If there’s one thing I hate worse than the Orbitz pop-under ads (see below/before), it’s dealing with personnel problems….
If there’s one thing I hate worse than the Orbitz pop-under ads (see below/before), it’s dealing with personnel problems.
47. Learn it. Love it. Live it. And now you know why the blog name. UPDATE (24-Nov-03): The link is now here. And, as an historical note, when this blog…
Insanity has been defined as trying the same thing over, expecting the results to be different. It occurs to me that this speaks directly to IT, since our primary diagnostic…
Insanity has been defined as trying the same thing over, expecting the results to be different.
It occurs to me that this speaks directly to IT, since our primary diagnostic methods involve trying the same thing over and over again. “Let’s try rebooting again. Well, let me try unplugging and plugging it in again. Let’s power it off and power it back on again. Let’s try rebooting again.”
The damnable thing is, the reason it’s our primary diagnostic method is that it works.
Either we’re insane, or we operate in an insane world. Or both. Live with the ambiguity.
As I write, we have Israeli military forces firing frickin’ missiles into buildings where they think Palestinian leaders or security forces are. And if a few bystanders get killed, c’est…
As I write, we have Israeli military forces firing frickin’ missiles into buildings where they think Palestinian leaders or security forces are. And if a few bystanders get killed, c’est la vie.
In the meantime, Palestinians are sending suicide bombers into pizza parlors. That’s productive.
Actually, if I were leading the Palestinians, I’d be following the Israeli tactic. Target soldiers. Target officers. Target leaders. Not only would that lend credence to the idea that you are fighting a war against your oppressors, and give you more support from the outside world, but it might make those same Israeli leaders more willing to talk peace.
At the same time, while the Israelis are scoring hits, in the long run they’re merely fragmenting (figuratively, as well as literally) the Palestinian leadership. Which means that negotiating with anyone is going to be increasingly difficult.
And, frankly, Israel is losing the publicity war. Sure, every pizza parlor the Palestinians bomb simply tars their whole “side” as a bunch of terrorists. But when Israel uses tanks and jet fighters and attack helicopters to blow up buildings, they come across as a Goliath vs. the Palestinian David. And we know who to root for in that competition. It’s even worse when collateral damage (i.e., innocent bystanders) get fragged in the process.
I found it morbidly amusing that Arafat has been trying to get the UN Conference on Racism, Intolerance, Xenophobia, and Related Stuff to declare Israel to be acting in a racist fashion toward the Palestinians. There’s arguably something to that — but it seems to me there’s a large degree of blackness in the kettle making the accusation at the pot.
As long as it’s a battle of Jews vs. Muslims, or Israelis vs. Palestinians, it’s a racist, ethnicist, xenophobic problem, on both sides.
I don’t know what the answer is. Sometimes I think we should just bomb the whole region down into a glassy plain. Other times, I think the Israelis should simply move the Palestinians (including in Gaza) lock, stock, and barrel into the West Bank, build a big wall, and then say, “That’s yours, this is ours, ’nuff said.”
I don’t think either of those is a good answer. But both are temptingly neat and simple (and bloody and final).
Peace — peace strong enough to get the majority of folks involved committed to it — has been so close, so many times. And there is so much bloody blame to heap on both sides, that neither can wear a white hat. I have to condemn, first and most of all, any side whose tactics are explicitly terrorist, who act in the most racist fashion because they consider anyone on the “opposite side” — wearing a uniform or not — to be an enemy. But the Israelis have more than tarnished their own shield here, between heavy-handed military action and police state tactics against anyone even suspected of being a Palestinian terrorist.
I would wish a pox on both their houses, but that’s clearly already the case. Because the biggest losers here are the haters, but the ones who merely want to live a life of peace and dignity, raising their families.
Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, Protestant protesters (“Those bloody Catholics are marching their bloody Catholic kids through our Protestant neighborhood on the way to their bloody Catholic school as a deliberate provocation!”) are throwing bricks and frickin’ home-made bombs at schoolchildren.
As far as I’m concerned, any “credit” the Protestant activists up there had by facing off against a truly bloody terrorist organization (the IRA) has been squandered by their own terrorist tactics.
Okay. Enough of those depressing tactics. My blood pressure is already too high.
I spent the first half-hour at work trying to figure out why I couldn’t login. Swapping cables, trying different ports, trying to get NIC lights to blink, the whole enchilada….
