poleguy

YNAB 3 will soon be released.

2009-11-24T21:39:00.002-06:00

This program has changed the way I handle my money. I highly recommend it. Way more useful that Microsoft Money or Quicken. It actually encourages you to make changes in the way you spend and save in the future, not just keep track of how you blew your budget in the past.

http://www.youneedabudget.com/ynab-3/

Maggie's Hair Trial

2008-04-02T00:53:00.002-05:00

Engagement.

2007-04-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

This is how it went down.

I ordered the ring through a friend Carrie who is a jeweler in the suburbs. They made the ring to look roughly like a Tiffany setting Maggie and I saw on the internet and liked. (Only not with such a giant stone.) The picture on the left is of the Tiffany model.

I had ordered the ring, and they said it would be done in the middle of April. Around Thursday last week I remembered this, and thought, gosh, I haven't really figured out where or how I'm going to ask the question.
I had considered my options, including going to the park on 18th street and asking her there. But I hadn't made up my mind.

On Saturday I was at home ripping CD's to my computer when I got a call from the jewelry shop saying the ring had arrived. Since I wasn't hanging out with Maggie that day anyway, I immediately drove out to the shop. (Stopping on the way to have a combination roast beef/pastrami sandwich and fries at sub-t.)

I picked up the ring, paid for it (I guess my Amex limit is pretty high after all.) and headed home. I had to stop in the Jewel parking lot to open the box and look at it again. I then proceded home.

At first when I got home I was about to hide the ring in the fridge of the coach house to make sure Maggie didn't stumble across it. Then I decided I better stash it in the car, because I might want to give it to her on Sunday. So I put it in it's bag inside a bag full of clothes that has been sitting in my trunk for ages. I figured she'd have no motivation to go through that and find it accidentally.

That night we went out to Paul Graessle's 30th birthday party in Arlington Heights. (Jenn Hammelly later told me that she had looked for a ring on Maggie's finger that night and thought to herself 'not yet.')

The next day I decided that unless I were to wait till later in the week, the only way to ask her on Sunday would be to catch her alone after Mass at St Clement's.

We had plans to shop for presents during the day, and I had developed a bit of a headache, probably form not eating right. We went back to Maggie's place and ate some food she cooked up. (Mac and Cheese with Garlic and Soup.) I did the dishes (the whole sink full.)

Then she warmed up and I took a brief nap. I drove her to drop her at Choir practice at 5pm. The Mass didn't start till seven, so I called my parents and got my Dad on the phone... I told him I was about to ask Maggie to Marry me, and if he had any advice. He said to talk to Jesus about it. I said I had done that already because he had taught me to do that in the past. He said that he wanted to be consistent in his message. He then gave the phone to my Mom and said that he was going to leave so that she could give me her advice.

She gave me some good advice, including advice about how sometimes people might not be able to give the answer they want to right away because they are shy. She had been this way. We both agreed though that Maggie probably wouldn't be like this.

Then I called Maggie's Mom. Well, first I wrote out a script (like I used to when calling girls I liked when I was younger.) I tried to follow the script and it more or less worked... more or less... It went something like this:

MR-"Hello" (Sound of TV in background)
ND- "Hi is this Magaly Ramirez? It's Nick Dietz calling."
MR- "No, she's not here right now, can I take a message?"
ND- "Wait a minute, this sounds like you..."
MR- "No, she's not here right now."
ND- "Stop joking with me... this is Nick Dietz, Maggie's boyfriend."
MR- "Oh, Hi Nick! You sounded like a telemarketer!"
ND- "Are you busy? Do you have a minute?"
MR- "No, I'm not busy" (Sound of TV getting quieter).
ND- "Can I ask you a question?"
MR- "Sure, go ahead"
ND- "I'd like to ask your permission to marry your daughter Maggie."
MR- "Oh No!" (Shriek) "...No, No No..." (Crying) "I... can't talk right now..." (Crying) "talk to Francis..."
(pause)
FC- "What's wrong?! What happened?"
ND- "Don't worry, I just asked your Mom's permission to marry Maggie."
FC- "Oh, I was worried because she just burst into tears... here she is again..."
(pause)
MR- "Nick, of course you can marry her. I'd love to see you together." (crying)...
...

So, my Mom's advice seemed to have been appropriate, but it applied better to Maggie's Mom, not to Maggie. When she burst into tears she wasn't able to say yes right away. (I assumed, of course, that the outburst meant yes despite the cries of "oh no!". It turned out my Mom was right.)

I then went and got some hot cocoa at Starbucks. (Three bucks!!) I thought it would keep me awake through church, calm my nerves, and potentially cure what was left of my earlier headache. It did all three admirably.

Next I had to take out the ring again and look at it. Then I put it in my inside jacket pocket and tried pulling it out. It stuck. So I moved it to my outside pocket and put my hat over top of it. That would work better. I took my gloves out and left them in the car to keep the bulk down. I tried to be conscious not to keep my hand in my pocket, to avoid looking suspicious.

I sat on the left of the aisle toward the front of the church. Since it was a contemplative Mass, the choir sat on the right wing of the church. I took off my jacket (ring still in pocket) and left it in the pew during the Mass. I thought this would work out great, since after the Mass I could ask maggie to say the rosary as we sometimes do after Mass. (She had a new-years resolution to say it with me on Sundays, but we've been bad about it.) When the church emptied out and I finished the rosary, I could ask the question.

Since I was in the church almost an hour early, I got to go over the music several times. I started trying to sight-read the music. I guess I must have been nervous and trying to keep my mind occupied.

Maggie had a solo part in Hebrew. She seemed a bit nervous at first, but it sounded good. The music was nice.

But then, at the end of the Mass, they announced that there would be cheese and wine downstairs afterward. Oh no! I thought. So after the final song I got up and went to talk to Maggie. I left my jacket in the pew. As we went to the choir room to get her stuff, I suggested that we pray the rosary. She seemed a bit unhappy, because she hadn't been keeping up her resolution... at the top of the stairs she mixed up her folder with someone else's. People were congratulating one of the other choir members on getting engaged. She wanted to get some wine and cheese. She said that could be her dinner. I said, no, we should eat some real dinner. But she wanted some wine, so we headed downstairs.

We each had some wine. I even ate some cheese. We talked mostly to each other. She mentioned how she was shy at this type of event. We noticed one guy reading the bulletin and facing away from everyone and seeming anti-social. Maggie, still a bit sappy from hearing of the engagement no doubt, reminded me of how Pritha said she wanted to get engaged so she could play house. Maggie asked if we could play house. I said sure. It didn't seem to register as an unusual answer to her. I suggested we finish our wine and go pray. She said "do you have the rosaries?" and started grabbing for my pocket! I totally panicked! I grabbed her right hand quite abruptly as it headed for my left pocket with the ring in it. Somehow this didn't seem to register as strange to her. I said "no, I left them in the car"... and she was satisfied with this answer.

Finally we went upstairs to pray. We hadn't been downstairs too long, but I was still worried they would close the church on us. I led us to the left side of the church where the tabernacle is. We sat with the tabernacle to our right and the statue of Mary to our left. As we started to pray (the Joyful mysteries) I pointed out the tabernacle and the statue of Mary. I thought this would be a great place to propose.

At about the third mystery, Jessie, the usher, came through and kneeled briefly at the tabernacle. Maggie lowered her voice in praying and seemed a bit shy. The church resonated strongly even our quiet prayers.

I tried not to pray to quickly, but kept worrying about them closing the church. Finally, with five hail-mary's left in the last decade, Fr Hickey came through the church and said from across the Church "we're locking up". I couldn't hear him, and had to ask him to repeat.

Maggie and I got up. Maggie was visibly upset. Fr Hickey had always been her favorite priest, but a couple weeks back had disappointed her at a new parishioner meeting by shaking her hand briefly and walking away without expressing any apparent interest. Kicking us out of church while we were praying didn't help.

As we got to the back of the church I noticed that the wine and cheese party was still going on. Obviously they would have to leave, so the church couldn't be locked up right away. I told Maggie we should continue our prayers. "We only have five left."

So we went back in to the back of the church and finished our hail-mary's as Fr Hickey was back in the sacresty. Then as we finished I said. "Maggie, I have a question for you." I pulled out the ring, opened the box, got down on one knee and asked her, "will you marry me?" She immediately said "yes". Then we both looked at each other and said "let's go."
She said she was light headed as we left the church, and I stood by her as we headed for the car. She said, I have to call my Mom. I said "use my phone, she won't answer yours until I call her to say it's okay." That's what Francis had suggested.

