d i n a n e . n e t 

I’ve been reading this book, Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter. It’s a thick book, both physically and in content. The rest of the post may include some bits that relate to the book, so if you haven’t read it and you intend to, you might want to avoid continuing. But then again, it isn’t really about the plot so much as what the book did to my brain, so I guess it doesn’t really matter. In any case, I do recommend the book - especially if you have any interest whatsoever in physics, astro- or otherwise.

One of the components of the book talks about these kids that are cropping up in society with super intelligence. These kids exhibit some Asperger’s tendencies, but more than that - they’re extremely smart and think about things that elude many adults. But this post isn’t really even about that.

It’s this: What if my kids aren’t smart?

I used to wonder what I would do if my kids are smarter than me, but I think I know how to handle that. Give them something to think about. Give them something to learn about. Libraries are awesome things, and when the town runs out of interesting materials, there are more colleges within reach around here than is really fair to the rest of the world. So it’s not really a concern. Extra-smart kids just need extra things to use their brain for. And the more the better. (And why this isn’t obvious to the people in the book, I don’t comprehend. Fear, I guess.)

But I don’t really like dealing with people who aren’t smart. I know, it makes me sound like an ass, but I prefer spending time with smart people. I’ve been some combination of lucky and smart about my friends choice in me as a friend and in my choice of fields. I keep myself surrounded with people who are smart and intellectually stimulating. My friends are smart. I work in a company where the people I interact with daily are more likely to be much smarter than me than not (and it sometimes gives me an inferiority complex, which just makes me want to get a masters so I can know more - but that’s for another soul-searching post). I know how to deal with smart people. I avoid “stupid people.” And I use that term generally to refer to people who may not technically be stupid, but “just” average.

Yeah, I’m an ass.

Moving on.

What if my kids aren’t smart? I can’t avoid them. I can’t make fun of them. I can’t be laughing or even frustrated at them if they can’t keep up.

Maybe they’ll be good with music. That would probably be enough. To have music in common. Or art in general. That’s something I think I could handle.

But, and here’s something far more terrifying, what if they don’t like music? Or art? What then?

I was musing about such things, while walking up the hill from the train. I finally came to a conclusion - it doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t. And I don’t have to worry about it right now anyway. I’m not having kids now. Someday, but not now. And I guess all the fear just reminds me that I’m not ready.

Thing is, I used to get creeped out by my friends having kids. And I can sense in some of my friends that they still are baffled that our friends are having kids. But it doesn’t freak me out like that any more. I know it’s something that just happens, and something that I hope some day may happen to me. (Just not now.)

I guess the introduction of this set of “what ifs” is just a part of the progression of my genetic imperative.

Either that, or this book is making me think too much.

When I finish these (there are three in the series), I think I might need to go back to Harry Dresden. He only makes me think about how cool it would be if I could do magic.

For 1-2 days, do not…

• spit,
• use a straw,
• eat hot food,
• tilt your head forward, and
• eat food that has “particles.”

For 1 week, do not…

• blow your nose,
• eat “sharp” foods,
• forget to swish nasty mouth sanitizer,
• allow your tongue to feel around your stitches, and
• forget to swish salt water around your mouth after eating.

For 1 year, do not…

• eat difficult to chew foods without first cutting them up,
• use your teeth as a tool,
• forget to brush and floss (in fact, this is important forever), and
• worry about your front teeth falling out (because, you see, they’re already gone, and replaced with something shinier (though temporary))!

I had a really good idea for a blog post last night as I was getting ready for bed. It was going to be awesome. I felt like I had at least a good four or five paragraphs worth of stuff you might actually want to read.

But I now cannot remember a lick of it. Not even the title, which I remember being especially exquisite.

So, instead, you get to hear more about how hardware hates me.

When I got home last night, Mike was upstairs fussing with my computer and the RAID that we have for backing up our shit. See, the night before, my personal laptop’s hard drive decided that it too would like to shit the bed. Luckily, it is dying a bit slower than my work computer’s hard drive did. The work computer was a complete loss as soon as I noted that it was broken. My laptop decided that it was okay to boot up after it’s initial seemingly complete death. Sure, it made a sad mac noise. But it still came up.

So we tried to back up my shit. We tethered it to the RAID, set stuff up, and walked away. Apparently, Mike found it to have failed to copy the next morning. So he started it again, and yesterday afternoon it had failed again. Leaving him with only one option. He hacked the OS.

Yeah, that’s not the option I would have thought of. And it’s probably good that I didn’t see him doing this. It would have made me anxious. He told the OS to keep trying to read bad sectors. Like 1000 times or something stupid like that, before calling it a real read error.

It worked.

But I do smell a trip to an Apple store in my future. One with a visit with a Genius. Hopefully he tells me it’s easy to pop in a new hard drive, or at least that he can do it for a fee that doesn’t make me nauseous.

Ultimately, though, my computer is pretty ancient. I mean, I want to believe he’s going to make it another bajillionty years, but when it comes down to it, 4 is old for a laptop. Just… I don’t really have spare money floating around for a new laptop. And I don’t really want to get a desktop. I like being able to lounge on the couch when I’m working from home.

