Reality beckons as vacation recedes… I type this as we roll up I-75 N toward Atlanta. We’ve been visiting family in Bradenton, FL (just south of Tampa) for the last week where we ate, drank, rested, swam and generally goofed off and had a great time. And now we go home. Don’t get me wrong, being home will be nice. We’ve been staying with family and it has been comfortable enough but you can relax and unwind in your own home in a way you can’t elsewhere. I’ve missed that. I haven’t missed getting up in the morning to go to work. I haven’t missed needing a coat to leave the house. I haven’t missed the ever-growing honey-do list and I haven’t missed the leaves that have no doubt gathered on my yard, anxiously awaiting my return.

Nevertheless, here we sit in our luggage laden vehicle rushing to greet them. Well, perhaps rushing isn’t the right term. We are “doing the wave”. You know the drill, speed limit for a few miles, slow roll for a few miles. I call it the wave because when seen from the air it looks like a series of waves rolling up the road. I feel pretty certain we will get home sometime between now and the end of the month.

On the bright side I did get a chance to finally pull out my camera yesterday before we left. We had lunch at the marina and went out to St Armand Circle for a while. St Armand Circle anchors the south end of the very affluent Longboat Key and is a breathtaking place full of stores that we mere mortals can’t shop at, but it sure is pretty to look at. Late in the afternoon we headed out to the beach to let the kids play in the sand a bit and watch the sunset. After dark we had dinner on a deck at a little restaurant called the Sandbar. The end of the deck literally fades into the white sand beach and the water is about 75 feet further so you have the sound of the breaking waves as background for your dinner. We used to go there on the jet skis when we lived in Bradenton. Of course, those times we just beached the skis and wandered up dripping wet. In fact, I think this may the first time I’ve eaten there with more than swim trunks on. Somehow their burgers aren’t as good when you are dry.

So, anyway, for those of you who know me, you’ll forgive me if I am a little out of sorts for the next day or two as I readjust to the harshness of reality. For those who don’t, you probably wont care what kind of mood I’m in over the next few days. For both groups, I’ve tossed a few of my favorite pictures from yesterday at the end of this post. Welcome to the modern day equivalent of dragging out the vacation photos. The difference here, of course, is that you are not a captive audience; you can simply close the window and I’ll be none the wiser. Just do me a favor: if you run into me, just tell me “Hey, I loved the vacation pics, especially the one with the little girl.” I will agree because I also like that one and I can go away feeling happy and validated.

/g

This shot of Courtney is one of my favorites from the trip. It really captures something of her more peaceful side you don’t often see.

This isn’t an especially good shot of Courtney, I just likes the sense of movement it has. She was dashing away from the surf with her bucket of water before the next wave hits.

Justin was never still enough for me to get any good photos of him in the fading light but I did get this cute silhouette of him as he shoveled away.

I took this one a couple of minutes later as he channeled Ghengis Kahn and destroyed the remains of a castle someone left. Notice his mouth is open in a little boy version of a primal scream. It was really quite amusing.

This and the next two shots are of the fishing pier at Bradenton Beach. I love the colors in the water, especially under the pier in this one and the third one.

This is the shot I like so much of the little girl. She was walking around St Armand Circle in this dress that she is obviously very proud of. In real life she was a little peacock. I almost hurt myself as I snatched my camera off the floorboard when we saw her. I had just enough time to rip off this single frame of this cutie out the window of the car as we drove past. You can click on it for a larger version. Her expression really is cute.

This is a terrible photo of a really really cool sculpture. It is a bigger than life replica of a famous photo from a Time photographer took at a Times Square celebration at the end of WWII in 1945. The nurse was not a willing participant, but no one knows for sure who she was. A number of women have claimed to be her over the years. There is a complete back story here in case you care.

I hadn’t planned on writing anything specifically for thanksgiving but here I am. I am spending today with family and not adding to my blog but I felt this was something I should write. I refuse to spend a lot of time on it so you’ll have to forgive the poor (er than usual) writing and any misspellings. I’m anxious to get back to my family so I’ve allotted myself 15 minutes to get this done.

So what triggered this unexpected outburst? I was watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade when one of the commentators commented that this (meaning the parade) was what Thanksgiving was all about. Now, I realize he didn’t mean that literally but for many of us it has become more about the parade and turkey than anything else.

As for what it is supposed to be about, well, duh. The answer is in the name: thanks giving. So with that out of the way, what are we giving thanks for and to whom? That, I think, is where some of us part company. Many believe and, in fact, most schools teach that thanksgiving originated with the Pilgrims as a celebration of the harvest to thank the Indians for teaching them domestic agriculture. While that makes for a nice, tidy story that conveniently skirts any mention of God, it simply isn’t true.

You only have to look as far as the whole purpose of the pilgrim’s journey to know what they were about. The part of the Mayflower compact that talks about the purpose of their very journey begins “Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith…” It was ultimately about the freedom to practice Christianity based on biblical principals and not the political ones laid down by the Church of England.

Their thanks giving feast was one of thanking God, not unlike the ancient Hebrew and, indeed, modern Jewish celebrations of Succoth and Passover. Their journey was a hard one and approximately half of them died that first winter. Think about that for a moment. You embark on a brutally difficult journey to a new land with a group of people and after months at sea you arrive, only to watch one out of every two of your companions die unpleasant deaths. And life didn’t grow significantly easier for them in the ensuing months either. And yet there they were, throwing a feast thanking God for what they have. Um, wow.

We’ve begun a tradition in my family where each day in November each of us writes down one thing we are thankful for and we review those on thanksgiving. While I think that is an important lesson for the kids (us too for that matter), I look now at the things on our lists as I consider how thankful they were for what little they had those many years ago and it is a bit embarrassing in contrast. It really highlights the indulgent lifestyle we have and just how much we have to be thankful for. The impoverished and homeless here have it far better than those at the top of the Pilgrim’s hierarchy.

