, because I can’t guarantee I won’t do it again. At least I’m honest.
Much of that vacation has consisted of quality Xbox 360 time, both by myself (Call of Duty: World at War for Christmas) and with Steph and Chris. (Alaric had a friend over today and we had a nice six-way Halo 3 match; the adults totally dominated the kids in team deathmatch, I might add.) However, I’d also slated doing some much-needed rebuilds on my network infrastructure here at home: migrating off of Exchange to a hosted email solution (still Exchange, just not a server *I* have to maintain), decommissioning old servers, renumbering my network, building a new firewall that can gracefully handle multiple Xbox 360s, building some new servers, and sorting through the tons of computer crap I have. All of this activity was aimed at reducing my footprint in the back room so we can unbury my desk and move Alaric’s turtle into the back room where she should have a quieter and warmer existence.
Yeah, well. Best laid plans. I’ve gotten a surprising amount of stuff done, even if I have taken over the dining room table for the week. (Gotta have room to sort out all that computer gear, y’know. Who knew I had that much cool stuff?) My progress, however, has slowed quite a bit the last couple of days as I ran into some unexpected network issues I had to work my butt off to resolve.
Except that now I think I just figured out the two causes. Combined, they made my “new” network totally unusable and masked each other in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways. It was rather reminiscent, actually, of the MCM hands-on lab. I guess I’ve been practicing for my retest.
Ah, well. I still have one day of freedom left before I head back to work. I might actually be ready to go.
Despite the fact that I’m now counting the hours until the election is officially over — election season has been *so long* and so incredibly divisive from all angles — I’m aware of the fact (and even somewhat excited by the fact) that no matter how it turns out, it’ll be one for the history books. The hope, of course, is that it’s one for the history books for the right reasons.
However, there’s a very disturbing trend I’ve seen here and there, both online and in interactions with various people, and that trend is this: if we can just make it to election day and choose The Right Candidates, we’ll be fine. All the wrong-thinking people will be shown the error of their ways during the next four years, the economy will be fixed, energy problems will be solved, and the world will be saved.
This, my friends, is magical thinking, and it’s precisely the sort of thinking that has led us to this point in history. It is the manifestation of the human wish for easy, single-solution problems and for immediate fixes. It is the failure of courage to realize that we’re in this for the long haul; if we really want to make a difference, we can’t just get riled up for a couple of months, go vote, and then go home and wait for everything to just suddenly get better. It is the ability to ignore or excusing the problems and deficiencies in Your Guys while fixating on those of the Other Guys. It is a failure of accountability and responsibility, the unwillingness to take meaningful action when confronted by broken promises and campaign lies.
Let me be clear, even though many will say that I’m being a defeatist: no single election will save the world, let alone America. There are too many people out there focused clearly on their goals (good or bad) who are willing to expend the type of energy and effort every day that some people have lately discovered in this election process. If you’re one of those people and you’re ready to step back down to a comfortable life after election day — you’re ready to end the last few months of reading and research and activism and just get back to “normal” — then here is my advice to you:
Don’t vote.
No, seriously.
If you aren’t willing to sustain that level of energy and drive forward with it for at least the next four years — to check up on your elected officials and make sure that they’re doing the things they said they would, that they’re being the responsible leaders they claimed to be, that they’re working towards the ends that you put them in office to work for — then don’t vote to put them in office. In order to do the job you want them to do, they need your support not just to get into office, but to actually do the work. If you’re not going to be there to support them, that’s like pledging to a charity and never writing the check; it makes you feel good, but there’s no real impact to you.
America’s problems will not get fixed overnight. They will not get fixed during a single Presidential term. They will not magically go away. Now that you’re up off the sidelines, if you really want things to get better, you have to stay up and active. Your elected officials cannot and will not make the changes themselves; experience has shown us this time and time again, regardless of party or affiliation.
If you haven’t already, go vote. But when you vote, realize that this is just the start. You’re in this for the long haul. If you’re not prepared to make that commitment, you’re got some thinking to do.
In my previous post, I talked about taking a class at the local YMCA. You may have noticed that I didn’t mention which class I was taking; that wasn’t by accident. I didn’t feel like talking about it until I knew it wasn’t going to be another fad.
Well, last Tuesday, sensei awarded me my 9th Kyu blue belt, so now I feel comfortable announcing that I’ve been taking Okinawan Shorin-Ryu Matsumura Karate for the past couple of months. I started it in the beginning of July, the same week of personal vacation that the kids started their summer introduction class. Since that time, I’ve lost 20 pounds — desperately needed — and have started to gain some measure of confidence that I can do this. I’m no prodigy, but I can plod step by step really well, and I’m already seeing huge benefits to my physical coordination.
More importantly, I’ve discovered three very important things about myself:
I am no longer afraid of pain. I walk into every class knowing that the workout is going to wipe me out and that it’s going to, on some level, suck eggs. I am always right — I’m badly winded, have sore muscles, and more than once have been so dizzy I almost passed out. Yet I keep coming back for more, and I’ve finally gotten to the point that my brain isn’t desperately trying to find excuses for skipping class.
Somewhere along the way, I’ve started to internalize the philosophy of “one step at a time.” I haven’t really dwelt on the whole “Devin with a black belt” thing, because that’s a heck of a lot of work and is way beyond my capabilities now. Heck, being asked to test for my blue belt was a surprise (albit a pleasant one). Our dojo teaches that it’s discourteous to ask sensei if you’re ready to test; he knows when you’re ready and will tell you. For the first time in my life, I have absolutely no difficulty in following that advice. I really do not look beyond what sensei tells me to do in a given class; I’m content to work on that and trust sensei to keep track of the big picture. (For my autistic self, this is a HUGE step.)
Probably the biggest one: I enjoy this. It’s probably one of the most physically demanding things I’ve ever done. I’ve spent hours of time at home slowly walking through each phase of the simplest technqiues. A simple step-double punch technique is really hard for me, because it involves coordinating so many things — hand positions, feet placement, breathing, wrist rotation, proper fist alignment, and more. I don’t find this stuff at all easy, and now I have lots of things to keep track of. My response is to treat it like choreography for theater — break it down into small components and practice each of those. Unlike dancing, though, when I put the pieces back together, the results aren’t laughable — and I’m totally enjoying the process.
Since the classes are at the YMCA and not a dedicated dojo, things are relatively informal. We’re tied in with several other dojos in the area (most of them also in YMCA facilities nearby) and are part of a bigger federation. The teachers and students are all great; very supportive and not at all competitive or dismissive. I don’t feel ashamed for letting my health slide for so long; I just feel like I have help in going where I want to go. I’ve gotten to the point where I look forward to each class.
