Are We Having Fun Yet?

Last year, I made a series of resolutions for 2014. So, how did it go?

• Ongoing gym work: Kept.
  
• Cutting body fat to 15%: cancelled in favour of muscle building.
  
• Additional workskills training: Ongoing and in progress.
  
• Seeing a career counsellor: Failed. There were higher priorities for limited disposable income.
  
• More massages, fewer all-nighters & working weekends: Total fail.
  
• Learning C3A square dance program: Cancelled for lost interest.
  
• Cutting back on square dance commitments: Kept
  
• Seeing a chiropractor: Cancelled for lack of need.
  
• New glasses: Kept.
  
• Cutting back on committee commitments: Kept.
  
• Household improvements: Ongoing and in progress.
  
• Saving $200/paycheck: Kept.
  
• Slaying the demon credit cards: Failed. Still too much out-of-control spending. More focus & restrain required.
  
• Updating wills, etc..: Kept.
  
• Sending xmas cards: Kept
  
• Finding my bliss: Some progress, but not enough.

Summary: 7 kept, 3 partially/ongoing kept, 3 cancelled, 3 failed. I'm counting this as 13 out of 16 good, so an 81% success rate. Not bad.

We're only three weeks into the new year but my non-resolutions for 2014 already have a mixed record.

Good: The gym stuff continues. I'm stepping up the program a bit: instead of my usual three sets of 12 reps per exercise, I'm finishing each set with an additional set to exhaustion at 75% weight, then another set to exhaustion at 50%. So far, so good.

Good: Body fat has dropped from 20.6% to 18.3%. Yay! I miss carbs & sugar but the cravings aren't as bad as they were for the first five days or so.

Good: New glasses have been ordered. Yes, they are progressive lenses. I should have them in the next few days.

Good: I'm now transferring $200/paycheck, up from $150/paycheck, into a savings account.

In Progress: We tried to purchase a new laundry sink for the basement but haven't found a model we liked. On the good side, we scored two tall used bookcases for $20 each so our book piles are much neater.

Very Bad: My credit card balance went from $0 January 1 to $4400 as of today. That's $1800 for a new dental crown, $800 for new glasses and $3000 for a new transmission for my car, less interim payments. At least I've received reimbursements from medical insurance for the dental work & glasses and will recoup the rest from my medical flex spending account, and that $3k for the transmission is after a 10% discount. I plan to have this nearly zeroed again by the end of February.

Good: The tax returns are looking good again for this year so the updates to wills and medical powers-of-attorney will be created in March per our original schedule.

All other items are still a work in progress. More news as it develops.

I don't really get the whole xmas tree decorating thing.

I know many people love to go stalk & kill their own tree in the wild. Some go to an urban lot and purchase their pre-killed vicitim from the local pusher. Others have fake/taxidermied trees in their attic. I just don't really get it.

I suspect a large part comes from my childhood in northern Ontario. I mean, I grew up surrounded by the damn things. LIke 10-million-of-them-for-every-one-of-us surrounded. And they're not all friendly either. Ever fallen from one? Ever had one of them fall on you? Ever had one leap in front of your car while you were soberly driving home from the no-there-wasn't-any-drinking party at night totally sober? Not friendly at all.

They're coniferous triffids. And that one you have in your living room is its advanced scout for their ultimate takeover.

Sure, you've cut off at the base, but it takes a lot more than that to disable these killers. And you dressed it up in drag: that really makes them angry. Let me say this again for those of you not keeping up: You have a wounded & pissed off tree IN YOUR HOUSE.

God help you when its friends arrive to rescue it. You've been warned.

I recently enjoyed a flight on Virgin America. As we taxied out from the terminal to the runway, we the passengers were given our mandatory safety video, the one where they tell us not to smoke, to put away all electronic items, how to operate a seatbelt, etc.. Virgin America's version was, well, diferent:


Now this was kinda catchy the first time, but it's long and, frankly, if you're not into their particular singing/dance style (I *really* hate rap), very, very tedious. It was even more tedious the second time on my return flght, enough that I will be taking earplugs with me the next time so I don't have to be subjected to it. I already know how to operate a seatbelt, etc., so tuning it out won't compromise the safety of our flight: it's just so damned annoying.

