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Update At His first year was stressful - in many ways, in many areas. But the kid's come through it just fine. Tonight he turned eight with none of the fanfare (or kerfluffle) which marked his birth - for which I'm thankful. We celebrated his birthday down in Iowa last weekend, so tonight was pretty laid back. We dropped his sister off at choir, then went out for dinner - a special treat at Culvers - because they were doing a fundraiser for the local "keep the heat on" funds. 10% of their sales went to this fund, so we went. And we enjoyed it so much we went twice. Well, not really. We had dinner, then had to run and get Dog food. We came back just in time to pick up Rhiannon and a friend from choir, and then we hit Culvers for ice cream. A cheap treat, but welcome. So we distributed everyone to the proper home, and then discovered (to our chagrin) that one of the major reasons for running tonight was to get Jack's treats for his birthday (postponed from today) - and so instead of being done and home, Jack and I ended up BACK out at nearly 10 pm. He picked out a tray of 24 cupcakes - white cake, because some of his friends won't eat chocolate cupcakes - and we were home not too much later. Howinhell he's gonna get those things on the bus in the morning is beyond me... So that was Jack's eighth birthday... |
Update At So I figured I'd need some company, and brought the dog to work. She loved it. All the attention, all of the petting hands - it was great. She came home and absolutely collapsed. Jack, on the other hand, had a rough day. After having a difficult day at school, he got picked on during the bus ride home. Now, mind you, I'm well aware that kids pick on kids - and most of the time it's not bullying, it's not hazing, it's just growing up. Kids need a certain amount of that type of "abuse" in order to develop a thicker skin. I'm not saying you should beat your child with a 2x4 to toughen them up, but teasing and some "picking" can be helpful in developing the ability to fight back. But that's just my opinion... Your mileage may vary. Now, as I said, SOME abuse can be healthy - but Jack's problems weren't even close to helpful. In fact, his sister was one of the ringleaders. Rest assured that Rhiannon was in tears no less than FOUR times as her mother and I took turns disassembling her down to near-component atoms and reassembling. As I told her "I rode a school bus nearly every school day for twelve years straight. I only rode two different routes, and I can remember maybe twenty names of kids who rode with me on those busses. I haven't seen a single one of those people in at least twenty years - except for my four sisters. Your brother will be your brother long after 'the cool kids' are done riding your bus. Your brother will be your brother fifty years from now - and he'll still remember you picking on him on the bus." Problem resolved. Jack didn't even rat her out - which makes me a bit appalled and proud at the same time. The kid's got the same over-developed sense of loyalty I do. He'll have to watch that. Of course, it helped LOADS that tonight was Jack's "First Reconciliation". <Basic_Catholic_Theology_Tutorial> There are seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic church. As I learned them they were Baptism, Confession, Communion, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders, and Extreme Unction. Today, they're Baptism, Reconciliation, Communion, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders, and Annointing of the Sick. Essentially: Baptism: Joining the church - typically done as an infant shortly after birth. Is required to join the Roman Catholic Church, to remove the stain of Original Sin (Adam and Eve's Boo-Boo). Reconciliation: Disclosure of your sins to a priest (who serves as a conduit to God) who provides absolution for those sins. You must be sorry for the sin and genuinely seeking forgiveness - in my day this was usually accompanied by the old "ten Hail Mary's, ten Our Fathers, four Acts of Contrition, and tell your mother about the broken window." It is our belief that Reconciliation relieves time spent in purgatory (sort of the front porch of Hell, for those who are "short-timers") - a soul that dies without sin goes directly to heaven, the rest go to Purgatory for an undefined time. A lost soul goes to Hell - permanently. Communion: Part of the usual weekly mass - some faiths (notably Lutherans) do not participate in Communion weekly, preferring to reserve it for more "special" occasions. The Holy Communion is, so Catholics like myself believe, a way for us to become closer to God. Many uninformed, misinformed, or prejudiced individuals mistake the Mass for some sort of cannibalistic ritual invested with spiritual significance (see "Stranger in a Strange Land" for a classic example of this misapprehension). Confirmation: The second stage of joining the Roman Catholic Church, usually done as a child is older (teenage). The child learns more about their faith and makes a conscious decision (usually "guided" by the parents and godparents who are typically saying "do this or die"). It marks full entry of an individual into the Roman Catholic Church - they are a mature member. Marriage: The RELIGIOUS marriage is a recognition of the bonds of love under faith - unlike the civil ceremony, which confers tax breaks. Holy Orders: Ordination as a priest or nun. 