Category: Kevin

I’m still thinking about the book I want to write. There are only a few things I know enough about to fill a book: AOLserver, Tcl, SQL, HTML and CSS being up on the list. I think a book about all of those things without a hook could be a huge jumbled mess and take way too long to complete. So, I’m leaning towards a “You Can Build an Intranet in a Month” book about using a PC with RedHat, AOLserver and Postgres on it to create a useful and powerful intranet (much like the one I created for work only more formalized).

The problem I’m having with this concept is that there’s already a great community system out there for AOLserver. The problem is there are no books about it. You couldn’t go to Amazon and find an O’Reilly book on the ACS or AOLserver. Someone needs to write one, and while I’m not the expert on AOLserver, I’m good. I’ve been using it for years and have enough passion for it to fill a book of just praise for it. But, who wants to read that?

I’m still intrigued by the Group Project Manual of Style idea too. I may tackle that one first because it could be article-length and will be less server-specific.

Either way, I should shut up and start writing it.

And for those who care – no more PreacherHair™!

Winter always makes me think of Iceland. I just read this post from mybluehouse about central heating that runs under the floor. It reminded me of our little apartment in Iceland. It had uneven floors that sloped towards the door, one small bedroom, with one small window covered in aluminum foil to keep the sun out at night in the winter, that my brother and I shared. It had one small bathroom with a step tub/shower combo that was great for playing with boats and toy subs in. The dropoff was the deep ocean where the giant squid lived.

We had a portable combo washer/dryer that smelled the place up whenever we did laundry. The whole apartment was smaller than the basement in my townhouse. Mom and dad shared a sofabed in the living room (where they conceived my little brother, which once I figured out what “conceived” meant, gave me an undying respect for their courage). I was 6, and Tim was 4, and he was wired. We lived in that little place for a year.

Getting back to my original point when I started this thing. We had lovely geothermal heating that ran through pipes under the floor. Whenever we came out on Saturday morning to wake mom and dad up so we could watch ancient cartoons on the only network we got (AFN – It irreversibly stunted my pop culture growth. I’m a generation behind in TV viewing), we’d sit on the floor in our footie pajamas, eat cereal and let the heat from the pipes seep up through our bodies. I never felt warmer or more secure than those mornings sitting on the floor with my little brother.

We lived about 300 yards from the end of the runway. Fighter jets, airliners, transport planes, etc would take off at all hours of the day and come in to land right over our house. The walls shook; the windows rattled; whatever was sitting on the table that stood on our slanted floor ended up on the slanted floor and rolling towards the front door. We had blizzards with sixty-five mile-an-hour winds and twenty foot drifts that blew over the tops of buildings. Yet, our little apartment always had warm floors, aluminum foiled windows in the bedroom and that stupid tub. I know it was probably miserable at the time, and I have no idea how my mom survived being pregnant and having to deal with my brother and I in that tiny place. What’s odd is how fond my memories are of the place. I can’t think of anything bad to say about living there (other than the time my dad kicked me in the neck on accident while we were sledding down a dormant volcano in a refrigerator box and my ulcer, but that’s not really connected to Iceland but another story I’ll tell another time). My memories are rosy and warm, like geothermal floors and footie pajamas.

I’m a freakin’ social butterfly! I took the Autism-Spectrum Quotient Test over at Wired and got a 13. I’m slightly more social than average. I don’t believe it…

I went out with some folks from work last night. We went to this little neighborhood bar full of corporate lesbians, yuppy freaks, a Fraggle, a Tae Kwon Do guy, two 5 year-olds, some guy who yelled at the top of his lungs at the silent sports program on one of the bar tv’s, one horrific toupee and us. We refrained from talking about work for the most part, which is a first for us.\
It was fun. I don’t go out with them as often as I’d like, but they’re a fun group. There were dirty jokes, good-natured mocking, stupid puns, and much laughter.\
I’ve been thinking recently about my glaring lack of friends that I hang out with. My works friends are cool, but I don’t hang out with them much outside of work. There’s the occasional party, but I’m the married guy with the kid. I’m younger than most of them, but I’m not the party-bar-hopping type. So, I don’t join them on their crazy escapades.\
I’m not really sad about all of it. I’m OK with it. Jen and I have a lot of fun together. Max is a ball. We hang out with my family a lot, which isn’t bad. Oh, it used to be. I wouldn’t be caught dead “hanging out” with the fam. Now, it’s just part of life, and we have fun.\
I have no idea why I’m writing this. But there you go.

So, I’m sitting here at my desk at work on a Saturday aftenoon. Why, you ask? Well, I forgot to bring the directions to the party home last night, and now I’m burning a couple CDs for the car trip to the party. I never realized how cool having a 100 CD-R’s, iTunes and a brand new G4 could be. I think I’ve burned 10-15 mix cd’s in the past two months, three or four Linux ISOs (that’s free software, baby…), and two backups CDs of all my project files. How cool is that?

I shaved off my beard last night as part of our “Beauty Night”. It was Jen’s idea. I shaved off my beard (thank you, beard clippers!). We did facials and had a Loofa Bath Party, where Jen hot-oil conditioned my hair. Then, we moisturized and went downstairs to watch Once and Again. I feel so pretty.