I spent the first half-hour at work trying to figure out why I couldn’t login. Swapping cables, trying different ports, trying to get NIC lights to blink, the whole enchilada.
I finally discovered that I could hook up through my notebook’s direct NIC, rather than through the docking station NIC.
A failure in the docking station? An unexpected consequence of something goofy they’re doing to fix our network problems? Evil spirits?
You be the judge.
Plus, my office e-mail is still flaky as all hell. Feh. There are times I wish I were a ditchdigger.
No, not really.
Internet ads are a bane to my existence. I hate ’em. They are annoying. They are intentionally eye-catching, and advertisers are in an ever-increasing frenzy to get eye-time from surfers…
Internet ads are a bane to my existence. I hate ’em. They are annoying. They are intentionally eye-catching, and advertisers are in an ever-increasing frenzy to get eye-time from surfers like me because — well, that’s why they’re paying for the damned things, right?
The worst I’ve seen (lately) was a pop-under for Orbitz, the new “Hey, we’re the airlines, so we’ll start a travel site, and you can move all your ticket purchases here, putting those other travel sites out of business, but, hell, we won’t ever take advantage of such a monopoly, trust us, we’re the airlines” site. This thing is like 5×8″, and flashes on and off with such a frequency I’m surprised there aren’t folks having epileptic fits triggered by it. You can’t look at it for more than 5 seconds without getting a headache but, more importantly, you can’t not look at it. Every lizard-brain part of your mind says, “Bright flashing lights! Something I must see, or else dinosaur will eat me!”
It is annoying as all hell.
And it’s how the Internet stays relatively free.
Yup. Most content providers out there make use of advertising to at least defray the costs of providing the content. Aside from folks like me who do this sort of thing as a hobby — and I’ve already said I’m a cheapskate. I’m a cheapskate with some concern for my viewers — which is why I bailed from Geocities (and it’s Ad Window of Doom), but also why I won’t purchase more expensive hosting services. At least, not yet.
So, yes, I hate ads, but I also acknowledge that they are a vital part of keeping the Internet from turning into a bunch of fanboy pages and subscription services. Which I suspect will happen in the next ten years, given current trends. But for now, that’s the case.
But while I have accepted the ethical “tragedy of the commons” sort of need for Internet advertising, I’ve decided to draw the line. That line is pop-ups and pop-unders. Not only are they an Abomination Before the Lord, but they raise the annoyance stakes to new levels. Plus, by opeing up new windows, they chew up additional system resources, clutter the screen, etc. They are Evil, Pure Evil from the Eighth Dimension.
So I took the step of downloading PopUp Killer. There are others, but this came recommended, and seems to do the job. PopUp Killer just sits out there and watches each browser window when it opens. If it has a name/domain that is on the PopUp Killer black list (which you can download), then it zaps the window with a little crash of thunder. Very satisfying. It also as a limited AI function to guess (with user-defined sensitivity) what might be a pop-up/under ad, and zaps that, too (this latter function can be set to simply prompt you, which I find to be a better alternative, since it sometimes guesses things wrong).
The Black List is a bit overzealous in places — it wildcards all the Tripod sites, for example — but you can also easily set up an exemption list.
I will not install software (available) that strips out ads from within pages — TANSTAAFL — but I will do this. And do.
Take back the Web. Solidarity Forever. Up the People! Right On, Man!
Doyce is waxing lyrical over the Claim Jumper over on his blog. You can check out the cake he’s talking about (or one like it) at the restaurant link. I’ve…
Doyce is waxing lyrical over the Claim Jumper over on his blog. You can check out the cake he’s talking about (or one like it) at the restaurant link.
I’ve heard commentary that one reason Americans are getting so … well, round (or well-rounded) is because what we “expect” as a serving size keeps increasing. Really, the cost of the raw material for most restaurants is a fraction of what the real estate/capital costs/labor costs are, so it’s an easy “differentiator” for restaurants to simply feed you more food than you can possibly eat. They charge you a goodly amount, but you feel like you’ve gotten a bargain-fargain, and come back more for later. And all for a relatively trivial added cost.
Check out the “serving size” on most packaged/canned food. You look at it and say, “Hah! Are you kidding? That’s just an advertising ploy so that they can say the can has seven serving in it, when each serving is just a tiny, unsatisfying morsel.”
