White Lightning Axiom: Redux

I was a mixed bag this weekend. Only a few exceptional events, but I'll mix them in with the rest of the tripe so you'll have to shake them out. You know, like searching through that box of cereal to find the toy inside or dredging through the peanut-butter to see if there are really 1.5 flies per jar. Nope, those are raisins ... of course. So, Friday the Cubs and I went to the Radio station for an hour and gobbled up pizza after wards. They had a good time storming and occupying the broadcast center, and even more so antagonizing the tour director. Of course, this just got my Twin Tyrants all ramped up for Dodge Ball Friday. Glad they can take out their frustrations on each-other without having them come back to me with complaints of 'he said/she said'. Nope, just unmitigated violence and revenge. Next day: nothing. Just slouched about the Manor but I did manage to fill the SuperSaturn POS with 10 gallons of NJ gasoline. I give the Mrs a set of 5gal canisters and she buys two weeks worth of fuel for me at 10-15 cents off per gallon while she tanks up. In exchange, I top off the fluids in the Family Tank v2.0 and toss in some fuel conditioner to boot. She completes me: I service her vehicle and light her fire; she gives me gas. Speaking of gas and fires .... this may be of interest to some of you (and it was for me since my obsessive compulsive ranting about gas prices). Sunday is the usual: Church, Sunday School, Bring in firewood, Prep meals for the week. The Mrs actually made the PB&J sandwiches for them this time ... and cut off ALL the crusts. Ghengis will not be pleased, he likes the crusts. Odd child. So all of Sunday was just in preperation for the work week. No big shocker there, except that the Tyrants had President's day off on Monday so I'd be sitting it out with them.

And along comes Monday, I cook, I clean, I entertain. Since is it a semi-national holiday, the swim-team practice is called off: School closed = no pool access. Fine. After my domestic duties conclude, we go through the regular 'swim at club/tsd at studio' routine. Everything is domestic bliss till some time after O'Dark-Thirty. Jake saunters into the master bedroom where the Mrs is settling into the mile-wide bed for a little shut-eye. He makes himself comfortable and then proceeds to produce about 200 metric liters of semi-digested, fully masticated vomit. How in the world!? He ate his dinner at 1500 hours and now he has issue? He must have been fermenting that batch of bile and 100 molar hydro-sulfuric acid for quite some time. So, the Mrs and I manage hose down and mop up ... he felt better but we needed some serious air-freshener to detoxify the master suite. The next morning, he was chipper as can be but I was still down a pillow. You know you are getting too soft when you need two pillows to sleep right.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Illness

Labels: Gas, Illness, Swimming, Tang So Doo, Weekend

Hrmmm, spent the day struggling with a SNMP issue at work only to find out that someone created the issue thinking that they were checking in a configuration file for Solaris instead of SUSE linux. Major oops, since we were only deploying this to linux hosts. Heh. That's what I'm reduced to at work these days, spotting other people's missteps.

And now on to the important stuff: the perquisite benefits of being a middle-age, middle-class dad. Grab the Tyrants and stuff them full of dinner while they bang on the piano and do their 100 pages of math and spelling homework. Quickly laing waste to the tasks at hand, we grab a couple containers of 'Little Smokey Cheese Wursts' (not bacon wrapped, sorry) and head off to the drowning pool were we simulate the storming of Normandy. The Old Ladies flee in fear as the Tyrants plow into their hastily formed defenses. It was almost funny to see the looks on their faces as they skimmed over the surface of the water like pink little patrol boats sans torpedoes. Wrap that up and skip the hot tub; it was closed due to too much sloughed flesh in the intake valves. Yetch. Quick change into the TSD clothes with a second (dry) set of swimming clothing on underneath - they each get a hard boiled egg and we hit the Karate Studio. Flash forward about an hour, we have just finished sparring so the class is over. The Ever Patient Mrs glides in the door and they all run off to Swim Team Practice for 2 hours; Genghis with his Lobster Chunks, Attila with her Mandarin Orange Slices, and both with a stick of string cheese. A few hours later, I limp out of the studio after getting rolled fairly throughly and meet up with the rest of the Haupertonian Household where a roaring fire and loyal Cybernetic Mastodons bay longingly at the beginnings of a light flurry of snow coming down. Of course, that snow is quite efficient at making those mountains of dog deposits in the back 50 look more like a pristine range of Matterhorn look-alikes than what they really are: Frozen Turd Bombs. Can you believe that (aside from the nasty cold I'm battling) this is an optimal day for me?

Technorati Tags:Illness | Swimming | Karate | Children | Work

Labels: Banalities Work, Children, Piano, Swimming, Tang So Doo

So here I am at the Log College Middle School swimming pool, waiting for the kids swim practice to begin. Toasty as all get out! It would be nice I suppose if I were not sitting here in a sopping wet do-bock (Korean spelling mangled). So, it's the perfect time to sit down with the laptop, find ZERO wi-fi signal (not even an encrypted one, and just pound out a rough doc.

