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Each year I get to watch my boy appear and disappear in a 24 hour period. I hate that. It’s amazing how rewarding it can be to put something together with your kids. This year, I got to put together a playschool dollhouse, a K’Nex Twisted Coaster, and an er…um….something to do with mechanized hamsters that need exercise. A toy is evil if and only if it requires batteries. I find Michael Bay’s Transformer’s movie mesmerizing in that “If its on, I have to watch it” way I usually reserve for Airplane!, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Ten Commandents. Bad news is worse at Christmas somehow. It’s like you’re in the foxhole, getting shelled, and the guy next to you farts. Nothing to do but smell it. The Mattress sales industry should be regulated tighter than casinos. Casinos at least offer comps. If you’re on the hook to feed your buddy’s dog while he’s on vacation, wear comfortable footwear. Said dog may be off her chain and feeling athletic. Bulleted lists get tiring after 4 bullets. I finished Meghan McCain’s Dirty Sexy Politics a few days ago, and I found it both naive and insightful. Naive in that the book’s the equivalent of the hot date that goes nowhere: Meghan tells all, but has frightfully little to tell of consequence, aside from her night in Nashville with John Rich and how she totally screwed-up that infamous GQ interview. ...

So, the other day, J-man and I were trekking to Shelbyville, Maria in the back seat. Joey was bored and he started the “Guess a number between…” Each time we play this game, I calc the ceil(lg(N)) of the higher number and request that many guesses, and I win every time. ("Stand back, I’m going to try science!") Anyway….Maria wanted to get in on this, too. Which is fascinating, since she CAN’T COUNT. ...

Ruminations for today: It’s a crime there’s no site where you can put in reasonable search criteria (“manual diesel wagon”) and have it monitor AutoTrader, eBayMotors, Cars.com, Craigslist, etc. Sort of like Kayak.com does for airline tickets or Mint.com does for finances. Corollary thought: Some techno-geek/gear head like me invented just such a program, but loved it so much never left his Mom’s basement. Plurality of choice sucks. Both ‘cancelled’ and ‘canceled’ are correct English. The single-L form makes my brain want to explode. So, okay…until we invent telepathy, we’re stuck with language of some form to communicate ideas. Each language has its own strengths and weaknesses: brevity, density, beauty, expressiveness. Could we come up with something BETTER THAN ENGLISH, please?! Corporate communications is where English majors go to die. In no particular order, here are the new cars I want to test drive: ...

I sit here in office 249, staring down the last work week of the year, the Meghan McCain tome Dirty Sexy Money winking at me. Outside, the temperature hovers at 17 F, as arctic air chills most of America. Yes, I blinked, and the weekend was over. So, what happened? First, I saw Despicable Me with Maria Thursday night (yes, a little Daddy/Daughter time). Wonderful film, even if the tickets cost us $3 and the concessions cost $19. I laughed a lot, and Steve Carell is a genius. I’ve subjected Whitney to my (bad) Gru impression since Friday. ...

Background: I have a 6 week old infant daughter. In an ongoing effort to avoid sleep deprivation psychosis, my wife and I now alternate “standing watch” for Grace each night. Last night was my night. Man, a day that ends at midnight and begins at 4:30 sucks. Really could’ve done with another hour of sleep at least. Still, it beats Sunday night/Monday morning, at which time my daughter went to bed at 11:30, then woke up at 2:30 and screamed the next 18 hours.

Yes, I’ve caught the blogging bug. I feel different enough from my former self that it seems to make sense. Maybe I’m reading too much Peter Egan these days. Whatever, I’m here, again. This weekend was another hole in my soul weekends when Joey gets to go to Louisville to be someone else with Dad #1. This is not how he phrases it, but that’s it in effect. From my perspective, I drop him off @ 7pm Friday, he goes into a fugue state for 48 hours, then I pick him up at 7pm Sunday. In any case, it kills me, as Joey’s my only defense against the giggly, shopping, toe-painting brigade known as the Combs Women. ...