Virgin America: Could you consider returning to the old, less exuberant safety video? It would make my flight a lot more comfortable. Besides, do you really want expose your paying packed-like-sardines customers to a mandatory video where actors have more than a foot of space between their seats and four feet between rows? Think about it.

Every now and again, I see a posting on LJ, Facebook or some such thing about how we did stupid things when we were kids. Kid stuff like skate boarding without helmuts, biking along major highways, throwing lawn darts at each other, exploring obviously dangerous areas, operating heavy equpiment beyond our skill to manage. And we did it without parental supervision, without safety gear and without extraneous regulations.

The saying goes something like: "See all the stupid things we did back then? And we all turned out pretty well! Who needs this nanny state/safety crap?!"

But not all of us turned out pretty well. Some of us didn't live long enough to turn out well.

When I see these postings, my mind drifts back to the Brentha Cemetary, a small civic cemetary near where I grew up. Some day I will be buried there. I knew most of the people buried there, and a significant number of them were kids when they died. We went to the same elementary school, we rode the same school buses.

When I see postings scoffing at the "obvious" absurdity of common sense safety precautions, I think of Jeffrey, Donnie, Terry, Gord, Brian, Matthew, Ron and several others. Most died before they were ten years of age, none to age 16. I won't bother you with a list of the ones I lost in high school.

I survived, partly because of dumb luck but largely because of safety-conscious parents. Regulations have become better, equipment is (sometimes) better designed, and fewer risks to children are accepted by society as a whole.

"We turned out pretty well!" is boastful claim made by the living in ignorance of the silent dead.

The joy of travelling is that I can rent a variety of cars, ones which otherwise wouldn't be on my radar for purchase or even test-driving prior to purchase.

In our visit to Seattle for a square dance weekend, we had a reservation with Alamo (they're dirt cheap) for an intermediate-class car. Alamo also lets you pick your choice of car from the litter on offer: you just check out the cars in the class you've booked and drive away with your choice.

Upon arrival, they didn't have any intermediates handy so they gave us a free upgrade to a full-size vehicle so we perused the range of larger cars. And that's when the three of us had to make a decision...

Me: We need a four-door model...
Them: Oooo! That one's pretty!
Me: Does it have enough trunk space for our luggage?
Them: It's red! We like red!
Me: Is there enough leg room for you guys?
Them: It's a shiny red! Let's pick this one!
Me: *sigh*

It was indeed roomy enough and had plenty of trunk space. There was good sightlines around the vehicle from the driver's seat and the dashboard was easier to understand than many other cars I've rented, although I'll confess I never found the trunk release button until the day we returned the car. The analog clock was an interesting stylistic choice.

Overall, I think the fuel efficiency was so-so, as was the general acceleration, sound levels, general comfort and ride. It just nice, not great, not horrid. Nice in a bland and otherwise uninterseting way. I'm sure in a few weeks, the Chrysler 200 will fade completely from my memory.

Still, $75 for four days' rental... I'm good with that. And the boys got a red car for the weekend.

I've been calling square dances for about nine years now. Well, more precisely, I was permitted to hold a microphone on stage about nine years ago: it was nearly a year before I was allowed to go on-stage solo. I remember being scared as hell and feeling utterly unprepared. I also remember thinking that I was utterly the wrong person for the role, that I should simply drop out and admit I wasn't up to the task.

This past week, I had three gigs which tested my skills in different ways.

Last Tuesday, attendance at Chesapeake Squares' club night was sparse so I called from the floor while dancing as the 8th dancer to complete a square. I have done this before, but it was mentally draining and it wasn't exactly what one might call a polished performance. This time, however, it was no more tiring than simply calling or simply dancing. I could think ahead 2-3 calls while my feet continued to execute the current call. And I didn't shame my ancestors while doing it.

