Fourteen years ago, we met when I gave her a wedgie in the middle of our high school Chemistry class. Ten years ago, we were married on the first hot day of summer in a gorgeous outdoor ceremony. Nine years ago, we became parents with the birth of our daughter. Five years ago, our son came into the world. Three years ago, we nearly split up, but with marital counseling we were able to work out our differences and start getting along again. One year ago, we moved from beautiful, sunny California to the rain-drenched trenches of Seattle. This morning, after all of the laughter, tears, stress, and joy of a relationship that has spanned half of our lives, Sarah and I have parted ways.

What happened?

For those who know us personally, what can I even say? In the early years of our marriage, I had a lot of emotional baggage leftover from one particular ex-girlfriend. Part of me resented Sarah because I felt like we got married before we, or rather, I, was ready to. She saw me pushing away, and responded by clinging on, which only made me push away even more. We started fighting all the time.

Sarah became depressed. I became moody and irritable. I asked her to move out, then relented. We went to marriage counseling and somehow managed to work things out. I learned how to set aside my baggage and simply love Sarah for who she was. Sarah learned how to communicate with me in a way I could understand and provide the personal space that an introvert like me needs to have. Our relationship did a 180. But the seeds were already sewn.

Our interests diverged until we no longer had anything in common. Sure we liked movies, but completely different kinds of movies. We liked different kinds of music. When we would go out, we could never agree on what we wanted to eat or what we wanted to do. We stopped spending time together. We fell out of love.

Sure, we got along just fine, we never really fought anymore, and we certainly made great friends and roommates, but it takes more than that to keep a marriage together. Honestly, I believe that the reason why we stayed together for as long as we did was that we both really wanted it to work out. We wanted to stay together. We wanted to be happy. But we weren’t.

Stay together for the kids

I don’t believe in the notion of staying together for the kids. I believe it’s an excuse that lazy people come up with to avoid moving out of their comfort zone. “Sure I’m unhappy, but it would be too much work to split up. Let’s just stay together for the kids.” Baloney.

Children learn what a healthy relationship is by watching their parents. If the parents don’t have a healthy relationship, the kids will grow up thinking that married couples aren’t supposed to be happy. Is that really what you want to teach your kids? Not me. Sure there will be some near-term pain for everybody involved, but over the longer term, your kids might actually have the chance to learn what a healthy relationship is. That’s what I want my kids to see.

I wish my parents had split up years ago. I know that it’s a strange thing to wish, but I grew up with parents that didn’t (and still don’t) know how to communicate effectively with each other. My parents were separated for most of my growing-up years, but the years they’ve spent together have been so dysfunctional that I wish they’d just broken up and married people they actually got along with.

They just recently re-separated after being together again for about 15 years. My brother is angry about it, while my sister and I are surprised it’s taken this long. We’re used to the dysfunctionality. I wish that we weren’t.

Sarah and I are determined to stay friends throughout all of this. We’re working out how to split things up fairly, and we’re splitting time with the kids 50-50. We plan to live in the same city as each other so that the school situation works out. We’re able to sit down and have rational discussions about our future apart from each other. We’re not mad, depressed, or even resigned from each other. We care about each other, but we recognize that we’re better off apart. It’s that simple.

I would wager that this is the most amicable split in recorded history. We don’t hate each other like most couples do when they split — quite the opposite actually. The best way I can describe our relationship is that we’re bonded for life. We still love and care about each other, even if we’re no longer in-love with each other.

What’s next?

I can’t help but think of the song “Good Life” by Frances Dunnery. I’ve been listening to it, along with the rest of my Depressing Music playlist, for the past several hours.

Softly now / You owe it to the world / And everyone knows that you’re my favorite girl / But there’s some things in life that are not meant to be / I’m not meant for you and you’re not meant for me / Here’s to our problems / And here’s to our fights / Here’s to our achings / And here’s to you having a Good life / From Me

Softer now / You owe it to yourself / And don’t think that you will be left on the shelf / Cause there’s someone for you and there’s someone for me / Like me you’ll meet them eventually / Here’s to your lover / And here’s to my wife / Here’s to your children and here’s to you having a good life / From Me

I honestly don’t know where things are going to go from here. Sarah is a smart, wonderful, talented woman who will continue to play an important role in my life for quite some time. I wish nothing but happiness for her, and look forward to the day when she meets someone who makes her eyes sparkle the same way they used to sparkle for me all those years ago.

That said, I’ve also learned that sometimes you need to simply draw a line in the sand to kick-start your motivation to actually accomplish tasks from that crazy-long to-do list you have. And that’s where I am. I spend too much time thinking about the things I want to do, and not enough time actually doing them. So here we go.

• Come up with a set of New Years’ resolutions. Done.
• Engage with people more often. I spend a lot of time hanging out in my head, and not enough time building relationships with people.
• Improve relationships with people I already know. It’s really easy to put relationships on auto-pilot or the back burner. I want to be more intentional about growing relationships with people.
• Publish my first book. Working on it, but I want to actually complete it and get it out to people.
• Do my first speaking engagement. I’ve wanted to go on the speaking circuit for several years now, but was never intentional about trying to make it happen.
• Take instrument lessons. Either drums or guitar. Or both. Maybe piano too.
• Launch my first desktop app. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while as well. It’s time to do it.
• Hit my weight goal of 180 lbs. I was almost there a couple of years ago, but the medication I’m taking made me gain some weight back. I want to be intentional about slimming down. P90X has already been added to my wishlist.

What are your resolutions for the new year?

Between the flights today, I didn’t have a chance to eat dinner. So when I got here, I decided to get something to eat… that, and I wanted to go exploring a bit. In the end, I ended up walking around the downtown area of a large, unfamiliar city all by myself at 1:00am. Although quite unorthodox for me, it was a fun hour of walking around. It’s about 80 degrees and humid, even at 1:00am.

Coincidentally, my friend Michelle is also visiting Chicago from the Seattle area. I didn’t know this until after we’d already booked our flights, but she’s a professional photographer and scrapbooker and apparently there’s some convention in Chicago this weekend. I ended up chatting with a lady on the place and on the subway ride afterwords that was going to the same convention where my friend Michelle is going to be.

I’ll be meeting up with Eric and his girlfriend Katie tomorrow. It’s going to be fun!

1. MY LOVE LANGUAGE (FROM THE BOOK “THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES”) IS “WORDS OF AFFIRMATION”.

   I used to think it was “Quality Time”, but then I realized that since I never have the opportunity to spend much time with most of my friends, I’d probably be pretty depressed most of the time. More recently I realized it was “Words of Affirmation” as that is how I both express and feel affection, and “Quality Time” is likely my secondary love language because I find that I thrive on close personal relationships with other people.

   I’m definitely NOT “Touch” (it’s likely the last of my 5), although two of my closest friends are. It took me a while to get used to the idea of hugging my best friend, but that’s how he expresses and feels affection. Over time it’s grown on me with him and a few others, but times where somebody touched my shoulder or grabbed my hand for whatever reason have made me feel particularly awkward.

2. I’M THE BIGGEST “CALVIN AND HOBBES” FAN ON THE FACE OF THE ENTIRE PLANET.

   Eric (my BFF — yes, I said BFF) would probably beg to differ, but he’d be wrong. It really is me. C&H changed how I saw the world at a very pivotal point in my life, and I believe it actually made me a better person. I’ve told my kids the very same things that Calvin’s dad told him (“you were unceremoniously dropped down the chimeny by a big, hairy pterodactyl”, “it’s windy because the trees are sneezing”). Besides all of that, I have every C&H book ever produced (except for the complete collection, which I’m hoping to get soon), and I have 15 original C&H comics cut out from the newspaper (16 if you count the one I gave to Eric when I moved away).

