Following Edge

In response to my contemplation that I either needed to accomplish something or not worry about accomplishing things during my vacation, David tasked me with a hunt for 10 things of a list of 16. Anyone with any sense would have considered this rediculous, but I decided to take it on, so long as I didn't have to do any additional running around to do it. Our plans for today included shopping, visiting the Phone Museum, and washing the dog. The only restrictions were that I could not use images from the Internet and that I couldn't doctor ("Photoshop") the photos. No problem...

See the details here.

Is it wrong that I want to do something I enjoy on my vacation, but can't get around to it? I often have the same reflection about work: "I accomplished a number of useful things today, but not what I really thought I wanted to accomplish".

Maybe the problem is in my perception. I want to enjoy accomplishing something significant and productive, but I actually enjoy chatting with David over coffee, doing the laundry (something Drew Barrymore also loves to do, by the way), and checking the security of dozens of University of Oregon buildings. If that's the case, I had a very enjoyable day with the only trouble being that I am depressed due to not reaching any objective.

Tomorrow, I should either discard my objectives or rise to meet them.

The baby chick continues to do well, but its next potential sibling failed to hatch today. [Oops, wrong link for the baby chick, try this one instead.]

Also came across these very cool "transparent desktop" pictures [1] [2]
If you like them, check out the whole set of them on Flickr.

By amazing coincidence, Easter day has brought us a baby chick. It's the first successful hatch from our new buff Silkie chickens. We were starting to become discouraged after the first three eggs failed to hatch, but now our Easter day success gives us greater hope for the dozen or more Silkie, Partridge Cochin and even Emu eggs remaining in the incubator.

Especially since we'll be sending the incubator in to Lauren's school for a week or two, we're happy that they are likely to have some luck.

The process of hatching is really a wonder. Check out the Silkie chick hatching page for lots more detailed pictures if you'd like to see what it's all about and if you can tolerate seeing a little blood.

Of course, it couldn't be more cliche to have a baby chick on Easter.

After working today, I start my two weeks of vacation. My goal , as I outlined earlier, is to rest up and temporarily recover my sensibilities and to invest some time lining up a new doctor to treat my condition for a longer-term solution.

Even so, I have been thinking in the last 2 days of all the things I need to get to around the house:

• Help plan a new chicken coop
• Install a wireless card in my stereo and put in hundred of CDs
• Put a pile of stuff on eBay
• Make some art for the smilingdisease experiment
• Put the hot tub together (a bit of work that may have its own reward)
• Assemble my "$1000 car", "gut-surgery girdle", and "Oregon credit union" web sites that I've been thinking about for years
• Order parts for fixing up the camper
• and more...

However, I realized that taking two weeks off of work just to stress out about personal projects would be a waste of my primary goals for taking time off. So, I am resigned to forget my list and take on only the personal projects that I really feel the energy and desire to work on, if any. David wants me to try and stay away from my computer and commit myself not to do any work during my break, but I expect I should take the same attitude toward work... only the work that I really feel the energy and desire to work on, if any. Obviously, the key is to keep my mind off both to-do lists and remember just to do what really inspires me. Happily, most of the things I set out to do both at home and at work are things that inspire me. That must be why I have almost 3 months of sick and vacation time accumulated.

Now, to my plan... no lists... only what I have energy for... and only what I desire to do.

I have been seeing a bit more of my friend David lately, including joining him for dinner on his 36th birthday this week. I think this picture is bunches better than the ones he has on his match.com profile. However, he doesn't agree, for some reason. I think you should let him know if you think this picture will do him good in meeting the right people.

Speaking of the right people, when Anne Marie, Lauren and I went out to the Roadhouse Grill with David recently, I became obsessed by the cook. You'll see a picture of him here and understand why you might normally think this is just a somewhat overweight fellow who works as a cook. But, if you watched him for just a few minutes, you'd realize it was more than that! It was obvious that he loved the food he was preparing. The little flourishes and rapt attention evident in his cooking were more like the love for a woman laid out on a bed than the simple preparation of meat on a grill. It became clear that he was overweight more because of a passionate love of food than an inattention to his health. I hoped that this fellow would be preparing our food and, after our food came, Anne Marie agreed that the meat was especially delicious. Can you see some of this from this little picture? I'm afraid it may be something that can only be appreciated in person.