Every day in America should be thanksgiving. So instead of gorging on turkey and watching the parade, shouldn’t we find a few minutes to thank God for all he has given us? Is saying grace at the table really sufficient? Look around you and consider then do whatever you feel is right. At least for me, the prayer over the meal doesn’t begin to cover it.

Well, I am off to the family again. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I sincerely hope each of you have a blessed Thanksgiving and may God continue to bless you and yours in the coming months.

/g

I’d never given much thought to how I portrayed myself to others online, I was just me. To be honest, it just never occurred to me to wonder how I might be perceived so I never gave it much thought. At least, until a few nights ago I hadn’t. I was chatting with an online friend who I’ve never met in real life. Let’s call her ‘C’ for simplicity here. As is often the case my wife, Christy, was sitting with me and could see the conversation. To be honest, I don’t even recall what we were chatting about. Out of the blue Christy asked me something to the effect of “Goodness, honey, did you also tell her about your blue spandex suit with the red cape and big ‘S’ on the chest?” After shuddering at the thought of myself in a full-body spandex suit of any color I told her that I had not, of course, mentioned any such suit but I think I might have dropped a few hints about the Bat Cave. Then I asked her what the heck she was talking about.

In answer, she pointed out that I might be painting a bigger than life portrait of myself for my friend. Over the past few months I’ve talked to Christy about many of the conversations C and I have had and I guess she had, without really thinking about it, been compiling a mental list. She started to tick off a list of the things she knew I’d talked about. In my many chats online I’ve mentioned to C that, among other things, I am: 6′7″, a pilot (who has crashed and walked away unscathed, no less), a scuba diver, a white water rafter, a caver, into martial arts, a security expert who speaks at conferences and whose job involves peripheral involvement with the FBI, a world traveler, a photographer and photography instructor, a God fearing, church going, loving husband and father who adores his wife, dotes on his kids and even cooks. I may, in fact, even be the world’s coolest dad since I went to great lengths to take my teenage daughter to a Coldplay concert and with amazing seats at that. And those are just the facts that sprang to mind immediately. I’m sure that, given a few minutes to think, I could double or triple the list.

It isn’t that I set out to portray myself in that light at all but I am an adventure junkie and, over the course of 40 years I’ve managed to do a number of interesting things. And, let’s be honest, those things are the ones that you tend to remember and, hence, talk about in the course of general conversation. All of those things are absolutely true but aggregately they paint an unrealistic picture. Especially when you factor in that some of them are strictly sporadic pursuits. I’ve only been in a few wild caves and only white water raft once or twice every couple of years. I haven’t been scuba diving in six years, and haven’t set foot in a dojo since I don’t know when. A very long time, to be sure. My crash wasn’t of the lawn dart like variety that springs to mind when one hears “plane crash.” Rather, it was a belly landing forced by a landing gear failure. Yes, it was a crash and yes, I did slide a couple thousand feet down a concrete runway with the metal belly of the plane acting as a poor substitute for wheels, and yes, it was both very exciting and terrifying and could have ended very differently, but it isn’t necessarily what it sounds like just the same.

Add to that the fact that people don’t tend to talk about their faults online. Heck, I don’t find many people eager to talk about them in real life either for that matter, and I’m no exception. But at least in real life you have the chance to observe them first hand and generally tend to pick up on the bad and good together over time. Rarely does the fact that you like kicking puppies pop up in the course of a normal conversation online. I’m not saying I like to kick puppies; I rather like puppies. I’m only trying to say that, if I did, it isn’t the sort of thing I’m likely to mention. If you were with me in person you would at least have a chance of seeing me do it. That’s all I’m sayin’.

Take the case of this particular friend. C has no way of knowing how I tend to leave stuff laying around and how, many times, I take an awfully long time to finish a project around the house and how completely nuts both of those things make my wife. She doesn’t see me on those days when work was rotten, bringing me home in a less than good mood and I am less involved or more terse with the kids that I otherwise would and should be. She doesn’t get to see the times when, in a disagreement, I respond to Christy sarcastically rather than maturely. She has no way of knowing that I am terminally afraid of doing things I am not good at, especially in front of other people. She doesn’t get the chance to see any of those oh so very fallible moments in my life that my other friends do.

She has no way of knowing that her dedication and devotion to her walk with God makes me feel more than a little ashamed of the level of dedication I’ve exhibited lately. She has no clue of the regrets I have over the missed opportunities to step up and be a truly good father or husband; those times when I was too busy or too tired or too self absorbed to pay the attention that I should have.

This only goes to reinforce the point I made in my very first post on this blog that in most cases you don’t really know the people you meet online. You see what they allow you to see and no more. It is a bit like a product demo. You only see the features of a product that the person demonstrating it chooses to show you, and they are only going to show the very best features. You don’t learn about the bugs and deficiencies that would drive you nuts unless you actually buy the product. Though in that original post I had intentional deception more in mind and, though this is nothing of the sort, the same supposition holds true to some degree.

Given enough time most people can discern character beyond what is overtly presented and I think C is certainly smart enough and a good enough read of people to at least suspect that I am not actually perfect. Yeah, I’m afraid its true. And, to be fair, I have told her things about me that aren’t part of an idealized tale of my life. I’ve told her some things about my first marriage and how badly it ended and I’ve talked a bit about my misspent youth. I’ve shared stray facts like that, but almost certainly less than I should have. When you get down to it I don’t know how well she truly knows the real me so, how can I expect her to have any idea. And that probably cuts both ways.

She and I have had a number of conversations around what constitutes true friendship and rather we qualify. We’ve discussed rather or not the time we’ve spent chatting is all wasted effort, running toward a dead end. My personal take is that it isn’t. I’ve mentally stopped making the distinction between her and ‘real life’ friends, rather the difference is on-line as opposed to off-line. Both are real life for me. I’m not sure what exactly comprises friendship because it isn’t something I decide intellectually or consciously, but I feel like I have found it in this instance. But, then, I have always been exceptionally good at reading people. I’ve met very, very few people that I didn’t have a distinct opinion of in the first five minutes of conversation and there have only been a couple of people ever to prove that initial opinion wrong. I’ve learned to trust my gut. How and why C arrives at a conclusion will only be revealed with time and even then, perhaps not to me. Either way, I consider her a friend, lack of details and all.

