December 2003 Archives

A new post just went up on Jennie’s site. Apparently, she proceeded to tell Smoochy* she wanted him to leave the house and he just sat there and basically said, "over my dead body."

It’s gotten pretty bad. I knew things were going to head south as soon as I heard Smoochy* had moved himself back in. Things were going so well while they were apart. They were starting to date again and were getting along pretty good, all things considered. But once he moved himself back in (without Jennie’s blessing, mind you), all his sincerity, all his kind words, all his willingness to compromise went down the toilet.

When they get a legal separation or divorce, Jennie’s going to get the house anyway, so if Smoochy*’s given up on the marriage, he should get out. If he hasn’t given up on the marriage, he should get out because they have a much better chance of working things out if they’re not living together right now.

Man, I have been so “driftwoody” the last couple of days. I don’t know if it’s because of the holidaze or because I’m coming down with some kind of head cold, but I have really been having a hard time getting motivated to do, well anything.

Mornings are the worst, of course. It should be pretty obvious to anyone who has read many of these journal entries that I do most of my productive work in the late evenings anyway, but it’s been harder than usual, lately, to get going in the a.m.

It’s not for lack of work to be done, either. There’s still a lot of stuff that needs to be done around the house. There’s still about 3-4 square feet of wood floor that needs to be glued down and the pantry closet hasn’t had the original carpet removed and replaced with wood.

A water story

Despite my vegetable-ness, I did get the water line run for the ice maker in the kitchen. This was a project I had been dreading, somewhat, for weeks, because I wasn’t sure exactly what parts I needed to get to do it and I was a little nervous in general.

When I ran the water line for our ice maker in Hyrum, I purchased a common saddle valve which punctured the copper pipe and connected to tubing going up to the ice maker. It worked, but we were having problems with some of the ice coming out hollow- like there wasn’t enough water in the tray.

Christine had an appliance technician come out and check out the fridge and he said the saddle valve I installed just wasn’t delivering the kind of pressure needed for the ice maker. He replaced it with one that worked much better and our ice was solid from then on.

If installing the ice maker line was as easy as installing a saddle valve (one providing sufficient pressure, of course), I really wouldn’t have been that nervous about it. But it made sense to do a few other plumbing tasks while connecting the ice maker line and that made the project as a whole more complicated.

The idiot(s) who lived in the house before us did some weird stuff with the plumbing (among other things). They had a swamp cooler on the roof and installed a saddle valve in the basement for the water line going to the swamp cooler. That’s not so weird. But they installed it on the copper flexible pipe going into the water heater and ended up crushing the pipe a little. The result was a saddle valve that leaked (sprayed) water if you touched it or looked at it the wrong way. The ongoing water leaks left a lot of corrosion and hard water build-up on the pipes on the top of the water heater.

To repair this stuff and install the ice maker line, I chose to remove the flexible pipe going into the water heater and replace it with a copper tee going into a new flexible pipe. The tee would go to a ball valve which would go to the copper tubing going up to the kitchen.

A couple days ago, I went to Lowes and purchased the copper tubing, the 3/4"-1/2"-3/4" tee, a small tubing cutter, and the ball valve. I also needed a couple short pieces of 1/2" and 3/4" copper pipe, but I couldn’t find any small pieces at Lowes — only 10-foot pieces.

I called my dad and he said he had some I could use. So, yesterday I went down to his place and picked up some 1/2" and 3/4" pipe. Then I stopped at Lowes again (actually, a different Lowes) and got flux, solder, and a compression fitting for the back of the fridge.

Then, last night after the kids were in bed and Christine was getting ready to get to bed, I got to work. I had already soldered and attached the tee, ball valve, and the flexible pipe. I just needed to sweat the old flexible pipe off and solder the new one on, affix it to the water heater, and connect the tubing going to the ice maker to the ball valve.

