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stupid weekends

Stupid weekends are never long enough.  I needed this one to deliver, too, as I couldn’t quite push work out of my head in the alloted 48hrs.

I’ve been watching a lot of old episodes of The Rifleman with Chuck Connors lately.  One of the original western serials, AMC has been playing it, in its original airing order, in fantastic-looking HD at like 3am on Sundays or something.  I’ve been DVRing each episode as it runs, and Keaton and I have started to enjoy watching them together.  Sharaun, at first not too happy with how “appropriate” Western shoot-’em-ups are for kids, has relented after watching part of one with us and realizing how awesome they are.

There is a lot of shooting though, she’s right about that.  Like a any five year-old kid back in 1958 could, though, she’s able to tell the “bad guys” from the “good guys” and she doesn’t seem too disturbed when Lucas and Micah have to off some bandits for the good of North Fork.  One thing about the show that I find curious is how if often ends with McCain killing the bad guys.  You’ll get twenty-eight minutes invested into the show, Lucas will shoot three or four scruffy-looking ne’er-do-wells, their bodies will laying strewn about the street at the center of town, and he’ll clap hands with the marshal, smile, and offer some show-capping comment.  Despite the fact that there are people just feet away bleeding to death and full of lead, the show never fails to end “happily.”

Let’s hope that the gunfights of my last couple weeks, and the corpses left in the sawdust to be dragged away, tie-up just as nice and tidy as those days in the New Mexico territory.  I could use a neatly-resolving ending where I ride back to the ranch and live to fight another day.

‘Night.

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8 of 10 agree

Friday finds me feeling excited for the weekend.

As usual, Saturday and Sunday are scheduled to the hilt, much like the work week.  Mind you, the weekend schedule is full of sport and leisure (well OK, leisure at least) while the week is filled with sweat and toil – so it’s a more welcomed allotment of time.  Despite my midweek pep-soliloquy, I still found my daytime thoughts drifting too often to the coming RV odyssey.  In one of my more out-there daydreams, I imagined finding a plot of land somewhere on the cheap.  Buying it and getting the government to pay me to not grow corn.  My conscious would get used to it, perhaps.

Tomorrow Sharaun is running/biking in a duathlon.  If Cohen’s fever stays away I plan to take the kids down and cheer her along Tour de France style.  I admire her for doing this, and hope she’s happy with her finish.  Me, I’ve fallen completely off the wagon.  Haven’t been to the gym in weeks, gave up caring about what I dump down my gullet, and am hovering around where my metabolism thinks my “stasis” is (which, unfortunately, is not anywhere near where the AMA thinks my weight should be).  Eight out of ten doctors agree: I’m fat again.

Goodnight.

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call in the cavalry

For Christmas Keaton got a new big-girl bike.

When I purchased it online it didn’t have an option to ship with training wheels.  Though I knew she’d likely still need them (she’s only ever ridden with them), I suppose I was hopeful that maybe we could rush right to the dad-runs-alongside kind of learning to ride and perhaps forgo them.  A few weeks back, when the government gave me sunlight after work and the weather warmed enough, we tried this.  Results were as expected: she’s just not ready to try without training wheels yet, especially on a bigger, more daunting, bike.  So I took a “to-do” item on my phone to purchase, or borrow, a set of training wheels for her new ride.

That was three sets of unusable training wheels ago.  The first set, hand-me-downs from her good friend Jake, wouldn’t fit on her bike – a theme which would come to repeat itself.  See, the frame where it rests on the rear wheel axle is all thick stylized tubing… and most training wheel attachment and stabilization hardware assumes some standard frame construction.  That being the case, the borrowed wheels wouldn’t work.  I purchased two more sets from the local big-box joint, and the hardware for both of those was also a bust.  No way to get them attached to her crazy new-fangled frame.  Worse, in the process of trying set after set I managed to strip the axle nut so badly I almost couldn’t remove it.

Last night, however, we happened to be at the Wal Mart and I noticed they carried a type of training wheel I’d not yet tried.  Now familiar with the specifics of my daughter’s bike which caused the incompatibility, I quickly inspected them for feasibility.  Hooray!  My visual inspection said they were at least plausible, but I’d have to buy them to be sure.  So we did, paid something like $13.  Tonight I attempted to put them on the bike, and, what do you know – it actually looked like they’d work.  At least that was the hope until I managed to crossthread the axle nut onto the bolt – permanently ruining and hope of reattaching the wheel again.  With the first 1/8th inch of thread simple sheared flat, I’m out of luck.

