Category Archives: Confessions

Things about me you probably never wanted or don’t need to know.

My Best Fan

Evie Gazes
This evening, over far too many minutes, I installed a ceiling fan in Evie’s room.  I had to install a support rod with complementary electrical box first.  Insulation fell all over me – I itched then, I’m itching now.  I somehow missed one of the steps in the installation and had to back track to fix the missed step.  Screws fell from the fan as I was trying to put them in.  All sorts of frustrations.

It was all better though when Evie looked up at the spinning blades with Jessica by her side and said proudly, “That’s my best fan.”  She was so pleased to have a fan in her room that I could only enjoy the smile and the pleasure that my work, irritated as I had become, had brought about.  She loves that it spins and I love that she loves it.

Tomorrow night I get to install Abby’s, but I’ll be applying the lessons learned, so hopefully it’ll be less messy, and less irritating.  It’ll be my best fan for one of my best girls.

Security in Light of Comedy

I have a friend who went through security holding onto a Mountain Dew soda beverage.  Security at the airport.  The airport where congress in the United States has made that illegal.  So my friend was told by security, “You cannot take that drink through security, sir.”  His curt reply was, “What?  Am I going to make a bomb out of Mountain Dew?”

They really made the rest of his stay at the airport exciting and irritating.  Security, whose purpose is to make sure we’re all safe, was not a joke.  While traveling through the security checkpoint at the Denver International Airport, around the same time, I discovered I had accidentally left my pocket knife in my pocket (where it belongs).  I quickly slipped it into my computer bag with my keys and wallet and let it go through x-ray.  If they find it, I want them to find it and remove it from my bag and I’ll blush for having forgotten to put it on my night stand.  Security didn’t catch my knife on the x-ray screen.  I got to keep it, hidden, and then when I arrived in Grapevine, TX, I put it in my luggage that was checked so as to not get it confiscated by the DFW screeners who are effective at finding knives in bags… I’ve lost two to them.

Last night I watched Spaceballs at the movie theater with my brother-in-law.  In that movie there are a few really, really good bits on security holes that often exist in real-life security situations.  The combination number for the planet Druidia’s security system was 1-2-3-4-5 [as was the president’s luggage combination]. The security guards protecting the self-destruct mechanism inside of Spaceball One (the extra-long battleship) help foil the security.  Mel Brookes, the genius behind Spaceballs, saw the idiotic nature of much of our security in the world and cried foul, and nearly made me cry because it was so funny.

This morning I watched Pinky & the Brain with my daughters.  Again, they bring to light the comedy of lax security in what should be important situations.  Comedy makes us laugh about what is really important.  What is so often funny in the comedy is that we all know that the human error involved in the scenarios is quite probable.  Worse, we can laugh because we see the horrible catastrophe playing out before our eyes.  Even more we see in books like Dave Barry’s Big Trouble has a great section at the end of the book where terrorists jump through security with guns as if its no problem simply because they can time the system and game it.  The writing is hilarious (as is most of Dave’s work) but the problem is real.

Does the staff at the TSA, FBI, CIA, BMW or AT&T [that was a little comedy right there.  Very little.] ever watch comedy movies or television shows?  Because when they make choices about security it isn’t always obvious?  Bruce Schneier, a respected security expert and security blogger, has written on many occasions about the bumbling choices that get made in the name of security.  I would laugh if it wasn’t so irritating to have so many good examples.  I hear you loud and clear from here, Bruce, there’s very little that we won’t try in the name of security, except for the stuff that works, because that’s just ridiculous.

All By Myself…

This evening upon exiting my office I walked out into the living room and there on the couch was Jessica curled up in the fetal position.  On my own, all by myself, I determined that she would not be making dinner tonight.  In almost ten years of marriage I have learned this important lesson: if its blatantly obvious, I should probably get a clue.  Clue received… now, what to do about dinner?

My Children are Insane with a Capital N

Warning: this post contains lots of non sequiturs, I’m tired, and non sequiturs make me chuckle when I’m tired.  I’d ask if you follow what I”m saying except that that’s what a non sequitur is.  Elephants wander through the African planes and such.

Both girls have been in a mild to extreme melt-down mode since coming home from Indiana. I’m pretty sure this is due to the fact that Jessica and I have also been in punt mode. We’ve had a lot going on and when that happens we end up punting a lot. If you’re not familiar with the punt analogy it ties in with the popular American sport called American Football. Its called American Football because the rest of the world calls it American Football because they had a sport called football long before the Americans who took Rugby, Football, Sumo Wrestling and the Civil War and combined them together so that only very fast, large men (and now, apparently fast, large women) can mash into one another like two over-loaded sports cars while one smaller, but still huge man attempts to throw the ball to another smaller, not as huge man who runs even faster than the other fast runners in an attempt to not be killed by oncoming fast, large men. This is, in short, American Football.

