Ponderings and Musings

Observations in the Sun.

I am sitting at the Marina along the Erie Canal on an abbreviated lunch hour. Work is very crazy today in that I’m getting a lot of “dumb customer” calls. One woman asked if cat pee would hurt the keyboard. The answer would be “yes”. I remarked on Twitter that perhaps licensing should be required to own a computer.

I am listening to a DJ Feel mix on my iPod; the mix is a gift from dave in Toronto. We are both fans of the work of DJ Feel, a Russian Trance DJ. This mix decidedly different than the other work I have heard from him but equally as enjoyable. His work inspires me to look for more gigs as DJ SuperCub.

A large 747 just flew over the car, it’s headed for the old Air Force base. This 747 has a large radar dish on the top of it, the dish rotates as they fly. How impressively high-tech!

The clouds are giving way to blue sky. My bike ride tonight should be quite enjoyable. The breezes are cool, autumn is warning us of her arrival. I welcome the impending debut of my favorite season of the year.

Life at the Manor has been interesting this weekend. The baby is doing well but Earl and I are definitely not used to a house full of people. It’s all working out but it’s definitely a different experience.

Hold On Tight.

The week is flying by at an incredible rate. Earl and I just got back from another trip to Syracuse, where we saw my sister, brother-in-law and the two boys (Dave’s first son and the new little guy). He is doing splendidly for being three weeks early, but his mum and dad haven’t had much time to sleep in the hospital this week. Apparently people are in and out of the room on a 24 hour basis so they catch little catnaps here and there. I think Jennifer might be discharged early tomorrow or Friday.

I’ve been keeping busy taking care of Earl, who had to have a tooth pulled instead of the planned root canal yesterday and trying to keep peace between the cats. Tom doesn’t like having another cat in the house and Xena, Jennifer’s cat, doesn’t acclimate well to a change in her surroundings. She buries herself between the covers on the spare bed and hisses at things. A bird will fly by the window, she hisses. The phone ring, she hisses. We try to make the bed and she throws a damn hissy fit. The only time she isn’t hissing is when she’s eating a treat I gave her. Instead she growls between swallows. She refuses to come out of the bedroom, so she has a litter box, food, water and familiar toys in there. Does she bat playfully at the toys? No. She wedges herself behind the computer and hisses.

I have no idea what to do to get her to calm down. I guess it’ll just take time.

Meanwhile, we are going to have a selection of houseguests for the next month or so. This should all be very interesting.

Well hello Little Man.

Earl and I were driving home from Toronto along the QEW. It was around 1 p.m. that a very special call came from my aunt.

“You’re an uncle. He weighs 6 lbs and 13 ounces and he’s healthy. Your sister is doing very well.”

Mom and Jennifer had said yesterday that they were heading to the hospital. My sister said there was no reason to come home from Toronto early, so we didn’t. The Little Guy was due on the 9th of September. He decided to do things his way and make his grand entrance on the 18th of August instead.

Earl and I stopped at the hospital on our way through Syracuse and visited with my sister and the little guy’s grandparents. I got to hold him for a while. My life changed a little bit at that moment. He looks like his Dad with some of my sister’s touches and was sleeping peacefully as he laid in my arms.

We planned our trip to Toronto early in my sister’s stay at our house figuring she had a few weeks left before she would be heading to the hospital. I guess the Little Guy had different plans for us all.

Tick Tock.

When a first-time visitor arrives at our house it usually only takes a few minutes for them to notice a “click-click” sound in the background household noises once a minute. That’s when I show them my collection of school clocks wired throughout the house.

I don’t talk about my clock collection very much here but I have a collection of school clocks made by The Standard Electric Time Company. These are the type of clocks that were found in most classrooms throughout the 20th century and are characterized by that familiar click-click sound that advances the time each minute. Thousands of students have watched these clocks over the years, waiting for that minute hand to click to dismissal time.

