Category: General

Indian Summer

It’s fall in New York, and Indian summer is upon us. The weather’s been very nice so far, generally warm in the days and cool at night, with a few stormy days. The kids are back in the school groove, and after finishing my record, I’ve been able to start planning the next music project, as well as get back into my origami book. Diagramming the frog this week.

My work situation continues to improve. We got our release finished off a few weeks ago, and it was met with enthusiasm from our customers and managers. Now we’re sort of back to normal as far as the level of pressure and the general vibe. We have a follow-on release coming up in November. Finally getting tot he point where all the well-structured, modular, reusable code I’ve been writing is starting to pay off by actually getting reused. In related news, our corporate overlords did some shuffling of chairs recently. My team lost our nice corner shared office, as it’s going to be converted into a conference room. I got my own office right next door, which is a reasonable tradeoff. View of the Marriott wall, but at least it’s a window. The other guy in the room got sent to cubicle purgatory.

We did get a Prius a few weeks ago after all, and so far we think it’s pretty neat. Good roomy size, good futuristic looks, good handling, reasonable power and of course the hybrid synergy drive is a radical, cool technology. It takes a bit of getting used to. The controls are all electronic. Instead of a gearshift it has a videogame joystick. The car is black and completely silent at low speed, so my friend Erik nicknamed it the Stealth Car. Meanwhile the kids have dubbed it Princess Priia. So far we seem to be getting about 47 mpg. We’re gonna take it on a drive out to country sometime soon for some hiking and pumpkin picking.

Back To School

Another summer vacation has come to a close. Tomorrow the kids go back to school. They’re all packed and prepped and off to bed.

We spent the long weekend at the beach, as has become our custom, and had a mainly excellent time. Hurricane Earl didn’t bother us much, mostly wind and big surf. At one point it was raining sea foam, which was pretty weird. It came in quickly Thursday night and left just a quickly Friday afternoon. We had to stay out of the ocean for a day and all the rides were closed. But it was just as well cuz I was really tired and got a chance to catch up my rest. The hotel had a pool and game room, and we went for a big walk down the beach and around the island as the storm cleared. The rest was pretty much the usual: amusement pier, water park, beach and ocean. We went for a great nature hike at Asseteague and saw lots of blue crabs, shellfish, fish, birds, tadpoles and turtles, and some cool shells and stuff. Pictures coming sometime, maybe soon.

Lizzy got a pet hamster today and named her Delilah. She’s very excited. For a while she considered getting a pet turtle instead, but the cuteness factor won out.

Work has sort of stabilized. Our first release candidate went to QA, where a few minor bugs turned up. I’m going to build release candidate 2 tomorrow. I impressed everyone in my project by seemingly fixing a bug before it was discovered. Actually what happened was I discovered and fixed it last week before I went on my trip, but the bug tracking system was down that day, so our QA guy opened the ticket for me while I was away.

Had a chance to get caught up on a number of random tasks between all our travels. I even did some more work on my book this weekend. One thing on my mind now is upgrading my studio. I have a lot of options, each with pros and cons. But with my new record done, I really want to get into making more music, not mucking around with technology. More on that in the weeks ahead.

Camping 2010 Pics

Last weekend I went camping with bunch of friends. It’s become an annual tradition and the group grew so big we split into to two groups a few years back. We this year both groups came back together for the same weekend, so it was a huge, great time. Best camping trip so far, in fact. The kids are old enough now we can pretty much let them run around without worrying too much. Saturday I slept in, and when I got up went to my brother’s site, asking if my kids were there. No, but would you like some coffee and eggs? Went down to the next site where my friend Nick was staying. Same thing, no kids, but here’s some breakfast. Finally caught up to them across the road at Erik’s site. Best thing of all: no rain. We stayed until Sunday evening and until finally few drops convinced us to finish packing the car.

Beat The Heat Part II

Been doing some good summertime stuff. A week or so ago Jeannie and I took the kids to Rye Playland, the local amusement park, for an evening of rollercoasters and that sort of thing. A few weeks back we brought them into the city for a trip to the Nintendo store and the new Lego store.

I’ve been trying to watch more TV with the kids. I’ve heard that most American households watch 6 or more hours of TV a day, but I have the opposite problem. I’m trying to go from zero to one hour of TV a week, or at least every other week. Specifically I’m trying to watch NOVA with the kids to help them get more of an appreciation for science in the real world. We all enjoy the show, but we’re usually busy when its on and we forget. Last week remembered, and it was about a bunch of guys trying to salvage an old WWII airplane that’s been sitting out in the ice in Greenland for fifty-odd years. This led to a whole flurry of renewed interest in flying and flying machines.

