Still not the world's forum for great thought
Sneaking up on a pea cock at Tracy Aviary
28 May 2001
“Help! There’s a lory on my head!”
28 May 2001
Yee-ha!
19 May 2001
Super boy
15 Apr 2001
New spiky do
15 Apr 2001
“I wonder how this egg dye tastes…”
14 Apr 2001
The sub-zero egg hunt
12 Apr 2001
Masters calmly at work
05 Apr 2001
The hat no child can resist
01 Apr 2001
Always remember your eye protection!
10 Feb 2001
Violence, especially when involving a child, is an ugly thing. I can vouch for that first-hand. My children have been abusing me a fair amount lately.
The trend started when Ethan and I were wrestling one morning. I guess it had been a while since we had clipped his fingernails (that would be a whole different wrestling match), because he recognized them for their apparent combat potential. He dragged a fingernail from the base of my neck to the middle of my sternum. Without exaggeration, a strip of my skin dangled from the end of his finger.
Something in my face inspired him to an immediate sincere apology. The shower sure stung that morning, and I looked like I was recovering from surgery for a few days.
Gerrit, not one to be upstaged, pretty much took over from there. Aside from being the general King of Destruction in our home, he also does his share of harm.
Not long ago, while Shannon was holding him to me for a kiss goodnight, he thought a head-butt-to-the-eye goodnight would be much more fun.
But his magnum opus so far was a time when I was asleep. It’s not often that I’m asleep when he’s out of his crib, but for some reason, that was the situation. He climbed up on the bed, and I groggily noticed something cold and metallic rubbing on my upper arm. I thought, Oh, Gerrit is driving one of his little cars on my arm, and I just tried to keep sleeping.
When he went over to visit Shannon (also sleeping), she woke with a start to find Gerrit with a razor in his hand. The connection still didn’t quite make it through my head, until I got up later to find a raw patch on my arm that had bled in a few places.
I do have to say, though, that in Gerrit’s case he distributes the beatings evenly. We’ve all learned that when you sword fight with Gerrit, it’s a very practical exercise in self-defense. He even gets himself sometimes. Just yesterday he stepped off a mattress and in a stumbling, running attempt to regain his balance, smacked right into a wall. That’s one of those dichotomous experiences where you try to show sufficient comforting sympathy while stifling a giggle.
A very sad e-mail hit my inbox a couple of weeks ago. Seeing the subject line, “Game over for Gamecenter,” my heart sank a little.
Gamecenter is one of the web sites I visited most regularly. Their “Dispatch” that shows up in my work inbox brought a bit of stolen pleasure each week as I peeked at the computer game reviews. The best reviews are for games that I’ve greatly anticipated (knowing about them from previous Gamecenter previews), and for games that really stink. The latter are always good for a laugh. In fact, I doubt I’ve played any games over the past few years that I didn’t first get a good recommendation for from Gamecenter.
And now they’re gone. The dot com shakeout finally impacted me in a personal way. Sure, several of the free ISPs I’ve used have dropped like flies as I kept changing from one to the next (though NetZero remains in business; they just take their fee in blood instead of dollars — they get more obnoxious every week). I’ve also gotten e-mails from several other free services as they crashed and burned. But this was the first one to hurt a little.
It turns out that Gamecenter didn’t go bust — their parent company, through acquisitions, ended up with two gaming web sites. One of them had to go, and pink slips to the Gamecenter staff announced which one.
Their last feature on the site was a list of bios for all the writers and editors. Each name was followed by a sadly ironic little button: “add to cart”.
Every now and then, someone will ask us, “So, are you all settled in your new house?” I usually respond, “Yeah, pretty much,” which is the socially expected “I’m fine, thanks”.
But really I wanted to say, “It’s never home until I’ve got a place for my computer.” Of course, you can’t say that for fear of being considered not only a total geek, but ungrateful for such a nice new house.
When we bought the house, the “no place for an office” flaw was immediately apparent, but there was a whole lot of space in the basement to remedy that.
We started the remedy in January, and hoped to be done near the end of February. Unfortunately, it was the classic over-schedule, over-cost project. It caused lost sleep, tough choices and was highly educational. The adage comes to mind that good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
Anyway, after all that, I was finally able to resurrect my desk from its dusty and partially disassembled/destroyed state last week. Over the past few days, I got my computer set up. I was especially anxious to do this since I had gotten a high-speed internet connection hooked up about a month ago, and hadn’t been able to use it.
Unfortunately, when I finally got all the hardware hooked up, I couldn’t get a connection. I went through hours of technical support music, with lots of suggested tweaks, apologies about hardware incompatibilities and finally stumped support people. I was starting to suspect software rot — my OS had stopped shutting down cleanly a while back, and was getting a bit cluttered with junk.
