Looks like my volume of unread mail has passed the “too much” threshold and has hit the level of “down right evil”.

 

As the years go by I get more and more blasé about celebrating New Year’s Eve. I’m not quite at the point where I need to whip out the walker, but staying up to midnight just to so I can shout “Woo! Goodnight!” doesn’t have the appeal it used to.

New Year’s Eve 2007/8

While I don’t have to worry about the sleep deprivation or hangover there still is post-party fallout to deal with: going into work and facing the inevitable “so... what did you do for New Year’s Eve?”

Well, I, for one, am not going to worry this year. I’m going to party my socks off.

At least, as far as you know.

Lay the ground work

You can’t just roll into a night of non-partying unprepared, you will have to get your act together first.

1. Make sure everyone knows you’re serious about tonight

With all the twittering, facebooking, texting, etc. going on these days, you can’t just show up to your fake party unannounced. First thing you need to do is publicize how excited you are about the upcoming festivities. Make sure it’s suitably vague but extraordinarily enthusiastic. I recommend the use of caps and exclamation points.

“I’m SOOOO stoked for tonight!!!!!”

2. Do a little alibi building

These days people don’t just expect you to have fun, they expect you to prove it. Any party animal worth their salt leaves a wake of twitpics, facebook albums and confetti where ever they go. To get ready, take your camera, wait until it’s dark out, then step outside and take a picture of yourself. Most party pictures are the same: bright flash and dark background.  Smile like you’re having fun and you can pass off the dark background as just about anywhere. Plus, the dark background allows you to stick yourself into other party pics as needed.

Party like you mean it

People now expect you to be partying, and you have photos to back it up with some good times. The key is to keep your fans in the loop throughout the evening. Since watching Golden Girls then nodding off at 8:30 isn’t going to cut it, you’ll need to get some fun ready before you turn in. Fortunately you won’t need to stay up late, you’ll just need to have your computer do the partying for you. Set up a bunch of “parking sucks!”, “awesome fireworks!” and “i’m soo drbunk” e-mails and then have your e-mail client or a web service like time cave trickle out the evidence over the course of the night.

Having a little bit of “real fun” couldn’t hurt either. Satellite, cable TV and even the interwebs give you a great opportunity to still ring in the new year, just celebrate with your fellow humans a few time zones to your east. Here on the west coast I was free to count down the new year’s ball drop in Times Square with my buddy Ryan Seacrest. Just don’t forget, this is also an opportunity for some more party evidence: turn up the volume on your TV and get a little video of you counting down, cheering and singing “Old Ironsides” (or whatever that once-a-year song is). Just be sure to keep the video tight on you, show just the ceiling or the TV behind you. If you don’t have a partner-in-crime to smooch, just fumble the camera to your chest like you’re getting unexpected hugs. Either that or you can kiss your cats.

Seal the deal

What’s a good time without a bit of lasting pain? When you get up on January first be sure to complain to all your virtual friends. Depending on how hard you “partied” you can make a post about anything from how tired you are to your splitting headache to how you woke up next to a tranny.

One request: if you do plan on waking up next to a tranny, please friend me first. I really want to see the reactions.

 

When weather, traffic or other conditions delay my packages it’s all good and well. The shipping companies can’t be penalized when a package gets delayed due to outside influences.

If my package were to arrive early, however, that’d be great. FedEx, though, has decided that it’s too early to deliver my package. Turns out that if a shipper pays for three-day shipping it doesn’t mean that a package will be delivered in three-days-or-less, it means three days. We wouldn’t want anyone to get two-day shipping for the price of three now, would we?

Taking off my cynical, the man’s out to get me hat for just a moment, I could imagine there’s a perfectly reasonable, logistical business decision for this move. If you have too many packages to handle on a given day (perhaps we’re getting into holiday shipping season) it may be a good idea to hold back packages that won’t be late.

It really comes down to this: it’s MY package and I want it! GIMME! FedEx must realize that, other than my wife, I’m the most important thing in their world. Apparently the memo hasn’t circulated yet.

 

Well, nothing to do with jewelry per se, but I did replace my own watch batteries tonight.

Over the past year my watches have been slowly dropping off, about one per month. A few weeks back my last running watch finally ran out of will. I had a drawer of 10-15 watches, all without juice and being a cheap bastard I couldn’t bring myself to take them to a jeweler and pay $10 and up per watch to have 40 cent batteries put in them.

Lucky for me there’s this cool thing called the Interwebs. A watch back removal tool from eBay and a pile of batteries from watchbatteries.com and I’m back to being on time again!

I learned two things:

1. You can save money replacing your own watch batteries
2. If there are tiny screws between you and the battery, let a jeweler do it

 

There was a snowstorm predicted for Wednesday... but it waited until Thursday instead.

I went into work in the morning for a bit to get some work done, the remote connection servers are swamped by everyone trying to WAH (work at home).  To make sure I didn't get trapped at the office I left at lunch time.  All the stranded cars and the continued snow assured me I made the right decision.

Other than peaceful white coating, the weather has another fun benefit: wildlife. Our bird feeder has a constant crowd of patrons and our hummingbird feeders are helping the littlest customers stay warm (yeah, who knew that hummingbirds stayed here year round?). The cold also brought us a brand new visitor: a pair of coyotes. They must have come up from the park at the end of our street looking for food.

I was able to get some quick pictures of the hummingbirds, quail and coyote, they're in our big snow gallery.

With the fierce competition for connectivity to Microsoft I won't get much work done... but that does free me up to watch the show.

 

My parents were in town for Thanksgiving and I've been enjoying Thanksgiving dinner for four days now, but it all started with Thursday's spread.

 

(Before and after... yum)

 

It's stuff like this that makes e-mail fun at work.

Tim e-mailed to let the SharePoint team know he was working at home sick, this was the exchange we had...

Tim:

Hi Team,

I’m going to stay at home with the germs. I heard that it was a popular pastime for the team these past couple weeks.

Tomatoes are not to blame! Please, don’t turn against them.

And don’t worry too much about me; I took a vitamin (Flintstones COMPLETE [More COMPLETE with Choline]) , so everything should be fine.

Sincerely,
-Tim

Reeves:

Since Fred is bigger than Barney is he more nutritious?

Tim

I’d have to assume that Fred’s additional mass of chalk and artificial sweetner contributes no nutritional value.

I imagine molds of many characters, each receiving the same miniscule scoop of vitamins and minerals, moving down a conveyer to a second, varying-sized treatment of filler.

I don’t know if they do anything to even out the nutritive content. Perhaps they’re all liquids that eventually bake or cool.

When they’re formed, they go into a bottle and then I eat them.

That’s how health works.

---

You want to know the rest of what's in Flintstones?

 

I had a glass or orange juice then brushed my teeth.  Ah, refreshing.

Why does it taste horrible if I drink orange juice after I brush my teeth but it's tasty when I brush my teeth after I drink orange juice?

---

Oh, turns out the orange juice I like is made by Coca Cola company... who knew?

 

This is much more exciting to me than it is to the rest of the world.  I have cleared my inbox and my workload is now tracked by my task list.

Why is this good?  It now means that I'm not using my inbox to figure out what I need to do next.  Why is that bad?  Because the contents of my inbox are controlled by everyone else more than they are controlled by me... makes it hard for me to be in control of my tasks.

Now I need to actually get the stuff done.  The upside is I know what the stuff is.

 

The stress of moving and changing jobs has kind of put me off blogging... so for updates I refer to you Paula's blog.  She has been much better than I about blogging as of late.

At any rate... after a much delayed flight from Dublin to Chicago we're relaxing in the American Airlines Admiral club.  I must say, AA is going down hill.  The aircraft here from Dublin was a total beater (our seats had no functioning lights and the channels on the AV system wouldn't change).  The Admiral's club is not much better, the seats all look like the upholstery hasn't been cleaned in a decade.

Yep, delaying my flight for several hours forcing me to have a 5 hour layover makes me grumpy.

Bah!

 

Paula and I are complete old fogies... we rang in 2008 from bed.  On the plus side... it's the first time in several years we've actually been awake at midnight.

Have a wonderful, safe and peaceful 2008!

 

I've got a new job (soon)!  The beginning of next year I'll be joining the Sharepoint team in Redmond, Washington.  I'm super-excited about this new position.  I'll be moving into the greater Office organization and getting a chance once again, to work with friends from the past. 

While Paula and I are both really excited to be moving to Redmond we're still a little bit stressed and sad.  We're facing down our second international move in less than two years (can you say "gluttons for punishment"?) and are a little disappointed to be leaving Ireland. We love the Irish people, the country and especially the convenient travel.

We will, however, be over the hump soon and are working hard to distract ourselves (went to Waterford last weekend, going to Spain this weekend, going to western Ireland in early December and to New York for Christmas with my sister <phew>). 

