twas the night before 'mas

I have an offline blog entry simmering on the back burner, collecting my feelings about this time of year, but I shall allow it to bubble and fizzle out for a while longer. Tonight is the night before xmas, part 2...

Tomorrow we trek up to St. Cloud, the new geographic center of the extended family universe ever since C and J moved to Fargo. So tomorrow we will be doing the xmas with my side of the family. And what is stirring in the house? Well, I FINALLY got Felix to go to sleep about 15 minutes ago, Andrea and her brother are in the dining room watching Home Movies and laughing quite a bit, the dog is off in his corner licking his paws in his typical OCD manner, and I'm in the basement, which still stinks of dog piss, quietly trying to figure out how to make video DVDs from AVI files in Linux.

For work I've taken it upon myself to drive the creative process for the next presentation. Our Star Wars themed version control movie apparently set the bar pretty high and other teams are feeling the pressure to produce something "creative" for January's quarterly meeting. Since the version control movie was done using stills of star wars figures, I htought I'd step this one up and try to do something that's animated. I have Anime Studio Pro which I think I can use to make 2d animations, sort of like South Park, but i need actual characters, etc and I don't know if i want to tackle trying ot draw them all...so then I decided to dabble with Poser, which is a 3D rendering program specifically for posing and staging scenes with human and animal 3D models. Spenty a good chunk of the day just trying to figure out how that program works, and ne4edless to say, it ain't easy to use.

Ah well...

security guard pre-requisites

"I've lost my coffee mug. Can you look in your lost and found to see if maybe someone turned it in?"

"Sure........nope, no mugs here. Where did you lose it?"


Duuuuhhhhhhhhhhh.
If I knew where I lost it, I'd have found it wouldn't I, and it wouldn't be lost and I would be talking to you...

out to get me down?

Sometime last week Google Calendar decided to start giving me some commentary every day. How depressing.

baby pictures

here it is!

Picture, details

gitterdone

I got my xmas early today when Sears delivered the new dryer. Of course, it wasn't without cost. When I approved the replacement, they told me to go to the SEARS website and look at the model they were going to purchase for us (they = home warranty company) to make sure that the measurements were OK. This is important, they said, because this is non-returnable, non-refundable. I'm thinking "It sits out in the open, not in a closet or enclosed space, how could it possibly not fit?" so I called back and said, "Yeah yeah, looks great. Gimme."

Today the delivery guys show up and I wave them around to the side door so they can take it straight down to the basement. The guy whips out his tape measure and measures the doorway. Uh....uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh. He says, "I think this door is going to have to come off. In fact..." he looks down the stairs and measures the width of the stairway at its narrowest point. "I think you need a flatback dryer. This ain't gonna fit." no no no no no no no.

"Well, this is a warranty replacement and its non-returnable, so its gotta fit. Tell me, what do we need to do?"

He looks at the stairs. "Well, I guess if this could come off it just might fit." He's pointing to the sort of mantle-like piece of wood the runs along at the top of the staircase. I don't know how else to explain it....maybe as a "ledge" where I tend to set tools and other stuff that needs to go downstairs. Anyway, I get my hammer and give it a few whacks on the bottom lip and up it comes. "Well....OK." He says. I take off the door as well while he and his partner uncrate the dryer. By the way, at that moment it was starting to actually snowing the first real snow we've had this year. The attach their lifting straps and whatnot and start to move the dryer in. The round the corner and are starting to ease down the stairs when they stop. "It's not wide enough," the one guy says. "Whaddya mean? It looks like you're already on the way down?" I say. "Naw, it's starting to rub, it won't fit. We could force it but it'll get scratched."

"Scratched, huh?"
"Yeah."
"Will it dry clothes?"
"Well....sure."
"Then f-ing scratch it. I've got a 5 month old baby who's diapers we've been drying on the damn radiators for a week and a half. If you guys showed up with a blow-torch I would have been happy. I don't care if it has scratches, just et it down there. Christ, the OLD dryer was crap when we bought the house, a few scratches aren't going to bother me. I'm the only one who's going to see the thing anyway."
"OK, here we go."
And the pushed and there was the noise of scraping, but it turned out mostly to just be paint and wood on the stairs. The dryer was delivered to my laundry room and they gave me a power cord. Yeah, weird how dryers don't come with the power cord attached. Then the guy looks, "Oh, you've got a 3-wire outlet....this is a 4 wire cord." Uuuuuuuh.
"No problem, I'll go get a 3-wire from the truck." whew.
The new dryer is beautiful.
I put on the power cord, the feet, an d set about trying to level it. Then I attach the vent from the old one. Its tight, but it works. Probably want to get some new venting, but that's no biggie.
I level it, make some adjustments to the feet and plug it in....
...except that the cord doesn't reach the socket. No. no no no no no.
So I move the dryer enough that the cord just reaches and, of course, the vent pipe comes off. I climb back there and reattach vent. And find I'm trapped between a tightly stretched power cord and a tightly stretched exhaust vent. I end up doing some limbo action to get myself out of there. The dryer is about a foot more forward than the washer and, in its new location I'm going to need to adjust the feet again....but anyway, I power it up and it works. Smells like burning something, but apparently that's to be expected on a new heating element.

So, next small project...replace the ledge in the stairs. And get a longer power cord and exhaust vent.

weekend shmeekend

Actually, all things considered, it wasn't a half bad weekend. ACTUALLY, all things considered, it was a pretty good weekend.

Last Saturday I called in to our home warranty company because our dryer, which as been on its last leg since we bought the house (and has been steadily losing its toes), finally kinda kicked the bucket. The belt or drive wheel no longer gets enough traction to spin the drum if anything heavier than a wet sock is in it. So I called them up last Saturday and they said someone would call me within 24 hours.
Sunday comes and goes.
Monday comes and in the afternoon I call back to say, "Nobody called me."
"Oh," they say, "It says the contractor said they don't go all the way out there." Out there? out where? We live smack dab in the middle of the damn city. "I'll put you on the redispatch list."
"Uh, yeah, its been two days now, can you give it some sort of priority or something?"
"Yes, I'll do that."
Tuesday.
Wednesday.
"Hey, nobody has contacted me yet."
"What? Oh, it looks like the contractor doesn't..."
"Yeah yeah, Jon's Appliance...I had this conversation two days ago. We were supposed to be redispatched, with priority..."
"Um...whoever said that must have forgotten. I'll redispatch..."
"Yeah, look, we're on day 5 with no dryer and I have a 5 month old baby. I've had the same conversation twice now..."
"Here, let me transfer you to a service agent and they will handle this for you directly."
"Uh, thanks I guess."
Muzak.
"Hello, how can I help you?"
"I called in on Saturday..." story continues.
"Ok, I'll find a contractor right now, can you hold?"
Muzak.
"Ok, um, the only contractor I was able to get in touch with was...SEARS, and they can't get out there until Monday. Is that Ok?"
"Monday? No, of course that's not ok, but what the hell am I going to do? If that's the best you can do, I guess I'm stuck with it. Can't you keep trying other contractors and hope someone can get here sooner? I NEED a dryer. I'm drying diapers on my freakin' radiators."
...
UPDATE: So we're getting a new dryer. Will only be a week or so before it arrives... gah!

looks like it worked

Day 2 with no messy coolant leak forming under the car...course, it has been raining all day yesterday so it was hard to tell, but this morning I checked again and it looks like the new radiator was the solution. With this sort of thing I'm always paranoid that I'll go through great expense or great effort and only partially fix the issue or in the process uncover other equally serious issues. Hasn't happened in this case yet.

NOTE TO SELF: Need to fix headlight.

conquest

YAR!!!!!!!!!

I finally finished working on the car. Tonight was another grudge match against the engineers at Ford. It was slow at times, frustrating, but in the end I won.

I installed new transaxle oil cooler lines, which was as hard as removing the old lines, as well as installing a new fitting on the tranny because the plastic "quick connect" clip (because nobody would actually buy a "This is going to take you 45 minutes just to install this line connect") broken when I removed the old line. And "removed" is putting it politely.

Once the new lines were in, I felt OK attempting to remove the radiator. Turns out the guys at the Taurus Car Club are right, you do NOT need to take off the bumper to replace the radiator. Besides, all of the hard stuff is on the engine side. If you really wanted to make removing and installing the radiator easier you'd remove the power steering pump, the alternator, and the AC hoses. Anyway, the whole radiator part only took about an hour, and most of that was just trying to remember where all those bolts went. I only ended up with one bolt leftover, and actually, I think I know where it goes and it is non-essential.

So, now the heat works great and so far as I can tell we're not leaking coolant...a little oil and maybe a teeny bit of brake fluid (at one of my last services I was infromed of some seeping or weeping from the brake master cylinder or slave cylinder? Can't remember which. Passenger side front wheel is all I remember). So, anyhow, I started Sunday around 2:30pm and finished Tuesday at about 1:45am. All told, the radiator only took about 2 hours. Most of the remaining time was spent driving around (tonight) looking for a replacement fitting or yanking on tranny oil cooler lines (last night and some of tonight). If I were to do this again, I expect it would take me maybe 3 or 4 hours total.

And the only known casualty is my passenger side head light bulb, which was the older of the two and was probably going to go out anytime.

We still need to have the cooling system flushed, though, but I'll let JiffyLube do that in a week or two.

Right now i have so much testosterone...

the saga continues

Good grief, somebody shoot me please. First of all, those jackasses at the service shops are f-ing full of shit. Second of all, Ford is f-ing full of shit to build a car around an f-ing radiator. I will never buy another ford. Probably. Unless its a Lincoln or something...whatever.

