Andrew's View of the Week

Writing process

Posted on 10/19/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

This hasn’t been the best of weeks. Wednesday I felt a cold starting to come on and it got worse. Today is the first day I am starting to feel better and fear I’ll have to go to work tomorrow. You’ll notice that I’ve changed my WordPress theme and I have a new picture in the header. It was just time for a change – I’ve been using the old layout for three years and I think this new layout is cleaner.

Yes, that is me, in my hiking gear looking out over the hills were Heather and I hike. This one was taken a couple of years ago at Russian Ridge. I kind of like the picture. Let me know what you think.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I am working on a book of poems, well today’s post will be short because of that book. I’ve been working steadily at it and am now about 11 poems into it plus a couple of pages of prose. It’s hard to describe but there are things that take on an energy of their own and require that something be done. In my heart I am feeling an urgency to complete this work that is filling my soul.

At first I was going to just write a short book of poems and essays about my experience with prostate cancer. As I wrote, one poem popped out of my brain about my mother and her death from pancreatic cancer. Now my little book has two parts and nearly two pages of poems titles and various outlines.

I think I can blame the whole process on a recent shift in my writing habits. My habit had been to sit down on a Sunday afternoon and crank out an essay on whatever subject popped into my head. In the last few months that has been harder to do as I have churned through the easy topics. Also, I’ve found myself thinking and writing more in verse and poetry.

I wanted to make a shift so I could keep writing prose. My solution was to allow myself more time to write and research a post. The plan was to do some research on a Tuesday evening, write on a Thursday and post on a Sunday. The first result of that was my three-part post on the California drought (that was supposed to be one post, but it got out of hand).

Can’t really say what exactly happened but in the last couple of weeks, I’ve shifted almost all of my writing time to my little book. Some of the contributing factors include:

A long-held desire to write a book
A recent shift in my thinking of writing prose to writing free verse poetry
A need to tell my cancer story in non-traditional way
A reminder of the pain and sorrow around my mother’s death

Let’s just say that these plus the feeling that I need to take my writing in new directions gave me the energy to shift and do something different. It’s not a process I fully understand but know I need to respect its calling.

I’ve no idea what direction the final work on the book will take or what it means for this little weekly blog. It’s possible I might post a poem or two from the book instead of writing a post and it’s likely that I’ll be turning to a shorter post on Sundays so I’ll have time for the book. But, I do find the discipline of posting every week to be valuable.

It is the discipline of regular writing that has given me the confidence that I can, through effort and persistence, write a book.

Whether or not anyone will want to read it is a topic for another day.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in General, Prostate Cancer, Writing | Tagged Prostate Cancer, writing | 6 Comments

Jury Duty

Posted on 10/12/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

This was my week for jury duty – again. I’ve been called up for jury duty maybe five or six times in my life. Only two times have I actually had to go to the courtroom. When you’re called up in my county, your given a juror number with a phone number and a time to call (these days there’s also a web page you can check). You call at the time listed to see if you need to come down. Most of the time, I’ve been told, “not today sir.” After a week of daily checking, I am done so I’ve not really found jury duty to be all that burdensome – except for the stress that I might have to actually serve.

Well, this week was a bit different. I warned my boss I was on-call for duty and dutifully checked the website. I didn’t have to go in on Monday or Tuesday but on Tuesday night I got the message to report Wednesday morning. Each state and jurisdiction has slightly different rules and procedures – in my county getting called to come in means that a judge has called for a jury panel of about 100 people to select 12 good citizens to sit in on the jury and decide the fate of the accused or settle a civil matter.

All the way down to the court-house, I went over all the excuses I could think of for not serving. I do believe in doing my civic duty and don’t mind serving but I wish there was a better way of scheduling when I had to do it. I get the point of it being random to ensure that juries don’t get stacked or artificially created. Still, it’s inconvenient. My work is getting into the busy season, my grand-daughter was visiting and they wanted me at the court at 8:30 am. AM

Do you know any software engineer that can be anywhere at 8:30 am? I normally get to work around 9:15 am and am known in the office as a “morning” person but 8:30 to be dressed and ready to be seen in public is a stretch. Dudes… can we talk about this?

I had visions of getting put on a three-week trial and after a hard day listening to testimony (and restraining my body’s urge to strangle the attorneys) of going home and logging into the office to do a little work. So, while driving I spent a few brain cells on thinking up excuses for not serving that still sounded like I wanted to serve but just not today.

Turns out the morning wasn’t a total loss. After I got through the security line a voice from the past called out, “Andrew, long time no see.” It was a co-worker from a previous job. He’d been called up the week before and was sitting on a jury. After I checked in and getting my panel assignment, I went to the jury room where my friend was sitting waiting to be called into his courtroom.

We had a nice little chat about old times and where we landed after we’d left “that” company. He had his laptop out and was logged into his office to “catch up on some work,” – confirming my fears that jury duty won’t entirely get me out of work and I’d end up doing double duty – jury and work. Then he got called to his court and wandered off to conduct the business of justice.