On a gamble, I installed a clean version of Windows XP, which I have been beta testing at work. I knew that no support technician would touch me with a ten foot pole after that, but hey, I figured I had exhausted their expertise anyway. Besides, I’d grown to like XP from using it at work. So, I installed it, and everything just worked! I felt like a Mac user for a moment, though not quite so “artsy”.
So here I type in a new office, on a new operating system, with a new high-speed link to the ‘net. And if all goes well, this issue will even be published on an advertisement free new host.
And even though my office isn’t totally finished, I’m starting to think, “Yeah, this is feeling like home.”
New Office in Progress
April 22, 2001
Look at the pretty paper we found in the closet, Mama!
02 Feb 2001
It makes a great tent!
02 Feb 2001
Ethan acting normal
28 Jan 2001
NextPage ski day at Snowbird
20 Jan 2001
Shannon’s first ski trip
20 Jan 2001
Who needs a keyboard anyway?
16 Nov 2000
| December 25, 2000 | Issue 24 | Lehi, Utah |
Shannon has had a dog-shaped piggy bank for most of her life. And as parents do when their kids finally have a house, Walt and Charlayn shipped it off to us to worry about. It probably weighed something like 30 pounds with all the change inside it, and after tripping over it in the garage for a while, we thought, “Hey, if we crack this thing open, maybe we could afford a new house!”
The first hard part was getting the stopper out. It took two highly proficient demolition experts (with a little help from their dad) to mangle it into submission.
The Demolition Crew
December 14, 2000
But ripping out the stopper was nothing compared with the difficulty of trying to cash in the coins.
We had seen a Coin Star machine at the grocery store, which collects coins in exchange for a cash voucher (minus its commission), and figured this would be the perfect opportunity to put it to the test. Unfortunately, the machine was clearly designed to handle a handful of mint-condition coins — not the grimy mounds of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters we shoved down it. I was getting tired of the messages of astonishment from the machine (“My, you have a lot of coins! Please wait for us to catch up”) when it finally buckled under the weight of the task, and refused to continue.
A very nice clerk named Jason apologized a lot while he tried to get the machine to work again. Honestly, though, we were a little embarrassed.
After a very long time, and two more Coin Star breakdowns, we decided to call it good with the cash we’d gotten so far.
We only made it through about a third of the bank, but we figured we might be able to cash in more before our first mortgage payment came due, so we got ready for the big move.
Moving Day
December 16, 2000
Due to days and days of packing, the bulk of transporting our stuff from one house to the other was finished in about two hours. That didn’t include some small odds and ends, like the “Fred’s Fort”, though. I have to credit Jason Sucher, our home teacher, for heading up that project. It didn’t seem really too bad to move. Of course maybe that was because I was waiting at the new house while everyone else loaded it onto the truck….
Where am I going to put all this?
December 16, 2000
But we got a lot of great help from family and friends, for which we are very grateful. There’s no way we could have done it all ourselves.
Now we’re just trying to make the house our home. It’s starting feel less like a hotel now. Except I keep thinking I need to find that yellow dog bank to tip the bellhop.
Before we moved, I didn’t think we really had that much stuff. I guess it’s all relative — I mean I’ve helped people move who really have a lot of stuff. But when everything is right in front of you, it does seem like a lot.
Stuff!
December 14, 2000
In a way, it makes it hard to want to get anything else when you’re looking for places for all that you already have. Still, I did manage to bring home a Christmas tree last week. Here’s a new tradition idea for any of you stressed-out mothers: Shannon went to a movie while the rest of us did the decorating. Actually next year Shannon and I both plan on going to a movie after we throw the tree and decorations box into the living room and make a run for it, while the demolition — er — decoration crew does their job.
This year Gerrit was pulling decorations off the tree almost as fast as Ethan and I were putting them on. We only gained the upper hand because some of the ornaments were out of his reach. I think eventually the only decorations still on the tree were higher than three feet. Gerrit also had to taste all of the candy canes he could get his hands on.
Crunch, crunch. OK, this one’s good.
Crunch, crunch. We can put it on the tree now.
December 20, 2000
But we finally made it to Christmas, and kept what little sanity we have remaining.
Waiting for the predicted white
Christmas to blow in (but it was just a little dusting).
December 24, 2000
A birthday cake for Jesus
December 24, 2000
I think we may have a genuine Christmas miracle. All of our gifts fit and, if I do say so myself, we look great. I don’t know if in recorded history this has ever happened. Thank you for the gifts they were just what we wanted.