I spent almost all of today working on that goddamned radiator and curently I'm feeling somewhat defeated. It was looking bleak when I couldn't figure out what the instructions meant when they said, "Remove radiator mounting bracket assembly" and thought for sure I was going to have to remove the bumper cover and just the thought of doing that was very overwhelming. Here's why. The Haynes manual does this super nifty thing where to install a radiator is explained in less than 20 semi-detailed instructions. However, you'll find that step 11 is "Remove bumper. See chapter 8 for details" and so you go to chapter 8 and find the "remove bumper" section and it has 10 steps, step 5 is "Remove headlamps, see section 2" and step 12 is "remove fender liners, see section 4" which is another 8 steps, one of which is "Remove the wheels". I imagine this is the scenario that the service shop is trying to sell to me. HOWEVER, it just so turns out that the hard part about removing a radiator from a 97 Mercury Sable is the fact that the hoses all connect on the engine side of the radiator and there is little to no room to work. Keep in mind, this would be absolutely the same scenario if you took the whole front end off. The worst part is that the transmission oil cooler lines use a little plastic quick disconnect "tool", which, of course, only works if your line fittings are not rusted to your radiator, like mine are.

So, after getting off to a great start, floundering for a little while, then having a eureka moment and blazing away, I end up feeling defeated by a pair of poorly places and solidly stuck transmission cooler lines. So I had to give up for tonight. The only option I have is to cut the lines off the radiator so I can remove it, then I'll need to install new lines along with the new radiator. Which probably isn't a bad thing...just another operation I wasn't counting on and which on the face of it SHOULD be relatively simple and hopefully low cost. Right? And I take some small consolation that had I gone with a service shop they would have called me to let me know "Turns out your tranny cooler lines were rusted to the radiator and we had to cut them off, so you'll need new ones of those installed which will take 2 more hours and $200 in parts..." or something along those lines.

Mainly I just feel like I've let my family down, stranding us without a car for who knows how long. Hopefully I can get these lines at an auto parts store for a reasonable price and hopefully there are no more surprises. Oh, and I absolutely HATE spring wire hose clips. What a horrible idea those are.

And to top it all off I felt like shit (maybe it was just because I was practically swimming in antifreeze all day) because I was missing my son. I'm not supposed to be away from him like this on the weekends.

chasing geese

I now dedicate December as National Mechanical Failure Month, or, perhaps, National Bad Luck Month, or even National Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch Month. Definitely making it (if it isn't already) Empty Your Bank Accounts Month.

So, here's the story:

Andrea's dad offers us an early xmas present - he said he'll cover to cost of labor to get the radiator replaced. So I call up the place that gave me the best estimate, which involved buying a radiator from a radiator salvage place and then taking it up the street to a service shop to have it installed. They quoted me 3.8 hours (like the other places did) and an hour after I dropped it off, 20 minutes into the hour bus ride BACK to Minneapolis (both of these places are over in old St. Paul, on Rice Street) for work (late, by the way) I get a call from the shop. "Uh, there's an asterisk on the deal. Turns off this is a six hour job cuz that bumper has got to come off." Just like the first place I took the car to said. "Well, forget it then. I'll be back this afternoon to pick it up." Grrrrr. Even though the labor portion was being gifted to us, I'm not going to bump up the gift cost by hundreds of dollars. So I already bought the radiator ($75). I call another shop and ask them why this 3.8 hour job would suddenly turn into a 6 hour job? They say, "Doesn't make sense to us. None of our guys can remember ever having to take a bumper off to install a radiator." So I of course hit the library again, this time checking out the Haynes manual for my car and looking at the AllData database again (which one of the shops quoted me as having the alleged asterisk, which I could not find) for the service instructions. The Haynes manual mentions removing the bumper cover. The AllData instructions don't mention the bumper or bumper cover at all. So I scour the web, again, and this time I come across the Taurus Car Club which has tons of info in the forums. Lots of people saying that you don't need to remove the bumper, that the radiator comes out the bottom. Hrm.
Sigh. Ok, I have the part, and Andrea's dad had volunteered his garage and tools before he offered to pay for the service, so I decided I'd be taking him up on that (I'm going over today to try to do this repair...you can bet there will be an entry about how that goes) offer instead.

So, yesterday (Saturday), we're going about our semi-regular weekend schedule, which includes doing adult people laundry (instead of the baby people laundry I do at least every other day). I had started the laundry Friday night and dried half of our laundry over night. Saturday morning I was drying the first load of darks (always heavier due to the jeans, etc) and I thought I smelled burning rubber. Oh Great. Yeah, the drive wheel or belt or whatever on the dryer is slipping and won't turn the dryer drum if more than maybe a handful of socks are in there. Well, this thing has been on its last legs since we bought the house, and in the past month is has gotten louder and louder (screechy and scraping), the door latch broke so I'm holding the door closed with a 2x4 with angled ends (works pretty well, actually). Well, with cloth diapers we can't really afford to have the dryer out of commission for more than about a day. Luckily, all of our appliances are covered by our home warranty, so we pay $55 deductible and someone comes and looks at the dryer and at worst fixes it and at best, replaces it. I'm going to try to get this thing replaced if at all possible. Talk about a silver lining on this past dogshit week. But I'm not really expecting that. But who knows...maybe the time it takes to fix the dryer will be more than the cost to just replace it...I'm not looking for a nice stainless steel industrial grade dryer (though that would be nice), just your basic front loader that was made before 1980. Our current dryer is a Monkey Wards brand dryer, if that tells you anything about how old it is. So, the guy from the appliance place hasn't called me yet (supposed to get a call within 12 hours? Riiiiight) to set up the appointment. I expect they will call me on Monday when they check their messages. Which means I'll probably be taking a half day sometime this week to deal with that...

And now, after continuing to drive the car with not much trouble at all (heat works after awhile, car is not over heating, but still see fluid leaking) I'm starting to worry that the leak might not be in the radiator at all, but could be a hose or the reserve tank. But the first service shop, the ones who actually DID diagnostics, a pressure test, etc, said that it was the radiator and thus delivered the quote for 6 hours work, $600. AND THEN EXTRA TO FLUSH. That's what gets me. Shouldn't a cooling system flush be fucking included in this type of service???? That's one of the reasons I may not go back to that place. So far the only thing they have going is that they are close to where we live.

Ok...enough for right now. Perhaps my next entry will be when I am glowing with the satisfaction of DIY done good and having saved $$$.

And of course, to further put worry bees in my bonnet, my dad asks me, "Did you ask a Ford dealer what they would charge for the service?" No, of course not, I assumed they would cost more than anyone else. "Bad assumption..." he says. Well, whatever their quote, I'm past the point of no-return. Right now my biggest concern is what am I going to do at Andrea's dad's house for 3 hours while we wait for the engine to cool...

ah to be a stay at home dad

I took off two weeks (vacation) to stay home after Felix was born. Other than that, I've never taken more than maybe 5 days of vacation at a time, and 90% of the time I only take off a single day. So, I tend to accrue vacation time quicker than I use it. In fact, in the past month I've taken off three days (including today) which is a lot, if you ask me. I've taken off one day each week for the past three weeks to stay home and help take care of Felix. This is as much a benefit to me (getting to spend a whole day with Felix is great, especially when its not a weekend day) as it is for Andrea (having someone else around to occupy Felix, as well as another adult person to talk to during the day helps break the isolation, just a little).

Now, I work with people who I have a hard time imagining they have any vacation time left because A) I've been here longer and B) they seem to be on vacation all the time. Mostly doing half-week stints at least once a month and a spare Monday or Friday during at least one of the other weeks that month. And, for people (I'm saying "people" because I don't want to single a person out, even if not using any names...who knows who reads this thing anyway, right? Learned THAT lesson already!!!) who take so much time off...they also seem to be taking the most sick days too.

It does make me a little self-conscious, taking these days off, but at least I planned them well in advance and picked them strategically to try and have the least impact on my team. Some people barely give any notice and don't seem to take into account the fact that they may even be on-call when they are scheduling their "vacations" (last minute or not).

I'm all in favor of having a healthy work-life balance (its why I'm home today), but it is possible to be leaning too far in the life direction to really be fair to your work. Of course...who knows whats going on behind the scenes.

Anyway, I'm home today and I feel pretty good about it since I did more than my part to keep things running and even advance them along the way. The big project I'm working on, the one I have been working on since October (where I replaced that guy, who is now back...and I'm still doing most of his job on the project) keeps getting held up by technical issues. And each time, what do you know, who figured it out, wrote a little script, or debugged a piece of code, that got everything back up and running? Me. I am a troubleshooting mofo fo' sho'. (*snicker* Felix's monogram is FSHO, F'sho'!)

Right now is the "quiet" part of the morning when Andrea and Felix are still trying to squeeze in another hour of sleep. I put quiet in quotes because, on this day, the garbage trucks in the alley next to our house start at about 5am. Apparently the dumpsters for the apartment building across the alley are a target of opportunity for every single waste management company, as it sounds like no less than three different trucks have pulled in, picked up, and slammed around those f'ing dumpsters. What is this, garbage truck school?

And in other news, my Linux home initiative is still underway. The main computer was reloaded Linux, then returned to the previous Windows install (different drives) when I couldn't get Samba working the way I wanted it (rather, I didn't know how to set it up) which cut us off from our night time entertainment (big no-no) on nights when no netflix arrived. I have since switched back to Linux, have samba working, bit torrent working, and, through the glory of VNC, I am able to do almost everything without going down into the basement. So we are now Linux in the basement and using our laptops (OSX and WinXP) in the rest of the house. And it is relatively seemless. The other nice thing about VNC (better than Windows Remote Desktop, I think) is that it is fast and unobtrusive. If i have 10 minutes, I can pop onto the Linux box remotely, work on something, and then put it down as quick as necessary if Felix or Andrea call. Current Linux project I'm working through is getting Wine (a Windows "integration layer" to allow running Windows programs almost natively in Linux) to work so I can still take advantage of certain Windows programs that are particularly useful, like DVDShrink and DVD Decrypter. The main trouble lies in the fact that I'm running 64-bit Linux and not every software package is available in binary format (precompiled) for 64-bit systems. The nice thing is, with a little extra work (or if you tap the right resources, with someone else's little bit of work) you can usually compile these applications yourself or wait for someone else to do it for you, and voila! It usually works.

