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What remains of the day remains to be seen

I am now in the winning stages of a five day battle with strep throat that caused one side of my neck to swell up and made it very difficult to swallow for several days. The doctor concluded today that it was likely the preliminary stages of an abscess. Yesterday the pain had actually moved into my jaw and the swelling had progressed into the middle of my neck. On my first trip to the doctor on Friday, he prescribed amoxicillin and vicodin after concluding it was probably strep throat. He said to watch the swelling and if it got worse, see him again. And so I returned yesterday after spending a day alternately sleeping and zonked on vicodin. He agreed that the swelling had worsened but wasn’t ready to resort to more drastic measures like prednisone or stronger anti-biotics. He did have me make an appointment for today to check on my progress. I stuck with the omoxicillin and vicodin and threw in a box of shells and cheese (first real food in several days) last night. I slept for nearly 12 hours straight and woke up just in time to make my appointment with him today. And I felt great. And feel great still. Hail to the shells and cheese!

Thursday night I wasn’t feeling very well so I asked Thomas to put the trash and recycling out to the curb. Tina volunteered to help him and I’m grateful they spared me the effort. Sometime during the process, though, our little girl, Rory, snuck out of the garage and hadn’t been seen until just a few minutes ago. Tina and the boys made “missing kitty” posters and were going to plaster them all over the neighborhood. We feared that she had escaped to the greenspace behind our house where coyotes are rumored to wander. We know for sure that there are raccoons back there so we were very concerned. Tonight when we returned from dinner and book shopping at Goodwill, we thought we heard distant meowing outside the garage. When we went outside to investigate, there was Rory on the roof and glad to see us! I can’t tell you how happy our household is at this moment.

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Vital Statistics

Bike odometer: 2360
Van odometer: 150819
Weight lost (in pounds): 14
Hours of sleep last night: 12
Aches & pains: swollen glands/sore throat
Current reading: The Book of Totally Useless Information by Don Voorhees, The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman
Recent listening: The Band, This American Life
Recent viewing: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Countdown, Charlie Rose, Larry King Live, The Simpsons Movie
Recent playing: Spikeys Bounce Around, Chicken and Egg
Recently accomplished: two doctor’s appointments, searching for Rory
Imperative To Do: Sift through inbox, post office (Kent, Sue, Lala), phone calls, finish Best of 2007, test bike commute, join gym, 401k rollover, find new internet host

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Vital Statistics

Bike odometer: 2360
Van odometer: 150701
Weight lost (in pounds): 8
Hours of sleep last night: 7
Aches & pains: none
Current reading: The Book of Totally Useless Information by Don Voorhees, The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman
Recent listening: The Rising Tied by Fort Minor, The Shepherd’s Dog by Iron & Wine, This American Life, Wolfmother by Wolfmother
Recent viewing: Countdown, The 4400, Superbowl XLII
Recent playing: Peggle
Recently accomplished: cleaned cat boxes, recycling, paid bills, finished Holiday Road series, evaluated Quicken Online (fail), started new job
Imperative To Do: Sift through inbox, post office (Kent, Sue, Lala), phone calls, finish Best of 2007, test bike commute, join gym, 401k rollover, find new internet host

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Best of 2007: Honorable Mention

