We lived in an 1880s house in the country in New Jersey for several years in the 1990s. The house was on a hill rising from the street. It had a short driveway and a long sidewalk up to the house (which was good in terms of snow shoveling).

The remnants of a hurricane blew through one night bringing rain and relatively high winds. The storm woke me in the middle of the night, and I could see the dome light on in the car down the hill. Shit, I told Katie, I must have left the door ajar in the Camry, and it's raining.

So, I put on my raincoat and ran down to the driveway to fix the situation. When I came back to the bedroom, I told Katie: the good news is, I didn't leave the door ajar; the bad news, the car has been crushed by a tree branch.

Man, we loved that car.

In my last blog entry, I mentioned that I grew up in the Texas hill country. In the course of writing that entry, I ran across this photo of the swimming hole where I spent most of my summers.

This swimming hole is on Rebecca Creek, located about a mile from my house. In the photo, you can see a concrete platform with a ladder out of the water and a very large cypress tree next to it. When I was young, there was a platform about 8 feet above the concrete platform, though it was cut down when I was a teenager.

The swimming hole is about ten feet deep, and when I was growing up, there were 2x4 steps nailed up the cypress tree. The first branch over the water is at about 35 feet with an awesome rope swing hanging from it. Originally, you could swing off the platform, but after that was gone, we just climbed a few steps up the tree to swing. A rope swing that long makes for a nice wide arc over the water.

You could also jump directly from the tree, either from any step or by climbing up to the first limb. I still remember the first time I jumped from the limb. I was probably eight or nine years old.

The steps led to two higher branches, maybe 45 and 55 feet, but I never went up to those branches--not because I was afraid of jumping from those heights, but because it was more difficult to get from the steps out onto the branches. That part scared me.

In the summer, there were always people at the swimming hole--if not swimmers, then teenagers hanging out, drinking, and/or smoking pot. I didn't partake, but I was known to be 'cool' about it.

There were a lot of disadvantages to living in such a remote location--the solitude and loneliness, the 1-2 hour bus rides each way to school, etc.--but all in all, I consider myself pretty damn lucky to have lived in such a place, and the swimming hole was a big part of it.

As part of a post on gun control, Gordon Atkinson describes the history of hunting in his family:

I am not a hunter, but I come from a family of hunters. One of my grandfathers grew up in a poor family of sharecroppers. When he was a boy, his family hunted animals, killed them, and ate them...

My uncles and father hunted with my grandfather, but by that time hunting was no longer a necessity. It was something that they enjoyed. There were old rituals involved that reminded them of their roots and of the land and of our close ties to it. They chose to hunt and eat what they killed instead of buying all of their food from a store.

My father moved to the city, and I grew up in that environment. I went hunting with my grandfather, father, and uncles when we were visiting East Texas. It was something that men did together in our part of the world...

I don't want to get into the gun control issue, but Gordon's description of the tradition of hunting in his family caused me to reflect on my own history with hunting and guns.

Guns were an important part of my upbringing. I learned to shoot at an early age, had a BB/pellet gun from as early as I can remember, and had gun safety drilled into me. My dad hunted some for sport, mostly with business contacts in South Texas (though we always ate what he killed), but I was mostly only involved with deer hunting which we did primarily for food purposes.

Living in the Texas hill country, we shot deer close to home, and we weren't concerned with killing bucks with big racks. We also butchered and processed all our own meat (unlike many hunters who take their deer to a meat processing plant). I never knew whether we were eating store-bought beef or home-processed venison.

I have not hunted since I left home for college, but I go through phases when I would like to take my son Samuel hunting. It's important to me that he learn where his food comes from. After reading Gordon's post, though, I realize why I have never done so. It would lack the social significance that Gordon describes. For Samuel and me to hunt, we would have to go about it as other suburban sportsmen--get a deer lease, buy gear, etc. It would be an event or an outing, not part of our family routine, as it was when I was a kid.

I also recently bought Samuel his first BB gun. He shot targets with it for a few days and then lost interest in it. I realize now that I was disappointed with this. To me, getting your first BB gun is an important rite of passage. In his suburban life, it was just another toy.

Here's an inventory of the electronics that we took on our recent vacation to New Mexico:

• Three ipods
• Two laptops and all the cables for the associated electronics
• Two digital cameras
• Two GMRS two-way radios
• Three LED flashlights, and the AC cord for the one that's rechargeable
• Portable DVD player
• Samuel's Nintendo DS

I'm a big photography fan, so I brought my laptop primarily so that I could upload, view and edit photos from my dSLR camera (The house we rented didn't have internet access, so I couldn't upload the photos to my Flickr account until we got home). We also brought Katie's laptop so that we could work (check email, etc.) concurrently when we had internet access. Due to the lack of internet access at the house, we only used her laptop at the hotel on the drive up there. We could have left it home.

The ipods, DVD player, and DS were very helpful on the 14-hour drive each way; the the two-way radios were useful once we got to New Mexico, since we had to take two vehicles whenever we all wanted to go somewhere.

I don't really have a problem with what we took. In fact, I probably wouldn't even have thought about it if it weren't for the fact that we vacationed with a family that had virtually no electronics along. Just an interesting observation: we are a wired family.

We had a great two-week in northeastern New Mexico, where we stayed in this rented vacation home outside Angel Fire, with Katie's cousin Kay, two of her kids and her husband Mark.

I've posted several sets of photos: general vacation photos, photos of the Taos Pueblo and photos from the Rodeo de Taos.

This is Norman lying on the kitchen table and reminding us that he graciously allows us to live in his house.

(click on photo for larger version)

I'm definitely an old fart when it comes to mobile phone use. One of the many things that bugs me is people who continue to talk on their phone when participating in public interactions. Here's what happened this morning at Einstein's while I was waiting for my bagel:

Woman walks into store talking on cell phone. Cashier comes over to his register to take her order.

Woman stops about six feet in front of the cashier to continue her conversation. Cashier looks confused. I think he's trying to decide whether he can go back to the other task or should remain at the cash register to wait for this woman.

A minute later, still talking on the phone, the woman walks up the register and orders. The cashier asks her some questions (dine in or to go, her name so they can call her when it's ready, etc.) and has to repeat every question because the woman is paying him no attention.

What a way to communicate to the people around you that they are of no consequence compared to your all-important conversation.

I've studied the German language and Germanic culture for years, but sometimes the intricacies of cultural understanding still allude me.

Last week, I visited my company's R&D office in Linz, Austria, for the first time. Please note that, as far as I know, I'm pretty much the only U.S. employee in the company who speaks fluent German--except the couple of Germans who work in the US offices, of course.

When speaking German, I assumed that all of my fellow software engineering colleagues would address me with the informal 'Du.' That was true with one exception.

Continue reading "Annals of cultural confusion"

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I'm working at my company's office in Linz, Austria.

I'm in Linz, Austria on business this week. I'm adding the photos I'm taking to this Flickr set. I got to walk around town for a few hours yesterday afternoon after I arrived, but since the work week starts today, I don't know how many more photo opportunities I'll get.

