Category: General

More Complaining About Winter

I went shopping for a snow blower today. I haven’t gotten one up until now because we only get enough snow to make it worthwhile a few times a year, and some years not at all. But now we have snow and I really shouldn’t be shoveling it by hand, and it’s a lot for Jeannie to do solo. So there it is. A few weeks ago we went to Sears to look at dishwashers and refrigerators and they had a whole field of different kinds of snow blowers. I went back today and it’s all lawnmowers and barbecue grills. What the heck?!? It’s still February and there’s over a foot of snow on the ground. Also looked for a new winter coat, but as usual they have nothing in my size. I hate shopping.

I started working out again yesterday. I made some adjustments to the routine. Doing more stretching and far less weights. I’m going to reintroduce the weight and reps gradually. By the time I get back to full weight it will be spring, but I think next winter I’m going to make it a policy to seasonally adjust my workout balance with less strength training and more yoga and stretching stuff.

Snow Daze

Well I’m surviving the winter. I feel better about the season now that there’s snow on the ground. Last week we got a big snowfall, enough to pretty much close the entire New York City for a day. The kids had the day off from school and I helped them build a snow man amid interminable shoveling. But that was nothing compared to my friend John in D.C., who’s endured a few big snow falls, a power outage and a week of from school (He’s a teacher).

I was scheduled to another mixing session with Erik, but that got postponed. We ended up doing it a couple days later and now I have two songs done and sounding totally awesome. One of them, an R&B number with a horn section, almost sounds too clean. Once I get one more in the can I’ll post some audio files for you to hear.

The kids had off from school yesterday and we took them skiing. Another round of fresh snowfall made for a slow drive, but the best conditions I’ve skied on on the East coast in years, maybe ever. As an added bonus, we met our friend Seth on the mountain and it was his birthday. It was snowing so hard we had to stop and buy the girls goggles. It was Michelle’s first real day off the bunny hill and up to the top of the mountain. She was a little nervous abut it, but she did just great, and soon felt confident enough to try some blue trails. At one point there a was a steep spot and I skied a bit ahead, stopped and turned back to see if she could handle it. She just blew right past me going “Wheeeeeee!!!”. Now we can all ski together as a family, which is great, cuz it means we can plan a ski vacation out west in a few years.

Things have been contentious at work recently. My project is behind schedule, mainly due to the Bad Manager, not giving us requirements to work against in a timely fashion. This in turn stems from the fact that he does not have a technical background and is out of his depth trying to manage this project. Last Friday we had a meeting to work our requirements for a particular feature set and yet again he wasn’t prepared, didn’t take notes or understand what he needed to meeting, questioning obvious points but unable to contribute to the actual issues that need to be worked out. So my boss kind of lost her temper and the two of them got into a rather heated argument. Today was yet another meeting, and my boss’s boss and the Bad Manager’s boss showed up, and everyone was on their best behavior and in the end we hammered out the design of the panel resolved. Yeesh.

We’ve been watching some Olympics and been enjoying it pretty well. I like the winter sports, but I must say I haven’t watched regular TV in a long time and I find the pacing and constant interruptions and 50-50 ratio of ads to sports makes it kind of a drag, and my enthusiasm starting to wane. Most people don’t seem to mind or notice this, but TV ads have been out of my system and it’s kind of a shock.

Daylight Again

Well we’re moving into the second half of winter. It’s still plenty cold, but at least the days are getting longer and it’s the daytime again when I get up in the morning, which is helping with the seasonal blues.

We went ice skating this last weekend, which was a fun time. We had planned on going skiing but Lizzy had to have a tooth pulled on Friday (baby tooth hadn’t started to get loose yet, but the tooth under started growing and pushing up), and wasn’t feeling up to by Saturday evening, so we decided to skating instead, since it’s closer to home.

Been making progress with the music. Last week Erik and I went to do another mixing/mastering session at his studio, but his car broke down on the trip into the city, so that was kind of a bust. Still, I worked on my own on “Green Glove”, on of the two songs that still needs to be completed. This was originally supposed to be a quick, almost throwaway song, a fun little idea to round out the record. But then there were problems with the arrangement, so I’ve be brining a new level of detail and precision to it. I redid the bass part and added rhythm guitar, and then I changed the horn arrangement and retracked the vocals. One important thing I did was to pan the backing vocals to one side and the horns to the other. This gave the whole mix a lot more space and clarity. So it’s getting there. Hope to get it finished next weekend.

We watched the movie “Anvil: The Story of Anvil” over the weekend. Inspirational odyssey of a starving artist. The band is from Toronto. A couple scenes of the film took place in McKellar, Ontario, on the shores and waters of Lake Manitouwabing, where I spent I bunch of time as a kid.

