I got up before the sun and went for a strenuous walk of non-trivial duration. Earlier this year for a week or so I managed to get myself up out of bed early enough to go for a long, fast-paced walk for about two weeks in a row. Then the weather (I think) dis-cooperated and broke my habit.

I don’t know if my body will go along with my plans again tomorrow morning, or the morning after to create a new habit, but if it does I don’t think the weather will be forming the barrier to habitization it did back when there was snow on the ground like the last time I tried.

In fact, on this, the first day of my new undertaking, the weather tried mightily to confound my effort and failed.

I was about six blocks from home when I remembered that Ruth had said that today was, according to the TV weatherman, supposed to be “the wet one” this week. I remembered her proclamation because I felt a few drizzly drops and realized I had been seeing (thought not fully registering) flashes of lightning several times as I’d made my way uptown.

I was at about the half way point of a decent route and decided to loop back around instead of extending my path up the next block. As I turned left, I thought I detected an increase in the precipitation, but I wasn’t sure. I figured there was nothing to do but keep going anyway and I could decide at a later point to finish the loop I was on or extend it in the other direction when I was closer to home.

As I approached the turn to take me back home from the loop I was on I decided to extend one block and if conditions recommended, simply turn around and retrace that block and make the turn I’d just passed. Before I reached the middle of the block conatining the designated decision point, I realized the slight drizzle had progressed to very light rain. However I had also reasoned that when I got home I’d be getting right in the shower anyway, so I needn’t worry about getting wet.

I must say that in all my almost forty years on planet earth, I do not recall ever having intentionally walked in any kind of rain other than a sprinkle for a distance longer than say, running from the front door to the car. I do not recally ever having done so before today, that is.

As I passed the point at which I had planned to either abort or extend my mission (I had decided to extend) the rainfall increased in density steadily. I remember noting to myself as I walked along the increasing intensity of the downfall.

· Yeah, I guess it’s actually raining now… for real
· This has now transitioned from ‘just raining’ to a ‘pretty decent’ rain.
· OK, now it’s really coming down!

Thoughts along these lines continued constantly trending upwards until this:

· It is POURING down now.

Walking with my head down staring at the sidewalk in front of me I still had to keep squeezing my eyes shut and trying to wipe away the water from them with my fingers like windshield wipers againts my tightly clenched eyelids. It was getting a bit chilly, too, in my totally saturated t-shirt and jeans. The temperature was probably about 72° F and a bit windy. Not being a hypocondriac in the least (in fact I tend in the other direction to figure that if I can still move a limb and no arteries are severed, a doctor is not required) and prone to ignore such conditions when striving doggedly towards a goal, I was nonetheless reminded of hearing the story told by a historical reenactor portraying Martha Washington how our nation’s first president met his untimely end. George had been riding all day, it seems, in a terrible rainstorm and had just gotten home about suppertime. He stomped in shedding his sodden coat and hat and sat down, against the entreaties of Martha that he at least change into dry clothes, and ate supper. George was a stickler for prompt mealtimes. He was also dead within the month from the sickness his decision to eat on time (and in cold, wet clothes) he earned him.

Though my eyes were beginning to feel quite irritated by the influx of rainwater and the chill beginning to seep into me, I finally arrived at my front door. Standing in our entryway I was now cold and clammy from the touch of my wet clothes. I peeled off my t-shirt and let it drop to the tiled floor with a loud splapt. Fortunately the laces of my boots were not overly recalcitrant and I was soon in the bathroom running warm water for a shower.

As I waited for the water to heat up I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that my eyes were indeed irritated. The entire white of each eye was almost pink with bloodshot. It would have been an appropriate look for a horror movie.

As I got in the shower once it was hot, I was thinking about my red eyes and my mind did not dwell the least bit, or even have the least glimmer in the background of an incident from the night before last. Gideon had been in the bathroom taking care of business when he shouted for Ruth.

“Mom! I’m on the potty and there’s a big spider in here!”

Ruth came to see what the hubbub was about and sure enough there was a US quarter coin sized spider hanging a few inches from the ceiling by a thread of web.

“Don’t worry, Gideon,” she teased “He won’t bite you if you don’t bite him.”

Well, the next day Ruth mentioned idly wondering where the spider had gone because it wasn’t up on the ceiling where it had been. In fact she hadn’t seen it.

I had just got done shampooing my hair and had reached out to grab a bottle of body wash. It was a red Wal-Greens brand bottle with our last name neatly hand lettered in Rub-a-Dub permanent marker on it since it was the one Isaiah had taken to camp with him last week.

These two seemingly unrelated things came together in sharp juxtaposition as I simultaneoulsy grabbed and dropped the bottle to the floor of the shower upon seeing that stupid spider three inches from my hand. So I guess the spider is half-smart. He figured it wise to make his primary location on the other side of the shower curtain where he didn’t have to see and be seen by us, but he didn’t realize that not only is that a relatively bug free region, but every morning (at least) he’d be exposed to an even greater (due to proportional size differences) deluge than the one I had just escaped. As a thought provoking aside, isn’t it funny how the apparent size of a spider is directly proportional to it’s proximity to one’s person? That is, the closer they are the bigger they seem– far more than can be accounted for by the normal foreshortening effect of perspective.

And in conclusion, I’m not dead yet and feel fine so hopefully I will die of old age (at an old age) instead of from a fatal chill as did the father of our nation.

And since I’ve stayed up far later than I meant to, having begun this account far past my bedtime, I’m not sure whether I’ll be concerned about the weather in the morning or not.

For the second year in a row Isaiah has attended a summer science program put on by the local school district. For a few weeks the kids spend Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:45 am to 1 pm doing science-ish activities and going on field trips. Today was the last day of this summer’s program and they had planned to have a picnic at the park with parents invited so I had taken the day off to attend. Being Thursday, I’d also have the opportunity to go to Play Pals with Elsie- something I don’t get to do nearly as often as I’d like.

Though it had stormed pretty well last night, it was cool and dry this morning with clear sky, but the grass was still a bit wet and we didn’t know whether the picnic would be at the park or if a backup plan would be in effect. We soon discovered when we dropped him off that the picnic in the park had been converted to lunch in the cafeteria due to the wet grass and possibility of more rain.

