With absolutely no fanfare one of my domains died over the weekend. The site had been languishing for more than a year and it had never really been active; either in a visitor sense or as an advertisement for my company. I am of two minds about it being gone, I miss the idea of it and I am glad to be past it.
In a very real sense it represented one possible path for my life to take. That path was littered with obstacles and challenges, and resulted in some major setbacks professionally and financially. I’ve picked up the pieces and moved on so letting go of the site is a good thing in a sense. Still, it is odd to know that partitionsoftware.com no longer leads to me.
Eventually I’ll have another website, one that more closely aligns with my professional goals today. For now though, I am satisfied to be just zanshin.net.
Tonight after dinner, at my request, Sibylle and I spent a couple of hours digging through the final unexplored boxes in my locker. The ones at the back. On the bottom. Ten feet in and ten feet under.
With one of my hands effectively out of commission the bulk of the lifting, moving, opening and sifting fell on Sibylle. The locker space is cramped and mildly claustrophobic. You end up standing on boxes, reaching over other boxes, breathing in stale vaguely box scented air and getting itchy from the chaffing against all that cardboard.
We found stereo equipment and old books and an entire collection of old tee-shirts and other treasures. We did not find my passport. Through out this search I’ve been avoiding the obvious answer - they were stolen last October when I was robbed. At the time I thought only my camera was taken, along with a single piece of luggage. However, the desk drawers were pulled out and their contents stirred. Several rings and other valuables were at the very back of one drawer and they were untouched, so I assumed that nothing had been taken from the drawers.
I am convinced now that the missing passports were taken and are forever lost. It saddens me to realize this. It’s piece of my life I’ll never get back. Coming to this realization also leaves me feeling the same need to take a shower with everything I own so as to scrub the imagined stench of the vermin who rifled through all my belongings.
So tomorrow I’ll stop by the downtown post office and hand in my forms and a check for $157 to get a new, expedited passport. And I’ll stop searching for but not stop missing, my original passport
Yesterday afternoon by the time I arrived at home, my injured finger was swollen enough to be very uncomfortable. Although we understood the mechanics of heating a paper clip and using that to create a opening in the nail to let the blood, and therefore the pressure, out, neither Sibylle or I felt comfortable doing this at home. So we went to urgent care to have them do it.
Urgent Care, it seems, exists in a world of their own choosing. Unlike your family doctor or the emergency room, they get to be choosy about what they do or don’t handle. When we explained to the receptionist what had happened and that I needed to have the blood drained she informed us that they “don’t really do that here.” They would be happy to diagnose my finger but not treat it. We both reacted to that statement saying that we didn’t need a diagnoses just treatment. She did call someone in the back and got a tentative acknowledgment that treatment might happen.
So we sat down and filled out about 900 pieces of paper with a detailed medical history going back 12 generations complete with mitochondrial dna samples and blood work from everyone I’ve ever known in my life. Or maybe just a half page about the usual drug reactions and brief medical history,
After a few minutes wait we go to see a very nice doctor (“He looks like he’s from the 1950s,” said Sibylle) who offered two treatment options. Either burn a hole through the nail with a white hot gizmo or bore one using a small needle. I opted for the needle and shortly thereafter the pressure in my finger was largely gone. He warned me that we had now converted a sealed injury to an open one and that we now needed to be careful to avoid injection, but the relief in pressure is more than worth some extra care around my finger.
While I was getting my degree one of the courses I took was called “Small Group Communication.” We studied the roles and interactions of people in small groups, which has proved invaluable in my career as a software developer and architect. One of the concepts I still remember from that class was the idea of “consciousness raising.”
Consciousness raising is what occurs when people share similar experiences in order to form tighter cohesion with each other. It’s the “forming” part of “Storming, Forming, Norming, and Performing.” There are many positive outcomes of this type of interaction, and unfortunately, some negative ones as well.
The society here in the US can be generalized (I know generalizations are bad) in this sentence: “Winners are good, Losers are bad, and Everything is a contest.” Don’t believe me, watch the cars around you the next time you are on the beltway; you’ll be able to pick out the one’s driven by people who want to “win” at the car driving game, even though there is no way to win.
This week’s finger injury brings up an example where the negative side of consciousness raising, combined with the mania to win, has a potential bad result. Returning to work with a broken finger resulted in three different stories from co-workers about how they’d managed to mangle fingers using drills, hammers and saws. I wasn’t able to even tell my story in one case before other’s were relating what had happened to them.