There was a heavy ball valve above the pipe going into the water heater and it looked like it was a convenient way to turn off the hot water by shutting off the water going into the water heater, so I decided to use it in lieu of turning off the water main.

I started loosening the compression fitting at the bottom of the flexible pipe going into the water heater and there was a little water spraying out as I loosened it, but it seemed to be losing pressure as I went - which I expected as the system depressurized after being turned off.

When I nearly had the compression fitting off, the fitting popped up. Then water came gushing out at full pressure. This was all at eye-level above the water heater so all the water was hitting me in the chest and below. I bolted across the basement to the main water valve and shut it off. That stopped the water from gushing. I went back to the water heater and the floor on all sides around the water heater and furnace were covered with water.

Christine came downstairs at this point because of the loud noise and just shook her head and told me there was a bag of towels behind me where we were storing a bunch of stuff.

I looked again at the plumbing to see if I could understand what had happened. I don’t understand why they did it, but the previous occupants of the house cut into the one-inch main line coming into the house and put it into a meandering jaunt of 3/4" plastic tubing and metal elbows that looks a little like Manibloc or something. This connects to the 3/4" pipe that goes into the water heater, but it connects below the ball valve I mistakenly assumed would shut off the water.

Well, I got my new stuff soldered in and the ice maker line connected. We have ice now. It’s nice, but it didn’t happen without some fun!

Hecticus Decorum

I talked to Jennie tonight. She’s growing more and more frustrated with Smoochy*. She told me she feels ready to get the legal separation back on track because nothing is improving and Smoochy* seems oblivious to it.

I told Jennie the best thing would be for Smoochy* to move out of the house again. When he was living with his work buddy, he and Jennie were getting along better than they had in weeks. They were going out on dates and generally being really nice to each other. Then, he moved himself back in and, in Jennie’s words, he’s been a “real jerk” since then and Jennie doesn’t want to do anything with Smoochy* or even be around him.

Jennie told me tonight she was going to tell Smoochy* she wanted him to move out again. I told her to tell him it was the best thing to do whether he was interested in working things out with their marriage or not. If they’re going to work things out, it’s not looking good for them right now living together. If they’re not going to work things out, he’s going to be out of the house soon anyway.

So, now, it’s just wait-n-see time. Nobody really expects Smoochy* to be cordial and move back out, but we’ll see.

On another note, I promised Jennie a website for Christmas and I finally delivered one. It’s (temporarily) at <http://jennie.fozzilinymoo.org/>. I’m looking forward to seeing what Jennie puts in her “Jenn-a-log.”

Christmas, Bricks, and more.

Christmas

Christmas came and went, without anything negative to report. I guess that’s a good thing, right? I commented to Christine that I don’t feel like Christmas is magical anymore. It’s not like it was when I was a kid.

We decided we are going to make sure we implement some traditions next years. It was hard to really do anything this year because of the move into our new home. In fact, I told the kids not to be disappointed with Christmas because they had to remember we got a new home to live in. My concerns about a lack of enthusiasm was unwarranted, however. Maya told me she thought this Christmas was, “the best Christmas ever!”

White Bricks

Sons Of Nothing played at Bricks last night. Bricks is an unusual venue for SoN because the club is known more for its alternative and hip-hop scene and up until a couple years ago, was a popular lesbian meet-up.

But the management is trying to push some changes through. They’re going to be changing the name of the club, the format of the schedule, and bringing in more blues and rock in an effort (I’m guessing) to win some of the audience lost by the Zephyr closing the Dead Goat Saloon transforming into a stripper joint.

The greater Salt Lake area has been blanketed by snow the last two or three days. I’ve heard it was the biggest single storm to hit the area in ten years. We didn’t get much in Riverton, but areas around downtown got two to three feet of snow. The first batch of snow was wet, heavy snow (exactly what the drought-ridden state needs) and resulted in knocking power out to 60,000 residents. After that came the light, fluffy powder Utah is famous for.