Since it was dark in the church, she turned on the car light to get a better look at the ring. Then she called her Mom and Francis. They had already told Barbara.

Then we had to drive quickly to Renee's place because Maggie had to pee.

Spring.

2007-04-03T22:54:00.000-05:00

It's gonna snow tomorrow. I'm blogging for the first time since February. It was 79 degrees last week... it was 70 today... it's gonna snow tomorrow.

I gave up meat for Lent. (Maggie did too.)

Davy called me today to tell me that he wanted to have me over for dinner while I was still a vegitarian. I'm going over there tomorrow night.

I happen to be typing on Kevin's computer. It's weird, because it is set to a QWERTY keyboard, and I am still able to touch type reasonably well. Having typed Dvorak almost exclusively for almost 10 years, it is suprising I can still do it at all.

Hmmm... What should I have as my first meat after Lent?

Hamachi

2007-02-18T23:25:00.000-06:00

My Hamachi Network is up. I can't figure out how to get it to work over the firewall at Maggie's place. I'm using it to backup my files to my Mom's place.

This image shows my current status:

2006-06-28T22:24:00.000-05:00

Poleguy strikes at the White House... sorry for so few blog updates. A bunch of Poleguy pictures are eminent... I'll be posting an update to poleguy.com soon I hope. I've got pictures in DC, Boston, NY and Nashville to go up.

I heard the funniest thing today.

2006-01-03T23:41:00.000-06:00

"I pooped in a hole." -- Maggie, convincing me that she really was roughing it.
"Everybody poops." -- Maggie The Greatest, quoting a lovely children's book.

Yeah... those are highly representative quotes. For sure.

Summary of things: Went to Ohio for Christmas as usual... watched the first season of Veronica Mars, because Molly got hooked and wanted us to see it. Pretty good show. But watching the full season all at once didn't help me feel very good afterward.

I'm really in bad physical shape. I'm going to start training for a marathon. Why not go from one extreme to the other? Maggie is training and Jen Haggarty claims she'll run it with me too... although she won't train. Hmmm... okay, fine.

Mike White and Katie McEwen are engaged, trying to perpetuate the roommate record for my house.

Went to Sonjia's for dinner on NYE, instead of staying in bed. She has a nice old Chicago courtyard apartment.

Slept about 12 hours last night... catching up from the last couple weeks of poor sleeping schedules.

On being busy over the holidays.

2005-11-27T13:55:00.000-06:00

"I'm never cooking thanksgiving dinner diner again. I don't ever want to stick my hand up a turkey's butt again." -- C. Flick... on being asked how busy she would be over the holidays.

"Hey, come on, come on, come on... run... yeah!" -- What I just heard from downstairs. It must be football season.

Saw Hershey Felder performing as Monsieur Chopin at the Royal George theater on Friday. Was a good performance, but I felt that the reviews by WFMT were fair in assessing him as not a superb pianist. It was a good performance, but it really makes you recognize the challenge of playing Chopin's music. I think the Gershwin would have probably been a more fun and interactive show. I guess he will be bringing it back for a couple of weeks in December. Maybe I'll get to go after all. They're also having a sing-along on New Year's eve which may be interesting.

Saw Harry Potter this weekend. Good. Fairly true to the book: long.

Pray to St Anthony for the safe return of my missing gloves. Otherwise I'll have to return to Costco for another pair. Fortunately only $10.

Dinner at Mom's again... right now.

Tagging.

2005-11-22T23:09:00.000-06:00

I don't know what a meme is. I do know that the link on the comments from my November 15th post is broken.... there should be no slash after the ".html/".

I also know that "www.papafamilias..." should not have a www... that's two botched links out of two. Tut-tut Chris!

So on to my confessions.... I'm usually one of the last people in to work.

I confess that I recently had the urge to learn Chinese.

I confess that I have not exercised since ending my soccer season, and I have back pain because of it. I haven't run or lifted anything heavy in months.

I confess that I have spent more time sitting in my studio playing with recording gear than I have doing house work.

I confess that I recorded myself singing "You may be right" by Billy Joel.

I confess that I really want a Guinness and Chris owes me one and I haven't collected because I haven't seen him (besides at my party) since I started dating Maggie.

Now tell me, am I supposed to tag somebody else? I don't understand this game.

No blog entries.

2005-11-15T22:43:00.000-06:00

My last blog entry was the day I started dating Maggie. That pretty much explains the radio silence. Maggie is awesome. I met her through soccer. I calculated the odds of meeting a person like her on a soccer team, and came up with 1/17,345,599,232. I consider myself pretty lucky.

The lotto today was $315 million. We didn't win the lotto. But it was fun to play. Nick and Kevin and I sat and watched them draw the numbers. It goes way too fast. We should get Tivo and play it in super slow motion next time. Too bad I don't care that much.

Things have been going well. Work is good. The studio is coming back together. Kevin Antene is now a roommate, and wants to stick around. I'm planning on setting up a room in the basement, so I can get him into a proper room. I think that project might start soon. I'm thinking I'll need to do some asbestos abatement before that starts. Then I think I'll just put in a couple of walls and some insulation call it a room. That should be good enough.

My party went well. My coach house is finished... it still needs some paint. My list of 45 things to do before the party grew to over 50, and never got nearly finished. After the party I lost the list.

I took a bunch of pictures of a project to fix my ancient toilet. I never posted them. The toilet just had an old wax seal needing replacement. I replaced it, but everything seemed to go wrong in the process. I still have a slow drip at the threads of one of the ancient pipes. It used to have caulk, and now I know why. I have been caulking it, and it gets progressively better, but still has a nagging leak.

I actually read a couple of books in the last few months, including Harry Potter, the Goblet of Fire. It was good. I'm starting to read the tail end of the Bible that I never did finish. Chris Luther is planning to become a priest.

Cubs Cards

2005-09-24T09:47:00.000-05:00

Go Cubs! Click the picture to see the full collection.

Like in highschool again.

2005-09-08T23:39:00.000-05:00

I feel like I'm back in school...

Here are my latest photos!

The reason I feel like I'm back in school is that I'm hacking up web pages. That web page is automatically generated by a java script that my cousin wrote. All my photos can be viewed that way. Email me for the secret URL if you want access.

Soon I will update the poleguy website!

Carpet is in the garage! Concrete should start tomorrow. The basement is clearing out with George's help.

Uncle John comes to town this Saturady. Luther, come join us for dinner at 4?

Now I need to sleep.

New gmail feature!

2005-09-06T22:42:00.000-05:00

No posts in a while. Sorry. But here's the good news.

Gmail has silently added a feature to send mail as somebody else. Cool... now I can easily send mail as poleguy again! Awesome. I think I requested this feature.

In other news: I got to dial empire carpeting and actually order carpeting the other day. They're coming on Thursday. (They did offer to come tomorrow).
I'm also working on installing a JSP script that my cousin wrote onto Sambar. I got it running, but there seems to be a bug in the script and my cousin hasn't responded to an email about it. Setting up Java Servlets and JSP is a typically difficult and unnecessarily complicated process with a fairly steep learning curve.
In other news. I spent a bunch of money at guitar center on Monday after voluntarily driving my friends home at 8am after about 4 hours of sleep. I must have been a bit delerious. I spent a bunch of money, but got some pretty good deals. I now own a new piano bench ($15). I also have a pair of Sony 7506 Headphones, Sennheiser HD280 Headphones, and a Behringer HA4700 headphone amp.

Things learned today.

2005-08-05T00:35:00.000-05:00

Melting plastic with a soldering iron at 9:45 am causes people to say "what's burning?" in unison.

this c code:
int byte, a, n;
a = (byte >> n) && 0x01;
will not correctly set a to the n'th bit of the byte.
(hint: & is the binary and operator, && is the logical and operator.)

Nobody at Shure complains if a software guy and an intern spend an entire day trying to debug an analog circuit.

John Halverson can calculate the 3dB point of a simple RC filter in his head to within 4%.

Making a garden hose combiner requires: a length of hose, one splitter, and two female hose terminations, no males are required. Oops.

2005-08-02T23:23:00.000-05:00

I just bought a pair of monitor speaker stands from Guitar Center. I should have got these a long time ago, but somehow I didn't. Anyway, they're not bad, but since my speakers weigh about 30 pounds each, I also decided to get some tie-down straps just in case. Although these stands are rated to 200 Lbs, I wouldn't want to put that much weight on them. Even 30 pounds seems like a lot. These guys have a fairly heavy base, but not that heavy. They seem a bit top heavy, but stable enough to make me comfortable... with the tie-down straps (available at home-depot, but only in red. I might dye them black if I really care.