As for other random tasks, I’ve even gotten back to making some progress on my origami book, although not as fast as I’d like. And now that I’m done with the updated music player, I can concentrate on the next cycle on the Foldinator. I still haven’t made any progress on the winter home improvement agenda, but then I guess getting the new appliances can count toward that and other projects deferred.

New Goal: The Appliances

Well football fever died almost as soon as it was born. The Jets played a good three quarters of football last week, but in the end the Colts overcame their defense. Ah well, at least we have Super Bowl Sunday free now.

In other news, our dishwasher broke down last week. Jeannie for some reason has gotten really stressed out over this, although Lizzy has cheerfully volunteered to help out with doing the dishes, which is nice. Then last night our fridge started to go on the fritz, so we now have two appliances that need replacing. Guess we’ll spend the weekend shopping. Fun fun fun.

The Oh-Tens

Had a very nice winter break. A bit of time off work, relaxing and getting caught up on things, Xmas with the family, a trip upstate to see family and friends, plus more visiting around the home turf. All doing well. The hit gift this year is a game called Qwirkle which my brother got for my daughter. It’s sort of like scrabble but with shapes and colors instead of letters. The kids enjoy it and the grownups too. I even brought it along to my friend’s for New Year’s eve.

It seems every year around this time Jeannie and I binge on videos. Fits in well with escaping from the darkness and cold. Last year it was HBO’s “Rome”. One year we watched the entire LoTR trilogy. This year it was Firefly/Serenity. The show is a few years old, and they only made a handful of episodes and a movie, but it was very shiny. Like Rome, it was too good to be on TV.

I listened to my album-in-progress a few times. Mainly satisfied, some tweaks to make. Jammed on diagrams for my origami book. Up to step 70 or so on the Medieval Dragon, complete with diagrams, page layout and annotations. It’s looking like it might get to 100 steps! Worked on some software projects. Did some home repairs and touch up painting in the hall and kitchen.

Now it’s the start of a new year, a new decade. Hurm. Been very cold for three weeks now. As always I hate the cold. Back to work. Everyone in the office is grumpy and it seems everyone’s trains have been running late. At least I’m looking forward to some ski trips.

News on the Street

It’s Thanksgiving break, and I feel like I have alot to be thankful for this year. Things are generally good for my loved ones and my overall situation, and goals I’ve been working towards for years have been showing signs of progress and paying off. Of course its easier to feel good about life when you’re relaxed. This is my first break since the start of the school year in September, and we’ve been taking it easy and getting things done this weekend. No big travel or entertaining, other than going to Jeannie’s folks for Thanksgiving day. Played a fun game of Earthopoly (Monopoly with a “go green” spin) with the kids. Jeannie and I both went bankrupt early, and it was and epic battle between Lizzy and Michelle.

I got a nice big block of time to work on music. I re-recorded, edited and mixed the vocals the song “Angel or Alien” (soon to be renamed “U.F.O.”). It sounds much better and this makes six out of nine songs ready for mastering.

I kicked off the this winter’s home improvement project cycle. We have four projects on the slate and I thought I would tackle the easiest one first and knock it off the list this weekend. It was just to shore up some towel bars in the bathroom that were coming loose from the wall. However one thing leads to another and jobs are not always that simple. I took off the first bar and put in a new stronger wall anchor. But then the towel bar would not go back on to the mount since the new anchor had a bigger screw head and the towel bar would not fit. Bad design. We had to get a whole new set of towel bars and rings. The dimension were just different enough that it meant drilling new holes and painting over the place where the old mounts came up. So it turned into a three day job. But whatevs, it’s done now. Woo-hoo. Three to go.

One nice surprise this week is that the town paved our street, so we went from having the bumpiest, potholiest street in town to the newest, smoothest one. Immediately the kids started clamoring to go out rollerblading, but it was sort of rainy for a couple days, so it had to wait until the weekend. We finally got a chance to play outside. Lizzy recently got her cast off her arm, and immediately did some cartwheels, something she’s been pining to do for weeks. The weather has been really mild all November, and we still are picking fresh parsley from our garden and believe it not have roses in bloom.

Now we’re turning the corner into December. Looking at three intense weeks of work and everything, then a short week and some time off for the holidays.

Fall Groove

Well it’s more of the same over here. Nonstop busy. Work work work, making Jack a dull boy. My job situation with the clueless manager seems to have sorted itself out at least. The fall has come. Leaf raking season is upon us, although I expect I’ll still have to mow the lawn one more time. It’s getting darker and colder. We have to turn the heat on every night these days. Starting to get up before the sky is fully light. Ugh. And it’s no longer light or warm enough to go skating in the evening when I get home from work. So I’ve switched to using the Nordic Track indoors, which is not as much fun but I can listen to music while I’m doing it, so it gives me a chance to listen to the mixes from my record. Continuing to chip away at that, thank you very much.

