Can’t Complain

After all the nervousness yesterday about how the weekend was going to go, today ended up being a bit of a relief. It wasn’t miraculously good and infinitely better than I expected, but it was good enough. The children did, in fact, fight with each other quite a bit. I suppose that since many adults haven’t really learned to mind their own business, I shouldn’t be surprised that my children have that problem. I’m also a bit at odds with Kate – she seems to have a bottomless desire to do things with me, which is often very nice but many times conflicts with chores I have to do or time that I am taking to try to have some mental solitude.

Still, those troubling times were not present in such great amounts that I wanted to run screaming from the house. Donia took Quinn to his basketball game, which gave me a little time to be at home with the girls and call my mom to wish her happy anniversary (45 years – wow!). For dinner, we made a journey to an Italian place that several people had recommended. Apparently the family that owns it has several children with celiac (and I think maybe the parents have celiac too), so they have made an effort to have a large gluten free menu with several items that are typically verboten (like fried or breaded foods). We got a plate of fried mozzarella chunks, and Donia and Kate were able to get dishes that they both really enjoyed.

All in all, it was a day with some minor victories and no major defeats. I would declare victory and head off to bed, but if I crash now I’ll wake up well before 6:00, so I need to keep myself awake a while longer.

Yay for the Weekend?

After a rough start to the week with all the computer issues, things got a lot better yesterday with a super-productive day and then finished off nicely with a relatively calm Friday. I think I hit the wall a little at the end of the day, but I was still able to get some loose ends wrapped up and clear my head for the weekend.

The problem is that I don’t think a clear head will necessarily lead to an abundance of patience. The kids have been particularly troubling over the past week. Lots of fighting, lots of whining, lots of non-compliance. I know that it’s that time of year when they have been cooped up and have energy to burn, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. Last weekend was a rough one; it seemed like the kids were taking turns pestering me while the other two fought. So that makes me apprehensive for this weekend. We do have a few things going in our favor. Donia and I have probably breathed enough fire this week to scare them a little bit. And we have Kate at a “Girls Night Out” at her school this evening, so hopefully it helps for her to have a special event to start things out. So, I suppose we’ll see what happens. Honestly, even with a little apprehension, it still feels pretty good to have the weekend arrive.

A Case of Missing Persons

The other day we were driving into the neighborhood, and Donia mentioned that it was starting to feel a bit more like home. I wasn’t terribly surprised to hear her say this, because I had been feeling the same way. I think what it boils down to is routine. Partly from having 6 months under our belt and partly from not running from one crisis to another, we’ve established a routine here. In some ways, that routine is the same as what we had in Rochester; in other ways, it’s very different. But just the fact that we have established something is enough to make it feel like home – home is where you live out your routines.

Another thing I have been thinking about lately is how surprised I am over how much I still think about the people I used to work with and go to church with. I’m not surprised that I still miss them, but they float through my mind on a fairly regular basis and I wonder what they are up to and how they are doing. I’m thinking now that the two topics are related. The more we have our own routine here, the more it highlights the things that are missing from the old routine. For me, the people at work were certainly a huge part of that. Whether or not I felt like I had a close personal relationship with them, I was seeing them and talking with them on a daily basis. That accumulates to something significant over 10 years. Even aside from the time factor, the relationships at CompTIA are very different because of the way we work together and the sizes of the teams. We also haven’t quite found a church home yet, though we have found some individuals that we have connected with, so there’s nothing at all replacing that routine.

I had a couple conversations on Facebook yesterday where this came up. It was really nice to connect, and it was also nice to be able to say that I missed seeing them around and to hear that they felt the same way. One of my favorite quotes is “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” This whole moving thing continues to be very bittersweet, but I suppose I could modify the quote to be “Don’t cry because you miss them. Smile because you’re missed.” It’s good to have friends, even if the connections have become something very different from what they were. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m very glad to be on Facebook to keep those connections going. I’m hoping that this year there are a few chances to meet people face-to-face, rather than avatar-to-avatar.

Humble Pie

So yesterday I posted that I had made some errors in judgement, but I did not expound on this, which I know drives some people crazy. Today I am ready to tell the full story.

My Mac had been starting to run slow, and the IT guys at work had a new image that could be put on the machine to try to fix things up. I decided this was probably a good idea since I had been testing their patience a bit with my overzealousness for upgrading. So I backed everything up – the work stuff to their cloud service and the full hard drive to an external machine. I figured I was covered. The machine got its shiny new image, and I started the process of getting things restored. Everything came in from the cloud service just fine. The only issue was that I had to re-sync the files from my team’s shared space on Box. Then I plugged in the hard drive to restore everything else. After recognizing the drive, it asked if I wanted to user encryption. I almost decided to grab the data first, but then I figured to go ahead.

