Time to throttle back a while

Wow! Thanksgiving has come and gone already! There's that whoooshing sound again. Time to slow down a bit and soak in the heart warmth of the season and reflect on the inexplicable wonder of the Christmas story. Isn't it something how the closing in of winter, the nostalgia and memories of Christmas's past, and the hope of Emmanuel blend to pull us out of our ruts, even for a moment.

It doesn't have a Christian message, per se, but for me, the movie The Polar Express captures much of the magic of this time. Seen it 3 times in the past week, and it holds it's charm. Maybe we can catch it in Imax at MOG again this year. Are ya up for that, Erin?

There's a light at the end of the tunnel of The East Point Project. I don't think it's an oncoming train, but can't be entirely sure just yet. I/we have this problem, in that we tend to go overboard with renovations, and one thing leads to another, so the project has consumed more money and much more time than we dreamed. But we've learned a lot, on several levels. Our Uncle Tom had a tender expression: "I'd like to unscrew the top of your head and ?%#$ you some brains". Well, this ain't about brains, it's about experience. And we've got a bunch.

Gotta rush along, now. Hmm. Here's to a peaceful Christmas season for you and yours. Make the time to take the time. Later.

Phone, home

Okay, lots has been going on with the investment property, not to mention another adventure with a different brand of cement board, and being done with the major area's of work, if we don't update (read "replace") all the windows to increase the value and sellability of the house.

My beef at this moment is with LG cell phones. Last Friday evening we're finished with a meeting with a potential business builder. It's now into the dinner hour, so I call our favorite Italian restaurant with Diane's LG camera phone to make a reservation. Well, the call doesn't go through. I look at the display, and it's lit but it's kinda... frozen. Hit end, nothing. Try to scroll through the directory, nothing. Try other functions, nada. Press and hold end, it won't shut off! Close the flip top, the freakin display doesn't even turn off! I've been around enough computers to know this means the phone's crashed.

Well, that happens once in a great while. The only thing you can really do is pull the battery, wait a couple of secs, then replace it. Did that. Powered back up, it says 'reading SIM', then displays the default background. Uh oh. Check the directory. Nothing freaking there! About 200 contacts painstakingly entered: gone! Check the SIM: empty! Crud! Pure crud!

Next day I decide that maybe I could transfer the directory from my LG 1300 to Diane's if I just unload it to the SIM. Now, I had maybe a 100 numbers in there, carefully grouped by contact name. The LG phones let you assign several numbers (cell, home, work, etc) to the same contact for easy access. So I have this pretty directory that I wanna transfer to Diane's phone. Names: Copy All: Phone to SIM: Replace. So it copies my pretty directory to the SIM. BUT NOT BEFORE SPLITTING EVERY SINGLE FREAKING CONTACT IN THE PHONE INTO SEPARATE CONTACTS FOR EACH NUMBER!!! As a programmer, I can confidently say that this is absolutely unacceptable, crappy behavior for software. Argghh! I expect stupidity like that from Microsoft.

LG: get a clue! Don't write software that screws up something as personallized as people's phone directories!

Cingular: get with the program, and give customers a way to back up their directories to your servers so they can be recovered.

Good grief. Oh, and I spent 4 hours in the ER Saturday making sure the pain and severe shortness of breath that hit me like a ton of bricks that morning wasn't my heart checking out. It wasn't. The pulmonary blood clot test came back positive, so a CAT scan was run to rule that out. It was ruled out. Turns out to be a back problem, with some ribs outta place, too. My Chiro will be putting me back together tomorrow.

I'm sooo ready to stop working 7 days a week, and get into a relaxed Holiday state of mind/body. Hope you're there already. Take care y'all!

Durock: Sheetrock With An Attitude

Whooosh!
What was that?
Five months of life passing by.

a dizzying Haiku

"You've gotta put Durock under a tiled floor", the sales dude advises. "You work with it just like sheetrock", the sales dude said. "Just score it and snap it", he says. Yeah, hmm, uh huh. D'ja ever try to cut a sidewalk with a utility knife?

Durock might best be described as a thin slab of cement, reinforced with fiberglass on both sides. Installing it in the master bathroom in our investment property, I quickly learned that it works like sheetrock the same way that a firehose works like a water pistol. If you're persistent with a knife, you can cut through the outer veneer of concrete, through the front side's fiberglass mesh (which is what keeps the whole thing from crumbling into little rocks), and score the inner slab. Then, you brace the back side along the cut, protect your eyes from flying shards and cement dust (that smarts), and gingerly throw all your weight into both sides. If the cut was deep enough, you get a reasonably smooth break. If not, you get a bunch of concrete pebbles clinging to the mother board via fiberglass. What a delightful material!