One of the reasons I’ve been a lot quieter on the blog front for the past month is Call of Duty 4 (actually, let’s be honest; that’s one of the ways I’ve chosen to spend a lot of my free time since Christmas). However, at the beginning of July, I added a new reason: I started taking a class two days a week at the local new YMCA.
This class has been kicking my butt, but it’s been good for me. Our main teacher — we’ll call him PT — is a doctor and can’t always be there. If that happens, we have a backup teacher (named ST). Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen a lot of ST, and his warmups usually have me breaking a good sweat. Well, PT was back tonight…and oh my GOODNESS, he is a LOT more grueling. I actually got dizzy and had to step out for a minute. My shoulders hurt, my legs hurt, my arms hurt, all in that “OMGWTF you did WHAT to us???” way that really lazy muscles get.
I do not like this. I do not like barely having enough energy to drive home, eat, and make it through a shower. I do not like being this out of shape. It seems that PT doesn’t like it either, and he’s determined to help me fix all these things. It’s a good thing I’m tired of being slothful and rotund; I know that, left to my own devices, I would never drive myself this hard. The class is small and I like the other students, enough so that my poor body image is outweighed by my desire to not look like a complete wuss in front of these people. And they have been very helpful and supportive.
I guess I get to continue this course of action. The only way out: make there be less of me, so that it doesn’t hurt so bad when PT gets his hands on me. I’ve even started noticing that I’m cutting down on the snacks and treats at work and at home — I look at them and find myself thinking about how they’re going to make PT’s next workout that much harder.
If you’re already having the kind of day where you feel a bit dizzy, and you’re walking through the parking lot at your place of employment after coming back from lunch, do not under any circumstances close your eyes for any reason.
Man. Just shoot me now, because not only am I about to blog about Miley Cyrus, I’m about to defend her.
Yup, that’s right. I, as a parent of a girl about to be a teenager, am willing to go on record and defend the already infamous photo shoot which has been characterized as the result of villainous Vanity Fair exploiting a minor to sell magazines.
What in the world can I be thinking?
Well, for starters, her parents and other advisors were on the set with her. There’s another picture from the same shoot that’s also drawing a lot of ire — one person I read described it as a “disturbingly erotic photo…like one of those old Calvin Klein ads, except with incest” — showing Miley reclining on the lap of her father, Billy Ray. I’ve seen the picture; I think it’s disturbing, but not because it’s somehow evoking incestuous thoughts. No, I just don’t like Vanity Fair’s visual style; they have this uncanny way of taking normal people and making them look alien. They reduce people to cold, otherwordly icons, rather than capture whatever it is about them that makes them human. All the kerfuffle about this picture is, in my mind, predicated on the growing bias and backlash towards males, the same socially acceptable prejudice that allows airlines to reseat male passengers who are sitting next to unaccompanied minors.
He’s her father, y’know? By all accounts, he’s a damned good one. He’s involved with her career; he’s got a good reputation for not just being a co-star on her Disney show, but for being a parent. I’ve never even heard a whiff of accusation against him before now, so why is it all the sudden acceptable to characterize a picture of a father and daughter as “incestuous”?
Oh, that’s right. Because this particular teenage girl is owned by Disney. Shame on Miley for being a growing young woman who is just 3 years away from being a legal adult. Shame on Billy Ray and his wife for actually being strong parents who feel entitled to make decisions on Miley’s behalf even if they don’t always correspond with Disney’s interests. Don’t they know that they should have just ceded control of her career and future over to Disney? Disney would have preserved her in amber to make sure she never displayed even a hint of sexuality (with one or two exceptions noted below) until the day she turned 18. That strategy has worked so well for so many other Disney youth — Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Hayden Panettiere come to mind. They’re all healthy young ladies who have a responsible outlook on what it means to be an adult in an industry that promotes people based on their inner qualities.
And let’s be honest — Disney doesn’t appear want its stars to have any healthy sense of sexuality at all, even when they’re older than 18. Look at the recent kerfuffle with Vanessa Hudgens, who was 19 when she had pictures taken that Disney disapproved of. This smacks of outright hypocrisy on Disney’s part; they’re aiming squarely at the tween and teen crowd, and you can bet that “I want to be just like ______” is a large part of their planned market appeal. Ever taken a close look at the Lolita-ish designs of the Hannah Montana clothing lines? Ever heard a group of tween girls giggling about how some Disney boy is so “hot”? (I have.) Heck, ever watched Miley’s stage show? The choreography is blatantly sexual. This does not match the “clean-cut” appearance that Disney seems to want its actors to portray so they can play the “family friendly” card, but somehow, nobody at Disney publicly protests these displays.
I’m betting that the genesis of Miley’s apology was just after Disney’s PR people saw the Vanity Fair photos and freaked. By all reports, Disney lawyers earn their pay; they write tight contracts. I don’t even pretend to have inside knowledge, but I’m guessing that Miley and parents weren’t “embarrassed” by the photos until Disney informed them that they were displeased and that Things Must Be Fixed. Is Disney really outraged on behalf of Miley, or are they worried about her earning potential somehow being diminished?
Now, having said all that, would I allow my daughter to take those pictures? At 11, not just no — hell, no! At 15, probably not. But then again, I wouldn’t let my daughter get up on stage and dance some of the routines that Miley Cyrus dances, either. Is the Cyrus family wrong to let Miley do it? Tough question, but the answer is ultimately theirs, not mine. I’m not Miley’s parent, I’m Treanna’s parent. My job as a father — and from all reports, Billy Ray seems to have this one figured out pretty well — is to teach my kids how to be healthy, responsible adults. As humans, we learn best from a combination of positive and negative reinforcement; some of our best-remembered lessons come from our failures. As my kids grow older, if I can’t extend them increasing amounts of freedom and larger opportunities to earn and display responsibility, I’m doing something wrong. I can’t protect them from consequences, but I must do my best to teach them about consequences before they learn them the hard way — and then if they make the wrong choices, I have to let them take those consequences and meet them appropriately. I suspect Miley’s learning all sorts of unintended consequences from this photo shoot, one of which is, “Don’t cross Disney.”
This has not been one of the best weeks I’ve had. That’s not to say it’s been all fire and brimstone — it hasn’t been an Old Testament kind of week — but the victories and good things have been few and far between. One of them happened last night; I passed a needed certification test on my first try.