My friend John the origami artist came down from Washington for a visit this weekend. He’s been working on a bunch of new books and e-books, including new editions of some of his classic books, and some all-new ones too. He’s in a very productive, prolific phase right now. He’s got a fourth Polyhedra book coming out. This one I think will be the most accessible yet (it eschews the most difficult shapes like dipyramids) and offers a whole bunch of new models. Hidden in the pages is a wealth of geometric folding techniques, such as about ten different ways to fold an 18 or 36 degree angle.

My day job continues to keep me busy but everyone is focused on our upcoming launch now, and things seem to have finally gotten organized, at least for the time being.

Beat The Heat Part I

Summer continues. The heat wave continues, with temperatures remaining in the mid to upper 90’s daily the last couple weeks. My friend Seth gave us an old air conditioner because he got central air put in his house. Normally in the summer we just have a cool zone in the bedrooms and we don’t even need that every day, but this year we were grateful to expand the cool zoon to the whole upstairs.

Seth’s dad Shelly passed away recently. Mark and Kelly came into town for a from the Adirondack for the funeral. A sad occasion but good to catch up. I’ll always remember Seth’s dad for a day I spent on his sailboat many years ago. I was a hot summer Saturday, when I was living in Queens, before I was married. Seth called me up and asked if wanted to go sailing. It told him I had planned on doing laundry. He convinced me to drop off my washing, something which had never occurred to me to do.

It was a great day sailing. We started up in Ossining sailed down the Hudson and under the Tappen Zee, almost to the George. Coming back we were sailing into the headwind and had to do quite a bit of tacking. Shelly had a pretty big boat (40 feet or so) and I’d only ever sailed little Sunfish before. I was really impressed at how he and Lynn could operate everything with ease, how coordinated they were. All the ropes were rigged that he could have run the boat himself, managed the sails and the rudder, from one spot if he needed to. It was a really great experience.

There and Back Again

Last week we took a trip upstate to visit friends and family, staying with my parents for a few days. It was pretty low key as far as these things go, nice and relaxing. Went up to my brother-in-law’s house one day and went swimming in his pool. Enjoyed a parade and fireworks on the 4th of July. Saw a nice handful of classic cars, and great fireworks show right in the field behind the local school, right over our heads as spread out on the lawn. Best fireworks I’ve seen in years.

Now that we’re home I wish we’d stayed longer and did more. We have a long list of things we’d like to do and see there with the kids. Fort Niagara, Toronto, etc. Maybe next year we’ll take a tour of upstate NY and Ontario as our main vacation. We did get to the Albright Knox art gallery, which I hadn’t been to in maybe 20 years. It has a pretty excellent collection of contemporary and modern art and I was happy that some of my favorite pieces were still there, including the mirror house. On the other hand the upstairs halls including the sculpture court were mainly empty, which was disappointing. Walked around the lake at Delaware park too.

We left the kids with my parents for a few days. Had a stopover in Albany on the ride home to have dinner with Martin. It was a nice enjoyable trip home, listening mainly to hippie rock. We crossed the Hudson up near Albany and took the Taconic home, avoided the traffic on 87 and the Tappen Zee. (I hate every Tap I see from Tappen A to Tappen Z.) We thought we’d have time to relax and hang out, sans kids, but no. It was a busy, busy workweek. My project is under alot of pressure these days. On top of it we had a major heat wave with temperatures getting up to 104. I worked at home that day and only went outside to move the sprinkler around the yard, but even being out for a few minutes was pretty intense.

At last on Friday evening the weather broke and it was merely in the upper 80’s hazy and muggy. Jeannie and took an epic walk around Manhattan, starting in times square, doing downtown. We went along the High Line, in Chelsea, which is a really cool thing. It had once been a network of elevated railroad tracks that supplied butchers in the meatpacking district with carcasses to carve up into meat. It has been abandoned for many years and overgrown with weeds. The city has turned into a long, narrow park, basically a pedestrian walkway that runs from 20th street down to the west village. On either side of the boardwalk are gardens of wildflowers — basically the same weeds, but well tended. It’s a surprisingly effective setup and the whole feels really peaceful and special.

When we got to the end of that, we weren’t too far from the waterfront. When I worked at Radical Media there was a pier nearby I used to walk to sometimes. It was a bit run down and in later days it was fenced off. Well the city as turned this into a park too, and you can walk out the end and see the Verrazano Bridge and Statue of Liberty, and even a tall ship. When we were done there we got dinner are a Mexican restaurant, and the walked thru the NYU campus and to the East Village. We finished off at St. Mark’s place, which is where I lived when I first moved to NYC many years ago. At that time it was all bong shops, but the city has become so upscale that I wondered if it’d be all changed now. It was refreshing to see it was just as seedy as it had always been.

The kids home again, all nice and tanned. They had a great time with all the grandparents, aunts and uncles. I guess they did lots of swimming. Ah summertime, and the living is easy.