'Nuff said. Annointing Of The Sick: Formerly, commonly known as "Last Rights" it is the comfort of the sacrament of special annointing. In times past, it was reserved for the final sacrament - these days it is understood to be a special mark of faith which may confer solace - not healing. Remember, I'm neither a priest nor theologian (the two are often mutually exclusive), so consult your own local priest if you think I've boo-booed. Odds are the priest is right and I'm wrong... Anyway... </Basic_Catholic_Theology_Tutorial> Anyway, we went through that process, which makes him ready for the final push to First Communion this coming April... when the walls of the church come crumbling down, some expect... |
Update At 2000 The question she posed was why should we continue with a two-party system when the Republican party was running everything, doing so well, and, of course, doing all the RIGHT things. I wondered this myself when I was younger. I mean, after all, the things I was taught were so self-evidently RIGHT that they should be obvious to any RIGHT-thinking person, therefore those who did not agree must be, on some level, defective. In fact, I had a number of friends (and friends of friends) who thought that way. One of them was so fundamentally certain of the RIGHTNESS of his beliefs that when they were challenged - at a fundamental level - he couldn't respond. He, in fact, ended up dead after a downward spiral in which he questioned everything he ever knew. There's nothing wrong with certainty. Far from it. There IS a fundamental flaw with the idea that one group knows what is best and should, after all, control the rest. The world today isn't simple. It's not like we were kids on a field selecting sides - far from it. It's like light - when the light goes away, there is dark. You can't prevent the dark - you can only dispel it. The same with evil and good, rich and poor, smart and dumb, and all the rest. Predators exist for a reason - to pull down the weak and the infirm, and improve the breed. So it is with opposition. Any system so weak that it cannot stand a challenge should not survive - and any system not challenged is, by definition, weak. However, I can quite clearly see such a system - in fact, I think I could design a fairly standard one that has been shown to work - within reason - for long periods of time. We would, for example, select an individual who would, for obvious reasons, be required to occupy a high leadership post to provide such continuity as this individual could. The benefits are obvious - the individual in question could be consistent, the underlings or petty bureaucrats who are charged with carrying out the will of this leader would be quite clearly at an advantage, as their leader would be both consistent and not subject to the fickle winds of election change - or regime change, as the case may be - and those underlings could then make many decisions based on the known will of said leader. Since this leader is there to maintain continuity, we're going to have to give that leader a substantial voice in who his or her eventual replacement will be. Heredity doesn't make much sense, as there's no more guarantee that two geniuses can create another genius any more than two snowpeople mating will produce snowballs (actually, they won't mate, because the very act would cause them to melt - that's why you never see baby snowpeople - snowballs (say it out loud a few times)). So heredity is out - but we've got individual selection, which would work. It would also be possible, then, to free that leader from much of the hum-drum business of governing - as the leader's will was known, it would be obvious what legislation the leader would or would not support - and thus no one would waste time passing useless legislation - well, no one LOYAL, at any rate. This is such an efficient system, after all, that it requires no opposition at all - it is perfect. Since this system makes so much sense, we really have no choice, then, but to assume those who do follow the system, those who do not join with us, are, by definition, against us. And this is, after all, the New America - no need for opposition, no need for disagreement, because, as we all know, the leader is the smartest, bestest guy for the job. So those who oppose this leader must be some sort of defective, do they not? And a danger to our carefully planned society. Thus, they must be removed to prevent their disruption of polite society. If this doesn't frighten you, then it's about time you sit down and re-read a little history. Hereditary rule, lifetime terms, the rule of the few over the many - totalitarian states are like that. Fortunately, Mrs. du Toit doesn't speak for most of the conservatives OR Republicans I know. And while I'm of the firm belief that this woman should be allowed to say whatever she wants whenever she wants, there should be a label applied - "This Person Does Not Know History" - either that, or "This Person Is Not Necessarily Sane".