Now, if I could only find a way to make the dog much quieter as he tromps up and down the stairs....THAT would be a big win.

when it rains it pours

So, over the past few days we have made some hard decisions and some unfortunate discoveries. It's been good news-bad news the whole time.

Turns out our heater isn't broken, its just that we're low on engine coolant! That's good.
We're low on coolant because there is a coolant leak. That's bad.
Auto service place says, "You're absolutely right, there is a bad leak in your radiator." That's sorta good.
"And by the way, we found a leak in your oil pan. AND we're going to charge you $45 to tell you you were right in the first place." That's bad.
"To fix your car, we will charge you $1000!" That's good for them. Bad for us.
I hope that my silent scowl while paying $45 is correctly interpreted as "F-you bastards for telling me nothing i didn't already know and having the balls to charge me for it." That's highly unsatisfying.
I get quotes for the same work from various radiator shops around town that are all much lower than this place. That's good!
None of the quotes are under my new $100 policy regarding this car. That's bad.
I can buy a reconditioned, warranteed radiator for about $75. That's good!
Supposedly this model and year of car is a bitch to do radiator work on, which is why all the estimates were so high in the first place. That's bad.
My father-in-law has volunteered his garage and tools and to help do the work ourselves. That's good.
It's still going to cost at least $75+ and probably an entire day of work to do it ourselves, and if we screw something up could put the car out of commission (always an option when I'm involved). That's bad.
The dog had diarrhea and shit in the middle of the living room in the middle of the night. That's bad.
I got to mop the entire downstairs of the house, a chore that was long overdue. That's good.
The dog did it again two nights later, this time pooping in the living room and in the dining room, both in the exact locations where we either put Felix down on his play mat or where we sit his bouncy seat. Seems like something more is going on. That's bad, bad, bad.
We do some soul searching and finally decide that the dog needs to go live in the country. That's bad and good.
Suzanne is going to lend us her crate so we can more easily contain and minimize clean up the dog when Andrea goes out. That's good.
If the dog can actually be crate trained, he might not need to go live elsewhere. That's really good. Good for everyone.
Dog still needs to be trained, which is time consuming and the whole reason why he hasn't been trained yet. That's bad.
Andrea and Felix will still be trapped at home during the day until we can use the crate...and even more so now that it is so cold and the car has no heat. That's BAD.
And of course it is getting very cold and we have a drafty old house, which means our heating bill has already started heading for the ceiling, which is just bad in general, but not our most impending bad news. I would consider that to be part of the general ambient seasonal badness.

I honestly think that Xmas is the magical wonderful time it is for children specifically because they never know what their parents are going through.

"working at home"

I'm doing a domestic shift today, staying home with Felix to give A a break. Started the day off right too...Ash kept waking us up last night so at 4:00am I took him out back so he could pee. Came back in and went to bed. An hour later he was back at it. I shushed him and went back to sleep. I eyes snapped open twenty minutes later to the smell of dog shit. Right in the center of the living room. Ash has his issues, but incontinence isn't really one of them unless he's left alone in an enclosed space (in which case he gets freaked out, pees (or poops if the space is large enough), then freaks out even more because he just peed or pooped and knows it was the wrong thing to do. Anyway...the point is, our routine is to go out between 6:30 and 7:30am for a skate/run/walk/bikeride around the park. On weekends we might not make it out until 9, maybe 10am. So, he's demonstrated the ability to hold his poo for quite a while in the morning. So on the one hand, I guess I should have paid more attention when he was insistent, but on the other hand, I thought he was just being a brat (over the past few months he's been getting worse with requesting attention, competing with Felix). Wrong again! Anyway, so I cleaned it up. Thus started my "day off" which isn't a day off, its just a day working at home, on home stuff. So, why not start the day with a dirty nasty job? Ugh. In a few minutes I'm going to be washing all of the floors, which I might as well have done had the dog not dumped in the living room since its been at least a month and a half since the last time I did...maybe even longer, so they really could use it anyway.

Felix fell asleep on my shoulder while I wrote this. I don't think that he has fallen asleep in my arms since he was a month old. I coul be wrong. Maybe every time seems like the first time?

So, warning, I'm about to do the proud parent thing:
Every day Felix amazes us. Parents out there are probably nodding their heads while non-parents are probably smirking and making little gagging pantomimes. That's ok, I used to do the same thing. Honestly, I'm still a little wierded out when other people are interested in even just hearing about my kid, and they get all "awww" and "yeah, that's so great". I'm like, "What? Yeah of course *I* think he's great and I'll tell you he's great...but why are you getting so jazzed up by it?" I think babyhood is something of a drug and people like to get a contact buzz or something. Whatever!

I have yet to punch a stranger for touching my child without permission, but just you wait...it just might happen this shopping season. And now, back to work.

hobbies

OK...so since Felix came along I've sort of put most of my hobbies on the back burner because I want to do my fair share of child-rearing and currently that means trying to take care of him as much as possible when I'm available (a.k.a. not at work) and also give Andrea as much of a break from it as possible since she is the one who is, essentially, doing that job full-time and after hours on-call as well (he still wakes up at least once a night for feeding). So the hobbies I kept up with are mainly ones that can be done on the bus ride to and from work (scribbling story outlines in my notebook, watching TV shows on my laptop). Andrea has essentially put her career goals on hold to raise Felix so I think giving up my after-work entertainment and hobbies like aikido and taking apart/putting together computers (and associated computer tinkering) is not that huge of a sacrifice in comparison. And of course, both Andrea's full-time career and my part-time hobbies, are not gone for good, just on hold until Felix lets us resume them to whatever degrees we can.

That said...I think I'm finally going to make the switch from running Windows to Linux as my main home OS. Ubuntu has gotten to the point where I feel I can really, honestly, replace XP as the OS on the "main" computer. And part of the reason for this is particularly BECAUSE of my hobby reduction. What are the reasons for using Windows? Because you need it for A) most commercial software B) almost ALL commercial games. Honestly, I don't buy a lot of software. Almost none, really. I've "sampled" quite a bit of software and many games (in the past, not really so much at all in the recent past).

But what do I do with my home computer right now? I download TV shows. I burn DVDs. I browse the web. Maybe do some email. And every once in a while run a webcam to capture police raids in my neighborhood. Mostly my home computer just sits and downloads TV shows and then serves them up to us to watch on a laptop somewhere else in the house.

So here's the thing: I don't have time for games, especially not the super whizzbang new games that come out now. I'd love to, but don't, probably won't ever, have time (or even money) for doing video editing (other than the once-a-year fun project at work). My current hardware, which will not see any major upgrades in the forseeable future, is not cutting edge and probably won't support Vista anyway. So, as the next MS OS is coming out, I might as well move completely off of MS. ALSO, Andrea is a Mac user and I can't imagine that the communication between a Linux computer and her Unix-based OSX laptop could be any worse (and probably even better than) than that with a Windows machine. And to top it off, I have an AMD64 processor that is going to waste running standard XP (I never made the leap to Xp 64 because it sounded like a LOT more work and poor peripheral support). Why not run a 64-bit Ubuntu which is much better (and freely) supported?

So, maybe sometime in the next few weeks our mother's helper will provide enough slack for Andrea that can trickle down to me and allow me to reload my computer with Ubuntu... we shall see.

And by the way, boy is it ever dead at work on the day after Thanksgiving.

scare tactics

Andrea and I have been reading Richard Dawkins's latest book, "The God Delusion" and it has been fueling some very interesting discussions between us. Not debates, mind you, just discussion. Not to shock anyone (unless you've been asleep for oh, I dunno, several years) but we're both atheist. As the resident religious escapee in our equation (she didn't have a religious upbringing, I was raised Catholic...sort of) I am often asked for background or insider knowledge about what she is learning from Dawkins's book. And before you all go frantically running off to Amazon, let me warn you, if you are deeply religious this book will make you uncomfortable, and likely angry, due to Dawkins's unapologetic, openly hostile view towards religion, all religions. And also know that there are several reviews posted that make it sound like a bad book. Well, take those reviews with a grain of salt. If you Google phrases from the reviews, you may eventually find the ACTUAL authors of the reviews and not the stupid plagiarists who are clearly on a campaign to badmouth Dawkins. OK, that caveat aside, its a very good read if you are atheist or agnostic (may put the final nail in your religious coffin if you are agnostic) or an open minded, free-thinking, religious person. (snicker)

Anyway, the final chapters of the book deal with Dawkins's own proposal that religion in general does more harm than good, especially to children. You might be wondering what sort of wacko childhood this guy must have had to be so vehement opposed to religion and his likening religious education to child abuse. Well, it turns out that he doesn't have a religious upbringing. Which actually makes a lot of sense.

