Moving to Oklahoma? Yep.

Okie doke here's a major update: I'm moving. My residence is currently in Colorado (and has been for 7 years or so). If you're in Oklahoma and wondering why I say I live in Colorado but have Oklahoma listed it is because I'm moving that way ASAP. Looking for rentals now (but hoping I can sell my house quickly so I can just buy one in OK).

Choosing Oklahoma over Colorado? Yeah. Odd choice even for me. But my parents/sister/brother/nephew/niece are in Norman and much as I've tried to talk them out of it over the years they just ain't gonna move. I didn't put down a bunch of roots in Colorado, my parents are starting to have some health problems, I love hanging with my sister and brother (in-law), and I want to watch my nephew and niece grow up. So ... this time the mountains lose the fight :)

I still work for Cisco (who bought the Pure Networks in August 2008) and plan to stay at it. My boss is great and has been very understanding about the move (I have always worked remotely so it really won't impact my job much except for fewer choices of flights when I need to travel).

I do have my backup plan started for when I finally do leave the computer field. If all goes well I've got a pretty good fund going for starting a business in Norman with my brother some day. But for the forseeable future I'm enjoying this job and well ... they pay darned good.

Nederland is a great town, but I WON'T miss 6-7 months of snow and sub-freezing temperatures. I -will- miss not needing an air conditioner.

Choice between living in the best landscape ever seen and living near family ... which to choose? OKC I'm omw. Colorado, I'll visit often!

Caution! Moving walk is nearing it's end. Please watch your step. Thank you!

4+ hours at the airport gives TONS of time to ponder

Just bruised the hell out of my biceps trying to get into my car ... Locked keys in middle of nowhere NM.

Northern NM otw to OKC

Heading from Seattle to Vancouver for a 1hr action-packed demo an then back to Seattle

Testing Ping.fm

Love the Krystal

I found myself in Atlanta this week on a fairly unexpected business trip. Many people would take a business trip as an excuse to grab expensive food. Not me ... or at least not this trip.

I arrived just before midnight on Wednesday night. Got my car. Got the GPS going. Used the iPhone and looked up a Krystal on the way to the hotel. So many Krystals on the interstate are 24 hours that I didn't even ponder this one being closed. But ... yes ... it was. CURSES! Foiled again.

The next day after my business meeting was over you know what I did. Into the GPS I go. So what if it was only 3pm, I had skipped lunch for this!

15 minutes later I'm blissfully "snacking" away on 2 cheese Krystals (no pickles), a Krystal Chik, and (just to REALLY over do it) 2 Double Krystals with cheese (I swear I only ordered 1 ... the woman taking the order "just knew").

Sidebar: I miss the South :( I know alot of people who haven't lived there don't "get" the area ... but you can actually leave a drive-through with a smile just because the person taking your order had a good attitude and sense of humor plus a big smile. You just don't get that other places. I have plenty of -pleasant- experiences with service everywhere, but only in the south is my spirit raised by the attitude most people have.

Heck ... tell me the last time THIS happened to you. I was staring at the traffic on Peachtree and cringing. It was backed up a mile ahead and half a mile behind. So what did I do? I started sorting my bag of amazing little cheeseburgers. I wasn't even looking at the road. Some stranger saw me waiting there, stopped their car (blocking traffic behind them so that I could get out) and waited for me to look up (which was a good 20 seconds, a lifetime in the traffic pattern) so that I could get out. Here in Colorado you might get that if you eyeball all the people in traffic but if you take more than 3 seconds to start moving then you lose your chance. And most other places? You're just gonna be waiting until a traffic light shows you mercy.

Anyway, back to the food! Krystals are one of those foods best enjoyed in 1 manners:

1. While driving
2. While drunk

Needless to say the 2 SHOULD be mutually exclusive. Since I hadn't had a drink in a couple of weeks I did the only thing left: I ate on the road. Where was I going? Nowhere. I had hours to get to to the airport (there is irony in that fact ... since this WAS Atlanta traffic). I didn't even turn on the GPS. I just started munching away and enjoying the traffic. Oh yes, this was like a little homecoming. Too bad I didn't have enough time to digest the meal before getting to the airport later that night (sadly for the person next to me during the 3 hour flight, too, but luckily she was a sleeper).

NOTE TO KRYSTAL MANAGEMENT: PUT A KRYSTAL IN THE ATLANTA AIRPORT PLEASE! I've had fresh Krispy Kreme in the airport in Sydney, Australia ... surely I should be able to get Krystals in the Atlanta airport!