Anyway, Monday evening I got it installed, and about an hour later had the tile set. I'll be back for another long working weekend to grout, finish some plumbing, set the hopper, and move on to the half bath. We're hoping to get most of the remaining work done in the next two weeks so the place can be listed in early November. This project has consumed all available resources this year, so we're very ready to wrap it up and get our lives back.

The one event this year that you might call a break was our trip in August to the Shaklee National Convention in Chicago. It was a lot of fun and much was learned, but it wasn't a vacation by any stretch, and the kids weren't with us, either. Anyway, there's some highlights from the days' events here and here if you're interested.

I also had a working trip to Chicago in July. A good friend works for a company that contracts with The Weather Channel to travel around the country to run what they call The Weather Wall. It's part of an educational program TWC sponsors, 'weather camps', usually for kids, where they get to do a weather report in front of a blue screen, with clips of TWC weather maps playing in the background. Each kid gets a keepsake tape or DVD of their performance. So, this video company was overbooked one weekend in July, and Erin and I got to drive the equipment to a Boys and Girls Club in Chicago to do the Weather Wall for their weather camp. It was a tiring but fun and interesting weekend.

After that drive, I can safely say that 98% of all the world's corn comes from Indiana.

That's where most of the time has flown so far this year. We're anxiously awaiting some down time so we can take care of our own home, and just be still. Scarce resources will probably nix any family traveling this year, but it's looking like Pop and Joe might come up for Thanksgiving, so that will be Good.

Take care, y'all!

And a top ten interesting weather day...

This is some of the aftermath of a storm that roared through the Lakeland Plaza area of Cumming yesterday afternoon. The house is on the corner of 9 and (I think) Old Atlanta, in back of the Parsons/Kroger strip. The tree took out two cars, and busted the house up pretty bad. We were stopped about a quarter mile downwind at the Chevron across from Applebees when it hit.

In all our travels, we've never been in anything like that. It came up in a matter of seconds, and it was a good thing we weren't moving on the road at the time. We were out with friends, in a large van that was being rocked like it was a toy, the doors on the gas station were blowing in and out, and then the wind and rain got so intense and from every direction that you couldn't see anything. Chris was in the store, not daring come out 'cause she'd probably blow away. Chels was terrified.

Anywho, it passed after about 5 minutes, and we drove over to Cathy's for dinner (electricity was out for an hour and a half). While driving around afterward, we determined that the path of that thing was no more than maybe a half mile wide. Quite a few trees were down and snapped in the middle. There was a big one blocking Castleberry, and flooding from runoff all over. If that wasn't a small tornado (didn't hear the train), it must have been pretty intense strightline winds.

Rich and I drove back to the house to check on their camper, and it barely rained at all there. Like I said, the swath of wind damage wasn't more than a half mile wide. We redefine localized weather here in Georgia. Wild and crazy.

Oh, and when it settled down enough to leave the gas station, Chels asks "do you know why it stopped?" "Yes, it blew over." "No! Do you know why it stopped? It stopped because I prayed and asked God to make it stop." Ah, the sweet faith of a child.

Here's to interesting times that you can walk away from. Take care, y'all.

Just another top ten day in Georgia

My oh my, this has been a great couple of days off! For the most part, the weather has been typical Southern early spring: dry, warm, a light breeze, azure blue skies, perfect for outdoor choring. In my case, that involved readying the deck for the season with some pressure washing (Saturday) and a coat of sealant (today). Added two more strings of mini lantern lights under the railing, and we're ready to go. I'm resting my bones on the swing with my bride, enjoying the dusk surrendering to the night, and listening to some Maire Brennan. Perfect end to a productive day.

Like many things in life, you have to be ready to grab hold of spring and enjoy the ride while you can. Before long, the evenings start getting too warm to enjoy without the insectivorous pests becoming too distracting. Tonight, though, is a keeper.

Friday was interesting. Erin and I pulled off a MacGyveresque lighting project for the Tenebrae service using just coat hangers and charred banana peels. It was actually a little more sophisticated than that, but not by much. The desired effects were achieved, and it was a meaningful moment. Resurrection Sunday's service was great! We're blessed with much musical talent in our church, and they sing and play their hearts out for the Lord.

