Fairly Symmetrical

Yes, I know, long time no update. Bad Eric, no doughnut. :)

So much to tell, although if you watch the gallery some of it won't be news. Ollie's second tooth popped out a while back, right next to the first. Jenny and I were coincidentally talking about when his second would appear, and I happened to look in his mouth--and there it was!

He's changing so fast right now. He's just started into 6-9 month clothes (at 8 months--if he stays on this growth curve he'll be 18lb. at a year, which means he'll be wearing 12-month clothes until he's about two :-P), so there are new cute clothes to wear. He's pulling up from sitting to standing all by himself, and in fact at this point I think he'll skip crawling. He can scoot forward if he wants to, but given that he can pull himself up, he loves to stand, and if you give him your hands to help him balance, he can shakily "walk" forward... All he really needs is balance and practice: I give him a month before he's walking. I could be wrong though, he seems to alternate developing physically and mentally, so maybe he'll get to cruising and plateau there for a few months.

He loves books; just going to Barnes & Noble and walking down the kids' aisle (or heck, sitting down with a book at a cafe table) puts a huge smile on his face. Not surprising given his parents, but very gratifying. :)

He likes being upside down, too; I think he's either going to be a gymnast or a monkey, and the jury's out on which. He's figured out he can hook his toes into my ever-present belt and push up (or, more often, out); today in B&N he started adding the step of dropping his head between his arms so that he's on the verge of doing a somersault down my chest. So naturally I just grab him and toss his knees over my shoulder so he's hanging there, and he's grinning and laughing like a maniac. I'm telling you, all he needs is a prehensile tail.

He gives kisses, too, lots and lots of kisses. I hope he stays this affectionate; I know the culture will try and beat it out of him, but when he hugs me or kisses me it really is the best thing in the world.

He starts daycare tomorrow, twice a week. I know Jenny's really stressed out about it, and so am I. I'm so used to seeing Jen and Ollie pop in and out, or come over to my desk at home to see what I'm doing/steal my glasses/give me a kiss, and now that won't happen on Tuesday and Thursday. It's kind of sad to be passing so much of Ollie's time off to someone else. I'm so spoiled working at home, I get to see all the firsts in person and not miss anything. So hopefully he doesn't, like, walk for the first time at daycare (or at least, if he does, they don't tell us ;)).

Speaking of firsts, just yesterday he figured out the "M" sound. He's been saying "Dada" for a while now, but the closest he could get to "M" was "B" (so Jenny has been "Bob" for a few weeks...). Then yesterday he said "Mob", which was pretty close, and then he said "Mom" very clearly. He grins every time I say it back, and I've noticed when he gets upset sometimes he'll say "Mommommommom". Which kind of hurts a little bit, even though I try hard not to let it; I know sometimes he's going to want her instead, and he ought to. But I'm selfish like that. :)

Tonight might be another breakthrough, we'll see. He's not been sleeping well lately, although he's getting better at napping (hour naps aren't uncommon at this point, and we can often get away with just two naps a day even). At night, though, a lot of times he won't even go two hours without waking up, which is tiring, especially since he virtually never sleeps past 6 or so. So tonight Jenny and I decided to make another go of mild sleep training, so after his bath and a feeding, I put him down in his crib with Gertrude (his stuffed hedgehog, the closest thing to a lovey we've been able to identify), kissed him goodnight, and left rather than rocking him almost asleep (or to be honest, all-the-way-asleep, more often than not). He seemed to think it was playtime at first, making his "bobbobbobbob" noise and shrieking periodically, but then he got bored or lonely and started crying. After ten minutes I went in and tried to soothe him (without picking him up), but when I left a minute or so later he started crying harder. Jen left at that point (she has a class she's been going to), and I was expecting all kinds of difficulties, but at the end of the next 10 minutes, just as I got up to try soothing him again, he suddenly quieted down and went to sleep.

I am now going to probably jinx myself by checking on him, because PARENTHOOD is an anagram for PARANOIA (not really, I can't back that up, but it should be).

Nope. He's still alive; I can see him breathing. The worst part about this is that all the baby books say that 6 months (or double birth weight, which Ollie just hit) is when you should try sleep training, but they also say that SIDS is a risk until 1 year, and you shouldn't let them sleep on their stomach until then. The paradox is that by 6 months, they can roll over anytime they want to, usually (Oliver could), and left to his own devices, Ollie will sleep on his stomach. So: let him fall asleep on his stomach and POSSIBLY DIE, or start sleep training? Or poke the bear by letting him fall asleep, then trying to turn him over without waking? You can't win for losing.

Speaking of not winning for losing, at Jen's continued urging I embarked on a weight gain program. I added an 800-1000 calorie milkshake to my daily intake (ice cream, whole milk, whey protein, banana, chocolate syrup), drank it religiously for two weeks without eating any less at meals... and lost five pounds. What. The. Hell. I'm still spotty about eating breakfast though, so maybe if I add that it will help. If I drop another five I think USAID is going to start airlifting supplies into my back yard (which at least would help with the grocery bills). :(

Edit: Also, I know the site is wonky and comments are disabled. I upgraded Movable Type and it screwed everything, so I have to basically start over. Sorry, folks. :( You can always e-mail me your comments, I do love e-mails...

Edit the Second: Okay, so he woke up at 8:20 and cried, despite my best soothing efforts, until Jen got home and fed him at 9:40. Ah well. Maybe next time.

So this is just a quick update, I promise a long post later with more info and I'll add pictures when I get a chance.

Oliver Grey Kokai-Means was delivered at 5:33 this morning. He weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces and was 20.5 inches long, blue eyes (of course) and blonde/brown hair. He is the most beautiful baby ever, and lest you think I'm just being a new dad, I'll point out that all of the nurses have said so too, and they're not biased. ;)

Unfortunately, due to some complications during labor, Oliver experienced severe respiratory distress at birth, and he is making a steady recovery in the neonatal ICU of St. David's hospital. He seems like a perfectly happy, healthy newborn boy, and we're hopeful that he'll be home by Jenny's birthday.

(This post was actually written on 1/10, and pre-dated, just in case anyone is wondering. No, I did not rush home from the hospital to blog about our baby. :))

I don't know what to say about my birthday this year, really. It was a pretty good weekend bookended by some of the worst travel I've ever experienced (and I've experienced my share of bad travel). We flew out Thursday morning on Continental, after getting up at 4am to make our flight. Every single time we fly Continental, going all the way back to 1999, I've sworn never to fly them again, and like a total idiot I do.

This time, there was a windstorm in Houston the night before we left, which meant that all the crews worked extra hours, so there were no crews available to fly the next morning. Delays all around. Okay, fine, whatever. But that meant the airlines had to rebook everyone in order to not miss connections all over the place, meaning no kiosk check-in. It was a study in comparative staffing strategies. The Continental desk had 4 ticket agents. Two of them were working the first-class line (length: 5 people, and not growing). Two of them were working the "steerage" line (length: 300 people and growing). The American Airlines desk right next to it had 12 agents--and no line at all.

As an extra insult, we could have driven to Houston, made our original connection, and had none of these problems. (Although, as you'll see, that plan would really not have worked out well later.)

So we get to Louisville, where some Cocoa Trios from Borders finally add something positive to the day. The rest of the weekend was pretty fun; Jen set up her parents' new computer, and I hooked up their new home theater system. Then we played pool. :)

Friday night we went to the L&N Wine Bar, which was pretty good. Their creme brulee is very good, and the drinks looked really tasty. The rest of the weekend we pretty much just hung out, watched TV, played pool, etc. Lots of fun. And I got lots of cool gifts, for which I am very grateful. Jen and I played an inaugural game of the latest edition of Trivial Pursuit already. ;)

Coming home was, if possible, even more annoying than getting there. The flight itself was fine, not late or anything, but it took us an hour to get our bags and the car was dead when we got to the parking lot. Apparently it's a miracle it drove at all before that, because the cable that runs from the battery to the starter had corroded into green powder. I won't belabor the point, but we got home at 3:30 am and I had to go back the next day to get the car towed.

Wednesday we had the car seat checked to be sure it's safely installed, then went shopping at the new outlet mall and the new Ikea store.

Thanksgiving day we spent largely cleaning and cooking; we had dinner by ourselves, then had friends over for drinks/dessert/Beyond Balderdash, which was loads of fun. I ate way too many tasty desserts. :) Today's been more relaxing, finally; I took a nap, did some Xmas shopping, and then Jen and I played Pikmin 2 for a while. And there's still two days left in the weekend, so things are looking up. :) 

It's hard to believe it's already the end of October. (Of course, it would be easier to believe if it weren't still hitting 80 every day. I want Fall, damnit!) It seems like it was just a few months ago that we were carving pumpkins with our (still child-free at that point) friends Stephen and Shannon, not a whole year.

Of course, on the plus side, that means hockey is back on. :) We had Alec over last night to watch the Canadiens lose to Buffalo (after Janne Niinimaa guaranteed they'd win--smooth move), which was lots of fun. We have startlingly similar taste in books, too, which is cool. :) Also went out to a birthday party on Saturday that was a lot of fun. We don't stay out late very much anymore, so it was novel in that respect; we ended up hanging out in a neat little park with some friends until it got too cold.

Work is settling down a little bit again, aside from a minor crisis on Friday afternoon (why is it always Friday afternoon?) that I had to handle; it's been really busy lately, but at the moment I'm working on some estimates for the release after this, and it's hard to feel the same sense of urgency about that kind of thing. :) Tomorrow I'm supposed to take my work-provided pair of monitors in and exchange them for brand-new flat panels, which is cool. It certainly will give us back some of the dining room table--those 21" CRTs take up a lot of space. I should also be getting an IP-based phone this week, so I will no longer be tying up our phone line every morning for teleconferences. Which doesn't really matter to anyone but me (because I'll finally be able to hear everyone else in the meetings) and Jen (because she hates me tying up the phone), but hey. :-P

Nothing happening on the Ollie front. He's pretty active most days, which means Jen gets worried when he's not active, but he generally gives her a kick or two if she asks if he's OK. The class moves along; last week we simulated contractions (using ice cubes). It's all very interesting (actually, I'm finding it very useful to get a clearer picture of what my role will be, what kinds of things I will need to do and think about--I might be getting more out of it than Jen is, in some ways, although she does enjoy practicing the relaxation exercises).

Also I'm kind of getting the writing bug again for some reason. I might just ignore it until it goes away, I might not. It's been hard to start writing simply because the last time I did, I somehow managed to not save about 3/4 of what I wrote. I have the Word doc, it's just a lot... shorter than I remember it being. Which is frustrating, but I guess it's all still up in my head, so no great loss. Sometimes I think about trying to write and publish a novel or something, just to see if I could. And royalty checks (however small) certainly wouldn't suck. ;)

We finished the dots today. :) All in all it wasn't nearly as bad as I had thought it might. It was a lot of painting and a lot of work, but I think the result is well worth it. As Jenny says, nobody can accuse us of failing to stimulate Ollie visually. ;)

I jest, of course; I didn't paint any dots while Jen was out of town (it really is a two-person job), so tonight was night 3 of dot painting. I think it's going along quite well. A couple more days and I think we might be done.

Y'all (oh yeah, I said it) better be impressed by the latest photos of Ollie's room, because (as my dad warned us), those dots are kind of a pain in the ass to paint. ;)

Although the big circles made out of 3" circles will be way more painful, I'm sure. Still, I think it looks very cool even partially done. My wife and dad are both geniuses--one for coming up with the idea, the other for designing it and putting it on a 12"×12" grid so we can easily paint it.

Yeah, so these things seem to be monthly, so here you go for the month of September. ;) I'm just kidding... or am I?

Anyway, last weekend was lots of fun. Sandy flew in from Florida (between all kinds of crazy business trips: we appreciate the stopover! ;)) and hung out all weekend. We went to the Botanical Gardens, and also a nearby collection of animals who had been rescued. Many of them had been people's pets, which makes you wonder about humanity (I mean, who thinks a bobcat would make a good pet?) I did feel bad for the coyote, Martha, though; she had grown up on a ranch with a family and dogs to play with, and now she's stuck in a small cage with no entertainment at all. She just paced back and forth, back and forth, and she really reminded me of the poor dogs at the Humane Society, the ones who keep hoping their family will come back and find her again. Some kids came by while we were watching her, and the way she perked up was kind of heartbreaking. The vultures were kind of cool, though, especially since it was feeding time (yum, rats!). Jen was a little squicked out by that, though.

Anyway, like I said, it was lots of fun. We went to see The Illusionist at the Alamo; I really liked the movie. It was all stylish early-1900's Vienna, and magic, and love, and an ambiguous ending (I love ambiguous endings), and Jessica Beal's te-herr-ible "Generic Euro" accent didn't detract too much, seeing as she didn't have all that many lines. I liked Edward Norton's role a lot, though, and Paul Giamatti did a good job too. Anyway, if magic and intrigue in Imperial Vienna sounds interesting, you should definitely check it out. We hit the Texas State History Museum as well, which had an interesting exhibit on Braggin' (It's not braggin' if it's true!), including a Cadillac covered in rhinestones (the glitteriest car I've ever seen) and an actual, working, VW Beetle made from wrought iron (which was amazingly cool). All in all a fun visit, with a very nice mix of activities and full-out lazy relaxation. My kind of holiday weekend. :)

Lately work has been madly busy. We have a major deadline Monday (I've been working 10- and 12-hour days, highly unusual for us), and another at the end(ish) of October, and somewhere in there we're moving offices. Well, I say "we", but I'm not moving offices, because I already did. I packed up my office at work, including my work PC, and brought it home, and I now work from the dining room 4.5 days a week. (The other half day I have to be onsite for meetings etc.) Working from home is, in a word, delightfullyawesome. It's definitely nice to have separate work and home PCs--easier, at least for me, to keep the two activities separate and be able to "leave" work even though I'm still here. I feel more productive, able to concentrate better; I couldn't imagine working in a cubicle farm again. A private office, maybe. ;) The lack of commute is really, really nice. It does take some discipline, but I guess I don't really find that all that hard to manage.

