New Year's Eve, 2013

It is less than an hour away from the beginning of 2014.

2013 has been a really interesting year, for many reasons.

Phyllis and I are a year older, and neither of us likes that fact all that much.

Like many others, we have been affected by births, marriages, and deaths (in no particular order of precedence.)  We have acquired a new son-in-law with whom we are well pleased. We have experienced highs and lows, and on balance the highs won out!

I am going to try very hard to avoid political polemic here - there's plenty of time for that, and there have not been any significant changes in the political environment since 2012 ended.

Phyllis and I still work and I find that I am not ready to retire any time soon,  I still enjoy what I do, and although there has been upheaval where I work, the future looks interesting, and there are things coming of which I would like to be a part.  Also, I have a motorcycle that would like to get paid off, and several ongoing computer projects that need funded and finished.

Commuting has been a bigger PITA in 2013 than it was in 2012 - the traffic is worse, and the drivers seem to be less interested in smoothing the flow and more interested in getting in front of me no matter who gets endangered in the process.  Still, I had a lot of days that I could ride my mototrcycle, so it wasn't totally unpleasant.

I managed to drop my big motorcycle on my right leg and break it, which upset me greatly and did nothing for my normally placid demeanor - and while I was off with the leg broken an ulcer that I never knew I had perforated, giving me the opportunity to meet a particularly fine bariatric surgeon who repaired the hole in my gut without opening it up all that much, although he also restricted my diet, my coffee intake and a couple of other things I hope will get undone sometime in the near future.  The leg has healed, my wife did not require that I get rid of any motorcycle, although she did suggest I get one not quite so heavy if I was going to continue to ride.  So I bought a rather nice Moto Guzzi 1100, and retired the Suzuki 1500 with the intent of selling it when biking weather returns. As far as I can tell, there's no problem in my gut (although I have to have it scoped before the surgeon will tell me that I'm good to go.)

We have had a family mending - the father of one of my grandchildren married the mother of that grandchild yielding a complete family, and Phyllis and I are well pleased with this outcome - the new son-in-law is a Good Person - a hard worker who loves his wife and son, and will do well by them.  We are proud of all of them.

I was privileged to travel to Las Vegas to attend the wedding of the child of one of my favorite cousins - and to spend time with many of our West Coast relatives, with whom we do not get to gather as often as we might wish.  A great time was had by all, although I learned that Las Vegas is not a really great place for me personally, since my knees are not all I could wish,  and while on a map Las Vegas looks small, the actual fact is that I have lived in towns smaller than Caesar's Palace - and it is possible to walk for 40 minutes inside Caesar's Palace and never see the outside.

I have been to Las Vegas before - 40 years ago, in 1973.  It has changed.

But it was interesting, and I did get to meet someone I have 'known' for several years but never actually met - and it proved to be a fun day and evening, and well worth the time - and these folks supplied me with a unique pleasure I have never had before - I got to view a movie from the Owner's Box - really a great way to go!

I have no resolutions for 2014.  It will be interesting, exciting, and probably at times maddening, but we'll get through it and in another year I'll sit here in this same place, waiting for the ball to drop and wondering if I am making sense.

Many people have influenced me, helped me, lectured me, delayed me and otherwise affected me on the way to this evening, and I am thankful for all of them, for they are all now a part of who and what I am.

I am particularly thankful for my patient and loving wife and kids, my extended family of so many cousins that have been there for all the years I have lived, as well as the friends throughout the years who have helped me to be who I am.  A special thank you to some special ladies who have been part of my life over the years - my world would have been a far poorer place without you.

2014 is here, 2013 is gone - Happy New Year, all who read this - and all who do not read this.

Life is a great place to be.

Monday Afternoon

Through some mischance I got to work early today, something I usually try not to do.  When I had an office, it didn't much matter because I could close the door - but now that I'm out here in a semicube right by the entry door, it seems that folks are obligated to stop in, chat, watch me code, ask me things, and generlaly make sure that concentration cannot occur.

As a person with ADD, living amongst the noise, conversations and interruptions is not real easy, especially if I am supposed to Get Things Done along with the occupying of space.  I persevere, but I'm not nearly as productive as I would be if I were screened off from this noise.  Also, out here I cannot play my music unless I use a headset - and I can't use a headset unless I don't mind getting bitched at for not paying attention to someone who came up to my area and started to talk without regard to the fact that I was not hearing anything but the music.  Information Technology is just overrun with bright people, but along with bright seems to come an extra load of pathology.

My middle child went on a date this past weekend.  This is something new, and her son did not appreciate it.  By the time she returned, neither her mother nor I appreciated it.  We are no longer young, and by the time midnight rolls around we aren't all that interested in being awake - indeed, I have already gone to sleep three or four times in my chair in the living room.  Sometimes Phyllis lets me sleep when she goes to bed, and I wake up beween 2:00 and 4:00 wondering just what that noise was (I have yet to figure it out - maybe it's my computer falling on the floor or something like that) and then get up and go to bed, put on my CPAP mask, turn the machine on, and go to sleep.  Fortunately getting to sleep is not hard, even if I've had coffee just before I go to sleep.  I think I've reached the age where my sleeping ability has reached its peak - and I sure hope that that lasts a while - it's a new thing for me, at least within recent years, and I like it that way.  

Here at the office I'm occupied with making some stuff I did better.  Or at least making it different - better is something best judged by me, and some days it's not better, just a little different.  I'm trying to modify the major systems that go elsewhere to get data and then load it up into our Oracle to make it easy for someone other than myself to troubleshoot.  If is kinda hard, because it very seldom fails, and when it does it is usually some outside influence (like a power failure in the server room) that causes it, and there's no way to script that recovery process, since servers as a generic class of device hate having their plugs pulled, and will do all kinds of miserable things to keep from restarting clean.

