Bruised by Life

The week began in pain, and will no doubt end in pain as well. The old foot is starting to feel a bit better, but the head - oh! the head! - is starting to feel as compressed as a valve lift spring.

You do know what a lifter is, don't you? Oh, come now! Just because cars have become so complicated that no one bothers to work on their own engines anymore - except you die-hards, hobbyists, and mechanics, that's no excuse to avoid popping the hood and seeing what kind of damage can be done with a crescent wrench and a screwdriver.

The only reason this makes any sense at all - and it hardly makes any of that - is that, just as I was starting to feel better in the foot, my car got ill.

It first became obvious that something was amiss on my way to work the other day when the temperature gauge didn't move. Much. It moved a little bit, just over the ambient temperature line, then stopped. Huh? Then I checked the output of the heater through the defrost vanes, and it was ... vaguely warm, not really hot. And the temperature lever was cranked over to Maximum.

Oooh. This doesn't look good.

It had been awhile since my last adventure with car engines, so I consulted the Book of Armaments, Chapter 1. OK, actually it was the shop manual for the Toyota. It confirmed what I had suspected: something was wrong.

Specifically, the thermostat was bad. And needed replacing. Which means the radiator has to be drained. And the new thermostat has to be bought. And a gasket to go with it. Which means - there goes Saturday!

But I can handle it. I've done car work before. Of course, the car never ran quite the same afterward, but, hey, it's all about experience, right? And this should give me plenty of experience. Walking home. In the dark. And cold. And snow. With the Toyota parked by the side of the road. Stuck. Dead. Not moving.

The rest of the week has been dandy as well. I've had this User Manual overdue for a week now, and a customer here for training, and people coming by every hour or so to ask, "Are you done yet?" And my car troubles just add spice to an otherwise boring life.

How to fall off a ladder...

It's very easy.

You climb up the ladder, wait until it starts raining, then start climbing down.

Oops! Your silly foot slipped on the bottom rung, and your heel struck the pavement with a very loud SLAP! and suddenly there is this very bad pain in your ankle, and you wish you could reach down and rip your ankle off your leg because it is sending you these very unnecessary messages of extreme pain.

And pain hurts.

Instead of doing the smart thing, which is to go back in the house and pack it in ice and sit on the couch and watch movies the rest of the day, you head off to work ... because your project is behind schedule and you have customers coming in for training next week.

So you drive (ow!) to work (ow!) wincing (ow!) every time you press (ow!) in the clutch. And then you work (ow!) until the pain (ow!) is so bad that you are afraid you (ow!) won't be able to (ow!) drive back home. So you go (ow!) home.

And then you finally pack it in ice and lay on your bed with the foot propped up on a pillow, and do more work on your laptop because ... you still have all this work to do, and as long as you're just sitting there, you might as well get something done!

Late night catechism

Wowsers, this morning came way too early!

Of course, being up until one in the morning composing a letter to one of the children's teachers didn't help.

Seems someone is having difficulty focusing in class. Starts doodling instead of listening to instruction. Then gets wrong answers on the quizzes because he wasn't paying attention. Ooops! Gotta nip that in the bud (as my good friend Deputy Fife would say). Otherwise, Life As We Know It will collapse into a black hole, and Armageddon will ensue.

We have a theory on that, a theory which was presented in the aforementioned letter. Would you like to hear it? Of course you would! It isn't every day you get to hear parents dreaming up excuses for their childrens unacceptable behavior.

Two years ago, aforementioned child (AC for short) was in classroom where the teacher was unable to maintain discipline. AC, being a normally compliant child, bagged out on the bad behavior and kept to himself, did his work, then had all this free time available because the teacher was still trying to get the unruly kids under some semblance of control. He drew. He read. He got in the habit of tuning out.

The next year, it wasn't quite as bad -- but the habit was a bit ingrained. He took every spare moment to do his own thing. Since there were still lots of misbehaving kids, there was plenty of opportunity. The teacher was better prepared this year, but still ... it was relatively chaotic.

This year, with the addition of a new school to the district, a dramatic reduction in class sizes, and the loss of many of the unruly students, there is no 'free' time anymore. There is no more chaos in the classroom. BUT ... the habit is burned in. He tunes out at the drop of a hat. He doodles. He draws. He fades away.

Oddly enough - and this is where my dander gets up - I didn't find out about this until I complained about that most Sacred of Cows, homework. My position is that there is altogether too much. The Teacher disagreed, and only then brought up the fact that aforementioned child is doodling instead of paying attention.

That strikes me as a rather defensive posture.

So, first of all, I'm furious that I didn't find out until now that AC is having trouble focusing in class. Second, I'm upset that the teacher wants to put all the blame on him. I'm more of a mind that the kid will tune out whenever the teacher fails to engage his attention, i.e. the teacher is BORING. Ever have one of those kinds of teachers?

Third, I'm put out because my child is getting a bad attitude about school, an attitude fostered by two years of coasting through chaotic classes and then suddenly hitting the brick wall of reality. So now we have to back-track, fix the problem, program in those good study habits, remind him to show respect, pay attention, etc., otherwise he's going to slide down the slippery slope into dropoutsville.

I still hate homework.

Computer Malfunction

This is what happens when you mess about with the network connection on the computer. It chokes. It doesn't like the constant twaddling with the ARP tables, the repeated unlink and relink of the ethernet ports, the enabling and disabling of the port drivers. Eventually, it throws up its hands and gives up.

I haven't seen the BSOD on this laptop for a dog's age, and yet it was somehow comforting to find it on the screen at last, like a long-lost friend. Ah, Windows! How I'll miss you when you're gone!