As I opened the front door to walk Samuel to school this morning, I found five police cars and two news crews in front of the house. During the night, car thieves had abandoned a car across the street and shot at the police as they fled. The photo below was taken from my next door neighbor's front yard.

This New York TImes article about school bullying and the corresponding discussion on MetaFilter brings back a lot of memories from high school.

I was picked on a lot in high school, and I spent many years trying to figure out why. After 25 years, I agree with the MeFi posters who say that bullying is all about enforcing social conformity. I think I was threatening to a lot of people--not because I was different, but because I was different and either didn't know it or didn't think anything of it.

For instance, I was tall and generally fit but not interested in sports. I realize now that I was fairly good looking but didn't realize it (judge for yourself); I was smart but took it for granted; and I was ambitious, taking part and excelling in a variety of non-sporting school activities: band, choir, German club, and speech.

One particular provocation always comes to mind, and I think it's a perfect example. My sophomore year, my assigned locker was in some out-of-the-way place, so my band friend Walter, a senior, offered to let me share his locker which was centrally located. Walter and I got constant hassling for sharing a locker, mostly by the 'jocks' and of the homophobic sort. Looking back at it, to have two band guys sharing a locker and not thinking anything of it must have been terribly threatening to the more narrow-minded and insecure among my high school peers. But at the time, that didn't occur to me, that I remember.

Xena (and the rest of our family) wishes you Happy Holidays!

We certainly view our pets as much like kids as anybody, but when it comes to pet health care, my country upbringing reveals itself. Lately, we've been grappling with the high cost of veterinary care. We like our current vet a lot, but we feel like he prescribes optional services without informing us that they aren't absolutely necessary. Today, I found an article on Slate about this very subject:

It's just that if we're coming to the point that we think of our pet's health in the same way we do our own, I wish the vets I see would treat my pets more the way our doctors treat us. For example, over the years the pediatrician has heard a mild heart murmur when she has examined my daughter. But since my daughter is obviously in excellent health, the pediatrician has reassured me it's nothing to worry about. But when the veterinarian detected a mild heart murmur in one of my cats, she immediately recommended I make an appointment with the veterinary cardiologist. What would happen to the cat if I didn't do that? I asked. She had to acknowledge: probably nothing, but the echocardiogram only cost $300, and since my cat was a member of my family, surely I would want to do everything.

I just returned from a whirlwind trip to Singapore. I wish I could say it was a pleasure trip, but it was business. About all I saw besides my hotel room, the office and the taxi ride between the two was this panorama from my hotel room:

It looks like I'll be making a couple more trips to Singapore in the coming year, so maybe I'll get to see more.

This afternoon, I opened my garage doors, intending to get out some gardening supplies so I could work in the backyard. As I stepped out into the driveway, I saw a guy chasing a schnauzer down the sidewalk toward me. I stepped to the sidewalk, squatted down and held my hand out to the dog, hoping I could catch him.

But the dog was too wily; he barked at me, ran past me and kept going. I saw that the dog was out-pacing the man, so, I stepped back into the garage, grabbed a leash and my bicycle and joined the chase. A few seconds later my neighbor Chris from three houses down the street came up on his bicycle, and he joined the chase, too. Chris is out on his bike and rollerblades a lot, so I figured he was either already out riding or had also joined the chase as it passed his house.

The dog led us across the street and onto the sidewalk that goes behind our subdivision's pool and tennis courts. At one point, Chris and I managed to get the dog between us with some shrubs on one side, but the dog dashed between the shrubs and into the parking lot.

On the other side of the parking lot, we kind of cornered the dog between the tennis courts and some other shrubs. Chris and I both dropped out bikes, and Chris managed to get on the other side of the dog. He then squatted, held out his hand and called the dog in a sweet voice. To my surprise, the dog responded. When he got close, Chris grabbed for his collar, but the dog wriggled away and came toward me. I tackled the dog and held onto him until Chris could also get a hold and we got the collar on him. When I tackled the schnauzer, he bit me and punctured my hand in one place.

Chris then told me that the dog chaser was his visiting brother-in-law, and that the dog has escaped from Chris' house. He thanked me and walked the dog toward his house, and I rode home.

While I doctored my wound, I told Katie and the kids what had happened--laughing hysterically the whole time. A couple minutes later Chris came over to thank me again and to give me my leash. Turns out, he'd been bitten, too.

All in all, the suburban schnauzer wrangling was worth the dog bite. It was actually a lot of fun.

Lat night, I bought my first album of DRM-free MP3s off of Amazon MP3. Reasonable price ($.89/track; $8.99/album), easy purchase and download experience (it puts the tracks directly into iTunes after download), and DRM-free MP3s. What's not to love?

This morning, I canceled my eMusic subscription. I've really enjoyed finding new music on eMusic, but lately it felt like a monthly chore to find 90 tracks that I might like, listen to them all, rate them, etc. And now that I can buy DRM-free MP3s competitively to Apple's DRM-laden iTunes Music Store, I think I'll switch back to buying less music that I know I like for a while.

Hasta la vista, iTunes Music Store

Oh, and it warms my heart to see DRM finally losing out due to market pressure. People DO care about controlling the stuff they own.

I've sung the praises of eMusic before, but I have another reason to like them today. After I downloaded all my tracks last month, I accidentally deleted all of them before importing them into iTunes. I was bummed that I'd lost $20 of music. This morning, I went to eMusic to start finding some music to download in the coming month when I realized I still had a few downloads available from last month. I decided to download a few of the tracks I'd deleted. After I downloaded one, I noticed that the number of available downloads hadn't been decremented. I had accidentally discovered that I could re-download my previous purchases! I just recovered the lost tracks by downloading them again!

This week, writer John Scalzi is blogging his answers to questions submitted by readers of his blog. Yesterday's question was, in essence: What is the meaning of life?

Mr. Scalzi suggests that he devised his answer to this question via humanist (non-religious) means:

What I'm leaving out here, for the space of relative brevity, is a detailed examination of processes by which I came to this intellectual methodology, generated through years of self-examination and self-realization via intentional and unintentional experiential phenomena, to produce the robust heuristic structure through which I filter data.

Here's the heart of his reply:

Finally, in the larger sense -- the one in which I am a citizen of the world, that I like no man am an island, blah blah blah blah blah, it becomes a matter of asking one's self first whether one wants to be engaged in the world, and then if so, how best to be of utility. I do enough things that I feel engaged in my world and I feel like I'm trying to do beneficial things (or at least I'm doing as little harm as possible). I think it's my responsibility to try to make the world a better place than it was before I got here; I don't feel obliged to be heart-rent at every thing that's wrong with the planet. One person can make a difference in the world, so long as that one person realizes that one person can not do every thing or be actively concerned with every damn thing. I pick and choose; everyone does. I focus on what I think I do well, and where I think I can do good. (emphasis added)

I find his answer to the BIG QUESTION quite similar to my own, which I formed in the context of being a Christian. I guess it all comes down to the source of the responsibility, and his answer shows what I believe: that there are many ways to realize your obligation to 'love your neighbor'.

