Following Edge

When we got home today, a box was waiting for us with a cell phone from TracFone, so we headed off to deliver it to Sri. He's a twenty-something fellow who we pay to work around our farm and yard pretty regularly. Sri doesn't drive, hasn't held a job for quite a while, and recently separated from his partner (a woman named Bob). His life is very basic and he will even say, "I'm not very good at figuring out the modern world".

Given that Anne Marie and I have worked hard all our lives to build up a stable and successful existence, his very basic existence is almost incomprehensible to us. It reminds me of Brian Hines' recent story, which I commented on, about being emotionally overwhelmed by the very basic needs of a woman he gave a ride. I'm so happy that we can provide some basic employment for Sri, and happy that we can be generous with extra supplies that we can share with him. After he moved out from Bob's house, and decided to move into a camper in the hills 5 miles further out than our place, we got him an electric blanket, since he was having trouble sleeping in the cold. It was very basic, but I think it made a big difference to him.

Last week, Sri asked for advice about pre-paid cell phones. I recommended TracFone, but told Sri that I should order him one on the Internet for $20 instead of letting him find one at a mini-mart for $50 (another example of the tax on people without "modern" skills). The phone has to be a good thing for him, since we've had no way to reach him about work, aside from his daily calls from a payphone in town. He's been anxious for the phone to arrive, so we headed off to his address as soon as I saw it on our doorstop. About half way along the 5 mile, uphill trip, I spotted him walking up the road. We stopped and he was overjoyed to have the phone and happy to get a ride the remaining couple of miles.

We'd never been to Sri's camper before. It was down a long, long gravel road, in a gravel patch next to the road. The camper was in better shape than I expected, but still old and tiny (at 15 feet, including the driving compartment). His dog cautiously peered around the edge of the camper as he got out of the car. It seemed hard to imagine that he would trudge (or ride his dirt bike) so far each day so that he and his dog could live in this spot.

But, looking past his camper, there was a panoramic view of the southern Willamette valley, Fern Ridge reservoir, and the lights of the city of Eugene. It was spectacular.

In the 8 days since writing about the crash, things have been a constant challenge. I've been silent because it's not very entertaining to write about one bad thing after another and I hadn't been feeling positive enough to care about writing.

On Monday evening, the APC Uninteruptable Power Supply that runs the computer room I manage failed a scheduled battery test and turned off the power to all the equipment, including all of our network connections, accounting servers, calendar, email and web servers. The electricity to the room never went off, so it shouldn't have happened. I guess the word "Uninteruptable" was a serious overstatement. Talking to APC, they simply informed me, "No, that shouldn't happen". Thanks.

On Tuesday, I stayed up very late assembling a new server, "nhi", so that I could install it during my trip to Portland on Wednesday. I went to Portland mainly to meet a Covad DSL Installer. After driving over 2 hours and waiting 4 hours, I discovered that the installer determined he hadn't brought the correct paperwork, so wouldn't do the work that day. Since he didn't call me to let me know or enter any information for the company to call me, I wasted hours sitting and waiting, then more hours waiting in rush-hour traffic, arriving home late in the evening. Calling someone if you're unable to make an appointment is a pretty minimal courtesy. I am going to do the installer some serious verbal harm when I do see him. At least, though, I got the new server all assembled and beautifully installed. But...

The next day, Thanksgiving, I enjoyed visiting with friends and family, letting the weeks worries slip away. Ha! Not even! In actuality, our most important server, "trac", went down before 10:00am and my friend Chris and I spent hours of our holiday time until 7:00pm getting things fixed. It turns out that both the server's logic board and power supply went out. To get things running, we had to tear apart the new server I'd installed the previous day, copy all of the data on this massive server to new drives, and do a scary upgrade from Linux 2.2 to Linux 2.4. The good news is that I did get to take an hour off to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with the family at Judith and Chris' house. It was as wonderful as it could have been, given the chaos and frenzy going on around me.

On Friday, and even now, I am terrifically behind on work due to the backlog from all those distractions and the work to get everything repaired and back in good condition.