Try it again. Those serving sizes are set by the Feds. They’re set to a standard for each type of food, so that consumers can compare easily. And they’re based on serving size standards of four or five decades ago.
Yup. Once upon a time people ate only six or seven chips from a Doritos bag, not the whole bag all on their lonesome. That was the Depression Generation, folks — eat light, be thrifty, save for a rainy day.
I can’t say I mind having lived through an era of prolonged prosperity (even at its deepest recessions after WWII, the US has been doing better and living better than any previous generation, in aggregate). Heck, my own well-rounded shape shows how much I don’t mind it. But there have been “soft” costs, none softer than those love handles.
So we are referred to (in some quarters) as the Consortium. Or, more properly, our (Margie and my) place is so referred to. Interesting. The reason, I am told, has…
So we are referred to (in some quarters) as the Consortium. Or, more properly, our (Margie and my) place is so referred to.
Interesting.
The reason, I am told, has to do with our nomenclature. I’m a Hill, Margie’s a Kleerup. Margie kept her maiden name for two reasons that I’m aware of. First, should she publish, there are a lot fewer Kleerups than Hills out there, making journal lookups and the like a lot easier. Second, because there are a lot fewer Kleerups than Hills out there (I can count the number in the US on the fingers of both hands, I think), so it’s a Proud Name That Should Be Retained. (Which is why we decided that if Katherine was a boy, she’d be a Kleerup.)
I’ll add another one to both of those very good (and supported by me) reasons: because I’m not hung up on Margie becoming a Hill. Because we are we, and her having her own name is just fine by me (as would be her taking my name — or, if she had felt that strongly about it, my taking her name). And I’d known her fifteen years as Margie Kleerup (let alone how long she’d known herself to be that), and it would have been weird any other way.
Margie will go by “Margie Hill” or “Mrs. Hill” socially, if that’s how things get typed up on the seating chart or name tags. And I have been known to answer to Mr. Kleerup (usually by those who know Margie and assume she’s taken my name).
Indeed, I had a “David Kleerup” Costco card for a while. Margie’s folks have had a business membership with Costco for quite some time (since it was Price Club) as Kleerup Enterprises. When I married into the business, so to speak, I got a Costco card … that said, for reasons taht escape me, David Kleerup. It had my picture, of course, and I had no problem with it. It was even kind of funny.
Then I got the Checkout Clerk from Hell. No, that’s too harsh. But think of the stereotypical teenage male checkout clerk, completely with breaking voice, from The Simpsons. That was this guy. All was well until I tried to pay my Costco bill with my Discover card (back when they took Discover). He looked at the credit card. He looked at the Costco card. His eyes got wide.
I’m sure he was onto breaking open some incredible credit card fraud ring. Because it was clear that there was Something Funny Going On Here.
“Uh, these names don’t match.”
“Hmmm?” Dave remembers the Costco card name. “Oh. That’s my wife’s last name.”
“It’s not your name?”
“No, but it’s my wife’s. They issued it to me with her name by mistake.”
“She doesn’t have the same last name?” This seemed to be a novel, probably heretical, concept.
“No, she goes by Kleerup.”
“But this credit card says ‘Hill.'”
“Yes.” Dave starts speaking more slowly so that the clerk can understand him. “My name is Dave Hill. My wife’s name is Margie Kleerup. I got this Costco card through her family’s business, Kleerup Enterprises, and they put the wrong last name on.”
“That’s not the same last name as on the credit card.”
“Noooooo, it’s not. But that’s me. See, there’s my picture on the Costco card. And –” Rummaging. “Here’s my driver’s license. See — my real last name, plus my picture.”
“But they don’t match.”
Dave looks around for Margie, who had gone to the drink stand to get me a soda. “Margie?”
Margie comes over. Margie shows her ID — her driver’s license (“See, same home address”), her Costco card, even some Kleerup Enterprises business cards.
“I’m going to have to call the manager.”
Meanwhile, of course the line is backed up, impatient customers are wondering who to lynch first, and, dammit, we always go to Costco as the last stop on our errands (since we usually end up with perishables), so I was tired and hungry, and not just a bit embarrassed.
The manager, fortunately, was able to hold two or more concepts in his head at once, and so understood the problem. I was asked to get a new Costco card, with my real name, and all was right with the world.
I’m sure that checker, though, was disappointed.
At any rate, I was willing to be Dave Kleerup as need be (and still am).
And, frankly, given the hassle I went through with that, I can’t imagine pressuring Margie to change her name.