It's been some time since I've had a chance to fill ya'll in on the going's on around the Haupertonian Manor. There has been illnesses and broken digits. The illness has been distributed among the clan with equality and the snapped tendons, digits and such have been reserved for my enjoyment. My pinky toe looks like a bloated purple grub at the moment. That should be a wonderful when I go through my black-belt pre-test in a couple weeks. Oh yessss .... I'll be gimping it up in prime form! The Tyrants will be going for their second stripe on their red belts so they are only 6 months behind me at this point. Tough little buggers, they are. The force is strong with these ones! Their midi-chlorian count is off the charts!! (Geeky Star Wars Ref here)

Let's see ... a synopsis of all the other mish-mash that makes my blessed life so durned interesting ... Christmas was off the charts ... we had everyone down at the manor this year and the 100 foot tall tree looked FANTASTIC. The piano/keyboard lessons are going well and they are really shaping up to be a couple of Mozarts. I tried to keep up with their lesson plans, but my wretched fingers are too well trained to be at home on the computer keyboard. Alas, no late life shift for me to take up a lounge act with the Tyrants and the Mrs as a sultry swooner. Hmmm ... massive layoffs at work that somehow spared me but left me with an excessively truncated list of available victims for the support phone duty. Not good for me, but I'll still get paid. No bonuses, no raises, not 401k matching ... but I never had that before so I'm not too sore about loosing those perks. Like I said, I'm not picking up shell casings in a war-zone to sell back to some dubious buyer so I really am in a pretty good place.

Oh, and for Christmas, Hero Dad and Super Mom bought the Mrs and I a new kitchenette set and a new Refrigerator. The table and chairs are really nice and sit very high so I don't wreck my back leaning over the Tyrant's homework. The fridge is VERY quiet and having the freezer on the bottom is so nice. I could never find anything because it was stored at a level that would require me to have eyeballs in my knee-caps. Now, I can pretty much locate that frozen pleisaur roast that I made last week with no difficulty. I moved the old fridge to the garage where it now serves as a back-up for milk, eggs, broccoli and beer. Happy-happy!

Oh, and how about those gas prices! Jeeze, what a roller coaster ride.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Piano | Christmas

Labels: Beer, Blogging, Children, Christmas, Grandparents, Health, Support Phone, Swimming, Tang So Doo, Winter

Ugh. Work. Not much to say but the troglodyte mindset of some as they claw their way through their career is less than palatable to the neutral observer. The narrow minded and puerile actions that pass for fiduciary responsibility boggles the mind. Alas, my gripe is shaded by the fact that I have been on hiatus in a simpler, more joyous world of late. Once more into the breach, dear friends; work is such an ugly thing. Kids are fine ... missing the halcyon days of vacation as much as me. They continue to ask for the privileges that they were afforded then (pizza/tacos/ice cream on demand, staying up late, no manual labor, etc...) and alas, to their dismay, they are refuted. Ghengis, much to his discontent, is starting to learn about 'rewards' and why you are not given the carrot before the stick.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Work

Labels: Banalities Work, Children, Swimming, Tang So Doo

More meetings (about 6 hours worth) chowdered my day yesterday. It was an atypical day in that sense, mind you. I had a significant number of tasks that just did not get done outside of my blogging to boot. Urk. Even worse, our team has the temerity to do it again today ... and tomorrow ... and tomorrow - Creeps in this petty pace from day to day. I am not being any manner of a hyperbole when I state that the end/beginning of each 'sprint' cycle is nothing but back-to-back infomercials arranged by the Agile patrician that stalk the halls here, trying to ensure their continued power. No matter, my 'non-work' life is rich and robust enough to counter my meeting surfeit. There is the swimming ... where Miss Gwen and Ghengis's favorite young lady, Miss Steph have been seen. TSD is starting to get better. The Tyrants had nearly forgotten everything after a week hiatus. In 30 days, we have another test and this time they will be getting their Red Belts and black Dobok uniforms. Little Ninjas, on the prowl.

Spending a lot of time in the evening preparing for the birthday-bash this Friday. Week long spoilage of the Tyrants of Turpitude. I made 20 hamburger patties (special recipe), sliced up 5 racks of ribs and wrapped them in foil with the 'special sauce'. Laid out all the peripheral accouterments and sliced up the meat for the skewers. Now we just need to look into the cabbage in the garden to see if it is ready for Grams Super Special Cole-Slaw that the Mrs loves so much. Just so you all know, the Mrs is a major gear in this well oiled machinery. I may be the spring, but without her ... I'm just a tightly wound kook. Tonight, we'll slice up the cheese into chunks for the platter (durn, need tooth-picks) and maybe pull the cabbage out. Oh, so much to do. I could show you the list but it already is two pages long!

Technorati Tags:Birthday | Swimming | Karate | Children | Work

Labels: Banalities Work, Birthday, Children, Swimming, Tang So Doo

Nothing entirely exciting today. I'm a little pooped from TSD, but nothing out of the ordinary. I've still got a fairly nasty bruise from last Thursday evening where I took a back-kick to the right pectoral ... it's a wonderfully mottled shade of gangrene yellow and splotches of purple. A bit like a moldy slice of toast with coagulated jelly on it. PRETTY! I'll wager the folks at the Physical Therapy Center (Which I have an appointment on 5/22 @ 1430 hours) will see either the image of Jesus or Elvis in it. Uff-da. PT. I cannot believe that I'll be doing that. So much ignored damage to go over with them. I'm a friggen' (Rhode Island) Frankenstein's Monster. Scars, stitches and mis-matched parts. Should be entertaining.

