filed under: benjamin, family, kristina, life, pictures

25 days ago

In case you didn’t hear from my email, twitter posts, or corresponding facebook posts, my amazing wife gave birth to my amazing son last Wednesday. His name is Benjamin Zoltan Arthur, he weighed 7lbs 15oz, and was 20.25” long. He is perfect!

I’m writing this post in a very exhausted state of mind, so please forgive my ramblings. I wanted to just get an announcement (plus a few thoughts) out before too much time passed.

I have a temporary photo gallery set up, but I put a password on it because I plan to move it later and don’t want it showing up on the broader internet until I figure out what pictures are really going to be ‘public’. (The picture in this article is from that gallery.) If you know me, please feel free to request the link and password from me or anyone in my family.

Some notes on his name: we’ve known for a long time that we wanted his middle name to be Zoltan, because he is half Hungarian (from Kristina) and he has a great-grandfather named Zoltan, and another great-grandfather with Zoltan as his middle name. We couldn’t decide on a first name, though; we had a list of about 10 candidates, with “Alexander” at the top, but were never quite sure about any of them. As soon as he was born, I declared “he is not an Alexander” and Kristina agreed (once she had a chance to really look at him). The problem was, he also wasn’t any of the other names we had on the list. So we grudgingly started looking for new name ideas. A good friend suggested “Benjamin” and as soon as I heard it, I knew it was a good fit. Within minutes I was certain it was his name. Kristina took a little longer to come around, but also agreed that it was a good name for him. So we finally settled on it, just a few hours before we left the hospital. I knew at the time that he had a relative named Benjamin, but I wasn’t sure exactly who; it turns out that Levi Benjamin Valley (commonly known as “Ben”) was my great-grandfather, and a father-figure for my own father. So this little boy is named after great-(great-)grandparents on both sides of the family!

We call him a bunch of things – Benjamin, Z, Big Z, Little Z, and Mister Z. I’m pretty sure we’re going to have “Z” as a nickname for him for a long time to come, and that his proper name will be “Benjamin”. I can’t get myself to call him “Ben” so I think we’re going to try to keep that nickname out of common use, but I have learned (from my wife) not to try to force these things, so I won’t.

So far, he’s been a very happy, healthy baby. He eats well and on a regular schedule (every three hours), he sleeps most of the rest of the time, and he has fairly simple cues for when he is hungry, needs burped, or needs his diaper changed. He is as cute as I’ve ever seen a baby be :) (Of course, all parents say that, but so far everybody else who sees him also has said that.) He has one minor medical problem that he inherited from his father, but it’s not a big deal, and easy to fix.

Our lives have changed heavily, of course. Everybody says birth is a life-changing experience. It is certainly an emotionally overwhelming one! I can’t remember another time in my life when I was so flooded with raw feeling in a single moment; it’s impossible to even catalog what the feelings were, simply because they were too big to be identified. One feeling was and is very identifiable – pride and love for my wife, who was simply amazing throughout the delivery, and through these first five days of his life. (Benjamin was posterior in the womb and sideways when he finally delivered, but she did it with only 6.5 total hours of labor, and only 1.5 hours of pushing. And now she’s totally on top of everything he needs, every single time he needs something.) And now I can’t help but feel completely attached to this little child; I get a little energy boost every time I see him; I can’t leave him alone for too long without needing to check on him; I have a really hard time leaving him, once I am with him.

In contrast, I find myself almost totally calm, all the time. I feel totally confident about how I handle him, about the choices I make for him, and about the things that will make him calm or upset. I don’t have any hesitation or doubt about him, at all. I think it’s some combination of a vastly simplified priority list (if you need a hint: it only has two items on it), general exhaustion, and general euphoria. It’s an interesting experience, living such a simple life (for the moment, anyway).

And of course, I have to thank all the wonderful people who helped, offered well-wishes, sent gifts, or gave their advice. And Kristina and I both owe a huge debt to my mother-in-law who came and spent the weekend with us. I think she made this weekend about 80% easier than it would have been on our own, and gave us a chance to adjust to this new lifestyle. We’ve spent today on our own, and largely we’ve been OK, and that’s because we had a few days to prepare because of her help. In any case – THANK YOU ALL!!!

And welcome to the world, my son. I’m writing this in one room, while your mother cuddles you in another room, and just in the time it’s taken me to write this post, I miss you :)

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filed under: benjamin, family, life

35 days ago

Today, I had a startling realization about the nature of a fetus. It’s an interesting topic, but also a very delicate one, and it seems somewhat risky to post this so close to our delivery. But this realization is a consequence of all the events during this pregnancy, so I think it is natural that I had the realization now, and appropriate that I share it now, also.

But before I get to that, I have to explain another startling realization I had a few months ago, when I started learning more about pregnancy: that the placenta actually belongs to the baby, not to the mother. Specifically, the placenta has the baby’s genes (i.e. from both the father and the mother), and is formed from one half of the blastocyst (the other half becomes the embryo itself). I had never really thought about the issue before, but my basic assumption was that the placenta was a part of the mother, and that the umbilical cord was actually the place where the mother merged into the baby. But that’s not what happens – the mother has the uterus, and the baby has the placenta. The placenta attaches to the uterus, secretes hormones that make the uterus (and the rest of the mother’s body!) do what the placenta needs in order to allow the embryo/fetus to grow, and exchanges oxygen, nutrients, and waste products to support the embryo/fetus. The placenta is actually an agent of the embryo/fetus!

