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home alone


Today Sharaun and I reached a parenting milestone, although, we admittedly reached it long before I thought we would. See, today, we left Keaton at home alone for the first time. Now, before you go calling up CPS, let me elaborate. Sharaun usually heads to the gym early in the morning for an early morning “spin” class (not being a gym kinda guy myself, I imagine this is a Grateful Dead concert style dance class for women in long flowy bohemian skirts). Also important to let you know: Sharaun locks her keys in the car all the time.

Now, with those two pieces of knowledge, you can better appreciate my story. So, Sharaun leaves the house around 5:30am or something for spin class, I’m merrily sleeping – dreaming Natalie Portman is feeding me Pizza Rolls in her underwear (a.k.a. foreplay). ‘Round about quarter-to-seven, my foggy brain thinks it’s hearing a knock-knock-knock at the front door – I groggily dismiss as an auditory hallucination. Couple seconds later and the knocking is back, now loud and unmistakable. I climb out of bed and peer through the peephole: Sharaun. I open the door and retreat behind it so as to hide my unbridled magnificence from the world at large.

“Hey,” I say. “Hey,” she says. “What happened,” I ask. “I’m screwed,” she replies, “I locked my keys in my car.” “Mmm… and you’ve been using your spare key, so you really are screwed,” I concur. “Yeah,” she says, “I’m totally screwed.” “How’d you get here,” I ask. “Susie dropped me off.” “Huh, that was nice,” I say. I then head off to the shower, while Sharaun makes an audible vow to redouble her key-finding efforts. Over the past couple weeks, she’s dumped out and sorted, archaeologist style, through Keaton’s toy bin multiple times. She’s pulled off all the couch cushions twice, poked around under couches and even ruled out odd locations like the garage, bathrooms, and the fridge – all with no results. At this point I’m not too worried. Worst case, I figure as I shower, she puts Keaton in the stroller and walks several miles to the gym to call AAA (on a payphone, because her cellphone is also locked in her car.. with her keys) to come open the door.

But, it never got to worst case – Sharaun walked into the bathroom before I could even hit the showers proudly holding out her found keys in front of her, beaming. “Where were they?,” I asked. “In the couch, where I’ve looked a hundred times,” she replied, “But deep in the crack, way up in there.” “That’s good,” I say. All’s right with the world, right?

“How am I going to get to my car?,” she asks. “We’ll have to leave Keaton here,” I say. At the time, Keaton is still sound asleep in her bed – probably dreaming about Job feeding her Cheerios, or something. “Can we do that?,” she asked. “Well, what else can we do, she’s still asleep,” I say.

And so, I threw on some shorts and a t-shirt and grabbed my wallet and keys and we took off. And, for about five minutes, Keaton ruled the roost – manned the castle. Now, I don’t know if this makes us bad parents… or if I could get in trouble for writing it here, but she seemed to survive OK without us.

And, in the end Sharaun found her lost keys.

Oh hey, check this neato little “invention” out.

Goodnight.

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the jostling thousands


Good Wednesday evening to you folks – had a good, but slow, day (work-wise, at least). I think people must still be on vacation or something, as the flow of e-mail was low-low-low (cue car salesman voice). It’s OK though, because the work part of my day is over and Keaton was looking cuuuuute when I got home. And now, I’m reclined on the couch typing. Spent some time putting up some new pictures from our Memorial Day weekend camping trip, mostly of Keaton. You can check them out by visiting her gallery here. Hope you enjoy ’em.

This weekend is the Arcade Fire show in Berkeley. We’ve got a huge entourage of ten peoples going, from the music-nuts to the casual fans to the relatively uninitiated. We had considered renting a minibus/van thing to all caravan down together, but several calls to every rental agency in the area turned up nothing. No worries though… we’ll figure it out. I’m excited, if a little worried about trying to get a decent spot among the jostling thousands (a capacity sellout, around eight-thousand) packed into the 100% general-admission venue. Recent setlists look extremely promising, and the band have been planning some super-cool afterparties at local venues. Not that I think us almost-adults would entertain the idea of heading out to a club after the show (we’re old as balls these days)… but a guy can pretend.