In the few days since I started writing this post I heard a quote about friendship that I especially liked. But more than that it amused me when I thought about it in the context of this post. The quote was “True friends are like angels; you don’t have to see them to know they are there.” I can’t help but wonder if that extends to those friends you’ve never actually seen at all. I mean, I’ve never seen my angels either. At least, not that I know of.

So I’m left to sit here and ponder the imponderable and will probably never get any closer to a conclusion than I am right now. Given that I have no choice in the matter I guess that I will just have to live with it. In the mean time, I’ll make an effort to share more of the real me, not just with C but with my off-line friends as well. In short, I will find a hanger and an open spot in my closet for the outfit with the cape. I think in the end it will work out better that way, and I suspect that I will feel better either way. Not being able to fly anymore is gonna take some getting used to, though. C’est la vie.

/g

If you’ve not done Thanksgiving or Christmas in Florida you should give it a try. I highly recommend it. We are down to see Christy’s family for the week and I am starting to wonder why we moved away from here. OK, not really. I wouldn’t trade where I live for Florida, but it really does have its advantages over the majority of the country this time of year. It was a sunny 75° F and the pool felt great. But that was only a small part of an exceptional day. A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say, and, as much as I hate pictures of me, I think the only way to really give you a taste of the day is in pictures. So, here goes nothing:

I got to play water taxi to the kids for a stroll into the deep end. Since Justin tried to drown himself in my sister’s pool last year he has been a little freaked out and clingy around the water but today was digging it. Hopefully we are past that.

For the second time today Justin decided he wanted to take off and swim on his on. Far be it from me to interfere. In fact, I felt obligated to provide a little motivation by chasing them.

After swimming and a brief rest we went over to the great grandparent’s house to visit. Courtney spanked me at Chutes and Ladders. Stupid long slide….

Around 5:30 a professional swing/ragtime band set up by the community pool that is directly out the back door and started playing. This was shot standing in the back door. We opened up all the windows on the sunroom in the back and got a free concert. I have video too that I’ll put up later.

While they were playing we had to suffer through this sunset…

…while the house was filled with the aroma of this cooking. I made a 7 layer lasagna that was criminally good. It will be even better tomorrow and the day after. yay! This shot is scratch-and-sniff. Give it a go.

My mother-in-law suggested I it would be more honest to post the wider version of that shot. I sorta trashed her kitchen in the process of making it. Luckily she really, really likes my lasagna and all was forgiven. After I cleaned it up, of course…

On a scale of 1 to 10 today would be somewhere around an 11, I guess. I think I’m just gonna skip the rest of the week. It could only be down hill from here.

/g

I was talking to a friend the other day about an upcoming business trip that would start in LA, wind inland through Utah then back to the coast in the Pacific Northwest. She told me that she had been skiing out there and how much fun it had been. I’ve never been skiing and said as much so she suggested I give it a try while I was out there. It sounded like it might be fun so a few days later I looked up some rates for lessons, rentals, lift tickets, etc at various locations along my planned route. The problem was, even as I looked up information, something about it just didn’t feel right which started me wondering why. It didn’t take long to figure out…

Over the years I’ve traveled extensively for work and, like most business travel, it has been a largely solo activity. It has taken me to virtually every spot in the continental US big enough to warrant a Walmart and most of the larger cities many many times as well as to places off continent from Bermuda to Helsinki, Finland and many points between. Initially all the travel was a heady, exciting adventure. In fact, it still excites me on some level, just not like it once did. The whole truth, though, is that it can also be a very lonely existence and not just because I’m alone. Visiting cool new places or experiencing fun new things without someone to share it with is somehow inherently sad for me. I know there are people it doesn’t bother but I am a social creature and crave sharing the experience as much as or more than the experience itself. No matter how wonderful the place or activity I always find myself wishing for the company of a friend.

One of my favorite places in the world is San Francisco and within the San Francisco Bay area my favorite place is the Marin Headlands north of the Golden Gate Bridge. More specifically, the portions overlooking the bridge and, more specifically yet, at night. For me, at least, it is a magical place at night and, if you go late enough you can find spots in which you can be completely alone. Year round it is a little cool and there is almost always a strong breeze tousling your hair. You are nearly as high as the towers on the bridge and looking out through the cable suspension at the entire vista of the San Francisco skyline beyond. The blackness of the Pacific Ocean is felt more than seen as a palpable void to your right. You can’t help but feel the vast emptiness that stretches thousands of miles beyond the horizon. Something about that emptiness combined with the close yet seemingly unreachable companionship of the city gives me a sense of unparalleled solitude and the sheer scale of the entire scene serves as a powerful reminder of just how insignificant I really am.

But the thing is, that solitude extends only as far as earthly company is concerned. For me, at least, that separation from the rest of the world reminds me of how little all of the ’stuff’ really matters and helps me gain perspective on what really does matter. Put another way, if you can’t hear God’s voice there you need to work on your listening skills. I’ve not found another place anywhere on the planet where I feel as at completely alone and completely not at the same time.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have sat up there alone just looking out over the bridge and the city beyond while the hours rolled past unnoticed. I’ve found myself still sitting there as the sun broke over the Eastern horizon a few times, but I try to be packed up and gone by then as a rule. Something about leaving while it is still dark lets you carry a little of that wonderment away with you in a way you couldn’t by the light of day.