I just got word that my grandmother died. This is a call I’ve been expecting and would suck, except for the fact that she’s been on the decline for a long time, including pretty severe memory loss. My immediate reaction was, “Thank goodness, it’s finally over.” A year or two ago, I was planning on driving down to see her (even though I knew that she wouldn’t recognize me or remember who I was) and was pretty much told flat-out by my family not to bother. This was after several years of not making time to get down to see her before everything had slipped away, or writing letters on a regular basis.
So, yeah, I’m glad that her decline (and, at the end, physical suffering) has come to an end, and I’m glad that the family members who’ve invested such dedication into her these past several years may finally have a chance to get some semblance of normalcy back in their life, but I also feel more than a little guilty for being so short-sighted. I have awesome memories of spending time with this woman back when I was a kid — she was fun, full of fire and life, and the only one I know who played multi-hand Solitaire (or Uno) to draw blood. Yet I don’t grieve for her now…because that woman already died many years ago. What left us today was her shell.
They say that anything you do more than once is tradition. I guess that mine is to offer the words written by Annie Lennox, Howard Shore and Fran Walsh, as sung by Annie Lennox, at the end of The Return of the King:
Lay down your sweet and weary head Night is falling; you’ve come to journey’s end Sleep now and dream of the ones who came before They are calling from across the distant shore Why do you weep? What are these tears upon your face? Soon you will see all of your fears will pass away Safe in my arms, you’re only sleeping
What can you see on the horizon? Why do the white gulls call? Across the sea a pale moon rises The ships have come to carry you home.
And all will turn to silver glass A light on the water; all souls pass
Hope fades into the world of night Through shadows falling out of memory and time Don’t say “We have come now to the end” White shores are calling; you and I will meet again And you’ll be here in my arms, just sleeping
What can you see on the horizon? Why do the white gulls call? Across the sea a pale moon rises The ships have come to carry you home.
And all will turn to silver glass A light on the water; Grey ships pass into the West
As I have no words of my own, perhaps this image will do:
Feel free to download and use it; just please don’t remove the copyright notice. Also, please feel free to share with others; please, though, just link them here instead of simply passing the files on. If you download it, I’d very much appreciate it if you’d leave me a quick comment.
So, I’m in Sydney for a training conference that I’m talking about in my work blog if you’re interested. There’s a lot of interesting small differences that have more of a mental impact to me than the big ones:
The exit signs inside buildings are green with white letters. I’m used to the opposite.
Didn’t find a single country radio station. Of course, this could be because the alarm clock/radio in my hotel room is cheap.
Speaking of hotel rooms, holy crap are they small! I’m having flashbacks to the really crappy hotel room in London from a couple of years back.
Did I mention that the hotel rooms have a distinct lack of ornamentation? Very small, very functional, but it feels like living in a cupboard.
Apartment buildings are painted interesting colors.
Window dimensions are subtly off.
They’ve got Taylor Swift’s Teardrops on My Guitar on the muzak system here at the conference center. I noticed an interesting lyrics change: the line “it’s just so funny” is “it’s so damn funny” here. Apparently, in the United Nanny States of America, the terrorist will win if a 17-yo girl says “damn” in a country song.
The magazine in my hotel room had Nicole Kidman on the cover, but I’ve not yet seen a single mention of Kylie Minogue.
Speaking of Nicole Kidman, she’s done two movies with Daniel Craig — The Golden Compass and Invasion, which I watched on the plane. Basically another cover of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, only they wimped out on the ending.
In just a few more hours, I’ll be on my way to do something I’ve never done before — cross the equator. I’m just going to kayak down to the big black line floating on top of the ocean, nip across, spin around counter-clockwise, then nip back home.
No, seriously — I’m heading to Sydney, Australia with my cow-orker Kevin to a week-long training conference. I think I might be able to survive the flight. I leave Seattle on the evening of February 2 and land in Sydney on the morning of February 4. By my calculations, that’s nearly 40 hours of time — but due to the vagaries of the International Date Line, I’ll experience far less of that (Sydney’s 16 hours ahead of us). In effect, I will not exist for February 3. That’s right, folks, I’ll be completely non-existent for my 12th wedding anniversary. Don’t worry, though; I’ve been aware of this for long enough to have made (and executed) plans and all the proper observances have been made; Steph will not be shortchanged.
Other than survive my time in time-zone limbo and the grueling plane flight, I’m hoping to meet up with a longtime net.friend and fellow SJGames freelancer and maybe even get to do the Harbour bridge climb. So, if you don’t hear from me for a week, it’s all good — I’m having fun down in the land of the Southern Cross.
Whoa. I just realized, that if I see any stars, they’re going to be totally different.
I’ve been knocked off my sleep schedule this week — I had to test some sleeping medication I need for an upcoming business trip and verify that I wouldn’t have any unanticipated side effects before I was in Australia and unable to do anything about it. However, in the midst of all this, I had an interesting thought, spurred a discussion with my new office mate. We were talking about history and the traditional adage that “history is written by the winners.” I disagree; I think it’s something more like this:
History is interpreted by the winner’s descendants.
That I’ve managed to successfully get myself back on an “into work by 6am” schedule for nearly three weeks now. Even though I am not a morning person, I find that this schedule has a number of benefits, the most important being that I feel like I get more work done (of better quality) and that I correspondingly have an easier time keeping work from taking over my life.
Seeing that my sleep schedule is finally starting to show signs of settling down against the previous point.
Call of Duty 4.
Writing while listening to Def Leppard Pyromania and the Halo 3 soundtrack.
Having finally had the uninterrupted hour to clipper and shave my head again. True, it was at 3:30am this morning, but it just made a nice start to the day.
The more Steph and I listen to Brad Paisley, the more impressed we are. (Those of you who don’t know who he is, he’s a country singer. If you don’t like country, that’s fine, you can stop reading, although I suggest you go to the video section of his website and at the very least watch Whiskey Lullaby, the duet he does with the incomparable Alison Krauss.) Tonight, though, I came in the middle of a new song on our local radio station: Letter to Me. The basic premise is simple: the song is a list of the things the singer would tell his 17 year-old self.
The best line of the song comes in the bridge:
And I’d end up saying have no fear These are nowhere near the best years of your life
I don’t think I can tell you just how nice it is to hear one of these types of songs that doesn’t wallow in that sugar-coated all-American myth that “your high school years are the best years of your life.” Those years aren’t your best years — they shouldn’t be, at any rate — and if they are, you either need to pull your head out of your ass and look around to see how good your life is or you need to get in line for a serious kick in the ass.
Thanks, Brad. You continue to confirm that you are one of the coolest people in the music business.