I just don’t have anything more to write… Goodnight.

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leaving well enough alone


Getting started this morning at work was hard. I felt like an old car on a cold day, sputtering and wheezing my way to life… not quite firing in-time. My muscles still felt freshly tight and a little tender from my two Keaton-saddled mini-hikes over the weekend (baby + pack pushes ~30lbs), and I found myself enjoying the sensation – a physical reminder that I had successfully gotten up off my can and done something.

For a while, I feared it was a further worsening of my increasing disdain for work – but, I think my disdain remains relatively unchanged. I’m just tired of the whole business… and am ever more anxious for my two-month “respite” later this year. I can’t linger on the thoughts though, or else I’ll just get all bummed and it’ll effect the effort I put forth on the job. No, gotta soldier on and continue to perform. Man I wish I was back at that campsite, though. They really temp you with that “14 day maximum stay” sign on the way in – make me think about fourteen days spent camping, with occasional trips into town to re-stock… I think I’d actually love it.

Well, that was quite a schizophrenic paragraph.

Months ago, I decided my sneakers needed a good washing. I figured that, were I to wash them well, I could likely get quite a good bit more life out of them. Not that I’m averse to wearing dirty sneakers, I could care less actually, but I was feeling ambitious and figured I could clean them up and wear them as “new” again for a while. So, I pulled out the laces and set them in a little cup of diluted bleach to soak while I threw my sneakers into the washing machine. The shoes and laces both came out significantly cleaner, and I was pretty pleased. As I was relacing the shoes, I noticed that the little insole inserts had been jostled out of position during either the washing or the drying. I decided I’d yank them both out and try to reseat them properly. In retrospect, this decision is what ultimately decommissioned a perfectly good pair of shoes. I just cannot seem to get those inserts back in there right… they just don’t fit.

Since the washing, I’ve tried multiple times – and it just ain’t happening. After trying that morning prior to work for about 20min, I realized I had to leave and instead resorted to wearing the dingy pair of sneakers I’d retired one generation of footwear prior – I’m still wearing those today. Some mornings, as I reach for my current dingy backup sneakers, I look at my freshly-clean shoes sitting there unused and think, “I’ll try again this morning.” Today was one of those mornings. I got one shoe fit perfectly, but the other just wasn’t having it. Eventually, after another 15min of fighting with the thing – I gave up and again pulled out my backups. Looks like my backups are my defaults now… I shoulda left well enough alone.

Goodnight.

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sated, buzzed, and sweaty


A three-day weekend spent communing with nature. Three days with dirty feet and dusty skin, greasy hair and smelly clothes; three days spent sated, buzzed, and sweaty.

I had a great time… lounging in the sun, swimming in the river, drinking around the fire, and taking a couple small hikes (4mi and 3mi, respectively) as a family. Keaton enjoyed herself too, and was a great little camper. We arrived midday Friday and broke camp bright and early Monday morning, bellies full of that camping staple – breakfast burrito ala Coleman stove. We were home by 10am, car unpacked and cooler emptied by 11. The rest of the afternoon consisted of trawling for new holiday weekend leaks (some good stuff too, the new Architecture in Helsinki, the new Polyphonic Spree, and the new Paul McCartney), and an afternoon nap. All in all I came away better for it, my only injuries being somewhat sore legs from our short hikes and some painful little nicks on my fingers from trying to open a Newcastle with a rock.

The first harvest of my first foray into gardening is nigh. This weekend, I counted a whopping fifty-nine green tomatoes (several different varieties), at least a few of which are big enough that I figure they’ll be reddening up soon. My corn stalks are all averaging about 2ft-3ft tall and look healthy, and I would’ve had a nice handful of strawberries by now had the dang birds not carried every stinking one away just before they were pickin’-ripe. Of all the things I planted, only the peppers have fared poorly. They’re growing, but they’re just slow… still tiny and seemingly stalled out as seedlings – some have been completely destroyed by some sort of pest, chewed through at the base. I’ve decided I’m going to dig up their squares and plant pre-grown peppers instead – I’m cheating.