In American Football there’s a really nice thing that happens: the teams share the ball and take turns having ‘possession’ of the ball. Possession is a loose term because each team could find themselves running with the ball, in fear of being creamed by the other team, lose the ball and then do what’s called fumbling the ball and then recovering the dropped ball, which means that they might still have possession even though they temporarily did not have possession. After enough time lapses where the team who had possession didn’t do anything useful with the ball, they might have what’s called a fourth down. The fourth down follows the first through third down. The number of downs you have depends on the number of severely injured fowl you have as well as fouls that may have been committed by players added together with the number of yards the football has traveled in a subjectively positive direction. Upon the fourth down, if the team who has possession of the ball decides that they’re too close to the scoring end-zone of the opposing team they can do what’s called punting. Punting is to kick the ball to the other end of the field but not into the scoring end-zone, just up close to it. The returning, opposing team then catches the ball and the player who catches the ball hopefully runs a long, long way so that they get back closer to the original end-zone so that they can get a touchdown. A touchdown has nothing to do with the downs mentioned earlier. So the punt is a scrambled maneuver that is only done to prevent the other team from scoring and is generally looked at as a last resort maneuver.

Since Jessica and I have been resorting to the punt for the last couple weeks due to some unforeseen circumstances, work, and a general sense of being whelmed (not over or under, but relatively pegged) the girls have probably felt like the football being kicked from one end of the field as we play American Football with each day.  This is why Evelyn threw a screaming temper tantrum as we were entering the fine Costco store this evening to collect small, specific bits of food for Father’s Day this weekend. Food that will keep us going in our punting, punting that will keep us from scoring, but keep the other team from scoring. Scoring which makes us like John Williams, who does not play American Football.

Lens Envy

If you have ever wondered why I like photography, and I’m pretty sure you all have, its because its a creative activity that lets you observe things around you and try to capture events, things and points of view for posterity. My friend’s dad growing up was a photographer and he always had amazing photographs hanging up that he had shot, developed, printed and framed himself. Photography was art, but it was also science and engineering for him. When I took photography in High School I was terribly disappointed to find out that the actual science behind it was not as forgiving as I had hoped it would be. I wanted for there to be a great, simple method to take photos, print them, hang them to share, and then to repeat with other photos. I gave up on photography because the steps to produce consistent results seemed just out of my grasp and budget (film costs money and the equipment to process yourself is expensive, as was having someone else process the photos for you).

Then digital photography showed up on the scene. What had once been exposing my inability, broken by fixer and developed into a pain was now being replaced by technology that allowed me to avoid the bad process that was error prone and gave me freedom to discover the awesomeness that was photography without the older headaches. Newer photography headaches have come up in places like storage, image software needing to be learned, file sharing issues and the like, but this was a step that cut out the toughness and let me just shoot and share.

Two different friends got me excited about photography again: Norm Avery at church. He showed me his Nikon 5700 and I was blown away by the picture quality and what it could do. And Mike Mason, who showed me his awesome photos as well as shared some great image manipulation techniques in photoshop.

My biggest problem was wanting the newest, biggest camera with the most amazing accessories. I griped about it one day to Mike who plainly put it into perspective. He told me that the camera didn’t make the photographer. It’s a simple statement. It is true that a great camera can take great pictures, but in the hands of the wrong person its just as bad as my grandma buying a computer and only using it for playing solitaire! The point was not that I should never get a better camera (I did, but it isn’t the bigger camera I had envied), the point was that I had to work with what I had to maximize my use of the camera before I worried about having the $5,000 setup. I have a $400.00 camera and I love it!

I have been to zoos, public gatherings and various events and seen people with monstrous cameras and they’re just walking around holding them while they chase their kids, drink a beverage or just sitting like a bump on a log. I was at the Denver zoo and a photographer with a massive lens was taking shots of the animals and I talked with him about it a little bit. I don’t remember the info he gave me on the lens, but I do remember his attitude of friendliness. He wasn’t out there showing off his camera (though I did notice it… a LOT), but he was enjoying his art. The cat he was trying to photograph was not cooperating with taking the shot he was after and he sat their patiently waiting for the shot. It wasn’t the camera. It helped to have the camera, it helped to have a great lense (this thing was amazing), but it was not the camera or the lens that had planned the shot out and waited for the cat to move into the right place, look the right way, and executed the shot.