Back to the Beach

It really feels like summer now. It’s been a really hot week, up in the 90’s every day. Last Sunday was Father’s day and we spent a great day out at the beach swimming in the ocean. Earlier this week was the summer solstice. Yesterday was the kid’s last day of school, and both kids made the honor roll and now they’re on summer vacation. Now I have Ocean City on my mind, but there’s lots of adventures to get thru first.

It looks like one of the elm trees in our yard is sick. Maybe Dutch Elm disease. That’d be a bummer cuz we may have to cut it down to save the other one. At least it’s the lesser of the two elms, not the champion elm that I’ve grown particularly fond of is home to the family of squirrels that includes the red one with the black tail. The sick one is almost as huge and extends to over to our neighbor diagonally across the street. It’s very lopsided and I figured its destiny would be to fall over in a storm and take out 4 houses worth of power lines.

My office remains chaotic, although I’ve been productive and zen about the situation as things swirl around me. Viacom lost their big billion dollar lawsuit against Google – thrown out of court — so it’ll be interesting to see if there’s any fallout from that. My boss is in a bit of a funk over her deceased cat. I’m taking some time off over the next two weeks. A much needed break.

My recording project has progressed to the actual mastering, and Blick wired up a chain of external gear including a Weiss EQ and something called a BCL (Bass enhancer, Compressor, and Limiter). We rendered out the mixes without the final master effects (mainly dynamic compression) and ran them thru this chain instead. The difference was really striking. I’m really psyched. Blick is really getting into it. It seems he doesn’t get the chance to master full albums very much (mostly does promos and soundtracks fror TV shows) so he’s putting his full effort into it. His partner Glen dropped by and liked the sound. He dug Green Glove, saying it sounded just like Night Fly. Which I’m taking as a compliment, since it’s the most deliberately Steely track on the record.

After many attempts I successfully folded an origami zeppelin tonight. So I have one more nice new model for my exhibit this year. It also is the last word on the series of polar coordinate flying things that include my Rocketship, Hot Air Balloon and U.F.O.

Squirrels, Concerts, Cartwheels and Fireflies

When I was kid all squirrels were grey. Then one day we went up to visit my cousins in the suburbs outside of Toronto and we saw something new: a black squirrel. It turns it was a mutant strain, but a successful one, and over the years the black squirrels have spread out across the northeastern part of North America, to the point where now in the 21st century, they are common in Westchester County, NY. We have a champion elm tree in our front yard, and in it lives a family of squirrels. One Saturday morning a few weekends ago I was sitting on the couch sipping my morning coffee when the new family of young squirrels came out to play. I called the kids over and they were knocked out by overwhelming cuteness of all those squirrels frolicking in the trees, on the power lines and on the ground. I counted nine of them, some black and some grey. Then I saw something new I’d never seen before: a black squirrel with a red tail!

I was out rollerblading earlier this week and I saw another one. That’s two. I wonder if this a new variety of squirrels, and if it’s going to become common in a few years.

…

Last Friday was Lizzy’s spring band concert. I’m happy to say that the school band is getting a lot better and Lizzy in particular is sounding quite good. This is important to me as a parent and musician, because school band was a big part of my early musical training and experience. Two years ago (Lizzy’s first year in the band) the teacher quit at the end of the year, and about half the band graduated the school. So last year it was a new teacher and a ragtag group of beginners. So as you might imagine, they sounded pretty rough. But the teacher, Mr. Quinn, was quite dedicated and patient, and the kids have been steadily improving. This year was a dramatic both in terms of the material they could handle and the level at which they played it. This year they did a dress rehearsal at the school, which by all accounts was a big success and instrumental in recruiting new kids into the band.

Lizzy had a solo too, the Hunter’s Chorus by Weber, and I’m happy to say she nailed it. And at the end of the concert the band director told me he’s inviting Lizzy to join the honor band next spring. This is a band formed from the best players from a bunch of schools in the area. It’s made up kids in grades 6 – 8, and Lizzy is just going into 6th grade next fall, so that’s pretty cool.

…

This is the time of year when the evenings are really long. This kids are all excited about summer vacation and me, well, I have a couple long weekends coming up. Lizzy had the end of her gymnastics class last weekend, complete with a demo competition. It’s something she’s been working to master, so one night this week she was out on the lawn doing cartwheels back handsprings and asking me to spot her. Michelle was out too and as it started getting dark the fireflies came out. Firefly season is always special since it’s so short and only comes when the evenings are long. The kids caught a bunch of fireflies and but them in a jar, although I persuaded them to release our little glowing friends when it was time to go inside. It was a nice shiny moment of serenity.

Summer’s Here and the Time is Right

The season has progressed to full on summer. Finally made it to a long weekend, a much deserved and needed break after rather chaotic spell at work. Been trying to get our software release out the door, filling in for my boss who was on vacation, as well as running things since our project manager was gone too. Dealing with uncooperative directors of other projects, and that all-time favorite of software development, fixing other people’s bugs. Well all’s well that ends well I suppose and we met our deadline.