Released from the Release

The software release at work has been pushed back a week or so, so I can relax for thirty seconds. Just long enough to catch my breath, look around, and smell the coffee. Or chocolate. Must be chocolate. There's been a lot of it lately, what with Chef Karen around. She's into chocolate in a big way. And she left us quite a bit!

It made me mad, though. The schedule relief, not the chocolate. I mean, here I was, running aorund like a headless chicken, trying to have fun while the Neugebaurs were here, and worrying about the software release and all the work I had to do, and working ridiculous hours to try and get things done, and if they would've told me it was going to be delayed in the first place - or at least by Friday - I could've relaxed and had fun! But noooooo, they wouldn't see the trees til they dropped on their heads.

Now the Neugebaurs have left, and I miss them already. Hope you guys are having fun on your trip home! Say hi to Washington for me!

1986

I was pacing in the emergency room, looking for something more interesting than the latest news on the New York plane crash, or the incoming storm, anything to get my mind off the things going on behind the swinging doors of the hospital where visitors were not allowed to wander; and so I drifted over to the magazine rack to peruse the periodicals. And promptly tripped into The Twilight Zone.

There were two magazines in the rack from 1986. Can't remember the name of it - Woman's Day? Ladies Home Journal? Something like that. One cover had Carol Burnett. The other had Goldie Hawn. 1986. Twenty years ago. Gosh, they both looked a bit ... old. But not nearly as old as they are now. I opened them up. The pages were slightly yellowed, aged but not too badly. The ads were hilarious. Do you remember the styles from 1986? And the products? I'd forgotten.

Reminds me of when I visited my Grandma's house back in '85 when I got out of college, and she had all these old magazines from the early '70s. That was hilarious, too, but this - ! This was twenty years later. And sitting in an emergency room waiting area!

I imagine somebody brought them in because they were reading them at home and didn't remember that they had them until they'd gotten there, and either absentmindedly or on-purpose put them in the rack. Would the hospital have kept magazines around for twenty years? Makes me wonder.

But the articles were poignantly funny. Carol Burnett's was an excerpt from her autobiography in which she related the pain of growing up with alcoholic parents. She rescued her sister from that horror by 'kidnapping' her when she was just starting to make it on Broadway. Goldie was relating how and and Kurt Russell were going to give up movies and live on a farm and be like normal people. Guess some dreams don't turn out.

Oh, and there was another poignant article in one of the issues, I don't remember which one. An interview with Lucille Ball, who was just about to debut with her new (and last) series, Life with Lucy. That series died a quick and unmerciful death, and Lucy died just a few years later (in '89, I think). I didn't find out what happened to the series until after I got home and looked it up on the 'Net, and that made it worse. Back in '86, she had such high hopes for it. She was hoping to conquer the '80s like she'd done in the '50s and '60s and '70s. Didn't happen. By 1986, her brand of humor was apparently out of fashion. Either that, or people just weren't going to buy her as a physical comedienne when her body was 76.

Odd to travel through that time warp, looking back on the hopes and dreams of yesterday, and the memories that have moved even further out from view. What would those ladies say now - those that are still alive - if they were reminded of the things they had said back in 1986, now that the intervening years have brought them on new pathways, new adventures, new heartbreaks?

Back On-Line

We're back!

Not that anyone noticed our absence. It's gotten so busy around here that I don't really have time to update as often as I'd like. That's known as the "Blogger's Lament".

Cheryl and I had a wonderful lunch-time date today. Dropped by the computer store to pick up a 4-port DSL Modem, then had lunch at Panera (yum!).

After work, I installed the modem and voila! we're in business (so to speak) again.

Now if I only had something important to say...

Oh, yeah. There was a couple things. Those of you who DON'T home-school, if you could perhaps read the following links and give me some feedback, I'd really appreciate it. It has to do with the Educational Process.

Part One
Part Two

Random Bloggery

Jeff Berryman is back and blogging!

I've missed his Deep Thoughts over the past few months as he's been working on a new book, so it was quite a pleasure to check back and find out that he's been at it again ... and, of course, he's got some more Deep Thoughts which have been spinning around in my brain all day.


Also, I thought I'd mention another site which caught my eye today. This is a commentary which neatly coincides with my own way of thinking, so naturally I'd like to preach it to the world.

To summarize, I don't like school fund-raisers where they want my kids to solicit their friends, neighbors and relatives in order to get money for school programs. I don't like it when the Scouts do it, I don't like it when the schools do it, and I don't like it when people come to my door selling stuff, be it material goods or personal theology.

Of course, I don't like homework, either, but that's a topic for another day...

Offline

A thunderstorm went through Monday night and took out our DSL modem, so we're 'offline' for a while, until we can get another one.

I spent an hour and a half on the phone last night with Tech Support trying to find an alternative that didn't involve replacing the unit, but to no avail. So today Cheryl and I are going to meet for lunch and modem-shopping!

We've had so many thunderstorms lately that it's been necessary to shut down the computers anyway to keep them from being damaged. Lots of lightning strikes close by.

I felt really bad for Adam Monday morning, when he had gotten up extra-early so he could play Lego Star Wars 2 (no, of course he's not obsessed!!) but we couldn't let him turn on the computer because the sky was lighting up all over the place with horizontal lightning, and thunder was shaking the house. He was so eager to play! But ... we had to say No.

Luckily for him, the storm was over by the time he got home from school, so he was able to play then.

But his brother ran into the same thing this morning. He had gotten up extra-early, too, so he could finish his homework (getting James to finish his homework is like pulling teeth), and he was hoping to have a few minutes on the computer as well, even willing to forego breakfast to squeeze as much time as possible ... and just as he was finishing up the homework, the thunder echoed across the sky and the lightning started. Sorry, James!

We'll just hope things have improved by afternoon.