On the road to making the Haupertonain Empire an Energy Independent Sovereign State, I stopped off at the local DMV to pick up a motorcycle learner's permit. I got there at about 1610 and it closed promptly at 1615! I was in so I got to stay ... sweet! The process itself was fairly painless given the dreaded DMV connection. I had to wait about 5 minutes and then was directed to a kiosk where I took a 20 question test where I need to correctly answer 16 questions with the option of skipping some till the end of the test. I skipped one and the test was terminated after I got to question 17 ... took all of 7 minutes. Roughly 15 minutes after I arrived, I was leaving the facility (through the unlocked side door) with permit in hand. I'm starting to think that the DMV is unnecessarily maligned. Now, I just need to find a BRC course (they are held at the local Naval Air Base) where I can make all 4 half day sessions.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Physical Therapy | Karate | Injury | Motorcycle

Labels: Gas, Injury, Motorcycle, Physical Therapy, Tang So Doo

Late, late, late. So sorry. Really, cannot you just grasp the visceral experience of my sorry-ness just oozing from the screen? No? Sigh ... okay, yeah. So I've been preoccupied. Let's just skip all that perfidy and get down to the rub, eh? Last Friday, yes. Dodge Ball and swimming ... all good except that the pool heater had been broken all week and by the end of the run the pool temperature had dropped to something just short of freezing. This morning, the ambient air temperature was somewhere around 38F so you can imagine the blue-lip experience I was getting from all that semi-liquid wonderfulness. The kids did not mind one bit though. I cannot fathom how latitudinarian they seem to be about heat or the lack there of. Must be the Minnesota Blood I contributed to their genetic makeup. That, or the nano-bot fusion heaters running about their bodies. Either way, on top of the 'energy death' cold days, it's been raining consistenly all week so mowing the lawn had to be skipped. Fortunately, I scalped the pastoral expanse last week so I could skip this weekend without having to worry about looking for Doctor Livingston in the Darkest Heart of Africa the following week. I need to weed the Haupertonian Agricultural Sector too ... this extended cool period has really been a boon for the leafy greens and pea. Totally out of control! I've been eating salads freshly picked every night for the last week and I've got 10 bins all set up for this week (lunch, dinner). Delish! (no, I'm not stealing this from that faux personality who whores for Dunkin Donuts)

This Saturday, after a rocky start, we got going at 1000 hours for a favored destination ... Sesame Place! Nice and close, about one gallon of gasoline for a round trip. Of course, as noted, we have had a flood recently of a mostly semi-liquid slurry of liquid hydrogen and suspended dark-matter. It was concentrated in the water-based attractions and you KNOW that Attila required me to ride with her on the more vigorous rides. The ducky-ride, one of the favorites, was particularly chilly being the first thing we hit after Ghengis' required visit to the Super Grover Roller-Coaster: VaporTrail. The upside is that we never had to wait for more than 60 seconds to get on ANY wet ride attraction we were interested in. The dry rides took a bit more patience, but nothing out of the ordinary. Tea-cups, Blast-off and Flying Fish were the only lines. All in all, well worth the kidney I had to give up for the season passes. On the way to the Park, we noticed a new restaurant on Street Road just before we got onto the Freeway. It's called Ristorante Toscana 52. I thought we could stop off on the way back home (park closes at 1700 hours) for a quick bite to size the place up. Well, it was absurdly wonderful. A bit more pricey than Carrabas, but a culinary treat of surprising proportions. I think we were lucky to arrive so early since when leaving roughly 1.5 hours later, the lot was overflowing into the street and the waiting area was mobbed. Note to the wise, always arrive early. A brief tirade, but there is no reason to waste bits of your life waiting for food and service if you do not have to.

Sunday, it rained. Slacked about, folded some laundry and actually relaxed a bit. Bizarre, guilty feeling made the whole experience rather uncomfortable. My tendency towards pluripotency when it comes to activities is a hard predilection to rally against. I'm finding that imparting this trait upon my scion is a case of low hanging fruit ... if they are not doing something, they want to help me do something. I dread the day we let them start playing with the Wii. This should help us with the reward points for system usage.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Rain | Sesame Place

Labels: Children, Gas, Rain, Sesame Place, Swimming, Tang So Doo, Weather, Weekend

I had started this posting earlier, before I was Crushed by the oppressive boot of the universe. I have not a faintest whiff of umbrage that my 'out of scope' activities brought the hammer of the 'Great Economies of Spoon Deficit Spending' down upon my thick skull. I am not extremely parsimonious when it comes to regulating my daily endeavors and this is a long and lowed tale of such an incident.

It had been a fairly dull weekend up till Sunday. There was the usual Swimming/Karate with the Tyrants. The dictate so far is that one would suffer the pain of mortal punishment should we miss Friday Dodgeball at TSD. It was a nice class actually. Jake did as he promised this evening and tried quite hard to be a good little tyrant for daddy. The opportunity to peg his sister with a ball after her harassment in the pool may have been the impetus for that though. Since it was raining all day, I was in no hurry to get home and lounge about. It was laundry day and I had a few loads to take care of. Instead, I cooked 4 fillets of Tilapia and we had a bit of broccoli soup with a side of carrots ... and they finished it up within an hour this time. Gotta love Fish Fridays.