I’m seriously considering changing webhosts, StartLogic’s performance has been on a steady decline for about a year now – and I’m wondering if they’re just overburdened and can’t keep up with the business. If I do switch, there’ll likely be a spotty transition period while the domains transfer and I attempt to setup all my major subpages again (a little worried about having to restore my blog and gallery…). Anyway, I sent this note to my current host today:

Subject: Database-reliant pages continue to be EXTREMELY slow

Hi there,

This is the 3rd time I’ve mailed about slow performance on all my database-reliant pages, but the load-times continue to get worse. Lately, I get timeout errors more often than not – making my pages nearly unusable.
Is there some concrete answer you can give me about this? At your suggestion, I’ve done many things to try and alleviate the slowdown:

  • Reviewed all my code for efficiency in database calls
  • Randomized database calls from a pool of all available users
  • Removed any high-load code

If I can’t get some increased performance, or if the answer is “upgrade to a higher-price plan,” I’ll be honest and say I’ll likely defect to a more reliable host.

Hope you can help me out – thanks.

We’ll see what happens. Sorry for the geek-talk.

I think that’s enough for tonight. I did upload a bunch of new Keaton pictures from our weekend outing – but I’ve not put them in a public gallery yet as I want to wait for some images from other cameras that were on-the-scene to get ’em all in one batch. Goodnight folks.

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it’s not good, but there’s new pictures


Tuesday night, fresh from a post-work trip to the bar for some beer-fueled conversation. It’s essential, you know, to “hang out” with your workplace compatriots… I’m convinced that it’s one of the single most effective things you can do to increase your stock at the old sawmill. A beer and candid conversation go miles and miles when it comes to relationship-building – the Japanese have it down.

Well, changed the blog’s layout – reduced the page area to 900px wide. I know this matters not to most folks, but, to me, it means some folks with more wimpy screen resolutions might be able to see some more green framing the center white text area – which was my intent when choosing this new layout. So, hopefully your user experience is a little greener now – just as it should be. In other blog news, I’ve been sporadically working on my upcoming half-2007 “best of” list, as has become tradition here at sounds familiar. I know you’re simply wet with anticipation, but it’s not right to publish it before sometime around mid-June… so sit tight.

Found out today that I missed out on tickets for the Smashing Pumpkins’ reunion run at the Fillmore in San Francisco. I wasn’t paying attention, honestly, and wasn’t really sure I wanted to go. Having heard the new song, however, as well as watched the internet buzz build (even PF is saying the new single is “not that bad”) – I’m now kicking myself. What’s worse, they sold out and eleven night run (well, not really a run, but close), and the Fillmore shows are on of only two “engagements” (one on the west coast, one on the east) they’re doing. That’s eleven times over the Fillmore’s capacity – and we missed out. For me, it would’ve been a pretty important concert – marking the tenth time I’d have seen the Pumpkins live (if you count the various band configs). Ten times is a lot for one band. I’m still cautiously optimistic about the album, and I don’t like that new song all that much – but it is fun to listen to. I think this comment on stereogum pretty much sums it up for me:

I must admit, the chubby, depressed high schooler still somewhere in my subconscious is pretty stoked from reading that setlist. And I really don’t hate that first single like…even a little bit. It’s not spectacular, but it’s certainly not terrible either. Maybe this comeback could actually be more than Billy Corgan in need of some fast cash and an ego stroke?

Yeah… dang… guess I’ll have to put Sharaun on Craigslist watch for tickets.

Been getting a lot of requests for new Keaton pictures lately, soooo… I uploaded some tonight. Hope you enjoy them!

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the mighty and the mighty bored


Hey hey Monday. Sharaun and I had a date night tonight, with friends picking up the babysitting duties as a favor. It was nice. I’m gonna write about work, so prepare for some gender-neutral non-specific generic-talk.

