A New Hope

With another snow storm scheduled for this weekend even Facebook has taken to taunting me with its advertisements for snow blowers. Curse you FB, yes I do need an Ariens 24” Two Stage Electric Start Gas Snow Blower. Not that it matters anymore, it is late enough in the season that I couldn’t find a snow blower for purchase for just about any sum of money. I didn’t really plan on all the major home improvement stores being completely sold out of snow blowers. This could very easily put a crimp my plan to buy one for cheap once this winter is over.

Wednesday I nearly got stuck in Atlanta airport as they must have been in the midst of receiving historic levels of snowfall, they must have gotten multiple tenths of an inch… But seriously, I sat on the tarmac for over 90 minutes while they deiced the plane. I don’t claim to be an expert on deicing but I’m fairly confident that the deicing procedure is only good for so long, and I’m also fairly confident that that period of time is a number less than 90 minutes. The whole time the flight attendants kept reiterating how we had to stay in our seats with our seat belts buckled due to the fact that FAA regulations dictate that all passengers must be in their seats and buckled up whenever the plane is in motion on the ground (we weren’t really in motion, but we had to be ready just in case the pilot received word that we had to take off within a 15 second window). To be fair I didn’t really feel like verifying that FAA regulations really require this because, quite frankly, I don’t want to waste my time perusing FAA regulations, but let’s just say that this sounds exactly like something I would expect to come out of an agency whose authority comes from the federal government. While I sat waiting for my flight to take off I was amused at the irony of the fact that I took a shuttle to the airport which didn’t have seat belts and then I rode on a train inside the airport that didn’t even have seats yet I was not allowed to get up in a plane that might suddenly start moving at a walking pace. Thank you FAA for forcing the elderly gentleman in the first row to control his bladder for the entire 120 minutes it took to us to get into the air. Perhaps you would be better off trying to regulate other trivial matters like drone flights and paper airplanes, oh wait…

Last week I spent some time flying my drone and recreating scenes from Star Wars. This week I spent time editing said footage and put together an epic masterpiece of cinematography. Rather than go on and on about how my coworkers have raved about my piloting skills describing them as “nothing short of incredible” and how I have been called “the Da Vinci of Adobe Premier Pro” I will let the video speak for itself. It is worth mentioning that it is rumored that when George Lucas saw the video he said “it was the biggest mistake of my life not hiring him for production during Episode IV.” Without further ado I give you, Solar One – A New Hope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CdvPNM5eUc

After having filmed and edited the preceding video I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I lost a Star Wars related bet earlier this week. My opponent conceded that the only reason he won was because he had seen Episode IV somewhere around the order of 30 times in the past six months, largely due to the fact that his five year old son loves Star Wars. Nevertheless, it was still a poor excuse for losing a Star Wars related bet; it looks like I am going to need to spend the next several weeks brushing up. The only real question at this point is do I start watching with Episode I or do I kick it off with Episode IV?

As I sit here typing this Jack is watching one of those mindless children’s cartoons with Leslie. I’m only half listening; I can’t really avoid overhearing at least part of it. It is sadly ungratifying to pick apart the basic premise of the show, not to mention all the other issues the show has (seriously, how are you supposed to drink a glass of water when the entire show takes place underwater?). I really don’t remember my childhood cartoons being this bad, this really, really bad.

Womp Rats and Ash Wednesday

This past Monday was a holiday and it was nice to have a day off and enjoy the company of my wife and children. Leslie needed to make a trip to the store so I agreed to watch over both of the kids while she went shopping. It was during this time that I began to question all of the times Leslie and I have “ooh’d” and “ahh’d” and commented on how smart our eldest child is. It was during this time that I witnessed Jack get stuck in a chair… twice and then attempt to jump face first on top of the blanket fort I had just built… again, twice. I’ll preface that by saying that while, yes I am an engineer, and yes, I happen to make a pretty stout blanket fort, there’s not a blanket fort known to man that can withstand a rather chunky child attempting to swan dive right into the middle of it… twice.

Well, this Wednesday was the start of Lent, not that Lent has ever played a big role in my life, I mention it only because Leslie and I were reminiscing on Friday about some of the people we worked with back in the GE office in Norcross. During this conversation Leslie recounted her first encounter with people who observed Lent. My sheltered Baptist wife had never had anything to do with Lent, much less seen the practice of smudging a bit of ash across your forehead. She told me that she simply could not figure out why everyone was having so much trouble with the printer on the main floor, enough so that they were getting toner smudged across their face. To be fair, I don’t know that I can laugh too hard at this because I vaguely remember telling my roommate something similar my first year in college.

