From the "Well, Duh!" files -

If you're going to carpool to work, make sure the vehicle of choice is in good shape. As I was driving to work yesterday, I had the opportunity to witness 4 people in shirts and ties become very, very late for work when the junker they were riding in on I-635 (just north of DFW Airport) blew its engine. Oh, and it was a spectacular blowing of the engine, too.

That concludes this practical tip for the day.

This is probably my favorite time of year. Not because we get several cubic yards of compost delivered or because I break my back hauling compost or digging out planting areas or anything like that, but because everything around the house turns green. Our Cedar Elm trees out front put on their green leaves almost overnight, our Bradford Pear spent a week with its white blooms, and now it has big green leaves on it, our apple trees are beginning to leaf as well, the Crepe Myrtles are putting on their foliage, and even the grape vines are really sprouting. Plus the canopy of natural growth trees across the creek behind the house are now in full green mode. It's just beautiful around here.

Oh, but now I have to start mowing the grass. Crud. Thanks for reminding me...

Not sure if that's really a word...

But I'm so happy, I don't care! New York Subway has opened a new shop much closer to where I live! The new sandwich shop, called New York Sub Hub for some reason, is only about 6 miles from the house, and much easier to get to than the ones by the two campuses in Denton.

Once again, a sense of balance is returning to my world. Ahhhhhhhh....

I've been listening to dance music lately on the radio.

*pause*

Now that you've had a chance to pick your jaws up off the floor, I'll say that again so you know I wasn't mistyping. I've been listening to The Texas Party Station on my commute of late. I've occasionally had a spot of electronica and techno in me, but I've really been getting into this music vibe for a while.

But that's not the worst part. There's a song they've been playing that I've started digging a little. When it comes on the air, I crank the volume up a bit louder than it was before, endangering my poor factory speakers in the truck. It's got a nice groove, it seems well-produced, the melody and lyrics are catchy, in fact, I'd almost go so far to say as that I really like it and I'd love to hear it again when it's over.

Then I find out yesterday that the song is "Toxic" by Britney Spears.

My life is over...

In the last year I've come to realize how blessed I've been to be a part of my family. Sure, my family has it's quirks, probably more than most, but it's also made up of Good People™, and sometimes that's worth its weight in gold.

My brother and step-sister now live in the Dallas area, too. This past year, we've started meeting for breakfast on Saturday or Sunday mornings once or twice a month. Ten years ago, I never would have thought this could happen.

Sure, my brother and I were pretty typical brothers when we were growing up. We fought, I thought he was a pest, he hated following me in school, that kind of thing. We were never close as youngsters, and when I went off to college, we pretty much lost all contact. Some of that was me, just not making any sort of effort to interact with him, but most of it was due to my extended family on my father's side telling him lies about what a horrible person I'd become and how he shouldn't be like me (I'd had a pretty nasty falling out with my father's side of the family, which was one of the factors that led up to my changing my name). Only a few years ago, after my brother had a similar falling out with the paternal side did he realize that he had been fed a line. We finally had a heart-to-heart about it where he apologized for thinking poorly of me and I reassured him that he was given bad information and wasn't responsible. That was about the time that he changed his name, too, ironically just a few weeks before I did, and neither one of us knew the other was doing it. Then once he moved into this area, we started hanging out a little more often and really getting to know each other again as adults. As an adult, he's a Great Person™. But I guess he'll always be my pesky younger brother.

I never really got to know my step-sister. She was 4 and I was 16 when her dad married my mother, and I left town a couple of years later. In fact, the first time I saw her after I left for college was on a return trip "home" with my wife, about 10 years or so after I left home, when she came to the door of the house, I answered the door, and thought she was one of my brother's friends. I didn't even recognize her! I still have yet to live that one down. In fact, it came up *again* at one of our breakfast meetings a few weeks ago. Thought she eventually moved in with my folks and we would see her when we went to visit them, I still really didn't interact much with her. But now that she's graduated from college, lived back east for a year (she lived across the bay from Manhattan on 9/11), and moved to Dallas ,my wife and I are getting to know her again, and she's turned out to be Good People™ too. In fact, she and my wife have become pretty good friends, which is always a relief.