Thankfully, I was able to recover my sensibilities and get in a good mood in the last few days. Basically assisted by all of Ian Dury's favorite things, but substituting Vince Guaraldi for Rock and Roll.

The picture shown here is the destruction of the Rite Aid at 29th and Willamette Street in Eugene. (The other picture is the destruction of Thanksgiving dinner, of course.) They're tearing this huge building down to, evidently, build an even bigger one for the PC Market of Choice. Since my parents (both pharmacists) worked there for decades, it's a significant event for me. Lauren and I enjoyed watching the destruction.

Things feeling better now, I hope to write again in just a couple of days.

Driving into town, driving in heavy traffic at 18th and City View in Eugene, a car sped through the opposing turn lane, passing several cars waiting for the signal, and slammed into the passenger side of the car right in front of me, causing that car to collide with the driver's side of a car in the opposite lane. It was shocking.

I stopped, but, by the time I was our of my car and across the street, the wonderful generosity of dozens of people had already verified the good (but shaken) condition of the passengers, started work to tug on the door of one car to free its driver, and had contacted 911.

I'm always impressed by the generous human impulse to help people in need. It makes me glad. On the other hand, the butterfly effect is also on my mind. What if a burst have wind had dislodged a leaf, distracting a dog, causing the lady in the car in front of me to have to yell at her dog one more time to come in for breakfast, and this 3 second delay resulted in her being behind me today, instead of me behind her. I could have been in that accident. Something to think about, but not too much, I suppose.

In the last two or three days, I've fallen again into a very deep depression. It's strange how quickly it comes on. Tvindy asked my on Wednesday night whether I was still suffering depression, and I had told him that it had been gone for some time and that I was feeling good and being productive. So quickly things change. Of course, everything seems in need of fixing: I think about changing jobs or restructuring or reducing my work, I think about reorganizing my personal time so that I can get a bit more time away from the routine of home, I think obsessively about sex, I think about everyone's faults. Certainly, things must, in reality, be much as they were earlier this week... only my thoughts have changed.

It's hard for me to do anything. I feel like laying in bed all the time and have to force myself to to my job. I was thinking about doing IRC Internet chat or even something like Second Life to occupy myself and give me another social outlet, but a little investigation seems to show that most of what's out there isn't worth getting involved with. I'll keep thinking about it. In the meantime, I'll keep up hopes that it will pass quickly and before anyone yells at me to stop being such a bummer.

I wasn't prepared for a good Eugene Blogger Get-together. In fact, after staying home from work yesterday, canceling my trip for tomorrow, and feeling wrenched all day, I was ready to avoid the meeting altogether. Not that I could have, but I'm glad that I didn't! After two energy drinks and two DayQuil, it turned out to be excellent.

Tvindy made it there from Indiana. Evidently, he broke some personal records in the speed of his trip. It always feels more like a get-together when he's there, but, even though we both arrived early, I wish we'd had more time to chat.

David didn't make it, but Alan did and contributed to an extended conversation about what might have become of him. Was David eaten by his animals, suffocated by lighting a fire under his not-yet-ready chimney? Only time will tell.

Best of all, both Punkin Dunkin and Brandon made first-time appearances. Evidently, Brandon was surprised that we couldn't stick to blog business. Really, for those of you who haven't attended, don't be surprised that it's almost wall-to-wall chatting and laughing. When I said "no agenda", I meant it!

I've been a real fan of Punkin Dunkin's blog, "No Whammies... No Whammies... Big Bucks... STOP!", since just after she started it last year. It was great to meet her and hear her talk about how her blog and her emphasis has been changing over that time.

Thanks to each of you who attended.

Now that I'm back home and the caffeine and cold medicine is wearing off, I think it's time to switch to NyQuil and try to recover.

Within 24 hours of saying how great everything was, I have come down with a miserable cold and am now wallowing in bed being miserable.

I did go into the office today, and I did join Anne Marie this evening on her two-hour effort to satisfy some crazy craving for french onion soup, but I don't think I'll be making it into the office tomorrow.

Hopefully, some rest tomorrow will kick the sickness in time for the Blogger Get-together on Wednesday, since Tvindy is definately on his way.