The big company party is tomorrow night. We’re getting all dressed up, smiling, and going.

In a whole different world, I wanted to tell you the story of when I discovered that girls and boys are different.

I was 8 or 9. We lived on an Air Force base in Goldsboro, North Carolina. If you’ve never seen military housing, imagine hundreds of identical duplexes painted varying shades of horrible lined up on practically identical streets. Our house was the first row in a newer section. Our back yard faced a football field sized field where I think they were planning on adding more houses. The middle and high school kids used to use it after school for various practices. We never noticed them as we played Army Men, Hide and Seek, Secret Agent, Superheroes, Tag, Smear the Queer (does that game still exist – did they change the name?), Orphan Adventuring Kids or whatever else we played.

One day, the cheerleaders started practicing. They wore shorts and tiny t-shirts. All of a sudden, we noticed. Every Tuesday and Thursday at three, my brother (who was 6 or 7) and I would lie on the living room floor like concealed snipers and stare out the sliding glass doors as they jumped, formed unstable human pyramids and did their cheerleading things.

It wasn’t sexual. I don’t remember having dreams about them. I just remember watching them, and thinking they were very different from me. They weren’t girls to me. They were women, but not like the moms I knew. They were just different, older but not old. Grown-up but not adults.

I loved being 9. More than being 7 and hiding in our windbreak. We lived in a neighborhood with lots of kids who played. We ran through the woods, caught crawdads, found illicit hidden military things in the woods we weren’t supposed to touch or they’d come shoot us.

If I were a work of art, I would be Pablo Picasso’s Three Musicians. I am colourful and provoking, always looking to break out of the mould and to pioneer new ways of doing things. I have a jaunty outlook and although I am a bit weird, most people have some idea what I’m about. Which work of art would you be? The Art Test

It’s all well and good, but did I have to be the creepy guy on the right?

Gene Weingarten’s article in the Washington Post Magazine this weekend, Why Not the Worst? was excellent. It’s a profile of Battle Mountain, Nevada, the armpit of America. Really, it sounds just wonderful. From the gigantic BM whitewashed on the hill to the delapidated downtown, it sounds really… armpittarific.

But, that’s not all. It’s really a great piece about America and how things have changed. Read it.

Which brings me to one of this weekend’s little epiphanies. Between being DAD, getting Jen to medicate her poor flu-ridden self and coughing up oyster-like collections myself, I got to go out for a little while. On Saturday, while Jen and Max were napping, I went to the book store, bought the latest Preacher collection and Purple Cane Road by James Lee Burke. Then, I went to Saigon Cafe, had fried spring rolls and Pork with Funny Noodle and read.

It brought back memories of my pre-married life in Tucson. I went out to lunch every day, always with reading material. Since we had to stagger our lunch times so the phones were always manned, I always ate alone. So, I read. I read almost the entire John Irving library (Hotel New Hampshire and the latest are the only ones I haven’t read), the entire James Lee Burke collection, and more comic books than I can count.

It was at this time, when I had no responsibilities, no debts, nothing to do but work and goof off that I realized I’d lived a sheltered life and knew next to nothing about how the world works. I decided, at the ripe young age of 20 that I needed to get out and meet different people. It was something I’d missed at BYU, where everyone’s lily-white and mostly from Utah or Idaho. They’re 99.6% conservative young Republicans, think the same things, do the same things, etc. After that, and my accident on my mission (that story will come much much much later if I ever decide to tell it here), I knew I was missing something. I’d lived all over the world and seen a lot, but hadn’t met people who didn’t agree with what I’d been taught my whole life. So, I began a quest (yeah, another one). I wanted to meet and get to know people from all different “categories”.

I didn’t have to go far. If you’ve never worked tech support, I’ll let you in on a secret. The facelessness of phone work means you can look like pretty much whatever you want. AOL in Tucson was a hotbed of “alternative lifestyles”. There I met my first lesbian, bi-sexual, gay man, transsexual, transvestite, pot smokers, etc etc. After working with them for a while, I realized they weren’t as different as I thought they’d be. Their views weren’t way out there and devilish like I was brought up to believe. They were just people, doing their thing the way they saw fit. They were pleasant and cool and loved to share their views on everything.

(this is a lot longer than I had intended)

And that’s where it began. Six and a half years ago. Now, I’m married, have a son, a good job, and have been working on this concept. Reading the article in the Post yesterday formalized it a little bit. So, here it is. America is big enough for anyone who wants to live here and do their thing. As long as you can live with a couple rules (you know, the “good of the society” stuff, going without murderin’ or thievin’), you’re ok. You can find somewhere to live, a group of people who agree with you, a place to live unfettered by anyone else’s ideas or rules. That’s part of what makes America great. The American Dream isn’t one dream. It’s the opportunity for everyone to have their own dream and to follow it. That little town in Nevada was a place for people with a little town dream. New York is a place for big city dreams. There are thousands of towns and places here that fit all kinds of dreams, you just have to find one that fits yours.

:: and the soapbox goes away, and I’m going to get back to work – happy Monday ::

Is it wrong to goof off at work on a day you were supposed to have off but had to cancel because off last minute requirements and changes needed on a project that all of a sudden became the top priority?