I'm also planning on buying one of these bad boys. I think I'll wait until I get the studio set up a bit better, because I currently have no place to put it except maybe on top of the existing piano.

My phone number spells what?!?

2005-07-24T02:00:00.000-05:00

http://www.phonespell.org/

Until today I thought my number spelt nothing... I guess I was wrong.

This is very timely, since my roommate recently mentioned to me that his family number spells SEX-HELL.

Camera working again.

2005-07-21T21:38:00.000-05:00

I got my camera working again... by buying a new flash card... look at how nicely my coach house is coming along.

Almost done.
Almost.

Firefox lost all my settings.

2005-07-10T23:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, this sucks. All my firefox settings, including all of my bookmarks just disappeared. Of course my backups are like a year old. What a pain. I think it had something to do with trying to update my drivers for my flash card reader, but I can't exactly explain what happened. I guess even I'm not immune to computer problems. On a happier note, my Mom now has DSL, so I can fix her computer problems remotely.

Volleyball

2005-07-06T23:25:00.000-05:00

Played volleyball on the beach today. Ran into Dan Kiernen, who was playing on another court. I should have signed up at the beginning of the season. It should be no problem getting there after work. Went out to Duffy's afterward. No word from Rami... I guess he's not in town.

Got harped on by Mark pretty bad: something about my best friend's girlfriend. Could be he's just jealous? :-) I wasn't expecting such an onslaught from him. I think he was trying to get a reaction. Years of training against my brother allows me to maintain a calm demeanor under such fire.

Duffy's was good. Three dollar plates of wings made up for six dollar Hacker Pschorr's.

Got a call from my Mom rather late. Talked on the phone and then stopped by her house and chatted till after 11pm. She's missing my Dad who is on vacation, and is getting bummed about the amount of work around the house she is doing.

Brats for breakfast.

2005-07-06T00:19:00.000-05:00

Why am I up at midnight? Brats for dinner tonight. Brats too for breakfast tomorrow. Halibut for lunch... again. Too many left-overs. And what should I do with the pineapple on my kitchen table?

Went to dairy queen after work to meet up with Scott Schwemin and friends (Kelly, Jen, Liz K, and Trisha.)

I need more sleep.

Work update: Receiver boards should be built early next week. I've got a lot to do to prepare for them.

Coach House update: floors partially completed. Work is in Eric's court. Flooring looks great. Paint still not complete. Waiting for a cool spell, and some free time.

Volleyball starts tomorrow.

Happy Independence Day

2005-07-04T22:46:00.000-05:00

I really enjoyed our party this Saturday. It turned out to be a wonderful experience. We ended up with more food than we started with, and lots of interesting drinks. Sunday morning we had barbecued chicken for breakfast on the grill. Nick Lesher was seen drinking directly out of a bottle of wine. (He said something like: this is just water right?)

It was suprisingly not very messy. I did not finish cleaning Sunday or today, so I've got some more cleaning work to do.

Today I grilled the extra Halibut, and I still have about sixteen brats. Anybody want to come over and eat brats with me?

Scott Schwemin made an appearance, and visited Vicky and Ian's 16 entry rib contest with us. It was good to see him back from the Navy, and in seemingly good shape.

Excellent spot to watch the fireworks downtown: NE corner of Buckingham fountain in the grass triangle surrounded by bushes.

I don't think I've been relaxed at all by this weekend.

Frustrated by closed bars this weekend: first, after the taste on Sunday, Manhattan's was closed. (Jen Steven's old Law School bar.) And tonight the Butcher's Dog was closed. (Luther's reportedly best pint of Guinness bar.) We'll try again some other time.

Saturday I got to play piano sitting next to an opera singer. Tonight I got to play piano with two four year olds. (One requested the ABC song, and I came through for him. I think he was impressed.) Zeke has good rythm, but needs a little work on hitting individual keys.

Maybe next week I'll figure out the meaning of life, but tonight I'll sleep and try not to think too hard.

Tired these days.

2005-06-23T21:51:00.000-05:00

Work is going well on the coach house. Tile is going in the bathroom. Most of the paint is done. The deck around the hot-tub just got finished today.

Leanne Rimes showed up at my work today. That's the first celebrity appearance... hopefully there will be more.

Made banana bread last night, and went to the Pita Inn for lunch.

Set my computer back up again, finally.

I have a new roommate. His name is Nick. So far that's going well. He's helped a lot around the house cleaning up in the past week, especially since he didn't start work till this week. His room now has a fresh coat of paint and a freshly waxed floor. He even stripped one of the windows down to the wood. It looks great.

We burnt the brush pile in the back. The back yard is slowly getting in shape.

Why so few entries, Nick?

2005-06-06T22:08:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been busy. I think I'm turning into a bit of a workaholic. I think I caught it from my Dad. I was working today for 11 hours, and I don't even have any deadlines, and my boss took the day off. That's bad.

On the other hand, I enjoy work. I actually commented last night, as I sat in my hot-tub, to three witnesses, at midnight, that it had been a long weekend and I looked forward to going back to work.

The garage is going well. Sorry no new pictures yet; stay tuned. The drywall is up and primed. The garage doors are in the garage and will be installed tomorrow. The AC is operational. A bit loud unfortuanately, but I suppose that will be dampened a bit when we put some soft materials in the room.

Grass is peeking up from the ground in the back yard! I've been watering it fairly reliably.

I've picked out paint colors more or less. A green for the walls, and a blue for the bathroom, and I'll probably leave the ceiling white for a bit of contrast, but I haven't decided that yet. Davy will come by after work on Friday to help me paint. Anybody else want to help? (Only good painters please!)

Guiness Popsicle

2005-05-30T10:45:00.000-05:00

Click on the Guiness popsicle for details of how to build your own.

In other news, the drywall is going up nicely on the coach house. All that remains is taping and mudding. Today I plan on planting grass seed.

Chase Corporate Challenge.

2005-05-26T23:07:00.000-05:00

Ran the Chase Corporate Challenge today. My official time was 29:57. Yes, I was basically sprinting to get in under 30 minutes. That's a record time that has been my goal for about five years. (They say that it took about a minute to get to the start time, so I actually did better than this for 3.5 miles... about 8:20 per mile I'd guess... and this through a lot of traffic: 16,000 people!)

This means several things happened. First, I got in good shape from playing soccer all winter and all spring. Second, the taped-up twisted ankle I got on Sunday didn't stop me. Third, cramps in my left leg due to the over-tightened bandage on my left-knee didn't make me stop.

In other news, the drywall is going up. It got delivered today, and will be going up starting tomorrow.

May pilgrimage

2005-05-22T12:59:00.000-05:00

Pictures from the annual May Pilgrimage, with full size images. If anybody wants to make prints, use the full size images for best results. I wish Picasa would let you generate a link to the originals, with thumbnails and intermediate size images.

Lori and Tom's Party

2005-05-22T12:51:00.000-05:00

Pictures from Lori and Tom's Party.

Shure Thing.

2005-05-18T21:22:00.000-05:00

There is a rock band playing in my living room. It's like having my own private concert. It's only 9:22, so the neighbor's can't even really complain.

So, two days ago at 3pm or so, I find out that they have decided to build a few boards on a four day turn and they will be showing up on Tuesday. Yes, that's yesterday. That means I stopped writing test-plans and started porting code like a mad man. My schedule had me convinced I had plenty of time to write test plans before I started coding. Not so. I'm having meetings tomorrow with my manager, the project manager, and the team to discuss our schedules and clarify why this happened.

Fortunately I did get a software load to build today, a total hack, but it built. I got it to load on the demo board too. That's pretty good progress for one day I'd say.

Melanie soldered the parts on the board for me, and by 4:15pm I had what was supposed to be a working board. She had put the power supply, LED's, and switches, and that should have been enough. There's really not much to programming the board. Only two pins, reset and background. So when it didn't just go, Leif (the guy who I inherited the code from), Melanie (who did the schematic) and I, decided it must be a short somewhere. At 6:30 or so they went home, and a few minutes later, after looking closely I noticed that the processor was placed down 90 degrees away from the way it should have been. I put a post-it note on Melanie's monitor. She's not going to be too happy about this. I think that probably means the part is trash, if not the whole board. But it buys me another day to finish my code.

I've got a 9 am meeting tomorrow, so I've got to go to bed soon. Insulation and lawn mowing will have to get done some other day.

Long day.

2005-05-16T23:15:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I did no insulation.

Today I finally did, but I'm still not done with the work. One of the guys at work is starting to joke that I've had "two days" worth of work left on the insulation for the last three weeks.