[Link] What's so terribly frustrating is that, sometimes, management gets involved. And I'm management. A couple weeks ago we ordered new machines. Unfortunately, I'm a small enough account that Dell can tell me quite specifically and pointedly to fornicate myself when it comes to certain combinations we need - such as Windows 2000 and Office 2000. I was forced to purchase XP/2003 for these new machines (forced="Accounting would not authorize the additional expense to purchase the machine without OS or Office and then allow me to purchase same outside the original purchase agreement" - a factor we have since rectified, me by using a very large club). And so when things were installed, I instructed the fellow doing it to do it in the proper order - install not one God-damned thing until you've verified the network connectivity and logged in. So what happens? The last thing he does is connect to the network. Oy and Vey and assorted other complaints of an unprintable nature. So I "retrieved" the machine from his workbench and set it on my own. I plugged in the XP CD, rebooted, and reinstalled. I connected to the network, after first deleting the old computer account. I verified network connectivity, and then I reinstalled Office. All this because our primary database is a combination of Microsoft Access and SQL Server 7 data that's written in Office 97. I slugged through the umpteen billion warnings about not making changes, etc., and then got to a point where the program blew up - and dumped me into the VBA environment to show me that a string in VBA wasn't getting passed properly - so I hollered for the programmer, while re-writing the installation instructions in BASIC SIMPLE STEPS. Hopefully that will work in the future.
[Link] Does anyone have any recommendations for AV software that works and plays well with most everything (I'm familiar with Norton and MacAfee) - and is there anything that combines AV software with Spyware/Adware blocking? Just wondering...
[Link] Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's gonna get better any time soon... |
Update At I am, in many ways, both complex and simple. I like complex things - I like figuring them out, I like knowing how they work, and I like noodling out bad ugly problems that I know I can solve. What I do not like is the deliberate construction of a system which is wasteful, expensive, and absolutely stoopid. Case in point - my employer was obtaining local telephone provisioning from one vendor. Said vendor had downsized their local staff from roughly 60 people split between the two downtowns (Minneapolis and St. Paul) four years ago to two people to cover the upper midwest (one's out of Chicago) now. Thus, I couldn't get adequate answers about some of our services. We have a cable modem connecting our network to the internet - and we have another vendor who is filtering our e-mail and providing dial-up access for some of our traveling users. Finally, there's another firm that provides long distance, three firms which do premise wiring, and another organization that fixes the antiquated phone system we rely on. So - there's four bills from vendors for monthly services. Four other vendors who provide occasional services, depending on location/season/mood of the person arranging the service. And that's just crap. I talked to a local vendor I've got a long history with. We're dumping the e-mail filtering and dialup, and the cable modem, and switching our local phone provisioning to this vendor (Onvoy) because they're going to save us $7000 next year on the local services alone. If we switch our long distance to them, we'll save another $200 a month (based on this year's usage). I had initially proposed putting some of those savings into replacing the phone system we have now (an antiquated, outdated AT&T/Lucent/Avaya Merlin conglomeration) with Cisco IP Phones - no joy at the moment, we have strategic issues which we need to address that will, in the fullness of time, make us a more profitable company (in the mean time, it's the usual squeeze, squeeze, SQUEEZE for the dollars). So I've dumped four monthly bills to two - hopefully one - with minimal disruption. This all happens in January, too - just around my 90-day review. Should be nice. What's this got to do with the Dishboys? Simple - I asked only one question - "do you offer internet access?" "You can keep your cable modem..." "Thanks for stopping, see ya..." I had to repeat it three or four times. While I may be headed towards preliminary curmudgeon status, I figure I'm saving us all time. I have absolutely no intention of splitting TV into Cable for internet, Dish for TV, and then having to get rabbit ears and all the rest for local TV (which we regularly do watch). Sure, I could get my phone, cable TV, AND internet through one provider (my cable TV company) but I'm not going to put that many eggs in one basket. With Onvoy, they're a