As amazing as that place is and as much as I want (or perhaps need) to be alone there, I still long to share the experience. In the time Christy and I have been together I’ve been there dozens of times without her but not once without wishing she were there beside me. Not once have I left there without a measure of sadness that I couldn’t share the experience with someone I love. The same is true rather I’ve been wandering the streets of Paris or walking a cornfield in Iowa. No matter how fun or amazing the experience, a part of me is left wanting for someone to share it with and saddened that I can’t carry that experience back to those I love.

As an avid photographer I carry my trusty Nikon with me as surrogate companionship. While being able to spend all the time I like trying to get a shot or sitting in one place for an hour waiting for the light to get just right is very nice, it really is a poor substitute for having someone to talk to. And, while I may have excellent shots of the trip years later, they are a poor substitute for being able to sit with someone and say ‘remember when’.

So I find myself wondering what do do now. Christy really isn’t into the whole skiing thing so this would be the perfect time to try it out, but there is just something depressing me about the thought of going it alone. The date for this trip hasn’t been settled so I have some time to decide, but I don’t know if I’ll be better able to decide later than I am now. Oh, well. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

/g

Warning: Because of the subject matter discussed, this post unavoidably contains material that many may find offensive. You may want to stop here. If you choose to read on, please accept my apologies ahead of time if you are offended. That certainly isn’t my intent.

OK, they’ve done it. They’ve finally done it. They have made me write my first crotchety old man post. I was listening to the radio yesterday and heard a song called “Addicted” by the band Saving Abel. I’d heard it before but hadn’t actually listened to the lyrics. Now, let me start out by saying that I am not a prude or even close to it. I may not like the state of what passes for morality these days, but I know the score. I really don’t offend easily but when I actually listened to that song I realized that the lyrics are grossly inappropriate for radio. Well, they’re inappropriate in any context if I’m being completely honest, but even more so on a mainstream radio station. So you know what I am talking about here are the first several lines from the song:

I'm so addicted to
All the things you do
When you're going down on me
In between the sheets
Or the sound you make
With every breath you take
It's unlike anything
When you're loving me

Oh girl lets take it slow
So as for you,
Well you know where to go
I want to take my love
And hate you til the end

I won’t even bother to dissect that little bit of prose. If you need it explained, you really shouldn’t be reading this to begin with. I’m not naïve and I know that there have been lyrics that bad and worse for many years but it used to be that those were only heard by those who bought the album, not on the radio. I grew up when songs like “Pour Some Sugar on Me” got tons of airplay. Rather or not that was also inappropriate is a whole other discussion but at least, at least the overt sexual references were made metaphorically. These lyrics are not just explicit, they are crass.

What ever happened to radio versions of songs? Well, I guess that concept still exists somewhat because on the same station I’ve heard sanitized versions of other songs where drug references are omitted, if just barely. Why that and not this? While I’m on the subject I have another ax to grind. Why is it where ever the term “God damn” is used they bleep “God” and not “damn”? I mean, really. Can someone please explain the thought process that led to that practice? I guess they think we find God more offensive than expletives. By they I mean the brain dead morons at the broadcasting companies, of course. Which would you rather have your child ask:”What does God mean?” or “What does damn mean?” I sincerely hope they wouldn’t have to ask the former, but you get my point. And I know there will be someone who reads this and thinks that I’m overreacting. I would just ask that if that’s you, please email me your phone number. That way, if my kids do somehow hear that song I can call and let you explain it to my six year old when she asks me “Daddy, what does ‘going down on’ mean?” On second thought, nevermind. I’ll field that one, you just stay clear of my kids. Thanks.

You see, I used to listen to the radio in my car when the kids were along. Then it got where the subject matter in the morning and afternoon talk shows were bad enough I couldn’t listen to them with children present. I usually wouldn’t even when alone for that matter. But at least we could listen to the radio the rest of the day when they are actually playing music. We can’t even do that anymore. You just never know what is going to come out of the speakers.

The frustrating thing is that it need not be that way. Equally popular is the song “1,2,3,4″ by Plain White T’s that could’ve been ripped straight from out of the 50’s. Here is the first little bit of that song’s lyrics:

Give me more loving than I’ve ever had
Make me feel better when I’m feeling sad
Tell me I’m special even when I know I’m not
Make it feel good when it hurts so bad
Barely get mad
I’m so glad I found you
I love being around you
You make it easy

It's as easy as 1-2-1-2-3-4
There’s only one thing two do
three words four you...
(I love you) I love you
There’s only one way two say
Those three words
And that’s what I’ll do...
(I love you) I love you

See? Isn’t that nice? OK, so that may be the other extreme, but I’m OK with that. You know, I’m not one of those people who think that any and all sexual references in songs are inappropriate. I’m really not. I think music, or at least good music, is not just listened to, it is experienced. Listening to music that finds you where you are can be a visceral experience. That music both expresses and invokes strong emotion. Given that the most intense human emotions revolve around love, including physical expression of it, I would find it odd it the topic didn’t come up fairly often in music.

Look, I’m not picking on Saving Abel here. The thing that annoys me most, in fact, is how much I liked the song before I stopped and listened to it. And now I can’t. Not all of their music is objectionable and they are far from the only ones out there today spewing garbage onto our airwaves. All I’m asking is this: Keep it tasteful. It doesn’t have to be explicit and it certainly doesn’t need to be crude. If it is, let those who want to buy it listen to it. I don’t need that much detail about you via public broadcast. I think the term is T.M.I. That’s all I’m sayin’. Now, if you’ll excuse me while I go put my soap box back in the closet. In the mean time, thanks for listening.

/g

 
OK, so this should be fun. I am scheduled as the sole speaker at tomorrow’s Nashville ISSA chapter meeting. That alone is no big deal. I mean, there will probably be at most 100 people there. I give talks like this all the time and to much larger crowds. That isn’t the problem. The problem is that I am sitting in the Nashville Marriott sipping warm tea with honey in it in hopes that it will preserve what little voice I have left.