The powder kept falling off an on while we were at Bricks Saturday afternoon setting up for the show. Everyone was concerned nobody would venture out into the inclement weather just to see Sons Of Nothing, but, in the end, several dozen people did just that.

It wasn’t a massively attended show, but it was a better-than-no-turnout-at-all show. The people that came seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves and the band got a handful of new fans added to their announcement mailing list.

My visuals are getting better and better. The screen we used was a bit small, but adequate. I’m planning on some software and hardware changes between now and the next show, though. My goal, of course, is to move entirely away from Windows (which I use on two computers to do video and live visualizations) and run Linux on one computer to do everything.

Loader Rote Kay

That’s a fair approximation of how you might pronounce “LoTR RoTK” — the commonly accepted abbreviation of Lord Of The Rings - Return Of The King.

Christine and I managed to see this new film this last Monday and found it to be long, but very enjoyable. It’s not often we get to go to movies anymore, so I really enjoyed that we got to go to one.

A lesson

I taught in church today. Last week, Christine overheard one of the elders quorum presidency asking someone if they would be around this Sunday and if they could present the lesson. That person was unavailable, so Christine suggested they ask me — that I would enjoy doing that.

So, when it was asked of me, I accepted the task and hastily prepared a discussion on “living in the spirit” which I delivered today. It was not one of my best prepared lessons, but I think it went over pretty well.

Christine and I really enjoy the ward we’re in.

It’s coming soon. I don’t know how soon, but it’s coming.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Yep. I’ve started working on providing commenting within the Fozzolog system. Initially, I was planning on including this in the next version of the Fozzolog system, but development on that has stalled due to some overly ambitious design goals.

Since the ability to post comments is something a lot of people have talked to me about, I decided to go ahead and see if I could put it in the existing version of the Fozzolog code.

It’s coming along pretty well. I’ve got the user account stuff started and the comment summary and link code set up. I’ve still got to set up the login procedure and the comment display page. I haven’t decided yet if threaded comments will be supported or if it will just be a flat structure of comments (i.e. everything will be a comment to the original entry).

Anyway, that’s something to look forward to if you’re interested.

Here’s a Christmas picture of Eli!

Eli’s Christmas portrait

Nine years ago, on December 16, 1994, Christine Nielsen and myself were wed. Nine years later... we’re still married, amazingly.

I say “amazingly” because during that time we’ve witnessed the disintegration of so many marriages around us. It seems like most of my good friends from college ended up going through divorce. Both my brother and then my sister have been divorced in the last nine years.

Before I was married, I thought my family was immune from the “disease“ of divorce. I didn’t know anyone in my family who had been divorced. It seemed to me if someone in your family had been divorced, especially your parents, there was a much higher liklihood your marriage would end up in divorce as well. It sounds like some kind of inherited weakness or something.

So, yeah, I thought the Barton family was immune to it. My parents were still happily married, no grandparents had been divorced. Aunts and uncles were all happily married too.

Then, a couple months before Christine and I got married, my parents split up. It was just a temporary thing, thankfully, but it scared me to death. I was petrified thinking it meant inescapable doom to any relationships I wanted to forge in my life.

It took a couple weeks, but my parents mended their differences and my dad moved back in.

Since then, my brother divorced his wife, my sister divorced her husband of 18 years and is now married to another man. I’m the only one of my parents’ kids not to do it. Am I doomed? Am I destined to someday give in to some invisible hand that attempts to push marriages into divorce?

Well, I hope not. I’m not really that worried about it. Christine and I get along well these days.

And today was our nine year anniversary.

We didn’t really do anything fancy-pantsy because we’ve both been mentally and emotionally exhausted from moving and fixing up our house. Plus, it’s enough of a anniversary present to have this house to live in.

