On the home front - I opened the pool - sort of. There is/are some minuscule leaks in the hose connections that cause the filter to fill with air when run on high after about 30-40 minutes. I tried to pay someone to fix it but that never works. After three or four phone calls I gave up. If only a tree would land in the damn thing I could collect the insurance, have it removed, and put a lawn there instead. On my hands and knees in the mud and shade, with glasses on, trying to locate the damn leak using shaving cream my head started to hurt. I hate that pool, but we went out and bought a couple of inner tubes for it anyhow.
At work - we're going live with Google Apps in three weeks. I have in excess of 15K email accounts already created for existing users and we'll be adding another two to three hundred a week for the rest of the summer. It's all good, except that I have to figure out the APIs for provisioning and SSO in order to make it work. It can't be too difficult to figure out the SAML integration pieces for SSO in the spare 20 minutes a week I have to devote to this. After all it's java code and lots of people use java - except me. I've never written a "hello" program in java before. Since it's summer, probably not too many of the 15 - 16K people with accounts at the time will notice that THEIR EMAIL IS MISSING on Monday June 15th. I leave two weeks later for London anyhow. On the brighter side, my new programmer analyst starts in one week and she is a java programmer so...
Other tasks for the next 20 or so days: write and publish the strategic plan for the next year (piece of cake), select the VoIP system to replace our "cans and string" telephony and present it to the trustees (best part of that is dinner is free - worst part - you have to swallow it whole in order to finish in time for the presentation), review/update/publish the disaster recovery plan and entertain the auditors looking for it (I expect them to be staying for the next six months), give some bad news to at least two part time people that they may need to write new resumes (that's always a lot of fun), find the time to write a new job description - put together a selection committee - interview and hire a new programmer/integration specialist (worth any amount of work for that), come up with the budget request for next year (an obscene amount when many others have to cut back to twentieth century figures), do some schmoozing and politicking for a couple of important projects with a lot of people that I would prefer to cross the street to avoid, and respond to whatever might come along in the 200 or so emails I get every day (I'm grateful we had the space to quadruple the mail store)
Looking at it all, this isn't really anything out of the ordinary so why doesn't my head hurt all the time?
Been doing my usual obsessive planning about summer vacation. I have a daily Kayak alert on the fares to London. Every day for the past 5 weeks I get an alert for the beginning of July. Every other week of the year has fluxuated wildly. I have the days worked out on an excel spreadsheet and interchange the activities, length of the vacation, and the itinerary. It's hours of internet entertainment. Anyhow, one day soon I'll get out the credit card, click on the "purchase" button and put an end to it all.
Sitting on a Sunday morning and staring at the laptop, I'm thinking the lack of bright ideas or ambition to do much of anything is really just boredom. We have something of a tradition of never admitting to boredom. It seems that's when the worst happens. You know - "I should have never complained about being bored because now look what happened. I should have been happily bored and kept my mouth shut." So do I have thaasophobia, the fear of boredom? I started to think of the many things that people waste time and energy being afraid of, myself included, and did some research.
There are several people who "work" for me who may have some phobic issues. Note the quotations there. It's because I think people getting paid to work for me actually suffer from ergasiophobia, the fear of work. Perhaps I've misdiagnosed ergophobia, the hatred of work, but the effect is the same. I think one is a kathisomanaic (opposite of kathisophobia - fear of sitting down). He seems to love to get to work, get to that chair and get to sitting for the rest of the day to the exclusion of work. (see above reference to ergasiophobia). OK, I understand that sitting and working are not mutually exclusive, especially with a desk job, but this guy concentrates HARD on the sitting part and not so much on the working part. Wait a minute, maybe I'm totally off base and he's really not ergasiophobic because he works so hard at sitting, or is it that sitting isn't work so it dosen't count?
Things could get worse. They always can get worse I've learned. I mean, barophobia could set in and I can't imagine being afraid of gravity. It's an inescapable situation bound to be totally crippling. You couldn't even enjoy sitting if you were worried about gravity. Something like lyssophobia - fear of going insane - seems to me to be both a debilitating, self-fulfilling prophecy and a vicious cycle ditto to phobophobia - fear of being afraid.
OK OK OK enough already. Time to move on here. See what demonic things like in the idle mind. I need to get back to browsing.