It is funny, since when I first moved to Alabama in 1991 I wouldn't THINK of eating at Krystal. I spent 4 years deftly avoiding Krystal even when when it was so late at night that there were only 2 options (needless to say I ate a lot of Taco Bell in those days). Then ... one day ... I caved. My life was never the same since.

Yes, I know just how low the quality of the meat is. In fact I know first-hand since one time in 2003 my (now ex) wife went to Tennessee to visit her parents and I convinced her to stop at a Krystal and buy a full, uncooked, 20-burger pack of meat and buns and keep it in an iced cooler all the way home. I'm not kidding, that 20-pack of patties had enough fat that, when rendered, filled almost 2 mason jars. I was tempted to make tallow candles but decided people would be a bit too disgusted by the candles smelling like onions and hamburger.

I can't explain it. All I know is this: I'm probably better off with no Krystal available to me (I'd have to drive 600 miles ... and I have been known to go an hour out of my way on roadtrips to get some). But I'm not happier because of it :)

Why I watch even fewer commercials

Ok this is just a little rant posting, nothing serious.

I've been a DVR user for 7 or 8 years now. TiVo for a long time, DirecTV HD DVR for a year now. In that time I pretty much only watched 10% or so of the commercials. Yes, I admit it, I'm one of those people that broadcast TV hates.

Recently I moved my office (I work from home) to my living room. That lets me heat less of my house in the winter and only have 1 room with "loud things" (obviously I'm a bachelor at the moment). As such I have a tendency to leave the news or something similar on in the background throughout the day. Meaning I consume many many more commercials even if I don't actively watch them.

Which leads me to my rant. Why do only SOME commercials seem to be encoding audio in stereo-only? Since I'm using a Dolby PL2 capable receiver (which would convert stereo to a 5 channel output, meaning most sound goes through the center speaker) it is obvious that this is very purposefully done since if it was a "normal" stereo encoding it would go through my center.

This is flat annoying. Stereo sound on these commercials is also significantly louder. And in my case the right stereo speaker is directly over my head. I can bypass it by -forcing- a 5 channel output, but that means the receiver isn't being allowed to adapt to the sound in the best way.

Anyway, I can only assume that they are doing this on purpose as an attention grabber. Especially since they jack the volume up so high as well on these.

The net result?

When these blaster commercials come on I tend to completely turn the system off for an hour or two so I can keep focusing on what I'm doing. Probably better for me anyway.

But surely this isn't what is intended?

Mom's Birthday Party

Mom's birthday party at Bob and Bonnie's in Sierra Vista, Az.

Posting here so family can grab the pictures and so that the guest quartet can access their videos. Click on the pictures below for larger versions and use the Download function to grab the "full" size (1600 wide) pictures for your own albums. Links to the barbershop quartet videos are at the end.

Photos and movies taken with an Olympus Stylus 1010 digital camera. Blog, pictures and videos uploaded with Picasa 3 (need to have accounts on Picasa Web Folders, Blogger and YouTube to do the uploads).


Party table during dinner ... I forgot to get pictures of the cake ... oops


Kids and parents in the living room ... the dining room just wasn't big enough for all


Julia playing with her brother Willow


The barbershop quartet "Watering Hole #3" ... they actually sang first at the party, the pics aren't in chronological order.

There are videos of the quartet singing that I posted on YouTube:

The Java Jive

My Wild Irish Rose

New blog, old posts

Well I've decided to move my occasional and random bloggings again. I've had blogs in a few locations, none with more than 4 or 5 posts. Recently I've started using Facebook alot to connect with old friends but Wall posts aren't the same as blogging at all.

So I'll be trying to find some of my other posts and re-posting them here. That means the continuity of the site will be a bit odd, since this is technically the first posting but there will be posts that show up with earlier dates.

I also post some things on Google Documents, since its easier to write and edit there in some cases, and I can post to this blog by sharing those documents. Pretty handy. Right now I'm just setting things up.

There is no agenda to my blog. I'll post random weirdness that has happened to me, or a good recipe if I've done something worthwhile, etc.