This weekend we're just kind of chilling. USA Baby was having a huge sale, so we picked up a full-body pillow for Jen and a car seat/stroller system. We also took down the popcorn ceiling in the nursery (which is terribly messy, by the way; there's fine white dust everywhere), I primered it today, and will be painting it tomorrow. We need to do the polka dots soon as well, just to get that room totally done and ready.

Ollie is really active lately, and he's pretty strong. It's very weird (in a cool way) to feel him kicking or punching. Today Jen said she tapped her stomach and Ollie immediately kicked her there, so she may have invented a new game. ;)

Charlie is finally back down to his ideal weight, but Cara managed to put on five extra pounds in the meantime. The dieting never stops here, man; we just take turns. ;)

Anyway, aside from Sandy's visit, my life is all about work and Ollie, so not much else to say. I hope all you guys are having a good time of it. :)

I have absolutely no idea what this is, but it's definitely full of affirmation. ;) Jen found it while we were looking for the Austin Papas e-mail group.

It actually works with any random address, actually... try <yourname>.youaremighty.com, for instance. Or this one. :)

No, it's not a vacation. :-P An anti-vacation, in point of fact. This is Jen's last week at TIP. I know going in we both thought it would be fun for her, that the time would fly by. Instead it's been quite the reverse; Jen made the comment Saturday that it's a good thing she's mostly dissociated the whole thing from Duke TIP, because as an experience it would otherwise have polluted the fond memories she had of her own time there. Which is really too bad; I had hoped to send our own kids there someday, and from Jen's experience, I wouldn't do so if they paid me at this point. And I'm not even talking about the things Jen has had to deal with--just the way the kids are treated and the program is run. To be honest I'm not sure whether to blame their expansion away from the Duke campus (and the resulting loss of central program culture) or the societal changes (technological and otherwise) that result in parents who panic if their kids don't have cellphones and threaten lawsuits for any imagined breach of idyllic perfection. I will never be that parent, I want my kids to learn independence, learn to deal with problems on their own, learn to make friends and experience technology as a tool, not a substitute for their own intelligence and creativity.

Anyway, Jen was in town again this weekend; she and some new friends managed to make it to one of my games for the first time this season--against the team that won the championship last season. We won, of course (it's totally her fault our record's no good... ;)), which was lots of fun. It's funny, we tend to play very well against this team (both seasons), I don't know why. I still have no points this season (2 penalty minutes, though!) which is kind of disappointing since I won't be playing this fall (or next spring). I'd like to get a goal before I have to lay off for a while, but we'll see.

I can't decide if I like the Mary J. Blige version of "One" better than the original, or vice versa. I told Jen I liked the original better earlier today, but then I just listened to the new version and I can't decide. It might be novelty, though; the song is a classic either way.

I need something new to read. Lately (okay, like the last eight years) I've been on this intelligence sort of kick, but I feel like I haven't read anything challenging on the subject in a while. There was a good article in the NYTimes magazine today about intelligence (short version: heredity rules if your environment is sufficiently challenging to allow you to reach your full potential), and I wrote about an interesting study about learning to program over on my "other" blog--the one that nobody ever reads unless they need help with the Windows Scheduler ;)--a few days ago, but I feel like there must be something new and exciting in either related philosophy or science. Hofstadter has a new book coming out, which is exciting, but I'm thinking about looking for something to read on the plane to NYC.

Which is a separate excitement. Work is pretty busy right now; I have a metric ton of work to do before Sep. 15, and I can definitely use two weeks of R&R; I know at least some of it will be spent Kokai-style "commando raid" vacation, but hopefully I can sleep in at least once. ;) Either way it should be fun, with everyone from both families in one place, plus Simon & Fiona.

Sorry, I'm a little scatterbrained right now. I've got so much going on mentally that I've had trouble sleeping, something that hasn't been true since probably sophomore year of college, when I considered it a relaxing day if I got to sleep before 2 a.m. ;) I probably left something out of this update, but I can't "feature" what (as they say in Deadwood ;)).

Last night was our fourth hockey game of the season. We lost the first two, both by a single goal; the first one we really should have won, the second was just a hard-fought game. We won the third game, 7-1. To be honest I felt kind of bad about that one. You'd think it would be fun to have a game like that, but I always remember the times I was on the losing end of those games and it's hard to enjoy it.

Anyway, like I said, last night was the fourth game of the season. We ended up coming back from a 2-0 deficit to tie it, but it felt like a win, the way we played. Our opponents were the best team in the league (same team that won the championship last season), so a tie isn’t bad at all (we can do better, though. ;)) After the game, our goalie stood up in front of everyone and announced that I had had a “monster” game, my “best game of the season, by far”, and that I was “absolutely everywhere on the ice”. I think I blushed. :) Anyway, it was a really good game; I had lots of great defensive plays, stopping breakaways, cutting off passes, etc.

I did have one big fall, though, which everyone teased me about mercilessly. The captain said he was taking up a collection to have my skates sharpened. :) We had the puck in their zone, 2nd period, we were getting lots of good pressure. Curry, one of the forwards, got the puck at the left wing and saw me completely open at the blue line. He passed it to me, perfect pass, and right as he did my legs just shot out from under me. Nobody within 20’, a perfect pass, and I just BAM! fell down. What’s worse is that, as I was laying on the ice, the puck was coming straight towards me. I mean, STRAIGHT towards me. If I hadn’t moved it would have hit me right in the middle of my stick. Of course, like a total idiot I tried to lift my stick (as I’m laying flat on the ice) to take the pass with the blade, and the puck goes under the stick, under me, and out of the zone. Brilliant!

Anyway, like I said, I had a good game--almost had a goal. I had the puck all alone against 3 defenders, I faked past one, ended up right in the center of the ice with the 2 defenders in front of me. I seem to find myself in that situation about once a game, so I've been trying to make it work for me. My current move is to cut right just a bit to get the defender between me and the goalie, and then shoot the puck through the defender's legs, so the goalie has trouble seeing the shot at first. This time, I’m pretty sure the shot hit the post on the far side, it was a really nice shot and I don’t think the goalie really saw it. Eventually one of those shots is going to go in, it just didn’t happen that game.

I've also noticed a number of Spoonerisms coming out of my mouth lately. After the game I wanted to talk about the fact that especially in the second period, it's important to keep our shifts short so we don't get tired and caught out of position (which is why we were down 2-0), only I said it was important to keep our "shorts shifted". You can guess what kind of jokes were made at my expense at that point. ;) I actually really like this team. Everyone on it is always in a good mode, there's teasing and camaraderie in the locker room. Jen says she approves of their teasing me all the time, and frankly I agree; it's a really great group of guys and I'm glad to be a part of it. What's even better is that I know other guys on nearly every team in the league (last nights' opponents are pretty much the exception), so there's always someone to say hi to or trash talk before the game. It's a lot of fun, and it makes me wish I could play hockey every night. :)

Playing games without Jen in the audience is kind of weird. She'd only missed a few games before this season, and I was pretty used to looking up and seeing her in the second or third row, reading her book at period intermissions or cheering during play. I keep looking for her, and of course she's not there. She'll get to see my game this Saturday, though, so hopefully I'll have another good game. :)

As far as work goes, it's pretty busy right now. We have our second-most-major deadline of this entire release coming up, and everyone's scrambling to get ready. I'm in the middle of a really frustrating problem (been working on it about 14 hours thus far, with no resolution). It doesn't help that making brand new code work exactly like the old code did six months ago--which is what we're doing--is one of the more tedious, uncreative jobs in programming. It has to be done, and it will be worth the effort at the end, but any programmer will tell you that solving new problems and writing new code is much more fun.

Aside from work and hockey I haven't done much; I have a million things to do to the house that I just haven't had the time to do, and we're supposed to hang out with some friends for July 4th, but other than that my social life is essentially nonexistant. :) Sorry. No new baby news, either; we won't know the sex for another 5 weeks, and that's really the next big milestone. I've actually only told 3 people at work, partially because everyone who knows Jenny is pregnant seems to only talk to her about that sometimes, and I don't want that to happen. Of course I'm also a pretty private person in general.

Sadly, my life is not a Mighty Ducks movie, and so, though we are indeed a plucky ragtag band which has had our problems, my hockey team did not win the championship game. In fact, we pretty much sucked for the entire game. :-P The final score was 2-1, but that was only because our goaltender had an amazing game. The other team was working us over like crazy, making good passes, frustrating our rush, getting off good shots all over the place. We just couldn't seem to get our flow going, start connecting on passes.

On the plus side, I did have two very solid slapshots, both on net, and I did have fun (although I took a slapshot off my thumb that left it swollen and sore for two days), so I can't really complain. There was an after-party, with barbecue (it's Texas) and beer (apparently my defensive partner's dad is a brewer for Shiner Bock, and procured a keg of what will be next year's Anniversary Special). I partook of neither, since we don't eat meat and I'm not drinking until/unless Jenny does (it only seemed fair), but I did spend about 15 minutes swapping hockey stories with a 14-year-old. :)

Anyway, it was a great season and I can't wait for the summer season to start.

So the season has ended; my team finished in third place. The final stats for the season are available online here. If you drill down into the stats, you'll note I got no goals, no penalty minutes, and a single assist. Go me. ;) Still, I feel like I had a great first season and a lot of fun. The handful of pictures Jenny was able to get before the camera battery died are up in the gallery. I'm in black with a white helmet, #79. (I would have been #13, but someone else on the team already had it).

Being in the top 4 teams meant we got to enter the playoffs, which are a simple single-elimination tournament. Our first-round game was last night, against the 2nd-place team. Of our 4 regular defensemen, one was recovering from salmonella and the other had just gotten new skates (and isn't really comfortable in them yet) since the steel runner in his old ones shattered during a game earlier in the season (seriously). The referees seemed to kind of have it in for our team; we took 7 penalties to I think 2 for the other team, although I honestly think there were an equal number of offenses on either side. We did score first, one goal in the first period, but the second period kind of fell apart on us and we gave up two power play goals.

Fortunately, one of the things this team is very good at is coming back from a deficit, and we really went to work in the third period. My defensive partner scored a beauty of a wrist shot off a faceoff during a 4-on-4, leaving us tied. We had several more great opportunities, including one where I cut off a clearing pass, passed to a forward at the side of the net, and ended up with the rebound and a wide open net. My shot was a little off balance and someone got in the way of it, and we ended up with about 8 players involved in a scrum in front of the net--most of us laying on the ice. The puck ended up right in front of me, and I saw our center about three feet away, standing up. I very carefully used my stick to push the puck towards him, but as soon as he touched it the ref whistled us for a hand pass (which was nonsense).

Time wound down and ran out; unlike the regular season, there are no ties in the playoffs, so we went to a 5-minute 4-on-4 sudden death overtime. We played for about 3-1/2 minutes, with some good chances on both sides, until a miscommunication ended up with us apparently having too many men on the ice. (I'm not completely sure there actually were too many men, but that's what was called.) One of our centers, my defensive partner, and I ended up as the 3 in a 4-on-3. I was really excited to get tapped for the 4-on-3, since it indicated a lot of trust from my captain and teammates. Less than a minute later my partner got the puck in our zone. He had some time, so he held it, and the center started yelling for him to ice it all the way down. Instead, he very calmly passed it straight up the middle to the center, who fought off the lone defense in his way, broke in on the goalie, and beat him 5-hole. It was an amazing goal shorthanded in overtime, and the crowd (friends and family as well as the teams waiting to play the next game) started yelling. It was great. :)

So we're into the championship game, which will be played next Monday. We've played our opponents three times: beaten them twice and tied once, so we feel like if we play well we have a great chance. Either way, I've had an amazing time this season and I'm really glad I got to play.

In other news, yesterday and today my company held the annual conference for our independent resellers, consultants, and other developers. This year it was held here in Austin. I was scheduled to judge an annual competition yesterday, but I had to bow out at the last minute because I needed to make it to my playoff game. Today I gave a 25-minute presentation on recent improvements to one of the tools we sell. It was very well received, although I have several notes on things I can do better next time I get the opportunity. It was very interesting to me to meet all these people who build an entire ecosystem of software based on our stuff, and hear their perspectives on how things are and should be. Being an insider was a new experience for me too; all these developers wanted to know what's coming down the pipe, and how things work, and I have to keep in mind what I am and am not allowed to state publicly. It was very cool taking questions and being able to give good answers. Hopefully I'll get to participate in the conference in years to come as well.

I'm really bad about updating this thing. Sometimes I'm not entirely sure why I have it. :-D

Anyway, hockey has been going great. All of a sudden my team is on a tear; we've won our last 5 games, the most recent with a substitute goalie. In that stretch we beat the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams (we were more or less in 4th place for most of it). As of this last game we are tied for 1st place in the division with either 1 or 2 other teams (the latest games haven't posted to the website yet).

Of course, I still don't have a goal, an assist, or a penalty to my credit. I'm the only player on the team who has not missed a game of which that is true. :) Partially it's just luck; I've certainly had chances for goals or assists. Mostly it's due to the fact that I tend to play a defensive style; my partner tends to play pretty offensively, joining the rush or pinching to try to hold the puck in, which means I'm covering back in case he gets beaten. Still, we're winning and I'm having a great time, so I'm happy.

Work is going well. I've been working on my presentation for our reseller/developer conference, which is coming up very soon. I'm a little nervous;hopefully it goes well. No hecklers, that sort of thing. ;)

The garden hasn't died yet. We've been watering more than we did last year, and that seems to be helping. The bell pepper plant from last year has actually grown quite a bit, so here's hoping it feels productive this time around. This weekend I'm going to put up the new mantel and re-lay the floor in the bedroom. I'll be painting the guest room this summer, and I need to find some way to keep the stupid transition pieces attached to the new flooring (I think I'm going to end up drilling into the concrete and screwing them down) and then hopefully that will complete the inside of the house for the time being.

Also, for some reason, yesterday and today I've been thinking a lot about Neil. I'm not really sure why; maybe it's that all the flowers around here are blooming. I remember noticing on the way back from Houston that the bluebells were blooming along the highway; they were kind of heartbreakingly pretty actually. Either way. I still miss him a great deal, especially when I cut up bell peppers or broccoli.