Ok, so what I'm getting at is that Andrea is discovering all of these things she never even knew about Catholicism (it is a frequent example in his later chapters, though throughout the book all religions are made fair game), some of which she finds quite scary. Last night she found out about the good old Catholic "emergency bathtub baptism" clause. She read the anecdote from the book about a young Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, in Italy in the 17th Century who was forcibly taken from his family by the papal police so he could be given a Catholic upbringing. Turns out his baby-sitter was a Catholic teenager who secretly baptised him when he was sick because she was afraid he might die and go to hell. Andrea asked me if I had heard of this practice (the ability of anyone to baptise anyone else if they thought the need was there, not 17th century Papal policies). My reply was, "Oh yeah. Everyone has heard about a friend of a friend being baptised by their aunt because they were sick and no priests were available, you know, just in case. I don't think the Catholic church preaches about babies going to hell anymore though...i think now they just hangout in limbo or something." She was mortified.

spousal support

Oh no! Blogging from work again!
Just kidding. I took the day off to take care of Felix. Last Friday we had a woman come and "mother's helper" for Andrea for a couple hours as an interview/trial. Sounds like she'll work out! I had already taken a day off for this week and next week to stay home and give A. a break. Felix is taking his second nap so I'm talking this chance to catch up my blog a little bit.

Work is great. As great as it can be I guess, meaning they are still paying me and my job doesn't suck. Work takes on a new flavor when you have a kid. On the one hand, going to work every day provides a lot of structure and regularity and a small respite from the times when Felix is having a bad day. Lately he's been congested so we have to suction out his nose. Not fun for him, not fun for us. Also, he seems to sleep less and less during the day, and he pushes bedtime back further and further. He usually sleeps through the night, or at least until about 4 or 5am. But when he gets tired, instead of falling asleep, he gets cranky. But over the past couple days he's gotten a lot better. I think, as the administration might put it, we've turned a corner, we'll stay the course!

Actually, Felix is a pretty happy baby. Its just that he gets to a certain time in the evening when he is done for the day but he doesn't want to admit it. That's when he gets grumpy.

I was playing with him on his butterfly mat/toybar the other night when he, out of nowhere, just rolls over from laying on his back. I was looking right at him. He just sort of went up on his side and then whump, rolled onto his tummy like it was nothing. "Uh....honey...Felix just rolled over onto his stomach." Andrea rushed into the living room from the kitchen, "He did?!?!?!" "Yep."

See, up to this point I've been missing the first times because they usually happen at work. "He just rolled over onto his back!!!!" "Oh yeah, he's been doing that for a couple days now," she says in an offhand manner. "WHAT??? Why didn't you tell me that?" "I did but you weren't listening..."

So I finally got my own Felix First. And I got another one today. He fell asleep while I was bottle feeding him. Bottle feeding has been something of a necessary evil around here and he usually only eats just enough to stave off complete hysteria. When he nurses with mom, of course, its the most relaxing thing in the world so he frequently falls asleep or continues to sleep-nurse. Well, no sleep eating from the bottle.

And he's awake...gotta go.

chips are down

So it was an eventful election day. Most of minnesota went respectably blue, though we still have a red governor and the crazy jesus candidate in the sixth district won as well, so there's another bible-thumping, gay-hating, science disbelieving, Dubya disciple walking into the halls of Congress in January (or whenever the turnover date it). But, i am proud to inform you, I voted for and helped elect the first muslim Congressman of the USA, ever. Good job me.

Of course, these US Senate races will be undetermined for probably...oh I dunno, until Bush is out of office. Yeah, Virginia and Montana, I'm talking to you. Ohio is so happy that they got to shirk the mantle of being at fault for our current administration. Are you sure you guys want to know what that feels like by not doing right? As if there were ever a time NOT to be depending on Virginia and Montana to go all sensible on us...

Ah well. At least the future is a little brighter.

weekend warrior

So the weekend is over and I'm back at work, drinking my coffee and getting the feel of my professional surroundings once again. The weekend was blissfully uneventful insofar as I did not go anywhere or "do" anything. I was basically the babydaddy all weekend which is nice and tiring at the same time. On the weekends I get a slight taste of what Andrea does all day every day and so learn to appreciate even more that she is able to stay home with Felix.

Not that nothing happened, it was actually a weekend rife with activity and circumstance.
A) Dad came up on Thursday night to help me do some emergency plumbing (no, not radiateors again, NEVER AGAIN) on the kitchen sink which had essentially completely fallen apart both top and bottom in the course of a day. Technically not the weekend, but it was close enough.
B) Mom and dad stopped by to drop off some clothes for Felix (a big bag from Dave and Anne, THANKYOU!) since he's outgrown just about everything. I think he's going to be not just a big kid, but possibly a tall kid. We think Andrea might have some tall genes we don't know about.
C) Sunday night when Andrea's dad stopped by to visit us (Felix) for dinner he brought apple pie. Unfortunately Felix was so congested and it was "that time of day" so he was pretty crabby and not very excited to see anyone, so grampa only got to hold and bounce and dote in Felix for about half of the time he was there. And his drivers side window got smashed in while his car was parked on our street. While helping him sweep up the window glass, we found what appeared to be a broken glass bottle in his car, so it would seem someone threw a glass bottle from a moving car or otherwise hurled it through his window. I don't think this should really reflect on our neighborhood badly since it was probably someone who does not live here who did this. That's the problem with living in a decent neighborhood surrounded by bad neighborhoods. The people going from one to another bad area tend to fuck it up for everyone. Its like, just because you're an asshole who doesn't have anything and you hate your life doesn't mean you have to make everyone else hate you too, by tagging on houses or smashing windows or doing other property damage. Asshole.

so, hey, just in case this is a popular past time for the local assholes (we got our window smashed a while ago too) make sure you have comprehensive with no glass deductible if you plan on parking on our street after dark. Just a suggestion. Or I can point you to a good glass place that had good turn around. And a drivers side window costs about $220 if you pay out of pocket. They charge your insurance like twice that if you have insurance (which we didn't at the time, we do now!).

Ok, now I'm back to work. It has also been the most uneventful on-call week for me (knock on wood). Only 1 more day to go.

boo

I start my week rotation as On-Call today. See you all on the other side.

Oh, and I need to buy halloween candy. As homeowners I think we're obligated to hand out candy or something. We don't want to be Halloween Scrooges just because we're antisocial! The past few years it has been easy to skip halloween because our front door was on the back of the house and not somewhere that kids would generally go (I wouldn't let MY kids go up to my front door if I were their parents...).

So, who knows. Maybe we'll stick Felix in a pillow case as a micro-boo and let him experience his first Halloween. Except that its supposed to be like 30 below tonight. Ahhhh, halloween.

felix

For the record, Felix weighed in today at 15lbs, 4oz. So it appears his rapid weight gain has slowed somewhat, though he seems much taller, so he is still growing.

crackshack video

By popular demand, the crackshack video.

negligent

Well, I've been busy. I haven't really been doing much at work except for work and I've been doing nada at home but Felix fathering. I have no hobbies that can't be squeezed into the 30 minute bus ride or my lunch hour.

Actually, AT work I was able to do one fun thing, which was to produce a short video explaining the basic background of source control using StarWars figures as the actors. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of hard work. Makes me want to make more movies though...if only I had the time.

Felix is growing like a weed. A very sturdy, solid, weed. Seriously, the kid is like a brick. He's going to be a big boy when he grows up, is all I'm saying. Bigger than dad for sure.

Right now I'm sneaking some moments while doing diaper laundry. Since the washing machine only takes 20 minutes but the dryer (have to run dry cycle twice on a medium to full load) takes all of 150 minutes. So I usually try to get the washing done and kick of round 1 of the dryer before going to bed, then if Felix wakes up in the night, I kick off round 2 then or start it when I wake up in the morning. He's been sleeping through the night on a semi-permanent basis so I've had to start setting the alarm clock again. Anyway...seems like i never have enough time to get laundry done or really to do much of anything else. Though Sunday Felix was good and went right to sleep while I was watching him (Andrea was out) and stayed asleep almost all night. I was actually able to do some reading. For work. Sad, isn't it? But I'm filling in for someone at work while they are on a month-long vacation and doing my best to make sure that they don't have the same job when they come back (I'm an associate, he's a Sr., and I've been doing his job AND my job for all of October, as well as side projects). Sure, I got the midyear bump, but I don't want anyone to think I'm being complacent. Besides, I have a family and when it comes to promos and annual increases, having a senior engineer sitting around and sucking up a disproportionate chunk of the budget while I'm clearly capable of doing his job, possibly even better, WHILE doing my regular job. well, you can see. It's a dog eat dog world in some cases and I need to maximize the input and minimize the timeframe. I just got a new manager, but things are looking good there too.

booyah

I didn't get the promotion at mid-year that I was hoping for, but instead HR decided that they weren't paying me enough so I got a raise. AND, I'll still be elligible for promo in December and another annual increase in March. I'm workin' it, fo sho!

knock knock

who's there?
POLICE
As in, police battering ram knocking in the door of the crack shack across the street. Yup, once again A. and I were having a meal when we heard a noise (we thought someone was smashing up our car). Turns out it was just the cops executing a full-on commando style raid on the shack. And I got it all on the cam...well, every 5 seconds of it until it got too dark. Weird thing is, I don't know if they arrested anyone. We saw them let some people go. But then a van pulls up and a contractor gets out and starts boarding the building up. Crazy. Unfortunately a lot of the guys probably weren't home. The car that is usually there was gone, so it looked like the place was full of the fat dude, the skinny dude, one of the ho's, and a bunch of little kids. How sad. And animal control confiscated the dog. So bizarre. Never a dull moment!

crack shack

So i set up a little webcam in my attic so I could monitor the activity at the crackshack across the street. The program I'm using to capture the feed from the webcam is an open source app called Fwink. Unfortunately, it isa pretty barebones and doesn't have an archiving or auto-naming function, it just takes a snapshot and saves it to a specific filename every X amount of seconds (or minutes or hours).

SInce I can't really be monitoring this thing all the time, the archive would be nice. So I htink I'll write a little vb script to run that will automatically copy this image file to an archive directory with a new, incremeneted, filename. That would be a lot more useful.