I did some cool origami stuff. I made some “megafauna” models to donate to the American Museum of Natural History for their holiday tree. More on that soon. I’ll take some pictures tomorrow in the daylight. I’ve also started diagramming my Medieval Dragon. It starts with dividing the paper into ninths, which is something I always used to eyeball, but for the diagrams I worked out how to do it the legit mathematical way, which is pretty cool.

Jeannie and celebrated out Crytsal anniversary last week (I looked it up). It was a school night and so we did laundry and helped the kids study. Ah, married life after 15 years. We did meet for lunch in the city and go to a nice Thai place called Yum Yum. Afterwards we went to Toys’R’Us in Times Square and I bought her a lego dwarven catapult.

Denis and Sarah came to visit last weekend. We all had lots of fun. Carrie and Michelle always get on great and little Anna is walking already. Saturday Mary’s all came over and Jeannie’s parents too. Jeannie made a fantastic dinner for sixteen people. Chicken parmesan, eggplant parmesan and pasta. I was surprised to discover we had enough tables and chairs for everyone to eat once.

Fall Down, Part II

Seems that this is the time of year for work in progress. Here’s an update on a bunch of project. You can skip it if you find it boring.

My job has entered a new planning cycle. I’m trying to figure out how to deal with a manager who’s making it difficult for me to accomplish what I need to do. I want to moving forward with a major new feature set of my product, and he’s not getting it together to provide me with usable requirements. I working on him to see that it’s in his best interest to let me take over some things, but he is reluctant to give up control even though he’s spread too thin.

In music, I’ve been finishing off my album Face The Heat. I updated the page, including links to the newest mixes. I’m in the final phase, really focused on the details of the mixes now. Probably one or two pass at each song remains, but I find after I do a mix I have to take a few days and listen to it.

But in the sense that I want to finish my record to make time for origami, so far it’s kinda backfired. I have a trip coming up to California next month for the Pacific Coast Origami Conference, and I’d like to have something new for that. I took the summer off from working on my book, but now I have to get back into it. Last winter I was in a groove of diagramming over a model a month, but that’s a pretty heavy pace. So far this fall I made some corrections to my Lizard and began diagramming my Medieval Dragon, which will be probably over 70 steps! I also have a bunch of models in development, including some insects: a new butterfly, a dragonfly, and maybe another crack at the ladybug. And then there’s the batch from June that need further refining: the Blimp, the Sphere and the Orb UFO. So I’ve been doing some origami, just not as much as I’d like. Ah well I still have a month.

I’ve also made progress on the Foldinator, my origami software. It is now generating the paper procedurally using the drawing API. Also I‘ve defined the various lines weights and colors the application needs. I have a bit further to go before I release the next demo, however. I want to draw the initial state of the paper based on what it says in the xml file for the model. This requires a bit of plumbing so that the paper is aware when the model is loaded. After that I will probably go on to the non-folding operations, namely flipping and rotating the paper.

I’ve realized that I am long overdue in updating my origami site with pictures of my 2009 models. The web site redesign is probably far enough along that I should shift gears and take care of this before carrying on with that. The photography and photoshop is a whole little project in itself. While I’m at it, I should update my general photo gallery with pictures from the summer before it gets too far behind.

Fall Down

Well the fall weather has arrived. We’ve passed the equinox and turned into the dark side of the year. The sun is setting sooner; not many days left for rollerblading after work. Last night it got down into the forties and we had to turn on the heat in the house. Today it’s only up to the mid fifties. Definite jacket weather. I mowed the lawn for possibly the last time this season this afternoon.

I’ve been very busy, but have had some time for family and friends. The kids have been watching more Star Wars, and I discovered episodes I – III are tolerable when you watch them in half-hour chunks. Michelle has been learning Weird Al’s “The Saga Begins” on the Ukulele and actually doing a pretty good job.

Last weekend Martin and Kathleen and their baby boy Charlie came down for a visit. I was great to see them and get caught up. We went down to Long Island for a party for our friend Nick, which was great too, and included a wider circle of friends to catch up with.

Towards the end of the night, the kids were playing scooters in the front and Lizzy fell down and hurt her arm. It turned out she has a hairline fracture in her radius and had to get a cast. So she’s out of gymnastics and swimming for the next month, but otherwise OK, and in good spirits. Everyone at school signed her cast, which made her quite happy.