What’s the worst that can happen?

My thinking was that the computer was asking me if I wanted my future backups encrypted. It actually wanted to encrypt the entire disk. So it started this incredibly long-running process, during which it looked like my previous backups were inaccessible. This did not make me happy for multiple reasons, not the least of which was that I had to leave the machine running overnight at work so the encryption could complete. Still, I assumed that once the process finished, I’d be able to get to the backup.

When I got to work this morning, the encryption had finished! Yay! The backups were still not available! Curses! I couldn’t find any answers online, and when I called the Apple Store they just told me to come on in. So I pretty much had to punt and wait until I could go in, which I did tonight. I explained the problem to my assigned Genius, and he gave me a perplexed look. Not good. I fired up the machine and showed him how the backups were not available from inside the Time Machine application. He was still perplexed. Then he suggested we try something else.

“Go into Finder and just select the hard drive. Yeah, now you can see the folders for each one of the backups…and you can just select the one you want…and there’s all the data.”

My elation was tempered by my humiliation at a solution that I think Kate might have been able to stumble upon. We did run into a weird permissions problem that wouldn’t let me copy the entire folder all at once, but it became evident that the best course of action was to work around that rather than solve it. So everything is back to normal now and life can go on.

So what have we learned? Think through things – several times – before major operations on the hardware. Also, I’m not always quite so smart as I might like to think.

Smarties

WARNING: Parental bragging ahead.

I usually remember that Kate is pretty smart, probably because she has always tried to act older than her age and has alway enjoyed using her mental abilities. The other two have always acted a little more like I would expect kids to act, with the running and playing and not necessarily trying to engage us in conversation. So I tend to forget that they are kind of bright too, but every so often they remind me.

Paige is reading now. I had thought that we would have some big celebration for surviving a third tour of “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons,” which I did with the first two and Donia started with Paige. Paige sometimes tolerated them and sometimes didn’t, and she seemed to be getting the hang of it. Then all of a sudden we noticed she was reading things that the lessons wouldn’t have taught her. After we switched schools, her teacher wrote us a note saying that she was sending some extra material home since Paige was reading so well. The other day, I read a book with her and had the thought that she was reading better than Kate was at that age. Which may or may be true, since I don’t have empirical evidence, but it was still kind of cool.

Quinn got into the Discovery program at school, and tonight he went to the open house introducing the program to the third graders (they all start the program next week). They took some test to determine who qualified for the program, and tonight for some reason they explained to everyone which percentiles the scores represented. A score over 130 was the top 2%, and Quinn got a 131. So that was pretty cool. Of course, since they had explained about the percentiles, Quinn sees the score and announces in a stage whisper “I’m in the top 2%!” So we might have talk about keeping a low profile.

The thing with these two is that while Kate is likely to use her intelligence for good, they might lean a little more toward using it for evil. Especially that little one.

Bound to Happen

I suppose it was too unrealistic to imagine that the entire winter would pass without snow. The first substantial snowfall hit us today. It wasn’t horrible, but the first one is always a little depressing. At work, it seemed like it was having trouble accumulating, but when I got home, there were 4 inches on the driveway. I hate shoveling while it is still coming down, but with that much (and with it being fairly wet) I decided to clear it off. During the shoveling, I thought about how dealing with snow here compared to Rochester. Here’s what I came up with:

• Shoveling: Hard to say, but at worst it was a wash between the two. I thought it would be better here since the driveway and sidewalk were both shorter, but the driveway is wider too. My wife, upon reading this, will begin to have her blood boil over my continued resistance to purchasing a snow blower. But I think we’re going to be OK. I almost had Quinn help me out on the driveway, which I think he could have done. But I decided to just handle it myself this first time. Still, I believe my dream of free labor will be coming true this winter.
• Bringing the kids in: Better here thanks to the large entrance we have. We have a mudroom coming in from the garage, but it’s tight because it’s a skinny room and the laundry machines and a double laundry tub. The front entrance has space for the kids to come in, and it’s a little more out of the way than our front entrance in Rochester. We didn’t have “snow clothes removal” as a part of our house-hunting criteria; we just got a little lucky.
• Schedules: The snow didn’t come overnight, so we didn’t have to deal with it this morning. Oddly enough, it felt like it would have been worse to shovel and get ready to go, even though Kate and I leave around the same time and the younger kids get on the bus later. Not sure why – maybe I just hate that whole scramble and it will never seem good. The afternoon was going to be a little tricky. I was going to have to leave early to give myself time to get home for Kate’s swim practice, then work a little more from home. Which is about what I might have done before, just with a longer commute. However, Kate decided she didn’t want to swim AND CompTIA told us to get out and beat the rush. We sometimes made management calls at IBM, but since we were working with other teams in other places, it felt like the machine was still running. So this was nice.
• Parking: My favorite one. There is a deck at the Sara Lee building, and I park all the way on the bottom. No walk through the weather, no scraping of the car. Beautiful.