For those folks who have decided otherwise — more power to you. Names have magic, and how we conjure with them is up to us, thank you. Don’t fence me in, and I’ll not ring you with chain link either. ‘Nuff said.
The only other complexity our dissimilar names cause is … well, the source of this Consortium thing. Because it’s not the “Hills’ house,” and it’s not the “Kleerups’ house.” And we don’t really hyphenate our names (except in our domain). I’ve tended to use “Hill/Kleerup” at times, but that’s not always possible. It makes doing up invitations to functions interesting, too, when it’s for people (like at the office) who know one of us or the other, but need more than just first names.
So. The Consortium. There we go. “An association or combination for the purpose of engaging in a joint venture [i.e., marriage].” I like it.
I’ve put a picture of me and Katherine at the top of the page. It’s so cute I could scream. It’s main (and glaring) flaw is that it ignores my…
I’ve put a picture of me and Katherine at the top of the page. It’s so cute I could scream. It’s main (and glaring) flaw is that it ignores my Better Half. If I can get an equally fun one of Margie and me (or even the three of us together), I’ll put that up instead.
I am a cheapskate. At least when it comes to the Net. I hate to spend any money that I don’t have to for a “hobby.” So the next thing…
I am a cheapskate. At least when it comes to the Net. I hate to spend any money that I don’t have to for a “hobby.”
So the next thing on my Blogger wish list is a way to get comments. A few reasons. I want to know that somebody is reading this stuff. And I want the opportunity to explore some of the topics further.
Big problem: so far all the commentary stuff I’ve seen requires server-side services, and, being a damned cheapskate, I’m on the cheapest, barest-bones hosting plan I can get. So no SSI, no PHP, no ASP. So far, I seem to be SOL.
Doyce says he has another cheap host in mind. Of course, he said he’d e-mail me about it, too, so …
Blogvision An expansion of the theme below (i.e., from earlier today) on how having a blog has an impact on things. I was driving off to my golf game on…
Blogvision
An expansion of the theme below (i.e., from earlier today) on how having a blog has an impact on things.
I was driving off to my golf game on Saturday, and I noticed myself … noticing things. Hmmm. Light rail — that’s neat. Gotta write about that. Oh, look, folks queued up at the light rail station to go to the game. Hah — idiots! Y’know, they don’t have gravel igloos like CDOT has here back in Southern California — I remember how amused I was when I first saw them. I should share that. Gotta talk about my ring finger some time, too. And so forth.
They say that the best way to learn to write is to write. When you are going to write, it makes you think about writing. When you’re going to be blogging observations about the world about oneself, it makes you observe said world.
Perhaps we need to encourage more politicians to blog.
So mail is down at the office this morning. Which serious puts a crimp into what I can do. So I’ve been noticing that the Archives section of my blog…
So mail is down at the office this morning. Which serious puts a crimp into what I can do.
So I’ve been noticing that the Archives section of my blog template is generating an annoying Javascript error.
So … I’ve fixed it. Woo-hoo. The old programming skills haven’t completely atrophied. Of course, since I actually created a separate archive directory (which is good practice, and which seems to be encouraged by the Blogger documentation), a lot of the relative references that the archiving processes use don’t work, so I’ve had to hardcode the blog URL into a whole bunch of the template code. Messy. Annoying.
Of course, the really annoying thing here is that, as of WinXP, Java will not be automatically available on new PCs (i.e., it is not part of the default XP installation). Micro$oft claims this is necessary due to their court settlement with Sun, which is, ah, a prevarication on their part. The goal is actually to make the C## scripting language (owned by M$, natch) the de facto scripting standard on the web. Sincek, of course, if it isn’t owned by M$, it can’t be allowed to be a standard ….
Which means that, eventually, either bits and pieces of my blog (and many, many web pages) will break, will need to be recoded in C##, and/or will require that people download a Java VM (for XP-or-newer systems) or C## VM (for pre-XP/non-M$ systems) (or both).
Bad enough that M$ and Netscape “broke” the HTML standard. Bad enough that server-side scripting is still a crapshoot depending on what sort of host you have. Now we’re breaking standardized client-side scripting. Granted that Sun has a finger in this, since they kept trying to twist M$’ arm. But the reality is, it’s yet another step forward for the MicroBorgs, one step backwards for the Web.
End of Diatribe. Time for lunch.
