Sick Vacation

Woke up this morning feeling better. That lasted till about 1 o'clock. Didn't get much done today - a little trim and the pool guys showed up.

- b

Quote of the Day

Doing an SS rally with gears would have been like sex with a farm animal. Probably fun, but just not natural...

OMR

- b

Party on Wayne

Team party pics here.

- b

Not Fair

I finally get some time away from work to do a little work around the house (i.e. vacation) and I get sick. So far it's mostly a nuisance, but my stuffed up head makes me a little stupid.

I hope it clears up fast, because I'm three months behind on house chores and have only a week to get caught up.

- b

Breakfast in Bed

It was my birthday

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Fixed

Wednesday Gretchen went in to get spayed. She came home like this

Her belly's shaved, full of stitches and she has to wear the cone for two weeks. The first full day home, Jen stayed with her while she did a lot of this

By the third day she was back to her normal self.

Problem is her normal self has too much energy for her required recovery. She wants to run, hike and play, but she is supposed to rest and heal. She's not having much fun laying around all day and it's only been 4 days. She's also not very good with the cone. CJ was pretty smooth with his within a day or so. Gretchen still crashes into things. I don't think she cares that she's scuffing the walls and furniture.

- b

Dtown SS Rally

Sorry for the short notice, but an SS rally in Downingtown has been proposed for this coming weekend.

"They" even went to the trouble of creating a schedule.

Sunday March 30^th @ Victory Brewing Company
* Single Speed Rally

Pre-Game
9:30 meet at Victory Brew Co.. 420 acorn ln, Downingtown, PA

10am keg stretcher ride up to Marsh Creek - 20 miles

Rally Start

12:00 Bonus points skills Challenge.
12:30 Short Track
1:30 2 person relay.
2:30 Individual Time Trial

Post Game

3:30 return to Victory for the post game celebration and overall awards.

*Gears welcome but subject to ridicule and tamporing

the times are probably more like suggestions then hard and fast rules

- b

Mmmmm Fresh Bread

and beer of course

- b

She Has Risen

2:45am Jen's phone rings. I tell her that her phone is ringing, but she doesn't believe me. It rings again and she asks, "What's that noise?"

Uhh. It's your phone. This time she picks up and away we go!

The new phone system she put in a week ago has gone down at her company's call center in Bangalore (that's India for those that don't know). She does what she can, but it's no use. She repeatedly calls and leaves messages with the service company for the system, but no one returns her calls. I get back to sleep around a quarter till four.

At 7:30 when I get up (again), this picture is what I find.

I told her though I really appreciate her efforts to make me feel better after my horrible weekend, this is going too far. A simple hug would have been fine.

- b

Happy Easter

Saturday morning Jen and I hiked with the dogs at Marsh Creek. That was nice.

Saturday afternoon I went to work where a junior developer was supposed to meet me. He never showed, so I left around 6:30 - not before converting my development project into an unmanageable mess.

I continued working at home till around 9 trying to fix my project to no avail.

This morning I hiked alone with the dogs at Warwick county park. The drive up there was nice, but the park kind of sucked and the dogs were a mess.

Around noon Jen left for her Grandmothers and I stayed home to work. At two, the junior guy IMs me and apologizes for not showing yesterday. I need his project to try and fix mine, so we meet at the office at three. My project still won't work and he's totally useless. In the meantime I change my password, since I'm at work hooked to the network and IT tells me it's going to expire.

In the middle of swimming through the myriad of passwords I have to remember for the various systems at work, I lock myself out. I can't even log into my own computer. I'm done. It was nine o'clock Sunday on Easter and I've accomplished nothing other than failure this weekend.

Last year's Easter was better.

- b

Yummy!

Incentive to get home for dinner - Black Bean and Sweet Potato Stew with Chiles and Polenta Triangles

If only it were that easy.

- b

First Tick

Plump and juicy too. From last weekends hikes.

- b

Just Another Weekend

Spent a lot of it working. Probably will do the same for the next couple. When I wasn't working, I was doing something like the following.

Hiking with the dogs at Springton Manor or hiking with them and Jen at French Creek again. Jen worked too, but now her deadline is over. Her new phone system is installed and she should be back to normal life. I'm far from it. Other things to mark the weekend was rolling 200,000 miles in the mazda.

Now we can finally get rid of it. The truck, on the other hand, we can't get rid of even though it decided not to start this weekend. It only has 275,000 miles on it. The subaru, which I'd like to get rid of since the accident, has this piercing windshield squeal when you run the windshield wipers. Literally I have to drive with my finger in my ear it's so bad. I finally got around to putting Rain-x on the glass .

It actually works. I could kick myself for not doing it sooner.

What else was there?

Oh yeah. I picked up $600 worth of trim. It took two trips. This is what $400 looks like - that's 24 casings and 5 base.

The guy at Lowes was like "You've got a lot of work ahead of you." Little does he know I have so much "work", that I'm actually looking forward to this project.

I also threw up this little gate to help with Gretchen's Invisible Fence training.