Look, I am being a little tongue-in-cheek here. These things all add up to very little. But I’m still happy to have minor victories.

One Year In

During the last few years we were in Rochester, there was a string of 10 year anniversaries. Now it feels a little like we’ve hit the reset button: today was my 1 year anniversary at CompTIA.

When I mentioned it to Donia over the weekend, it seemed kind of unbelievable. Today, though, it felt more like it did when Kate turned one. I remember everyone asking “Can you believe it’s been a year?” And I remember saying “Yeah, it’s definitely been a year.” When it’s been so hectic, it feels like an awful lot has happened. Even with time moving a little faster as the kids are getting older, selling the house and moving added so much to 2011 that my flight into Chicago and wide-eyed entrance to the CompTIA HQ seems like a long time ago.

As far as work goes, I don’t have any regrets about the decision. Now that the newness has worn off, I can feel the frustrations of working life starting to set in. But I recognize them as muted versions of some of the frustrations I had at IBM, so I just handle them the way I was learning to back then. Also, the worst frustrations are completely absent. There are things I miss – mostly the camaraderie that came from intense work and the feeling of being a rung up the ladder as a manager. I knew I would miss those things, though, and getting peace of mind and reasonable workload is a good trade. Beyond that, I’ve been able to do things that wouldn’t have been available to me at IBM: writing in an official capacity and traveling for both education and presentations.

I do feel like I’m still getting to know the place, especially since it was slow starting while I was living in Rochester. There are still several ingrained behaviors that keep me from completely feeling like I fit in. Just like the frustrations, I realize that the discomfort probably won’t ever go all the way to zero (and maybe it shouldn’t, lest complacency set in). And just like the frustrations, the good outweighs the bad in the personality of the association. We had a great meeting today going over the budget and the rationale behind it. It’s the type of thing that can’t happen in a large company, and even then I’m positive that not every organization would take the time and explain things like that to help keep the employees informed. I feel like there is a lot of good momentum and potential, and that’s a nice feeling to have about the place that is providing your livelihood.

It’s been a great year. Not without its issues, but overall very rewarding. It will be several years before we’re able to fully evaluate the decision to turn our lives upside down; if things keep improving from this first year, I think we will be in good shape.

13 Days = Just About Right

I know that not everyone shares my opinion on this, but I am feeling pretty good after two weeks of vacation. I have always felt that my brain doesn’t fully refresh if I take a day here and a day there without taking a full week off, and this was the first vacation of at least a week since last Christmas, which didn’t really count because I was working while we were in NC. So I’m not sure when the last true full week was.

Donia asked the other day if I wasn’t bored with all this time off. I’m honestly not, and I think most of the jitters about going back to work are there because I know there isn’t another viable option, so going back is inevitable. Because of that, I think I tend to shut down and enjoy some tranquility, knowing that the chaos will start up again soon enough. The kids certainly get stir crazy, and that translates to me getting a little crazy. But left to my own devices, I feel like I pass the time without getting anxious. Which, again, I know is not for everyone.

This vacation was broken up into stages, which may have helped keep things interesting. First there were the days before NC, which ended up being busier than I thought since there was a ton that needed to happen and we were also kind of reeling from Kate’s diagnosis. Then the drive down to NC, the time there, and the drive back, which I’ve already covered. Finally there were the last few days here at home. I was surprised at how much got accomplished during that time. I never thought I would get as far with the 2011 photo book as I have, the Christmas decorations came down in a hurry on New Year’s Day, and we even entertained the Grosses on New Year’s Eve. Even with all that activity, I was able to let my brain hibernate. I might not say I’m looking forward to getting back to work and the whole routine, but I think I am ready for it.

More than anything, that has been my favorite part of this vacation: the feeling that my mind is ready for the challenges ahead rather than struggling through day-to-day survival. Even looking at the calendar today, I found myself thinking about the whole week ahead and not just Tuesday. Unfortunately, I don’t think my wife would share my enthusiasm and mental clarity. Our minds work in very different ways, and it is pretty rare for both of us to be feeling refreshed and calm at the same time. My goal is to hold on to my feeling while helping her find her own. With the new school and work schedules, I’m optimistic that we just might be able to make it happen.

Goodbye, 2011 / Hello, 2012

I was thinking that the feeling I’m having at the end of this year was somewhat unique. Then I decided to go back and look at my past couple New Year’s posts, and it looks like I have typically have this sense of optimism. I’ve even had the feeling of “that was a rough year, now I’m ready for a good year” like I have now. I do think there’s a little bit of a different spin this year – and of course I will get to that soon in many more words than are probably necessary – but it looks like this is my standard approach to the turning of the calendar.

