Walking on Sunshine

My wife and our neighbor and I went out for a walk along the bay in Foster City today. It was a rare clear, calm day, and the sunshine took the edge off the nip in the air for the most part. We had a nice little walk out to a somewhat secluded spot where we sat and watched the birds and talked while listening to the gently lapping water along the shore.

Then, off in the distance, I could hear this odd whine that sounded like some kind of power tool off in the distance. I brushed it off, thinking maybe someone in the neighborhood was working on something in their garage. But after several minutes of this relentless high-pitched buzzing sound, I finally turned my head toward the direction of the sound, not really expecting to see anything.

I was stunned to see not one, but two electric RC model airplanes buzzing around in the sky off in the distance. I pointed them out and my wife said I should go check it out and that she would bring the car around later to get me. She's great. I set off on foot in the direction of the airplanes, leaving my wife and neighbor friend to discuss life issues on their own while I pursued my own destiny of the day.

It was a good little walk to get to this grass clearing near the road, and by the time I got there, the planes had landed, but I met up with a couple of very nice modelers who had a whole fleet of small electric airplanes lined up in the grass. They were very welcoming and friendly, and while I was talking to them, two more flyers arrived with their airplanes. Conincidentally, one guy had the exact same model that my wife got me for Christmas!

It's the Mini-Funtana - and here is mine before its first flight, sans propeller.

I flew my new airplane for the first time a couple weeks ago and managed to rip off the landing gear on the first landing. It turns out, it is not an easy plane to fly.
But maybe that goes without saying. Here's a shot of it, looking at the bottom, after the landing gear got torn from the underbelly. It peeled back the covering like a sardeen can, and poked a couple of holes in the wings. Needless to say, I was quite irritated, understandably upset, and downright angry.

And here you can see the disembodied landing gear (to the left). The gear survived just fine, but the mounts were ripped right out of the bottom of the airframe.

After meeting the guy today who had the same plane, I now know what I need to do to fix mine. I have already cut away the covering from the affected area and removed some of the damaged wood, but I have a bit more work to do. I will be reinforcing the area with a couple strips of some heavier plywood. My assessment of the aircraft when I originally examined the damage was that the landing gear mount was of an extremely poor design. This assessment was confirmed by a couple of guys today who said that everybody has that problem with this plane, and that the landing gear is "mounted wrong."

The one guy gave me some additional pointers about setting up the controls to make the plane flyable, and to make sure I move the CG (center of gravity) forward, even further than the manual indicates. It shouldn't take me long, though I'm going to have to wait another weekend before I get around to fixing it. I don't think I'm going to the robot rumble next weekend, so I'll probably work on it then. I am certainly getting the itch to fly again!

After watching the guys fly for a while, it began to get a little cold, and my wife showed up with the car, so I departed. We drove around Foster City a bit, looking for places where we might like to live, and have begun dreaming about moving there. It's such a nice community, and I would love to have a little boat that I could paddle around in...not to mention, having a place to fly with some nice people to fly with.

We also dreamed of winning the Power Ball lottery. Wish us luck! We're certainly going to need it if we don't buy a ticket...

P.S. My Computer Circus blog turned two years old this month.

It's Only Time

It's almost 4:30 am and again I cannot sleep. I went down to read a technical book around 9:00 pm and promptly fell asleep, only to awake around 1:15 when my wife came to bed. I have been having athsma or allergy problems the past few days. I was doing so well, then something happened - not sure what. I think it began when I choked on some water (you'd think after 43 years, I'd learn how to swallow properly). Then I cleaned out the litter box for the cats, did some general sweeping and vacuuming around the house, and generally stirred up dust. Then I went to a dinner party a couple nights ago at a house that was pretty much completely rebuilt - the guy who owns it is a contractor and bought the house at a foreclosure auction and it was pretty much rotted and gutted out when he got it. Lots of mold and crap. So, who knows if I was exposed to anything there.

But my lungs are full of crap and my nose is running and I'm sneezing a lot. I really hate when that happens. I'm just glad I don't have to go to work tomorrow. uh....today.

Speaking of work, my job is only 5 miles from home! That's quite a difference from the 30 miles that it used to be. But here's the kicker. When I worked 30 miles from home, it took me nearly 40 minutes to get there. 7 minutes to the freeway, 20 minutes on the freeway, 10 minutes to the office. Yet, now that I work 5 miles from home, it takes 14 minutes to get there.

14 minutes.

That's like 20 miles per hour when you average it all out. I had to laugh when I read a post somewhere from someone claiming to have lived in New York and San Francisco and other places, complaining about how the traffic lights in Tucson were unsynchronized. Now, wait a minute - I grew up in Tucson, and although the occasional red light was perhaps a bit inconvenient, it certainly wasn't unexpected when travelling across town, and the red lights only lasted for maybe a minute. I have to wonder if this complainer has actually ever so much as set foot - much less imagined it - anywhere in California.

I swear all the lights in this state - all of them - are perfectly synchronized so that each and every single one of them on any given route is RED when you get there. Then, you have to deal with the first-come, first-served nature of their...uh...design and try to guess which arrow is going to turn green, which direction of traffic will get to go next, and half the time wonder why seven of the eight possible directions of travel are red at any given time while you're sitting there for 2 or 3 minutes trying to figure out which light is actually green. Even at 2:00 in the morning. Then, if any traffic comes along in the lane that has a green light or a green arrow, it will turn red just in time to make them stop. Then the light for the next empty lane will turn green (and it might be empty because the traffic previously waiting there got tired of waiting and blew the light - though that is highly dangerous, since you never know what light is going to be green as you pass on through).

Unsynchronized traffic lights in Tucson? GIVE ME A FREAKIN' BREAK!!!

I went to visit Tucson not too long ago, and I thought I was in heaven. Relatively speaking. As far as driving goes, anyway. Although, the whole driving culture is very different. Although you can't get anywhere in any reasonable amount of time on California streets (at least not in any part of California I have ever been in), at least I don't feel like some mindless numbskull with a boomer stereo system and a pneumatic suspension system is going to cream me in an intersection at 60MPH while making a left turn. So, I guess there are trade-offs. But I sure miss being able to actually get around town. As spread out at Tucson was, it seemed like the longest it ever took to get anywhere was 15 minutes. And that certainly covered more than 5 miles. Hell, I could be out in the desert in 15 minutes!

Ah, well. You take it as it comes to you, I guess. One mile at a time. I guess I'm spoiled from the days when it only took me 6 minutes to get to work. A short jaunt to Grant Rd. Zip on down to Campbell. Shuttle on down a couple blocks and pull into the parking garage. I think it was like 3 miles. That makes it about 30 MPH on average. Well, in Tucson, you could actually go 40 MPH. Out here in California where I live, I don't think I've seen a sign for anything over 30 MPH. The streets are barely wide enough to walk on, much less drive on, so I guess that is sort of understandable. But being forced to listen to an entire song on the radio from beginning to end while sitting at a single red light is a clear indication that something is wrong.

Enough of my ranting. I could write a book about driving (and have even considered it). I may even one day start my "Jerk Alert" web site that I have always thought would be a hit, but I guess that is for another time. We'll see.

Take care - and drive safely out there!

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!

Chew it up, Spit it out

Suck it in, blow it out.

After all this time, I bet you were expecting something a bit more enlightened and profound, weren't ya?

:D

God, I'm tired!