Yeah, that’s right, I’ve lost my voice. On the way home from work yesterday I was singing along with the radio and noticed a little rasp in my voice. Great, I thought, now I can sing John Cougar Mellencamp songs too. Neat. And it was for a while but by bedtime I knew something else was up. My voice had gone from Mellencamp to somewhere between Barry White and James Earl Jones. I normally have a deep voice, but this was almost sub-sonic. Its a shame Christy had already gone to bed or I coulda tried some of Barry’s moves from the 70’s with that voice. “Hey, baby. Mmm mmm mmm, you are lookin fine tonight, sweet mama.” Hmmmm. OK, so, as I was saying, luckily she was already asleep…

I feel fine, mind you. Not even a sore throat. Just can’t talk is all. Well, I can a little but at the moment I sound like I am re-living puberty. I’m fighting off the urge to go to my 7th grade girlfriend’s house just in case she still lives there. I could see if she still thinks the squeak in my voice is cute.

Tomorrow should be interesting. I am practicing my shadow puppets since I know I’ll have a projector at least and my tap dancing isn’t so good. That, and I’m trying to figure out how to convey “virtual server” and “hyperjacking” in case we end up playing virtual security charades. Wish me luck. I sure hope the boys team wins.

/g

 
The fabled King Midas purportedly had the ability to turn anything he touched, no matter how plain or how ordinary, to gold. I’ve found over the course of my life that I have a similar ability. Any task I put my hand to, no matter how menial or seemingly fun, turns to work. While I have to admit it isn’t quite as cool as King Midas’ ability it is also far less likely to result in the loss of a loved one; proof that life has its little trade offs, I suppose.

You are currently looking at the latest manifestation of this amazing ability: my blog. What started out as something I thought would be fun and perhaps a little therapeutic has somehow transmogrified into a swirling black hole from which neither time (that would be any free time I might have had) nor light (i.e. something worth reading) escapes. “But wait,” you say “I’ve read everything here and, well, you’ve spent all that time and this is the best you could do?” Well, yes. And no. It isn’t quite that simple. But then, it never is, is it?

See, the root of the problem is that I am a perfectionist. I mean a “if you’re gonna do it, do it right, if you want something done right do it yourself, almost isn’t good enough”, unrepentant perfectionist. While that may seem like a good quality to have, trust me, sometimes (perhaps even often) it isn’t.

A prime example of one of those times would be the sound system I put in my truck. I gave a small overview of what I’d done in this post last week, but really only a passing mention. The whole story (abridged version) is that a few years back I bought a brand new Dodge Ram Quad-cab truck. Almost immediately after purchasing it I stuck my brand new truck in the middle of my garage, opened all 4 doors and removed the entire interior; seats, carpet and all, excluding only the headliner and main dash section. I ripped out the center of the console (where the radio and a/c controls are located) and made a dense foam mold of the opening to shape and use as a mold for the cast resin replacement I made. You see, I had to re-cast it because the placement of things had changed. I’d removed the stock receiver (of course) and replaced it with a more suitable aftermarket one but, to accommodate the seven inch touchscreen I was building in I had to fabricate brackets to move the radio higher in the opening and another to move the a/c control unit lower. You may be wondering why I need a touchscreen in my dash. Well, how else will the PC I was building into the truck in be used? I bought triple shielded signal wires and after carefully routing them from the receiver to the amps to keep them away from any power, I cut them to length and soldered new gold plated RCA connectors on them. I added a separate power feed and power distribution block directly from the battery. I built custom brackets to mount my XM antenna inside the dash and more to place my front tweeters at just the right angle. I built a foam mold to make a factory like fit 12 inch sub enclosure under the rear passenger side seat then spent many many hours laying fiberglass to make it. I…well, I could fill several pages with the complete task list, but I think you get the idea. The end game was to have a great system that looked like it came from the factory that way. All the amps, etc were hidden but, even if you know where to look they look like they were put in when the truck was built. Every detail had to be right.

During the course of this whole adventure my truck sat squarely in the middle of our two car garage looking more like a vehicle that had been left overnight in Harlem than one in a garage in suburbia. Christy asked me more than a few times when I was going to wrap this silliness up and get the heck out of her spot in the garage. And she didn’t ask in a “I love you truly, madly, deeply and want to spend the rest of my life with you and bear your children” sorta voice. It was more of a “this was funny for the first week or so; now when are you going to wrap this silliness up and get the heck out of my spot in the garage” voice. It was a little tense for a day or two but, alas, perfection cannot be rushed. That obsession with getting all the details caused a bit of friction, but I couldn’t bring myself to just wrap it up and leave things slapped together.

While the blog is not taking up space in the garage, it has been much the same. Perhaps to a lesser degree, but not as much as you might think. It isn’t blocking my wife's access to the garage so the friction isn’t there, but it does involve a lot more detail than you might suspect. I’ve written the few posts that are published now and have a good running start at another four or five. While writing them takes far longer than I could have imagined, those only account for a small portion of the time I’ve spent thus far. What else is there, then?

Well, for starters I had to find a theme (the add-on that determines the layout and look of the blog) just to get out of the gate. I found a theme I liked in overall terms but still needed to make significant changes. To that end I’ve spent many hours substantially modifying the html portions and cleaning up the css bits. I also created the banner graphic you see above then had to match the other elements to it. All of the little things from the shadow below the banner to the footer at the very bottom of the page are all hand built graphics and the page contains about a dozen of them. All of those have to be re-done every time you want to try out an idea so it isn’t a fast process. I’m not entirely happy with it yet. I need to re-work the colors of the sidebars, for instance, but I’m close enough for now and have most of the heavy lifting done.

Beyond the theme, though, I wanted specific functionality added as well. One of the first things I wanted was the SMS box you see here so that readers can send text messages to my phone from the blog. Live comments, if you will. So I set out to find a widget (an add-on for the blogging software I am using) that would let me add that. And the widget I found was great if you ignore the fact that it didn’t work at all. If that bit bothers you, as it did me, then the only way to correct it is to dive in and find the problem. If you’ve not had the pleasure of unraveling someone else’s code then allow me to explain. It is a lot like taking a statement made to you by a stranger and trying to figure out the thought process that led them to it. Let’s just say it wasn’t a quick process.

