Year: 2016

Well, it’s nearing the end of August-this means school and Fall. The signs have been here for a few weeks, and we’re trying to get the kids back into school mindset.

We watched part of Order of the Phoenix, until we discovered that S played us to get to watch it. To bed, up earlyish, working on the website. I need to drop my essays and everything else that can be serialized onto it. I need to get it prettier too. 2016 theme is boring and ugly-blogger is way better, but WP might have themes that are nicer. I really like having everything on a bitty set of devices. This may make me post more often.

OK-cleaning, S wanted to join Pottermore-she’s in Hufflepuff. We’re planning to go to the fair later.

We finished cleaning and went. See the post from last year for the details-we did stay later, bought more stuff and ate crap food. We’re looking at getting a new bed. Church, market, libe today. Work week-same ‘ol-trying to get to bed early-working through a change-just finished it-went back to the original code and wrote an array sorter-nothing else-trying to keep the mayhem at home minimized. Watched half of Batman vs Superman. S’s birthday-she went to Build-a-bear with friends. More housework later, M got teeth pulled to prep for ortho. Downloaded S’s TV appearance. Keeping the website up-to-date-need to import my dreams. It’s Thursday-there was an earthquake in Italy, Gene Wilder died, hurricane headed to Florida. Shillary is still ahead, Dump is dumping. This is B-movie territory, folx.

Home late-missed my usual bus, E picked me up at the libe. Ate, watch the rest of Batman vs Superman-M has strong opinions.

Second week is over-pretty mellow. Got one thing done, and another one started. They’re pretty skittish about putting stuff out to production, so that’s that. Also, my supervisor is off next week.

Cleaned today, spent Thurs. evening at the ER with E-tummy trouble again. C got his braces. Waiting for the bullies at Hitachi-and got it on the 16th… So hot. Olympics.

I love the pi. Everything is so smooth. Plus it’s in the DMZ, so I can get to it from outside. I have Eclipse Che on it too. The one thing is that it’s on a sd card, so eventually it will die. I failed at getting a hard disk up, so I need to address that soon. I’m thinking a system backup and good notes. Sun. I got a portable 1T disk going, so it’s all good. I’ll probably put all my base storage unit stuff on there as well. The sd is only for booting, so it should be OK.

Work Mon, so tired. Aborted meeting with the startup, S to bed and me too. Work Tues., late in because of trains. Meetings, going with C to a show tonight. Show was great-Earth was fine-did an encore of Oubouros with Boris-just awesome-Boris: OK, but not 100% my fave stuff. So tired Weds., the usual, late in Thurs. Work, phone meeting, to bed, up Fri.

Hanging out on a Tuesday. I kinda like this. Did the same yesterday. It will end soon enough. Got a lot of cleaning done.

Trump is the GOP nominee, and his wife cribbed some lines from a 2008 Michelle Obama speech. Now the attacks will begin in earnest. He hasn’t got a chance in hell, and he says he’s going to leave all the heavy lifting to his veep when he’s elected. Hillary may be a neoliberal hack, but she’s been in the game for a long time, and will make a competent technocrat, much like Obama. Trump’s a novice, and he’ll get eaten alive.

More cleaning-we have mice droppings in three places. Boys to orthodontist. Watched Everest. Koo-koo, climbing a mountain where 1 in 3 make it to the top, and 1 in 50 die, most either on the way down from the top (if you’re a climber) or setting things up (if you’re a Sherpa). And it’s hideously expensive…and you’re getting shepherded to the top if you’re not experienced.

And more cleaning-the whole living room is cleaned, and the kitchen today-more mouse poop. Just found out we’re “opening” for Blitzen Trapper. Kitchen is done-got help from S. Watched Prometheus. Sun., S to pool party, home, S to camp, Outback Steakhouse for dinner. Quiet Monday, on the phone with OHP. Warm. Cleaned under S’s bed, maintenance came, fixed the bedroom light & tried to fix the freezer again. Watched Apollo 13. Went through my stuff, gave C the drum pad to play with.

