Twelve Years

Posted on 10/06/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

Twelve years.  Twelve years ago last Monday.  The second most life changing day of my life.  That was the day Heather and I were married.  Life hasn’t been the same since.

It’s been better.  Much better.

At this point an enlightened reader would be asking, second most life changing day?

The biggest life changing day was the day I got it into my head to ask Heather if she’d marry me.  I wish I would have written down that day somewhere.  It was before the wedding, 6-8 months or so – don’t really know for sure.  I just remember I was scarred she’d say something like, “are you out of your mind?”

Well, my mental state is often in question, but it’s a big fear of mine to have that pointed out to me.

I’d like to tell some romantic story about a candlelight dinner, me getting on my knee, violin music playing gently in the background with me producing a ring from my vest pocket and asking, “Dearest, will thou marriest me?”

Romance isn’t something I do well, and as I recall the ‘question’ was more like a statement, “Marry me and you can stay here all the time.” Or, something genuinely stupid like that.  I do recall her having to confirm the question, “Did you just ask me to marry you?”

I also wish I’d written down the date on which she said ‘yes.’  She did say yes, I’ve got a paper she signed, and witnesses – lots of witnesses.  There even a few pictures – there would have been more but the photographer was an idiot and wedding pictures is something I try not to mention very often.

Such is married life – good times, bad times and sometimes just time.

It would be easy for me to launch into a long soliloquy on the virtues of my good lady.  Well, there are somethings I only tell her and I hope you get the point that I am still in love with this special woman.

There are times I wish I could give her more.  There are times that …

Well, she has given me so much – far more than I can write here.

This week we took time to spend some time together away from the world to celebrate our twelve years and start on our thirteenth.  We spent three days at a nice B&B by the sea and just enjoyed time together.

Just time, just us.

Till next week,
Andrew

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No Post Today

Posted on 09/29/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

It’s one of those days where my brain is largely not functioning.  I sat down at the computer an hour ago to write my weekly post and so far I’ve got nothing.

Heather just gave me permission not to write so that’s what I am going to do.

Just wanted to let you all know that I am not writing today.  In the past I’ve said that if I don’t write, I’d post a picture.  Sorry, don’t have any pictures to post.  Well, I could go out a take one but that would involve effort and Heather’s using the camera cable right now to download some pictures.

Yes, we only own one download cable but have two cameras.  I could take a picture on my iPhone and email it but that would take about 10 mouse clicks and all my fingers are on the keyboard typing so that seems like it won’t work out for me today.

I did try to figure out something to write.  I’ve been thinking about a new business I’d like to start and was going to write all about it.  Seemed like a great idea until I started to think about how I’d explain it – then it started to sound like a bad idea and completely put me off the whole idea so I am not going to tell you about it.

Some times when I can’t think of what to write, I’ll reread my last post, read someone else’s blog, check out the news, maybe watch a short woodworking video or two.  Or in today’s case, three.  Normally I find my writing rhythm in about 10-15 minutes.

Today I was 52 minutes into that when I got an email which distracted me. Then Heather asked a question and looking at the clock I should be putting the pizza in the oven soon.

Maybe it’s some weird late side effect from my radiation treatment. Or possibly some late onset ADHD.  Not really sure what that is but a co-worker of my blames a lot his problems on it.  Oh look, I got another email.

I’ve been rereading the whole Harry Potter series and re-watching watching all the movies.  Which has nothing to do with why I can’t write today but I thought I’d mention it as it could be significant.  There must be some deep physiological need that has driven me to do this.

Now that I am writing about it, it is really starting to bother me.  On most Sundays I can sit down and knock out a thousand words, edit it down to 750 all while getting the pizza in the oven and finding the camera download cable.

Sorry, Heather is still using it.  Not that it would help since I don’t have any pictures to download.

Just had a great idea – opened up iPhoto and found some pictures in there that I’ve never posted.  Yes, I had to move my hand to the mouse to do that but it only took four clicks to find this picture of a bridge over a creak.  This is from one of our favorite hikes along Fall Creek.  This little bridge crosses the creek and I’ve always thought it would make a great marquetry picture.

Fall Creek Bridge

The bridge over Fall Creek

Well, sorry I didn’t write a post this week but sometimes it goes like that.

Till next week,
Andrew

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Whiny Post

Posted on 09/22/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

The last two weeks of work have been horrible.

Mind numbing the phase that pops into my mind.  Well, when anything pops into my mind – you see it’s a bit numb at the moment.  Have you ever gotten to the point where words just bounce off your brain?  It’s been happening to me all week.  People will come up to me and start talking.  I know they are talking because their mouths move and sound comes out.  Just about the time my brain connects the fact that sound is words and that they’re trying to tell me something, they stop making the sounds.  It’s at this moment that I know they’ve asked a question.