Modelingnew clothes
December 25, 2000
As Eric and I went to bed on Christmas Eve, Eric said he was really worried Ethan would wake up at 4:30 and want to open presents. So we were pleasantly surprised that Christmas morning didn’t come to our house until 6:45 — Ethan’s usual wake up time. We thought Ethan showed amazing restraint for a 4 year old.
The kids really liked their gifts. We’ve been playing with toys and reading books all day. Ethan’s gift from Grandma and Grandpa Fearnley was very sensitive to movement and talked at the slightest touch. He’s been saying, “Hi, did you come to play with me?” for days. I wonder if the mail carrier was relieved to deliver that package because I imagine it was driving him nuts.
Saturday, December 23 came and, miraculously, we were finished with our shopping. But rather than relaxing and enjoying a quiet day at home I insisted we go to the mall for pictures with Santa. Eric kept asking me if I was sure I really wanted to go to the mall even though it wasn’t absolutely necessary. I think many of his sentences started with, “I can’t believe….” I admit when I saw the mall parking lot I had some serious doubts about my sanity. To make things worse, when we arrived at Santa’s seat he wasn’t even there. Santa was on break and wasn’t even due back for another 20 minutes. I persevered. We would stand in line, Santa or not, but all the while worried the boys would be scared of Santa and scream the entire time they’re on his lap. What if Santa’s break is a lot longer than 20 minutes? But it was worth it. Ethan and Gerrit’s picture, in my opinion, should be placed in the annals of great Christmas pictures.
Merry Christmas
Love Shannon
Boys with Santa
December 23, 2000
Here are some shots of the house that we contracted to buy on Friday, November 3. This house is currently serving as the builder’s model for the area, and was a house in the Utah County Parade of Homes, where it got a couple of honorable mention awards for best curbside appeal and best master suite. Since these shots show the professionally decorated home with nice furniture, it may be the best it will ever look.
Wide angle exterior
28 Oct 2000
Family room
28 Oct 2000
Kitchen
28 Oct 2000
Master bedroom
28 Oct 2000
Master bathroom
30 Oct 2000
Room to grow
30 Oct 2000
Musketeers (OK, this isn’t the house, but it’s cute, isn’t it?)
25 Oct 2000
Last Friday, after eight and a half months of hard work, shipping our new NextPage product finally seemed imminent. It wasn’t quite ready to go, but there wasn’t much stopping it. My boss announced he was taking the whole next week off.
Other people started saying they weren’t bothering to come in either, so I considered my own four weeks of vacation time remaining for the year, and Shannon’s long expressed desire for a family trip.
It was all good timing too, since our scheduled move to our new office building would be a major interruption to any serious work anyway. So we packed up, and were off to Moab by Monday afternoon. Shannon and the kids had made this trip last year without me, and thought it fun enough to do again as a whole family.
Ethan was excited about staying at a hotel. He hasn’t had enough pop culture exposure to ask, “Are we there yet?” Instead he incessantly asked, “When are we going to get to the hotel?” Gerrit just quietly sucked his thumb for much of the 3 1/2 hour drive.
The first order of business after checking into the hotel was to hit the swimming pool. We discovered over the next couple of days that a swimming pool is all that is required for Ethan to have a good vacation. In fact, other activities were just distractions to him.
We went to Arches National Park on Tuesday, and the novelty for Ethan lasted about half an hour before he started complaining that he wanted to go back to the hotel (presumably to go swimming).
Ethan, clearly thrilled to be here,
with Mamma & a wiggly Gerrit
September 12, 2000
Gerrit was fairly happy, especially when you put him down so that he could walk himself. He toddled all over the place, and even did one of our strenuous little hikes almost all by himself.
Gerrit and Daddy
September 12, 2000
Ethan finally started to come around after I talked to him about how neat all the rocks and arches were. You can’t always assume wonder comes automatically with kids. We talked about how those big holes got in the rocks — with wind and rain and sand hitting against them. I picked up a small flat rock and started throwing sand at it.
“How long do you think it will take me to make a hole by doing this?”
“A long time,” Ethan answered.
“Now imagine how long it would take to make that big hole up there!”
That was enough wonder to make the rest of the day bearable.
North Window
September 12, 2000
Still, though, you weren’t allowed to make too much of it all. Another park visitor was trying tell her companions how one formation looked like elephant heads. After a few minutes explaining where she saw ears, eyes and trunks, Ethan finally burst out, “Come on! It’s just a big hole!”