So a man walks into a blog … (That wasn’t meaningful, but the phrase occured to me, and I wanted to use it). Doyce raised the issue over in his…
So a man walks into a blog …
(That wasn’t meaningful, but the phrase occured to me, and I wanted to use it).
Doyce raised the issue over in his blog of why those who write blogs do it. Rather than simply comment over there, I’ll comment here — since I have this damned page and can do with it as I like.
On one level the reasons are probably as varied as there are people doing it, if not moreso. But for myself, the following come to mind:
Narcissism. There’s something terribly self-important about the idea of writing one’s personal opinions and experiences and posting them out there in the Internet for the entire frickin’ global community to read. I mean, what an ego-boost. And what presumption, that one’s inner thoughts (edited to whatever degree one does) are actually worthy and entertaining enough to be so posted.
(Digression. One day when I was in 6th Grade, we got back our little packet of school pictures — the individual kind. They came, of course, with a flimsy little cardboard frame. I noticed some folks putting their 5×8 self-portrait into their frame and putting it on their desk. I thought this was amusing, so I went them one better, and put my sheet of wallet-sized shots into the frame, so that, Andy Warhol/Op-Art-like, there were several shots of me gazing outward sedately. One of the neighboring 6th Grade teachers, Mrs. Snyder, who was something of a wag and who knew me because of my zany intellectual hi-jinx with one of her students, happened to spot this and dubbed me Narcissus on the spot. She even clipped a New Yorker cartoon of Narcissus gazing into the pool, while his girlfriend asks, “Narcissus, is there someone else?” and gave it to me. Today, of course, she’d be be sued, fired, and probably tarred and feathered. At the time, it was a useful, if odd, lesson for me, not to mention an anecdote for my future blogging.)
On a more innocuous plane, it’s push communication. I could write a lot of this stuff (“How I Spent My Labor Day”) in e-mails to people. It’s simpler, in some ways, to blog it. Of course, I don’t really know if anyone (aside from a very few people) actually read this, so it may not be being pushed very far.
It’s journaling. In other words, it doesn’t matter who’s reading it, as much as that I am writing it. There’s probably some of that, but I could do it a lot more simply in another format, and without worries of who might be reading it restraining me from commentary on certain items. (It occured to me, as we were going through our Buffyfest this weekend, that Dawn ought to be journaling in a blog, with appropriate hilarity ensuing.)
Perhaps, in the long run (as Meery Berry implied in her comments to Doyce), there’s not much different between what drives one to write a blog, and what drives one to write. All of the above could apply to writing a novel, a textbook, or a poem. Or, for that matter, in a more abstract fashion, sculpting, painting, or spraying oneself with Cheeze Whiz and reading the phone book naked (made possible by a grant from the NEA). There’s the (necessary) Narcissism of believing one has something to say that is worth hearing. There’s the desire to promulgate information that can’t be sent out any other way. And there’s an element of self-therapy in working through thoughts and beliefs and ideals in another venue that offers its own opportunities (and pitfalls).
It’s worth more thought, one of these days.
No, not that season. For various reasons (Alpha class schedule, other stuff) Margie and I were serious slackers when it came to watching Buffy and Angel this past season. Lucky…
No, not that season.
For various reasons (Alpha class schedule, other stuff) Margie and I were serious slackers when it came to watching Buffy and Angel this past season.
Lucky for us, Doyce is as compulsive about taping them as I was about B5. And he has been noodging us to catch up. And more than noodging — making extraordinary efforts.
So this weekend, between basement cleaning and tree planting, we watched at least four or five Buffy eps, and two Angels. And FFed through a few more of each. I worry if we’ll be able to catch up, but it’s worth doing.
And, in return, I finally got around to loaning Doyce Season 3 of B5, and will be taping the Farscape stripping that SciFi is doing (though not this week, since it’s all on the tapes I already bought and loaned).
Media ‘R’ Us.
Trees, trees, trees This Labor Day weekend was, indeed, laborful. Sure, Friday was Dad-at-home, taking care of the Squig, while Margie worked at the office. And Saturday … well, that…
Trees, trees, trees
This Labor Day weekend was, indeed, laborful.
Sure, Friday was Dad-at-home, taking care of the Squig, while Margie worked at the office.
And Saturday … well, that was a golf day. Labor, but of a pleasant sort.
Really, it was all of a pleasant sort. Sunday, post-church, Margie and I went off to CostCo and bought four Gorilla Racks. Came home. And started in on the basement.
