Working Like A Dog

As far as work goes, Friday was the day my employer moved from our old offices to brand new offices. We’re fortunate not to be a big company (or at least our office), so the move was very smooth by most standards. The new digs are a big step up from the old ones.

Monday and Tuesday were busy with executive visits. Its led to some late days and little time for other things. I’ve been thinking I need a clone of myself to help with the load. No sooner did I broach the subject than it was approved! Tomorrow I interview a potential candidate to help with the fun stuff. I have to say that I’m impressed with the speed in which it all came together.

Tomorrow has more move-related work. Monday I fly to Seattle, returning Wednesday night. I conduct more interviews the rest of next week. The following week I fly to LA for two days of business (plus two days of travel). The following week I spend training technical staff, taking time out to get my wisdom teeth pulled. The week after I fly back to Southern California for a trade show. Then I stay here until the second week of March when I’m on the road again for four days.

Got all that?

Busy Weekend

I’ve been pretty busy lately. Thus the blog-that-writes-itself post earlier. I’ve got a minute now though, so here’s a recap of the past few days.

Friday night I spend some time with Kelly putting together a website for Hallie’s preschool. We’ve made a lot of progress but there is some cleaning up to do. Actually, Kelly has done far more work on this but needed my help with some of the tech stuff. She’s amazing, I tell ya.

Saturday I was determined to catch up on some long-suffering projects. I spent the previous weekend helping my parents with their new HDTV. This weekend was my turn to do some fancy hookups.

My parents gave me their unused, supersized VHF/UHF TV antenna, an antenna so big it barely fit into my car. I managed to set it up in an unused area of the attic, though, and the resulting picture made it worth all the trouble. My temporary solution was to snake the coax down through the attic stairway, but that obviously needed a better solution.

Since we moved into this house, I’ve wanted an easy way to get cables from upstairs to downstairs. I bought some swimming pool vacuum hose to serve this purpose but never got around to installing it. This weekend was the time to do that. I searched the attic for an easy path to the garage but wound up empty-handed. It would take more work to make this happen: I would have to take the house apart.

I took off the soffit vents from the side of the house to get access to the space above my garage wall. I then threaded the hose from the attic down the roofline to the top of my garage wall. I then went inside the garage and cut a 1.5″ hole up through the wall until I had a path for the hose. Unfortunately for me, the hole saw on the drill was a bit tight for the hose, so I had to spend another 20 minutes carving the hole out with the undersized saw.

Eventually the hose went through. I nailed the soffit vents back on the house, nailed the hose to the attic wall so it wouldn’t come loose, and went down to the garage for the coax I wanted to pull through the hose.

Oops. No coax long enough! Back to the parents house for some coax, which they graciously gave me in exchange for fixing their TV. I tweaked their TV a little more before returning with the coax.

The hose conduit worked like a champ. The coax was installed in about 10 minutes, whereas it would’ve taken over an hour to thread it through separately. Putting in that conduit took the better part of the weekend, but now I can wire up just about anything in my attic without so much as getting my hands dirty. The conduit also allows us to drywall the garage some day without sacrificing our ability to run wires. Woot!

That’s not the only thing we did that weekend. I put up three picture shelves in our den, measuring them precisely so they line up with the wall studs. This was one of those rare project where the holes I drilled were all right on target. I was skeptical of how the shelves would look, but Kelly has sold me on them. They really add a lot to the room.

Oh, and as someone already mentioned, the Wolfpack won and the Heels lost their games on Saturday. Gotta love that. I took time out from the projects to watch the end of the State game.

We had some good family time during all of that, too. I will be on the road frequently in the next few weeks, so I aim to enjoy all the family time I can get.

Casey Jones

Casey Jones
As Performed by Johnny Cash

Come all you rounders if you wanna hear
the story about a brave engineer
Casey Jones was the roller’s name
on a 6-8 wheeler, boys, he rode to fame

Caller called Casey bout half past four
he kissed his wife at the station door
He climbed in the cabin with his orders in his hand
Said this is my trip to the Promised Land

Casey Jones climbed in the cabin
Casey Jones orders in his hand
Casey Jones leanin’ out the window
Taking a trip to the Promised Land
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Cheap Thoughts: Self-Writing Blog

What if I could invent a blog that wrote itself? A blog that took the difficulty of coming up with topics completely out of the picture?

For instance, what if I added some software to an iPod or Treo that made it narrate everything it sees? Kind of like Closed Captioning but for real life?

Man, if this was a product I would buy one.

America’s Sail Coming In June!

The paper brought news this morning about the America’s Sail event which is coming to Beaufort, NC at the end of June. It’s a race of tall sailing ships as well as a celebration of the rich maritime history of North Carolina.

Speaking of rich, some of the sponsors are from the high end. Quotes in the article like “It’s on the scale of the U.S. Open” make me wonder if how many dubloons we’ll need if we decide to go.

Still, those tall ships should be fun to watch, even from the cheap seats. This sounds like one event I just can’t resist.

Highlights of 2005, Number 1: Italy!

Number 1. Italy! Of course you knew that our May trip to Italy would be the biggest event of 2005. While I’ve been to many places in my lifetime, our family trip to Italy will always stand out.

It was about this time of year that we began planning it. Kelly’s parents were visiting, there was plenty of bustle, and the idea was bantered around. I heard the plans but it didn’t really register with me. I guess I assumed it would never really happen. Travis was all of two months old at the time. I mean, how could we think of pulling off something like this?

But it did happen! We got our passports, purchased our tickets, picked out a farmhouse apartment outside of Siena, and soon we were counting down the days. Travis turned six months old right before we left and seemed jolly enough to reasonably make the flight. Hallie we had no question about, naturally!

The flight was a smooth one up until the very end. We all had a blast marching around the countryside and cobblestone streets; there was much pasta, wine, and gelato consumed; and we enjoyed living life like the Italians do for our lucky two weeks. Heck, we even took readers of the Raleigh News and Observer along, too. Aside from Travis’s unexpected visit to a Siena hospital, we couldn’t have asked for more (though the hospital visit was enlightening as well).

The flight back was fraught with obstacles. Perhaps the universe was suggesting we stay! We left Florence two hours late and missed our connecting flight in Paris, forcing us to stay overnight. It was terrible … listening to the fun the rest of our group had while Kelly and I were stuck in the hotel with the kids!

Oh well. Paris deserves more than a half-day. One day we’ll do it right.

Oh, and missing our Paris to Washington flight meant missing our flight from Washington to Raleigh, too. Rather than spend the night in the DC area, we rented a car and drove the six hours back home. I guess we couldn’t get enough of traveling.

As the new year kicks off, I find myself longing to be back in Tuscany. I suppose it gets in your blood. We vow to return some day, when the kids are a bit older and can better appreciate it. I’m sure it will have aged like the fine wine grown in its spectacular countryside.

NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice on Illegal Wiretapping

Walking to my gate at the airport yesterday, I caught the tail end of a CNN story on NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice. There was lots of noise (it being an airport after all), but one thing he said caught my attention. He said that current NSA employees he’s spoken with consider Bush’s illegal wiretapping to be a “betrayal.”

“If you are a signals intelligence officer, it is drilled into your head from early training on that you do not spy on Americans, period,” Tice said.

Absolutely correct. As I said before, Bush has brought undue suspicion to an agency doing heroic work for our country.

It’s time for some answers.