It's funny how you can coincidentally start listening to a particular song that somehow fits right into your life.

And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

From How to Save A Life by The Fray.

Neil lived in a purple palace with a purple castle to sleep in. He raced around his cage at top speed, sending bits of litter out the corners as he peeled out. Neil loved cantaloupe, blueberries, cheerios, broccoli, and peppers. When he ate watermelon the juice ran down the corners of his mouth and stained his white fur red and we called him a vampire piggie. When Neil was a baby he climbed his castle and out of his aquarium and scaled a book case (a height of a foot above the aquarium) we don't know how he did it. Neil and I used to play a game called "reverse lion tamer" where I would open my mouth and he would insert his entire head. He was not scared of the cat and would blithely ignore the paw fishing around for him until we screamed at Riley. When Neil was excited he would bounce around on your chest like a piece of popcorn popping while chittering. When he was scared he would whistle softly. When I held him in my arms with his head on my chest he would butt his head up under my chin.

When Neil's eye was bad they said he might not even live and he got his sight back.

When he broke his teeth off he grew them back.

It turns out that Neil probably had a very inner ear infection that gave no symptoms. This ear infection went on so long it seeped into his bones, his nervous system, and his brain. Neil could not fight hard enough to win this battle.

And neither could we.

Neil died today, at 6:30 am at the specialist vet in Houston we took him to. We were supposed to plan a course of action today for the newly developed nervous system problems but it was too late to plan. We had promised him that if he lived until Monday the special vet would make it all better. He lived until Monday but she didn't make it better.

Neil was supposed to live at least five more years.

I loved him very very much and I miss him very very much.

Neil died this morning about 6:30 in a hospital in Houston. He fought through more things than anyone could have asked. I miss him.

As with everything else, Jenny says it better on her blog.

Jenny took Neil in to the vet today for a progress check on his eye (which is doing extraordinarily well, all things considered), and it turns out he's a local celebrity. Apparently the specialist we went to see in Houston (who took a CT scan of Neil's head for us) used his slides at a conference this weekend, which the vets here in town went to see. So when Jenny walked into the vet today, and the vet tech found out that he'd had a CT scan last week by Dr. Antinoff, she all but asked for his autograph. Which I find hugely amusing. :) Everyone knows his name.

Today was one of those days where nothing seemed to go right. I spent the morning trying to figure out why adding tax to orders was coming up with the wrong numbers, only to discover that the person who told me it was, was using the wrong tax percentage to verify. Then I spent the afternoon trying to track down a ghost in the machine; a bug that didn't actually exist. My own fault, of course, as I broke a rule that I've spent the last month trying to get someone else to follow. :-P

On the other hand, when I organized the garage tonight (ok, I admit it, when I've had a bad day I put upbeat music on really loud and clean things) I found an ice hockey helmet we inexplicably bought for Jenny back in St. Louis when she expressed a brief interest in roller hockey. This means that I can ditch my crusty, rusty, stinky old roller hockey helmet for a nice new one actually designed for ice hockey. So that made me feel better. :)

Work in general is pretty busy right now. We pushed RC1 (that's Release Candidate 1 for you non-programming types) to our QA department this afternoon, so we're moving right along. I'm going to be interested to see this go out to customers and hear exactly what they like and don't like about it. :) I also have some ideas for things I want to change or add in the next version, not that I think Product Management will leave me a whole lot of time to do so. ;)

Looking forward to the cruise. Tonight I learned that cruise lines' (or at least Princess') customer service people not only don't bat an eye at potentially weird requests, they actually can answer your question in an entirely satisfactory manner. So kudos to whichever nice fellow (Christopher?) I spoke to.

What does your birth date mean?

Your birth on the 17th day of the month suggests that you are very lucky financially, because this date indicates a solid business sense.

Snicker.

Although you are probably very honest and ethical, this birthday enables you to be shrewd and successful in the world of business and commercial enterprise. You have excellent organizational, managerial, and administrative capabilities enabling you to handle large projects and significant amounts of money with relative ease.

Chortle!

You are ambitious and highly goal-oriented, although you may be better at starting projects than you are at finishing them.

Finally something halfway accurate. :)

A sensitivity in your nature, often repressed below the surface of awareness, makes it hard to give or receive affection.

Er. Okay.

Seriously, if I believed in numerology at all, this would have put paid to it. :-D

It has been brought to my attention that there is no Neil on my banner. This is obviously a grievous oversight and will be corrected. Soon.

I am often described as "easy going". I suppose in a lot of ways I am, but at this point I don't think it's a term I'd ever really choose to describe myself. I am remarkably anal about some pretty trivial stuff, and I'm sure it doesn't make me particularly easy to live with. Fortunately for me, I am married to the most patient, loving woman this earth ever produced--a stroke of fortune so great I could be unlucky the rest of my life and still come out ahead.

Oh, examples? Okay. Here's the kind of thng you'd have to put up with if you were Jen:

• I cannot abide towels not being hung up after use. I mean, cannot abide like it grinds at my soul for entire days when I think the towels may not have been hung properly. And by properly I mean folded to within 1.0mm of "in half" lengthwise, then hung precisely doubled on the towel rack. I swear. Like nails on a chalkboard. Really.
• If I don't load the dishwasher, it gives me the heebie-jeebies as if someone were not merely dancing, but seriously Lord of the Dancing on my grave. There are glasses that go in the far left row, and nothing else is allowed to be in that row, lest horror and chaos engulf the household. The bottom shelf of the dishwasher must be as symmetrical as possible given the layout; if there's a large plate on the right, there had better be one on the left. Again, horror and chaos.

This is all just so all of you know what Jenny has to put up with on a daily basis. I would bet money that nobody who ever lived with me would ever be wary of my wrath should a towel not be properly folded. Fortunately, none of you have to. :)

This ramble brought to you by Eric and his Extremely Anal Saturday, in which he rearranged the dishwasher before turning it on. For no better reason than it made him feel better. I swear, some nights I'm not half so relaxed as Adrian Monk.

Oh, also, I have the most patient, loving, wonderful wife in the universe. That is all.

No, wait, that's not all. Tonight, we got a pizza stone. It came with a wooden pizza peel. I am so excited I nearly forgot to rearrange the dishes in the dishwasher. Whoever comes over next gets free awesome homemade pizza.

Okay, so a quick update before I crash for the day; I have to get up at 5:45, after all. (In case you're wondering, I have to get up that early to catch the bus, in order to be at work by 8:30. Jen and I are riding the bus at the moment because gas is outrrrrrrrrrrrrageous and we're poor after August. :)

I played hockey Sunday for the first time in roughly 2 months. I'm still a little stiff. :-P It was fun, though; nothing like puck-in-the-corner drills to work out any lingering stress or aggression. Hockey is kind of funny, because nobody ever thinks of me as a sporty person. I played varsity tennis in high school, and soccer at various points, and now both roller and ice hockey, and yet when you think of sporty people I'm never one that comes to mind. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get to play in the league this fall (and I'm sure I won't this spring)--between the cost and my crunched schedule (spending 4-1/2 hours a day on the bus kind of squeezes your free time), there's just no way. Maybe next summer.

Work's been good. We apparently had a gangbuster August in sales and are shaping up for a good September. Our salescritters are evidently very excited about the new stuff we're putting in the next version, including specifically mentioning a feature that I worked on pretty heavily. I've never worked in retail software, and while 90% of the job is the same as it was at Boeing or LG&E or Darwin, the other 10% is completely different. :) I guess that's true of any job, but retail software just seems really different somehow. I need to think about that when I'm less tired; maybe I can get a decent post about that. In general work is really good; sometimes tedious, sometimes exciting, but all in all it's one of the two best jobs I've had, and I'm really happy with it.

We took the dogs in for their annual checkup today. Charlie is kind of fat. When we got him he was about 50 pounds. Last year he was about 62. Today he was 74 and change. I hope he doesn't have a thyroid problem; we should know in a few days. On the other hand at least a thyroid problem would be treatable, and would explain how he can gain 25 pounds on a diet of less food than the one that keeps Cara at about 55 pounds. :(

The plus side of riding the bus for 4 hours every day is, of course, that I have lots of time to read books. I've been going back through the Wheel Of Time series (next book in October!), at about a book every other day. The later books have some warts, but overall I still love that series. Jen and I went to a library book sale which was unfortunately kind of lame; nothing like the St. Louis one where they'd sell you a box full of books for like $2. I miss that. :)

You meet the strangest people riding the bus, though. I mean, I usually have my defenses against meeting people well in place; Zen headphones in, nose firmly in book, but there was this fellow at one stop last week who pretty much took the cake for "non-scary" weirdness. He wanted to talk about physics, and Einstein, and psychology, and computational theory, and neurology, and ghosts and UFOs and whatnot. It was one of the most wide-ranging 15-minute conversations I've ever had. His grasp of physics was a little incomplete, and we didn't spend too much time in computational theory, but hey, at least he was thinking about stuff. :)

Okay, I think that's about enough of a brain dump for right now. I'll try to expand on some stuff from this post over the next few days.

Also: Cheese. That is all.

Okay, maybe not perfect, but yesterday was a good day. It started out kind of slow, with a visit from the mold exterminators, who were very nice. They liked our animals, which is generally a pretty reliable litmus test. :) After that I went and got a long overdue haircut at my favorite salon (yay for pre-cut scalp massages), then Jen and I visited our new favorite liquor store, the Grapevine Market. It was Tequila Day, so there were four or so little sample stands set up with different kinds of tequila. Each station had a mixing/shooting tequila and two sipping tequilas, and would happily feed you samples, either in a margarita or straight up. Not a bad way to spend an hour or two (especially since their lunch menu looks yummy), and we came home with four new wines to try. Jenny's stated goal is to have a completely full wine rack (a feat never before attempted, let alone achieved) before our friends descend upon us this summer. :)

After that we took a nap. A lovely, relaxing, nap. Followed by dinner - barbecued chicken, one of my favorites.

After that, we hit PetCo for some supplies, then Barnes and Noble, and then came home, watched part of Dark City, and then fell asleep.

All in all a pretty satisfactory day. More Saturdays should be like that. Also, more weekends should be 3-day weekends, but sadly nobody down here seems willing to do that--one thing I really miss about Boeing.

Okay, since my adoring fans are clamoring for an update, here's a sorta kinda stream of consciousness covering whatever I remember of the last month (while the cat does a square dance on my lap), in rough reverse chronological order.

Today I passed the Microsoft Developing Web Applications with C# certification test, leaving me one test (Solution Architecture) shy of my full MCSD. There are fewer than 13,000 MCSD's worldwide, although I confess that I'm still not quite as cool as the 9-year old Pakistani girl who became the youngest ever Microsoft Certified Professional. :-P

At work I've been getting comfortable with Virtual PC. Right now on my computer at work I have three virtual computers running: Windows 2000 (US), Windows XP (England), and Windows XP (French). This is the awesomest thing ever, especially if you are responsible for making sure your company's software works on international versions of Windows--which, coincidentally, I am. Seeing the familiar Windows UI in French is pretty cool.

Speaking of internationalization, I want to hunt down whoever wrote the Date object for Javascript and beat them with a copy of some large, heavy tract on internationalization. I realize that way back in like 1995 when Javascript was invented we never expected people in those <sarcasm>tiny, useless third world countries</sarcasm> to ever actually get computers, but it's been 10 years, people. Get in on the damn global village already.

I saw Revenge of the Sith Tuesday (my company paid for all us programming geeks to go see the noon showing at the Alamo Drafthouse, which was nice). They showed an hour of various things before the movie, including clips from the Clone Wars animated series, a takeoff on COPS called TROOPS (imagine Stormtroopers getting called in to break up a domestic disturbance, their eventual solution being to shoot both husband and wife and burn down their house), and, believe it or not, the first 10 minutes of the honest to goodness 1978 Star Wars Christmas Special, which was so bad that Lucas stated in an interview that if he had a time machine and a sledgehammer, he would use them to make sure nobody ever saw that film. And frankly, given the first 10 minutes, I say give the man a time machine. ROTS itself was good (not great, but good). It didn't redeem the first two movies; ROTS is the only one I feel any impetus to purchase. Still, it was very pretty, and reasonably minimal on the terrible dialog. Apparently Jar Jar actually does have a single, solitary line in the movie; he says "excuse me" when someone bumps into him. Admirable restraint on Lucas' part; I was expecting some kind of vaudeville show or tap dance or something.

The previews before ROTS were all very interesting. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe looks very pretty (and the trailer at least was cinematically quite similar to LOTR, surprise surprise), and if the story is done well it could be an excellent film. Batman Begins looks at least passable, though the Batmobile kind of makes me want to retch. But hey! Katie Holmes! :) Stealth looks like the perfect summer blockbuster: fighter jets, explosions, etc etc.

Geico is currently my hero, since some pleasant fellow rubbed up against our Passat in a parking lot, denting the wheel well, and neglected to leave a note or insurance information. $1700 damage, plus car rental, of which we will only pay $250. Of course, we'll see if they're still my hero in September when we renew our policy, and unfortunately they weren't willing to pay for the oil change and torn CV boot (~$400 total). Sigh.

My grandma (dad's mom) was just here for a week-long visit. It is still rather shocking to me that she's 83. I don't know why, though. I guess I always felt like it was other people's grandmas that were old. :-P

I finally started playing ice hockey. Well, not "playing" so much as "taking lessons", but same thing. Every Sunday I suit up and get out on the ice for a thoroughly exhausting hour. I am having an absolute blast. I'm starting to actually get the hang of stopping. It's not at all like stopping on roller blades. For one thing, if you fall down on roller blades, you stop. Not so much on ice though; you just spin into the wall like a moron. :) Hopefully by the time the next season starts up I'll be in decent playing shape. If nothing else I should have massive leg muscles, at least if the instructor and his damn suicide drills have anything to do with it. Incidentally, I wasn't sure whether to be comforted or worried when I learned he was qualified in Combat Life Saving by the military. Currently I'm going with comforted. :-P

Okay, I think that's pretty much popped the stack. If anything else comes to me you all will be... well, okay, not the first to know, but definitely in the top 10. :)

Edit: Added link to the TROOPS short film.