From there, Ruth, Elsie, Gideon, and I went to Play Pals. I wish we could have found somebody to watch Gideon during Play Pals, but I think all Ruth’s relatives were busy so he went along. He could have behaved a little better, but I tried to be patient with him because it’s a difficult environment for him. I generally try to cut him a little more slack than the other kids because he’s the middle child. He’s too little to do the big kid stuff with Isaiah and too big to play with the little kid stuff Elsie is interested in. It’s hard for him at Play Pals because not only does he want to do something while he’s there, but he went to Play Pals when he was younger. So not only is he a little too big for the climb-on ride-on toys, but he’s comfortable in a familiar environment that he doesn’t fully realize is not his place anymore.

All things, considered he could have been better, but he was OK. Elsie, of course had a blast as always and I had a good time watching her do one of the daytime things I generally just get to hear about. She is as active as 14 month old Isaiah and 14 month old Gideon put together! She’s always in motion, crawling, moving, climbing. She really likes to climb. The little dress she had on today, did not lend itself well to her attempts to scale the toddler size ramps and steps, but that didn’t stop her from making numerous valiant efforts. After all the paying customers had a chance to make one with Ms. Amy the Play Pals teacher, I helped Gideon make an American flag with star stickers and red fingerprint stamps for stripes. Unfortunately I discovered the hard way that I had the wrong memory card in the camera and was only to take a few pictures before it was full. On the other hand, the card in the camera was mostly full of pictures of Elsie at Play Pals on previous days and not being able to take pictures of my own enabled me to forget about fooling with the camera and spend time enjoying my rare time there. When we got in the van I noticed that the odometer read 155544. I made a mental note to watch the mileage closely because I’d have an opportunity that day to photograph an interesting number sometime today.

Play Pals runs from 9 am to 10 am and we’d been told that parents could show up at the (no longer really a picnic) picnic anytime after 10:30, so we went by the house to get a different memory card for the camera and then went to the middle school (in the building I went to high school in) to see what was going on at the science program.

Not too much was going on there, actually. Some kids were playing board games in the cafeteria where we would be eating, but Isaiah was not among them. We ventured through the halls and found him coming out of the gym with a friend named Steven. One of the program personnel then began hearding everybody from the gym and the computer lab back down to the other end of the building where a movie was playing in the auditorium.

It was kind of interesting to see the inside of the Main building of what used to be Alton High School. I hadn’t been in it in over twenty years. I was surprised how little it had changed, but then change is not a strong point of our American educational system. The auditorium also had not changed- but it was very much the same as I am sure it has been since long before I was there. In fact my maternal grandfather went to school in that building way back when it was new and I’d bet the only very noticable feature that had changed since then were the new seats.

Down front the kids were arrayed in front of a projector screen upon which a small LCD projector was showing an unmentionably nauseating “movie” I later learned was called ‘High School Musical 2′ or something like that. I knew Isaiah and his buddy Sam sitting with the other kids were enjoying it no more than any of the rest of us. Ruth, Elsie, Gideon and I were sitting near the back of the auditorium just kind of waiting around.

After a while it was time to go down to the cafeteria for the (non) picnic. Isaiah was already in line, so I told him to save spots for us when he sat down. He and his buddies Steven and Sam (who he went to preschool with) got a table against near the wall by themselves so there were seats for us. The lunch was school cafeteria hamburgers, an apple, a small bag of doritos, a juice ro milk, and a small cup of ice cream. The hamburgers were surprisingly good (though small) and the ice cream was not-surprisingly good. Elsie especially enjoyed the ice cream I fed to her. I asked the boys what they had learned and they did a good job of recounting several of the projects they did with details- things like making paper and a biosphere.

The program lasted till the regular time of 1 pm so I asked Isaiah if he wanted to stay or go with us.

“Where are you going,” he asked.

“Home.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Uh, nothing. We’re just going home.”

“In that case I’ll stay here.”

At home Elsie did a good job of NOT taking a nap. We were just being at home for a while when I had the idea to capitalize on our time without Isaiah to give Gideon a little extra attention. I asked him if he’d like to come sit on my lap and watch some videos on the computer with me. We ate Ritz crakcers and drank some soda while watched a few episodes of The Trap Door (snived from YouTube) and several more episodes of The Cheap Show before it was time for me to pick up Isaiah.

When we got back home I told Isaiah to sit right down and write a blog post while the science program was still fresh in his mind. He grumbled a bit, but agreed it was a good idea and sat down to work. Elsie was asleep in her play yard in the family room and Gideon was playing in the play room while Isaiah labored at the keyboard. I was sanding fins for the model rocket I am scratchbuilding on the dining room table. After Ruth had been gone a few minutes I noticed things seemed kind of quiet. I asked Isaiah if he thought some music would help him writing his post and he said he thought he would. When I asked him if he thought electro music or heavy metal would be better. He said heavy metal would be better because it’s cool, so I started up a Pandora channel and turned it up so I could hear it about ten feet away at the dining room table, but not loud enought to damage his young ears.

We were rocking out (and Isaiah was almost done with his post) when Ruth got home and asked the same question she always does when she goes shopping and we have the music on when she gets home:

“Don’t you think it’s a little loud?”

To which I invariably reply:

“What? WHAT?” while cupping my hand to my ear.

Elsie was still fast asleep and closer to the speakers than I was, so I figured it was not too loud.

After Isaiah finished his post, we took the boys to Ruth’s folks’ house while we took Elsie by the pediatrician’s office for a re-check following an appointment she’d had a while back. We had traveled several blocks when I told Ruth to get the camera out of here purse. Then, as soon as I went through the next intersection, I put on my right turn signal and pulled to the curb by a laundromat.

“What’s going on– is something wrong,” she asked.

“Nope, nothing’s wrong. Just hand me the camera, please.”

Though I find the philosophy of Ubuntu something to strive towards and am working to incorporate it into my life, it is the distribution of linux I refer to specifically when I say I have switched to it and in the remainder of this post that is what I am referring to when I use the word Ubuntu.