Why do I feel compelled to give the truth when explaining technolgy to the technologically challenged? We lost the flash card in our Fat Pipe this morning. So, the Fat Pipe (load balancing device for our business cable lines) was unable to load or hold the network configuration information and our connection to the internet was down. We finally managed to disconnect our one remaining T1 line, bypassing the Fat Pipe and directly connecting to our firewall. That gave us about 16% of our normal bandwidth but left our spam filter out of the loop, meaning that incoming email couldn't find the mail server.
OK now explain that to those who have trouble using a Blackberry just as a phone without referring to flash cards (I"M NOT KIDDING). I have photographs of the Fat Pipe. It's red, about 3U high, and has the words Fat Pipe on it. That doesn't help. It also doesn't help to bring in firewalls, DNS, and broadband cable vs T1 linespeeds. I should have just said "the Internet is broken and they are overnighting a part to fix it". Instead I spent about 45 minutes constructing what I thought was a reasonably straightforward and accurate explanation of the events with a description of what we were doing to handle it and how it would be resolved. Then I spent twice that time explaining the explanation, at the end of which I realized everyone was even more confused than before I had started.
I'm certain now that people think I'm making stuff up to cover for someone who tripped over a wire in the server room pulling it out of the wall and busting the Internet plug. When will I learn?
Well it was almost like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. It was actually a rusty piece of 5/8" rebar that I shoved in my left eyeball. We were out in the garden - like we are ever anywhere else on a weekend - and I was attempting to tie up a really floppy eupatorium "Chocolate". We use the rebar as plant support and I was nearly done when I dropped the twine. So I bent down to quickly pick it up. Instead I only got down as far as the rebar poking into my left eyeball. It made a sort of squishy noise as I recall. I stood up quickly and my hand went to my eye. The wife screamed and ran to the house shouting something about an ambulance. I figured there was no eyeball left. When I took my hand away it was bloody.
Abbreviated version of the rest of the story... washed the eye and rode to the hospital. They took me in the emergency room after several hours. After all there was also a woman with a bad cough and a guy who needed the wax washed out of his ears and all I had was a bleeding eyeball - seriously this is the truth. They diagnosed it as a scratched cornea and small cut. I got a tetanus shot and a prescription for some antibacterial goo to squirt in the eye to keep it nasty looking for the next week. By the next weekend it was only a bit bloody looking in the corner.
The lasting effect of this is that I am now very nervous near any sharp object, particularly any that are sticking out of the ground. I had a tough time going for a walk in the neighborhood when everyone stuck thier snow poles in the ground. (editors note: snow poles are sticks that line driveways and property at the edge of the road so the snow plows will know where lies the pavement and where lies the lawn in the winter) All I could think of was - watch out, that could poke you in the eye!!
I don't know if this will fade with time. I suspect that will be true but for the forseeable future I am staying as far from sharp sticks as I can and I try not to have them in my mind as I drift off to sleep at night.
Arrived back from Ireland today and trying to not let the memory fade as quickly as is usually the case. I expected some adventure, or what passes for adventure when you are 57 and have led a pretty tame life for most of those years. Like, I thought driving on the left side would be a bit adventurous. It wasn't at all. Not until the road suddenly got half as wide and the speed limit stayed at 100 kmh and there were buses, and trucks, and crazy Irishmen hurtling towards us in the other direction going at least that fast. Every corner is blind and there is no "side of the road" like the good old US. There is the road, and then there is a wall of stone, or earth, or just a hedge that rises up four or five feet about six inches from where the pavement ends.
I swerved to miss what looked like certain death in a head on collision with a truck, blew a tire, and bent the rim on some stretch of desolation about 25 km from any civilization in Connemara. It messed the rest of the trip to Clifden and most of the rest of the day as we tried to get the tire replaced. Those friendly Irish told us everything would be fine. Those bubbles foaming from the tire wall really didn't mean that there was a leak and all was well. Just put the tire back on the car and drive off into the picturesque wilderness and have faith. I did and had shoulder pains and headaches from the stress of worrying about the damn tire but it was fine for the next 8 days, until we left for home.