I am taking two weeks (mostly) off of work starting next week. My first priority will be to rest enough to regain some of my sensibilities. The second priority will be to finish getting an appointment lined up with a doctor in Portland to review my condition. Beyond that, I'm hoping to get away to Portland for some recreation at least one day. David said he might join me and I bet I'll get to take Lauren. But first, I have to get caught up on my work so I can take my time off.

To point out how broken my mind is lately (either due to fatigue or perhaps, from some people's perspective, my normally warped mind) I imagined giant men eating crocodiles when I read the following local blog headline: Giant Man Eating Crocodile Captured in Uganda

Aw... isn't that cute.

Anne Marie finished this dollhouse for Lauren this week. It even includes a full set of ceramic bathroom fixtures. Lauren is very happy about it.

I was surprised how quickly Anne Marie completed this dollhouse. Partly due to her heavy load of schoolwork right now, but mostly because I know she's been working on completing a different (fancier and more complex) dollhouse for about 20 years. This one went from kit to completion in a few weeks. I think she used all of her destressing-from-school time working on it.

By amazing coincidence, Lauren's "show and tell" theme at school this week was "something miniature". As we expected, she was the only student to bring a toilet.

I have too much to say and too little energy to say it, but here goes...

My energy level this week has been back down. Part of it is extra effort I'm putting in to help Anne Marie feel a little less burdened during her last 7 weeks of graduate school, part of it is the project I'm working on with Keith, but mostly I'm sure it's just my thyroid problem making me feel bad. I think I'm going to have to take a week or two off of work to recover somewhat. Pushing myself to exhaustion every day is not helping me be as productive as possible. I hate to take time off with the project nearing completion, but the truth is that there's always something urgent in front of me.

Despite all of that weighing on me, this month's Eugene Weblogger Meetup was really nice (especially compared to my feelings about last month -- see "Pit of despair"). Kinsey was there as well as Ben, David, Kat and Alan. There was a lot of interesting discussion. I think I'll go again next time.

The "hatching day" for one of our Silkie (chicken) eggs came and went with no hatching. We have at least half a dozen more in the incubator, so we're hopeful to still get chicks soon. A reader from Warrenton wrote to me asking for advice about finding Silkies for her daughter and I helped her with some contact information for a Portland breeder from the "Yearbook of the American Bantam Association". (Bet you don't have that one on your bookshelf!) My greatest hope is that we'll have enough luck with the remaining eggs to have some to offer her.

In response to Ben's comment on my last post about GPS software, I think I'm going to pick up the "Route 66" software that provides GPS-based driving directions to see how that works. Even if you're tired of hearing about GPS, you can look forward to an update on that software soon.

After returning from the coast, I am so pleased with the super-cheap-guy car navigation system that I set up that I can't keep myself from telling you about it in detail. If you're less excited about what I do to entertain myself in the car and prefect to see what Lauren does in the car, here's a cute picture (click to see a bigger version).

Now, for the rest of you nerds that do want to know what I do to entertain myself in the car, you can click on this other image to see a full-size image of my car GPS display with some explanation. By the way, the tall map image over on the right shows our full path all the way back from Rockaway Beach to Elmira.

Before Ben asks for details and before I, therefore, devolve into a six-month process of writing about it, here's the quick rundown of the equipment I used: Magellan GPS315 receiver with a power and data cable, proper power and an adapter for my car to power all this, MacGPS software and complete USGS maps for Oregon.

Now, in this case, you may discover that "super-cheap" requires a bit over $200, but since David just bought a car for more than twice what I paid for my car, my truck, my motorcycle, my tractor, my camper, and Anne Marie's car all combined and it doesn't have a GPS system, I think this is a comparatively cheap way to get a cool feature.