The invisible fence teaches her going outside the yard is bad, so to teach her going to the park is ok (with us), we put in this gate. Hopefully she'll learn going through the gate is ok, but going through anywhere else is bad. So far. She won't go near it and she hasn't even been shocked yet. I think the problem is the white flags on either side of it. I should get a section for each side to connect to trees. Maybe without the flags in her view, she'll be more inclinde to try it.

That was about it. Time to get back to work.

- b

Let's Go Camping!

Picked up a new tent with my REI dividend.

That puts us at four tents for anyone who's counting...

Speaking of counting, I think it's time for my second beer this evening.

- b

She Won't Die

Gretchen's been given a clean bill of health. Her blood tests show good numbers by all accounts.

- b

It's That Bad

Pretty much sums up the stuff I'm working with.

- b

Drugged

Somehow I screwed up my back again. I still had some of the muscle relaxer from the last time I did this, so I took it. The label says take one pill every eight hours. I took one last night around nine. I was pretty well looped till about three today.

If I had nothing to do, it would have been nice. Everything was relaxed. I wasn't sleepy, just relaxed.

Having to be at work and working hard killed it.

Physically I was relaxed - too relaxed. Mentally I was freaking out.

I suppose I should see it as a positive, since I'm usually freaking out and physically stressed anyway.

Maybe tomorrow I'll double up and go out for a Three Martini Lunch.

- b

Fenced In

Started Gretchen on Invisible Fence training today. Since we already had the system, we're at step 4.

Training went well.

She understood pretty quickly the flags placed around the yard are some kind of boundry.

At the same time I quickly understood the perimeter that was installed before we bought the house is a little ridiculous. It's worked fine for CJ, since he's twelve and has little interest in going very far. For Gretchen the space leaves a lot to be desired - literally.

- b

Belated Post

I've been trying to post this since Sunday, but blogger was having issues with pictures.

I had this big long thing about how it was cold and windy. We went to French Creek, but a different part of the park then last week.

The wind had blown down all these trees on the north side of the trail. Then we found this cool rocky trail that went up to the bottom of the fire tower.

From there we found the old abandoned (since been rerouted) horseshoe trail (trail that goes from Harrisburg to Valley Forge).

All in all it was a pretty adventurous trip.


- b

The Deal

Yeah. New jobs are tough. There's an adjustment period where everything sucks and you're trying to catch up. My new job has that and more.

Not only is the job new, but the product we're building is new. The team that is building it is new. The technology we're using is also new.

We have a deadline of Dec. 08 to have it completed and released. In software product development cycles, that puts code freeze (the point where we stop coding functionality) somewhere around September. Between that point and December, it's all testing and code correction.

It's now March and we've yet to complete a design. The product we're building sort of exists in another product owned by our company. That product has forty screens for just one of its features. We'll have that and more.

Our product manager really knows the business we're trying to serve, but knows very little about our own business. He doesn't know how (or doesn't want to) to create the proper documentation and designs we need to build the document. We don't have a Feature List (list of functionality we'll support) or Use Cases (descriptions of how users will use our software to conduct their business). Yet he thinks he's smart enough to criticize database models and we're smart enough to build his "Master Product" from the thoughts in his head.

Our Business Analyst is his brother. He too knows nothing of software development. I spend more time explaining how software works to him then he explains how our new product works to me.

Our development team is completely new. Of the fifteen people we have, only three of us have worked with each other before. Under normal conditions, a brand new development team is a tricky thing. You have no idea what peoples skill sets and performance abilities really are. Sure they passed the interview with flying colors, but give them an IDE (programming tool), a design and see what happens. Under our current conditions there's no time for training, mentoring, or even explanation. We need results and we needed them two weeks ago. So far what we've gotten are a few gems, but mostly build errors and dumbfounded looks.

I was hired to lead the UI (user interface) development. The UI technology we're using is completely new. It's another project owned by our company, but it's development, though ahead of us, is in its infancy. It's incomplete and inconsistent. It requires a lot of extra work to figure it out and make it do simple things like delete a record - extra work our developers are unwilling or incapable of doing (more dumbfounded looks). After spending six to eight hours in design meetings with the product manager and his brother the BA, I end up spending another two to four hours trying to catch up the lack of UI development.

This product will go one of three ways. It could fail and never see the light of day taking my job with it. It could squeak out by the skin of its teeth barely functional and hardly usable. It could be a great success and I get promoted to lead another new product development team.

So it's more then just a new job. It's a bomb slowly exploding in our faces each day till we hit September and there's nothing left.

We can't get another product manager. It's too late and they're very hard to come by. Hiring a second Business Analyst has proven hard enough.

Hiring more developers is a crap shoot. Throwing more resources at something doesn't alway fix it. Instead of having three useless developers, we could end up with nine.

Getting an extension on our deadline has been mentioned, but we've also been told not to count on it.

Quitting is an option, but going back to my old job no longer is. I figure if it's either quitting or losing my job, I'll stick around. There's got to be something I can learn from one of the many hats I've been wearing to positively apply somewhere else down the road.

