Category: grindstone

All about breadwinning.

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everything is gonna be fine

Tuesday.

Monday was a particularly productive day for me at work. The timing of the project I’m currently working on is way in the future, so most of the tasks I have now are planning-centric… and I’ve been using the benefit of time to do some experimenting along those lines, firming up the way I forecast and ready the team for what’s coming down the road. I know, without me telling you what I do it’s hard to know what that means – but, them’s the breaks folks. Anyway, I feel like I almost made up for a week gone in a single day… Because, when I want to, I can be super productive like that.

Now I’m sitting here listening to some Sabbath (courtesy of the iPod shuffling it up) and writing. I had Keaton tonight. Got to feed her dinner, give her a bath, sing her a bedtime song, say her prayer with her, and put her to bed. She didn’t nap today so she was super tired, but before I put her down she managed to say, in her little half-asleep croak of a voice, “Sing a sun song, daddy?” “The ‘sun song?,’ I asked.” “Yeah, sing a sun song, daddy?” “I don’t know the sun song, baby, can you sing some for daddy so he can hear it?” “This one, daddy: ♫ Please don’t take my sunshine away ♫.” I immediately knew the verse, but couldn’t place the song. It took me a minute, but I eventually broke into ♫ You are my sunshine, my only sunshine… ♫, and stopped to say, “Is that the song, baby?” “Yeah,” she said, and nuzzled into my shoulder. ♫ You make me haaaapy, when skies are grey… ♫ Awesome, I’m telling you… straight-up awesome.

And, since I’m already on about babygirl…

Sharaun took Keaton to her two-year pediatrician appointment today, and asked about several things which’ve been on our minds lately. #1, the stuttering thing (which, by the way, is back again, with a vengeance): Bottom line, the pediatrician said she sees “no cause for concern.” She said she’s already noted Keaton as “advanced language ability” (finally, some corroboration for Sharaun’s my-baby’s-a-genius stance), and suggested that her vocal “hesitations” are more than likely her response to a stall in development that her mind doesn’t understand, and is compensating for. In other words, she seems to think pretty much what I guessed at a couple weeks ago: that baby girl’s vocal chords are just stalling in an effort to catch up with her brain, which has developed beyond them. Not the most scientific explanation, but it works for me. The doc said she’ll continue to monitor it and see how it goes, but that she expects it’ll go away of its own accord eventually. Whew. That really is a relief to me, no matter how much I said I wasn’t overly concerned.

#2, We also informed her of the we’re-the-parents call we made to suspend indefinitely her recently regimented breathing treatments whilst in Mexico. While we made the decision together, I was the one pushing to abandon the treatments. I just got too itchy about having our two-year-old inhale atomized steroids twice a day for what I, for whatever reason, viewed as dubious benefits. I convinced Sharaun to stop giving her the treatments, and her wheezing (which the pediatrician readily admitted was most likely caused by a bug she had, and not some underlying malady) didn’t return. Sharaun said the doc actually applauded our use of parental judgment, and said she agrees with our decision and Keaton seems fine. For some reason, that flexibility and non-attachment to a “prescribed” remedy impressed me. Anyway, we felt like we’d done the right thing – which was not so much a relief as it was a nice vindication of our motivations.

And, #3, some odd breathing patterns we’d seen in Keaton while she slept. Seemingly abnormal things like her getting into a two-deep-breaths / no-breaths-for-ten-seconds rhythm instead of a normal regulated breathing pattern. I had feared this might be related to the whole “breathing” issue thing (which has actually now gone away), but the doc assured us abnormal breathing is normal in kids at this age. Which, again, helps to support my theory that being a pediatrician is about like being an HR representative in that there are no concrete answers to anything, and nearly everything is pretty much “normal” and/or “OK” depending on how you look at it.

Anyway, overall it was a reassuring doctor visit, which I take to mean all is well, or that we have a complete charlatan of a pediatrician. Fingers crossed for the former, eh?

