Category: grindstone

All about breadwinning.

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stick to blocks

A pleasantly productive-feeling Monday at work.

As the pendulum swings, this was one of those days where I felt like some of the work I do may actually impact something for the company when all is said and done.  I guess that means later this week it’ll swing back the other way and I’ll be left reminding myself the beast wouldn’t blink were I to disappear off the Earth.  Thankfully, my family still needs me.

Well, maybe not tonight… since Sharaun’s out and I’m here alone (Keaton’s already sleeping) listening to some John Mayall on the iPod.  And, even though I’ve turned down the volume on the Halloween display’s “ambient sound” (which is just howling wind, hooting owls, and some crow-caws on an endless loop) the sound is still dribbling through the front door and driving me mad.

Mmm… gotta be some blog around here somewhere…

Usually sometime after I get home in the evening, I’ll queue up the day’s episode of Countdown and watch it.  I know, I know… it’s about as left-loving as you can get, but I sometimes temper it with some O’Reilly Factor just so I’m not 100% brain-poisoned.  Anyway, today Keaton came out and sat on my lap during the show and, after a couple minutes of watching, told me she’d like to watch a Backyardigans.  Not really thinking before replying, I chose the flat-out lying route and said, “This is The Backyardigans, babe.”  “Not it’s not!,” she corrected me, “it’s Obama!”

Wow… too much politics on the TV methinks.  I don’t need a policitaclly aware two-and-a-half year old, thank you very much.  Anyway, we already have her saying prayers for McCain and Palin every night at 5pm PST (3pm CST, 2pm EST) so the liberal Satanists don’t make all the weddings be gay weddings.  Dude, kidding… totally kidding, OK?  Sheesh.

You know what I find amazing to think about.  Once, in the year 2003, I wrote a blog on the world-wide-web about some of the silly things I used to do back in gradeschool – which, by the way, was way back in the year 1988.  Then, that entry garnered a comment from someone who was actually in that fifth-grade class with me so many years ago – and he remembered me doing the silly stuff I was writing about.  That, my friends, is one of the reasons I love blogging (not that it happens all the time or anything).  But, really, the internet has made some amazing things possible… no?

I guess I have to end this somehow…

It’s 11:16pm now and I just got up from my laptop-side perch on the couch (the iPod is playing Ben Folds Five now, their self-titled debut… a truly seminal album from my college years) to take a pee.  As I rounded the corner into the hallway I gasped aloud at what lay before me: There, at my feet, was my beautiful and sound-asleep daughter laying face-down on the carpet in the middle of the hall.  I was actually so surprised to see her there I stood shell-shocked for a few seconds before scooping her up and taking her to bed.

She does that sometimes, sneaks out of her unlocked door and army-crawls to within inches of the hallway where she can hear and/or peek out and see Sharaun and I – but we typically hear her do it and can redirect her right away. I have to think she was there for quite a while tonight, she looked completely comfortable.  Dang this lulling music and stupid howling Halloween wind for masking her telltale steady breathing!  If the iPhone camera had a flash (I know, ridiculous, right?) I would’ve snapped  a picture to accompany the entry… but as it stands you’ll have to take my word for it.

That girl is hilarious to me.  I less-than-three her so bad.

Goodnight.

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couple nights alone

Friday and I’m passionate for the weekend.

I have to work from home today (which is tomorrow as I write, being that I do all my keybanging the night prior to an entry) for two reasons:

1) We’re doing the introduction meet-and-greet for the gradeschool e-mail pen-pals thing I volunteer for at work.  So I get to meet my kid tomorrow.  If they really do pair us up based on the questionnaires they made me fill out I expect to get a kid who plays no sports, loves math and science, and whose hobby is “writing.”  Holy crap I’m gonna get the hugest nerd y’all…

Anyway, 2) Sharaun is leaving for her New Kids on the Block concert around midday.  It’s her big several-hundred dollar VIP package, complete with her own meet-and-greet.  For her, I seriously think this is a childhood dream come full circle.  And no, I did not give her permission to sleep with any of them were she to be invited “back to the bus.”

