They’re unretouched, they’re great examples of how difficult it is to get six people to look good at the same instant of time, and they’re here, at the Wilcox Family Photo page.
What If They Opened a Highway, and Nobody Came?
Yesterday the slowpokes widening Route 3 announced the first section to have all three lanes (and two shoulders) opened, which was Route 3 northbound, between Drum Hill (Route 4) and the New Hampshire border.
I was very pleased, as I usually go home by driving up to Drum Hill through Chelmsford side roads to get onto Route 3, rather than trying to go through the four-lanes-becoming-two-lanes nightmare currently at the 495 interchange.
So, I got the e-mail notice yesterday, but discovered that almost no one was actually using the newly-opened right lane. I guess that most people did not know the lane was opened, and definitely did not know that it was open all the way to New Hampshire.
In a related effect, we have been waiting all summer for the paving to be finished over the railroad grade crossing in Nashua that is on our way to church in Litchfield. The grade crossing was in such a bad condition that any speed over about 1 MPH would virtually guarantee significant damage to one’s vehicle. Well, a few days ago, they finally finished the top coat paving, making the grade crossing passable for the first time in months. However, people are so conditioned to driving over it at extremely slow speeds, that they are still doing so.
John Makes the Soccer Team
Congratulations to John, who has been officially awarded a starting fullback position on Tabernacle Christian School’s soccer team.
John starts ninth grade on August 30. His good friend Jay Mavrogeorge did the appropriate arm-twisting, and succeeded indoing what we could not, getting John to try out for the team.
(I’d add w00t! but John would consider that too geeky.)
David Now Has His Own Web Site
It’s in development, but being documented as it is built. http://david.wilcoxfamily.net/ Part of the trouble was trying to explain to him what I can and cannot do on a Web site. He plays the Flash- and Shockwave-based games online quite often, and figured that I could just whip up one of my own in about half an hour. There is more detail on the site, including my commentary from his perspective. Enjoy.
Rats! We Missed a Tornado!
Sometime close to when we passed through Meredith, New Hampshire, as we were driving back from Moultonborough on Friday, a small tornado (which started as a waterspout) knocked over a few trees.
The Champlain Channel has the details, and even video of the tornado.
I wish I’d seen it.
I am assembling pictures of our Moultonborough trip at photos.wilcoxfamily.net
Nightmares
[doug][david]
Our son, David, is at the age where nightmares are common, and often wakes us up when he’s had a bad dream.
Sometimes as adults we forget how troubling a bad dream can be, as our nightmares (for most of us anyway) are very infrequent.
It has been a very stressful week. Work was busy, and worst of all, our station wagon died, leaving us with a 6-person family and a 5-passenger car. Last night I had a horrible dream, for which I am holding my co-worker Doug “JavaDoug†Ross partially responsible:
I dreamed that, despite the fact that our SMC router's firewall prevents detection of machines behind it, and protection via Norton Antivirus (I do not recommend any other product), our two computers were infected by a trojan that allowed someone from outside to remote control the machines.
No matter what I tried, the remote-operator would write taunts to the screen, install and launch games one after another (Duke Nukem was one, for some reason), and prevent me from using the machines.
What was really scary is that in the dream I hit the button which disconnects the cable modem from the outside world, to eliminate the attacker’s access and start cleaning the damage, but the malicious remote operation didn’t stop!
Rust in Piece
It appears that the last straw has been added to the problems with our still-beloved 1994 Buick Century station wagon.
Although the car is now 11 years old, we were hoping to get another year or two out of it. Instead, the past two repairs have included one big electrical system problem ($300+), a leaky oil seal ($650+), and a blown head gasket ($1,000+).
Today the car was hesitating, so Nichelle took it in to a mechanic. He found the transmission fluid was 2 quarts down, and that there was rust on the transmission fluid dipstick. This appears to be caused by contamination between the transmission cooling system and the engine cooling system. Eventually, this kind of corrosion wipes out the transmission, but he thought it could last up to a year, if we watch the fluid levels. It would cost about $2,000 to actually fix the problem. He added the transmission fluid, and gave the car a test drive.