For those of you who don't know (which is probably everyone), the personal trainer Jen and I consulted with has told me I need to add calories to my day (this will not come as a shock to anyone who knows me) and add about 12 pounds. To this end I have been advised to eat breakfast as well as some sort of mid-day (and mid-evening, if I can manage it) snack.

Jenny has taken to this idea with great relish. We have had several shopping excursions where we go down the entire power bar aisle looking for the bars with the most calories. We then pile varieties of these bars into a shopping cart, and I go home and eat 1-2 a day in addition to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and an apple.

Since I have to eat these (so far mostly) godawful power bars, I figure someone might as well get some entertainment (or would that be infotainment?) from my experiences, so I'll be reviewing each bar as I try them. All scores are on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being "Oh my god I can't believe I put that in my mouth" and 10 being "Fill up the shopping cart tasty". Different flavors of the same bar will be added to the original bar review, so check back often for updates! And may god have mercy on my soultastebuds.

The Reviews:
Peanut Butter Rage
Promax
Clif Bar

...it smells like... victory. ;)

So Saturday we ripped all the carpet out of the office and bought enough new laminate flooring to replace all the carpet left in the house. Unfortunately the laminate needs to acclimatize to its new environment (you know, sniff around, set up its den, mark the perimeter... oh wait) for 48 hours before installation, which meant that the office was empty all weekend but for stacks of laminate--which meant that the front hall was full of office furniture, and the living room was full of stacks of books. (We have a lot of books. It doesn't seem like nearly so many when they're on the shelves, but we could build fairly substantial forts out of these stacks of books, and still have paperbacks left over for ammunition...)

So last night while Jen was at a New Works (er, sorry, The University Co-op Presents the Cohen New Works Festival) meeting, I spent 3 hours putting the new floor down in the office. I think I've gotten the hang of this flooring, since that was all it took. Tonight I'll do the closet and the bedroom hall, put in the mouldings, and then we can reassemble the office.

I'm really digging my Creative Zen Touch. My first impressions were that it is a bit more substantial than Jenny's iPod, specifically slightly heavier and slightly wider. I'm okay with that; it's still pretty small, and the extra size is due to a larger battery. So far it seems as if the claims of ~24 hours continuous play life are more or less true (it's hard to say because I'm not using 96Kbps WMA or whatever the claim is based on; I have both high bitrate MP3s and some WMAs that were automatically converted). I am a little disappointed with the software integration. The Touch isn't yet 100% compatible with Windows Media Player; you can copy over all the songs on a playlist (or all songs in your library), but you can't copy over the playlist(s) themselves. Supposedly a firmware update due in March will bring it up to full MTP compatibility, after which AutoSync should make life wonderful, but until then I have to use Windows Explorer to create playlists. I didn't bother to install any of the Creative software (except the required drivers), since I've never had a good experience with Creative software. :)

As far as sound quality, I'm very happy. I'm not sure I can hear any difference over Jen's iPod, but it might be the default earbuds; the sound is very clear, though. The player's interface is interesting; it does a very good job of not ripping off the iPod without sucking. It has a touch-sensitive strip used for scrolling; I've read a lot of complaints that scrolling through long lists is painful since you have to repeatedly stroke the strip. Apparently none of these people discovered that if you stop at the end of the strip and hold your finger there, the player will keep scrolling. :-P Anyway, so far I'm really happy with the player itself. The carrying case is annoying, though. It's very protective, but once the player is inside the case the only control you can actually access is the power button; you can kind of get at the volume buttons through the elastic sides, but the play controls are all covered by a stiff protective guard. It's really a shoddy design. The worst part is that nobody makes MP3 accessories for anything but the damned iPod; there's no such thing as a third-party Zen Touch case. Sigh. I'll probably post an update to this once the new firmware comes out.

So I glanced at my gmail account today (which I pretty much only use for mailing lists) and I have 50 gmail invites to give away.

If there's anyone who doesn't have a gmail account yet, and wants one, let me know. :)

Okay, so this entry is only about 4 days late. But a very happy, belated birthday to my inordinately loving, beautiful, and incredibly wonderful wife. Who is a year older than she thought she was. ;) I love you dearest.

(Last, that is, until the new year. ;) Two more days until I pack up two dogs, a cat, and a guinea pig and drive 18 hours to Louisville. (I swear, every time I say that I think I must be in some Muppet movie--I'm half tempted to try to rent an old Studebaker for the trip...) I'm excited, though; I haven't seen Jen in weeks and weeks, and Christmas is always an exciting time in the old haunts.

Work has been very crazy lately. The client on one of our houses decided it would be a fabulous idea to have his house done in time for him to have a New Year's party in the place. Now, I can totally understand where they're coming from--a New Year's party is a great chance to show off what I understand (not having seen the house yet) are some pretty sweet digs. But you have to wonder, when he decided that, did he even consider what that would mean for the people actually making that happen? Did he think about people working 12 hour days a week before Christmas? If he did, would he have cared?

Anyway, I spent all last week in Phoenix. All in all, it was far from the worst trip out there; we were working in our PHX office, not in the client's house (working on site is stressful and not much fun...), and probably 75% of the central equipment was already set up and ready to test, which was pretty novel. The worst part is that I have to go back out the week of the 3rd... and Jen and I are driving back from Louisville on the 2nd. Now that's ... lovely. Really.

I went to a Christmas party last night, the Austin Museum of Digital Art (in the person of my coworker Rob) was throwing it. It was a pretty decent party (though I could have passed on the grab-bag gift I got...), with some interesting people. AMODA seems to attract a lot of different people; architects, musicians, visual artists, financial people, etc. I think I ran into about 4 or 5 people who are computer programmers "just to pay the bills", which is new for me (at least socially; I've worked with a fair number of those, and cleaned up after many more...). Normally my crowd--at least post-undergraduate--is people who do what they're doing because they really, really like it. I guess sometimes it's good to be reminded that there are a lot of people out there who don't or can't do what they really want to for a living. We did have some interesting conversations about the nature of hobbies, though, which followed on the heels of my finally getting around to reading Hugh McLeod's How to Be Creative essay. That was a particularly interesting read for me, because--as much as I stoutly maintain that real software engineering is a truly creative thing--I still often find myself with the desire to build a bookcase, or write something, or go sit in a store and paint really crappy chinese ships on overpriced pottery. :) I like what Hugh says about sovereignty, and the need to not make it about getting rich or indeed even showing anyone else what it is you do. Most of the stuff I do end up writing is for Jen, and thus at least one other person knows about it, but sometimes I do get the urge to write (it's almost always write) something totally for myself. Creativity is a strange beast.

Getting back to the sovereignty thing; someone last night made the point to me that he likes the "pressure" of some sort of deadline, even in his hobbies. I can see where that would be useful, but to me it really is all about the sovereignty of the hobby. The stories I like the most are the ones I write on my own schedule, or at least the ones I'd had kicking around in my head for a long time before I committed them to paper. When I took Intro to Creative Writing, that was certainly true; the stories I just tried to sit down and write to the assignment were just not, to put it one way, as authentic and--again, perhaps just to me--as interesting as the ones where the writing of the story happened to coincide with an assignment.

Anyway, I'm sure next year will be a good one; not without its stresses and tribulations, but with many good memories to be made. Catch you on the flip side...

So yes, my birthday was Wednesday. Thank you, thank you, I have survived another year. Shocking, innit? ;) But then, Jenny and I saw a play in which the point was made that people act as if you get older all at once, on your birthday, as if something changes, when really it's gradual, infinitesimal, unnoticeable in real life. Birthdays are strange in that they're at once a tiny step -- a rollover of the clock from 11:59 to 12:00 -- and a quantum leap -- underage to adult, minor to legal drinker, twentysomething to thirtysomething, normal working adult to "eligible for retirement" oldster. Anyway, that's the pithy thought for the week: when exactly do those things "change"?

As for the event itself, it was even more low-key than the time I invited 30 people and 3 showed up. I worked from 6:15am to about 5pm, went home and made dinner, and then Jen and I went to UT to do callbacks for her show. I spent 3 hours sitting in a college desk in the hall taking photos of prospective castees and handing out sets. Then we went home, had raspberry martinis, and crashed. Oh, yes, and somewhere in there Jenny surprised me, against all orders, with a copy of Half-Life 2. Which I am greatly enjoying. :)

This weekend was even more crazy full than usual, and yet somewhat more relaxed. I mean, we only saw 2 plays, both of which were pretty short. Both were fairly disturbing, but that's also kind of par for the course this semester. Saturday we spent about 10 hours at the Alamo Drafthouse, watching a marathon of Degrassi (both Junior High and High). I confess I had never even heard of this show before, but it was enjoyable. In retrospect, I think we should have played the drinking game, but oh well.

It's rainy as hell here. I want it to stop. I need to mow the lawn, among other things.

This week is a short week; I am really looking forward to a four-day weekend. Work is very intense -- if good -- right now, hopefully it will slow up again after the new year. Weekend after next Mom and Dad and Ryan are coming down, which is exciting. The week after that I am spending in Phoenix, which is less exciting (but will earn me my next free ticket from SWA). I'm going back for another full week right after we get back from Xmas vacation. I think the universe is taking vengeance on me for complaining that I really wanted to finish off that free ticket; really I would have been happy with a one-day, in-and-out trip, but I guess it's not to be.

I think the best part about this Christmas will be that I'll get to spend time with all three of my grandmas in a one week period, which has thus far happened exactly once (at our wedding).

Not much more to say, I'm afraid. We get up early, work late, and go to lots of plays. Terribly exciting, I know. ;)

Today while cleaning the office it occurred to me that our closet door is like some sort of game of chance for our dogs. On the one hand, it holds the leashes, which means that opening that door could lead to going for a walk around the neighborhood--always exciting. On the other, it also holds both the luggage and the vacuum cleaner. The luggage is itself a kind of lottery--it could mean we're all taking a road trip, or it could mean Jenny or I (or both) are going away for a few days. The vacuum, of course, is purest distilled evil, though Charlie tries very hard to act nonchalant. ;)

And they never know which it will be until I close the door, and by then it's too late. Poor guys. :)

It's 2 in the morning and I'm sitting here worrying about Jen, wishing I could be with her right now, wrap her in my arms and do even the tiniest thing to make her life better right now.

I love you baby, and I hope you're okay.

Jen flew off to Pittsburgh today to drive up to Boston with her sister and spend the weekend with her Nana, so it's just me [Ed: and the dogs, and the cat...] all weekend. I grilled up some Veat today (somehow managing to be grilling during the exact time period it rained... it started as I put the chicken on and ended 5 minutes after I took it off) with a new barbecue sauce I'm trying (Stubb's Spicy, if you're wondering). BBQ'd chicken is so incredibly yummy. It's fantastic hot off the grill, but I inevitably end up munching on the leftovers later that night... cold BBQ'd chicken is a leftover delight from my childhood. :)

Texas is having certain predictable results on my food, actually. No, I'm not eating steaks or anything like that, but since we moved here, I've completely lost my taste for Tostitos Salsa, once my favorite -- it just tastes too sweet to me now. Right now I'm digging Leal's salsa, which you probably can't get anywhere else but is really, really tasty. :) Same with the BBQ sauce, if to a lesser extent: I am getting spoiled by the variety, though the fact that most of them include Worcestershire Sauce (including anchovies) does keep the variety somewhat smaller than the salsa choices I have.

Work is craaaaaazy at the moment. At least I seem to be keeping pace with my task list; that means I'll be fine right up until about Wednesday of next week, when all hell will break loose. Though I suppose it's possible that things will go more or less according to plan. I keep getting compliments from my bosses, which is nice. It'd be nicer if there were some other developers I could spread the load to, but it's a bit late for that now.

Random thoughts. Spider-Man's problem is that he has no way of telling whether there's a serious problem, or just some cop in a hurry on his way to a domestic disturbance. He and MJ could be in the middle of some intimate time, and he hears sirens, and he has no way to tell whether it's worth getting involved in or not. How much would it suck to swing half way across the city only to discover that the perp was in cuffs by the time you got there?

Batman has partially solved the problem, I mean, he's got the Batsignal. Of course, that really only works if it's dark out, or at least really cloudy. I guess he relies on criminals not committing major crimes on sunny days. Which probably works out all right in Gotham, come to think of it, since the sun doesn't come out during the entire Batman movie (there was only 1). That wouldn't work for Spidey, though, because the sun shines in New Yorkwhatever city that is.

Good Eats drives me nuts. Every episode I watch I'm like, "damn, I need a pizza stone and a peel," or "damn, how did I live this long without a mandoline," or "holy cow I need a digital thermometer with a 12 foot lead and which can outgraph my old TI-85". I don't really need any of these things, but the show does tend to (unintentionally, I think--then again, it may just be really good advertising) reinforce the "better cooking through gadgets" idea. To be fair, a lot of Alton's tips don't require any gadgets at all, and I love the show, it just drives the gadget freak in me absolutely nuts, that's all. Also, the man has like 16 kitchens, and that makes me jealous too. :-P But a 99 cent pizza stone, how can you not want one of those?

1. Name a book you love no matter what anybody says.


The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Say what you will about the thinly veiled Christianity, but my dad read these books to me when I was sick once, as a kid, and they hold a special place in my heart.

2. Name a book you loathe no matter what anybody says.


Can't think of any I loathe right offhand, but J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion is mind-numbingly boring no matter who says it's not. The man had a mind for detail, he was creative as all get out, but damn he should have hired a ghostwriter to make stories out of his material. :) Thank god for Peter Jackson, that's all I'm saying.

3. Name a book you think is undeservedly obscure.


We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. The true story of the Rwandan genocide, one of the decidedly less shining moments in recent history. Reading news stories about current events in the Sudan--and other places--makes this book all the more painful (and relevant). This is what the U.N. should be for, not running multibillion dollar oil-for-food scams and letting the Syrians write Human Rights resolutions.