Quiet week-set up my rig with an idea, but I’m not sure yet. Dems had a better convention than the GOP. Electoral-vote.com is putting Hillary ahead. Got a dresser for S, but too big, so E is using it. New Ray-Bans. Meeting with the startup today. Drove around trying to find dressers for S-got 2 $35 ones at Ikea. Bleh.

Sat., picked up S from camp, lunchish at Shari’s. Hung out, watched Harry Potter. Cooked Chinese. Got cookies and wine for my birthday.

Sun., church, off to gamelan. A thing, practice, gig, home. No work until next week. Got a Raspberry Pi for my birthday-it’set up, and sort of available from the world. More tweaking is necessary, and dropping a non-flash storage device.

Busy week-cleaning, E got rid of a bunch, practiced my guitar a bit, set up the Raspberry. Don’t remember much else-one of S’s friends came over.

Got some new clothes, went bedsheet shopping, the bins, over and over. Farmer’s market, library. Started work a little late, laptop appeared early, no admin. Played around with loading everything on a toy PC, home, dinner, S to bed, to bed. Reading Goblet of Fire now.

Up a little later, to work, walked through the setup, meeting, meeting, got admin, starting installs, got badge. Home, dinner, tired, S to bed, me too. Olympics. Up Weds., to work-making progress, lunch with team, home, dinner, S to bed, me too. Up Thurs., to work-stuck right now, and everyone is in meetings. Got unstuck, but did it the wrong way-and now it’s all working. Still need to tidy things up, but tomorrow I might be able to start being productive. And I got it all running and started work on tickets. One of the guys said it was a record. Same thing happened at Nintendo.

not very exciting around here-we may go to Sellwood for the ones at Oaks Park.

Up late. church, Milwaukie market, bins, home-got a nice pair of lawn chairs. For $10 each. To bed, slept in, quiet day. To S’s teacher’s, then the Hawthorne bridge for fireworks. C came-we had a great spot.
Up Tues, work, not much else, Weds., the same but a quick meeting to start up with a startup. Thurs, work, E drove me to an interview, dropped off S for a sleepover, dinner at Burgerville with boys, saw Independence Day 2, no boys. Fri, work, interview, E picked me up at the libe, more work, rainy.
Sat., slept in, hung out, shop later. Sun., skipped church, shopped-bought a TV and a sound system. Mon., work, got the one job, Tues., got the other-a bit of a surprise-took it. S is going to VBS this week.
Weds., work, hang out, watch the Tour, set up Apache & PHP on the laptop, redirected port 80. Thurs., the daughter of S’s teacher went with S to VBS. Work, VBS thing, Cha cha cha for dinner. Everyone is playing Pokemon Go.
Fri., work, hang out. Sat., sleep in, hang out, go to Fry’s and get a blu-ray player, Sonic for lunch, Value Village. Watch Jurassic World. Sun., church, farmers market, libe, watch Independence Day.
Spent the weekend moving my website to WordPress. Only a little bit of programming…I think I want to get a bitty Raspberry Pi and host everything here.

I could do this daily, but it would so boring and very short. I really don’t want to pontificate, and no one is listening anyways.

So, up at 9, work, wash, dishes, S home, M made dinner, S to bed-she read herself to sleep with Chamber of Secrets. More work-got the thing done. Now to test.

Dreamt about going back to 1023-there’s water dripping from the ceiling, go into the attic and the roof is all bowed from the water. Release it, get the boys to start sweeping it up. It’s huge up here, and all my dad’s big tools are here. I look down into a huge open area.

OK, so it’s now Friday. Just plugging away at this issue-I’m done, have to wait until everyone else pisses on it. This is a very chaotic development environment. I could go on for awhile about it, but it’s not worth it. I’m looking for the next thing, as I have no idea whether I’m going to convert. I like the rate, and extending would be nice, but it’s a bit of a grind. I have an onsite interview Monday, and just finished a coding exercise-had to write war-fun, one of those games that is easy to code. Ran it a bunch, and it hits steady state fast and will draw easily-I was getting a million hands easy. If you add a shuffle, it goes way down and wins easily. OK. We’ll see how that goes. Hopefully I can get something going, and not be stuck when the contract ends.

