12 - 2005 | ***Dave Does the Blog

I hear you want a Resolution …

First off, a review of last year’s New Year Resolutions: 1. Spend more time with Kitten. Hmmmm. Yes and no. Enjoyed my post-pre-school drives home with her, but those have…

First off, a review of last year’s New Year Resolutions:

1. Spend more time with Kitten.

Hmmmm. Yes and no. Enjoyed my post-pre-school drives home with her, but those have gotten much less frequent with her bus riding from Kindergarten. I’d say this remains a necessity. Knowing myself, I need to set up a standard time for this sort of thing — when she gets home, or when I got home, or at bed time (difficult), or “Katherine Thursdays” or something of that sort. I get too easily distracted (to/from everything).

2. Try to cut back on external commitments some. Family first. In particular, as rewarding as the various activities at church have been, I’ve overcommitted there on both the Search and the Vestry stuff. Nothing to do for that (and I’m not going to back out on them), but as those responsibilities begin to wind down, I don’t plan on going out of my way to backfill that time with more commitments there. Easier said, perhaps, than done.

Well, I’m not sure that I succeeded here, either, though I certainly tried. Coming off of Vestry will be a big help. Unfortunately, work commitments have ramped up even as other commitments have ramped down.

On the other hand, I have, as noted elsewhere, been spending more time with Margie (CoH-wise) than our parallel pasttimes in the past have allowed.

3. Write. Edit. Write. To wit, a minimum of 15 minutes per day on writing activities. Minimum. Whatever it takes.

I was really glad I did the pseudo-NaNoWriMo over November, and I’ve done a fair amount of light writing for the CoH boards. But, really, didn’t do much with this. Bleah.

4. Keep the weight off, and walk 1,000 miles to nowhere.

Aha! A pretty decent success. Actually dropped added weight and made it to 1,500 miles! Who’d have thought that the stereotypical physical health side of a Resolutions List would be what I ended up doing successfully?

So … what to take for next year?

Hrm.

Well, hell, I don’t see much reason to change the list:

Spend more time with Kitten.
Try to cut back on external commitments some. Family first.
Write. Edit. Write.
Keep the weight off, and walk 1,500 miles to nowhere.

How’s them apples?

Happy New Year!

2005 in Review

Started thinking last night about the big changes in and around my life over this last year. So here’s my personal retrospective Top Nine (because I couldn’t think of Ten),…

Started thinking last night about the big changes in and around my life over this last year. So here’s my personal retrospective Top Nine (because I couldn’t think of Ten), in no particular order.

DVR – In January, we got a Comcast DVR, the cheap version of TiVo offered by our cable company. I cannot now think of TV life without it. It records what I want, reliably, and lets me watch shows I’d ordinarily never have gotten around to seeing. Plus Margie now gets her fill (so to speak) of Iron Chef. And we can select what shows Katherine watches, too. It is, frankly, as transforming a technology as the VCR was.
CoH – It was probably only a matter of time before I got swept up into the MMORPG craze, no matter how much I worried about getting addicted, and Doyce’s leaping into it first — and Margie’s willingness to leap into it with me — wildly transformed our entertainment options starting February or so. Our TV viewing went way down. Our time actually doing stuff together actually increased. My weekend yardwork time and our average amount of sleep went way down. And we met a whole bunch of additional acquaintances along the way.
Fun stuff. No regrets. It’s been a huge time sink, yes, but also a good one, and I don’t feel like I’ve let anything significant lapse or slide or not get done sooner or later that I would have gotten done before the game came into my life. The fact that Margie and I spend about 90% of our game time duoing has helped that be possible.
K2K – Katherine started Kindergarten this year, which changed our schedules as well — suddenly, everything was oriented around bus arrival/departure time, M-F. It also opened up a new world of activity, opportunities, and challenges for her, thus for us.
HHOA – In the spring, I got functionally promoted to a new title and a new group, overseeing development and support of “HR and Home Office Applications” — meaning everything from Quality to Safety to HR to Payroll/Timekeeping applications. It’s meant a lot more travel to Pasadena, a lot more staff to manage, international transfers, a crash course in HR and Payroll and Health & Safety, and some massive projects … with concomitant stress.
(Not to mention numerous phone calls whilst ostensibly off on vacation.)
Rector Hunt! – The hunt for a new rector for our parish — the hunting committee for which I was a member — concluded in May with the arrival of Fr. Craig from Portland. So far, so good. It took a lot of time and effort out of my life, but I felt very good having been a part of making it happen.
Weighing In – I didn’t hit my weight loss goal for the year, but I still managed to drop 15 additional pounds and make it to about 200 or so — and a size 34 waist. Which doesn’t suck, even if I continue to keep fighting the good fight (with occasional retrenchment and trenchermanship during the holiday season).
People looking me and saying, still, “Wow, you’ve lost weight!” doesn’t hurt with the incentive to keep the weight off, either.
CPG – We put on a production of the Cotton Patch Gospel down at the church in September, with me as Matthew/the Narrator. Who had more lines than Jesus (both figuratively and literally), along with songs to sing. Tremendous fun, all told, but a hella lotta work.
Story time – Aside from all the time I put into CoH RP, the key creative output was the Land’s End Story Cycle in November. A great deal of fun, and a good gang of great writers. In some ways, the most worthwhile use of my creative energies all year.
MLK – Kudos to Margie for dealing with difficult times in her department by taking care of herself and going out and finding another position within her company. It was a tough several months, but in December she formally made the change, and she’s already smiling a lot more. Didn’t blog much about it (at all) since some of her co-workers have been known to swing by here at DDtB, but it’s worth noting as something that impacted me (and us) this year.