Mike was right. I knew he was, but it required me to change my mind about what I expected from my photography experience. Mike, along with encouragement from my buddy Dave, suggested I get the Canon S3IS several years back so that I could take the pictures I wanted (most of the time) for a price that was less than $500.00. Because my attitude about the camera was different – it wasn’t about having 500 bells and whistles and huge lenses – I was glad to upgrade from the Nikon 5700 I had had, to the Canon S3IS. The IS stands for Image Stability, which was one of the big reasons, along with a faster auto-focus and a sports setting, that I bought the camera. With two little girls I needed faster auto-focus than the Nikon had and with sports I knew that I could get better shots of them in pretty much any activity they could participate in. The camera helped, but I knew I had to learn about the camera and use its tools as a smart photographer instead of just hoping that the camera could compensate for my lack of thought.

I have a lot to learn about this camera still. I need to think more about composition, depth of field, and just about every other detail of the photos I take, but my attitude has changed. My friend Jeremy often takes great shots where the composition is great, but the depth of field grabs my attention. Mike gets the lines to draw your eye to the subject, and Sean, the childhood friend whose dad is a photographer, plays with all of the details and finds new expressions of the images with adjusting colors. There’s lots to learn, and in the end, the camera is a tool, but its no replacement for the photographer who uses the tool to make art, capture moments, and create images of memories.

If you have a hobby or passion consider adjusting your attitude about certain elements to focus on the very substance of the passion. Don’t get caught up in the trappings (unless you’re into a dangerous sport, then get into the trappings, don’t kill yourself or get yourself killed), find out what the fundamental details are and explore them. In our consumer focused world exit the ‘stuff factory’ mindset and make sure you’re maximizing what you’ve got. Then, if time and money allow, you can get the cooler, newer, bigger, better, faster, flashier thing – but it won’t be excess baggage, it’ll be the right tool in the hands of a thoughtful individual.

You can find pictures by some of the folks mentioned above at the following locations:
Sean Franzen
Mike Mason
Jeremy Doan

Jank

My computer is borked.  The puke that Abby gave it on Saturday makes it ‘exciting’ to use because periodically it will just reboot itself.  The puke is the deliverer of Funk and fortunately there is some Wagnalls coming because the fine people at the Apple store will be able to restore it to a normative state of working.  By normative I mean back to not smelling funky, having a screen that has correct color and such as well as a keyboard that responds to all of its keys being pressed.

Why get an extended warranty on an expensive laptop?  Because that will give my friend Dave something to make fun of me for.

More Web Developers Choose Crack Over Any Other Browser!

I have spent far too much time on ‘fixing’ a bug that only happens in Internet Explorer (AKA Internet Exploder).  Here’s a run-down on the problem:

1) Use math to figure out where something should show up on the screen

2) Test in Firefox – works!

3) Test in IE7 – Fail!

4) Remove rational math that appears to make sense and replace it with nonsense – works in IE7, fails in Firefox because Firefox isn’t as buggy

What I don’t get is that more people use Internet Explorer and its older.  Why does the new browser have to work better, smarter, faster and cleaner?  Thanks for reading my whine.

IE7 hack  post mortem: in Firefox, use math.  In IE6 & IE7 use meth.

Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That

Last night my buddy Tony drove up from Austin to hang out with me while I’m in Grapevine, TX.  I stopped by the hotel front desk and asked about paying extra for another guest in the hotel room so as to

1) Be honest

2) Confirm that they knew I’d have another guest in my room

3) Make sure that any extra charge for another guest was not on the bill for the company I’m down here working for

The guy who I asked at the front desk asked his manager because he was new and didn’t know what the extra cost would be.  He came out with an odd grin on his face that was strangely dirty and concerned me and announced, “He says you can have the guest in your room for free tonight.”

I think this was free because the manager didn’t want to fiddle with the bill, but the perverse look of the messenger was very disturbing.  I think I shall go bathe in some bleach.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Its Like Being Dead, Only Different

I’m still here.  I’ve been working like a crazy man for the last month and some days.  I have re-written three interfaces in that time and I’m rather pooped.  I’m heading out on a business trip tomorrow morning (which is probably when you’re reading this) and will be on call for the whole trip to do work related things.  I’m hoping to get some sleep somewhere soon.  In the meantime please consider looking at pictures of things like barbed wire, my girls, or this.

If you’re in the mood some praying for my well being would be much appreciated as in 6 hours or so I’ll be getting up to begin the day’s traveling.  I’ll try not to whine since I’m blessed to be employed, blessed to have a great family, and blessed to get to see friends in Texas.