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I wrote this poem in 7th grade and never forgot it. My friend Peter thought I was a god for a semester for writing it:

Shit shot cosmonaut,

Itching sqeezing burning hot,

With ease,

release.

Riles will be 1 year old next week on Halloween. Courtney and I have spent the last week reminiscing about last year at this time. The nerves, the excitement, and the fateful night two weeks before. Riley never really made many “shifts” during the pregnancy to indicate that he was going to pop out. It began quite nerve racking, actually. But one evening in mid October Courtney got up and paced around for most of night. Looking back on it, it was Riles only sign that he wanted out.

As we get closer to his birthday he’s starting the “new trick” phase again. Right before major milestones he seems to pull out some new trick. Within the last week he’s been saying “uh-oh!”, which sometimes comes out as a painful “oh-uh!” Try to say it backwards, it’s not easy or graceful to do.

On top of that he’s finally waving. We’ve been waving at him for 6 months now. Just this week he seems to have finally gotten the point. When Courtney and I pass him back and forth between us he immediately spins around and waves to the person he just left.

The best new trick, though, has been the hugs. He just started hugging us all of the sudden. It was like one day he just really, really missed us. And ever since he’s been throwing his arms around us.

So, his birthday will be fun. I look forward to it. Pictures next week.

P.S. – I taught Riley the “Pile-Driver” this week too. I told Courtney that he’ll need to know that sort of stuff for when he has a younger sibling.

I’ve struggled over the years to find a good, reliable solution for maintaining secure backups of my files. As my much of my real-world possessions become digital versions of themselves I’ve grown increasingly paranoid about losing them.

I’ve been averaging about 1 lost hard drive per year for the last 4 years. When a begins hard drive to fail I typically have to scramble to clear space somewhere else, or start digging through my archives in hopes that I actually did back up everything to one of the other corners of another hard drive. I’ve tried building dedicated server machines, I’ve tried a multiple hard drive configuration, but it is all too complicated.

Running parallel to all of this has been my growing concern for my carbon footprint. Sure, it sounds wacky. Why should I be concerned? I’m just some guy in MN. But I figure becoming more green isn’t a choice, but a lifestyle change. If we don’t start to become aware of our ecological impact now then we won’t be able to solve the problem later. We recently downsized from the truck to the Mazda, all new light bulbs are compact fluorescent (most that are needing to be replaced were already halogens). This article got me thinking about the waste of power I was spending keeping so many machines on during the day.

So to cut out one whole computer from the Broken Complex I decided to outsource my backup. I chose to use Mozy, for mostly the unlimited backup space and zero transfer charges. For 5 bucks a month I can backup any data on my machine. Mozy runs in the background constantly checking for new files. Once a night any new files are uploaded to Mozy. So far I’ve been quite satisfied with the service. Mozy makes it clear that they are not an offsite hard drive facility, Mozy is a backup solution, that’s it. It doesn’t work well as a file dumping grounds. It’s job is to simply ensure that the files selected on the local machine are successfully backed up to Mozy’s servers. There are other services that tackle both backup and remote storage, but they were cost prohibited to the amount I need to store.

The initial backup of 80 gigs of pictures and music took 6 weeks due to Comcast’s upload limit of 384kbps. It  finally completed the other day and we reclaimed a speedy network connection again. After the upload completed I was able to shut off a computer that had been running for 3 years. The computer room has become quite quiet.

I honestly cannot remember when the toilet started running, but as of late it had become more than a drip or trickle. It had gotten so bad that we’d get up in the middle of the night to shut the bathroom door AND our bedroom door just to muffle the noise.

3 weeks ago I bought a “replace-everything” toilet flushing kit. Unknown to me at the time, I didn’t need to replace “everything” per-se, the bolts holding the tank to the bowl could have been saved. Regardless, since I had all new parts I spent Saturday morning fixing the toilet. After living with the a running water noise for so long, the lack of it is deafening. But it also feels like a bad itch has finally been scratched.

In other news, I have switched jobs once again. This time, though, I think I’ve hit on something good. I made the career switch to consulting vs permanent employment. I’m still salaried through a consulting firm, but now get to enjoy the luxury of zero emotional attachment to the work. I still really enjoy working with the technology and working on solving complex problems. With consulting comes the automatic respect and expectations of a job well done. I don’t feel like a drone so much.

The downside, working at a large corporate healthcare client has seriously cut into my online social life. No longer am I able to ping anyone via instant messaging. If I try to access any sort of IM on my work computer I’m kindly reminded via the proxy server that I am violating corporate policy and if I continue attempt to access IM it will be reported to my manager. Yet-another-reason I’m glad I’m not an employee.

Riles birthday party is fast approaching. With it comes the release of Guitar Hero III for the Wii. If I’m not reading about GH3, I’m telling Courtney about it. While Riley’s birthday party will be fun, I will also be enjoying a few competitive “battle of the bands” round against Drew and Chad.

A conversation between Courtney and myself:

[13:55] brokenindu: do we have to dress up for riles birthday?
[13:55] Courtney: yes!
[13:55] Courtney: i was going to tell you!
[13:55] brokenindu: dammit…
[13:55] Courtney: at Target they have an adult size gorilla costume
[13:56] brokenindu: you’ll look good in it.
[13:56] Courtney: its too big for me
[13:56] Courtney: you will have to take one for the team

The weekend started out with a bang but ended in a 3 am Charlie Foxtrot Monday morning. Let me explain:

Feeling feisty and hungry Friday night, we checked Riley into the “Grandparents Motel” and headed out for the evening. In search of a good steak we decided to hit Red Stone in Minnetonka. We enjoyed a fine 3-course meal sprinkled with wine and vodka. The only thing better than the food was the impeccable service. At one point I called over the manager to give kudos to our waiter.

Still Riley-free Saturday morning, we did a little birthday shopping for him. I don’t want to ruin any surprises but lets just say he’ll really appreciate all the new clothes we got him. We were beat tired from the night before so we settled in for a quiet night at home. Court put Riley to bed and I began reading Into the Wild. We hit the sack early and called it a day.

An hour later we heard a barking seal from Riley’s room. We listened for awhile as the seal got angrier. Riley awoke from his slumber angry and frustrated. The coughing kept Riley up. We were concerned because his breathing was quite labored and he was gasping for breath. With my history of asthma we’re overly concerned when we hear things like this. We hopped in the car and headed to the emergency room. By 3am Riley had been diagnosed with croup, an inflammation of his throat, and we were heading home for a little sleep.

Sunday we spent over at the folks house watching football. None of the three of us had slept much the night before. We made it through the ‘rents on sugar and caffeine. We all crashed early. Called it a night before night began.

My work pager rang at 2:30am. It was an urgent issue that needed attention. 2:30am is no time to be thinking, especially about work. Some item wasn’t showing on the website and it needed to be active by 5am. When in the T.V. biz this stuff happens at all hours of the day. I spent the next 2 hours troubleshooting and waking up many other poor souls. At the end of the night it was someone else’s mess up that got me up in the middle of the night.

This morning I’m flying on little sleep and even less motivation. I’m waiting for today to come and go. The kicker is that I will get no more extra sleep tonight. I have a scheduled upgrade for work at 2am. I may just have to call in sick tomorrow.