And now our family is about to grow again. My pesky younger brother, who hates to hear that we thought he was going to be an "old maid" forever, is getting married in a couple of weeks. We've gotten to know his future wife and step-daughter at these family breakfasts over the last year, and I'm happy to announce that they're Good People™, too. One of these two brothers who swore on a stack of Bibles and other printed material that we would never have children is about to become a step-father, and the rest of us think he's going to be pretty good at it. That means I'll be an uncle again in a few weeks (my other step-sister also has a child, but she doesn't live anywhere near us, so we never get to see them). So I need to start reading the "How to be an Uncle" manual and see what all kind of things I can get away with in my new familial role.

So congrats to Jason, Erin, and Molly, and welcome to the family. I hope you'll find that you're gonna fit right in with the rest of us Good People™.

My brother-in-law has been in the far east for the last year or so. Most recently, he spent a few weeks in Taiwan, where the culture is apparently very focused on appearance. As proof, he offered the following:



Kinda puts things in perspective, don't ya think?

While I was digging through my audio cassette archives to locate material for this week's posting to Musical Mondays, I ran across my stash of old answering machine tapes. In my first few years of college, I was rather creative with my answering machines and developed a number of unique outgoing greetings. Anyway, I found several of those tapes and thought I'd share some of the outgoing messages, along with some of the interesting responses I got.

Some of the greetings I created just by speaking a carefully-crafted announcement over musical snippets I grabbed from other sources. Others were accompanied by original sounds/music that I'd put together. Most of the ones below use someone else's music for a background. Bonus points if you can identify the music I pulled for these.

"Nazi Subs"
Unfortunately, the first few seconds of this greeting got recorded over somehow, but the meat of the matter is still intact.

"Concert Tour"
Not one of my better efforts, but I put this one together right after I returned from touring with the Continental Brass and Singers, so it was timely, and the music fit perfectly.

"Español"
My friend Greg Ross helped me with a number of greetings, including this one and "Nazi Subs." He also helped on "The List," which I hope I still have laying around somewhere.

"Chinese Water Bath"
This is probably my favorite, and ranked up there in terms of getting the most messages simply about the greeting itself.

In fact, many of the greetings I recorded generated a flurry of messages and incoming calls. One gentleman left me a message that said something to the effect of "That is hands-down the most creative answering machine greeting I've ever heard. I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to share your number with some friends so they can hear your machine as well." I also got several responses that said something like "I dialed the wrong number, obviously, but I'm really glad I did." My college friends also took my greetings as an inspiration to be creative with the messages they left me.

Some of the more unusual messages that I still have on tape are these:

"Tuesday Afternoon"
"Paper"
"Bowl"
"Gibberish"
"What is the frequency?"

You'll also note that some of these recordings have some really awful line noise interference. Dialing up anywhere was a major pain, until I finally got someone from GTE on the phone who would listen to me play back one of these messages so he could hear the interference, and they came out and got it fixed immediately. Of course, it only took me 4 months to get to someone who would listen.

I think I still have some other tapes of outgoing greetings and other odd messages. As soon as I can find them, I'll record and post them as well.

For those of you who find the post below to be just a bit exaggerated, I offer the following images:

2003


2004


See?

I'm in the middle of an interesting acquisition (and no, I'm not referring to the rumors about Microsoft buying AOL from Time/Warner *shudder*) at the house. You see, it's spring, and therefore it's time for planting and general yard maintenance. We build two new raised beds in Anna's garden area, bringing the total to seven, I think, and I can't even guess how many square feet that is. Anyway, we wanted to do the same thing we did last year when we built out several new raised beds - have a compost/topsoil mixture delivered so we could fill out the beds. Last year, we goofed and seriously over-ordered - 12 cubic yards, in fact. If you don't know how much 12 cubic yards is, well, it's a lot (12 yds * 27 cubic ft/yd). And smell? Well, you can imaging. We joked for a week that a dinosaur came and took a dump on our front lawn. Yes, it took us that long to get the pile moved to the places we wanted it. We gave away so much of it that we just weren't able to use - at least 6 truckloads full, not to mention the countless wheelbarrow loads that went to just about all the neighbors around us. Wow.