Things are going very well with Diane's business. Our star doctor just got her wellness center fully functional, and she more than exceeded our sales expectations. Also, we're registered at the secondary hotel for the Shaklee convention in Chicago this summer. (The main hotel is already sold out.) We're planning an extended visit around the Windy City, so this will be our main vaca for the year. (If you're following the thread, the Shaklee life is the better way I referred to.)

Hope y'all are having a great week. Make you live in blessed, not necessarily interesting times.

Hours were like months

What was I thinking? I thought I was busy last year because of the work schedule. Reality check... Yikes! I audited my 2004 time sheets and was stunned that I put in 400+ hours beyond my regular schedule. Six days a week. Average. Insane. And my better half and kids certainly felt it, too. I don't know how marriages and families survive when a spouse works those kinds of hours year in and year out. Like the commercial sez: there's a reason they pay you so much for overtime. Except that when you're on salary and everyone gets mediocre reviews and raises, the message is more bitter than sweet. Such is life in IT post dot com.

So where did the time go? I'm not entirely sure. Christmas? Went as fast as a fresh cheese-only pizza on the Pizza Hut lunch bar. New Years Eve we watched Apollo 13 (a personal top 10), pausing a couple of minutes before 00:00 to watch the apple and peach drop. Wasn't it weird not rockin' in the new year with Dick Clark? I remember watching him on Bandstand around, oh, 1961. So many American icons are fading away.

January was punctuated with a little home repair. Well, not that little. In spite of the high quality workmanship that went into our abode, the stone work around and above the front door apparently had been less than waterproof. By the time we realized there was a problem (rotten floor boards in the foyer and rain water running out of the porch light switchplate!), the exterior sheathing and several studs were gone. One mason, one carpenter, and a medium-sized bag of money later, we have a new stone facade and nice fresh timber and sheathing behind it. The damage could have been much worse, but it looks great now.

Birthday's were the highlights for February. And March? Well, Diane moved up to Coordinator in her Shaklee business, thanks to a children's doctor coming on-board and recognizing the value of nutrition in her practice. Hey, now it's starting to come back to me. Many (but not all) of the holes in the time continuum were spent helping with the business, mostly in the area of developing websites and related stuph, and reworking our subdivision's website. Oh yeah, one other thing. I was voted onto the homeowner association's board. Thanks. I think. We'll see.

Ready for spring? Us, too. It's starting to warm up, which means the opportunities for Very Interesting Weather have officially arrived. I think I'll use the week of vacation bumped from last year to make a Very Long Weekend. Now that's a perk not everyone got; some folks had too much work to use all their vaca last year, and they couldn't bank it, either, so they lost it. There's gotta be a better way. We're looking. And we'll point the way when we make it work.

Take care, y'all!

The Main Thing

Santa here's got it right. As busy as St. Nick is this time of year, what's our (my) excuse? Work? Parties? Shopping? Hmm... well, work certainly is in there. Parties... see previous excuse. Shopping... just started, see previous former excuse. Just gonna have to put quiet time on the schedule. Let's see... 4:30: stare into the abyss. 5 o'clock: solve world hunger. 5:30: jazzercise...

Jazzercise, ha! Here's hoping you're holding tight to the season's reason, or are on your way to finding the peace the Christmas Child gives.

bloggus interruptus... 5 days later

Well, now work is finally on holiday and I've gotten my two major projects out the door. Office Christmas parties are over, there's one more work day for the year, and I'm sooo ready for a couple of weeks of family and home time. YEHAW!

God's got quite a sense of humor, don't ya think? And a bit of snow once in a while is a wonderful treat. In December a couple of years ago, Erin visited her grand folks in northeast Pennsylvania. December, near the Catskills, gotta have snow, right? Wrong! No snow there, but here in Georgia we had a couple of inches of the fluffy stuff. Enough for sledding. Heh.

Fast forward to today. She's visiting in PA for the week, and hoping for snow. So far, nothing but some flurries that didn't accumulate. They've got the cold, tens and twenties, but the conditions for snow just aren't happening. And... the weather folk are talking about a little of white stuff this weekend... here. It's not expected to amount to anything, but ironic nevertheless.

Enjoy the season, it passes all too fast. Enjoy your loved ones, they grow up and grow old all too fast. As the good doctor (Suess) said, may you find and know that Christmas, perhaps, means just a little bit more.