I’m glad to see 2011 come to an end, but I’m also satisfied with the way the year played out. It doesn’t feel like I want to say “good riddance” to the year. Some of the events, maybe. But not the whole year.The move obviously was the defining event of the year, and it was very difficult in many ways. But I don’t regret it. It didn’t kill us, and I do think it made us stronger. In fact, even though the move was the defining event, I’ve thought more about our family and the ways that we have changed when I have reflected on the past year. Each of us changed throughout the year. Some of that was due to the move and some was due to the stages of life that we are all in. Those changes brought some growing pains, but overall I feel like we are moving in a positive direction. I think we grew closer together this year, even as the kids start to fight a little more with each other and with us. Without having many familiar things to hold on to, we found some comfort in each other. I think that will pay dividends in the years to come.

The satisfaction at the end partly comes from the bumps starting to settle down. There hasn’t been a major catastrophe with the house for a few months, and we’ve also had some time to evaluate how things are going and make some changes we feel are needed. The other part of the satisfaction is the sense of accomplishment that I have. My pre-vacation work list got done, but more than that I feel like we are doing what we set out to do. Donia and I are seeing eye to eye on things, and we are moving past the difficulties we had and getting on with the lives we want to have.

And that is the optimistic feeling I have for 2012. Not so much that “something” marvelous is going to happen, but that we are ready to make marvelous things happen. 2012 is much more of a blank slate than 2011 was: no new job, no new move, no planned vacations. With the change in schools, we are expecting to have more time, money, and energy to explore our new city. Donia should finally be able to dig in to her work, and I am anxious to see how year 2 at CompTIA goes now that I have an idea about the annual cycle. I have no doubt that the children will continue to provide some amount of angst, and I have no idea when we will claim to feel that we are fully settled in. But I also have hope that our family will continue to grow stronger in the next year and we will end up better than where we started.

2011 Reading List

I had dedicated this year to re-reading, but I decided not to record all the things I was going through for the second time, which may have been a mistake because I’m not sure that I remember them all. I know I re-read the Harry Potter series and the Dark Tower series. I also re-read The Blind Assassin, Bag of Bones, and Watchmen, which were all just as good the second time around. Bag of Bones actually may have been better. I feel like there are a couple that I’m missing, which isn’t a terribly big deal. There were also a couple I thought about re-reading, but eventually the weight of the books I wasn’t getting to became too pressing.

So here are the books I read for the first time this year:

Stieg Larsson	The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Robert Ferrigno	Prayers for the Assassin
Howard Jacobson	The Finkler Question
David Cristofano	The Girl She Used to Be
John Hart	The Last Child
Stieg Larsson	The Girl Who Played with Fire
Stephen King	Full Dark, No Stars
Stieg Larsson	The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
Steven Levy	In the Plex
Peter Sheahan	Flip
Peter Sheahan	Making It Happen
Robert Lewis	Raising a Modern-Day Knight
Dan Brown	The Lost Symbol
Harlan Coben	Live Wire
Suzanne Collins	The Hunger Games
Courtney E. Smith	Record Collecting for Girls
Ian McEwan	Solar
Graham Swift	In the Light of Day
Ransom Riggs	Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
David Brooks	The Social Animal
S.J. Watson	Before I Go to Sleep
Patrick deWitt	The Sisters Brothers
Suzanne Collins	Catching Fire
Julian Barnes	The Sense of an Ending

I’m getting more in the habit of writing reviews on goodreads than recording them here, but there are a few things I notice when reading through the list. I finally got caught up to speed on two popular series – the Millenium and Hunger Games trilogies. I can see why they are so popular – I enjoyed them both quite a bit (even if I wasn’t quite able to finish Gabe’s Hunger Games books and will now have to resort to placing another hold at our library).

I’m a little surprised at the variety on the list. I would have guessed that I leaned a little towards quick reads throughout the year, but I have some non-fiction (though none that I was particularly fond of) and some more serious books on here. As far as favorites, things really picked up at the end of the year. I enjoyed The Light of Day, my favorite book of the year (and maybe the past couple years) was Before I Go to Sleep, and The Sense of an Ending was also very solid.

Even though I obviously didn’t stick exclusively to re-reading this year, I still have a feeling of being behind on things. If I stopped to think about it, I could probably come up with 10 books that I would love to get to next year, and that’s without spending any time digging around for some things that are off my radar screen. With Kate’s swim schedule, there’s a decent amount of time fo reading, so I expect I’ll have another decent list to talk about next year.