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 really enjoy writing specifications and making logic flow diagrams! I really should just hire a programmer to work with me and I concentrate on sales and project management.
And that concludes a productive morning of proposal writing. Next up: run errands then program then cook then go to a meeting then program more.
Husband: "What do you want for dinner honey?"
Wife: "Anything but ribs or salmon."
Husband: Gee thanks. That really narrows it down.
You know. It’s ok to run out of money. And it’s ok to run out of food. But it’s never ok to run out of food and money at the same time.
I really enjoy cooking but with the food challenges of my children, schedules, and cash flow, sometimes food becomes downright frustrating. The past couple of weeks I have carefully planned our meals and shopping trips. The result was that we ate happily on healthy meals of salmon and ribs less expensively than coping out on busy nights with McDonald’s and Chick Fillet.
However, I look at the clock (1pm) and note that Tommy has to be in BFE at 6pm albeit he gets feed at his youth group tonight. We are still on 1 car since I haven’t made the time to replace the water pump on the Jeep and the afternoon schedule involves me being at the elementary school around 2:30, Sarah being picked up from school at 4:45, and Tommy’s jaunt to Lenior City beginning at 5:30. Ah! Looks like leftover ribs, salmon, and, for the non-eaters, fish sticks tonight!
(fish sticks cook in 8 minutes btw!)
Noah this morning poured his cereal in his bowl, opened the utinsil drawer for a spoon, poured his milk, closed the milk carton, and tried to put the milk carton into the utinsil drawer.
Yesteday the dogs were out when Noah came home. He opened the door and let the dogs in. Molly carried a ball that must remain outside. We call it the "stinky" ball. I said the stinky ball needed to go outside and Noah opened the door, stared at the tv, and was oblivious as the dogs stepped on his feet and ran out. When I asked, "what are you doing?" he swayed back and forth almost as if semi-conscious and closed the door. I mentioned the dogs he let Molly in and closed the dog on Crystal.
These types of absent-minded actions on Noah’s part have become increasingly bad. I feel it has slipped beyond "being 10." I do not yet know how to snap him out of it. I feel he has some enourmous stress or anxiety built up in him. I am sorry. At 10 years old you should feel no stress or anxiety. We are going to start by making his life as stress free as possible, do some juggling, and perhaps yoga. I would like to see an improved diet also.
The Reign of Ellen is closing shop. Maybe she’ll be back. Ellen always managed to draw some of the best Lost reviews! Hopefully Margalit will take over as Ellen suggested. Or! Perhaps Ellen will be back by Oct 5.
Cathy and I have no social life now-a-days. Blame it on managing 5 children’s schedules, lack of money, or my constant working if you will but basically we have not created much opportunity for adult conversation. Yesterday we broke our mold and went to Atomic Tumor’s party and had an absolutely wonderful time! The crowd was very comfortable, the food excellent, the conversation fun, the children played hard and were happy among new friends, the very pleasant teenagers eagerly watched the younger children, and there was much laughter. There was at least one "small world" event (I met you in 2000!) and it resulted in some throwing of fire. Cathy has links to the exhausted children and others. The only noted damage appears to be the two youngest children ended up with fevers. Build those immune systems! Thank again to Atomic Tumor et al!
Update: More photos here, here, here, here, here and here, and video here.
Today we are joining the AtomicTumor gang for festivities in Oak Ridge. Looking forward to putting faces to bloggers! We are heading over around 3pm. I don’t expect my crowd to last terribly long.
Dad: "Amy come here!"
Amy: blink blink, no movement
Dad: "The dog is better behaved than you."
I love my family! We just had the pleasure of running errands together and despite Noah being puny, Amy being overtired and cranky, and a bit of a rough start, we had a good outing.
We live a great adventure!
Cathy, despite not feeling well, has risen and I am working undisturbed! I owe her.
Noah asleep on the couch.
Amy asleep in a sleeping bag on the floor.
Tommy asleep in his bed.
Sarah asleep in her bed.
Cathy asleep in her bed.
Evan wrecking havoc.
It’s 10am and my deadline is noon! Calgon!
Programming is an art. Basically programming is mathematically solving complex logic problems that start out as word problems. That is why lateral thinkers make good programmers.
I have heard it stated that programming is 90% thinking and 10% coding. I am not sure if 90/10 is accurate but the concept is correct. To get your head around the problem, you have to be able to concentrate and sometimes for a long time. One disadvantage of working from home is finding long blocks of undisturbed time to concentrate and focus.
I used to have a Sony Discman (minidisc player) that was great for helping me block out ambiant noise (white noise drives me nuts) but it is gone or misplaced. I have often used ear plugs that cut noise down by about 20 decibals but I have lost ever single set. I would kill for a nice pair of noise reducing headphones. Of course, having a music source to plug those into would be even nicer.
In leu of all that, I will let Evan climb in my lap, listen to Amy’s shrill demands and shreaks, monitor the fights between the older children to decide when to intervene, listen to the dogs bark at unseen foes, hear the whine of the television and the hum of the refrigerator, heed my wife’s requests and listen closely to the words she does not speak, and between chaotic outbreaks I will slip in some coding enjoying the chaos and the logic.
Yesterday I paid $2.199 per gallon of gas! I never thought I’d see the day that I got excited over $2.199. When I first started pumping gas into cars and using my own money to buy it, I think gas was either $0.58 or $0.68 per gallon. The guy sharing my pump last night said he remembered gas being 20 cents a gallon but also that his wage was $1.60 per hour.
I am still confused as to why we never saw $4 or $5 per gallon like “the they” claimed would happen with the pipeline shutdown.
I would really like to take some time to beat myself up today but I am having difficulty working it into the schedule.