Soundly and thouroughly defeated, I removed the entire back tire and will be taking it into the local bike shop tomorrow to see about either getting a new axle bolt, re-threading the current axle bolt, or getting an entirely new replacement tire if neither of those options is (are? – man I always mess this up) possible.  Keaton made sure I wasn’t given a pass on this – in fact she told Sharaun immediately that I “broke her bike again” (the first “break” being the stripped nut).  Oh yeah Keaton?  Well… dad can… pay to have someone else fix his mistakes.  How about that, huh?  How about that.  Hopefully the bike store dudes won’t laugh me out as I walk in with an 18″ pink and purple bike tire…

Goodnight.

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perspective

At work today I had this moment where I had to tell myself, “Shut up, Dave.”

It’s a somewhat cyclical thing with me.  Work begins taxing me more and more and I have these little Popeye moments where I say to myself, “That’s all I can stands and I can’t stands no more!”  I start daydreaming about vacation, start thinking towards the weekend, developing a case “senioritis,” as they used to call it in those final months of high school.  If I let my thoughts linger there for too long, my productivity is impacted.  I get in some kind of work-depression funk where I start questioning the meaning of it all.  That, my friends, is when I have to give myself a figurative slap across the figurative cheek and tell myself to snap out of it.

My job is awesome; my life is awesome; my family is awesome; buck-up and be thankful.  I told someone today that the first problem on my brain when I wake up each morning is which car my wife is going to want me to drive to work, the big one or the little one.  Some guy in India wakes up in a hovel and the first thing he worries about is feeding his kids for the day.  Perspective.

Also at work today, and not related, I wondered to myself why my team can be so cynical all the time.  I thought about it and realized, I’m a cynical person.  Someone challenged me on this once, saying that if you studied the behaviors you most dislike in your team (as a manager), you’d find that most of them are modeled after the very same behavior exhibited by you.  Ouch.  A damning concept, but one that I think is probably true – at least in the case of my team’s cynicism.  I’m a pretty cynical and sarcastic person, or at least I like to entertain all reactions to things, a primary one being cynicism.  So, your team is cynical and you’re likely a cynic yourself.  How to fix it?  How to change the collective thread of behavior?  Model it.  You change, they change.  A tough, but thrilling, concept.  Sigh…

Yeah, time to get some perspective.  Goodnight.

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a few proud minutes

The other day Ben pointed out to me that I’m nearing a significant milestone.

See, I use this great open-source application called Subsonic to stream all my media.  For you non-techies, this means that I run a small program on a computer at my house which can “beam” my music and movies to wherever I happen to be.  If I’m on the road, I can use my cellphone; if I’m somewhere else, I can use any web browser.  The awesomeness of this software is not to be understated – it is, quite honestly, the media solution I’ve been dreaming of for a very long time.  In fact, it’s what finally moved me off the hard-disk based iPod model and into “the cloud.”  For you techies, I run Subsonic on a four-drive NAS, running Windows Home Server in a JBOD redundant configuration.  I keep this tiny machine in our master bedroom closet, where it has a dedicated line to the internet.  The machine provides me with a whopping 4.66 terabytes of storage for my pictures, music, movies and saved television shows (a separate  repository than our DVR).  Using folder mirroring I am fault-tolerant against any single-drive failure.  It’s a nice setup.

I use Subsonic daily; I drive to work while streaming music, I listen to music at work, etc.  One of the neater features of the application is that I can enable any number of friends or family to also have access to the server and likewise stream all my content at will to their mobile devices or PCs.  In this way, I’ve enabled a dozen or so music-minded folks who make regular use of the streaming server.  Oftentimes I’ll be logged in listening to music and see a friend or two also streaming this or that.  Subsonic even supports a rudimentary chat interface, so we can talk back and forth as we enjoy my growing library.

In fact, that “growing library” is what I stopped by to write about, for that’s exactly what Ben called my attention to.  I hadn’t even noticed, but he sent me an instant message in the Subsonic interface yesterday saying “You’re close to cracking the 1TB mark!”  I’m glad he did, because it seems like an important milestone to me.  Check out the screenshot below from the Subsonic interface, where the application summarizes the available listening library:

For a few minutes I was so happy that I almost reached a terabyte of music.  Then I realized that full-on 50% of this is movies (Subsonic doesn’t differentiate in its count).  The real music-only size hovers just over 500GB of disk space.  Nothing to be ashamed of, I suppose, yet still not quite as exciting as the ten minutes where I thought I was on the verge of library-size domination.

Guess I’ll just have to continue legally purchasing music from iTunes and Amazon in a reach for that next goal.

Goodnight.