January 14th is my first day... so I'm sure the time will fly.

 

Okay, I'm starting to get my head back above water. 

Paula and I got back from Germany last Tuesday,  and Thursday our friend Max flew in from Colorado.  We went from ten days of touring Germany with my parents to five days of touring Ireland (well, Paula and Max did most of the touring... I dug through e-mail ).

And now more fun news, our friend Christopher is going to come stay with us next week!  We're both stoked to have yet another visitor from the states.  We really enjoy living in Ireland but do miss our friends tremendously.

 

Every once in a while, when I'm rinsing a spoon, I manage to put it in the flow of the tap just right and spray myself.  What a pain.

What if, however, someone clever stuck a spoon on the back of a toothbrush?  Well, you'd get the Brush & Rinse, of course.

 

As we age, men slowly gain an understanding of what and what not to wear but some never get it.  As someone who's figured out some of the dos and don'ts in life I thought I'd pass on some info which is self-evident to most... but not obvious to all.

Wearing things on your belt does not make you look like Batman

Trust me here, there are very few situations where you can safely wear something on your belt and not look like a dork.  Things you shouldn't hook to your belt include compact cameras, leather man pocket tools, pagers and cell phones.  I know, wearing a cell phone on your belt makes you kind of feel like you have a holster... but honestly, it doesn't make you look like Han Solo.  

Speaking of cell phones, here's another one:

Unless you're talking on the phone, take off your Bluetooth headset

If your cell phone holster makes you feel like a cowboy then your Bluetooth headset must make you feel downright special forces.  Sorry, it doesn't look like a military-issue comm set and people aren't giving you extra looks because you're so ultra-manly cool.  Here's a quick tip: if you're eating dinner in a restaurant, enjoying a meal with your date... take off the ear-tumor.  First, you shouldn't answer a call during a romantic meal out.  Second, you're not so important that you should answer a call during a romantic meal out.  But it probably doesn't matter... if you're wearing an ear piece during meals you won't be eating with company long... she's already planning on breaking up with you Sgt. Rock.

And while you're taking off that silly earpiece...

Not even movie stars look cool wearing sunglasses inside

I suppose there's one exception, Jack Nicholson... but that's all I'll give you.  Everyone else who wears sunglasses inside is just kidding themselves.  This goes double if the sun isn't even up.  Stevie Wonder, you're on notice, you poseur.

Coming soon

In my next men's fashion advice column please look for additional gems such as:

• If you're over 40, make sure your shirt has sleeves
  and
• Only .1% of the population can get away with wearing bike shorts (even fewer, a Speedo)

But wait... there's more

My new teen fashion blog will debut shortly.  Here's a teaser:

• Leave your PJs at home, why advertise you're lazy and your parents have no control over you?
  and
• No, your "Spoiled Princess" T-shirt isn't cute, but until the FDA legislates warning labels for brats, keep wearing it.

 

It's July 14th... hard to believe we've been in Ireland for a year already.  My official first day at work was the 17th (a Monday) but Paula and I arrived the Friday before to start getting settled in. 

Time has gone by very quickly and we're still having a blast.  Here's to another great year (and to getting our friends from California to come visit ;)).

 

This is the type of really, really important stuff I spend time thinking about... 

As I was hanging our new shower curtain I wondered... who decided there should be 12 holes in the curtain?  Someone, at some point, decided to make a shower curtain with 12 holes... who were they?  Why did they pick the number 12?  Why did everyone else say "12? That's genius! I'll put 12 in mine too."  Our shower curtain from Pottery Barn has 12 holes, the liner we bought from Target has 12 holes and the set of curtain rings we bought in Ireland came in a pack of 12.

 

I don't know why I do it, but often when I hear a sound I feel compelled to mimic it.  More often than not I mimic it badly.  Perhaps if I did it well Paula would find it less annoying... but I don't do it well.

Here's what life is usually like:

Getting into an elevator:

Elevator: "Ding!"
Reeves: "Ding!"
Paula: "Stop it"

Paula walking around wearing flip-flops:

Flip-flops: "Snap, snap, snap.."
Reeves: "Snap, snap, snap.."
Paula: "Stop it"

When a bass-happy import car drives by:

Car: "Ooots, oots, oots..."
Reeves: "Ooots, oots, oots..."
Paula: "Stop it"

And just yesterday, pouring wine:

Wine bottle: "Glug, glug, glug..."
Paula: "Glug, glug, glug..."
Reeves: "That's my job"
Paula: "It's been thirteen years... something is bound to rub off"

I'm so proud of her. 

 

Saint Patrick's day for most of the US (except for perhaps, Boston and New York) is much like Saint Valentine's day: serious stuff... provided you work at Hallmark.  It was, however, a bit surreal for Paula and me... being our first year living in Dublin, Ireland.

 There were a bunch of events going on in downtown Dublin this weekend, but since Paula is still recovering from being sick we decided to just go to the St. Patrick's day parade.  There were a ton of people downtown and it was fun to check out the scene.  Talking to my Irish co-workers it was interesting to find out that many in Ireland view Saint Patrick's day as a minor, artificial holiday.  That said, the Irish people are a social lot and love an excuse to get together (which also explains the third-floor party with a chicken and cow... sort of).

Given the crowds, we couldn't really see the parade all that well... but we're both a fan of people watching, so that provided a ton of entertainment in its own right.  Here's an interesting fact: the first Saint Patrick's day parade wasn't in Ireland, but in America (in New York or Boston, depending on whom you choose to believe).  I suppose that explains why the majority of people in silly leprechaun hats didn't have Irish accents and hotels which normally charge 90 Euro a night were charging 300 this weekend.  Moichandising!

---

Food Note:

When we got done with the crowds we were having trouble picking out where to grab some lunch.  I have a weakness for good pie (especially blueberry) and so when I saw the restaurant "Delish", which billed itself as a "pie cafe & juice bar" I had to drag Paula in to check it out.

Turns out that "pie" means "pot pie"... and I also love a good meat pie.  Paula had the beef and cheese pie while I ordered the chicken, ham and leek pie.  Toss in a side of mash (mashed potatoes) with gravy and you've got some serious comfort food.  It was also seriously tasty.  I recommend it if you're in downtown Dublin and looking for a bit of nosh to warm your belly.

 

The Irish government has generously acknowledged that we all work too hard and have declared today, March 1st, to be "Work Life Balance Day".  In order to help us out they have... thank the maker... created a web site!  I feel much better now.

The Work Life Balance web site has lots of information, but the most helpful thing on the site by far is their 142 page report which includes qualitative results for employers and employees.  Having a very short attention span, I jumped straight to the Policy Measures/Interventions on the employee section.  I examined the 10 bullet points find the holy grail of... uh... doing stuff to not work too hard while keeping up the respect of coworkers and continuing to earn promotions...  and took away these two things from the list that I'll need to address:

1. "Change in the culture of organizations, i.e. male attitudes [...]"
   
   Given we have no women on our team as of yet, I'm going to work with my coworkers to rotate the responsibility of having a female attitude.  With our team of 9 I think a good balance would be two or three people each week taking on the role, bringing in the much needed female qualities our team lacks (empathy, fashion sense and a general distaste for fart jokes).  They won't, however, need to wear a skirt... that would be silly.
   
2. "Remove the mythology behind work-life balance arrangements."
   
   This is going to be a tougher one to implement.  To date we've been able to keep people slaving away at their computers with the threat of a Minotaur which roams the halls until 7pm.  Granted, it also means I can no longer go home early every Thursday using the excuse "Sorry, I need to pick my Unicorn up for school, my wife is at her mermaid husbandry class."

Speaking of husbandry... women in Ireland get 26 weeks of maternity leave.  Their husbands? 1-3 days.  Uh, oh... I feel some male attitude coming back.

 

Okay... what have I learned today?

1. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
2. Ignoring rule number 1 should only be proceeded by backing up your crap.
3. For those who are too lazy or too confident to pay attention to either of the first two rules, this advice: don't dick around with it... dummy.
4. Don't be a cheap bastard and use RAID striping instead of buying a full sized disk (unless you're dealing with data that is totally expendable).
5. It takes a really long time to rip 870+ CDs... you don't want to imagine having to do it twice. 
6. The perceived time it takes for Windows to start up increases in  logarithmic proportion to the amount of data you think you have just lost.
7. System restore can save your butt.
8. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. (that deserves mentioning twice)

Okay, what ruined my day you ask?  This morning, before going into work, I did a quickie web search to see if there were Vista-compatible drivers for my RAID card.  This weekend I plan on installing Vista on my home machine and I realized I needed to lay some groundwork first... like making sure there were drivers for the various bits of hardware I have.  So, there are Vista drivers, Yay! 