Saturday morning was an early one. Both the Mrs and I had appointments and the Major Medical Complex where I spend way too much time in the emergency room. We both had blood tests but her's was in the Northern most branch of the complex on the 100th floor or something. Mine was in the Lab in the Polar opposite so I hauled the tyrants off, dodging the various organ transport droids and skulking vampires (called Hematologists?) along the way. I had to wait amongst the unwashed masses while the Mrs was fortunate to have her own private sitting room and a bevy of attendants. Harumph. By the time I get called to the blood-letting chamber, the Mrs has finished her procedure and was sitting along with the reset of us in 'stowage class'. Of course, my own fluid divestment went quickly.

With that behind up, we rocketed off to Staten Island for a day-long co-ed baby shower. I'll not deride your sensibilities with the mental torpor inducing details. Long story short, we got home shortly before midnight after much merry-making and child scolding. Sunday morning was the usual with a good measure of lawn-mowing and general yard-work chores tossed in for good measure. I was busily spreading 80lb bags of garden soil about the back-50 to reseed areas exfoliated by the cybernetic hounds and their Agent Orange urine when it hit. That little tingling in the frontal lobe and the small visual disturbances ... like little fairies of light prancing about reality, only visible through a gossamer veil of exhaustion. I had not my wits about me or I would have realized the indicators of my eventual downfall. Flash-forward to the next morning, I was paralyzed with nausea and existence rending storms of grinding suffering. All other ailments were thrust aside as this new fresh brand of hell intruded upon my blissfully perfect life. The next two days were a marathon session of gulping pills and retching till I was finally able to cast off the worst of the symptoms late Tuesday afternoon.

Returning to work, I found myself challenged with piles of work. Added to this was the back-log of personal activities (doctor's visit?) that I needed to deal with. Apropos to the topic, my Talkative and Extraordinarily Friendly Physician had my blood results and noted some anomalies: Cholesterol was just a hair above 200, Triglycerides were through the roof and the HDL/LDL was skewed due to low HDL readings. Peculiar because of my diet and the amount of exercise I get. She referred me to a lipid specialist because of the oddities but we both agreed that since my diet is within standard operating parameters and physical acumen for exercise was above par, no drugs would be useful at this time. Looking down at the site where the last gallon of blood was siphoned off, the buick sized bruise invokes feelings of apprehension should this vaunted expert require yet another sample.

Oh, gasoline ... yes. It's at $3.77USD/g right now. I'm considering the alternatives.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Weekend | Karate | Children | NYC | Migraine

Labels: Children, Gas, Migraine, NYC, Tang So Doo, Weekend

I'm completely spent from the load of disparate chores and events I pursued over the past few days. Friday night's halcyon hours of light supping and TiVo viewing were all too soon replaced with Saturday morning's scurrying and panicked preparation for the dreaded TSD test. The Twins were necessarily kept calm so as to not arouse Attila's Stage Fright nor Ghengis's penchant for light-speed hyperactivity and subsequent flubbing of forms. As things would have it, they did just fine and were rewarded handsomely for their efforts by the Mrs. Transformers (Brawl) for Ghengis and anatomically correct dolls for Attila to promptly strip and waterboard. Now, I also passed my test but I was not feeling all too well. The night before, I had that particularly uncomfortable itch in the back of my throat that was the portend to a cold. Indeed, the following morning my nasal passages had been blockaded by the Snot Revolution and my uvula was a bright red beacon of swollen rage. Yeah, I had a bit of a rough go of it, but I managed to drag through and then we went off to the default pizza party after the last of the 1000 pushups had all but become a distant memory.

The pizza party was fine and we had a relaxed time ... well, in between admonishing the Twins for not eating enough. Right from there, we departed to the Family Friend Seliga's home for a First Communion Party that lasted well into the evening hours. Mostly, it was because of the Flyers game. (WOOT! Great Game!) Just as the last drops of perseverance were being squeezed from my once bottomless reservoir, the mrs got a call from one of her co-workers who ... carries a support beeper. Apparently, one of their servers went down and the first round of beepers did not respond. So, we were stuck for a bit while the Mrs 'dialed in' to survey the battle field. Not too long though, she just commanded her minions to storm the server room and commit an IPL on the offending machine. Like HAL 9000 singing his final rendition, it went down into that long dark night and we were off. Back to the manor to put the Tyrants right to bed. They had been going full tilt all day long and were now in the process of turning the humidity directly into energy via fusion process. I could not keep up since my genetic blueprint did not include such wondrous organs. Durned Retro-virus, all picky about what pluripotent cells it will work with. Sheesh.