Yes, I suppose I could set up a live stream, but saving an archive of THAT would be very space consuming.

what a cute little pumpkin monkey boy

Do you find, as a parent, that you string together the most bizarre terms of endearment when talking to your baby?

captain stupendo

Well, I've done it again. Disregard the birthday fiasco with my stint as an amature plumber that made it rain in my kitchen. Oh no. That was nothing. Tonight, after a sumptuous dinner, Andrea and her brother took Felix upstairs to hang out in the bedroom and read magazines. Ah ha! A Friday night and there are more than enough people to manage Felix's feedings and diaper changes. I better jump on this opportunity!

So I close the door to the basement, open all the windows and the door to the outside at the top of the basement stairs, and I dust off the wooden rocking chair that I have been lightly sanding over the past few days. What better time to get that first coat of primer on it? I'm planning on working on this project tomorrow, but it's supposed to rain tomorrow like it did today, so who knows. I've got the basement ventilated and closed off from the rest of the house. So I start painting. I get about 1/4 of the way done with the first coat of primer (spray-on primer) when Andrea throws open the door at the top of the stairs.

"What the hell are you doing?!?!?!?!?!"
I'm getting a head start.
"The entire house is filled with noxious fumes! Stop doing that right now. Are you insane?????"

It's one of those moments when you think to yourself, "How can they possibly smell this two stories up???" But sure enough...the whole house smells like spray paint.

I dunno. It seemed perfectly rational when i started. So now I've got all the windows opened, door opened, fans blowing and Andrea has taken Felix to her brother's for the night. I feel about this tall [

deeper and deeper in

Have you ever had one of those projects where it starts out something simple like, oh, change a flat tire but by the time you are done you've installed a brand new transmission? I'm starting to get the feeling I'm halfway down the road on this one.

Last week it got chilly for a couple of nights. Andrea requested heat and I figured, no time like the present to check out our new boiler. Well, I discovered that while MOST of the radiators worked great, the one in the baby's room wasn't heating up at all. Hrm. That's kind of a required area as far as heating goes. So I try the valve. No knob. Hrm. No biggie, I take the knob from the radiator in the bedroom and put use it on the radiator in the baby's room. After much heaving and hoeing I finally got it to move just a pinch in the direction of OPEN. Huh. Wait, what's that? a drip of water? another one...a leak. Close the valve! So I crank on it theo ther way and it goes a little bit in that direction...but it still leaks. Ugh. So now I've gone from no heat to a leak...

The obvious answer is "Fix the valve" but since the valve barely turns as it is, well, I figure we might as well go and just replace the valve. After all, this is in the baby's room and i want everything working tip top not half-assed. So I go to Home Depot with pictures on my laptop any everything and find their plumbing specialist. "Oh sure no problem, you just replace the valve. No problem. Shut off the intake and you get no water coming out. You fix it, sure." (btw he's mexican or something. I say, "But what about all of the water inside the radiator?"

"Oh yes, I see your question. Very true." So I thank Yoda and buy a pipe wrench, the biggest steam radiator valve they have, and a radiator key (needed one anyways). it would seem to be a simple operation. Well, anyways, I go down and turn off the boiler, shut of the gas, and set the thermostat to the lowest setting (35 deg). Then I close off all of the water valves I can find (making careful note of which valve was ALREADY off) and then open up the boiler's drain outlet. Luckily, it has threads and I can attach a hose to it and run it to the utility sink in the laundry room. So I drain that out. Then, after dinner I start working on the valve. yup, there's still plenty of water in that radiator. Being that there's pretty low clearance beneath the radfiator, I'm using these short, sandwich-sized tupperware containers to catch the water and dump it into my 4 gallon bucket. Did that for about 15 minutes and thought to myself, "I have a shopvac, what the hell am I making such a big mess with this silly system for?" So then I used the tupperware to catch the water but then sucked it up using the shop vac asa sorta secondary reverse water pump...and after about 20 minutes and two shop-vacs of water later the gush was just a drip drip drip.

So, now i have the valve disconnected from the radiator. No problem...however, I can;t seem to get the valve disconnected from the pipe that sticks up out of the floor. Sigh.

This project started as troubleshooting a cold radiator and now I've moved on to replacing plumbing fittings...next thing I'll be replacing all of the pipes o the house. By the end of this I expect I'll have a new bathroom installed as well as Central Air.

It is starting to feel like this old home should have come with a Home Depot line of credit as well.

Anyway, I'm attempting to enlist my next door neighbor and his handy-man friend to help me out with this. We'll see how it goes.


Oh, and tomorrow is my 31st b-day. in 20 minutes, I'm officially over 30. I will have passed the last of the events listed in the header of my blog. i guess its all down hill from here.

interesting side note:
Google "replace radiator valve"" and you'll find that almost all hits will be within the UK. Weird! Better make sure you have the right sized spanner!

my thoughts exactly

Wondermark

I have thought this same thing EXACTLY.

And we just had Felix's 2-month checkup/vaccinations. If you are a parent I don't have to tell you how horrible THAT appointment is. It was all I could do to keep from punching the nurse out.

Anyway, Felix now weighs 13lbs, 10oz, is 23 inches long, and I forget how big his head is.
Those measurements are in the 97th, 76th, and 53rd percentile, respectively. But the weird thing is, he isn't a fat baby. I've seen some fat, I'm talking megasaurus, babies and he's not one. He must just be really dense. Must be all that muscle...and maybe those big hands and feet. But yeah, now momma is going to try to satisfy his frequent sucking urges with something other than a feeding. But he's totally not fat. it's bizarre.

mfing pos aholes

This morning Andrea decided to get out the vote. She puts Felix in the carseat and then closed the door. When she did so, the driver's side front window of the car shattered, showering the inside of the car with the tempered shards of glass. It appears that at some point, someone hit our car. From her description, it sounds like there is some paint or something and a slight scrape on the door, but otherwise the window was the only thing that appears really damaged. So, $200 down the drain to buy a new window and I'm kinda sorta wishing we had our own driveway, but you know, it coulda happened anywhere. Anyway, of course Andrea was pretty shaken up because, you know, glass exploding all over the inside of the car with Felix in his carseat is pretty traumatic. Felix is OK. Andrea is OK. We're all pissed off.

Comprehensive coverage with full glass coverage is only about $12 more per month. I think we'll be doing that as soon as we can get it inspected. Here's hoping that all the little dings and such don't disqualify us.

church v. state facts

We watched an episode of "30 Days" in which an athiest was sent to live amongst Christians (notice the big C, as in non-denominational, bible-toting, megachurching, born more than once christians). It was a very interesting episode and I learned some factoids about myself and other free-thinking brethren.

That IN GOD WE TRUST is on the money and UNDER GOD is in the pledge of allegiance is not really proff that the USA was founded upon a religion.

In God We Trust first appeared on the 1c and 2c coins in 1864 and wasn't added to all currency until 1966. From the US Treasury currency fact-sheet:

A law passed by the 84th Congress (P.L. 84-140) and approved by the President on July 30, 1956, the President approved a Joint Resolution of the 84th Congress, declaring IN GOD WE TRUST the national motto of the United States. IN GOD WE TRUST was first used on paper money in 1957, when it appeared on the one-dollar silver certificate. The first paper currency bearing the motto entered circulation on October 1, 1957. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) was converting to the dry intaglio printing process. During this conversion, it gradually included IN GOD WE TRUST in the back design of all classes and denominations of currency.

The words "Under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 by Congress as the result of a campaign by the Knights of Columbus.

So, while there is officially only 5% of the US population that is atheist, I suspect the number is actually higher but many people do not openly admit it. So hey, finally, a 16-35 year old white male finally, legitimately, belongs to an oppressed minority group.

And if you think athiests are not oppressed...think again. How comfortable would you feel if our currency had "There is no god" printed on it? (borrowing from one of the people on the show). Yeah.

And why isn;t there any mention of God, any god, in the constitution?

Its funny, because as much as people following different religions have problems getting along, they at least have the common experience of beliving in a god, so they relate to eachother in terms of, "Oh, you've just got the story a little mixed up". It realy is comparing apples to apples. Whereas the atheist is unrelatable. "You think the story is fiction? No, no, non-fiction, no-fiction! See? It's in a book and everything."

Of the dialogues between the atheist and the Christians, one of the most tellings exchanges went something like this:

C - So, I know what you DON'T believe in. But what do you believe in?
A - That you should treat everyone well and you are responsible for your actions. Everyone should act morally and ethically.
C - But, I mean...how do you know that's right? We have the Bible. What do you have? What tells you what's right and wrong?
A - There is no text. I believe these things are correct because they are logical, rational ideas, they are what I would consider natural laws.
C - But who tells you what's right or wrong?
A - Who tells YOU what is right or wrong?
C - God. The Bible.
A - Logic. Reason. I can figure out what is wrong or right myself through reason, natural law. The golden rule.

Very telling. Think about that.

life events

So the other day I bought my first coffee maker. Finish reading before sending me emails saying, "But you could have had my coffee maker!" because I know I have scads of dads who are probably eager to give me their coffee makers as an excuse to buy a brand new one that they've had their eyes on for a while. I KNOW I can probably take my pick of the second-hand coffee makers and I still may. I bought a simple French-press, which is the coffee equivalent of a tea strainer.

