Thus far, in the past 2 days, we’ve moved roughly 160 gallons of stuff (mostly clothing) to Goodwill. And removed every VHS movie that wasn’t homemade from this house (with minor exceptions – The Wall, Diablo Follies, …). Whoopie!
Category: Daily Life
Ramblings, often stream of conscious, journaling the events of my life.
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How to make Dad feel bad.
Amy is very weepy today. She cried twice at school, and talked about missing Lucy. We suspect "Missing Lucy" means "I feel sad and can’t express why" or something akin to that. I feel helpless. I do not feel that I am meeting the basic needs of my family. I can hear my wife’s voice in my head, "Don’t make this about you" but I cannot helping feeling like the root cause of the problem.
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Ill logic
Sometimes I feel less like a programmer (or am I a developer?)
- Developers have some knowledge of the domain and the business
- Developers care about maintenance burden
- Developers know that work methods are more important than technical chops
- Programmers try to solve every problem by coding
- Developers seek repeatability, programmers like one-off heroics
- Programmers like complexity, developers favor simplicity
- Developers care about users
- Developers like to satisfy a need, programmers like to finish
- Developers work, programmers play
[Source]
Well, right now I could go either way. Mostly if I can’t get over this technical hurdle I’m going to go nuts and beg for a phone support job. By his definitions, usually I am a developer.
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Hard day ahead but at least there’s eats
Wednesdays are tough. Lots of interuptions and errands. They usually end on a good note. At least I have already planned dinner and have the needed supplies.
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Challenges of self-employment
I work as an independent consultant. I do anything involving computers. Typically I build business systems on the Internet such as e-commerce websites. My skills are varied. I have bid on automating assembly lines in factories. I also do repairs such as virus removal on business and home computers. I enjoy project management the most.
Sometimes clients are slow to pay and in some cases never pay at all. These situations cause difficult cash flow problems and make for uncomfortable decisions at times. This week our websites may temporarily go offline. Cathy’s email and blog may become unavailable as well as Reality Me and a half a dozen or so other sites. We may also be without phone for a bit. I post this so that when it hits the fan you don’t think we fell off the Earth.
As a minor act of desperation, I have created 3 ad sponsor places on the blog and will keep them there until January 1, 2005. If anyone wants to donate any amount (paypal button below), I will happily fill that space with your advertisement.(that was dumb) Purchasing webhosting via this link could also help. -
Watch a family grow
What a cool idea! I have been trying to get Sarah to photograph herself once a day then morph the pictures together in a few years. This family simply takes a picture of everyone in their family once a year. Notice the guy never smiles again after 1978.
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TIA
Cathy feels that within 12 months I will have a life altering event.
They can occur days, weeks or even months before a major stroke. In about half the cases, the stroke occurs within one year of the TIA. [Source]
What’s a TIA?
A TIA is a “warning stroke” or “mini-stroke” that produces stroke-like symptoms but no lasting damage. [Source]
And the symptoms:
- Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body (see the last point with the target reference – that was sudden!)
- Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding (Sarah)
- Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes (see)
- Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination (June 19, 2007 actually)
- Sudden, severe headache with no known cause (Click, Kneed and death)
Guess I better play a littler harder this next year.
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Today’s Non-verbal Communication
For no apparent reason, Cathy wants me to stand behind the van. And I knew it before she posted this!
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Sarah did a doubletake!
Sarah is one of those "must contain all my emotion inside and always look morose" teenagers. She refuses to say "I love you" to anyone and conversation with the parents is totally uncool. Although I have minimized the amount of NPR listening when she is in the car I still force her to hear a little bit about what is happening in the world. She does her best to ignore me.
As I dropped her off at school this morning I chimed out, "Have a nice day Sarah! I love you!" then as she got out my autotomic brain spouted out, "Have a nice day Noah." Sarah had already begun closing the door and instead of running from the car as quickly as possible like normal, she stopped, turned back to car, opened the door and gave me the quirkiest look wordlessly declaring, "you are the craziest dad in the world!" then went off to school with a smile on her face.
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True Love – Speechless Communication
When Cathy and I were dating, I could read her mind. How connected! To know one another’s thoughts without speaking a word is bliss.
All married couples are familiar with this non-verbal communication. It changes a little after tying the knot. Ok, it changes a lot. For instance, when dating, I knew what Cathy needed. Now married, I simply know how angry she is with me.
The kids have a game called Punch Buggy. We archaic folk know it as Slug Bug and shun the unnecessary "no punch backs" childishness. Our most open communication comes through this game.
- When things are hunky-dory
- Cathy will call Slug Bug and the color and choose a child. No hit thrown of course. Occasionally, for balance, I receive a no hitter. And we all laugh.
- I may have irritated Cathy or she has had a frustrating day
- I get a light punch to the arm.
- I said something stupid
- I will feel a sting, still to the arm.
- I directly confront her, maybe without substance
- She stares into the parking lots like a hawk searching for a mouse and wallops me a good one possibly leaving a bruise. Any body part is fair game.
- My very presence annoys her for no rationale reason
- She will make up seeing a slug bug and magically find one of those Jedi nerve places bringing subtle tears to the corners of my eyes
- I yell at a child, scare her, or momentarily forget where I am
- She waits until we move to the back of the car, then she takes the tailgate and repeatedly slams it on my head. As I falter toward the ground she takes the baby from my hands and storms into Target with the other children leaving me bloody, dizzy, and barely standing in the parking lot. She never tells me the color of the Volkswagen.
Ah! Now that’s efficient communication.
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And the wheels fell off
I forgot to mention that yesterday we drove roughly 258 kilometers just running errands.
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So, how’d that coffee thing go
One pot of coffee later and I magically tranform from good dad to bad dad. So much for a romantic evening.