Maya insisted on celebrating our anniversary with us, so we took Maya and Lucy to the dollar store in Herriman and let them each pick out a gift for us. Of course, they wanted to buy toys like squeaky frogs that we could “share” with them. It was fun and it was a good opportunity to challenge them to think about the wants and likes of the recipient of a gift rather than what they themselves want.

Then, I wanted to take the family to a nice restaurant. Christine said she really just wanted to go to Dennys. I was confused by that, but that’s what we did. Moons Over My Hammy is good! That’s what I always get at Dennys.

In addition to our anniversary, today marks the midnight showing of Lord Of The Rings - Return Of The King. Had it not been our anniversary, we probably would have gone. *shrugs*

On Smoochy* & Jennie

Jennie told me today that Smoochy* moved back in this weekend. I asked her if that was cool with her. She told me what happened: Smoochy* visited her last Thursday or Friday at work and had lunch with her. Things had been going well between them and they had been going on dates and having a pleasant time in each others’ company. Jennie says she mentioned to Smoochy* that they should have some discussion about him possibly moving back into the house.

From what Jennie says, that’s as far as it got. They did not discuss it at that time. She only expressed an interest in discussing it. When she got home from work, Smoochy* had already moved all his belongings back into the house.

Jennie decided to go with it, but told him if things got out of hand again, he’d have to leave again. His response was that if things got bad again, Jennie would be the one to leave, not him.

To an outside observer, it seems Smoochy* is just taking advantage of Jennie now that she no longer has Christine and I living there and intimidating Smoochy*.

Jennie also said Smoochy*’s attitude has been showing signs of returning back to “normal“ (that is, normal for Smoochy*). She says he complains a lot about a lot of things and while he agreed to go to a family Christmas party with Jennie (and her family), he relegated himself to sitting alone in a back room because he, “doesn’t like parties.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I don’t know what to think. I hope Smoochy* has learned something. I hope he can not mess this up... for his sake and for Jennie’s, but it’s not looking good so far. I’m concerned about his attitude that Jennie would have to move out if they can’t get along. That’s just a bad sign all by itself.

Christmas? It’s Christmas time?!

Christine and I are scrambling to get gifts bought for family and friends. We’ve been so busy with the house, moving, and all, we haven’t really spent any time shopping or even thinking about Christmas. We finally got our tree up on Saturday after I brought it to the house from my parents’ storage garage. I hope we’re able to make it all happen.

You know... Comcast just sucks.

I’ve had beef with this company for a while now. I originally got broadband Internet service via a cable modem with Excite@Home when we lived in Hyrum. The service was provided through AT&T’s cable television system at the time. Then, Excite@Home folded and AT&T bought all the assets and converted all the @Home customers over to be AT&T customers, raised the monthly fee, and capped the bandwidth.

It wasn’t too bad, though. Download rates were still pretty dang fast and the monthly fees were reasonable. On top of that, AT&T’s support people were pretty cool to deal with.

Then, AT&T sold their cable Internet business to Comcast. Again, the monthly fee went up. The Comcast support system sucked big time as it required users to run Windows and install all kinds of Comcast-specific spyware on your computer so a technician could remotely see your desktop and/or control your computer.

Shortly after this happened, we moved and I (gladly) cancelled my account with Comcast. Well, where we are now, it’s the most practical solution for high-speed access, so I had to gulp down my bias and order it again.

About 3 weeks ago, I went to Comcast’s website went through the qualification process. The website said our Riverton address qualified for high-speed Internet service so I placed an order. An installation date was tentatively set up for the first week of December and I was told I would get e-mail about a firm install date and time.

After the third of December rolled around and I still hadn’t heard anything from Comcast about my install, I called them up. They had no record of any order placed by me and told me I’d have to place a new order. So, I went through with it — placed a new order. They scheduled a new installation date of 10 December. This wasn’t happy news. It meant I’d probably have to limp along with dialup for a few days, but what was I going to do?!