Sunday was a mess. I ended up sicker than ever and still had things to do. Now that Sunday School is over, I can assist with other endavours ... such as assisting with the KOC program to collect donations for Mentally Disabled Children. At the 0700 mass. I did the early mass since most of the older crew cannot make it at that hour and get all set up. I also helped out with the beginning of the 0830, which was greatly appreciated. When all you manage is a buck or two from each parishioner, it takes a bit of smooth talking and flattery to fill that bucket! I was their eye candy and I could also open the heavy metal doors! Heh ... and I wonder where my son get's it from. After the third collection, I stopped off at the local grocery store to buy the Mrs some roses and the Tyrants some donuts. I also had to pick up some salves and medical potions for myself. Gha, I'm such a wreck. Arriving home, the Twins were in the guest room in their jammies, watching the TiVo and the Mrs was blissfully snoozing away in the Master Suite. Who am I to buck the system? I shed my Sunday Finest (work day clothing with a nice sweatshirt) and slipped in between the sheets. Nice! Hours later, I was up again, puttering about the Haupertonian Lands and mowing the lawn while the Twins re-enacted the 100 year's war in the sand-pit. Not too bad of a Sunday, but I did not get the cooking done for the week and did laundry instead. Just 6 loads, but still, it had to be tended to. As for the rest of the day, I spent the twilight hours trying to be and erudite consumer of blog postings that I had been neglecting since Friday. Too much though. Monday morning, I got up a bit late and arrived at work at 0635. I'll need to do better next day (not!) but since the ENTIRE DAY was either preparing for meetings or attending 6 hours of meetings, I missed very little.

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Illness | Karate | Children | KOC

Labels: Chores, Church, Illness, KOC, Tang So Doo, Weekend

Whew ... that was a close one! Nearly had my 'Curmudgeon' License revoked for having a sunny disposition and all. It's meeting day so I'll be spending my day fending off 'action items' and on top of that, it's the end of the SCRUM Sprint. We need to meet with the Product Owner and the Customer to have a Retrospective about what we have accomplished over the last four weeks. Quite a lot actually, but since we are merely a bug fix team, we are not adding any new functionality. Just reducing Technical Debt. Not entirely glamorous, but I'm a blood-n-guts sort of guy so it suits me fine. We need only let the interested, or captive, parties know that we are continuing to improve product quality and ensure that future efforts will be boot-strapped by our efforts ... then skedaddle!

Speaking of quality and time, the Mrs fell asleep last night while snuggling with the Twin Tyrants of Turpitude. It is a fore-gone conclusion that they will ask for an innumerable number of things to avoid going to sleep every evening: Story-Time, Hugs-n-Kisses, Drink of Water, and as a last resort - snuggles. Now the Mrs is more than happy to comply when she does not have an evening teleconference with her Subversion Agents in the Pacific Rim Theater, but she must have been extraordinarily tired and thusly, was incapable to remain awake till Ghengis dropped off. Now I'm not above indulging the other with similar privileges, but after a night of TSD I tend to stink of sweat, blood and fear. It sluffs off me like a bank of fog rolling up into valleys from a greater mount of volcanic venting. So, in the early morning hours, the Mrs stumbled into the Master Suite and plopped her semi-somatic form into bed, jolting me from my usual light slumber. It took a bit of time for me to reacquire the sufficient calm to return to the dreams of angst I usually spool through. With that, of course, I had a difficult time getting out of the ever-calming embrace of the Mile-Wide Bed. I was running about 10 minutes late and paid for it on the way to work ... the Reading Railroad crossing was occupied by a rather lengthy freight train. So, it took me 17 minutes to get to work instead of 13 ... part of which was induced by missing the 6am Perfect Harmonic Light Sequence. I had to stop at THREE red lights. There goes my mpg rating!

Speaking of gasoline: This. Interesting, eh? And, with that: This. Given that only 25% of existing farmland is actually being used to produce any type of crops and the acreage we ARE using is producing more than ever, all this nonsense about food shortages seems like fear mongering to me. Can you guess what country produces the most rice? How about corn?

Technorati Tags:Gas | Food | Karate | Children | Sleep | Work

Labels: Banalities Work, Children, Food, Gas, Sleep, Tang So Doo

WOOT! Made it in before 0630 today. And I only hit the snooze bar once at 0515. As I was telling CharliePATpk at the 'ass-crack' of dawn, I used to do this sort of thing when I was younger and not a Father. I would get up around 0430, get out of the Haupertonian Keep (apartment) at 0455 and drive a bazillion miles to Wilmington (DE) or King of Prussia (PA) to work out at 0600 for an hour or so. Of course, I would not leave work till 1900 hours or so ... spirited youth - wasted in a sensory deprivation cube. Alas, my motivation now is not to dedicate my waking hours to a career in technology. Now, it is so I can LEAVE work to be with my loved ones as they are released from their mandated institutionalized education ... so I can continue with the education that they really need. Music lessons and fire-arms education are still on the back-burner.

Nothing else is noteworthy. Swimming, TSD, Adult TDS all went fairly well. The Smith Quints were at the pool today and we said hello to them. Cute kids, but their mother looked a bit harried ... go figure. Oh, and gas prices went down 1 cent. WOOT! HUGE GASOLINE MARKET CRASH!!! Yeah, right. Upside of getting on the road early is that I can hit all the lights and not spend so much time idling at red signal lights ... and avoid all the typical fender benders as well. BTW: That photo is of me and a small harem of my cousins on the Fraternal side of the Clan.