So, genius boy here decides to download and install the new driver at 7:30 in the morning before going to work.  Heck, it's for the card I have, no need to worry about something going wrong (sure, it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time).  A quick install and reboot later and my 500 gig music drive is suddenly two 250 gig, unreadable drives.  I almost cried.

Knowing I had to go to work and didn't have time to futz with the damn thing I just shut down, kicked myself, packed up to go to work, then kicked myself again.

The worst part of it all was that as soon as I wasn't focused on a task at work my mind would wander and ...

"CRAP!!!! I SO SCREWED MYSELF!!!!"

If I had only bought two 500 gig drives instead four 250 gig drives the failure would have been no big deal... I'd have had two identical copies of my data (see rule number four above).  Given my RAID array wasn't fully bullet-proof (and running just fine, thank you very much) I really shouldn't have even played with it in the first place (see rule's number one and three).  And so on...

All day I kept re-living my idiocy.  As soon as I could reasonably leave work I came straight home (panicking again every time my mind would wander at a stop light), dropped my coat just inside the front door and ran straight upstairs to sit down in front of my computer... the machine which I had so unceremoniously raped this morning.

I tried a couple of things, each requiring what seemed a stupendously long reboot time.  It's amazing how painful it is to watch what usually seems a reasonably quick boot time when you're imagining your entire CD collection going through a digital paper shredder.

In the end I did what I should have done first thing this morning, I used system restore to put my machine back in the state it was before I installed the drivers this morning.  Well, actually, what I should have done first thing this morning was poke myself in the eye with a pencil, and then kick myself for even considering updating the drivers for my RAID card when there was nothing wrong with it's operation to begin with, followed by poking myself in the other eye to ensure I was unable to see well enough to screw myself. 

Honestly, sometimes I have the common sense of a small soap dish.

 

Saw this on Christopher's site (he saw it on Trina's site (she got it from her brother-in-law (he saw it on CC Chapman's site (he got it as a chain mail from his sister))))... have I mentioned I have trouble staying on track?  Where was I?  Oh yes... 

The general idea is this: put your entire music library on shuffle, write down the first 14 tracks and slot them in for these pre-set sections of your life movie (rules, my play list and movie scenes below).

So, here's the thing, I wanted to link to clips of each of the tracks so people would be able to listen to them if curious, but Amazon doesn't have samples of all these tracks... so I instead went waaaaayyyy off the reservation and and started pulling pictures in from my life, slapping them into Photo Story and adding the musical tracks.  The end result lands somewhere between nostalgia and narcissism.

Video: My Life

---

Steps/rules:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every section below, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new section, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool …

#	Scene	Track
1	Opening Credits	Embrujo by Triumph
2	First Day At School	Breaking the Silence by Queensryche
3	Falling in Love	Boomerang by Kiss
4	Breaking Up	Play Rough by Night Ranger
5	Prom	In Search of a Rose by The Waterboys
6	Mental Breakdown	Seeing Things by The Black Crowes
7	Flashbacks	Knights of the Round Table by Monty Python
8	Getting Back Together	Mr. Rainmaker by Warrant
9	Wedding Scene	Apples and Pears by moO
10	Final Battle	Homewrecker by Gretchen Wilson
11	Death Scene	Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon by Neil Diamond
12	Funeral Song	Full Sail by Rick Emmett
13	End Credits	Two Guys a Girl and A Horn Section by Redwood School District
14	Anthem	World Start Turning by Rick Springfield

 

Yep... I'm lucky.  Sure, you already know I have the smartest, most bee-you-ti-ful wife ever... but that's not what I'm talking about in this instance.

Dublin is great... but there is some stuff you can't buy in Ireland (a US power strip, for example).  As a result, when I come back to the states on business I always end up coming back with a shopping list.  This time I had some pretty random stuff on the list.  Being a guy (you know, never asks for directions) I just drove off into Redmond.

Randomly I turned right and hey!  A lighting store, perfect.  I needed 9" harps to replace some which had been lost in the move.  Trying to drive out of the parking lot I was forced to turn right. A little down the street: hey!  Staples, I need 8.5" by 11" sheet protectors... and a power strip.

To make a short story long, by randomly driving around I never should have made it back to the hotel in under three hours with any of the things on my list. 

It took me 20 minutes and I got everything.  I'm a lucky bastard (did I mention I have a beautiful wife too?)

 

It's 2007, you know what that means?  My driver's license expires this year.  I wonder of the California DMV will send me a new DL to my address in Ireland.

It is also that arbitrary time for a portion of the world to reset their calendars and reset their goals.  Yes, New Year's resolution time.  Resolutions always feel artificial to me... and yet I cant resist the "clean slate" state they represent.  Here's some stuff I'm going to do this year:

• Join the gym (and use it at least twice a week)
• Take more pictures (at least every other day)
• Spend time reviewing my pictures (instead of just keeping 100% of them) 
• Get back on the Getting Things Done wagon

One of the things I rarely make the effort to do is to go through my pictures after taking them.  I should really get in the habit of tossing out the crap (I'm a horrible pack rat) and cleaning up the good pictures (below are two different compositions of the same shot, the second removes the distracting window from the bottom... though I'm still not sure which I like better ).

 

I hope everyone has a great 2007!

 

We returned home last night from our Christmas trip to Maryland. 

Our trip out was not delayed (as we expected it might be) but our luggage was.  We left Dublin with two bags and arrived in D.C. with one.  Damn Heathrow!  We went the whole week with the baggage system saying "we have no new information on your bag".  By the end of the week I was sure the bag had been stolen and we'd never see the stuff again (which sucked, Paula had a coat in that bag she really likes). 

When we arrived in Dublin we decided to check with the counter there... lo and behold! Our bag would be arriving tomorrow.  Even better... it arrived tonight!  As a bonus, the cheese and salmon we had packed in the bag as Christmas gifts hadn't leaked (which would have sucked big-time... Paula's pillow was in the bag too).

Ahh... vacation is over, we can relax now. :D

 

So, having tired of chain e-mail, the net has now switched to chain blog posts.

So, the game is apparently quite simple, give 5 things that few people know about you, then tag 5 friends to have them follow suit.  Omar has dragged me into this... So here goes:

1. I wanted to be an actor, a stuntman, a race driver and/or design cars... and no, that wasn't when I was in 6th grade, it was when I was in college.  I chose UCSD because it was close to Hollywood (well, closer than Toledo, Ohio was) and had a good engineering program (which I thought would be good for designing race cars).  Partway through school I decided I didn't want to be an engineer, I wanted to be a Psychologist.  Suffice it to say, I didn't do any of those things.  I do, however, still want to be Paul Newman.
2. I'm related to Orson Welles, distantly. We have the same great-great-great grandfather... I'm not sure what that makes us.  Family lore also has it that James Hadfield is a distant relative, but that's unsubstantiated (and probably nothing to brag about).
3. My feet are a wonder of nature.  I'm 5'9" and my feet are size 13.  They are also on upside-down: the bottom of them are baby-soft and the tops of my toes have calluses.  Between the size and the extra hair you'd think I was an over-grown Hobbit.
4. I'm obsessed with solitaire on my cell phone.  It's how I relax (and give myself carpal tunnel in my thumb).  The result is I've learned interesting things like:
   1. If you hold the joystick up it will automatically put cards up into the Ace piles.
   2. If you win a game and watch the cards bounce around, you'll see there's a bug, the cards count down from King down to Ace... then the King shows up again.
   3. While the end of game cards are bouncing around pressing "draw" will start stacking them back into the pile.
5. I hate dry wood in my mouth.  Chopsticks, popsicle sticks, anything.  Gives me the willies big time.  If you're ever at a Chinese (Japanese, Thai, etc.) restaurant with me you'll see the first thing I do is dump my chopsticks into my water glass and leave them there until I'm satisfied they're good an soaked.

There you go, 5 things.  I figure that at some point down the road someone will have to start up a game of "Five more things people don't know about me"... but until then I'll have to pass the baton.  

• I started at ResNova to replace Rob (can you believe it's been 12 years?), I'm sure he has a tale to tell. 
• Jason has taken on the awesome responsibility of caring for our good friend Leslie.  There was no application process so I'd like to learn more.
• For a long time Tami has been my blog "pen pal".  Let's hear five things from her (or her cat).
• Not everyone on the net lives in America... so let's hear from Casper, a fellow Dublin resident.
• An last, but not least, to Steve Davis, because I'm sure he has something funny to say (or at least, frightening).

 

Last night was the Microsoft Christmas Party (less concern of being PC in a Catholic country) which kept us up a little later than usual.  After sleeping in we started the day feeling productive, having a light breakfast and making a list of things to do. 