At least I know what would happen to the brand new power cable I just bought my laptop less than a month ago. I was whining about how I’d hate to spend money on my computer only to have to replace it when Mike stated, as a matter of fact, “If you get a new computer, I’m stealing your power cable. We can sell the broken computer with my broken power cable on eBay.”

Nice to know someone’s already in line to steal and sell parts…

I wonder if I can get the kind of price I got last time I sold an old and broken computer on eBay.

eBay is my Friend
How neat is it that you can sell broken used crap on eBay and get real money from people? I wrote a little poem to express how lovely eBay is.

eBay is my Friend

I had a nice computer,
I liked it quite a bit.
I dropped it on the floor,
because I’m a dimwit.

It was cracked and broken,
but as I wiped it down,
I seemed like it would function
still, so I - I didn’t frown.

Then after months of happy use,
the screen went two-thirds dead.
It’s usefulness was shattered
and I hung my sad sad head.

After I got over it,
I wanted to see it gone.
Now some guy in California
wants my computer for his own.

eBay is my friend now,
’cause they let me peddle
my junky broken ‘puter
to the highest bidder.

Pretty crappy poem, huh? I’m awful proud of it. And I’m awful glad for eBay!

– My LiveJournal, 03/03/2004

This is less of a blog post and more of an order. You should back up your shit. Now. I mean it. Get out a CD-R, or connect to your company’s back up server, or make a shelveset or a personal branch, or do whatever it is you do to make sure you don’t lose things. Back up your shit. I mean everything. Even the stuff you just kinda keep on your desktop. Everything. Even the VMs you think you don’t care about that much. Everything. Even the work you’re doing right now that isn’t finished. In fact, especially that. Just think about how much it would suck to have to start over.

Back up your shit.

Or you’ll end up like me.

I was surprised to discover that it was my shoulders and chest, not my calves and thighs, that were the sorest this morning, presumably from the push-ups needed to resume the sport.

Well, it’s official, my brain clock is confused (so much so that my first attempt to type “brain clock” came out as “brain flock,” which leads me to picture something that kind of resembles that old flying toasters screen saver, only, you know, with brains). I had a 7:00 AM meeting with a customer in Bangalore (or Bengaluru, depending on which translation you prefer). Now, astute friends and possibly readers might know that I am pretty much a morning person. As such, you might expect that a 7:00 AM meeting wouldn’t have too much of an effect one me.

You’d be wrong.

Sure, it’s only about a half-hour, fourty-minutes before I usually get into the office, but in order to get here on time for such a meeting, I needed to take a much earlier train. The 6:20-something wouldn’t cut it. I needed the 5:52. That’s 3 minutes earlier than my alarm on a normal day and an hour and 4 minutes earlier than my normal train. Still, you think, at least you’re not architect-man. He usually doesn’t get into the office until like 9:30, 10:00. It must be much worse on him.

You’d be wrong again.

Architect-man was relatively cranky this morning to have to be in early, but he claimed that he would easily adjust and just make up for it in some extra morning sleep the next day. Me? Yeah. No. I’m almost certain to snap awake by 7:00 tomorrow even though I could really use to make up that extra hour.

That’s right, extra hour. I set my alarm one hour earlier than usual - 4:55. Yes, folks. That time starts with a four. That time is also known as still-night-o-clock. You might also note that it was one hour earlier, not one hour and four minutes earlier, as the train would be.

I missed the train.

So I drove in. Did you know that the morning guys on 101.7 start “The Sandbox” at 6:00 AM? Me neither. But now I do. They have intro music and everything. Did you know there’s traffic at 6:00 AM? Me neither. But luckily, there was less than at 7:00, because I couldn’t afford to be late.

But yeah, my brain’s biological clock is superpissed. I have a very strong clock up in there, and it is very, very confused. I fed it some caffeine. That may have made it worse. I don’t know for sure.

I do know that I am currently simultaneously wide awake and completely asleep.

Today will be fun.

On the plubmers’ third visit, it appears that our heat may in fact be cured for good. I’ll be more certain if it’s still working when we get home… but at least it was working when I woke up this morning!

Mike and I trade off on holidays. In even years, my family “gets” us for Thanksgiving, and his for Christmas. In odd years, such as 2007, we do the reverse. This year’s Thanksgiving was not too unlike that of two years ago. The major changes being a reduction in the number of pies and the absence of Kate. After the traditional (though less exciting without Kate) shopping-of-crazy, Mike’s mom and I were heading south along 93 to our house. I called Mike to let him and his father know that we were on our way, and Mike gave me a heads up.

“The heat’s broken.”

He continued to give me some more details about the problem, and to tell me that he’d called the home warranty people. Thankfully we have that home warranty, which we might not have considered getting on our own. Thank you home sellers!