Brexit passed. I don’t post links much nowadays, but this one seems apropos. How American Politics Went Insane.

Not much else, S  had a school friend spend the night Tues. That’s about the only thing. She may stay over at another friends’ tonight. Didn’t-we went to Mike’s for dinner and she met us there. Up late-dreamt about my guitar getting all the hardware taken off it.
Boys are just jelly right now. E is busy.

Saturday-up, checked in on work, hung out-lovely day. Drove around. Up late, church, drove around-market, etc.

And now it’s Wednesday-had a face-to-face Monday, not much else except work-I’m really tired. Read the whole Harry Potter series over the past weeks. Visited a Dr for E in NE. Thursday, finished up a thing, with little response from people, finished up another one as well. Dropped E off at the train for another Dr thing, dropped S off at theater camp, an interview for tomorrow postponed until next week. Cleaning up a bit. Up, S to camp, worked on a new thing. S to show, show, Burgerville.

Sat-slept in, hung out, reading outside with E, shop-Michaels, Sally, TJ’s-my sunglasses fell apart. C has an ear thing, so E is taking him to urgent care. We were going to go to the bins…

for the kids, not for me.

Looking for a job just in case the one I’m on falls through. I’ll have enough money for awhile, but it never hurts to start now. Had a phone interview yesterday-not bad.

All the kids are now on summer vacation-that means I can sleep for a half-hour more. I don’t think anyone has anything planned, except S. Maybe M will get a job.

OK, the Senate was filibustered yesterday for legislation on gun control. Reading some good stuff. Also making a run at Synergetics. Moved a bunch of stuff to the storage unit. I’m contemplating buying a 4tb one-I usually get a new one when the price point is $100. Also a new TV-we have a behemoth given to us a few years ago. You can get a reasonable sized tv for $200.

S to bed late, a little work, to bed, dreamt about waiting for a train in downtown Portland, and letting a full one pass because there was one right behind it, also about an altercation and chase/fight behind a warehouse/office park. Finally got one task done-the next is due now, so I’m busy.  Up lateish.

Up early to deliver E and M to Pride-they’re running a booth for the school w/the handwork teacher. To target, now home and to work. Worked all day and night-“No sleep ’til Brooklyn” Got the push done, not the pull-dunno if the other guy will get it done.

Up, to Pride until 2, back, S to friends’ for sleepover, back to Pride, teardown, dinner w/boys, froyo, home. movie, bed.

Time for bed. I need to get sleep.

Endless frustration at work, still. I have no idea if it will stop. It did, for the most part-now I’m to the “figure out all the stuff” part.

