Filling in the Blanks

Wow. Looks like I'm working again. Thanks, everyone, for hanging in there. I hope you have had an enjoyable few weeks in my absense. How long was I gone?

Talk about jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Actually, it has been more like jumping out of bed into the microwave oven. I hit the ground running in my new job, to say the least. This place has one of the top enterprise software products in their market, yet they haven't quite figured out what they're doing wrong, yet. They're too heavy in the sales and marketing department and don't seem to be interested in the people who are building their product. Go figure.

There are 30 developer positions open! Boggles the mind. And yet, here I am in an in-between position, working with the designers and coordinating their efforts with development. In the past couple weeks, I built a prototype to show off some design ideas to address the weak points in their web-based product (and there are a lot of them) and to help steer them into the 21st century as far as the technology. I even worked through the last two weekends to get it ready for a big presentation we were supposed to have today. The design team is trying to get buy-in with the head guys -we're trying to make them understand how integral design is to the software development life cycle. But we're facing an up-hill battle against some quite old school momentum. Such a classic tale.

But the kicker was that the top dogs who we were going to present to today cancelled the meeting in favor of another "more important" meeting where they are covering issues of scope regarding the next product version release. Now, hang on just a minute here! How can you discuss scope when you don't know what the design team is proposing? These people have no fucking clue.

Well, Oracle laid off a bunch of people, so perhaps the open development positions will fill up. Unless the company figures out they want to retain a competitive position in their market, it kind of makes me wonder where my position will end up. We'll probably be relegated to the age-old band-aid approach to "improving" their product. Anyway, I don't really care as long as I get paid. But I would much rather continue doing cool new stuff than try to continually patch things to keep the old "machine" limping along.

In other news, I finally got the chance to fly my new radio-controlled (electric) airplane that I got for Christmas. It was a very short flight, however. I was in totally unfamiliar territory, and the airplane was much more difficult to fly than I expected, and I wound up ripping the landing gear off in a hard landing. Fortunately, that is all I did, but now I have to find time to fix it.

I also went another round with my ear infection. I think it is stress-related. My theory is this: when I get stressed, I find myself doing this odd thing with my jaw, where I kind of thrust it forward. Then my TMJ (jaw joints) become irritated and inflamed and the increased blood flow and swelling in the area raises the temperature in my ear, promoting fungal growth. I also tend to pick at my toes while I'm sitting at home at the end of the day, then scratch my ears, so I suspect I am introducing unwanted visitors into my ears where they can flourish. That's my theory, anyway - I hope you're not eating breakfast.

My right ear became completely plugged up for a couple of days. There was a little bit of discharge one day, but that was it (not like the horrible bout of 2000 where both ears were oozing and I was temporarily deaf for a couple weeks due to blockage and, finally, treatment, which consisted of an "ear wick" procedure that involved injecting some gook into my ears, which hardened, then was removed several days later).

This time, I started attacking the infection from the onset, using the ear drops religiously...but to no avail. Ear drops seem to never work for me (and I am using two different kinds, one perscription, and one OTC). I was very distressed about being deaf in one ear, and the blockage was simply very uncomfortable. I finally took matters into my own hands on Sunday.

I had this ear wash bulb that I got from my first battle in 2000 and I retrieved it from its hiding place in a cabinet in the bathroom and went to work. I blasted my ear, repeatedly, with warm salt water for about 30 minutes. It didn't seem to be doing any good at first, and I was worried I was making matters worse by watering my new fungal inhabitants, but then I had a breakthrough. At one point, I simply filled my ear up with water and let it soak for about 10 minutes. Then I blasted this big ball of crap out of the hole, and suddenly I could hear again! I can't tell you how much I appreciate and rely on my hearing. It was such a good feeling!

I continued to blast my ear with salt water for several more minutes. In the end, I must have flushed about a gallon of water (or more) in and out of my ear. Then I sat for quite some time, using the now dry ear wash bulb to repeatedly blow air into my ear to dry it out. Once I felt it was dry, I put some drops in.

My ear has been fine ever since. Looks like I may have conquered it. Hopefully, it will be the last time. I'm keeping an eye on it (so to speak) over the next few days, and if I feel confident by the weekend, I'm cancelling my doctor appointment. I called to say I had a raging infection in my ear and needed to see the doctor, and they said they could squeeze me in on the 27th. That was about a week ago! So, you see, I couldn't just sit around and do nothing about it. Now I am so happy that I did something.

My wife got a call from her Mom saying her Aunt had been diagnosed with cancer and was dying. My wife was going to fly out to visit her last weekend, but plans changed and she wound up staying home. We both worked through the weekend (though me more than her, which was a switch). She's going to travel another time.

There's some robot fighting fun coming up in Oakland on the 25th. I might sign up for it and go fight my 12-pounder. It's always fun, and I haven't yet pitted it against anybody with any real weapons, yet. In fact, I think I'll go sign up for it as soon as I am done with this blog entry. By the way, it is nearly 4:00 a.m. and I have already slept for six hours. I got up early Monday morning to make it to the presentation, only to discover it was cancelled, and I was so tired from the past couple weeks, that I came home and crashed around 7:00 p.m. I got up around 1:00 and, as usual, my wife had fallen asleep in her chair in front of the television. We traded places, so now she's asleep and I'm up entertaining myself.

Today is Valentine's Day! Ugh! I haven't had a chance to get so much as a card for my wife. Perhaps I'll run out before she wakes up and get her some flowers or something. We went to a private hot tub a few weeks ago and had a nice relaxing evening. We're talking about taking a day off work this week - perhaps we'll go out on a date.

Well, I know there is more to tell, but I'm just not thinking of it right now. I've got a new entry to write up in the Computer Circus (a new acquisition I found in the trash, of all places). Something is wrong with this world when there are people who can't even afford to eat, and here I am pulling computers out of the trash. Anyway, that's another story for another time.

I hope all is well with everyone. And Happy Valentine's Day!