Speaking of David, following the bad news he emailed my about, I've hung out with him a couple times to chat (and even brought the margaritas). I thought that, as a blogger, he should be spilling his guts online. But, maybe that's just the (embarrassing) way I do it. Oh well, I guess, for now, people will have to find some way to contact him directly if they want to offer their concern or encouragement. My tongue is tied! Ha!

We're visiting Anne Marie's mother on the Oregon coast this weekend. It's the usual fun of visiting my mother-in-law, helping to do her taxes, and making dinner (so she doesn't have to make dinner for us). In addition, it was an amazingly beautiful and warm day on the coast, so we visited the beach, shopped at the local trinket shops, and attended the annual "Crab Races".

We saw an impressive alligator kite at the beach and an impressive collection of garden gnomes (both pictured here). Both piqued Lauren's interest and she claims she had "a very good day". I have to say that, if this is what Winter is going to look like, I will hate to see what Summer is like!

Of course, the 3 hour drive out here gives me an ample opportunity to perfect my mobile technology. Pictured here is my really-cheap-guy dashboard GPS navigation system. My company laptop and my cheap GPS unit plug into the car's lighter and to each other to provide live mapping of our position and track overlaid on detailed USGS maps. So cool that even Anne Marie thought it was neat. Unbelievable!

I'm eager to get back home tomorrow afternoon. Not only can I enjoy the GPS navigation on the way home, but I just hate to be away from home very long. I'm not a world traveler... I prefer my own home and my own bed. Even more important, my best friend David emailed me with some bad news and I'm eager to see him soon.

Our daughter Lauren is hard to keep up with. In the most recent case, however, it may not be in the way you expect.

Lauren can now dial local phone numbers from her "phone book" which she couldn't quite manage two months ago when she was just 4 years old. Her "phone book" is currently just 2 phone numbers (mine and her grandmother's) written in big numbers on large index cards. Previously, she had trouble tracking what numbers she had already pressed and wasn't willing to admit to knowing how to find any of the numbers on the buttons. Now, she can track the numbers and find them on the phone well enough to call me when I'm in another room.

The "keeping up" problem is that we are looking for a number for her to dial that has "8", "6" and "0" in it so she practices all the numbers. The only problem is that the most obvious ones are long distance and her phone is restricted from long distance. That seemed wise when I first set up her phone, but now that we have Vonage and get unlimited long distance, I am trying to figure out how to route her phone through our Vonage line through our phone system. So, I have to keep up with her and find a solution. I am thinking I might just take it easy on myself and find some local number in the phone book (867-5309?) with the required numbers and teach Lauren how to make crank calls.

By the way, the picture here is from the play area at a local donut shop. Lauren was having a great time there (perhaps related to just having eaten a donut) while we waited for our car to have an oil change. The item to the right of the toy box is a high chair and the items to the left of the toy box are electrical cords and old blinds without child-safe cords. They love kids there.

I've spent the last week reducing my coffee by half. It has nothing to to do with recent coverage on the Today show and Dateline NBC about caffeine addiction. Anne Marie exclaimed after one of those shows, "Can you believe drinking 12 cups of coffee a day"? I can believe it because I was drinking 6 cups of coffee a day last year. And when I say 6, of course I mean 12. The people who measure consumption of coffee, you see, use the standard 8 ounce "cup" of coffee, whereas I drink the coffee stand standard 20 ounce cup mitigated only by the 4 ounces of cream I generously apply. But those days of excess were gone last year when I reduced from 6 cups to 4 cups a day (by which I really mean 8 "cups", of course) and really, I'm not going to have you believe that either the network news nor my wife were any factor here. Really.

However, the problem was really that I don't like it when addiction cramps my style. It's fine to have an occasional headache when I don't get my usual coffee, but when I have to plan my life around getting that coffee to avoid the headache, things have gotten out of hand.