4. Name a book you think is undeservedly famous.


Ah, this one is even topical. James' Joyce's Ulysses. This may be something like my lack of appreciation for certain forms of abstract art, but it seems to me that the only thing worth admiring in Joyce's work is the sheer amount of determination it takes to write that much nonsense down. Ulysses is at least more readable than Portrait of a Young Man, though, I'll give it that much.

5. Name a book you think you ought to read.


Harold Abelson & Gerald Sussman, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Or maybe Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. The list, written in 6-point Times New Roman, probably would stretch to the moon and back, actually.

6. Name a book you think I ought to read.


See #3.

She says she loves me, but then she celebrated our anniversary by going out to dinner with her parents, and without me. I tell you... ;)

Anyway, I stayed in, watched Miracle, and made one of my favorite recipes from my childhood:

English Muffin Pizzas

Ingredients:
Plain English Muffins (2-3 halves per person)
Pizza Sauce
Mozzarella Cheese
Parmesan Cheese
Any other pizza toppings you like

Preheat oven to 350°. Split the English Muffins and toast them in a toaster until crispy. Spread pizza sauce, toppings, and cheeses on muffins and place in middle rack of oven for 15 minutes or until cheese is melted and bubbly. Turn on broiler for 2-5 minutes (watch it carefully) until cheese is a nice golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool for as long as you can stand it, then gobble them up (half the fun is burning the roof of your mouth ;).

Being the wild and crazy kids we are, Jen and I started off our mad, mad Memorial Day by taking in a movie--Shrek 2--at the local cinema. (Side note: the local cinema has very nice chairs, but is not steeply canted enough for my taste. I give it a B+, with a nudge for its relative cleanliness, but docked because they refused to sell Jen a student ticket.)

Anyway, the movie itself. It is as all the reviews have said: Ha ha, funny movie, tries too hard, story isn't as good as the first one, and Puss in Boots steals all of his scenes. (To be fair, it is quite hilarious in parts, and well worth the inflated ticket prices.) Also, there's a scene where the fairy godmother breaks out Bonnie Tyler's I Need A Hero. And stay through the first round of credits.

Saturday, we got glasses. See Jen's page for photos, if you dare.

Sunday. I don't really remember what we did Sunday. Oh. We acquired two new lamps for the living room. And watched approximately 400 contiguous episodes of Law and Order: SVU (the first season was really terrible, I'm talking Sex and the City Season 1 terrible here). And grilled out, with some really good chipotle-flavored marinade.

Today we took the dogs to Bull Creek Park and went wading (/swimming). Charlie swims like a crocodile; he's heavy enough that only the top half of his head is above water. It's mildly amusing. Then we watched--surprise--more Law and Order (starting to get into better episodes now). And killed some heathen infidels in Age of Mythology.

So now there are only 4 more days till Jenny jets away to lollygag in the sun in Louisville for three weeks, and 4 days is never long enough for my taste. I could always leave here Friday afternoons about 4 and get to Louisville 19 hours (counting the time change) later, and then do it in reverse on Sunday, but that seems like Jenny will veto it. :-P

Hope everyone had a good MDay; I know a lot of people who spent the weekend dodging funnel clouds. Here's hoping nobody caught one.

As promised, new photos of the house...

The backyard swing, with all of its vines flowering.

The garden in full blown growing mode. Amazingly, nothing has died yet. :)

The new deck furniture, after having hacked out enough of the rosebush to allow them to peacefully coexist.

I probably will have little time or inclination to update the rest of this week (stop laughing), so all my adoring fans will have to make do with this.

Yes, we spent most of last weekend and yesterday cleaning the house from top to bottom, and breaking it from bottom to top. This latter bit is really a very annoying trend. We just "finished" the front yard (well, sort of, it still needs about 327 plants and a new ledge to replace the rotted one--but at least it looks nice!) The new patio furniture makes me very happy, especially as the weather has been Austin Beautiful™ lately. I've been dying to take a good book and a beer out on the back porch after work, and just have not had the time. But Fiona is coming in tonight, and Les Thursday, and I'm sure there will be plenty of hanging around in the backyard drinking. :) And then of course there's the BBQ this weekend. I do have pictures of the house, particularly of the very pretty wooden swing (currently swimming in white flowering vines), the garden (which is fast approaching Eden proportions--or at least starting to produce little baby tomatoes and bell peppers), and the new deck furniture. I will try to post those tonight.

Work. Work is stressful. Critical projects have a way of self-destructing at 9pm lately, and this trend is also very annoying. I have one project right now that reminds me of those Engineer Days at school where people would compete to create harnesses in which eggs could be dropped and expected hoped to survive. Except that this particular egg fires itself downwards at very high velocity and contains about a tablespoonful of nitroglycerin, and so at this point it has been fitted with parachutes, streamers, airbags, jet thrusters, alarm sirens, and even springs to bounce it back up into the air when it hits. It hasn't crashed in about a week, which is an improvement. (This project is a living lesson in the hell of supporting legacy software; all of our other projects continue to behave themselves.) If nothing else, this is great practice in troubleshooting recurring problems. :-P

House pictures, as promised.

This one shows off the two new (expanded) beds we just put in, along the front of the house and around the tree. The gravel bit in the foreground will become the third bed as soon as we get around to it.

This is the other part of the front side, showing off one of the two new garage doors. :)

And here's a comparison "before" shot. This is slightly unfair, since in this photo stuff is blooming, but in another few weeks our yard should catch up -- the roses in the back yard have already gone all exuberant.

Since it's been about 2 weeks since my last update, I guess I'm due again. :) I keep thinking I should just force myself to post something on a daily or semi-daily basis. I dunno.

Anyway, last week was pretty horrendous at work. I worked something like 50 hours, despite taking Friday off, and spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Phoenix. Just a tip to anyone thinking of doing so, but do anything it takes to avoid flying into Austin during SXSW. Every single flight into Austin the whole week was oversold, which meant that if you didn't make your flight--and early enough that you actually got a seat--there was no way you were going to get a seat on any other flights. One of my coworkers unexpectedly spent three extra days in California because he got bumped from his original flight. And even if you made your flight, it was guaranteed to be 100% full--largely by people who don't travel much or well (envision rows full of kids who entertain themselves by banging on the seats in front of them). It was not a fun trip.

This week was better; only 47 hours of work, and I even (finally!) got to spend some more time on the next version of our major software. I'm really starting to get a handle on VB.Net and the framework in general, and doing some very cool things with Remoting and Reflection. Getting a handle on VB.Net is a very good thing, considering I'm planning on taking the first of my 5 tests for my MCSD next Tuesday. :) The practice tests are pretty easy, so hopefully it goes well. Also, we have a new employee starting Monday, who knows Java but not VB, so I'm going to be spending some time teaching him VB.

Let's see, what else... I'm kind of on a design kick lately... been reading The Design of Everyday Things and The Evolution of Useful Things. They're really interesting books, and anyone who designs anything should probably read them. I also want to read Peopleware and The Mythical Man-Month. It's funny... as much as I don't want to be a manager, I'm finding all of these books and topics very interesting. Of course, it makes sense to read them as a non-manager too, since the information can be useful from both sides. I've been mostly lucky thus far in having the luxury of choosing good bosses, but that might not always be the case, and managing your boss is a great skill to have. :)

Other things that really interest me lately: Network theory. I want to read Six Degrees. RSS is proving interesting; I started subscribing to feeds a few weeks ago, and there are some really interesting ones out there. I'm particularly enjoying the ones from Microsofties. Having direct conversations with the people who actually write the tools I use on a daily basis is just fantastic--I still haven't found any feeds by OS developers, but pretty much all of the major .Net Fx developers seem to have good feeds/blogs.

Another expensive weekend: we bookended it by purchasing a new bed (Friday night) and new garage doors (Sunday night), and somewhere in between we put up the moulding in the guest room (which was at least cheap; 43¢ per linear foot). The new garage doors in particular will give the front of the house a much-needed facelift (as well as alleviating our fears that at some point the garage door will just collapse onto the car as we pull in or out). I'm sure all of you planning on visiting us will be glad to know that you can now select from a queen size bed, a futon, or the couch for your sleeping accommodations. :)

Unfortunately, I developed a low to mid-grade case of whatever Jen's had, which is moderately annoying. I'm home sick this afternoon so I don't infect my coworkers. Will probably sleep a lot. :-P

Table Saw: $99.

200 square feet of laminate floor padding: $40.

240 square feet of Cherry Ship Deck laminate flooring: $200.

Replacing some truly cheap, ugly carpet with something that looks like beautiful hardwood: Priceless.

I would like to thank my parents for the table saw, the Habitat for Humanity Restore for the cheap materials, and my wife for her patience. :)

I swear this weekend was no more than four hours long. We got up on Saturday, cleaned some of the house, went to the grocery, and went out with one of Jen's old classmates from Butler -- at a very cool bar downtown called Lounge (try the White Martini, seriously). Could become a regular hang-out spot for us. Sunday we got up and went to the dog park for a few hours with Megan, Nick, and Tupper, which was pretty fun. Came home, Jen did homework and I wrote some code, we watched the halftime show (what did I think? 1. Totally planned. 2. Meh.) and went to bed. And that was it. I mean, I missed a day in there or something! Sigh.

Happy 25th, love of my life. :)

Jenny and I put up our tree this last week, and finished putting the presents under it today. It's not much, but then neither of us really feels like going all out when we won't be here for Christmas itself. The fireplace really needs a mantel, though.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Jen's mad because I never update this thing. So she should be good to go for another two weeks or so now, right? ;)

Anyway, Thanksgiving weekend was a riot. I know Jen didn't have as much fun, and I would obviously have preferred if she wasn't feeling bad, but it was still a heck of a lot of fun. And I know I will never look at trees in quite the same light. On the plus side, we did determine that Jen thinks UT is the best school anywhere, which is good to know. Let the flood of Longhorns-branded items commence.

Other tidbits: Unturkeys are pretty good (the gravy tastes completely different than it smells, which is a Good Thing™), the Two Towers extended edition rocks, so do Office Space and my new luggage, and I am still not a fan of early-morning flights. :)

All in all, a fun trip, and I'm definitely looking forward to Christmas break. I never would have expected it, but my family (including my family-by-marriage) is some of the best friends I ever hope to make. That would be the only downside to living in Austin, I suppose. Did I mention that it was 70° today? :)

And yes, dad, I don't think it's a bad thing at all that I've grown up a lot like you.

Hook 'em Horns!

So I'm winging off to Phoenix again, for the second time in three weeks. Only for tomorrow and Friday, at least. I'll try to write a longer post on the plane, and see if I can't snap a couple pics of the place, if Jen will let me take the camera.

Also, Riley provides us with a moment of comedy gold:

Yes, he's sleeping in the bathroom sink.

Spoken today at Barnes and Noble:

Eric: Do you want something to drink?

Jenny: Yes.

Eric: All right, let's mosey on over to the cafe.

Jenny: No.

Eric: Why not?

Jenny: Because I'm feeling contrary.

<insert helpless laughter>

Perhaps this is one of those things you just have to know Jenny to find amusing, but I thought it was great. :-D

Ah, the weekly flight from Austin to St. Louis. :-P Let's just say I'm not going to miss laying over in Houston Hobby for an hour or two twice a week.

I did get to see the Arch for probably the last time as we flew by at a couple hundred feet, which was kind of nice. The Arch was always my "last leg" landmark, coming back from Louisville; I always knew that when I finally spotted it over a hill I was home again, and the rest was just a quick half-hour hop, skip, and jump through the city. The Arch is thus a comforting landmark to me.

I guess I haven't formally posted it, but yeah, I do have a new job, in Austin, starting next Monday. I met everyone yesterday. I'm really looking forward to starting there; it seems like the job will be extremely interesting.

So I had an odd dream last night. I dreamt that Lindsay and I were helping Jenny move into the dorms at UT Austin (which was weird enough; I can only imagine that it was some amalgam of memories helping Jen move into the dorm at Butler). As we were carrying a load of stuff across the dorm lobby (this dorm was apparently a high-rise, with a hotel-type lobby on the ground floor), I saw my old AP English teacher and drama director, Mrs. Berry (though I am suddenly unsure if that was actually her name). She moved to Texas (in real life) just after the end of my senior year of high school, which made me feel sorry for the juniors as she was a great teacher.

So anyway, I saw Mrs. Berry across the lobby, but I had a heavy armful of stuff, so we ascended the high-rise looking for Jen's room. It took us a while to find, as the place didn't have any straight hallways longer than about 4 feet. (This particular image may have come from that bionic office I linked yesterday.) By the time we found the room and came back down, Mrs. Berry was gone. It was a very odd dream, especially since I haven't thought of Mrs. Berry in a while (probably not since the last time Jenny mocked me about Guys and DollsBye Bye Birdie), and I had almost forgotten she moved to Texas. I don't even know where in Texas or whether she's still there.

Also: T minus 81 hours and counting.

Sandy, Mark, Ryan and I watched the second-to-last summer episode of "The O.C." tonight. Watching shows like that—Sex and the City, Queer Eye, The O.C., that type of stuff—is one of the things that really makes me miss Jen. I enjoy watching the show with my friends here, but I miss the way we used to sit on the couch together, dogs at our feet, and laugh and groan at the characters and plots. I know it will happen again, hopefully in the near future, but right at the moment I really miss my wife. :-P

There are other things, of course; when I have a good day at work (like today), I want to come home and tell Jen about it while I make dinner. I want to hear how her classes went today, see my dogs go nuts when I come home. I miss hanging out with my best friend every day of my life.