Technorati Tags:Gas | Swimming | Karate | Children | Work

Labels: Banalities Work, Children, Gas, Swimming, Tang So Doo

Well, yesterday went from morose to a livid nightmare. Later in the afternoon, I was feeling a bit off. The odd stuff that should have tipped me off was the cold/numb fingertips and the peculiar feeling that all was not right within my skin. Fortunately, I made the command decision early on to bad TSD and swimming with the Tyrants. It was 'Book Sale' day at the Day Care/ReEducation Facility so I begged out of the usual activities by giving them an option of receiving a book as a consolation prize. They never pass on the opportunity to expand their personal libraries. So, with that, we headed home and practiced our forms on the mile long driveway for a bit so that they would not be too rusty when we returned on Tuesday night. That is, provided that my growing migraine subsides by then. I had to work with Jake a bit to get him to stop twisting his ankle when he does a inside-outside block in fighting stance. I told him to close his eyes, move into position and fix his foot without looking at it. It is going to be wrong so looking at a foot that you KNOW is in the wrong position is just silly. He closed his eyes, did the Pyon-Cho Don form and on the last 4 positions he closed his eyes and moved his foot to the place it's supposed to be and VOLIA! It was straight as an arrow. On the last move, I asked him to open his eyes and he damn near split his head in half with the smile that rocketed over his cherub face. He just might be able to get it right for the test. Maybe I need to spend a bit more time with them. I'm thinking about letting the swim club membership lapse, there is just too much to do during the summer months and there might be a 1700 class starting at our TSD school ... that would work out nicely actually. We'll have to have a family meeting and go over the pros and cons.

After I was done grilling the Tyrants, I set about to digging about in the 100 meter tall pile of mulch on the mile long drive. Of course, by then, the migraine was in full effect and all sorts of H.P. Lovecraftian netherworld daemons were clawing their way out through my eyes. It was the bad eye so I did not mind as much. It's always the left eye, wouldn't you know. I managed to get one of the islands of greenery in the front pastoral expanse covered before I gave up and wandered back into the manor. Of course, I took a fist-full of various pharmaceuticals to buttress my sanity against the crashing breakers of pain ... but what was needed was the strongest medicine I could find ... sweet, DEEP sleep. The problem with that is should I indulge my desire to avoid the pain, I would certainly pay the price of staring at the ceiling for hours after midnight when I should be sleeping. So be it. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

While languishing in my tomb of anguish, I tried to distract myself with plans for the future. Mostly, parenting. We need to set up a task/reward board for the little ones so they start to understand how to plan and what to expect when it comes to 'consequences'. I'm thinking of stuff like; put out trash, tended to cybernetic hound programming (feed, water, wash - I'll deal with the poo), set table, bus dishes, irrigate the Haupertonian Agricultural Sector, finish Homework before asked, good grades, laundry, earn belt promotion, conquer continent, and other simple tasks. Rewards will be tricky but I'm going with a point system so they could bank up the points to earn bigger rewards. Perhaps 1pt = 15 min of television, 15 min of computer time or (for future activities, Wii Time), a snack, 10pt for a small toy, play time outside is free as is story time and other developmental activities. Of course, much like greater rewards require greater quantities of points, they'll receive greater points for harder tasks. Any suggestions?

Technorati Tags:Parenting | Swimming | Karate | Children | Chores | Fatigue | Migraine

Labels: Chores, Fatigue, Migraine, Parenting, Swimming, Tang So Doo

POW! WHAM! SPLAT! And all that other good stuff. The last few hours have been rather mundane. Work has been a real bugger. I though I had messed up a bug fix but after several hours of tinkering around, I deduced that the fix was working as advertised and was failing a validation of frequency comparisons because the Encryption Modulator was set up to use a different set of QPSK/QAM settings. It worked on the dev platform where things were set up properly, the test platform was mis-configured and the code detected it. DUH! The System Integration Tester was absent once I learned of the deception ... I'll have to explain this to her at the SCRUM meeting the following morning. Fun.

The other day, Jake did WELL in TSD and swimming. I believe it was because Stephanie was present as the pool so Jake had to show off. Then, on Wednesday he was all played out so he did not do so well. We need to focus on his forms for the test that is coming up at the end of the month or he may not make the test list. Either way, he is the toughest little 5yr old Martial Arts Practitioner next to his sister. Master Smith is giving them a little more constructive criticism of late ... and they tend to listen to him a bit more so than me. If they pick up the next two forms as well as they have with the others, they should have little difficulty making their red belt. (Insert Image of Proud Daddy puffing up his chest)

A few nits and ends: Scheduled the water company to insert a water meter for the sprinkler system on Friday ... I'll wager they will not do it since I'm not going to be there. I should put a sign up were the meter should be installed out near the curb. They will probably assume they need access to the basement ... not true. Mental note; make sign. Odd thing, they did not mention that there will be a $50 surcharge for installing the meter for the summer. I think the woman who threatened me last time was bluffing to get me to go away. Grrr. I've also scheduled the sprinkler guys to come out and give the system a once over. On the same day, the AC guy is supposed to show up some time between 0900 and 1400 hours. When I asked about the wide range of time, they insisted that they might get emergency calls on Saturday and there is only one technician on call. Umm, I'm pretty sure that I'm the ONLY guy even trying to turn on the AC at this early date so their hedging is just a clumsy attempt at expectation management. Fair enough, but I'll be calling the Friday before to firm up the time. 0900 would be a much better time for me ... free up my day so I'm not sitting there, pining away for some fellow to show up like a teen-age girl waiting for her prom date. Of course, if it's some hottie in string bikini and daisy-duke cutoffs ....