Actually, I’m home alone right now because Sharaun is at (guess… c’mon… guess) a New Kids on the Block concert.  Yeah, tonight is the first of three.  Two back-to-back and one later this month that she’s flying to Florida for.  Sigh… at least I got to have the TV off all night, the iPod on, and play with Keaton…

And, since we’re on the topic of dreams (well, we kinda were… somewhere back there…) I had an insane and frightening one last night, and it was so vivid upon waking I figured it might mean something. Now, bear with me because dreams aren’t always quite linear… but here goes:

Sharaun and I somehow got free tickets to see a hip-hop/rap act play in some highschool auditorium in San Francisco. In my dream I knew who they were, some very popular radio-staple act like Lil’ Wayne or something. Anyway, it was some kind of “secret” show I think…. We arrived and stepped into some glass-walled booth above the stadium-seating style auditorium, where we’d watch the show.

The place was filled with highschool kids sitting very reserved in their seats waiting for the show to begin. As the house went dark I could see shadows taking their places on the stage, and when the lights came back up and the beats kicked in the place went wild. Kids tore the backs off their seats and started a frantic teenage riot, trashing things for the sake of trashing things.

Immediately, authority figures in the form of what I assumed were teachers and administrators swept in from the aisles and quieted or restrained the unruly kids. The show was stopped and everyone was ushered out of the room. The entourage on stage walked off in disgust and ended up joining us in the glass booth. Being less than interested in hanging out with Lil’ Wayne and his crew, I opted to walk around instead – leaving Sharaun there (this has got to be a dream, as no married man would ever in real life leave their wife alone with Lil’ Wayne and his boys… that’s just not a good idea).

Upon wandering, I met a doctor (I know, it moves fast here) who said he wanted to talk to me about my medical history… and had some forms for me to fill out. We decided to step outside and have a seat at some tables there to go over the results. As we sat talking, I was facing the street and he had his back to it.

Suddenly, and this is the moment in this dream that made me write about it, behind him in the air I saw something huge falling through the sky.  Doing a double take, I could see what appeared to be a huge rocket drifting down with a large parachute trailing behind it. Despite the parachute, the massive thing was sailing down at a pretty good clip. I remember think that no who hadn’t yet seen it as I had would even know it was coming, as it was completely silent as the parachute lowered it through the air.

I watched in confusion and growing horror as it moved from top to bottom across my vision, crossing the imaginary line formed by the tops of the buildings flanking the very street we were sitting along, drifting towards the busy road. It was then I realized just how close the thing actually was to us, it couldn’t have been more than a quarter mile away – just down the street. And, by the time I realized it was nearly on top of us and was going to impact it was too late.

I sat and watched helplessly as it crashed nose-first into the street with a tearing shearing sound of twisting metal. I can remember expecting an explosion just before one came, and I swear I could feel the heat from the fireball in my dream – it was that vivid. The explosion didn’t destroy the rocket, however, and the thing, still stuck nose-first into the ground like a fallen arrow, began spewing forth a white mist – which came shooting out of it at high pressure.

At this point the doctor I was sitting with jumped up, pulled the neck of his shirt over his mouth and darted back inside the building. I followed suit, but the mist was so thick and quickly enveloping neither of us made it inside before being swamped in it.

Once we did get inside, the air was already getting fuzzy with the stuff. I can remember running around trying to find Sharaun, terrified that I wasn’t with her when this happened. In my search for her I somehow must have ended up back outside, where the air was now clear and by now there fireman cops and ambulances arriving en-masse.  I can remember helicopters circling overhead, and tons of people were milling around confused.