Comparing injuries is not a contest. One-ups-manship isn’t a desirable social trait; it leaves the other person feeling diminished and less-than - after all, I only caught my finger in a car door, I didn’t tear the nail off with a drill bit. I think it is a sad commentary on our society that we place more value on having a worse experience to “top” the other guy than we place on being able to listen with appropriate compassion for two minutes.
Last evening Sibylle and I set out to explore the rear most boxes in my storage locker in a last ditch effort to find my missing passport. Time is running out for me to get one before our trip to Germany in September and, while we await the arrival of a certified birth certificate, I wanted to continue the search.
When we arrived at the locker facility I managed to shut the locked car door on my right forefinger. Sibylle quickly unlocked the door and we examined the now rapidly swelling and throbbing digit. The nail wasn’t broken but a dark pool of blood was already forming in the nail bed. Walking across the parking lot to the store fronts there Sibylle found a small church that was open and got a bag of ice for my hand. We sat in their lobby for a few minutes while I felt faint and then set off for the local urgent care facility.
Urgent care was closed (I guess after 8:00 what ever you have that’s wrong is an emergency) so we proceeded to the hospital. St. Luke’s is a new, modern facility staffed by some very friendly folks. Being a Wednesday evening in an upscale suburb meant I was the only patient at the time. We weren’t even fully signed in at the reception desk when I was called back to a treatment room. Before we left, a scant 40 minutes later, I had the attention of three nurses, two x-ray technicians, and a pleasant doctor who looked to be about 16 years old.
My finger tip is broken, a distal phalanges break, and I have a subungual hemotoma or blood under the nail. They put a split and an ace bandage on to immobilize my finger, gave me Oxycodone for the pain, and offered to poke a hole in the nail to drain the blood. As the doctor explained, the rule of thumb for draining is 50% or more of the nail involved with the blood. Last evening only about 40% of my nail was involved so we opted to not drain it.
After leaving the hospital we drove to the nearest 24-hour pharmacy to fill a small prescription for more Oxycodone and then went home. Thanks to lots of ice and the wonders of a mild narcotic I was able to sleep fairly well all night. I’m taking at least the morning off as one isn’t supposed to operate heavy equipment while numb from Percocet. The nail is now almost completely black but as I am not feeling pressure from under the nail we haven’t done anything about getting it drained.
In 3 - 5 days I’m supposed to follow-up with my family doctor, otherwise I’m fine. Being a nerd I took several pictures of my finger, which I’ll post on my Flickr page shortly.
Just over a year ago, around Independence Day, I joined eHarmony in hopes of finding someone to spend my life with. I could write volumes about my experiences there, and about how utterly happy I am that I took that step. Instead I’d like share a blog posting that I wrote and only shared with a very special woman. I wasn’t ready to openly share my relationship on this site then; I am now. Allow me to introduce you to Sibylle through a recounting of our first meeting, which happened the weekend of August 12 - 13, 2006.
Barefoot in the Fountain (originally written August 14, 2006 @ 6:42 am) Over the weekend, my relationship with Sibylle deepened; it stepped from the online world into the real world. At the same time it is wonderful, beautiful, and scary. I am one minute numb and the next tingling all over. Thoughts of her steal in to my focus and suddenly I’m smiling. Then self-doubt creeps in and makes me afraid again. I’m all over the map emotionally - and I wouldn’t trade a minute of it for anything else in the world.
On Saturday she had to be in town to pick up a friend. We agreed through email that if she came early we could meet before hand. Both of us posses a fear of “dating”, of that first conversation. For me it is a fear of rejection, a fear that the troll I feel like inside will creep out and I’ll be shunned. So rather than meet or have a date her idea was to simply be in the same place at the same time. Sit quietly together. Read. Not talk. With that thought in mind I set off for the airport and our first time in the same place at the same time.
Since reading was a part of the plan I had a new book with me. It might have well as been writing in Swahili, for while I could read the words my mind wasn’t capable of putting sense to their meanings. The designated meeting spot was terribly noisy so I didn’t hear my cell phone ring, but suddenly I noticed a new voice mail had been left. It was her. Calling to tell me when she’d arrive. I listened to the message again and again just to drink in her voice. It was beautiful. Then I got a text message asking me to come find her. Walking down the concourse my heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t hear anything else. Seeing Sibylle sitting, then standing and walking towards me left me shaking. As if we were too old lovers reunited, or long-lost friends together again, we hugged each other for the longest time. It was one of the warmest embraces I’ve ever felt. I think both of us were shaking a bit as we sat down together.