We went upstate to see Martin and Kathleen and Charlie over the weekend. Very nice hang. Went swimming, which was great for my back; the first time since the winter it really felt good. Unfortunately the car ride home undid that. We also watched the Queen open the British parliament on CSPAN. This was pretty random, but the girls are Anglophiliac these days because of Harry Potter, so we thought they like to see a real Queen in action commanding the Lords and Commons. The weirdest part was when the chief constable shouted “Hats off, strangers” before the Queen entered Parliament, predicted beforehand by a very blasé announcer.

I did some research into the wacky traditions of British government, and learned some interesting factoids. There is a movement afoot to replace the phrase “strangers” with “visitors” to be less anachronistic. The word strangers dates from the time of Cromwell. Smoking in parliament was banned in 1696, although snuff is available to all members at the public expense. Wearing of armor was banned in 1313. There’s a list of words banned from discourse that includes “blackguard”, “git”, and “traitor”.

Here’s some pictures from my yard and garden from 2 or 3 weeks back. The roses and fig tree are doing awesome, and we even have some ripe strawberries.

Workin’ Man’s Blues

I haven’t posted in a while. Last week I was feeling pretty burned out and dragged down by life and work in particular. In younger days this may have precipitated a semi-major existential crisis, but I’ve learned I usually just needed to unwind and catch up my rest, so I spent my evenings last week watching a movie or going to bed early rather than trying to get stuff done.

You may remember the management consultants skulking around my office a while back. Our corporate overlords want us to learn Agile since they don’t really understand software development or how to manage it. It should be said that we’ve been doing Agile for a few years now and we’re actually pretty good at it, and as far as it goes Agile is fine, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. The cultishness surrounding it is pretty silly and tiresome, and of course the problems in our organization have nothing to do with us not “doing Agile right”.

Nevertheless, the consultants were prized for their supposed Agile expertise. When they around to interview me I mentioned that I’ve seen a lot of management fads come and go. (Humans have been working together for more than 6000 years, so the idea that suddenly the One True Way of Project Management has been divined is kind of absurd.) We had several meetings in which developers raised legit issues about or process and the limitations of Agile, and the consultants gave us weak and unsatisfactory answers. Then they went off and wrote up a report and it’s been circulating our department. The consensus was that it was about 1/3 okay but that part was so generic they could have pasted it in from some web site, about 1/3 dead wrong, and 1/3 complete bullshit that couldn’t even be evaluated for correctness. Among the gems it contained was the bullet point “Developers think that Agile may be a management fad.” which is of course true, and if you reduce this to its essence, they have a problem with the fact that “developers think”.

My boss and the other tech directors, and basically everyone who read it had the same reaction, a combination of disgust and outrage. Even the VP’s of project management who commissioned the report were embarrassed to stand behind it. So they set up a meeting with the consultants and basically went over the report point by point tore them apart. I’d imagine that’s not the end of it, but it makes me feel better after having my professionalism slagged by some clueless wonks. One positive thing that was in the offing anyway is that we have a new VP to oversee our group and sibling projects. He made a good first impression on me and is well regarded by people who’ve worked with him. He’s now the new boss of the Bad Manager, so that will go a long way to solving that problem.

On top of this, we had to get a release of our product out the door last week. We just finished a major launch, and this was pretty much an unexpected follow-on to accomdate a new client. The Bad Manager wanted the release “immediately” so we had to call a meeting to explain to him what it all it would take to build, deploy and test the app. It’s a few days work, partly because we’re doing alot of the deploy stuff for the first time, and partly to allow for a full QA. At one point I’m enumerating the steps to the Bad Manager, and he says “Somebody ought to be writing this down.” So I handed him a pen and pad of paper. Yeesh.

Friday I stayed home from work because Michelle had to get a tooth pulled. I was totally burnt out, so it was just as well. She had a baby tooth that was fused to her jaw, so it was nontrivial surgery. I drove so Jeannie could hold Michelle’s hand in the backseat of the car. We’d known she’d need this for quite some time and Jeannie has been really dreading it. But it turned out not to be so bad. The tooth’s root had begun to dissolve and the x-ray didn’t look anywhere near as scary as the one from a year ago. The doctor and nurse were very nice and put Michelle at ease and the operation took only maybe a half hour. She was kind of woozy afterwards no major pain over the weekend.

So shaw’nuff life gets better. We had a fantastic weekend with beautiful weather. Took care of the yardwork, went skating, feeling rested again. The highlight was Jeannie and I went into the city last night to celebrate our friend Lisa’s birthday. (Lisa it’s your birthday, happy birthday Lisa.) We went to some crazy trendy Japanese restaurant in Chelsea. Fantastic food and drink and a really good time.