I recently was able to convince my manager that it would be in the best interest of the business to purchase a drone with the ability to take high quality video while inflight. Perhaps I wouldn’t make so bad of a salesman after all. Anyway, he gave me a pretty large budget and told me to get the best that I could for that amount of money. Needless to say I had something purchased by the end of the day. Unfortunately the weather has been pretty rough ever since. I’ve snuck in a couple of flights at the house, but nothing very significant since I was battling below 0F wind-chills that made standing outside for extended periods of time very uncomfortable. Friday I went out with my boss to visit a prospective site in Massachusetts and we took the drone in order to get a good video of the topography. While it was cool to be using the drone for its intended purpose it was stinking cold outside and it only took about ten minutes for my hands to start feeling like they were about to fall off. Today (Sunday) was a brilliant blue, sun shining day, where the temperatures sky rocketed all the way up to 33F. It practically felt like summer and it was perfect weather to break out the drone for a couple of extended flights. Of course, one of the first things I had to do was recreate the scene from “A New Hope” where Luke is flying down the channels of the Death Star in his X-wing since the snow banks piled up along the sidewalk looked faintly reminisce of those very channels. While I am an excellent pilot, let’s just say that I wasn’t trying to bulls-eye any womp rats.

The really funny thing is that the entire solar team has gotten behind this drone concept with great enthusiasm. It is not unusual for people to randomly come up to my desk and ask to see the latest footage. My boss has written out each of our names on his whiteboard and is in the process of coming up with call signs for each of us. I tried to get Rogue Leader assigned as mine but he remained resolute in that you are not allowed to come up with your own call sign. I’ve purposely avoiding telling him that I ended up ruining a week’s worth of time lapse photography because I left a finger print smudge across the portion of the case that covers the lens. I’m more than a little concerned that I might wind up with the call sign ‘Smudge.’ I guess it could be worse; I could be ‘Sparky’ or ‘[Sheldon] Cooper.’ We’ve already been through last year’s performance reviews so I’m in the process of trying to get the rest of our team onboard with his call sign being ‘Duchess.’ I’ve started trading Top Gun quotes throughout the day with the guy in the cubicle next to mine. On top of that I’ve taken to wearing my aviators around the office; I only need a leather flight cap or maybe a bomber jacket to really complete the persona. “This guy is dangerous.”

This next week I am traveling back to Raleigh for a few days, it will be the first time that Leslie has been alone with the kids for more than a day at a time. It is the perfect time for a trip since Jack has not been listening very well as of late, on top of that it would appear that he has stopped taking one (if not both) of his naps during the day. Yea… At this point I’m just hoping that my son is still alive when I get home.

I am finishing up this newsletter on the plane and I am fairly confident that I have to be related to the guy sitting across the aisle from me. Twice now he has woken himself up because he was snoring so loudly. Ahem, I won’t specifically call out which grandfather or uncle(s) this reminds me of. I’m still working up the courage to ask if he knows any Filippos or Griffins. Ok, he said he doesn’t know any and I don’t think he believed me when I said “I was just curious.” I probably better wrap this up before he starts reading this last paragraph over my shoulder.

I’ve Been IT’d

This week has been a relatively uneventful week, a week where I was able to get caught up on most of my work here in the office. It is amazing what a week without travel can do for my schedule. That said, the week did not pass completely without any items of note. I believe that Leslie and I have finally found our home church and this week we had our first meeting with our small group. For quite possibly the first time since we have been married we were surrounded by adults that were close to the same age and station in life as us. Typically Leslie and I are either the youngest couple in the class or group (although this is occurring less and less) or we have been married for far longer. Side note, it is crazy to think that we will celebrate our 10^th anniversary this year! This is a somewhat new situation for us and it is kind of cool. Leslie was thrilled to find out that our pastor and his wife got married eight days before we did. It’s the little things in life.

