September 2004 Archives

I really should be in bed by now. I’m starting a new contract job tomorrow morning (I’ll go into more detail about that in a future entry).

Hope it’s not too bad

Christine reviewed an early draft of the previous Fozzolog entry and was concerned about its subject matter going up on the weblog. I did a lot more work on it- trying to to emphasize that my purpose was to highlight an potential hypocrisy on the part of the media-right (all five of those guys) and not to promote any kind of lascivious behavior.

Hope it flies well.

It’s official

I found out today the divorce of Jay and Jennie is official.

*sighs*

More birthdays

I put pictures from Lucy’s 3½^th birthday party up in the events area.

Here’s a partial transcript from a conversation with my brother in law Adam.

(19:35:22) Adam: oh, and if you haven't seen Jennie's blog, she's engaged.

(20:02:21) fozz: heh.

(20:02:50) Adam: she's engaged and all you say is heh?

(20:03:03) Adam: Melissa said a little more than that

(20:03:04) fozz: Yeah. I guess.

(20:03:15) fozz: I mean, who's surprised?

Well, it’s true. According to Jennie’s online weblog entry, she and Dave have plans to tie the knot.

I really hope it works out well for them, but I couldn’t help but cringe inside when I learned about this. I advised both of them after they met each other to take things slow — they need not be in any kind of hurry. I don’t think I need to explain why; It’s common sense.

That said, I care a lot about both of these people because they are good friends of mine. I also think they make a good couple. I really hope they find a joyful life together. God knows they both deserve some joy after what they’ve been through individually with previous relationships.

I just don’t want to hear myself saying (or thinking), “I told you so,” sometime in the future.

More new pictures!

Here’s the event entry for Maya’s 6^th birthday.

New pictures!

Got the pictures developed from Maya’s and Eli’s birthdays. I created an event entry for Eli’s 1^st birthday.

Go and enjoy yourself.

New banner

I got bored with the old website banner and created a new one that has a more family-feel to it. I’ll probably change it from time to time to keep it fresh.

Silverthorne rocked!

I’m too wiped out to go into detail right now. Hopefully Thom will in short order since I wrote a lot about the Vail show. ;-)

To summarize, though, it was a great show, great crowd. The band was “on” from what I could tell. Everyone was pretty happy. We met some cool people including a family of four that came, the men wearing Pink Floyd t-shirts. That was cool.

There are pictures from the show on the Sons Of Nothing website.

Thom introduced me to the audience toward the end of the show as “Fozz” and told them I did the website and the visuals and that I was a “friggin’ genious.” Thanks Thom. I’m flattered.

This was our first “tour” of shows booked with the help of Tony, a friend of Greg’s. He handles booking for a number of bigger name acts. He came to the Vail show and told Tim and Greg he thought the band had a lot of potential. We’ll have to see what happens!

Okay, now I feel much better — more coherent and alert.

We took a slightly longer route to Vail, Colorado than was recommended by MapQuest because Greg didn’t want to take US-6 for one reason or another. Instead, we took I-50 into Wyoming and then headed south through little towns like Biggs, Yampa, and Oak Creek to I-70 and then on to Vail.

We stopped for lunch in Oak Creek and ate at Taylor Made Pizzas. This restaurant’s outdoor signage includes “MEXICAN FOOD PIZZA” and it’s not quite clear if they intended that to be two separate food categories or one innovative combination that sets them apart from other pizzerias.

While in Oak Creek, Thom used my cell phone to call into the Eagle rock station to do an interview with Rocco the DJ about the Silverthorne show.

Greg played at the Sandbar when he was in a band called Smilin’ Jack so he knew where to go. The Sandbar is a nice sports bar. I think there were over 20 televisions, some 32-36-inch CRT and about six large plasma screens. They were tuned to six different sports channels.

There are also some pool tables, arcade games, foosball, an Internet-connected jukebox, and a full-service restaurant. So, yeah, nice place.

The stage is in one corner. Corner stages are a pain for several reasons but specifically for me because we can’t mount the projector screen directly behind the center of the band. We usually have to mount the screen off to one side. At Liquid Joes, for example, we end up hanging the projector clear off to one side of the stage. That sucks because I’d prefer the visual aspect of the show to be concentrated in one place: the stage.

I think the ideal screen-placement was at Darrington where we were able to hang the screen behind and above Greg’s drum kit. Of course, to do this, we need to be working with a high ceiling (or no ceiling).

