October 2003 Archives

It's snowing good here. It's still warm enough it's not doing a good job sticking to the ground, but there is an accumulation of up to an inch or two in places. Mike told me he's got at least four inches in Mendon (near Logan). Jennie said her parents (in Holladay) got a couple feet!

The Elasticity of Hecticity

For those of you just tuning in, we're watching a perfectly salvageable marriage crumble in flames. Indeed, what we are seeing here is not unlike watching someone spend huge amounts of money on a nice car, truck, or SUV and then proceed to neglect to maintain it by never changing the oil or doing regular service. A vehicle in conditions like this loses its value pretty dang quick.

What's new? Well, Smoochy* wouldn't talk to Jennie last night. However, he did proceed to pinch her repeatedly throughout the night despite her insistence that he stop. She was even polite about it.

This really bugs Christine and I. I suggested calling Smoochy*'s dad to see if he could talk to Smoochy* (again). Doesn't sound like that will work because Smoochy* won't talk to his father anymore since his father told Smoochy* he needs to consider some counselling and possibly some anti-depression/anti-anxiety medication.

Nobody in the family really knows what to do. There's been some talk about an intervention of some kind, but most people doubt it would do any good. Smoochy* would probably think Jennie put the whole family up to it because, after all, she's a wacko gone bonkers.

Last night, Christine and Jennie took the kids and went to a church Halloween party. At the party, Jennie was asked by a couple neighbors when she was going to be moving out of the house and where she'd be going. Smoochy* told his dad it really bothered him that Jennie talked to her friends about what was going on, but he apparently has no problem fabricating stories about Jennie moving out of the house.

So, that's the latest folks. Just trying to keep myself together for another couple of weeks.

Just an update on the hecticity and some other stuff.

Hecticity Decorum

I'm afraid I've (fortunately?) been too busy the last couple of days to really be in tune with what's been going on with Smoochy* and Jennie. From what I can tell (and what I've been told), they've both kind of given up on any reconciliation at this juncture.

Smoochy* continues to insist to anyone that will listen that Jennie is seriously deranged and needs many “years” of counselling. It's getting old for everyone here and pathetic that the more we hear about what Smoochy* says, the more it sounds like he's describing himself when he says stuff like that.

In my last update on this situation, I said that Smoochy* was being nice and polite to Jennie. It apparenly only lasted for a couple of days.

It seems obvious to me Smoochy*'s been obsessing over a list of things about Jennie, what Jennie does, what Jennie has done, etc. that just drive him bonkers. What kind of marriage is that?! What kind of friendship is that?! If you care about someone, you accept their weaknesses and faults and try to forgive the wrongs they may have done to you, right? You don't put up ultimatums like, “You've got to change or I won't be your friend.”

That sort of behavior is just... self-centered, disrespectful, and rude.

Meanwhile, Jennie seems to be doing an adequate (not great, but adequate) job of keeping her chin up despite the fact her second marriage is in serious jeopardy. She keeps herself occupied and busy. She's civil and tries to be compassionate with Smoochy*. She tries to reason with him when he insists on flinging layer upon layer of feces-ladden insults at her via e-mail. I think it would help if she knew better when to stop — when it was obvious he can't be reasoned with — and just walk away.

Moving up on moving in

I got a call from our loan officer's secretary, Kylie, today. Kylie said the financing is done and the title company has everything they need and they're saying 5-business days- that puts us somewhere between next Tuesday and Thursday. That's a few days sooner than I was expecting us to be able to close.

The Amazing Maleeni (our loan officer) warned me, though, that buying a HUD like this can be very frustrating because of unexpected delays and a title company (U.S. Title) that takes an unusual amount of time to get things done.

We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Last night I was thinking about putting a recirculating stream running through our backyard at the new house. I was thinking about bringing in some big rocks and having a cascading waterfall type thing on one end and then a winding stream that snaked across the yard to a small pond where, naturally, there would be an inlet for the water to go to be pumped back up to the waterfall end again. And then, somewhere near the middle of the yard we could put in a arching wood bridge over the stream.