Geoff's simple baked mac&cheese

History

• Rev2: 2008-04-28 - added Variations
• Rev1: 2008-04-17

Ingredients

• 1 box of "premium" macaroni and cheese (like Kraft Deluxe or Velveeta Shells and Cheese ... ie has a pack of soft cheese not powder)
• 2 small or 1 extra large egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2tsp Salt
• 1/2tsp Black Pepper
• 1 cup of shredded cheese (sharp cheddar, colbyjack, whatever sounds good)
• Baking dish just large enough to hold cooked pasta
• Optional: Handful of breadcrumbs (japanese panko works great as does anything else)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Prepare the pasta as per box instructions
3. While pasta is boiling whisk together milk, eggs, cheese packet from box, salt and pepper until cheese packet is well mixed
4. Put 1/2 of the cooked pasta in dish, pour 1/2 of cheese mixture from above over pasta
5. Spread 1/3 of the shredded cheese over dish
6. Remaining pasta and cheese mixture in dish
7. Evenly spread remaining shredded cheese over dish
8. Optional: Evenly sprinkle dish with handful of breadcrumbs
9. Optional: Dash of pepper to taste over dish
10. Bake in oven for 25-30 minutes, until cheese is beginning to brown and small air bubbles are rising around the edge
11. Let cool and set for 5-10 minutes

Variations

• Use 1/2 Mozzarella or italian cheese blend along with oregano / italian spices on top
• Rotini works well, especially flavored rotini
• Double the amount of pasta and just add enough cheese to spread across the top

"Describe your day"

[note: this was formerly on my MySpace blog on this same date ... I'm ditching MySpace for reasons mentioned on 3/16/2010 and copied this here]

Someone asked me to tell them what I did today. I was bored and wrote way too much. What do you do when you write too much? Yep, blog it.

And explaining what I did today really -won't- give you any idea of my normal day-to-day life, but its interesting anecdotally.

I woke up 2 hours early to drive to Denver (I live in Nederland) to go to civil court to make sure my deferred judgement for a concealed weapons charge was disposed of as expected. No, I'm not a gun toter, I had a knife in my luggage that I forgot about when I tried to clear DIA security back in March. I spent 30 min in the court that my other 2 appearances were in only to find they'd moved and I was in some other court. They didn't know which address the court was in, only the intersection, so I wandered around until I found the intersection. Then I spent a few more minutes entering random city buildings asking if they had any court rooms. Once there I spent a few minutes sitting to hear "you don't need to be here, case is over" (which is what I was expecting, but didn't want to be a no-show if I DID need to be there).

On the way home (I took the day off work) I somehow timewarped 3 hours between Lowes and Flatirons Mall. Bought a reciprocating saw ("sawzall" clone) so I can tear up another part of my house in a quixotic quest to make it less of a fixer-upper. Went to LensCrafters to exercise my new vision insurance only to find that the difference between their sales price and the insurance discounted price (they don't apply sales to insurance claims) was negligible. And oh my! Glasses have gotten quite expensive. I had Lasik a few years ago and was good with an old pair for a long time. I'm talking $560 after the insurance claim for 1 new frame and 2 pairs of lenses (1 pair of lenses for my old glasses to become sunglasses). I knew I didn't go the cheap route, and I'm not regretting it since I'd rather have good glasses (I don't need them for computer work or restaurant dining with someone, but do if I want to see much past that without blur), but ouch. I went for no-line bifocals (not to add more correction but so that I don't have to take them off to get rid of the correction, like when reading something in the car without over-correcting) so that was a good chunk of the cost.

Had lunch, drove home, and am answering some work emails and working on some data entry. Its my first day out of the office since starting a new job a month ago. I'd been a remote worked for the last 10 years but after just a couple hours working from home this afternoon I'm realizing I -don't- miss it and am wishing I was in the office. I never figured myself to be social enough to notice it before.

And that's my day.

The Perfect Horoscope?

[note: this was formerly on my MySpace blog on this same date ... I'm ditching MySpace for reasons mentioned on 3/16/2010 and copied this here]

So I randomly clicked on my horoscope for today here at MySpace and I got:

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Gemini (May 21 - Jun 20)

You are pulled between your fantasies and the need to handle pressing details involving others. On one hand, your unbounded dreams are important to your well-being by revealing previously unknown possibilities. Stay focused now or little problems may get out of hand. It's better to face the real world today than drift off into the clouds.

That thing should appear every day. Its possibly the most generally-applicable horoscope I've ever seen while remaining accurate.

Employment? Yes!

[note: this was formerly on my MySpace blog on this same date ... I'm ditching MySpace for reasons mentioned on 3/16/2010 and copied this here]

Ok, I could still be jinxing this but I don't think so. Only things that could still go wrong:

1) Pee test comes back with a false positive

2) Background check comes back and freaks about my pending deferred judgement in the stupidest court case I've ever been involved in (ok, its the ONLY one I've been involved in ... and no, I'm not writing about it until October 24th when its done).

3) They look at it and go "hey, he never SAID he had his degree but we just assumed" and toss my 10 years of related experience out the door.

Pessimistic stuff out of the way? Yep.