So I sat back and continued my thoughts on how to get out of this so I wouldn’t suffer the fate of my friend – jury by day, software engineer by night.

Okay, yes, technically, when you’re on jury duty you don’t have to go to work and your boss, by law, can’t punish you for doing jury duty and not working – but, well you see, it goes like this: Sure I can say, I can’t work but they just save it up telling me I can do it when I get back, but the project dead-lines won’t get changed and after a while you’ll get little calls and notes with something like, “Andrew, nobody here knows how you fixed the server last time. Could you login tonight for just a couple of minutes and take care of it? Thanks – I owe you one.”

The few minutes will take a couple of hours and in three months I’ll be at a project postmortem meeting saying for the five thousandth time, “I didn’t meet the deadline because I was on jury duty for three weeks.” And I’ll get the usual rejoinder, “couldn’t you have gotten out of that?”

There is this thing in our society that is set on everyone getting out of jury duty rather than just doing it. I might be old-fashioned but I believe that, despite the inconvenience, it really is our duty to do our best to serve – after all our justice system relies on jurors and we once fought a war for the right to have a jury of our peers (when you pay for something in blood, you need to remember its cost). Still most people today consider it an unwanted burden. My boss never asked directly if I could get out of it but did a lot of, “well let me know what happens because we’ll have to figure out how to get the project done by November.”

I get called for jury duty once or twice a decade so it’s not that bad. I’ve never had to sit through a trail and only have been questioned for a jury twice – both times they politely said, “We like to thank and excuse Andrew,” and sent me home for another five years. I am still trying to figure out what I said to get sent home – feeling good because I didn’t have to stay, but also feeling bad at being rejected (really, I’d be a good juror).

All of these thoughts were going through my head when I realized it was getting close to 10:30 and we hadn’t been called to the courtroom to start the long boring process of jury selection. Then, just as I was thinking of faking a heart attack, flu, or toothache – the announcement was made that the parties in the case had just settled and the whole jury panel could go home and we won’t be called for at least a year.

Well, there, I served the cause of justice by just being there in the jury room. What’s more, I can get my project done on time and still have my evenings free for writing blog posts about being on jury duty.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in General | Tagged jury duty | 7 Comments

The Water Bond

Posted on 10/05/2014 by Andrew Reynolds

We had a little rain here, not much – just enough to get our hopes up and then we got a heat wave. I also got in the mail the list of state ballot propositions we’ll be voting on in November. It includes proposition 1, a $7.12 billion bond measure for water projects. Seems like a good idea. California hasn’t spent any significant money on water infrastructure in a few decades and with the current drought we could use more water.

It does some things I really approve of like, $725 million for water recycling and advanced treatment technologies. There is money for lots of good things – water way clean ups, watershed protection, ground water clean up and protection and even a bit to improve flood control (oddly enough a big problem in the state). All good stuff and if that was all that was in the proposal, I’d vote for it. No question.

It’s your basic feel good legislation – let’s do something to fix the water supply. Here take this big box of money and do it! I imagine some good is likely to be done, even after all the expected government screw-ups, mismanagement, litigation and other problems projects like this can cause.

But there is one thing in the bill that really bothers me: $2.7 billion for water storage projects – dams and reservoirs. Several problems with that in my mind. First, $2.7 billion won’t go as far as you think. Sounds like a lot, but after all the costs, you’re going to get maybe one or two dams – provided the environmentalist groups eventually lose the court battles some time in the next twenty years.

Then there is the little problem of how are you going to fill these dams with water? We already have enough storage in the state for about three years and that’s is running dry – has been for about a decade. Creating water is the problem, not storing it.

The suggestion that we build more surface storage is a bit like saying, “I am running out of money so I’ll open two more checking accounts to hold my cash.” If you’re running low on cash, having more places to store what little you have isn’t going to help. What will help is creating more cash for yourself – either by spending less or earning more (or better yet, both. Radical concept, I know).

I’ll research the bond measure a bit more and will likely vote in favor, even with it’s flaws. We need to do something and this measure has enough good stuff in there to get started. The problem with the money for the dams is likely to become moot anyway as the drought moves into years four and five and as the dam builders run into opposition at each new dam site they propose. Likely the dam money will either not get spent or will be diverted to improve existing dams – either increasing capacity or doing seismic retrofits to prevent failures during earthquakes. There are a number of dams in my county that are running below design capacity because of weakness in them that make they vulnerable to collapse in an earthquake. I can see the water district asking for and getting some of that 2.7 billion to shore up our dams with the justification, “We could store more water right here if we do a little retrofit.” $50 million here and there could improve storage without damming up more rivers.

Still I think the money would be better used improving recycling efforts and working on practical large-scale solar-powered desalination plants.

The bond measure is unlikely to have a short-term effect and likely only a minimal long-term effect. Real relief from the drought will come in the form of water conservation, recycling, desalination and rain.

Till next week,
Andrew