One small victory tody, however - there's a bit of mainframe stuff that has been "taught" to write directly to network storage instead of needing to write to itself so an operator can download the data onto the network for processing.  Part of this involves some chatting back and forth between a server that manages virtual tapes (that is, tapes that really are not tapes but the mainframe thinks that they are tapes)  in order for the server to tell the mainframe which tape drive that does not exist "owns" the tape that does not exist but is to be used anyhow. There was a bit of a problem with adata area not being cleaned out before sending a message to the mainframe console that I grabbed off and parsed to answer a different mainframe question so a human would not have to do this.  The fact that the area was not being cleared occasionally caused the piece of the answer I needed to put elsewhere not to be where I thought it would be - but today I finally found that there was a way to find it always with about four more lines of program code, so that made me happy, at least for a while.  I love automating things, particularly when some bozo tells me that it can't be automated - which is part of the backstory about this virtual tape server that we are using.

The only thing I have ever found that I could not do (aside from not using my hands to put things in my mouth to accumulate calories in quantity that I could not burn if I lived to be 352) is be unemotional in trying times, although I prefer to present the facade of being so.  Then, when nobody is looking I go downstairs into my workshop and throw hammers in a corner.  I used to shoot targets down there as well, but now that my grandson lives with us I have to keep the guns locked up.  Probably just as well, I guess - my .357 was getting hard on the concrete wall when I missed the phone book backstops....

When I dropped my grandson at school this morning, it looked like snow.  I just looked out the window, and it still looks like snow.  I'd like for it not to snow, but if it is going to snow, I don't think it will ask me.  I'm hoping for a couple more motorcycle days before the cruelty of winter sets in and sits on us - but I dunno; it is looking less and less likely.

My wife schimpfed at me the other day about the fact that there are two motorcycles parked in the carport and I haven't ridden one in some time, and asked me what I planned to do with it - and I told her I thought I'd put a sidecar on it.  Now, a sidecar has only one thing going for it - it won't fall over on your knees - but I've heard it can me a real hoot to drive, and my grandson is forever bugging me to go along - so maybe it will come to fruition.  The other motorcycle is an old Honda CB900 Custom hat has a two-speed transfer case before the 5 speed gearbox - and the lower range of the transfer case would be ideal for hauling the extra weight of a sidecar. 

At least, that's the theory, and what I told Phyllis.  Maybe after the new year a sidecar will come my way and I can get going on that little project.  I've been told that a sidecar rig embodies all of the vices of automobile and motorcycle, and none of the virtues of either, but I think it might be kinda neat - and I'm getting too old to enjoy picking up motorcycles, especially when they're mine.

Well, I guess I have to get back to coding.  I'd recommend folks visit http://dooce.com - it is an interesting blog, Heather is a real hoot to read, open, honest and funny, and some days she makes me feel really good.

Happy Monday, everyone.  

Jamie left

Our kids are our kids - we just have to love them. Our oldest, James (Jamie since he could talk) just left yesterday for the west coast, then New Zealand, then Australia and after that who knows.

We knew he was going sometime this week, but didn't know he had gone until we got home from work yesterday. He's driving, plans to sell his car on the west coast, and leaves on the 26th on a big airplane.

A couple of years back, he spent a year in New Zealand, and liked it a lot. Phyllis and I have a feeling that if we are to see him again, we'll have to go there, but one is never certain. I'd like to think I had wisdom to impart before he left, and he missed out on it, but really, he's 35 now, so anything I might have said would not have made a big change in his plans or his life.

I had rather hoped some woman would throw a rope around him and tie him down, but he's skinny and flexible, so nobody managed to do that. It's going to be quiet around here without him, but it was quiet before and he came back. He would have been gone some time ago except that his baby sister got married and threatened mayhem if he left before he could be in the wedding, and I guess he just got too comfortable and stayed around for a lot longer than planned.

I might be a little envious - I had wanted to go back to Germany and never did it, but may yet - he's still unencumbered by responsibilities like wife & kids - but he's pretty much on his own as all of his pals have taken up the conventional life and have wives, kids, mortgages and such - although one of them moved to New Zealand to live his life.

There's something subtly seductive about that part of the world - we have family members that had gone there once on vacation and never returned, having found mate and life there. I guess there's still hope for Jamie, but I rather fear he'll end up old and alone for being too picky or something. Of course, I may just be being morose - it is, after all, Friday....

Anyhow, he's off again, and I miss him already. Wonder when we'll see him again....

Sunday, part one

Well, I started out to do a leaf run, which consists mostly of riding a motorcycle where the leaves are colorful and looking at the leaves, interspersed with stopping somewhere for lunch, a drink or something by way of a snack.

Before leaving, I opened up this laptop to look at the mail, and turned on the TeeVee - and discovered that there is a HD channel that devotes Sundays to concerts - and that the one coming next was The Moody Blues at the Greek Theater, one which I had not seen - so the leaf run got delayed in favor of watching a concert by a couple of guys with more grey hair than I have, assisted by several other musicians, playing & singing nostalgia-inducing music from a while back. Some of the memories are sweet, some are poignant - but Justin Hayward and John Lodge still have it.

Of course, if you hate The Moody Blues (or don't know who they are/were) then I guess this will induce a little nausea - but it was worth the detour to watch old pros doing what they do so well.