Yes, this means I finally have gainful employment starting on October 1st. I'll be Wall Street on Demand's newest Technical Project Manager. They're essentially a .com that provides market trends and charts and similar stuff to all of the large financial web sites (thought they generated their own content? nope). But not really a .com since they started the business back when faxes were the rage in communications.

Its not paying a TON, in fact its only about 55% of my last regular job. Enough to pay the mortgage but not the mortgage and the bills that remained from the divorce (credit cards mostly) and miscellaneous living expenses. But, I've found a way to manage it ... refinancing the house interest-only until the Spring when I can get it on the market. Yeah, in THIS market I'm refinancing for a larger loan, but not alot. Just enough to kill that 1 card and a couple of smaller debts. In the end it will be about $700/month less outflow which IS enough for this job to pay all the bills and still let me pay more than $1.50 a meal (which has been my running target for the last 8 months while I blew my savings staying afloat).

If I don't sound happy trust me I damned well am. I'm ECSTATIC. My brain had gone places beyond sanity the last 2-3 months as my bank account was hitting bottom and I never want to go back there again. It is unbelievably relieving. I won't get to travel like I have the last few years, but I won't be at risk for going under or having the house foreclosed (no, I'm not a victim of the sub-prime mess, just coincidental timing).

Phew.

Today in a Mexican restaurant

[note: this was formerly on my MySpace blog on this same date ... I'm ditching MySpace for reasons mentioned on 3/16/2010 and copied this here]

A young couple, mid 20's, walks into a mexican restaurant today. A fairly typical Boulder couple, a bit hippie-granola to their look. Nothing wrong with that, I've associated with that look myself (but managing long hair is for the birds).

They are seated a booth away from me and the waiter brings out a bowl of bean dip. This restaurant uses ground beef in their bean dip. The lady of the couple, in a voice that has just a twinge of attitude to it, immediately tells the waiter, "you can take that back now please."

The waiter, confused, replies, "its for the chips" that he is about to bring out.

The lady continues, "we're vegitarians, don't waste it on us" and makes it clear she isn't going to touch the bowl but that it offends her.

This story wouldn't even exist if it stopped there. I respect everyone's right to be upset at whatever food they find disgusting. In fact I personally think the most of the meat industry is like the Wal-Mart of the food world, sacrificing our health and future for a quick buck. I'm all for grass fed beef and eating LESS meat, but meat itself doesn't bother me. It is a part of our nature. Taking a stand is fine though, and not wanting it on your table is definitely your perogative.

However, about 5 minutes later the waiter returned to take their order. The woman says ... "we'll share the shrimp fajitas".

Ok, so, they're not anti-meat. They are probably anti-beef. Possibly anti-four-legged animal protein. Again, that's great. And no, I don't equate shrimp intellect with cow intellect. However ... the whole attitude shown about the chip dip just seems hypocritical. They weren't rude. Don't get me wrong. But ... if you don't eat beef then say "we don't eat beef". Ok? I hate to tell you this, but the fishing industry is almost as bad to the ocean as the ranching industry is to the land.

Requiem for two cats

[note: this was formerly on my MySpace blog on this same date ... I'm ditching MySpace for reasons mentioned on 3/16/2010 and copied this here]

So alot of people know about my job, ex-marriage and need to sell my house.

Something I haven't mentioned is that this year I've now lost 2 of my cats. I had 4. I have 2.

If you met them, the ones that passed were Semele (late March), who died at the young age of seven from kidney failure, and Sasquatch, who passed about 30 minutes ago. I'm writing this to help process the stuff tonight and to get my head clear.

Semele is the tabby, Sasquatch is the tortoise shell.

The tragic part is, I'll never know for sure if Semele passing wasn't my fault. You see, I was on vacation for 5 days and when I came home, put my bags in my bathroom, and about 30 minutes later I found Semele pretty well wasting away. 2 days later I found a dried BM in the bathroom that I really don't think was there before I left. Which means she either did it right before I left, right after I got home, or she was locked in the bathroom for the whole time I was gone. I try to account for them all before I leave, but if I made a last minute pit stop she easily would have snuck in.

I spent about a week with her and the vet taking blood, giving her fluids, and trying to force her to eat. She had been through a kidney failure once before when she was 2 (I think she ate something mildly poisonous) and so her system never quite rebounded, so just a little was enough to push her down.

She was possibly the nicest, most polite cat you would ever have known. She wasn't a lap cat more than once a year but she always wanted to be next to you on the sofa or watching over you while you slept. She would clean up messes other cats would make, in and out of the litter box. Most importantly, she was the companion cat for Sasquatch. I don't just mean friends, I mean lovers even though both were female and not sexual. They would spoon together for hours, with Semele flipping over and them "making biscuits" on each others bellies.