I live near St. Louis Missouri and am thus blessed to be within the listening radius of what many consider to be one of the best radio stations in the country and perhaps the world- the public radio station KDHX 88.1. This is both a blessing and a frustration. It is a blessing in that there is a great variety of diverse programming every day of every week. It is a frustration in that I just can’t listen to everything I want to hear.

I can’t get KDHX in my cube at work and being not only married, but the father of three children, it is just not feasible to sit down and listen to the radio whenever a good show is on. This means, that though I am familiar with the broadcast schedule of KDHX, this familiarity is largely a knowledge of what I might be listening to if I happen to be not at work and in the car when it’s on. This means I am frequently aware that something very cool is currently on the air and I’m not listening to it.

It’s also frustrating in that there is a ton of great stuff on KDHX I know my dad would love, but he lives in Arizona and although KDHX is streamed to the web, he still has dialup.

He has the perfect setup for listening to good music. His house has a nice courtyard area with an outdoor fireplace and even a small indoor bar (His place is seriously like a very small resort- ask anybody who’se been there). In fact, he often talks about sitting out in the courtyard in front of a fire with good music playing on the outdoor speakers. Everytime he mentions such an activity I wish I could get some of the good stuff KDHX broadcasts to him.

Well, thanks to my switch to Ubuntu, a good link by my friend Jay, and a bit of investigation and figuring out on my own, I have now solved both problems.

I now have mp3 files of radio programs broadcast on the Internet automatically saved to my hard drive. As long as my computer is turned on and booted into Ubuntu the shows I want will automatically be captured and saved for later listening.

I suppose I am setting myself up for hasselation and dire oppression by the RIAA making such proclamations, but to them I say you can’t get blood from a stone. Go sue some granny on a fixed income or a suburbanite mallternateen. You’ll have a better chance actually collecting a judgement from either of them than you will from me because if there were a debtor’s prison in the USA in 2008 I’d probably already be there.

Anyway, back to the cool tech stuff.

The Instructables link above that Jay sent me worked perfectly- it was flawless right off the bat. For one of the stations I wanted to record. The one that isn’t KDHX. The one that broadcasts the shows that I frequently am actually able to listen to.

The directions in the link did not work for KDHX. The reason was that the other station offers an mp3 stream which was fine with mplayer, the program instructables used. KDHX provides a stream in RealPlayer .ram format that mplayer could not handle. This was a bit of a stumper to me for a while (I am a command line old-timer, but new to the intricacies of linux audio) until I found the second link listed above which recommended the use of a program called vsound along with a program called totem that can play .ram streams. Vsound can take the audio signal that is going to the speakers and direct it to a file so that once totem is running, vsound can write the audio directly to the hard drive.

I copied the script that worked for the streaming mp3 station and changed the mplayer command to the vsound command. After a little bit of head scratching and syntax double-checking, I had it working. I could run the script, watch totem start, hear the sound, and watch the .wav file grow in my /tmp directory. Once I killed totem, I could even watch the script convert the .wav in /tmp to an mp3 in a directory on my storage drive and then delete the .wav file from /tmp.

It was a beautiful thing and I was very happy. I was happy until today when I noticed that, though running the script from the command line produced perfect results, and clicking “run now” on the etnry for the script in Kcron, a graphical user interface for cron (the linux daemon that make things happen on a schedule) produced perfect results, actually relying on cron to run the script at a set time produced no results.

The reason turned out to be that when cron ran the script, it was failing because it didn’t know where to display totem. Totem wants to pop up on the screen so you can see it while it’s playing and if it doesn’t know where to show up it dies. When I ran the script explicitly either from the command line or via kcron, totem knew to just show up on the screen since the user told it to run.

My difficulties were alleviated when I simply entered the variable DISPLAY=:0.0 at the beginning of the crontab (the text file cron uses to schedule things).

Now everything is absolutely perfect. All I have to do is remember to periodically burn some of the resultant mp3s to CDs so that I can actually send them to Arizona and so that my storage drive doesn’t fill up. Of course, my one extravagant expenditure of 2007 was $140 (you can see why I’m not afraid of the RIAA) for a 500 G hard drive so it will be a while before I run out of storage space for mp3s at 20 M / hour but once they’ve been burned to CD there’s not point keeping them around.

So I feel pretty good. Since I switched to linux I am finally able to harness the power of my computer to make it actually do something for me and I have learned a great deal about audio for linux and cron. I am now also free from the frustration of missing my favorite radio shows and able to improve the quality of my father’s life (if only in a small way) by sharing great audio entertainment with him to which he would otherwise have no access.

Open source rules, even for wannabe feebs like me.

I had paid my money and the transaction had cleared and the admin interface on their website showed the expiration date of r-l-w.net to be 2009, but it was not resolving. I checked with tucows who was the upstream vendor to the reseller in question and it showed the expiration date as 2009, but this turned out not to be the case.

The reseller was unreachable by telephone or email and when I read this I started to get worried that not only was I gonna get juked out of $15, but that with my domain in unreachable limbo I would lose it to some front-running, domain taster.

After reading the blog post above I immediately posted complaints to InterNic and OpenSRS, which is the part of Tucows that deals with domain names. Then I disabled domain locking via my bad reseller’s admin interface and opened a ticket with my hosting company to transfer the domain. I was hopeful, but not optimistic that the bad reseller would not impede the transfer.

Surprisingly, the next day I actually got an email in response to the complaint I had filed with OpenSRS. I was given a login to administer my domain directly on OpenSRS and the advice to request a “reseller to reseller transfer” from a different reseller. I appended this info to my ticket at the hosting company and crossed my fingers.

Fortunately, as you can tell by the fact that you are reading this, everything turned out OK. My host got the domain renewed and transferred. I even got a follow-up email from OpenSRS asking if everything turned out OK.

The funny thing about it is that when I couldn’t get to the domain, posting to this site was in my mind like unto an itch in the middle of the bottom of the right foot when wearing cowboy boots in heavy highway traffic. All I wanted to do was scratch that itch, but there was just no way.