Well, it was something to think about as I was trying to fall asleep, right?

I've wanted a walkout basement door for a long time, but the Riverton house doesn't have one. So, we may add one. My brother did it to a house he owned several years ago, so I know we can do it.

And I want to make the master bathroom bigger. :-) We don't know how (or when) we'll be able to do that, but we'll think about it.

Can't you see?! Buying a house is torture! It's self-flagellation! It's like a brutal autonomic masochism!

Looks like Thom finally got a chance to write a little about Friday's show. That's cool, but I have a feeling it's just the tip of the iceberg, heh heh.

Maya's a Top Dog

Maya was awarded the Top Dog award for October at her school today for being a model student in her kindergarten class. We're very proud of her. Christine, Lucy, Eli and I were joined by my mom and dad at Maya's school this afternoon to attend the school assembly where she was given the award.

I can tell it doesn't really mean much to Maya now. She probably thinks everyone gets awards like this. But, someday she'll look back and appreciate this day. She's a remarkable girl!

Maya and her medal

Maya's medal up close

Hecticity Minor

Things have calmed down during the last 24 hours or so here at the house. Smoochy* and Jennie are talking and Smoochy*'s being nice. We all know this is just tiny steps in the right direction, but it's an encouraging sign that hope is... possible.

DSOTM

I (finally) picked up the Dark Side Of The Moon DVD — the documentary — today. Watched most of it this afternoon and enjoyed it a lot. Lots of interesting trivia and interviews with just about everyone involved in the original recording. I was disappointed with a few things: First, most of the “in-studio” footage I recognized from the Live At Pompeii film (which just came out on DVD last week. I want it!). Second, they showed bits and pieces of film produced for the live shows which eventually made their way to MTV as music videos for the songs. Why can't they put it all on there?! I could really use that stuff!

Et cetera Blogiterra

That heading doesn't mean a damn thing.

I'm heading to Logan tomorrow. We're running low on cheese. :-)

In this installment of the Fozzolog: SoN rocks the Zephyr like never before; Your trusty author is taken by sickness; Trouble (more than usual) at Hecticity Manor; More trouble elsewhere.

Sons Of Nothing at Zephyr Club

Friday, 24 October, was the date for the big Sons Of Nothing show at the Zephyr Club in downtown Salt Lake City. I arrived at the club around 1:30 p.m. to help set up and entered through the back door. At that time, I was the only person there aside from the two janitors.

I set up my computer gear toward the back of the east balcony as the telephone rang incessantly. After a few minutes, I heard the janitors making comments about how annoyed they were getting with the telephone ringing off the hook. Finally, the older guy cussed at the phone, came upstairs, and answered the phone only to find no one on the other end of the call. But, the phone stopped ringing after that and the janitor personally apologized to me for swearing (yeah, big f-ing deal!)

Tim and Carl showed up soon after that. We put up the projection screen and started working on mounting the video projector, rigging up the crashing airplane, and the on-stage flashpots.

Tim said the projector he had borrowed from his employer had good resolution, but he wasn't sure how bright it would be. That got me real concerned. I decided we should try hanging it close to the stage, from a light bar where the motorized movie screen hung from. Once we got it hung from there, it was about to 4:30 and nobody was real happy with the projection. It was plenty bright, but it suffered from some shape abberation that made the picture trapezoidal as opposed to rectangular.

So, I recommended we hang the projector from the next light bar back where Brian — the light guy — had hung 6 spots from. I proceeded to move the projector but when I got up there to hang the projector, I studied the situation and decided there was a good chance the heat from those spotlights could easily burn through some of the rope I was hanging the projector platform with and we'd end up with a heavy video projector (that we didn't own) lodged in someone's skull on the dance floor.

So, we moved the projector back to the traditional projecting platform which is in front of the main mixing console at the back of the room on the balcony. The problem here was the picture was just too big and overlapped the on-stage screen on every side.

