Humphrelia

This past week was Halloween. But I didn’t really have to tell you that.

This is Malin’s favorite time of year and her favorite holiday. We brought out the giant eyeballs again (4′ beach balls that have been painted to look like giant eyeballs). We tie up in the front yard so they stare at everyone entering the neighborhood. We usually get a fair amount of compliments. They went up a little late this past Wednesday, so some kids, hoping to see them on their ride back from school, were disappointed. But everyone that actually went out trick-or-treating got to see them.

Like last year, we had a giant spider on the house. Last year it was a ridiculously big spider (basically a big trash bag that you fill full of leaves and eight, long, flimsy legs attached). This year it was a little more reasonable – about two feet long. Its setup was more intricate this year though. Last year, the giant black bag of a spider was simply hiding in the shadows on the bushes outside of our garage. This year, it was on display in a big web (of white yarn) by the corner of the house near the garage. It was not in the shadows, but directly in the path of the garage floodlight, so that all of the kids could see it.

I worked from home on Wednesday – partly to avoid the horrible, hellish, Halloween traffic; and partly because I try to work from home nearly ever Wednesday. I was finally able to pull myself from the home office to participate in the pumpkin-carving festivities about 5:30pm.

After opening and gutting a li’l pumpkin, I busied myself with catching up on blogs and such while Malin and Will made Halloween cookies. Malin’s mother joined us at our house, and she helped Malin and Will with the cookie decorations. We bought a few thin-crust California Pizza Kitchen pies from the grocery store, tossed them in the oven, and were eating shortly thereafter.

Shortly after 6pm, we received our first trick-or-treaters. Soon after, Malin and I took Will out to get his fair share of the loot. Malin’s mom was nice enough to stay at the house, giving out our candy to the neighborhood kids. Meanwhile, we were off to pillage and plunder the neighbors’ supply of candy.

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I finally got around to posting some things for sale this evening. I posted my Blazer to both Craig’s List and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The Camaro is finally fixed, so I’m unloading the SUV. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the Camaro is really fixed this time. The mechanic said that the reason the new pinion bearing went out so quickly was a problem with the pinion flange, which should now be fixed.

I was quite irritated to find that he still had not corrected the speedometer, after previously telling me that it would be fixed. He conveniently failed to mention this shortcoming when I picked it up from his shop. When I called him right after getting home, he said that “he tried four times to reprogram it, but it wouldn’t work.” He blamed the tool he has, and he told me that he’d get it fixed soon.

Considering he held the car captive for twelve weeks the last time I took it in to him, I’m not holding my breath. So I bought a used Hypertech Power Programmer III off of eBay last week to fix it myself. This thing is capable of reprogramming the on-board computer for a variety purposes, including adjusting the speedometer for after-market gear ratios and tire sizes. It also has “performance” programming that adjusts everything from the temperatures at which the radiator fan turns on and off to the fuel delivery and ignition. The intent is more horsepower, but I’m more stoked about the potential for better fuel economy: 2-4 mpg better than the factory programming. That means this tool will pay for itself in less than a year in lower fuel costs.

Now my only problem is that this new programmer won’t work: it tells me that the computer’s current programming is not factory. I have to call Hypertech support tomorrow morning to see what I can do to work around this issue. I have a feeling this happened when the mechanic “tried four times” to fix the speedometer…

In addition to selling my Blazer, I’m also unloading a Bowflex home gym. I don’t use it often enough and would get more use out of a treadmill. If you are in the market for a home fitness system, take a look.

Halloween will arrive this upcoming Wednesday (and my sister’s birthday very shortly thereafter). This weekend we went to a Halloween party – technically a pumpkin-carving party. And before that, we had a neighborhood birthday party to attend. So Will had a big day yesterday.

The birthday party was for a girl in our neighborhood. She lives down the road from us, and we know her parents, Bill and Robin, because they are good friends with the couple that used to live across the street from us. The birthday girl, Casey, turned six on Thursday. Her parents threw her a pretty cool party on Saturday. They rented a giant, inflatable space-walk slide. Will was too anxious around the swarm of kids to go up and slide down it. But after everyone went inside to watch Casey open her gifts, Malin and I were able to coax Will up to the top. He thoroughly enjoyed sliding down. He got dreadfully upset a couple of times while climbing up to the top, though. The material was very slippery, and he was shorter than many of the other kids that were climbing up (despite being quite tall for his age – most of the other kids were a little older). So he had a tougher time reaching the railing (seatbelt material that ran up the length of the climb onto which the kids could hold), and he had a tougher time with each step because they were further apart than normal stairs. But, overall, a good time was had by all.