Any pretense at not talking, of just sitting quietly together was gone We spent the next several hours sitting quietly, or talking. Taking walks up and down the concourse. We tentatively held hands. Once or twice she started to put her head on my shoulder. I felt alive and numb, as fragile as freshly blown glass, and carefree as a leaf blown on the wind. I would have stayed seated there next to her forever had she asked.
On Sunday I drove to where she lives, and we spent the afternoon together. I was just as scared, maybe more so, this time. What if she’d changed her mind after seeing me in person the previous day? What if the previous night had just been a dream? Was I really here, was I really about to meet her for a second time? I ate something for lunch but cannot remember what now.
Our afternoon was beautiful, surreal. We walked through a park, Sibylle slipped her shoes off and waded in a fountain. We visited an old friend of hers, who teased her, and she gently covered my ears and told me not to listen, while smiling. Later she playfully pulled me out of the friend’s house as he had started teasing again. The casual familiarity felt wonderful. Sure we were both as nervous as long tailed cats in a room of rocking chairs, but there were moments of calm and clarity that felt oh so good. Even the nervousness felt good, in a way. Sibylle showed me her studio and home. It was eclectic and warm, a new facet of her personality - I felt honored that she would trust me in her space.
As was becoming our habit we started and ended our time together will a long, warm embrace. It’s like being bathed in sunlight and feeling a cool breeze at the same time. Holding her in my arms while being held in hers is simply amazing. I cannot wait to see her again.
In the months since then we have traveled thousands of miles, exchanged hundreds upon hundreds of emails, text messages, and phone calls. I am thrilled, honored, and beside myself with happiness that Sibylle is a part of my life, and I hers. And I am pleased to introduce her to all of you.
I’ve been using my iPod on a daily basis at my new job which has brought to a light a couple of quirks in how it handles smart playlists. For those of you who aren’t iPod and iTunes savvy, a smart playlist is dynamic; you specific parameters and the contents of the list are filtered through those parameters. For example, you might create a list that only contains music not played in the last month.
I’ve been using a variation of the smart play list described by Brad Root on Smart Playlists.com (Yes, there is a site for everything on the Internet.), called Floating Shuffle.
In a nutshell this article describes how to nest several smart playlists to create a random sampling of music from your collection. Here are the five underlying smart playlists:
Least Recently Played (LRP) : Limit to 50 songs selected by least recently played Least Often Played (LP): Limit to 50 songs selected by least often played Most Recently Played (MRP): Limit to 50 songs selected by most recently played Most Often Played (MP): Limit to 50 songs selected by most often played Random (R): Limit to 50 songs selected at random, not in the other lists
A composite list, made up of the 250 songs selected in the five underlying lists is next. Finally a smart playlist that you actually listen to, Shuffle, which selects songs from the composite list provided the song hasn’t been played in the last 25 days. (The original article used 4 days, I’ve bumped mine up to 25.)
The Shuffle list was used heavily when I was toting the Powerbook to work every day, however it doesn’t work as well for me on the iPod. Smart playlists do update on the iPod even when you don’t synchronize with the base computer frequently. However, they only update when the end of the list is reached. Having 250 songs in the list means that list only refreshes when I reach the end of approximately 20 hours of music. Switching to an album or different playlist results in Shuffle starting over again at the top of the same set of songs.
So I’ve changed the settings on the Shuffle smart playlist to select only 50 songs from the composite list that haven’t been played in the past 25 days. Between morning and afternoon commutes, and severals hours listening at work each day I can traverse a 50 song playlist in day or two. Now I’m getting a better shuffle through my music.
In the course of my professional life I have changed jobs a number of times. In most of those instances there comes a point in time where you know you are going to leave the current job and a sometimes subtle, sometimes profound change occurs. I refer to this change as the blinders coming off.
While I am not a horse person I recognize blinders as a piece of the tack worn by the horse to prevent it from seeing anything to the sides. The “blinders” in this case don’t actually blind the animal but they do induce a form of tunnel vision; if it is straight ahead the horse can see it, otherwise it doesn’t exist. I think we go through our lives with various blinders on as well. Some we knowingly choose to wear, others are there subconsciously.