Oh, and before I go – I wanted to include a quick image of what some sounds familiar reader at work considers funny. Below is the name plate thingy in front of my cube (last name blurred for safety… or something), done in tribute to this entry I posted a week back. Funny stuff:

See all those little pharaohs up there? Yeah, that’s gotta be my desk.

Well folks, that’s it for tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow with

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that’s all i’ve really got

Hi Tuesday folks, or Wednesday folks, as the case may be.

It’s just after 9pm here and I’m already back at the hotel room for the night. The iPod has its heart set on jazz for some reason, and it’s doing OK at setting a mood. Maybe not the most exciting mood, but certainly one that makes me want to sip whiskey and smoke. Too bad I’m doing neither. In fact, I’ve had this bugger of an itch in my throat all day long, and my sinuses were giving me trouble too. I’m hoping it’s just a reaction to the thick dusting of yellow pine pollen that clings to everything around here, and not some illness which might take root and decide to blossom south of the border next week while we’re on vacation.

Hey, while I’ve still got that “just started the post” momentum, I’m going to go ahead and jump to today’s installment of “In Pictures.” Not a whole heck of a lot to document today, just a long meeting and a fairly uneventful group meal afterward, but I managed to take a fair amount of snapshots anyway. I did take a quick tour of some of the highpoints of USC campus – but totally forgot to take pictures. Sometime after I got home I switched the little phone camera into “superfine” mode, so some images might look better than others. Here we are then, my Tuesday in brief:

Hope you enjoyed ’em.

The meeting today was long. I couldn’t get to sleep at a decent hour last night, and I seem to react to a three-hour time-change more than tend to do going oversees on a long haul, so I was actively trying not to nod off after lunch. Eventually I just got up and stood by the wall, which is a tactic I use when those afternoon doldrums take the wind from my sails. It works well – it’s much harder to fall asleep on your feet. The meeting itself was good, lots of good networking and handshaking and strategy-exchanging… all that wanna-be high-power business-school crap.

I miss Sharaun, and Keaton.  Keaton most of all.  Every time I hear her little voice in the background when I call Sharaun I just wish I could be there to scoop her up and kiss her.  I’m really looking forward to next week when I have them all to myself in Mexico.  Can’t wait to get home and leave again, in fact.

Now then, that’s all I’ve really got. Goodnight.

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cleansweeping


A hodge-podge of a Tuesday to ya friends, glad you found some time to stop by. I won’t try and monopolize your attention for this entire entry, rather I’ll just do a bunch of unrelated paragraphs as I work to clean out the bits-and-pieces bin (you know, where I’ve scribbled stuff down that doesn’t really fit anywhere else.

Today I decided to play a little midday hooky from work, taking a longer-than-usual lunch so I could repair the shelf that fell down in the garage – just fell right off the wall. I’d like to blame it on my immense wealth, and the fact that I have so much money I’ve resorted to storing boxed of gold bricks on my garage shelves – the weight of which became too much for my little shelf and caused it to tear off the wall. Unfortunately it was less exciting than that, and I’m not hording gold bricks just yet (give me a few more years). So, I swung by the lag-screw store and picked up some parts, rehung the shelf and replaced all the stuff (mostly hiking gear and Christmas lights), all while I listened to Elvis’ classic 1956 Sun Records sessions (that’s a good additional detail for this story, right?). Anyway, after that Sharaun and Keaton and I had a picnic lunch in the backyard (the weather is unbelievably gorgeous in Northern California lately). We had turkey sandwiches and diet root beer on a blanket in the warm sun. All in all it was a two-and-a-half hour work-diversion, and was entirely worth it.