After that, we had a couple of hours during which to unwind. After unwinding, we were off to a pumpkin-carving party in Decatur. A friend and co-worker, Rob Cleveland, was the host. Every year at this event, he comes out in costume as “Gripper Man”. The word “gripper” is, apparently, slang for men’s briefs. Gripper Man has a super-hero cape, a big emblem on his chest in the shape of the aforementioned underwear that is emblazoned with the letter G. And, of course, Gripper Man wears grippers – over the top of this pants. Unfortunately, Malin did not bring her camera…

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I was reading the blog of a co-worker and friend of mine, and therein some of the posts linked to other blogs and sites. While wandering through the web, I happened upon a link to a strange video: scenes from Star Wars (Episode IV) wherein Darth Vader’s lines are replaced by lines from Coming To America. Check it out here.

After watching, I noticed some links to episodes of Chad Vader – Day Shift Manager. I saw these some time ago, but when I first watched them there were only two of them. Now the entire first season is finished: eight episodes in all. The story centers on Darth Vader’s lesser-known brother, Chad, and his tribulations as a manager at a grocery store. It’s quite amusing and worth wasting time with:

• Episode #1
• Episode #2
• Episode #3
• Episode #4
• Episode #5
• Episode #6
• Episode #7
• Episode #8

Recently, I recall someone telling me about a commercial wherein a gorilla plays drums to the beat of In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins. I can’t remember who it was that was telling me about this, but I just recently saw it firsthand. My brother, in fact, sent me an e-mail with this link.

This post is kind of a hodge-podge of rambling thoughts. So much so, that I couldn’t think of any reasonable title.

Lots of stuff has occurred this week. Some good, and some, unfortunately, really bad.

We’ll start with the good:

• I had a decent week at work. We got a lot done, and I got to work on some new stuff (although not a lot). Particularly bright is the prospect of starting new development. We had reviews of functional designs that I wrote much earlier this year (before our new development efforts were postponed).
• My parents will be coming this weekend to see Will. We haven’t seen them in quite some time. They were in Ireland and Scotland for a couple of weeks. The last time we tried to meet up with them, my mom, sadly, fell ill. They will definitely be tickled to see Will – who has grown a little bigger since they last saw him, is talking quite a bit more (and better) since they last saw him, and is halfway potty-trained.
• I had been wanting to share a link on this blog for some time, but have been unable to dig up the link. The other day, while looking for something else in my Inbox, I randomly happened upon it. It’s a demented “mind-melting” page – complete with appropriate music (courtesy of Danny Elfman circa 1985). Check it out here.

Unfortunately, a couple of not-so-good things happened. A long-time, good friend of mine and his wife lost their dog this week (the dog was struck by a car on a busy road and suffered major, irreparable spinal damage). Also, a co-worker of mine had to suddenly leave work yesterday upon hearing the news that his grandfather had died.

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Today marks a monumental occasion: it was the first time that Will crapped in the potty. He’s been doing pretty good, for the most part, on urinating in a potty. And he no longer wears diapers except when he sleeps at night. But for the past few weeks he has been pushing a turdball into his undies everyday.

Today he discovered that it looks more like a snake and less like a ball when it comes out while sitting on a toilet. Imagine that!

Luckily for everyone (most of all Will), no pictures were taken. (we’re not that crazy! … usually)

Will thought it was pretty funny and talked briefly about pooping out seashells and turtles, in addition to balls and snakes. Speaking of the deranged imaginations of toddlers, he wakes up after having pretty vivid dreams quite frequently. He may have inherited these types of dreams from his mother (mine are usually less engaging and less memorable). I say that because he frequently talks about all sorts of crazy stuff, typically involving some of his favorite cartoon characters, right after he wakes up in the mornings.

News Flash: For all of you who have submitted a comment only to see it disappear, my suspicion was right: your comments were magically and (so it seemed) irrevocably being marked as spam. Once I installed WordPress’s anti-spam plugin (Akismet is included with WordPress), I was able to access the spam comments and restore them. So all of your comments are now up! Yeah! If this happens to you again, it will hopefully be restored from spam in short order. Also, I’m hoping that the Akismet plugin identifies fewer false positives than whatever mechanism WordPress was using before.

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One of the great things about YouTube is the incredible diversity of music videos that one can find. I figured I would share links with some of my favorites.

We’ll start off with an amazing guitarist that I remember seeing on YouTube several months ago: Andy McKee. When I first heard of him, his record label – CandyRat – had taped recording sessions with lots of their artists and posted all of the videos to YouTube. This guy was definitely the most impressive. Below are links to four of his tunes that happen to be my favorites:

• Drifting
• Africa (written by Steve Lukather’s band, Toto)
• Art of Motion
• The Friend I Never Met

His style is very similar to Michael Hedges. If you’re not familiar with Michael Hedges, then you can see him play here.