The problem of the day, however, ended up being physics.  The pure mass of our couch proved to have entirely too much gravitational pull and we succumbed to the inevitable, curling up for a little TV and a light nap.

hard to resist

The day wasn't, however, a complete waste.  We did something we've always wanted to do... figure out what the heck this "cricket" thing is all about... roughly.  I've studied the basic laws of cricket from the BBC web site and now think I could watch a little bit of the sport and kind of understand what's happening.  I'm still not sure, however, if I could sit still for the full six hours of a professional test.

 

The Economist's review of the world for 2005 has Ireland ranked as the best place to live in the world based on quality of life indicators.  The US failed to break the top ten but wasn't far off at 13 in the survey of 111 countries.

You know the reason, right? 

Via BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4020523.stm (thanks for the pointer Laurence!)

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Update: A link to the full report thanks to Casper: http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf

 

The Wall Street Journal today had an article about US citizens moving to Ireland and it leads off talking a little about Paula and Me!  It's really bizarre to see your name in print like that (and amazing to see how fast it gets forwarded around the office here in Dublin). 

If you receive the US edition you can find the article on page B4 of the October 31st issue.  In the European edition it takes up most of page 3.  I encourage you to cut it out, frame it and put it on your wall.

In other news my ego can now be seen from space.

 

 

Walking home from work on Wednesday (well... walking home from the train) I noticed a sign: "Dublin City Marathon Course Route, expect delays".  Huh, what do you know?  The Marathon course runs right in front of our house.

Here we are, right between miles 18 and 19:

It was very cool.  Lots of people lined the streets and cheered every runner as they went by.  Apparently people line the entire course (the Dublin Marathon is internationally known as "the friendly marathon" ).

 

Not satisfied with taking the fun out of most everything else, lawyers have now turned their attention on that most sacred of childhood pastimes: a good game of tag.  Schools, for fear of being sued by parents, have now started to ban any game in which a child might possibly get hurt.

Lawyers, be forewarned: when I become all-powerful (it'll happen any day now, I'm sure) I'm going to stick you in a very small room with the guy who invented those wretched plastic clamshell security packages and Corey Feldman.  In that room you will be locked for all time, fed only Oreo cookies (without milk, of course) and forced to listen to a never-ending stream of Celine Dion ballads.

Link to School bans tag, other chase games - CNN.com

 

While flying home to Dublin from Redmond I was doing a little blog reading (hooray for SAS and airborne broadband) when I came across an interesting post on Dare's blog regarding the Microsoft policy of needing permission from your manager before you can interview or a different position within MS.  It's a policy that leads to a certain amount of discomfort for any employ who wants to change jobs.  Going to your manager for permission is tough, but here's a promise I've made to myself which helps me (and works if I'm at Microsoft or not):

I've promised myself I won't ever leave my current role - I will always go to a new role.

Here's the big issue for me: when I'm fed up with work, my boss, my hours or whatever, any job will look good to me.  As soon as I'm in flight mode, trying to run away from my current position I am super-likely to be simply abandoning the frying pan.  There are always times at work where I'll be pissed at my boss, annoyed at my coworkers and/or think the product has no chance of succeeding.  When I get to that point I always take a deep breath and try to figure out if a) it's something I can correct and b) if it's something I think will last.  It sounds pretty silly advice,  but don't ever leave a job you hate.

So, what should someone do if they hate their job?  In the ideal world one will have picked a cool group at a cool company working on a cool product.  Chances are there's something you like about your job, find it and focus on it.  You also have to decide you're not going to adopt a victim mentality (it's your bosses fault... your coworkers stole the credit... it will ship if test would find the bugs).  Don't ever think that you can't make your situation better because that will sink the ship fast.  Figure out what is broken and what part of it you can fix.  Once everything is sunshine and roses you can move on (sure, I'm an idiot... but I'm an optimist).

I am totally comfortable at any point in time going to my boss and saying "Hey, I came across this internal job listing and it totally sounds like something I'd really like to do.  Things are going great here but I'd really like the opportunity to go do this cool thing.  May I please?"  I may actually be happy in my current role or I may not... but if I actually honor my promise to myself I'm actually highly likely to be in a role I enjoy before I leave for one I'm going to enjoy even more.

So, what does this have to do with the Internal hiring policies?  Here's the thing: I feel if my manager thinks I am a good employee and honestly excited about going to a new role they will be disappointed to see me go but genuinely interested in helping me succeed.  If I get the job I wanted my manager will be happy because they know I'm going to an exciting opportunity.  If I don't get the job my manager will be happy because they don't loose me.

---

Afterword
I've been at Microsoft for almost ten years and been a manager on and off for roughly half that time.  I've applied for internal positions and moved groups.  I've also applied for jobs and not been hired.  I've had employees request permission and I've granted it every time.  Microsoft has policies about when a transfer can be blocked or delayed and are very reasonable.  Always if your manager blocks your move and you think it's unreasonable you should talk to your HR rep as they can help you to work through it.

 

Having been born on the thirteenth (of a different month) I've always had an affinity for what many feel is an unlucky date.  When the 13th also happens to fall on a Friday... that's even better.  Hey, it's the 13 AND it's the end of the work week.

So, for those of you who are a little anxious today, I'll distract you with some vocabulary fun:

Triskaidekaphobia - Fear of the number thirteen (not to be confused with Trichopathophobia, the fear of hair)
Paraskavedekatriaphobia - Fear of Friday the Thirteenth

Hmm... I wonder if paraskavedkatriaphilia is a word?

 

We've been dreaming about and planning this for so long now that it hardly seems it could be happening... but it is.

We're an hour away from touching down in our new home, Dublin. I suppose at this point we are officially expatriates.

IMAGE_075.jpg

 

We had cake...

... and there was much rejoicing.

Yay!

 

Last night we attended the wedding of our good friends Leslie and Jason. It was a beautiful ceremony at the Greenbriar Inn in Boulder, Colorado. The weather was perfect and the setting was beautiful.

After the wedding we went to a piano bar called The Reef. We were expecting a place for the wedding party to hang out, talk and listen to some music. We instead discovered a boisterous review music ranging from the 60's to present day with a little humor mixed in and lots of audience sing along encouraged. If you're in Boulder, stop by there on a Saturday night with a group of friends ready to have fun.

 

Long time, no blog.

I'm just starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel... and I have been "on vacation" for two weeks now. Why is time off such hard work? Because Paula and I are moving to Ireland.

I'm not leaving Microsoft... or even really leaving Windows Live Mail/Hotmail. Microsoft is adding to its development workforce based in Dublin and I'll be going over there to work on Windows Live Mail with a couple developers.

We're going to sell our house and (as you saw earlier in the blog) I needed to finish the bathroom I started. I also needed to finish off a project I started of replacing the trim throughout the house. Combine that with a house hunting trip to Ireland, meeting with realtors, packing up some of stuff to stage the house and having a garage sale I've been running ragged.

Things are starting to ease up, however. The house goes on MLS tonight and there is only one small bit of trim to finish in the bathroom and I'll be all done.

And Paula will be happy because I now have the energy to shave again.

 

If you take a pocket full of change, segregate it by color then examine the coins you'll find we have one colored coin in America... and it has Abraham Lincoln on the face.

Think about it...

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On a related note, is it any coincidence that paper money and envy share the same color?

 

 

I ordered my Xbox 360, and was cheap so I ordered it shipped via ground

moo

I went to Mike, told him to order an Xbox 360.  Go ahead and pick ground, that's what I did.

moo

Mike went to Dick, told him to order an Xbox 360.  We had ours shipped via ground.  Dick did the same... twice.

moo

moo

Now, because none of us were willing to spring for the extra few bucks for two-day delivery we are suffering through the weekend without our new toys.  All of us except Mike, he pawed the ground a bit, dipped his head and charged through the pasture fence.  He scoured the countryside and, after trundling around a china shop called "Best Buy", he found himself a 360 at Costco.

MOO!

At least our herd has a bull now.

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Confused?  Read this: Moooooo

"Larry the Cow" artwork created by Matteo 'Peach' Pescarin and shamelessly lifted from the gentoo user forums.

 

True to form, I was in a hurry today for no particular reason, as a result fate smacked me in the back of the head.

I took the day off today to go with Paula up to Sausalito to get some tile for our bathroom.  On the way up there we were driving along highway 1 through San Francisco when the light in front of us turns yellow.  The truck next to us wasn't slowing down so I thought, "what the heck, I'll keep going too".

There were two lights along the route with red light traffic cameras.  That was one of them.  There were two pretty flashes, one for the semi, one for me.  Great.

I guess the SF PD will be sending me a nice portrait via US Postal Service... I just hope my portrait turns out as nice as Steve's (see bottom of page).