Today I did put up a platform to do the insulation above the stairs. And I did finish putting up all of the insulation on the second floor besides the stairs. So all that is left is the stairwell and filling in the spots on the first floor. I'm getting there slowly. Anybody know if the staples are really necessary if the insulation stays in place on its own? Maybe I can leave out some of the staples to save time. A lot of what I did is not stapled yet.

This past weekend I went camping with my dad. We did our annual pilgrimage to Wisconsin, complete with nine-mile hike. The weather held out for us. Blue skies and puffy white clouds. Beer and Brats and Bacon. It was beautiful.

Got to sit in my hot-tub Saturday night. It's beautiful. I'm going to like this even more than having it under the pine tree, out the back door. It's now up high enough that all I saw was roof-tops, the pine tree, the hickory, blue sky, puffy white clouds, airplanes, the moon, stars, then pink clouds, purple clouds, dark blue sky, stars, very dark sky, constellations.... gosh it's getting late. Oooo ... it's cold out...

I go back inside and there is a rock band in my living room in the middle of playing a song. I guess I was in the hot-tub for quite a while. I sure felt good after that though.

Saturday night Liz Griffiths had a party. All the old folks were there. I ended up at Darien's place till four in the morning and then up at TBP (Taco Burrito Palace #2). I slept in.

Soccer sunday went well. This time nobody broke a leg. Report on the guy who got hurt:

"It was a broken tib-fib, and he had some pins put in, and he went into surgery that night, and they gave him a morphine IV." If he went to surgery on a Sunday night, it must've been bad...

Yeah, I knew that crack sounded loud... ouch.

Showed Nick Lesher my place yesterday. Today he called to say he will want to move in. It looks like I've got a new roommate. If it gets too confusing with two Nick's, I'll have to kick him out. Thanks Rami for the reference.

So now I have even more work to do around the house to get ready for him. All the studio equipment has to move.

Hot tub madness.

2005-05-09T23:03:00.000-05:00

Madness? Or anger, maybe?
I tried to hook up the hot-tub yesterday. I figured this didn't count as "work on Sunday" because the end cause was soaking in a hot-tub. But as it turns out, after filling the hot-tub with water, the circuit breaker pops as soon as you flip it on. Even if I disconnect all the wires at the hot-tub end.
It seems that our electrician, Bill messed up one of the connections. I couldn't find any mistakes. Hopefully he'll show up tomorrow and fix this problem. I don't want that water to start turning green on me.

Soccer Madness:
I'm playing sweeper, the ball gets past me, and I'm running just ahead of an opposing player. I'm running the wrong way, and our goalie, Brian, is heading straight at me. I yell "it's yours" and step off to the left a couple feet. The opposing player desides not to back down. As Brian reaches the ball, I'm right next to him. He takes a good swing at the ball and makes solid contact, first with the ball, and then with the opposing players ankle. Brian managed to break the guy's ankle despite his shin guard and Brian walked away with only a bruise himself.
That ended the game. They carried the player off the field and Wendy dove him to the hospital.
I had to walk off the field and couldn't watch this guy lying on the ground in pain. It reminded me too much of the situation in which I hurt my knee. I'm just glad it was his ankle and not his knee. Bones heal relatively easily.

On happier news: I figured out how I'm going to get my code done at work. All it took was a three minute question and answer session with Mr Manthei. The last couple days I was a bit stumped. The old code totally sucks and needs a re-write. It's full of NOP() loops and other arbitrary delay based timing, even for critical code. Several sections of non-critical code are preempting critical code. Very similar code is repeated. There is at least one unnecessary, undocumented, and uncommented recursive routine... worse, it is not obvious that the variable that ends the recursion will necessarily always end up false, preventing an endless loop.
Finally, the code is all based around an interrupt task that is definitely missing interrupts, and is running excessively fast. It's as good as doing everything in a big, un-timed for loop. Ick.
And this is my first for-profit programming project. Wish me luck.

2005-05-08T21:19:00.000-05:00

I guess I didn't think about my latex gloves when it says on the back "do not use on rubber". I was cleaning some sap off of my hot-tub cover when my gloves started disintigrating.
Oops.
And of course the hot-tub cover is made of vinyl. Is vinyl also "rubber?" Hopefully I didn't cause too much damage.

Goo-gone also didn't do a good job of removing the hardened sap. Any chemical engineers out there know a solvent that will quickly disolve hardened sap, but not disolve vinyl?

Funny Pizza Video

2005-05-08T19:19:00.000-05:00

A great little video. I smiled:

Pizza Party

Enjoy

1:24am... are you up?

2005-05-08T01:29:00.000-05:00

I got a lot of insulation done today. I also started cleaning my hot-tub. I still need to do a good amount of insulation work. I also still need to do a lot of hot-tub cleaning work. I guess I'll work on that on Monday.

Big fat steak for lunch today. First firing up of the barbecue. Mmmmm. Good.

I went out to a show at Lilly's with Davy and Kathleen tonight. It was fun. I missed the "really short film festival" at the Abbey. But got a lot of text messages from Wendy who was there. I guess it was a fun time too.

Long week.

2005-05-06T22:29:00.000-05:00

I worked on insulation yesterday and really wore myself out. Tonight I didn't do jack. Work is good, but I recently discovered that the code I am "porting" to a new processor will probably need some serious repartitioning. This will require a good amount more thought than I had anticipated.

Shure will not sponsor my team for the Chase Corporate Challenge, so I'll be running for Mindspeed. Maybe next year.

Tomorrow I wake up early and do insulation until I drop. I did by a couple of nice steaks from Costco, so I can take a break for a grilled lunch.

2005-05-03T22:08:00.000-05:00

That's the new part. The washing machine is now fixed. I'm pooped. Work went well. Goodnight.

2005-05-02T22:33:00.000-05:00

I need to use a pliers to pry this piece off the axel under the tub. Notice the three sheared plastic pins that are missing.

2005-05-02T22:32:00.000-05:00

There is the source of the rubber dust. That rubber piece is all torn up. The three plastic pins on the motor assembly look okay, but in the lower right, on the floor, you can see one of the three plastic pins that was sheared off. Another is stuck in the rubber piece.

2005-05-02T22:30:00.001-05:00

See the black rubber all around the hole?

2005-05-02T22:30:00.000-05:00

Here's a sign of trouble. At the inner shaft of the motor, there is black rubber dust everywhere.

2005-05-02T22:29:00.000-05:00

That's the motor, half way free. If I do this again, I'll be sure to remove the bottom clip first, because it's hard to remove once the weight of the motor is resting on it.

2005-05-02T22:28:00.000-05:00

That's the dryer disassembled.

I got that call at work today.

2005-05-02T21:45:00.000-05:00

The phone rang and said: "Dude, the washing machine is making a noise like it's running, and it fills with water, but it doesn't do anything."

So instead of doing insulation when I got home I had to come home to fix a washing machine. So far, I have gotten it apart, and removed the dead part. I'll buy a part tomorrow if all goes well.

I'll post pictures. I have some good ones. Right now I'm too tired, and my camera is still in the basement.

My right shoulder is still in very bad shape. I definitely did some damage to it. My left neck muscle is sore because I am compensating for the injury.

I got a fat check from the mortgage refinance. I'll be paying for that for the next thirty years. But at least I'll have a nice bachelor pad. If you're going to do it, do it right, right?

What happened to days Three and Four?

2005-05-01T20:49:00.000-05:00

I guess the rest of the week went well, smoothly enough that I didn't make any entries into my blog on Thursday and Friday. Let me briefly catch up.

I actually felt I was getting up to speed pretty well. I was getting all the passwords, permissions, and software installed and configured. I had to actually get a form signed by my manager to get administrator privileges on my machine. I turned in my direct deposit form. (I had to ask about four people where to go to find the payroll department.)

I was shown the collection of music they have for testing. It's a pretty big collection, and available at my desk, which is nice.

The guys around me were in the process of debugging a large DSP board (12 inches square more or less.) They had a radiated emission at 600 MHz, which is a very unusual frequency because that's not an even multiple of any of the clocks on the board. I pointed out that it could be a board resonance. After all, at a dielectric constant (Er) of 4, on FR4 board material the propagation delay is 140ps/inch, so 12 inches amounts to a period of 1.68ns, which is about 600 MHz.

They were able to whack this emission by changing the grounding connections on the daughter boards, so it is not really an issue, but I felt good to be able to offer an explanation for why they might see this particular frequency of emission.

But just as they were whacking this emission, I looked over and Paul was listening to headphones and pushing on the fan to slow it down. I knew that was a bad sign. He had me come over to listen to fan noise in the audio. So the joy over elimination of the emissions was dampened by the problem of fan noise.