I just recently ran across another cool artist, thanks to a long time friend of mine, Keith Groover (Keith and I were next door neighbors for several years in Taylors, SC). One of his websites had a link to an awesome video by Kaki King. She is an amazing guitarist whose technical style shares a few things in common with Andy McKee. Below is a link to that video followed by a couple of other videos of hers:

• Playing with Pink Noise
• Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers
• Yellowcake

While we are on the topic of awesome guitarists, how could we possibly forget the un-freakin’-believable Stanley Jordan. The links below are videos of live performances by this phenomenal virtuoso (after seeing him play, you can easily forgive his cheesy choice of costume):

• Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven
• The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby

How about something completely different? Like some Wierd Al? Some skateboarding? YouTube has it all!

Here is a neat tune from a European pop group named Bloc Party. And here is an even cooler video for it, created using an addictive Flash application named Line Rider. And while we are talking about Line Rider, who can forget this one? (featuring a song named Tank! by Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts – also featured during the opening sequence for the animé show Cowboy Bebop).

Finally, I will share another facet of YouTube’s greatness: the availability of bizarre Japanese television programming.

Treadmill Madness:

Our big US television networks need to seriously consider hiring the guys that come up with this stuff – pure genius! (and way better than Deal or No Deal).

The newest content on this blog is, in fact, old stuff!

When Malin was pregnant, we had a blog to which we posted pictures of and info about ourselves and our fetus. We continued to maintain it (though much less often) for six months after Will was born.

So if you take a gander at the archives, you’ll find some posts from the years 2004 and 2005. They were all copied over from our old blog – which wasn’t really a blog at all. It was a free web-site with geocities. We added content to it like a blog, but we were not using blog software (like WordPress). That meant that it didn’t have the features of most blogs, and it was a huge pain to actually post something because we had to hand edit the HTML file (actually, Malin used Dreamweaver).

Today, Ann (my mother-in-law) watched Will for a couple of hours so that Malin and I could go see a movie. It was our way of celebrating Malin’s birthday (she turned 29 yesterday).

Malin knew what movie she wanted to see weeks ago: The Bourne Ultimatum.

The movie was very good. It did an awesome job of picking up exactly where the last movie left off. It even beautifully incorporated the previous movie’s final scene – which looked to be some sort of resolution until you see the events in the context of this film.

It maintained the fantastic action pace of the previous two (complete with thrilling car chases and Houdini-like escapes from the antagonists) while still showing an excellent plot that does a great job of slowly revealing the pieces. In the end, just like in the previous movie, all the pieces fall into place perfectly. There was one thing Malin and I were expecting from the last scene that wasn’t delivered – but I’m afraid I can’t divulge that info without potentially spoiling it for those who haven’t seen it (send me an e-mail if you want to discuss).

I also like the soundtrack to the movies more and more. The musical themes presented in the first two are kept in the third installment. They do a great job of conveying the tension and drive of the characters while at the same time adding some mystique and interest to the whole experience.

If you’ve seen and enjoyed the first two Bourne films, the third is not likely to disappoint.

While leaving the theater, Malin had a great idea for movie marketing: why not co-release the DVD and the film, but only make the DVD available to those that see it in the theater for the first few months? If the movie is good, then many people will be willing to buy the DVD because they’re still “high” on the movie. Malin and I would have definitely been willing to purchase the DVD on the spot as we exited the theater. Since the DVD was not thusly available, we will be acquiring it whenever it is finally released.

I suggested in an earlier post that my employer, NewEnergy Associates, was likely to have a new stakeholder in the near future. Well, that future is now. Our former parent company, Siemens, sold the company to a corporation named Ventyx. A press release describing the deal was released to the public yesterday, so I am now able to discuss it and its particulars freely.

The name of our new parent company is kind of a joke. In the company meeting where we were formally informed of what was happening, their CEO admitted that they tried to think of all sorts of meaningful and/or clever company names, but everything they could think of was already taken. So they just made up a word. Today we received word from marketing folks at Ventyx trying to explain or justify the name. It was stereotypical marketing silliness. In short, it’s just a made-up word: it means nothing. The great brains that thought up the new name made the poor marketing department think of some way to explain it. It’s no wonder that marketing folks occasionally get a bad rep: they are sometimes asked to do the lamest things by company “leadership”.

Ventyx is a combination of several companies – primarily Indus and MDSI, but a couple of other smaller companies, too. A private equity firm bought these companies and consolidated them into Ventyx. They also made up that name. Why not just call it Supercalifragilistica? (By the way, I’m trademarking the name Supercalifragilistica – so if I ever buy a company and feel like changing their name, I’ll already know what to call it).

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