Now that I think about it, my confusion probably stems from the idea of cutting the cord, which I had always thought of as “separating the baby from its mother” but in fact is actually separating the baby from its own placenta!

So somehow I’d missed figuring that out before now, and it was a bit of a shock. In some sense, the mother is just a container for the developing fetus, and the placenta actually ‘tricks’ the mother into letting it stay in the uterus, and providing a good environment for it. So from the very moment of conception, there are three parties – the father, the mother, and the embryo/fetus. In no way is the baby a “part of” the mother. The baby is “inside” the mother, is “attached to” the mother, and is “dependent on” the mother, but biologically, the baby is not just an extension of the mother.

And that’s the source of today’s realization: I no longer give any weight to the argument that the woman’s reproductive rights are the only issue that matters. Yes, the woman’s body and the woman’s life will be affected, but per the realization above, the woman is not the only party involved in the decision. Any argument for abortion, in my newly-formed opinion, must take into consideration the impact on the embryo/fetus (i.e death), and weigh that against the benefit to the mother.

And here’s where it gets tricky – removing that argument from my list of “arguments to which I will give consideration” isn’t really a huge deal for me, because it isn’t a part of the basis for my own opinion about abortion. That argument always seemed a bit dumb (because it seems very petty). But this new logic still represents a fairly hefty shift in my thinking, so I wanted to share it.

And to the obvious question: I am not going to share my stance on abortion in this post, because I don’t have time to carry out the whole argument with the whole internet right now. I have a well-formed opinion, and if you know me personally, you may already know it. I’m also very willing to discuss that opinion, in person, with just about anyone. But I’m not quite ready to subject myself to the commentary of the internet (any more than I just did, anyway), so internet, you’ll just have to wait for another day :)

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filed under: benjamin, government, lent, life, politics

36 days ago

Just a few notes that I’ve been collecting, but that aren’t individually worth a blog post. I know it’s been a while since I blogged, but in spite of some prompting, my blogging rate remains inversely proportional to my living rate :)

Kristina found a horoscope for our baby. It will be fun to check it out in a few years and see if it is at all correct.

I found a great blog article about the real causes of terrorism and the mess we are making trying to fight it. Some new information there for me, but I’m hoping that you’ll read it – because the focus isn’t just on “what’s wrong with what we’re doing?” and instead is on “what should we be doing?” As always, people are the source of the problems, and “better people” are the appropriate solution. The politicians, though, seem focused more on how to look good than how to get the job done, so we end up reorganizing all these organizations, without ever kicking out the people at the top of them that are actually the problem. That’s something I have some first-hand experience with, so it rubs me the wrong way.

I also wanted to mention that I’m deeply saddened by the Supreme Court decision that corporations can buy elections. I don’t agree with the idea that corporations have “rights” like people do, and it makes me extremely sad to see how little shame our leaders about letting corporations run the country.

I’ve also been sad lately about Obama and his fiscal policy. I like, very much, that he seems to be taking his time to think through all the issues he faces, but I don’t like his attitude that “profits and bonuses are bad,” even if he was forced into that position. I also don’t like the size of his budget, even if it is very carefully crafted. I knew when I voted for him that I wouldn’t like his economic policies; I just wish that it had turned out that I was wrong :)

Also, my calendar reminded me that Lent is coming up soon. As I mentioned last year, my plan this year is to exercise. (Remember, my focus is self-discipline, not “giving things up.”) Of course, I’m about to have a baby, so this will be rather complicated. But I’ve been putting it off long enough, so I don’t feel like I have any leeway to put it off again. This year: exercise!

Speaking of the baby – it really does seem like it will be any day now. If you haven’t been following my twitter feed, here’s my latest one. Plus our due date is tomorrow.

For those of you wondering what the name will be – please trust us that we aren’t really settled on a name, ourselves. In fact, we got a new recommendation today that we are seriously considering. So, we’ll let everyone know just as soon as we decide – and that may not be until after he comes :)

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filed under: benjamin, family, kristina, life

178 days ago

Well, the title covers the major fact. But there’s a lot more to say… too much, in fact. It’s hard to know where to start, how much to cover, how much to say online…

To set the stage, I’m sitting in an airport (BWI), after an essentially pointless (but expensive!) single-day trip that finished early, and I suddenly find myself with a few unexpected hours on my hands. Probably enough to write something appropriate online about my new baby boy. (Yep, it’s a boy!) But there is so much tied up in my head and my heart, it’s really hard to just get started.