We moved Sandbar’s retractable screen on stage left but because of the low ceiling and limited space on stage, it was difficult for Thom and Juli to avoid blocking some of the projected image at times.

Nonetheless, it worked well.

We’ve been trying to mount the projector closer to the screen to maximize the brightness of the projector (it only has 400 lumens available).

Because the club is also a restaurant, we had dinner provided. I had chicken fajitas. Very good.

So, anyway, last night after the show, Thom and I went to 7-Eleven and got some munchies and something to drink.

I set the alarm clark for 9:00 so we could get some breakfast provided complementary by the hotel. Unfortunately, it wasn’t worth it. The breakfast buffet consisted of some fruit (apples, bananas, etc.), donuts, and plain bagels w/ cream cheese. There were some chocolate donuts, but some old guy in front of us raided them and had the last three or four save one on his plate.

After each eating a plain bagel, Thom and I walked over to McDonalds next door and got some real breakfast. ;-)

The band didn’t pack up the gear last night, so after everyone got up (Greg and Tim were late getting up, for some unknown reason), we congregated at the club to pack up. (Actually, Tim and Greg just joined the rest of us who had been assembled at the club for quite a while at that point.)

So, now... we’re in Juli’s Durango again for the short hop to Silverthorne.

Hello from Vail, Colorado.

We finished up at the Sandbar Grill not too long ago. I’m so tired! It’s been a long day and I didn’t get much sleep to begin with last night.

The show went great. The venue spoke to Thom about the possibility of having the band back for a two-night stint sometime in the future. That would be cool.

I’ll have to write more details tomorrow.

In the meantime, I have uploaded some pictures to the Sons Of Nothing site.

Welcome to the Fozzolog!

I was goofing around tonight and added audio playback capability to the Fozzolog. So, if you’re bored (or blind) and you want to listen to the entry instead of read it, or want to read along as you listen to it, click on an appropriate link in the header for your preferred audio file format.

Subaru Update

The Subaru is still up in the air. That’s really all I’m going to say about that.

And now, a bit about Jennie

Jennie’s having a rough time this week. She discovered a couple nights ago she has at least three kidney stones. She’s been dealing with excruciating pain and nausea as a result. She’s got an appointment to see a urologist about it tomorrow. I hope they can do something to help her quickly and relatively painlessly.

Surprise, surprise!

I’m surprised I didn’t mention this before, but we found our digital camera!

Yes! Yes!

Christine and I are very happy to have found it after thinking it was gone for good two months ago. There is, however, a part of me that feels a bit disappointed because I was saving up for a new camera.

Where did we find it? Christine found it in a box on a top-shelf in our basement. The day the camera disappeared, we were looking through some loose photographs in our living room and when we put everything away, I guess I gathered up all the photos and the digital camera — which was in the living room too — put it in the box and took it downstairs.

Our theory was that someone put the camera in the kitchen closet where the recycling and garbage can is and it fell into one of those containers and then got taken away.

So, there are again some pictures to look at here at the Fozzolog!

Eli in the kitchen	Eli on the couch	Maya & Lucy on the couch
Lucy shows off her dance moves.

Turning green

I mentioned before that we had planted some grass seed in our front yard. We have continued to water and fertilize the yard and it is beginning to look green from the road.

Our young front lawn

We’re thinking of getting another bag of seed so we can throw some more seed down in the areas that aren’t coming up so fast.

By next Spring, we’ll have a lush lawn... in theory, anyway.

Getting ready to roll to rock

I’m leaving Friday morning with everyone’s favorite original and Pink Floyd tribute band, The Sons Of Nothing to go hit two towns in Colorado: Vail and Silverthorne.

Everyone’s excited about Silverthorne because it’s another outdoor festival show like last month’s show in Darrington, Washington.

I went to Larry H. Miller Subaru and got the little doo-hickey I needed for the belt tensioner in the Subaru. I didn’t even need to tell the guy at the parts desk what car I had or anything. He glanced at the broken part in my hand and walked back to fetch its replacement. He says they used to make them out of cast iron, but now it’s plastic.

Total cost: $8.73. Not bad. Not bad at all.

While I was there, I couldn’t resist looking at the new 2005 models upstairs. The Outback is looking mighty fine.

Whew. What a day.

Tonight, my brother and I started working on the Subaru — replacing the water pump and the timing belt.