3. BETWEEN MY FIRST GIRLFRIEND AT 15 AND MY MARRIAGE AT 21 I’D DATED 12.1 PEOPLE.

   These are the very special ladies who’ve been in my life at one point or another. Chronologically, speaking: Claire S. (May – Oct 1995), Michelle B. (Nov 1995), Heather H. (Feb – Mar 1996), Amber M. (Apr – July 1996), Emily B. (Jun – Aug 1996; we never dated, but we were both interested in each other and we spent a TON of time together over 3 months. This is the 0.1.), Alyssa B. (Oct 1996), Renee T. (Nov 1996), Kristen P. (on and off from Feb 1997 – Nov 1999), Aimee B. (on and off from May 1997 – Aug 1999), Sarah C. (May 1998 – Sept 1998; Mar 1999 – July 1999), Liz S. (Dec 1999 – Mar 2000), Amanda F. (Apr 2000 – Sept 2000), Steph L. (July 2000 – Oct 2000), Sarah C. (again, Nov 2000 – Present).

4. I’M NOT EASILY IMPRESSED, AND I’M FREQUENTLY BORED/DEPRESSED/FEEL ALONE.

   Some people are easily impressed. I’m not. I spend time with some of the smartest, most talented leader-types alive today. It takes more than acting smug when you answer a trivia question correctly to impress me.

   Some people struggle with depression. I’m one of them. People who don’t struggle with depression wonder why we don’t just get over it. If it were really that simple, we wouldn’t be depressed dumbass. For me, I thrive on close relationships with other people I care about, but I live at least an hour away from the people who are closest to me. Because of this (and everybody’s busy schedules), I don’t usually have that emotional need filled… and that can be hard to deal with. My wife and kids fill the wife and kid roles, but that’s not the same thing as the ill-maintained friendships I have. On the other hand, I’m in the process of developing some cool new friendships here in town, so hopefully I won’t feel this way for too much longer.

5. NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS AFTER 2:00 AM.

   This is more advice than something about me. I’ve had more than one instance where after 2am my better judgment gets up and walks away while I stick around to make really bad decisions all by myself. I’ve already destroyed one relationship and almost destroyed 2 more because I was left to my own post-2am stupidities. P.S. It gets even worse when alcohol is involved, so I try not to drink much.

6. I HAVE A TECHNICALLY-INCLINED INFJ (INTROVERTED, INTUITING, FEELING, JUDGING) PERSONALITY TYPE. I’M ALSO A TEXTBOOK SCORPIO.

   Here’s a great INFJ description: http://typelogic.com/infj.html. Read the whole thing. It describes me flawlessly. If you don’t feel like reading something else, here’s a snippet:

   INFJs are distinguished by both their complexity of character and the unusual range and depth of their talents. Strongly humanitarian in outlook, INFJs tend to be idealists, and because of their J preference for closure and completion, they are generally “doers” as well as dreamers. This rare combination of vision and practicality often results in INFJs taking a disproportionate amount of responsibility in the various causes to which so many of them seem to be drawn.

   INFJs are deeply concerned about their relations with individuals as well as the state of humanity at large. They are, in fact, sometimes mistaken for extroverts because they appear so outgoing and are so genuinely interested in people — a product of the Feeling function they most readily show to the world.

   On the contrary, INFJs are true introverts, who can only be emotionally intimate and fulfilled with a chosen few from among their long-term friends, family, or obvious “soul mates.” While instinctively courting the personal and organizational demands continually made upon them by others, at intervals INFJs will suddenly withdraw into themselves, sometimes shutting out even their intimates. This apparent paradox is a necessary escape valve for them, providing both time to rebuild their depleted resources and a filter to prevent the emotional overload to which they are so susceptible as inherent “givers.” As a pattern of behavior, it is perhaps the most confusing aspect of the enigmatic INFJ character to outsiders, and hence the most often misunderstood — particularly by those who have little experience with this rare type.

   I’m also a Scorpio in that if you’re cool with me, then I’m cool with you… but don’t dare cross me. It’s been a rare occasion when I’ve unleashed my inner scorpion, but those who’ve felt it know what I’m talking about (of course they’re likely not reading this). In the end, I married a textbook Leo. Sometimes things are fantastic and other times it’s death incarnate.

7. MY MOST SIGNIFICANT EX-GIRLFRIEND’S BIRTHDAY, MY WIFE’S BIRTHDAY, AND MY ANNIVERSARY ARE ALL ON THE SAME DATE.
   My most significant pre-marriage relationship was with Kristen P. Turns out that her birthday is the same as my wife’s. We got married on my wife’s 21st birthday. Basically I only have to buy one present, but it has to be a big one. I don’t really talk to Kristen anymore, as that relationship ended up exploding in a fantastically gigantic ball of flames on my 20th birthday and I don’t think she ever wants to speak to me again for the rest of her entire life.
8. I’M PRETTY WELL-BALANCED BETWEEN THE CREATIVE AND THE TECHNICAL.

   For many years I wanted to grow up to be a professional musician. Then in 1997 I got my first computer and discovered web design. Web design was the perfect balance between the creative (design) and the technical (programming). Music, writing, and visual composition are all passions of mine. So are the web and technology. So is usability. I’ve spent the last 10 years focused primarily in the web and growing my skills there. Over the past 2 years I’ve been focused on making technology as human-friendly as possible. Over the past few months I’ve finally gotten back to my music. I’ve got so many ideas for arrangements on some songs I wrote 10-15 years ago, script and production ideas for videos/movies/plays, and I’d love to be able to oversee the use of human-friendly technology to enable people to explore their creative depths. I plan to see these things realized one day, beginning sometime very soon (MFM ~ I’ve got some lyrics for you).

Not like the guy who washes his hands hundreds of times a day, or like Adrian Monk — the TV detective that suffers from all sorts of phobias and anxieties and has these oddball little quirks — kind of obsessive.

But a little.

I think it all started when I was a kid. I was the kid that had to have all of my toy cars lined up exactly right, or it was no good. When I was about 5 years old, I randomly watched my dad put his socks on. You know that long line stitch in the sock that’s supposed to go straight over your toes? Yeah. My dad’s stitch was looping over his toes from the top to the bottom. I saw that and felt my brain short-circuit.

When I was in Jr. High or High School, I started noticing that if you looked at my socks you could see where the big toe went. Apparently this was because I unconsciously wore the same socks on the same feet. A left-foot sock was always worn on the left foot, and the same was true for right-foot socks. I would even go so far as to flipping one sock inside-out if I could only find 2 left or right-foot socks. I still do this to this day.

I always, ALWAYS keep my wallet in my right pocket, and my keys, chapstick, and a pen in the left pocket. If I’m missing any of those items, I almost feel naked. Well, no. I take that back. But things do feel not-quite-right. When playing Monopoly, the Chance and Community Chest cards MUST stay within their assigned boxes on the board. If I notice them out of place, I have to fix them. Except for the times when somebody else moves my things, I haven’t lost my shoes, wallet, or car keys in over 10 years. Why? Because I only put them in one or two places when they’re not on my person.

It seems funny to talk about, because it doesn’t seem like any of this is out of the ordinary… but for many people it is. My wife can’t keep track of her head, and it’s attached to her body. But even though I’ve been doing all of these things for my entire life (at least as long as I can remember, anyway), the thought of actually being a little OCD never occurred to me until last week.

Last week, I discovered OpenID. OpenID is a cool system, where you can authenticate (sign-in) to an OpenID-enabled service, and that will activate your URL (your website address, among other things) as your OpenID “key” to other OpenID-enabled services. (I know that was probably a terrible way to explain it, but it’s really not all that relevant to the story.) 37signals launched a new service last week called Highrise, which is a way to manage your contacts, conversations you had with them, follow-up tasks, etc. Highrise also supports OpenID authentication.

Once I got my OpenID set up, I logged into Highrise with it. I typed in “ryanparman.com”, and it logged me right in. I thought that was really cool, so I logged out, and again typed “ryanparman.com”. It logged me in again. Sweet. Log out, type “ryanparman.com” again. Log back in.

I’m not really sure how long this went on for, but I began looking for other services that supported OpenID, like Zooomr, and Live Journal, and there’s a Mediawiki extension that supports it, and there are at least a couple dozen sites and/or services that support it already. I just kept logging in, logging out, logging in, logging out. After a while I looked at the clock, and realized I’d been logging in and out of services for about two hours. Two hours of my life — wasted — because I thought that OpenID authentication was really cool. No… it’s, like, 5 minutes cool. Maybe 10. Not 120 minutes cool. Not two hours cool.

