Day One

Well. Today I start my new gig, which is going to be generally based here at home. I have an office, but no gear yet. I’m told it will show up some time today. I’m already booked on a there-and-back-again trip to Atlanta tomorrow, and my account executive has the next week pretty well planned out. It feels a little strange to be sitting here doing…well, nothing, but things will be picking up shortly and my downtime should be fairly minimal.

Unpacking all of my office paraphernalia at home had a curious collision-of-worlds vibe. On the one hand, I was at home. On the other hand, here were all the things that I’ve trucked from desk to desk over the years, some things for over 15 years. The lava lamp has been on every desk I’ve used since college. Some of the books date back to my first admin jobs. I’m probably not going to be managing any sendmail or usenet servers any more, but I’m loathe to get rid of the O’Reilly books covering same. Ditto for my copy of Concise Guide to MS-DOS Batch File Programming. You just never know. I’d rather have it and not need it than vice versa.

No, I have not shaved. Let the scuzzification begin.

Furniture, gymnastics and Battlestar Galactica

Spent the evening assembling office furniture. Most of it is done, but one of the pieces was busted in the box, so we set that whole unit aside while we wait for a replacement part. In the meanwhile, I’ve cleaned out my desk at work and have all of my books and whatnot sitting in the trunk of the car. Soon, but not soon enough, the chaos will be done and we can get back into a routine of sorts.

This past weekend had us at an invitational gymnastics meet for our oldest. She had a lot of fun and is looking forward to the next one, which will be some time in June. 

As for the rest of the brood, I’m happy to report 0 sick days and 0 injuries. I’m going to hang one of these in the family room, I think. I keep threatening to do so. 

Movies: Pan’s Labyrinth, which was…interesting, though a little depressing. Parts are very difficult to watch, this is definitely an adults-only fairy tale. Also, the Battlestar Galactica miniseries, which we watched over the course of 2 evenings. We enjoyed it and had some fun trying to pick out references to the original series, which we both watched as kids. I paused during one of the museum scenes to point out which toys I’d had. She remember quite a few of the characters I’d forgotten.

Bit of trivia from the IMDB: when the doctor is delivering the bad news, there are ships flying around outside the window. At the very end of the scene, Serenity can be seen landing on a nearby roof. Sure ’nuff, there it was! What a hoot. I think I made two Firefly comments during the rest of the series. Something along the lines of “this needs more Jayne” and “Mal just would have killed that guy and been done with it.” Dorkalicious!

2 adults + 6 children * (stimulus package) = 1 iMac

Our venerable ol’ x86 machine croaked last weekend so we bought an iMac. I’ve been playing around with it all week and, frankly, it’s every bit as good as I remember from my time in college when I first fell in love with Apples. All of the writing labs in the J-school were full of Macs - in fact, if I remember correctly, you had to search high and low for the PC room, and the only folks who used those were B-school pukes and other assorted oddities.

We used them, obviously, for completing our writing assignments, but also for layout and internet access. “Internet access” at this time meant e-mail and usenet, and at that it was all command-line. I do remember someone downloading Mosaic and showing it off, but we didn’t think it looked any better than gopher, archie or veronica. Am I dating myself? But I digress.

To me, Macs were computers and that was about it. Apple would show up every so often at the student center with their display tables and student discounts and the hardware was still light years beyond what I could afford. So we parted ways, and I entered into a fifteen-year relationship with Windows, Intel and eventually Unix in its myriad forms: Linux, *BSD, Irix, HP-UX, and all the others. Lately I’d settled for Ubuntu Linux because, as Linuxes go, it basically just worked. 

All of them are dead to me now. Leopard is as beautiful a desktop environment as Ubuntu could ever hope to be. What’s more, the internals of OSX are…BSD. All of my little friends are still around, just hidden under the beautiful trappings: python, apache, perl, and so on. I didn’t have to shoehorn them in, make allowances for shell weirdness or run them in a VM. They’re just in there, ready to go.

We love it. Everything just works. Installing and removing software is a snap, we’ve migrated all of our pictures, documents and music over and everyone has their own profile. The kids actually share a single, locked-down account. We’ll probably never buy a Windows machine again, which is fine by just about everyone. Not that I have anything in particular against it, but why bother? None of us are hardcore gamers, but not even that is much of a problem. If it were, I’d be exploring BootCamp. 

Anyway, it’s been a hoot and half. I was geared up to spend considerable time learning the ins and outs of this thing but it’s really so simple, that most of us are up to speed after only a few days. I’m sure there’s more to learn, but for now, we’re at least productive with the thing.

 

Breaking The Galilean Spell

Stuart Kauffman writes about the shortcomings and ultimate failure of reductionism in science.