I figured if we could move the projector just 6 to 8 feet closer to the stage, we'd be fine. I started looking around for a piece of plywood or a couple of 2x4s that could do it and couldn't find anything. Well, I probably could have ripped up one of the floorboards out of the attic and used that since the Zephyr is closing in a week or so anyway, but I decided against that. Instead, I called my brother Tom and asked him if he could bring me a board and some screws ASAP and that I'd get him a free ticket to the show.

Tom brought the board and I screwed one end into the platform in front of the mixing console and suspended the other end from the rear light bar with rope. Then I strapped the projector onto the board. Bingo! The image looked fine.

I had moved all my computer gear to the front of the east balcony earlier because I figured on using the projector closer to the stage, so I had to move it all back once we settled on the rear mounting position.

Tim wasn't having much luck getting the airplane working the way he wanted. In the past, he'd used D-size model rocket engines in the airplane to propel it down a wire cable to the stage, but after the deadly fire at a West Warwick, RI nightclub in February, most clubs frown upon pyrotechnics and Tim wasn't going to push it. To propel the airplane for this show, Tim rigged up battery-powered propellers to the wings of the plane with a switch on the top of the plane to turn on the props. The trouble was that — I think — the propellers were too small and didn't spin fast enough to create any forward motion.

So, Tim rigged up a string-and-pulley system powered by his cordless drill to “pull” the plane down the wire cable. Carl — SoN manager — would control the drill and ignite the flashpots (which got the blessing of the club manager) when the plane reached the stage.

Tim tested the flashpots a couple times before the show and they worked great.

We had planned to do a soundcheck at 6:30 but didn't actually get around to doing one until around 8:30. The delay was partly due to members of the band showing up a little late and mostly due to the fact Todd, the sound engineer, showed up quite late. He says he would have come earlier if someone had called him.

Todd's a miracle worker, though, he worked at an amazing pace and got everyone's monitor levels set and even had time to patch in the sound effects coming from my computers into the rear speaker system we brought to create a poor-man's quadraphonic sound experience.

In the end, we were ready on time with everything prepped and ready to go.

When the Sons Of Nothing started playing their original set, they had maybe 15, 20 people in the audience. I could tell Thom was concerned the show was going to be a big disappointment. I was definitely concerned. I had gotten comp-tickets for a couple people and they hadn't shown up yet.

A few more people trickled in during the originals set, but the dance floor was bare until backup singer Juli got out there during the last couple of songs and started dancing and a few patrons joined her.

The band took a break after the originals set while a representative from Bikers Against Child Abuse (BACA) and Dave Smart spoke about their causes. Afterward, I started up the “Bike” intro music to prelude the FloydShow set. When the band started playing Shine On You Crazy Diamond, I looked down and there were a lot of people down there.

Early in the FloydShow set, the band was to play the song Sheep off the Animals album. For fun, Tim had designed a contraption he called the “sheep gun” which used air from an air compressor to eject small stuffed sheep (created by Juli) into the audience. That was a hit with the crowd. Everyone was clamoring for these stuffed sheep as they flew to different corners of the club. “That's a keeper,” I told Carl.

The band sounded terrific. They were tighter than they'd ever been before. Everything went great until it was time for the airplane to crash down into the stage at the end of On The Run.

Tim ran up to the sound booth to unsecure a string holding the airplane back (which had already been cut by Carl, but Tim didn't know it). Tim fought too long with the string and he missed the cue. Carl was having some trouble with the drill and couldn't get the airplane coming down consistently, so it kind of chugged or hopped down the wire. The effects reel kept going and “Time” started before the airplane had finished its journey. I quickly stopped it and rewound the film so we could start Time again after the airplane fiasco was over with. When the airplane made it to the stage, no flashpots went off. Carl said later that he did throw the switches, but there was just a small spark and then nothing. When Carl told Tim this, Tim slapped his head as he realized he had forgotten to fill the flashpots with any flash powder for the show.