Technorati Tags:Work | Swimming | Karate | Children | AC

Labels: AC, Banalities Work, Chores, Tang So Doo, Traffic

Things kinda suck today. Lot's of problems in the world, no easy solutions. Worst part, it all revolves around Television and Internet. Blech ... priorities people! Alter the agenda! So, I've been completely drained of my will to live today. No interesting posts for you till I recover some of my vim and vigor. I won't even talk about the Cognitive dissonance that Jake and Alexis went through when discussing the lessons from yesterday. One was taught patterns, the other, how to read a clock. They argued over which was right about the lesson of the day ... it was infuriating for them that the other held a divergent view of the world. Oh, and I got called at 1805 yesterday as well. Nice.

Technorati Tags:Work| Karate | Children

Labels: Banalities Work, Children, Tang So Doo

Again, cranky. I got a support call at 5:55 that was essentially someone trying to pass off work at the end of their shift by saying it was a software bug and throwing it over the wall. I countered with 3 questions; 1) Is video out? 2) Is revenue impacted? 3) Will you wait in your office till I get there? The answer to each was and unequivical no and thusly, I let the caller know that this could probably wait till the next morning. I would see them in their office at 0730 hours. of course, they did not show up till 0915. In the end, it was a non-event but it did not stop my mind from going non-stop all night long ... it precluded sleep, wouldn't you know. On top of that, I had to crawl through my system and shake out a bunch of adware virus infections ... including the damed VirusHeat virus. Gha, I say.

P.S: This flu season is apparently a killer. Beware all you who should be. Sorry I'm too late for you Pb.

The flu season is getting worse, and U.S. health officials say it's partly because the flu vaccine doesn't protect against most of the spreading flu bugs.

The flu shot is a good match for only about 40 percent of this year's flu viruses, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

The situation has even deteriorated since last week when the CDC said the vaccine was protective against roughly half the circulating strains. In good years, the vaccine can fend off 70 to 90 percent of flu bugs.

Stupid shots ... wont even work!

Technorati Tags:Work | Karate

Labels: Banalities Work, Tang So Doo

A great deal of my time yesterday was spent trying to help other people resolve issues. Issues that I did not necessarily have the skill set to appropriately solve. Rather frustrating. This is why I think I enjoy the TSD training. If I have a problem with a maneuver or a particularly difficult form, I just have to redouble my efforts. At work, it is not an effective approach. Effort and dedication are present, just not the knowledge. Too many known:unknowns and then the unknown:unknowns. Again, frustrating. /whine

In happy-happy news: Thnx to Liz over at Finding Life Hard? who gave me an 'E for Excellence' award. She had previously given me an additional honor regarding my 'gift of gab' and I'll now need to post both of those wonderful salutes on the side-bar somewhere. My blog will begin to look like a Russian General's breast if this keeps up!

Technorati Tags:Work | Awards | Karate

Labels: Awards, Banalities Work, Tang So Doo

Yeah ... gettin' none of that. I'm not sure what is going on but my sleep patterns are all haywire. I just lay there next to the angelic Mrs, listening to her gentle breathing till 0130 in the morning. Note: Never accuse someone of snoring who could very well plaster a pillow to your face in the dead of night. I'm not sure if my ineffectual attempts at slumber are a result of my angsty attitude about work, depression due to seasonal light disorder (6 more weeks!?), turning 40 or God knows what else. Sometimes, I cannot turn off my brain and no amount of wine or calming bio-feedback seems to help. I'm exhausted from TSD so it's not surplus energy. Gha. Something has got to break before I do ... might be time to go pharma, but I would rather not.

Technorati Tags:Sleep | Work | Karate

Labels: Banalities Work, Sleep, Tang So Doo

Okey-dokey ... let's get this party started! First off, I would like to initiate you all into this round of blogging where I am once again, getting ready for a tour of duty on the support phone. Bleh. But enough of my 'whining' about having to do actual work; on a more trivial subject I would like to wish you all a happy Ground Hog's day and an additional 6 weeks of winter. Damn Global Warming, causing it to be all cold and stuff. Just to add insult to injury, there was an ice storm this morning. Oh goody. Rats, there I go again with all them negative vibes. I'll have to use a set of bombastic proclamations regarding how wonderful things are for me right now. So, let's talk about the arse whoopin' I got this weekend at the TSD test. The Tyrants did wonderfully. Ghengis Jake had some problems with his staff form due to close quarters. He, as a 5 year old boy, had some issues with being distracted by all the cameras and had to repeat the form alone in front of the evaluation board. No biggie for him though, he is enthusiastically ambivalent and oblivious to his audience. That is a good thing though, it makes it a simple task for me to catch him misbehaving. He believes me to be a prognosticator of deity like qualities as I seem to always catch him when he exhibits his favorite misbehaviors. Alexis had her usual board-anxiety ... Master Smith walked her though it and she did fine. Then there was me. You see, the Tyrants were tested at 1000 so we were up at 0700 to let the dogs out and complete the usual morning activities. I had a difficult time getting to sleep the night before so the morning was a rough event. My examination started at 1145. I did not eat either so I was fairly depleted of all raw blood sugar by the time we started. After I finished my 1000 push-ups, I was drained. Very much so. That did not preclude me from doing the palm-strike board-break with 2 board where I I managed to bruise my finger-tips and the heel of my palm because I failed to retract my digits properly. Serves me right. But with all that, it was a rather successful event. No dehabilitating injuries, little blood drawn and my fellow testers were too exhausted to help me celebrate my 40th birthday (on the 3rd) by presenting my with punches to my arm. That will be saved till tonight, I am certain.