 

I love this quote from an interview with Richard Pryor on NPR's Fresh Aire.  Mr. Pryor was talking about dealing with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), he said that his disease was a blessing and joked about it in his routines.  In the interview he said: 

Life to me was like... not supposed to make sense, 'cause, hey, it's I don't care how you slice it, you ain't getting out alive, so enjoy as much as you can.

Richard Pryor died this month at the age of 65, his wife said he was joking right up until the and and died with a smile on his face.

Once again I'm humbled by the strength of others.  A tip of the hat to you Mr. Pryor, I'm sure you watching us and still laughing.

 

Does anyone else find it amusing that I have been reading "Faster" for several months now?

 

I was always at odds with myself when I was working in the Mac group at Microsoft.  The team is a great, smart bunch of people who really love the Mac platform and really want to do right by the Mac and turn out cool software.  I knew we were doing good work but there is so much zealotry in the Mac community that it took me a long time to refer to Microsoft as “we”.  If you check out comments on Omar’s blog you can see first-hand some of the quasi-religious fervor that can follow any post which is construed as anti-Apple.

Well, it’s taken me a long time but I can finally say I’m proud to be a Microsoft employee.  Having worked at Microsoft for almost nine years now I’ve come to realize the public’s view of Microsoft as a big, evil company who’s sole purpose is to crush all opposition is both not the view of the majority of the public and also just not true.  The people with whom I’ve worked are, with few exceptions, driven to excel and truly passionate about producing great software for their customers.  We are a competitive lot, but while having another company (e.g. Google or Yahoo!) producing cool e-mail software may drive me to want to out-do them I no more want to destroy Yahoo! than I would want to injure an opponent when playing soccer (besides, if Yahoo was destroyed, I’d feel really bad for Hans, Rob and Randy… they’re great people).

Seeing as it’s past 2AM and I’m on the road, having trouble sleeping without my lovely wife around... I was thinking... Being a white, American male growing up in the ‘burbs (raised Christian to boot), working on Macintosh software at MS provided me with what is probably the closest experience I’ll ever have to true racism.  And I’m know it’s nothing compared to what blacks, gays, Muslims, handicapped etc. people may face. 

So, I suppose it’s no great triumph of human will against insurmountable odds... baby steps.

 

So, I was thinking... If I were cheap enough to steal the swanky hotel hangers, I would probably consider it a reasonable investment to buy a thinner closet rod so I could use them.

 

On the way back in from taking the dog out I was bending over Nala trying to get her to sit and Paula looked up at our dove family and found them looking back at us.  The trio was looking down at the dog and me trying hard to figure what the heck was going on. 

Their curious expressions made my night.

 

From high school biology I remember that blue eyes is recessive and brown eyes is dominant.  I have blue eyes… so I have two recessive blue eye genes… should I have children, that’s all I can pass on.  If my wife had brown eyes then I’d know that our children would likely have brown eyes but possibly blue.  My education was useful up to the point I married a green-eyed lady (who here is old enough to remember Sugarloaf? Raise your hand… but don’t pull anything, please).

The other day while discussing genetics and eugenics with Imran my curiosity got the better of my and I did a search for an eye color calculator.  My search turned up a very nice page which happens to be hosted by our local Tech Museum.  My question has finally been answered: 66% chance for green eyes, 33% chance for blue.  Want to know your chances?  Make sure you know your parents’ eye color, your mate’s parents’ eye color, your mate’s eye color and your eye color then go to the Tech’s eye color calculator.  Note, if you can’t remember your own eye color you’re in trouble… if you can’t remember your mate’s eye color you’re in really big trouble.

Now I now the odds for eye color... if I could just find out if they’ll inherit her good looks or my idiocy.

 

Vegas in July, sounds like a great idea, right?  109 degrees in the shade... tourists in wife-beaters... wondering if the misters use "reclaimed" water.

Scary as it sounds we had a fab-tastic time.  We ate some great food at Delmonico Steakhouse (the waiter screwed up my order... but brought me something delicious... no harm no foul), we watched a great show, Zoomanity (the reviews were mixed on this cabaret-style twist on Cirque du Soleil but Paula and I loved it) and, above all, we had some great company.  It was a great way to spend Mike's 40th birthday.

One fun part of the trip: Dick had never been to Vegas.  Claimed he was never going to go... would have anything to do with it.  Can you guess?  He loved it.  He's going back.  In about a month.  My prediction: he'll go every weekend for a year then we'll need to perform an intervention.

Here's a picture of some of the gang walking through the Venetian... looking very much like a still from a Vegas heist movie.

What's Omar looking at you ask?  I'd wager it's his Treo™ 650 smartphone.  He's the next one who will need an intervention after Dick.

Oh, and yes, the cheese sticks were very good.

 

Paula has been doing a fantastic job of getting healthy.  She's been exercising regularly, she's been cooking healthy and, thankfully, she's been encouraging me to eat well and exercise with her.  Yesterday was a pretty good day for me for exercise and quantity of food.  Typically I’ll have a snack or two during the day and/or have one really bad meal (e.g. hamburger, fries, soda and a milkshake) but yesterday I just had Wheaties (The Breakfast of Champions^TM), an Italian sandwich (which isn’t especially healthy but I didn’t pile chips and a soda), a small handful of GORP and finally, for dinner, Paula made whole-wheat pasta with vegetables on top (she makes it with a touch of butter, olive oil and some parmesan on top… healthy and tasty).  After dinner Paula made us go running.  To top it off, I wound up staying up late (I blame Dick, Trina and Mike) which would typically dictate a late-night-snack before going to bed, but I resisted the temptation and just went to bed with a glass of water.

All this clean living must have a payoff, right?

So here’s the thing, I was out to breakfast eating my fruit cup when I realized the chef had screwed up and there was no fruit in my fruit cups (because if one fruit cup is good, two fruit cups are better).  All I had was just the pastry containers.  I wasn’t sure if I was right in expecting fruit so I asked Ron Howard, who was having breakfast with me, if he had fruit in his pastry cup.  He confirmed it, I was missing my fruit.  Ron was extraordinarily polite about it considering I really was making a fool of myself by teasing him mercilessly in front of Kiki Dee.  I was feeling pretty silly for making fun of Ron Howard but things only got worse when the Roman centurions were unable to control the crowd after throwing gold and treasure into the audience.  As the crowd spilled over into the center of the stadium the other gladiators and I were forced to grab the ropes of the Ligers to prevent them from attacking the crowd.  I figured if I could pull hard enough on the rope while planting my feet on the animal's neck I’d be able to keep it from biting me but it was still able to squirm around and get a hold of my leg.  I compensated by sticking my foot in front of its face length-wise because I have size twelve and-a-half feet and it wouldn’t be able to open its mouth that wide.  Turns out it was very cute when it gnawed on my shoe.

I have the weirdest feakin’ dreams.  I think I’ll go make myself some breakfast… and I’m staying away from fruit cups for the foreseeable future.

 

Well, it's been a long time (10 years) with Network Solutions but I've finally gotten off my lazy butt and moved my domains over to GoDaddy.  The primary reason was to get away from paying $35 a year per domain and bring it down to closer to ten bucks a year.  A little effort to save a little money.

There will be only one casualty in the transfer: the history.  There isn't much documented in the Network Solutions registration but I always enjoyed being able to go look at the whois record for doe.com and find the registration date.  I guess I'll have to turn to this blog entry to reminisce from now on.

Doe.com - Record created on 27-Jul-1995

Along with this date I might as well record the story behind the registration.

Before working at Microsoft I had a job at a small "start up" (it wasn't starting, so the term "start up" is used loosely) named ResNova Software, Inc.  ResNova’s primary product was a BBS which, among other things, had functionality to aggregate Usenet newsgroups.  Back then there was far less garbage in the newsgroups but there was, strangely enough, a large number of posting from some “John Doe” fellow with the address john@doe.com.  Being the curious sort I decided to investigate who owned doe.com… turns out no one did.  Being the mischievous sort I decided to register it (domain names were free back then… I’m also the cheap sort).  I used to periodically check the account and respond to the occasional “are you real?” or “test” e-mail messages (and they were occasional).  The account was also useful when I was a test lead on Outlook Express and Entourage for the Macintosh, lots of spam to throw at the product.  Sadly, I can no longer play celebrity as john@doe.com is overrun with e-mail.  Surprisingly the bulk of the mail is no longer spam, it’s bounce messages from all the test mail, junk mail and virus mail purporting to be from john@doe.com.  John@doe.com can receive around 250 bounce messages per minute (my previous ISP threatened to kick me off his servers because just the mail connection attempts to john@doe.com were melting his servers, there weren’t even any accounts set up).