So this year we scaled back - only 5 cubic yards, the minimum needed for a delivery. However, this year, the dealer is not selling any topsoil at all, so we had to get straight compost. No problem, except that we can't plant a raised bed of straight compost. So this week, while she was on Spring Break, Anna relocated most of the soil from her existing raised beds and distributed it evenly amongst all the beds, and then started filling in what was left with the compost. She also added a layer of compost as a dressing to our other planting beds, put some around the trees, topped off some planting containers, put two tires in her garden area and filled them with compost, and we still have over half of it left.

So today I get to go and try to find a home for the remainder of the compost that we have. I have no idea where it's going to go once we fill in around the trees that have yet to be treated and the two other beds that really won't use all that much. I guess I'll probably spread it around the lawn and give us a nice green lawn for quite a while!

If you're near Denton and want any of this, let me know. We just may still have some for you...

When we built our house just over two years ago, we were really excited about the neighborhood we moved into. Nice houses, nice younger families, nice landscaping, a really comfortable middle-class neighborhood. We were thrilled specifically because our two previous homes had not been located in really "clean" neighborhoods, and we had some real problems with neighbors who just flat junked their homes and yards. Right before we moved, in fact, we got to experience the joys of one homeowner suffering foreclosure, two rental properties changing occupants monthly, well, you get the idea.

So imagine the joy we felt when our new next door neighbor in the nice new neighborhood we just settled into started leaving a horse trailer parked in front of his house. Then in his driveway. Then in his back yard, after taking down part of his side fence and sort of propping it back in place, but not really. The partial fence was a beaut, because now we can see the filing cabinets and other assorted "junk" he has stashed right next to our garden areas.

Then a friend shared this site with me, and I suddenly don't feel so bad.

It's here! I've created a new blog for my musical exploits called Musical Mondays. You can read all about it over there.

I've been joking lately that I've started the Weekend Workout exercise plan. I'm slovenly and anti-athletic during the week, then I try to make up for all of it over the weekend. Two weekends ago, I spent the entire weekend digging out an area in the back near our fountain for a new planting bed, then prepping and planting it. This past weekend, I built a new shelter for the cats out back. In both cases, I was completely exhausted and sore by the end of the weekend, and really looking forward to being sedentary at the office all week. Don't know if it's helping me get in shape, but it sure is making me tired.

But that's not really what I'm writing about here. This cat shelter project has convinced me, once again, that I'm not a natural engineer. Oh, sure, I keep getting involved in projects that let me think that I have a clue what I'm doing with power tools and table saws, but the reality is that I'm just a hack, or whatever the carpentry term is for a complete idiot.

Maybe "practice makes perfect" is what keeps me trying these silly projects, I don't know. But for every successful bookshelf or fence installation, there's a cat shelter. And every time I encounter the cat shelter type project, I swear it's the last time I'll try anything like that. Like I am right now.

Granted, the shelter itself came out OK, in that it will continue to provide a covered area for the outdoor cats food and water and will likely not kill them in the process, but that's just a side effect of this disaster. That I didn't lose a limb in the process is the real miracle.

I really admire my wife, though, because not only does she put up with these silly projects, she even helps me out with them. In fact, she and I were the only ones that struggled to try and hoist the roof on top of the shelter as darkness fell last night. In fact, it's probably a miracle that I didn't end up killing her in the process.

You know, there's a very, very good reason I'm in computers as a profession. I'm good at that. Some would even consider me to be an expert in a couple of related fields. I've been published by several major-market publishers. I've even received some accolades for my musicianship. So why on earth do I continue to torture myself with the notion that I can build heavy things from wood?

At this point, I'm convinced that I'm going to abandon my plans for installing by myself the large pond we want in the backyard. I mean, really, who am I kidding? So, if you're associated with anyone who professionally designs and installs ponds, now would be an excellent time to contact me and make a bid. Based on past experience, it may only be a few weeks before I get the urge to grab a shovel again...

Just when you think you've stopped popping up in unusual places, you run across yourself again.

I had no idea.

