A depressing start to the day

On the sidebar, I've listed some of the websites that I go to every day. Magic: the Gathering is the official site for the card gmae that I play. Each day there are 2-3 articles to read about it. Star City Games hosts another site about Magic. There are a number of articles each day and a forum for discussing any and all aspects of the game. ReelViews is the repository for the reviews of James Berardinelli. It contains over 3000 reviews and he generally adds 2-3 a week. The archives goes back to the early 90s, so I'll check there after I watch something to see whether I agree with him or not.

The realization that I had is that while I go to these sites every day, my reading them is about the extent of my participation in those activities except for the rare occasion when I get to play Magic or get to watch a new movie. So every morning I press my nose against the glass of the internet to catch a glimpse of other people enjoying activities that I would enjoy. At least some of the reason that I can't do these things more often is fatherhood. And for that I wouldn't give it up for all the world. And some of the reason is other responsibilities. I have a family, a job, and a house that absorb free time. So I know why I can't do the things I want to do. It just doesn't make it any easier.

Giveth and taketh away

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email about a new Flexible Work plan. My long sought after dream of working from home was in sight. I emailed my wife (who already works from home one day a week) the good news and we both started picturing how to coordinate schedules, what Oliver's day care schedule would be like, and where we would set up our home office. With an optimismitic glow, I went to see my manager to find out when Nirvana could begin. After a short conversation, Nirvana was destroyed. My manager's manager doesn't like Flexible Work. She doesn't think that any of our IT jobs could be done remotely. Overseas, yes. From home, no. I seriously considered filing a Flexible Work plan anyway, just so that I'd have something to fight about. But while I believe in the principle, I also need to help feed my family.

Yesterday, the news spread that Flexible Work would be possible - for those who wanted to commit career suicide. But when I look at the FAQ on it, it doesn't say that deciding to utilize Flexible Work was grounds for limiting career advancement. In fact it says the opposite - that advancement is based on merit, not attendance. So at this point I'm in a quandary. Do I opt for career suicide or work how/where I don't want to because they don't like the idea of Flexible Work? It doesn't seem like a choice really but it should be. On the other hand, if I'm not married to working here, who cares about career advancement?

The point is moot anyway since I don't have a machine capable of allowing me to work from home which they'll need to provide as a disaster recovery mechanism. So when the point becomes un-mooted I'll revisit the issue.

At long last - Air Conditioning

It's not easy being a hot house pariah. My parents have refused to come visit us during the summers because it's too hot here. We couldn't have friends over this summer because it was too hot - even at night. Oliver also has his father's mutant ability to sweat like you wouldn't believe. Now, I've never really been explicitly against air-conditioning, but we hadn't wanted to get it installed.

I think the final straw came this summer when my wife worked from home on Mondays. Her mother would come down and sit with Oliver while my wife worked. This situation worked well until it got unmercifully hot this summer. When that happened she and her mother retreated into the few rooms that had window units. But no one wants to remain cooped up all day week in and week out. So my wife took Oliver up to her mother's (air-conditioned) house when the weather got hot. And that worked out surprisingly well.

So when we needed to replace the boiler this summer, my wife suggested that we look into installing a zoned air conditioning system. After several abortive attempts to get someone to give us an estimate on getting this done, I joined Angie's List to get the names of some reputable heating and air conditioning folks. Mission accomplished with Hayes Heating and Cooling.

So after fighting it for a long time, my wife and I have finally caved in and installed air conditioning in our house. The workmen just finished yesterday and I arrived home from work to the hum of the fans blowing around the cooled air. We still have a bit of work to do to close off the ductwork. But we'll be doing it in air conditioning.

Just in time for the changing of the seasons.

Hockey draft

With the arrival of fall and the resumption of hockey comes the resumption of fantasy hockey. This Saturday all ten managers are going to join me at my house for the draft. Usually the way I go about a draft is to pick up a magazine, look at their rankings, and follow them somewhat closely. This year I have a feeling that everything is going to be different.