Today we had an important meeting at work. Various strata of management assembled in a room to update the troops on this and that and the other thing. The atmosphere was one of placation, as the managers came forward and tried to stomp the ashes of a wildfire of their own creation. I was there, people I work with were there, and my managers up the “chain” were there – we were all there. I entered the room to standing room only and took a space leaning against the wall near the rear. Soon, we were deep in conversation and exchange, higher-ups sounding polished and confident as they spoke to the room. Some people listened, some asked questions, some (me) shifted from left foot to right foot thinking mostly about their numbing ankles. One person, however, did something that I found totally interesting.

This person, a manager up the food chain a few evolutionary steps from me, sat in the back of the room and played with a laser pointer. The laser pointer was used to trace the hand that wasn’t holding it. It was used to make pretty patterns on the wall as it bounced and reflected off a ring on that same hand; was wiggled in tiny circles in the center of the palm. All the while this manager’s attention was fixed, not on the goings-on of the meeting, but on that laser pointer and its beam. With nary a care for the business going on external to that laser-pointer-and-hand world, the manager sat engrossed in whatever thoughts accompanied the mindless activity.

Now, I’ve seen this manager do all sorts of high-and-mighty things: wheel and deal in million-dollar negotiations with customers; give orders to fire and to hire; make quick strategic decisions; and play workplace politics with the best of them. One thing I’d not seen this manager do though, before today, is act bored – act somewhat human. I mean, who hasn’t drifted off during a meeting? Who hasn’t let their mind wander off into daydream land? It’s actually refreshing to see that the mighty also get bored. They invent little games to keep them entertained just like the rest of us when our thoughts drift, they have their own balls of yarn they can resort too when things drag on. Glad to know we all need a little mental break sometimes.

Goodnight.

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gold for the weekend


Sunday. Worked outside in the sun all day, building that barbecue over at Anthony’s. Today we took it from about halfway done to around two-thirds done. It looks good, you can even spot it for a barbecue now – before I could’ve seen mistaking it for some sort of shelving or rack or something. We have the grill and the raise/lower system left to build, and then make a rack to burn the wood on, a tray to catch ashes, and perhaps add some ventilation to the “pit” area. It’s maybe another two work-days of work and then we’ll slap on the high-temp paint and start slow-cooking tri-tip over oak. I’m really impressed with how it’s coming together, even if it will weigh 400lbs.

Anyway, sorry the blog’s been so slow lately… my host has really been sucking it up. In fact, I swear if this thing goes down again or continues to be this dang slow – I’m gonna look into moving. And, similarly, we’ll be camping next weekend. Finally, our first real trip of the summer. Right now, I’m planning on taking Friday off to head up there early and stake out enough campsites for the huge group we’re going with (need to claim the prime sites early for the busy weekend). In fact, today, I toyed with the idea of taking Thursday off too – just for the crap of it – to have a nice long five-day weekend. I can’t wait to get out in the boonies. I plan to sit in the sun and drink beer and throw frisbees and go in the river and take naps. Yeah, hurry up weekend, hurry up.

Has anyone else noticed the humongous web-presence explosion of 2008 presidential candidate Ron Paul? I mean, the frontpages of Digg and Reddit have been absolutely blowing up with stories on this guy. First, it was MSNBC’s “cheating” of Mr. Paul via it’s unofficial online “who won the debate” poll; then, it was Guliania’s chastising of him at the GOP debates – a move I bet ol’ Rudy now really regrets. Now, it seems, news pages and blog are just looking for a reason to write about him. I’d say, right now, it’s clear that Rep. Paul has has the internets “en fuego.” It’ll be interesting to see how the GOP machine ultimately responds to Paul if his popularity continues to rise, I’m betting more than a few card-carrying Reds would do a lot to keep him a long way from Pennsylvania Ave. Guess we’ll have to just stay tuned.

OK, I’m gonna be honest – I actually like the new Smashing Pumpkins single that leaked last week. Sure, it’s not exactly classic Pumpkins (the guitar is a little GnR/Prince-ish and loopy at times, but in a surprisingly good way). The more I listen to it, the more I like it – and it’s really raising my hopes for the album. Maybe it’s nostalgia, because I’m pretty sure I’d never pick up a song that sounded like this “off the shelf” and just like it… it’s carried in a big way by the name for me… but still, it’s not bad…

Goodnight.