It was a good day at work, though; that was cool, since lately I feel kind of like I'm just doing busy work. Not that I don't understand; when an employee is leaving on an unknown schedule, it's chancy to give them any significant projects. But I got to have some interesting, thought-provoking conversations on software engineering today, which was nice. It's a little unnerving seeing how my career goals have solidified the last two years; I do have Boeing to thank for that. Also, having read the design patterns books I did really is having an effect on my software designs. That's something I definitely wish we'd covered in the grad class I took on Software Engineering, since it would have helped a great deal when we were redesigning all of our software the last 18 months. (And a big shout-out to my Software Engineering prof…) Still, I feel like I'm gaining a certain amount of skill at finding situations where the design patterns I already know would be useful, so hopefully I can start detecting new patterns soon as well. That makes me a major geek, but I enjoy it, so what the hell. :)

Had some interesting thoughts on kids today too, but I'm still mulling those over. May post about them tomorrow night. Last thing: I love you, Jenny. :)

So Jenny, the dogs, and the car have all moved to Austin, leaving me here in St. Louis. I feel like I'm kind of in limbo: our St. Louis life has basically ended, but my life in Austin has yet to begin. It's a very frustrating feeling. And it's odd to feel homesick for a place you've only been to three times, but that's how I feel.

Some random interesting links:

Who Lives There? - characterize your zip code by the kind of people who live there. Of course, the MicroVision one for our new neighborhood is completely different from the PRIZM one, so who knows how accurate they actually are. :)

CDBaby - interesting "indie" CDs. The cool part is being able to discover new artists who sound like famous artists you like.

Rhapsody (listen.com) - unlimited music for $10/month, plus $0.79 to burn any song. Might have to look into this when we get broadband again.

So today's the last day of apartment habitation for us. Hopefully forever. The walls are re-primered, the door frames repaired and restained, the rooms cleaned and the fridge emptied. Tonight we're off for Chicago, next week for England. I'm really hoping this will be a good vacation… I'm tired of being so stressed out.

Of course even on vacation I won't be completely on vacation. I'm taking a pair of books to learn all about Design Patterns, and I'll have to mail off some resumés before we leave the country. But at least I might get to sleep in a couple of days.

So the house thing is done. There were a few very tense moments: there is nothing quite like being informed that the lender screwed up and you need an additional $6,000 literally as you are packing up the truck 48 hours before closing—fortunately that got worked out with no harm done. There were a few very cool moments: watching the dogs gambol in their brand new back yard; putting all of the dishes away, including the ones you've had in a plastic tub for 6 months, and still having space left over; lying in your new bedroom and falling asleep for the very first time, and realizing that as new and as strange as this place is still, it nonetheless feels like home. Yeah, we're happy about the house. Didn't want to come back to St. Louis.

As expected, once I updated my resume with our Austin address, I've started getting a little more interest. I'm hoping things will really take off in the next week or two, so that after Jen and I return from England we can both go to Austin at the same time. I'm looking forward to some new challenges.

I'm pretty worn out after this weekend, though. I'd say I'm looking forward to sleeping more tonight, but it's hard to really look forward to sleeping in a sleeping bag on top of a concrete floor barely softened by some thin carpet. ;)

Jenny has returned to town. Her haircut is very cute, though I confess I'm curious to see it post-hair dryer and curling iron. ;) Happy to have Jen in town again… Over the years I've gotten used to having my best friend around all the time. Jenny's a much better kisser than my cell phone. :)

On the other hand, Jenny being back means that June is over, and where the heck did that month go? Fortunately the house thing is going smoothly… homeowner's insurance (check!), appraisal (check!), moving truck (check!), hotel room (check!), and only 9 more days to go until we sign The Big Bad Paperwork.

Becoming a homeowner is a very strange thing… today I caught myself thinking that the lawn will go untended for about a month between closing and coming back from England, and should I hire someone to cut the grass once or twice while we're gone…? This is not something I would have thought to catch myself thinking, you know?

Job hunting continues to be a little slow. Still hoping the change of address will help; I'm currently getting a couple of calls a week from recruiters, most of whom are in the St. Louis area (and obviously missed the bit on my resume where it says we're moving to Austin…). If I were getting those calls from people in Austin instead I might well have a job. :( Most surreal recruitment call I've received: being recruited for a job in Alabama… working for Boeing. Um, yeah. If I wanted to work for Boeing, I'd use the internal job posting system, you know? And last I checked Alabama was not within commuting distance of Austin. Ah well.

It is not much fun to come home to an apartment empty of dogs and Jenny. Not much fun at all.

House hunting was not quite as productive as we had hoped; we saw about 20 houses on Saturday, revisited 5 on Sunday, and picked 3 we wanted to make offers on. Made the first offer on Sunday night, and Monday the fellow came back with an offer that was a) more expensive than his original asking price (?!) and b) wouldn't appraise anyway. People are weird about selling their house. To make a long story short, we passed on even trying to negotiate with him. Made the second offer yesterday; haven't heard back yet. Hoping for the best, but trying not to be too hopeful in case we get shot down. :-P

I had a job interview Saturday as well—a completely informal not-really-an-interview-but-really-an-interview lunch, anyway. Came out of it very excited about the job. I was the first person they'd talked to, as they had seized the opportunity to talk to me while I was in town anyway. Like I said, I would be delighted to take this job if it were offered. Again, trying not to be too hopeful…

Tonight I went and finally saw Matrix Reloaded. As for whether it was a worthy successor or not, I'm reserving judgement; I just don't think anyone can really say until the third movie comes out. It's possible that some of the slightly disjointed stuff will make more sense once some of the meta-mysteries get resolved (assuming they do). Overall it was reasonably enjoyable.

Okay, I have to respond to Lileks' post about M:R. I actually have two parallel responses to his criticisms, one of which spoils the plot twist and one of which doesn't (for the spoiler versions, hit this).

Well, Jen and I have sort of finalized the list of houses we want to look at in Austin next week. We have between 23 and 30 houses to look at, plus/minus any new ones that pop up or any that get bought in the next few days.

I'm actually really looking forward to it. The thought of having a back yard to hang out in and watch the dogs play in, and not having to walk up a flight of stairs to get to the front door, and not having to be annoyed that the neighbors have just left one of the grocery carts outside their door (and thus outside ours as well) again… well, it seems like a fantasy world, that's what. We have what seems to be a good realtor, though, so that probably helps. :) It amazes me how many people go looking for houses (or better, try to sell one) without the help of a realtor. Yeah, 7% of the cost of a house is a fair amount of money, but having observed my mother for years, a good realtor will earn that money.

Busy weekend… we went to Louisville and hit the infield for the Kentucky Derby… photos here. Lots of fun. The infield is a crazy, crazy place. We even managed to more or less break even, as I picked the winning horse in the Derby. Played Beer Pong with Jen's family, then street hockey the next day, ate brunch at Lynn's, and had a two-family cookout. Fun all around, though I'm a bit tired out and definitely sunburned.

So yes, we're moving to Austin. Texas, y'all.

Actually I hear Austin's a pretty cool town, so I'm looking forward to it… especially the bit about having a house. I'm not sure I'm so keen on the summertime high temperatures, though. Of course, 70-80 degree weather in November might make up for some of that.

Of course it means job hunting. If I could just work from home I'd probably stay with Boeing, but they seem to want me to work in an actual Boeing facility, which complicates things—seeing as the nearest Boeing facility appears to be in San Antonio and doesn't have any other programmers there. So we'll see.

Muhahahahahaha… Jenny has decided to read The Return of the King after we saw The Two Towers again tonight. She will be a geek, oh yes; she will be a geek.

"I think the best thing about having married you is probably gazpacho. My life was sorely lacking before gazpacho."

Jenny, ruminating on the highlights of our joint life.

Weather's nice today, sunny and about 50. The ground, however, is about as soggy as corn flakes left in the milk all day because of all the snowmelt.

Jen's currently driving somewhere in Connecticut with her mom and sister; I'm still sick (going on the 8th day) and starting to lose my voice, which could make the nightly phone call with Jen a little more difficult. :-(

The last few days I've been using gallery to put up our own online photo album. Without further ado, I present: Jenny and Eric's Photos. All of the photos have been taken with the Kodak EasyShare camera we got for Christmas.

Okay, so, various stuff:

• Dar Williams has a new CD coming out on Feb. 18. This completely blindsided me… good thing I'm subscribed to her e-mail list. ;) And she'll be touring St. Louis on April 29…
• Charter Communications is on my shit list right now (and probably forever after). When I went to pick up the kit to install our cable modem, they gave me an empty box. When I brought the empty box back they accused me of stealing the cable modem (because, you know, I have nothing better to do than rip Charter off for a $99 cable modem…) and said they'd have to "investigate" it. The lady at the front desk actually had the audacity to tell me a bold-faced lie, claiming she'd checked to make sure the modem was in the box before she gave it to me. I said, "No, you didn't. I watched you take it out of the cabinet, copy down the number on the outside of the box, and give me the paper to sign. At no time did you open the box." She didn't have much to say to that. So now their warehouse is looking for the cable modem. I have zero confidence that they will actually look for it, or that if they find it, they will tell us so. The kicker is that our last bill included a $250 charge for a cable modem we're supposed to be leasing for $5/mo and which would only have cost us $99 had we bought the fucker outright. We are so going back to DSL when we get a chance. I hear Speakeasy is really great.
• Breakups really suck, even when they're not yours. They're hard enough when you only like one of the people; when you like both of them, it's really unpleasant. I have had this driven home to me twice recently. The worst part is that getting involved is a bad idea, so you can't even act on your feelings really.
• Finally, the museum exhibit William Gibson mentions at the bottom of this post sounds very cool. Too bad we haven't the cash for a jaunt to Barcelona (for oh so many reasons).

Jenny made me homemade bread. I am in heaven.

So I sort of promised a more complete post. Here it is.

About Frisky: Jenny said it better than I would. It made for a rough Christmas. It's strange how many misfortunes seem to fall on that particular day.

My list of loot: the aforementioned digital camera; an away Blues jersey (by which Jenny proved her love for me: she'll let me embarrass her in public ;); a pair of quite good books (Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos); a complete set of Winnie-the-Pooh office supplies (stapler, business card holder, etc); a rolling pin (yes, I am excited by owning a rolling pin); some nice fleece pullovers and a Get Fuzzy book; the Fellowship of the Ring Extended DVD (love it); the Memento DVD; Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk; Mahler's 9th Symphony on CD; and a bunch of other stuff I'm either too lazy to type or too forgetful to remember at the moment. :)

It has been brought to my attention that Beyond Balderdash is an excellent party game, especially when you have a creative group of people to play it with. Note that prolonged exposure has been known to cause the complete and sudden collapse of chairs in some cases, however. :-D

Last but not least, through a hook-up I am not at liberty to discuss, I received a copy of Crossroads of Twilight yesterday—one day before the actual street date. Of course, I only got through about 120 pages, which leaves me nearly 9 million to go… not that I'm complaining. Unfortunately, A Feast For Crows doesn't come out till April.

So I see (via a report on a news site) that DirecTV DSL will be shutting down all ISP operations in no less than 30 days. Argh. We've been with these people since they were Telocity. At least it looks like there are other ISPs who can give similar (not quite as good, but reasonably similar) deals.

Yeah, so, things have been pretty busy lately. However, Jen's play is over, Thanksgiving is over, and Jen's grandma has returned to Florida, so hopefully some peace and quiet will bless us until Christmas.

I spent most of the weekend cleaning the apartment; it hadn't had a good cleaning since about mid-November, so it was something of a disaster. The laundry still isn't done, and I started the first load about 10:00am on Saturday. :-P I also still have to do some work on the office, but everything else is clean and smells nice. Now if only I could freeze it that way. :)

Charlie's training is progressing. Last week he was stubborn and unhelpful, possibly the least-well-behaved dog in the class. Yesterday we tried a different training collar which really gets his attention, and I found a treat he'll actually pay attention to in class. The short version is that he was probably the best-behaved dog in class, particularly at heeling (which he is usually horrid about)—he walked right at my side, watching me very closely. The other people in the class were very impressed (hell, so was I). Last week I came home incredibly frustrated, but today I'm optimistic. Unfortunately we're having class both the Sunday before and the Sunday after Xmas, which means that I (and possibly Jen, if she decides to come) will have to drive back from Louisville for those two classes. I am irked.

You have no idea how difficult it is for me to not stop by Barnes and Noble on the way home and pick up the Lilo & Stitch DVD. No idea at all.

Work is in one of those in-between phases. There's a certain amount of steady work (website changes, bugfixes, setting up a new trouble report tool, etc etc), but it's neither really cool nor incredibly stressful. Largely I think it will stay this way till the new year, which makes me happy. Downtime is good.

Oh, I almost forgot. We finally bought groceries again. Massive amounts of groceries. It's so nice to open the fridge and see real food again. :)

I had a pretty good day today… I'm taking a class on VB.Net, and training weeks are always easier than work weeks. I wasn't even supposed to take the class, but all my other teammates were busy. Lucky me, I guess. My observations after the first day: .Net kicks ass. I have never used a software package as polished, as well designed, and as powerfully user friendly as Visual Studio.Net, and that's saying something. VB.Net is everything I spent the last year wishing VB6 were; what I wouldn't have given for structured exception handling, to name just one thing.

We've enrolled Charlie in training. This week was just the owners, no dogs; learning how to teach our dogs, so to speak. Hopefully Charlie will pick up most things quicker than he has housetraining.

On the other hand, Saturday was the grand opening of the small dogs part of the University City Dog Park. The "small dogs" area is larger than most complete dog parks; the "large dog" area will be pleasantly huge, the kind of place where you can launch a frisbee for your Great Dane and not feel hemmed in. We took the dogs, of course, as well as my mom and dad, Conner, and Jen's Grandma. It was a romping good time, we even got on the evening news (briefly), and we may have discovered the secret to housebreaking Charlie (may, I say).

As noted, my parents and Conner were up this weekend to see Jen's play. It was, all in all, a very full but quite fun weekend. I realized this weekend that one of the things I love about my dad is that he's always ready to play. It's most noticeable when he sees a very young child—he gets this mischevious look on his face, he makes funny noises (some of which I have learned to duplicate), he's just a very fun guy to be around. I realized this because he was making a very strange sound this weekend because it seemed to totally captivate the dogs, Charlie especially. I think my dad's willingness to play has been a major influence in my own life; at least, I hope so.