Sasquatch didn't mope much when Semele was gone, but she definitely slowed down. About 5 weeks ago she stopped eating much. 3 weeks ago I took her to my Vet and after blood tests he saw that her mouth had very bad gingivitis. I guess that was over with 2 weeks ago. She still wouldn't eat, at most she would lick the gravy off of soft food, so back to the Vet we went. We were able to get quite a bit of food into her, and she would hold more than half of it, but she had stopped eating voluntarily 100% and was starting to not drink water.

A sidebar about my vet. He's perhaps the nicest pet doctor I've had the pleasure of meeting. His wife ranks equally up there with him.

Anyway, today I took her back and a new blood test revealed that she was showing signs of cell death that indicated Lymphoma. She'd probably started way back when I first took her in and had stopped eating both because of the Gingivitis and the Lymphoma.

Anyone who follows dental medicine might be thinking that mouth disease has been linked to cancer. You're right. So there is a chance that if I'd had her dental work kept up to date she wouldn't have gotten sick. There's just as much chance that she would have. Either way, I was able to take care of her, try to help her, and be with her when it was too late. You see, Semele suffered when she died. She was just too far gone. I tried to get her to eat the night she died, then I went to sleep. I found her the next morning in a closet where she curled up to die, the food had come back up while she was asleep.

The rest of this some people may not want to read. Hell, you may not have wanted to read the previous. I will try not to make it upsetting.

So I made the call and asked my Vet about putting her to sleep. But Sasquatch more than my other cats hated the Vet's office. She didn't mind him or his staff, but being in a cage really hurt her feelings. So I asked to have them give me a loaded syringe. They graciously agreed even though I knew they weren't supposed to. I wanted Sasquatch to die where she enjoyed life.

I was going to give her until tomorrow to have a miracle, but she went downhill fast tonight, and was starting to stumble and have a hard time holding her head up. I made the decision that it was time, so I opened the door and she wandered outside, sat on the sidewalk, and let out a pitiful cry a few times. I couldn't do this in the front yard, too many people were wandering by, so I picked her up and walked her to the back yard. I put her down and she laid down immediately, something she would never have done normally (she would have hopped into the yard-high grass and tried to eat it). I gave her the shot.

The shot was 6 CCs of some form of horse tranquilizer. I was warned she would try to vomit and she did, but had nothing to come up. After that she calmed down and let me hold her in my lap as she got weaker. It took her over 30 minutes before she stopped fighting to stand up every few minutes. I carried her up front and we watched the sun go down. After awhile she was mostly comatose but would go into mild seizures every few minutes still, so I laid her next to me. I know she was mostly unconscious, but she would still respond every once in awhile to my petting her, so I eventually stopped so that she would relax. She never stopped moaning. It was a moan like you would expect to come out of a sick baby, not a cat. I've never heard a cat make that noise before. I hope never to again, it was ... plaintive.

After an hour passed and she was still in that state, I called my Vet again. He said he would meet me at the clinic if she was still alive 30 minutes later. I know he would have gone immediately if I asked. I was just worried that she was suffering.
After 30 minutes passed she had slowed down but was still hanging on. I didn't want to make him go to the office again after all the help he'd given me this week (he knew about my job situation and was putting almost 1/2 my visits "on the house"). She was breathing very shallowly, so I put a small but firm pressure on her chest. Any other time she wouldn't even have been affected by it. She breathed 10-15 more times, trying to get enough air, but finally stopped. She died as the sun went down at 8:50pm, Friday August 3rd, 2007.

Sasquatch was one of the best friends I've had over the last 14 years. I'm a loner alot of the time, not always by choice, and she was almost dog-like in her loyalty. Unlike the stereotypical cat she would follow me around the house. She loved getting in my office chair and me spinning her until she was completely dizzy. She loved belly rubs. She would sleep in the crook of my arm most nights until I was out. She loved to hide under the comforter. She was an afficianado of tuna juice and roast beef. I "rescued" her from a pet store in Huntsville, Alabama. She was the only kitten not in the group when I passed by and she was immediately wanting me to pick her out. She was always a bit chubby in the middle, but never too out of shape to enjoy her life.

It took me 3 months or so before I stopped seeing Semele's shadow every time I sat on the couch or at my feet in the kitchen. I think it will take much much longer to not feel Sasquatch on my arm at night. She will be missed, but I feel blessed that she was in my life and that she got to go with me in the place she loved.

I'll be driving to Oklahoma City, where my family lives, tomorrow. Sasquatch and Semele will be buried together as they should be in a place I'm sure I'll be able to wander by when I'm there.