 

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dad’s superman veneer

Shhh!  Don’t tell anyone, but I made a conscious effort to dial-down my work investment this week.  I really did.  I was sort of sick a couple days so that forced slowdown helped, but I also tried to do less.  You can see, from the writing, that it worked.  I feel better (not bad at all) about it.  Let’s go.

I don’t know if it’s the lovely Spring weather or what, but lately Keaton’s had a renewed interest in riding her bike.  I talk more about the whole training wheels saga later; right now we’ve just been getting out of doors almost nightly and riding small suburban circuits.  While we ride together, I can help but to do a bit of dad showing-off… dredging up muscle memories made in my youth and popping and riding wheelies (on my mountain bike, no less), riding with no hands, “fishtailing,” “endo’ing,” and bunny hopping.  (I think) she finds it all terribly impressive, and a dad’s gotta keep up his Superman veneer, you see.

Monday evening Sharaun was at the gym and Keaton, Cohen, and I had all gone on a long walk around the neighborhood.  Keaton chose to ride her bike and after we got back home she joined up with a group of neighbor girls who were also out riding bikes in the cul-de-sac across from our house.  For a while, while the sun was still well enough above the horizon, I stretched out on the grass in the front yard and played with Cohen there while she rode.  Then, as dusk came and the sun was no longer there to warm us, Cohen and I took our leave of the lawn and headed inside.  I hollered at Keaton that she could stay out and ride with the girls.  She stayed out there and cycled around in circles until after the streetlights came on and all her friends had to go home too.  It was after eight o’clock before I stepped outside to call her back.

Later, I learned that she was absolutely thrilled to be given this tiny freedom.  I considered it quickly at the time, only just briefly, for it really isn’t a situation she often finds herself in.  She’s only just five, and the times where she’s “alone” are usually playdates with friends or in childcare at the gym or church.  She hasn’t really yet experienced the empowering rush that I can remember as a kid when you felt that the world (as big as it was to you at the time in your radius of four of five suburban blocks) was yours to explore and discover.  But for Keaton that night she was out hanging with the big girls.  Riding bikes with no parents, laughing and playing and having a grand old five year old time.  Nevermind that I could hear her the whole time through the front screen door, or that I could see her by craning my neck from my seat on the couch – to her she was unchaperoned.

As she was coming in she said to me, “You can do that again Dad; let me ride by myself.  I wasn’t scared or sad at all; it was fun.”  It’s fascinating to try and plumb the psychological implications of what your kids say and do.  Maybe this little self-affirming comment was her way of admitting that, in fact, she may have been a little scared or sad to begin with – but that those notions soon passed and she was thrilled to realize that there is a world off the apron strings.  I figure one thing I can do is try and give her an idea of just how big and wonderful that world is, maybe grow in her some passion to explore it and test it.  Then again, I have no idea what I’m doing here.

OK, the other thing I wanted to capture about that evening bike ride.  I mentioned I could hear the girls in the circle through the front door, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to stand there and eavesdrop a bit.  I’m glad I did, because I got to overhear my daughter bragging to her friends.  “Hey do you guys know that my dad can lift the whole front wheel of his bike and ride around?  He can also ride with no hands and jump his whole bike off the ground!”  Hearing this made my heart swell, I tell you.  Of course the other girls were quick to represent their dads in response, I heard lots of “My dad does X,” and “Yeah and mine can do Y!”  If you’re not a dad of a little girl, I don’t think you can even approximate what emotions this evokes in a man.  It’s primal, tickling something in us which dates back to primitive times; and it is so satisfying it’s hard to describe.  (Pat just wait.)

Just wait until she’s fourteen or fifteen and reality comes crashing in as she realizes I’m not but a human after all, and a flawed one like the rest of us at that.  Owell, until then I’ll enjoy the view from this pedestal.

Goodnight.

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carseats in RVs (or, death-baiting)

As I’ve mentioned many times here on sounds familiar, our family is going on massive, cross-country RV odyssey this summer.

As this hopefully amazing trip nears, I’ve been putting the final touches on all manner of planning.  One thing which I wanted to make sure I got right was the question of what we do with little Cohen on the long journey.  He’ll be about eleven months old, and therefore will need to travel in a carseat.  Not knowing where best to install a carseat in an RV, I hit-up Google for some advice.  I was at first a bit dismayed that there didn’t seem to be all that much information out there.