Sunday morning—the morning of my birthday—we went out for a fantastic brunch buffet at the Millenium Hotel with my great-uncle Jim Cholmondelay (a.k.a. "Jim Who?") and his wife Jean. I have to say, it was one of the better starts to a birthday I've ever had. It's hard to go wrong when you start the morning with valet parking, champagne and St. Louis-style potatoes and finish it with chocolate-covered strawberries and more champagne.

Jen's play is (finally) over, so we can all relax a bit. It was a really good play, and despite the occasional hellish moment, I'm glad to have been a part of it. I met a couple of cool people, I learned a lot about how (not) to build a set, and I got to see a great production.

Jen reminds me that I should perhaps list what I got for my birthday. Her wish, my command:

• Monsters, Inc DVD, and a Monsters, Inc. flashlight. (I love this movie.)
• Three stuffed Stitch dolls (Elvis, a Hawaiian, and what appears to be a Vampire). Elvis is currently gracing my desk at work, because he's just too cool. Thanks, Laurie (who also sent me a very nice card…).
• A black wrought-iron stand in which to display the octagonal UofL paving stone my mother gave me for some previous birthday. It actually seems to make quite a nice end table.
• The Official Iron Chef Book from Lindsay. So far it's really cool. Really, really cool.
• A long card (or short letter) from my Grandma Phyllis, and another from my Grandma Nancy. With any luck I'll see the latter at Thanksgiving.
• Money from Jen's Grandma, and I have yet to decide how to spend it—one of life's nicer problems, fortunately.
• A book called The Thousand Orcs from Conner.

It was a really good birthday, actually <inside_joke>(even if I did have to bake and ice my own cake. ;)</inside_joke>.

Oh golly, how could I have forgotten? Tangerine is incredible. Vegetarian comfort food indeed. Chicken fried portobella mushroom is super fantastic.

When we got up this morning, Charlie was limping. I took him to our vet, and it turns out he has severe hip dysplasia—his left hip is one of the worst cases she's ever seen, and his right hip is not much better. The left hip needs immediate replacement. Our vet's a GP, not a specialist, so she didn't have any exact figures, but she told us it would likely run between $1000 and $1500. Per hip. Fortunately for us, we've been pouring money into long-term savings (specifically our 401(k) plan), so we can take out a loan against that to pay for this. Thank god for that foresight—it's much nicer to pay back the money to yourself than it is to pay it to a bank.

If anyone would like to send along well-wishes (or a dog biscuit or two) I'll be happy to pass them along to poor Charlie.

I had a close call which ultimately turned out to be good news this week: the RAM in my personal computer died, and thus so did my PC. This is not normally considered Good News, but the RAM happens to be Crucial brand RAM, it's backed by a lifetime guarantee. I called them up, they shipped me a new stick, and I ship the dead one back to them. The only cost to me is shipping of the old stick to Crucial. Fantastic company, great customer service; don't buy RAM anywhere else.

The weather yesterday reminded me just how much I love fall. Sweater weather, just cool enough that you can see a hint of your breath in the morning, the kind of day that makes you want to take a big mug of coffee and sit out on a back porch somewhere just enjoying the way the air defines the word crisp. Walking outside in that weather is like a sharp shock that always gets my brain going—which at 7:30 in the morning can be a real trick.

As you can no doubt see, randomtree.org is back online following the move. The new apartment is working out quite well, though there's still a lot of work to be done. Sigh. More later… I want to exercise this nice connection a bit. ;)

Yes, we have returned from our jaunt into the vast wilderness that is Orlando, Florida. :) 5 days of Disney parks is enough to exhaust anyone; we're all pretty pooped. Though we are also tanned, fairly relaxed, and we captured the elusive stuffed Stitch (we started hunting him shortly after seeing him at MGM on Monday morning, and finally succeeded early Friday morning at Epcot, after scouring every shop in every park between -- we snatched the last two. Apparently the little guy is popular. If I had a digital camera I'd post pics, but alas). Fun vacation, though I recommend flying over driving if at all possible.

Friday night -- our last in Orlando -- Jenny, Lauren, Lindsay and I went to Wolfgang Puck's restaurant at Downtown Disney, and I had the best pizza in my entire life. If you live near a WP, run, do not walk. The mushroom-mushroom pizza is fantastic. I also had a very decent Canadian microbrew called La Fin Du Monde; not really a pizza beer, but quite good on its own.

And to top off an already fun week, Jenny's grandmother gave us an original Atari 2600 machine with three games. Jen and I have decided to start a computer museum. :)

There's just something satisfying about stew that's been slow-cooked in a crockpot for 12+ hours. Not to mention the convenience of coming home, ladling some into a bowl, and having dinner ready instantly. I love stew.

I'm starting to get really tired of the letter X. In fact it is beginning to achieve the same level of dislike previously reserved for the small letters i and e, the phrase "information superhighway", and related phrases. XM radio. Windows XP. The Athlon XP. Aqua Extreme. OS X*. The XFL. Knock it off with the Xs already. Sheesh.

* Yes, I know it's supposedly "OS Ten". But it's an X nevertheless.

Means: the 1923rd most common name in the U.S. Jenny's last name does not appear in the top 88,799. :)

I wish I'd gone to UC Berkeley. I mean, UofL would never in a million years have a course on weblogs, taught by one of the co-founders of Wired magazine. What other fascinating once-a-week courses could I have taken to satisfy my myriad of interests?

As Jenny and I grow older and nearer to the point where we will be starting a family (not to worry, a few years yet), it occasionally occurs to me just how scary raising a child can be. Children, especially infants, are fragile, and there are so many things to keep track of -- this Salon article about breast-feeding vs. formula, for instance. The list of things infants and young children die from, even today and even in this country (a selection: diarrhea, lower respiratory infection, otitis media (ear infections), bacteremia, bacterial meningitis, botulism, urinary tract infection, and necrotizing enterocolitis), is frightening all by itself. The days that I end up thinking about things like this, and all the things that those thoughts imply, are the days when I feel paradoxically too old and too young at the same time. It's a very somber feeling, contemplating what it would (will) be like to be so immensely responsible for the very life and health of such a fragile little person. Awfully deep thoughts for an unpleasant Friday at work.

Speaking of work, this job has somehow made me dislike company holidays. How on earth could it do that, you ask? Well, my normal work week is 10 hours each day on Monday through Thursday, with Fridays entirely off. Working 8am to 6pm took some adjusting, but it's fairly normal now, and I definitely prefer it to working on Fridays. In any case, in order not to screw up the company payroll system, in any week in which I take a vacation day or which includes a paid holiday, I am forced to work a normal 5×8 schedule. This is because we are not allowed to take partial vacation days (a terrible crime IMO), among other things. So if there's a holiday on, say, Monday, then I end up working 4 8 hour days so that I can have that holiday off. Thus instead of 4 10 hour days and having an extra day off, I end up working 4 8 hour days and getting an extra day off. The difference between a 10 hour day and an 8 hour one is not even close to enough to make any real difference. So instead of lazing about this morning, I had to get up and come to work so that I could get paid for Monday's holiday. What I would like to do is work my normal schedule, and come in for 2 hours on Monday to bring the total (8 holiday hours + 2 normal hours) to my usual 10. Sadly, companies with over 200,000 employees aren't precisely flexible or responsive to individual employees' desires (well, at least those at the bottom of the food chain; I'll bet Phil Condit can take a half vacation day if he wants…), so I'm out of luck.

At least I get Monday off. :sigh:

I've also resolved to post longer posts; a link and a sentence probably isn't very interesting to the few regular readers I do have. This isn't instapundit, after all. :)

People who refer to their SO as "the boy" or "the girl"… they annoy me. I see this on a number of blogs, which makes me think it's reached some kind of critically massive blogger slang stage or something, but it feels so incredibly… detached. Like the SO in question is just J. Random Girlfriend, who could be replaced at any minute by any reasonably priced competing model (think dishwashers and refrigerators here) without a problem. Of course, for many of these people I suppose that might be true. But it still irritates me.

In other news, the drive back into town last night was horrific and impressive all in one. Illinois was one huge Severe Thunderstorm from Indiana to Missouri, and we drove smack through the middle of it. It was bad enough that at one point we actually pulled over and sat under an overpass for twenty minutes or so. There's something slightly nerve wracking about sitting under an overpass in the dark, with rain coming down so hard you can't see the street ten feet beyond the overpass edge, and having semis come roaring by at 60+ miles per hour. On the other hand some of the lightning was something to see… there would be cascades of lightning that would start at the edge of the southern horizon and ripple overhead all the way to the northern horizon, lighting everything up with pure white light, and then plunging you into darkness that seemed that much more dense by comparison. Of course, after 2 or 3 hours of that, my whole body was one tensed muscle group, and I'm a fair bit sore today because of it.

Finally, Morrowind seems like it's going to become an addiction, if I ever have time for it. Between the already huge world, millions of side quests, and complete non-linearity of the game, and its impressive flexibility (at one fan site I've already noticed a couple dozen user mods for the game, and it looks like it would be fairly easy to come up with more myself), this game could last years. Not that there aren't a few improvements I'd love, namely NPCs who actually seem to have lives and a multiplayer, persistent version, but this game is shockingly well done.

Okay, that wasn't finally, this is finally: It is occurring to me more and more often that in less than a month Jenny and I will have been married for a year. Life is an interesting thing.

I actually had something to post, but by the time I went to post it, I forgot what it was. :-P

So instead I'll just say: I'm glad I'm me. :)

Screwy weather this weekend. It went from sunny and nearly 90 on Thursday to 50 and raining cats and dogs on Friday, and then back to mid-70s the rest of the weekend.

In other news, something has seriously irritated my immune system. I don't know if the rapid weather changes made me sick, or caused the mold/tree pollen counts to shoot through the roof, or I just got "lucky", but Saturday afternoon I went from perfectly healthy to sore throat, congested, headachy, bleah. I still don't feel entirely well, though spending nearly all of Sunday asleep helped. We did go to Christina's for dinner and a movie (How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog, starring Kenneth Branagh and some other people -- odd, but pretty good).

I want to take a course on Game Theory, but it does not appear that Wash U offers such. That's not cool. I wonder if SLU has one…

We put Cindy to sleep about 7pm EST today. Jenny and I managed to get to Louisville in
time to say goodbye and tell her we loved her. I think that there are few things
that are harder than putting a dog to sleep, even if they're obviously in a lot of
pain. We're all pretty devastated.

We've arbitrarily designated Cara's birthday as today (we know for sure she was born in
March, but not the exact day), so she's officially a year old today. We got her a cake
and some presents, and got a cake and some presents for Fiona, who was in town this weekend
and whose birthday was recently as well, and had a grand old birthday gala. Sort of. :)

The longest post I've posted in a long time, and it's about geeky stuff. Sigh.

Anyway, Fiona's coming into town this weekend, so that will be fun. In other exciting
news, Dar Williams will be playing in St. Louis the first week of April. I love living
in a big city. :)

Also, it drives me completely batty to discover the apparent solution to a problem that
has been plaguing me for literally weeks, but not be able to figure out why that solution
fixes the problem. :-P

Yikes. Two rough weekends in a row. Jenny fractured her ankle rock-climbing today, so
we spent a few hours at the emergency room. Jen's in a rather large moon-boot style cast,
which unfortunately makes getting about somewhat challenging. Never a dull moment.

So this is my new web page. It's table-free, and translucent, and a bit more creative
than my last one. I hope you like it. None of the links work yet because this is a mock-up.
Also, god help you if you're using something that's not CSS compliant cough*Netscape*cough,
because I'm not going to be bothered trying to make the page look pretty in it. It should be
readable, but that's all you get.

10/25/01 -- How's this for random? Today I called our Volkswagen dealer about an idiot light that had come on, and he asked if my car was already in for service. I
said no, and he said there was already an Audi owned by an Eric Means in for service
there. Also, there was apparently an Erick Means who went to high school in Martinsville,
IN (where my grandma lives) the same years I went to high school. Coincidence? You
be the judge. ;)

Also, tomorrow is the Big Day, when we find out about JSF. Cross your fingers.

My knee is apparently just sprained, not torn or broken or anything. Doctor's appointment to make absolutely sure on Monday, but it feels better, the swelling is
down, etc… phew.

10/15/01 -- Okay, so the big news was that Jen and I bought a car. We wanted to surprise people, was why no posting. We bought a brand-spanking-new 2002
Volkswagen
Passat GLS. With the "luxury" package (sun/moon roof, etc). 5-speed, traction control,
about 30 airbags, nice warranties, in-dash CD and
cassette player, enough trunk space to hide an elephant… I love this car. It's so
much fun to drive it's insane.

09/04/01 -- Jenny made me update my Bio. Read it and send her effusive love-mail on how good a writer she is. :)

07/16/01 -- Boeing did in fact offer me a job. And I took it. :) So we have an apartment, I have a job, and I'm getting very close to finished with
my thesis. Woo-hoo! On the other hand, I went to the allergist today and
-- guess what? I'm allergic to cats! Who knew? ;) Anyway, I'm going to hold
off on immunotherapy until October, when I can use Boeing's health insurance
to pay for it. Incidentally, if you want an allergy doctor in Louisville, use
Dr. Pollard -- he and his staff are great.

06/09/01 -- Well, the day of the wedding dawns bright and clear… good omen. :)

05/31/01 -- Things I hate: People who get on the elevator to go one floor. Similarly, people who get on the bus to go two blocks. What is up with these
people?

Nine days and counting. Nerves beginning to set in… but I think it will be ok. And fun. I think it will be fun. :)

05/19/01 -- Well, Jenny's in town permanently… happy days! She and I went to see Shrek last night… fantastic movie.
Not a kiddie movie, really… I think kids would miss most of the funny bits. I
really liked it. Hm, what else… The wedding plans proceed apace, minus some
minor crises with annoying people who want to use our wedding space as storage and
some interesting bridesmaid's dress problems…

04/12/01 -- <giggle>.

Oh, and I have a job. And Jenny decided on grad school. St. Louis, here we come…

04/10/01 -- Had a decent job interview today. It was ironic, which is sort of unusual in job interviews. Also got around to putting actual pictures
on the Pics page, so enjoy. Of course, I haven't
taken any pictures in a few years, but
that's another problem.