I frequently describe myself as a liberal or progressive Christian. Twice in the past couple of weeks, I have been asked exactly what that means. While I have some general statements, it bothered me that I didn't have a concise, easy-to understand answer. In response to this frustration, I started reading Brian D. McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy (which Rick Diamond, who I recently met, recommends on his blog.

I haven't yet gotten too far into the book, and I don't yet have an answer to my question, but I found the first chapter of the book to be an informative brief theological primer. In this chapter, Mr. McLaren describes "the seven Jesuses I have known;" he writes a short summary of the unique characteristics of seven 'branches' of Christianity. At the end of the seven characterizations, Mr. McLaren writes:

I am a Christian because I believe the real Jesus is all that these sketches reveal and more. Saying that, a question comes to mind...

Why not celebrate them all? . . . I'm recommending that we acknowledge that Christians of each tradition bring their distinctive and wonderful gifts to the table, so we can all enjoy the feast of generous orthodoxy--and spread that same feast for the whole world.

I definitely identify with this viewpoint, so I think I'm looking in the right place to help me voice my views. Stay tuned...

By the way, 'the Liberal Protestant Jesus' is one of flavors that Mr. McLaren describes. Since I identify much more with Mr. McLaren's viewpoint than this one particular flavor, I see why I've had trouble describing my own theology. I have a feeling I'll end up abandoning the word 'liberal' as soon as I find a more accurate and less charged description.

This fridge magnet, and several other equally awesome ones, apparently adorn Rick Diamond's refrigerator (photos taken by Gordon Atkinson). Seeing the magnets and visiting his church's web site, I dropped by his office and had a nice chat with him. I'm really intrigued by the approach to their faith that Rick and his fellow 'journeyers' take, and I plan to visit their worship service soon.

Yesterday I went to lunch with a guy our company just hired. He's in his early to mid 20s. We were talking about traveling to Europe, and he mentioned someone he knows who lives in Germany, in Bonn. By the tentative way in which he pronounced 'Bonn', it was clear that he was unfamiliar with it. I immediately started to remind him, "You know, Bonn, the capital of former West Germany." Then it hit me that Germany has been reunited for the part of his life in which he's been aware of foreign affairs. For him, Bonn is just some small German city.

I've been really busy lately, especially with work. Stay tuned.

Preface: Katie and I love to mangle the names of stores. When we lived in New Jersey, our good friend David came to visit us. After we referred to the local Shop-Rite several times by its correct name, David exclaimed: "What has New Jersey done to you? Why don't you call it Shop-Rong?" Well, we had referred to it that way from the day we moved there; it's just that by the time David came to visit, it has lost its novelty.

So, on to the story... We spent last Christmas in Red River, NM. We drove up there in two days, spending the night in Lubbock. We arrived in Lubbock kind of late, and we were tired. After we got the van unloaded, we set out in search of a place to eat. Within a few blocks of our hotel, we didn't find much that interested us, so we finally just went through the drive-through at Wienerschnitzel. The food was really awful, so Samuel dubbed it Wiener-shit-zel.

We had a proud parenting moment.

I just ran across the blog Death By Children, written by a stay-at-home dad. On his blog, that dad writes about his farting, scratching his nuts, his teenage daughter's boobs--all hilariously, and supposedly with the sanction of his kids.

On my blog, in contrast, you get a highly edited version of my life: you find out that I'm a geek, a liberal Christian, a liberal politically. But I write nothing that could (I hope) offend anyone I know. About the most personal insight into our family life that you get is how we arrange our mantel hooks at Christmas.

I'd love to be as funny as the Death By Children dad, and I'd love to be able to write about it on my blog, but my personality type is all about control and moderation. Don't get me wrong, I love being an introverted geek, but sometimes I'd just love to be able to throw all caution to the wind and write with passion and abandon. Oh well.

On Saturday evening, we attended our local high school's performance of Footloose: the Musical. The play is set in 1985, and it culminates with a formal dance. During the final scene, I noticed one actor wearing a baby blue tuxedo with navy trim and a ruffled shirt (like below, but without the vest). I wore that very tuxedo to the prom in 1980. After the play, I found myself standing in line next to the young actor who was still in costume. I told him that, in my opinion, he was the only actor in the scene wearing a period costume. I then remarked, "I'm not sure what's more unsettling: that I actually wore this tuxedo, or that I referred to it as 'period'!"

As I was writing the previous post, I first wrote "set my DVR to tape [Howard the Duck]." I quickly noticed it and changed it to 'record.'

I also often absentmindedly refer to my iPod as my Walkman, eliciting guffaws from Katie.

For years, my favorite movie ever was Howard the Duck. Based on its lack of success, it's safe to say that I was in small minority of the movie-going public. Last week, I noticed that it was coming on cable, so I set my DVR to record it. Katie, Samuel and I watched it last night. This was my first viewing in probably fifteen years, and I have to say, I didn't find it nearly as funny as before. But Samuel loved it! He watched it again this morning and has declared it his favorite movie.

If you've never seen HtD, I recommend you give it a try--if nothing else, for the 1980s big hair.

I'm a creature of habit. Almost every morning, I get one breakfast taco at Taco Cabana on my way to work. One taco costs $1.07, and I try to give exact change whenever possible (my OCD). Yesterday, I followed my routine.

On the way home from work, I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up a medication. When I got to the register, I was surprised to find that I had no cash--I remembered that I'd gotten a $20 bill the day before. While staring blankly at the pharmacy cashier, I quickly went through my routine. Suddenly, it hit me: yesterday morning, I'd given the Taco Cabana drive-through cashier $20.07, but because I was so accustomed to giving exact change, I didn't think about my change. Apparently, the cashier is also a creature of habit.

I figured the money was lost, but this morning I mentioned it to the Taco Cabana drive-through cashier. She immediately called over the manager on duty who said that the register was indeed about $20 over yesterday. He took my name, address and phone number (in case the corporate office checked it out, he said) and instructed the cashier to give me my $19 change. I drove off with my missing cash and today's taco (eggs and cheese, if you're wondering).

I got my vacation photos edited and posted to Flickr, along with some commentary about our trip.

We just returned from a winter vacation in Red River, New Mexico. We got stuck for two days in Santa Fe during the biggest snowstorm in decades, and had to drive home almost 1000 miles in one day. Stay tuned for vacation photos.

In case you're wondering, O N E L is this year's spelling of the mantel stocking hooks, created by Katie.

These are the two vegetables that we had with dinner the other night. I'm pretty sure our kids are totally unfamiliar with their proper names. But who cares? They both taste yummy with a little cheese sauce. Fortunately, they're both still to young to understand why I thought 'You want a little head?' (and variations thereof) is so funny.

A while back, I wrote about some annoying behavior with iTunes regarding podcasts. I've worked around that problem by adding my podcasts to playlists and syncing them as playlists instead of via the Podcasts sync screen.