Then when it finally got fixed it was such a relief. It was like the old gag about hitting yourself with a hammer cause it felt so good to quit. So when it was resolving again on January 11 (four days ago) the very first thing I did was scratch that itch and write this post, right?

If that were the case you would have already read this post.

But, instead of dwelling on falling off the horse, I’m getting right back on (in my own sweet time) and just moving forward. In fact, I even did some work on upgrading this WordPress installation- all the way up to date with 2.32, and tinkering a bit to smooth out some of the rough edges on my theme (which you may or may not notice, but which had been irritating me a little bit and are now “smooth like a rhapsody” though I’m not sure it qualifies as a masterpiece).

So, I’m back in business writing on the Internet. My life is still pretty dull though, so don’t expect amazing adventures or anything… Unless I start writing fiction or something (but don’t hold your breath for that either).

It’s been a while since I spent the whole day working on a vehicle and I really can’t say I missed it much. I like cars and I like working on them, but I don’t like the way “simple” things end up taking all day.

I also don’t like the way the cost of anything related to cars has gone up in price. Yesterday I bought two gallons of coolant, a five quart jug of oil and a filter. The cost was about thirty dollars. Of course, the expensive part was $9.99 apiece for two gallons of coolant. The oil wasn’t quite as much at $8.99 for five quarts, but I only needed one. The filter was less than four bucks because after getting wiped out by the antifreeze, I went with the store brand. Besides, I figure if the oil I am replacing is as black and overdue for change as the stuff I replaced, there’s not much point spending extra on a high-dollar filter. Especially when I bought the cheap oil, too.

I figured today I would change the oil, clean all the bright green corrosion off the battery terminals, and flush the radiator. I actually did accomplish all of these things (if you allow me a generous interpretation of the word flush), but it took me far longer than I expected it would.

The first delay was when I discovered that my oil change container was full. That meant I had to take it to the parts store and empty it out. I know a guy who used to live in the midst of the Saguaro National Forest in Tucson, Arizona. He used to talk about how when he changed the oil in his car, he’d take the old oil and pour it at the base of the largest and oldest, most majestic looking saguaro cactus he could find. I’m pretty sure he was joking, but there aren’t any cactus around here so I had to blow twenty more minutes.

The oil change and cleaning the battery terminals went smoothly with nothing unexpected. In fact, they both went very pleasingly with no oil spilled on the driveway at all. This alone is an unusual delight, but it was coupled with the pleasing feel of removing a perfectly finger tightened oil filter- also without spilling a drop.

The delight ended there, of course.

The radiator thing turned out to be a bit of an extended fiasco, though I finally beat it (mostly) in the end. I felt it was necessary to flush the radiator since, though the engine temperature was OK according to the gauge on the dash board, the heater hasn’t been working properly for a while. Sometimes the heater would work normally, sometimes it would never work, other times it would work only when the engine was under load. Additionally, the overflow tank was almost empty.

Theoretically, flushing an automotive cooling system is simple. Open the petcock at the bottom of the radiator to let the coolant out of it, fill the overflow tank with plain water, and run the engine till the stuff running out of the bottom of the radiator is clear indicating that the fresh water is cycling through the system and all the old stuff that is gong to come out is out.

Things went “pear shaped” as our British friends might say from step one. I have no idea who came up with the idea of making plastic radiators, but such mighty brain work is the kind of thing that makes me think water-boarding should perhaps be permissible in some cases. Not only is the radiator in my van plastic, so is the petcock, which makes me very nervous about putting a big pair of channel-lock pliers on it to get it to turn, but that was what I had to do. Well, that and removing the air box to be able to reach down to it from above when I had turned the petcock as far as I could from below long before it was open. I have no idea why it was so hard to turn, but some liquid was trickling out and the petcock had been turned till it most definitely was not going any further.

The irritating thing was it never did anything other than half-heartedly trickle. I added water to the overflow tank and started the engine and let it run till the engine achieved operating temperature. The coolant was still only casually moseying out of the radiator into the plastic tub below it on the ground. Concerned about this lack of apparent progress, I called my dad who is a car guy from way on back. I was describing the situation to him on the cordless fone as I went back outside and had a look at the engine temperature.

The engine temperature gauge needle was now pegging the red end of the scale. With this added information Dad suggested I have a look at the thermostat. This made a lot of sense as we discussed it further and I determined to make it my next course of action. Battling the petcock closed seemed to be much easier than opening it had been and a trip to the parts store (2nd for the day) yielded a what I needed- including a gasket for another dollar and a half which I didn’t appreciate, but I guess that’s life in 2008.

I burned my finger taking the thermostat housing off because I didn’t want to wait, and I had to take the headlight assembly off the van because I dropped one of the thermostat housing bolts behind it, and I am one ten millimeter poorer since it dropped down in a place where there is little chance I’ll every get it out, and scraping the old gasket off the engine block and thermostat housing was a serious drag (especially since when I had the bright idead to try to used my dremel tool with either a wire brush attachment or a sanding drum attachment to accelerate the process of removing the old gasket material, I broke the clear plastic cover on the top of the carrying case rendering the case pretty much useless now), but the petcock was even easier to turn now though I still needed to use the pliers.

When I tried going back to my standard flushing procedure, I had no more success at getting the coolant to come out of the radiator petcock. I then employed a thought I had based on a comment the guy at the parts store had made. I re-removed the upper radiator hose from the thermostat housing and ran the hose into it until it was flowing back out the top of the engine through the thermostat.

When I put the hose back on and started the engine, the coolant would still not come out of the bottom of the radiator any faster than a tired drip, but the heater was working perfectly. This was encouraging, but wanted to replace the coolant and I was getting tired of fooling around.

I closed the petcock (I was getting to be an old pro at it) and removed the top radiator hose (this was aslo a somewhat irritating task that I was getting better at with each incident since it was not a screw-type hose clamp, but one of those powerful spring kinds that takes the ol’ channel-locks again and some careful action to not do a painful number on a finger in the wrong place), then placed the drip pan under the other side of the radiator and removed the bottom radiator hose from the engine.

