So my car has been overheating often and in the winter this is an odd occurrence. It overheats just as I am about 5 minutes from home and stuck in traffic waiting for a left turn onto Cypress Street off of Route 9. So I finally decided to take it into the local auto shop this morning figuring they would be too busy to look at it. They told me to leave it there and they would call me back. So I walked home and figured I would do some maintenance tasks while I was waiting. The main maintenance task I have is to migrate from my DELL laptop to my new HP laptop that is faster and doesn't have the history in it of all the crap that has been installed or uninstalled. So I have been spending the bulk of today trying to figure out how to install everything I need to run on my old PC onto my new PC and to migrate all of the data files from one to the next. I know there are tools that do this sort of thing but I wouldn't trust them. My circumstances are particularly bad because I act as a software developer, graphic designer, and business person. That means I need all of the Adobe tools, all the Microsoft developer tools, all of the MIcrosoft desktop tools, VPN connections and tools for key customers, various things like Crystal Reports, and it is best that I migrate every email or contact I have ever had in case someone wants to know if I know somebody at company X. This doen't even start to deal with the idea of wireless networking on private networks.

Of course all of these things are somewhat intertwined where some report runs inside of an Excel spreadsheet to connect to a database that also runs against Crystal Reports. So not only will it take me a long time to copy everything but even longer to make sure that it all works. I feel like a hermit crab trying to get out of one shell that I had outgrown and scuttling into a new shell that I hope is bigger and safer. I can't help but imagine that the whole exercise is futile but I am doing it anyways. My plan is to try to use the new laptop for everything for a week and only grab the old one if I need to pull off some piece of data or configuration. I'll shut down applications hopefully more than one at a time with the first being Email. I might feel more comfortable if I could make a perfect disk image of the old machine and use it when needed. I already have used about 3/4 of the disk space on the new computer just moving files onto it. I should have gotten about 10X the 80Gig that is in the machine now!

At least the migrating from one machine to the next is easier than actually working on something useful.

Posted by Dan Housman at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to the gym today and did about an hour of elliptical runner. My main thought while spinning my legs in circles was how lately no matter what area of my life I am looking at I feel like I am starting over when I finally get around to doing something. When it comes to going to the gym the idea is that I should get into some rhythm where every Wendesday afternoon and Sunday night I would go and do an hour of excercise but instead it is patchy and I go a few weeks without going to the gym. Then I start-up again with the same thoughts on one random day that I actually excercise that I am about to get regular with it. The same is true with writing in this blog, doing work to sell new accounts and build the business, keeping the car in good repair, keeping the apartment clean and upgraded, getting the computers tuned to work properly, programming at work, writing at work, reading books, going out, or taking care of Madeline in the times I am alone with her. Lately it always feels like I am starting from scratch whenever I am doing something. Maybe the list of things to keep regularly doing is too long and too conflicted. The one thing I have gotten consistent at is watching a DVD once per day. That's a good 90 minute investment that I might need back. So for today as I begin the work week on a Sunday night I think my best bet is to create a schedule and stick to it for a while and even lay off the DVDs wherever possible and substitute work-outs for every other one of them. Maybe that will work?

Posted by Dan Housman at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Before the football game on Sunday I figured I would test Madeline's ability to understand what I was saying. I asked her to "bring me the happy baby words things that go book". She toddled into her room, rustled through the bookshelf and returned with that exact book. I read it to her and then asked her to bring me "Goodnight moon" and once again she rustled around and returned with the right book. So that means she understands much more than she can say. How much I'll never know but it was an illuminating moment to see her able to understand so much.

Unfortunately the Pats lost the game due to some unfortunate playing in the second half allowing Payton Manning to come back from a 21-3 deficit. But it had to happen sooner or later.

Posted by Dan Housman at 07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally got around to posting the late November and December pictures. I guess my routine has moved to taking a month of pictures and then jamming them through. They are in the photo library.