First: to our baby: whoever you are, whoever you end up being, when you read this someday, you should know that your mother and I already love you very much. We’re a little nervous about what the future holds, but we feel so good about you, and about us, and about how this is going to work out. People say that you’re never really ready to have a baby, and we followed that model – we weren’t quite ready, but we knew it was time, and so we decided to try. And suddenly (quickly!) it happened, and you are on your way. Our life isn’t perfect… but I (we) find that it doesn’t really matter… we know that it’s going to be great. We’re in the 20th week of the pregnancy, halfway there. You have been perfectly healthy so far, and your mom has had an easy pregnancy, and you have little bones, and fingers, and a heartbeat, and a face, and it’s so scary wondering who you are going to be, and if we’re going to be good parents, and what you’re going to need from us, and what we’re going to have to give up, and what we’re going to gain, and where you’re going to take us. And yet we aren’t often actually scared; somehow, we are both generally calm, and feel ready for all these things to come, one day at a time. I think a lot of that is because your mother and I have such a strong relationship. And some of it probably already comes from you. And some of it is probably just because we’re underestimating everything to come :)

And I have to let you know – just yesterday, when I found out you are a boy, was the first time it really hit me that you’re going to grow up someday, and be an adult person, with your own decisions, hopes, failures, loves, stories… and suddenly you were a person, not just a creature growing in my wife’s belly. (!!!) It’s a very, very heady thing. Welcome to the universe, little one. In about 20 more weeks, I’ll get to welcome you to the world. Oh boy, here you come :)

Second: everyone else: Kristina and I are having a baby. (Just in case you missed that part.) And it’s a boy (we found out yesterday!). And we’re already mid-way through the pregnancy, with a due date of February 5th… or 8th. The official date with the doctor is the 5th. But the real date is the 8th, based on my own calculations (using a variety of official methods) plus what the ultrasound estimated. But someone had calculated the 5th using the simple method, and the doctor said the date from the ultrasound (the 8th) was “close enough” that she just called it the 5th. So really he’s due on the 8th :)

You might also have noticed that it took me a long time (about 15 weeks!) to make the announcement online. Well, there’s a reason for that. Which is that work wants me to move to Phoenix, and this baby has made us rethink whether that is a good idea, and I have been hiding the fact that we’re pregnant from work, so they don’t wonder if I really will move… because if they find out I’m not moving, I might lose my job. That’s been a lot of stress. A lot. So two weeks ago I finally got fed up with it, and told them that I’m not moving, and here I am, still with a job… at least, for now.

The important part, though, is that when I told them, I also felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders – and suddenly I was free to be excited about this little baby, and I started engaging in all sorts of ways (budgeting, shopping, reading, announcing, blogging, etc.!) that made it clear to me that keeping my baby secret was really having an impact on my life. So let that be a lesson to you, readers, family, and child: secrets aren’t worth it. I regret that period when I wasn’t free to tell the world about my son – that shouldn’t ever be necessary. I wish I had told work right away, no matter what the consequences might have been.

And lastly, no, we don’t have name ideas yet. Other than “Arthur” or “Gunther” or “Edgar.” And we do have ultrasound pictures, but my wife has a shy uterus, so we’re sharing those off-line :)

So, good morning, everyone! I probably won’t be blogging a lot in the coming months… but that’s because I’ll be so damn busy living!

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filed under: food, lent, life, religion, vegetarian

380 days ago

Happy Lent! (It started today.)

As I mentioned last year, I give up something for Lent each year. It’s not for religious reasons; the purpose is really just to strengthen my self-discipline, and Lent happens to be a convenient reminder to do it each year.

Two years ago I gave up beef. Last year I became vegetarian, and somehow I’ve managed to stick with it. (Almost a whole year, now!) So this year I’m giving up food entirely.

Er, no. Not really.

But it has been a little tough to figure out what to give up – there isn’t really anything in my life that I feel is excessive right now (except maybe work). But my goal isn’t really “give something up” – it is “improve self discipline,” so that leaves other options. The two that seem most needed, in fact, are “take vitamins” and “exercise.” Both are things I’ve wanted to do but haven’t had the discipline to actually carry out.

But I’m not going to do both, and “exercise” scares me, without at least a little forethought. (I only realized yesterday that Lent starts today.) So, vitamins for me! Thankfully, I had a bottle of good vitamins already sitting around, so Day 1 was easy. I’ll need a little more planning ahead as I travel for work, but this one should be relatively easy. Hopefully, though, by the end of it vitamins will just be a valuable habit, and I’ll keep it up.

And next year’s Lent starts on February 17th, so I’ve marked that day on my calendar, and my plan is to use exercise as my discipline-improving technique next year :)

So, wish me luck. Hopefully, I’ll be a healthier, more energetic person come Easter. And if not, well, maybe my pharmacist friend is right that vitamins as just a good way to pee money down the drain ;)

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filed under: dogs, driving, family, geek, kristina, lent, life, motorcycle, politics, rainskit.com, truist.com, tru_tags, vegetarian

459 days ago

Wow, according to my last post, it’s been 144 days since I blogged. Too long, but it’s a sign of how busy life has been. I’m going to use this post just to catch up quickly, then future posts will hopefully be more insightful:

• I’m still a vegetarian
• The new job is good (and I was promoted!), but time-intensive
• The dogs are awesome
• Buying the Honda Element was very much the right decision – it is perfect for the dogs and for Kristina’s plant (and dirt!) hauling
• The new house is great
• I did buy that motorcycle I had my eye on (and I love it!)
• I sold my domain (truist.com) and replaced it with the one you see before you (rainskit.com). (And truist.com now has some very interesting content. But it’s a dumb name for a company.)
• We all finally hired the right president