So we spent Friday night huddling under blankets, watching movies on HBO, and waiting patiently for the on-call plumber to come. That is, after being on hold with the warranty people approximately eight dozen times and finally getting the direct number to the plumbing company. He eventually did come after midnight, apprentice in tow.

They smelled of stale cigarettes and coffee, and looked just slightly more tired than I would prefer for someone who’s coming in to work on my house, but on the Friday after Thanksgiving, ones options are more than a little bit limited. We showed them the boiler, and went upstairs to watch more movies on HBO. Every few minutes, the apprentice would go by, go out the front door, and come back in carrying yet another tool. “New guy carries the tools.”

Suddenly, it started to get warmer. I stuck my hand behind the sofa, and felt the warmth of working heat. I did a little celebratory dance in my head, and looked forward to the guys leaving the house so I could sleep.

The big guy finally came upstairs and asked me to get the work order number from the warranty people. I acquired that, and their phone number, and handed it off to him. He went outside and came back in several minutes later with his cell phone on speaker. “Yeah, I’ve heard that hold music before.” He disappeared for a while back to the basement, presumably to clean up his crap.

When he came back upstairs, he handed me his phone, and I got our official “emergency approval number” or some such crap. Normally, I guess, they wouldn’t approve of paying overtime for the contractors, and would have made us wait until Monday. I took down the emergency number and rolled my eyes as they told me that I’d pay him and they’d reimburse me later. Lame! Even the plumber didn’t think it would work that way, and he went back out to his truck to make a different invoice. I wrote him a check, careful to make sure my carbon copy came out clean, and took our copy of the invoice.

Sleep!

The next morning, we woke up slowly. Well, everyone else did. I was up early because my brain refuses to sleep past 7:00. Lucky for me (and the people sleeping in our house), the new guitar for Rock Band has a silent strum bar :).

Eventually, breakfast was had, and we got in the car to go to Boston. Instead of a play this year, we went to the Museum of Science, and “Experienced” CSI. It was pretty cool, though not at all what I was expecting. And we never did find the miniatures. We topped off the night with a trip to my favorite restaurant, and were soon on our way back home.

Home, sweet… Damn! It’s effing freezing in here!

We repeated the shivering of the night before, while I called the warranty people again. Hold! I talked to a guy who mumbled and made no sense, but who seemed to eventually get that we should be approved for emergency again, as it was even colder than the day before. I asked if I should call the plumber myself, but he assured me that they would do it and follow their procedures.

So, we settled in for another evening of HBO movies. An hour into our second bank-robbery-related movie in as many days, Mike checked online. They still hadn’t updated our account with a new work order! So, back on hold. I swear, they have the most annoying hold music ever. And this time, I was on hold long enough to make it to the second (and even more annoying) song.

I made annoyed mutterings at the guy who finally answered, and he gave me “permission” to call the plumbers directly. The call-center person took our name, address, and phone number and said she’d page Dean, the plumber who came the day before. He called back shortly afterwards, sounding very annoyed that our heat only breaks at night. I apologized, telling him how the warranty company had screwed us both out of our proper sleep, but with his cranky attitude, I was afraid he’d never come.

After the movie was over, I called the call-center back again, because he hadn’t come. They took the name, address, and phone number again, saying they’d page him again. I made sure he was the one who was supposed to be on call - I would feel bad if they paged him on his true day off just because he had done the work the day before. But she assured me that Dean was the on-call guy for heat that day.

Eventually, we heard the welcome sounds of their truck from the street. Mike’s parents had both gone to bed, and it was once again after midnight. They went downstairs and the same ritual of running tools commenced. After quite some time, they came up and said they needed to go out for a smoke. Less than promising, because that implied to me that they had not yet determined the problem.

After another hour or so of them clanking on things in the basement, he came up. I looked up hopefully from my blanket cocoon, but he told us he had bad news. The “computer board” was fried. He suspected that it had shorted the part he’d replaced the night before, and had finally given up itself. Unfortunately, they don’t carry around circuit boards for every make and model of boiler, so we’d have to wait until Monday for him to track one down. And even if he found one then, it might need to be shipped. So in reality, we’d be heat-free until Tuesday at the earliest. He advised us to get space heaters first thing in the morning.

So, we blew up the air mattress upstairs, where it was still warm due to the remaining electric heat (suddenly, it doesn’t seem so bad to have mixed heat). We huddled under blankets and slept fitfully until my cell phone alarm went off at 7:00. I ventured downstairs to find that the temperature had dropped almost down to 50. Shivering, I gathered some clothes and went back upstairs. Mike did the same and we waited for a few minutes before putting them on, so they would warm up.

Home Depot!

We bought three space heaters, two large and one small. When we got home, Mike’s mom was up and wondering why the guy never came. We explained that that wasn’t the case, and went on to get the devices running. By noon, the temperature was a much more moderate 68, and by the time Mike’s parents left in the afternoon, we had to turn the space heaters down because it was getting to be too warm.

So, we wait. Wait for word from Dean the plumber. Please call us. Please say you’ll bring by the part today and install it. We like heat. And we like not paying through the nose for our electric bill…