Turret Arch
September 12, 2000
The Wolfe Ranch was one of my favorite sites in the park. John Wolfe was a Civil War veteran who settled in the area with one of his sons to do some ranching. He was supposedly looking for a drier climate than his native Ohio because the dryness alleviated the pain from a war injury. I think he went a little extreme, though, because his log shack (‘cabin’ seems too generous) is in the middle of the desert. There isn’t a decent tree for miles, and the closest water supply was a stream that, at this late time in the summer, was more like a skinny pond for as much as the water was moving.
Ethan exploring the Wolfe “shack”
September 12, 2000
After a few years homesteading, one of John Wolfe’s daughters (daughters-in-law?) came out to live there with her husband and their children. She was appalled at the living conditions, and insisted that a better cabin be built, with a wood floor. This was a little better than the shack, but still no bigger than Gerrit’s bedroom in our house. To think that they had four adults, and who knows how many children, living in that thing is amazing. I now realize that I live in a mansion.
Ethan on the lookout
(finally back in the pool)
September 13, 2000
Since I’ve officially worked for something like four companies, but have only had a desk in two different buildings, it seems high time to bridge the gap a little. To that end, we’ve made the move from our site in the Riverwoods Business Park out to Thanksgiving Point.
The old Folio/Open Market/NextPage, etc. building
September 14, 2000
When we first moved into the building in Riverwoods, there were two other buildings out there. Now, there are a half-dozen office buildings, an upscale mall, a movie theater, and some really nice restaurants. I guess someone was getting too uncomfortable with all that nice infrastructure, so we are now the only office building in the new park.
Old office on packing day
September 14, 2000
There were actually all kinds of reasons to move out to Thanksgiving Point. One minor reason, hardly worth mentioning, is that Alan Ashton, one of our principal investors, happens to own Thanksgiving Point, and paying rent to yourself seems like a pretty good plan.
The new NextPage building
September 16, 2000
And of course, Thanksgiving Point is also getting some interesting things going. There’s the dinosaur museum, complete with an IMAX theater, the animal park, the gardens (which are pretty cool), and an impressive golf course (if you like that kind of thing).
I’ll miss the old building mostly, though, because of the Sports Court it had in back. I’ve spent many a lunch hour playing volleyball and basketball back there. Our facilities manager promised us a court at the new building, but I’m starting to fear that he’s going to renege on that. There are some rumors that the business park will have some sort of indoor athletic facility, but that could be years away.
One last game of volleyball on the old court
September 14, 2000
But I unpacked into my new office yesterday, and noted a few evidences that we had really rushed the people putting the place together: a bunch of desks are built wrong, furniture is missing, I don’t have a name tag, etc.
The new digs
September 16, 2000
And in the sea of changing companies and buildings, a constant continues: I’ve still got my faithful chair.
“So, when do you think we’ll take our kids to see fireworks? When they’re twelve?” I asked Shannon on Independence Day. We’re pretty strict about bedtimes at our house, so Ethan rarely sees 9:00 PM (and then only when he’s rebelliously fighting sleep to watch the neighborhood go by outside his window). Gerrit is usually long gone by 8:00 PM.
Add to that the fact that Gerrit was suffering from infections in both ears and both eyes, I figured it wouldn’t be this year, at least.
“I guess you could take Ethan tonight, if you want. I can stay home with Gerrit, and I wouldn’t be upset or anything,” Shannon replied.
So Ethan got to stay up later than we’ve ever let him so that we could watch fireworks.
He was already looking a little droopy when we left at about 9:30 PM, but he started to get excited when we drove by neighborhood knots of kids with sparklers and fountains. I told him that was small fry.
We drove up to BYU, and plopped a blanket down on the small arc of grass just north-east of the Alumni Center (south-west of the Marriott Center). The annual “Stadium of Fire” was just down the hill, so it seemed like a good spot.
We weren’t alone, either. There were lots of other people, some of them putting on a pre-show with rows of fountains out on the traffic islands. Ethan passed the time playing peek-a-boo with a co-ed who sat near us with her date. I had to reel Ethan in, though, when he started throwing pine needles at them, shouting “Fire show!”
Finally the show began in earnest. It has been a while since I’ve seen a fireworks show, and I think I saw some new things. There were spirals and rings in addition to the traditional spherical bursts. There was also a shimmering curtain of gold, and some fireworks that seemed more appropriate for Halloween: ghost shaped streaks that looked like souls headed for heaven. They even made a spooky moaning noise as they fish-tailed into the sky.
Ethan was interested for a while; he even stood up and shouted at one point. Ironically, it was during a quiet moment, so everyone turned around and looked at him.
But after a while, pulling up grass seemed more interesting, so he started dumping handfuls onto our neighbor’s box of Cheez-Its.