    Honorable Mention Albums for 2007     

  • The Blind Leading The Naked by Violent Femmes: Talk about a late 80’s flashback! Few bands can lay claim to the soundtrack of my college career but the Femmes are definitely one of them. Of their first three albums, this is probably my least favorite but also the most accessible for the masses. While “Old Mother Reagan” definitely sounds dated, the rest of the album still sounds as fresh as the first time I heard it twenty years ago.
  • Chicago IX (Greatest Hits) by Chicago: Before they were the Peter Cetera Love Song Band, Chicago was a kick-ass rock band with a great horn section. Although some of these songs hinted at the mediocre ballads that would come later, this set of songs is never formulaic and recommended for all fans of classic rock.
  • Eagles Live by The Eagles: Classic rock seems to be the theme for this year’s crop of Honorable Mentions and this live album represents the classiest of the classics. This two-disc set was the capstone on the Eagles’ decade long run at the forefront of the country-rock movement. Although it’s a little heavy on songs from The Long Run (most of the album was recorded during that tour), two discs leaves lots of rooms for all the old favorites and even a “new” classic for this album, “Seven Bridges Road”. More than anything this album proves that the Eagles were a great live band that did not rely on the studio to make their sound. The harmonies are all spot-on and the musicianship is exquisite, particularly on “Hotel California” which ends with a legendary guitar duel between Joe Walsh and Don Felder.
  • Volcano, Riddles in the Sand, Last Mango In Paris by Jimmy Buffett: My sister introduced me to Jimmy Buffett in the 80’s and I have loved his music ever since. For years I had been satisfied with owning the wonderful Boats, Beaches, Bars, Ballads box set but I have missed many of the album tracks from the period of his career I like to call the Mustache Years. Upon signing up for Lala I immediately put those albums into my Wanted queue. This year I was lucky enough to receive three of those albums. Riddles and Mango have particular meaning for me because they helped provided the soundtrack for my summers in 1984 and 1985 when I lived with my sister in South Carolina. I’ll never forget the look on my brother-in-law’s face as the melody to “La Vie Dansante” played near the end of “Beyond the End” – we were perplexed, delighted… and stoned.
  • Walls and Bridges by John Lennon: Although this album is not considered among Lennon’s finest by most critics, I still count it as one of my favorites by John, probably because it was my first solo Lennon album. The Phil Spector-inspired production can get unnecessarily cluttered with horns sometimes, but each song has almost exactly the right atmosphere it needs. The downbeat numbers, in particular, have a definite dark feeling to them and John’s estrangement from Yoko is obvious. Perhaps that’s why the upbeat numbers feel forced, as if John was trying to convince himself that he was happy when he was not.
  • Apple Venus Volume 1 by XTC: Although I would classify myself as an XTC fan, I haven’t been very impressed with anything they’ve done since Skylarking, perhaps one of the Top 10 albums of all time. Sure there have been songs that I liked, but each album has been a disappointment as a whole. And so it took awhile for me to finally pick up the first release on their own record label, Apple Venus Volume 1. It undeservedly languished outside of the rotation for months last year until I finally set my mind to rediscovering XTC. Oh how I was rewarded! The lush production and the willingness to throw in a horn or some strings harken back to Skylarking but this album isn’t quite up to that standard. Thus, it only makes Honorable Mention this year.
  • Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull: Convential wisdom says that Aqualung and Songs From The Wood make up the essential Jethro Tull oeuvre but I would make the case that this masterwork should be included in that collection as well. I first stumbled upon this album in the mid-80’s as a plundered my sister’s record collection with cassettes in hand. I finally purchased the album on vinyl sometime in the 90’s just so I could have the full version of the epic liner notes but it took this long for me to pick up the CD. After ripping the CD into iTunes using the defaults, I went back and re-ripped it as a single track since I think that’s what Ian Anderson intended all along.
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Yes, we’re going to a party, party

I had the first week at my new job this week and it was largely uneventful. The one remarkable thing was the striking difference between my current benefit package and my old benefit package at CPS. When I signed on there eight years ago, I remember thinking that it was sub-par, but I made sure to negotiate the differences into my salary. That kind of thinking was certainly a mistake on my part, especially when salary failed to keep up with health insurance costs. Now health insurance premiums are a very minor dent in my paycheck and the other benefits are icing on the cake.

I don’t think I explained before that my “new” job is actually the old job that I left to join CPS back in 1999. Back then I worked in a small office in Vancouver for a company called Splash which had grown successful developing a high quality RIP (raster image processor) that made it possible for computers to print to Xerox color copiers. Our little office was initially tasked with developing a similar product to drive Xerox’ line of wide format printers. Splash eventually attempted to diversify their product line and transferred the Macintosh-based product that had made them successful to the Vancouver office, thinking that it was on it’s last legs. Within a year after I left, Splash was bought by their primary competitor, Electronics for Imaging (EFI). Eventually all of the Splash offices were shut down except the little office in Vancouver, where the team I left continued to churn out high quality Splash-branded, Macintosh-based products for Xerox color copiers. That is the team that I joined this week. It was good to see some familiar faces and exciting to see new faces. I’m really looking forward to my future there.

