Making the House a Home

At the time we bought the new house, it came with a non-functional old refrigerator. It was housed next to a slim cabinet that was further subdivided into a messy broom closet. It was one of the few real weak spots of the house: there was no pantry in the kitchen, or enough cabinets to serve that purpose. One of our priorities upon moving in was to somehow clear some space in the cabinets to make a pantry.

While we were having some other work done before we moved in, we decided to rip out the cabinet by the old refrigerator. We had discovered, in the course of shopping for a new fridge, that the old refrigerator was a size that is no longer available (42" wide, as opposed to the now-standard 36"). As a result, in a 72" wide space, the fridge took up 42", leaving only 30" for the cabinet. Knowing that we would buy a 36" wide new appliance, we could fit in a standard 36" wide cabinet as well.

We selected and ordered the cabinet from Lowes weeks ago, but the installer was only able to come out this past Saturday to put it in. After a similar number of weeks of putting off prepping the space, I put two coats of paint up Friday night, and the cabinet went in as scheduled on Saturday. Having never had a real pantry before, we are delighted. The house is starting to feel like ours now.

Before:


With paint:


After:

The Daily Grind

My commute these days is a bit of an improvement over LA freeways:

Night Launch

Last week, the space shuttle Endeavor made what is likely the last night launch for the shuttle program. An acquaintance from one of my online car clubs who lives in central Florida made the trek to the NASA causeway about 7 miles from the launch site to view the launch. He managed to get this spectacular 166-second exposure photograph of the launch itself:


I'm afraid it's looking more likely that I will never see a shuttle liftoff, much to my regret.

November in Moraga

After a few rainy days, a last heatwave is on its way.

The Cy Young Award Comes to the Giants

In the middle of a miserable sports year for the area, San Francisco received the happy news today that Giants pitcher Tim Lincicum won the National League Cy Young Award today, the first Giant to win the award in over 40 years. Lincicum won 18 games for a mediocre Giants team, setting a San Francisco Giants record for strikeouts in a season, while pitching the third most innings in the league with the second lowest earned run average.

Lincicum is a physical anomaly. He stands under 6 feet tall and weighs less than 180 pounds, the antithesis of the big horse physique that most teams look for in a pitcher. However, with a home-built wind up that makes the most of his slight stature through the miracles of flexibility and torque, he can gas it up into the high 90s with a delivery that hides the ball well from hitters. Thanks to his unusually well-developed tactical and physical abilities, he also throws a changeup that is nearly unhittable.

Even in the midst of a poor season, Lincicum starts became must-see events. We were fortunate enough to see one of his starts on a Friday night in late August this year. As expected, he pitched well, overpowering the San Diego Padres. The buzz in the stadium when he is on his game, which is most of the time when he has the ball in his hand, is a genuine thrill. At the tender age of 24, he is already a regional treasure and is expected to be the centerpiece of the Giants for many years to come.

Flying Blind

I can think of only a few things more terrifying than being in control of an airplane and suddenly losing one's sight. The chances of that situation being resolved happily would seem to be very slim. The knowledge that you were far above the ground with no way to land safely, knowing that you were only minutes from near-certain calamity.

Or so it would seem.

The pilot of a small airplane in England recently suffered a stroke while flying, suddenly and severely impairing his eyesight. The RAF managed to talk him down by sending up an airplane to fly next to him, guiding him all the way to the landing without further incident.

I would be scared to drive down my street into my driveway with a blindfold on and a guide talking me through it. I can't imagine how frightening and difficult landing an airplane would be under those conditions. The minute and constant reactions necessary to keep the craft on target would be nearly impossible to pull off.

Well done, chaps.

First Term Grades

Moving is never easy; uprooting kids and forcing them to make new friends and find their way in new schools can be the most wrenching part of the process. We have been blessed. Kelly and Michael have been nothing but supportive and excited about our move from just after we told them it was coming more than a year ago. Even so, we harbored normal concerns about the schools they would be going to. Both had done well where they were. How would what they had done translate to new schools that are, by all measurable means and reputation, very high quality if not downright ruthlessly competitive?

So far, so good. Both kids have made a lot of friends, have had fun with soccer, and are doing great in the classroom. Kelly brought home her first quarter report card yesterday: an A in every class (A+ in PE, she would want me to point out), with nice remarks from several of the teachers about her contributions to the class. She agonizes over every lost point (or half point), so earning the perfect grades pleased her to no end.