It's been a great weekend. After a no-school Friday and chores galore Saturday, I was expecting to relax today. Alas, thanks to our thriftiness and diverse skills, we became piano movers for the day.

You see, a couple of months ago, Anne Marie mentioned that perhaps we should think about getting a piano. Maybe Lauren might like to learn to play it. So, as always, I put on my "back burner", waiting for the perfect opportunity. Last week, a free piano appeared on CraigsList, so I inquired about it, but learned it was already spoken for. Then, today I got a call saying that the piano arrangement had fallen through and we could take it as long as we could remove it today.

Anne Marie and I got the assistance of the giver and his next door neighbor to load it into the horse trailer, then Anne Marie and I moved it from the trailer into our house on our own. Let me tell you... a piano is a heavy thing. It took all my energy to lift one end off the floor a few inches, when necessary. Overall, except for a few hours of labor, a bruised big toe, and a major divot in our front-door threshold, we ended up with a piano needing only some minor repairs and tuning. Excellent!

Keith was commenting on Friday about how cheap I am (in regards to my recent $15 television purchase), and I'm afraid this may just confirm it.

I have to say that things are pretty great. Despite the usual feeling of overwhelming backlog both at work and at home, it feels like things are really nice for me right now.

Lauren had no school Friday, so we got to pal around a few extra hours, which was great!

On Saturday, everything seemed to go right. Lots of chores out of the way, a visit to the Science Factory museum with Lauren, and a fun time assembling a silly star projector that Anne Marie bought at the museum which let us see stars on the ceiling of our dome. Excellent!

Then, after Lauren's bedtime, Anne Marie and I enjoyed a nice evening. I can't tell if things were really going that great between us, or whether it was just because I felt totally baked. Regardless, I've been feeling good.

Plus, the repairs to the roof seem to have worked and we were able to buy the stuff to clean up the office. Now, I'll just need to convince myself that I can be a restoration expert as well as a piano mover.

The Eugene Weblogger get-together is coming up next Wednesday, November 16th at a new location. We'll be meeting at the Flying Dogs Cafe near 13th and Alder Street, close to the U of O campus. Flying Dogs offers good food and drink, is usually not very crowded, and evidently offers free wireless Internet. Alan went there recently and recommended it. Hopefully, it'll be a great new spot for Eugene bloggers.

The Get-together starts at 6:30pm and is usually over at 8. Both bloggers and blog readers are welcome. It's a great way to meet some of your Eugene blogging comrades and, even though there's no firm agenda, there's always lots of discussion about local happenings, technology, work, and everything else under the sun.

We're likely to see Tvindy, one of our favorite local bloggers, who is staying in Muncie, Indiana instead of returning to the U of O this year. There should be lots of interesting news about his activities. He's making a cross-country trip to make it to the Eugene Weblogger get-together... so no excuses from the rest of you.

Don't know what's going on in local blogs? There is really a lot happening in local Eugene-area weblogs and following local blogs is a cool way to keep connected to the community. Check out the Eugene Weblog List to see more than 125 local weblogs (including 7 new additions).

Mark your calendar:

  Eugene Weblogger Get-together
  Wednesday, November 16 at 6:30pm
  Flying Dogs Cafe
  1249 Alder St (near campus)
  (Trouble parking? Try the multi-level parking building
  a block away at 13th and Hilyard.)

Hope to see you Wednesday.

Yesterday, we attended a cider pressing party at our neighbor's house. We've been invited each of the three years we've liven in Elmira, but scheduling has kept us away from the event until this year.

These are some people who know about making apple cider. Bob Correll, our neighbor, is the maker of the well-known (in the right circles) Correll Cider Press. He was featured in Forbes magazine recently as the world's best cider press maker. People pay $500 to $1000 for these presses and wait on a waiting list for a year as Bob works in his workshop hand-crafting just over one hundred presses a year. He should have a helper, but he wants to keep the business in the family, so he's waiting for his oldest son, now 51, to retire from firefighting and join the business! If I knew anything much about apple cider, I'd be giddy about having him as a neighbor.