And here I sit, talking about something I never noticed about myself until last week. It makes sense though, and it certainly explains a lot of my behavior over the last 27 years. It explains why I have a sock “thing”. It explains why things need to be alphabetized. It explains why when I’m drinking a Pepsi from a can, I never leave any Pepsi in the lip of the can after each drink. It explains why I’m the one who’s responsible for how my furniture is arranged and how the kitchen is organized — not my wife. It explains why I became a web developer… and before that I was a musician… and before that I was a kid who was really good at math.

Thing is, I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, it certainly serves me well that I never lose my shoes or my keys. But I know it drives other people crazy. Should I even care? My impulsive side wants to arbitrarily change something about the way I do things. Sometimes that works out for me, and sometimes it drives me crazy. I’m not sure if I’ll even do anything about this new revelation, I just thought I’d take a few minutes to talk about it.

Since the last time I wrote, a few things have happened. First off, I quit my job last September to co-found my first startup, Foleeo. We’ve been keeping our eyes on the web and watching what’s been going on. We’ve been looking at the successful players, and have learned from them. We’ve been listening to thoughts and ideas from many people in the blogosphere to get a sense of not only what some of the existing problems are, but also how people want them to be solved. We’re working on some really cool stuff and I really hope that people are as stoked about this stuff as I am when we start pushing out the cool parts of our roadmap.

Geoffrey and I have released SimplePie Beta 3, and are trying to polish off our 1.0 release. SimplePie has really started to take off in popularity, garnering a TON of praise from the community. We couldn’t be more thrilled. It’s amazing to see how this little side project within a project has grown into a major player in the RSS/Atom space. This success would never have been possible without the community that has gathered around it to give feedback, submit patches, and make it better.

As a substitute for blogging (and as a simple showcase for SimplePie), I launched RyanParman.com a few months ago as a way to show the world the things I was interested in without having to blog about them. The site keeps itself up-to-date by tapping into things I’m already doing — adding bookmarks, listening to iTunes, renting DVD’s from Netflix, uploading photos to Flickr, watching funny videos on YouTube, and of course Twittering. Since this is my first official “comeback” post, I’ll be integrating this blog’s posts into that site as well.

Lastly, I recently had a friend pass away at the age of 29. I have the quite unfortunate knowledge that she made the conscious decision to reject a relationship with the Lord, meaning that she hasn’t actually gone to a better place like we’d all hoped. If so, I’d be throwing a party for that lucky girl because she got there before I did! Instead, I find myself mourning in the very depths of my soul.

But it got me thinking. If I was visited by an angel who told me I had 30 days to live, how would I spend today? I know the setup might sound a little odd, but let me put it into perspective: If an angel came and told me, it’s not like I could argue about it — I would know it was coming. If I’ve got 30 days, it leaves me with enough time to do a little planning so I don’t have to panic and try to cram everything into today. And if I knew I didn’t have much time left, what would I spend those precious few moments doing? Who would I spend them with? Would I stay angry at those people? Would I still be afraid to call that old friend I had a falling-out with a few years ago? Would I make long-distance friendships a greater priority? It’s really had me thinking, and I’ve been making changes to my life and my schedule appropriately.

Anyways, welcome back into the life of Ryan Parman. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep it interesting.

Vasectomy. That’s right, no more kids for me. I decided a long, long time ago that I only ever wanted two kids. I have them, I love them, and I’m done. My wife said that she was kinda bummed out about it, but understood my decision. And it’s not like it came as a surprise either — I’ve been saying the same thing since we met in high school, long before she was ever my girlfriend.

I have always been very adamant about only having two kids, for a couple of reasons:

1. Statistically speaking, parents with an odd number of children have a higher likelyhood of losing their minds and going crazy. After watching my parents go nuts, I decided I didn’t want that for my life. (Mom, if you’re reading this, laugh!) I considered stopping at one, however, after my daughter was born. But one kid is too few and they tend to get lonely because they’re the only child in the house (or so I’ve heard).
2. That just leaves an even number of children. Six would make me a Mormon (which I’m not, nor will I ever be), four would put me in the poor-house, so that really only leaves two (which also solves the only-child syndrome).

So yes, there were specific reasons for wanting to stop at two. I was so adamant about only having two, however, that when my wife told me she missed her period last week, I got really pissed. Not at her, per se, because it’s not like I can blame it on her. More because of the fact that it would mean more than two kids — and I didn’t want that. Fortunately, she went down to take a blood test, and everything came back negative — which I’m thrilled about. Now we justs need to figure out why she missed.

Anyways, so I’ve been in surgery before, so this should be no big deal. I’ve never been one to have “test anxiety” because I know that things are going to go however they’re going to go, and there’s really nothing I can do about it, so why stress? This was no exception.

Fortunately, I have a desk job, so I should be able to go back to work on Monday, and still be able to relax and stay off my feet. When my best friend got done, he went back to work after four days — but he was the General Manager of a fast food restaurant, and that required him to spend most of his day not only standing up, but also running around in a high-stress environment. His wife was telling me that his junk swelled until they looked like a couple of blood oranges — a fantastic thing to look forward to.

So I got into the operating room, and the nurse asked me to strip from the waist down, and then gave me one of those blue sheets to cover my lower half. As soon as I came back out and sat on the bed, she asked me to lay down while she removed the sheet anyways. What was the point of the blue sheet? *shrugs*

So after having her do a quick shave down there, rubbing it all down with some sort of disinfectant, and me praying “Dear Lord, please don’t let me pop one,” she left and the doctor came in. He apologized for running behind (I’d sat in the waiting room for an hour), and began explaining exactly what was going to happen. He was cool about it all, very professional and everything, which was kind of a relief.

I won’t go into details about the next part, but between the stab of the anesthetic syringe, the incision, and the dull pain that comes from the squeezing, I can say that if anybody ever graduated from a university with a degree in making vasectomies as comfortable as possible — that person would make billions. I’m SO glad I never have to have babies. And I’m lucky I’ve never passed any kind of kidney or gall stone, because I hear that a guy passing a stone is more painful than a woman having a baby.

So anyways, I’m at home relaxing — jock strap and all — and trying to find things to keep myself interested over the next few days when I’m not allowed to do anything. In truth, I have some work to do on a couple of websites, a computer to fix, and some software to upgrade, so I doubt I’ll be needing anything to do.

If you thought that this was too much information, all I can say is that I warned you at the beginning. However it might have been like a car accident: so grotesque, but you just can’t look away.

Anybody care to share your own v-sec experience?

We usually have 2 Christmases at our house. Everybody always gets together with their families for “real” Christmas, and so did we. But we also have a Christmas with all of our friends (which we call “UFKS Christmas”) a week or two before “real” Christmas, so that we can all get together without having to compete with other family stuff.

So at UFKS Christmas this year, my wife let me open my “big present” early. It was a new Sony PSP! My wife really knows how to spoil me! It has built-in Wi-Fi, and the latest firmware update has a pretty decent web browser. Another friend got me GTA: Libery City Stories, although I haven’t had the chance to play it yet. I’m thinking about going out today and picking up Burnout Legends and Star Wars: Battlefront II. Very cool stuff.

But what I didn’t know was that my new PSP wasn’t really my “big present”. It was just a decoy, of sorts.

She hands me a wrapped DVD, which I promptly opened. Inside the DVD case, however, was a piece of paper with a riddle on it. I figured out that the riddle was another location in the house. I went there, and found another riddle. I couldn’t help but laugh, because I had done the same thing to her for her present — she just didn’t know it yet. Anyway, I followed the clues to the back seat of her dad’s truck. I opened the door and saw a box that said “42-inch Plasma HD Widescreen”. I was completely dumbfounded. Based on the expression on my face, she thought that I was disappointed, but actually I was just trying to think of something to say.

We got it all set up with the new Monster Cable that she’d gotten for it, and it was beautiful in all of it’s 42″ Plasma glory. I got the fourth season of “24″ from my parents, so I spent the rest of the weekend watching 24 on my new TV with my already-owned Bose Surround Sound system. It’s like a movie theatre replacement, it’s so awesome!