Posted by Dan Housman at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had my last experience with my first Christmas tree today. At least I think the tree has reached the end of it’s life. We left it up for our little New Year’s Eve get together with Sarah’s sister, Nick, Matt and Kate. The idea was to leave things festive for the evening. So it smelled of pine while we played electronic Taboo and a hearty game of Apples to Apples. Unfortunately for us a late night with lots of wine drinking rapidly becomes an early morning with a demanding baby looking for food attention and fighting off new diapers or a much needed bath. So Monday morning was filled with a headache combined with some baby crying. Sarah and I took it easy for the day by driving out for lunch at Charley’s at the Chestnut Hill Mall and then returning home. I didn’t really feel human until I drank my second iced tea and had a chunk of bread. Madeline was a champ with the crayons though making drawings that looked like dashes both on the paper and in the table. We rented some videos and watched Accepted.

Madeline went to sleep but despite being exhausted I couldn’t really sleep after the movie so I was reading my Murakami book. Then at about 11 O’Clock Madeline started crying. So we tried to calm her down by bringing her into the bed. But she was just bothering Sarah and kicking us a lot while we watched Superman II hoping she would fall asleep. When we gave up on getting her to fall asleep we placed her in her crib where she proceeded to make awful sad crying noises for about twenty minutes. The melodrama of a baby crying because they don’t want to be in a crib is hard to bear. It sounds like some medieval torturer with a lack of mercy is torturing your baby in the other room and she is crying out for help. So we ignored the cries until they quieted down and then when they went silent I fell asleep for a few moments only to be overwhelmed by the fear that the reason she had been crying so much was that there must be something wrong like the cat had suffocated her to make her quiet. So I went into her room to check on her and it startled her so she was awake once again.

Sarah left me in charge of the problem since I was responsible for the second awakening of the little one. So I tried a host of techniques recommended in popular magazines and that I had seen work for other family members or baby sitters like rocking in the chair, singing popular children’s songs, giving her a dropper full of Tylenol, holding her on my shoulder and swinging back and forth in a soothing pattern, offering her some juice to drink. None of this worked and she could be used as a Geiger counter for identifying her crib since every time I got close to it she would raise her voice exponentially. So I gave up and decided to just play along with it. We started with playing with the Tylenol bottle. It has a dropper on the end and she was biting on it but found it much more funny to feed it to me and watch me chew and suck on it. So we played that game for a while. Then I read her a story. Then we went into the other room where the miniature Christmas tree is and we removed, reapplied, and dropped the mini gold ornaments on it about 1000 times. My one stroke of genius was that after she dropped the whole tree off the counter (it is only about a foot high and made out of plastic), I reached over and noticed that I could pull the power cord out of the tree while picking it up along with the ornaments that she had dropped. So we found darkness again at about 3:00 AM. Finally at about 4:00 AM, as the sun was rising,, we went back into her room and I managed to rock myself to sleep only to find her asleep in my arms when I awoke.

So as I was driving home Sarah mentioned that it would be helpful if I were to take the Christmas tree downstairs because it is garbage day tomorrow and we already removed all of the ornaments from it. As a first time Christmas tree owner I had no idea what this entailed. Just walking through the room with the tree left a hurricane of pine needles, attached sap to my hands, and had branches breaking off on every piece of furniture. When I got to the door to the apartment the nine foot tree neither fit through the door nor would it hold on to about 50% of it’s needles so a storm of needles fell on either side of the door. I then dragged it down the stairs brushing against each banister freeing the remaining needles and smaller branches as I made my way out of the building. Finally I threw it in on the curb, looked at it amazed that there was any green part of it left attached and returned to review the path of pine destruction I had made on my way. I then spent the next hour and a half trying to sweep the hallway, clean the scraps off the floor, vacuum wherever the pine needles could be found, including my ear, and pour out the sappy water in the base that held it into the sink.

I did enjoy my first tree. Too bad I wasn’t more alert when I took it out. Luckily Madeline still has that little fake one to play with. And with this vacation done I am ready to get back to some relaxing work.

Posted by Dan Housman at 07:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual."

- Mason Cooley

Posted by Dan Housman at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"It's been ten years since I listened to so much music. To my surprise, the Rolling Stones and Beach Boys are still going strong.Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on."

From Haruki Murikami - A Wild Sheep Chase

I liked this passage. It struck me when in the mix of things and phases of life that we create outfits out of time to dress ourselves in but we are ephemeral and it is not.

Posted by Dan Housman at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)