After work on Friday I stopped past my Aunt's house. They were going out to have Peruvian food. Had I known ahead of time I probably would have gone, but I had already decided to grab some dinner at the Flat Top Grill with Wendy from soccer. She had left me a voice mail. We ended up going out to 10 pin to go bowling as we waited for Oscar to finish eating with his cousin. Mike white and Taty showed up, and Mike got us free drinks and made our bowling bill disappear! What a nice roommate.

We ended up meeting Oscar, his cousin, and her friend out at SoundBar, but couldn't get in because Wendy had forgot her ID. 10 pin didn't card us. So we went back to Oak Park, got some Sub Tender, and called it a night. It was already pretty late anyways.

I worked in the yard Saturday with my brother. The dirt in the back yard is looking much closer to flat.

I managed to tear something in my shoulder pretty bad. Hot tubs should not be moved by one person. Empty hot-tub weighs 900 pounds. Nick weighs 135 pounds. My brute-force test push on the hot-tub caused a lot of damage to my shoulder. I could barely move my arm after a few hours.

However, with a 2x4 lever, the hot tub is easily moved by one person. Why didn't I try this approach first?

I didn't go out Saturday night, because I was very tired. I woke up early today, went to a fairly good first communion service at the 9:30 Mass at St Edmund. Then I played soccer. I was actually playing pretty well today, but the rest of the team seemed to be hung over and tired. We lost 2 to 1. I thought we had won.

Ashley roasted a whole Lamb on a rotisserie. It's Easter for the Greek Orthodox, so I guess that was his tip of the hat to the old tradition, despite being Catholic.

Tonight I will go to sleep early. I think I'm actually on an early schedule!

Day two.

2005-04-27T22:55:00.000-05:00

No Caffeine yet. I did get cookies from Jewel (across Touhy from Shure) so I was using a bit of sugar to keep awake. That's non-ideal.

I did get to sleep at a reasonable hour last night, so I wasn't too tired this morning. It took me 36 minutes to get to work today. I took Oak Park, Narragansett, Nagle, Touhy. I'm expecting this time to drop even more as I perfect the route.

Work went well. Still learning the ropes. Software not all working yet. Got to use a light table today to compare two huge schematics. (Several feet by several feet in size.) I found my first two bugs. A missing ground connection, and a missing connection to a power monitor circuit. I think I've earned my salary for the week with those too. It'll probably save a board spin.

I signed the mortgage at lunch. I realized that I won't get the check till Monday because of the three day waiting period. What a pain. I have to keep telling Eric to be patient about cashing the check I gave him. What a pain.

Ate pizza and played piano/guitar with Mike. Pray to St Anthony that he finds his chain that he has worn for the last ten years around his neck. (Side note... also pray I can find the piece of the Bible that I'm missing.)

Went through some of the paperwork I need to review tonight. I think I'm going to go with Blue Cross's cheaper HMO plan. It covers most stuff at 100% and is only slightly more expensive than the Shure plan that covers at 80% with higher deductables. I don't plan on using it, but the incremental benefit seems worth it. I'll have to ask some people about that at work.

It seems my dental plan is going to be going up quite a bit. I'm definitely subsidizing other people's dental work, considering I've had no charges for dental work or cleaning for the last five years. I've only gone once, last week, and my dentist friend did not charge me, and advised me not to bother filling the one cavity I do have.

First day of work.

2005-04-26T20:57:00.000-05:00

Shure. Very interesting. I think I'm going to like this.

So far no Caffeine!

It took me 40 minutes to get to work, but this was taking what I suspect was not the optimal route.

The morning was spent in training watching videos like "It's a jungle in there". And various other standard training videos. We also went over benefits. I think there were twice as many papers there than at a mortgage closing. (Which I do tomorrow at lunch.)

I saw my manager for about two minutes before lunch. He said here's your desk, it's not clean yet, so throw out the stuff from the last guy. He then said you should sit in this meeting at 1pm... welcome to Shure. I get a feeling I'll be in a lot of meetings at Shure compared to Mindspeed.

I sat in the meeting for about three hours. Learned a whole lot about a automated mixer project, and found out that the project didn't have sufficient staffing, so it was being pushed off for a few months.

Regarding staffing, one of the "Analog Guys" in the meeting asked me:
AG "Can you do analog design?"
PG "Yes, but I don't have a lot of experience."
AG "Do you know how to bias a transistor?"
PG "Yes"
AG "You're hired"
At this point one of the more senior people in the meeting chimes in:
"Wow, our standard for picking out analog designers has sure gone down hill."
To this I say:
"Well, yeah, I can bias a transistor, but I'd leave off the coupling caps and blow the thing up."

I don't think he was serious, but had I pushed the matter I probably could get into analog design pretty easily here. This is promising.

So after the meeting I see my manager again (for another two minutes.) He tells me that he's not sure what project I'm going to work on. He then talked about several projects. Then he asks "Can you program in C?" I say "Sure, it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life, but I can do it just fine". At this, my assigned mentor Paul Rooney gives me the sign that I should shut up and not volunteer to do stuff like this. (You know, the bugged out eyes and the finger slashing the throat look.)

Chris then says he wants me to review a layout for a wireless microphone system and port some embedded code to a reduced cost processor. Despite Paul's advice I say "That sounds interesting."

A couple minutes later Chris comes back with a guy named Leif and says "Plans have changed." I get put on this wireless mic project, shown the board layout and schematics, introduced to the engineers who will help me, and handed a schedule that shows my time scheduled out till November on a 17x24 inch piece of paper. I notice the schedule is already a week behind.

I think I'm going to like this place. Lots of geeky toys. There audio test room has a fully automated digital mixer. Yeah, like about 8 ft long, with a big German do not touch warning on top of it. (Which I ignored, claiming ignorance of German).

I also found out that the studio they are building should be done in August and that the purpose of it is for people like me to try out equipment and "jam." That was exactly the unbelievable answer that I was hoping to hear, but didn't dream was possible.

Finally I was shown "the important stuff" as Paul called it, on the intranet website: namely, the Shure store. They are selling Beta 58 microphones for $30! Their $4500 top end wireless mic set is going for about $800. A portion of my salary will definitely be going back to the company store.

The software on my computer wasn't really working very well, and I didn't have a chance to really sit down at my desk for very long anyways. I think I sat down for maybe ten minutes all day. I got my phone set up. By the time I checked my email I had 13 messages. I haven't read them all yet. I haven't even got rid of the stuff in my desk from the previous guy who was using it.

I'm already taking a long lunch tomorrow. (I have to sign a mortgage.) I had to have Paul schedule my time for me on the calendar system. (Which I guess everybody uses extensively.) My password wasn't working yet.

I'll be using Mentor Graphics to do layout and schematic work. That brings back memories of college days.

I already knew my manager Chris Benes from Mindspeed and from soccer. I ran into Paul Herbert and Mark Manthei from Mindspeed for lunch. I also knew Karl Janowski from U of I. I feel like I already know half the guys there.

It's great to be back at work.

Anybody need an embedded software or hardware job? These guys are hiring like crazy.

What a very long day.

2005-04-22T22:43:00.000-05:00

Got a call from my mortgage people. They are going to give me the money! I have to wait till Wednesday for the closing, which will happen in Skokie. I hope my work is flexible enough to take a long lunch that day. That means I can actually pay to finish this over-priced hot-tub gazebo. Woo hoo!

I itch. Fiberglass.

Tomorrow I help Kelly move. That will be a nice break from the work this week.

The hot-tub is now installed. I rented an 18 ton crane to install it. I was suprised when it showed up at 10:30am, because I thought it was supposed to arrive at noon. I had the time wrong. I had to do a super hustle to get some man power to get the thing in place. I think I got it on video. I borrowed Ashley's camera. I'll see if I can get the video up on the web.

I have discovered a slight flaw in my hot-tub deck plans. I think I want to make a change. I had left a space between the wall and the hot-tub to allow the cover to be stowed. However, it is impossible for a preson to grab the cover from the edge and re-cover the hot-tub once the cover is between the wall and the tub. You just can't develop enough leverage agains the seven foot lever arm created by the cover. I think I want to put the cover away from the wall, so that it can be grabbed from the middle and easily re-covered. This might not be possible because of the way the platform for the hot-tub was built. Since the platform was made with the other configuration in mind, it may not be able to create a cedar deck to cover the piece of the platform that would extend beyond the hot-tub.

That description could use some pictures, yeah?

Piano Installed, and Played.