So now I can look back at my travelogue of pictures and remember just the good times. We toured gardens. We toured castles. We drove - for days. We ate and drank in pubs. We ate potatoes - lots of them. We were served chips with pasta, mashed potatoes with chips, mashed potatoes with boiled potatoes, potatoes were offered up with rice - white on white on every plate and every other vegetable was mashed up as well. We ate mashed carrots, mashed peas, mashed spinach, mashed um... something vegetable like and enjoyed it all.
The weather was exactly what we expected. It rained every day. It was sunny every day. It was cool and windy and when locals apologized to us about the rain, we smiled and said "It's Ireland. The weather is supposed to be like this." The umbrella was about as essential as a pair of pants. I never went out without both.
We loved it and I'd go again in a heartbeat if there wasn't the rest of the world to see first. On to the next adventure!
It just occurred to me that one of life's important lessons I learned at the dinner table and never realized it until today. Something we're all told at one time or another - "Take small bites". OK, so we're only ten and choking at the time and it takes a while for it to sink in and to generalize to the rest of life. For me, it took almost fifty years but now I finally get it.
Today I finally put together the pile of lumber that lay in the driveway for a few weeks and made three compost bins out of it. There was ample invoking of the F bomb and other colorful colloquialisms throughout the process but today it was complete enough to be functional. The problem was, there was a mountain of compost in a pile about eight feet away that I then needed to move into the lovely handcrafted bins. At first the task seemed insurmountable. I tried shoveling but that didn't work. The spade fork was a bit better but still I thought I'd need hospitalization by nightfall and the job would still be unfinished. My lovely and ever so helpful wife joined in and we both thought we were insane to have started the task in the first place. We broke for lunch. We burnt some of the garden grasses and refuse. We raked and dethatched the lawn a bit. I got out the pick ax and that helped a bit more. Basically, we nibbled at it rather than chowing down on the job at hand.
Hours later it was done. It looked great. We weren't crippled. All was well with our world. That was it - small bites. Big tasks, mountainous jobs, seemingly impossible feats are done every day by handling only one small forkful at at time. I thought over some of the things that I've accomplished that I initially thought were beyond my skills, over my head, or impossible for anyone and I got it done. Each time I looked back and realized that it wasn't so bad after all.
You just have to remember - small bites. It takes a bit longer but it is even more satisfying in the end.
Just bought the lumber for the compost bins that we will be building over the weekend. It came to $390. Something seems not right about that. The lumber to hold piles of weeds and grass clippings cost almost $400. It will make the backyard look a lot neater but for the value added to the garden, I could order a truckload of cow manure every year for as long as we'll probably live here. I guess I have to look at the entertainment and exercise value of a project that will take a weekend of work to complete. OK - I'm in trouble because that makes sense.
OK, I had to think just a bit on how old I am today but it wouldn't matter much what the number is. Once you are something the other side of middle aged it hardly makes any difference. If I have my glasses on when I look in the mirror it can be a little scary. Otherwise I think I still look pretty good for my age. Occasionally someone at work will say something like, "Are you having a really bad day today?" or "I see you were up late watching the game last night." This happens far more frequently on days that are going well where I went to bed early the night before so I know something is going on. The good thing about aging is you don't give a crap what people think most of the time anyhow. So, happy birthday to me - doing just fine despite outward appearence as I am poised at the door of those golden years.
The thing about parenting is it never stops. I used to think it odd when my mother talked about "the kids". This phrase could apply to the grandchildren but just as frequently it applied to my siblings and I, or even one of her eight younger brothers or sisters. The fact that those she referred could all be over 60 had no consequence to how she thought of them. Her baby sister and baby brother were stuck in her head as "the kids" as we all were.
I find I think of my kids as "the kids" too. The youngest is 21 this year so technically they are all adults but when they call and need help of any kind it's almost a joy to be needed. This weekend we scarfed down a few slices of left over pizza before heading into the city where Number One's car had been towed, this the same week as he had to cancel his debit card so he needed both a ride to the tow lot and $110 in cash to pick up said car. A couple of weeks ago Number Two neede help moving from one apartment to another, both third floor. The old apartment hadn't been packed up. There were even dirty dishes in the sink on the day we were moving him. It still made me feel really good to be helpful. The lack of planning or advance work almost made me feel more useful.
The moral of the story? The ages and all other circumstances have no bearing on the relationship between parent and child.
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