But of course, all of that put a ton of stress on my life and my wife, and we are still trying to recover from it. Speaking of which, she (my wife) also:

• Turned 30, and got through a party that I think she would have preferred to delay
• Took care of the dogs while I was traveling
• Worked an internship
• Took over as president of Pi Alpha Xi at OSU, and has had a stellar experience
• Took a full load of classes this fall

Regular life things also happened. I’m sure I’ve forgotten many of them, but notable items include:

• Discovered Pistacia Vera, an absolutely life-changing “dessert botique” (in Columbus!), that we now go to every weekend
• Found DropBox and Carbonite, which are similar services that finally make file sharing and backup (respectively) just work the way they should have all along
• Found Woot and its associated sites and got addicted; we’ve probably ordered 10 things from them so far
• Amitai visited and during that visit, I bought a first-gen iPhone and hacked it to work with T-Mobile. (I love it!)
• Had a very good Thanksgiving at my dad’s house, at which we learned some great news (that isn’t quite yet public)
• Released two new versions of tru_tags, and used one of those releases to make this site’s archive page

So anyhow, it’s been really busy, and many parts of our life have fallen behind where we’d like them to be. The busyness hasn’t really been a problem… it’s just prevented us from doing other things we might want to be doing. I think our priorities are in the right place, though – I’m doing what I love, and Kristina is working toward a new life where she gets to do what she loves. I think that’s how things are supposed to be.

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filed under: dogs, kristina, life, pictures, truist.com

628 days ago

Two posts ago, I mentioned how we were stirring our lives up, in a number of specific ways:

• new job
• new car
• new house
• new dogs
• birthday party
• uncertain motorcycle

And I forgot to mention that Kristina would be starting an internship at Franklin Park Conservatory.

So, all that stuff happened. I have the new job (in Cleveland, so I’m traveling there 50% of the time), we have the new car (described previously), we found a house in Harrisburg (Ohio), we have two new Great Pyrenees puppies (details below), the birthday party went well, Kristina started her internship, and the motorcycle is still uncertain.

Yeah, it’s been stressful.

I don’t have pictures of the birthday party, although some of the guests will probably send me some of theirs. I also don’t have pictures of the puppies because the camera is still in a box somewhere, but you can see a picture of Kodiak (the 11-week-old) on this page (with the little blond girl on the right side of the page) and Sophia (the 11-*month*-old) on this page.

As you can imagine, we’re pretty much stressed out, especially Kristina who did everything I did, plus started the internship, plus had to be home a few days with the dogs without me. But we’re getting through it.

Oh yeah – and some guy called me and offered to buy truist.com. I think I’m going to sell it to him (he offered a lot of money). I’ll post about that soon, but for now – I need a replacement domain name, and I’m running low on ideas. If you have any, please email me or post them here as comments.

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filed under: business, dogs, family, kristina, life, travel

686 days ago

Four weeks ago, life was pretty simple: I was comfortable (but not really happy) in my job, we had a nice apartment, our expenses were low, we had a fairly stable plan for the future, and I was planning on buying a motorcycle. Now, though, everything is different: today was my last day at NetJets, we just bought a car, we’re looking for a new place to live, the future is very uncertain, and it’s not clear if I’ll be getting a motorcycle.

And yet, still, I think today is better than four weeks ago. Crazy, huh?

The story goes something like this: Five weeks ago (to the day), I finally realized (after much prodding from my wife) what I wanted my next career move to be. I wanted to be a Product Manager for a software company, much like I was back before I left Noteworthy Medical Systems, four years ago. I realized how important it is for me to have my hands on real problems that I get to solve myself, and how important it is for me to be on the front lines rather than in an IT department (“in the business, not serving the business”). Nothing against NetJets – they have a truly amazing IT department! – but having tasted life in a software company, I wanted to get back to that. The problem was (five weeks ago) that it’s extremely difficult to get a job as a product manager in a software company, especially in Ohio, so I essentially put that plan on hold for “someday”.

So then four weeks ago (to the day), an old friend/coworker from Noteworthy called me up and basically said “we need you to come back and be a product manager – are you interested?”. Huh, funny how these things happen. I told her I was maybe interested, and spent the next week talking to her, going to Cleveland for interviews, and trying to figure out what had changed since I left. After about a week of this, I was convinced that Noteworthy was in good shape, and that this was a legitimate opportunity, and that I’d really love going back into the product manager job.

So it was easy for me to say yes to the offer – except that Noteworthy is in Cleveland, and we live in Columbus, and Kristina is very happy as a student at OSU. So I was going to have to travel to Cleveland for this job, leaving her in Columbus, and we both know that we don’t do well with full-time travel. So I managed to work out a deal with Noteworthy to travel half-time, working from home the other half, and after much discussion we decided that we could handle that, and I said yes to the offer.

That was two weeks ago (to the day).

So I put in my notice, and we started making plans for how to make this all work. First, obviously, we needed a second car. We’ve never had a second car – our lifestyle just never demanded it, and a car is a huge expense. The question was, which car?