So, on the morning of 10 December, a gentleman from Comcast came to install the cable modem. He ran some cable across my yard (because there was no buried cable to the house yet) and hooked everything up the house. I knew they’d need a Windows system to set up my account and activate the cable modem, so I had my laptop booted into Windows 2000 for him ready to go.

He had a webpage up which was asking for my preferred username and password when my phone rang. I answered it and found myself talking to another gentleman from Comcast. He was very polite and said it was a ”courtesy call” and he regretted telling me that high-speed Internet service was not available yet at my address. I laughed and told him there was a Comcast technician sitting right in front of me and everything was working just fine. He asked to speak with the onsite technician. I heard the technician say something about the area being available for over two years.

After that phone call, the technician had me choose a username and password and then he left. Everything was set up. I moved the ethernet cable from the modem from the laptop to my Linux gateway and everything worked fine.

A few minutes later, the sincere gentleman from Comcast called me again. He proceeded to tell me that high-speed Internet really was not available yet in my area, but the lines were being prepared for it — Comcast was still doing some line-balancing and testing and couldn’t have me sitting on the system before it was ready for deployment. So, he was going to dispatch a technician back out to my house to take the cable modem away.

I told him it was a bit ridiculous considering the fact the Comcast website had said for weeks the area had high-speed Internet service. He agreed it was a problem and said he’d talked to his supervisor and there was no way around it.

I told him I needed Internet service to do my job and wanted a call from his supervisor as soon as possible. He told me he would have his supervisor call me soon.

A few minutes later, he called me back and asked me if I was in Riverton or Layton. I told him Riverton. He said they had two orders with my name and phone number on them. One had a Riverton address and the other had a Layton address. The area that wasn’t ready for high-speed Internet deployment yet was Layton, not Riverton.

“Please disregard everything I told you before,” he said.

“I will gladly disregard everything you’ve told me.” I answered.

So... Comcast continues to suck the big one, but at least it works.

Smoochy* said the unexpected.

Hecticity Reprievity

In a move that shocked everyone, on Sunday Smoochy* told Jennie he was sorry — several times — for the hurtful things he’d said and done. To top that off, he didn’t tack on any disclaimers like he’s known to do if and when he does apologize for something.

Jennie says Smoochy* seems quite sincere so she is cautiously willing to give him a chance. So, they’ve been going out on dates and spending a little time together. I’m impressed with Jennie’s clarity of thought as she proceeds through this. From what I can tell, she’s being very smart and secure as she proceeds.

I really do hope it works out and that Smoochy* learns how to have a relationship with Jennie without dishing out the verbal and mental abuse. If he can learn to treat her as an equal, they have a great future together.

It’s been quite a week.

Moved in

We’re not all moved in, but we’re living in the new (new to us) house in Riverton and have been since Monday. There’s still a lot of stuff to move from Jennie’s house in Sandy and from my parents’ garage in West Valley City, but we have most of the stuff we really need already.

Moving is a pain in the ass.

Maya attended her first day at Foothills Elementary today. We were going to continue to take her to the school she has been attending in Midvale, but she and Christine fell in love with the school near our house when they paid a visit to it to get Maya signed up. So, she started today.

This is the first year of operation for Foothills Elementary, so it is as state of the art, I guess, as they come. I’ll have to go over there sometime and check it out.

There are still several things we need to do to “finish“ the house.

• There’s still about 25-30 square feet of parquet floor to finish putting down. I’m planning on doing this on Saturday.
• The living room closet and the master bathroom did not get painted. Nobody knows why.
• We haven’t replaced the ugly flourescent light fixture in the kitchen with anything yet. The kitchen is a little dark as a result.
• The master bathroom, main bathroom and laundry room floors need to be tiled.

Christine just called me upstairs for dinner.

I can barely feel my fingers.

A finished rewiring

Iodynamics finished the big rewiring job for one of our clients yesterday. We did the first phase of the job about three weeks ago and rewired the top two floors of their building. Yesterday, we finished by doing the remaining floor — the basement.