Lest this come across as churlish for bragging about my kids, the interesting part of this process is not so much the grades (of which we are all proud) but how hard Kelly has had to work to get them. She routinely puts in two to three hours of homework every night, usually covering almost all of her classes. She has had special projects in just about every class already. The substantive work does not seem to be that hard, but the amount of work is considerable. We figure it is our job at this point in her schooling to teach her how to study and budget her time, which is probably her biggest weakness. She is learning, though, and having her effort rewarded with great grades should help reinforce what we're trying to do.

The classwork does not get easier. The school has even warned sixth grade parents that the workload will increase over the course of the year, presumably as the kids develop the skills to cope with it. The local high school is the best in the state and, by all accounts, extremely competitive. Our goal for the kids is not necessarily that they always get the top grades, but that they learn how to put in the effort necessary to get the best grade they are able to attain based on their innate abilities. I find that it is the effort and efficiency skills that are the most useful out in the real world; learning them now in ways I never did can only help them down the road.

It looks like the education the kids received in the Glendale public school has not left them playing catch up. Learning how to study is going to be the ongoing effort this year, but it is off to a solid start.

And You Thought Your SatNav Was Complicated

In another life, this would have been my office. It's the cockpit of the new Airbus A380 jetliner, an enormous two-deck commercial aircraft that has recently begun passenger service.

For an aircraft designed so recently, the seats look surprisingly drab and uncomfortable. Perhaps we don't want the pilots to be too comfortable, although these airplanes can fly themselves from takeoff to touchdown with only a minimal amount of human interaction.

Note, too, that there are no control yokes in front of the pilots. Instead, it looks like Airbus took advantage of a CompUSA blowout sale to pick up a couple of Logitech flight joysticks. That's good to know; if there is ever a problem with the pilots, I know I can count on the fifteen-year-old gamer in row 33 to fly us to safety.

Internet Pet Peeve of the Day

I understand why they exist, but word verification applications are a constant annoyance, and an example of a half-baked solution to an ongoing problem.

Anyone who has ever posted a comment to a blog or news article online within the last few years has had to deal with a word verification program. It usually consists of typing a series of letters or numbers depicted on the screen in graphical format rather than as regular text. This, as I understand it, is to deter spambots that used to flourish by blitzing comments. The spambots cannot read the images generated by the word verification system, so no spam can be deposited.

It's a simple solution, which is usually the best solution, but it is the details that sometimes let the system down. I have often found that the image generated by the word verification program is so distorted that I cannot read it. This is a mild annoyance when posting here (where it is a constant problem), but when I'm trying to buy concert tickets or something else of value that I may lose if I can't complete the transaction, it becomes a major problem.

Please, anti-spammers, don't throw the legitimate user baby out with the spammy bathwater. Give us a tool we can actually use!

Why Tuesday?

Among the many arcane rules of political life that have survived the decades without notice, why is election day the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November? It seems like a rather arbitrary selection.

It is not.

According to this Congressional Research Service Report, there are very specific reasons why that day was selected as election day:

Elections for all federal elected officials are held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even-numbered years . . . ; presidential elections are held in every year divisible by four. Congress selected this day in 1845 (5 Stat. 721); previously, states held elections on different days between September and November, a practice that sometimes led to multiple voting across state lines, and other fraudulent practices.
By tradition, November was chosen because the harvest was in, and farmers were able to take the time needed to vote. Tuesday was selected because it gave a full day's travel between Sunday, which was widely observed as a strict day of rest, and election day. Travel was also easier throughout the north during November, before winter had set in.

The accommodation for travel time is apparently because most voting was conducted at the county seat, and horses could only take you so far each day.

So get your harvest in, people, and point your horse toward the county courthouse. There's electin' to do!

I Want My MTV!

Remember when MTV stood for "Music Television"? It has been many years since MTV actually featured music as a substantial portion of its programming, now preferring instead to broadcast a steady diet of reality shows exploiting teens striving to be a lot cooler and sexier than they really are.

Good news for those with a nostalgic longing for old Duran Duran videos, however -- the music is coming back. MTV is not changing its programming; instead, MTV has enabled online access to all of its videos. This may be a bit trivial in the grand scheme of things, but MTV is not without significance in pop culture history. There was a span of years in which exposure on MTV could absolutely create a career (see, Madonna) or give eternal life to one-hit-wonders that would never have been known otherwise (see, a-ha).

For those of a certain age, imagine yourself dropping your backpack at the front door, pouring a bowl of cereal and settling down in front of the Trinitron for an afternoon of mindless radio on TV until mom nags you to get started on your homework. In this small way, you can go home again ... to 1982.

The Inevitability of the Useful Lifespan

It is axiomatic that appliances will blow a fuse or spring a leak the day after their warranties expire. A little known codicil to this truism (or at least one that was not known to me) is that the moving gods will punish the affront of a homebuyer discarding appliances that came with the house by causing the buyer's own appliances to spew their guts within a month of moving in.

