A juggling technophile shares personal stories, challenges, humor and perhaps some political commentary.
Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.
I woke up having my wife’s dream waking up having my wife’s dream waking up having my wife’s dream. She did this the other night and it is both disturbing and cool. After coding during the wee hours I took a nap and dreamed that I woke up and went back to coding and after a little work I really woke up to realize I had been dreaming about work then I closed my eyes drifting back to sleep to have the same dream. I repeated this cycle about 4 times.
I feel very sleep deprived.
It is so crispy and beautiful outside! If I had my druthers, I’d drop everything and go on an all day hike.
The software industry is filled with "two more weeks" promises and deadlines. The truth of the matter is that I can always tell a project is nearing the end when the incense starts to run out. I’m down to pine, musk amber (Cathy says smells like dust), and rose. This is almost as bad as running out of coffee!
At 3am, I was pounding my head on my keyboard with this bizarre problem. The PHP code I had written was reading the XML data from the XML file but for some inexplicable reason was breaking one of the nodes in half. If it was supposed to read "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" it would instead create two nodes such as "the quick brown" and "fox jumped over the lazy dog". Maddening! So I slept. And in 5 minutes this morning, I solved the problem. I still wish I could take a pill instead of sleeping.
Update: The correction to the problem was to read the whole file instead of reading it in 4096 chunks.
Because we don’t get Calgon!
The decibel level in our house exceeds anything considered safe. Last night as we played D&D with some friends, Cathy pondered why our friend‘s house was so quiet compared to ours. We conjectured it is the televisions and computers but I think it comes down to Amy. 
She is so shrill! Then Evan tries to match her. We get multiple conversations going on simultaneously. So while someone is at the table finishing their dinner with the clinking of utensils, we have Cathy typing at her computer to pull up the children’s grades and talking to one of the teenagers about their school performance. I am listening in on their conversation while running water over the dishes and cleaning up counters and talking to another child with some segues to interject on Cathy’s conversation. Meanwhile Evan clomps across the wood floors while screaming like a girl with Amy chasing him and screaming. The adults increase their volume to be heard. The teenagers yell their conversation. The tea kettle blows (no reason).
Does this sound like your calm evening? We are definitely no like dinnertime with the Cleavers, My Three Sons, or Pleasantville. I think tomorrow I will wear ear plugs.
Evan wakes from nap: "Daaaaa oooeeww Daaa. Da DAAAA. OH Daa DAA!"
In college, I spent a lot of time trying to live on only 3 hours of sleep a night. It was that "sleep is a waste of time thing." After a couple of years, I crashed and slept through a summer break. For the record, you cannot catch up on sleep. If you think you can shave a few hours one night and make them up another night, you are fooling yourself. However, you can make yourself sick.
Last night I wanted to pull an all nighter for work. I chose to sleep. I might have produced some sloppy work last night in twice the time it will take me to wrap it up this morning. I may deliver a little later than I had hoped today. But my work will be higher quality and I feel healthier. Because I slept. Still wish I could take a pill instead of losing those hours.
I’ve been waiting since January 2004 for that! Special thanks to:
Apologies if I missed anyone. Just let me know in comments or email juggler [at] gmail.com
I listen to music on Pandora at the recommendation of a college professor who told me that Pandora and its algorithmic music selection is the rage of his research assistants. Wanting to hang with the cool kids, I checked it out and was impressed. Now thanks to Darren Rowse at Problogger, I also listen to Sky.fm and enjoy the higher quality streaming but am not thrilled with the narrow selection of music choices. Thanks to my brother-in-law’s gift of XM Radio to Cathy I rarely listen to regular radio anymore.
I like Frank Murphy. He blogs and performs in my improv alma mater, Einstein Simplified. Even before the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra I had the best of intentions of checking out his STAR 102.1FM morning show but as is typical of "best intentions" I haven’t done it yet…until today. Frank drew me in with his mention of Reality Me’s report that Google Street Views is in Knoxville. What did I learn from today’s morning show? It is good! And apparently if you blog about Abby Ham, in particular Abby leaving Knoxville for Cleveland somewhere, you get traffic to your blog!