This Thursday was the Chesapeake Squares' first Mainstream class night of the new fall series. There was a time such a gig would have filled me with terror: how to I teach these calls? How do I make them interesting? How do I fill a two hour dance with only a handful of easy calls? This night, however, I wasn't nervous or fearful. It was actually kinda fun. We covered the calls I had planned and not one more (hard though it is to resist that urge sometimes), we danced them repeatedly in a variety of formations and we built new sequences out the calls on hand. In short, it worked pretty well.

This Saturday, I called a combo dance for the Times Squares in New York City. The first 2.5 hours were Advanced & Challenge, then latter 2.5 hours Mainstream & Plus. Times Squares doesn't take breaks between tips: the only rest time is the minute or so required to change music and set up news squares for the next tip. I had been asked explicitly not to dumb down the choreo or speed to the weakest dancer, and I soon understood what they meant: the Advanced floor had one dancer who was a new Advanced graduate but was having extreme difficulty with the Mainstream & Plus calls --"column circulate" shouldn't crash an A2 square. Later in the evening, there was a longtime dancer who joined for the Mainstream tips who clearly couldn't remember or execute half of the calls on the list, but also had no concept of looking at his opposite for clues or even looking around for an empty spot on in the formation to fill. Instead, he just stood there, staring at a random wall waiting for someone to move to physically to an available spot. I noticed several dancers taking incorrect spots --effectively taking a hit for the team-- just so he could be placed in the nearest available position.

In all, it was a calling challenge but I did as instructed, letting go the weak square in favor of the stronger ones. I limited walk-throughs to those sequences or calls which clearly caused the bulk of the floor heartburn (eg. peel the top, remake the thar). I used a lot of written choreo for the A&C stuff so I could repeat it on demand, but went with sight-calling frequently to fix squares or just for fun (the MS & Plus part was entirely sight-called).

In all though, I think the evening was successful and I had a fun time. It's rare that I call extended sets like these: I've only done it three times before, including our own Harvest Festival Hoedown in 2010. I have proven to my own satisfaction that I have sufficient choreography, workshop material, choreographic variety and a musical palette for such extended dances and sufficient mental & physical stamina to keep focussed beginning to end. Times Squares is a good club and I hope to work with them again some time soon. If nothing else, I'll see many of their dancers at upcoming square dance festivals across the next few months.

To make a long story short ("Too late!"), I've survived a compressed work schedule, a series of demanding calling scenarios, extended travel and much more this past week without significant angst or last-minute panic attacks. I entered into each event as prepared as I believed I needed to be, along with some safety margin just in case. I left each without the sense of explosive decompression I knew only too well several few years ago. I hesistate to say this has become routine, but it has become --finally-- familiar enough that it doesn't trigger excess anxiety or stress. I'm going to call that "maturity" and "experienced."

There is, naturally, still so much more to learn and experience. I'm happy however that I've finally reached my personal goal: a of stable performance of several challenging calling situations without excessive strain. From here on it, it's dessert time!

All of our operators are busy with other palace coups and takeovers... please stay on the line for our next available operator.

The Mid-Atlantic Challenge Association (MACA) has been a bit adrift lately. For many years, the same folks have been on the board, and the focus of that board has been limited to running two dances per year and running the Zip Coder magazine. The magazine however has been transferred to a private company so the organization agenda is dramatically reduced. Many of the current board wish to retire from it, and some have begun making noises about winding down the organization.

cuyahogarvr, kent4str and I have other ideas. :-)

The current by-laws include a statement of purpose which clearly outlines several other MACA functions, many of which have been ignored for some time either by benign neglect, lack of interest or lack of human resources to implement them. These include:

• coordinating & promoting Challenge square dancing in the DC-Baltimore area;
  
• assist in establishing a systematic procedure for teaching the Challenge programs, possibly even sponsoring classes;
  
• sponsoring at least one open dance per year;
  
• promote a positive image of Challenge dancing;
  
• foster interaction between Challenge dancers and the rest of the square dance community;
  
• foster cooperation between Challenge callers in the area; and,
  
• promote special events.