Thomas is away on Mount Hood with the Boy Scouts this weekend. The BSA owns a snow lodge up there and Thomas’ troop goes up there once a year for inner-tubing fun. This week we celebrated Thomas’ 12th birthday. It’s hard to believe that we’ve had Thomas for that long and even harder to believe that he’ll be out of our hands in another six years. Last weekend he celebrated with his friends in a hotel suite for which a friend got a good deal for us. Tina described that shindig pretty well, so I won’t go into details here. Yesterday he used all the money he got from his birthday and some that he had been saving to buy an iPod Touch, which he has been dreaming about since the iPhone came out last summer.

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Holiday Road: Day 15

Friday, January 4

As I recounted earlier, snow and car accidents kept us from completing the final leg of our long journey home. We stayed overnight in Redding, CA, hoping that we would be able to make it home the next day. Discover step by step car restoration process by Classiq Cars services.

I woke at 4:30 am for an early morning reconnaissance mission up Interstate 5. When I reached the exit where we had been forced to turn around the day before and found that the roadblock had been removed, I concluded that the road was open and turned around. When I got back to the hotel, we roused the boys and departed Redding with no breakfast.

We hit the first snow as we ascended near Mount Shasta. About this time we noticed that we had acquired a small crack in the windshield on the passenger side. At first it wasn’t visible from the inside, but as we climbed we watched the crack grow! While we watched over a thirty second span, it stretched at least two more inches towards the center of the windshield. I turned down the defrost and it seemed to stop for the moment. It would continue to grow in fits and starts throughout the day whenever there were major differences in the inside and outside temperatures and later replace the windshield with the help of the autoglasstec services which specialize in this.

We had not put on the chains but we wouldn’t need them yet. A snow plow was less than half a mile ahead of us and when we reached what appeared to be the summit, he exited and headed back down from whence we came. At the same time, a snow plow from the other direction turned around at the same exit and blazed a trail for us going down.

Once we got back down to where it was raining, we stopped at a gas station to get fuel for the Scion and snacks for us. Since the pumps were covered by a canopy, I decided that it would be a good time to put on the new chains since we were certain to hit snow again at the Siskiyou Summit which was about 10 miles away. Unfortunately, my clever plan did not work as well as I would have liked. Because I had pulled to the forward-most pump, the front of the car (where the chains go on a front-wheel drive car) was sticking out from under the canopy. I had on the new raincoat which Tina had given me for Christmas and it worked perfectly, but my sweat pants were soon soaked as I struggled to put the chains on. Putting on chains requires quite a bit of knee-to-pavement contact, especially when one doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Unbeknownst to me, not all tire chains work the same and these were very unlike the set that I had bought and mastered for the van. Parts of the directions seemed vague until I was nearly done. When the meaning of “hooks up” became obvious, I removed the chains and started over again. After struggling with them for at least 45 minutes, we were finally ready to roll. I remembered the extra pair of dry pants from the night before and changed into them before we left. Now things were starting to fall into place!

It wouldn’t be long, though, before we began doubting our decision to chain up early. Driving the car over 45 mph caused a horrendous sound to come from the tires and Thomas pointed out that the directions said you shouldn’t drive over 40 mph with the chains. So we bump-bumped along for ten miles before we started seeing signs of snow. Soon, though, we felt good about our decision as we passed people trying to chain up in the cold. There were even entrepreneurs who were charging a fee to chain up other people’s cars. We drove right by the whole mess and continued on up to the pass.

There were no snowplows in sight this time but we traversed the pass at full speed (i.e. 40 mph) nearly the whole time and it was only about 45 minutes before we crossed the state line and descended into Ashland. After a delicious breakfast in Ashland, Tina took over the driving for the rest of the day while I napped. When I woke up Portland loomed in the distance and we faced afternoon rush hour on a Friday afternoon. It was only fitting, though, as it had seemed that the last hour was always the longest of each day of our entire journey.

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Safe Eyes 3.0 for Macintosh

In all the hub-bub over my departure from CPS, I missed this press release announcing the update to Safe Eyes that I worked on last year. I wrote the code for all of the new features and really enjoyed working with the people at InternetSafety.com. It’s a great product and provided a welcome respite from the difficult political machinations that went on at CPS during that time.