Creativity and frustration go hand in hand for me. Possibly for most creative types. I've always heard "You have to suffer to write" and I've heard from a number of writers that those are not empty words. I also know that the creative process is a painful one, sometimes violent, and almost always has a significant impact on the creator. Right now, though, I'm finding myself longing for that struggle, that anguish. I'm getting so many ideas swimming through my head, and I just don't have the time to exorcise those demons from my psyche and pour them into something beautiful.

Then comes good old writer's block. Once you get some time to yourself where you can really devote all your energies to the creative mindset, and the garage is empty. That happened to me this past weekend. My wife was working a school competition on Saturday morning, and I had several hours to myself. I intended to crank up the music studio and get moving on a couple of new project ideas I've been developing in the little grey cells. So, I got myself organized, and went to it. That's when one of my two favorite water metaphors came into play - I went to the well but the well was dry, or you can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink. Either way, my outcome was the same. Once I was ready to be creative, the raw material just wasn't there.

Maybe I'm just out of practice when it comes to scheduling the creative process. Many writers will tell aspiring authors to schedule a time every day to do nothing but write. It's awkward at first, but after several weeks, your essence is in the habit of working the creative flow during that time. In my regular music days, I spent at least part of every day with my music, creating new or just playing the old. That, plus the weekly band rehearsals really kept my music groove thumping.

I was hoping to re-establish my creative schedule during the time I was out of work. *buzz* Didn't happen. Now that I'm working, and working a LOT, I'm finding precious little time to keep up with life's requirements away from work, much less the luxurious time to myself to be creative. Yes, yes, yes, now it boils down to the adage of "making the time" instead of "finding the time." I'd like to put a sock into whoever came up with that phrase. Yeah, there's an element of truth to it, but it's almost a grail in itself. Simple, yes. Practical, well...

The credit I have to give myself at this point is that, for better or worse, I have been able to maintain some semblance of regularity in writing in the blog. Maybe that will be enough to get the creativity bandwagon moving again. When it does kick into high gear, though, you'd better watch out!

For those of you who don't know, I'm a white boy. White white white white white. I sunburn at the drop of a hat. I scare off ghosts when I wear shorts. I make my wife, who thought she was the whitest person on the planet, look tan. White.

So when I went outside yesterday to work on digging out a new planting bed, why on earth didn't I think to put on any sunblock? I was out working, in very nice weather mind you, for a couple of hours before I came in and applied solar protection, then went out and dug and cleaned and cleared and edged and planted and lined for a few hours more. By the time we finished and the sun was going down, I was positively glowing. Not from a sense of accomplishment about the outstanding job I did, but from my radioactive skin.

Today was going to be about the planting bed. Instead, I wrote some words about my skin that's red.

As I've finally been able to get back into the schedule of reading various blogs on a daily basis, I've started noticing a trend - many of them not only include various levels of thought (from really shallow to really philosophic) but they also have a number of mechanisms to see how many people are reading. There are a number of counters, from the basic web counters we've seen for numerous years, to site referral counters, to guest books, to comment trackers, and so on. Those sites that employ most (if not all) of these tracking mechanisms also implore the reader to leave a trace of their visit by signing the guest book, leaving a comment, or clicking on any number of 'track me' type links.

Maybe I'm a bit naive here, but I'm beginning to think that a large number of blogs amount to nothing more than a popularity contest - a way for the author to get validation for his or her existence.

Granted, the trend I've noticed does tend to be more prevalent with the younger crowd, specifically teenagers. Blogs that seemingly exist for no other reason than to espouse bad English, bad spelling, and , oh yes, who's the hottest guy or girl in class this week. (Needless to say, I've not gone back for regular visits to those sites.) But right up top, before you get to the professed 'most important' issues in the blogger's life are the stats of who has visited, how many comments have been left, and pleas to hit refresh or click a link or add a comment. Like I could even begin to comment on whether Ashley's boobs are really bigger than Andrea's.

Before you sound the hypocrite alarm, yes, I have employed some of these tools in this blog. I've included a site referral tracker at the bottom so I can see whether announcements about a particular post have been successfully received. I've included a comment system for those who wish to spout off about a particularly insightful or inane post on my part. But there are no hidden trackers, no counters, and if you've read carefully, no pleas to the readers to tell all their friends about my blog or to advertise any product, specialty, etc. You'll also notice that I'm bucking the blog trend of linking to 17,000 other blogs in my links section (a common ploy to get those 17,000 sites to link back to your blog to increase your counter stats). I've included links to a couple of blogs in my random links item (go on, hit refresh to update those, but there will be no additional counters added) more out of amusement for myself than anything else.