This means that syncing podcasts to my iPod is not as automatic as it was before, but I don't mind managing a couple of playlists by hand. It also solves another minor problem: a couple of the podcasts that I subscribe to consist of very short recordings. I can listen to several of those during one commute. The problem is that if I play them via the Podcasts menu on my iPod, at the end of each one, I have to navigate from the top level menu back down to the podcast and play the next one. Not a great idea when I'm driving at 70 mph. But, if I add all of them to a playlist and play that, my iPod will just play one podcast after another.

Update January 11, 2007: Please see Apple's intended solution to this problem.

At the beginning of the month, I blogged about Austin's new toll expressways and their effect on my commute. Now that we've lived with them for almost a month, I'm having other thoughts.

Pflugerville has long been one of Austin's lesser known suburbs, and our subdivision is on the outskirts of Pflugerville. Now, all of a sudden, we have two expressways leading directly to Pflugerville, and more precisely, to our neighborhood's front door. A month ago, we would have been loath to go into Austin, or even nearby Round Rock, without a really good reason. Now, Round Rock has the closest shopping and running into Austin is largely not a big deal.

On top of all this is the feeling of impending doom development. Since we're at the intersection of two freeways, I think our area is about to become the new retail hub. In a couple of years, it will look nothing like it does today. Strange.

I've had a very predictable evening routine for the last several years. After dinner, get Samuel ready for bed. Then, at around 8:30 or so, I spent an hour or more on his second bed, usually with my laptop, because he would only go to sleep with someone in the room with him. After 60-90 minutes, when I was sure he was sound asleep, I'd slip out, maybe watch TV for 30 minutes and then retire myself at 10 p.m. or a little later.

A couple of months ago, we finally sought help on Samuel's sleep problems (the bedtime routine and the fact that he rarely stayed in his room the full night). Over the last few weeks, he started to sleep all night in his bed, but he was still resistant to going to sleep alone. He wanted to do so, but was still afraid. Then, week before last at bedtime, Katie asked him again, and this time he said that he would try it. He's gone to bed by himself almost every night since! He spent two nights over Thanksgiving weekend with his Uncle Jim, and he slept by himself in the gust room there. That was a very big accomplishment.

So, now I have my evenings again. Since Katie usually goes to sleep by 9:00 or so, it's nice to have time again with her again. But in addition to that, I have time to myself to do whatever I want. I'm still adjusting. So far, I've watched quite a bit of TV. But now that I'm getting tired of TV, I'm starting to pick up my former activities: I've been thinking about getting my needlepoint out again and I'm thinking about some personal programming projects.

Yesterday, we started discussing what craft we would do for Christmas gifts. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew, the kids and I were at Home Depot. We made a home portrait studio out of a 6' x 6' upright PVC frame, a 9'x12' dropcloth, and some clamp-on lights.

We set up our portrait studio in front of a big window for as much indirect natural light as possible, and we did two photo shoots over the weekend.

The result is the Xenadog Unleashed 2007 calendar that we have published on lulu.com. Get your copy now hot off the press!

Well, I took the new toll roads to work today. And my drive to work took me 20 minutes, versus my previous 40 minutes or so. Once the tolls are collected, it'll should cost me about $52/month. I guess it's worth that to cut my commute in half.

I took some photos on my way to work this morning:

November 1 marks the opening of the toll freeways in red on the map below. Although I'm fundamentally against the idea of toll roads, now that they're a fact, I'm sure we'll take advantage of them. If I choose to pay for it, my commute should go from 35+ minutes to around 15 minutes. I'll get on Hwy 45 about 1/2 mile from my house and exit Mopac (Loop 1) in front of my office.

Officials are saying that tolls will average $.10-.12 per mile, and I estimate that I'll have 10 miles of toll roads eacy way, so I'm calculating a cost of $40/month for saving that 30-40 minutes per day. Time is indeed money, so this seems like a good buy to me.

Click on the map image to see a larger version. The map is taken from here.

I'm generally a very tidy person. I like to think that I don't organize for its own sake (Katie's opinion would differ), but I definitely like to know where to find things. Even when I leave things out, I tend to leave them in the same place. Conversely, it drives me insane that Katie leaves the portable telephone wherever she was when she ended her last phone call.

But after reading Jason Levine's post about his new workbench, it dawned on me that my workbench is definitely the exception to my general tidiness.

As you can see from the photo, I just pile stuff on my workbench. Every few weeks, I go out and put everything away, but then I let it pile up again. The photo above is about in the middle of this cycle. It'll get a little worse before I get around to cleaning it off again.

I'm not really sure why my workbench is so messy. I suspect it's because I just don't have enough room to organize everything well in the garage. I'm thinking now that maybe I should rearrange the garage to make more storage space for tools and such. Unfortunately, that has to be a relatively low priority home improvement project. I've got several other more important tasks on my honey-do list.

Maybe I'll find some better organization alternatives when the new Ikea opens in the next couple of months.

Autumn sneaks up on us here in central Texas. First, it's August--hot and dry; the world turns brown. All you can do is hunker down and survive the heat. Then, in September, the first cold fronts start blowing through. They don't cool things down much, but the rain showers and then the dry north winds that blow for a couple of days remind you that it won't stay hot forever.

Immediately after the rain showers, things turn green again. But you see that some grasses stay brown. Then you also notice that the corn fields have been harvested and plowed under. In the couple of days after the cold front, the air and sunlight have a softer texture. A hint of things to come.

I remember previous generations remembering where they were or what they were doing when they heard about significant national events: assassination of JFK, attack on Pearl Harbor. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were that kind of event.

When I heard the first news of the events, I listening to NPR's Morning Edition as I was driving to work in downtown Austin. The first news broadcast was simply that an airplane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. In typical fashion, I immediately began to minimize what must have happened: a private airplane had somehow hit the tower, kind of like a bug hitting a windshield.

After I got to work, we listened to the radio for more news. At some point, my coworkers and I migrated from the radio to the company upstairs that had a TV in its lobby. We sat there, stunned, as the events unfolded. When it was finally clear that the events were over, we went back to our offices and worked the rest of the day. We had Hannah in private school in Austin at the time. Katie was out and about, so she went ahead over to the school. I believe she got Hannah out of school early, but I was adamant that there was no point in panicking; the chances of anything happening to us personally were astnomically low.

This morning, I called Katie from the office:

Katie: Hi honey. What's up?

Me: Just trying to get this damn release out the door.

Katie: That's what you always say.

Me: Well, we've been working on this release for a while.

Katie: No, I mean, that's what you always say at every company where you work.

I just helped Ducks in a Row software launch their new web site. They sell home inventory software, and--soon--other software for personal risk assessment.

This is how I spent my weekend. I installed ~400 square feet of parquet hardwood flooring. I'm glad to be at work on Monday so I can give my aching body some rest.