Changing subjects again… I must admit I was quite depressed this last Friday when I finally found out the details around Radiohead’s summer San Francisco appearance. After the announcement, lean on specifics, that they’d be co-headlining the new “Outside Lands” festival in August, a three-day event additionally anchored by Tom Petty and Jack Johnson, I was excited to see them for what would be the third time. I watched various webpages and message boards eagerly for more details, and was happy to see that fanclub members would get first crack at tickets during a limited onsale on Saturday. Then, I found out that the onsale will be limited to three-day passes, each to the tune of $200. I guess if they don’t sell out those, they may consider offering single-day tickets. Since Radiohead only plays Friday night, and I don’t really have a desire to pay $200 to stand in a field with 60,000 other fans for one night of an abbreviated three-day festival – I’ve decided I’m not gonna go. Sucks, but I guess I can’t really complain since I’m choosing. Owell. No Radiohead this year.

And, somewhat related: I listen to music every spare moment at work. When I’m not on a meeting, or not talking to another human (using our mouths to make sound), I’m on the PC listening to music while I PowerPoint, Excel, or Outlook my way through the day. Really, that’s pretty much what I do. I’ve thought before, that if there was no Microsoft Office suite of applications, I’d have no idea what to do with myself every day. I guess I could draw things on my whiteboard, or assemble letters into words and phrases with my fingers like the ancient Phoenicians used to do or something… who knows. But, music helps make it all somehow a little less banal and monotonous – just a little. I mean, I listen to music at home too, and let me tell you that Cream sounds much better from the couch with sunlight streaming through open windows than from within my gray-walled tomb on headphones. It’s just a known fact, I think. Still, not having music at work might cause me to shrivel and die – and I say my thanks every day that I got a job that affords me that luxury. Way to go desk job!

And, continuing to sweep out the archives…

Been doing some blog sprucing lately, not stuff that you’d likely notice – but stuff that pleases me. For instance, ever since I added the “view all comments by” feature a while back I’ve hated the way that bit of text is smashed right up against the end of someone’s comment. I like the feature, you should check it out if you never have before, but I hated the formatting. So I set about hacking PHP and CSS files and fixed that, and the resulting all-comments page too, just to make them a little more readable and better formatted. Like I said, it’s actually a fun feature – and I added it to encourage more healthy discourse, so get to discoursin’, or something.

Kind of on the blogging topic… it worked well last week, so I’m going to try it again: It’s time for You Decide Friday #2. I realize I missed Monday’s entry (which I feel is the ideal spot to debut a poll), but let’s try the concept again, shall we? This time, I switched my polling software to one that I’m actually able to close when I want. The feature I lost is the ability for your to enter your own options when you vote – it was novel and cool, I know, but realistically it wasn’t working, and, besides, it was vulnerable to scripting injection attacks… stupid. Now then, here we go:

[poll=2]

Finally, it has come to my attention that my link to Keaton’s American Idol audition tape in yesterday’s entry was broken. I’ve since gone back and fixed it, but just for completeness sake you can check it out (and marvel at the apparently huge amounts of spare time I once had) by clicking right here.

‘Night.

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it’s better than rain


Thursday. Garbage day. Maybe the internet stalkers can puzzle out where I live based on that; I hope not. Today is also your last chance to vote in the You Decide Friday Poll, where you can tell me what to write tomorrow. And, whoever cheated and added the “all of the above” option (which, crappily, is currently winning), I’m totally gonna ignore that and default to whatever’s behind it – all of the above is cheating, sorry. Anyway, let’s get onto this blogging thing…

Was another gorgeous day in Sunny California today. Most of the trees are in bloom now, hastening their way to Spring green. As I drove back to work after lunch, I cut through an airborne swirl of little pink and white dogwood blossoms, whirling and twirling like Springtime snowflakes. I kept waiting for some to flitter in through my open windows or sunroof, maybe land on my shirt or something – but not a one did. I was happy on that drive, not just because of how neat it was to be driving through a haze of blossoms, but because I’d met Sharaun and Keaton for lunch at a park nearby work. We had chicken sandwiches (have to consume that thoughtful rotisserie chicken I so rudely spurned Monday evening), and Kristi and Colton, who also joined us, brought some potato chips and soda. I ate my sandwich sprawled on the grass, then played around with Keaton for an hour or so before reporting back to the sawmill. Was a good lunch, even though I did put $70 of gas into the Ford on the way back… stupid dead dinosaurs… cost so much.