Today doe.com is mainly a traffic generator for my blog.  People show up randomly looking for either the U.S. Department of Energy (which used to be doe.gov but is now energy.gov but still didn't register energy.com, genius!) the Doe Fund (doe.org) and, at one time, the Canadian Department of Environment (which used to be www.doe.ca but appears to be no longer, it's moved on, it's an ex-site...*).  Just for grins I let my online life flow into the real world, my Volvo station wagon has the custom plate “doe com” (if you came here because I cut you off, I honestly apologize… it had nothing to do with you, I’m just impatient and meant no offense).

The info above covers just about everything, but it doesn’t answer the most frequently asked question: “Is Doe.com for sale?”  The answer is, “yes”, of course, everything has its price.  Each time I’m asked I sit down and seriously consider selling the domain name.  I don’t, after all, have a mail server set up, I don’t use the domain name as the identity of my web site and even the traffic it generates is nothing but a cost to me.  Why not sell?  Turns out I’m very sentimental and really don’t want to sell it, but because everything has to have a price I’ve set the price at an $3 Million to cover legal fees, taxes and, of course, pain and suffering for the loss.  I figure that amount is suitably ridiculous to drive off most all buyers and if someone does come along willing to pony up the ridiculous fee (heck, it’s a three-letter, easy to spell .com domain) I’ll take the money, give half to Uncle Sam, buy my wife something really nice and put the rest in the bank for retirement.

Oh, I'll spend a little on my car too, I need new tires for my Volvo... they don't seem to last for some reason.  Must be something wrong with the car.

* Much love and many appologies to John Cleese

Note from Reeves to Reeves: Before moving the WhoIs showed "Little.org - Record created on 10-May-2002".  I know the domain is much older than that but I'll have to do some research to find out when I first registered it.

 

So, according to the bible, God created the world in 6 days and rested on the seventh.  This is, quite simply, the reason there is a weekend.

Now, let's say I'm looking at this from a very practical, non-religious point of view.  The weekend is the time of rest (especially Sunday, of course) when one is expected to relax and recoup.  The last thing anyone wants on their day off is the office calling with a bunch of demands.

Given that... isn't it inconsiderate to hold church services on Sunday?  It amounts to the whole world calling God on God's day off, demanding that God do stuff.  Sheesh, makes me glad I'm not a deity.

 

For desert I poured myself the last bowl of Lucky Charms in the box, but one marshmallow got stuck at the bottom.  I pulled it out, and guess what?  It was the Pot O' Gold marshmallow.

Yes, I found the pot of gold at the end of a box of Lucky Charms.

I clearly need a hobby.

 

But, in a pinch, Frito's seem to work just fine.  I recommend you pop the chocolate icing in the microwave for a few seconds... helps prevent chip breakage.

Mmm... chocolate Frito's... just like mom used to make.

 

UPS, FedEX, USPS... take note: if you can do a better job keeping track of packages than DHL I will insist that all shipments to me use your services.

I recently ordered three items from Dell computer... a pair of LCD monitors for me and my wife and a docking station for my wife's laptop.  All three packages were picked up at identical times from Dell by DHL.  Two of the packages are identically-sized, the third very close in size.  All three packages are being shipped to the same location, my home.  Check out the shipping status table below and tell me if you can spot my frustration?

Date	Time	Activity/comments	Location
Monitor 1 - Current status: Delivered
2/21/2005	2:13PM	Shipment delivered.	San Jose South, CA
2/21/2005	2:13PM	With delivery courier.
2/21/2005	7:59AM	Arrived at DHL facility.	San Jose South, CA
2/18/2005	3:42PM	Picked Up by DHL.	Shipper's Door
Monitor 2 - Current status: Processed at Sort Facility.
2/20/2005	11:23AM	Processed at Sort Facility.	Wilmington, OH
2/18/2005	3:42PM	Picked Up by DHL.	Shipper's Door
Docking station - Current status: In transit.
2/18/2005	3:42PM	Picked Up by DHL.	Shipper's Door

Every item was picked up from Dell by DHL at the exact same time on Friday.  Even though the box for the Dock is going to be a similar size to the monitor boxes, the Dock is 5 lbs and the monitors are 26 lbs... let's give DHL the benefit of the doubt and expect the monitors will be traveling together.  No?  They're not?  One arrived yesterday... 3 days ahead of schedule.

Okay, let's give DHL the benefit of the doubt and expect they'll get the same level of tracking detail.  Oops, sorry.  One package was tracked through a sorting facility in Ohio... the other simply showed up in San Jose with no intermediate stops. 

What about the dock?  It’s been “in transit” since the day it was picked up… no other detail is available… naturally.  Tracking number?  What’s that for?

"Hey Reeves, you got a package early, you should be happy."

Well, sure, if I didn't have a job and my wife wasn't in school we could sit at home all week waiting for the packages to trickle in.  Heck, I'd be happy with a semi-accurate tracking of the packages so I could plan to be home to receive them.  Having no idea when the boxes will arrive is disconcerting.  Receiving the 3 orders over a random number of days is frustrating.  Knowing I ordered a stack of expensive computer equipment and the shipper is sloppy in tracking and handling it is annoying.  Calling DHL to suggest they be more consistent and getting the attitude of "hey, you got your package early, you should be happy" is infuriating.  DHL, that's one step away from saying "hey, you got your package, you should be happy."

DHL: From this day forward I'm going to insist all shippers use UPS, FedEX or USPS... and I will pay extra for the privilege of not using your sloppy service.

 

This quote was given to Fareed Zakaria, the international editor for Newsweek, by an Iraqi politician:

"There are currently two Grand Ayatollahs running Iraq: Sistani and Bush. Most of us feel that Sistani is the more rational."

Fareed wrote an optimistic opinion piece about Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the effects of his leadership in Iraq.  It's a good read.

 

Steev (no, not a typo) is a ton of fun... apparently too much fun for a single web page.

• http://spaces.msn.com/members/steev/
• http://homepage.mac.com/sjanssen/
• http://www.steevil.com/
• http://steevil.textamerica.com/

Aparently he needs more to do.

 

While working on the Hotmail schedule I discovered that my worth as a PM has been diminished now that I'm a lead.  I know it's true, our project management software, used for scheduling work, proves it. 

Computers can't lie, right?

 

Paula Little, you've just finished your first semester of graduate school... what are you going to do now?

 

Thanks Denise for the tip on this Jamba Juice coupon: http://jambajuice.com/menuguide/featuredproducts.html

 

Starting tomorrow (12/1) people on the west coast will be able to request a free credit report at http://www.annualcreditreport.com/.  This new service will eventually be available to the whole country but is starting with the western states first, allowing the bureaus to do a gradual roll out (can you say beta test?).

I'll likely be one of the early people who runs out and signs up for a credit report, using my personal information to shake the bugs out of the new system.  I'm sure everything will be just fine, what's the worst that could happen?

The first states are: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.  For more information MSNBC ran a story on the subject a few days ago: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6576905/

 

You know they didn't put this page up recently, but the number of things to see in Iraq makes me sad that the human race is so screwed up.  One more place I'm likely to never see in my lifetime.

On the entertaining side, I do like Atlas Tours's tag line: “We are sincere”.  If we're rude and obnoxious, don't fret, you know we mean it.

 

Ever wonder where those turkeys come from and where they go?  National Geographic published an article in 2001 with some interesting details (like the trainers spend a lot of time dressed in blue clothing to mimic white house suits to socialize the turkeys).

 

I've always been jealous of my nephews and nieces with their bubblegum flavored toothpaste.  I'd buy some for myself but I'm assuming there's something about the kids toothpaste that isn't industrial-strength enough for gr'ups. 

But lo, what have we here?  Cruising Target the other day looking for the Shrek boxed set I came upon Colgate Cinnamon Spice tooth paste.  I couldn't pass it up.  Mmmm tasty.  It's the next best thing to brushing your teeth with maple syrup (not that I've tried... honest).

 

After complaining in jest about my wife I realized something...

...we have a really, really comfortable couch positioned nicely in front of our home theatre system... having to sleep on the couch for the night is not such a bad thing.

Now, if Paula ever figures out a good way to lock the refrigerator...

 

Well, we wondered if it would ever happen... but it did.  Dick proposed to Trina.  Congratulations you two! (Everybody else, check out the proposal story, it'll make you teary ).

I think the best thing is that in a show of Victorian geekiness they have maintained separate XBoxes... to share an XBox before being married just wouldn't be appropriate, the neighbors would talk.

 

I flew back from Redmond tonight on Alaska Air flight 594 and you'll never believe who was at the controls... Captain Kirk! He appears to have replaced his navigator, however... Chekhov was nowhere to be found.

 

Sure... jackhammers... add it to the list lady.  (click for big)

Edit 10/7/2004: Snopes picked up the story.

 

If I am sick or tired... or sick and tired... tired or just plain sick... I need comforting. Being a mama's boy my first instinct is to run home, but seeing as my mommy is in Colorado and I'm in California I need to have a substitute.