The log:
Work, all the way through, got conflicts merged, pull requests done. To bed, don’t remember my dreams.
Slept in a little, work, starting on a new feature. More PR comments, I’m over. To bed, dreamt about being in a parking lot with a store underground in the middle, E getting booze for a thing and I’m pissed about it.
Up, kids to school, work, more PR stuff, got the new thing going. No gamelan until mid-July. PR reviews, got the new thing rendering, but no data. Dinner, S to bed, conflict merging went fine. Time for me to sleep. Hard to get there, forgot the dream.
Up, slept in a bit, work, new thing is going. Upstairs neighbors are evicted. Reading Harry Potter. Woke up wiggly and cold. Massage, sleep.
Up, kids to school, work. New thing is almost done-need to refine the UI and hook up the data. UI is refined, except for one thing, the data is wired, but need to do the bit to populate the collection-getting there, all I need now are 2 more bits. Got the bits, S to bed, one bit left. Finished up, now to testing-the database I’m using sucks, so I have to get some data going. Pushed a branch, sent an email, played agario.
Slept in, dreamed about trying to find a place to be alone. Breakfast, coffee, a little work. Shopping for dishes. Home, burgers for dinner, S to bed late, up late.
Slept in-too tired for church. Shop-to Ikea and environs, no dishes. Up late-ish.
Holiday Monday-slept in, hung out, cleaned, worked. Dinner at a neighbors, up late working-got the PR in, but with conflicts.
Woke up suddenly at 7:45-ack. Dreaming about listening to Todd and looking at my email on an index card-sized device. Very tired. Everyone got out the door and I went back to bed. On to work. Fixed the conflict, did some if the PR stuff, getting a new task. ANOTHER conflict, working on comments, E to hospital, very very crowded, we got home at 2.
Up, so, so tired, but a few folks at work pulled an all-nighter, kids to school, standup, to Costco for meds, fixed the conflict, but now git’s certificate is wacked. Lockdown at UCLA. Yet another conflict… Pick up kids. Talk about the new JIRA on my plate. Cooking dinner, S to bed, more work.
So tired-woke up and had a hard time going back to sleep. Kids to school, work-figured out the 2 things I was struggling with. Finish them and on to the next bit. Got it done, but a zillion comments to the PR have stalled me. Luckily some dude made changes to the new one so I can call it. Prince died of a Fentanyl OD, brought on by chronic pain mismanagement. Got paid, pulled out taxes. Boy, I’m responsible! I’ve gotten burned, so I know.

Waiting on electoral-vote.com to start up for real. Not much else to say about our crazy land. I have lotsa links, but not going to post them, music too, but no, just the log.

It’s going to be hot today, but it’s still nice and cool. For now.

Trying to get things done, I think I’m making some progress, but it’s slow going. I got help-I needed to connect to an already set up database, now it works, but I have to change the call, and it’s not working. Onward-I’m on the critical path, and I don’t like it. OK-school meeting, yummy burritos with the wife, S to bed, hang out, bed-dreamed about being in a house and looking over the cool furniture, and my old library table, which had holes in the top, go outside with mom, big storm, run back to the house, go around back and there’s a big college party with all sorts of people I knew, but it’s freshman year, so I don’t really know them yet.
Up, kids to school, work-I’m actually making progress. Still under the gun, though. It’s hot again, and E wants the doors open, so it’s hot in here now. I closed everything up and turned on the A/C-it’s better after 4 hours…Still a bit choppy working-but not stopped in my tracks. Burgers and artichokes for dinner-went to the libe, but it was closed, saw the aftermath of a flowerpot fire. Up late.
Slept in a bit, E went to a church thing. Lazed around. Up for church, shopping. S to bed, working-got it figured out, but the API isn’t working right. I think I’ll check it in, but note that it’s not working right yet.
Got it all figured out, but very late, Super tired, got stuff done, but no housework. S to bed, back to work.
Up, very tired. Kids to school, work. Going to be hot today, but quite cool now. Actually a decent day-got more done, but the next ones are missing stuff. Cleaned the house too. Dinner, S to bed, a little work, time for bed.
SO hard to get up today. E is still sleeping. Kids to school, back, all the stuff that’s next doesn’t have specs or api’s, so I’m done! Well, almost done-the three I worked on still need to get finished up. Meeting at school, gamelan, dinner, bed.
Woke up late, work. Rainy, got the stuff to auto-build, reset pull request. One more thing to do tomorrow. Dinner, S to bed, looking at old OS stuff.
It’s Friday, there are 2 gigs tomorrow, and I’m basically done with all the work I have. Nice. I had to change one little thing, and write JavaDocs for a couple. Git case sensitivity is still hosing me. The old Ruby’s on the Seal Beach pier burned-it looked shuttered. Not much else-work, hang out, get pizza for fam, gamelan.
Sat.-up, take C to a friends’, gamelan-pack up truck, unpack truck, play at the Chinese garden, pack up truck, hang out in St. Johns, go to Kenton Masonic Temple, unpack truck, hang out, watch odd first act, set up, play-we had to restart Wilujeng-so embarrassing-it’s an easy piece! Watch headliner, pack truck, back to L&C, unpack truck. Very tired-home, eat, bed.
Sun., sleep in, pick up C, drop off C, go to AlpenRose & drop off S, yummy lunch, shop, watch kids’ show, Burrito Express for dinner, S to bed, hang out, so tired, sleep. Dreamed about being on the shore exploring a WWII thing that catches marine invaders, dive down to hide, back up on rocks-perfect waves coming in, want to bodysurf, go out.
Up, kids to school, work. Still so tired. Things aren’t going well.