In short, we've done the dance-per-year thing pretty well, but the rest of have been left unattended.

We're looking to run for board positions this coming November 2 with our own agenda:

• sponsor at least four dances per year with both local & out-of-town callers;
  
• plan our quarterly dances three years out, with a variety of callers and dance locations;
  
• partner with multi-level clubs, not just Challenge-only clubs;
  
• coordinate with non-MACA clubs to ensure a full booking schedule for travelling callers (and possibly sharing expenses);
  
• sponsor Advanced and Intro-to-C1 sessions at some of our regular events as a feeder to our Challenge program;
  
• modify the mission statement to expand our Baltimore-DC description to truly cover the Mid-Atlantic region;
  
• promote the hell out of MACA and its events with every means at our disposal, including paper flyers, Facebook, Twitter, an updated web site, email, eVite and more.

There are a few other things we'd like to do, but these will do for the first year. With $20k in the bank, the organization has resources to do a lot if we can get the personnel and energy involved and directed into a new action plan.

kent4str will run for a delegate-at-large position while cuyahogarvr and I will run jointly for the vice-president position --the VP does most of the dance planning & coordination. We still need two other people to run for positions which will likely be vacated by retirements: I have a list of people we're approaching for those spots.

This is a mid-range plan covering the next 15 months, but I think we can do good things for the organization. Fresh meat is a good thing from time to time.

I'm utterly delighted to report that I'm on vacation right now. While I've been at the trailer at Roseland Resort since last Friday, the vacation part didn't seem real until I set up the out-of-office auto-reponder for work. Now I'm blissfully plugging away on my laptop on my own personal projects without worry of distraction from more urgent work-related matters.

There were more than 750 people at the campground this weekend, a new record for the place. The staff are understandibly exhausted. The crowds were a little overwhelming for me so I was happy to stay close to or inside the trailer nearly the entire time. As an introvert, it's tough enough being available to the public, not to mention on a stage routinely, during weekdays: I come to Roseland to retreat from the world and recharge.

Nearly everyone cleared out of the campground on Monday. Currently, Wayne & JD are at their trailer, as well as the Bills in their trailer just below. Ron & Derwyn are here too, and another trailer further east of ours is occupied. That's the entire population of Rose Hill, our little neighborhood of the campground. There's perhaps a dozen other people scattered around the place. Wayne mentioned many of these remaining people were planning to depart today, further reducing the population. Yay for isolation!

I'm keeping busy though... I've finished four books, including a history of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a political piece on South Korea, and two books on team management. I've finally found time to catch up on some computer-based training courses I have on my computer, working towards an eventual Cisco certification. I finished one on Xen virtualization (not Cisco-related), and another CCNP-level Cisco course on network switch management. I'll start the next course when I'm finished with this posting.

Tomorrow morning, cuyahogarvr and I are heading to Cleveland overnight to tackle some minor business. We'll be back Thursday morning. Mercifully, it's only a four hour drive to Cleveland from the campground so it's not a big imposition into our vacation time.

There really isn't much else to report at this time, largely because I'm working very hard to ensure there isn't anything to report. The whole point of a vacation, after all, is to relax and let go of the mundane headaches of life in the real world. You'll let me know if something comes up, right?

Work has been an interesting combination of boredom & terror over the past month, kinda like flying a plane with one engine missing. I take consolation from knowing I still have at least one spare engine and a lot of experience, but it's still a bit less than ideal what with the passengers occasionally hitting the bar or screaming in fear. Very distracting, but if we keep doing the right things, we'll be soon clear of the turbulence.