Good luck Abby Ham! Be strong!
Update: By the way, I highly recommend the 10th anniversary 5.5 version of Winamp!
Update: For Abby Ham fans, Frank Murphy suggests visiting Terry Morrow’s blog and Knoxville Trivia Blog.
Wow! It is so beautiful outside right now. The air is crisp. Earlier there was a smell of leaking gas (yes yes…gas is odorless but they add a smell) but it has dissipated and been replaced by that smell of…crisp air! I could really enjoy a camping trip right now. Means I should get to work and clean my plate so that I can take a break.
If I am interpreting this correctly, RealityMe was on the STAR 102.1FM morning show mentioning the post Knoxville Street Views Happening Now! Very cool.
Ah! Of course! Thanks Frank!
Last night we had a wonderful time. Since our neighborhood is historically dead, we go to a friend’s neighborhood which is Pleasantville perfect. Our zombie horde dragged their feet and moaned their way into a Pleasantville street party. All the neighbors had brought food out ala potluck and one neighbor hired a dj to play music allowing the children to dance in their driveway. The street was packed but opened up as a tractor pulled a hay ride into the cove. The "hey ride" shuttle circled the neighborhood for a couple of hours giving young tired feet a fun rest. Our four zombies (one, two, three, four) where accompanied by a friend zombie and German shepherd, a poodle, mini-Shaun, and me.
The neighborhood was ideal with neighbors socializing and laughing, people crowding the streets, no one getting angry as children cut through yards and landscaping. I didn’t see the slutty outfits that we experienced last year but we did arrive earlier this year. Everyone was so friendly and many houses were decorated for the scene. One even had a rock band playing at stadium volume.
The 17 year old and 5 year old wore out quickly. The 2 year old would tire then find another wind. When we stopped trick or treating for the evening, I think he could have kept going but was really done. The two teen girls could have gone all night and the pre-teen boy found a friend’s house and could have played all night. I was attacked by Zombies. One adult identified me and cackled. A teenage boy laughed as he identified me and declared me to have "the coolest costume ever!" And I think one other person got it with a chuckle but only have being clued in during an explanation to a little girl about the blood on my shirt "There’s zombies everywhere! I’m being chased by zombies. Heading to the Winchester!"
Update: We’ve receive honor from Barry for Picture of the Week! Thanks Barry!
I understand why old people become crotchety and bitter.
On Saturday the 13th of October, Sarah settled into bed midnightish at a Marriot Hotel near Atlanta. She was traveling with the high school band to perform flags. On Sunday the 14th she awoke unable to find her phone that she had left on top of her luggage so she assumed it was in her luggage (that’s her official story..personally, I think she woke late and groggily shoved everything in her bag and rushed out to see her friends without giving the phone a thought). Sunday at 9pm as she came off the bus I asked, "where’s your phone?" She replied, "In my luggage." On Tuesday, she finally confided that her Motorola RAZR v3xx was lost or stolen.
I scoured her phone and text messaging records. The last number called was to Phoenix, Arizona so there was hope that we had a way to contact the person with the phone. After a few calls and several text messages we figured out that Sarah had actually placed those calls on behalf of a friend. Hope was lost. I contacted the housekeeping manager at the hotel and he confirmed no phone had been turned it. I deactivated the phone. A week later I called again and still no phone. LissaKay comes to the rescue (aided by Twitter) with a replacement phone for Sarah and Sarah flips with excitement spending the next 6 hours customizing the phone.
Yesterday I get a phone call from someone explaining they found the phone! Yea! Housekeeping came through. No, wait, this is guest! The phone, lost on October 13th, was found under the bed by an honest person staying in room 517 on October 29th. It still had power because Sarah had turned it off so the honest person was able to lookup "Dad" and found me. This means that room 517 hasn’t had a thorough cleaning in at least half a month and that for at least 15 guests, assuming the room is occupied every day, don’t check the room very well. Ewww.
Now, who gets the phone? Sarah or Tommy.
You know it is going to be an interesting day when you start off by putting your hot chocolate in your bowl and your oatmeal in your mug.