Enter psychology... specifically: behaviorism.

Just like Pavlov's dog, we have been trained to react. We can't help it. From conception to death our conditioning never stops. We'll flinch, cry and yawn on cue (don't bother stifling the yawn, it's not like I can see you). Yanking someone's strings can be easy if you know their triggers. One very useful trick is to learn to yank your own strings (trust me, you won't go blind).

If you're feeling down and want a quick pick me up, try this out: think back to when you were a little kid... say 4 or 5 years old. Getting the vision? Good, not stop touching me or I'm telling Mom. Perfect, you got it. Now, on Saturday, what did you eat? If you have a bad memory try calling your mom, she may be able to help out. The key is to nail down exactly what you used to eat, getting the ingredients as close as possible to the authentic stuff. Go shopping, come home, put on some comfy clothes and eat. If you can find some reruns to go with your snack you'll be golden. Trust me, it works great. If you put me in front of an episode of the Waltons, feed me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (made with Wonder bread, Welch's Concord grape jelly and creamy Jiff) cut in to quarters... diagonally, Fritos, a bowl of Campbell's chicken noodle soup and a glass of milk I'll be right as rain.

Now if I could just find myself a good pair of footy pajamas...

 

Perhaps my shoes are too tight but this kind of thing really irks me:  Harrods, British department store extraordinaire, has started its Christmas shopping season.  GAH!  It still annoys me when I see Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving (but I'm wacky that way).  Bring out Christmas decorations before Halloween and I fume.  But seriously folks... Christmas shopping before Labor Day?!?!?!?

"And they're hanging their stockings!" he snarled with a sneer.
"Tomorrow is Christmas! It's practically here!"
Then he growled, with his grinch fingers nervously drumming,
"I MUST find a way to keep Christmas from coming!"

 

Last night I came to a realization...

... I'm impressed by impressions.

 

... I thought that warm feeling was heart burn.

My lovely wife has started a blog... it does me proud.

 

When we found out we needed to be out of our house for a few days to have our house tented for termites we decided to make the most of it, we planned a road trip to southern California.  In the process we realized it’s the first trip of any length we’ve taken alone for almost three years.  Time for some quality time.

Can anyone tell me where this is... specifically?

 

Nala is very thankful for all the well wishes (Nala can’t read so I simply give her a dog biscuit every time someone posts a get well wish, she seems thankful).

I took Nala to the Vet again Tuesday morning (our normal vet, not the emergency vet) and the doctor gave me a little more information.

Her condition isn’t uncommon, especially in older dogs.  We should expect her to recover almost entirely.  Nala has essentially lost the user of her inner ear for balance (temporarily or permanently wasn’t clear).  Animals (dogs and humans alike) use multiple inputs to establish balance: inner ear, visual queues and muscle position.  Take away one of the inputs and things will be wonky at first, but the animal will learn to cope.

It will be a few days before she’s able to get around well on her own (she’s already managing pretty well, but does tend to go bump in the night).  The doctor said to expect her to be unsteady for a few weeks or longer… especially since Nala is shy one leg.  Many dogs never get back to 100 percent and will have some minor symptoms.  The most common vestigial symptoms being a tendency to fall down when shaking dry and perpetual head tilt (which is actually kind of cute).

For now we’re continuing to baby her, more for our own sake than hers.

 

We had a bit of a scary weekend.  We went out for a hike on Sunday and came home to find our dog Nala hiding in a corner and a lot of vomit on the kitchen floor.  She came slinking out of the corner when we came in. 

Initially we interpreted her posture as shame for having gotten sick in the house (though she's never been punished for doing so) but we quickly realized she was staying low to the ground because she was having a lot of difficulty standing.
We watched her for a little bit, then, like any good, overprotective parent, we went straight to the emergency room.  At this point we weren’t sure what had happened... how sick is she?  Did she have a stroke?  We were both terrified we’d have to put her down on the spot.

The doctor told us Nala most likely had “old dog vestibulitis”, not uncommon, but also not very well understood.  There could be a number of different causes for Nala’s vertigo and some blood tests would hopefully rule out some of them.  To be sure she was getting enough fluids and to allow her to be watched Nala spent the night in emergency veterinary clinic Sunday night.

Monday morning the doctor called us to let us know she could come home to recover.  She’s still not able to walk on her own and has difficulty standing to eat.  The doctor said she could be better in a few days, but it could be longer.
I’m not sure how much variation there is, but Nala’s symptoms are a rapid, side-to-side twitching of the eyes (horizontal nystagmus), a pronounced head tilt (perhaps trying to compensate for the spinning room) and a pronounced lack of coordination.  There are no warning signs and, from what I understand, there is nothing that can be done to prevent it (note: vestibulitis in general can be caused by ear infections as well, but for the “old dog” variety there doesn’t appear to be any cause).

My personal tip: get a dog harness, the kind that goes around the dog’s chest, and use that as a handle.  Nala now has a lot of trouble walking (especially because she only has 3 legs) and being able to grab the harness allows me to keep her upright but still allow her to walk roughly where she wants to go.  I’ve been using the harness to support her walking, eating and while she goes to the bathroom.

We’re off to our regular vet shortly... perhaps she’ll have more information for us.

Update: I found a note from the doctor with the technical diagnosis and am adding it so I don't forget: Idiopathic Peripheral Vestibular Disease.

---

Some resources:

• A good page on the topic from Yankee Golden Retriever rescue: http://www.ygrr.com/doginfo/health-vestibular.html
• United Emergency Animal Clinic (they did a great job): http://www.emergencyanimalclinic.com/unitedemergencyanimalclinic/
• A short video of Nala trying to walk: nala.wmv (459.98 KB)

 

... except, of course, your mother (she thinks you're perfect).

So then, you may ask, what's the secret to finding your perfect mate?  You'll never find anyone who doesn't think you're neurotic, crazy, slovenly, annoying or weird.  The key is finding the person who just doesn't seem to care.  When you find that person, pursue them until you're given a marriage proposal or a restraining order.

 

Because every little kid loves building a fort out of couch cushions and sheets (I know, not “every” kid, but bear with me) there is a great market for grown ups who want a fort too.  Enter 20th Century Castles, a real easte company specializing in decommissioned missile bases.

How cool would it be to have a house with thousands of square feet of underground space?  You thought the basement was cool when you were a kid?  You need a house that's almost all basement.

Not to mention, this will be a great place to live when the whole world goes to hell because we're doomed as a race and...

Oops, there I go again.

 

Bear with me, this started as an idle curiosity and then spiraled out of control...

I’m already convinced that, as a race, we’re doomed.  You’d think I’d just stick my head in a hole and start ignoring the idiocy of my fellow man, blissfully unaware, secure in my happiness knowing I can’t do a thing to change it.

I am, however, still fascinated by the things people do to each other.  Browsing Old New Thing I came across something quite new to me: people in India are declaring their relatives dead in order to claim property or insurance.  This may seem like a humane alternative to hiring a hit man but being dead makes life a little difficult, esp. when dealing with the government.

Is there an answer?  I'm not sure, but it gets me thinking.  Let's start with the bad stuff, people killing each other.  Why?  Can it be narrowed down to a simple matter of having what you need?  Animals will instinctively fight when backed into a corner: fight or flee.  If threatened with death, the stakes are high.  Kill or be killed.

Okay, so fight or flight makes sense when the situation is immediate (a person is being attacked) but it’s not so immediate in the case of the article above.  Or is it?  In a country where some people are attempting to farm a plot of land as small as many houses in America, not having enough land could literally kill you.  It could be rationalized as instinctual to kill for land.

So, what about the rest of the killing going on?  Can that be boiled down to the same need?  I don’t think so, but it makes me wonder if it has roots in the same place. 

Religion is, for many people, a very real need.  The church, synagogue, mosque, temple, etc provides people with hope, guidance and community.  For a religion to survive there has to be a strong belief in what is being taught.  There seem to be two main things which will threaten a religion: oppression and reason.  Oppression needs little explanation, someone stronger than you (your government, another religion, etc.) comes in and tells you to stop believing what you believe.  The other, reason, needs a little more explanation: reason shouldn’t be construed as correct reasoning, just being enough arguments to make a believer start to doubt.  Reason is what breeds religious zealots, they have so little faith in their beliefs they fear their followers will abandon in droves when presented with any rational alternative.  Why destroy ancient Buddhist relics?  Because people might find Buddhism more rational.  If your beliefs are forcefully taken away this removes your emotional support structure.  Aggression results.  If people are leaving your ministry this takes money out of your pocket as well as calls to question your emotional support structure.  Aggression results.