Every once and a while I’ll try to inject a little humor into a situation whenever I have to deal with corporate IT, only every once and a while mind you, I’ve found that IT doesn’t often had a sense of humor. This time IT may have had the last laugh. I entered a Help Desk ticket because I was having issues with my docking station for my laptop, but I decided to have a little fun with it so the first two lines of my ticket read “I tried plugging my refrigerator into my docking station and now it doesn’t work… I’m kidding.” What I didn’t realize was that the workflow automatically pulls the first 67 characters from the description for form the title for the case; as such it read “I tried plugging my refrigerator into my docking station and now it doesn’t work.” Well, so much for that. I was disappointed that the IT tech did not ask me if my refrigerator was running when he called later in the day.

That was as far as I got last week, I had intended to finish up my newsletter on Monday as has become my standard procedure as of late, however, when Monday came around I was struck with a debilitating stomach bug. I’d give you the details, but trust me, those are details that no one wants. So here we are, the following Friday and I am just now getting caught up.

Leslie and I have exciting news from this past week, finally, after months of searching, we have found a home church. We had pretty much narrowed down our options by the beginning of this year; this past Sunday we had the opportunity to sit down with the pastor and his family for lunch after church and get to know them a little. We are very excited to see how God is going to use us in this church setting. It is a little different than we are used to or comfortable with, largely due to its size (it is a fairly small church), nevertheless, we believe that God’s calling in this is clear and we are ready to move forward.

We got more snow on Monday (another 8-12”) and even more is scheduled for this weekend, although this weekend’s snow should be comparatively light with only a few inches in the forecast. That said, the temperature has been brutal today with the high hovering right around 5F and wind chills dipping to around -17F. My ears were killing me by the time I got into the office earlier today and when I reached up to touch one of them I swear I heard it crunch. I’ll be honest, this is close to North Dakota cold right now; the snot in my nose is beginning to freeze every time I breathe in.

Well, two weeks gone and I do not have much else to report, rather than waste your time or mine I’ll just wrap things up. Until next week.

Ground Hog Day

Another week and another missed weekend deadline, it won’t be too much longer and Monday may just start being considered my normal publishing deadline. The last of our family has left, fleeing the state just ahead of the snow; although this storm, unlike the previous week’s “Epic Blizzard of 2015” actually ended up dumping more than just a few inches of snow on us. I’m quite certain there are a number of politicians in New York City who were regretting their decision to begin canceling 1000’s of flights before the first snow flake ever fell, and all that over what amounted to be a few measly inches. Last night’s storm left us with about 8-12” in the driveway this morning and it continued snowing throughout the day for a total accumulation around 18”. It’s worth mentioning that Punxsutawney Phil’s weather forecast is probably more accurate than the ones that have recently come from the meteorologists in southern New York.

Phil says there supposed to be six more weeks of winter; at this rate I cannot say that I am surprised. The more that I have thought about it, the more that I have realized that Ground Hog day was clearly an invention of someone who lived in the south, spring has never come as early as mid-February in the north. The ground hog comes out and sees his shadow in Ney York and we’re like, “oh, six more weeks of winter? Sounds like spring is coming early this year.”

When I went out to shovel snow this morning I decided to only shovel out a couple of tracks for my truck since it was still snowing pretty heavily and Leslie did not have any plans for getting out of the house. I was somewhat relieved that the snow was a very light and dry snow, meaning it wasn’t quite so heavy to shovel. When I got home I wasn’t able to pull into the driveway because my tracks had filled in and another 6”+ had fallen, fortunately it wasn’t a heavy snow, right? I’ve since revised that thought, it doesn’t matter what kind of snow it is, 18” is heavy… and a lot. I think the sidewalks might just have to wait until a later time, like maybe April or May. Whose stupid idea was it to wait until spring time to try and get a good deal on a snow blower? I now have mixed feelings about the snow we are forecasted to get on Wednesday, Thursday, and again on Saturday. Yipee? I will say this, the recent storm has provided us with a nearly limitless supply of snow ice cream, or at least limitless until the sweetened-condensed milk runs out. I wonder if I can buy a pallet of that stuff from Sam’s?

Family life is going well enough, despite our best efforts, Ayla managed to pick up the head cold that has been plaguing Jack off and on for the past couple of weeks. Just when it seemed he had completely gotten over whatever he had, overnight he came down with something else, or the same thing again and now it would appear that he has passed it along to his little sister. Darn him for trying to be so affectionate and loving.

Well, it’s late and I’m already not sleeping well so it is time for me to go to bed. For those of you on the West Coast, enjoy the rest of your Ground Hog day, go out and eat a ground hog… or something.