Well, that gets to the next decision, which was to get a dog. As part of agreeing to the travel, Kristina and I made an agreement with each other that we’d get a dog for her, to help keep her company while I’m gone. Well… she wants a big dog. And I think that it’s always better to have two dogs, because they keep each other happy and healthy. And we happen to know of a breeder who has Great Pyrenees puppies for sale, and that happens to be the particular breed of very large dog that we had our eye on… so the plan is to get two huge puppies. Oh, the changes…

So back to the car. Between the two new dogs, and the fact that Kristina is a horticulture student who regularly carries plant stuff around, we decided that we needed a car with lots of space and that’s easy to clean. Minivans were right out, jeeps weren’t big enough, and SUVs are generally a waste of money, so that left the Honda Element – a perfect car for this situation, and one that we really liked. But then that got tough – we were trying to keep the cost low (so we needed a used car), but we like having convenience features (power mirrors) and a nice stereo, and we both like driving stick-shift cars, and we didn’t want one with a ton of miles on it. It is possible to get an Element that meets all these criteria, but we couldn’t find one in Columbus. So we went to Pittsburgh (Monday night) to buy one that we found there, and so far we love it. It took a lot of work to finally settle on that car, and to get the financing sorted out (without having a used car dealer screw us), and get a price negotiated, but it was worth it.

But wait, there’s another consequence to getting these dogs: our current apartment doesn’t let us have pets. (And I wouldn’t put two huge dogs into our place anyway.) So we have to find a new place, preferably a house with a large fenced yard. And we need to rent it because we’ll probably move in two years when Kristina graduates. And our current rent is quite low, and we don’t pay our gas bill, so our housing expenses are about to go way up. And we’re probably not going to find something close to campus with a large fenced yard in a safe neighborhood that’s not too expensive. So that search will continue :)

And finally, all these increased expenses may mean that I can’t get a motorcycle. I have my license (took the class last fall) and a helmet (birthday present, a week ago) and a riding jacket (another birthday present), but no motorcycle. More on this as events unfold.

So, to summarize: new job, new travel lifestyle, new car, new house, new dogs, maybe no motorcycle. Oh, and Kristina’s 30th birthday is in June, so I need to plan that. So yeah, things are a little stirred up around here :) But they’re good.

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filed under: driving, kristina, life, pictures, reviews, travel

920 days ago

Kristina and I took a vacation in Oregon this August, and as expected, we fell in love with it. We’d both always had this idea that we’d like Oregon, and one of the people on my team at NetJets lives out there and invited us to visit, and this year is our fifth anniversary, so we decided to go. With the help of a few borrowed guidebooks and the advice of a local, I did a lot of planning, made a loose itinerary, and booked the flights and hotels.

I’ve posted about 500 pictures over in the gallery, and they tell the basic story. (I know, 500 is way too many… but we took 1300 originally so this is a huge improvement.) We started in Portland and wandered all around town on the very-well-done public transportation. While there, we went to the world’s largest bookstore and went there again to stand in line for the midnight release of Harry Potter. We also went to the stunning Japanese Garden and the much-less-stunning International Rose Test Garden. From there, we got on the road and happened to pass by (and stop at) an aviation museum that houses the Spruce Goose. We then drove down the coast to Yachats, which is now the easy winner as our favorite place to vacation. I was a little sneaky and had rented a room with a view, and we spent a lot of time exploring the rocky coast and playing in the tide pools. Driving around there, we saw these cool Tsunami Hazard Zone signs, went to the famous Newport Aquarium (and stopped by the headquarters of Rogue Brewery), and took a few long-distance (but free!) pictures of the Haceta Head Lighthouse. You can see our cool Mustang convertible in some of those pictures :) Sadly, we eventually had to leave Yachats, and we semi-intentionally ended up having a crazy driving adventure through deep forest roads housing scary people who really, really don’t want visitors. From there we visited a few waterfalls and drove out to Bend. (Bend is the town where the person I work with lives.) Somehow, we don’t have any pictures of Bend, but we really liked it there. We do have pictures of our canoing trip and a trip we made up the Mt. Bachelor ski lift to try to eat dinner, but we ended up not eating there. Finally, we drove back to Portland, did a little more sight seeing, and flew home.

Phew!

Actually, it was great. We had 9 days, and no set schedule except for the hotel bookings. We were able to take our time and do whatever struck our fancy, from a big menu of previously-researched sights and activities. It’s my new favorite way to take a vacation :)

I have a few lasting thoughts / advice that I want to save, also:

• Portland was an OK city, but we didn’t really love it. The highway traffic sucks, and the sky is always gray. It does have some great vegetarian food and good public transportation, but it just didn’t grab onto us the same way Chicago did.
• The Japanese Garden is truly incredible. Wandering through there, I could help but feel awe and wonder, and be inspired by the talent and energy and time that went into making it. I will go back.
• The International Rose Test Garden was boring (for me). It is just row after row after row of roses. If you really love roses, maybe you’ll like it.
• Voodoo doughnut is only going to seem cool to you if you come prepared for it to be a dingy place from the 70’s.
• When you think Portland Saturday Market, think “flea market” and you’ll have a good idea what to expect.
• The Newport Aquarium is well worth visiting, and it’s even worth the price of admission :)
• Never, ever, ever go to Yachats. If you do, you’ll be tempted to stay, and then it will be more crowded when we retire there ;) If you must visit, it’s well worth the money to stay at the Overleaf Lodge. You should also eat at the Drift Inn Restaurant (we ate there five or six times) and at the Yachats River House.
• The best thing about Bend is that you can drive 30 minutes one way to be in desert, or 30 minutes the other to go skiing, or you can just stay in town to have great weather and lots of cool things to do. It’s the ultimate in micro-climate adjustability!
• The Mt. Bachelor twilight dinner is a giant rip-off. We thought it would be really nice, but it’s really just a cheap ski lodge trying to sell fancy food. We tried to eat there, but they didn’t have anyone to seat us, didn’t have a table ready for our reservation, don’t have a good wine or beer selection, and ran out of steak (one of the four dinner choices). We left, and ended up at the Seasons restaurant in the Seventh Mountain Resort. It is now at the top of my list of all-time best restaurants, for service, atmosphere, food, and wine. Dinner there was absolutely amazing.

Anyhow, the trip was fantastic. We will go back to Oregon, maybe this winter. We want to see what it’s like in winter, and we’re already wishing that we’d brought back some good art from there. If not soon, though, then someday.

One last thing: I’ve put together a folder of favorite pictures, suitable for framing or giving as gifts ;)

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filed under: life, links, pictures, travel

920 days ago

I finally got around to uploading all my recent pictures to the gallery. “Recent,” in this case, is defined as “in the last 8 months.” Before this I hadn’t uploaded anything in 2007, even though I’ve been taking pictures all year. So without further ado, I present:

• Some random flowers
• Jeff & Elizabeth’s wedding
• Anya’s graduation from American university, sadly without many pictures of Anya. We had to leave immediately after the ceremony, so we didn’t get to participate in the normal round of post-ceremony pictures. Sorry, Anya!
• And a few pictures from my first and second Lisbon trips. I’ve gone twice now for work, and am going again next week. I’ll also probably go to London at some point. Sadly, there’s very little tourism involved in any of this.

I’ve also uploaded pictures of our recent trip to Oregon, but I’ll be describing those in another post, momentarily. We also (also) have pictures from Kristina’s trip to Richmond, VA, but those haven’t been uploaded yet. Maybe they’ll make it up before Christmas ;)

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filed under: guns, life, politics, terrorism

1006 days ago

From time to time, I add a quote to my quotes list. When I find a quote that catches my eye, I usually sit on it for a week or two to see if I really agree with it. That way my quote list reflects the ideas I truly hold dear, and not just the things that sounded good at the time.

Recently, a friend sent me this quote:

There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. — Ed Howdershelt

I’ve been holding on to this quote for a while, trying to figure out what I thought about it. It didn’t really inspire me, but I couldn’t figure out if I agreed with it or not. Just tonight I realized that the quote is based in the notion that the first three ideas can come before the fourth. That is false. Without the power of force behind them, the other three don’t survive. It’s the basic ability to defend against aggressors that enables peace among those with that power. The quote works within a society that has already created a basically peaceful and just environment, through force or the threat of force. (Note that an unjust society can also be created through force; the force is merely the means to the end, not a guarantor of it.) In the raw world, without the protection of pre-existing force, the quote seems almost quaint.

Within such an already-stable society, though,I agree that force should generally be the last defense of liberty. But I don’t agree that it should only ever follow after the first three. I’m not going to wait for a speech, a politician, or my neighbor to stop the man intent on killing me.

I think a better quote would have been one that demonstrated that each of the first three ideas depends on the last. That idea rings true with me, and ties strongly to why I believe in guns as a good thing. Without the ability to defend ourselves, and our ideas, none of the rest of it is possible. Guns are simply an effective tool for earning and preserving freedom. Without them, the rest isn’t possible.

As you can imagine, I’ve decided not to add this quote to my quotes list, but I am very glad for the intellectual push. If any you readers care to comment, I would love to hear it. Please just post something here, and I’ll be sure to think, and to respond. Or send me a quote :)

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filed under: books, flying, geek, guns, life, links, reviews

1048 days ago

It’s been a while since I wrote and I have a small pile of small things that I wanted to write about, so I’m posting them all at once. In chronological order:

Cool blog / cool book

In my first case ever of one blog leading to another, Amitai’s blog led me to Bil Stachour’s blog, Journal Wunelle, on which I found this awesome post about evolutionary psychology and the book The Moral Animal. Bil writes intelligently, often, and interestingly, and his writeup of the book has led me to put it on my wishlist.

A combination street car and airplane

Check this out. Terrafugia has announced that they plan on creating the first commercially available flying car, called the Transition. I like living in this age :)

Buckeye Blast

On April 1st, I attended the Buckeye Blast, a fun-day shooting event put on by Buckeye Firearms Association, an orginzation heavily involved in passing the concealed carry laws in Ohio, and of which I am a member. The event is a fundraiser for the organization, and my wife bought my ticket as a birthday present.