There was a nice, big, heart warming gush of coolant from out of the engine. I then reconnected the bottom hose and poured one of my new ten dollar gallons of coolant into the top radiator hose. I was reassured when the overflow tank made gurgling noises and it’s level rose as the coolant bubbled down through the radiator. I followed the gallon of coolant with a gallon of water and figured they could mix inside the system.

With the top hose back on, I took the car for a test drive and it seemed to be fully straightened out. A check underneath after I pulled back in the driveway showed no leaks or drips so I called it finished. All tolled, I had harvested about two gallons of old coolant and replaced it with about two gallons of 50/50 coolant mixture so I considered my mission accomplished. I was tired and dirty and it had taken far longer than would ever have imagined, but I was done.

And I was done in time to take a shower and change clothes in time to not miss any of Ask This Old House.

Back in the good old days- 2002, 2003, 2004 I used to write almost daily using MovableType. Then when the crappy host I had back then gorked me by changing version of Berkley database they ran without telling me, my MovableType install was unsavably broken. That was OK, I had most of the static HTML backed up and stored on a local hard drive. Unfortunately, I somehow managed to lose that backup. I use WordPress now but most of that old stuff is just gone, though a small bit of it is available as static files somewhere here on this host and a bit more it available from the Internet Archive, but the only real response is to forge ahead and do better from now on.

While talking to my abovementioned dad last Sunday afternoon, he hit a nail on the head when he made an observation about my character that, though I was aware of it myself despite never having mentioned to anyone else, I was surprised he had intuited about me. He’s known me a long time though, so I guess I shouldn’t really have been surprised.

Anyway, the observation was that frequently my desire to do things right creates an almost insurmountable barrier to doing it at all. That is, if in my mind task X requires elements Y and Z, then if I can only get a bit of Z and no Y, instead of using the Z and making some Y substitute out of a pile of J and all the X I can scrape up, I’ll postpone the whole project until I can get my hands on some genuine Y.

Well, no more of that I say- at least in the subject of writing this website. I’m not Joseph Conrad and I never will be. I know that, nonetheless that personality trait I described with the Xs and Ys has become the reason I wrote only eight posts last year because I want every post to meet a certain quality and quantity standard. So it has become time to begin overcoming my X Y Z syndrome by just writing stuff whether I actually have a good topic or not.

Afterall the number of regular readers of this site consists of about maybe five people including me and dear old Dad, so I figure my target audience is more interested in just reading something all the time than reading something long eight times a year. So here it is: my first just-a-post post of 2008. It’s probably the first of many, but hopefully I’ll carry through and there will be many posts.

I’m sure there were a great number of other tremendous things in 2007, but unfortunately, as frequently seems to happen, when trying to enumerate them for detailed reporting, everything seems to flee into mind-vapor. Of course, when stacked up against the birth of a child most things play second, third, or nth fiddle in memorability anyway.

However one thing, rather an ongoing endeavor, that has been very rewarding over the majority of 2007 has been the hobby of model rocketry that Isaiah and I have taken up together. We only went to club launches two or three times over the year, and launched a few rockets on our own a few times but whenever we spent time together involved in this hobby, whether building rockets or flying them, we grew closer together and formed warm, long-lasting memories that help us develop our relationship and become who we are.

Gideon has grown up to be quite a four year old. He’s a very fun kid- when he’s not being grumpy and moody, but I suppose that could be said of most four year olds.

He started preschool this year and he’s doing very well there. On picture day he insisted the night before that he would wear a blazer and tie for the shoot the next day and the pictures turned out amazingly well. Frequently when you tell him to smile for a picture he scrunches up his face and squints his eyes in way that doesn’t really look like a smile as much as the kind of face he’d make after biting a jalapeno pepper. In the preschool pictures though he has a marvelous tooth-exposing, happy-eyed, heart-warming smiling expression. I’m sure part of it was pride at wearing his fancy dress-up big kid outfit.

He, like his brother, has quite a powerful imagination. Gideon’s favorite ‘critter’ is the ~6 inch tall stuffed puffin he calls Puffin. Puffin goes pretty much everywhere with Gideon (except preschool, of course)- when we know where he is. Gideon has a habit of putting Puffin somewhere and losing him for a while. This used to be somewhat traumatic, but these days it’s much easier to deal with because Puffin has been transformed into not only a stuffed animal, but a full-fledged imaginary friend. The other day when no one knew where Puffin was, he wasn’t lost at all. According to Gideon he was simply doing a stint on the International Space Station. No doubt performing some critical scientific measurements that will improve the lot of man and puffin kind around the globe.

Elsie is about 8 months old now and not only is she the cutest baby I have ever seen (I admit to being a little biased, but just about everybody who sees her seems to concur), she is the happiest and most laid back baby I have ever seen. Really the only time she cries is when she is hungry or needs a change. Well, not quite the only time- she also usually cries a bit when she’s been sitting in her bouncer seat for a while and Ruth or I walk through her range of vision without picking her up. She is pretty good about sitting on her own though when she can see us. She’ll sit for an hour or so playing with her stuffed bunny if she can easily see Ruth or I. When she can’t and we’re busy cooking supper or something, her brothers can do a good job of keeping her happy till one of us grups can tend to her.

She’s very alert. Her eyes are always watching everything around her and her hands are usually fidgeting or grabbing for whatever she can reach- including dinner plates and electronics unless, that is, her right fist is in front of her face with her thumb stuck in her mouth. It’s a cute habit now, hopefully she will grow out of it naturally. She has developed a couple of skills through dint of constant practice and determination. She can sit up on her own and she can get shoes off her feet no matter how snugly they are tied.

One of my very favorite ways to spend time is in the recliner in our family room with Elsie snuggled in the crook of my left arm. She (currently, alas, not forever) fits perfectly there and she seems about as pleased to simply let me hold her (for an hour or two at most, then she gets tired of me and requires Ruth) as I am to do so.

So I guess in retrospect the biggest and best thing of 2007 for me was my family. Actually, this is no surprise and is not unusual. In fact, this has been the case since 1997 when Ruth and I got a-hitched. Furthermore, I won’t be surprised if about a year from now, I am typing similar comments about my wife and kids. Especially since my primary resolution for 2008 is to do an even better job of making sure of it.