I'm spending the week on a business trip to San Jose. The company put me up at the very tony Valencia Hotel which is located in Santana Row. Wikipedia says that "Santana Row was intended to be Northern California's answer to Rodeo Drive featuring the one of the highest concentration of luxury retailers in the Western United States." Oh. My. God. I have never seen such conspicuous consumption, especially the cars. The hotel offers valet parking, but in the evenings, they park a few cars in front of the hotel, not in the garage. I'm not sure what it takes to get your car parked conspicuously on Santana Row, but tonight there was a blinged-out Rolls Royce and several other extremely expensive cars in the hotel's valet spaces. It's obscene, really.

UPDATE: A fellow hotel guest told me this morning that one of the other cars in front of the hotel last night was a sports car (I don't remember which brand) that sells for $1.2MM.

I seem to be experiencing another blogging lull. Mostly, it's caused by being more engaged in other areas of my life, especially my new job. Stay tuned; I'm sure I'll be posting more again soon.

Well, after lusting for one for a very long time, I bought myself a dSLR camera this past week. Here are some of my first photos. Nothing spectacular yet:

We're on vacation in Galveston this week, so there probably won't be any new blog posts. But I brought my laptop and our condo has WiFi, so I'm posting photos to flickr as they come off the camera (and get cleaned up). Check out our vacation photo set.

My conversation with Samuel on the way to school this morning:

Samuel: When I grow up, I'm going to be a little taller than you, and Hannah is going to be about the same as you.

Me: Yeah, that's probably about right, but I'm not sure Hannah will be quite that tall.

Samuel: Well, we're all going to tower over Takako. Even Mommy towers over Taka.

Me: Well, Mommy is a little taller than Takako, but I wouldn't say that she 'towers over' her.

Samuel: Well, the midget people who used to own the earth aren't taller than Takako.

Me: I'm afraid I'm not familiar with these midget people.

Samuel: You know, the midget people who used to own the earth.

[Pause while I try to figure this one out]

Me: Do you mean the ones from National Geographic?

Samuel: Yes, that's what I mean.

Our dogs lead good lives:

For my new job, I've been re-reading Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber. In the Introduction, the author says that common sense is a critical element of the processes that he outlines.

I'm usually wary of appeals to common sense, as they are often used in conjunction with various logical fallacies. In this case, however, I really like Schwaber's definition of common sense. He says that it "is a combination of experience, training, humility, wit and intelligence." It really surprised me to see humility and wit in his definition, and it was a good sign that I would like the author's point of view more generally.

This is Penny now. She's much more terrier-like than she was as a baby.

Three weeks ago, I started a new job: QA engineer with Borland Software. I couldn't be happier. The group that I'm working with is implementing a full-blown agile/scrum process. When I was interviewing with Borland, I told my interviewers that I'd used some agile methodologies in previous jobs. But now that I've been participating in a real agile methodology, I realize that there's a fundamental difference between adopting some of the methodologies and adopting the philosophy of agile/scrum: it's all about respect, truthfulness, collaboration, visibility, continual feedback, putting individual egos aside for the greater good, etc.

We had a crazy weekend. Katie's mother and aunt had been scheduled to move on Saturday, so we had planned to go to San Antonio to help with that. However, their move got postponed until Tuesday, so we drove down to help prepare for the upcoming move.

On Saturday evening, we celebrated a belated Passover Lite with Katie's dad's cousin and his wife, Bob and Paulina Polunsky. Hannah spent the night at the Polunskys', and Samuel, Katie and I stayed in a hotel (we'd planned for both kids to stay with Polunskys, but alas, that didn't work out).

During the night, the Easter/Passover bunny visited the kids at the Polunskys, so after an Easter breakfast of fried matzah at their house, we wrapped up our work for Mawmaw and Allie and hit the road home. I have to return on Tuesday to help with the rescheduled move.

I'm happy to report that today I launched a new design for ReligiousResources.org. I'm pleased with the design, but visitors to the site will not see the biggest improvements: I've completely reprogrammed the admin functionality (managing listings, etc.). But that change should make life much better for Susan, and will hopefully make the site more useful.

When I was reading this ask.metafilter.com thread the other day, something I've been thinking about for a while finally clicked. What caught my eye was that a few respondents mentioned the volume of music, in gigabytes, that they had downloaded from emusic.com back when it offered unlimited downloads.

Continue reading "Collecting"

David Brenner, an old friend from grad school whom we hadn't seen in about ten years, is in town for a convention, and he spent yesterday afternoon and evening with us. It was good to catch up with him again.

When I was growing up, our house was located at the very top of the Guadalupe river valley. We had a spectacular view to the southeast all the way across Canyon Lake to the other side of the county.

When I played trombone in middle school and high school, my parents made me practice outside (not a problem, since we had few neighbors). I remember the awesome echoes that I got with that. I would blast a loud short sound and just listen to the echoes.

Also, at one point we had a religious cult living in the old ranch house a couple of miles away. My friends and I would get on the garage with a telescope and spy on them, though we never saw anything extraordinarily weird take place.

Samuel has recently become a big Ben Folds fan. It started when Samuel discovered that Ben has a song with 'Stan' in the title. So, now when he listens to my iPod, he asks for 'the Stan song.' I carefully excluded this song from the playlist that Samuel listens to, but this past weekend, Samuel pointed out that I'd missed one song with objectionable lyrics. So, if Samuel starts using the F word, I guess I can just blame it on Ben Folds.

This MSNBC news article about cold-war era civil defense supplies having been found at the Brooklyn Bridge dredged up a childhood memory. I remember eating lemon hard candies that I thought were from civil defense caches. A quick Googling confirmed that they probably were indeed from a fallout shelter. The ones I remember were just like the yellow candies shown on this page.

The candies that I remember probably came from the grain elevator in Wichita, Kansas, that my maternal grandfather managed, which was a fallout shelter--though I'm not sure how the candies got from the shelter to my grubby little mouth.

Sorry the entries have been sparse around here lately. No particular reason; I've just been more focussed on day-to-day issues. Stay tuned.

So, Katie IMs me from home and mentions that our home (VoIP) telephone is not working. I respond: "So, is Internet access out also?" A second later I realize I asked her this via IM.

A small cool front moved through last night, bringing with it a thunderstorm and a little fresh, clear air. It made for glorious running weather this morning. I ran about eleven miles around Town Lake and up through west Austin (through Tarrytown to 35th, across MoPac and back down Shoal Creek).

At Auditorium Shores, I noticed on the side of the path a parked bike and an empty guitar case. A few yards later, Woode Wood was serenadiing the sunrise over Town Lake and downtown. I didn't stop to listen to him, but just his presence there made my morning brighter.

This afternoon, I spent some time browsing through Crap Cars at Barnes & Noble. This little not-terribly-witty book profiles about 50 of the worst cars sold in the U.S. during the driving lifetime of your average B&N customer--the last 40 years or so. I was dismayed, though not surprised, to find in this book two cars that I've owned:

1980 Chevrolet Citation

1975 Ford Mustang II

I really dislike Valentine's Day. I don't mind telling or showing my loved ones how much they mean to me, but Valentine's Day just seems like a totally artificial holiday. I'm anti-consumerist (to some small degree) and just generally passive aggressive. I don't like anyone telling me that I must show my love on this day, and that I really ought to do so by buying specific (overpriced) items.