The day was a blast! (ha ha) I learned more about real-life shooting in that day than I had in all my previous training and shooting, and greatly improved my shooting skills. I met a bunch of new people, and even got my picture taken. The event was held at the very impressive Tactical Defense Institute – I highly recommend them.

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

One of my birthday presents was an awesome book called The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. For years the “designers” have been saying that the “coders” can’t learn what it takes to design great websites; this book tries to prove that wrong. You can judge for yourself when I update this site’s layout :) (someday soon…)

The shooting on my birthday

The Virginia Tech shooting happened on my birthday. It’s a very sad, tragic event, and I’m sorry that such things happen in this world. It was initially reminiscent of the Case Western shooting which was a little closer-to-home for me.

My mom asked me what I thought about the shooting, and my response sums up my whole belief about the issue: “if someone there had had a gun, they could have stopped the attacker.” It’s a shame that Virginia Tech (like Case Western) has a ban on all firearms on campus.

I know this is a big issue, but I don’t want to dwell on it. My middle sister (privately) wrote a great piece about her feelings and reflections after the event, and there’s a lot more like that on the web. I’ll leave it to others to hash out all the nuances, but I did want to get my broad-stroke opinion out in public.

Other

There is other news, about life, work, and family, but most of it isn’t really good fodder for a public forum. Suffice it to say that all three have been interesting, hard, and good. This is a good time, for me.

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filed under: christmas, life

1188 days ago

I like giving gifts. I like it a lot. (It seems to be one of my love languages.) Like most things I care about, I want to be good at it. In this case, I’ve learned a few rules for how to be good at it, and Mom’s post below has inspired me to share them.

Some of this is basic stuff; some of it will help you choose gifts that will succeed wildly. Either way, following these rules will help.

In order of importance:

Put some energy into it

If you only follow one rule, let it be this one. When choosing a gift, make sure that you take the time to do it well. It doesn’t matter exactly what you give or how you give it, so long as you care about it and work (even just a little) at it.

Be thoughtful about what you’re giving

Give gifts that actually reflect the recipient’s individuality. Give something that relates to their life or their situation, or that involves something they care about. Personal gifts demonstrate that you put some energy into choosing the gift.

Give something they want

This one is subtle: give something that the person is actively thinking about or wishing for. A gift that everybody likes is much less exciting than a particular thing that the recipient really wants.

Give something they wouldn’t get for themselves

The gifts that really make people happy are the ones that are just out of their reach. Giving them something they want but weren’t going to get for themselves is almost a sure-fire way to make the gift a success.

Be sincere in your presentation

The actual presentation of the gift is at least as important as the gift itself. Depending on the situation, you may just need to take the time to wrap it or you may need to work some magic and make the presentation truly exciting. Either way, use your preparation, words, and actions to indicate that you are giving the gift because you really want to, and not just because it’s the right thing to do. This ties back to “it’s the thought that counts” – the “thought” is expressed more by your presentation than by the gift itself.

Give something useful

There are a lot of gifts that seem like a good idea when purchased but then end up in a drawer or closet, forever. Such gifts aren’t as effective as gifts that end up in frequent use, over a long period of time. Take the time to consider whether your gift will have staying power.

Note: flowers, art, and charitable donations all break this rule (somewhat), and yet they can all be great gifts. That’s why the rule is near the bottom :)

Don’t give money

It’s almost impossible to give money and live up to all the rules above. Instead, if you can’t do something better, give a gift card to a store that will let the recipient get something that meets the rules above. Be careful, though, that they don’t end up buying socks when what they really want is a sweater.

Happy gift giving!

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filed under: christmas, family, life, religion

1188 days ago

I occasionally ask myself why I celebrate Christmas, because I don’t really focus on it as a celebration of the birth of Christ. The general answer that I give myself is “Christmas is about people,” and I’m very happy with that idea. But I’ve never thought it out, or written it down.

My mother, on the other hand, has. She apparently got into an email conversation with someone who isn’t giving gifts for Christmas because they feel that it is too commercial / expected / etc. (I don’t know the details.) Mom replied with a detailed writeup of how she felt about Christmas, and then forwarded bits of it on to me.

It’s quite impressive, so (with her permission) I’m quoting it here, for anyone who needs it. (She’s a teacher, so she mentions the school(s) that she teaches at occasionally.)

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filed under: geek, life, pictures

1206 days ago

Just a few quick updates, between work and sleep:

Fun Stuff

At work the other day I spotted a background image that I really liked on a neighbor’s computer. I tracked down the source and discovered a treasure trove of fantastic backgrounds. The best ones are found by clicking the “Flame Favorites” links on this page (try this set, for example). You can learn more about Flame Fractals at lines and colors or flam3.com.

Work / Life

Work has been relatively insane the last few weeks. That’s the biggest reason I’ve been offline so much recently. On top of that, we’re hosting Thanksgiving Thursday, so we’ve been doing a lot of work to prep for that. The craziness will continue until about the end of the year. It’s good work, though, and I’m enjoying it.

Software

Joel has posted a rather amusing article about usability in Windows Vista, Microsoft’s next version of Windows. He demonstrates the type of thinking that’s necessary for making great products. It’s also the type of thinking that makes great Business Analysts :)

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filed under: life

1265 days ago

How many pennies in this jar? (Click the image to see a bigger version.)