I figure that if I'm going to turn into my dad, I might as well commit to it. I've been a candy-coffee (cafe mocha) drinker for years. I hadn't quite been able to get used to the oily bitterness of water-straight-off-the-bean coffee. As I get older and my palate becomes both more finely tuned and (oddly) more forgiving, I find the previously mentioned bitter water to be less offensive, in fact, possibly enjoyable with the right additives. I think i am sliding down the slippery slope that Starbucks convinced so many to perch upon when they made coffee saturated with chocolate and whipped cream available to the masses. Consuming the mochas, mint mochas, turtle mochas, and white chocolate mochas, one creeps ever closer to diabetic coma sugar saturation. So you start to scale back your additives. Whipped cream is slowly replaced with lots and lots of half&half, chocale syrup with plain sugar from packets. And as the amount of these additives is reduced, you must switch from espresso to regular coffee as the base liquid because, on its own, espresso is terribly horrid stuff (please send hatemail to startbucks@starbucks.com). Next thing you know, you're ordering a tall dark roast that you add one cream and two sugars to. Then, one day, maybe out of curiosity or out of a coffee condiment shortage induced desperation, you take it black. And it doesn't kill you. And maybe you do it again the next day. Next thing you know, you are proud to say, "No thanks, I take it black" in the same way you might say "No thanks, I prefer to walk."

So, I've started to slide down to slope. This change is also ushered in by Felix and the need to get caffeine at home. Soft drinks, diet or otherwise, are looked down upon in our household because of their ill effect on teeth. Tea is #1 and coffee is viewed as equally acceptable. Since I'm just not a huge of most tea (I drink tea I just don't prefer it, for some reason) I decided to dive into the coffee world. Here I am.

And its not half-bad.
The thing about a french press is that you need to use coarsely ground coffee. At the grocery store you can buy whole bean coffee and ground coffee prepackaged. The ground coffee that is prepackaged is rather finely ground for use in drip coffee makers. If you use this kind of coffee in a french press, beware! That is akin to accidentally putting rocket fuel into your car when you thought you were using regular unleaded.

So now I need to either get myself my own grinder or do that thing at the coffee store where you grind your own beans there. Anyway, so now I am having a morning cup'o'joe every morning sans mocha. It gets me going. Eventually I may move up to an automatic coffee maker, but that's really something you do when you are either a) too jittery to operate a manual piece of machinery such as the prehistoric lever at the heart of the french press or b) you need to make a lot of coffee, and fast (which frequently leads to case A).

Also realize that when your french press exclaims on the packaging "8-cup coffee maker" they are talking about your basic 4oz measuring cup, not 8 big-bad american mugs. Take note when measuring out your finely ground jetfuel beans...

new neighbors

From Andrea's report a few minutes ago it sounds like the crack shackacorss the street has been upgraded into a cat house with the new neighbors. We'll see how long it takes ot get those folks out of there.

see, I'm not the only one who gets it.

See, this is what I'm talking about.

This is from a webcomic called Brinkerhoff, about a rabit who gets divorced.

fuzzy

Been having a little trouble focusing at work. Mainly because I was out all last week learning ....

baby burner

Felix has inherited my (and my dad's) internal combustion heating system. I should have known from the first day (the second or third at home) that he kicked his way out of his swaddle, that he would be like me: unable to sleep with his feet under a blanket, unable to experience temperatures higher than 78 dregree F withour breaking into a sweat (but not bothered at all by the nearly constant liquid-cooling effect). Yes, Felix is more comfortable in a short-sleeved onesie than a sleeper with footies. There is a reason why his bedroom has the only full-time AC unit (though it hasn't been runnig as of late due to the temperate weather) while Andrea and I only use on when the heatwaves break upon our distant shore.

While I am comforted that Felix is a heater just like dad, it also means that when I hold him or he sleeps on my stomach or chest, we both kick our cooling systems into overdrive because our combined heat can raise the room temp several degrees in a matter of minutes.

the crusher

Did I mention that Felix has absolutely enormous hands and feet? Ok, not enormous, but definitely they are....markedly larger than we were led to expect. It only conformed my suspicions when at his first check-up the doctor said, "Wow! He's got some big hands!" Now, if he was a scale replica of an adult, I'd say, "Whoa! Here comes Gigantor!" but he's not, he's a baby and so had baby proprtions of a different ratio than an adult. So, while he does have the baby-sized (compared to adult sized) extremities, compared to other babies he seems to have large hands and feet, which are each respectively dominated by very thick thumbs and big-toes.

There is no doubting this is my baby, but he may just be much bigger than I was and am when he grows up. I think he's going to be a very sturdy, if not large, child.

up the ante

Ok, I have to let you all know that the guy who talks on his cell phone in the bathroom comes in a close second to people talking to me in the bathroom on the pet peeve scale. The only reason why the cellphone guy gets lower score than people directly interacting with me is because, well, he's not talking to me, he's just being a dick (no pun) to everyone who is trying to relieve themselves in peace. What do you think this bathroom is, a bus? well...I suppose it could pass for my bus, or vice versa, but anyway...

What I find amusing is that the cellphone pee-er comes in two distinct flavors: Terrorist and Hostage.
Terrorist cellphone pisser is the guy who enters the bathroom talking on his phone (and always loudly), pees, washes his hands (hopefully!) and then leaves, never breaking stride in his loud, asinine, self-important conversation. This guy is a bathroom terrorist because there's no way to ignore him. His talking loudly, like he's in his own bubble, is a passive aggressive way of trying to dominate everyone around him. He's important, his conversation is important, and he doesn't need to consider anyone on this side of the little speaker in his phone. This guy is only rumped (and actually, the talking-to-me pisser is also trumped) by the elite toilet-talking terrorist, the guy who does all of the above using his bluetooth Uhura-esque earphone. I imagine that this guy also eats dinner while he's sitting on the john at home and probably watches tv during sex, so I'm guessing he's at the top of a lot of people's lists. And of course, he does all of the above while yakking on his bluetooth cellphone.

More amusing is the cellphone-pissing-hostage. This is the guy who enters the bathroom like everyone else and starts doing his business at the urinal of his choosing. Sometime during his micturation he receives a phone call. He, being a cellphone-pisser, is not conscientious enough to mute the ringer and return the call later. He goes ahead and answers the phone. If he's lucky, he can end the call before he runs out of pee. If not, he gets trapped talking on the phone, his jones hanging out and dripping dry while he is locked in his urinal by his phone call. This guy is pitiful and annoying. Annoying because, hey, we all still have to listen to his stupid conversation (though this guy is more likely speak softer or limit his end of the conversation to single syllable answers) and maybe somebody else has to pee. He's pitiful because, well, he's unable to do more than one thing, or even focus on more than one thing at a time. I suspect that is it innate biological reflex that keeps his pee from stopping the second he answers the phone and backing up his kidneys, leaving him with a desperately painful need to finish peeing when the call is over. No, if that happened, he would quickly learn not ot answer the phone. But anyway, while annoying, I find it mildly amusing that this guy is standing there, dick in hand, phone in other hand, standing, not peeing (anymore) and talking...in public. How absurd is that? Of course, this guy is a major annoance because his phone-lock takes hold EVERYWHERE. This is the guy that made cellphones illegal while driving and who holds up the line at the grocery store. While he gets held hostage by his cellphone in whatever embarrassing or irritating situation, the rest of us get included in his conversations as collateral damage.

infant troubleshooting flow for men

Baby:
                        START
                          |
                          |
                  ┌--IS CRYING? > ----- NO ----  END
                  |       |
                  |       v
                  |       |
                  |      YES
                  ^       |
                  |       v
                  |       |
                  |      ROCK
                  └---<---┘

potty talk

You should already know that one of my biggest pet peeves is when people talk to me in the bathroom, especially while someone (myself, the other party, or both of us...or even some third person who isn't even involved in the conversation) is peeing. Who are these people who view this as prospective social time? Not I. There are several sure file ways to invoke my wrath including taking food off of my plate without permission, stepping in front of me in line for ANY reason, and talking to me while piss is in midstream.
With that said, the other day I was at the good old urinal, focusing on my own 4" x 4" section of the tiled wall, when a co-worker stepped up to an open spot, unzipped, then said, "How's it goin'?" I immediately start constructing all kinds of converstaion quelling retorts, but happen to glance over to see who is invading my private-time-in-public-space. It turns out to be a guy who I can't really get mad at. He's your proverbial geek with a heart of gold. So the attach dogs are kennelled and I thought to myself, "How do I not be a jerk in this situation? I mean, he did observer bathroom ettiquette by choosing the open urinal farthest from me instead of the one right next to me..." So I made a slight movement to pretend I was assessing my own peeing progress and said, "No problems so far!" He sort of chuckled nervously and I couldn't help but to chuckle a bit myself (of course, I was thinking I was so clever, ha ha). I thought it was funny and accomplished the feat of drawing attention to the fact that, I'm sorry, but I'm sort of committed to something else right now. And my wrath went unincurred.

m.i.a.

I've been in training all week, which is always a nice departure from work. It is sort of a like an all-expenses paid (except gas) work-hours vacation. So, yeah, you have ot get up early and get somewhere by a specific time, but they have bagels and doughnuts and coffee and soda, all you can eat and drink, for free (well, I'm sure they barely notice the cost of food when the class costs thousands of dollars to my employer). So, you sort of get a vacation from work AND from home, which doesn't happen all to often. Not that I need a vacation from home or work right now, just that it was nice to be able to go and get some technical learnin' that's not completely self directed. So here's the kicker...The class was taugh AT Microsoft. Yeah, I got to go to the local branch office of microsoft to learn some of their stuff. All my feelings about Micro$oft aside, it was a pretty good class that will be very useful for me in my current position, so I think my employer is going to get their money's worth out of me.

The weird (or maybe not so weird in the big picture, but weird for me) thing about this class was that Microsoft training is like being sent off ot qa deserted island. We spent all day working on computers that were completely disconnected from the grid. The only network involved was the virtual one existing on the virtual PC software we were operating inside of. Microsoft of course has their own internal network, but theres no way they let anyone from the outside on to that. My experience has always been that training places usually have their classrooms networked, but on a seperate segment that is in the DMZ. At Microsoft we got zip. Not even a guest network for me to log into with my own laptop in case I wanted to check my email. I had to go down to the Caribou Coffee in the other office tower and even there I waso nly able to get online because there was apparently a wide-open wifi networked conference room (Caribou had ATT, which requires subscription to do anything other than look at the caribou homepage).