Once I got that working I realized that, if someone took the time to text me from the blog, I had no way to reply to them. Well, that would just be rude now, wouldn’t it? So I set out to find a solution and happened upon the Twitter sidebar.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, it is sort of a micro-blogging site. Think blogging done entirely with text message length posts and you’ll be close. It also adds a social networking component so all your little Twitter friends get updated every time you post something to your Twitter account. So now all of your friends can be made immediately aware of critically important events in your life like the fact that you are ordering at Taco Bell or you just saw a funny commercial or the vitally important information that you are right at this very moment in time having a bad hair day. It makes facebook look like serious content. Yeah, it really is that bad. So why go that route? Well, in spite of all it’s lack of substance or perhaps because of it, Twitter is the perfect sort of medium to use to reply to SMS messages in a more public, generic way.

So. Back to the Twitter sidebar I found. It was great, except that it didn’t work either. The fix was fairly trivial in this case but once I got it running I realized it was quite lacking for my purposes. The biggest problem was that the only way for a anyone to see if I’d sent a response to a text they’d sent me would be for them to repeatedly refresh the page and see if a new tweet (that’s what individual Twitter messages are referred to as) has shown up. Oh, snap. Not on my blog. I set out to change that, which ultimately necessitated re-writing more of the code than I kept, I think. While I was at it I fixed it so that some HTML-like characters showed up properly and made it so you could specify the name you wished to be displayed before each message. I’ve thrown some tech details at the bottom of this post for the geeks among you.

Once that was working I had the cool idea that I could integrate the SMS widget and Twitter widget in some neat ways. I think we’ve established by now that I am unable to resist the stray cool idea. It is my kryptonite. I won’t bore you with implementation details, but the end result was that as soon as a text message is successfully sent the SMS widget notifies the Twitter widget to look for updates far more often than usual for the next couple of minutes. That way my pithy responses get delivered to the, no doubt breathlessly waiting, reader even faster.

I will be adding a sidebar music player shortly so I can throw up playlists or play the random audio sample. No, it will not start playing automatically when you come to the page. Ever. I promise. That happens to be a pet peeve of mine. Excluding that, I am almost done with the changes for now. At least until another cool idea strikes me, that is.

So before that next big idea hits I think I’ll spend a bit of time trying to catch up on some of these posts that are backing up on me. While I’m at it, I’ll try to avoid touching anything new, lest my Midas-like abilities suck me into something even bigger. As always, I welcome any feedback on the the look or functionality of the site in general. Thanks for stopping by.

/g

Tech details for the geeks follow. The rest of you overt your eyes from the geekiness. For the uninitiated, looking directly at it could result in dain bramage or perhaps the sudden desire to watch an episode of Jerry Springer. Same difference. At the minimum you are likely to end up a little constipated for a few days. You’ve been warned.

The Twitter plug-in I used is wptwitter. The person who wrote it says her coding skills are weak but it was actually pretty well done, just not for what I wanted. She was using the Twitter API to pull back Tweets as JSON objects, sorta AJAX like but not asynchronously. She had just created the call as a standalone javascript within the page that loaded and ran with the initial page load. The resulting JSON object was then just eval’ed by the javascript interpreter and an object named Twitter appeared in the global scope. Her later javascript then just parsed through it and printed it out. I wanted to get it every so often. I initially considered using an XHTMLRequest straight from the AJAX playbook, but browser security didn’t like the cross-site pulls. What I ultimately ended up doing is creating a script DOM object with the Twitter URL as the script src property and appending it to the head section. That caused it to run automatically, thus pulling the data from Twitter. The Twitter API allows you to specify a callback function in the original call so, when the response from the call gets executed it simply calls the javascript function I specified with the posts in a JSON formatted data structure as the sole argument. My callback function places that into the global data structure then calls the main body of code. Works very well. I also started passing the twits in by setting innerHTML on a pre-created p type DOM object so the HTML would be processed rather than leaving things like &lt; in place of <, etc. I also put in a substitution that uses regular expressions in the javascript replace function to turn URLs into clickable hyperlinks in the tweets.

The call from the SMS widget was a bit trickier. Since functions are global in javascript I though I’d just set up a function in the twitter widget’s code and dump a small javascript call into the HTML stream from the SMS box to call it. I couldn’t do it from within the main loop since the SMS widget is in PHP almost exclusively and the twitter widget is almost entirely in javascript. The problem was that the SMS code loads higher on the page so it tries to call the function from the twitter code before it exists. I solved that by having it call the code with a setTimeout call with a 5 second delay rather than immediately. It still isn’t ideal, but it gets the job done. The twitter function that recieves the call sets a shorter refresh duration and a specified period before it should revert to the normal value. Both values are configurable through the plugin interface in Wordpress.

If you want more detail on either of these or want the code shoot me an email (firstname at lastname dot net) and I will be happy to answer. Once I’ve had time to perform some light regression testing I will release it back into the wild through the original authors if they want it or directly if not.

Not unlike the average family, each of my kids has their own special talent. My oldest, Rachel, proved to be an accomplished artist and has turned out to be an amazing photographer. My youngest, Justin, is an engineer at heart. The boy can take apart and put back together things well beyond what he should be able to do. And my middle one, Courtney, is a little braniac; particularly when it comes to verbal and reading skills. She started talking at one and hasn’t shut up since, in fact.