datacomm provider - I know they'll do it well. My local cable TV company has no experience with "gotta have/always on" services. If the cable TV goes down, well, it's down, people complain - but it's only TV. If it all falls over, how do I let them know it's down? Ah well - the Dishboys won't ever be getting money from me. I've no intention of putting one of those ugly things on my home - and as for the free Tivo, puh-leeze. I'll build my own Multi-Media PC before I let some schmuck who is firmly lodged in the RIAA's back pocket get any further into my house than they already are. Sheesh. I suppose after that bile I should put up something heartwarmingly positive - perhaps I can. I've got to work all weekend (night job, two nights - day job, possibly one day - wreath delivery for Cub Scouts - starts 1 pm Saturday and goes until it's done) - so content here will be blissfully brief - if at all. You were looking for some good news, weren't you... |
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Update At I worked last night at the overnight gig, and decided that it's just not working out. When I got the full-time day job, I asked the HR Manager if I could transition from strict overnights to one weekend overnight and some evenings. His answer? "Sure, it shouldn't be a problem." Well, this is the second weekend I've got two night shifts, and I'm just not going to be able to do it. It's wrecking havoc with my body, my system, and everything else. So I'm going to take a pass on tonight's shift, and work my one shift next weekend and that'll be it. As to the vehicle situation, The Truck has arrived in the driveway. We now have "creak" the car and "groan" the truck sitting there - and there's good news and bad news there. The truck has a new lower radiator hose, a new radiator, and a new water pump and gasket. And there's still a leak. My mechanic friend stuffed an entire diesel-concrete-mixing-truck sized container of industrial stop leak into the radiator system - and it seems to have stopped the leak for the present. We're thinking a cracked block (which doesn't seem possible) or some gasket, somewhere. However, after spending the entire afternoon delivering wreaths, we found that there was no obvious leak from the vehicle that we could find when it was in the driveway. So I dunno. My mechanic friend wants me to make sure the radiator cap is NOT on tight - which might be the problem with the leak. But I would think that after running the truck for about 90 minutes today, most of it idling in place as we drove from house to house, delivering wreaths (there was that ten minutes spent talking with my sister and her husband with the truck idling in the street, of course), and the radiator cap on tight, either it would have built up enough pressure to completely blow any sort of chemical seal, or ... well, I know something about computer - I know much less about vehicles. Ah well. Pictures tomorrow, should I survive. |
Update At 2100 I'm essentially an honest man, or try very hard to be. But it felt wrong to call into my overnight job "tired" - I mean, I'm working overnights, right? I should be prepared for that. Unfortunately, I wasn't. I spent much of the afternoon delivering wreaths (after two hours or so of sleep), and spent much of the evening with an ever-tightening stomach, getting worse and worse - not wanting (or really able) to go work an overnight, but knowing I had to. It got to the point where I flat could not do it. At all. So I called in. Told them I was sick. As soon as I did, I felt better. And it occurred to me - I was making myself sick thinking about lying to work about being sick - I felt so sick I couldn't go into work, and so I called in - and then the problem (working overnight) was solved - so I didn't need to feel sick any more. Man, is that sick or what? Ah well. Today was "let's hemmorhage more money" day. Yesterday we shot about $200 on clothes and the like - today we blew a bunch more on useless things like breakfast out (thanking most of my mechanic's friend's family for the repair work), groceries, and the like. It went fast, but then again, but for a few bucks we'll have to spend on Wednesday, we're pretty well set for Thanksgiving. No Turducken in this house, just a good turkey (we get 'em fresh from the local meat market - about $1.20 a pound, we pick it up Wednesday pre-thawed (because it's never been frozen) and it's a hell of a lot easier to cook. We'll be doing the bacon-on-the-breast thing again (I'm gonna push for more bacon this year - and maybe some maple syrup as well). But we'll see what happens. And for those of you seeking this site earlier this weekend, no, it's not your ISP - the hosting provider for this place made a scheduled move - the only "unscheduled" bit was the notice - as in "they knew, we didn't" - all's well that ends better, one hopes...
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