January 28, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Rosanne Cash on death and...eternity...
I listened to a great interview of Rosanne Cash (daughter of the late Johnny Cash and his first wife Vivian) on NPR this morning. It was profound for two reasons.
One reason was because of her take on the recent film about her father’s life, Walk the Line (which I have not yet seen, but would like to). She said that she thought that 20th Century Fox had done an honorable job in making the film but that no one wants to see a movie about their childhood, let alone their father’s drug problems. She said that the film was made for everyone in the world but four people: she and her three siblings.
Wow. Sorry, Cash kids.
The second reason was this quote about how she felt about the passing of her father (and, sorry, Ms. Cash, if I get it a little wrong):
Our relationships with our parents don’t end when they leave their bodies. We just have to learn to come to new terms with them.It’s less than a week since the birthday of my deceased father-in-law. It’s always a hard time of year for us. Hearing that quote — even though it might be common sense to some or maybe a little foofoo to others — really gave me a glimmer of hope. It speaks of the strength within us to deal with difficult events. It tells a story about faith and eternity that’s sometimes very awkward to try to tell.
Thank you Rosanne Cash (who, by the way, has a new album out called, “Black Cadillac,” that you all should go buy.)
January 27, 2006 at 07:59 am
Spam poetry...
My friend, Wheat, sometimes posts what he calls, “Spam Haiku” over at his Blog:
This morning, I received some spam that reads an awful lot like poetry, and I thought It would be a great way to end the week…me buy studyBrilliant.
A translate drive
super give cut
search cancel swim
It complain have
night watch swim
true hurt work
by tell try
but explain talk
Is fill fix
today run do
January 23, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Welcome to the real Office Space...
I arrived at work this morning to find that I couldn’t login to my computer. In fact, the message that popped up when I did try to login indicated that my account name had been disabled. After over two hours on the phone (much of that time on hold), I finally found out that my corporate profile had been set to “terminated.”
Wha…?
My manager didn’t know what this was all about, so at least I knew that I wasn’t really terminated. That’s a good thing, right?
It turns out that over the weekend, the Human Resources department where I work was performing some maintenance. Namely, they were switching my profile fomr their current database to the one that’s controlled by the actual company I am working for. During this process (which I think was auatomated, due to the fact that it all went down at 12:30 PM on Sunday) rather than switching profiles, it just disabled mine.
So, over two hours of phone time later, I was told that I’d have to have our HR rep call the help desk (and probably wait on hold for forty-five minutes) and tell them that I’m not really terminated. (You see, me sitting there at my desk, telling the help desk that I’m not really terminated just doesn’t work.)
What fun.
January 19, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Have you heard any good gallbladder jokes lately?
The other night, Julianna and I were laying in bed, making up gallbladder and liver jokes (yeah, we’re crack-ups like that). I thought I’d share a couple of the gems with you…
q. What did the liver say after the gallbladder was removed?Or, how about…
a. You think the gallbladder was painful? Try a little separation anxiety.
q. Where does the liver go on vacation?No, wait, there’s more…
a. The Bile River.
a. What’s the gallbladder’s favorite band?Is this thing on?
a. The Rolling Stones.
January 17, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Some information about my new CEO and the company I work for...
On Sunday, the Kansas City Star ran an article about the company I now work for:
Sprint plans to jettison the local division that Hesse leads as a stand-alone business based in the Kansas City area by early this summer. The company, informally dubbed Spinco, does not yet have a new name, but it will have a formidable regional presence with a total work force of about 20,000 and annual sales of $6 billion. Among locally based public companies, Hesse’s firm will rank second only to trucking giant YRC Worldwide Inc. in sales.This is my favorite part:
For now, Hesse’s company operates from a headquarters building about a mile away from Sprint’s sprawling Overland Park campus. In the coming months, Hesse said, company leaders will consider whether to consolidate facilities in a new headquarters in downtown Kansas City or elsewhere in the region.Of course, I’m hoping that “elsewhere in the region” part is nixed.
(Read the entire article here.)
January 17, 2006 at 08:22 am
Amazing Avocados...
If you’ve never saved an avocado seed in order to try to grow an avocado tree, then you are missing out. It’s not that you will ever get any avocados from a self-grown avocado tree. That can’t happen unless you are able to successfully plant and cross-pollinate (or graft) the tree. What’s fun is the growing process.
If you would like to grow your own avocado tree, click here (those are the best instructions I could find online).
January 17, 2006 at 08:21 am
To clot or not to clot...
During the week and a half since my surgery, things have been going pretty good. According to the doctor (I spoke with him on the phone last night), all of the symptoms that I am experiencing are to be expected… Except for one…
Beginning on the day after the surgery, I noticed a lot of pain in my left forearm. So much so that it was hard to even touch it. The day after that, I noticed that there was a small bump in one of the veins on my wrist (close to where the IV was placed). Anyway, in the days that followed, this small bump has grown to about five inches of vein. There is still one area that feels “bumpier” than the rest, but for the most part, it is a hard vein.
Here’s a picture:
I am going to see my doctor on Thursday, so hopefully I’ll have a better answer then. Until then, I’ve been told (by my doctor and by Rob — who gave me an off-the-cuff diagnosis at the 75th Street Brewery the other night) to put heat on it — that’s supposed to help the irritation go down as well as break-down any sort of clotting.
And, so, another chapter in the “What’s wrong with Tim now?” saga continues…
January 16, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Rant ~ What you have posted is not a Podcast!
Don’t worry. This will be a short one…
From the Wikipedia :
Subscribing to podcasts allows a user to collect programs from a variety of sources for listening or viewing offline at whatever time and place is convenient to the user. In contrast, traditional broadcasting provides only one source at a time, and the time is broadcaster-specified…And…
What makes podcasting unique from other digital audio and video delivery is the use of syndication feed enclosures.
If you post an MP3 on your website of Weblog, it is not a Podcast!
Don’t call it a Podcast. Don’t refer to anything pertaining to that MP3 file as a Podcast. Don’t even think about typing anything resembling “Podcast” into the subject line of your Blog post.
So, what is a Podcast exactly?
If you didn’t pick that up from the above, quoted text, a Podcast is an audio file that is enclosed within an XML feed and can be directly, and automatically, downloaded into an audio application (such as iTunes) or a news aggregator (such as the desktop client, NetNewsWire, or the online site, Bloglines).
If the audio file that you post on you your website must be manually downloaded, clicked to play, et cetera, it is not a Podcast!
That is all.
(Read the entire Wikipedia entry for Podcast here.)
Oh… And if you must continue to incessantly post audio files on your Blog and call them Podcasts, please consider trying out a blogging app like TypePad — it will allow you to post your audio as real, honest-to-goodness Podcast files. Ok?
January 13, 2006 at 08:30 am
Reflections of week 1 on the new job...
It’s easy to tell that I haven’t had much time to post anything very meaningful over the last few days. That might give you some idea about how my first week on the new job went. For some reason, this is beginning to look more like a Photoblog than a Weblog! Hopefully, once I get my bearings, that will change. But, for the meantime, I’m going to leave you with a couple more first impressions through some more photography…
There is sunlight. Somewhere. But, not in my cube…
I’m very excited to get some of my projects underway and actually start being creative.
January 11, 2006 at 11:19 am
The perks of corporate life...
(This one is for Larry and Shepcat.)
First off, don’t be dissin’ my stapler:
Oh, but wait… It gets even better!
January 09, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Neither day, nor night, nor nary a moment 'tween...
January 09, 2006 at 06:45 am
First days...
First days are always fun. But, they can be a little unnerving as well.
In about an hour, I will be starting a new job. I’m not too nervous right now — maybe a little excited, but not really nervous.
I’ll report back when it’s all said and done.
January 05, 2006 at 10:38 am
The stones!
(No, not the Rolling Stones!)
I was mistaken. When still at the hospital, I was shown what the doctor left me with — I thought it was a bag containing one yellowish gall stone. What I was really looking at was a bag with some yellowish discoloration left by the stones that were actually in the bag (the doctor gave me a bunch of gall stones, as you can see in the phtoto). I put the ballpoint pen there for a frame of reference so that you can judge the size of the stones better — they’re pretty small, eh? And, it’s interesting that some are black and some are more orange.
Anyway, I guess there were some larger stones and there were some smaller ones, but they were mostly around this size. The main problem, in my case, may have arisen due to the fact that I have (or had) an abnormally small cystic duct which was easily blockable by any number of stone sizes. So, now that I don’t have to rely on that particular duct to deliver bile to my digestive system, I may see a reduction in all sorts of life-long afflictions (I can cross my fingers anyway).
I’m still feeling pretty good. The pain is manageable, although I am tired. Another nap may be in order soon.
Update: Julianna recently informed me that the “stones” did begin as one stone and must have crumbled since we got them. The original stone, then, was about the size of a small pea.
January 05, 2006 at 09:45 am
Top 20 Favorites for 2005...
In playing along with what everbody’s doing over at Flickr, I thought I’d whip up my most “favorited” photos of 2005.
Enjoy.
January 04, 2006 at 11:07 pm
MISSING:
Has anyone seen any stray gall stones laying around anywhere? Seriously. My doctor gave me one of the stones to bring home and now I can’t find it. If you have any idea where it might be hiding, I’m offering a reward.
Anyway, I’m back home and feeling pretty good (with some help from the pain meds, of course). The procedure went very well and I’m now without a gallbladder — which gives new meaning to the over-used adage, “I feel like something’s missing from my life.”
I don’t really feel like writing too much right now, so I’ll leave you with a couple of links to a couple of photos from my last couple of days:
- Gross! Pictures of my gallbladder (the white-ish, veiny thing) being extracted. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
- Through My Eyes. A three-photo photo essay of my time at the hospital. This set is for those of you who are a little more weak-stomached.
Off to bed.
Update: A photo of the gall stones can be found here.
January 03, 2006 at 07:34 am
This is the day that the Lord hath made...
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
January 01, 2006 at 08:55 am
Happy New Year!
I wish everyone a happy a prosperous 2006. Thanks for stopping by and making me rich with your all of your two-cent donations last year — I hope that my mental and spiritual piggy banks continue to be filled by all of you wonderful people.
Thanks to Mary, there is a photographic record of where I was last night.
Update: Todd has his photos of last night’s fun up now.