Suddenly, one cop got on a megaphone and announced loudly that they would be “offering heat treatments” to anyone who wanted them, and explained a “heat treatment” as a precautionary immunization/sterilization for those exposed to whatever may have spewed from the rocket. As he explained this, he was holding above his head what looked like a stun-gun – nodding towards it so we could see how they’d deliver the “heat treatment.”

After he spoke, several cops, each with their own “heat gun,” who’d now dispersed amongst the crowds began asking, “Who’s first?” I watched as the first person stepped up: The officer pointed the device at him and fired, and like a stun-gun two prongs attached to his body, trailing wires back to the “gun.” The man convulsed and screamed, and I heard the same happening all around me.

I decided I did not want a “heat treatment” and began to try and slip away from the action. But before I could get away, an officer approached me with his gun at the ready. I remember saying I did not want a treatment, and he told me it was not optional right before I felt the prongs latch onto my forearm. I can remember dream-feeling an intense heat bloom over my entire body, and screaming as the heat became unbearable.

Then, I woke up.

Anyone got some interpretations for me?  (In before “vote McCain.”)

OK moving on.  Yesterday (which is today as I write, because… you get the drill) at work stunk again, and at some point I began singing the lyrics to a great song that seemed so fitting.  It’s called “Moving Units,” and the part I was reminded of  by my day at the sawmill goes something like this:

If it isn’t making dollars, then it isn’t making sense.
If you aren’t moving units, you’re not worth the expense.
So if you really want to make it, you had best remember this,
If it isn’t penetration, it isn’t worth a kiss.

Ahhh… songwriting…

Goodnight friends.

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everybody is different kinds of smart

Here I am on Wednesday night suffering miserably from what I’m positive is a sinus infection, something that’s been killing me now for about four days – and that is finally dragging me stubbornly to the doctor tomorrow.  Enough is enough, I tell this foreign species trying to make me its host.

My two days across the state were long, sniffly, and uncomfortable because of this stupid sickness.  As I sat in line waiting to board the company jet bound homeward, sniffling and hacking and blowing my nose, the guy next to me pulled a bottle of that Airborne snakeoil from his bag and popped one.  I couldn’t blame him…

Where I work I’m surrounded by smart people.  I interact daily with people who have gobs more brainpower than I do, so intelligence is something I feel like I’ve come to take a bit for granted.  Because of this, when I meet someone who stands out above the normal din of firing synapses I encounter daily, it’s something I take note of.  Over the past couple days, I met a guy like that.  Not an engineer, but a finance guy.  Talked miles above me, talked about things that made no sense to me, “betas to the market,” and “the earnings ratios of S&P500 companies,” and how the treasury and federal reserve and interest rates and securities work.  It’s like the guy stepped right out of a Bohemian Club weekend for a few days to rub elbows with the serfs.

I like meeting people like that.  It’s humbling.  And, while this guy likely wasn’t trying to, he had me walking the tightrope at the edge of my conversancy.  I was hanging on by my fingernails, jumping in when I thought I could make a comment that wouldn’t immediately illuminate my comparative ignorance.  The beers and lobster helped; I can talk about beer and lobster.  I can wax about the Dow dropping forty points over the course of my waffle at breakfast.  I can tell you how many takes it took the Beatles to record “Hey Jude,” and from which of those recordings the version you know from the radio was assembled.  I can tell you my best-known-method for calming down a seemingly inconsolable two and a half year old girl who wants to play “for a couple more minutes” before taking her nap.

I guess everybody is different kinds of smart.

Goodnight.

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the sheets and pillow are calling

Hey there Tuesday people.

I’m off again today, taking the corporate sawmill shuttle across the state a ways to work over there for a couple days.  More of the “meet and greet” business, with a little effort thrown in to justify the whole thing.  So, an evening in a hotel and two days away from the fam… could be worse I suppose.

I’m just dreading the 4:45am rise-and-shine… which means I better get to typing here – I got music and Halloween for you today, not much to write home about.