This morning, a well-meaning elderly lady was coming out of the coffee shop as I was going in. She asked me, out of the blue, "Have you gotten a Valentine's Day gift yet for your wife? You'd better get on it. You should have seen all the men at the grocery store across the street." It took a lot of restraint not to tell her to go to hell. I know she was just trying to be nice, but she really rubbed me the wrong way.

I did my graudate education in literary/cultural theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which means I was thoroughly immersed in deconstruction and post-structuralism: truth is relative, our thinking and reality are limited by language, human relations are all about power, etc. I was hit with Derrida in my first semester of grad school and the theories of Michel Foucault figured prominently in my dissertation.

Some would find it odd, then, that I became a Christian in the midst of this education, what with faith's appeal to universal truth and the institutional nature of Christianity. I find deconstruction and post-structural theories interesting, useful and basically sound, but in retrospect, I think my embrace of faith represented an ultimate rejection of those theories. If you completely embrace those theories, the end result is hopelessness: we are each stuck in our own little reality--which itself might be an illusion--unable to genuinely communicate with others.

I guess I refused to go that far. I wanted and want to believe that there is some meaning to life. I'm not even sure that it's God, but in a community of faith, I found a group of people who also want to believe that it's possible to connect with others in a meaningful way (whatever that means).

Oh, I feel great ambivalence about the institutional nature of the church. And it's damn hard to cut through all the crap that constitutes our daily lives to get to know others intimately, but at least the members of a faith community profess to believe it's possible to do so. It's that belief--that faith--that counts. And occasionally, I actually glimpse that connection.

This morning, I ran the 3M Half Marathon for the third time. I'm happy to report that I'm getting faster as I age. I ran it in 1998 and finished in 1:40:00. In 2001, I finished in 1:38:30. This morning, however, I finished in 1:36:00! That's a 7:20 min/mile pace. Here are my general results and detailed results.

The half marathon is always a lot of fun. Here are some of the things I saw along the route this morning:

• a lederhosen-clad accodianist
• a kilt-clad bagpipe player
• unicyclists
• jugglers
• a juggler riding a unicycle
• a live band
• a terrified whitetail buck (with a big rack) next to Anderson high school

On Saturday, Samuel and I had a male bonding experience. We installed wire fencing around the bottom of our picket fence to keep his puppy Penny from escaping the back yard under the fence. Samuel and I went to Home Depot together to get the supplies, and then he helped me cut the fencing into strips and staple the strips to the bottoms of the pickets. He worked willingly and got tired before he got bored. Afterwards, he told Katie that he and I had had a really good time together.

I just wanted to document this experience to read again in eight or ten years when, I suspect, Samuel will not be so forthcoming with his help.

Taking the advice of my friend Rafe Colburn, last night I signed up with eMusic.com. I was not sure about it, since I couldn't view their catalog before signing up, but since they offered a no-strings-attached trial (I scrutinized the entire agreement), I decided to give it a try. Last night, I ended up downloading ALL of my trial songs (for the curious, I downloaded songs from Richard Shindell and They Might Be Giants) and converting to a subscription. I was impressed with their selection, their price and the fact that the MP3s aren't encumbered by DRM. The price and lack of DRM beats iTunes hands down.

As for their selection, it's not as extensive as iTunes, but it fits my music tastes perfectly. This is from eMusic's FAQ about their music selection:

Do you...

a) Already buy or download about one CD per month?
b) Listen to college radio or other non-profits? (Like KEXP or WFMU?)
c) Read music criticism? (Like Pitchfork, NYTimes, or Salon.com?)
d) Already troll the 'net for legitimate free Mp3s? (At Epitonic, BetterPropaganda, Insound?)
e) Go to three or four live performances a year?
f) Ever listen to stuff that is not pop, rock, or hip-hop?

If you answered yes to at least one or two of these questions, eMusic is probably for you. You'll be able to find plenty of stuff to listen to. Start by *browsing* rather than searching and check out what's really here. Also, you can ask on these message boards and you'll get a lot of recommendations, fast. And, of course, even if you aren't a hardcore music addict yet, eMusic is a great way to become one. You've been warned.

In a new blog post, John Scalzi recounts his move from print to online writing back in 1995. This is what John learned from the experience:

The most important thing the move taught me was simply this: There is always another way. What is required is the will to confront change from without and roll with it so it becomes change from within. My job came crashing down on me, and I had a choice of accepting it or finding another way. I found another way and and took it. My editors forced change on me; I turned it around and worked to make it a change on my terms. In this particular case I was fortunate that work I had been doing had prepared the way, so I could move quickly -- but even had I started from zero, with work another way would have presented itself in time.

I learned a similar lesson back in 1992-3. As I was getting closer to completing my Ph.D. in German, I realized that I no longer had a passion for my academic work and that my personality and work style were not well suited to an academic environment. I also noted the glut of freshly minted humanities Ph.Ds relative to the academic job openings. So, I made a conscious decision to be open-minded about other career opportunities. Because of this decision, I jumped at a part-time opportunity to work as a computational linguist. One thing led to another, and here I am today.

Some of my grad school associates think that I couldn't cut it in the academic world. Others think I sold out. There's some truth in both of those judgements, but there's also a certain amount of narrow-mindedness. But as I've aged, I've realized that my professional life is only a relatively small part of my identity. I'm very thankful to be able to provide for my family and to have a career that I find rewarding and intellectually stimulating in its own way.

We now have electrical utility deregulation in Texas. Sometime toward the end of last year, a salesperson for Reliant Energy showed up on our doorstep. Katie mistook this company for the company to which some neighbors had switched, and she agreed to switch service to them. When I got home that night, we decided we didn't want to switch after all.

In the packet that the Reliant salesperson had given Katie, I noticed a form to revoke our decision within three days. I faxed it in the next day. I never heard anything from Reliant, so I assumed all was well.

Well, at the end of December, we got a final bill from our previous provider. After several long telephone calls, I determined that Reliant put in the switch request to our old provider, but then never set up an account for us. As far as I can tell, we've been getting free electricity since December 16th. Unfortunately, I'm too upstanding to let that continue. I re-established service with our previous provider today (though I think we still get almost a month of free electricity, as they will establish new service for us this week). Gotta love bureaucracy.

P.S. Too bad the free month was in winter, not in August.

We spent three days visiting our friends Tommy and Frannie Marek at Swan Lake Ranch. You can see all of our photos here.

When I'm driving by myself in slow traffic, I absentmindedly read the license plates of all the cars around me. I chalk it up to boredom and a little OCD. I can't recall a license plate number a few seconds after the car passes, but I'm concerned my mind is actually storing them all away in long term memory. My fear is that when I'm old and senile, I'll start babbling out all the license plate numbers I've read over the years. I can just see myself slumped in my wheelchair, drooling, and saying "W12-TXL, BB3-56J. Oh! RTL-3S4!", etc.