Hey. I laughed plenty this weekend about things r… Whitney - Nov 1, 2010 Hey. I laughed plenty this weekend about things revolving around fire. and seriously? When was the last time I had my toenails painted? When was the last time I had toenails, come to think of it? See what happens? You call me female and the claws come out. oh. wait. shucks. ...

From time to time, I like to check-in on what daily life is like. Yeah, it’s mundane, but it helps me remember what I was like at any given moment. 5 am: Alarm Clock Goes off. Hit snooze bar. 5:09am: Alarm Clock Goes off. Hit snooze bar 5:18am: Alarm Clock Goes off, wakes 6 week old infant. Wife hits me. I turn off alarm clock and get up 5:30->6: Wash dishes from night before, read RSS feeds on Google Reader, listen to podcasts on iPod (particular favs: “Things you missed in History class”, “FLOSS weekly”, and “Wait, wait…don’t tell me”.) 6: wake-up Joey for school, walk him to the bathroom. 6:15: go back to bathroom to rouse comatose Joey 6:30: Shower, shave, yada yada yada 7:15: Leave to take Joey to school 7:45: Pick up Del for carpool 8:15: Arrive at work 8:30->10:30: Most productive time of the day 10:30: first SCRUM standup of the day. Dysfunctional, slightly dramatic team. Lots of contempt. Good product, though. 11: second SCRUM standup of the day. 11:30->1: Intend to get lunch. Usually hack on code problems identified during morning standup meetings 1->5: Program on my bread-and butter project. Ah, heaven! 5:15: Leave for home 6ish: Arrive at home, take screaming infant from wife 6->6:30: Converse with wife while she prepares dinner 6:30->7:30: Family dinner. Yes, we actually sit down to dinner most nights, and I LOVE IT. My wife’s an awesome cook, and I’m an awesome consumer of her cooking. 7:30->8:30: Bath time for Maria, get Joey into bed. Grace usually has a feeding right around this time. 8:30->10:30: Adult time, usually spent staring comatose @ television thinking we really ought to go to bed, because the baby will be up for a feeding soon. 10:30->11:30: Last feeding of the ‘day’ for Grace 3:30->4:30am: Give Grace her nightly bottle, if it’s my turn (Whitney and I alternate.) So, it’s a busy, structured day almost every day. Back when I first got married, the above would’ve driven me mad. I hate/hated repetition and routine, and the daily grind got to me often. Two infants drive that sort of hubris right out of you, apparently. Nowadays, I yearn for those nights where I can get 6 uninterrupted hours of sleep. ...

I like how it says it twice, like you don’t be… Randal L. Schwartz - Nov 5, 2010 I like how it says it twice, like you don’t believe it the first time.

Inspired by @tr0x on Twitter.com, here’s my anti-bragging list @ age 32. I suck at most anything sports related. I’m egotistical and I hate to lose, from which naturally follows I never liked being on any sports team. I was on a T-Ball team when I was 6. I played right field, couldn’t catch a ball to save my life, and that team ended-up winning the league championship. I chose to retire on top, you might say. ...

You are not a bad friend. We all get wrapped up in… Susan - Nov 4, 2010 You are not a bad friend. We all get wrapped up in life sometimes and that is that. Friends are people that you can talk to at any point and it seems that no time has truly passed. :-0 Yeah, commenting on my own post. ...

I was in a training class last week, and thought these quotes were interesting: Game time is not the time to improve skills. It’s the time to apply the skills. Projects have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Operations go on forever. Marry not the person that makes you happiest, but the person that makes you least unhappy. Metrics allow you to get rid of the losers. They DO NOT let you pick the winners The difference between a job and a career? About 20 hours a week.