I’ve been fascinated with these clocks since my first day of kindergarten. I remember sitting on the floor of Mrs. Mosher’s1 room in a big circle. Apparently we were waiting for a bell to ring to announce the start of the day. We watched the clock. It clicked, causing the hand to move backwards slightly, and then it clicked again. The minute hand landed on 9:10. A bell was heard and then the principal, Mr. Bellardini, welcomed us to school. The minute hand continued it’s trick throughout the day, stepping back slightly before moving on to the next minute. The really neat thing was that all the clocks in the school did it at the same time. It didn’t matter if the clock was round or square, had a speaker or not attached to it’s casing, all the clocks said the same time and marched ahead through the day in unison.

I found this very fascinating.

When Earl and I moved into our first house back in 1997 I decided that I wanted to start collecting these clocks and via the internet I found that there were others that shared the hobby as well. In fact, that’s how we met our friends Tim and Gordon in Cheyenne; Tim and I both share an interest in these clocks.

Some find it unusual that a high tech geek like me enjoys the simplicity of this system of clocks. The clocks in the house actually don’t keep in time; as slave clocks they just jump ahead via a magnet, some gears and a short electrical impulse from the master clock in the basement. Most of these systems were controlled by pendulum clocks that resembled industrial grandfather clocks. As progress, um, progressed, the pendulums were replaced by motors, and later, electronic circuit boards. The master clock in our house is from a hospital in Bennington, Vermont. It’s an electronic clock made by the same company, dating 1985. It doesn’t like thunderstorms and occasionally needs parts replaced. This is where the high-tech geek in me kicks in, I have the master clock wired to the internet so that it’s always in time with the atomic clock in Boulder.

I find it relaxing to work on my clocks. Some are nearly 100 years old and they continue to do as they were designed, move ahead once a minute as ordered by an electrical impulse. No two clocks in the house are alike but they are all made by The Standard Electric Time Company. I sometimes marvel at how many times that minute hand has jumped ahead each minute since the clock was built.

And time just keeps marching on.

1 Mrs. Mosher was the same teacher that told my parents that I was “mentally retarded” because I wouldn’t color between the lines and I jammed my papers into my book bag each day. Even back then I didn’t sweat the small stuff. I like to think she just didn’t get me. Later achievements (and multiple IQ tests) proved that she just didn’t know what to do with this little red headed gay boy.

Crack.

After work I treated myself to a little 100-calorie pack of chocolate chip cookies. They were delicious and hit the spot after a long day at work. Unfortunately, I also broke a tooth on one of the cookies. I now have a sharp piece of tooth on the tooth that has been declared a candidate for a root canal. I’m trying to hold out until my dental insurance returns in 60 days. I think I’ll be o.k., it doesn’t hurt me at all.

We didn’t make it to Saranac Thursday tonight as my sister drove in from Toronto to move in for a couple of months. She is in the ninth month of her pregnancy. Her husband is playing hockey in Switzerland this season. She and the baby will join him in Biel/Bienne in late October or early November.

Here Comes The Rain Again.

We woke up to brilliantly sunny skies this morning. It is now lunch time and it is pouring once again. I haven’t been able to mow the lawn because the lawn mower would sink. It looks like the trend will continue.

Oh well, no sense in getting depressed over it. I think I’ll go park myself in a sunny corner of my mind and hum a bit. That will make people think I’m completely crazy.

I go for that at times.

Connection.

I had grand plans of driving Earl and me to Saratoga Springs for the evening. Rest and relaxation has been the name of the game today and quite frankly, when it came time for us to head east we decided that we weren’t up to driving quite that far. So instead we headed west and ended up in Syracuse.

Along the way we did some exploring around the shores of Oneida Lake. Oneida Lake is home to Sylvan Beach, which we visited back on the 4th of July. This time we snooped around the southern shore and gawked at the various camps that are twice the size of our current home. It’s amazing to see what some people consider “roughing it”. There’s only one butler instead of a whole team of them, I guess.