And I have no clue what they’ve just said because the words have been hitting that part of my brain that has been numbed by over use. They are just bouncing harmlessly into space having made no impact at all.

Some people might try a tactic at this point to save face by saying something like, “I’m not sure I understand the problem – could you go over that again?”

When I was younger and cared about what people thought about me, that’s what I would do.  These days I either just admit my defects by saying, “Sorry my brain is numb and I have no idea what you just asked me.” Or I just head for insanity and reply with, “I wish I could answer your question, but I am afraid that aliens will eat my brains if I do.”

Either answer works, as the person trying to talk to me generally gives up and goes away.

I have been complaining about my work load to my co-workers and my boss.  My co-workers are sympathetic and usually say something comforting like, “well if you think that is bad wait till you hear this …”  My boss generally tries something like, “You know the plan is to hire someone to help you, next year.”

This is the point in weekly my weekly blog post where I’d write some clever transition or flourish some witticism at you.

But this week my brain is numb and I don’t have anything clever or witty.

So instead I’ll just end this post by showing you one of my coping methods – building things in my workshop.  There is nothing quite like the sound of a saw slicing through wood to comfort the soul.  Beating a nail to death with a hammer has the ability to reduce stress and calm the nerves.  When I’ve had time lately I’ve been working on cleaning up my workshop.  Here is a picture of my new lumber rack:

Lumber Rack

My new place to store junk

Here is the space I got back in my shop by moving all that lumber scrap out:

Shop Space

Where the lumber used to be stacked

And finally here is the nearly completed deck.  It just needs the trellis at the top finished:

deck with top

Almost done. Just a few more sticks to nail on.

Till next week,
Andrew

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A Working Post

Posted on 09/15/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

I just did something evil.  Well, maybe not wholly evil but possibly immoral and against the laws of tea brewing.

I confess – I couldn’t wait for the tea kettle to come to a boil and then wait five minutes for the tea to brew.  Yes, dear friends, I did – I put a tea bag in a mug of water and put the whole thing in the microwave and zapped it on high for two minutes.  After fishing out the tea bag I poured in some milk and am actually drinking it now.

Well, not right at this very minute, but in between paragraphs, I take a sip or two.  I completely understand if you’re so disgusted with the thought of consuming improperly brewed tea that you stop reading this post.

In my defense, I plead stress, and promise you I am not fully enjoying this cup tea.

My current stress is work – as in “too much and too difficult.”  I don’t really want to talk about it, but it is really beating me up at the moment.  You know that I don’t discuss work in the blog very much for a number of reasons.  The short version of what I do is that I maintain computers – the big complex back-end servers that would take me a month to explain to you.  The darn things keep breaking and I was the nut case that took the job to keep them running.

That’s where the stress comes in.  Imagine sitting around on a quiet Friday afternoon while looking forward to spending a nice pleasant weekend playing with power tools.  Then just as the pleasing thoughts start to relax your brain and that silly smile starts to grow on your face, your boss flies into your cube followed by half the senior executive staff, all crying, “The server is down.  You have to fix it NOW.”

Stress defined: The mind overcoming the body’s desire to throttle someone who richly deserves it.

So to prevent these little bits of Friday afternoon fun, I lead my team on a little project to upgrade all our servers and move them to a data center that could better handle the demands of my customers.  It sounded like such a good idea – more servers, better servers, built-in redundancy, automatic monitoring, warm standbys, hot standbys, active fail over – a veritable nirvana of data processing.

Stress in action:  “What do you mean we ran out of power cords?”

It is times like this I am reminded of John Steinbeck’s story, “Of mice and Men” and the line, “The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.”

That’s where I’ve been this weekend – astray.

For the last month, me and my team have been in deep planning and testing the changes.  We’ve made charts, written documents, had them reviewed by experts and constantly asked, “What have we forgotten?”

Then when we were convinced that we had it all together and everyone agreed, we scheduled the final dramatic cut-over to the new data center.  That was yesterday.  Planned to start at 9:00 am and end no later than 2:00 pm.

Stress starts with the statement: “Flip the switch.”

We finally finished the last test at 1:00 pm today and collapsed into victory.  Now I did get to come home and sleep in my own bed but it turns out there were about four things that we’d forgotten and that all the plan reviewers missed.  I am just gratefully I don’t work on nuclear power or launch rockets for a living – everyone down wind would still be in their shelters if I did.

So when it came to tea time this afternoon, I had very little emotional energy and just wanted a cup of tea NOW.  Hence my plunge into the abyss of microwave tea.

This is the kind of evil that working in high-tech can lead you into.

When the tea police finally show up, I’ll plea microwave tea by reason of stress and throw myself on the mercy of the court.

Maybe I’ll be sentenced to Starbuck’s.

Till next week,
Andrew

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