I felt kinda lame when she opened her new Palm T|X with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a 1GB SD Flash memory card, and a palmOne-branded GPS locator system for her Palm.

But all-in-all, it was actually better that we got to spend so much time with our friends and family over this holiday season. I love my kids, my wife (awesome toy-buyer extraordinaire), my friends that I got to spend a good deal of time with, and those that I consider my family.

I have a long drive to and from work — an hour fifteen to an hour and a half, and I don’t get to spend as much quality time with my daughter as I’d like. Sure, we sit together in the car, but that’s not always the same. Whenever it’s just she and I, we’ll oftentimes make up silly songs on-the-spot, we’ll tell jokes, and I’ll ask her questions to continually try to find out what makes her tick. She’s turning 4 today, and she just keeps growing up so fast.

I’d love for her to be able to be open and know that she can talk to me about anything for as long as she’s willing to. The teenage years aren’t all that far away in the grand scheme of things, and I just want to cherish the precious few moments that we’ll have until she decides that I’m not as “cool” as I used to be.

She’s smart, funny, beautiful — the perfect girl for me, if she wasn’t my daughter, of course. And, y’know, 4 years old. On the weekends we’ll play, and make silly faces, and dance, and invent new words and songs, and she’s just a little ham. She’s the coolest kid I could ever ask for.

There are so many things that I want to teach her, and so many things I want to do to get her a headstart in life. But some things you just can’t teach a kid until they’re ready to learn them, and I have to fight the urge to make her the kid that tests out of high school, and finishes college in 3 years, and just let her be a 4-year-old kid because that’s what she is.

Sometimes when she gets in trouble, I can be a little hard on her. And I hate having to punish her, but I know that if I’m a little tougher with her now, then I won’t NEED to be as tough with her as she gets older because she’ll (hopefully) be we well-behaved, respectable little firecracker.

She’s very independent, and has a will as strong as mine. And I believe that God gave me a child like myself for two specific reasons (among many others, of course): (A) to teach me patience, grace, and love, and (B) because if she’d been born into any other family, Julianna would tear them up. She’s got that strong will and that drive and it’s one of those things that gets her into a lot of trouble now, but if we teach her how to properly wield those character traits, she’ll be able to do great things with her life.

Her independence will have a huge hand in the kind of leadership skills she develops (because she will most definitely be a leader). For all you LOST fans out there, I often times compare Julianna and her best friend Kylie, to Locke and Jack, respectively. On LOST, Jack is the typical Type-A leader. People look to him for answers on what to do, and he tends to be the major decision-maker on the island. “Jack” is Kylie, Julianna’s best friend at pre-school. Julianna is more like Locke. Locke is also very much a leader. He can respect Jack’s decisions, but he’s more of a lone wolf. He goes his own way, and does his own thing. Whereas most of the survivors look to Jack as a leader, Locke sees Jack as an equal, and that really defines their dynamic. Kylie will say “hey everybody, we’re going to play with the blocks today,” and all the other kids start playing with the blocks. Julianna says “I’m glad you all like playing with the blocks. Blocks are fun. But I’m going to go play with the balls. See ya.” I think that as she gets older, and Sarah and I have done our jobs, she’ll turn out like a Jack-Locke hybrid.

Being the best possible father to my kids is my number 1 goal in life. May the Lord give me the grace, strength, and wisdom I need to be able to accomplish this goal.

[Double posted to 43 Things]

Okay, so have I ever mentioned how cool my wife is? Yeah. I had my 26th birthday last week, and when I got home that night, I had one of these awesome little toys waiting for me. The 60GB model. Yeah.

But that one was broken.

So I exchanged it for a new one, and that one has been awesome. Combine that with Tivo, Tivo AutoPilot, and a few hours of patience, and I was watching Tivo’d episodes of Alias, Lost, Veronica Mars, and the Mind of Mencia on my iPod the next day (which came in handy because I had a lot of riding-in-a-car to do that day).

I seriously have the best wife ever.

I finally got my Windows PC desktop put together earlier this week, and began pulling TV shows from my Tivo so that they didn’t get deleted before I had a chance to watch them. I’m way behind on How I met your mother, Prison Break, House, Supernatural, Lost, Veronica Mars, Alias, Smallville, and NUMB3RS, although I did take a couple of hours last night to watch an episode each of Smallville and Prison Break. Excellent shows, by the way.

Back to the point of the title of this post, I’ve moved from the heart of Silicon Valley to a small town about 1 hour 15 minutes (80 miles) away called Los Baños, which means “The Toilets” in Spanish — ’nuff said. Why on earth would I do such a thing? Three reasons, really.

1. We were able to get a lot more house for our money by moving to the armpit of California. In San Jose, we were looking at a run-down, 3 bed, 2 bath, 1-car garage, 1,500 sq. ft. condominium for $500k, or we could move to Los Baños and get a 5 bedroom, 3 bath, 3-car garage, 3,000 sq. ft. single-family home for the same price. This was a no-brainer.
2. Property values are skyrocketing in this little cow-town. People from Silicon Valley and the SF Bay area are moving further and further south as the area gets more crowded. Los Baños is the next town in line as more northerly towns are filling up — and the housing market is showing that. Our offer was accepted at $500k, but the appraisal came back at $525k before we’d even closed escrow. Now, someone down the street is selling a home that is 500 sq. ft. smaller than ours and they’re trying to get $570 for it. We could feasibly make $100-$150k on our home within the first 12-18 months. Schweet!
3. Lastly was the location. And I don’t mean that I like the smell of the wonderful farm animals at 5:00am, but rather that I’m roughly 1.5 hours from work, 1.5 hours from my hometown of Fresno (and Clovis and Sanger where most of my friends still live), and just a few blocks from my parents and siblings. This is good for me, because I can spend time with the people I care most about without having to drive quite so far.

The most important change, however, has been less a matter of commuting, moving, being half a million dollars further in debt, or any of the other major changes that have been going on — instead it’s been the little things that have been sticking out to me.

1. Customer Service: Customer service is nearly always worse in a small town than in a bigger city because there tends to be less expected of them. Granted you can run into stupid people anywhere (and I run into lots of them, be sure of that), but small towns are especially bad. For example: I went to 4 stores this past weekend looking for these little plastic things that allow you to hook your coaxial or ethernet cables and nail them to the walls — a great way to run lots of wires and keep things looking clean. I went to Walmart, Kmart, Radio Shack, and the local hardware store. The cashiers at all 4 stores all told me either how much they hated their jobs, or that they wanted to go home, or apologized for having “garlic breath” — no kidding.
2. Driving the Speed Limit: I drive fast. Really fast. I have a lead foot, and a car that can keep up. I speed almost constantly, usually without even realizing it. But even if I don’t like it, I can’t complain if the person in front of me wants to drive the speed limit. There’s nothing wrong with that, and actually, it’s what I should be doing myself. But here’s the issue: In bigger cities, people typically drive 10-15 mph over the speed limit. In small towns, I frequently get stuck behind people going 10-15 mph _below_ the speed limit. ARGH! And I would totally speed up and go around them if I could, but the problem with that lies with number three…
3. Bored Cops: Cops in this town will find a reason to pull you over just to give themselves something to do. They’ll pull you over for speeding (even if you weren’t), badger you like you just ran over Mother Teresa, then let you off with a warning after wasting 15 minutes of your life that you can never get back thanks to this idiot cop.

But I can’t only complain about small towns, as there are some good things about them too.

1. Los Baños has some of the best Mexican food ever. Granted, most of the residents of the town are of Hispanic descent. But I honestly can’t tell the difference between the tacos I get at the local taqueria and the tacos I buy at Rosarito Beach, Mexico every summer when I’m on vacation.
2. People (when not working at Walmart, Kmart, Radio Shack, or the local hardware store) seem to be friendlier. In our Silicon Valley apartment, we lived there for roughly 20 months, and barely knew our neighbors. We’ve lived in our house for about 2 weeks now, and already know several people around the block. We just passed Halloween, and that night we had a few hundred kids come to the door trick-or-treating.
3. Other things too, I’m sure. I haven’t lived here long enough to find other good things yet.

Living in -the toilets- Los Baños has its ups and downs. My body still isn’t used to the hours I have to spend commuting, and we’ve had some problems with Home Depot screwing up orders and deliveries on a pretty regular basis. On the other hand, I’m able to spend more time with friends and family and we have a big, beautiful house. Over time, I’ll get used to living in the armpit of California, and all will be well again.

Good/Bad News: My best friend Eric is about to finish up Navigator training in the Air Force (if you’ve seen Top Gun, he’s Goose instead of Maverick). After nearly a year of training 1500 miles away in Texas (he and I are California natives), he just found out he’s getting stationed in Omaha, Nebraska. The good news is that it was his third choice of location (better than getting a 17th choice, I suppose) and that he’ll be flying in/out of London and other parts of Europe pretty frequently, which is something that he’ll really enjoy doing. The bad news is that even in Omaha, he’s still 1500-1600 miles away from home, and I just plain miss spending time with him like we used to. Phone calls and iSight video chats just aren’t the same.

Good/Bad News: After being retarded and waiting 6 years to get my wisdom teeth pulled, I finally went to an oral surgeon and got all 4 wisdom teeth pulled yesterday. The good news is that I no longer have to worry about my wisdom teeth coming in directly horizontally causing very painful impacted molars (I’ve been taking Tylenol every day for the past 3 weeks for the pain). The bad news is that even with my medications Toradol and Vicoden (which is a close relative to drugs like Morphine and Heroine), my mouth is still killing me. I’ve been sitting here eating ice cream with a package of frozen peas on my face all morning to little avail.

Bad News: We had to let our house go last week. With my being out of work for three weeks, we weren’t sure how soon I’d've been able to find something else considering how competitive the market has been lately here in Silicon Valley. So we signed the “Release of Contract” documents last week, and are currently planning to wait a few months to be sure we’re financially stable again and then start looking for a new home. The lease on our apartment is over in August, so we’ll ideally need to find something else by then. Here’s hoping everything goes well with that.

Good News: For my fellow geeks that are as excited to start using the next version of Tarzan as I am to release it, I just want to say that I’m close to finishing development on the brand-new, completely overhauled Tarzan Control Panel. Besides the new features that I talked about the last time I mentioned Tarzan here, I’ve added the ability to apply custom descriptions to items via the Control Panel, and I’ve also added advanced cache management options — specifically the ability to recache the image/data for a given item without having to FTP into your cache folder and try to discern which item is which. I’ve also begun building the API that will allow people to search for items based on keyword rather than just ASIN/ISBN numbers. It should also be noted that I’ve completely overhauled the caching system in Tarzan 1.2, and you’d have to be Forrest Gump to not notice the significant speed gains that this new system has allowed. This same caching system (as well as a few other Tarzan features) will be making it’s way into the next version of SimplePie as well as Simple PHP Gallery 2 in the upcoming months.

Okay, I’m done writing now. I think it’s time to take my frozen peas into the living room to try to finish up Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

Tarzan 1.2: I’ve been very hard at work on the next Tarzan release. This release will be everything I’d hoped the last release would be, before I realized it was a bit too ambitious. Rather than talk about the things I want to do, there are a few things that are already done and in the bag.

1. A significantly improved caching system. This sucker flies!
2. Improved image processing functionality. Supports multiple output formats among other things.
3. Custom Descriptions for products. You can overwrite Amazon’s default values, or even use your own custom images for products.
4. A much improved Control Panel. Nearly everything can be tweaked from the web interface.
5. iTunes Music Store integration for CD tracklistings.

Very cool stuff, and I’ve still got more that I’m working on. Tarzan 1.2 will be awesome!

Skyzyx.com, v22: The redesign that I promised over a year ago is underway. I’ve switched to WordPress, and am in the process of fixing things that were broken in Movable Type. I’m working on a fresh clean design, and am frantically studying HTACCESS redirects.

Buying a house: My wife and I are looking to buy our first place. I’ve realized that Bay Area housing costs are absolutely ridiculous! We’re looking at buying a 1500 sq. ft. townhouse, 3 bedroom, 2 bath, for $500k… and that’s a good deal. In the small town of Sanger where I grew up, a place like that would go for a whopping $150k. Anyways, we put a bid on the place, and just got a counter-offer last night. Let’s hope that everything goes through!

New baby on the way: I didn’t want to mention this publically when we first found out, because you never know what might happen at early stages of pregnancy, but then I forgot to say anything once we were relatively in-the-clear. My wife and I are expecting a baby boy in June! It’s very exciting, but very nerve-racking at the same time.

Anyways, lots of stuff. So, what’s going on for you these days?

The King of all kings and the Lord of all lords was born in a manger in the city of Bethleham, and nobody took notice except for a teenage virgin, a young carpenter, thee confused shepherds, and several bewildered animals. Reading through Max Lucado’s book, God Came Near, he says it well with the following…

Near the young mother sits the weary father. If anyone is dozing, he is. He can’t remember the last time he sat down. And now that the excitement has subsided a bit, now that Mary and the baby are comfortable, he leans against the wall of the stable and feels his eyes grow heavy. He still hasn’t figured it all out. The mystery of the event puzzles him, but he hasn’t the energy to wrestle with the questions. What’s important is that the baby is fine, and Mary is safe. As sleep comes, he remembers the name the angel told him to use… Jesus. “We will call him Jesus.”

Wide awake is Mary. My, how young she looks! Her head rests on the soft leather of Joseph’s saddle. The pain has been eclipsed by wonder. She looks into the face of the baby. Her son. Her Lord. His Majesty. At this point in history, the human being who best understands who God is and what He is doing is a teenage girl in a smelly stable. She can’t take her eyes off him. Somehow Mary knows that she is holding God. So this is he. She remembers the words of the angel. “His kingdom will never end.”

He looks like anything but a king. His face is prunish and red. His cry, though strong and healthy, is still the helpless and piercing cry of a baby. And he is absolutely dependent upon Mary for his well-being.

Majesty in the midst of the mundane. Holiness in the filth of sheep manure and sweat. Divinity entering the world on the floor of a stable, through the womb of a teenager and in the presence of a carpenter.

God came to earth for us. He left behind the majesty and divinity of Heaven to come to this earth… and he did it for us. Max Lucado goes on to say more…

Think about it. Just because one has witnessed a thousand rainbows doesn’t mean he’s seen the grandeur of one. One can live near a garden and fail to focus on the splendor of the flower. A man can spend a lifetime with a woman and never pause to look into her soul.

And a person can be all that goodness calls him to be and still never see the Author of life.

Being honest or moral or even religious doesn’t necessarily mean we will see him. No. We may see what others see in him. Or we may hear what some say he said. But until we see him for ourselves, until our own sight is given, we may think we see him, having in reality seen only a hazy form in the gray semidarkness.

Have you seen him?

Have you caught a glimpse of His Majesty? A word is placed in a receptive crevice of your heart that causes you, ever so briefly, to see his face. You hear a verse read in a tone you’d never heard, or explained in a way you’d never thought, and one more piece of the puzzle falls into place. Someone touches your painful spirit as only one sent from him could do… and there he is.

Jesus.

The man. The bronzed Galilean who spoke with such thunderous authority and loved with such childlike humility.

The God. The one who claimed to be older than time and greater than death.

Gone is the pomp of religion; dissipated is the fog of theology. Momentarily lifted is the opaque curtain of controversy and opinion. Erased are our own blinding errors and egotism. And there he stands.

Jesus.

Have you seen him?

And he is the reason why we celebrate. How awesome a friend he is. And when a fantastically awesome friend of yours has a birthday, you want to celebrate in his honor. And that is what Christmas is about. Not about capitalism, and whining kids, or even about the tree and the lights, but about the birthday of Jesus Christ, the one true living God.

He is truly great, and that’s why we celebrate this season every year. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas, and that you all remember that beyond the tinsel, lights, and presents, it all comes down to Christ.

Dead Hard Drive: My 160 GB drive bit the dust last weekend. I’m still at a loss for why. The upshot is that it only took about 15 minutes to get a new 200 GB drive up and running in my system. The downside is that I’ve lost everything besides my boot drive, installed applications, and my music collection (which are all on other drives). The worse part is that any and all work I’ve done on my long-awaited redesign went up in smoke as well. Convenient excuse, I know. I just hope that my new code will be better than my old code.

sIFR: I’ve discovered how cool the Inman Flash Replacement technique is. Even cooler, I’ve discovered the Scalable Inman Flash Replacement Technique (or sIFR for short). This latest version of the groundbreaking technique really improves previous versions.

Firefox 1.0 PR: I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of Firefox 1.0 Preview Release. The PR release date has been pushed back 9 days from when it was scheduled (according to Planet Mozilla), and I’m trying to keep from biting my nails from excitement. Thunderbird 0.8 is also right around the corner, although I don’t know how close around the corner.

SimplePie: I’ve hit a roadblock in my SimplePie project. I need to figure out a regular expression that will grab self-closing tags (<description />, <tagline />, etc.), without also grabbing normal open-close style tags. I’ve done some tremendous work for v0.94, but I insist on holding back this release until I get the bug worked out. I know that this bug (combined with other elements of the code) effects Ben Hammersley and GoogleBlog, among others. If anyone cares to help me out with this regular expression, please let me know.

A New Church: After several months of looking for a good, solid, scripturally-sound church, we’ve found one. We’ll continue to visit for the next several weeks to really get a feel for the church, but it seems like what we’ve been looking for. I’ve been wanting to get back involved in music and children’s ministries, and this looks like the place for that.

SPG 1.1: Vaporware? That’s the feeling I’m starting to get about the update to Paul Griffin’s outstanding Simple PHP Gallery software. Let’s all go and ask him about it, so that he’ll feel the pressure to finish it. =)

Some Leafs: I’m totally diggin’ the photography in this new Zen Garden design.

Quick-and-Dirty Weather: Using the raw XML (not RSS) feeds from the United States National Weather Service, I was able to hack together my own simple weather RSS feeds. If you’re interested, check out Quick-and-Dirty Weather.

My Daughter: She’s growing up so fast, I can hardly believe it. She gets to be more and more fun as each day goes by. She’s just finishing up her potty training, and we’re going through tic-tacs like crazy. It was really warm when we got home this evening, and we couldn’t find any of her nightgown jammies, she I put her to bed wearing one of my old T-shirts. She was absolutely adorable. She misses us, my wife and I, when we’re gone all day at work, and she’s become vocal about it. It breaks my heart to be away from her all day long (although I’d probably go nuts otherwise), so I’m trying to find reasonable ways to remedy that. *sigh*

Anyways, that’s what’s been going on with me. What all has been going on with you?

If you want to ask me questions about code, scripts, the web, etc., that’s fine. If you just want to randomly chat about nothing, I’d suggest getting an AOL account. If you start (or continue) to ask me questions like where exactly I live, or what my phone number is, you’re only going to piss me off. Don’t do it.

If you’re a fellow weblogger, or have something worthwhile and intelligent to say, I’m totally cool with that. I’m a nice guy, really. Several complete strangers have contacted me via IM about code, or the web, or Multiple IE’s, and I’ve had enjoyable experiences talking to them. I just don’t like people who act psycho or won’t leave me alone. Got it?!

I’m done.

After two days, my memory chip came in and I went to install it. I opened up my PowerBook manual, and read that I’d need a Philips screwdriver, size double-zero. Essentially, the smallest screwdriver ever created in the history of the world. Reading through the page in the manual, I came across the following warning:

Warning: Apple recommends having a specialized Apple technician install new memory into your PowerBook G4 laptop computer.

…or something to that effect. Digging through my toolbox, I pulled out the smallest screwdriver I had. It was still too big. My internet wasn’t working at that particular moment, so I couldn’t go online to look up screwdrivers of that size.

I opened up the phone book and started looking up computer places that might have screwdrivers that small for laptops. Of the big computer stores, CompUSA doesn’t answer their phones and the people at Fry’s Electronics are dumber than a box of bricks. I called a few of the smaller local stores to no avail.

I thought about calling up hardware stores that specialize in screwdrivers. Home Depot couldn’t figure out what I was talking about, but Orchard Supply Hardware (OSH) did. Luckily they were right around the corner from me, so I took the minute-and-a-half trek over there to see what they had. After about 20 minutes of digging, I found a Philips screwdriver, size double-zero. I bought it, took it home, and sat down again with my laptop. Still too big.

I called up the Apple Store at Valley Faire Mall in Santa Clara, CA. They said that they could install the memory for a $30 fee, and that they were open until 9:30pm. Reluctantly, I got into my car and drove the 25+ minutes to the mall, parked, and walked into the Apple Store which was clear across the mall from where I’d parked.

Walking up to the “Genius Bar”, I saw one person in line ahead of me, so I sat down in a chair and waited. After the guy ahead was finished, he left, and I walked up to the bar. “I’m sorry sir,” the Genius told me, “but have you checked in?”

“Checked in?” I replied.

“Yes. You can go to any of the computers along the wall, double-click the Genius Bar icon, and fill in your information.”

“Okay,” I said. I walked over to a computer by the wall, double-clicked the Genius Bar icon, and filled out the webpage form. The webpage told me that the next available appointment was at 8:45pm. This was at 8:31pm. I walked back over to the Genius Bar, and the Genius told me it would be a few minutes. Nobody was in line, but apparently since my “appointment” was at 8:45, then by golly I was going to wait until 8:45.

At 8:45, the Genius asked what he could do for me. I told him that the information in the PowerBook manual was incorrect. The double-zero screwdriver was too small. And although I’m perfectly capable of installing my own RAM chip, I can’t find the appropriate tools anywhere, so I’m stuck coughing up $30 to have them do it. He looked at my PowerBook, then at my Crucial.com RAM box, then at me. “I’m sorry sir, but we can’t install that RAM.”

“Why not?!” I asked, clearly fuming from irritation.

“We can only install memory that you buy here, and we can’t allow anyone to use our tools. That’s our policy.”

“Wait a sec,” I began. “I’ve been using Macs for 12 years. I’ve spent much of the last 12 years evangelizing for Apple. I’ve successfully convinced 22 people to buy Mac over PC in the last, oh, 7 years. At around $2000 per computer, we’re looking at $44,000 that I have put into Apple’s hand… not including people that might have bought Apple later on that I don’t know about. In the last four months, I have personally given Apple $3400 of my hard-earned cash — not credit — cash that I spent several months saving up, I’m trying to pay you money for a task that I am perfectly capable of doing myself, and you won’t let me borrow a microscopic screwdriver for five freaking minutes because I decided to pay $120 for a RAM chip that costs $400 from the Apple Store — because of some stupid policy?!”

“Yessir. That’s right.”

Even as a Christian, I found it difficult to not reach across the Genius Bar and rip his larynx out of his throat while swearing like a sailor who just smashed his finger with a hammer.

“Then do you know of anyone, anyone, who has a screwdriver that is the right size?”

“Well, you’ll want to check out some of the jewelry stores here in the mall. They should have something of that size.”

For the next 45 minutes, I walked from jewelry store to jewelry store, asking the rich women at the counter for a screwdriver and getting nothing but strange looks or blank stares. Apparently, jewelers only have flathead screwdrivers, and not Philips.

Finally, I came across a Lens Crafters eyeglass store. I went through the process of explaining how small the mythical screwdriver is that I need, and was wondering of they either sold them or would let me borrow one for five minutes. Nope, and nope. However, one of the technicians just happened to walk by and over hear me talking to the clerk at the counter. “Will this help?” he asked.

I sat down with it, and in 5 minutes I was looking at the “About this Mac” dialog that listed 1 GB DDR SDRAM. “Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!” I said. He said he was glad to help. I asked him where I could find a screwdriver like that. He suggested hobby shops and a company called Sadler whio apparently makes them. I haven’t checked out the website yet, but hopefully they sell them there.

I went back into the Genius Bar an hour after I’d left, walked right up to the Genius and told him where to direct people in the future. He nodded and said okay, but I doubt he’ll tell anyone about it. As I walked out, and older woman told me that she thought it was very nice of me to have come back to tell them what I did about the Lens Crafters store. I told her that it was just because I didn’t want anyone to ever have to go through the same kind of frustration that I had that evening.

I talked to a friend of mine a couple of days the next day, and he said that he had a horrible experience at that same Apple Store while trying to purchase a new iMac. He ended up leaving and going to the Apple Store in Palo Alto, and had a significantly better experience. He thinks it’s because Steve Jobs is said to visit that store frequently… which I’d heard before too. I just didn’t want to drive that far.

If you happened to be inside Valley Faire Mall in Santa Clara, CA on Friday evening (July 2nd) and saw a guy frantically walking around the mall with a 17″ PowerBook in-hand, that was me. If you ever need to visit an Apple Store for any reason, stay away from the one at Valley Faire.

I’m still getting used to my new job. I have to take the train to get to work and back everyday, and it has so far proven to be less than reliable (it took 2.5 hours to move 45 miles last Friday). I’ve been keeping up decently with the blogs I read over the last few weeks, particularly SxSW this weekend (I hope I can go next year), but I’m still unpacking my stuff, and am still waiting on the delivery of my new computer desk which is now two weeks late (I’ll never shop Office Max again).

So, my ever-so-exciting upcoming redesign has been on the back burner for longer than I’ve wanted it to be. I also haven’t had time to complete and release the updates to Blocker I had been working on, nor have I had the time to do any more work on Feed Parser. Grrr… I don’t like falling behind on projects.

I’m also working on a easier-to-use version of my blogroll system. Currently it’s just kinda hacked together, but I’m working on a version that would be easy for anyone to just start using. This system just reads through my OPML files that I export from Feed Demon, and parses it out to finds the RSS/Atom feeds, then parses those feeds to display content about it. Currently, I’m relying on a modified version of Magpie for the RSS/Atom parsing, but I’m tempted to try to implement a custom-built, simplified, RSS/Atom parser into the new Blogroll system. Really it just depends on my ability to figure out how to implement some sort of reliable caching system.

I submitted a link to Cameron Moll’s website to the CSS Vault, and it got accepted! Cameron has a fantastically beautiful site. Go congratulate him on it!

Anyways, that’s all from California’s Silicon Valley for today. Talk to you again as soon as I can.

One bad thing about Californians is that they seem to completely forget how to drive when the weather is anything but sunny. Heavy fog? Hi-Beams and 90 MPH speeds. Heavy Rain? Swirving in and out of traffic without a blinker.

I always make it a point to be extra careful when my daughter’s in the car, and even more careful when the weather is bad. I don’t want to be one of those idiots that gets in an accident when it’s raining.

I am an idiot.

I was in the carpool lane going about 55-60 MPH when I hit a large puddle in my lane. I realized that I was hydroplaning towards the center divide, and had no tire traction. I applied my brake to slow down, and turned my steering wheel a bit to the right to try and correct. My car kept turning to the left, and natural instinct told me to turn the wheel more to the right.

Just then, my tires regained traction again. My car turned about 140° to the right as I began heading west on a north-south freeway. After crossing three lanes of traffic, and watching hundreds of headlights coming straight at me, with many people swirving to the right and left of me, I was hit by a late-model Ford Mustang, which then pointed me back northbound.

I pulled over to the shoulder, turned around to my daughter in her car seat, and asked if she was alright. With a concerned look on her face, she said “Yah. Okay, daddy.”

Everyone is alright, but our cars are pretty messed up. I’m moving to a new apartment on Saturday, and now I have to cough up $500 for my insurance deductible. Standing out in the rain talking to the police officer and the guy in the Mustang was a blur. I don’t really remember much of what happened. I do remember getting back into my car, calling my wife to let her know that I was okay, and thanking God that nobody was hurt.

I didn’t know whether to laugh from the relief that no one was hurt, or to cry because my daughter and I were almost killed today. Oh, thank God she’s okay.

That was two hours ago. I still can’t stop shaking.

On the way to work, I put in one of my favorite albums, Ben Folds Five. It’s one of the few albums where I like every single song on it. It’s too bad they broke up. If only the recording industry would produce more albums of that caliber, I wouldn’t mind buying more CD’s.

I got to work, and walked into a 50°F office. I turned on the heater, and then my computer, and fired up Thunderbird and Feed Demon. I thought to myself, “I wonder if I’ll be able to do this at my new job?”.

Oh, yeah! I got a new job! I think I forgot to post about it last week when I got the phone call. No more digging through job descriptions over at Monster, no more worrying about my stapler. I start two weeks from yesterday. The money’s decent, and they seem to have a good benefits package. I’ll still be freelancing in my spare time, and I’ll continue to work on Golden Rule’s Morning Sun customer newsletter.

My desk calendar is telling me that my word of the day is “myrmidon”. Interesting. I’ve never heard that word before. Hmmm…

I’m still contemplating a jump from Movable Type to WordPress. I’m thinking I’ll check it out on my localhost and see how well it all works. Maybe I can write some custom functions for it, as I find myself getting ever-so-comfortable with coding in PHP. It’s really not that much of a jump from JavaScript.

Since I don’t drink coffee, I’m at the soda machine and can’t decide whether I want Amp or Pepsi. Ah. I wonder if work is almost over, so that I can go home and pack for my move next weekend. Nope. I’ve only been here 40 minutes. 7 hours and 20 minutes to go. *sigh*

Does anything ever blindside you on some idle Tuesday?

Anyways, while digging through Monster, I came across the following blurb:

Internet savvy individual with the ability to maximize return in acquiring and managing leads through the e-marketing channel. Responsible for working closely with sales, product marketing, and corporate to develop and execute tactical marketing, ensuring that projects meet sales objectives and align with overall brand strategy.

Do people in the corporate world really talk like this? I’m looking for a good job in web design, but “maximize return in acquiring and managing leads” sounds kinda scary. Any tips? Any job leads?

I took my 2 year-old daughter outside this evening so we could walk down the street and look at all of the Christmas lights on all of the houses. There’s one house in particular that always goes all-out for every holiday, Christmas not being an exception.

She pointed at a big blow-up doll of Santa Claus and yelled “Santa, daddy! Santa!” She got so excited she started jumping up and down. I squatted down to her level, and as she was looking in awe at the giant, oversized Santa doll, I told her that if she had been a good girl throughout the year (which I told her she had been), that Santa would bring her lots of presents on Christmas. She started jumping up and down again. “Presents! Presents! Presents!”

Then something occurred to me that should have occurred to me already: This season isn’t about Santa, presents, or the hecktic holiday buzz. It’s about Jesus, and not in the “Yeah, I go to church on Easter and Christmas” way.

The only chance any of us have in going to Heaven is through Him. And Christmas is a celebration of the day He was born. Sure, getting presents is fun and all, but there really is a more important reason for the holiday.

I looked back down at my daughter, and said “Do you know what Christmas is all about?” She looked at me blankly. She can’t even say Christmas yet, much less does she know what it means. “It’s to celebrate baby Jesus!” I said. “Baby?” she replied.

I got up and took her little hand. She looked up at Santa again and said “Bye bye, Santa!” We walked back into the house, and into the living room where our Christmas tree is. “Presents!” She screamed. I just hope that I can teach her what the season is all about, and have her remember it in the morning.

*sigh*

Merry Christmas all!

Yummy.

Anyways, I went down to the video store today, and rented a copy of Mario Kart: Double Dash for my GameCube. I stuck the disc in, and powered up the system. After an unusually long pause, the system went into setup mode, which is something is only does when the lid is open, or there is no game disc.

“Maybe it’s just dust,” I thought to myself as I wiped off the disc on my shirt and blew across the laser lens to get rid of any dust that may have been there. I tried it again, and it still didn’t work. So, I grabbed my Zelda: Wind Waker disc and tried that one. Same problem. Getting frusterated, I tried my copy of SSX Tricky. Still no luck. Well crap!

After 15 minutes with no luck, I figured it was the system, so I went online to look at my warranty/repair options. I’ve had the system for just over a year-and-a-half, so the warranty is definitely expired. I looked up my options for paying for a repair, and the cost was $74.95! Oh my goodness! With all of the Day-After-Thanksgiving sales going on, I can get a brand-new system for $80. So that’s what I’m probably going to do. I hate to do it though, ’cause it’s paying $80 bucks for something I already have.