Long ago and far away, we had a relatively open basement. Between the initial move-in and some organizing elbow grease from Margie and Ginger (Margie’s mom), it was in pretty good shape. A little cluttered, but not bad.
But time and tide have worked their toll. Progressive Christmases have left boxes of decorations and wrapping materials in disarray. Storage of large items such as Margie’s old loom, the crib and various other baby things, have filled up space. The sewer blockage had left the contents of that room stacked in the rest of the space.
And, of course, there’s Old Man Entropy, making disorder out of order.
It was becoming an intolerable situation, and Doyce’s comments that, hey, we should get it cleaned up so we can use it for gaming made that even clearer.
So that’s what we did.
Not entirely, of course. But it’s a zillion times better than it was. All four gorilla racks are set up, some with boxes on them. Several dozen empty boxes or boxes of trash are in our dining room and living room and back deck, waiting to be put out at the street tomorrow night for the trash men. Things are stacked in a relatively efficient manner.
The trick, of course, is finishing the project. Going down there and getting boxes really loaded onto the racks, things back up where they belong, etc. With a little nudging, maybe I can do that this week. Or maybe not. But at least there’s space to walk around in, which is light years better than where we were before.
A tip of the hat to Doyce, for helping me with the racks, and to Jackie, for helping Margie with the organizational stuff. And Justin, natch, for both trash carrying and babywatching.
That was Sunday. Monday, we tried to return the favor.
Doyce and Jackie’s yard is, to be polite (and as polite as I need to be, since they are the first to tell you), a “fixer-upper.” Heavy on the grass and conifers. Light on the aesthetics.
Jackie got a coupon to Arapahoe Acres for money off a tree. This led to an off-the-cuff “let’s get a tree” party. Doyce determined that one or more of the low pines by the front door needed to go. I bundled up a box of tools and headed over, leaving Margie while Katherine went down for a nap.
Speaking from the perspective of having removed several large, overgrown junipers from the front of our house once upon a time, said junipers being embedded in several inches of clay-cemented decorative pebbles, I was expecting this to be a massive effort. In reality it was a walk in the park. About an inch and a half of pebbles. Dirt that was almost sandy in consistency. A stump with few tap roots, and a pickup truck with a chain to do the actual yanking. And minimal sticky-pokey branches and debris. Not to mention a young helper to clean up the cuttings.
Then off to the nursery to find an appropriate tree. Fittingly, Margie and I purchased two trees (a dwarf apricot and a semi-dwarf Jonathan apple), while Doyce and Jackie got a semi-dwarf Red Delicious apple.
A little shoveling, a little shifting around of rocks, and, voila, instant front yard tree. And it already makes their front yard look better.
One weird thing in this was my taking on the Jim (Kleerup) role — being the Elder, Experienced Advisor, suggesting grand plans and decorating ideas for the yard. Doyce & Jackie seem to welcome the advice, but I do keep waiting for the one piece of it too many. It also worries me that I might steer them wrong on one of these ideas.
Still, it’s kind of fun having a blank canvas like their yard to “work” in. There’s a lot that could be done, limited largely by money (of course) and willingness to get out there and sweat. And if I can help, it’s a pleasure to do so.
And it was neat getting a couple more trees, especially since we just discovered that the aspen in the east side yard has completely died. Not sure when we’ll install the apricot tree there (nor the apple tree on the east side), given my folks coming out around this next weekend, and the need to get the house cleaned before that, etc. Maybe some post-work yardwork. We’ll see.
Children are … complicating. From a purely pragmatic and selfish PoV, Katherine has complicated our lives immensely. Nights punctuated and interrupted by howls of varied distress, often requring getting up…
Children are … complicating.
From a purely pragmatic and selfish PoV, Katherine has complicated our lives immensely.
Nights punctuated and interrupted by howls of varied distress, often requring getting up to find out what the problem is and correct it, but always requiring arousal from sleep. The living alarm clock deciding it’s time for someone besides her to be up sometime between 5:30a and 8, regardless of whether it’s a work day or not, or whether the parents were up until 9 or Midnight, or were up during the night dealing with those distressed howls. Trying to keep her constantly amused so that she’s not screaming for attention. Tripping and dancing about various toys (and pieces thereof), pots and pans, and other dropped-where-interest-flagged detritus. The constant struggle to keep things out of her reach, which keeps getting longer, such that any horizontal surface becomes an emergency hosting place for coffee cups, books, papers, anything that shouldn’t be chewed, taken, or dropped. Outings that come to an abrupt halt because Katherine is too tired to be awake but too wired/unhappy to go down in her porta-crib. The inability to plan or execute any activity without working it around ad hoc right-now-dammit naps, feedings, bath time, bed time, or just I-want-to-crawl-in-your-lap-and-pound-on-the-keyboard sorts of demands, etc.