Once the airplane situation relieved itself, the rest of the show went pretty much unfettered. They played Echoes as the encore number and it went swimmingly well. There were still people coming in to the club when the band was playing Us And Them - four songs before the end of the show.

My brother Tom showed up. One of my clients, for whom I arranged a free ticket, came. My sister-in-law Jennie came and brought two of her friends. Thom's childhood friend (and acquaintance of mine) Krista came with her sister Suzanne.

All in all, a great show.

And there's talk about some out-of-state dates coming up. Scary and exciting.

Then, I got sick

I woke up Saturday morning feeling like crap. My stomach was uneasy and I was so sleepy. Christine had planned to go with her sisters to lunch and window shopping in Layton, so I stuck it out until she got home around 5 p.m. and then I crashed until about 9 p.m. I still didn't feel good- was cold and sluggish. Christine was nice and went to the store and bought me some soup and heated it up for me. I watched an episode of Angel with Christine and Jennie and then went to bed with Christine, but I couldn't sleep. After tossing for 45 minutes or so, I got up and did some stuff on the computer for a couple hours until I felt tired enough to go to sleep again.

I woke up again around 6 a.m. with a stabbing pain in my gut. Instinctively, I rushed to the bathroom expecting to vomit (don't you love these stories?). It didn't happen. The pain was pretty bad and I knew it would subside if I did vomit, so I managed to make myself vomit a little to ease the pain and it worked. I went back to bed for a while.

Today, I've spent a lot of time in bed or just watching TV. I had some soup, but I've mostly tried to take it easy on the eating. I hope I feel better tomorrow.

Hecticity Manor

When my brother-in-law Jay was working with Chadd and me in Iodynamics, Chadd I used to joke about Jay's common anecdotes and sayings. He was always saying, “Things are really hectic.”

So Chadd and I informally named Jay and Jennie's house Hecticity Manor. It has certainly lived up to its title the last couple of weeks. On the surface, it would appear Jay and Jennie have gone from a happy young couple planning to adopt a child to a bitter couple on the verge of separation within a couple of weeks.

Of course, it's never as simple as that. The forces pulling at their marriage have been there for a long time, but I think they've only recently all converged at once.

In Christine's and my opinions, it mostly comes down to Jay. He's got some strange, simple-minded, sexist ideas about how a marriage should be and can't seem to handle Jennie not wanting to be under his thumb.

I don't want to go into too much detail right now, but the summary goes like this: Jay's been mentally and verbally abusive to Jennie for quite a while, but his abuse has been intense the last couple of weeks. I think he's craving attention and just doesn't know what to do about it. When Jennie doesn't give into his threats and insults, it makes him more frustrated and he's gotten to the point where he's saying divorce is the only way to proceed.

Of course, I'm a fairly isolated third party - even for someone who's living in the same house. I've tried to stay out of it, but Jennie talks to Christine and I (Jay doesn't talk to anyone), so we still get part of what's going on upstairs.

To make a long story shorter, nobody supporting Jay right now. Everyone — even Jay's parents — have moved to support Jennie in this ordeal.

Of course, we're only going to be in the house a few more weeks and then we'll be moving into our house in Riverton. I just wonder who's going to be living with us then.

Coincidentally...

Tonight, I went over to the Sons Of Nothing site to see if Thom had written up some kind of synopsis of his perspective of Friday's show and found none. I thought maybe Krista had written something, so I went out to her LiveJournal blog to see. I didn't find anything about Friday's show, but I did find out some disturbing information about Krista's sister Suzanne and some BS she's had to go through with an abusive husband.

It's sad to see stuff like this happen, especially when there are children involved.

I'm at rehearsal. Sons Of Nothing are playing Run Like Hell right now and there's really nothing for me to be doing right now. There are no sound effects in this song for me to cue and I'm not here to rehearse the visuals.

