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.