03/09/01 -- Oh my god. It's official… I hate the US PTO. And Apple, for that matter. And Amazon.

02/27/01 -- I'm worried about my Grandma.

02/19/01 -- Why the hell do Macs use a solitary 0x0D for line breaks when every other system in the world uses at least 0x0A (if not 0x0D0A)?

02/01/01 -- Ahhhh, that's much better. :) Now if only I had a banner and a snappy title. :)

01/23/01 -- Decided to change around the site… color changes, font changes, organizational changes… oh, and I'm using XHTML now too. Gotta keep up on the
latest web technologies. :)

Update: I need a banner or something Something for the tops of the pages. It's just too… abrupt.

01/15/01 -- Jen's back in Indy… I miss her an awful lot already. :-P Last semester, though, that's something.

In other news, I pulled or twisted or sprained something in my back last night or this morning, and it hurts like mad.

12/29/00 -- Christmas was fun… I made out like a bandit. My aunt and uncle and cousin from Chicago sent me what essentially turned out to be
almost a complete kitchen utensil set. Nice ones, too, all stainless
steel. We just kept pulling little wrapped utensils out of the box and
going, "Oh my god, there's more in there!" It was great. Thanks Karol,
Jim, and Teegan! I got lots of cool stuff from everyone,
actually. Including some sweet fleece pajama pants from Jen. :) Of
course, since I got her a verrrrry nice electric blanket, it's not really
cold enough to need them much. :)

In other news, I'm to have my wisdom teeth out Tuesday. Thatought
to be fun. :-P

"Bush lawyer Fred H. Bartlit said he had not yet seen the ruling but was familiar with it." Huh? How does that work?

Jenny was fantabulous as a lesbian waitress in Danielle's Not What You Made this weekend… quite a good play. Jen and I went to the
Nutcracker as well. Great costumes.

It's up. And about time, too. :) Thanks to the friendly folks at the Public DNS for DNS
hosting. Now to get the web server completely set up. And get a POP3
server on there…

11/6/00 -- Went and saw Dar Williams in concert Friday in Indy… fantastic concert. Absolutely great.

9/19/00 -- Well, the new DSL connection is up and running, quite well I might add. Next step is to swipe my parents' old 486 and slap Linux on
it.

Jenny and I spent the weekend at Chautaqua up in Columbus, IN. My grandma had a booth -- she sells these really neat stuffed animals made
from old quilts. It was lots of fun hanging out with grandma and mom --
Jen's family even came up for a few hours. And then Sunday night we
watched this utterly horrible movie (The Velocity of Gary) with
Jen's Screenwriting class… that was interesting. :)

8/31/00 -- Well… flying out to California tomorrow for my cousin's wedding. Within two weeks' time I will have been the entire length of the
States, from Boston to San Jose. :) Should be a good time,
though… haven't seen those relatives in forever. I know they're all
eager to meet Jen. :)

8/15/00 -- Well, I'm losing my beautiful 38th-floor floor-to-ceiling-window with a view. Damnit. We're moving waaaaaaay out
by the Snyder for some unfathomable reason. Sigh. At least parking will
be easier. And no more scary elevators, I suppose… but I did like the
view. And the privacy.

7/13/00 -- Guess what? I still exist. :)

Jen and I moved. About two blocks. The new apartment is about four times as large
as the old one. Kickass. It's got central air (!) and hardwood floors
and a dishwasher! Of course BellSouth took their sweet time
about getting my DSL moved, and now I'm pissed at them because I'm on
PPPoE instead of a bridged connection (yeah it's arcane and obscure
and very very annoying). We're building Jen a PC… you know you're a
computer geek when you have 3/4 of a new PC in spare parts lying about
from your last round of upgrades <grin>. Lessee… went to see Dar
in concert two (?) weeks ago… unfortunately it wasn't a full concert,
only about an hour of Dar, but good nonetheless. Going up to Indy next
weekend for that Centennial Oz shindig. Work is rocking. Nothing like
stimulating work to make up for some really tremendously boring
classes. Fortunately Art History is over.

6/15/00 -- Online libraries… cool.

6/5/00 -- 1 more hour! 1 more hour! :)

Also… funny. :)

6/2/00 -- Well, Jen's left England. Too bad I don't get to see her till Monday… she's spending the weekend in Boston with her
grandmother. Ah well. Three more days! :)

5/31/00 -- Very interesting piece about Napster and the music industry…

5/25/00 -- I need a vacation.

5/19/00 -- Satire is such a wonderful thing.

From MSNBC:

"Time Warner Cable spokesman Mike Luftman reacted by calling Disney 'a hostile, cynical and out-of-control company.'

Back at ABC headquarters, spokeswoman Julie Hoover countered: 'We categorically deny being hostile or out-of-control, and we are undecided about cynical.'"

Now that's comedy. :)

4/22/00 -- Yep. Academic suicide. Of course he's too stupid to effectively cover his tracks, so perhaps things can be corrected. On the
other hand it's not like Speed School has given me much hope of
responsiveness or justice lately.

Update: I don't know whether I'm an idiot or the universe has merely decided it hates me.

4/20/00 -- I feel very existential today. You know, condemned to choose and all that.

Update: Well… I have exercised my existential necessity, if you want to put it that way. I really don't know what to say.

4/17/00 -- Way cool. I wonder if maybe I can convince UofL to use some of their materials…

4/14/00 -- Decisions, decisions. :)

4/6/00 -- Ah, those wacky Nortel execs. How exactly does one negotiate this sort of thing? I mean,
how do you get into that situation? What a mystery.

Addendum: heehee.

Interview with a search engine. Enlightening. :)

3/31/00 -- All right, that's it. My enthusiasm and motivation for school is shot. Maybe it'll come back this summer, but right now it's on
vacation. It's very tempting, knowing that I could still do very well for
myself if I just forgot about school and went to work full time. Don't
get all freaked out on me; I'm not going to do it. But I could, and it
would be a hell of a lot more satisfying than my classes are right now.

3/28/00 -- Heh. I'm a prophet. See? :) Okay, okay, so maybe it's a
perfectly logical move. In true Apple style, it's a perfectly logical
move… that they should have made 5 years ago.

3/23/00 -- "The world's first presidential ePimp Slap" -- Andrew Nelson. Ouch.

3/21/00 -- Odd. I don't think I've ever heard Creed on DJX before. Yet more radio weirdness, I suppose.

Update: I heard em on 98.9 too. Huh.

3/15/00 -- I don't know what it is with my cars and head gaskets. The Neon has developed an oil leak, among other relatively routine issues, so
it's in the shop till Friday. What sucks is that I have to pay for a
chunk of it (though thankfully not the majority). Oh well. The silver
lining is that for the next three days I'm driving a cinnamon 2000 Dodge
Intrepid (980 miles on it!) with all the luxuries. :)

3/6/00 -- Glorious weather today. Political Philosophy met outside. :)

In other news, the federal government grabbed nearly half of my merit bonus for taxes. Bastards. Oh, and I hate the French. Or at least their
government.

This is Hilarious.

3/1/00 -- Applied for graduate school today. Hard to believe that in just over a year I'll be Out of College. At least
prospectively. :) Unfortunately, it looks like none of the 600-level
courses I really want (Adv. AI, Adv. OS) are going to be offered this next
year, which truly bites.

2/28/00 -- LG&E is being purchased by PowerGen, a British power company. This will be my second merger with LG&E. How exciting.

This is so cool. :)

Started an hour-long fight in my political philosophy class. I haven't had so much fun in ages. :) Today has been most
excellent.

2/21/00 -- This is just cool. :) I have to find out how they taste. :)

Update: Today has been a very nice day. No Speed classes, a good philosophy class, we finished the lab, and I got taken out to dinner
at Grisante's, which dinner included some excellent chat. I even got free
coffee. I wish every day till Jen came home could be just like this. :)

2/11/00 -- Was happy to see this
in the NYTimes. Especially as an awful lot of people seem to take it for
granted that capitalism is inherently evil, that getting rich turns you
into a devil, etc.

2/8/00 -- Okay, these little disclaimers seem to be in vogue lately, but…

I bitch and moan and kvetch a lot, I know. I vent quite a bit. I am frustrated about two of my classes (more spcifically the
professor of those classes) and I am somewhat stressed this
semester. That said, I am not an unhappy person. Yes, I'm
stressed, yes, I miss Jen, but I'm not suicidal, and I'm not even
fundamentally unhappy. Pretty much life is good. So don't take my
complaints deathly seriously. Okay?

2/4/00 -- There are nights that I wish there was a devil so I could trade my soul for things I couldn't get otherwise. This is one of
them. Sometimes I wonder if this makes me a bad person. Right now I
don't care one whit.

2/1/00 -- Moved the 1999 news to an archived page. Bored at work, so I may revamp some stuff, do some minor editing,
whatever.

1/25/00 -- Damn straight. Jesse Helms is an idiot.

1/18/00 -- Good news and bad news. Good news: I have a net connection again, and damn did I miss it. :) Bad news: I think I'm getting
sick. Sore throat, feeling yucky… damnit. I hate being ill.

Update: Yeah, I've definitely got something. All I want to do is lie in bed and have Jen feed me soup and take care of me, instead
of going to work and coming home and doing my philosophy paper, and going
to class tomorrow… I loathe being sick. Sigh.

1/11/00 -- You know it's going to be a bad class when the professor who is supposed to teach you about compilers refers to HTML as a programming
language. Sigh. You know it's going to be really bad when the
same professor is teaching Software Engineering as well. On the bright
side, my political philosophy class is going to be serious fun. On the
not-so-bright side, I can't get my modem to work at all. I think
something's wrong with the phone line, maybe. Dunno. And of course they
won't come out to look at it till the 18th.

1.1.00 -- Well, we're all still here. What a shock. :) Jen and I had a really good vacation to Oxford and Stratford-upon-Avon. Lots of fun.

12/13/99 -- New rant up on the Misc Page. This one's about the recent Mars Lander fiasco-that's-not-really-a-fiasco.

Update: Every now and again, suck posts something hugely amusing. This, for example. :)

Update 2: Added some stuff to the books page. Brave New World (just the foreword :) and some more about the Conscious Mind. :)

Yet Another Update: Updates to the Likes and Dislikes pages too.

12/10/99 -- 4:30 is definitely the earliest I've ever started drinking. :)

12/6/99 -- 3 finals to go, just 3 finals to go… getting Interfacing off my back was such a relief…

12/3/99 -- If I can manage to make it through the next 3 days everything will be good. If I can manage to make it through the next 12
days everything will be right with the world again.

11/29/99 -- Happy birthday Dad!

11/25/99 -- Rainy day. Missing Jen. Thanksgiving dinner was yummy.

Also, this weekend I plan on adding several pics to my pages (specifically a couple of me, Jen, me and Jen, and one or two or three of
the ferrets :). I promise. :)

11/22/99 -- Wrote a paper on Artificial Life for my AI class… really cool field. :)

11/18/99 -- Napster rocks. Share MP3 files with the world…

Well, Netscape finally crossed the uncrossable line. It completely locked up my machine (as in remove power to reboot) three times in an
hour. Internet Exploiter it is. At least until Mozilla is usable.

Made chili for dinner… it actually turned out really well. I'll have to remember it. :)

11/16/99 -- The future of radio? I hope so. :) I've often wished radio were run by
real DJs who picked their own music and such. If commercial radio won't
do it, I wish I could. :)

In other news, I have been very productive lately… my project at work is going swimmingly. If I'm not careful I might even begin to
believe my own reputation. :)

11/11/99 -- Infinite loops are the bane of my existence. I swear. I just sent myself 1600 automated e-mail messages from an active server
page I'm working on at work. Jeez.

It's official. One week to my birthday. This has got to be the least-anticipated birthday of my life. No Jen to spend
it with, no party to look forward to, I 've been driving for 6 years,
voting for 3, and I'm already legal. And I already know what I'm getting
from most everybody. Money for the trip to England. Which is really
great, don't get me wrong, but not something to be excited about opening.
No surprise. The only thing I really am looking forward to is opening
Jen's present. Other than that I think my birthday is going to be just
another day. I even have a test that day and one the day after for that
"you're extra-special" feeling. :-S On the other hand, I do get paid the
day after. On the other hand again, that check pays my rent and my car
payment, so I can't even use it for fun.

11/7/99 -- Got a haircut, caught the mouse, hung out with the fam; it was a pretty productive weekend. :) Coached my brothers' indoor soccer
team Saturday night (which basically means they needed a 21-year-old warm
body on the bench), skated for the first time in too long, and played
soccer in the yard with my bros. Met Conner's new cat. Tentatively
decided to see if Iceland has adult ice hockey lessons, since nobody ever
plans to have roller hockey ever again.

11/1/99 -- IT'S DONE! IT'S DONE! IT'S DONE! Ahem. I feel much better. :)

10/30/99 -- I've said it before, I'll say it again: John Cusack is awesome. :) Though movie nights just aren't as much fun sans Jen.

10/26/99 -- What will they think of next? :)

10/20/99 -- This is hilarious. Especially the part about where his session got killed by friendly fire.
:)

10/15/99 -- Okay, if anyone is listening, I'd like to get off the emotional roller coaster now. I had nightmares all last night, I missed
an entire page on a test (though I do get to make it up), I'm rather
uncertain about my performance on a second test, I have a third test and a
presentation Monday, and I got rear-ended on the way to work. Oh, and
yesterday I found out that they're dissolving my business unit. I just
want the world to leave me alone for a few days.

10/11/99 -- Downloaded the Homeworld demo from Sierra. That looks like a kickass game. Props to E for pointing me to it. Went out drinking
Friday night with a group of cool physics geeks. :) Had a thought…
that tech idea I posted to the random fruits page on 9/30 might be
interesting as a thesis. The "moving network" thing especially. Hm.

09/30/99 -- Coupla new items over on the Random Fruits page.

08/23/99 -- New bit on the Misc page about starting classes. I love the start of a new semester…