These are becoming detailed-truly “an exciting life?” I don’t think so. I’m just about done with the Nature of Order and a bunch of other books are here. Onward. Lots of music-Nurse With Wound.

Another week starts. Worked through lunch, trying to optimize memory usage but not kill performance. Did a thing with processing 100, then post, and it seems to work. Dinner, S to bed, eat, hang out, bed. Up, dreamed about running a long path through three dreamscapes and making a map.
Kids to school, to work, mess with Git, gave up and manually put everything in. More testing, have to rewrite some. Dinner, S to bed, eat, hang out, bed, dreamed about moving gamelan instruments, woke up with bad tummy and a headache.
Shower, work, coffee, work. More changes. Gamelan, home, dinner. Hang out, bed. Up, dreamed about being in a high-speed train, crashing into a cul-de-sac and a mom getting her minivan doused in foam.
Kids to school-missed every light. Now, to work-doing loop optimization, and pull requests. Sitting outside is sweet, and I installed iTunes so I can listen to music from my phone-Bluetooth was a fail. We’re such a fine gamelan-as good as any, except the top top folks from the courts. It doesn’t hurt that we get these ringers… S, finished up the loop optimization with a sweet use of slice-doubled speed. Checked it in, S’s teacher’s daughter came over and swam, dinner, S to bed, hang out, TV-Jimmy Fallon and Robert Downey Jr. talked about stunt kites-I sent him a link to videos…Bed, dreamt about walking through a big mall store and seeing gamelan folks, driving to a Starbucks like a bar with weird parking, and the manager talking about all the finance problems.
Up, S to school, the boys have the day off, and now, work. Starting on a new thing-installs…problems with Maven and Eclipse and Liferay. Watched Star Wars 7. Bedtime.
Sleep in, don’t remember what I dreamed. Gonna be hot today. Lazy, tried to stay cool, library, shopping, up late. Church, shopping, lunch on Hawthorne, very tired and headache, grill, S to bed, late. Lots of agar.io. Sleep, tired, kids to school (with an extra passenger),
Home, breakfast, work, new stuff, meeting. Struggling with getting things working, dinner, S to bed, hang out. Sleep, dreamed about setting up a guitar and taking a train somewhere. Slept in a bit, work-had to nuke my app…but I got the new app going-sort of, and the jira I’m working on is done except for the API coordination. Dinner, S to bed, hang out, bed, dreamed about being at a show and Foo Fighters played a little thing afterwards, with no one around.
Kids to school, work-trying to get the next one started, info about the first one, plus troubleshooting the deployment-there’s a bit of missing data. Didn’t get it working-it starts, but the website doesn’t respond. Anyways, dinner, gamelan, home, bed-dreamed about playing on a huge stage, everyone else leaves, and I’m playing riffs. Don Cornelius comes up and gives me a wedding package. Then I’m in a theater for church, the kids leave and we go with them.
Didn’t want to get up, meeting, work.

My family is giving me grief about being a Green and being the reason Bernie is going to lose (except for C-he’s a Trump supporter and could care less). \/\/hate\/er. I’ve been a Green since Greens came to California, and I’m not changing.

So, this may signal more frequent updates, as I’m actually working working from home. Only time will tell.