We knew very early on that this was her gift. Well before her second birthday the stack of flashcards she could read had grown to several inches and by her third birthday she was reading entire books. And I don’t mean the ones with 3 words per page. Of course, she was also the most “attitudinal” of our three kids. I often joke with my wife that Courtney got my brains and her attitude. Then I duck to avoid whatever she throws in my direction. It only makes her mad because she know its true. <ducks>

Because of that attitude, we were a little concerned when we got called in for a conference near the beginning of her kindergarten year. Expecting the worst, we met with her teacher who, as it turns out, wanted to talk to us to get permission to have Courtney tested and evaluated specifically in reading. Of course we said yes. Now, as a frame of reference, the school’s target is to have kids reading ‘level four’ books by the time they reach the end of kindergarten. Courtney’s tests revealed that she was reading somewhere between level seventeen and twenty-one at the beginning of kindergarten. We knew we’d have our hands full trying to keep her engaged when we saw the results but her kindergarten teacher was exceptional and managed to keep her involved by doing things like having her help other students or sending her to read with students from higher grades. Thanks to her, Courtney remained engaged and excited about school.

Which brings us to this year; first grade. Against all odds, Courtney landed in a class with not one, not two, but five other gifted readers, all reading somewhere above level twenty. Her teacher was shocked because some years she doesn’t even have the one like that; but it worked out well because the kids in that little group could work together without having to make special arrangements and all of them felt less singled out. Courtney was at or around the top of the group still, reading at something nearing level thirty, but not anything like the experience in kindergarten.

Each year when they do the standardized tests some of the students are accepted into the gifted program here called FOCUS. With that comes advanced curriculum with classes including “chemistry, zoology, Shakespearean studies, algebra, and persuasive writing” among other things. Keep in mind this is only the elementary school stuff. The program here is exceptional I’m told and it is far from easy to get into. In fact, very few kids make it in while in first grade. Most of those who ultimately get in the program do so as a result of testing in third or later grades.

Now, like I said, Courtney is a smart kid, but we knew several very, very smart kids who were a year older than her who didn’t make it in last year. If the criteria for entry were just reading she would be a ringer, but it is much broader than that. You have to rank in the top few percentile in mental ability, achievement, creativity and motivation, so it isn’t all just test scores. With that in mind, and the fact that I never thought her to be particularly ahead of her peers in other areas of study we weren’t holding our breath on her getting in. I mean, sure she talks like a high school kid and it has been several years since we’ve been able to s-p-e-l-l stuff around her, but I didn’t think she wasn’t more proficient than her peers at, say, math.

Well, it doesn’t take a psychic to see where this is going, I suppose. We went to a conference with her teacher last week and learned that she had, in fact, been accepted into the FOCUS program. In fact, she was the only one of those six bright kids in her class and one of the few from her entire grade to make it. We are super proud of her, of course. It is killing her that she isn’t allowed to talk about it at school, but she will get over that.

I don’t believe in driving kids hard through school, but I do believe in bringing the work up to their level. She is still one of the most sociable kids I know. She has a large group of friends and gets along with them as well as any first graders do. I think she is, if anything, too well adjusted.

I am excited she got in because she needs a challenge and I’m not sure the standard curriculum would give her that, although I now find myself wondering how long I will be able to help her with her homework. I also find myself wondering what the future holds for her. She isn’t used to being challenged in school. The work has always come too easy for her.

Oh, well. Only time will tell, I suppose. All I can say is that I am excited for whatever the future holds for her. The same applies for all my kids of course. All of them are in such different places in life. I’m getting to know my little buddy better as he becomes the person he is going to be and I’m getting to know my oldest as she becomes an adult and I like what I see in both cases. But for today, just for today, I am especially proud of my six year old teenager. Good job, baby.

/g

 
In my last post I talked about what a blur my life has become and how I realize that, while life is good, I rarely have truly exceptional days. You know the ones. Those days that act as anchor points in our memories; those days we use as a reference point in discussions years later. My theory is that the fewer of those anchor points you have the more life seems to pass you in a blur. Well, I found myself with far too few anchor points and lots of blur and I vowed to do something about it. When I wrote that I never expected that I would be doing something about it quite as soon as I did.

It has been a while since I’ve been to any concert and a long while since I’ve been to a really good one. And there is nothing, and I mean nothing, like a good concert. Well, last week I went to a great concert. It was Coldplay’s first stop in Atlanta on their Viva La Vida tour.

The concert itself was amazing. In fact, it ranks among the top two or three concerts I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been going to concerts for a long time. It was an experience. In cases like these, the overall experience transcends any single element of the concert.

The artist performing well is nice, but that alone doesn’t make for a great concert. I know this for sure because the last RUSH concert I went to stank. The band rocked but the crowd acted like they were in a movie theater. We were the only ones standing up in our entire section. Talk about a buzz kill! We almost got up and left. In retrospect we should have. Listening to the CD in the car on the way home would’ve been more fun.

The production values can similarly make the concert more enjoyable but I think we’ve all probably been to shows with spectacular lights and sets and gimmicks, and yet they still sucked. Likewise, some of the best concerts I’ve been to offered very little in the way of production value.

So, if not the band and if not the production, what is the ’secret ingredient’ for a good concert? Well, in my opinion, that would have to be crowd energy. I mean, that’s really what makes a concert a concert isn’t it? When the crowd you are in is in a complete frenzy you can’t help but be swept away with it. It is sort of a mob mentality, but with a positive spin.

It would be a gross understatement to say that this show had that crowd energy. There was energy to spare. I saw perhaps a dozen people sit down at all during the entire concert and those were while there were lulls where the band wasn’t on stage. And it was pretty much a capacity crowd at that show which, In Philips Arena, means a little over 20,000 people. I can’t fathom what it must be like to be on stage for an adoring crowd like that. It would have to be the ultimate drug.

When I originally got my tickets I misunderstood where the section was. As a result I thought I would be very close to the stage but I really wasn’t. As it turned out we were around 20 rows from the stage left wing and closer to 35 from the actual stage front. They were still floor seats and those still aren’t bad seats in that venue, but I was a little disappointed when I discovered the mistake all the same. Since the show I found someone else’s shot from the very back in that same concert I zoomed way in and played the ultimate game of Where’s Waldo. Knowing where we were sitting let me find Christy and I in the crowd. Mouse over the picture below to see where we were. Click on it for a larger view.