If no natural law suffices to describe the evolution of the biosphere, of technological evolution, of human history, what replaces it? In its place is a wondrous radical creativity without a supernatural Creator. Look out your window at the life teeming about you. All that has been going on is that the sun has been shining on the earth for some 5 billion years. Life is about 3.8 billion years old. The vast tangled bank of life, as Darwin phrased it, arose all on its own. This web of life, the most complex system we know of in the universe, breaks no law of physics, yet is partially lawless, ceaselessly creative. So, too, are human history and human lives. This creativity is stunning, awesome, and worthy of reverence. One view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures.

Because of this ceaseless creativity, we typically do not and cannot know what will happen. We live our lives forward, as Kierkegaard said. We live as if we knew, as Nietzsche said. We live our lives forward into mystery, and do so with faith and courage, for that is the mandate of life itself.

[...]

Across our globe, about half of us believe in a Creator God. Some billions of us believe in an Abrahamic supernatural God, and some in the ancient Hindu gods. Wisdom traditions such as Buddhism often have no gods. About a billion of us are secular but bereft of our spirituality and reduced to being materialist consumers in a secular society. If we the secular hold to anything it is to “humanism.” But humanism, in a narrow sense, is too thin to nourish us as human agents in the vast universe we partially cocreate. I believe we need a domain for our lives as wide as reality. If half of us believe in a supernatural God, science will not disprove that belief.

We need a place for our spirituality, and a Creator God is one such place. I hold that it is we who have invented God, to serve as our most powerful symbol. It is our choice how wisely to use our own symbol to orient our lives and our civilizations. I believe we can reinvent the sacred. We can invent a global ethic, in a shared space, safe to all of us, with one view of God as the natural creativity in the universe.

via aldaily.com

Catholics - cf. CCC, 31-35. This is interesting writing. As a Christian, of course, I also believe that it’s seriously deficient, but interesting nevertheless. A god of strictly vegetative spirit is no god at all, but rather instead a convenient shorthand. A spirituality centered on it worships the painting at the expense of the artist. Prof. Kauffman gets a little close to Anselm’s ontological proof, but this is still a long way from the idea of Emmanuel, God-with-us. Still, he is to be commended for continuing to seek and knock. The section at the end about the “four injuries” bears particular scrutiny.

Painters, short-time and books.

We’ve had painters in the house for…days. They’re almost done, which is good. Our rooms have been discombobulated for over a week, stuff piled up everywhere. They’re nice guys, and they’ve done a great job, but it’s time for them to wrap up and get out. Now.

In other news…just kidding. There is no other news. I’m still wrapping things up at my old job, which means that I go to an odd meeting now and then for something called “knowledge transfer.” This sounds like I ought to be strapped to a table, with Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman hovering nearby. In reality I play 20 questions and try to stay interested, since the projects we’re covering will be completed in the After-time, when I’ve moved into the Great Beyond.

I wrapped up Lewis’ OHEL last night, after a short detour through Shakespeare’s sonnets, which he wrote about at length. I will probably renew my attack on the plays soon, though I’ve been seriously looking at starting Children of Hurin. I got it as a gift awhile back, but had just finished reading The Silmarilion and The Book of Lost Tales and needed a breather from Tolkien. Enough time has passed, I think. For big-kid bedtime reading, I’ve started Watership Down. Talking rabbits? Grand adventures? Fighting? There’s a little something in there for everyone.

Movies inbound from Netflix: The second part of Gormenghast and Pan’s Labyrinth.

New job

So, the thing that was cooking is this: I’m starting a new job in a couple of weeks. This represents somewhat of a career change for me, so I’m a little nervous but still very excited. I’ll be based out of a home office and traveling a little around the region as a “field service engineer”, which basically means that I accompany an account executive and answer technical questions about the products. I can do this with a minimum of hassle because we used quite a few of these products at my current-soon-to-be-former employer and know full well how great they are, albeit a little on the pricey side. In any case, it’s the first time I’ve ever worked in a sales-type of role.

Luckily, the AE I’m working with is pretty seasoned so I can concentrate on technical stuff for now. He’s a strong believer in minimizing the amount of overnight traveling, which is another bonus. Our location puts us within about a 4 hour drive of most of our territory, so we should be able to do day trips throughout the middle of the week, reserving Mondays and Fridays for office days.

I’m pretty stoked. A couple of former co-workers have already moved over to this company, so I’ll already know some of the folks on the team. I haven’t worked from home in several years now, but thoroughly enjoyed it when I did. We’re having to rejigger some of the rooms in order to clear enough room for an office, but everyone seems to be taking it in stride. The sleeping arrangements were going to change anyway, so they’re just changing a little ahead of schedule.

Anyway, it’s been brewing for a couple of weeks, but for obvious reasons I had to keep mum.
Having given notice at work, I can talk about it now with no small amount of relief.

Oh, and: W00T!

House stuff

A couple of months back, we bought a new dishwasher to replace the one that came with the house. The old one just sort of stopped working one day, so we took that as a sign that, you know, it needed replacing. As it happens, I’d replaced a dishwasher once at our old house. There’s really not that much to it, since you’re only connecting three things: power, water supply and waste. Simple. I could have done easily done it.

But no.

Instead, I let the place we bought it from install it. I paid for this privilege. You know what happened next? It leaked. In fact, it leaked for a week. We didn’t know it was leaking because the hardwood floors in the kitchen did not extend all the way under the dishwasher. The water pooled there, then seeped under the planks and spread into a large, Africa-shaped stain that only became visible after a week. We called the installer, who declared that a “faulty part” was to blame, and this so that he could file an insurance claim for the repair of the floor.

That’ll teach me.

As it turns out, the floor couldn’t be fixed. It had to be replaced, in toto. This was fine by us for two reasons. First, we weren’t going to be paying for it. Second, the floor was dinged hard in a few places anyway. Sorting out the claim, estimates and ordering of the new floor stuff took many weeks, but the Flooring Guy showed up yesterday and will probably wrap up today. At least, we hope he’ll wrap up today so we can get our kitchen and dining area back.

While the Flooring Guy is working downstairs, the Painter is working upstairs and downstairs. The previous owners of our house had…attempted to paint. By “attempted”, I mean that drunken orangutans painted the walls. There were smears all over the trim, the ceiling and baseboards. Big ones, too. After we moved in, E. and I tackled the MBR and then I swore I’d never paint another room again. I lack the patience and, frankly, the attention span to do it right, so it takes us forever. You pay someone to come in, and he knocks out an entire room in a day - with razor-sharp trim and not a single spot on the floor anywhere.

The bummer is that I have to drain and move the aquarium so that he can get to the wall behind it. Ugh. Not looking forward to that. We’ll probably just house everyone temporarily in big rubbermaid tub for the day, then transfer them all back to the tank in the evening. Fingers are crossed that we don’t have any casualties in the process.

Still here.

Last week was pretty busy, thus my relative silence. Some things are cooking that I can’t talk about quite yet. Stay tuned.

We were supposed to go camping with the scouts last weekend, but punted at the last minute because the weather was looking pretty sketchy. Severe thunderstorms and whatnot. I’ve had two rainouts on camping trips and they’re about as miserable as it gets. Everyone was very understanding, and more than willing to wait a few weeks until it warms up just a wee bit more and the weather is a bit more cooperative.

So, instead, we got a lot of stuff done around the house (including a long-overdue reorg of the garage). As a small compensation for missing the camping trip, I took most of the kids on a 2-mile hike at a nearby state preserve. We did the loop late last summer, and wanted to return in the spring to see the wildflower populations. It was a nice walk, and we’re betting that another month will have the flowers in full swing.

Movies: Elizabeth: The Golden Age and first episode of the BBC’s miniseries version of Gormenghast.

Parent Hacks takes on the crock pot.

Discussions ensue. There will probably be some good things posted here, so check the thread from time to time.

Pinewood Derby, more camping gear and Shakespeare’s sonnets.

The Pinewood Derby was a great success - our car placed second among the dens, so Pancho left with a nice little red ribbon and a certificate for “Shiniest Car”. Unfortunately, the ribbon, car and certificate got left behind in a bag. Luckily for us, our packmaster found the bag and is holding onto all of it for us. Afterwards we hit DQ to celebrate, then rounded off the day with some final camping-gear shopping.

The dollar store, incidentally, is God’s gift to the family getting started with gear. We bought all the kitchen untensils we could possibly need, along with things like plastic tubs for dishwashing and clean-up towels for just under $40. I spent the afternoon packing all of the kitchen stuff into a single, large Rubbermaid tub and it fit perfectly. Some time this week - maybe tonight, actually - I need to fire up both the lantern and the stove. I don’t think that sundown at the campsite is the best time to figure these things out. Lastly, I practiced-packed Clifford (The Big Red Van) and it looks like things will fit, but it will be tight. We’ll need to use floor space under the wee ones for clothes and such. I was afraid we were going to need a hitch and platform for extra storage, but I think we’ll be in good shape without it. For now, anyway.

For movies this weekend, it was Oceans 13 (lightweight but fun) and Serenity (dark and exciting). We think we will probably buy the series and movie before too much longer. I’m almost done with Lewis’ book on sixteenth century poetry and prose, having completed the section covering Shakespeare’s sonnets. His plays are evidently covered in a separate volume by somebody else, so Lewis concentrates on the poetry alone: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and the sonnets of course. I’ve gone back to my Riverside edition and started to re-read them all in sequence, as Lewis says we ought to do occasionally. Who am I to argue?

Foodish things: we found a hole in the wall Japanese/Thai place up the road that makes pretty good yakisoba and katsudon. Huzzah! We used to make yakisoba at home quite a bit before the kids came along, and had considered trying our hand at katsudon. But now it’s right up the road! And cheap!

Lastly, and I scarcely dare write this, for fear of waking up and finding it all a dream: TRADER JOE’S IS COMING TO TOWN. Yup. Saw it in the paper the other day. It’s not exactly close to our house, but it’s a whole lot closer than Atlanta.