- b

York Showcase

When we started this whole dance thing, there was talk of us competing. For a little while, we were good enough to try some competition at the introductory levels, but never made it happen. Lately we can hardly make practice happen, so competition is out.

The studio (and Jen) made me go anyway - not to compete, but to see what it's all about. There are three semi-local competitions a year held by the semi-local Arthur Murray studios. This one was in York, PA.

I've been to a lot of different kinds of competitions over the past few years and this one was the strangest for me. It's more of an evaluation then a competition. The only prizes or places up for grabs is Best Couple, Best Male, or Best Female. After that it's all gravy. You'll get a score sheet for your own performances, but unless you get Best, you have no idea where you scored with the rest of the bunch.

I'm ok with that approach. It should relieve you the stress of coming in dead last, but it's still stressful. The studios totally hype it up. They have special practice sessions, dry-runs, reminders, all kinds of crap to "prepare" you for the big day. "What dances are you going to enter? How many? With who? What are you going to wear? Do you have a costume?" All that crap seems to conflict with the averaged results of average dancers.

If you're going to take it seriously enough to buy $400 costumes, practice your feet off, pay $1000 just to be there, and glue on fake eyelashes, I want to know where I place with everyone else.

And if it's all just for fun, don't pressure me into it.

That's my take on it anyway.

Jen liked it. She wants to try it. Which is fine as long as I remind myself to ignore the pressure and just have fun.

- b

From the Outside

This isn't good.
- b

"Cat's In the Cradle"

Most of my life I've felt this song reflected my relationship with my father. Lately I see it more as the relationship I have with myself.

There's me running around working all the time, then there's me looking up asking "when you coming home...? I don't know when, but we'll get together then. You know we'll have a good time then."

I've got to start making better choices about how I spend my time.

- b

Glasses

It's official. I got glasses, so I'm old. I realize there's many of you that have had glasses forever, but this isn't about you.
So I've had this problem with my eyes for a little while now. They'd simply get tired by the end of the day. I wouldn't get headaches, but they'd get tired. I'd have to close them and rub them for a while.

It was time to get my eyes checked.

I've never been opposed to glasses. I've just never needed them.

Into Jen's eye dr.s office I went. I've been to the guy before, but all was fine then. Not this time. Things started out fine, but got worse as he applied a battery of tests to my vision. When he put the big simulator thing in front of my eyes and started changing the prescription for each of my eyes individually, I quickly realized my left eye wasn't working as well as it used to. My right eye was fine. I could read every letter on the bottom row perfectly fine. When he blocked my right eye and asked me to read the bottom row with my left eye, things got blurry. He said the prescription wasn't bad, but in combination with an astigmatism and sitting in front of computer all day, that was the reason my eyes were so tired by the end of the day.

Ok fine. I need glasses. Sign me up. Just get me past this tired eyes bit.

Being new to the whole glasses thing, I didn't realize they'd make me pick out a pair right then and there. I expected them to give me a prescription and send me on my way - especially considering they'd dilated my eyes and I couldn't see a train coming my way. Nope. The woman sat me down and started throwing glasses at me.

"How do you like these? What about these? Oh you can't afford those."

Huh? I can afford whatever I damn well please. If they're going on my face, they better look good. What's the point of cost if I can't see the stupid things? At one point I mentioned waiting to shop with my wife as a polite way to make the woman back off, but at the same time I really wanted my tired eyes to not be tired anymore. I figured I'd get a pair (crappy as they may be), since insurance was paying for them. I'd get a better pair later that insurance wouldn't pay for anyway. Frustrated I picked a pair I thought looked decent and left.

That was a week ago.

Yesterday I spent an easy twelve hours in front of the computer. My eyes were killing me. I was so glad when I got home to find out my glasses were in. This morning I went in first thing to have them fitted. Jen warned me they'd be weird. They might even make things worse. She was right. Anything other than sitting in front of a computer made me want to puke. I persevered and wore them anyway. The guys at work said they made me look 10 iq points smarter. Working at the computer seemed easier - less tiring.

Jen says I look like a dork. I feel like I look like one of those people in the Lens Crafters ads that look like they shouldn't be wearing glasses. Jen agrees. Now that I see them, I agree with her. As I type all this, I realize my eyes are still tired. Not as tired as yesterday, but tired. Maybe they're adjusting. Maybe the prescription is wrong. I don't know. I think I'm just old.

- b

Devil Worshiper

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Beer and Laptops

Goes together like work and weekends.

Did some hiking and updated the site a little, but that was about it.

- b

Comparison

A while ago I was estimating Gretchen's full grown size based on an average weekly weight gain.

Doesn't look like she'll come anywhere near my guesstimations, but she is growing and looking more like a dog and less like a puppy.

Unfortunately she's still peeing like a puppy. We thought we were in the clear, but she decided otherwise.

Maybe if we give her some chores like trail garbage duty, the responsibility factor will help her mature.


- b

Balance

I need a little less of this


And a lot more of these.

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Not What You Think

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