Last night the boys and I had finished watching my new favorite movie– It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and afterwards, as a reward to Isaiah for successfully conquering his attitude and completing his homework earlier we watched episode 3 of The Ribos Operation which, for those behind the curve in knowledge of televisual preeminence is the first of six parts of the Dr. Who story arc generally referred to as The Key to Time. Anyway, due to all that good TV (Perhaps that’s an oxymoron, but the consolation I have in the fact that we watch a lot of TV is that I am very picky to make sure that we get almost all good stuff– I mean look at what was on the schedule tonight!) they were up about forty-five minutes past their nominal school night bedtime of 8:30, but we had a good time.

The reason I had wanted both them and me to get into bed early was that I’d planned for the three of us to get up very early to witness the lunar eclipse that is only just concluding as I type these words with the rising of the sun.

I’d read some time ago of the eclipse and decided it would be great fun to drag the boys out of bed in the wee hours and haul them down to the wetlands preserve just across the Clark Bridge to watch the celestial unfoldings. Ruth had also read something about it and forwarded me the link via email a few weeks ago, but I think she’d forgotten about it.

So I’d planned to get them up and just after I had turned off the computer to go to bed (an hour or so after I’d meant to) I got a big glass of ice water to take upstairs with me as I always do, and then realized I’d forgotten to double-check the best viewing time for our time zone. Once again I rebooted the computer and about fifteen minutes later actually went up to bed.

Before I turned of the light I set my alarm for 3:20 am. Considering the abovementioned time of retiring, I hoped I would actually be wakened by it…

The alarm was up to the task, fortunately. When I woke up and quickly silenced the alarm (there wasn’t much chance of it rousing Ruth at such an hour, but I sure didn’t want to hear what she’d have to say if it did), I went halfway down stairs to peer out at the heavens through the window on the first landing to see if weather had scuttled my scheme but I was in luck. The window I was looking out faced north so I couldn’t see the moon, but I could see stars which was a very strong indicator that we were in business. A trip out to the back porch confirmed this and judging by the progress the eclipse had already taken I promptly went back upstairs and lay back down for about twenty minutes.

When the alarm once more shattered the thin bedroom silence found only in those hours rarely experienced, I was ready. I quickly switched it off and got dressed in the darkness. Next, after shutting our bedroom door, I turned on the hall light so it would lend just enough light to the boys’ room to allow me to get them out of bed and find their shoes without injuring myself by tripping over scattered toys.

I shook Isaiah gently and he awoke. When I briefly explained, he climbed down from his top bunk and began searching for footwear in the half-gloom (a non-trivial task in this room in broad daylight). Gideon, on the other hand, remained catatonic until I had gotten shoes on both his feet. The weather was warm and I figured we wouldn’t see anybody else so I let them go in shoes and pajamas. Gideon wasn’t thrilled about waking up at first, but when Isaiah explained what was going on he was excited. I carried him downstairs and we all hurriedly got in the van.

On our way to the bridge we could see the moon out window to our left. At this point it looked much like a sliver of moon usually looks except the points of the crescent were directed upwards instead of the to the side. Isaiah had noted the shape, but not its unusual orientation until I pointed it out. Also the remainder of the moon, now in shadow was much more visible than normal when occluded by the earth.

We found a good, secluded spot with as much darkness as can be expected so close to town and I parked and we got out.

“Look, boys, there it is! What do you think?”

“That’s pretty cool,” Isaiah responded.

“Dad, it’s part moon and part meteor,” was Gideon’s astronomical observation based on his three year old cosmology. Of course, with a brother like Isaiah, Gideon’s knowledge of space and science (at least space and science as his eight year old brother’s conception of the universe has characterized it) is advanced far beyond that of most three year olds. How many three-and-a-half year olds do you know who have a favorite planet? Gideon’s is Neptune because “it’s blue”.

I tried to explain to Isaiah just what was happening and why the whole moon was visible. He listened and tried to understand. I think he mostly did, but at that age the rigorous details of reality are just not as interesting as the fanciful flights of imagination the eight year old mind produces so much more quickly and richly than any adult can describe how things really work.

We sat and watched transfixed as the moon slowly glided into totality.

“It’s turning red,” Gideon whispered reverently with glee.
“You can almost see it moving,” his brother added.

I tried to take some pictures, but my hardware just isn’t quite up to snuff for such things. The camera is very slow with not enough zoom, and since the exposures were so long I rested the camera on the top of the van and held my breath to try to minimize the motion of my hands. Nonetheless, I am kind of pleased with the results (not that they are impressive, but that at least you can tell I shot a picture of a dark, orange round thing instead of an imperceptible smear) I got considering the camera I used to take them. I don’t think anybody else could have done much better with a $150 camera and no tripod– at least not with two kids bugging them to come back over to join them.

After a few more shots I did go back over to join them sitting on the square cement slab covering the storm drain in the corner of the parking lot. Gideon climbed up on my lap and a few minutes later Isaiah did too. Sitting there looking at the beauty of this display in the sky, with both my sons quiet and happily excited, I’m not sure how I could have been much happier. The only possibility I can come up with is the fun we’ll have in a few years when little four-month-old Elsie is big enough to go along with us when we venture out into the darkness of the unpeopled hours to experience the glory of the universe.

Then the boys got cold and, beautiful as it was I knew the burnt hue of totality would persist for nigh to an hour mostly unchanged (an expanse of time the length of which would surely not have allowed everybody’s happy moods to continue unmarred), we decided it was time to go back home for the boys to catch a couple more hours sleep.

And for me to write these words.

However, being so powerful and so flexible also means it is very complex. It is also very well documented, but in the language of people of eat and drink programming and web development. That is to say, I can keep up, but I have to pedal my Big Wheel fast to keep up with the tricked out choppers. So my progress is not remarkably swift, but I am making progress.