Recap: work, travel back to PDX, slow bus, but I left early enough to get to the train OK, several groups partying until the conductor came and shut them up, while I listened to music and read the last book of the Nature of Order. Family picked me up, home, cleaning Sat., libe, run around, church Sun., run around, up Mon., kids to school, back to work, standup, work, clean, work, dishes, work, laundry, work, lunch, work, dinner, S to bed, us to bed. Today looks like lather, rinse, repeat, though there is less cleaning to do, and only one load of dishes and laundry. C has swollen tonsils, so he got to stay home. Got everything done, but having trouble with Eclipse and PHP debugging. Cooked dinner, S to bed. Time for me too. Up, kids to school, work, got the debugging thing fixed, mess w/kids as E had to go to OC for a friend, gamelan-only 4 people and no M, worked on one piece, shop, home, up today, slept in a bit, work, E’s tummy, got boys, E to hospital, work, get E, libe, shop, dinner, bed. Dreamed about butterflies, moving, and diving (actually in a pool and trying to get to equilibrium). And now it’s Friday. Up, kids to school, work. Work all day-picked up a nasty encoding mismatch bug. Sleep late Sat., hang out, clean, shop. Up late, hard to get to sleep, sleep in, laze, clean, burgers, time for another week.

Not much to say-I think I’ll call it a post.

I’ve been neglecting this for a while. Whatever.

Here’s a quick recap of months of life: went to L.A. for xMas. Long drive, decent hotel. Visits. It was super awesome to see Diane. I was so in love with her. Still am.
Back, and the Zoom thing fell through. Onward, then-had a ton of phone calls, screens, face-to-face, but nothing, nada, zip, bupkis. Not much else happened during this time-kids & school, church, gamelan, the usual. A couple of things. C is a conservative and supports Trump-we think he’s just trying to piss us off… M is doing very well. S is too-she had chicken pox. E had colitis, but it’s subsiding now. We had to rush to get OHP insurance. I was finally getting close with OHSU, and a company called Schneider Electric wanted me to interview in Clovis, and I was hanging on with Hitachi. Finally Hitachi came through, but with a contract for Nintendo doing php rather than Java with NWEA-oh, whell… So I’m in Seattle for 2 weeks, and have to wait 45 days to get paychecks. Yuk, but it’s a job with a good rate. I took the train up, and stayed in a tiny room right next to Microsoft, and walked to work, back and made chinese food for dinner. E and S came up Thurs., drove around, ate pizza, sleep. Friday they’re going downtown. The traffic south is insane. They had a great day downtown, and we waited ’til 7 to leave. Drove home, slept in, shopped at a flea market in Vancouver, home, church, train back to Seattle, back to work.
Geezer rock stars are dying. Lemmy, Bowie, B.B., Kantner, Glenn Frey, Chris Squire, now Prince (even though he’s not a geezer)…

I’ve been reading Alexander’s The Nature of Order. It’s slow going, but valuable. I wish this would change everything, but it’s likely not going to happen. He’s coming at Steiner’s theories, but from the other direction. I don’t think he’ll end up at the same place, but only because he’s not clairvoyant and Steiner was. Even with Steiner’s blind spots, bias, and pre-conceived notions, the idea (and reality) of a spirit-filled world is true and valuable, and that’s the end-point of Alexander as well. How to spread this?

I had some thoughts about Microsoft as I was walking through the campus. What happens to Bellevue/Redmond if M$ never existed? Also, what would it look like if M$ used Alexander’s building theories?

I’ve also been thinking about alienation. About how the hallmark of our culture and era is just that. And how I fall into that hole, even without thinking about it. That there are so many who do the same, but don’t have (or know) the way out. I’m reading the last of Alexander’s books now, and he’s noting the same thing in building, and life in general. I have to take a moment to reconnect, and luckily all it takes is a moment for me. That doesn’t take away from the general feeling, and how I still feel it, especially about other people. Sometimes it’s a consequence of living in a city, where there are lots of strangers, and you can’t treat them like friends. Sometimes it’s closer to home, but luckily I can shake it off. That doesn’t minimize the feeling-it’s dangerous, and it infects things. I think it’s a consequence of the culture, and my personality, so it’s a thing. And not just my thing.

Onward. into the breach.