So that was my year — how was yours?

The Big Bucks

I guess that’s why they pay them to me, since I spent a couple of hours during last night’s Christmas Party and a couple of hours this morning on phone…

I guess that’s why they pay them to me, since I spent a couple of hours during last night’s Christmas Party and a couple of hours this morning on phone calls and e-mail going over a rather nasty year-end problem in our systems at the office. Rrg.

Going out on a limb

Bootleg scans from the 2006 Hooters Calendar. Mostly outdoors shots — woo-hoo! (via BoingBoing)…

Bootleg scans from the 2006 Hooters Calendar. Mostly outdoors shots — woo-hoo!

(via BoingBoing)

“No, I am … crazy, and I need a menthol cigarette.”

A Pennsylvania school teacher does drugs, strips naked, and stands outside in the snow until officers come. Upon being queried if he was okay (one of those great conversational gambits…

A Pennsylvania school teacher does drugs, strips naked, and stands outside in the snow until officers come. Upon being queried if he was okay (one of those great conversational gambits that cops learn to use), he replied as above.

When asked where he lived and why he was naked, Lofton is alleged to have said that he was “Jesus Christ” and that the officer must be “God,” court papers say.

A scuffle broke out between the two men during which Lofton is alleged to have hit the officer over the head with a long plastic toy trumpet which he scooped up from nearby.

The officer used his pepper spray on Lofton, at first to no avail. Then a cursing Lofton advised the officer that “‘Jesus’ is now blind,” court papers say.

I’m sure it’s sad, in many ways, but — well, that line must made me crack up. That deserves to be a t-shirt or something.

(via Romenesko)

Worse ways to go, I suppose

Man bowls his third lifetime 300 — then dies. (via J-Walk)…

Man bowls his third lifetime 300 — then dies.

(via J-Walk)

Pervasive blogging

A flier on the Alaska Air jet that depressurized earlier this week blogs about the experience, complete with cellphone camera pics. Makes me wonder how the Titanic sinking would be…

A flier on the Alaska Air jet that depressurized earlier this week blogs about the experience, complete with cellphone camera pics.

Makes me wonder how the Titanic sinking would be recorded today …

Also worth reading for the inexplicable troll comments imputing the blogger’s veracity. How bizarre. Not to mention idjits who don’t understand the difference between a Treo that’s turned on and a Treo whose cell radio is turned on.

Jeez, I should set up an apartment …

After being in California on business in late November and just before we came out on vacation this year — and having hopped into the office this past week for…

After being in California on business in late November and just before we came out on vacation this year — and having hopped into the office this past week for a couple of days, and back in the office again next week for a couple of days (though the boss man decreed I should feel free to go into Cypress instead next Wednesday, rather than driving into/out of Pasadena on Rose Bowl day) — I now find I’ll be flying out for a goodly chunk of the week after we get back.