We asked for the existing washer (relatively new, front loading) and dryer (older, but gas heated) to be removed in conjunction with the sale of our new house. The seller did not remove them, so we had to go to the extra effort of having them hauled away after we moved in to make room for our 12 year old matching washer and dryer set. Maybe we should have taken their stubborn determination to remain in the house as a sign.

Just before soccer games began this morning, our washer decided it no longer wanted to keep its water to itself. It wasn't an inlet or drain hose problem; the main tub overflow blew a seal of some kind, flooding the laundry room and adjacent bathroom.

It will be a busy week upcoming. Our friendly neighborhood Sears delivery man will be bringing a replacement washer tomorrow. A pantry will be coming sometime this week. Living room shutters will finally arrive on Wednesday. A breakfast table will be here Thursday. The guest room closet organizer was installed on Friday. In the span of about a week, most of the final pieces of the basic move-in improvements will be done. The broken washer was just the unexpected cherry on top.

Superior, Relatively Speaking

I flew again this week for the first time in a while, and the first time since the airlines began charging fees for just about everything. One phrase came to mind:

"Lower your standards!"

John Lovitz was about 15 years ahead of his time (a phrase that cannot often be uttered) when he created this catchphrase. There was a time when Southwest Airlines was a punchline itself, the place you went to be crammed into an aluminum tube like cattle, fed only with peanuts.

My, how times have changed.

With airlines now charging for every service they provide, all the way down to a simple cup of water, Southwest now looks pretty good. Look, peanuts! And they're free!

New Proof of Media Bias!

Big Media can no longer sanctimoniously claim it is not taking sides. The revealing gaffe was right out there for everyone to see.

Last night, in the sixth inning of the Tampa Bay Rays' 7-0 blowout of the Boston Red Sox in the fifth game of the American League Championship Series, when a win by the Rays would send them to the World Series, the announcers began thanking their audio engineers for a great season. The obvious implication is that the TBS crew believed it was working its last game.

To make things worse, in the top of the seventh inning, TBS sent its sideline reporter into the stands to talk to a high ranking executive of the Philadelphia Phillies, the National League representative in the World Series. The reporter and executive proceeded to congratulate the Rays on a terrific season and spoke of the Phillies' task in facing them in the next round.

It is so transparent. The TV guys know you do not assume a win in a big playoff game, as anyone who watched Dusty Baker present departing pitcher Russ Ortiz with the game ball in Game 6 of the 2002 World Series would know (on the verge of elimination, the Angels staged a miracle comeback in that game, then won the series in the next game against a shellshocked Giants squad).

What this all means is that -- no surprise -- the big media outlets want big-market Boston to win. The best way to accomplish that goal, obviously, is to poke the baseball gods in the eye, throw karma to the wind, proclaiming Tampa Bay the winner nine outs before the game was over. If I could have, I would have put money on the Red Sox to win that game the minute the guys in the truck received their on-air thanks.

Yeah, baseball. What did you think this was about?

Moving Day, Illustrated

We have all been through it. We all know the peculiar anxieties, stresses and exhaustions of moving a household. Luckily for you, you get to relive mine.

Unlike the Mayflower guys who moved us from SoCal to NorCal, who were exceptionally prompt and worked swiftly, our little crosstown movers arrived almost an hour late on the appointed day. The got everything moved, but in my view disassembled furniture more than was necessary. Where the Mayflower guys would wrap up a cabinet, for instance, these folks would take it apart first. That causes two problems: it takes longer to move out, and because there is more to reassemble, there is a greater likelihood that something will be put back together incorrectly. Or, as in our case, it will just take longer to put back together, a double time-whammy. Did I mention that they were paid by the time spent, not pounds moved? Smaller truck, too:



Nevertheless, they were careful and got everything moved without any drama. That was the one day all summer, of course, that threatened rain, and the sprinklers at the new house had turned the area by the front walk into a muddy bog, so I had to lay out a lot of plastic to protect the new, light-colored carpet.


The house was so orderly, once:




Not so much by that evening:




We left the other two thirds of our possessions in the garage, and have been working our way through boxes ever since.

Can't Leave Well Enough Alone

Here, finally, are some happy snaps from the last six weeks or so.

No sooner did we get the keys to the new house than we set about tearing it apart. We ripped out some cabinets and put in a doorway to connect the area we will use as the dining room with the front family room/kitchen:



Painting was the next task, which remains ongoing (before/after [or, more accurately, during]):





The week before the move, our storage unit was been delivered. Thanks to Dad, its contents now fill half of our garage.


Next up: the move (almost a month ago now).

Financial Bizarro World

You want a measure of how crazy the financial markets are right now?

With about 45 minutes to go in today's trading, General Motors, which makes cars, has a market cap of about $2.75 billion.

Hasbro, Inc., which makes toy cars, has a market cap of about $4.05 billion.

[Incidentally, I find that fact to be a reflection of GM's poor management and products more than a consequence of the current credit market shakedown, although the GMAC wing certainly is not helping the bottom line. It's still weird, though.]

Nostalgia Days

My 20th high school reunion was this past weekend. I attended the 10th, which was predictably awkward and all too reminiscent of high school itself.

This one was far better. The reunion was planned by our own people, not an outside firm. For the last six months we have had a website that included not only the basic information but also a message board and a member section that allowed each classmate to post personal information, photos and any other information they wanted to share with the class. The sense of anticipation for the event was heightened immeasurably by seeing what people have been up to, with a new addition almost every day.

The early opportunity for contact gave rise to an expansion of the event. On Friday, a bunch of people met at a San Francisco bar owned by one of our classmates, while another group of people met at a wine bar in Fremont owned by another classmate. The reunion itself was Saturday night at a hotel. The food was simple (Mexican) but good, the pictures, music and atmosphere were fun, and the fellowship was pleasant. The vibe was much more relaxed than the 10 year; people seemed genuinely happy to see each other. I did not personally speak to many more people than I usually spoke to back in high school, but there was something enjoyable about seeing familiar faces across the room ... just like twenty years ago.

I did get a chance to speak to just about everybody I had hoped to see. I even discovered that one of my friends from back then had also gone to all the same elementary schools that I had (it was complicated because of a school closure and a split campus); we even had the same first and second grade teacher. He might be the only person in the world that shares that particular history.

Almost better than the reunion was the family picnic the next day at a park less than a mile from my old house. The weather was great, and there was both a playground and full soccer field with nets for the kids to play on. Kelly was the oldest kid there and spent much of her time playing soccer. We eventually got several other kids to join ours as a small game broke out.

After it was all over, I found myself unexpectedly nostalgic. Part of it comes from being back in the Bay Area, but a lot of it is an odd longing for those days. I hadn't thought about it much previously, but as I get farther away from that time of my life, I gain an appreciation for it. High school was not the best time of my life (college was the pinnacle of my school days), but I see now with greater clarity that it was still a good time. Maybe it would have been fun to go to a real party or two (let's see, I missed ... oh, all of them), but I now see that for all the constant activity and uncertainty about the future, there was still the freedom of childhood underlying everything. Maybe I would have enjoyed spending more time with the kids who went to all the games, but that fact is I knew most of them anyway and called many of them friends.

In this age, now that we have reconnected, it is far easier to stay connected. A Facebook group has been created, which has led me to a junior high alumni group, an elementary school alumni group, and a "You know you grew up in Sunnyvale if ..." group. I've now heard a bunch of names that I haven't even thought of in decades. It all helps me appreciate that I grew up in a nice area, with good people around me. I can always say there were other things I wish I had done, people I could have known better, places I could have gone, but there is no regret. I have never idealized my high school years, but I am happy to revisit them now, more content than I expected I would be, and more eager to see these people more as the years go on.

Where Is Our [Fill In The Blank]?

The move, it happened. We are now in our new house surrounded and overwhelmed by boxes full of everything we own. Ah, the irony: we have it all, it we don't know where any of it is. Plus, anything we unearth may not be in that same location half an hour later as the process of unpacking and reorganizing begins. I never realized how much I piece it gave me for 10 years to know that at any time, day or night, I could find my 3 foot level. Or my socks.

One of the things that went unexpectedly well was the fact that we will not be without Internet access while AT&T gets its act together to switch their plug from house A to house B. Thanks to the Dawn of the Age of WiFi, one of our unwittingly generous neighbors has provided us with a robust (and unlocked) connection to the Internet. That means pictures will come soon, I promise, once we have a few minutes that aren't dedicated to painting, unpacking, rearranging, or staring blankly at the walls as fatigue sets in.

It's a happy fatigue, though.

Moving Day, Again

It has been a very hectic week. Thanks to Dad, we unloaded our portable storage unit last week, filling half of our new garage. We also took over a bunch of boxes from our rental house, filling the other half of the garage. Thanks to Cheryl's parents, we have packed up our rental house again and put in shelf paper at the new house.

And the movers don't even come until later this morning.

Pictures, etc. to come later when we have a moment to breathe.