Heck, not being able to sit down and watch a movie on TV at night without at least one irresistable demand for food/visitation/re-binking from Our Mistress’ Voice. And having to be constantly attentive, waiting for said Voice, whether it comes or not.
There are times it gets incredibily frustrating. And harrying. It introduces a level of stress that leads to me grinding my teeth, Margie and I snapping at each other, and general misery.
It is something that nobody not in the situation can understand. Really. Trust me. I thought I did.
And yet …
Yesterday morning, I came downstairs, having slept in until 9:30a (albeit with multiple interruptions at wee hours of the morning), to find Katherine sitting on Margie’s lap on the sofa in the family room. And she was smiling, and happy, and full of joy, and she looked up and saw Daddy desending the stairs and the look on her face was just astonishingly precious. It made it all worthwhile.
At least until the next time I found myself grinding my teeth …
Back in the office after a long weekend. That’s always a mixed blessing. On the one hand, there are the mental pressures of Things that Need Doing which can finally…
Back in the office after a long weekend. That’s always a mixed blessing. On the one hand, there are the mental pressures of Things that Need Doing which can finally be released. On the other hand, it means getting up at 5 a.m. and dealing with … well, the stuff they actually pay me to do.
Last week we had a major server melt-down in the office — two RAID drives on the main NetWare server going bad, which turned out to be actually a bad SCSI cable to the backplane. Non-NetWare services weren’t affected, though, so no major impact on me.
On the other hand, this morning, with most NetWare services back up, our e-mail is running veeeerrrryyyy slowly, and usually timing out after 5 minutes or so of hitting it. Since e-mail is about 90% of what I do and/or how I do it, this is a Bad Thing.
Looks to be one of Those Weeks.
Let’s get married, We’re ready for tying the knot, Let’s get married, Set the seal on the feelings we’ve got, Let’s get married, We can make each other happy…
Let’s get married,
We’re ready for tying the knot,
Let’s get married,
Set the seal on the feelings we’ve got,
Let’s get married,
We can make each other happy or we can make each other blue,
Yeah, it’s just a piece of paper but it says “I Love You.”
For the good times,
For the days when we can do no wrong,
For the moments when we think we can’t go on,
For the family,
For the lives of the children that we’ve planned,
Let’s get married,
C’mon darlin’, please take my hand.
— The Proclaimers, “Let’s Get Married”
Love you, Margie. Even if it is cuter with a thick Scottish accent.
I have grown old enough that I have given up hope of owning a motorcycle. I know it’s dumb. I know it’s dangerous. I know it’s wildly impractical in this…
I have grown old enough that I have given up hope of owning a motorcycle.
I know it’s dumb. I know it’s dangerous. I know it’s wildly impractical in this climate (when it’s either sunny and hot, or snowy, or thunderstormy, none of which make for pleasant cycling).
I also know that Margie would break both my legs before she’d allow it. Even though I’d wear a helmet and jacket and pants and all the things necessary to avoid it becoming a “donorcycle,” as they so quaintly put it down at the ER.
My Nono (my Mom’s Dad) wanted a motorcycle when he was a youth. His mother disagreed. He went ahead and, when he had enough money, bought one. Hah! Take that, Mom.
The next morning, the tires were slashed.
Some lessons enter the genes. Natural selection at work, I suppose.
A nice evening. Margie barbecued two big steaks. I do have a few digestive difficulties, minor ones, when I eat that much beef at a time, but, wow, it is…
A nice evening. Margie barbecued two big steaks. I do have a few digestive difficulties, minor ones, when I eat that much beef at a time, but, wow, it is so tasty, it’s worth it. So far.
I didn’t claw my way to the top of the food chain just to eat leaves!
— Michael Rivero
The general convivial tone of the evening was not harmed when Margie spilled the sauce she’d made from the drippings and mushrooms and wine onto her dress, and so took it off.
Life is good.