My team was expanded by two extra bodies in July. The new guys are still coming up to speed, but they're progressing very well and are demonstrating the initiative & curiousity I had anticipated. There is a lot to take up, but they are pulling their weight and this makes me happy. I'll be even happier yet in a few months when they're fully up to speed and we have some major projects behind us but I need to be patient.

We've had a burst in workload this past two weeks. No single item was a killer, but the volume was more than we could handle at our regular pace. Still, with some extra hours and some judicious shuffling of priorities, we were able to tackle nearly all of the outstanding items before the weekend began.

My boss took a well-deserved vacation day on Friday so I got to play interim manager again. I like those opportunities because they give me license to speak with a higher degree of authority than I would when the boss is in and therefore might be seen to overstep my bounds. These perceptions are exclusively in my head, of course: my boss wouldn't object and our management structure for problem solving is very flat, but I am by nature hyper-attuned to levels of management, degrees of latitude and adherence to procedure, propriety, etiquette & appearances. If I ever think I'm losing any portion of my Canadian identity, here's a perfect counter-example --and perhaps one I should be more aggressive about addressing since it's probably holding me back.

One of my bigger projects this past week has been completed. It wasn't a technical challenge, but a logistical one: we had over 1,000lbs of dead or retired computer equipment in my data center which desperately needed to be removed. I needed a place to discard the equipment, I needed to have the hard drives removed & destroyed to protect our data, I needed extra hands to help heft the heavier bits (one singular chunk was itself about 90lbs and very awkward to grasp), along with coordination with use of the loading dock, a cargo vehicle and a few hours out of my business day. We got that on Friday.

cuyahogarvr and I wrestled the largest portion of this pile of junk out of the data center after lunch on Friday and delivered it to our home county's electronics recycling depot using kent4str's minivan. On Saturday, I collected the remaining eight blades & servers, rail kits and such; those were discarded this afternoon, along with miscellaneous household bits (a retired TV & VCR, some dead batteries, etc.). There is now a huge amount of extra space in my data center and in our garage. I feel much cleaner --and am delighted to strike one more item off my to-do list.

I went to Philadelphia for an overnight trip August 10-11 to attend FOSSCon 2013, a small convention of free open source software users & developers. I had a good time, although not at first. The event started a little late and registration didn't actually open until everything was in operation for an hour because of traffic delays. While I had a schedule from the web site, each hall was listed with a sponsor name, but signs weren't up anywhere in the building to identify the halls. In short, the first two hours put my inner project manager into frustration overload. I nearly stormed out in annoyance and frustration.

Then I remembered two things: (1) there was no registration fee, and (2) these were enthusiasts & amateurs putting together an event, not professional event planners. I've been spoiled by major conferences with large registration fees and professional managers held at major event hotels (think USENIX, LISA, etc.): my righteous anger at misplaced resources was wrong and utterly misplaced.

Once I reframed my thinking and focused on the content of the talks & presentations, all went very well. In fact, I was pretty impressed what they were able to do with limited resources and an all-volunteer staff.

My major take-away from this panels was a list of software packages I should examine for work and/or beefing up a resume: Salt, ZeroMQ, Jenkins, Ansible and such. Of course, I need to get through my immediate work-related projects which include Xen and Ubuntu 12 first, but I've made some notes for future. And I'll definitely attend --and perhaps volunteer-- for next year's event.

I see that the technical schedule for the upcoming LISA conference in DC in November has been posted so I have to go perusing. I've been pre-approved by my VP for registration so I'll be there: the only question is how many of the tutual days I'll sign up for. More later.

And finally, some high tech trauma: one of our home laptops died. More precisely, the hard drive has snuffed it: no computer can recognize it and it just clicks spasmodically. I've tried everything I know to try waking it up, all to no avail. Yes, we have backups of it, but they predate a number of important software installations and data files. I've obtained a duplicate drive and will take both to a local data recovery service tomorrow to see if there is any hope of grabbing at least some data from the dead disk. It's gonna cost, but it's our own fault. sigh