Lately, I’ve been on this soul music tear – acquiring (through absolutely unquestionably legal channels) tons and tons of vintage 60s and 70s soul records to try and flesh out my collection. In the process, I’ve found some simply amazing stuff – the cream of which so far has got to be material by one O.V. Wright. Someone I’d never even heard of before, it’s hard to believe this guy isn’t held in the same esteem as classic performers like Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye. His voice is incredible, full of emotion, and his songwriting isn’t so serious that you can’t get a chuckle here and there. And the music, oh man the music. All the right horns and cymbal crashes in all the right places… this stuff makes you feel.

Anyway, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Some seventy albums into my bender, I realized I’ve now got too much to appreciate before something new comes along – and I’d better come up for air and actually take in some of what I’ve grabbed. Soul is a relatively new area for me, so I’m excited to get educated. I know, you’re riveted right no.  I’ll continue to thrill you with the following, I’m sure…

I was thrilled today as I came up with a really neat concept to “soup up” the Halloween prop setup. Right now I’ve got live power (at 120V AC) running all around the place to power the props. I’ve long worried about this being unsafe, as a lot of my connections are simple wire-nut jobs and could conceivably be susceptible to shorts (and, less plausible but still a concern, human contact). Today I hit upon a way to move most of the dangerous high-voltage hookups under the safety of the front porch roof enclosure – and wire the props in the yard with low-voltage 12V power.

Additionally, I dreamed up a way to reduce the amount of clutter I have by triggering the coffin “popper” and ceiling “dropper” from the same motion sensor. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but to me it means a lot less wiring, a lot cleaner interface between the props, and some cool new features. For instance, both the dropper and the popper can have (timed) associated sounds and targeted lighting now, in addition to the always-on “ambient” soundtrack that was there last year.

What’s more, if everything goes right – in addition to springing down on you from its hiding place above with a blood-curdling scream and scary spotlighting, the ceiling dropper will now spray a burst of fog towards you as well. It’s probably hard to visualize, so I’ll just post a video when I get it working.

Ahem… I’m outta here.  With such an early start to tomorrow, the sheets and pillow are calling.

Before I go, I keep meaning to mention that Ben posted his pictures from our abbreviated John Muir Trail hike over at his site.  Check them out here.

Goodnight.

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baked away the day

Monday night and what a welcome end to a long day.

Began around 7am when my boss called me from the airport.  I mean, I’ve not even made it into the sawmill yet and here I am listening to my boss in my ear as I fart around the house getting ready to go.

Yeah, I know, I’ve got to do more work with less people and less money.  Fix what went wrong on the last project but make absolutely no changes from the way they did things, uh-huh, right.  Sure, no problem.

I couldn’t even give Keaton a proper kiss and hug goodbye for holding the phone up to my ear to promise I’d “run some numbers” and estimate what might “fall off the plate” if I didn’t “get any upside” in first-quarter 2009.  I’ll tell you what’s gonna fall of the plate man… my faith in the fact that things can change… that’s what.

Ugh.

On top of this I’m buried in unread mail when I finally get to sit down at my desk.  Four-hundred bold-font missives stare blankly at me from my monitor… each of them threatening to make me think, make me do something.  I start to group them by subject, weed out the crap, the mile-long thread where thirteen people thank each other and reply with useless one-word statements like “OK” or “Sure.”  Past the near-ten pieces of corporate spam telling me they’re resurfacing the parking lot in front of building F or that the servers that run the Coke machines will be down for servicing Saturday night from 3am-5am.

Man, I could care less.  Is this where I landed for real?  I mean, I slept in a lecture hall one night in college we stayed studying so late.  We ordered pizza to the building, snuck in after the cleaning staff left, studied until 5am, slept on the floor until 7am, and studied again for an hour before the class began at 8am.  I worked that hard for this, eh?

I know, I sound sour – but I’m really not in that bad a mood when it comes down to it.  I guess I’m just in one of those moods where I want to stay in bed all day with Keaton and Sharaun.  When I got home, I put on some new music (an amazing series of rare 60s American “Northern soul” compliations called Talcum Soul) and played teaparty and “river” with Keaton.