You can see how I would be disappointed when I thought I would be very close to the stage. That was before the concert started, though. Once it started I realize that our seats placed us pretty close to the middle of the aforementioned 20,000+ person crowd. You know, there is something about standing in the middle of a crowd that size when they are excited. The energy is palpable. I lost count of how many times I got goose bumps. No, I’m not kidding.

This concert was the perfect storm. The band was on, the production was flawless and there were some amazing touches which I’ll get to later and, of course, there was the crowd. Rather they (we) were yelling and shouting or singing along there was a continuous electricity from wall to wall. Ooh! Look. I got goose bumps just remembering it.

update: Though what I’ve written here is primarily about the show on the November 5th, I ended up taking my daughter back to the 2nd show on the 11th. We had AMAZING seats this time. The crowd wasn’t quite as into it, but it almost isn’t fair to expect that sort of magic twice in a row. Even at that, it still was an experience not to be missed. I still got goosebumps, just not as many times and it was still among the best concerts I’ve been to.

The anticipation in the moments before they took the stage was almost painful. They started bringing up these bright lights from behind the curtain and kept them up for what felt like an interminably long time before they started. When they did start they hit “Violet Hill” and “Clocks” in the first few songs which are two of my favorites and it only got better from there.

Fix You was positively amazing. If you can stand in the middle of 20,000 fans singing the chorus of that song (“Light will guide you home and Ignite your bones. And I will try to fix you”) and not be moved then I strongly suspect you don’t actually have a soul. That’s all I’m sayin’. Its not that the crowd only sang the chorus, by the way, but I think even the ushers kicked in during the chorus. I have some video I shot with a point and shoot camera here and here (it stopped recording in the middle of the song for some reason so it is split into two pieces) from the show on the 11th. Check it out for yourself, particularly near the end of the second clip. If you are on high-speed internet I suggest using the “watch in high quality” link below the video.

At one point in the show they walked out into the crowd and all the way up to the back corner, about half way up the stadium, where there was a small area cordoned off with a couple of guitars and a mic or two. They played a couple of songs there before returning to the main stage. They were literally playing among the fans, as those in the closest seats were no more than a few feet from them. I thought it was a nice touch.

I think the most amazing moment in the entire concert was during “Lovers in Japan” when movement above me caught my eye. When I looked up there were what looked to be millions of paper butterflies about three inches across and in a rainbow of colors fluttering down from somewhere above the lights. They continued falling for what seemed like 5 minutes though it was probably less. They got so thick in the air at the peak that you couldn’t see the stage. The moment was nothing less than magical. When it was all over I noticed that the entire floor and most of the seats were covered with the butterflies several layers deep. Even though I was expecting the butterflies in the second concert, it was as amazing as the first time.

After both shows it seemed like they’d ended way too soon but, to be fair, they could have played every song they’ve ever written and it would have felt that way at the end. I was a Coldplay fan before going to these shows, but I am a much bigger fan now. Much. Aside from that, though, these shows have reawakened something in me that had been dormant for far too long: my passion for music. That falling off was such a gradual process that I didn’t even realize it had happened. I mean, I’ve listened to music all along but, somewhere along the way it stopped exciting me like it once did. You might say that, after a trial separation, my iPod and I are working on our relationship.

Right after I bought my truck I spend a lot of money and even more time installing a sound system befitting my love of music. I stripped the cab down to metal so I could carefully route the power and preamp outputs. I modified the brackets under the rear seat to provide a couple of inches of additional space for the hand laid fiberglass sub enclosure I was making. I applied soundproofing mats in the doors and carefully tested different speaker positions searching for the perfect layout. In the end I had 7 speakers running on 4 amps, totaling around 2,000 watts (RMS, not peak) and it sounded phenomenal. Lately, that same sound system had spent most of its time playing talk shows and audio books. Such a shame. Well, that is no more. I’ve come full circle and am now back addicted to my music. I’m heating the amps up real regular like now a days.

It is easy to get excited about the exceptionally good song or great artist rather you are a music lover or not. I mean, if you can listen to Elton John and not want to learn piano, if you can listen to Van Halen (pre Sammy) and not want to learn to play guitar, if you can listen to RUSH and not want to learn to play drums, well, I’m just not sure I can trust you. You very well may be a sociopath. I have no proof of this, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t too far from the truth. If you don’t own an air guitar you really should pick one up next time you’re out. note:My apologies to the younger readers among you for picking older examples, but I think those I gave are timeless. Feel free to substitute John Mayer, Coldplay, etc. Whatever works for you. I think you get my point.

The tickets were, um, not cheap to say the least, but SO way worth it. Well, being fair, there were more reasonable tickets out there at some point but I decided that I wanted (a)good seats (b)a day or two before the concert (c)to sold out shows of a very popular band. To get the amazing seats Rachel and I had I paid over $1000 for a lot of 4 then turned around and sold two of them back off immediately. Fortunately I recovered more per ticket for those two than I’d paid per ticket so it left me with two tickets that were marginally less insane. I say all that to say this: The experiences I had would have been a bargain at twice the price.

So I end this week with not one, but two exceptional days to carry with me. I got to experience an amazing concert with my wife and another with my oldest daughter. All that and my iPod and I are close once again. Um, wow.

/g

Note: Check back in a day or two and I’ll have more videos up.

Disclaimer: Cameras weren’t allowed according to the tickets so I didn’t bring one for the 1st show (which caused me physical pain, I might add). Since everyone and their dog brought one in for that show and they didn’t seem to care about them then (the ushers were taking people’s pictures for them) I brought a point and shoot camera for the 2nd show. I would have loved to take my SLR, but I didn’t dare risk it. The pictures from the back of the auditorium or upper side balcony aren’t mine but are someone else’s from the same concert. The pictures from in the crowd are mine. Some of them are crappy camera phone pictures from the 1st concert so quality may be a little iffy.

And some Videos: