Year of the Startup

At work today, I avoided the cabbage soup so I could have so much more on Thursday and Friday.  It hasn’t thawed completely.

Wow, busy weekend.

On Saturday, I had an early morning church meeting (elders) immediately followed by a dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s Christmas play (I run the lights).  This took me to lunchtime.  In the afternoon, with the help of my son and his friend who spent the weekend with us, we lifted that 60lb solid cherry wood cross-member on the custom TV cabinet up by 1cm.  I had to redrill all the holes and move four of the eight screws, all while the two boys balanced the slab of wood on their heads; using their hands to keep it level in three axes.  By the time we finished, everything looked wonderful, and the boys could then play Modern Warfare in HD, while being blasted with a sub-woofer.

Later that evening, we began to watch our favorite TV shows and realized that, with true HD, all our shows looked “fake,” especially the outdoor scenes.  What once looked normal, now looked extremely cheesy, and everything looked like a daytime soap opera.  The difference was astounding, and not in a good way.  We had all lost our “suspension of disbelief” – the ability to get into a show or movie.  If anything, we saw too much: the imperfections of our formerly gorgeous actors, or how fake a particular set looked, and a whole lot of bad acting we never noticed before!  On the plus side, everything looked 3-D, even though we didn’t opt for a 3-D TV.  So often, it seemed like the actors were going to step into our living room – everything looked that real!  I guess we’ll need to get used to this, or watch our favorite shows in the bedroom, which only offers 720 lines of HD resolution.

On Sunday, I taught part two of my class on Advent, ran lights for the simply adorable Christmas play, then watched the 49ers lose to the Cardinals with my friend Jeff.

Over the weekend, my neck began to feel better as well, thanks to ice, Motrin and a lot of prayer.  WebMD pointed to a nerve pinch rather than a muscle pull, so switching from heat and muscle relaxants to ice and anti-inflammatories really did the trick!

Oh ya, today I worked… and went home.  The highlight of my day was going to Sonoma Chicken with Bob.  I was supposed to have cabbage soup for lunch (for the next four days!), and who doesn’t love cabbage soup, but alas, it was a frozen block of “goodness” that I didn’t feel like melting today.  Maybe tomorrow… maybe.

I had to stay home again to wait for the TV.  I had a 10-2 window, and it arrived just before 2.  When my son got home, we decided to hook it up.  We got most of the hookup done, then tried to slide the TV into the custom-built cabinet… custom built for the previous TV.  Amazon’s dimensions were wrong!  Width-wise, the TV was as advertised, but the height was off by an inch.  Even so, the TV should have just fit, but it didn’t — it was off by half a centimeter, 5mm, one-fifth of an inch.  We put the TV on the ground for now.  Sometime over the weekend, I’ll need to unscrew the top wood piece on this cabinet and raise it a centimeter.

My son and I had a thought about what to do with the old TV while we were working on the new TV.  My plan was to put it on my dresser in the bedroom, but that would be awkward, and we wouldn’t be able to see it well from bed.  Both of us had recently seen a wall mount that “telescoped” off the wall and allowed the TV to move at any angle.  By getting one of these, we could mount the TV near the ceiling and adjust by using the telescoping feature.  I had found one such unit on Amazon for $30 on sale (regular $190), but shipping was $45!  I thought maybe I could find something less than $75 at Best Buy so off we went.  Nope, the cheapest telescoping wall mount there was $230, and it looked worse than the one on Amazon.  We went home and I got the one online.  It should be here in the middle of next week.

I’ve been having neck problems since Monday.  Last night, it got so bad I couldn’t sleep.  This morning, I could not move my neck without severe pain.  Various medicines, so far, seem not to work.  Still, I drove to work… without moving my head.  It’s not as easy as it sounds, and it is definitely dangerous.  I couldn’t even look in the mirrors, so I would go fast, pass a car, count to three and change lanes.  By lunchtime, I couldn’t open my mouth too much because it would hurt my neck.  I had to take small bites.  When I got home, I tried heat (I had also tried heat this morning).  No luck.  WebMD says that sometimes heat will help, and sometimes ice will help, and you never know which until you try both.  Well, heat definitely didn’t work, so I tried ice.  Much, much better!  This leads me to conclude that it’s a nerve pinch brought on my inflammation, rather than a muscle strain or pull.

I got a call just before I left the office that Kat & Josh had some items stolen from their new house this morning – a big screen TV and all their important documents.  I was asked to gather a group and go be with them.  Others would be there to fix the door and door frame that had been kicked in.  Sort of ironic, but the burglary was cut short when the ADP security installers came to install their security system.  I spent much of my time with Josh.  We prayed and talked.  I think he was feeling better this evening, but this morning, he was pretty upset.  No one wants to feel violated like that.  Suddenly, Josh & Kat had safety issues… in the house they just bought!  With one young child, and another soon on the way, safety is important.

I got so much work done today!  Layout is fun when everything works out.  After 20 years of doing this, I sort of have a love/hate relationship with layout.  I’m happier when layout is not all I’m doing… maybe I’m doing it 25% of the time.

I was able to connect with the TV delivery folks today.  Because Amazon’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday was so successful, they are absolutely slammed with deliveries.  Now that they’ve missed my Monday delivery, the next time they can deliver it is Friday.  Really; these guys have already inconvenienced me once, and now I must wait the entire week?  This is not right!

Barb made curry burgers tonight.  Very yummy!  I helped by making the patties and my hands still smell like curry.

Long day, but a fun day; I wasn’t bored!  I’m down to two reliability vendors, and they are in a bidding war.  Truth is that either would be a fine vendor, but I do have my preference.

My boss heads back to China tomorrow, so a lot of today was spent doing “last minute” things for him, and setting up “while I’m gone” tasks for me.  Again, I won’t be bored.

Over the weekend, our router or modem stopped functioning properly.  Perhaps it is because we have 14 wireless devices hooked up to it… ya, probably that.  I may have to set up a second hot spot.  The natives are complaining – our many wireless devices seem only to work in my home office.

My weekend class went better than expected.  It’s now on to week two.

I stayed home today to receive our new TV.  We got the speakers and cables, but no TV.  Perhaps somebody forgot to load the TV on the truck? (Amazon said that the TV arrived at SFO at 2:35 this morning, and was scheduled for delivery today… so where are they?)

I must get used to the concept that upper management is useful, but doesn’t (directly) produce anything.  It’s been years since I have felt like I have done so much, yet produced so little.  Upper management is all about interaction and coordination of effort.

This weekend I start teaching again (Advent Conspiracy).  I guess I’d better put some time in on the class on Saturday if it’s going to succeed on Sunday.  At the same time, I’m still doing the homework from the previous class taught by Randy.  His class (Chazown – about “vision”: seeing your preferred future) is telling me that I should be teaching A LOT more than I am now; my preferred future is teaching, preaching and writing.  Even my wife said that I should spend less time administrating Adult Ed for the church and spend more time teaching the classes.  She said this independently of my “discovery” that God built me to be a professor (and not necessarily a semiconductor engineer/manager).

Gaaa!  Another computer problem.  This one started last week and has gotten progressively worse.  How many laptops am I going to go through this year?  My main layout program has become all but useless on my laptop, yet seems to work fine on any other machine.  I don’t know what to make of this.  After three days of running virus scans and registry fixing software and defragmenting software, and reloading the application countless times, I give up.  My boss has asked me to look into getting a desktop for work; that way, I can use my work and home desktops, and merely transport the key/dongle that makes the program work.  Still, I need a laptop some of the time.  I guess this laptop will do everything but layout.

Happy Birthday to my brother Allen.  He turns 40 today.

Today, I did a bit of shopping during lunch and bought office supplies.  How exciting!  The largest thing I purchased was one of those plastic floor mats because my home office chair is slowly grinding into my hardwood floor.  After work, I finally got new front tires.  The old ones were bald, and I would probably be found dead on the side of the road the next time the rain came.  The tire folks checked my suspension and it was fine (Yeah!), but my breaks are just about at their limit, so I guess I’ll need to replace them myself or pay someone to do it.  The new tires are on the pricy side (top of the line Michelin 80K mile tires), but they are so smooth!  This is the first time in 16 years that I’ve had decent steering capabilities.  And here I assumed all this time that my car was just made that way.  Nope, it was the tires I have chosen.