Perennial doormats and powerhouses are changing places as the salary cap is forcing the big spending teams to reallocate their resources. Europeans players are not as attracted to the US since the salary differential is not as significant. I can imagine a number of them will sacrifice a few hundred thousand dollars to play closer to home. So as the season is about to begin, I don't know who's playing. I don't know which teams will be good, and I can't really rely on historical trends to choose players. Basically it's a big crap shoot.

It should be fun.

Cruising on a Sunday afternoon

Lately, my wife and I have been playing Hot Baby ("Watch the baby while I get X done.") as we try and get things done around the house. Sunday we were playing Hot Baby and I was it when Oliver decided to start climbing the stairs. Now I'd seen him do this a couple of times and he can go up so far but can't climb on the landing of the T-stairway in our house. My wife walked down the stairs and saw him on the stairs. She didn't see me behind him until she got halfway down the stairs. Then she walked into the kitchen. Suddenly Oliver flew across the landing like he'd been shot out of a gun. I snagged him before he got to the down part of the stairs.

Later I was in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner when Oliver crawled in and decided to play with the drawers. He ended up getting his little fingers squished in a drawer (thankfully no serious harm was done). Still later he started trying to haul himself up on a chair that had a box fan sitting on it. I picked him up before he got too far.

So now I know why parents go gray so quickly. Suddenly all of those baby proofing projects that we've been postponing have become an extra high priority. We'll be installing gates, securing bookcases, and locking cabinets all over the house in the next couple of days. Thankfully the AC unit will be finished up today so we can put away the fans that have been a constant in our house since we moved in. We know though that there are still more projects that need to get done before we're done.

As if done actually happens.

Prerelease weekend

This weekend was the prerelease weekend for Ravnica: City of Guilds. I had been planning for months to attend, but I had forgotten the date and found out on Monday that I was supposed to work on Saturday. The bank is doing a rollout of some software to our new branches in Texas and I was needed to support the rollout. But then Rita appeared and threatened the Gulf Coast. Since some of our branches are on the Gulf Coast, we had to cancel the rollout, and I was able to attend the prerelease. We were installing a new interface, but there shouldn't be any problems with that. My wife decided to spend Saturday at her mother's place since I would either be missing or useless as a parent. So with work and family accounted for I headed off to the midnight flight of the prerelease Friday night at 11:00pm.

I did some trading when I got there, trading away some older Prerelease foils for cards that I'll actually use. I probably got slightly ripped off, but since I wasn't going to ever play with them anyway, I didn't feel the loss. I played in a multiplayer game with a goblin deck which ended on turn five when the Tooth player cast Tooth... and the seatings for deck registration were posted. Either way the game was over.

Although the event is advertised as a midnight flight, we didn't crack packs until about 1:30. They leave an hour for flight registration and then there is a gap between then and the time the post the seatings for deck registration. Deck registration is a strictly administrative procedure where you open a set of cards, record the set, put it back in the bag, and turn it in. And no matter how many times you tell people, they take forever to do it. It's worse at a first set of the block prerelease where everyone is looking cards they've never seen before. At second and third set of the block prereleases they have at least seen some of the cards from the first set before. During the deck registration I got a call on my cell phone from work so I dealt with the call while I was doing the deck registration and didn't mind the extra time. The pool that I registered was pretty poor and I hoped not to get it back.

The card pool that I got back was pretty good. I got two dual lands and some other goodies. I built a WGB deck with pretty decent removal. I went 2-1-2 with the two draws coming on slow draws from my opponent. At this point it was 7:30 and another flight was starting soon. I entered a draft and rare drafted my way to a first round loss. I decided to enter another main flight. I was given a card pool with lots of red and decided to build an almost mono-red deck. It didn't work. At all. I ended up going 0-2 Drop. With that indignity beehind me I decided to join one more flight. This time I got a good deck with a RWG deck that practically built itself. I went 5-1-0 agreeing to a prize split in the last round. If I had won I would have gotten 54 packs or 27 packs if I lost. My opponent would have gotten 36 packs on a win or 9 packs if he lost. We agreed to a prize split where regardless of the result of the match I got 36 packs and he got 27. And then he crushed me. But I took the box and smiled and went home. I finally got home about 9:30 and collapsed next to the bed after being awake for 24 hours straight with a 1-hour nap.