Tomorrow is the big show at the Zephyr Club. We're all expecting (and hoping our expectations are valid) a LOT of people to come out for this show because (a) the band has put a lot of effort into marketing this show, (b) the Zephyr Club is closing down for good a week or so from now, and (c) Bikers Against Child Abuse (BACA) and Dave Smart (uncle of child abductee Elizabeth Smart) will be at the show to promote their causes.

So far, the band is sounding real good.

I forgot my RCA to 1/4-inch adapters so there was no way to hook the effects into the mixer. I found some computer speakers on the floor in a room next to Eric's family room but they really sounded bad when turned up all the way and they weren't really that loud anyway.

I was resigned to using the crappy speakers until I started rummaging through some of the equipment on a shelf in this side room. There I found a small compressor unit, some PA speaker cables, and a much-needed 1/4-inch cable with male stereo headphone jack on one end and two male mono 1/4-inch connectors on the other end. Ahhhh! Finally, we have mixer connectage!

It was my understanding this Zephyr gig would be the last show the Sons did for a while. There was even talk about it being the last show this year. But I think heard Thom saying something when I first showed up to rehearsal about talking to a promoter about some on-the-road opportunities. I guess I'll have to wait and talk to him about it later tonight or tomorrow.

Iodynamics has been very busy. Also, we're about 2-3 weeks away from closing on our house.

A Linux Server Milestone

This last weekend, Iodynamics installed a file server on the corporate network of one of our clients. The client had been running Novell Netware for their file and print services for about eightyears. The file server hardware they were using was in need of being replaced and they decided it ma be time to evaluate their options for a network operating system as well.

They already had an Iodynamics NetGateway for e-mail and Internet firewall services, so they were familiar with the reliability of our Linux solutions. We put a lot of effort into selling Linux to them for file and print services, which may have been unnecessary - they've been sold on Linux for quite a while.

We installed a Red Hat Linux 9 server running Samba v2.2 on the server. I had some issues with the Adaptec SCSI adapter our hardware supplier recommended to us, but I found updated Linux kernel drivers for it which resolved those issues.

For the most part, things went well. Chadd, Mike, and I did the install and it took most of the day Saturday to get the server installed and configured properly, and get all the client workstations (30-40 of them) reconfigured to use the Linux Samba server instead of the Novell Netware server.

Configuring Windows 98 clients was a piece of cake. Configuring Windows 2000 clients was a pain in the ass! This was mostly because users would lose all their personal settings once we set up their computer to authenticate their login off the Samba server. We had to copy all their profiles and then make sure they still had all the access they needed to the programs they used. I wouldn't be surprised if that comprised nearly half of our time.

This is the first major Linux file server installation we've done and we're happy with how it went. I think the client is and will be happy with its performance and ease of maintenance.

We have one other client for whom we've set up a dedicated Linux fileserver for, but it is not used as a corporate file server. It is only used by a few employees for specific applications.

For the client we did the installation for on Saturday, the file server was key to their daily operations.

Iodynamics narrows its focus

For a long time, all four of us in Iodynamics have felt it was difficult to define what Iodynamics did. If someone would ask me, “Now what do you guys do?” I would take a deep breath and say something like, “Well, we do website design and development, we do Linux consulting, Internet connectivity consulting, and we have these Linux servers called NetGateways that help a small business get on the Internet with e-mail, web browsing, name services, and more.”

And then, I'd pass out.

Recently, our director of operations — Mike — sat down and came up with a marketing strategy for us and narrowed our focus down to two products: linux servers and web application development. It's such a simple thing to look at, yet a monumental achievement for us to be able to tell people what we do in one (fairly short) sentence.

With this done, we need to move forward with revising our website, and marketing literature to reflect this more focused marketing direction.

Meanwhile, we're getting close to needing to hire people both for sales and for technical roles. That's going to be a major milestone.

A month ago, my major concern was generating enough work to generate decent profit distributions so I could afford to buy a house. Now my main concern is staying on top of the work and not letting anything fall through the cracks.

So... Sunday was the day we gave Eli his blessing.

All in all it worked out well. The only negative thing about the whole day was that bees were very interested in the food we had outside at my parents' after the blessing.