So, I made up a gradual reduction plan (diagram above) based on a recent conversation with Keith about nicotine addiction. (By the way, cheers to Keith and Kirsten for kicking cigarettes. That's significant.) Looking at my chart, you might wonder how I can drink coffee all hours of the day and still get to sleep...

Caffeine long ago stopped having the usual effect on me. I have said for years that, with the amount of coffee I drink, I drink it to wake up in the morning and I drink it to go to sleep at night. So, reducing to only 2 cups (err... 4 cups... whatever) a day is the continuation of a big change for me.

Anyhow... I stuck to the plan and didn't have much withdrawl trouble aside from a couple of headaches I would have probably had anyhow. I no longer go out for coffee in the evening, which has been a break in routine, but there's no shortage of other things to get to in the evening instead.

I hope everyone else is having similar luck keeping their addictions in their place.

Now, on to the work grumbles that have kept me from writing... Working really hard behind the scenes with little appreciation is one thing, but doing so with criticism is harder to take. There's a lot of pressure on the project I'm doing with Keith. Evidently, it shouldn't take so long and shouldn't take so much work (and, hence, money). It's all wrong thinking, in my opinion.

The system we're replacing is replete with problems because of a lack of time invested in its development. Previously, the company has not invested in much programming infastructure. Neither Keith or I want to see the same problem here, but almost no company likes to invest in the time it takes to write software. The exception, of course, is software companies who make the investment and from whom other companies are willing to buy the work because it is now "packaged" and easier to buy.

My friend related to me this week a story that sounded very similar. Someone wanted some programming work done and had gone to a lot of work to specify exactly what the finished project should look like and work like. The programmer said he would start work on it and get something going within a few weeks. Since the program was needed by the end of the day, there was disbelief that he couldn't just go back to the office and send the final program. Wasn't it similar to work that had been done before? Why hadn't he indicated that there may be some time involved in the programming when he heard about the project? It seems that people expect that building a house or digging a trench takes time, but don't expect that programming takes time (and expert work).

Especially with my good experiences programming with Keith in the last 2 months, I am starting to wonder if I'd prefer to work for a software company. Maybe to start one? Of course, my current company wouldn't like to see me doing something else, but maybe there's some compromise that would work well for me. Or maybe it just seems that way from recent events. Ask me next month and I'll probably have a different opinion.

Thanks for listening to my grumble.

I have been intending to write about my work for 2 days, but I have this problem that when I think about writing about my work, I start working. This led, for example, to me sitting down to write at 9:00pm last night and realizing at 1:30am that I had been working and not writing. So, in order to keep on task for writing today, I'll stick to updates on family and farm. Since my work is going very slow and is somewhat frustrating lately, you probably will prefer to hear about this than to hear my grumbling about work. I'll make sure you get to hear the grumbling later.

As predicted last Summer, Lauren now has a bicycle for riding this year. She's been practicing at the toy store for a while, so she's pretty good at riding. Since there's a path that goes all the way around our house (which is a dome, and therefore convenient for a path around it), she is continuing to practice at home now. I had predicted that our bicycle trailer would soon be outmoded, but I don't think she'll actually be able to keep up for longer rides, so I bet that both she and her bicycle will often get to ride on the bike trailer. All the more for me to pull. Anne Marie got the perfect size bike in great condition for only $5.99 from Goodwill, which is great, but the unfortunate compromise for the good quality and price is that it is pink and has the word "Princess" on it, which is not something that needs to be reinforced for Lauren. Oh, well.

Today, we also got the Emu eggs we were expecting by mail. You can see here the incubator with the two huge Emu eggs and the 4 tiny Silkie chicken eggs. We have our hopes up for chickens in about 2 weeks and Emus in about 7 weeks. It's still bird madness around here, but I am happy to go with the flow (or "stick with the flock", perhaps).

Everywhere, with the unusually warm weather, thoughts of bike rides and baby chicks, it seems like spring. Seems early, but I guess it's really only a few weeks away.