Yesterday evening, I found out that author James Oliver Rigney died yesterday after a long struggle with amyloidosis (a disease where your body deposits insoluble proteins in its own tissues and organs). Mr. Rigney was better known under a variety of pennames; the one that touched my life the most was Robert Jordan, author of the best-selling Wheel of Time fantasy series.
At one point in my life, I was extremely active in the rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan Usenet newsgroup. We’re talking ancient history here — at least a year and a half before I was married according to Google (and I think they’re missing a lot of the older stuff). My participation in that group filled a huge gap in my social life at a really shitty time in my life. I don’t even remember how I got introduced to The Wheel of Time, but I do remember that I was just in time to read the first three and start waiting for the fourth book along with everyone else. My days of Usenet participation are long past, but I still have a handful of active friendships from that group.
More importantly, that group –and thus Robert Jordan — is directly responsible for me deciding to move to Tacoma and thus be in the right place at the right time to meet the woman who would become my wife. I stopped reading the books many years ago (maybe I’ll get into my reasons some other day when it won’t just sound like bashing the departed, and if people actually care) but they brought me from the worst place in my life to the best place in my life. It took a while for the news to hit me, but hit me it finally did last night. Robert Jordan introduced me to many neat people, including the person who is my best friend, my lover, and my partner in all ways.
Thank you, Mr. Rigney. You have been loved, you will be missed, you have touched my life, and I send you back to the Light with sadness and gratitude.
I’m working from home today, for various and sundry reasons. It’s been a stressful week, for more various and sundry reasons.I figured out why I was getting particularly steamed today by looking at my Caller ID.
18 inbound calls.
Dude. That’s not counting the frequent outbound calls.
Summer is here and school is out, so the kids are looking for more to do. One thing they won’t be doing for the next couple of weeks, however, is riding their bikes.
You see, some bastard(s) stole their bikes at some point in the last couple of days (we were out most of Friday, so it could have been any time from Friday afternoon until Saturday afternoon. We assume that the parties who felt the need to liberate the bikes from our carport are the same parties who helped themselves to Nick and Steph’s bikes last Sunday. (Nick stored his bike here since he doesn’t have room at his apartment.)
Needless to say, the kids were pretty upset yesterday when they’d put on their helmets and went out to ride. These bikes were their major Christmas presents and were the first brand-new bikes either child has owned. They’ve taken pretty good care of them, all things considered, and really enjoyed having mountain bikes with multiple gears.
I’m not sure how we’re going to replace them at this point. Nick offered to pick up a couple of new bikes for them in a couple of weeks, and we’ll probably let him help us out, but he’s not going to shoulder it on his own. We need to find some way to scrounge up the money from what is a tight time of the year for various reasons (mainly because we’ve been aggressively paying off debts). Steph, of course, immediately started looking on Craigslist and Freecycle, but Nick suggested — and I agree with him completely — that we may want to spend the extra money for new bikes, since the kids’ bikes were new and were lost through no fault of their own.
I’m trying to maintain a good attitude about this. After all, like I told the kids, their mother and I believe that God gives us financial resources for many reasons, including ministering to others, and if someone is in a bad enough place in their lives to steal someone else’s bike then a) they probably need it worse than we do and b) they have to answer to God about it. The kids are pondering that one thoughtfully; they don’t entirely accept it, and I honestly don’t expect them to, especially since I flat-out admitted that that’s a hard one for me to keep my head wrapped around all the time. It did, however, get them thinking about the general wisdom of getting really attached to material things (and carefully picking which things, if any, you get attached to), which is a huge step forward.
I, however, just want to find the people who made my kids cry and introduce their face to my aluminum baseball bat. With all the love of Jesus in my arm, of course.
It’s been a long time since I posted on any of my blogs. Between lots of travel in April into May, a lot of work, and starting a new technical book for Sybex — not to mention still trying to make time (and more often than not failing) to be a good supportive husband and loving, patient father — I’ve had very little spare time, and what time I *did* have goes straight to vegging out by reading, playing Nick’s PlayStation 2 (I started Need For Speed: Most Wanted last November, and finally finished it near the end of May), or playing the PC (I finished Alaric’s Lego Star Wars and helped him get it finished too).
However, it’s Father’s Day, so happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there. Mine has been relatively quiet and while it started off with a migraine, it’s been relatively decent. I got a lovely brunch, a Tenth Doctor sonic screwdriver (which will look fantastic! with the rest of my SF toy collection at work), and the family is off hunting down a copy of Lego Star Wars II for the PC for me. I also had time to read a couple of chapters out of Castle of Wizardry to the kids, book four of David Eddings’ classic high fantasy series The Belgariad.
Before I head back to finishing up the whitepaper (we had some medical issues on Thursday and Friday that interfered took time away from my work schedule without adjusting the deadlines correspondingly) I’ve been working on, and then on to editing more chapters for my book (more about that in a separate post), I wanted to share with you a thought-provoking little YouTube clip I found thanks to my daily blog reading. The remarkable thing about this piece is that it was put together by a 15-year old.
I was looking back through my LiveJournal and found this piece from 2004 Jun 30. For some reason it struck me, so first I’m going to repost the content here, then I’ll add my additional thoughts after.
Put on the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring tonight to help grease my mental wheels while catching up on the badly neglected Exchange Cookbook recipes I owe my co-workers. Noticed something this time and was finally able to put it into words.
The cave troll scene in Moria always makes me feel sad. He always strikes me as a picked-on, abused victim who finally finds someone he can thump on. Kinda like he’s the really big, but really slow, older brother of one of the cool orcs. Cool Orc doesn’t want brother to tag along, but some time ago, Momma Orc put her foot down, so Cool Orc and the gang are stuck with having to let him tag along. Over the years, they’ve gotten accustomed to the benefits of this arrangement: he’s big and, with the proper teasing, quite scary. He’s a great prop for terrorizing dwarves and holding up other gangs of orcs for their milk money.
Then Cool Orc and his gang — and poor cave troll — run into the Fellowship. Cool Orc and his cronies realize that they’re in over their head — hell, maybe Cool Orc is the one who takes Legolas’s first arrow in the throat. So the rest of the the gang is pissed about that, but also has lost all control over the cave troll, who sees Cool Orc gurgling in a pool of his own blood with a nice feather throat piercing compliments of the prettiest boy-elf this side of Valinor, and yeah — he’s pissed. Conflicted, but still, this is family, and you don’t let tragically hip elves in facepowder and down-to-his-ass hair kill family.
So of course he goes nuts, and yeah he tries to skewer Frodo. But still, he’s not on top of it all, and the orcs have left him to his fate pretty quickly, and it’s sad.