2005-04-22T15:54:00.000-05:00

This video my brother shot is halarious. Complete with tweeting bird at the beginning.

Garage Walk Through

Let me know if anybody gets this video to work. I'm hosting it on Comcast, and I'm not sure that works okay.

Piano Installed.

2005-04-21T23:22:00.000-05:00

Phone lines have been moved to the garage. Cable is done too. No more wires over my back yard.

The piano was successfully moved from Jamie's place to my garage. I will now have to work around it. Bummer, but it had to move. It really needs a good amount of care. Anybody know how to get scotch tape and crayon off piano keys?

Tomorrow the crane shows up. George and Eric helped me push the hot-tub into position, and put it on wood supports so that we could easily put the straps under it.

Then I did some insulation. What a long day. I'm tired.

I just wish my mortgage would go through, so I could get the cash and stop worrying about paying for the rest of this project. I just want that part behind me.

I should get another roommate. Anybody know anybody in need of a place?

Cable Guy

2005-04-20T22:48:00.000-05:00

Today I played cable guy. I got everything ready. (or so I thought.) This involved drilling holes, pulling wire, disconnecting the old box, climbing a tall ladder drilling holes in the side of the building, mounting a ceramic bracket for holding the line tension, etc.

Then I reached out my window, held my breath and clipped my cable line. Wheee... I watched it fall. Then, as quick as I could, I pulled it across the yard, climbed back up the ladder and fed it through the building. (Except I wasn't ready. I realized the hole I had made wasn't big enough. So I had to climb back down, climb back up with a drill, and feed the cable through again.)

Note: new ladders are bright yellow for a reason. My ladder is not new. It is grey metal. It can hardly be seen in an alley that is paved in grey asphalt. I did not feel entirely safe at the top of the ladder, especially since it was near 5pm and there were lots of cars threatening to come down the alley. I put a garbage can out in the middle of the alley to make it more clear that I was up on the ladder. Next time, I think it is a two person job.

Anyway, I didn't get the job done by 6:30 pm, so I had to go to the dentist. (Shady dentist hookup: Tom Sarna is a dental student at UIC. Last week was taxes for dinner. This week was dental for dinner.)

I finally got the cable hooked up by 9pm or so, this required a flashlight and would have looked very suspicious if a cop had come past. Fortunately I didn't have to climb the ladder after dark.

I still have to climb the ladder a couple more times. I need to caulk the openings, attach the tensioners, and run the two phone cables. I need to get a hex security bit to move the NID before I can move the phone lines. Anybody happen to have this bit handy or know what size it is so I can order it?

My cable modem is back up, so I guess I got the cable hooked up correctly. I still don't have cable TV, but that doesn't bother me much. I need to add a splitter and maybe an amp for the TV connection. I also might move my cable modem to the garage.

I got a path ready for the hot-tub today, and the siding and the gutters are done. That's good to have complete.

The path is flattened out to push the hot-tub into position for the crane. The crane shows up Friday. I need to find somebody to help me push the hot-tub. My brother said he would help me do this tomorrow. I hope he remembers.

My piano goes into position tomorrow. A bit premature because the insulation and drywall are not complete, but Jamie's mom wants them out of her house. Piano movers are quite expensive. I hope it turns out to be worth it.

My mortgage people called today and asked what number they could call to verify my employment. I had to tell them I was between jobs. I hope that doesn't affect my eligibility. I gave them both companies' numbers.

I've been eating a lot and expending probably twice my usual energy per day. I don't think I've gained any weight. My muscles feel good though.

I've also been going to sleep at 10pm. Hopefully I can keep this up to be ready for my new job on Tuesday. Life will be different.

I need to eat a second dinner. Then it's off to bed. Mmmmm. Sausage for breakfast and steak for lunch and dinner. My fridge is fully stocked. I went shopping today. Mmmmm.

Caroline and Mike

2005-04-17T00:22:00.000-05:00

Okay, how did she get on stage?

Walking Spanish Living Room

2005-04-12T01:19:00.000-05:00

I've got a band camped out in my living room... oh my!
Check out Walking Spanish

Pope's Odds

2005-04-04T15:36:00.000-05:00

Hey, check out the Pope's Odds. I only really know one person on this list (Ratzinger.) Anybody know a site that talks about these different people? Besides the Cardinal Rating website that I found, that is.

John Paul II

2005-04-03T20:04:00.000-05:00

John Paul II holds a very special place in my heart. I have always followed the Pope. I am a Pope groupie. I have traveled to see the Pope in Detroit in 1987, in Denver for World Youth Day in 1993, in Rome in 1995, in St Louis in 1999. My father also went to see the Pope on most of these trips. He's a bigger Pope groupie than I.

I have always been discouraged by the media in their representation of the Pope as a feeble man. In Rome one of the guys from our group had the opportunity to shake the Pope's hand. He described him as being built like a football player and having a strong grip. I saw the Pope at St Peter's saying Mass and had an aisle seat that was no more than ten feet from him as he walked down the aisle. My memory is of a strong man. Even in 1999 that is not the way he was portrayed in the media. He was portrayed as a wimp. And they tried to use his physical ailments as leverage to attack his ideals and causes. Now that he has died from a debilitating disease, the media wants to make him less of a man because he was weak.

How do we remember Muhammad Ali? As a weak victim of Parkinson's right? Let us give John Paul the same respect we give Ali.

I remember sleeping on the concrete on a street in Hamtramck, Michigan, on the route where the Pope would be traveling the next day. We came to see the Pope and to have a carved wooden statue of Mary blessed. We came a day early to camp out for our spot by the parade route. (If people can do it for Cubs tickets, why not for the Pope?) I remember the Pope coming around the corner in the Pope-mobile, blessing the people on the left with a small sign of the cross, turning to the people on the right, blessing them, turning back towards us, seeing our statue of Mary high on a pole, seeing our signs in Polish and English asking him to bless the statue, his face lighting up, smiling and raising his hand in a large sign of the cross.

I remember world youth day in Denver. I remember the size of the crowds. The press always wanted to under-estimate the numbers. (Why not take satellite photos and count?) They filled the entire side of a valley. That was a fun time. I remember sleeping on those fields, and sneaking onto the luggage rack of the tour bus to sleep on the way to Denver.

I remember the Pope in Denver trying to stop the wave that had started going around Mile High Stadium, and failing because the crowd kept it going. I lost track of how many times it went around. I've never seen such a good wave. I remember playing with contraband beach balls in the stadium that the security guards were desperately trying to take away, and the crowd kept inflating more and trying to bounce them away from the security guards.

I remember my father bringing my former Geography teacher, Joe Benedetto, with him to see the Pope. Mr Benedetto was dying from brain cancer, and this was one of the last active things he did before he died.

I remember going with a group from St John's in Champaign to St Louis to see the Pope. I remember playing soccer in a field with complete strangers and carrying a Vatican flag and taking pictures over the crowd as the Pope drove past. I remember hearing the Pope talk to the president and to Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire. I remember him saying he would come back to the US to play hockey, and pretending his crosier was a hockey stick. His sense of humor was phenomenal. I remember deciding to stay an extra night with friends of Fr Tom Gibson. I remember being hosted with food and drink, port and congac, and sleeping like a baby... correction, sleeping like "two babies."

I remember his voice. He sounded like Count Dracula, but said good stuff. He has been Pope as long as I have been alive. He based his hope for the future on his trust in youth. I do too. I will dearly miss him.

I am trying not to focus on his death as much as the media wants me to. I don't like their attitude. Every article has a jab about his not allowing this or that unorthodox or immoral practice in the church as if he were doing something strange. If he wasn't important to the media last month, being dead shouldn't make him more important. The media seems to care more about what evil practices Catholics can start sliding under the radar of the Vatican now that he is gone. Let's not focus on how much bad stuff we can get away with and not get caught. Let's focus on how we can improve ourselves. Let's write the obituary, grieve, and move on. He was a man: a holy man, but only a man. He will be replaced by another Pope who will be different, but still only a man.

Several interesting quotes.

2005-04-03T01:52:00.000-06:00

"Can I come over and see your ditch?" -- Referring to the trench dug in my back yard

"Are you enjoying your Pooh?" -- Referring to a winnie the pooh doll I was playing with.

I rank Ashley's party a success. I rank the Illini win a success.

I think I ticked off Oscar pretty bad (again). We'll have to sort through that tomorrow.

Rest in Peace, John Paul II.

Illinois Wins!

2005-03-27T00:01:00.000-06:00

To me the most striking image of the game was seeing a reference to Isaiah 41:10 written on Roger Powell's shoes. I knew he did this, but that was the first time I actually saw the camera pan down to his shoes on national television.