I think I have mastered the basics and am about to take the plunge into increasing my knowledge through learning-by-doing what everybody wants to do, but which takes some foundational understanding to achieve- themeing drupal. That is, making it look just the way I want it to with just the functionality I want it to have. This is a non-trivial task for someone like me, who is a level 4.7 of 5 XHMTL and CSS (currently) hobbyist, because there are so many layers of functionality built in.

It has taken a lot of time and brainpower, but I can feel my abilities increasing and my powers growing stronger. Like a homegrown boxer working the bag in his backyard till he thinks he has what it takes to go down to the ring and face the pros, I am slowly tinkering and learning, trying to develop myself to the point where I can tap into the ever-growing drupal industry where the real pros keep saying there is so much demand that if you can theme drupal (at a pro level) you can find more work than you can do.

I am slowly approaching the goal. There are a few more hurdles to jump- some conceptual battles to win- and then… We’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, I am also returning to learning how to put WordPress through its hoops. I have been using wordpress since its first release and I am confident in my skills. However it’s been a while since I have done much with it, and in the intervening period it has come a far way. In fact, I learned today what a wordpress widget is. A widget (in context of wordpress, anyway) is simply a specialized type of plugin intended for small sidebar-ish content.

I located the tutorial on widgetizing a wordpress theme and BAM fifteen minutes later, my custom them “Primarie Interface” is now sporting the fancy new Pandora widget you see at the bottom of the sidebar (on the home page). Not very impressive, perhaps, but entertaining to me. Now I suppose I need to get a grip on the wordpress widget API. Then I can create widgets of my own.

The biggest step I have taken in a long time, though, is simply writing this post. It’s kicked out some cobwebs from my brane and gotten me back in the habit enough that I think I am finally going to be able to get back in the swing of writing regularly. How ironic that I, the first person in my inner circle to not only have a website, but to have been on the bow-wake (way back in 1996) of the trend that has popularly become known as ‘blogging’ (though this is not actually a blog, that does not stop people from using the term as a shorthand to get close to describing it), the person who has inspired more than one of my family members to take up writing and posting to the Internet on a regular basis, now frequently go months at a time without typing a single character of personal content for delivery on the Web.

If I only had a dime for each time I lamented that fact and promised to do better, I’d go out for a steak dinner tonight (and take the wife and kids).

It started off with waking up early and sleeping in late- while shedding one task and postponing another. It continued with spending high quality time with both my sons.

Isaiah and I planned on going to the regular monthly park launch with the St. Louis Rocketry Association at Buder Park. It started at one (set-up began about 12:30) till around 5:30. I figured we’d leave about 11:00 or 11:30 to have a little bit of time to visit Schaefer Hobby shop on the way and pick up some more motors- which turned out to be not the wisest thing, but more on that later.

We had some regular Saturday stuff to take care of before we headed south, and there was at least one non-weekly task that would have to be attended to also. My original idea was to arise at the crack of dawn and get to work mowing both my mother’s and my yard in time to get all the stuff done that morning.

I figured if I got up at six and started mowing my mom’s yard by 6:30 (counting the time to get myself and the mower together and get them over to her house) and got back to my house at 7:15-ish I would be able to finish by 8:15 and then shower and get to the next task of the day– haircuts for Gideon and I.

Instead of getting up early and mowing I decided that my mom’s yard could wait a week and that I would do mine in the late afternoon when I got home from the park. About 8:30 I finally got up and asked the still groggy Gideon if he’d like to get some doughnuts and a haircut. I didn’t know how busy the barber shop would be so we got a bag of a dozen doughnut holes (half glazed, half cinnamon) to go and took them to the barber shop and ate them as we waited.

As it turned out, we probably could have eaten our doughnuts at the doughnut shop. When we got to the barber shop only two of the three barbers had customers in their chairs and there was just one other person waiting. I decided we’d wait and eat our doughnuts till Barber Bob, the one who has so far performed every haircut Gideon has had, was free and then both get our haircuts at the same time.

Gideon was very good the whole time. We had a good time sharing doughnuts and he was excellent while he was getting his haircut. He didn’t even throw too much of a fit when I didn’t let him immediately eat the sucker he got from the barber for being good.

After the barber shop, we went back home and got all our library books together and made our regular Saturday morning pilgrimage across town to the temple of knowledge- Hayner Public Library. We had (as we always do) a bunch of books that were due. With so much to do, I might normally have renewed them via the library website instead of making the trip over there, but this was the day to sign up for the kids’ summer reading program the library runs each year. This will be the fourth year Isaiah has participated.

After the library we had lunch at home made up of a couple of different sets of leftovers. Ruth and the boys had leftover pizza from lunch Friday and I had leftovers from our supper at Chili’s Friday night. Ruth had thoughtfully put four bottles of water in the freezer for us to take and I filled up the red, two quart jug I use when I am mowing with water and ice. Isaiah and I got our water and all our rocket stuff together along with a book and a couple of toys for him in case he got bored then we headed out.

I had a special surprise for Isaiah for the 45 minute long trip south. I’d found a podcast of old british science fiction radio shows. He loves (of course) science fiction, and he really loves listening to radio shows and audio dramas and we enjoy having something cool to listen to when we are riding together.

We had just turned out of the driveway when I told him I had a surprise and when I told him what it was he nagged me incessantly to hook up the mp3 player and get it going. I told him I’d get it set up when we stopped in just a few miles to gas up and he relented.

After I put in as much gas as I felt like paying for, I did as I said I would. I plugged my cheap off-brand mp3 player into the audio cassette adapter and stuck the adapter into the dash. We turned onto the highway and as the sound began, we were transported to an imaginary realm of adventure set in a future from the past. The story was typical of such things- four guys in a rocket ship to the moon and not long after takeoff strange things start to happen. We were both totally sucked in when the episode ended and of course it was a cliffhanger.

Just about the time the podcast ended we were approaching the hobby shop I wanted to stop at. I figured the motors would be a little more expensive, but I’d have a much better chance of finding exactly the size I wanted than I would at a discount or toy store. I also figured Isaiah would think the place was pretty neat- because it is. It’s split about 50-50 with girly craft stuff and cool guy hobby stuff like model rockets and R/C planes.