The basement had it’s own set of challenges since, unlike the top two floors, there were no false ceilings. If we needed to access the wiring in the ceiling or walls, we had to cut through finished drywall. We ended up cutting about a dozen holes in various places to get to the wires.

The goal was to replace older network wiring with new wiring that would be capable of providing gigabit per second network speed. In addition to running new wiring, we also installed a 48-port patch panel, new 10/100 switches and an 8-port gigabit switch.

My fingers are all swollen and rough today. All the punching down of twisted pair wire; All the untwisting of the individual wires; All the pulling of cables... It takes a toll on your hands.

Because of all the work I’ve been doing at our new home as well, my hands haven’t really had much of a break the last three weeks or so. Because we’re getting close to being finished with the work at the house, hopefully my hands will go back to being soft and healthy. :-)

Time for a Fozzolog update.

House

We’ve been working on the house pretty much every day. I was hoping we’d be able to move our beds over yesterday, but it was a bit too ambitious. Now we’re looking at Saturday or Monday to do that. We’ll see how things go.

I got blinds installed in the living room, master bedroom, and one of the kids’ bedrooms last night. We’ve got a bunch of kitchen stuff unpacked as well.

To Logan again

I’m heading to Logan this afternoon to complete the rewire project that we started last month. This phase of the project is in a basement with finished drywall. So, this will be a little different than working with a false ceiling like we had before.

Diabetes hope

There has been a lot of news lately about Diabetes, mostly because it has been reported that the United States and other western countries are facing increasing numbers of new Type-2 Diabetes cases. While I don’t care so much about Type-2 cases (because I’m Type-1), it’s still a concern. I encourage my kids to eat more healthy foods and drink diet drinks or water when possible. Probably the most important thing you can do for your kids to help prevent the onset of Type-2 Diabetes is encourage them to excercise and maintain a healthy weight.

Time magazine has a story running right now mostly about Type-2 diabetes.

I ran across this interesting tidbit about promising research into islet regeneration being done by the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Iacocca Foundation. This would be great news for me and could effectively cure by diabetic condition.

For a few years now, doctors have known how to introduce new islet cells into the body by growing the cells outside the body and injecting them into the liver, by transplantation, or by enabling regeneration of islet cells in the pancreas. Because Diabetes is an immune system disorder, the hurdle has been keeping the body’s immune system from killing the new cells the same way the original pancreatic islet cells were disabled in the first place. This announcement says researchers have had some success “using a naturally occurring protein (TNH-alpha antagonists) to kill the (faulty) immune cells in type 1 diabetic mice.”

So, if they perfect this technique, I could figuratively go into a treatment center where they would inject this protein into my system to kill off the bad immune system cells. It’s possible the pancreas would immediately start regenerating healthy islet cells (which is another finding the research suggests) or transplanted islet cells or implanted laboratory-grown islet cells could be infused.

So... maybe in the next ten years... Type-1 diabetics like myself could be cured!

Now, if science could find a way to give me back the 60 db of hearing I’ve lost, my life would be complete.

One more day closer to being back to living in a house of our own.

Today, we finished painting most of the rooms. My parents, Christine’s dad, and Christine were there to paint. I installed the new dishwasher. My brother and I brought up the fridge and washing machine from my parents’ house.

The new carpet gets put down tomorrow morning and the plumber is coming to hook up the gas line for the stove.

Once these things are done, I’d say the house is minimally habitable. There will still be a few things to be finish up, of course. The wood floor needs to be finished — and I’ll try to do that tomorrow while the carpet guys are there. The master bathroom needs to be painted. And, finally, we need to put floor tile down in the two bathrooms.

But, I can be a little less hasty about these things. I need to get back to concentrating on my work to make sure that we have money to pay for all this stuff and to have a half-decent Christmas.

Here are some recent pictures of little Eli in his Christmas suit.