I’m 31, and I have arthritis in my lower back. THIRTY ONE YEARS OLD. Mom’s prophesy has come true: “You need to get up and move, or you’ll have arthritis by the time you’re 30.” You were off by one, mom. Can’t really lay blame on anyone but myself here. I’m the one who decided sitting around like Jabba the Hut for the last decade was the way to go. Twenty six percent body fat, zero flexibility, and no core strength. ...

I’ve been pulling lots of OT at work lately (as has my whole team) and this past week, the walls started closing in on me. That’s appropriate–I work in a windowless lab surrounded by high-walled cubicles and machines that wouldn’t pass FCC Class B certification with a bribe and a reactor radiation shield. Our lab has a sign with fake (?) blood on it that says: “Stress relief: Bang head here.” ...

ummm……yeah….>I don’t think you’r… Whitney - Jun 3, 2010 ummm……yeah….>I don’t think you’re part of the generation that grew up on these movies and thus including yourself in the “moving on” generation is absurd. You were 16 when the first one came out - mostly grown…..

Most of my Saturdays involve me getting to “sleep in” to 7am. Today was special–I got to sleep in to 8:30, at which point Bella declared, “Well, I’ve been awake for 2 hours at this point, might as well get up.” To encourage domestic sanity, Whitney and I have an arrangement–each of us gets alone time for around 4 hours each weekend. Traditionally, Whitney gets hers Saturday mornings ’til 1pm. ...

(As related to Kim Tegge, the lone coffee holdout at work) Stage 0: Coffee?! BLECH! Does smell good, though. Stage 1: Coffee?! BLECH! I’ll take a Mocha Frappuchino, please. Stage 2: Coffee?! BLECH! I’ll take an instant French Vanilla Cappuccino, please. I drink one of these every couple of weeks or so. Stage 3: Latte, please. I can’t stand coffee. This is my first one this week. Stage 4: Hmm…no latte? No Starbucks? Need something…I’ll take some coffee with my cream and sugar. Never had this before. ...

This morning, my daughter Maria, had a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy at an outpatient surgery center in Lexington. She did very well, considering. She wasn’t happy to have all that pain when she awoke. She cried, and I held her in the recovery room as they took the IV out of her left arm. The nurses and staff at the outpatient center were attentive, answering our every question. We took the slow trip back to Georgetown in the Cube (still no van ’til next week), and she dozed lightly with mom keeping her company in the back seat. Since then she’s taken her Tylenol 3 (with yummy Codeine) and 2 popsicles.

This year, I was puzzling over the word ‘Easter’ itself. Doesn’t seem to have any religious connection, does it? All the Latin-derived languages borrow from “Pesach,” the Hebrew word for passover. Surprise, Easter is named for an Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring. Traditionally the goddess Eoastre saved a frozen bird by turning it into a bunny. A bunny who could lay eggs, like a bird. BANG–“Easter Bunny” For me, this Easter has been a real bust. Really, the whole Lenten season, too. Usually, I get into everything from Ash Wednesday through Pentecost–purification, focus on religious life, prayer. This year, it’s been a succession of issues: Pregnancy, Mom’s cancer returning, ongoing illness in my wife & kids, work, a car accident, dealing with insurance company. This weekend’s been the exclamation point on that–missed our Good Friday chorale because of shuttling J, then missed Easter because J’s got stomach flu. Three roundtrips to Louisville in 3 days, then I get to look forward to my boy being gone for a week. :-(

Since March 22nd, my family’s been tooling around in a Nissan Cube. Let’s be honest: We hate it. We miss our Honda Odyssey and look forward to its return. Heck, this thing makes me yearn for the consistent handling, quiet competence of my 10 year old Toyota Camry. Yep. This brick is Hello Kitty with wheels, and yikes has it overstayed its welcome. For those who don’t know, a Nissan Cube is a Nissan Versa with a different body. A Nissan Versa is the smallest Nissan automobile sold in America, featuring a coarse 122 hp 1.8L engine and a Continuously Variable Transmission. Pic of the versa: ...