I admire this type of courage.

The Fast Begins.

2005-03-25T00:22:00.000-06:00

Good Friday?
No more food till Holy Saturday?

I've been looking at CT scans and the analysis of bone scans on Terri Shiavo. To me it looks like Michael beat Terri to put her into the hospital, beat her after she was in the hospital, injected her with insulin to kill her, and has finally figured out how to kill her through a sick judge and the rest of this spineless government. He's not motivated by money, he's motivated by fear. He's afraid she might recover and testify against him.

Clearly he is in denial that Terri will soon get her day in court, and the Judge will be impartial, and the punishment eternal.

Just let me go on the record to say that nobody is allowed to kill me. No matter what. You can let me die if I'm dying anyway, but don't kill me, don't starve me to death. Not like that, I don't want to go out like that. I'd much rather be nailed to a cross where at least I'll die quickly. (But don't do that either, thanks.)

Happy Holy Friday.

Step one complete.

2005-03-21T17:25:00.000-06:00

I got the call today that I have been waiting for. I didn't accept the offer right away, because it was initally about 10% less than what I currently get, and quickly dropped to 4% less when I complained, but I don't think it is going to improve more or end up at an actual increase.

I can expect to overcome the initial drop in about a year, but it sure would have been easier had they offered me 10% more, not 4% less. Oh well, I guess that's how the market goes. Now I have to decide what to do about it. Any suggestions? Anybody know what I'm talking about?

It is a nice improvement in terms of opportunities, but right now I'm in a financial pinch due to the 20% or so overbudget coach house project.

I think I should just go with it. I told them I'd sleep on it and call back tomorrow. When do I tell the boss? Now or after I accept?

The next day or so are going to be rough on me. Thanks everyone for your prayers.

Fortunately I just finished an important piece of code here at work.

Life is great.

2005-03-20T11:34:00.000-06:00

I'm in a wonderful mood. I think I must be getting too much sleep.

I had a great weekend so far. On Thursday I went out to Carson's for some wonderful pork chops. I even enjoyed their salad, and I got desert. I slept very well after all that food. I feel this was a respectable way to celebrate Rami's middle name day. I think that also started out the weekend on the right foot.

I then got up early (5 not 9) in the morning and wore a suit to work, so that I could head from work to Pete's wedding (my old college roommate.) It is amazing the reactions you get when you wear a suit to work at a place where jeans and t-shirts are the norm. It was fun.

The wedding was also fun. I think Pete and Sarah invited close to a majority of their friends from college and from work. It was a great time. I felt obliged to enjoy a gin and tonic and some wine, despite my Lenten resolution. However, unlike some of the "Catholics" at my table, I opted for the eggplant (which was excellent) over the steak.... which actually looked a bit over-cooked.

It was fun to see all the old faces. And I got to dance too. Not well, mind you, but if somebody needs a dance partner, I'm there. I love it. In this case our old neighbor Allison --whose name I couldn't remember at the begining of the night-- wanted to dance, and her boyfriend Mayo (with a short A) was having none of it, so she recruited me. High heels and a deficient sense of rhythm didn't help, but the enthusiasm was there at least. The old people have it right. Dancing is fun, and when the music is playing you should be dancing. Good for the calves and lower back.

Anyway, speaking of "good for the lower back:" at nine am on Saturday Davy came past (as promised) and got me out of bed to first go buy a wheelbarrow and then shovel dirt for a little over an hour. With two people and two shovels, a lot of dirt can be moved. I think I am going to try to make a routine of shoveling some dirt for an hour or so every night when I come home. I suspect I can fill that trench myself with enough time, and if I don't pull any muscles I'll end up with less back pain and stronger shoulders.

At 1 pm on Saturday I headed out to our soccer tournament. I was feeling exhausted after we won our first game. All I had ate was some left over linguini and water before the game. We had an hour break and then played the second round. It was a tough game, but we won, I think the score was 9 to 11. I spent a lot of time in goal. We were up for the whole game, I think, and we tried to play a defensive game. But I think it wore us out. Our third game at four pm was too much for us. I got my second wind after eating an orange. (Amazing what a little sugar will do.) I had been taking it easy, and at the end of the third game I actually scored two goals and almost a third, but we ended up losing 7 to 4 or so. At least the team that beat us was genuinly good, good sports, and worthy of the win. A lot of the teams we played to get there were poor sports, overly agressive, and whiney.

We then went out to celebrate and watch the illinois game. I had a beer in celebration. (Okay, I think this was probably a poor exception to my Lenten resolution, but we did play some excellent soccer, faught hard for second place, and they gave us coupons for free pitchers of beer at the bar.)

I then stopped past Kevin's St Joseph dinner party. I was sweaty from playing three hours of soccer, hadn't shaved, had shoveled dirt in the morning, had eaten a burger out at the bar, so wasn't even that hungry for the food that Kevin had prepared. But I decided to stop by, because it was on the way home anyway. The food was great. Pasta. Appropriate. Everyone was supposed to bring a bottle of wine, so there was lots of that. (St. Joseph day is a good excuse to drink wine, right?) My teammate Wendy came with. We both bailed early though, because of sheer exhaustion after such a long day.

I miss my hot-tub.

I woke up without an alarm today, and feel great. Very sore, but in a good way. I am now sitting in front of my computer listening to music in my studio. I'm very happy with my decision to buy the new monitor speakers. I won't regret it.

I found my inhaler before the soccer game. Thanks St Anthony. I got an email from Chris, saying Katie is doing much better, although she can't remember the last 72 hours, and is still in the hospital.

2005-03-14T21:51:00.000-06:00

Anechoic Chamber... chamber... chamber!

Things seemed to go well today. I should be less stressed soon.

Thanks for all the prayers guys.

"I use what I call the warrior-priest-clown method. In life you have to be strong, honest, spiritual and funny.” -- Barrabas

Happy St Patty's Day.

2005-03-13T01:43:00.000-06:00

That was fun, huh, guys?

Had the lovely drink Guinness to celebrate St Patrick's day out at the Irish American Heritage Center.

Katheryn Petty was kind enough to invite everyone... Thanks... you rock! It was fun.

I'll send you a copy of the incriminating pictures when I get them scanned in. They were pre-digital. (Not that you actually read my blog... but that's a public promise.)

Unfortunately I came back home smelling like smoke, and with a terrible headache. In that sense it was very similar to last year. Last year I came back very sick from the smoke. So much so that I was actually sick to my stomach. This year wasn't so bad. I had to take some ibuprofen when I got home, but I'm fine now. Also last year it was Ashley and George with me along with Sonjia who was in town from New York, and Colleen who I was dating... but my company of Chris and Oscar worked well this year.

Knew four Kates at the place... you know it must be an Irish bar.

Saw Patrice and Chris... I met them last year. Of course I had to be reminded of their names, but that's fine, right?

Goofy: first Patrice is mad because I didn't get her name right, and then she gives me a kiss goodbye. Was I wearing my "kiss me I'm Irish shirt?" or am I really that much better looking without a beard?

Note: The banisters at IAHC are perfect for sliding down, especially in a wool coat.

Interview question: What is the most risky thing you have ever done?

2005-03-13T01:31:00.000-06:00

Terror Alert

Missed Pete's Bachelor Party.

2005-03-12T01:19:00.000-06:00

I'm a wreck this week. I feel sore like I'm getting sick, but I don't really think I'm getting sick. I think I'm not getting enough sleep. Tomorrow I have soccer and an all day Irish party. I'm still not sure if I'm going to make an exception to my no alcohol lent or not. I have been putting off a lot of preparation that I should be doing this weekend for a "special event" on Monday... that will not be described in detail.

I have been putting off my taxes.

I told Eric today (in an email) to not start any additional expensive obligations on the garage project, because I'm running out of money and want to make sure that the money goes where it is supposed to, and not toward extra things that I can delay.

I'm going to need to take up a lot of people on a lot of favors soon. I need to get insulation, dry wall, paint, cabinets, floor, trim, etc. done on the super cheap (ideally: no labor cost) in order to get this done without going into a ton of debt.

Anybody feel they owe me some serious hours of manual labor?

I think I've lost some of my usual confidence lately. I don't know wehre it's gone. I'm actually worried about my image and what I say and how I say it and lots of petty things that have never mattered to me. What's wrong with me?

My grandma turns 100 on Wednesday. She had a great party this weekend. One thing she said to me that I really liked hearing was: "I've never been sick." How awesome is that?

I hope I got her genes.