I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this photo. First it was a 'Weather Photo of the Day' on the local TV news. Now it has been accepted to the Enchanted Ceiling project. I'm not sure there are especially stringent criteria for the project, but I thought it was kind of interesting.

The Taylor family wishes you Happy Holidays 2005!

(our Christmas photos)

Yesterday, I put down laminate flooring in the downstairs bathroom. Installing the flooring was as easy as the Lowe's employee had promised, but I had a few problems figuring out which way 45 degree miter cuts went on the quarter round moulding. Fortunately, a couple of extra pieces of moulding only set me back a few extra dollars.

My family has a history of mangling or chopping off appendages. My grandfather hit his knee with an axe and it was stiff the rest of his lfe; my dad ground the toes off of one foot in an industrial accident; and my mother lost a finger in a recreational accident. Katie lives in constant fear that I'll be the next victim.

Yesterday I was working with a borrowed power miter saw. With my family history, I should have realized that Katie wouldn't find it very funny when I came in from the garage with a towel around a finger and saying I'd had a little accident.

If you think Heather Armstrong's dog Chuck is gross, check this out: back when we used to leave Tippie free in the house while we weren't home, sometimes we would come home to find the bathroom trash can tipped over and Tippie running around with a string hanging from her mouth or bits of adhesive backed absorbent material stuck to her snout. She quickly gained the nickname 'Kotex.' For obvious reasons, we now put Tippie in a crate (let's be real, it's a cage) when we're away from home.

As you can see in the photo below, Penny has made herself quite at home with Xena. With Tippie, not so much, though.

So far, our new dog Penny is known in our household by these alternate appellations: Pen-Pen, Wenny the Poo, the Tootsie Roll factory, Chi-Hua-Hua (pronounce each vowel), Terriwawa, Puppy Doodle.

Samuel's new puppy Penny has made herself right at home with us

Relaxing on the couch with Xena:

Sleeping on my neck:

Samuel and Penny watching the fire in the fireplace:

Katie really likes to listen to music when she drives, especially when she's alone in the car. Last summer, we got her a new(er) van, but it doesn't have a CD player like our old one. Katie has been asking ever since if we could get a CD player installed. I told her that it's obsolete technology: she should just get an iPod that she can use in the car and elsewhere.

But, because she didn't really understand why an iPod was better, we haven't done anything about music in the car for her. Well, about three weeks ago, my brother-in-law bought me an iPod Nano, and this morning, Katie took it with her to work for the first time. As soon as she got to her office, Katie called me and said: "I want to marry your iPod!" I asked her if she now understood what I'd been telling her for months, and she agreed that she did indeed. I'd better start figuring out how to get her an iPod; she was threatening to kill me so she could inherit mine.

They say that the weather in Texas changes quickly. (Of course, I've heard the same declaration about other places I've lived). That's certainly not true in the summer, which is predictably hot and sticky. But this time of year, we do live up to that claim. Yesterday, it was in the mid 80s and very humid. We got a cold front through during the night, so it's in the 40s with a brisk north wind this morning. Today's high will in the low 50s. Fun.

A couple of years ago, we bought four Christmas stocking hooks that sit on the mantel. Each has a big brass letter on it, and they're intended to spell NOEL. But we decided that's too boring. We now have a new Christmas tradition: each year, a different member of the family spells something else. Last year we celebrated the first LEON. This year, Hannah spelled LONE.

My wife Katie is a former United Methodist minister. She served a parish for 2.5 years in the late 90s before deciding parish ministry was not for her. It's a long story, but this post isn't about her experience in ministry; it's about mine.

Even now, almost ten years later, I'm still coming to grips with how totally unprepared I was to be the preacher's wife. The biggest problem was that I had no idea that many parishoners hold the minister (and her family) to a different (higher?) standard from other people.

This is Samuel's early Christmas gift. Her name is Penny, she's half-chihuahua, half-terrorist, and about six weeks old.

I dreamt last night that I was explaining different types of taxation (flat tax, progressive taxation) to a group of ten-year-olds. I was able to explain it clearly, the kids understood, and they engaged in intelligent discussion about it. When I recounted my dream to Katie this morning, she replied that it was an odd coincidence: taxation is this week's subject in the freshman studies course she's teaching. Though, she added, sometimes it feels like she's trying to teach this stuff to ten-year-olds.

The latest trend to sweep blogdom, it seems, is to tell how you got 'into computers'. So, I thought I would add my story.

Continue reading "My path to geekdom"

This morning, Alpha, our betta fish who has been with us for several years, went to that great aquarium in the sky. Katie gets the unenviable task of burying him at sea. You'll be missed, Alpha...at least until we replace you.

Last week, I submitted this photo to KVUE news' daily weather photo contest. Yesterday I was notified that my photo will be the photo of the day for November 1. So, if you live in Austin, watch KVUE news that evening, or check their web site afterwards to see my photo. I hope this isn't my allotted 15 minutes of fame. I envisioned something greater.

This seems to be the only photo on Flickr tagged with Segway and ostrich. Who would have guessed?

I might be a few years behind the trend, but I got to ride a Segway this weekend. I have to say, it was fun and interesting, but not that big a deal.

UPDATE: Check out all of our photos from last weekend's adventure in Plantersville.

Batman just doesn't look so tough with his front teeth missing

Our first cool front of the fall blew through a couple of days ago. And for the first time in the almost three years we've lived in this house, it didn't bring with it the smell of sewage. There's a small wastewater treatment plant about two blocks north of us, and it really smells. Due to the stench, the city has been planning for several years to close it. When we moved in, we were told the project was 18 months from completion. The neighbors told us, however, that it had been 18 months from completion for a couple of years already. But the city finally did close the plant a couple of months ago. Big difference!

On Friday, sixteen families in our neighborhood rented a party barge together and had a good time out on Lake Travis. This was my favorite photo from the day:

Don't gossip about one coworker to another co-worker via instant message!

This afternoon, I wanted to say something less than flattering to coworker #1 about coworker #2, but because #2 was on my mind, I double clicked on his name in my buddy list instead of #1's, and I sent the snide comment directly to #2. Doh!

Fortunately, my comment wasn't terribly bad, and coworker #2 is generally good natured and understands that this kind of thing happens, so the damage wasn't too bad--this time.

Not like the time I wanted to make a comment about my boss and made the same mistake.

This morning, my cousin Shannon in California called. She and her husband are thinking about opening their home to hurricane Katrina refugees. She had found my blog, read my posts about hurricane Katrina and called to ask me if I knew how they could go about finding someone to stay with them.

I have only seen Shannon once in our adult lives--at my grandfather's funeral--but it was so cool that my blog brought us together, and for such a good cause.

I'm happy to report that I scored 90% on this eighth grade math test. And I only got the one question wrong due to an incorrect calculation, not because I didn't know how to figure the answer (not that an eighth grade math teacher would care much about the reason).

Sucker, that is...