That’s all I’m saying. Maybe I should go to bed now.
For the most part, this is still an accurate description of my feelings when watching this scene. It occurs to me to wonder why, in a world that is clearly designed with Good and Evil — and in which orcs and and trolls are clearly Evil — I still identify with one of the bad guys, at least in this way. It’s easy to understand with Gollum/Smeagol — during the narrative, we clearly see the duality within him, presenting as it does a mirror for the struggle going on within Frodo — because he’s meant to generate at least some sense of compassion.
So am I projecting, here, when I watch this scene and see the cave troll, or am I seeing hints that Jackson & company put in? The animators and special-effects crew clearly put a lot of time in to creating the cave troll model; for them, he’s not just a clear-cut case of evil foil, an obstacle to be vanquished. They put hours and hours of sweat and tears into him, even as they knew that his fate was to die on-screen.
How often do we see cave trolls in our own life? Like that asshole in the BMW on I-405 today who came across three lanes of traffic to zip into my lane just in front of me when there really wasn’t enough space, when he had 15 carlengths behind me — clearly, he is Evil. Needs an axe to the head. But when I get frustrated in traffic, see an opening and go for it, I’m the noble hero of the piece, only taking that which is my due.
Maybe not. Maybe it’s just my turn to be the asshole.
Apr 2-4, Orlando, to present 3 hours of sessions at Exchange Connections.
Apr 8-10, Denver, to be the main speaker at the Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging Roadshow.
Apr 18-20, Anaheim, to be the main speaker at the Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging Roadshow.
Apr 23-25, Dallas, to be the main speaker at the Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging Roadshow.
For those of you keeping score at home, yes, it’s why my blogging has been very sporadic of late. And I’m particularly annoyed about the timing of the current trip; turns out John Scalzi was doing a signing in Seattle yesterday, and that would have been something I would have gone to had my travel schedule not prevented it.
Needless to say, I’m a bit burnt out. Travel always screws me up to begin with; this series has been particularly hard, because the last time I did this kind of back-to-back travel was several jobs ago (not that I cared for it then, either). And I’m not done yet: I still have one more Exchange 2007 roadshow date in Phoenix May 14-16, although at least for that one I’m flying into Tucson a couple of days early and meeting up with my parents and sister for the weekend.
Travel screws up my sleep schedule, big time. I finally got a decent night of sleep last night — I’m not sure how — but my body is repaying me now big time with massive insomnia. Partly it’s being away from home in a strange place and bed, partly it’s that the hotel beds are never quite right no matter how comfortable they may be (and since the roadshow has been putting me up in decent hotels, bed quality is actually pretty good). It screws up my eating, especially when I’m speaking — I hardly ever can eat lunch on a day I’m speaking, because I’m just too damn busy/nervous; even if I did find the time to eat and could find something suitable in whatever catered options we have at the events, I’d probably just throw it back up. It doesn’t help that I’ve made some recent big changes to my normal routine, and I’m trying to keep those changes in place and going even while traveling.
Plus, since I’m outside of my routines, I’m an insecure nervous wreck. I’ll take 15 minutes to lay out my clothes and various articles for the next day, then re-check them six times before I go to bed. I’m very precise about how I unpack and where I put stuff. I maintain a level of worry just below “freak out” over things like getting to the venue/airport on time, and obsessively check and verify addresses and route maps. Not that this level of preparation is a bad thing, mind you; I hardly ever have to hurry in the morning (which is good because I’m usually groggier than crap), I hardly ever forget to take stuff along that I need, and I’ve been able to just hand our taxi driver a post-it note with the address of the venue the last two cities. But this level of obsessiveness takes it too far, and dumps me right in the middle of awkward, paranoia mode, which is so not helpful. If I’m chatting with one of my co-presenters and there’s a lull in the conversation, I’m immediately worrying that it’s a direct result of something I’ve done or said; if I don’t get included in a casual conversation, I spend minutes trying to figure out why. Take me out of my routine, and my Asperger’s isn’t at all far underneath the surface, no matter how well people tell me I conceal it.
The funny part is, I really love speaking — and the bigger the audience, the better. Smaller audiences require me to deal with a collection of individuals, which taxes my social skills to the limit. I find smaller audiences usually tend to be “flatter” — they don’t react as well to the jokes I make, they don’t tend to ask questions of the same intensity, and I just don’t seem to “click” as well with them. This is disappointing; I want my audiences to feel like they’re getting not just the technical information they paid for, but I want them to be entertained. I want them to feel like I’ve helped them. Hardly anyone who comes up to me afterwards and asks a good, hard question ever takes me up on my offer to email me so I can research and give them an answer. I tend to get good marks and comments on my feedback sheets, so if the people listening feel like I’m doing them a disservice, they’re not complaining about it, but I just can’t read them.
Give me an audience of 150+ people, though, and I start to have fun. I’m only nervous for a few seconds, and then something clicks and I turn on. The few times I’ve talked in front of a really large audience, I had great sessions — lots of fun, lots of laughter, and lots of good questions.
Having said all that, for being a smallish group today, the crowd here in Dallas was just plain fun. At the other venues, I’ve left my cowboy hat off when I got on stage; I left it on here and was able to get a laugh from it (at Anaheim’s expense; sorry, SoCal!) My post-lunchbreak observation that bringing in 100% clouds and rain to make the Seattle boy feel more at home was probably overkill got another good laugh. Thanks to everyone who showed up and had a kind word or question for me; y’all were great.
Now to see if I can get an hour or two of sleep before the wake-up call drags me out of bed. Have to get to the airport early enough to be sure to get on my flight home, since I’m not sure what kind of crowding has resulted from last night’s weather-related ground stop. I’d be more than mildly stressed at this point if I didn’t make it home tomorrow reasonably on-time.
While Steph and I were getting our Battlestar Galactica[1] fix last night, I did something I haven’t done since mid-December 1992: have a shoe-shine party. I’ve got four pairs of nice black shoes that were in various states of repair, but before we figured out which ones were worth keeping and which ones need a new home, they all needed polishing. I used to be pretty good at shining shoes. I still am, once I got back into it. The only problem is that my right shoulder and arm have been aching all day today because of the non-typical exercise. That wouldn’t be so bad, but work recently got a foosball table and the shoulder screwed up my game today. Not like my game needs the help; I pretty much suck.