After Oneida Lake we wandered around the northern suburbs of Syracuse before heading towards the city and stopping at Onondaga Lake Park along the way. This park is beautiful and a haven for anyone interested in outdoor exercise. The recreational trails are top-notch. There are also various activities held at Long Branch Park; today it was some sort of Scottish Festival.

Unfortunately, Onondaga Lake is one of the most polluted lakes in the world. Many efforts are underway to clean it up, but it is not safe to swim in it or eat fish from it. However, wildlife seems to be able to do their thing alright so perhaps the efforts to clean the lake are starting to be successful.

Earl and I walked nearly three miles along the walking trails. I stopped to take a number of photos along the way.

This guy (or girl, I can’t really tell) was kind enough to stop and pose. Notice the smile.


Flickr Link.

Earl and I also took our customary self-portrait as we walked. I think this is one of our better ones.

Flickr Link.

I also took a picture of these powerlines, which crossed the lot we parked in, which is also adjacent to the New York State Thruway. I have been fascinated by powerlines since I was a small child and courtesy of our travels over the years have noticed this particular style of pylon/tower to be only in Upstate New York. These lines were relocated in the mid 1950s with the building of the New York State Thruway, and these pylons/towers are newer than the ones further down the line. I am such a geek.

Flickr Link.

Earl and I felt very connected to everything around us today. We both needed the relative downtime and the opportunity to just relax. After our walk, we headed over to the new Quaker Steak and Lube, where we ate lots of food but I remained beer-free for the evening.

All in all, a great day.


Flickr Link.

There are more pictures from our little excursion available on Flickr.

Relaxation.

Photo 68.jpg

It’s a picture perfect day here at our merry little household. I had a grand plan of taking Earl on one of our adventures in the Jeep but the weather is just so breathtakingly gorgeous that we are enjoying some down time. I’ve spent much of the afternoon being a geek on the back patio, drinking in the sunshine and sipping iced tea.

The weather today is picture perfect at 72 degrees with mostly sunny skies. There has been a slight breeze which is gently announcing the anticipated arrival of severe thunderstorms starting tonight and lasting for the next 36 hours or so. How I do love my thunderstorms and wild weather. I start my first round of on-call on Monday, I might as well start it off with a bang. I’m filling in for another tech (he wants to get married without his pager going off, the crazy guy) so it’s only for a couple of days. It’ll be good to get back in the swing of things.

I’ve been keeping busy catching up on tech news and chatting with friends on IM. I’ve been messing with Windows Vista a little bit. I really like the way it looks. I wish it came with a better AIM chat client that can handle video, much like the way iChatAV does on Mac OS X. I don’t like the AIM program at all. I guess that’s why Microsoft wants Windows users to use the Windows Live Messenger program. I enjoy that except that I wish I could pay a small fee to get rid of the ads. I really dislike ad supported software.

My basking-in-the-sun routine has been kept interesting with progress on the mound of laundry sitting in front of the washing machine. This morning the mound was higher than the washer itself. We have now made it down to the towels.

I feel some satisfaction in conquering that task today.

Earl and I have been making our travel plans for vacation next year. We want to get a jump on the process so we can get the best airfares. It looks like we are going to do a little “pond jumping” again. I’ll know more once we make the plans.

As I snapped a photo on my computer for the beginning of this blog entry, a certain person of the feline persuasion heard the sound of the software snapping my photo. He had to get in on the action too.

Photo 69.jpg

Observation.

I am sitting on the back patio. I’ve been out here a lot lately, usually during my lunch hour when weather permits it. Tonight I mowed the lawn. I don’t particularly enjoy the activity but it has to be done and it takes less than an hour. It’s odd, I enjoy mowing the lawn in May. By August the chore becomes tedious. Nevertheless it gives my mind the opportunity to wander a little bit and explore creative things. As I get older I find that I rarely remember what I daydreamed about by the time the lawn is mowed. Maybe early senility is etting in.