Then I remembered that most sane people wouldn’t choose to drive a baby eight-thousand miles around the USA in an RV and so realized that this lack of information kind of made sense.  I would have to break out my Google kung-fu and find the deep links, search some RV-centric forums, maybe even some carseat-centric ones (yes, there are plenty of both – if it exists, the internet has a forum, or fetish, or both, for it).  After my initial dismay, however, my reaction changed a bit when I actually found some discussion…

Did you know there are carseat nazis?  Well, there are.

Look, before we get started here – I’m not attempting, in any way, to minimize the need for, or obvious safety benefits of, carseats for children and infants.  That would be stupid.  Carseats are great and I’m all for laws compelling their usage.  I am no scofflaw or negligent parent, and neither is my wife – who cut our daughter’s grapes into quarters until she was well past two years old.  I’ll also try to not be too derisive here towards those folks who have made carseat science their religion of choice.

Anyway, there are carseat nazis.

My search above eventually led me to what looked like a series of relevant threads on a carseat forum.  Unfortunately, germane as those threads may be, they were all nearly universally saying there is simply no safe way to transport a baby (or child, by extension) in an RV.  Most of the respondents, in fact, were quite quick to demonize anyone who asked about it or suggested doing so.  Take for example some of the following responses to variations of the question, “What do I do about carseats in RVs?” (all typos left intact, for extra derision):

No way Jose!! That’s asking for a multiple funeral. Car seats cannot be installed on side-facing vehicle seats – RV seats are not crash tested at all.

I would never use the dinette seats. Ever. Safe use requires a chassis-bolted seat belt in a forward-facing seat and most RV seats are only afixed to plywood in the flooring.

There are just so many risks with RVs (top heavy leads to easy roll over, countless projectiles including other passengers, etc.) that my child will never ride in one.  An unrestrained 100lbs person (or someone whose belt is not boldet to the core frame) becomes about 3000lbs of force upon your child in a 30 MPH crash.

RV’s are underpowered and are a nuisciance pest to our highways, due to there slow speeds, difficulty to pass, and lack of driver training required to opperate.

We’d love to RV some day, but we’d never consider putting the kids in a motorized RV – eek, the risks.

Loose or larger items typically transported in RVs during a trip can become deadly projectiles in a crash. For example, during a crash at 30 mph, a case of canned goods or bottled water weighing 20 lbs flying off the counter or out of the kitchenette’s cupboard would be the equivalent of 600 lbs slamming into an RV occupant.  An improperly restrained passenger who weighs 150 lbs would become the equivalent of 4,500 lbs during a crash at 30 mph.

A tow-behind camper and vehicle with which to tow it is the only safe option. That way everyone stay safely restrained, but you still can camp.

The injuries sustained by kids from wearing lap only belts are horrible- lacerations to organs in the lower abdomen, septic shock from torn intestines, lower spinal fractures and worse. So much so that emergency room surgeons have given the symptoms a name, “Seatbelt Syndrome.” If you can find any other option, including a custom tether anchor, your child would be much safer.

I don’t even know where to start (although I am intrigued about being able to become 3,000lbs of “force,” that sounds kind of awesome).  I think it’s fair (and derisive I suppose, sorry again) to say that carseat-heads probably missed the day Newtonian physics was taught in school… or maybe only half-listened.  Their hearts are in the right place, I can say that much.  I can get this kind of attitude, I think.  We all love our kids and would rather they stay alive than cease living – that’s an easy one.  But something about the above smacks me as self-righteous, loving-to-the-point-of-crippling, overbearing and over-protective.

So I tell you what internet.  Here’s what we’re going to do:  We are going to take Cohen (eleven months) and Keaton (five years) on this amazing, once-in-a-lifetime journey.  We’re going to put the carseats in the dinette location with the latch and bank on #1 – not crashing & #2 – being the winning/bigger object if and when we do.  I’m not going to care if the belts are attached to the frame or the wood or whatever.  I’m also not going to even consider the fact that items in an RV during a crash can become “missiles.”  In fact, I contend that this point is beyond ridiculous.  Anything, in any wreck, can become a deadly projectile.  I can also tell you right now I will probably let my five year old do “reasonable” walking around in the living quarters whilst we drive (no scissors allowed).  You know what that means, I am obviously rooting for the worst.

A car crash is bad; a car crash is never good; the most basic idiot knows this.  I hereby proclaim that unless you never, ever take your child in a vehicle at all, ever, period – you are just death-baiting.  You really gonna sit there and gamble with your kid’s life like that?   You monster, you abject beast.  I only drive if we have to go to the emergency room (when my kid’s peanut allergy acts up) and when I do I keep the child in an inflatable bubble and never go faster than 25mph, beat that.

Pish-tosh internet, pish-tosh.

Goodnight.