And, after dinner I decided to have her help me bake some banana bread while we listened to the new Of Montreal (Sharaun took pictures).  So maybe the lyrics aren’t exactly the best for a two-and-a-half year old, but at least they don’t really swear… they just talk about “kicking it softcore” and “taking it both ways.”  It’s cool, she’s not listening anyway, she’s all tied up in cracking an egg into our banana-batter and licking the mixer/beater things clean when we’re done stirring things up.

Mmm… I’ve dried up.  Nothing left to write.  Let’s paste on this little closing job I did sometime earlier today when I thought I was gonna write this whole thing but didn’t.

Well folks, the LHC (which I’ve written about before) is coming online tomorrow.  Y’all ready for the Eeath to asplode?  I’m not.  In fact, I just sent out the invitation to our Halloween party… so I’m banking on at least another month or two of Earth, K?  K.

Oh, and I know I’m once again behind in getting new pictures of Keaton up… so to tide you over here are some new pictures Bill posted on his lil’ corner of the web, as well as one here from pro-photog Maygsters.

Goodnight.

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back when i did nothing

Hi from Wednesday night.  Sitting here playing with an iPhone… yeah, I know I said I wasn’t going to jump on that wave, but when the sawmill finances it – it’s hard to deny.  So, on the bandwagon I climb…

Right now the iPod shuffled up “Morning Bell” from Radiohead’s brilliant Kid A album. I think I’ve written about it before, but this album brings back such strong memories for me. It dropped shortly after I started working here at my current job, when I was still the new guy and no one know what I should be doing. I can remember spending what seemed like interminable days simply browsing the internet, listening to CDs, writing, having absolutely no clue what I was supposed to be working on, and feeling guilty about it to boot. In fact, and I’m almost certain I’ve written this before, I can recall vividly standing in the bathroom after work one day staring at myself in the mirror, angry and ashamed for essentially stealing money from the sawmill.

I used my time as best I could: Spending it online researching various things, letting the web lead me from one topic of interest to the next. During those long months of being corporate flotsam, I became fascinated with alchemy (both the “let’s make gold from rocks” kind and the more metaphysical Jungian kind), brushed up on my knowledge of serial killers (no real explanation there), and did a good bit of “spiritual” research (I dunno, a phase, at the time). I listened to a lot of music, I wrote a lot, and I wondered what the hell this “career” I’d chosen was ultimately going to end up being. Looking back now, I can understand how things like that happen – and realize that those pointless months in the grand scheme of an operation as large as this really mean next to nothing. So I skated along under the radar, they’ve got me in a reverse-naked now and are wringing me for every dollar. Honestly, I prefer the crunch…

Anyway, just hearing this album reminds me of those days instantly. The environment then was so lonely. I sat isolated from most of the “team” I was supposed to contribute to, and I had bounced back and forth between no less than three managers (always a bad thing for someone knowing what the heck you do). The people who did sit next to me were in roughly the same boat, but I didn’t really hit it off with either of them – and wasn’t that interested in developing non-working relationships with them. I still think back to the time when I finally got transferred under a good manager with a team that was executing. From there it was a simple connect-the-dots to meeting the friend-base I have now.  Time, time, time… I suppose.

And, that, is what I have to say tonight.

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in arrears

A good Thursday to you, internet denizens.  Once again, work has me buried. Night after night I have nothing to write about since my days involve nary a stray thought from the bits and bytes and ohms and amps and watts and picoseconds I’m steeped in for eight hours a day. But, late today, in one of my meeting-free hours, I plopped the headphones over my ears and set about PowerPointing and Outlooking as the Pod slid into a smooth shuffle, easing me from the Band into some Steely Dan.  It was a nice break from the fast-paced chaos for a moment.

Anyway, let’s get this started.