Make a guess and click here to find out!

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filed under: family, life

1389 days ago

Anna Torontali

Born
March 4th, 1930
Budapest, Hungary

Passed
May 20th, 2006
Cleveland, Ohio

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filed under: business, life

1447 days ago

About six weeks ago my brain caused my body to write down a list of roughly-categorized questions, all vaguely related to “optimizing my ability to make things happen.” I’ve been sitting on those questions since then, trying to figure out where they came from and what they’re for. I’ve puzzled over it multiple times and not gotten any clue at all.

It’s fairly obvious to me that they all have a theme. They’re all questions about issues that I focus on all the time, and they are all a part of what makes me good at what I do. I just don’t know why I wrote them down.

So I’ve decided to post them here and see if any of you, my dear readers, have any ideas about them. Maybe this is the seed for some grand idea that will change the world someday, and I’ll later come back to here and realize that this was the beginning of it. Or maybe this is just what it seems: a list of questions that will help you focus on the right issues, so you can make things happen.

Here they are:

• audience: who needs this information, and what for? what are their key issues? who else will eventually use this information?
• effort: is it worth putting this much effort in, at this point?
• perception: how will the audience perceive this? what will they think? how will it affect their attitude? what questions will they probably ask?
• purpose: what is it that I’m trying to accomplish? does what I’m writing accomplish that?
• core issues: who feels the pain / wants this done / cares about this? are they the ones driving the solution / issue / work? are they getting what they want? is the work that I’m doing going to help resolve the core issues?
• image: does my audience trust me? how do I get them to trust me more? will this help our trust? do they think they can rely on me? do they think I have their best interests in mind? am I doing work that doesn’t have any value except to my image?
• understanding: how well do I understand my customer? do I know what is relevant, and what is irrelevant, to the decision/direction/solution I am trying to make?
• value: what do I bring to the table – why am I needed? does my audience understand that value? am I maximizing that value? am I letting others give their value? am I doing work that doesn’t support me adding that value?
• listening: does my customer feel like he has been heard? have I made sure to give them time to explain their needs/issues/wants?
• focus: does what I’m writing solve the core problems? does it also try to solve other problems? is there content that doesn’t lead to solving any particular problem?
• knowledge: do I know what I don’t know? have I asked for help / more information whenever I needed it? do I have enough information to solve my problem? have I identified which information I need, and which information I don’t need?

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filed under: life, rainskit.com

1498 days ago

1. I’m not reading any of my (30) RSS feeds any more. (It’s amazing how disconnected I am from the geek world, now.) I’ve stopped because I can’t find a decent web-based feed reader anywhere. I usually use Thunderbird, which does it just right, but then my feeds are tied to a particular machine and I switch machines (and logins!) too often for that to be acceptable. In the meantime, I’m working on writing my own web-based reader and once it’s done I’ll switch to it. (If you’re interested, my reader is written in Ruby on Rails, and it will work much like Thunderbird, but in a browser.)
2. Matt and I are slowly working on a wishlist app so we have a good way to keep and publish and track our wishlists. This seems like an obvious thing that ought to already exist, but it doesn’t. I’ve been using Amazon’s but they seem to enjoy making it less-useful occasionally, and it won’t let me track things that aren’t available on amazon.com. So again, once this new one is developed I’ll switch to it.
3. I will eventually be converting my existing gallery to ZenPhoto, because Gallery sucks. The only reason I haven’t switched before this is that there wasn’t a better product out there.

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filed under: life

1512 days ago

We signed a year lease this evening. Not very exciting to most, I know, but it represents a year of certainty to us – and that’s huge.

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filed under: life

1517 days ago

My life has been nothing but changes for the last 20 months; first, a new job with ThoughtWorks which meant a new lifestyle of travel and consulting, and then a series of projects and cities and travel arrangements that is still making my head spin. (The final count is six projects for five clients in five cities).

My wife and I aren’t really the right sort of people to enjoy a travel schedule like that, so we spent most of that time trying to find a way to mitigate the discomfort that it brought, and in the end, gave up. And thus that time of change has ended: I am no longer a ThoughtWorker, as of last Friday.

But that, of course, brings about a new time of change. I start tomorrow (Monday) with NetJets, which I’m really excited about (although they may make me wear a suit). Kristina and I have found a very nice apartment in Columbus, she’s looking for a job, and we’re both re-learning how to live with each other. It’s another time of change but we both believe that after this one our lives will settle down to a normal pace-of-change, and we need that.

To add to the changes of this time, I’ve re-implemented this site in TextPattern, mainly so I can start blogging, as I am now. This is a long-overdue task, and I’ll be posting soon about why it was overdue and what made me finish it. I also hope to post on other topics such as insights about life, goings-on in our lives, the tagging plugin I wrote for textpattern, etc. etc. etc. We’ll see if I keep it up :)

For those of you who want to follow along automatically, the preferred way is to use the Atom feed (or the RSS feed, which doesn’t validate), but you can also sign up for email notifications using the form over in the sidebar.

So Hello, World. Here’s hoping that this more-sane travel schedule will also mean I have time for more of the things I want to do.

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