In my experience, most of the jobs I’ve left voluntarily have, in the process of leaving, contained a moment where the blinders came off and I allowed myself to see the little annoyances, or perhaps the larger hidden costs of the situation. It is as if once you are no longer dependent upon being satisfied with the position you can see all the things you don’t like about it clearly.
Turns out that moving has a similar blinder removal epiphany. My current living situation is in a gated community. The gate, and surrounding fence, supposedly makes the property more secure. And, while I suppose it does add a certain level of deterrence, the gate itself is a royal pain. In the three plus years I have lived here there hasn’t been a single week when one of the four gates (two in and two out) at the main entrance haven’t been out of commission. One night recently the entrance gate for my side of the property wouldn’t open; we had to manually push it back on its tracks to get access. And almost every time I come home there is a car sitting, idling in the guest turn-around waiting for a resident to enter so they can tailgate through the gate while it is open
That the gate provides any security at all is a joke; the only dwelling I’ve ever had robbed was this one.
I say all of this knowing full well that the new place has some hidden “features” that I am carefully tucking behind the blinders, features that won’t become obvious to my until it is time to move from there.
I get tired of endless popup notifications from the various denizens of the system tray telling me well-meaning but generally useless bits of information. One aspect of the Mac OS X interface that I truly like is that you are only notified when there is some action you need to take, not for every minor change in your operating system’s landscape.
The Wireless connectivity icon, and the Ethernet connectivity icon are the worst offenders in my book. I use a wireless broadband card to connect while I am at work, so both of these system tray features are constantly telling me that there is no connection. First the wireless connectivity monitor spouts off, and then the Ethernet one. It’s annoying to me.
So.
Thanks to Google, and this page, I give you these steps, recorded here so I don’t have to find them again.
Enjoy your notification free world.
In the autumn of 1987 I took my first cruise, a Windjammer trip, to the Caribbean. At the time all the identification that was required was your driver’s license. Two years later, in 1989, I took a second cruise to the Caribbean, this time with a passport in hand. The passport provided some cheap souvenirs; each new island (country) visited added their visa stamp to one of the pages. Martinique, Dominica, Guadalupe, St. Lucia, Grenada, and others all graced the pages in the back of that passport.
In 1994 I traveled to Europe and added stamps for Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Flipping through the pages at home made me feel like a world traveler.
In 2002, in preparation for a Hawaiian cruse, that would include a stop at the Republic of Kiribati, I renewed my passport. At the end of that process my original was returned to me, with (I believe) a hole punch in the number to mark it as expired. I liked that I was allowed to keep my cheap souvenirs, the record of where I had been in the world. The 2002 cruise was disappointing, mechanical difficulties on the ship prevented us from seeing Kiribati so I didn’t add stamps to the new passport.
In two months time, however, I am returning to Europe and was looking forward to adding new stamps to my passport. Only I can’t find the blasted thing anywhere. Moving in 2004 resulting in a lot of boxes in storage. And since professional packers were employed to fill those boxes I have only a vague idea of what is where now. Over the past several weeks repeated trips have been made in vain to the locker to sift through the boxes looking for the one that has my passports hidden away. I’ve racked my brain again and again trying to remember the last time I knew for certain where my passport was located in the Illinois house, hoping that memory would give me a clue as to which box to search. Short of emptying each of dozens of boxes piece by piece, I have no way now of finding that little blue book.
The United States is changing their travel requirements, no longer will US citizens be able to go to places like Mexico or Canada, or US holdings in the Caribbean without a passport. This change has resulted in a huge backlog at the State Department as thousands upon thousands of new passport applications have been made. The newspapers have horror stories of people who have waited months to get their passport.
I have 61 days.
Over the weekend I downloaded and printed off the various forms I need to present. First is a form explaining that my current passport is lost, next is an application for a new one. Of course, without a passport I need to prove who I am all over again. A quick web search and $33 spent should get me a certified copy of my birth certificate from New York by the end of the week. Next will be new pictures, and then a trip to the post office. In addition to the passport fee ($97) I’ll have to pay for expedited service ($60) and then I’ll have to wait.
The hardest part will be stopping the search for my missing passport, once I set the wheels in motion for a re-issue of it, I assume it would royally screw things up to find the missing one and try to stop the re-issue process. I figure that a day or two after the new passport arrives in the mail, the missing one will fall out of a previously searched drawer or box. Which will actually be okay; I’ll still have my visa stamp souvenirs.