We got the old timing belt off, but not without the belt slipping a bit. This is bad because now we know the engine is for sure out of time. Tom’s friend Gary (whose garage we were using) is going to find out what we need to do to get the engine back to “dead center” so we can put the new timing belt on.

In the meantime, I took the old water pump off, scrubbed the gasket area clean, and put the new water pump on.

There was one little thing in one of the V-Belt tensioners that broke. It’s like a plastic washer with a threaded nut attached to it. The threaded part just cracked right down the middle. Gary says it’s probably going to have to come from a Subaru dealership. Hopefully, it won’t cost an arm and a leg.

Hopefully, tomorrow Gary will know what we need to get the engine back in time, I’ll be able to get a replacement part for that plastic doo-hickey, and we’ll put it back together.

What a car. I can’t wait for it to be back in running condition. I miss driving the Subaru.

Not cool

Our air conditioning at the house has been acting up. We’re not sure what’s up with that. We had the Carrier central air system installed this Spring, so it’s still a new system. The coil is freezing up and then the air won’t blow.

When we left for Church on Sunday, the thermostat said 76 degrees. When we got home, it said 79 and the air conditioner was on the whole time we were gone.

This morning, I called the company that installed the Carrier unit and they had a technician come out and look at it. He didn’t have any gauges he needed to check the coolant pressure, so he said he’d be back tomorrow morning with the necessary equipment.

Hopefully, we’ll be back in comfortable climate conditions by tomorrow afternoon.

Wow, it’s officially 9/11 and it’s been three years since 9/11/01. I’ll never forget that day.

Liquid Joe’s

I just got back from Liquid Joes where Sons Of Nothing performed tonight.

The show went pretty well. The crowd was smaller than the last time we played there. Not sure why. But, the crowd was certainly liking the music.

Just about everyone was in a bad mood before the show. I think the Darrington show had everyone a little spoiled and going back to play a small venue in your hometown was underwhelming. But, the band put on a good performance.

An amazing week

A week ago, I was feeling ready to throw in the towel on running my own business. The last couple of months have been frustrating because business has been down and Christine and I have been barely scraping by financially.

I’ve been sending out a lot of resumés but have not received any calls about interviews.

This week, suddenly Iodynamics is getting tons of calls and work.

Earlier in the week, a guy called me because he had been looking at the Utah ISP List to get a listing of local ISPs to contact about his company’s product. He contacted me because he figured we’d be a good company to know how to work with ISPs.

We’ve had two meetings with the company and have another one scheduled on Monday morning. The possibilities for partnership projects are pretty good.

Then, later this week, a guy sent me an instant message asking me if I did web design. I said yeah. He said he found me through my dad’s website and needed some work done on his website.

I met with him the next day and he’s waiting for a proposal from us and seems pretty cool about working with us.

Today, I was running some errands and business calls when my phone rang. The caller ID said “Unavailable Number” and I usually don’t answer those calls. They’re usually telemarketers.

“Hello?” I said.

“Is this Iodynamics?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you do consulting?” the gentleman asked.

“Yes, we do.”

“Do you have anyone who knows about Apache and mod_perl version 2?”

After picking my jaw up off the floor I said, “That’s our bread and butter.”

This guy had kind of an emergency. His company’s server was having problems slowing to a crawl after running for a while. Doing a restart fixed things, but only temporarily. I didn’t really think I had time to go to his office today, but he was desperate. I went up and we investigated. I helped a couple of guys comb through the code and find a section that could cause some problems. They’re going to rewrite that and see if it helps.

So, suddenly, a frightening amount of potential new work.

Read a couple interesting books this last week.

First, let me explain why I chose to read these books. A friend of mine IM’d me early last week and told me that he had a conversation with a mutual friend of ours who had told him that he was going to vote for John Kerry in the presidential election.

“Why?!” I asked.

He had a talk with his dad (a high-ranking Pentagon official), my friend said, and now he’s anti-Bush.

So I IM’d our mutual friend, politely confronted him about it, and asked him why in the hell would he do such a stupid thing.

He told me he felt the Bush administration had botched the situation in Iraq — they weren’t doing what they should to establish a peaceful country. He felt the administration had condoned terror and turned a blind eye to the Geneva Conventions.

I told him I could somewhat understand his concerns, but... Kerry?!

He said, yeah.

He asked me if I had read any of Bob Woodward’s books. I said no. He recommended them.

I made a deal with him. I told him I would read Woodward’s books if he would read Sean Hannity’s book “Deliver Us From Evil.”