So while I've been on vacation from work and home during the day, I've also been on vacation from the "outside world" for the most part. No email, not blogging, no browsing. I guess it helpes with attention span in the classroom if you know that your geek students are not going to be surfing ebay for action figures or Googling obscure coding examples in an attempt to trip up the instructor. But it is sort of disorienting to have whatever is on the car radio be my last free-world information stream before entering the Microsoft bubble. I may be more dependent than some folks, but seriously, if you regularly check your email (not even your work email, but your home email) at least twice a day, then you go on a net-free vacation to say, I don't know, a cabin in the woods or an igloo on a glacier or something (can they get internet in igloos yet? probably) you'll know what I'm talking about. Or, if you can't really give it up completely try this little experiment: Stop watching TV, ALL TV, for about a month. TV is such a steady stream of info that is so ingrained into our society that a lot of the time you probably don't even notice how many TVs there are around you all the time, every day. It is almost a part of the backdrop in a lot of places. Anway, if you suddenly cut out that subtle background stream, you find you start to notice it not being there but only in the back of your brain. You'll feel like you are missing something, like you are little disjointed when you try to talk to people who still are connected into the stream and are still receiving all those soundbites and opinion cues.

Ok, I'm rambling a bit. Of course, I've been in class, cut off all week, and at night I don't really have much time to dedicate to my blogging habit, or anything hobby related really. When I come home, i do my best, in whatever way I can, to relieve Andrea from Felix duty. Unfortunately, I cannot replace her, I can only try to take a little bit of the weight off of her shoulders. Well, luckily right now Felix is snoozing and Andrea is off with her brother, so i can try to catch up here. As soon as she gets home I'm going to have to tackle the house chores that have gone undone for the past few days vacuuming mostly...dog hair piles up faster than you can sweep it!). So I'm going to try to squeeze as much into this opportunity ads I can.

monthiiversary

Yesterday Felix turned one month old. Wow.

goodnight

Last night we had a good night. Felix continues to feed voraciously, but last night he slept well and both of us were able to get quite a bit of sleep. Andrea is experimenting with various nursing positions. Maybe after this is all over she can provide a course on "free-style breastfeeding."

A co-worker of mine gave me a book on baby sign-language as a . It sounds sorta hokey, but after reading it and talking to another co-worker who is actually using baby sign language with his 13-month-old, it seems like a really good tool to have in the baby-tool-box.

This morning at my team meeting one of the agenda items was "Surprise for Will." Unfortunately it was not a surprise promotion and pay increase :( but, as I could easily guess, was a bunch of baby gifts from my team. If any of you somehow have discovered my blog, thanks a bunch! They gave Felix some onsies (tagless, even!) and some socks, and some toys (which make sounds, but quiet sounds, yay!), some bibs, crib sheets, and some outfits of various sizes. Go team! Thanks a lot.

That makes me wonder...now that my life has real crib sheets, where did the term "crib sheet" come from? Cribbage?

its been three weeks since i looked at you

Felix passed the 3-week-old mark this morning. He rung in the new week with an all-nighter, too. He's been feeding like mad, running Andrea ragged, and he has the gas like nobody's business. All night he slept in 15-30 minute spurts punctuated with 30-40 minute episodes of crying, groaning, and straining. It looks like he's shitting a metric ton but each time i changed his diaper (I think about six times?) all he had done was pee, and a little yellow/green skidmark here or there. Not the diaper filling loads I was expecting based on the noises coming out of both ends of him all night. Luckily, at some point around 3 he decided he didn't want to feed any more and would focus completely on gas, so Andrea was able to get some sleep while I took care of him, trying to sleep during the 15 minute checks when he slept, though he makes a lot of noise when he sleep too, so frequently I would wake up just to check and make sure he was not waking up. I think he spent about 45 minutes sleeping in my armpit, head on my shoulder. He likes to sleep at an angle rather than flat on his back like he is in the crib. If he's not really really tired, he won't sleep in the crib.

Also, last night Andrea swears she killed a cockroach in our bathroom. She left the remains for me to investigate and it did look roachesque, but I know I have killed several critters that were definitely NOT roaches. It's an old house and we have our share of spiders and centipedes, but not so many as to consider it an infestation. So, from the remains that she left on the wall I couldn't be 100% on the identification, but she swears it was a roach. Anyway, that amount of doubt was enough to keep me awake for a couple hours alone...unfortunately while Felix actually was sleeping. I'm thinnking the roach was just a single visitor from across the alley (possibly from the apartment building or the apartment building dumpster) but you know, there is always the fear that when there is one, there are many. Something primal and instinctual about such critters comes into play. I don't think we have roaches or else we would have seen them where there was food, hopefully. I'm thinking this was just a lost little roach that Andrea mercifully killed before it could betray us to its brethren.

As Andrea defiantly proclaimed last night, I will not have roaches in my house! That is one thing I will not put up with. Of course, my immediate thoughts are to the cost of exterminators or somehow roach-proofing the house while she's talking about firebombing the aparment building. I suppose those are both means to the same end...

back to work

I worked from home last Thursday and, well, working from home sucks. I mean, it is nice to be able to when necessary, but I really feel like I'm operating in a very diminished capacity when working from home. The reason being that I need a certain amount of isolation to be effective. And I don't mean that I would work at home better if i was just locked in a quiet closet and left alone. For the most part Andrea and Felix tried to pretend that I wasn't home, but every time I heard him start crying I wanted to go help. No, what I really mean by isolation is that I need to be surrounded by my work environment to be able to be effective. I need to be able to do several things at once, and at home I just cannot do that. Instead of focusing on deployments, and documentation, and development, and dealiing with clients, etc, like i do when I'm at work, at home I focus on deployments, and the dog, and the baby, and lunch, and dishes, and laundry...

I need the firewall of email and telephone to limit my ability to focus on home when I'm at work. So I went to work on Friday and was able to do more than just the bare minimum.

Today Felix has his 2 week checkup, though he was 2 weeks old last wednesday. He is almost 3 weeks old now, and in a little more than a week he will be 1 month old! It does seem to fly by. Though I'm sure I will miss his current state (I dunno, maybe not) I also can't wait to see him develop. He's already pretty far ahead of the game physically, but I want to see him as he becomes more aware mentally/intellectually.

The novelty of the new family member has worn off for Ash and he has gone back to his regular routine of "Take me out, take me out, take me out!" every 30 minutes. Perhaps he is now switched from being more considerate (he routinely waited until late afternoon before doing the pee-pee dance in the past two weeks) to more competetive (he now does the pee-pee dance about every 30 to 60 minutes, which is bogus because I know he can go for HOURS without having to pee).

Sigh. It aggrivates Andrea to no end to have to deal with a super hungry baby (seriously, he does a minimum of 2 cluster feedings a day) AND now a super needy dog. I hope it is just a phase for Ash. I guess Ash won't feel like there is balance until Felix becomes a possible source of butt-scratches.

slight pain in the tranny

You know, the transmission in cars is so expensive, it makes me wonder why they even use them in the first place...

Maybe its just my over heated brain talking. I skated to the car place in 100 degree heat...twice. Woo!

I also started doing some slight attic prep work. I was rolling up the insulation that was laid down on the attic floor and even started stapling some of it up to the roof beams. Well I think I just about cooked myself doing that, so I decided to stop until it cools off. And this was at 10 in the morning when the temp was only 91 outside...

Anyone who still thinks global warming is imaginary needs to wake up and smell the freon!

like sharks!

If you ever want to see a feeding frenzy, offer free kitty litter on Freecycle. You'd think I was giving away gold bullion.

i am not dead

Just busy changing diapers.
Oddly enough, this has been one of the best vacations I've had in a long time. I sorta don't want to go back to work. But on the other hand, I won't mind getting back to the routine at work. Felix has been sleeping longer and waking fewer times at night the past few days, which I think helps all around. On the flip side, he's awake a lot more during the day and its not exactly clear what to do with him all the time.

lucky and happy

Yes, Felix is from the Latin root felix, which means, among other things, lucky, happy, and prosperous.

Not sure what the etymology of the name Scott is. I think it has something to do with tape and plaid.

first night

I now understand.

itsaboy, of course

yep.
Felix Scott. Born at 9:02am today after about 6 hours of labor, without the aid of any drugs (momma progressed to 10cm before they could even say the word "anesthesiologist."
7lbs. 11oz. 20.5 inches. curly brown hair and deep blue eyes.
he's just about perfect. ok, I'm wrong. he IS perfect.

carseat inspector or doorframe of doom

Yesterdya after work i toork our carseat down to the police department to have it and its installation inspected. Passed. BUT as i was leaving our house to go to the inspection I managed to slam our inside front door on my right index finger, tearing away a good hunk-o-flesh down to the nailbed and generally inflicting a lot-o-pain. That is, once feeling returned. Initially you have sort of a dull sort of "pain message" that lets you know "Uh oh, that was some dmage" but doesn't let you know whether or not your finger has just been cut or cut off. And it looked a lot worse than i think it runed out to be. Don't get me wrong, we're talking some deep hurting here, but I first though that maybe my finger had been skinned down to the bone/nail from the first knucle down. After switching the bandaid last night, I saw that it was a scapre from the first knuckled down, but it only got deep a millimeter or two up from the cuticle, so I don't think my nail is going to fall off. I think the worst part is that the end of my finger was smashed, and I'm cultivating a nice big purple fingernail. So now my finger just throbs all day and only sends sharp pain when I accidentally bump my nail against something hard straight on.