I was right, just as we walked in the door and I pointed out all the airplanes of various sizes hanging from the ceiling that Isaiah proclaimed it “extremely cool”. He also thought an R/C boat longer than he is tall was “awesome” I agreed and found the price to be awesome without the inherently positive connotations the kids put on that word. I found the cost to be awesome more like in “shock and awe”. It’s just purely incredible to me the amount of money people spend on hobbies, but that’s probably just because hobby shops attract the sort of people who have ample disposable income and I am not one of those people.

We finally found the rocket section after the grand tour of the cool stuff (I hadn’t been to this place in a while) and the shock and awe came back again. The motors weren’t a little bit more expensive, they were approximately double the price I could have paid at Target or Wal-Mart. That’s life, eh? I learned a lesson for the future and bought one pack of motors instead of two. We looked over some of the rocket kits they had (not quite as much more expensive than other stores but still higher), but there weren’t any of particular interest so we headed for the park.

I’d wanted to get to the park around 12:30 to help get the launch pads and control set up for the official start time of one o’clock, but we were late. We got there a bit after one, but the club was still getting things set up anyway. The pads and control system were all put together and ready, but a couple of the guys were just finishing bracing the legs of a 10 x 10 canopy and a table under it.

There were about 6 or 7 guys there and a few wives and a girlfriend, I think. Flying model rockets is fun, but everything is more fun when you do it with a group– especially when it’s a group of friendly people who are happy to help others learn more about what they’re doing. There was one fellow (little older than me) who showed up with is wife a while after we’d been there who wasn’t in the club. He said he’d built rockets when he was a kid but hadn’t done anything like it in decades and wanted to get back into it. He’d seen info about the launch online or on a flyer at a hobby shop or something and he showed up with the first rocket he’d built since he was teenager. I told him there was a term for people like him– B.A.R– born again rocketeer and that there were a lot of them around. His rocket looked good and he had a perfect launch and recovery.

In the meantime a father and his son, about Isaiah’s age, showed up. I think neither one of them had done anything with rockets before. They had a plastic ready-to-fly X-15. They had little idea what they were doing, but they were having fun spending time together and there were plenty of friendly, knowledgeable people to get them up to speed in addition to the instructions with the kit they had.

One of the people offering advice was Isaiah. Unfortunately his knowledge level wasn’t quite up to his enthusiasm level. He was being kind of a bigshot and a know-it-all to the other kid. I think it was one of those situations where you meet somebody and something about them just rubs you the wrong way. I don’t know why it is, but sometimes you just come across a person whom you have an antipathy towards before either of you has spoken a word. I also think the feeling was mutual from the interaction between the two. It was OK, though, no outright rudeness or anything, but a while later when we were walking out to get our rocket after a flight I told Isaiah to quite being snotty to the kid and try to be nice to him. Fortunately another father and son showed up soon after and the dynamic seemed to shift and the three of the boys got along better.

Despite Isaiah’s pleas to do it himself (not only to be the one to do it, but also to be a bigshot in front of the X-15 kid), I installed the igniter in our rocket the first time. From the second one on I let him do it with supervision. It’s not a complicated procedure, but it is the kind of thing where methodical attention to details is important if you don’t want to look like a chump when the LCO (launch control officer) presses the ignition switch and your rocket doesn’t ignite. I offered some guidance and adjustments for the first few flights, but after a while he was doing it on his own. By our last couple of flights Isaiah was doing everything himself but pack the parachutes and I’d had him filling out the launch cards (you have to fill one out with information about the rocket for each flight) right from the start. I started showing him how to pack a chute, but when he started, he got impatient with my “Hold on- not like that, like this” and suggested I just do it. So I did.

Still on the last couple of flights, he installed the igniter in the motor and hooked up the launch leads to the igniter at the pad all by himself. All I did was pack the chutes and put the rocket on the pad since he wasn’t tall enough to reach over the top of the launch rod. Both of the flights and recoveries were flawless and our the club president declared Isaiah a “great rocketeer”. Isaiah couldn’t have been any more proud of himself than I was of him and it was kind of cheesy, but it was cool to hear him say “I got it all from my dad!”

It was pretty warm out there and I sure was glad we’d brought those bottles of water. I thought we’d drunk all of them we’d brought and we walked back to the van to get the red jug. Unfortunately, I guess I didn’t get the top on it tight enough when I’d filled it because it was empty and a big patch of the floor of the van was wet. I discovered a last bottle of water, though, so we were hydrated for a few more flights.

All in all our afternoon together was about as perfect as it could have been. In fact, the only way I know of that it could have been better (other than having bought my motors somewhere else so that we could have shot more flights) was if I had paid more attention when I was downloading the episodes of the british sc-fi podcast.

After we’d stopped for more gas and gotten back on the highway I started what I thought was part 2 of Operation luna– it wasn’t. It was the start of a different story. Isaiah was bummed cause he was really absorbed by the story. I was too, and told him as much and apologized to him about it. We listened to it anyway and he liked it too. I have subsequently figured out where I got confused and have downloaded what really is the continuation of Operation Luna, and the other story we started.

When we got home, we each continued doing favorite things, though not together. He played Bionicle computer games online while I rounded out my perfect day by mowing the yard. Which, odd as it may sound to those who are not long time readers, is one of my favorite things to do.

Elsie really isn’t old enough to do much but be held, so after supper I made the day perfect and spent some time holding the one child I hadn’t spent much time with yet.

When it comes to entertainment I usually have a low overhead attitude. I don’t “play hard” very often since it is cheap and easy to sit on the back porch and read a book and I like doing that about as much as anything. That’s why Friday night I was not 100% certain I wanted to drive 45 miles south and 45 miles back north and spend all afternoon away from home and might have changed my mind if I hadn’t already mentioned the launch to Isaiah.

However, Isaiah and I had such a good time together and I was so proud of him for not acting too squirrely at the launch (a big part of the reason we had so much fun) that now I can’t wait for the next monthly launch. Hopefully I’ll have another rocket finished by then.

If I do, I know Isaiah will be glad to prep the motors for me.

P.S. For an alternative, though much shorter, account of the days events, complete with launch video, you can check out Rockets!.