That’s really all I have tonight. It was a late dinner at a friend’s place, a fellow manager at the sawmill to be precise. While we supped, we discussed creative ways to turn the screws at work, discussing our eventual ascent up the pile of overworked bodies to the top of the pecking order. No, not really. In reality, we played with the kids and talked about the trip to Mexico we’re both going on in the near future. I enjoy not being at work with work people, it’s fun sometimes. I’ve really made some good friends through the sawmill.

Well, before I leave you, you’ll get one last chance to vote on the theme for tomorrow’s entry right below. Thanks to those who voted already.

Goodnight everyone, check ya on the flipside.

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panic, scatter, a complete halt


Heeyyyy guys. How’s it going? Me, OK.

Monday, and an important one at that: The first day I’ve worn shorts to work since the cold and rain came so many months ago. I know that, here in California, we don’t have Winter that bad at all, but the temperatures still dip enough to make me want jeans… and that’s no small feat, since I generally hate wearing jeans. So, today, with the forecast actually calling for less sun than we had over the glorious weekend, I pulled on a pair of my favorite shortpants (olive green cargo style, probably went out of fashion a year ago, if they were ever in at all). I always feel a little unprofessional the first week or so when I make that Springtime transition from jeans to shorts. I can’t help it, really.

Problem is, my sawmill likes to think of me as some kind of lower-level management (I dunno, they just asked me one day if I wanted to be a manager… and I figured I did, so I did), and, in my mind, shorts just don’t fit the position. It’s an internal struggle, to be sure, so much so that it’s one I’ve had out publicly here before. I just feel like I should probably dress the part more, but my years sweating through humid Florida summers ingrained in me the virtues of shorts and flip-flops. So, I concede the flip-flops and get to feel at least a little more professional. It’s the best I can do, work… the best I can do. Don’t ask me for much more, ’cause I’m ridin’ that line pretty tight right now as it is.

Speaking of work… we’re coming’ up some some travel here soon, first off to Oregon for a quick working daytrip, then across the country to South Carolina for a couple more days work, and finally to Mexico for a weeklong family vacation (psst, the last one is the one I’m most excited about… in case you hadn’t guessed). Then, once back, it’ll be time to make a trip to China and Taiwan again, looking like a two-week run. And, I swear people, I am going to find a way back to Germany for Oktoberfest again this year… I’m bound and determined to make that a yearly pilgrimage. In fact, one of the 2007 alum sent out an e-mail blast today in attempt to rally the troops… and my mouth starting watering for that fresh Bavarian bier as I sat in my cube reading it. I just gotta get back.

Speaking of speaking of work… today around 4:45pm the place went “dark.” Not dark like literally dark, the lights still worked, but what didn’t was the phone and and network. The whole place, thousands of employees who sit in cubicles, each one of them either on a conference-call style meeting on the phone, or working on e-mail off the network. When the lines were cut, we were all blowing in the breeze. People began to stand up at their desks, rubbing bleary eyes as they flinch at the natural light, prairie-dogging over their cube walls to peer around the floor at what others were doing. “Your phone go down?,” you’d hear. “Yeah, yours too?,” would come the reply. “It’s the whole site, the whole thing is down,” someone chimed in. More heads appear, bones creaking as folks rose, muscles unused for hours working off memory and instinct.

Soon, people began to walk the aisles in search of other humans, almost like a renaissance of cognition. We gathered in small clusters, making humming sounds in our throats to comfort each other, banging on hard surfaces to make primitive rhythms, cracking knuckles as we waited for the familiar “pings” of new e-mails to chime in the distance, for the phones to ring. “What do we do?,” some asked? “I can’t be expected to do work with my hands, for God’s sake,” others lamented… peering at the skin on their baby-smooth fingers, hilariously useless for anything save typing. We called other sites on cellphones, Oregon first: “You guys have phone and internet up there? Oh… you do? OK… Well, we’re totally down here. Yeah. Dead. We have nothing.” Some called across the state, others called their families, still some their therapists.