Nichelle started up the street, and within sight of the mechanic's place, the car died completely. A police officer pushed it with his car into a McDonald’s parking lot.
At any rate, it looks like we’ll need to get a new[er] car, which we need to see if we can actualy afford. This eliminates, at least temporarily, our ability to go anywhere together. Thankfully, lots of people from church live near us, and will help out.
Time to start praying about this latest issue, and the obvious anxiety it brings!
All You Need Is Jesus (So I Need the Light Saber)
[david]David, who turned 5 the day we moved in January, re-discovered my light saber keychain, that came as a promo with Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. He has been trying, unsuccessfully, to get me to give it to him for a couple of weeks. The other day he found an angle that he was sure would work.
“Dad, when you’re saved, all you need is Jesus, right?†I looked at his face, and noticed that he had an odd-but-very-cute, somewhat droll smile that I’ve seen before, usually when he thinks he’s figured out a way to get more allowance money.
As he’d been pestering me for several days about the keychain, and I was in its general vicinity, it only took me a few seconds to see where he was going with this. “So,†I said, “you are saying that I only need Jesus, and I don’t need the light saber, so I should give it to you!†His smile broadened, as he was obviously pleased that I saw things his way. “Unfortunately, even though I don’t need the light saber, I still want the light saber, so you can’t have it.†(Plus he has broken it twice.)
Maybe I’ll get him one for Christmas. Of course, he’s already asking for Christmas gifts early (wanting me to order them online immediately), specifically two Lego Spider-Man sets.
2 Years at Kronos: Message to My Co-Workers
Today marked my second year of employment at Kronos.
What a busy year it has been on the home front! Naomi Nichelle (NaNi) was born in October, 2003. I lost my father in December—which was very sad—but I will see him again one day. Peter Jackson fulfilled our dreams with The Return of the King (and restored the Huorn in The Two Towers extended edition). We (finally) sold our house in Brockton, and moved to Nashua in January, 2004, shortening my commute by over 2 hours per day, and greatly improving our family life. I reveled in buying cool geek swag for NaNi from thinkgeek.com, and my wife Nichelle gave me the “Holy Grail of Lego†(the Star Destroyer model) for our anniversary.
Work this year has brought many changes. I've had three managers, one of whom endured me only for a couple of weeks. I've tried to forget the HTML UI Framework v1, and concentrate on building v3 (despite the occasional, discourteous reminders of v1 via the PAR system). I've had the opportunity to learn Struts, dramatically improve my Java skills, start studying for Sun Java certification, and achieve victory (with the help of a great team) in building the Lego guy at the tech summit. Along the way came immersive learning in ADP-ization, Czech localization, and AccuRev. Now that Larry Krakauer has retired, I may even have a shot (albeit a long one) at becoming the alpha geek—someday.
The constant support and genuine caring my co-workers provide has made this year pass quickly and pleasantly. More than ever, I am grateful for the blessing of working at Kronos—such an excellent company—among such excellent company. Thank you for your part in making this past year such a great one!
Good moring. Ugh.
It’s 8:45 a.m. (funny that Mark Sohmer hasn’t noticed that the BLOG postings are all on Pacific Time), and I’m waiting for my co-workers to come in (especially “JavaDoug†Ross and Pankaj Verma) after Ravi Gopalan and I pulled an all-nighter at Kronos. Our team is very well-managed, and this is the first deadline crunch that has caused more than a minor annoyance.
Trying to write while being sleep-deprived is an interesting experiment. I’ve had to rewrite portions of the first paragraph four times because they didn’t make sense. Of course, they still might not make sense.
Today is the last day of school for the year for John and Isaac, tomorrow is a birthday party for John, who will be 16 on Tuesday. It’s shaping up to be a busy summer.
Suspected Half-Life Thieves Nabbed!
Gamers actually helped catch these guys. Also in the ZDNet article is the information that all the source code had been stolen, but I thought previous reports had said only part of the code was. I hope they sentence the jerks, whose theft has delayed the release of Half Life 2 by at least six months, to be thrown into the crowd at a gaming convention. Check out the article and comments at Planet Half Life.
Pankaj has arrived, so I may get to hand the torch off and get some sleep soon.