Some people kill their spouse, this isn’t religion, right?  No, it’s one of two things jealousy or imprisonment.  Jealousy results from having something that you are positive cannot be replaced.  Being jealous of attention paid to your spouse is a self-confidence issue, you are convinced if your spouse leaves you that you cannot replace the emotional attachment.  A significant emotional attachment will cause significant pain if broken.  Pain drives the same fight or flight response.  Aggression results.  Being trapped in a relationship with no way out similarly causes pain.  Aggression results.

What about killing for money?  Muggers, mafia, etc.  One of the things that makes the free market system work is competition, people want to have more than their neighbor.  The Soviet Union seemed to illustrate that aiming for absolute equality will do more to beat people down than solve man’s built-in aggressive streak (this isn’t universally true, of course, otherwise there wouldn’t be communes).  Being wealthier and more powerful than the next person is a matter of self image.  The greater the stakes, the higher the risk, the more aggressive the response.

Sure, rational people don’t resort to killing.  I’m sure you would never kill anyone.  You’re rational, right? 

How do you know?

 

I'm back now from my family spring break trip, a trip where eight adults and six children get together somewhere warm and eat. 

At what point did my vacations become an exercise in killing time between meals?

 

Okay, it's official, I have too much to do at work too.

I've made a concerted effort to cut down on the number of projects at home, but it seems that there is a cosmic force at work with the sole desire to see me have a mental breakdown. 

So, how do I deal? 

Step one, find some clever quotes:

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?

Edgar Bergen (1903 - 1978)

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

Horace (65 BC - 8 BC)

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

Step two, remember I'm going to Florida soon to sit on the beach and do nothing at all.

Bah!  Whining is for four-year-olds. :p

 

After a week of being on my own and mildly crazy, my beautiful wife is back to keep me company.  She had fun with her friends but I'm glad she's back.  Yay!

 

I got a new shirt for my birthday, I know it's a quality shirt...

it comes with an extra button hole in case I loose one.

 

Thank the maker there are people like MC who are willing to take a bullet for the rest of us.  MC provided an excellent review of the new 7-eleven (an American convenience store) cheeseburger hot dog.  Read for yourself: http://www.michaelconnolly.com/?EntryID=92

MC, you are a braver man than I...

but mmm... it sounds tasty!

From the horses mouth:

Cheeseburger Big Bite™ Hot Dog
Easy to eat perfection! It looks like a hot dog, but it tastes like a cheeseburger! Fresh from the 7-Eleven grill, beef and cheese combine to create the easy-to-eat one-third-pound Cheeseburger Big Bite Hot Dog. Add your favorite condiments or toppings! Yummy!

 

I've bit off more than I can chew... it's now clear.

A billion hobbies, too many projects at work and half-a-dozen half-finished home-improvement tasks.  It all lends to a constant feeling of “crap, what didn't I do?”

It's time for a project diet... but how?  It all has to get done.  Or does it?  I think it's time to make a list of what's important.  If it ends up on the bottom of the list, I'll find a way to get rid of it.

Sure, not exciting to you, but heck, if something doesn't go, how will I have time to post to my blog?

 

Been a little overwhelmed at work but I'm digging out.  Let me just say that mail order prescriptions is a really *^&!y idea.  My life has been screwed up for three weeks because of those idiots.

How to blow off some steam?  Penguin baseball.

• http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~hopha/penguin.swf
• http://home.tele2.fr/kcv/pinguin.swf
• http://www.casper.ru/temp/pingu3/?namn=422

Why three links?  I dunno.  You can hit the penguins farther with the last one though, so that must be worth something.  DeEtte got 1200.2!

 

We must never forget we are animals, barely restrained by the society we live in.  When our society turns a blind eye, the animal breaks loose.

Without Sanctuary is a collection of photo postcards taken at lynchings (hangings) in America's not-too-distant past.  This book is a grim, and often gruesome reminder of the beast that lurks just below the surface of mankind.

I encourage you to visit the Without Sanctuary page at Musarium to watch the flash presentation of some of the book, narrated by the book's author.  Be advised that many of the images are graphic and disturbing.

I'd like to thank Steve for providing this link to a disturbing part of American history, a part that should never be forgotten.

 

I'm trying to buy something from Amazon but my account has been broken since Thursday.  Any time I try to submit my order Amazon just responds with:

We're sorry!

An error occurred when we tried to process your request. Rest assured, we're working to resolve the problem as soon as possible. If you were trying to make a purchase, please check Your Account to confirm that the order was placed. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Being a reasonable geek and a person in the Internet industry I expect this kind of thing will happen.  So, I decide to wait and try later.  Yep, it didn't work later either. 

Since their online help didn't solve my problem I decided to ask them for help.  Amazon has one method to ask for help: an online form.  I don't mind filling out a form.  There's just one problem... the form doesn't work.  I tried from work on my desktop machine.  I tried from work on my laptop.  I tried from home on my laptop.  I tried from home on my home desktop.  I tried clearing my cache.  I tried deleting cookies.

My account is broken.  I am unable to submit the support form.  I'm unable to get in touch with Amazon, right?  We'll see.  As a last resort I sent mail to every single Amazon.com address I was able to find on their website (everything from press addresses to their recruiting addresses).  Hopefully someone will reply.

Here's my advice to Amazon and everyone else who has customers:  Think about it - what happens to your customers if they can't get a hold of you?  I'll tell you, they get pissed off and they go away.

If it weren't for the $50 gift certificate Amazon is holding hostage I'd write them off and take my business to Barnes and Noble.

 

Blogging seems to be seeping deeper and deeper into our culture.  Aditya posted a link to a great NYT article on blogging.

Here's the quote that got me thinking:

And while there are exceptions, many journal writers exhibit a surprising lack of curiosity about the journals of true strangers. They're too busy writing posts to browse.

Blogging is really very self-serving (except in my case, because I'm special).  People have a strong need for validation, they want to know they are liked, respected, feared, or whatever resonates best with their psyche.  When you think of blogging as simply people looking for acceptance, is there any surprise that high school kids gravitate to it?

No, I don't think it's wrong to seek validation, I think it's natural.  I wish more people recognized the want for validation as a basic human need.  You want to experiment with validation? 

Fun with validation:
People will be giving you information all day long, it's unavoidable.  Next time you get information from someone you have two choices.  You can say either:
a.  "Yeah, I knew that"
       or
b.  "Cool!"

Try it out, watch their face.  So, what did you learn? 

Choosing option “a” is really an attempt to usurp validation from the other person.  Sure, you've made it clear you already have the information, have you made them respect you?  If you short circuit their request for validation they are not going to be happy, in fact, they will be so distracted by you being a “know-it-all” that you will not get any benefit.  With choice “a” you both loose.

Choose “b” and you you'll get a much better response from the other person.  Will they think less of you?  Unlikely.  Will you feel worse?  You already know you knew the information, who cares if the other person knows you knew?  Get over yourself.

Validation isn't limited to sharing knowledge, it covers every aspect of the way people communicate.  When someone shows you their new camera they really don't want to know it was the wrong purchase, they want to hear “cool!”  There's no point in telling them they paid too much, who wins?

Okay Reeves, this sounds very touchy-feely... what's in it for me?  Validation, of course.  If people feel validated when they talk to you, they will like you.  People who like you will do stuff for you.  Pretty simple, huh? 

Now go tell all your friends to read my blog because I'm really really cool and I know stuff.

 

Over the past few days I've managed to go through 4 boxes of Kleenex.  I think that's a new record but I can't find any listing in Guinness.  It also got me wondering... just how much mucus does a person produce?  Inquiring minds want to know.

The net is filled with a lot of bunk, but fortunately there are some great sites for information.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

For checking up on that latest story you were e-mailed head to the Urban Legends Reference Pages.  It's a great place to find out if there really was a hook on his hand or if Richard Gere really did what you heard he did.

And, for some real-life info, the page that got me thinking of this: The Straight Dope.  People have been writing to Cecil for years asking all kinds of tough questions... including "How does my nose produce so much snot so fast when I have a cold?" 

So, The Straight Dope says 14 grams of drippings per day and http://www.curingnasalcongestion.com (a site with lots of ads and no credentials, hmmm) says 1 to 2 quarts per day.  I'm still no closer to a definitive answer... but I do have the cure.

It turns out my problem may be that I'm resenting something.  According to healingyou.com:

Resentment is stored in the mucus membranes of the body. The flower essence for resentment is Willow. Dependent upon where the symptoms manifest in the body, a person can begin to zone into what their specific issues may be that may need healing.

Now, where was my patchouli incense?

 

 

If you liked Sesame Street as a kid and enjoy twisted humor you have to go see Avenue Q the next time you're in New York.  My eyes were watering through most of the show I was laughing so hard!

My favorite part of the musical?  I'd have to say the musical number “The Internet Is For Porn”.

Recommendation:  Aim for third to fifth row center... too far back and you can't see well, too close and you can't see the TVs (which show the occasional animated bit).