The key to putting a good shine on a shoe? Don’t stint on the polish, use your fingers to apply it (wrap a cloth around them first, of course), and don’t use plain water when you go to buff the excess polish off. We always used Listerine. You can use other things, but the point is to use something that evaporates fairly quickly (which is what leaves a good shine) without evaporating so quickly that the polish develops cracks. Listerine is a good balance. I’ve still got the glass bottle I bought after getting out of boot camp; apparently, they don’t sell Listerine in glass bottles anymore.
The combined smell of shoe polish and Listerine really did a head trip on me. My dreams last night were far more nostalgic than I’m used to. I remembered a lot of stuff I thought I’d forgotten, or at least had forgotten to think about. As crummy as my life was back in those days, it wasn’t all bad; there were some good times, too. It’s nice to remember that every now and then. Life was not all bad before I got married.
[1] Insert obligatory “BSG is the best show on television!” plug here. I keep lending out my DVD boxed sets.
I’ve never flown on Jet Blue, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about them. However, if the following turns out to be true, I will never step foot on their planes.
Jet Blue wanted to squeeze just a few more working hours out of its pilots but it needed the facts to prove that a change in FAA regulations wouldn’t lead to a spate of crashes and flight errors. Its solution? Hook up 50 30 odd pilots to monitoring devices and make them illegally work in excess of FAA protocol in a makeshift clinical trial.
The airline says it never intended to mislead anyone at the FAA, and the JetBlue spokeswoman chalked the situation up to “a miscommunication,” though, she says, in retrospect the company understands “we have to widen the circle of consultation.” JetBlue said: “Safety is our bedrock value. It is the fundamental promise we make, and keep, to our customers and crew members.”
The spokeswoman says there were no in-flight emergencies during the test period, and safety was never compromised because a third pilot was always on board to take the controls if needed. The JetBlue pilots who participated in the experiment volunteered for the assignment.
That’s a heck of a miscommunication, even if they thought they had the approval of “lower-level FAA officials,” and even if they had a third pilot on-board to take over if needed.
The FAA officials who green-lighted this should be fired. The pilots should be fired. The Jet Blue executives who approved this stunt should be fired. But before any of them are fired, they should all be locked into a room with a stack of expensive stationary, decent pens, and the passenger lists from the flights in question, and hand-write a personal apology to each and every person whose lives they so casually played God with.
Again with the lack of posting. You’d think I was busy or something!
I’ve got some more writing fragments on the way. I’m trying to sit down and work on them when I have free moments, and then I’ll use the new scheduled posting feature in Community Server 2.1 to space them out so I get regular updates even when I’m away from the keyboard.
In fact, if all goes well, you won’t see this go live until 4pm this afternoon (Pacific time), even though I wrote it nearly 20 minutes earlier.
John Scalzi, via his AOL Journal By the Way, points out a news report on the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, which has infected an estimated half of the people on this planet. The vector? Cats.
John doesn’t quote it directly in his post, but if you follow his link to the original article and read all three pages, you’ll come to this cheery bit of news:
Cat lovers need not get rid of their cats. The chances are not great that a modern cat, kept on a diet of safe cat food and not left to feed off rats, will transmit the parasite to humans. It’s possible, but not likely, Lafferty says.
I have a broken tooth and no set date for geting it fixed, so my phobia of dentists is free to whirl in full force. I’m constantly slurring, and the tooth next to it needs pulled as well. I’ve not been this self-conscious in years.
I have had the most difficult week of work I think I’ve ever had in my life. None of that difficulty is from technical reasons. The office is noisy, and I don’t feel like I fit in there anymore.
I just got home at eight. This is the earliest I’ve been home this week, other than the comp day I was given on Tuesday because we all thought the dentist would actually be, y’know, fixing my tooth.
Steph had a minor outpatient procedure on Tuesday afternoon. She’s still wiped and drained, and the kids have been taking advantage of that to try to play us against each other. That shit don’t fly.
Treanna just said grace over the meal. She prayed that Steph would be healed, and then added “And help Dad with his over-sad, over-mad times.” I felt like I’d been punched in the testicles. I couldn’t eat, and got up to hid the fact that I was crying.
I’m locked in my office with another family dinner going on in the other room that I, putz that I am, am once again missing. I’m tired of being so damn broken, I’m tired of being in the middle of this desert. I’m not asking for fame and wealth and to slay all the dragons and vanquish all my enemies. I’m just trying to raise decent kids, have time for my wife, do good work, meet our needs, and make a difference in the lives of the people around me in whatever way God leads.
I don’t feel like clay. I feel like a mud pie. In a desert. So, not so much mud as much as dust and grit. And the grit’s pretty much been blown away.
It seems that the Boston Globe is announcing a change in their domestic partner benefits coverage for gay employees. Specifically, they will no longer be extending coverage for unammried gay domestic partners as of January 1, 2007. From a recent story in the Boston Herald:
Benefits for domestic partners were originally offered to gay employees because they couldn’t legally marry, said Ilene Robinson Sunshine, a lawyer at Sullivan & Worcester.
Now that gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts companies that offer benefits to gay employees’ partners risk hearing cries of discrimination from unmarried straight couples.
I am curious to find out how the GBLT community is reacting to this news. I, myself, think it’s an entirely logical position to take, and not from the “mitigating legal risk” viewpoint. I find the timing interesting — is it just that gay marriage has weathered all current legal challenges, so legal departments are starting to feel confident in making policy changes that assume it’s going to be around for a while?
SF editor Jim Baen is in the hospital after a serious stroke on Monday. The folks at Baen Books are posting updates on their web forums (registration required to follow the link).
Specifically, here’s the latest info:
Jim Baen is in the ICU after a stroke, it is serious, Toni and a relative are there with him. Now you know as much as we do about his condition.
Baen Books is functioning under the very detailed emergency plans that Jim has in place.
Please don’t send cards or flowers. Please do send whatever prayers are appropriate to your faith.
and:
I’m sorry to have to announce that Jim Baen suffered a stroke on Monday, and has been in the hospital ever since. His condition is serious, but it’s too early for any prognosis as to how he’ll fare from here on in.
His family has arrived in NC, and are with him in the hospital. I’ve been to see him, as have other members of Baen’s staff and his friend David Drake. In the meantime, so far as Baen Books is concerned, our plans continue on schedule.
The business is fine, we’re all simply very concerned about Jim.
Toni Weisskopf Chief editor, Baen Books
Note: the “no cards/no flowers” thing is a common restriction for patients in the ICU, as the medical staff need to have ready access to the patients and don’t need clutter from well-wishers getting in the way.
May the Great Physician attend Jim and the Comforter be with his family. The Eternal go before them and follow up behind them; The Swift Sure Hand guide to the right and left of them; The Rock of Ages below them, the Highest above them; Lord of Light without, Emmanuel within them. His will in all, His Grace to submit.