This morning, I walked the kids to school. Well, Hannah usually walks ahead with her friends and I accompany Samuel. A small crowd of moms and kids was gathered next to the school building as Samuel and I neared. We saw a young cat emerging from the downspout and a mom trying to help it without touching it.

I reached down and scooped up the cat. The woman looked at me and said, "Your daughter was just here. She said that you would pick it up." I carried the kitten around the school while I dropped Samuel off, took it home and set it up in the spare dog cage. We'll decide what to do with it this evening.

Sorry I haven't blogged much lately. Two reasons, one short-term, one longer.

First, the short-term reason: I had knee surgery this past Wednesday.

The longer-term reason: upon my return from vacation a few weeks ago, I made a few resolutions, among them not to surf the web so much. Less time spent wandering the digital back alleys has resulted in fewer things to blog about.

Poor Samuel has lost all four of his upper and bottom front teeth, though the bnew bottom teeth are coming in pretty quickly (Aside: isn't that the cutest face you've ever seen? I'm not biased or anything)

Katie and I have a long history of adapting songs to fit out pets. Two of my favorites: our former cocker spaniel had problems with his anal glands and would frequently drag his ass across the floor (gross, I know). This action became known as the 'Butt Scootin' Boogie'. And at one point, we lived in a two-story townhome; when our 20-pound cat would jump down from the furniture to the floor upstairs, we could hear his landing loudly downstairs, at which point we broke out in 'I fell the earth move under my feet...'

Thankfully, Samuel's new kindergarten teacher apparently doesn't read my blog (like who does?); this morning, she let Samuel into her classroom and she didn't send me to the principal to have my mouth washed out with soap.

Samuel starts kindergarten this week. In preparation, Katie bought him a new lunchbox and water bottle. The water bottle has a liquid-filled insert that you can put in the freezer, let freeze, and then insert into the bottle to keep your drink cold. Samuel thinks it's really cool.

I kept referring to the insert as an 'ice dildo' due to its shape. Katie suggested I stop using this reference lest Samuel pick up the usage and get expelled from kindergarten before he even gets going.

I've posted photos from our vacation to flickr.

We just spent a week in the mountains of New Mexico with no TV, radio, recorded music or computer. It was blissful. I took along a book, some magazines and some needlework, but the most I managed to accomplish was to read a few National Geographic articles. I have little idea what happened in the world last week, and I don't really care.

Based on that experience, I'm vowing to do the following now:

• Watch less television


• Surf the Internet less; specifically, I have a list of web sites that I visit pretty much daily. I'm removing a couple of those


• Spend more quiet time (facilitated by the previous two items)


• Read more

We'll see how it goes...

We just returned from a very relaxing short vacation in the mountains of southern New Mexico. Getting back into the swing of things again...

Katie and the kids are visiting family and friends in San Antonio this week, so I'm living the bachelor life. So, I took myself to see War of the Worlds the other evening. It was the first time in months that I've gone to the movie theater, and the first time in years I've been to see a movie that wasn't appropriate for children.

I have to say that having a DVR and DVD player at home completely changed my movie-watching experience. First off, I had to sit captive through 25 freakin' minutes of deafening commercials before the movie started (I arrived 10 minutes before the posted start time, and commercials continued for 15 minutes after that time). Additionally, I couldn't stop the movie to go to the bathroom or back it up to hear or see something that I missed.

I frequently walk the dogs off their leashes in the fields between the golf fairways near our house. In the late evening and early morning, we frequently encounter rabbits in the open on the edges of the fairways. Xena has become an avid rabbit hunter, but she remains a terrible one. She just doesn't see the rabbits until she practically trips over them. Tippie, on the other hand, spots them from a distance and gives a try at catching them (NOTE: Tippie has never come close to actually catching a rabbit, and I don't expect either dog ever to catch one).

This morning, the reason for this difference finally dawned on me: Tippie is sight-oriented; Xena is smell-oriented. While she's running around, Tippie has her head up looking a ways in front of her. Xena, on the other hand, has her head down and her nose working furiously. She's an enthusiastic hunter because she smells the rabbits, but she can't actually locate one that's in the open because her attention is on the smells in her immediate vicinity. Before she gets close enough to smell a rabbit, it has already run into the weeds.

I ran across this quote by St. Augustine this morning:

Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.

Katie and I have recently been given the challenge of puting St. Augustine's advice into practice. You see, a friend of ours is now serving the first of a seven-year sentence in federal prison. He is not a close friend: I would characterize him as having a close connection to us through an accident of time, place and circumstance.

Continue reading "Time, place or circumstance"

I've fallen off the face of cyberspace the last two days. I was in San Antonio because my mother had surgery to implant a device that will hopefully reduce her Parkinson's disease symptoms. The surgery went very well, but they won't turn the device on for six weeks, so we have to wait until then to know how much it helps with her symptoms.

Today, my lovely wife (of 20+ years) celebrates her fortieth birthday.

On Saturday, while I was mowing the yard, I noticed a big box turtle out on the greenbelt behind the yard. When I went to look at it, I realized it had its butt stuck in a damp hole in the ground. Apparently, it was laying eggs. It stayed in the same position for at least an hour. Later I noticed it was gone; the hole was completely filled in and the only way I could even find it was that the dirt was a little damp in that spot.

OK, let's see if I really do have any readers here. I need some advice.

It's about our dog Tippie. She's half Husky, half German Shepherd, and she's 11 or 12 years old now. Under normal circumstances--when we're home with her--Tippie is a great dog: loving, gentle with the kids. She's in excellent physical health for her age.

But she has always been high strung: very energetic and prone to occasional bouts of anxiety. In particular, she is afraid of loud, unfamiliar noises. That makes fireworks and thunderstorms a problem. If something scares her, she tends to dig and chew at doors and windows. We've replaced many a door casing and window screen over the years.

Her anxiety level has increased over the years. Many years ago, thunderstorms didn't really bother her. Now, she paces around the house and digs at corners until we tranqualize her.

Due to the damage that Tippie occasionally inflicts on the house, about a year ago or so, we started crating her when we're not home. She goes willingly to the crate, but she cries and digs at it.

A few months ago, she started peeing in her crate occasionally. Now, she pees every time we put her in it. She holds her bladder all night in the house, and we had her checked out by the vet, so we don't think it's anything physiological. The vet thinks it's mental. So, we put her on Prozac a couple of months ago: 20 mg every other day. That seems to make her slightly mellower, but it hasn't had any visible effect on her worst symptoms: the peeing and anxiety attacks.

The vet is currently investigating other pysch meds for her. I thought I'd see what advice my readers (assuming I have any) can offer. Please leave a comment on this post or send me an email.

We spent Memorial Day weekend on my sister Andrea's new ranch south of San Antonio, doing all kinds of things we don't get to do much: riding horses and ATVs, shooting guns, cooking over a camp fire. I've posted a bunch of photos from our weekend on my web site. Mosey on over and check them out.

Steve over at theSneeze.com has a new rant about The Wiggles. Steve is funny, as usual, but while I was reading his post, it hit me