Finally the show was over, after an impressive finale. The most amazing thing to me, though, was this: That thunderous bursts of multicolored flame and sparks couldn’t hold our boy’s attention for even thirty minutes.
When the sun rises these days, the light isn’t the cheerful golden that spreads across the walls and carpet, but instead, an eerie reddish glow. This morning, it even smells like smoke throughout the house.
There hasn’t been a cloud of the water-vapor variety in the skies for days, but there’s a constant haze as forest fires burn in seemingly all directions.
And driving by the Geneva Steel Mill the other day, with its belches of brown smoke, I imagined some executive inside saying, “Quick pump out all the really dirty stuff — no one can possibly blame the poor air quality on us now!”
All in all, it’s just not a great time to be an oxygen breather in Utah County.
Summer, 2000
In complete control – Riding at Lenore & Steve’s place
30 Jun 2000
Rediscovering forgotten muscles
30 Jun 2000
Charisse walked as much as the pony
30 Jun 2000
I feel a warm draft…
30 Jun 2000
Caught in a moment not fighting over bath toys
Hi Dad!
10 Jun 2000
Sweet Corn
What does this button here do?
20 May 2000
What’s wrong with this picture? Two good-looking kids; politically correct races and genders; well-dressed — but obviously dressed by adults. In this case, adults trying to sell the clothes they’re wearing.
Sure, it’s OK for kids to look good, and have clothes that match. But there’s a certain self-expression evident only when they don (and sometimes doff) their own attire.
And young kids are the antithesis of teenagers in this respect. Whereas teenagers have their entire wardrobe dictated by their peers (What? You don’t wear Abercrombie & Fitch shoelaces? What kind of loser are you?), young kids just wear whatever they want. Or whatever is lying on the floor. Or just whatever.
Not only do they wear whatever, they don’t mind being seen that way, or even photographed, either. So, modeling here his own unique configurations, is Mr. Ethan Smith, age 3.
(Editor’s note: for the full effect, play this while you read on.)
Ready for whatever comes, the rugged bike-helmet, safety-goggles look, topping mid-morning pajamas.
The multi-collar preppies have nothing on this guy: he’s got hat-hood-hat to showcase the design elements of repetition and contrast. Snow boots make the ensemble bold. The fuzzy brown is a nostalgia piece — the bear costume from his first Halloween when only two weeks old.
Sans-trousers is popular in the potty-training stages. A brown sock on only one foot forgoes balance for asymmetry. The stocking cap, with ear-muffs and a chin-tie, sits rotated 45 degrees, with the front muff up.
Fashion meets fantasy in the toy box turned race car. Safety goggles again, with a hard-hat’s suspension strap for headgear. Ethan is joined here by cousin Emily, modeling the ice cream bucket crash helmet.
I woke groggily this morning — I’m not even sure at what time — to a small muffin being pushed into my mouth by Ethan. I felt sort of like someone being nursed back to strength, being woken just long enough to get some food, and then I was back to sleep again.
I had finally gotten to bed at about 4:00 AM, after a nineteen hour day at work, but I was up again by 9:00 AM, because I had to go back. Fortunately, though, the worst was behind.
A little over a week ago, I discovered that I had been volunteered to work on a special project for our CEO’s press tour this Monday (May 1st). NextPage is making its first big marketing push, and has appointments with major business and technology magazines this coming week, and we need a demo of our “Content Network” strategy.
The product we’re working on takes information from various sources, and homogenizes it. So with our software, you can have a web site (usually an intranet site, or corporate portal) that gives you a unified view into disparate pieces of information. You get a single table of contents and searching across relational databases, internet web sites, professionally published content, internal documents, etc. so that the search results seem like they come from a single source.
But the analysts have been having a little trouble getting their heads around the idea, so our CEO decided to make it more personal. In addition to having this vast content network, he wanted to let every person create their own profiles of the content. So if I’m a lawyer, I might pick and choose areas of content that are relevant to a case I’m working on. I can then trim down the table of contents and the search results to only the relevant information.
The only problem was that our product didn’t support any such thing. But now a week later, it does. Well, in prototype form anyway.
I built the personalization system, while the rest of the development team helped get the product into good enough shape to be usable, even though we haven’t quite hit our “code complete” milestone yet (we haven’t finished writing all the code yet — let alone thoroughly test it).
So those efforts culminated in last night’s sleep deprivation, and we delivered the final system to the CEO this morning at about 11:00. Of course he had a few minor tweaks he wanted done, but that was easy.
So now I can relax a little. At least until Monday, when I have to confront the fact that I am somehow a week behind on my real work.
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March, 2000
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