Sunday was not well received. The Wunderbar Mrs presented me with a gift on my day of reckoning, she took care of the fire, tyrants and hounds for me so I could sleep in for an extra 90 minutes. Much needed, if I do say so myself. Then, I had to get going. Sunday School would not wait, and neither would the weekly visit to Dunkin Donuts. I paged thorough the various fan letters and birthday cards from my adoring subjects ... fielded calls from the press and the TSD Black-Belt Brigade regarding my thoughts on making it through my first 4 decades without mortal injuries ... and received an early valentines day card from Rachel at Sunday School. Not too shabby. Here is the odd part of it all though: I spent the rest of the day doing laundry, bringing in firewood, taking naps and tending to various chores about the Manor. This is how Sunday should be spent EVERY week, but I will note that I fail to see how this could become a regular event. First off, even if I were a neophyte of the greenest shade, could I ever want to be this sore every week. My arms were like rubber bands weighed down by 100lb barbells so the firewood restocking took twice the normal time. Even grilling my standard 4 steaks for the week was a laborious endeavor! I'm not anticipating my next test in 3 months.

Technorati Tags:Weekend | Chores | Karate | Children | Birthday

Labels: Birthday, Children, Chores, Fatigue, Karate, Meat, Tang So Doo, Weekend, Wood

I should have posted this last night when Big Little Brother would have had a chance to see it ... but better late than never: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROTHER OF MINE". Today, he is as old as I am for the next 48 hours. May his joints and other ailing biological mechanisms be as irascible as mine and he be able to enjoy the fruits of drinking too much for the duration of the weekend! One bourbon ... and then a whole bunch more, skip the scotch and beer.

TSD the last few days has been moderately cool. Not too difficult ... I imagine that is due to the test this weekend. The Tyrants are excited and that is causing behavioral problems. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Last night was kinda sucky though. The Mrs had a work emergency so I had to step up a bit and guide the HMS Haupertonia into port manually. So, no last adult training class before the big red-belt test. I have not been sleeping well either of late. So much so that I had a difficult time getting up this rainy and bone grinding morn. It was nearly 0620 before I bumbled out of the Master Suite. I've altered the Hound's schedule a bit to make this a bit easier on me though. I have them poo in the afternoons instead of me standing in the cold and bleak morning opaqueness waiting for them to get to it. It's easier to see in the afternoon as well to bringing the back-hoe and dump truck in to do excavation isn't such a 'shot in the dark'. Friggen winter ... it would not be so bad if we had a bit of snow. Nope, just frozen mud here. Bleh.

Technorati Tags:Birthday | Illness | Karate

Labels: Birthday, Illness, Tang So Doo

I'm spent. Exhausted. But not yet fatigued. Still got some spoons left. Tea spoons, but they'll do. Anyways, At TSD last night, after I finished the adult torture session, I was talking to Master Smith about the Tyrants and he made a comment that when Ghengis Jake puts his mind to it, he can really do 'good' karate. He just gets bored with doing the same thing over and over again. Damn. If I were a Green Belt at 5 ... sigh. Kids these days, you know.

Other news: Weight, Diet, and failing hardware. And by failing hardware, I do not mean my obdurate joints and appendages ... and brain-bucket. No, the corpse of the work pc has been sent to the disposal depot and a new one is on order. Hopefully, it will be an enterprise level unit and a 'COTS' (consumer off the shelf) pos. First things first: I'm back down to 185. Even though my dinners are mostly steak/shrimp/wine/cheese, I seem to be shedding that indelible 10 pound layer of 'famine resistant' flesh I've been lugging about since Thanksgiving. Good riddance; just in time for Superbowl weekend. If I could ever reach that 175lb goal (another pertinacious 10 lbs), this is the year. Problem is that I found all that red meat in the freezer and that other goal of eating it all comes first. Right under 'manage the budget better'. Rats.

Work related news, my annual review went well but I'll be picking up pager duty for a week in the near future. That should sour my mood appropriately. I'll be singing my usual caterwaul of discontented grumblings and moans of unjust conditions. Wine, wine, wine.

Oh, and I watched too much television last night after hours. What a waste ... I could have been sleeping. Note to self: Jackass II isn't funny after the first 15 minutes ... watching 90 minutes of that tripe can only be useful as to inculcate the next generation as to what happens when you don't stay in school.

Technorati Tags:television | TSD | Karate | Children | Weight | Wine | Cheese

Labels: Banalities Work, Cheese, Children, Karate, Tang So Doo, Television, Weight, Wine