*Sigh*

I’m going to stop wearing a Visitors badge …

Oh, I would walk five hundred miles …

… and I would walk five hundred more …, and five hundred more after that … According to my trusty pedometer, I hit my 1,500 mile goal for the year…

… and I would walk five hundred more …, and five hundred more after that …

According to my trusty pedometer, I hit my 1,500 mile goal for the year … today.

Just in time to start next year’s running (or walking) tab. 🙂

The tale of Mary Poppins

The book, the movie, and the odd relationship that the the author, P.L. Travers, had to them both. (via kottke)…

The book, the movie, and the odd relationship that the the author, P.L. Travers, had to them both.

(via kottke)

I was parking in the garage one day …

The structures of parking garages, illustrated. (via kottke)…

The structures of parking garages, illustrated.

(via kottke)

And now for an important message …

“The Space Show” broadcasts one message to into space each month, ostensibly for aliens to pick up. They held a contest for the best message to send — the rules…

“The Space Show” broadcasts one message to into space each month, ostensibly for aliens to pick up. They held a contest for the best message to send — the rules were a one-page message taking no longer than five minutes to read. The winner (in its entirety):

We taste terrible.

Heh. Lloyd Bochner would be proud.

(via GeekPress)

Problems you probably haven’t faced today

1. Determining what 250 pounds of Silly Putty looks like all mooshed together. 2. Determining how to break the 250 pounds of Silly Putty back apart, given that it’s actually…

1. Determining what 250 pounds of Silly Putty looks like all mooshed together.

2. Determining how to break the 250 pounds of Silly Putty back apart, given that it’s actually incredibly thick, pliable, and self-adhering.

The problem was that once together, Silly Putty doesn’t like to come apart, and none of us had any idea of how to deal with this effect. We tried everything: very strong people (didn’t work), scissors (stabbing worked, slicing didn’t), 28-gauge steel wire (broke), 22-gauge steel wire (broke), 16-gauge steel wire (too thick), and twisting and breaking (worked well for “smaller” pieces — under five pounds, that is.)

Two hours later, with the help of more than a dozen enthusiastic Googlers, everyone was finally able to walk away with a giant piece of Silly Putty.

(via BoingBoing)

WaiterRant would be proud

One of my favorite blogs of late is WaiterRant, which goes over the life of a professional waiter/maitre’d in New York. It’s a fascinating look at life on the other…

One of my favorite blogs of late is WaiterRant, which goes over the life of a professional waiter/maitre’d in New York. It’s a fascinating look at life on the other side of the table, if almost always humorous, gives good advice, and is generally a fine read.

So, anyway, last night we had a very nice (and pricy) dinner. The service from the waiter was adequate — I felt neither neglected or cherished, and the food, updates, dessert list, and check came in a timely fashion. Cool by me.

I glanced at the check, and realized it was (while not cheap) oddly low. And when I looked more closely, I realized that the bottle of wine we’d ordered hadn’t been rung up.

Hmmm.

I was pretty sure we hadn’t been comped the wine (there was no reason to, and nobody had said anything), so obviously it just hadn’t been rung up. And while it wouldn’t break the bank of the restaurant, I knew that if the slip was spotted somehow, our waiter would get stuck with the cost. Now, we don’t go crazy on wine, but this was not a cheap bottle, either. It was, in fact, about as much as both of our entrees combined, and would set the waiter back at least four or five tables worth of tips if he had to pay for it.

And, as I said, the waiter was a nice enough guy. I ranked him a straight middle-of-the-road tip (a subject for another day).

So I called him over and pointed out the flub and he thanked me (sincerely if not profusely) and rang it up.

And I’m goofy enough to feel good about having done so.

Now, on the other hand, if he’d been a jerk and the service had sucked …

It’s so simple, so very simple …

… that only a child could do it! So crooned Tom Lehrer about New Math. Tom never worked in Payroll. Most folks look at their paychecks, and figure it’s pretty…

… that only a child could do it! So crooned Tom Lehrer about New Math.

Tom never worked in Payroll.

Most folks look at their paychecks, and figure it’s pretty simple and straightforward. X hours time Y dollars equal Z pay. Do a couple of quick lookups for taxes and some other goofy deductions, and that’s about it. At the end of the year, sum everything up for Uncle Sam and the W2s. Easy-peasy.

As someone who has now already sat in on more payroll and timekeeping and W2 meetings than I care to have, I can tell you it’s more hard-chard than easy-peasy. Way more. Think 1040s are hard? Hah!