Update: In response to a question, as far as I know this is an original prayer — though I’ve consciously patterned it on many Celtic sources including a well-known portion of the Lorican. Feel free to pass it on with a link back here.
I’m home from Europe a couple of days early; I was originally supposed to be in Oslo today, doing a second presentation, but I got really sick once I got to London and my bosses couldn’t take the chance I wouldn’t be better (sorry, Jim, for making you go to Oslo!). Lisbon was interesting. Paul talks about it a bit and relates some of the interesting bits of what happened there, but I have a couple of comments to add:
I was less than thrilled to find that they seem not to serve straight orange juice, but like to mix in other things. From the one sip I had my first morning, those other things might include pineapple, which would have been a huge problem for me.
The steak was awesome. The bacon was not, and the McDonald’s burger just didn’t taste like real beef.
Walking on the sidewalks was an interesting experience. First, they were pretty narrow — combined with narrow streets and fast city drivers, it made it feel like you were taking your life in your own hands on certain streets. Next, they were cobbled with irregular stones, and the resulting surface wasn’t at all level. Added strain to my feet.
I found out on Monday afternoon that my track (Exchange 2007 for the IT Pro) was in the main auditorium. It was a big auditorium, and there were a lot of people who had signed up for it. It seemed to go well, though; I got a good laugh from my intro joke and a lot of good feedback.
Being sick sucks. Being sick in a foreign country in a shoddy hotel really bites. And I was pretty out of it — the only reason I wasn’t in more serious trouble is that a couple of college friends (Mickie and Jen) were at the same hotel and keeping an eye out for me.
I’d been planning on going and staying with Jen and her husband Rich in Harrogate (up by York) on the weekend anyway, but instead of going back to London Sunday night I just stayed a couple of extra days and got better. It was definitely the right thing to do; the area right around Kings Cross station (where my dodgy hotel was) was a bit grimy and depressing.
The highlight of my trip was going to York on Sunday. I still wasn’t fully up to speed, so we focused on the Minster (the giant cathedral there; I’d been planning on trying to catch Sunday services there, but we didn’t get out the door quite on time and I didn’t feel like hanging around for the Evensong service at 4pm). That is a lovely cathedral. I now plan on going back there with the family at some point.
I’ve not been blogging much lately because I’ve been buried under a ton of work. One of the things I’ve been busy with has been developing a full day of content on Exchange 2007 to present in Lisbon (May 30th) and Oslo (June 8th).
Astu Are thte readers will have noticed the timestamp of this entry, done some math, and realized that I’m probably not in the US anymore. Those readers would be correct. I’m sitting in one of the food courts (near the B and C concourses) of the Amsterdam Schipol airport, waiting for my connecting flight to Lisbon in just under three hours.
This is my first international flight, and other than some business trips to Hawaii, my first time off the North American continent. Since I’m sorta wiped out and still have work to do before I take off, I’ll share just a short list of observations (in no particular order):
Airports look like airports, no matter where you are.
I’d not realized exactly how much I appreciated the US airport (and Washington state) total ban on smoking until, halfway through my meal, the nice people at the next desk lit up.
What’s up the the “T” gates (Transfer) they have here? What are those for? They look like ticket counters…but surely you buy your tickets ahead of time, not hop-by-hop, right? Are they an Amsterdam peculiarity, or are they an EU thing?
Wifi providers here are just as willing to take adavantage of your wallet as they are in the US.
Amsterdam is flat. Really flat.
You don’t hear announcers in US airports naming specific people for specific flights, telling them that they are delaying the flight and threatening to offload their luggage. You do here.
They have a Star Wars Transformer in one of the toy shops here. No shit. Anakin’s Jedi Starfighter turns into a fighting Jedi mecha. Who knew? And it’s using the real Transformer brandname — has the trademarked “More than meets the eye” tagline and everything.
I might do more later, if I’m not complete tapioca after 17 hours of travel plus an afternoon of session prep.
Somewhere in the instructions, the Department of State website, or the various other places that talk about the process, there should be a warning that your birth certificate will be sent into the processing center and returned with your passport.
It’s cheaper to have a mild concussion than it is to get a passport. Costs start at $97 for a US adult — $67 for the passport + security fee, $30 to the prep location. If you need expedited service (as I did), that’s another $60. Photos are $15. Total cost: $172.
Perhaps Friday afternoon isn’t the best time to go to the post office to get a passport, especially when there’s only two agents at the counter. I took one of them out of commission for 20 minutes or so, during which time the line got impressively long again.
I’ve been silent on the blogging front lately, so here’s a quick update on what I’ve been up to this last week:
Monday: I was coming down the stairs to head to my office to begin my work day, and suddenly I was at the bottom of the stairs with a concussion. Major ow. Got to go to the doctor — work, not so much.
Tuesday: Still major ow. Follow-up with the doctor, who found that approximately seventeen million vertebrae in my back had been knocked out of alignment by my unscheduled trip. Lots of sleep.
Wednesday: Still more major ow. More sleep, combined with boredom.
Thursday:Only minor ow, so threw myself into the backlog of work. Had an interesting email waiting for me from my boss, who urged me to get cracking on acquiring my passport if I didn’t already have it.
Friday:The ow has returned (though not to M-W levels), apparently by popular demand, but at least I can focus enough to work. Finishing a whitepaper, wrestling with some tools. I’ll be getting passport pics this afternoon, so of course I had to make sure my head is freshly shaved.
Anybody doing anything fun this weekend? I’m trying to get the last couple chapters of my ebook finished and into my editor so I can polish up my presentations for Orlando (which is rapidly approaching).
I should have known, from first thing yesterday morning, what kind of day it was going to be. Starting with sleeping through the alarm I’d set so I could get up and get a headstart to a long day, right through trying to change the roll of toilet paper and ending up by dropping the fresh roll into the toilet bowl, I had signs it was going to be a difficult day.
We did finally manage to make it to all of our errands in Redmond, including my eye exam and subsequent purchase of not one but two new pairs of glasses (luckily, we were able to turn a $410 purchase into a mere $155, through clever use of an eye plan discount we get through our bank and by recycling my existing set of frames, which were in remarkably good shape after three years of living with me). Yes, I now have driving glasses and reading glasses. I’m having to get used to the reading glasses — anything beyond about 10 feet gets blurry. This is more than fine for my daily computer work and reading books, but I’ll have to figure out the best way to keep both pairs on my person (or at least near me) at all times so I can switch, because if I’m not looking at something up close, the reading glasses will get me sick in a hurry.