And, thus began the exodus. I waited for nearly a minute in the right-turn lane to leave the parking lot, everyone filing past in their automobiles, looks of confusion and muted happiness on their faces as they drove – their faces gratefully buried into cellphones, once again suckling from the comfortable teat of technology. Having never worked a day in my life without e-mail or internet, it’s hard for me to imagine how it happened back in the day. People must’ve written with pens and pencils, talked in person in around tables in meeting rooms, licked stamps, read memos – something. Today, you cut the wire and it’s like you kicked the anthill of the modern worker. Panic, scatter, a complete halt.

Was a good day, I enjoyed the collapse of technology. Goodnight.

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please, will you bow with me?


Hi internet friends. Thursday night and I could use a little more week to get things done at work. But, were it offered, I’d turn it down.

Was a beautiful day today in Northern California. The air is still nippy, but with plenty of sunshine to warm your bones it seems more crisp than cool, and that makes me feel like we could be on the road to Spring. In fact, day by day, as the rains begin to break here in Sunny California, my brain is steadily considering the coming change of seasons and the spring and summer activities that come with them. Camping, for one thing, is something I’ve been daydreaming about lately. Back to the outdoors, this time with Keaton a little older and likely able to enjoy it a little more. I know she won’t be remembering trips for another couple summers, but I’ll still enjoy being able to see her get a little more out of them.

Please, will you bow with me?

Oh lord, we exalt Thee. Review time at the sawmill is over, and the joyous occasion calls for an endless celebration rich in fermented drink and empty carbs. There will be drunkenness and dancing, we’ll kill the fatted calve, and exchange fists in sport to the cheers of frenzied onlookers. We’ll raze buildings to the ground in a kind of tidal joy that peaks as unintended anarchy, but we’ll regret it in the morning. Women will part with clothing freely, and bed whomever smiles widest and has the strongest breath of wine. Legs will be parted and shouts will rise to Heaven, where you, Dear Lord, can look down on this bit of creation and know – review is over. And until that painful time strikes anew a year later, we’ll banish the memories to the corners of our minds. Thank you, Father, for your wise benevolence in quelling this torture, we give all praise unto you.

Amen.

I was thinking today about how much I love elective methods of communication. Phone, e-mail, and instant-message; all these wonderful keep-in-touch tools are great for enhancing communication, making it more instant and available. But they possess an unsung virtue: The are all elective. Meaning, if I don’t want to respond to them, I don’t have to. As opposed to something like a knock at the door, running into someone while out and about, or someone popping into your office at the sawmill – I can simply choose to ignore them. Oh, and I do. When I don’t want to, I ignore all of them. Maybe it’s a jerk move, but to me it’s an exercise in personal freedoms.

Goodnight my friends.

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two hours in each word


Established.
Demonstrated.
Exemplifies.
Critical.
Enabled.
Essential.
Successfully.
Consistently.
Engaged.
Willingness.
Confidence.
Desire.
Fostered.

I dare you, internet.

I dare you to become a manager-type at your sawmill, wait for annual review time to roll around, and extol the virtues of of those who toil ‘neath your iron fist without using the above words. Check me on it, even. This year, if your sawmill is the kind of place where you get an annual review (or where you write the reviews of others), check it for those words.

I’ll bet you those words are there, trying to neatly encapsulate, in paragraph form, some two-thousand hours of your work. Two-thousand hours crammed into a thousand words or less, two hours in each word. An entire year of phone calls and meetings and hallway conversations, a year of stressful nights where you can barely reclaim your own thoughts from your to-dos and deadlines, a year away from quality time spent with your family so you can have the means to spend more quality time with your family.

Throughout 2007, Dave successfully established a desire within himself to become less engaged with work in general. He consistently demonstrated a willingness to shirk critical duties, all the while fostering his peers’ confidence in his abilities by simply “faking it.” This technique enabled him to spend essential time with his family, which he loves dearly. In summary, Dave exemplifies the modern worker.

Goodnight drones.