Today when I got home from work, I came into the house through the garage like I normally do.  But, because I’m expecting a couple packages, I poked my head out the front door onto the porch (where the UPS or FedEx guys sometime leave them).  While there was no package, there was a little piece of paper attached to our doorknob.  Now, most of the time, these are advertisements for carpet cleaners or lawn services or pest control or something, but this one looked different.  In fact, it was pretty plain on the outside – having just our house number written by hand on a line.  Intrigued, I tore it off and opened it.  Inside, I read:

Dear Customer:

Your gas and/or electric service has been disconnected because of an unpaid past-due bill or credit deposit.

And, in red:

The Total Amount Due, prior to service being restored, is the Subtotal written below Plus a Reconnect Fee.

Current & Past Due Bill                      $  445.46

My huh got disco-what now?  Four-hundred and how many dollars?  What?!

How can this be? I have my gas bill, like every other bill, on an auto-payment system that drafts money right out of my miles card each month.  I hardly ever notice the bills being paid.  In fact, I know I’ve been getting e-mails each month from the gas company notifying me that my online bill is ready to be viewed (and, I thought, paid).  They must have got the wrong house…

Holding the paper, I went inside to call the number listed – and check our gas.  I flicked on the burner on the stove and it fired right up with a bright blue gas flame.  Confused, I turned it off and simultaneously picked up my cellphone to call the number on the notice and sat down at the computer to log onto my account.  I got to the representative at about the same time my account information loaded on the monitor in front of me.  I relayed the contents of the notice to her as I clicked on “Billing History” online.  I mentioned that, despite the note telling me my gas was off, our stove seemed to be working fine.  And then, the “Billing History” screen loaded.  Here is what I saw:

Yeah, that’s right.  The last time I paid a bill was in July of 2007.  That’s exactly a year to the day.  Holy crap.

As the representative confirms what’s now right in front of me on the screen, I click onto the “Setup Automatic Payments” link.  You currently have no autopayment options configured, the website tells me.  Dang.  Something happened to my autopayment data.  I quickly look at a couple payments prior to July of last year, and verify they were automatically drafted off my credit card (as expected).

I tell the representative what I’m seeing, tell her something must have busted my autopayment options… that I had no idea my bill wasn’t being paid.  Initially, of course, she assumed I was either a deadbeat or could just not afford to pay my bill – and suggested some sort of installment plan which would allow me to get my service reinstated. I tell her that the bill isn’t an issue, and that I’ll go ahead and pay the amount due right then and there online while she’s on the line.  She’s obviously not used to this, but is now amused at my situation.

It strikes me at that point that my gas probably is turned off, and I walk back over to the stove to check something.  I fire up the burner, wait ten seconds, and confirm what I figured: Once the residual gas in the line burns, the flame slowly winks itself out.  I tell the representative, “Yup, our gas is off alright.”

The conversation at this point got pretty hilarious, with me cracking jokes about how I could possibly not realize my bill had gone unpaid for a year – and how I couldn’t even cook Ramen now.  How I was a bad husband and father, and would likely wake tomorrow to find our furniture repossessed to boot.  For her part, the representative was simply amazed that they’d let me go a full year, and said it’s the longest she’d ever seen someone in arrears.  At one point I said, “You know, everyone is going to make fun of me when I tell them this, right?”  She cracked up, and kept reiterating how odd it was that I “got by” for a year without paying.  I echo her sentiment, and keep saying variations of things like, “Man, this is crazy.”

Oh, and, in the end, I had to pay a $25 reconnect fee and they’re gonna hold two times our average billed amount as a “deposit” which, upon one year of me not defaulting on payment again, will be returned to me with interest.  I consider the combination of these fees, which totaled something near $90, to be my “idiot fee” in this case.

Five-hundred or so dollars later, the gas man comes tomorrow to give us back the gift of fire.  And thankfully, they didn’t contact any credit bureaus.  Sheesh.

Goodnight.