It is nice to be able to read my monitors again without having to crank up the font size or get a headache, though.
We also managed to swing by the office so I could get the lowdown on some stuff I’ve been asked to do. We also picked up a new ATX power supply for Steph’s computer, dual-1GHz motherboard with processors, 512MB of RAM, and even a 40GB hard drive thrown in — all for very cheap, courtesy of the Seattle Craigslist. These will go into the Exchange server, giving it a much needed upgrade, freeing up other components so Steph can have my old system and we can get her back up and running on her own machine.
All in all, it ended up being a productive day; everything just took longer than we’d expected. I ended up working on day job stuff well into the evening. Thank goodness today is Friday.
On the calendar for the weekend: some good clean RoboRally fun with new friends, a Saturday evening visit to Church of the Apostles, some computer upgrades, and hammering out Chapter 5 of my ebook.
As you may remember, the local bookstore closed down last year. Today, I found out that our charming little hole-in-the-wall CD shop will be closing down in 6 weeks or so. This bites, because Steph and I try to support small local shops even if it means paying more, as long as we can get what we want there.
On the good side, they’re holding a 15% off everything sale, and I was finally able to pick up a copy of Billy Idol’s infamous (and very hard to find) Cyberpunk album, as well as a boxed 3-CD set of Queen’s greatest hits. Still, I’d rather that they were able to stay in business.
We finally diagnosed whatever is going on with Steph’s computer — motherboard or CPU. Well, shite. I wasn’t really looking to be rebuilding machines at this point, nor to be acquiring new hardware. I think we have a gameplan, but Steph will be computerless for another couple of days. Good thing she can read her email from OWA.
Oh, yeah — chapter 4 of the DCAR ebook is kicking my ass. I just cannot find the words to put on paper. This is doubly infuriating, because there are a lot of other projects that are clamoring inside my skull for airtime. I’ve got a wonderful essay rattling around in there, tentatively titled “The Relationship Lens: Re-imaging the role of faith and the church.” This sounds like a lot more fun to write, but it’s not what has the deadline.
Got a concerned email from one of the ladies at church. Rumors are now going around that we’re leaving. This wouldn’t be so bad of itself, because we are going to be actively looking for a new church home. What pisses me off is that it sounds like there’s already a healthy load of bullshit going around about my reasons — lots of gossip and speculation. Mind you, nobody’s bothered to ask me what the truth is.
If it weren’t for the fact that we still have a great school for the kids, I’d almost be thinking it was time to seriously consider moving from Monroe.
Update: the kids are really grooving on the Queen albums. They recognize a lot of the music from the Highlander movies and TV series. Yep, they are geeks.
We’ve been getting over the flu here at Casa del Ganger. For the past several weeks, I’ve been feeling under the weather to a greater or lesser extent, so I’d slow down and try to get extra rest, etc. After a few days I’d feel better, so I’d go back to normal life, and whammo! a couple of days later, down I’d go again.
Last week and weekend, however, was the absolute bottom of this cycle. I struggled along the week slowly feeling more and more like crud scraped off the bottom of the Coney Island boardwalk, and when Friday finally arrived I almost decided to postpone the Auspex move. In the end, I didn’t postpone it because I’d already done so once. So I got up on Saturday, went to breakfast with a friend, then came back home and hauled the Auspex out and got it ready for transport. The new owner showed up right on time and right around noon, we had it loaded into his rental truck and were pulling away from the house for the trip down to Factoria. I had my new Qtek 9100 Windows Mobile PDA/cell phone with me so I could tell Steph when we were done unloading it and getting it set up. A couple more hours later and I was sitting at McDonald’s waiting for my family, entering my first blog entry on my geektoy.
When we got home (minus a detour through Costco Home), I intended to lay down for two hours or so and take a refreshing nap, since I felt like hammered crap. Instead, I woke up at midnight when Steph crawled into bed. I went back to bed and ended up sleeping most of Sunday.
Of course, Murphy was having none of this — so Steph started coming down with it too.
This week, I’ve been on the mend, although I’m still sadly lacking in energy. I’ve been going to bed by 8:30 most nights. On the upside, I’ve been getting up nice and early — anywhere from 4:30 to 7:00 — so I’ve had plenty of time to get my work done. I’m just running out of steam awfully quickly though, and if I’m tempted to think I’m completely healthy, all I have to do is plot when my energy falls off. Nobody who can tell exactly when their last dose of acetaminophen wore off by noting that the sudden loss of energy is exactly eight hours past the last pill-ingestion has any business deluding themselves about being healthy.
As an aside, reading Stephen King’s uncut version of The Stand probably isn’t a great idea when you’re sick. I felt like I was drowning in phlegm a little too often last weekend to be comfortable reading about the superflu that killed people by drowning them in phlegm. I finally realized that the reason I kept reading it was that even as sick as I felt, I took a certain perverse pleasure in not being as sick as those poor bastards.
Speaking of perverse pleasures, Steph and I scared a truck driver this morning on the way back from taking the kids to school. On our way up to school Steph noticed a Guinness truck parked at the local Canyons and idly commented that it was too bad we didn’t have our camera with us, since it would be funny to get a picture of me in front of the truck.
Enter the geektoy — the Qtek 9100 Windows Mobile 5.0 PDA and cell phone, with integrated 1.3 megapixel camera. You, being an astute reader, can probably see where this is going…
So that was a good start to the day. It was book-ended by what may be a quite awesome ending to the day — we’ll see if things pan out the way I hope they do.
[Ed: "What's an Auspex?" I hear many of you say. "Why the heck are you wasting two posts about this stupid thing?" Well, Auspex was a company in the 1990s that made very high-end file servers. The model I had, an Auspex NS5500, cost around three-quarters of a million dollars when it was manufactured and sold in 1990 and represented the pinnacle of non-mainframe computer engineering. It was a 7-foot tall, 700lbs. black metal cabinet chock full of computery file server goodness. At one point I contacted Auspex to find out what it would take to refurbish it and the tech I was talking to exclaimed, "Oh! That's where that one went!" You see, these were the kind of computers you didn't just buy, use for a couple of years, then throw away; they usually got traded back to Auspex as part of an upgrade cycle. The story about how I came to own it will have to wait for another day.]
(actually, let’s be honest; that’s one of the ways I’ve chosen to spend a lot of my free time since Christmas). However, at the beginning of July, I added a new reason: I started taking a class two days a week at the local new YMCA.![[A tribute to Gary Gygax: dice and candles, PNG, 640x480]](http://www.thecabal.org/~devin/images/tribute_160_120.png)
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