In other news, when googling for gunshots in powderhorn, I found myself on the first page of results! I also found out that Minneapolis is installing gunshot detectors this summer, which supposedly are pretty accurate and can drastically improve police response time and likelihood of them locating a victim or perpetrator. That's A-OK with me. I also found that the Pioneer Press had a better article than the Trib on the 4th of July shooting at Toni's Market.

busy busy busy

Today is filled with mind-numbingly repetitive tasks. Ugh. It is times like this that I am glad I found Pandora. Here's my own radio station I'm listening to. about 75% of the tunes it serves up I really like, or at least don't hate. The station is based off of the song "Plug Me In" by Add N to (X). Here's the station for those who want to see what powers me though the day today: Plug Me In radio
Some of my recent favorites: Take me to Your Leader, pretty much anything by LCD Soundsystem, etc. Its a good station.

wowsers

I actually completed everything on my to-do list yesterday, including installing the carseat base.

Just as well. We spent the entire evening (after 10:00pm) on a Kinko's Odyssey on par with Andrea's MCAD days. It was glorious.

goes to eleven, again

So, I take the dog for a walk or a skate around the park almost every morning, sometimes once or twice in the evening as well. I feel like I've actually been spending a lot more time outside than I usually do, which is sort of impressive considering that I have almost no yard to speak of so barely any yard work. I have a push mower that I use for about 30 minutes a week...or every two weeks depending on the rain. So, I've been getting a lot more fresh air time, lots of walking, etc, which is good since I haven't been sticking to a consistent aikido schedule in the past two months. Well, today I went. Of course, the last intro series ended a couple weeks ago, so Saturdays are now all-student classes, which are both longer and harder than the regular classes. Needless to say, I over did it. About 3/4 of the way through I had to take a break and leave the mat, get some water, start breathing again...

Yeah, it can be a pretty tough activity not because you are getting thrown around, but because you keep doing it over and over and over and over. It is the repetition that really gets me. I'm sorry to say that all of that great work I did during the early part of last year when i first started aikido might have been undone by my 2nd and 3rd trimester inactivity, especially having missed so many classes. I might have tested for pre-sixth kyu, but I just hadn't gone enough and I didn't want to rush it. The next test is in August or September, then in December. I'm not trying to fast track it anyway. I'd rather be much better at my technique when I test than just working my ass off to get good enough to pass. I'd like to pass with a wide margin. Granted, my next test is a pre-kyu test, but still...

In other fitness news, since the basement is somewhat my domain, Andrea has finally allowed me to put up a chin-up bar. You may not know or remember this, but when I was finishing up college and was living on my own, I had put up a chin-up bar in the bathroom doorway of my studio apartment. It was a great diversion for whenever i was bored or waiting for something. I think chin-ups are a great exercise for building strength and toning your entire upper body. Well, it is something i have missed for years. Now i have my chin-up bar again and I'm baby stepping back to beter shape. I used to be able to do 20 chin-ups! Right now I can only do 6. I'm sure that my arms are weaker and it also doesn't help that I'm about 15-20lbs more than I was back then. Yep. I had a regular physical a couple weeks ago and i weighed in at 192lbs. Yes. I may be stocky, but I really shouldn't be pushing two bills that closely. I'm sure my ideal weight is something like 172 (or if you go by height alone it would be 160 according to most BMI calculators).

So, here's to getting healthier, and being able to push it to eleven without passing out.

the got god better

Can you tell my mother is dyslexic? That was supposed to read, "The Dog Got Better", as in, I didn't take him to the vet because.

Am I dyslexic? Only when I type.

sick as a dog

I'm not sure where this saying comes from, but my Ash is currently sick. Starting yesterday he has had constipation and diarrhea. He hasn't been eating or drinking as much as usual and he wants to go outside to go to the bathroom frequently, though he never gets out more than a squirt or two of a slimy brown/green substance. Well, he ate sometime yesterday and at some other time dumped a big poo-puddle on the new rug that is under the baby's crib. Very unlike him. he also was constantly waking Andrea and I all last night to take him out so he could try to poo (unsuccessfully). The only thing I can think of is that maybe the pork bone he ate at the park on the 4th might have created some sort of blockage or just not agreed with him. or maybe he ate something else off the ground that his tummy didn't like. He has been eating grass every chance he gets, it seems. Consensus on the internet is: Dogs eat grass but no one knows why.
Andrea checked him a while ago and his nose was hot and dry (dog fever indicator). He seemed to be plenty energetic when we went for our morning skate around the park, but Andrea says that he's done nothing by lie around all day. Well, he has an appointment tomorrow morning. We'll see what the verdict it.

hate the smoke, love the smoker

Since the smoking ban in restaurants and bars went into effect last year something interesting has happened. The second hand smoke has been pushed out of the confines of the bar and grill and out into the general public. Every bar and eatery scrambled to set up "patio seating" which in some cases meant as little as putting a rope or chain up around the group of smokers outside the front or side door all the way to constructing elaborately themes open air patios on annexed sections of the parking lot for food and beverage service. The Onion did a whole section on smoking around the twin cities last week. It had maps and everything.

Here's what I have noticed, though. We have effectively moved the smoking section (which was a flawed notion to begin with) from the inside where it affected the patrons and employees of said establishments to the outside where it affects mostly non-patrons and those patrons who may have been silly enough to prefer eating in the "fresh" open air. Whats better, down town where the bars only have frontage on sections of sidewalk, they have turned every available space into "outdoor patio seating" to accomodate smokers. In many cases, this means putting tables and chairs full of smokers on the very same sidewalks that anyone who is a pedestrian must use if they want to get from point A to point B. So now you don't have to wade through smokers to get from the bathroom to the bar but you do have to wade through the smokers if you want to get from the bookstore to the bus stop. As if bus stops weren't bad enough with their own smokers (why does everyone who rides the bus smoke???).

Some might say, "Exactly! Let the people smoke in the bars!" but to that I say, "No no no, we just haven't gone far enough. If we're going to ban smoking, lets do it right and ban smoking in public completely." After all, if all smoking in public is illegal it is more easily policed and enforced. No more effing butts all over the place, no more homeless people bumming smokes off you while you're trying to eat your lunch outside (in the new smoking section, apparently), no jerk-off Trump wannabe walking down wind with his stench-ass cigar.

We don't allow shitting in public and that doesn't even cause cancer or really have any affect on bystanders (other than the unpleasant odor) provided it is cleaned up within a reasonable amount of time. There's no shitting in public lobby, though, so I don't think we'll see it happen anytime soon.

Love the smoker but hate the smoke? No, I say where there's smoke, there's smokers. Can't exactly have one without the other. It's not my fault they got their stupid ass hooked on something that's legal. They don't have any right to smoke any more than I have a right to eat cheese curls. If you want to let people smoke then you have to let them get suicide assistance, euthanasia, and abortions at every mall. You also have to let them shoot people and spread disease without repercussions.

I say enough coddling the smokers. Where there's smoke, there's fire. It is utterly hypocritical to legalize tobacco smoking and alcohol but outlaw nacotics, hallucinogens, barbituates, abortion, gay marriage, prayer in schools, any of it. Splitting hairs.

july 5th - new holiday

Hey, I would like to propose that July 5th be made national pick up all of your fucking fireworks garbage day (PUYFFGD!). When I took the dog out this morning I expected to see a lot of litter in the park from all of the cook-out activity from yesterday. Actually, almost all of the garbage in the street, on the sidewalks, everywhere, was the remnant of exploded store bought fireworks. So, as every law-breaking god-given-right exercising American patriot enjoyed the splendor of their own personal and amateur tribute to Old Glory, it is only right that said public disturbance in the name of freedom, liberty, and high gas prices has to put on an orange vest and comb the neighborhood with a plastic glad bag and clean their own shit up.

As a tax paying home owner, I now feel justified in getting all hot and bothered about people leaving their trash every where, especially in my neighborhood and park. It's bad enough that they have to be killing eachother. I want clean streets and neighborhood, in every sense. Grrr. Get some effing respect you douchebags.

On a lighter note, I take some small comfort in the fact that the shooting that happened yesterday was not some random robbery, but more likely a falling out between acquaintances or possibly a gang-related killing. I know, no shooting is good shooting, but it is better that this was a directed assault on one person rather than a more indiscriminate crime like robbery which could happen to anybody.

Also, I don't think it really connects on an emotional level that I actually HEARD someone get killed. Intellectually, I know what happened, but on a gut level...I just try not to think about it too much. Especially since we just took our infant CPR class (which also covered Child and Adult CPR) last week and I'm wondering if I had been closer/on the scene I might have somehow helped. The man/kid that was killed was shot and then made his way into Toni's Market to ask for help before he died. I wonder if anyone tried CPR on him before the cops arrived and I wonder if I might have made a difference, even if I had just looked out the window when we heard the shots. It's confusing and a little embarrassing that my instinct was to look but my logical/common-sense dictated "Keep your butt in your chair and keep reading the paper, don't get involved, you live here." Even with the goings on of the drug dealer/prostitution/whatever shady business across the street, it seems like my neighborhood isn't THAT bad...but there are no walls between my block and the next. The guys who did the shooting had a 1 in 4 chance of running down my street. Freaky people wander past our house all the time. I'm glad we have Ash, while he's a bit of a pain to get adjusted to new operating circumstance, seems to make a good deterrent. I let him bark at people in front of our house just a little. I WANT people to know that there is a dog at the house, a dog who is protective of his territory and his pack. He has a deterrent bark. A very deterrent bark. And I know that he will follow through if he has to. I find it oddly comforting to know that this dog bites on occasion.