It's been almost three years since I gave Lucy her infant blessing. I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing, but all my church books are in storage until we move into our house. I decided to look online for the form of a infant blessing.

I found what I was looking for on a site harshly critical of the LDS faith and beliefs. I looked around on their site for a moment and familiarized myself with their beliefs. I don't know what religion they hail to, but it seemed to be a fairly typical christian religion that believes you can be saved by faith alone.

This really bothered me because I felt these people just didn't get it. They were critical of the LDS gospel because they think it involves some kind of quota of work to be saved. In fact, LDS belief is that you don't need to do anything to be saved. You don't even need to say, “I believe!” Unless you've commit a serious sin against God, you're saved. That's what Christ's atonement was all about - saving you.

What the LDS gospel offers is an opportunity to do more than be saved. The work church members are encouraged to do is not a requirement for salvation — it's an opportunity to be all you can be. That's what life is all about - learning and striving to be better.

Anyway- I'm not a church buff. I usually don't like going to church or participating in church activities, but I do appreciate this unique perspective our religion has on life's purpose.

Things have settled down a little this week, but I'm still super busy.

A meeting of the minds of the Sons

Had a meeting with the Sons Of Nothing gang to discuss band publicity and technical details concerning the upcoming October 24 show at the Zephyr Club in Salt Lake City.

Thom and I are also planning to unveil the new Sons Of Nothing website between now and then. It's actually pretty close to being ready to go. I've got a lot of bells and whistles I want to add to it, but I think we'll go ahead and put it up and add them as we go.

Work...

This week (so far), Iodynamics landed a new project, eliminated aa hold-up on a project that had been held up for a month or so and finished it, and submitted a proposal for what could be our biggest project yet. So, we're pretty busy, but today I'm feeling a little relief.

Mike sent out some e-mail Monday night showing our revenue trends this year, summarized for each quarter. It showed that we're doing okay. Our revnue is increasing every quarter, although not as much as we would like. This is still significant because every year we've been in business until 2003, our third quarter revenues have always taken a big hit. It's like the third quarter is Hate-Iodynamics time. But this year, not only did we not take our usual big hit, we did better than second quarter.

It would be awesome if our fourth quarter did better than our third. October's already looking pretty good.

Da House

Sounds like everything's Go on the house. We're meeting with our agent today to go over some more paperwork. I'm hoping we'll have a closing date today or tomorrow.

Christine's all excited about painting and putting down new flooring. I'm trying not to get too excited because I know we've got a lot of work ahead of us and, frankly, I'm just looking forward to moving in. We'll probably have to paint right away, but we can deal with the floor as our finances allow.

I've been thinking a lot about lighting in the kitchen. The kitchen in our last house had poor lighting and it was always a problem. The dining area had a hanging chandelier-type light and the kitchen area just had a single 2-bulb dome on the ceiling. The kitchen in Riverton is kind of the same except there's a (dirty) flourescent light fixture on the ceiling above the kitchen.

Christine and I both hate flourescent lights in the kitchen, so that's going away. I want halogen track lighting or cable lighting over the bar and sink area and then some other fill lighting over the rest of the kitchen. I also want to put some under-cabinet lights around the kitchen so there's good lighting on the countertops.

This is all going to take some electrical improvisation since the walls and ceiling are already in and there's a limited number of switched circuits available. Should be fun.

Wow. Losing weight can improve your health! Who would have thunk?

I've been working on shedding some pounds lately and I've noticed my insulin requirements have gone down. If I eat a light meal like a Slim Fast shake, I don't need any insulin with it at all. If I do shoot my normal insulin dose, my blood-sugar invariably goes low and I have to eat something with carbohydrates to get it back to normal.

So that's cool... except going low can be scary.

House stuff

Christine and I worked this week with a loan officer on our house. We think we've got it all straightened out. I took all the rest of the paperwork he needs over to him today. I don't think anything else really stands in our way and maybe the first part of next week, we'll know our closing date.