I talked to an unnamed friend today who looked very concerned about her increasing age. I'm not feeling it yet. I'll let you know when I really start feeling old. But I definitely know I'm not 21 any more.

P.S. Now that I'm back in the no-beard club, I'm also back on the single and available list. Anybody know any single Catholic women (or Catholic men who want to introduce me to their single friends?)... yo, hook me up already?!

International Women's Day

2005-03-08T00:31:00.000-06:00

Congratulations Women! It's your day! (I sincerely hope it wasn't a women who came up with this day. I'm sure I could find out, but I don't really want to know.)

It's like saying... the rest of the year is ours!

Last year at this time I was in England.

Yesterday I installed speaker wires in my walls to put sound into my kitchen. It had been annoying me that I couldn't hear the stereo in the living room when I was washing dishes. Problem solved.
I now have speakers in the breakfast room, kitchen living room and of course in the recording studio that all can play the same music if I like.

This was prompted by having bought some Mackie HR824 Studio Monitor Speakers. Let's just say they sound great.

Bye Bye Beard Party.

2005-03-04T00:34:00.000-06:00

The party was a success despite the poor turn-out. I can't complain actually, because people did show up. Oscar was nice enough to stick around and press the camera button. Ashley was a sport too.

Julia had a rough day at work, and didn't come, so Krista didn't come either. Of course Julia is a social worker, so aren't all her days at work going to be bad? Boy I wouldn't want her job.

Cindy was going to come out, but I called her and warned her not to bother when only ash and Oscar were around.

Chris Luther figured (incorrectly) that since he was late he probably missed the fun, so he did his own thing.

Sue discovered she had to go to Wisconsin for a Music Therapy conference.

Colleen called to say she wouldn't be coming by on her way to Tinley Park, although as of yesterday she had planned on "stopping by on the way."

It turns out my cousin Terry now has a beard. My aunt Lorry said I should keep mine. I decided to shave it in part because I want to look unobtrusive for my Grandmother's 100th birthday party this weekend.

The following pictures are in order. You should probably scroll to the bottom and then look at them in chronological order.

2005-03-04T00:20:00.001-06:00

Yes, of course I do!

2005-03-04T00:20:00.000-06:00

Don't I look more happy without a beard?

2005-03-04T00:19:00.002-06:00

Don't let this one get out.

2005-03-04T00:19:00.001-06:00

Adolf.

2005-03-04T00:19:00.000-06:00

Used Car Salesman.

2005-03-04T00:18:00.003-06:00

Criminal.

2005-03-04T00:18:00.002-06:00

Mario!

2005-03-04T00:18:00.001-06:00

Maybe keep this look?

2005-03-04T00:18:00.000-06:00

Woah!

2005-03-04T00:17:00.001-06:00

Yeehaw!

2005-03-04T00:17:00.000-06:00

Way Country.

2005-03-04T00:16:00.003-06:00

Country.

2005-03-04T00:16:00.002-06:00

Ming.

2005-03-04T00:16:00.001-06:00

Goatee.

2005-03-04T00:16:00.000-06:00

Sides.

2005-03-04T00:15:00.000-06:00

Bye Bye Beard!

How much memory... or do we have a brain?

2005-02-25T11:36:00.000-06:00

Question:
How much memory do I need?

Answer:
The asterisk demo file system is 115 MB big.
Asterisk alone takes less than 3.5 Mb.
In memory, it takes a maximum of 2.3% of the memory.

Okay, thanks guys... that helps a lot.
How much memory do I need?

Grrr....

What a day!

2005-02-20T05:38:00.000-06:00

Today I:
Got up Early.
Played Soccer.
Went to a wedding.
Ate.
Was visited by Ashley.
Wore a tie.
Crashed two wedding receptions at the same hotel.
Had Rebecca change clothes in my car while I drove.
Went to a rock concert.
Ran into Caroline Amorella.
Went to a dance party. (Lot's of fine women!)
Danced.
Ran into Thursday Night Trivia Girls Natalie and Marlina out of context.
Picked up food for drunk hungry Irish girl in Oak Park.
Got home at 5:30 am.
Parked in my new garage.
Didn't drink any alcohol.

poleguy

2005-02-18T19:31:00.000-06:00

Last night went out with Ashley to see a battle of the bands at Nevin's in Evenston. Walking Spanish was playing.

It was a good show, but I only stayed for the first three bands because Ashley wanted to get home. It's a good thing because I was super tired and couldn't get out of bed in the morning. It may have had to do with eating an omlette before going to bed.

I'm super bummin' right now. Not sure exactly why, but a combination of things. Luther wants me to go out to Grace O'Malley's for a fish fry, and Ashley is going with his brother to 10pin for some bowling. I'm contemplating just going to sleep because I have a 12 noon soccer game tomorrow, and want to crash Bill Downey's wedding ceremony tomorrow at 3.

Walking spanish is playing again tomorrow night up at the Bottom Lounge... I think.

Starting working on a new project at work. In a week or so we need to have calculated the cost on a board that does essentially a VOIP gateway with ethernet on one side and DSL/T1/Ethernet on the other, and POTS service too. A bit agressive for the price point they want.

Hmmmm. maybe I shouldn't talk about work stuff on this blog.

Anyway, the garage didn't get worked on today. I think they thought it was too cold. The flat roof under the hot-tub was done the other day, and didn't come out quite as nice as it should have. They didn't use the material that the architect had spec'd out. I guess it will work, but I'm not too happy with the results. Fortunately it will all get covered in cedar, so you shouldn't really see it.

I shouldn't leave the default title: poleguy.

2005-02-10T01:40:00.000-06:00

Just noticed I shouldn't leave the default title: poleguy... it's not very informative.

Here's an interesting website:
guess your gender

But the best one this week of course is: google maps

No more yahoo, no more mapquest! Yeay!

News of the day: Jesus will be a preemie this year! The feast of the Annunciation has been moved to April 4th because of a collision with Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter, and then Holy Week! Blam! Zaam! Kapow!

poleguy

2005-02-10T01:08:00.000-06:00

Long day. Tired. Didn't eat much today. Updating website. Burnt out.

SSH wasn't working on my box at home lately. Stopped and restarted daemon, which seemed to fix it, but I'm worried it might break again after the next reboot.

I think it's getting time to build a new machine, but I'm out of money because of the garage project. Running over budget a bit.

Time to do taxes. Hopefully I'll be getting something back. Probably not much though. Which means I'll need to pay my property taxes out of my bank account, which means I'll be a wee bit short on paying the overages on the garage. Hopefully I can make up the difference in sweat equity.

Day one of no alcohol. Mike reports that next weekend will be tough for him because his cousins John and Pete will be in town for Bill Downey's wedding. (I might crash the wedding next weekend depending on what time it is. It's at St Vincents.) Julia is having Dim Sum in china town in the evening, but that might not be a problem if the wedding is early.

poleguy

poleguy

2005-02-08T00:45:00.000-06:00

Left work early today because my office was full of smoke. I wonder if it will be there when I return in the morning. I have grand plans of waking up early and heading to work early and getting back from work early to watch the Illini play ball.

Tomorrow is Mardi Gras. I may give up alki hall for Lent. Chris is going to, so I figure why not?

I baked banana bread tonight.

This morning I kicked James out... I told him no more sleeping on my couch... etc. He didn't like that much, but he's gone.

I sorted through all my mail tonight. I have my tax pile separated from my other pile at least. That makes me feel that I accomplished something.

No word from Shure. Patience, Patience.

poleguy

poleguy

2005-02-06T13:13:00.000-06:00

I am updating my garage project webpage. I'm still missing the last few days in pictures, but I don't want to run out to the car to get my camera.

http://poleguy.homeip.net:2080/pictures/garage

poleguy

2005-01-28T22:01:00.000-06:00

Huh? Oh, one of those nights....

2005-01-28T22:00:00.002-06:00

Self photo!

2005-01-28T22:00:00.001-06:00

Everybody look serious for a second.

2005-01-28T22:00:00.000-06:00

Am I in this picture?

2005-01-28T21:59:00.002-06:00

Pink chested fool!

2005-01-28T21:59:00.001-06:00

Let's go!

2005-01-28T21:59:00.000-06:00

C'Bee and O'Dog.

2005-01-28T21:58:00.001-06:00

Pink Eye!

2005-01-28T21:58:00.000-06:00

Let me tell you a secret!

2005-01-28T21:57:00.001-06:00

Who's been drinking?

2005-01-28T21:57:00.000-06:00

Pink Shirt Night!

My first post

2005-01-26T18:32:00.000-06:00

Check out www.poleguy.com, which is my full website. Why did I just create a blog? Great question. Whatever.