As I sit on the back porch I’m watching the new Air Force folks that moved into the local base do some nighttime training missions. They are chasing each other across the sky, back and forth multiple times, in what appear to be very high-tech jets. They are rather loud but I find them entertaining.

Off in the distance I’m seeing “heat lightning”. I don’t know why we call it heat lightning in these parts but we do. It’s actually just flashes of lightning from a storm near the horizon. I guess that means we may get some thunderstorms tonight.

I wish I could say that sitting on the patio at night is a peaceful, quiet experience, but with the sound of the nearby freeway, the train tracks the run from Albany to Buffalo and the jets doing practice runs across the sky overhead, it’s anything but peaceful and quiet.

Oh well, at least I find it entertaining.

Debate.

I have mentioned before that I worked at the family business, a hardware store and lumber yard, during the middle of my teenage years. It wasn’t an expectation but something I chose to do. At lunch time we’d gather in the office for lunch; my grandparents, my father and uncle and me and a smattering of cousins. Lunchtime conversations were usually pretty tame; we’d talk about various customer projects or what was happening in the area. Occasionally there’d be a discussion about local politics or the two men that owned a women’s dress shop down the street from our store. Every once in a while a hot topic would come up for debate, the one that sticks out in my mind was the nuclear plant that we lived downwind from. The “atomic plant” was always a hot topic at lunch. My father and uncle would end up yelling at each other. Tuna fish would fly out of mouths. Coffee would be spilled. There would be threats of a two-by-four being flung against someone’s head. This was a rare occurrence but it did rattle everyone in attendance when it occurred. If my grandfather was in attendance, it’d be like an earthquake in Los Angeles to add some shake to the hollaring. My cousin Mike and I would finish up lunch and go out in the shop to get back to work. One of us would mutter, “the fucking atomic plant fight”. Then we’d go back to hauling bags of concrete mix or whatever. Everyone was fine an hour later and we went on being a dysfunctionally delightful family that owned a business together.

I learned a lot from those lunches. I learned to be passionate about what I believed in. I learned to listen to other points of view. I learned to stand my ground. I learned to be far away from two-by-fours.

There are a few topics I get passionate about. One of them is technology. Contrary to popular belief I don’t always believe in the latest and greatest technology. While I like to tinker, I don’t think that upgrading just for the sake of upgrading is always the answer. I do believe that technology, when used properly, say in the workplace, can make us more productive and make the company we work thrive. I firmly believe that many offices can go “paperless” but that the concept frightens people. They’re too used to having paper to shuffle around. They like trails. I believe some just don’t understand “electronic trails”.

Earl and I had a lively discussion about the paperless office today on the way home from Albany (where we had delivered boxes to the Capital District plant that he manages). As General Manager, Earl has grown his company to unprecedented levels in the 13 years that he’s been there. He’s pushed a lot of paper in the process of doing it. On the other hand, I’ve observed a list of ways that the company I work for could go in a more paperless direction. I was pointing out the advantages of a paperless office where I work by using Earl’s offices as an example.

At milemarker 185 we were having a calm discussion.

At milemarker 195 I was thinking of a certain atomic plant.

At milemarker 200 I was gripping the steering wheel and his hand was out in a “debate stance”. I couldn’t see if anyone’s veins were sticking out in our heads.

At milemarker 215 I was not thinking of two-by-fours or reasonable facsimiles, paperless or otherwise.

At milemarker 233 I had gone into silent mode and he was staring straight ahead.

At home all was well and we continued on with our evening.

I won’t bore you with the details of my grand scheme of tree hugging and saving trees here (at least not yet), but let’s just say that I learned a few things about Earl’s business tonight and he learned a few things about the company I work for, as well as my vision of a paperless office for everyone on the planet.

And no two-by-fours were harmed in the process.