It wasn't easy to be on a diet, give up caffiene, and be at a prerelease. Before I left, I packed a "lunch" of veggies and hummus and cheese sticks. On the way to the tournament, I stopped by Schnucks and picked up a bag of peanuts, a small bag of almonds, a six pack of flavored water, and a six pack of V-8 cans. About noon I had a salad from a hallway kiosk, which I proceeded to dump some of the contents on myself. Thankfully I don't like dressing on my salad or that could have been really bad. About 4:00 I stopped in at the Cracker Barrel next door to the venue and had a breakfast of eggs and turkey sausage. And that was all that I had over the 24 hours I was up. I was amazed at how well I was functioning throughout the day. I guess I had already been broken in by Oliver to cope on little to no sleep.

In terms of observations on the set, it is pretty obvious that everyone will be playing some combination of green, white, and black. Red seemed to be well-represented at the top of the tables. Blue was virtually unplayed, unless you got all of the cards that would make it ridiculous. Dredge is a really strong mechanic, Convoke is not as strong, and Radiance and Transmute didn't see a lot of play. There didn't seem to be a lot of Limited bomb/Constructed chaff type cards. We'll see when everyone gets a look at it.

Most Annoying Blog layout yet

I think I've found the most annoying blog layout yet

http://twinkieexperiment.blogspot.com

The blog is an interesting idea - detailing the results of two twins trying to pull the twin switch. But the layout means that you can't read their entries in their entirety.

The Family Bed - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

As with most things there are good things, bad things, and ugly things about the family bed. My wife likes that she doesn't have to get up to nurse Oliver. We like the fact that Oliver gets this extra degree of closeness to us that he wouldn't experience in his crib. I get to see my wife and child curled up together every night before I go to bed. It definitely has some perks.

There are some bad things about the family bed. We can't just leave him there by himself like you can with a crib because the bed doesn't have rails. This means that we don't have as much post-bedtime free time as crib parents. To protect the bed against Oliver having a midnight accident, we have a plastic cover over our mattress. Plastic covers don't bleed off heat like a mattress can. If Oliver does have an accident, then sheets that need to be washed are much larger. And there are times when I have to contort my body to sleep because Oliver has decided to be a perpendicular baby instead of a paralell baby. These are little things, but they are annoying.

And then you have the ugly things about the family bed. Oliver doesn't really sleep through the night like your average crib baby. Since our sleep cycles are synching up, it means that I wake when he stirs. He'll get up a couple of times a night usually to nurse. Since we are doing early potty training, that means that at least one and usually more of those wake-ups involve taking off the diaper, putting the baby on the potty as he screams in my ear, waiting until he goes, putting the diaper back on, giving him to mommy to nurse back down, and dumping his dump in the toilet before going back to bed to sleep. Add teething to the equation and you have a couple of nights like last night when he was waking every hour or so. My wife, bless her heart, got most of them, but it means that she and I were rather grumpy this morning.

The family bed is a good idea. It makes me feel closer to my family. But geez, if there aren't nights when I wouldn't rather be sleeping in the tub.

Back on the diet again

A short history of my weight
In the beginning I was chubby. Then puberty hit and I sprouted and became thin. Then I went to college and discovered beer. And it was good. Too good. And I became chubby again. Then I discovered the South Beach Diet and it was good. And I dropped a third grader (not a literal third grader, but that much weight). And then Oliver was born and I got lazy. Now the third grader is back and it is time to diet again.

So my wife and I back on the South Beach Diet again. I know that it works for me. I just need to have the disciple to send my third grader packing again. Wish me luck.

A Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

I have my good days when I want to remodel the whole house and then I have days like today.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Straightening up around the house

Over the past few months we have been accumulating home improvement tasks faster than we could get them done. Much of it had to do with needing to care for Oliver. Some of the rest could be chalked down to heat. And the rest belongs to sheer laziness. But now that we've gotten the floor down in Oliver's play room, I've been inspired to get some things done that we've been putting off for a while.

Since I'm on morning duty I have some time after my wife and Oliver go to bed to get things done. Over the past few nights I've cleared out space in the basement and moved the weight set out of the first floor addition down there. With the extra space in the addition we'll have some space to move our extra furniture about. I'm not sure how that is going to happen since I can't imagine anyone being excited about helping me move the couch from the second floor into the first floor addition.

If nothing else I might be able to spend some time working on that room. And that room needs a lot of work. Most likely we'll just put new drywall over the existing walls and ceiling rather than trying to patch them up. Or we could frame out the walls and avoid having to drill through the concrete. Then there is the matter of installing a radiator so that there is heat out there this winter. After that project is complete, we have the laminate to put down on the floor. And we haven't even gotten to the bathroom yet.

I also have my eye on a couple of other projects.
• We need to do some serious babyproofing projects with our outlets.
• There are gates to be put up.
• There's a lot of cleaning that need to get done.
• I'd like to move everything out of the computer room and finish it off. That may be more of a project up my wife's alley as she's much better than I am at mudding, sanding, and taping.
• When the current computer room is ready to be set up as a bed room, the computer room will move across the hall into a larger space for more of an office feel.
• We need to finish the kitchen by tiling the backsplash and making sure all of the kickplates are in place.

When we first moved in FIVE years ago, I thought we could have the house in shape by the end of the summer. Currently I'm shooting for the end of the decade. If then.

The Family Bed

My son stills sleeps with my wife and I. I don't anticipate that changing very much. We're family bedders and proud of it. We just don't talk to our family about it much.

It started because Oliver is a breastfed baby. We'd wanted to have him close so that Lisa didn't have to wander far (or as likely me) to fetch the baby in order to nurse him. He was in a sidecar arrangement for a while (thanks guys!) before Lisa got tired of pulling him up into bed to nurse him. So she moved him into bed on her side. Once she figured out how to nurse him lying down things were blissful for a while. Then he started rolling. So we decided to put him in between us. It took a while to get used to him being between us, but eventually I got used to it. It was kind of cool to have him snuggle up to me in the middle of the night. He recently started crawling which means that we had to put the mattress and box spring on the floor in the corner of the room and surround the bed with pillows. This arrangement is working well so far and the pillows have already caught a falling baby once.

Of course now that I'm already in a family bed I'm finally starting to read up on it. Not to find out what I've gotten myself into, but more to find out how other people set theirs up and live with it.

100th post!

This is my 100th post. Some of them are cheater posts - a function of the fact that I don't know my image posting software (Picasa) all that well. There were a number of posts on my journey to fatherhood, but most has been me griping about subjects that by and large only I care about. If you've been reading, thanks. If you haven't, well, you haven't missed much.

For my 100th post I wanted to revisit the subject of metablogging. I proposed the subject of metablogging as tailoring what you write to your audience. The subject has been one that I've done a lot of reflection about recently. And I still haven't determined what the right thing to do is.

My posts on Katrina deeply offended some friends with my generally uneducated comments about Katrina and disparaging remarks about their choice of vehicle. I was woefully uniformed of the mass suffering and devastation that Katrina caused. My entry was more informed from the effects that various hurricanes have had on the Florida coast where the rebuilding has generally improved the existing structures effected since they are upgraded to be better than they were pre-Hurricane. However, Katrina appears to have visited an entirely different order of devastation on the area. After all there has to be something left to improve on.

I'll concede that SUVs have their use. This is America, so you have the right to buy any vehicle that you want. And if you prefer to drive a larger vehicle, go for it. I would prefer if you didn't, but that's just my point of view as a small car driver. But small car driver and big car drivers can band together in despising sports car drivers - all the gas guzzling power of a bigger car but without the potential of purpose. Let's get 'em!