“Sean’s obnoxious on the radio,” I said. “But he writes a great book.”

He agreed to read it. I reserved the two books, “Plan Of Attack” and “Bush At War” at the library. I went and picked them up on Thursday or Friday of last week.

I started “Bush At War” Friday night and finished up the epilogue Sunday morning.

What a great book! “Bush At War“ is about the war in Afghanistan, but not so much the war itself, but the players involved in the White House, Pentagon, etc.

I learned a lot about Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Tenet, etc. and in the end, I found the book to be a very flattering, complimentary report of the administration and our government.

We’ve heard so much this last year about how the U.S. intelligence agencies don’t work. The success of the first phases of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are a testament not just to the members of the intelligence community, but to the resourcefulness of the men and women working in intelligence and the military. They were able to quickly adapt to a whole new way of fighting an enemy by sharing information and working in smaller, technologically connected teams.

So, I finished “Bush At War” feeling terrific about our president. Here was a man who had lots of intense personalities around him. He didn’t let anyone push him around. He always spent the necessary time to solicit opinions on major issues. Then, he made a decision and followed up to make sure it followed through.

I finished “Plan Of Attack” tonight. This book was less complimentary of the administration, but not much. There were obviously some glaring imperfections in how intelligence was working on the build up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. There were probably some high-ranking intelligence officials (e.g. Tenet) who didn’t put enough emphasis on how credible (or not) some intelligence was.

That said, I really have to respect the way the president and the administration handled everything. Bush remained true to his belief that 9/11 changed the rules: We had to take the war to the terrorists before they brought it to us.

There will probably always be a debate about whether Saddam Hussein was involved in terror operations. There has been enough credible intelligence to show that members of al Qaeda were in Iraq and had met with Hussein or his officials. Since the beginning of the war there, we’ve seen al Qaeda member Abu Musab al-Zarqawi mentioned several times as a leader of the insurgency in Iraq. The more of them we capture, kill, or convert in Iraq, the fewer we’ll have to deal with stateside.

Plus, there’s an incredible benefit to the Iraqi people.

Today, I saw a report on television about a congressional testimony in which military officers reported a stark dichotomy between what was being reported in the news about Iraq and what they witnessed firsthand.

The one officer I saw speak said if you believed the news, 90% or more of Iraqis saw the U.S. as an occupying force and not as a liberator. His experience was just the opposite.

The news media clearly doesn’t want to report on the love shared between military troops and Iraqis. That’s just not “important.” I don’t see that as bias so much as “just the way the media is.”

Now, back to my friend who challenged me to read these books. I talked to him today. I forgot to ask him if he’d read Sean Hannity’s book, but he did say this:

A vote for Bush is certainly a vote against Kerry.

Babies... are... everywhere!

Here’s a shout out to Sarah and Bryce who just welcomed their baby boy — Kade — into their family. Another shout out to Adam and Melissa who just announced they are expecting.

Finally, a shout out to Doran and Christine, proud to be the expecting caretakers of thousands of blades of grass in our front yard. Yippee!

Those little baby grassies... They’re so cute and fuzzy right now. Just barely poking up from the dirt. Awhhhh.

I feel I have a lot to talk about. This is more for me than for anyone reading.

Diabetes update

It’s been almost four years since I was diagnosed with diabetes. It was a big life-changing shocker, but I adapted and changed my lifestyle. I feel I’ve learned pretty well how to be more healthy.

Now I know I need to learn more and work harder.

It’s been over a year since I saw my doctor in Logan for a checkup on my diabetes. I always meant to find a new doctor in or around the Salt Lake valley, but I never got around to it. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find one that was as knowledgeable as Dr. Redd was. I worried my insurance wouldn’t cover a good doctor. I worried about the money I’d need to spend to see a doctor. To top it off, I felt like I was taking pretty good care of myself; I’d be fine for a while without seeing no stinkin doctor.

My mom kept nagging me to see a doctor. She told me to just go see a doctor my brother had started to see because he had the same insurance plan I did. I managed to get an appointment and went. I figured, if this doctor didn’t know much about treating diabetes, I’d just find out who did and go to them.

I didn’t end up going to anyone else. Dr. Raychel Gonzales is awesome. Her accent is a bit thick so I have to work hard to understand everything she says, but she knows a lot about diabetes and how to treat it. For now, I’m happy.