Sitting in a meeting today, I started tallying up all the complications as we’re looking at changes to our W2 printing this year. First off, the Feds change things subtly each year, as do, within the company, the Payroll and Accounting groups, not to mention Legal. The biggest complication is that we work interstate (we’ll ignore all the complications of our international operations), so we end up producing payroll and tax reporting to each state we work in, and each state we have residents in. And if folks move from one state to another, that means multiple W2s for that, with different rates and …

… oh, wait, some states don’t have income tax. There’s an exception. Did we calculate and deduct that right? Well, it’s made up for by adding in the localities, even within a state, that charge some sort of tax, or, like Denver, a head count ($25/month or a paycheck or a year or something for everyone who works inside of Denver city limits, like I used to). Multiple W2s there, too.

But while we’re on state, we have disability insurance and unemployment insurance and how those vary from state to state and employer and employee contributions. Not to mention by job category — staff, or craft, or union …

… ah, union, where we have multiple lookups for any given individual based on their job classification, their particular contract, their shift, plus the various deductions and dues (some of this applies to others, of course), which may be based on a per hour, or per day, or per paycheck or per year amount, sometimes with a maximum cap, sometimes with a minimum threshold, sometimes as a percentage of gross or straight time, or sometimes as a flat amount. All of which may be overridden for one reason or another, and which may, or may not, influence taxable wages, etc.

And then there are deductions and other expenses and earnings that may be pre- or post-tax (of different sorts, since Federal tax and Medicare-considered tax, and FICA are all handled at different rates and rules …). Plus pensions and 401(k) stuff, and bonuses and stock options and other reportable income/earning things. Plus benefits (and benefit payments and employer/employee splits, and certain projects/sites we do work at where the contractee picks up some of that or adds to it).

Oh, back on the states, we also do work in Puerto Rico, which as somewhat different rules and a different W2 form (bilingual, among other things). And if a given employee works both in PR and stateside, things get even more fun.

One hell of amount of work goes into calculating that paycheck and deciding on what W2s you get. And it’s all a moving target, as the rules and regs and locations and carriers and stuff constantly change and adjust their numbers, percents, caps, etc.

It’s a wonder any of us ever get paid. Or get our W2s. Or don’t go slowly and silently MAD, MAD I TELL YOU!

Just what I need — coding problems, too …

So taking Hythian’s suggestion, I did some research and found the Google Referrer program for Firefox that he mentioned. You need to be a Google AdSense affiliate (I am), and…

So taking Hythian’s suggestion, I did some research and found the Google Referrer program for Firefox that he mentioned. You need to be a Google AdSense affiliate (I am), and you simply get some additional code to paste into your site.

All well and good, but I couldn’t get it to work. Some of the referrer stuff would display, some wouldn’t, and it seemed to interact together badly.

Finally thought to view in IE. Hmmm. Works there. Front page looks like crap, but the referrals work.

But …

Hmmm …

Looked at an individual archive page. Multiple AdSense stuff working perfectly there, FF and IE … and the page looks good in both, too.

So … something screwy between the two templates?

Both have the same doctype at the top

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd”>

Interesting … different charsets in the metas. The main index uses UTF-8, the archive page uses ISO-8859-1. I wouldn’t think that would make a difference, and MT should be publishing the page as UTF-8 anyway … Make the correction for the archive page template, no difference.

Hmmm. Requires more looking. The basic page framework divs are the same for both, which makes me wonder if I have a div problem on the main index page (outside the basic framework) — except I don’t understand how that would screw up the page in IE (but not in FF) and I *really* don’t understand why it would screw up the AdSense Java scripts.

Must ponder further.

A very fine evening indeed

Since Katherine was with my folks last night, Margie and I had an honest-to-gosh date. A yummy dinner at Catal, a walk among the shops, some Häagen-Dazs ice cream, and…

Since Katherine was with my folks last night, Margie and I had an honest-to-gosh date. A yummy dinner at Catal, a walk among the shops, some Häagen-Dazs ice cream, and lots of good conversation. Among other fun things.

A very fine evening indeed.