Seriously, I am a small car guy. My vehicle choices to this point (Saturn, Prius) bear that out. MPG is a major factor in my choice of vehicle (much to the chagrin of my wife). But on all issues oil-related I take the very long view. Let's pretend that there is only a finite amount of oil on the planet. That oil has a number of potential applications from combustion to condoms and is currently being used for car fuel. Eventually the planet will run out of oil. It probably won't happen in my life time and possibly might not happen in Oliver's life time. But it will eventually happen. Barring a miraculous Jetson-era explosion of technology that supplants the need for oil Oliver Agamemnon Jr. will not be able to use it for any purpose either as propellant or prophalactic.

In metablogging, I can't not think thoughts that could be offensive. Considering that my blog is supposed to be an online journal, should I only write about things about which I have a more solid opinion and factual understanding? Possibly, but this isn't journalism. Is it better to censor my posts so as not to offend my audience? Is it better to strike more moderate tone on posts that are possibly offensive? Well, why am I writing if that's the case?

I don't want to apologize for any of my posts. All of them reflect my state of mind at the time that they were composed. Could any have been better worded or expressed? Certainly. Could I have been better informed? Absolutely. Was I wrong? I don't like the use of the word "wrong" or "incorrect." Was I different? Yes, but different is not the same thing as wrong. Look at events that occurred in the past that were traumatic/horrific. Was World War II a good thing? Not if you were a Jew in the concentration camps. But if you were an Indian nationalist who wanted to be free of the yoke of Great Britain? Maybe it was. In 100 years, could a historian agree with my assertion that Katrina was good for the New Orleans area? I'd say we'll see, but I don't think that I'll live long enough to have that perspective first hand.

Visit with my family

This weekend we went up to Chicago to see my family. The trip itself was largely uneventful. Oliver continued his streak of being a very good car baby. There were a few rough spots, but all in all he passed through with flying colors.

Saturday the family gathered to watch the Notre Dame-Michigan game. This is quickly becoming a fun event since Lisa is a fervent Notre Dame fan and my brother is a rabid Michigan fan. I didn't end up seeing much of the game since I had to take Oliver out to see my mother's friends (and complete strangers), but the final result was a Notre Dame victory and an unhappy brother - the best of both worlds.

Fun mother story - Oliver doesn't make it up to Chicago very often. So whenever he does the proud grandmother wants to show him off to as many people as she can. On the way down the street from her office, she stopped in at a random shop to show off Oliver to someone that she does some small amount of business with. We stopped at the library that she volunteers at to show him off to some people she works with. We stop into Tag's Bakery to pick up a cake for his cousin's first birthday. While we are waiting for the cake to arrive, my mother finds out the name of the other grandmother type behind the counter and says that she has something to show her - Oliver.

While my brothers were there I took the opportunity to talk to them about my parents' future plans. My mother is going to turn 70 this year and my father is 68. Neither is in exceptional health - my mother has some ongoing back pain and my father has Spina Bifida. They are looking into a graduated retirement home. The idea is that you start with an assisted living space and move into the more care focussed areas as you require more assistance. From my conversation with my parents earlier this summer neither of my brothers was particularly thrilled with the idea. I offered up the trial balloon of my parents coming to live with one of us. But in talking to them, we all recognize that none of us is particularly well suited to having them come live with us. And my parents are only getting this as an option. We are all glad that my parents are taking steps while they still possess enough of their faculties to make an informed decision.

On another cheerful note, I talked to my parents about how I would go about setting up a will. It's not that I have a tremendous amount of property or anything, but now that we have Oliver, my wife and I need to make a decision in terms of who we would like to raise our child should something bad happen to us. I have a feeling that this will be a particularly difficult decision since we have a very different parenting style from any of our siblings. The one piece of advice that my parents passed on to me was that once we made our decision we didn't have to broadcast it beyond the necessary people.