At the "party" we helped Bob's friends, kids and grandkids use two of Bob's presses to turn a ton of apples (literally, a ton) into cider. The presses are amazingly efficient and practical, which is a real testament to the long history of the cider press. I understand that little has changed in the basic design for a century, aside from replacing a hand crank for the grinder with an electric motor.

Basically, the apples go into a grinder and the apple bits end up in a basket with a bag in it. When the basket is full, the bad is closed up and placed under a press that you crank down by hand to squeeze out all the juice. The juice runs down the tray into a bucket where it's strained into jugs.

The grandkids knew the routine well and ran one of the presses themselves (as shown here) while the adults and amateurs like myself and Anne Marie were allowed to help on the second press. We went through over a ton of apples in just under 2 hours and took home 3 jugs of cider for our enjoyment.

Almost certainly, we'll let one sit outside for a while to ferment into hard cider, since that's an even better way to enjoy fresh apple cider.

Here are a couple of shots from a birthday party that Lauren went to at a local gymnastics place this week. As you can see, she is always either considering and observing, or in motion (on a trampoline, in this case). Lauren is wonderful, of course.

Our house has sprung leaks. Most dramatically, half the floor and part of the wall in our office is totally wet. Since we live in a dome, trying to figure out any leaks is an almost insurmountable problem for an acrophobic. The roof is extremely tall and impossibly steep. One would need more climbing gear than a ladder to climb it. Happily, we determined the leak must be near a dormer window, which offered a thin, only-slightly-slanted surface for me to stand on to find the problem.

Being on that thin, slanted section of roof reminded of Philippe Petit's description in "To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers" of his first time to the top of the trade center towers and how frightening it was to stand on the thin, slanted section of roof just at the edge. Now, you might say that the World Trade Center was 1,368 feet tall while our upstairs window is only 10 feet up, but I'm sure one could die falling from either height, and I am no high-wire walker, as Philippe is.

I think I found and patched the quarter-inch hole in one of the pieces of dormer flashing. I've ripped up the wet carpet in the office, am drying things out and waiting to see if the leak is truly gone before I repair everything.

And that's just one of my concerns... thinking about starting a business, volunteering to make an online timeclock for our company, and...

Trying to find proof that a six-somewhat-black-star Sudoku puzzle (Difficulty Rating: ) is not a "0 of 5 star" puzzle, even though I don't know what it is. One appears to be in our newspaper every Saturday, so figuring out what it means shouldn't be that hard.

I'll tell you about all those things when I can. Hopefully, there'll be more time for writing this coming week.

Last month, our local newspaper, the Eugene Register-Guard added Sudoku to its puzzle page. Since Anne Marie and I frequently do the New York Times and "daily" crossword puzzles and the Jumble together, we noticed this new puzzle right away. Additionally, I've heard about Sudoku from people I know, who enjoy it.

Basically, it's a puzzle with number patterns that can only be filled in a certain way, based on the rules of the game and based on the numbers pre-filled on the puzzle grid. Although I love numbers, I didn't think I would enjoy it. Even so, I gave it a try this weekend and solved a puzzle. It was a tricky puzzle, but I can't know how tricky. All of the instructions I see say that the puzzles are rated from one to five stars in difficulty... for example a puzzle might have three of five stars blackened to show that it's a "3 star" puzzle. Unfortunately, the puzzle I did had six stars, all of which were neither all blackened or all white. What does that mean!?!

In any case, I found the puzzle very tedious. I developed a solving strategy within a few minutes and then spent the rest of the time robotically applying the algorithm to the puzzle until it was solved. A computer could have solved it, since it required only persistence and not creativity, in my opinion. (I might enjoy programming a computer to solve Sudoku. Hmmm.) So, it was hard for me to enjoy. I think the reason that I enjoy crosswords so much more is because it's "fuzzy". The clues are only (more or less, at times) related to the answers. Solutions require delving into memory and making best guesses. A computer program could not be written to do that. Plus, it's fun to do with Anne Marie.

I'm happy to say I tried it, but Sudoku is not for me.