Then, I looked down at my NES (that I still have). I grabbed my Super Mario Bros 3 cartridge, blew into it, blew into my NES, put the game in and turned it on. Within a few seconds, I saw Mario and Luigi running around on the bottom of the screen, followed closely by three koopa turtles (with the third one slightly out of sync with the first two, as always). If my NES can last me 15 years, why can’t my GameCube last me two?

I’ve got a Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis 2, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, GameBoy, GameBoy Advance, and a Nintendo GameCube, and it’s the GameCube that breaks. What the heck?!

If you work in an office, you’ll be able to appreciate this movie. One of the supporting characters is a poor guy named Milton Waddams. His office keeps getting moved around, until he eventually ends up in the basement. He hasn’t gotten a paycheck in six months because he was fired, but nobody bothered to tell him. He gets treated very poorly by nearly everyone throughout the entire movie. But it isn’t until his boss takes away his stapler that he finally snaps.

This is how I feel about my stapler.

I work for a small produce company in the southern end of California’s Silicon Valley. I share an office with a guy named Antwoin. Antwoin and I have been working together for the better part of 3 or 4 years. We both worked at a pizza parlor a few years ago where I was his manager. When I left to begin working my office job at the produce company, I brought him along with me since he was the best employee I’d ever had. Even though he did excellent work at the pizza parlor, our time together at the produce company has been strained from time to time.

Mostly the strain has been due to the “stapler issue”, as we call it. If you need to staple a few papers together, you’d use the regular stapler, right? And if you had a giant stack of papers to staple together you’d use the giant stapler, right? This is simple, common sense stuff. Antwoin just doesn’t get it when it comes to the staplers.

I have seen him take a stack of papers an inch-and-a-half thick (approx 3 cm), and try to staple them with a normal stapler. After a few tries, his stapler is completely mangled. He’s ruined his own stapler, so he has to deal with it. Then I come to work the next morning to find that my stapler is also completely mangled, and won’t staple anything properly.

We used to work almost the same shift, during which I could keep an eye on my stapler, and inform him when his papers needed the “big stapler”. I had the same stapler for a year-and-a-half with no problems. These days, we work nearly opposing shifts, so I am not as able to oversee the use of my stapler by other people. I have now gone through 13 staplers in the last 3 months. He’s my friend… a good friend at that… but I’m going to kill him if he ever touches my stapler again.

I went online and found a picture of Milton’s face, as well as a picture of the Emporer and the Llama from “The Emporer’s New Groove”. I created a label out of them with the words “MY STAPLER. NO TOUCHIE!” I stuck the label onto the handle of my stapler, believing that it would be painfully obvious that it was my stapler, so don’t touch it. I was wrong. Two days after I applied the label, I had another mangled stapler.

I’ve asked him to not use my stapler, and he’ll say okay. I’ll go to the restroom and come back to see him stapling another stack of papers. Apparently he forgot… again… forgot. I’ve started taking my stapler home with me so that he can’t get to it when I’m not there. Sometimes I forget to grab it before I leave the house in the morning, and I’m stuck going all day without a much needed stapler. Sometimes I forget to bring it home with me, and the next morning it’s dead, just like all the staplers before it.

Before I go and beat Antwoin to a bloody pulp, I’m interested in hearing suggestions of things I can do to keep my sanity. If he touches my stapler again, I’m gonna lose it. I really am…

The thought had never occurred to me before. I guess it should have. It’s not a name or a word of any sort, it’s just a name of my own creation. I came up with it back in 1992. I was in eighth grade, and I decided to create a word out of all of the “cool” looking letters of the alphabet. After a few tries, “Skyzyx” was the polished word.

For the record, Skyzyx is pronounced “Sky”, as in the sky above, and “Zicks”, just like “Ticks”, but with a Z (Z has always been a cool letter. Do you think that Jeffrey Zeldman would be as cool if he didn’t have a Z in his name?).

I guess the next logical question would be “What does it mean?” I still haven’t gotten around to that yet. Maybe “creator of words that are difficult to pronounce.” I dunno.

I started using it as a “pen name” of sorts when I would write short stories. It was also my callsign in the “club” I was in with my other eighth grade friends. After a while it just stuck. I would use it as my handle on BBS’s and IRC. In 1998, I launched “Skyzyx’s Lair” from my GeoCities web account… loaded with cutting edge frames, and magical table-based layouts.

Now, I use Skyzyx as my handle on forum boards and for my up-and-coming freelance business, Skyzyx Technologies. We’ll see where I’m able to go from there…

Twenty cows and a chicken were all taking a bath. Suddenly, they all looked up and said “Ryan’s not answering his phone.”

Good grief, I love that guy! I like where Jeff’s brain goes. I wish I saw more of his “schizo-scherzo” personality in my life.

What if I could have gone back in time to 1995 and warned him about what was going to happen to him. I could warn him that in 1996 his wife would get into the New Age Movement, begin feeling “negative energies”, and leave her husband of 20-someodd years. I would tell him to go see a doctor about the minor heart attacks he was having so that he might prevent “the big one”. And I would tell him that I loved him no matter what was to come. Unfortunately, I can’t go back in time.

I was also thinking about an old friend named Toni. She was my manager back when we worked at a pizza parlor together. She was only three days younger than my mom, but during the time that we worked together, we became very close friends. We would go hang out at her sister’s house after work, and just hang out. She got into a fight with the owner in February 2001, and quit. She moved a few hours away, so I only saw her when she went to go visit her sister. She died of a kidney failure on September 15, 2001. I miss her.

I wish we didn’t have to say goodbye. Either that, or I wish we could say goodbye when we wanted to.

Anyways, I’m sitting here filling out a scholarship application through my school. After I got past questions like “Full Name”, “SSN”, and “Is a third party contributing to your education?”, I get to the essay part. “Please write a one page essay that describes your need for a scholarship award.”

I could go into how $49k per year for two people with an infant in the SF Bay Area is barely livable, but mainly I just want money for college. Who really wants to pay back $37k worth of tuition? It wouldn’t take me a page to explain that, only a few sentences.

Anyways, here are sections of lyrics of some of the songs that stand out to me:

DON’T STAY
Don’t stay.
Forget our memories,
Forget our possibilities,
Take all your faithlessness with you,
Just give me myself back,
And don’t stay.

I don’t need you anymore,
I don’t want to be ignored.
I don’t need one more day.
Of you wasting me away
…with no apologies.

SOMEWHERE I BELONG
I want to heal, I want to feel
What I thought was never real
I want to let go of the pain I’ve held so long
Erase all the pain ’til it’s gone

I want to heal, I want to feel
Like I’m close to something real
I want to find something I’ve wanted all along
Somewhere I belong

I will never know myself until I do this on my own
And I will never feel anything else until my wounds are healed
I will never be anything ’til I break away from me
And I will break away, I’ll find myself today.

I want to heal, I want to feel,
…like I’m somewhere I belong.

FAINT
I am a little bit insecure,
A little unconfident.
‘Cause you don’t understand
I do what I can,
But sometimes I don’t make sense.

I am what you never want to say,
But I’ve never had a doubt
It’s like no matter what I do
I can’t convince you
For once just to hear me out.

I can’t feel the way I did before.
Don’t turn your back on me,
I won’t be ignored.
Time won’t heal this damage anymore.
Don’t turn your back on me,
I won’t be ignored.

No! Hear me out now.
You’re gonna listen to me,
Like it or not…
Right now.

Anyways, I think that the people who are out in San Fran protesting this war are retarded. If it was before the war had begun, then sure, okay, protest away. But now that the first bombs have fallen, I think it’s a waste of time to try to make the president change his mind. War has begun. Deal with it. The best thing that we can do now is support our troops… whether we agree with the war or not… so that they can get their job done, and then get their butts back home where it’s safe… to get back to their families, friends, and loved ones.

Ech. That, and I want the economy to pick back up. This sucks. I need to find a cool web job. Anybody hiring?