This past weekend

This past weekend was a productive weekend - ironic since it was Labor Day. My wife and I had ordered flooring for Oliver's play room from Lowes and gotten a part needed to hang our kitchen ceiling fan so we were primed to get stuff done. We imported my mother in law on Saturday. When we went to cut the floor boards, we discovered that we couldn't find any of our tools. Since most of the likely suspects to whom we might have lent our tools were out of town, we called another set of friends who had a compound mitre saw and a handheld circular saw for us to borrow. A number of hours later we had most of the boards cut and laid down in the room. We stopped for dinner and went out to Mike Duffy's so that my wife could watch the Notre Dame game. After the first quarter we were back home and my wife drifted off to the sounds of her team thrashing the other.

Sunday morning dawned bright. We awoke to find that the floor - which is supposed to float had shifted a matter of inches. We decided to redo the part that we had done. My mother-in-law was going to be at her home instead of travelling down to South County to see my wife's sister. Sensing free baby-sitting and anticipating getting a lot more done we headed up to Illinois to drop off Oliver and retreat home to be productive. Our expectations were brought to a crashing halt when my wife found out that all of her sisters were going to come up to see her mother. So she decided that we were going to stay the day up there. Meanwhile, I was still operating under the assumption that we were going to make it back home and be productive. It wasn't until hours later that my wife filled me in on the non-productive plan. I'd claim that I should have divined what was going on but I'll claim gender. Finally our time was at an end and we headed home. The night ended with us hanging the kitchen fan and heading off to sleep.

Monday morning dawned bright. My wife and I spent most of the day playing pass the baby as one or the other of us completed the next task in the sequence of redoing and finally getting real close to finishing the room. We got a call from a set of friends who also have a young son named Gavin. We went to their house for dinner since our house was such a pit. Dinner was a tasty lasagna and salad. After dinner we were talking about playing a game when our respective children made clear that it was time to go home. Such is the life of a parent.

Going to visit my parents

This weekend my wife and I are headed up to Chicago to visit with my parents. It will be a fun trip for us since we haven't seen my family since earlier this summer. We were supposed to go up in August, but between work commitments and travel schedules we never were able to make it up there. Oliver has changed so much since then that they will have fun seeing the changes. I have a hard time even remembering what he was like that long ago. Now he's crawling and sitting up and talking where then he was able to hold his head up.

My mother-in-law comes to watch him on Mondays and all of my wife's siblings live near by. So I know that he gets to see that side of the family as much as he could want. I'd like to see my family more often, but it has been difficult to be a good parent, a good homeowner, and a good son all at the same time. As much fun as it is to be at my parents house, Oliver doesn't have fun on the trip up. My wife and I have recently made a lot of headway into needed home improvement projects from reinstalling a ceiling fan in the kitchen to putting down a floor in Oliver's play room. That kind of headway would not have been possible if we had spent that time shuttling back and forth from the city. And I never said that I was a good person to begin with.

And now an alternate take on Katrina

Hurricane Katrina is probably a blessing in disguise. For those who are in the swath of destruction or have family in the area, it might be difficult to see how it could be a blessing. But this cloud does have a silver lining.

First, the devastation of New Orleans will force the city to rebuild itself. Having never been to New Orleans, I can only relay the descriptions of it that I've gotten from other people, but it seemed to be a literal crime ridden cesspool. Rebuilding it will allow for modern principles of building (if you are going to build in a hurricane zone, take that into account) and urban planning to take effect. New Orleans may lose some of its color, but the area will likely benefit from the change. Tourists will be anxious to see the new New Orleans where they don't have to be afraid of getting mugged.

Second, the disruption in fuel refining capacity will cause sticker shock at the pumps. For those of us who look down upon the commuting SUVs and cars of conspicuous consumption, we get to watch as their monstrosity quickly becomes the dinosaur it ought to be. Car manufacturers will have to work harder at producing more fuel-efficient vehicles. Gas prices will eventually settle down, but folks they are generally going to be expensive from here on out.