Not unexpectedly, she had me submit to a barrage of laboratory tests to indicate my cholestrol ratios, my long-term blood glucose control, and other stuff.

That was a couple weeks ago. I had a followup appointment with Dr. Gonzales to review my lab results this last Monday.

The good news: my cholestrol levels are not as bad as they used to be. My LDL level could still use some improvement, but it’s not as bad as it used to be. This is probably because I’ve lost some weight and I’ve been, generally, more active than I was a year or two ago.

The bad news: my HbA1C level was 8.4. Ouch!

The HbA1C indicates your average blood sugar levels over the last 90 days. The goal is to have it below 6.5. I used to have a 6.8. Dr. Gonzales says this means my average blood sugar has been around 250 mg/dL when it should be 80-120 mg/dL.

This is completely my fault. I’ve become too lax in my testing habits. This is partly because I didn’t want to keep paying for the test strips. Also, I felt I had a pretty good sense of what my body was going through- I could feel whether I was high or low pretty well... or so I thought.

So, I’ve got to test more regularly and probably adjust my insulin ratios so I don’t go high.

She prescribed an insulin sensitizer medication as well. I’ll probably start that later this week.

She also put me on a trial of Lipitor to help me manage my cholestrol ratios better. The other statins I’ve been on before, Zocor and Advocor, either didn’t help with my cholestrol at all, or fouled with my blood sugar levels. I’ve taken the Lipitor a couple nights now and haven’t passed out or squirted blood out of my eye sockets, so I think it may be fine.

Of course, if it does work well, then I’ve got to worry about how much it’s going to cost to stay on it. *sighs*

She also gave me a prescription for a low dose of a blood pressure medication. My blood pressure isn’t a problem (110/62 at last visit), but the low dose can help protect my kidneys from problematic effects of diabetes in the long term.

So there’s that. Maybe one of these drugs will make me feel light as a feather and convince me I have the ability to read minds and navigate gopher holes with my eyes closed. That would be cool.

I’ll be heading back in to see Dr. G. in October to see how I’m doing. My goal is to get my HbA1c down to 7.5 by then.

Maya’s sixth birthday

Maya turned six on Tuesday.

Wow.

We had a party with her and three of her friends at a big park in South Jordan on Saturday. Aside from a slightly gusty wind, it was perfect weather and everyone had a great time. My mom came to help out.

Then, last night, we met my mom and dad at Panda Express at Jordan Landing for a birthday dinner. Maya loves Chinese food and Panda Express is her favorite place to go for Chinese.

I would put up some pictures of some stuff, but I’ll have to get the film developed.

*sighs* - Still digital camera-less.

Not working

I’ve been sending resumés out to a lot of companies the last couple of weeks. Iodynamics isn’t seeing a lot of work right now, unfortunately. Christine and I agreed we’re getting frustrated with the barely-squeaking-by lifestyle we’ve been living since I got laid off from About.com April 2003.

I’m doing some contract work for a company called ODYC, but it’s a startup with very tight funds. While I have no problem with that, it’s not exactly harmonious with what my needs are right now. Until I find something, though, it’s better than nothing... and it’s fun. Plus, I get to work with my old About co-worker Dave.

Subaru b0rked

My partner Mike has been in Hawaii on vacation, so I’ve been handling things in Salt Lake and in Logan. I mentioned it before, but I ended up driving to Logan and back 4 times in a period of a week. When I returned home on Monday evening after that fourth drive, I was alerted to a fluid leak under the Subaru.

It’s coolant.

Of course, the first thing I check is hoses. Nope. Hoses all look good.

The leak appears to be coming from two places- both along a gasket on the front of the engine, between the engine block and the timing belt cover. One of the leaks is right next to the thermostat housing as well- so it may be a thermostat seal, I guess.

In any case, I decided I can’t use the car until I get it fixed. I’ve got to decide if I want to tackle it on my own (and possibly save some money or mess things up real bad), or find someone to fix it (and spend some money).

For now, I’m just pondering.

Ideas for the website

I had an idea for the FozzilinyMoo.org website: A question and answer area.

See, I know a lot about Linux, web development, networking, and other balogna, but I don’t really feel like picking a topic and writing about it. I was thinking if I could get some topic suggestions in the form of questions, I could write something up as an answer and publish it on the site.

I write up some pretty comprehensive explanations when someone asks me how to do stuff in an instant message conversation or e-mail. I never think to save it and put it online.

So, comment below or e-mail me.