Google proxy

While some companies (and locations) block access to certain websites, you can (possibly) easily get around said blocks via Google — by telling it to translate your target page from/to…

While some companies (and locations) block access to certain websites, you can (possibly) easily get around said blocks via Google — by telling it to translate your target page from/to English, and essentially using them as a proxy server, e.g., using http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=www.forbiddensite.com to get to www.forbiddensite.com.

Of course, a visual review of URLs may spot this, and it won’t hide your IP address, and it would be relatively easy for Web Nanny software systems to block something like this — but it’s a rather clever hack nonetheless.

“Gloom personified”

RIP, Vincent Schiavelli. A classic gloomy-faced character actor, I’ll remember him for his appearance in Buckaroo Banzai (as John O’Connor), and, more recently, as the politely professional killer, Dr. Kaufman,…

RIP, Vincent Schiavelli. A classic gloomy-faced character actor, I’ll remember him for his appearance in Buckaroo Banzai (as John O’Connor), and, more recently, as the politely professional killer, Dr. Kaufman, in Tomorrow Never Dies… along with eleventy-dozen other movies and TV shows appearances.

Lessons in gift-receiving

It was a great Christmas all around, but with all the enjoyment, it was, in some ways, a bit hard on Katherine. See, she’s of an age (5½) where she…

It was a great Christmas all around, but with all the enjoyment, it was, in some ways, a bit hard on Katherine.

See, she’s of an age (5½) where she still has all the self-centered delight of Getting Gifts, but is beginning to be responsible and aware enough to be held to a degree of politeness and civility. So, if she gets a gift that she doesn’t particularly care for, we expect that she’ll still politely say thank you, and not just throw it aside and look for the next one. And if she goes to the end of the gifts, we expect that she won’t get all sulky and such.

She went through five major giftings this season — the Colorado Contingent, the En Famille At Home Pre-Trip, the Christmas Morning At The Ks, the Christmas Afternoon At The Hills (Parts 1 and 2), and the Christmas Evening At The Dellis — so five or six, and it was wearing. She got a lot of neat stuff (the solid “hit” seems to be a stuff Snoopy, as well as a big fuzzy robe, but the Barbie DVDs appear to have done well, too, and a nifty book about school busses), but also some stuff that wasn’t at the top of her list, and that was, as it is for all of us, a bit difficult to deal with.

As adults, we grin and nod and say thanks and wow, who’d’ve thought they made this in those colors, and classify as back-of-closet / return / re-gift, but overall we employ social graces to make it clear that we (really truly) appreciate at least the thought, and, if need be, will pretend that we appreciate the gift itself, too. Katherine’s old enough now to be able to start doing that, where throwing an unwanted gift down and hurtling toward the next is no longer as cute as it was at 3. And that’s been hard for her to learn.

Heck, some adults never seem to have learned it …

(And, yes, sometimes there’s an element of dishonesty about it all. That’s part of the social grease that keeps society working. While some folks will get on their high horses about “lying” over gifts, and others will make excuses by trying not to actually say that they like that hideous monstrosity that someone had a fever dream might be a nice present, the implication is still there. In which case being strictly honest is no kindness, no virtue, but just being unwontedly mean. Smile, make happy noises, and bring some joy into the giver’s life — as long as it doesn’t encourage them to come up with a matching sequel next year …)

Of course, Kitten did get some pretty good swag, so that should have made it a bit easier, I guess. Not much explicitly in the way of toys and games — lots of nice clothes (which she’s still young enough to appreciate, not of an older kid age where getting clothes is like getting frozen vegetables, a necessity but hardly a gift), videos, books, dolls/figures/stuffed animals, various gew-gaws. I don’t know if it will strike her, once she gets back into watching TV again at home, that a lot of the “I want that!” impulse requests never made it under the tree (which, to be honest, is not a bad thing).

As for me … well, I have a birthday coming up, which my family was always very careful not to conflate with Christmas (lesson learned from my Dad, I guess, who has a birthday in December). Still, I’m always surprised when the first birthday gift appears, usually identified as such during some Christmas gift giving, and it does provide an opportunity to make up for some of the gaps in what I’ve gotten for Christmas (or an opportunity for Some Shoppers to actually purchase stuff for me that’s not socks and underwear, ahem).

At any rate, now it’s time for us to shift into the parental mode of, “Oh, you want that toy/treat/game/doll? Well, your birthday is coming up in a few months …” — and for Katherine to continue to learn how to ask and receive gracefully.