And that's really the bottom line for me. This blog is mine, primarily for me, a way for me to collect my thoughts into a seemingly rational, logical format for introspection and retrospection. It's a way for me to keep those who are interested in what's going on with me to keep up to date without having to call or e-mail directly (which opens the 'am I being an anti-communication enabler by blogging?' can of worms, but I won't touch on that here).

So, please, feel free to browse this blog. Or don't. Leave an opinion on a post. Or don't. Tell all your friends and people about it. Or don't.

If reading this blog has brightened your day, great. If it has changed your life in a meaningful way, great. If you think I'm a nutcase in need of serious psychological help, great. You can leave a comment, send me e-mail, or post in your own blog.

Or don't.

Did you know the plural of "moose" is "moose?" I didn't...

Anyway, Anna had a moose sighting this morning on her way to work. She passed an Animal Control truck that just pulled off to the side of the road as she went past, and she thought she saw a rather large dark horse in the field she drives by every day.

At the time, she didn't think anything of it. Then one of her students came in, shouting that she was attacked by a moose on that road on the way to class.

This may pass as normal behavior in rural Washington State or somewhere like that, but this is suburban Dallas/Ft. Worth Texas for goodness sake! This moose sighting was just 10 miles north of the largest airport in the state, and second busiest in the country! We're not country bumpkins!

Moose indeed...

Have you ever had "one of those days?" What's that, you say?

For example, getting up an hour early to go to a brief meeting before work, scheduled such that you can attend the meeting and still have time to drive across town to get to the office by 9am, but getting stuck behind an injury accident less than a mile from the house that costs you 20 minutes. Then dealing with heavier traffic because you hit the freeways later than you expected. Then actually getting to the meeting about the time you were expecting to leave the meeting and having to deal with the issue as a sidebar and not a full presentation. Then getting stuck at a red light that stays red in your direction for 7 minutes even though there is absolutely no traffic in any of the other directions. Finally getting to work, only 15 minutes late miraculously, finding out that your schedule has changed, but that change has been changed for that day only so you can attend a mandatory training session. Only you get involved with an issue about 30 minutes after you arrive at work and not wrapping up that issue for another six and a half hours with no lunch break, though you've been able to snack regularly through the issue because your desk is well-stocked for snacks. Then taking a half hour to try and catch up on the other work that was supposed to have been completed earlier in the day before getting involved in another issue that keeps you occupied until 7pm, all the while having the people who work with you treat you as though you're some mistake they made in the hiring process. All the while, you're questioning the benefits of making this particular employment decision yourself, only to keep seeing the harsh reality that you better be damn glad you've got a job at all. Then finally leaving the office to head home, only to find that the thunderstorms predicted for the next day got anxious and decided to roll into town 12 hours early, literally raining on your parade. So you end up driving home agitated from the days activities, in a bad mood because your blood sugar is out of whack from not being able to eat properly, and your cell phone coverage decides to really wig out so you can't talk with anyone while driving to try and get some of your frustration out of your system.

Nah, I didn't think so...

It's official - the economy really sucks.

I learned late last week that a good friend is losing his job in a couple of weeks, and not for performance reasons. The company he works for has a branch office in Austin, his office, that they're closing down to "streamline operations." Catch is, he works for a major publisher of entertainment software, so you know if the PC games market is bad, everything is bad. At least he's in Austin, where the market is faring better than Dallas/Ft. Worth.

This is just another reminder for me to remember how lucky I am to have a job within my field of expertise. I'm counting my blessings that I was only out of work for 2.5 months in the D/FW area, which is nothing short of miraculous, given my profession and career level. I know my friend will do well in his search because of his talents, skills, experience, attitude, but mostly because of his location.

To those of you who are currently earning a regular paycheck in your desired area of employment, consider yourselves blessed.

To those of you who are currently earning a regular paycheck in any field, consider yourselves fortunate.

To those of you looking for technology work, get the hell out of the Dallas/Ft. Worth market!